BobBudJones Posted October 31, 2015 Posted October 31, 2015 (edited) TLDR; Almost all meaningful choice in directed the way in which your character advances has been eliminated in favor of purely cosmetic choices. This is not very fun to someone who enjoys RPGs. First let me say that I'm not trying to hate on the game; I started playing at launch, and have now re-subbed twice (fairly briefly each time). I've put hundreds of hours into the game, finished all the class stories, and generally would consider myself a fan of the game. I'm a gigantic fan of Bioware in general. I've been playing PC RPGs since the late 80s, and one of the things that makes them so satisfying is the sense of progression. You know what this is: better loot, better abilities, and most importantly, having choices to make along the way that influence the direction you progress in. SWTOR in its current form has almost completely eliminated this. The last significant choice you make is choosing your advanced class. OK, so each advanced class has three disciplines, but you can swap between those virtually at will, so that doesn't count. Some specific issues: -Disciplines. Ugh. So the reasoning behind the change was that the talent trees were basically unbalanced, and people in a given class were invariably choosing all the same talents. The correct fix for this is balancing the talent trees. But no, instead we get all the choice removed from leveling up. And don't say "But utility points..." No. Not only are utility point options virtually identical for every single class, but they also have many no-brainer options depending on what you like to do (PvP v PvE), and so are no better than the old talent trees. Most of them, furthermore, are simply passive buffs to existing abilities, so their effects are not very interactive and at worst almost unnoticeable. -Crafting. I used to have a whole family of crafters, who would help each other out by making cool stuff. It was satisfying to progress a character's crafting skill and acquire recipes, because this would mean better gear for my other characters. Crafting is now a) unnecessary due to the overall ease of getting through the game; b) highly impractical because you move through planets so quickly you immediately outlevel your gathering skill; c) mostly pointless until endgame, again due to the speed with which one levels up; d) in the end, almost entirely cosmetic. Which leads me to... -Gear. Where to begin. The problems here are inextricably intertwined with those of crafting. Namely, the game is too easy to even care about the quality of your gear most of the time. Even PvP has Bolster, which is plenty until endgame. Green drops are nothing but vendor trash, especially now that companions can't use them. Crafted gear is good for cosmetic reasons only, and at this point it all sucks compared to Cartel gear (in appearance, that is). Even blue/purple drops are mostly pointless; due to the mastery/adaptive armor changes, at least you can use anything you find, but it's easier to just collect comms and buy equally good gear from vendors. The level 65 vendor gear is obviously intended to be the staple gear for all players, whether you wear it as-is or rip the mods out to put in your Cartel orange gear. Summary: gear doesn't matter until endgame, then you just grind dailies/ops/whatever for comms, which you use to purchase from among a very small selection of gear/mods, themselves possessing very limited variance in stat allotment. The end result of all this is that most choice in how your character progresses has been eliminated from the game. I've always thought that all MMOs are essentially wheels in a hamster cage, and the successful MMO is the one that can disguise that fact the best. Making the progression so robotic, choiceless, and easy pretty well kills the illusion. One final thought: sadly, I think a lot of this has to do with the F2P business model that Bioware/EA has chosen to use. The entire focus of this game now seems to be on acquiring mountains of stuff that has only cosmetic value. That may be something, and some people may dig it, but it is definitely not a traditional RPG. P.S. I do still enjoy GSF, even though that is a completely different beast, and subject to its own problems. Edited October 31, 2015 by BobBudJones
Djiini Posted October 31, 2015 Posted October 31, 2015 What's wrong with disciplines? Forgive me if you said so but you don't seem to have explained what's wrong with them, only that you miss the old way?
