Various

[Varnoukh]

Me : Lifetime (pre Disney) Star Wars fan. Played SWTOR in open beta but didn't love it. Just another WOW clone with great story. And effectively just human and twi'lek as race options with some human races having different coloured skin. Super boring.

 

I'd let the game drop totally off my radar so just recently learned about incoming Nautolans. Used a free week code to check them out on the PTS. They look fantastic. Plus I checked out what else has changed, have been playing some of my other characters and have decided to give it a serious play.

 

That said, I have some feedback. Not all positive but definitely constructive.

 

Positives first.

 

1) Nautolans look epic.

 

Love them. I spent a lot of time in character creation and found many, many, many combinations that look awesome.

 

Yay!

 

2) Companion explosion!!!

 

The original companion offerings were disappointing, especially for consular - which is what I'm most interested in. Having so many more to choose from is fabulous. And with role selection for them your choice is no longer limited by their predefined role.

 

Yay!! Yay!!

 

I'm especially keen to pick up Choza Raabat. Ithorian and Jedi. I could squee.

 

And companions no longer have the original crew skill bonuses so you can just learn whatever you want. That's nice.

 

3) Some good class changes.

 

I don't love all of the changes I've read about or seen but some of the small ones make a big difference to my enjoyment of the game.

 

eg. Telekinetic Balance / Madness passive which removes the cooldown from Telekinetic Throw / Force Lightning.

 

Especially for sorc, that stream of lightning from the hands is the iconic sith move. Being able to use that whenever I want makes the game feel much more Star Warsy and me more inclined to play a sorc.

 

TT is less iconic than FL but I still love having it always available on my sage to the point where I've dropped Disturbance off my bar - in part so I don't have to see it blinking rudely at me (see negative feedback about class changes below).

 

Now for the negatives.

 

1) Male Character Customization

 

I'm set on playing Nautolans but since they're not out for another month and there are potentially annoying grinds I could get out of the way in the meantime, I've been checking out other races.

 

eg. playing other races to 50, playing classes I have no interest in to get their legacy unlocks.

 

I was surprised to find some serious problems which could potentially be turning a lot of players off.

 

Positives first - you have a fantastic selection of faces and hair styles. Lots of games, online or otherwise, don't for males. I was able to make =male heads I liked the look of. Loved even. The problem was bodies - in particular early game costume models for them.

 

Body option 1 is a child. Height-wise they're potentially a short adult or older teenager but this body option comes with youth'enized faces. I suppose it's good to have the option to play a younger character but it's not what I want.

 

Body option 2 is a muscle bound freak. Nice butt but the chest is ridiculous.

 

Body option 3 is 2 on roids. Again, pass.

 

Body option 4 is a fat guy. Nice to have that option but again, not for me.

 

Females get 3 character models all the same height, but with different proportions, giving them a real choice, plus a giant for anyone who is into that.

 

After spending probably literally hours previewing various pieces I eventually decided that no-choice-at-all body option 2 was ok. While a lot of costumes - seemingly lower level / older ones - overdo the chest region and also often apply a stupid butt bump for robes or capes, others look ok.

 

That's not ok though. Not everyone who would download and try the game would be willing to spend so much time previewing outfits. They would reasonably assume that the early player experience is representative of the whole game.

 

Fixing or replacing some of those clothing items could pay dividends.

 

2) Male Togruta Character Togruta Customization

 

They deserve a super special mention.

 

Wow.

 

Most of the opinions I've read online focus on the lekku (dangling head tails). While I agree that longer would look better I don't think that's the worst of it.

 

The main problem is up top. The montrals look like a stupid giant cat head, especially from the back. Not a single male togruta from the clone wars - which is supposedly the source of this problem - looks like that. Not a one.

 

Positive compared to other races - body option 1 doesn't use youth'enized faces. They use the adult ones. That's nice. Unfortunately there's crazy clipping problems for the only look which minimizes the ridiculousness of their crazy cat heads. The jewellery (7) sticks right into their faces.

 

Bizarrely jewellery 11 which is a copy of 7 minus the tiara bit doesn't have this problem. Someone has bothered to fix that but didn't bother to copy / paste the bottom rings over 7 (and it's colour variants).

 

I think their heads may also look a bit over sized for their bodies. Possibly the jewellery dimensions have been shrunk but someone forgot to do the same for the heads?

 

Clipping problems like this in character creation are super embarassing.

 

I was able to make one male one which didn't look especially Togruta, but did look ok and a bit Star Wars. Thing is though, by then I knew your business model. You charge real money for character customisation changes. Yeah. You released a race with totally ridiculous looking male characters, and at some point in the future may add authentic options for male Togruta. Not only would you charge players extra for those options, players would also have to pay to fix each individual character.

