Level 50. My view of the current state of the game (wordy)

[archifikoss]

I'm surprised your thread hasn't been locked/deleted. Me and a few others posted the same exact issues, almost as well articulated as yourself with no raging or anything.

 

 

I'm guessing it's because they tend to keep only one thread of any given subject at a time.

[kaelthun]

What you expected was to roll from one MMO that's been around for a couple of YEARS into one that's just been launched, is starting its community, has had no chance to address issues yet and is a giant IT undertaking in general without problems.

 

The quality of Bioware will show in how they deal with issues, not how well they created a game that has no bugs. It's been said over and over again and I'll reiterate it once more: no game launches without bugs, WoW was a mess when it released (didn't even have BGs to start with, remember that?) and the same goes for every other MMO out there. You forgot because you were playing established games. Maybe you've never been at a launch before, maybe this is your first time.

 

Welcome, this is what an MMO launch looks like. If your previous experience was different you obviously weren't involved as deeply as you are now and you should re-evaluate whether your recollection is realistic. Also, expectations can screw up your perception pretty harshly.

 

I spent most of my time in WoW hanging out with my guild, grinding gear and raiding. The last year I played I got involved in PvP quite a bit. Warhammer was mostly a "log on and rush castles" thing with the PvE being a painful afterthought. Rift was great, is great but again - suffers from balancing PvE and PvP. If you're not willing to put up with the stuff listed, you shouldn't be playing MMOs. There are lots of games out there where you won't find a lot of the problems you're listing, but they're mostly singleplayer. Go on the Battlefield 3 or MW3 forums, it's all QQ about certain weapons being OP or snipers being favoured on certain maps. League of Legends forums always QQ about balance being crap and the most OP heroes taking out whole squads. Any other MMO forum is filled with bugs in the UI, maps, quests getting stuck, textures getting badly drawn, character models outdated, not enough new content, the list goes on.

 

If this is the stuff that makes you want to quit instead of shrugging it off and playing, get a different hobby. Maybe online gaming isnt' for you. I hear Skyrim's good.

[SuberBaird]

1. agree, mostly

 

2. time will fix the bugs

 

3. time will address features

 

4. combat in general is completely out of whack, see the 100+ page thread

 

 

Yes, it is a promising game, and the game is unfinished, probably a result of EA's notorious business practices.

 

In general, combat and UI need fixing immediately, and the other issues such as social aspects and so forth can be addressed over time.

 

Time? Buy a game don't enjoy it until 3 years down the road. Sounds fun!

[_Scattered_]

The op's complaint are not wrong, but I don't find any of it game breaking just yet. I am not sure I will.

 

I take the bad with good, when I see a flaw (especially a bug) I just deal with it. And you know what? I am still enjoying this game immensely.

 

Too many gamers it seems have a aspergers like obsession with a lot petty flaws.

 

PS Oh and you level 50s would do well to have a little patience while everyone else catches up, either an alt of something different entirely. It seems rather silly to judge a game at cap while so few are at the cap.

Edited December 29, 2011 by _Scattered_

[masterjack]

Am I nuts for thinking that blue font on a blue background is a bit hard to read?

 

i feel it stands out more but i gueass we see blue on blue diffrently

[MargulisAZ]

Having reached level 50 5 days back and having a chance to do pvp, finish my class questline completely and run some flashpoints, I feel somewhat dissapointed overall. Now im not a cry baby troll looking for sympathy as I rage irrational expectations to the masses and declare "Im quitting" after investing a lot of time and 60 bucks into the game. The BIGGEST problems I feel this game has is as follows:

 

1. It really feels like a single player game with multiplayer functionality. (the diablo series is a good example of what I mean.) Every server is overpopped with empire and underpopped with republic. I rolled republic and its astounding how few of us there actually are. Another thing that contributes to this feeling is the constant storyzones and instances. Now dont get me wrong, I think bioware did a fantastic job with the story and the immersion of your character aspect. Unfortunately much of this is lost when you see how railed the zones and planets are. Everything feels like a straight line.

