I Want To Like TOR, But It Just Feels Old

[Shadysketchy]

 

The problem is that outline for the game was written in 2004 and they never updated it.

 

Yes, I agree

[AmandaBynes]

The problem with Swtor is not content.

 

let me say that again,

 

The problem with Swtor is not content.

 

The problem is that outline for the game was written in 2004 and they never updated it.

 

Yes, totally agree with this. A majority of the posts in this topic aren't about content itself. Ignore that other guy though, he just bashes WoW in every post he makes for no reason.

[fallenvirtues]

Give it some god damn time...They couldnt fit everything in for launch and some **** was left out on purpose

 

If after a couple of months, things are still not to you liking, bounce..peace

 

I for one, am very happy with the game...There are a lot of bugs that need to be address, but I knew exactly what I was getting myself into by getting TOR at launch..

 

I think a lot of you make mountains out of mole hills and/or are so damn extremely impatient...Its easier dealing with my 2 year old son

[Offended]

Give it some gosh darn time...They couldnt fit everything in for launch and some **** was left out on purpose

 

The largest problem i have with your first reply is that, as people seem to enjoy to point out, this game has been in development for 7 years.

 

 

Are you trying to say that in 7 years they couldn't add macro support, fix combat, or any of the hundreds of other "minor" issues that have been around in beta for ever?

 

They put voice acting first, every thing else was second. Why not make a usable engine, a working game client first, then add content fluff and makeup later ?

 

Oh, i know, because then it would be like wow right?

[crazyhorsek]

Woah... forum necro ftw!

[Receo]

Pet AI is horrible, between the delay on commanding their auto attack, their hilarious pathing errors, and many others; it's safe to say giving every Class+Spec a pet was a bad idea, without first giving them AI that's passable in 2011

 

- 2007 graphics (The Skybox being a 2D Painting is particularly insulting)

 

- Server queues (Had queues in WoW for Vanilla, BC, and Wrath but not Cata, Blizzard has evolved, BioWare has not)

 

- Three Warzones, No Arenas (also consider Huttball cannot be taken seriously as Rated PvP). Again; TOR is competing with 2011 WoW (8 Battlegrounds, 4 of which can be done Rated + Arena Content)

 

- Voice Actors voicing too many different people; I don't think I've seen this many Characters with the same Voice Actor, since the first Deus Ex game

 

- Player Character repeating Dialogue from other conversations (My Sith Inquisitor has said "I'll show you what a Sith can do!" like 5 times now, and other less memorably rhyming are equally if not more common)

 

- "Choices" are still just the Blue good guy option, or the Red bad guy option — this was kinda new in KOTOR, and still cool in both Mass Effects; but unimpressive today

 

 

- Awkward gold; having over 500,000 gold by the time you hit 40 is... silly, and will be a major hassle as the game ages and gold inflation occurs

1)i think you mean companions not pets, and Vette has better DPS then my Marauder....

2) BW had to tackle a pretty big thing with close ups in conversations and tons of different looking worlds so you should be happy with what you have.

3) Have you read their updates? TOR is getting WAY more players then they expected.

4) The games been out for two weeks! WoW got those battlegrounds and arenas because they have had 7 years and 3, soon 4, expansions to add them in

5) You should be happy there is voice acting in the first place.

6) Same as last one, this is already the most expensive video game ever made, and voice acting is a pretty big chunk of that money

8) What other options do you want? There is the Light Side and Dark Side of the force Thats it. Do you want neutral points? Or Greed points?

9) 500,000 credits is worth 5,000 gold

Edited December 31, 2011 by Receo

[Ituhata]

Aion, Rift, Age of Conan, City of Heroes, Everquest 2, Lord of the Rings, I can keep going if you'd like. Only kid on the block, haha ok. Yes the questing is easy in the game, its almost like a tutorial 1-85. They do offer challenging content once you reach that point though, you obviously havn't gotten there. You think this game is "hard"?

 

Its funny because you treat those titles as serious contenders. I tried WAR, Rift, EQ2 LOTR and Runescape and quickly decided those games could not even come close to replacing WoW as my staple MMO. It's obvious many people felt the same way I did. This game is doing it for me and I'll wager my level 85 in WoW that this game will be just fine.