 

Race is a total write-off.

 

3) Bad class changes

 

Apart from them being Jedi - who I adore - one of the great things about consulars was their straightforward gameplay. Abilities cost force and have cooldowns. That was all.

 

This was especially wonderful because the other two healing classes - commando and scoundrel - have convoluted guff. Build totally random stacks of something stupid to spend on other stuff. Yawn.

 

At some point between launch and now, you've gone totally crazy pants with consular abilities which apply totally random buffs to other abilities. I say random in the sense that the interactions are totally arbitrary, i.e. not immersive. One ability giving you a buff which makes another ability insta-cast and do more damage makes no sense at all.

 

It's not advertised up front. It's a horrible surprise lurking at higher levels. Classic bait and switch. I went from seriously considering playing SWTOR properly to deciding to just play through the story.

 

What would be great is if you made garbage like that optional - like over in the right half of the discipline UI. In your original system, if you had any crazy garbage like that I'd simply not have wasted points on it.

 

To pre-empt the inevitable 'you-too-stupid' troll replies, no I'm not. I'm super smart and this is hardly brain surgery. It requires an unintuitive hotbar layout but I can play telekinetics. Its damage output is vastly superior to balance and it looks much more authentic than flinging rocks. Jedi don't throw rocks at people. Sith do that. Especially not rocks which wouldn't just be randomly lying around in eg. space ships. That said, I really don't enjoy it. The more I play it, the less I want to play at all.

 

Over on the Empire side it's less problematic. Lightning looks much more authentic than rock flinging so the other two disciplines at least feel right. On the Republic side though, I don't feel very Jedi. It doesn't help that my lightsaber is just an accessory which totally randomly I draw and wave around for a few seconds for some abilities.

 

4) Advanced classes

 

One thing I've noticed is lots of class abilities with 'requires specific weapon wielded' to use, which aren't weapon attacks. What that looks like is a holdover from a time when the game design might have allowed players to switch between advanced classes by eg. wielding different weapons. Possibly some cash shop gremlin said, "Take that away and they'll have to buy millions of character slots to play those other disciplines. Oh we shall be rolling in money!" Yeah. No.

 

Also there's things like the consular storyline - which makes total sense for heal'ey sages but makes no sense at all for sneaky shadows. As if the story had been written before they'd been separated.

 

Put them back together again and the game might be much more playable for everyone.

 

5) Achievements

 

In addition to class based achievements, there's madness like ones which require permanently dismissing a companion or which are hidden and require doing some semi random thing during a mission which can't be repeated on that character.

 

There can be no doubt that the devs are dark side.

 

Again, the rewards attached aren't anything major but the problem with this madness is that it undermines the achievement system's core driver, which is completionism. Once a player decides that they're never going to complete achievements because of any single achievement, it's much easier to care less about the whole system.

 

Even just the fact that you have achievements which require being dark side is crazy pants. One of the game's major selling points is allowing players to make meaningful choices... but you make it impossible to complete achievements unless players make choices you've decided they have to make.

 

Epicly stupid design.

 

6) Light v Dark

 

Tedious and annoying.

 

As a returning player I was not happy about finding my character inexplicably earning dark side points - which I eventually figured out was because Empire defaults to dark side.

 

Worse, it's not just that my light side points diminish. The game permanently records and displays those dark side points in my character sheet.

 

Seriously, devs, FU!

 

Thankfully it was just my agent character I'd played through for the legacy unlocks anyway, but it's another reason to delete him.

 

I figured out how to disable the toggle in the UI and know to do that immediately with new characters now. But this is crazy stupid game design.

 

As for the whole dark v light bonus business which I've read about and understand, that's more crazy stupid game design. Holding off on completing missions until your side has won may make mathematical sense but it's tedious and arbitrary. I will ignore it.

 

7) Lack of online information

 

I mention this because it really looks bad for the game and could be a serious turn off for potential players.

 

Up to date online information on basic things like eg. class abilities is crazy difficult to find. This was the only source I could find, which I found in a reddit post.

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F4d0WfBKX4GQf8s2ce7R_lCqtSxrNJPTiJoNvZw0XnU/edit

 

Wikis and other sites have old, out of date and / or incomplete information.

 

I'm perfectly aware that such sites are not the responsibility or under the control of SWTOR's devs, but their current state reflects extemely poorly on the game. They suggest that the game is abandoned.

 

Appearance of abandonment aside, minus this info it's impossible to get a feel for whether you'd enjoy the game in its current state. It needs to be online and readily available if you want to attract more players.