BobBudJones Posted October 31, 2015 Author Posted October 31, 2015 (edited) Disciplines don't allow for any meaningful choice beyond picking the discipline itself. After which, the entire path of progression is entirely predetermined (besides utility points, and I explained why I think they are lacking). Compare this to Mass Effect, Dragon Age (Inquisitor was pretty dumbed-down but even it has more choice than SWTOR), the Witcher, D&D based games like Baldur's Gate, Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin, or just about any other RPG where you choose what ability/trait/etc to advance every time you level up, and in many cases have significant latitude in choosing which abilities you even have access to. Edited October 31, 2015 by BobBudJones
EnkiduNineEight Posted October 31, 2015 Posted October 31, 2015 Disciplines don't allow for any meaningful choice beyond picking the discipline itself. After which, the entire path of progression is entirely predetermined (besides utility points, and I explained why I think they are lacking). Compare this to Mass Effect, Dragon Age (Inquisitor was pretty dumbed-down but even it has more choice than SWTOR), the Witcher, D&D based games like Baldur's Gate, Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin, or just about any other RPG where you choose what ability/trait/etc to advance every time you level up, and in many cases have significant latitude in choosing which abilities you even have access to. While I agree with you on about every point, most of those games mentioned do not really have a serious PVP aspect, and this is why 'balancing' was difficult. I agree with you as well that the progression being identical removes a lot, I can understand the justifications. if I had done it myself, what I might have attempted was something like what they did with the Utility Points. Basically, as you progress provide your points to spend in a category. its easy enough to control each category and the abilities there and how they scale. If you have a limited number of choices from the category you can not exceed this could be balanced and it allows you to tailor your game as you go along. Perhaps havea slightly predetermined Discipline path (you will ge these additional abilities because you are a Powertech and you will always get them at this level, so we can design our contentto utilize your new skills, but leaving all the filler to player choice would be preferable. So I could make a powertech who focuses on being a melee tank, or I could make apower tech who focuses on being a ranged tank, or I could makeapowertech who focuses on long range dps, etc, whatever, as long as the skills and the cooldowns and the damage caps etc all are roughly equal, it would be balanced. But yeah, the 'streamlining' they have been doing from the beginning has been about eliminating choices, and its to the point now where there really aren't any meaningful choices. Sure they claim some in their story but those choices re like cake.. its a lie. There is very little RPG anymore and I've said it a few times recently but this is more akin to a Tel Tale Games product than an RPG. And that might be fine for someone but I'm not entirely satisfied that the MMORPG I purchased and became invested in has been changed into a casual choose your own adventure novel with basically one ending.
EnkiduNineEight Posted October 31, 2015 Posted October 31, 2015 I also agree with you about gear and the f2p model being part of the problem. In an MMO I use as an example of how to give a game longevity without creating lots of new content, I use DAoC. For YEARS there was no level cap increase and none was needed. Players had ample challenge and content in the PVP realm and in the addition of high level content that did not raise level caps. This meant there was no need or reason to create a gear treadmill. Gear treadmills are so.. WoW. Every new release does not need to be accompanied by a level cap increase and new gear treadmill. Once you get rid of that model, you can look at how gear is introduced into the game, and losing with it the f2p model and the absolute focus on microstransactions (I should say MACROtransactions in this model) you can then look at providing community by introducing gear through Mob drops and reverse engineering/crafting.. EG the players have a reason to craft, and those who don't want to craft do other things and buy from the crafters. t creates community and this game is sorely lacking any sort of positive community and most of the changes and additions do their best to divore a player from the need to interact with other players. In DAoC for example, most all of the best gear was player made. When I obtained a 'Bollark Masterwork Blade' on Perc/Hibernia it was a big deal for me. It was also a great thing for Bollark, who made the blade because he had players who sought him out, it gave us opportunityto interact and roleplay. When I enchanted that blade I had to do it with Gems bought from other crafters. Etc, While I was mostly a PVP player at that time MY activity supported the PVE activity. The Crafters doing PVE needed my money to finance their trips into PVE content to get materials they could then craft and sell back to me. Since players were the source of the 'BEST' equipment, there was a circle of involvement. community grwew and is still fairly active even today. (I left when they started trying to match WoW with new content/raids, etc and made them basically a requirement to do the things I liked but many people still play)
BobBudJones Posted October 31, 2015 Author Posted October 31, 2015 Excellent points Enkidu. You're absolutely right that the games I'm comparing it to are all single-player and have no PvP...PvP is, of course, notoriously hard to balance, even when you're not also trying to balance the same classes around PvE (see the neverending cycle of League of Legends nerfs/buffs). You're also right in that this game has progressively moved away from requiring/encouraging any kind of interaction, except for PvP or Ops. (Not to derail the subject). I played DAoC a little way back when. Vanilla WoW was like that in a way; your description of the one master crafter on the server who was needed for a particular item reminded me of it. That actually reminds me of another thing that SWTOR gear lacks: any kind of unique attributes or abilities. Everything just has basic stats and a damage rating; no procs, nothing. This just adds to the feeling that "any level 216 weapon will do" and there isn't much sense of accomplishment for getting it. My hunch is that the devs just aren't marketing this at the RPG crowd anymore, and they're going instead for, as you describe, the TellTale crowd, but with shiny customized outfits.