 

FYI, my friends and I had made it through Throne of 4 Winds, 5/6 BWD and I think 3/5 in BoT (downed the dual dragons) before the first updated content patch came out. The only reason I didn't complete the 1st tier raids is because I got bored.

 

This game isn't hard, but I'm enjoying my way to level 50 and not just blindly accepting quests and grinding my way to the top. There have been more than a few challenging situations when I am required to go solo fir my class quests and heroic 4 man quests feel like the old BC dungeons, which IMO was the height of WoW, back when dungeon running wasn't a trivial affair and it required a good group with CC, a tank who could mark, and a decent healer. The flashpoints feel a littler easier than the heroic 4 mans, but I've been late getting into them and usually outlevel them by +2 or so.

[Shadysketchy]

Woah... forum necro ftw!

 

I don't think you know what "forum necro"ing is

 

Anyway, this Thread hasn't been necro'd

[gentquality]

the game is good. But SWTOR better step up their game if they don't want to lose players to GW2 or Diablo 3. A lot of people say they are not a competition, but well it is...time being the cost here. Although GW2 and D3 are free to play, it will capture alot of attention and as it stands, SWTOR is an old engine.

 

Check this boss fight for example,

 

and this was august of 2010 and it has that epic feeling...and it's a outdoor world boss that appears as an event.

 

 

 

 

I know I have not seen end game but one of the clips I've seen...it looks like an oversized droid mob that I when I was level 8.

Edited December 31, 2011 by gentquality

[Vaegaknight]

This game isn't hard, but I'm enjoying my way to level 50 and not just blindly accepting quests and grinding my way to the top. There have been more than a few challenging situations when I am required to go solo fir my class quests and heroic 4 man quests feel like the old BC dungeons, which IMO was the height of WoW, back when dungeon running wasn't a trivial affair and it required a good group with CC, a tank who could mark, and a decent healer. The flashpoints feel a littler easier than the heroic 4 mans, but I've been late getting into them and usually outlevel them by +2 or so.

 

Bam. Nail on the head. You can't go into every game you play and expect to play the exact same way you played the game before and come out happy.

[MannToots]

Only read the op and not the 100 pages that followed.

 

Stop comparing a game that just released to WOW that has been out and developed for years. It is an unfair comparison to any new MMO. If you compared the original release of WoW to this you would get an entirely different comparison. It isn't fair to take a long developed game and compare its features to a brand new one.

[Shadysketchy]

Only read the op and not the 100 pages that followed.

 

Stop comparing a game that just released to WOW that has been out and developed for years. It is an unfair comparison to any new MMO. If you compared the original release of WoW to this you would get an entirely different comparison. It isn't fair to take a long developed game and compare its features to a brand new one.

 

SWTOR needed to be able to compete in the 2011 market, not the 2004 market

[IheartGreenGirls]

Do you wanna like it? I see you in a ton of topics just being a hater and taking pointless jabs at the game and anyone who is actually having fun with it. Must be some gooooood haterade.

[MannToots]

After reading back a few pages here I also wanted to add that I think many of you have absolutely no idea the level of planning and commitment it takes to design a game engine and game content. I am a software engineer and I've learned over the years that You can't go y changing things half way through the development process because some other company tried something new or because you have a new idea. Every large change can impact the entire development team and slow down the project for months. This is whats called scope creep or requirement creep. This happens even for minor changes. Now once you get into some of the major changes you guys want this becomes a problem. I'm sure many of the features wanted here will be added eventually. The first iteration of the game generally has to fit to the original design spec. Using that spec as a basis they determine how long the game is going to date to complete, and the document is generally treated as a contract. Now consider all this and then remember how long this game was in production.

 

There are so many factors that go into these decisions that many of you do not comprehend or refuse to comprehend. Right now most of the programmers and content designers of the SWTOR team are in bug fixing mode while the software designers and project leads are probably in a room somewhere putting together a new spec sheet for the first major content update. I would wager that the first content update will silence many of the opinions voiced in this thread.