 

2. So many bugs. Now I am not naive enough and unrealistically demanding enough to expect a bug free MMO launch. Far from it. The problem here is many of the bugs are debilitating to the entire game and are broken/flawed core game mechanics. Examples: Ability delay (and at times they dont even go off at all), Raid Frames not updating properly and showing actual health (feel so bad for you healers), the absolute dependency on your companion for survival in everything outside of raids and pvp. The chat window becoming active if you click on it or near it on accident. The extremely buggy UI (again see the raid frames) and the fact that you cannot move it, customize it or change it in any way. The CC bar that displays that you cant be ccd for a short time seems to never work right. Im getting ccd when its full all the time. Abilities canceling themselves in mid attack because you happened to dodge or parry an attack. The guild window never updating. The list goes on and on. I have to reload the UI at least ten or more times per play session. These bugs were present in beta for a long time and were not ever addressed and dont even get me started on the fact that all my romantic storyline options with Kira Carsen are bugged. I have max affection rating with her and have had no dialogue with her at all. Constant settings getting changed back to defaults each time you zone. Confirmed bugs back in beta.

 

3. Features that the game should have but doesnt. A good example is the ability to /roll or the fact that you have to constantly run to your airlock and cant use your mount in the shipyard every time you want to leave a planet. The fact that when you queue for a WZ as a group and when the warzone ends you are no longer in a group. The inability to queue for the WZ that you wish to queue for. No mailbox on your ship. No dual spec feature and an extremely high cost to respec. The inability to search/filter properly on the AH.

 

4. PVP feels incredibly out of whack. I thought there was too much CC in WoW and then I played SWTOR. You move at less than 60% speed 90% of the WZ. The lack of brackets for pvp combat. The broken RNG system of getting pvp gear... why make getting pvp gear so RNG based? Feels like arch in WoW all over again. Of course I know the classes need to be balanced and that it takes time, I realize that and accept that. But how in the hell do you balance a game where level 50s are put on the same team as a level 10? No real rewards for world pvp at all. Even Ilum. Have done it, you get practically nothing.

 

Overall the game has potential if bioware can make the necessary changes and make them quickly. Right now though as a whole, the game feels unfinished. I am not a QQr crying for everything to be like wow, nor am I a fanboi. But the excuse I hear the most from fanbois when any issues are brought up is "They are adding that soon." or "They are doing that but it wasnt ready for launch." The WHOLE game wasnt ready for launch imo with so many glaring problems with basic core functionality that any modern MMO needs to have.

 

In the end I stand by my previous statement. The game feels like a single player game with multiplayer functionality. It doesnt feel like an mmo to me. Im not rage quitting, Im going to give bioware and EA a chance to make things right, but Im not going to wait around forever for basic functionality features and bugs that have been present since the first beta phase to be repaired. Worst case Id quit and come back in a few months if things are different.

 

The game has a lot going for it... Descent PVE flashpoints, awesome crafting system and a great storyline with descent voice acting, but in the end of that is all it has Id rather play SW:KOTOR 1/2 or Mass Effect because those have even better and more immersive stories.

 

Flame if you will.

 

Don't worry you're not alone. My reasons aren't all the same as yours, but it seems there are enough things wrong with this game that there are plenty of reasons to go around, lol. After my 30 days I'm gone, won't be back. What's missing for me can't be patched in a few weeks, there are so many things. Biggest disappointment I've had in an mmo and that's saying something.

[Perfik]

omg stop it with the stupid the game just came out argument, it's the core of the game that is problematic and that is really hard to patch

 

how about go get a life and do not rush to 50 ?

[Miothan]

I agree with OP, the game feels Rushed and unfinished.

 

Atleast fix the most important bugs, such as critical errors and not able to enter Hardmodes.

 

All in all, i would expect more from a game on a release, this feels very much unfinished, too much randomness everywhere, Slicing getting loads of epic misson drops (340) while i as a Archeologist and Treasurehunter have not recieved a single one, and i average about 10 missions per hour......

[McVade]

The only thing I agree with is the PvP. It does feel out of whack.