[SteveTheCynic]

1) Nautolans look epic.

A bunch of the male faces look too much like Advozsec for my taste, but yeah, they're pretty nice.

2) Companion explosion!!!

Opinions vary widely on that.

And with role selection for them your choice is no longer limited by their predefined role.

Opinions are *very* varied on that.

1) Male Character Customization

 

[[[sNIP]]]

 

Body option 1 is a child. Height-wise they're potentially a short adult or older teenager but this body option comes with youth'enized faces. I suppose it's good to have the option to play a younger character but it's not what I want.

That's a bit subjective. I'd call them short, but then again I don't much like BT1 either.

Body option 2 is a muscle bound freak. Nice butt but the chest is ridiculous.

BT2 is big and buff, but hardly muscle-bound.

Body option 3 is 2 on roids. Again, pass.

It's not that bad, more "big and big and buff and buff". Both BT2 and BT3 are the male equivalent of the typical MMORPG representation of female ... chest assets, let's say.

Body option 4 is a fat guy. Nice to have that option but again, not for me.

ESO does fat people better than SWTOR does.

Females get 3 character models all the same height, but with different proportions, giving them a real choice, plus a giant for anyone who is into that.

BT4F is slightly taller than BT2F, and BT1F (the skinny one) is a bit taller still.

That's not ok though. Not everyone who would download and try the game would be willing to spend so much time previewing outfits. They would reasonably assume that the early player experience is representative of the whole game.

Anyone who's into MMORPGs will know better. All MMORPGs have the same sort of "plain-ness" issues around beginner armour. At least it's not like beginner armour in ESO, 90% of which looks like it has been kicked around the yard a few times before you were able to recover it and get dressed again.

2) Male Togruta Character Togruta Customization

You are way, way, way far late to this party, and your comments align mostly with the general themes that we've seen ever since the moment the first player tried to create a Toggie after they went live.

I was able to make one male one which didn't look especially Togruta, but did look ok and a bit Star Wars. Thing is though, by then I knew your business model. You charge real money for character customisation changes. Yeah. You released a race with totally ridiculous looking male characters, and at some point in the future may add authentic options for male Togruta. Not only would you charge players extra for those options, players would also have to pay to fix each individual character.

There has been no sign of that being planned *at*all*.

3) Bad class changes

 

At some point between launch and now, you've gone totally crazy pants with consular abilities which apply totally random buffs to other abilities. I say random in the sense that the interactions are totally arbitrary, i.e. not immersive. One ability giving you a buff which makes another ability insta-cast and do more damage makes no sense at all.

 

It's not advertised up front. It's a horrible surprise lurking at higher levels. Classic bait and switch. I went from seriously considering playing SWTOR properly to deciding to just play through the story.

It *is* advertised up front. Every single one of those interactions is visible in the ability lists in the "P" panel or the "K" panel.

4) Advanced classes

 

One thing I've noticed is lots of class abilities with 'requires specific weapon wielded' to use, which aren't weapon attacks. What that looks like is a holdover from a time when the game design might have allowed players to switch between advanced classes by eg. wielding different weapons. Possibly some cash shop gremlin said, "Take that away and they'll have to buy millions of character slots to play those other disciplines. Oh we shall be rolling in money!" Yeah. No.

Nah. Those weapon-locked abilities were there at the beginning, before there even *was* a cash shop.

Also there's things like the consular storyline - which makes total sense for heal'ey sages but makes no sense at all for sneaky shadows. As if the story had been written before they'd been separated.

The story *was* written before they were separated. Er, before starting as a plain-Jane base class character (Trooper, Consular, Knight, etc.) was removed.

5) Achievements

 

In addition to class based achievements, there's madness like ones which require permanently dismissing a companion or which are hidden and require doing some semi random thing during a mission which can't be repeated on that character.

Achievements are not per-character, *and* achievements are optional. They give nothing (except a few which give a pittance of Cartel Coins and a bunch that give titles, but titles aren't *useful* for anything).

Even just the fact that you have achievements which require being dark side is crazy pants. One of the game's major selling points is allowing players to make meaningful choices... but you make it impossible to complete achievements unless players make choices you've decided they have to make.

Um. You don't have to complete any at all, and you don't have to (and, indeed, in some cases, can't) complete them all on one character. You can make a dark Warrior to get the dark achievements and the warrior class achievements, and then you make light characters for the light ones, and so on.

6) Light v Dark

 

Tedious and annoying.

 

As a returning player I was not happy about finding my character inexplicably earning dark side points - which I eventually figured out was because Empire defaults to dark side.

 

Worse, it's not just that my light side points diminish. The game permanently records and displays those dark side points in my character sheet.