[Quaade]

I am a software engineer and I've learned over the years that You can't go y changing things half way through the development process because some other company tried something new or because you have a new idea. Every large change can impact the entire development team and slow down the project for months. This is whats called scope creep or requirement creep.

 

Even then, let's assume just the basic features, chat, combat, guilds, ui, those 3 and development began in 2004 shortly after WoW hit the market. None of those 3 things are progressions in terms of user friendliness or basic features that WoW had in it from the start.

 

In some respects it's even steps backwards, chat channels that resets after space combat, making you lose conversation, UI that can't be scaled and a combat system that's horribly clunky.

The worst offender is the combined fact that BW didn't have to develop a single one of those features, they are all in the basic Hero Engine, and since they didn't have to develop on them they obviously also chose not to refine them at all.

[twinscar]

So honestly, I really do want to like this game. And I do think it has some positive features, including Star Wars; I've always like the Star Wars movies. Unfortunately, TOR just feels really old. Even compared to World of Warcraft, which actually is very old (over 7 years now), this feels elderly.

 

The following are some things that make TOR feel old:

 

For the sake of Brevity and concision I will retort using only your comparison of WoW

 

- No LFG Tool (been in WoW for over 2 years... absolutely baffled as to how this hasn't been developed for TOR yet)

One can disagree on this, seeing as how there is a LFG tool in game, do your research first or risk being an incompetent. (this is the dictionary term)

 

- Awful UI; I could make an entire thread about this (and people already have), but for the sake of brevity, I'll just restate that it's awful

yes it could use help, considering how much the community has done to help WoWs UI, this one is a non-factor. Using Hotkeys and bindings however will solve many problems, aside bug fixes, expect players to make this better.

 

- Pet AI is horrible, between the delay on commanding their auto attack, their hilarious pathing errors, and many others; it's safe to say giving every Class+Spec a pet was a bad idea, without first giving them AI that's passable in 2011

true, having good AI is great, WOW however does not have AI. Go fig

 

- 2007 graphics (The Skybox being a 2D Painting is particularly insulting)

every game you have, uses a 2d surface to represent the sky, EVERY GAME. I mean this in a literal and figurative meaning, its not some 2007 "trick", its simply how games are made. You dont think they actually build space and the galaxy into the night when you look at the stars right? Get real.

 

- No Day/Night Cylce

Agreed, not game breaking and the passage of time, is of course different.

 

- No accessable body of water deeper than 6 inches

eh whatever. Until there is under water combat I can accept that the water isn't water like.

 

- Server queues (Had queues in WoW for Vanilla, BC, and Wrath but not Cata, Blizzard has evolved, BioWare has not)

yeah, queues suck. Cata however, is the reason many people are here. Evolution indeed.

 

- Lackluster Character Creation

and yet more robust than WoWs? that is your primary comparison factor yes?

 

- Absurd Leveling curve; the overall process of getting from 1-50 is pretty fast, but the curve for time per level increases at a rate that makes me feel like I'm playing Aion again

I played Aion before they "westernized it" the leveling curve isn't even close. Then again in WoW people leveled their toons 1-85 in the span of 2 days, defeated X raid boss in less than a week.

 

- Three Warzones, No Arenas (also consider Huttball cannot be taken seriously as Rated PvP). Again; TOR is competing with 2011 WoW (8 Battlegrounds, 4 of which can be done Rated + Arena Content)

WoW might have more battlegrounds but the pvp is a joke to begin with, also consider that while you are capturing the flag, bringing a flag to the Fel reaver Ruins, sitting at the stables, rushing to Drek, that pvp in WoW is....retarded.

 

If you want to grab the best comp and pawn people into oblivion because of your rad comp and gear, then yes WoW Arena is for you.

 

Huttbal conversely plays with a large teamwork component to win, something that WoW never encouraged, conversely we arent capturing the flag here for some unknown reason, each Warzone thus far has been well integrated into the game, can you say the same for WoW?

 

- No Macros

Yes, I agree here. My G15 keyboard fixed that however

 

- No mouseover casting

again, developed by players, Not Blizz. Expect the same here.