 

Everything else about the game is great. I couldn't care less about /roll. Didn't even know the game didn't have it until you mentioned it. That's how little I care. lol

Edited December 29, 2011 by McVade

[Vegetian]

omg stop it with the stupid the game just came out argument, it's the core of the game that is problematic and that is really hard to patch

 

Yes and no. Yes it is the core that is the issue (to some degree), and while it is hard to patch or adjust, its not impossible. Cryptic's launch release of STO was horrible...absoutely horrible. After the lead dev was dismissed (or left) Zahn came in and changed many core features. While I wouldn't call the game a stunning success, as it never has eclipsed 500k subs (and I haven't played in a while) they did have good success at changing many of the core game features. So it's not impossible. I'm willing to wait and see what they do here, its still way early to pass judgements and determinations.

 

However, I will say that thegame was not ready for release..a fact we almost all agreed upon in beta. But EA was tired of funding the game and not seeing a return, which from a business standpoint I can understand too.

[EdgedSword]

I think its funny that people power leveled to 50 and then started to qq about end game content/pvp content for a game that has officially been out for 7 days..

 

I played Beta and I played early game access... I mean it took me the whole of 5 days to find my first char that I even like I have 3 chars that are all lvl 20+ and I have finally narrowed it down to two different chars that I really enjoy playing.. But for those people who "beat" the game in 7 days I know you didn't read the story-line that well.. I know you didn't take your time to talk to your companions or do flashpoints or heroics..

 

As for the game feeling like a solo game, i do not agree at all.. I played WoW for a long time and SWTOR is a lot better than WoW, in the fact that it actually gives you something to level towards and the missions feel like something a real hero of the Sith or Republic would actually do... Not only that but people seem to for get that the only time you really need a party in WoW is to raid/instance or get power leveled or ran somewhere... In SWTOR you need a party for the same reasons but you do not waste your time running around as much as you did in wow..

 

So in short you decided to power level your char to 50 and now you qq... Good job...

 

This man has got it right. It's not how fast we get to 50, but what we learn and experience as we do so. The class quests are just too good to spacebar through. I'm a very slow leveler and probably won't hit 50 until 5-6 days, but I'm really enjoying saving the galaxy and watching my Star Wars dreams come true! I'll power level other characters later, lets just try and enjoy a great game and not just rush through it.

[darthrockso]

You know I have to say...for you people getting on here New Years Night to post to say "Game sux...im unsubbiing....ect........." think about it...you ust posted on NEw Years night how much you hate the game...you must like it if your on the SWTOR forums on New Years night posting. If you truly did not like the game you wouldnt be visisting the forums period.

[SarahR]

You know I have to say...for you people getting on here New Years Night to post to say "Game sux...im unsubbiing....ect........." think about it...you ust posted on NEw Years night how much you hate the game...you must like it if your on the SWTOR forums on New Years night posting. If you truly did not like the game you wouldnt be visisting the forums period.

 

 

I would love to see an alternate universe where companies only thought like this. "Well they are talking about how bad it is, so atleast it is popular" - the bad publicity thing only works for celebrities (and not so much them, either). A product will fail if concerns are not addressed. It's the reality of the situation.

[Asturias]

Non-vannila WoW players always have high expectations. This game has had the best release launch I have seen. Most old school MMO players see this.....

[dharh]

Having reached level 50 5 days back and having a chance to do pvp, finish my class questline completely and run some flashpoints, I feel somewhat dissapointed overall. Now im not a cry baby troll looking for sympathy as I rage irrational expectations to the masses and declare "Im quitting" after investing a lot of time and 60 bucks into the game. The BIGGEST problems I feel this game has is as follows:

 

1. It really feels like a single player game with multiplayer functionality. (the diablo series is a good example of what I mean.) Every server is overpopped with empire and underpopped with republic. I rolled republic and its astounding how few of us there actually are. Another thing that contributes to this feeling is the constant storyzones and instances. Now dont get me wrong, I think bioware did a fantastic job with the story and the immersion of your character aspect. Unfortunately much of this is lost when you see how railed the zones and planets are. Everything feels like a straight line.