Not permanently. When you max out one side, any further points you earn on that side will erase any remaining points of the other side on a one-for-one basis, and that has *always* been the case, ever since the game released.

As for the whole dark v light bonus business which I've read about and understand, that's more crazy stupid game design. Holding off on completing missions until your side has won may make mathematical sense but it's tedious and arbitrary. I will ignore it.

Lots of people do, indeed, ignore it. I do, because life's too short for that nonsense.

7) Lack of online information

This is not GW1 / GW2, where the publisher hosts a Wiki, but even there, the progression of the Wikis depends on the efforts of dedicated players, because ArenaNet does no more than hosting the content.

I'm perfectly aware that such sites are not the responsibility or under the control of SWTOR's devs, but their current state reflects extemely poorly on the game. They suggest that the game is abandoned.

So what do you propose that BioWare *does* about this, given that it's not their responsibility?

Edited October 11, 2019 by SteveTheCynic

[Varnoukh]

BT2 is big and buff, but hardly muscle-bound.

 

BT2's chest is kinda ridiculous. Though as I said I think it's more of a clothing issue, with lots of the lower level / older stuff over accentuating / puffing it out.

 

Anyone who's into MMORPGs will know better.

 

That's a pathetic insult.

 

I've been playing them for 15 years and have at least tried nearly all of them.

 

All MMORPGs have the same sort of "plain-ness" issues around beginner armour. At least it's not like beginner armour in ESO, 90% of which looks like it has been kicked around the yard a few times before you were able to recover it and get dressed again.

 

Total straw man.

 

I criticized older / lower level armours over-accentuating male body 2's chest region and also weird butt bumps on a lot of robes / capes.

 

Then you conjured "plain-ness" out of thin air.

 

You are way, way, way far late to this party, and your comments align mostly with the general themes that we've seen ever since the moment the first player tried to create a Toggie after they went live.

 

No.

 

I've read a LOT of comments online about Togruta and no, my comments don't align at all with them.

 

As I said, everyone focuses on lekku length. Again, to repeat myself, while I agree that longer would be better / more iconic, the real problem for males is montrals. They don't look Togruta.

 

SWTOR's Togruta came first so they should be treated as canon. And in the clone wars 2 parter, none of them look like SWTOR's implementation, and there's wide variation in them.

 

The male head just looks like a giant cartoon style rabbit or cat head. Regardless of canon it's hard to look at them and not LOL.

 

There has been no sign of that being planned *at*all*.

 

It's called their business model and simple inference.

 

They charge real $$$$ if you want to change your character's appearance.

 

They released a new race, which courtesy of Shaak Ti and Ahsoka, potentially could have been very popular, but did so with the male version looking totally ridiculous and the female version ok, but arguably significantly inferior to in game female Togruta NPCs and the companion, Ashara. Both for having shorter lekku and more importantly I think, for their being curiously wrinkly.

 

Either they are literal morons who just really screwed this up - which is possible - or their grand plan was for players to make Togruta characters whose appearance they didn't really love. Then for them to demand more options for them in the cartel market. Then for them to buy those options and on top of that pay more to fix their stupid looking characters.

 

Instead everyone's just laughing at them.

 

It *is* advertised up front. Every single one of those interactions is visible in the ability lists in the "P" panel or the "K" panel.

 

Lie.

 

As I said other garbage class mechanics like this are listed up front.

 

During character creation you can open an info screen for every class and you can see things like scoundrel (I think?) using energy + tactical advantage. Or sentinels and concentration. That's advertised up front.

 

Anyone who's played MMORPG's knows that players don't walk up to the nearest NPC and read through all of their abilities at the start of playing. Ha! Also anyone who's played SWTOR would know that by default they're not even displayed. The game defaults to only showing ones you can immediately learn.

 

Plus, as I said, the lower level experience is TOTALLY different to late game. Mind-bogglingly.

 

If there was a low level build-a-stack of some moronic garbage buff which changed how another ability functioned, that would accurately represent the class. And honestly, if there was and I'd seen that I'd have immediately quit out and uninstalled the game.

 

Nah. Those weapon-locked abilities were there at the beginning, before there even *was* a cash shop.

 

Nah. Anyone who's played MMORPG's knows that while lots of subscription games didn't launch with cash shops - because that's a wildly unpopular combination - they were often added and almost certainly planned from the beginning.

 

Achievements are not per-character, *and* achievements are optional. They give nothing (except a few which give a pittance of Cartel Coins and a bunch that give titles, but titles aren't *useful* for anything).

 

Duh. I know they're not per character. What are you talking about?

 

My complaint very clearly was that so many of them required playing specific classes and making specific, irreversible choices which many players wouldn't want to do.