 

- No addon support

I agree, that isn't to say that there wont be addons.

 

- No Dual Spec

really? this is one of your "musts" do you know why they put DS in? because nobody wanted to tank or heal, that's it.

 

- Taris memory leaks (should have been fixed in Beta, not "overnight" a week after Early Access started for the game's release build)

ah yes I remember when we had a DK use Dark simulacrum on a boss, bringing their hp to 10%. It was of course a bug, just like Taris memory leaks.

 

- Lack of variety in quests; everything is kill X amount of Y, unlike WoW where they've added a lot of variation (for better or for worse) in the quests, which makes leveling feel less grindy

I remember killing 250 Kobolds for

10 candles, I also remember collecting ***** several times, if this is your solution I dont want a part in it.

 

- Voice Actors voicing too many different people; I don't think I've seen this many Characters with the same Voice Actor, since the first Deus Ex game

ZOMG TEH VOICES, yeah all the voice actors in WoW....er...I guess dialogue boxes are the same voice too aren't they? or are we talking about Metzen who seems to Voice act the majority of the pitiful amount of voice acting in their game?

 

- Player Character repeating Dialogue from other conversations (My Sith Inquisitor has said "I'll show you what a Sith can do!" like 5 times now, and other less memorably rhyming are equally if not more common)

yes I know, if only there were more ways to say yes!

 

- "Choices" are still just the Blue good guy option, or the Red bad guy option — this was kinda new in KOTOR, and still cool in both Mass Effects; but unimpressive today

as unimpressive as WoW I suppose?

 

- No Mount until level 25; it only takes a couple hours to get your first Mount in WoW these days. No idea why this was considered a good idea

wait didnt you just say that it was quick to lvl in SWTOR? yeah....

 

- Awkward gold; having over 500,000 gold by the time you hit 40 is... silly, and will be a major hassle as the game ages and gold inflation occurs

I dont think you actually made it to 50, as 500,000 CREDITS goes rather fast.

 

- A vast array of technical errors that BioWare, and easily amused Players will chalk up to "Every launch has issues, go play WoW kid!"; but nonetheless detract from gameplay, and are hard to excuse in a 2011 title

and yet in 2010, Cata released to its own bugs?

 

- No Appearance/Gear Customization such as WoW's Transmogrification, or a standard MMO Appearance Tab (weird in a game where we watch ourselves talk so much)

oh wait are we talking about the game company who couldn't implement that same customization for 7 years? but don't you worry there bub, those who were in the beta already know whats going to happen with the evolution of the "match chest color" but Ill let you in on a secret, what took Blizz 7 years, wont take Bio several months.

 

- No Barbershop for minor character recustomization (again, weird in a game where we watch so much of our character speaking)

no customization for a companion? DO YOU EVEN PLAY THIS GAME? TALK TO A COMPANION CUSTOMIZATION VENDOR

 

- More — I will expand on this as more things pop into my mind, these are the ones currently at the forefront of my thought process

please dont, write an email to yourself first then play the game. Then delete or alter the points you were trying to make, so that they match SWTOR. Or better yet dont.

 

Anyway, do you guys feel the same way? Maybe you don't see the logic in some of my points (but you will once you get to level 40+), but you've probably noticed the game feels old. I'm worried that this feeling will plague the launch, and the early days of the game. This will both turn away new players, and create a jaded community; problems that get worse and worse as time goes on. Hopefully the game can be improved enough though, I do like it.

 

TL;DR, I think TOR feels old, what do you think?

get off the soapbox

[Shadysketchy]

 

 

no customization for a companion? DO YOU EVEN PLAY THIS GAME? TALK TO A COMPANION CUSTOMIZATION VENDOR

 

 

More like, do you even read what you're quoting

 

I clearly said Character Recustomization, not Companion

[TYBERzan]

You guys are lucky that you can even play, I am on vacation and have been for a week and even though I downloaded the game on my laotop I cant play because some idiots made error code 7, so while you get to complain/play I qm forced to read forums and dream of playing my avatar. Some people just dont know how good they have it.