 

2. So many bugs. Now I am not naive enough and unrealistically demanding enough to expect a bug free MMO launch. Far from it. The problem here is many of the bugs are debilitating to the entire game and are broken/flawed core game mechanics. Examples: Ability delay (and at times they dont even go off at all), Raid Frames not updating properly and showing actual health (feel so bad for you healers), the absolute dependency on your companion for survival in everything outside of raids and pvp. The chat window becoming active if you click on it or near it on accident. The extremely buggy UI (again see the raid frames) and the fact that you cannot move it, customize it or change it in any way. The CC bar that displays that you cant be ccd for a short time seems to never work right. Im getting ccd when its full all the time. Abilities canceling themselves in mid attack because you happened to dodge or parry an attack. The guild window never updating. The list goes on and on. I have to reload the UI at least ten or more times per play session. These bugs were present in beta for a long time and were not ever addressed and dont even get me started on the fact that all my romantic storyline options with Kira Carsen are bugged. I have max affection rating with her and have had no dialogue with her at all. Constant settings getting changed back to defaults each time you zone. Confirmed bugs back in beta.

 

3. Features that the game should have but doesnt. A good example is the ability to /roll or the fact that you have to constantly run to your airlock and cant use your mount in the shipyard every time you want to leave a planet. The fact that when you queue for a WZ as a group and when the warzone ends you are no longer in a group. The inability to queue for the WZ that you wish to queue for. No mailbox on your ship. No dual spec feature and an extremely high cost to respec. The inability to search/filter properly on the AH.

 

4. PVP feels incredibly out of whack. I thought there was too much CC in WoW and then I played SWTOR. You move at less than 60% speed 90% of the WZ. The lack of brackets for pvp combat. The broken RNG system of getting pvp gear... why make getting pvp gear so RNG based? Feels like arch in WoW all over again. Of course I know the classes need to be balanced and that it takes time, I realize that and accept that. But how in the hell do you balance a game where level 50s are put on the same team as a level 10? No real rewards for world pvp at all. Even Ilum. Have done it, you get practically nothing.

 

Overall the game has potential if bioware can make the necessary changes and make them quickly. Right now though as a whole, the game feels unfinished. I am not a QQr crying for everything to be like wow, nor am I a fanboi. But the excuse I hear the most from fanbois when any issues are brought up is "They are adding that soon." or "They are doing that but it wasnt ready for launch." The WHOLE game wasnt ready for launch imo with so many glaring problems with basic core functionality that any modern MMO needs to have.

 

In the end I stand by my previous statement. The game feels like a single player game with multiplayer functionality. It doesnt feel like an mmo to me. Im not rage quitting, Im going to give bioware and EA a chance to make things right, but Im not going to wait around forever for basic functionality features and bugs that have been present since the first beta phase to be repaired. Worst case Id quit and come back in a few months if things are different.

 

The game has a lot going for it... Descent PVE flashpoints, awesome crafting system and a great storyline with descent voice acting, but in the end of that is all it has Id rather play SW:KOTOR 1/2 or Mass Effect because those have even better and more immersive stories.

 

Flame if you will.

 

*** blue color.

 

Anyway.

 

1) I think they meant to make it this way. An entirely new concept that we as players will either like or dislike. I eagerly await to see how it all goes because I for one really LOVE the fact that I actually for the first time ever have an actual indepth, in game, backstory to my character. But maybe that's just not enough for others.

 

2) There are alot of bugs it seems. but personally I've not run into any debilitating ones. Ability delay is certainly not debilitating for PVE. Also, im not anything more than a casual PVPer, though I must say, it seems to me im better than average for most any PVP warzones i've played thus far. I certainly do not care about open world PVP (I don't even want to play a game with such a thing).

 

3) /roll is in fact probably the only missing feature that really made me go, ***. I chalk it up to bioware just simply having zero experience in MMORPGs. Otherwise, LFG/D, the GTN aka AH, the UI, etc are all pretty much peripheral to everything else. Is the single player story good? Yes? Well then, I'm not sure why i should care about anything else.

 

4) PVP is going to take them a long time to get correct, if they ever do. It's not an easy thing IMO. And its niche. I can only really say that I've yet to hear about an MMORPG that does not have HUGE major complaints _all_ the time about its PVP.

 

This is where we start to agree. This game has huge potential. Then again, so did SWG and it died horribly. So this STO, now its a mediocre mess. Rift? Now in the dustbin of MMORPG history. AION? lolwut?

 

The history of MMORPGs is littered with the corpses of many.

Edited January 1, 2012 by dharh

[Bodha]

STOP WITH THE SINGLE PLAYER NONSENSE!