 

Duh. I know they're "optional".

 

My point very clearly was that having any achievements which require players to do things they really, really don't want to do fundamentally undermines their driving force which is completionism. Once a player decides that any given achievement is something they're not going to ever get, it's easy to dismiss the whole system.

 

Um. You don't have to complete any at all, and you don't have to (and, indeed, in some cases, can't) complete them all on one character. You can make a dark Warrior to get the dark achievements and the warrior class achievements, and then you make light characters for the light ones, and so on.

 

Wow. Seriously?

 

First off, you're wrong. While historical, there was the Dark and Light event which required you to make a new character during it and max out both their light and dark side. Reading about that made me cringe.

 

Also again I myself made the point that you can't all achievements on a single character - that eg. there are class based ones. Remember?

 

And most importantly, FU and F the devs for telling me to go dark side. On any character.

 

I know it's only a game and no-one is actually hurt by any of my "decisions" but those are my decisions to make.

 

Not permanently. When you max out one side, any further points you earn on that side will erase any remaining points of the other side on a one-for-one basis, and that has *always* been the case, ever since the game released.

 

That's not explained in the character screen, is it? There's no reason why any person would assume that would happen? Is there? They'd just see the totals for each and think that the game permanently records and displays totals for each.

 

Thank you for telling me, though. It is good to know that if I ever make a boo boo I don't have to delete the character.

 

This is not GW1 / GW2, where the publisher hosts a Wiki, but even there, the progression of the Wikis depends on the efforts of dedicated players, because ArenaNet does no more than hosting the content.

 

The GW2 wiki has always been excellent. Updated with new info generally within 24 hours of it going live. I've always been able to rely on it to bring myself up to speed on changes and see the current state of professions I play.

 

So what do you propose that BioWare *does* about this, given that it's not their responsibility?

 

I'm smirking right now. Given it's not their responsibility? Seriously?

 

Yes like I said I know that the content of independent websites is not something they have direct control over, but anyone who's played MMORPGs knows that such independent websites and wikis are where players go for information. If they are poorly maintained that reflects very, very poorly on the game and makes it difficult for potential players to know if they even want to try it.

 

It is irresponsible of SWTOR's devs to ignore that.

 

Like I and you just said, they could host this information themselves. Or engage with their community to encourage them to do it. That's their responsibility.

[Adric_the_Red]

Achievements are not per-character, *and* achievements are optional. They give nothing (except a few which give a pittance of Cartel Coins and a bunch that give titles, but titles aren't *useful* for anything).

Let's not forget those achievement "points" you get for doing them. Although those points don't *do* anything besides add to the *cough* pointless *cough* (pardon the pun), total at the bottom of the page. Edited October 11, 2019 by Adric_the_Red

[Varnoukh]

Let's not forget those achievement "points" you get for doing them. Although those points don't *do* anything besides add to the *cough* pointless *cough* (pardon the pun), total at the bottom of the page.

 

Yeah, psychology, right?

 

One of the fundamental underpinnings of gaming is making a bunch of numbers go up. Achievements is one of the many arms of that. Though it also plugs into completionism and success.

 

There isn't really anything difficult about well designed achievements. You just need to plug enough time into the game. Eg. kill 1000 X's. Stand your character near an aggro spawn point with a companion out and you could probably literally do that while asleep.

 

In essence it's about providing a false sense of achievement. But if you implement any achievements which require players to do things which they really don't enjoy or otherwise object to, you hobble the whole achievement system.

[Varnoukh]

As a general followup, in case anyone else likeminded ever reads this, I think I've wrapped my head around the other classes now.

 

Two of Shadow's three specs lose the problematic totally un-Jedi rock throwing. The third goes even crazier with the rock throwing. That's two steps forward and one back for that class and either way still superior to sage. Shadow still has some of the ridiculous build a stack garbage but there doesn't seem to be any totally escaping that in this game.

 

However, gunslinger / sniper might have only been lightly grazed with this particular crazy brush and the worst of that seems to be over on the right hand side as optional extras where it belongs.

 

It is unfortunate but I'm not surprised that no-one was able to helpfully point this out.

 

One downside of this kind of ridiculously convoluted class design might be players sticking to one class and totally ignoring the others. If I decide to stick around in any capacity I'd probably do that.

[SteveTheCynic]

First off, you're wrong. While historical, there was the Dark and Light event which required you to make a new character during it and max out both their light and dark side. Reading about that made me cringe.

You didn't have to do that on *one* character. I *did* that event (up to the top-minus-one tier), and I got "Reached Dark V" on one character and "Reached Light V" on another.