sentientomega Posted October 31, 2015 Posted October 31, 2015 (edited) The only things I don't like about the discipline system are that Shien form is at 42 for Vengeance/Vigilance, putting it far later than most, if not all, of the other stances. and that the utilities are mostly PvP-related. I was never really comfortable with the skill trees, especially whenever BW:A kept resetting our points. Edited October 31, 2015 by sentientomega
Transcendent Posted October 31, 2015 Posted October 31, 2015 What's wrong with disciplines? They're very narrow and very funnelled down a specific route, with little to no variation. That was the intent of them, but with the way everything was explained when they were introduced, it was to assist "balance". Not seeing that, or anywhere near it, all we've seen is the developers "favourite classes" continuously dominating. While all the other classes left behind, simply can't go outside of the box to adjust builds to counter because they're now exceptionally limited. So it's literally re-roll a new class or suffer (which isn't enjoyable). That's the problem with disciplines. It also doesn't help where this isn't really an RPG in the gearing sense, allowing multiple variations of set bonuses etc etc. Again, this comes down to the combat team seemingly unable to cope with variations in builds or gear. I mean what's next? Companions are all cookie cutter, the players will be next. At which stage this just become "bland" and "generic". The developers should be adding more variety into the game and expanding upon it, not just cutting things back to simplify their life and make their jobs easier. Poor approach.
Mikahrone Posted November 1, 2015 Posted November 1, 2015 You NEVER had any choice how your character progresses and picking AC was always last meaningful decision. SWTOR was never free form "pick any skill" game lol
EnkiduNineEight Posted November 1, 2015 Posted November 1, 2015 You NEVER had any choice how your character progresses and picking AC was always last meaningful decision. SWTOR was never free form "pick any skill" game lol No, it was never completely free form. But you could pick skills from different trees available to your Advanced Class, it was often quite stupid todo so, though there were occasions where you could use several trees to make a truly formidable character with a hybrid spec. That it was 'never free form "pick any skill"' does not necessarily justify making it completely on rails either, so that you really have NO choices for your skills at all. You will ALWAYS have the same skills if you chose a 'tree' under your advanced spec _unless_ you choose not to go 'purchase' them for a zero credit transaction from some form of skill trainer. Where before there was a small semblance of choice, now there is no choice at all outside of picking AC and Tree..and Tree really isn't a choice, as previously mentioned, because you can essentially switch between them at will.... making AC your only choice. The moment you make that AC choice, everything else is decided except for a few utility points.
Kaisernick Posted November 1, 2015 Posted November 1, 2015 Disciplines don't allow for any meaningful choice beyond picking the discipline itself. After which, the entire path of progression is entirely predetermined (besides utility points, and I explained why I think they are lacking). Compare this to Mass Effect, Dragon Age (Inquisitor was pretty dumbed-down but even it has more choice than SWTOR), the Witcher, D&D based games like Baldur's Gate, Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin, or just about any other RPG where you choose what ability/trait/etc to advance every time you level up, and in many cases have significant latitude in choosing which abilities you even have access to. with Disciplines they seemed to have followed the same route as WOW their old talent tree is gone and while there is slightly more choice with talents most of them do the same thing with just different animations.
AlrikFassbauer Posted November 1, 2015 Posted November 1, 2015 I even can understand that they invented the Disciplines : In the PvP area, the complaints about "skanks" became bigger and bigger ... And they tried to eliminate that.
Recommended Posts