I am going to use the famous WoW as an example, leveling 1-60 now is something that can be done in 2 days, with no group quests whatsoever and limited to non-existent contact with other players unless you LFD, hardly anyone are in the zones anymore!

 

I would just like to point out that 1-60 in WoW now is incredibly different than when it was released. The xp rate now is geared to get you through that "old" content incredibly fast.

 

 

Now as for the entire tirade ppl seem to have about this game being oh so unfinished I would like to point out something. I've played a great many mmos over the past ten years and I have to say not a single one of them wasn't buggy in some way or another for the first several months. Now, that said, some mmo's were much more responsive than others to fix bugs. I personally will not judge this game and its dev's until at least 2 months have gone by since release. If they have fixed most of the glaring bugs by then I will be surprised.

 

What I would like them to fix asap:

1. commendations from some quests go into regular inventory

2. graphical glitches

3. Broken missions.

4. Broken game mechanics. ie abilities not working the way they are supposed to per tooltip etc.

 

What I would love to see in the near future:

1. Ability corrections or balancing.

2. UI customization need more bottom row bars, need to resize, and so much more.

3. Map marker for location of the fleet shuttle if one is on planet.

4. Higher limit to number of GTN postings allowed per character.

5. Dual specing, and I would really like this to be at a fairly low lvl.

6. Easier method of comparing prices when posting on GTN. (would love the system to show all same lvl same slot items or something like that for comparison sake).

 

What I would love to see in the mid to distant future:

1. A system of regular updates rolling out additional planets or additional areas to existing planets with more quests and things to do.

2. Ability to customize the ship's interior. Think, anchored spots for trophies, furniture etc. ala lotro.

3. A guild office/home on the respective fleets with some degree of customization similar to the #2 section above. Wouldn't that be cool?

4. A guild leveling system. Non combat perks only tyvm plz.

5. More variety in the space battles. May I suggest you look at the old X-wing, and TIE fighter games for some inspiration. Not for gameplay so much as more ideas on things to do with space battles.

6. Combo missions, where you do a space battle and then have to perform a small instanced mission before going back on the ship to finish the space battle.

7. Branching story segments. I would love to see my choices on the prime storyline cause my character to have completely different mission arcs. ie. If you do A you go to alderaan to continue and B causes you to go to Coruscant.

[StokedCaliGamer]

Blue font...hurts.....

[Lokiliesmith]

Are people really trying to claim that MMOs have EVER launched complete? That's a joke, right? Let's take a look at the patch notes from a few months into WoW, shall we? Here are a few gems from 4 months after the release:

 

Fixed a bug that was causing the game to freeze when scrolling through auctions in the Auction House.

 

Herbs and mineral nodes will remain active if they are not fully emptied.

 

Group loot has been fixed to work as originally intended. It will now work exactly like round robin does, with the exception that when an item of threshold level or above drops, it will use the auto-rolling system. (Prior to this fix, when in group loot mode, the round robin system was only being used for items (all players could loot coins), which was rather confusing).

 

Fixed a bug that incorrectly enabled the vertex animation shader option on some GPU's that do not support it. This bug was causing player character models in-game and in the character selection screen to appear invisible or distorted. The fix should benefit users with NVIDIA GeForce 2MX or 4MX GPU's and ATI Radeon 7000/7500 GPU's. It should no longer be necessary to manually turn off the vertex animation feature on these systems * it should now be off and disabled automatically.

 

Seal of the Crusader: Fixed a bug where damage per swing was increasing instead of decreasing when Seal of the Crusader was active.This resulted in a dramatic increase in damage per second (DPS) that was unintended. The tooltip for the spell displays the intent of the spell: "Fills the Paladin with the spirit of a crusader, granting additional attack power. The Paladin also attacks faster, but deals less damage with each attack."

 

 

 

I mean, hell, the game was launched in Nov 2004. So it's great to see, in March 2005, patch notes like:

 

Tab targeting works properly now.

 

Fixed exploit allowing non-grouped players to remove other players from groups.

 

 

This is the same patch where they finally put a cap on the number of players you can bring to a dungeon because they realized that sometimes people will bring 10-20 people into an area tuned for 5.