 

Tldr-stop complaning, I cant even play.

[Sunsoar]

DX9 and the hero engine combined make an awesome looking game....in 2002. This is suppose to last years...next gen GPUs are out in a few months on top of our already powerful 580s and 6970s and we still have to look at this fugly crap. Can't wait to see what their 'high' resolution textures bring and any graphics/ UI changes down the road.

[TYBERzan]

DX9 and the hero engine combined make an awesome looking game....in 2002. This is suppose to last years...next gen GPUs are out in a few months on top of our already powerful 580s and 6970s and we still have to look at this fugly crap. Can't wait to see what their 'high' resolution textures bring and any graphics/ UI changes down the road.

 

Hero engine came out in 2008.

[TitanJJ]

All I see in OPs post:

 

'i really wish this was wow with lightsabers, just like people told me it was'.

 

 

 

people like you don't want to play star wars. you want to play wow. admit it.

 

you complain if it is too much like wow and you complain if it is different from wow. MAKE UP YOUR MIND.

[TheHauntingBard]

DX9 and the hero engine combined make an awesome looking game....in 2002. This is suppose to last years...next gen GPUs are out in a few months on top of our already powerful 580s and 6970s and we still have to look at this fugly crap. Can't wait to see what their 'high' resolution textures bring and any graphics/ UI changes down the road.

 

They probably wanted to make it for consoles as well and decided half away it was a stupid idea, we're talking about EA here.

Down side is the UI and graphics pretty much look like it was made for the Xbox 260

[MannToots]

Even then, let's assume just the basic features, chat, combat, guilds, ui, those 3 and development began in 2004 shortly after WoW hit the market. None of those 3 things are progressions in terms of user friendliness or basic features that WoW had in it from the start.

 

Consider WoW was so new around this time you can only expect that they designed to game to at least match up to the competition. You may want it, but you can not expect every single game in existence to always and infallibly push those features forward for all of gaming. You simply can't. WoW set the bar for the minimal ui features. This game has everything it absolutely needed to succeed at launch. MMO's are unique in gaming that features that were not featured on launch are frequently added. You have to assume at some point during the design process some of the items on the feature request page have to be pushed back for these addons. DLC's are a new idea in console gamine but large content patches for MMO's have been the norm for years. Expect this to be a consideration during design.

 

In some respects it's even steps backwards, chat channels that resets after space combat, making you lose conversation, UI that can't be scaled and a combat system that's horribly clunky.

The worst offender is the combined fact that BW didn't have to develop a single one of those features, they are all in the basic Hero Engine, and since they didn't have to develop on them they obviously also chose not to refine them at all.

 

First off a bug isn't relevant to this discussion. That chat issue will be fixed. UI scaling isn't even a relevant feature to everyone. I for one have no use to it.

Combat isn't clunky in my opinion. I've rather enjoyed it.

 

This last paragraph is an anomaly to me. Its mostly opinions and less on fact. Sounds to me like you just don't like the game and want to find every single way to complain about it.

 

I've lost interest in this now. I'm going to go actually play the game instead of ************ about it on a forum.

[Bdaw]

Only read the op and not the 100 pages that followed.

 

Stop comparing a game that just released to WOW that has been out and developed for years. It is an unfair comparison to any new MMO. If you compared the original release of WoW to this you would get an entirely different comparison. It isn't fair to take a long developed game and compare its features to a brand new one.

 

Unfortunately this game has been in production for years and years now. And it plays and feels like they didn't change or update a damn thing from that first day. I agree with OP, game feels old. Regardless of what anyone says, this game is missing a ton of features that MMO players have grown to know as basic functions of the game. This would've been acceptable back in the day when they started. But seeing all the advances that have happened in other MMO's should've sparked something in the devs minds. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt that it'll all come together in a few months. But it just feels lackluster compared to all the hype they've been putting on us these past few years.

[Shadysketchy]

They probably wanted to make it for consoles as well and decided half away it was a stupid idea, we're talking about EA here.

Down side is the UI and graphics pretty much look like it was made for the Xbox 260

 

I agree, this game has an ever-present "Console" feel to it