 

 

But WoW was finished upon release, right? That's some revisionist crap right there.

[Bawheidbob]

A decent round up thanks for sharing your thoughts i agree with most if not all of it.

 

The blue for me was a bad choice though

[Attilious]

i still crash to the loading screen when queuing for a pvp match sometimes i mean really lol the day before they had a 8 hour or 10 hour downtime what were they doing!!?

[Morcova]

how about go get a life and do not rush to 50 ?

 

Hahaha, right... I'm sure taking your time in leveling (do people really find leveling that time consuming in this game? What, did we get players from Hello Kitty?) will fix all those bugs right up!

 

Lol.

 

Kids.

[Wraith_Shadow]

Yeah, this game Honestly feels like they Took a Single player game like KOTOR, removed all the fun aspects like player choice and originality, replaced it with boring Standard MMO mechanics (you don't get to pick powers or abilities and they prectically tell you how to play it) and they tried to market it as an MMO.

 

When the biggest part of endgame content it starting new character, that detract's from the replay value. When they took out all the stuff that made KOTOR great it made this game seem cheaper. I miss that KOTOR let me pick how to play my character. In this they might as well be handing me a premade character since the customization is terrible, and the story doesn't change very much depending on decisions i've made.

 

Why do Light/dark side points only effect certain specialty armors/items? It used to have a direct effect on powers and abilities. Powers and abilities i used to be able to pick and choose. It's kind of redundant that they market this as "Your Story" when they dictate how you play, how you hold your weapons, what powers you get, what people you have, and Daniel Ericson is even on record saying that we can't be any of the iconic species people want to play as because it doesn't Fit Biowares epic story, which frankly isn't as epic or heroic as they try and make it sound.

 

 

This game has a lot of potential, but frankly i think they sacrificed it all just to appeal to the bland MMO crowds. WOW set the standards 7 years ago, and this game feels like it's trying to meet that same standard even though it's years later.

[trumpsofdoom]

STOP WITH THE SINGLE PLAYER NONSENSE!

I am going to use the famous WoW as an example, leveling 1-60 now is something that can be done in 2 days, with no group quests whatsoever and limited to non-existent contact with other players unless you LFD, hardly anyone are in the zones anymore!

 

How can you say "WoW is a great mmo! Great multiplayer!" and then turn around and say swtor is single player, yet has more group quests than BC + LK combined, and you see other players in the zone with you, does that make sense?!

 

Lets start using some logic please, its like some of you are putting 2 + 2 together and coming up with 5, its not making sense!

 

 

You can get to 50 in swtor with out doing 1 group quest in the game and as wow has found out group quest are not good for the lvling process a few weeks after the content has come out on my republic char it can take me 3 hours to get a group for heroic quests at lvl 20 do to most player being past that planet

Edited January 1, 2012 by trumpsofdoom

[Saintango]

 

Sadly, many players were introduced to MMO's by WoW and started playing WoW long after it's initial release. Thus they assume all MMO's should be as polished and as content rich as WoW is now.

 

Exactly what everyone's problem is... high expectations, average results. It hasn't even been a month yet. Calm down people.

 

And don't sit there and say "Quit saying 'it just came out' talk". MMO's take time to mature and polish.

 

Very typical in today's culture.... Instant Gratification and gets pissed when given something otherwise!

 

 

FOR THE EMPIRE

[Morcova]

Exactly what everyone's problem is... high expectations, average results. It hasn't even been a month yet. Calm down people.

 

And don't sit there and say "Quit saying 'it just came out' talk". MMO's take time to mature and polish.

 

Very typical in today's culture.... Instant Gratification and gets pissed when given something otherwise!

 

 

FOR THE EMPIRE

 

Except a lot of us played the beta, reported these same problems and they were never fixed. So sorry but the "it just came out" argument is stupid just for that reason. These aren't issues that magically appeared on December 20th, these are issues that were being reported a long time before launch.

 

There's a screencap floating around on the net of this forum where people were discussing the very same bugs we are talking about today. The date of the posts?

 

June 2011.

 

But it's like ok guis! The gaem just launched! Just give it another six months and 60 more dollars and I'm sure they'll fix all the issues they didn't fix in the six months before launch.

 

Srsly guise.