SWTOR got the "Playable" rating for the Steam Deck

[TrixxieTriss]

I have to ask? In what way? For the most part the pruning is at most 3-4 abilities out of the 20 something characters have. I don't see how the pruning has anything to do with controller support when people have been playing swtor on a controller since the steam controller became a thing.

 

I disagree with a decent chunk of the cuts to some of the classes, but acting like it was for the sake of controller compatibility is reaching. It is safer to assume it is more about dumming it down as people prior to steam had issues understanding class abilities. Heck I just got three of my friends to start playing and I am basically backseat gaming over discord streaming to try to help them. One of the is a final fantasy player too. Swtor has been pretty complex with it's "basic" rotations for a while, and that complexity isn't being removed. Just the issue with gunnery mains using sticky grenade on cooldown.

 

The issue is the rigidity of the skill trees, IO for example should have explosive dart as a basic tool, like how they made orbital strike for engineering standard due to pts feedback... just to make takedown the replacement.

 

It’s the whole package. Ie, pruning took away between 2-3 ability’s per class and the class buff button was made passive (so that’s 3-4 keybinds no longer needed). The utility UI was simplified, as was the inventory / character UI pane. Add the simplified static gearing system and it rounds out most of the changes I believe were done to make the game more compatible with the Steam Deck and a possible Xbox port this year.

[Phazonfreak]

The where's the official controller support and setup? Ain't that way WAY more important to have ready for February's Steam Deck launch than ability pruning? I would love if they had this kind of ambitions but there's really zero evidence of that whatsoever so far...

 

Which is exactly why I wrote that I do not agree with the idea that the Steam Deck and 7.0 are directly linked whatsoever. The timeline of events might look like it, because of the close announcement and release dates for both projects, but they must have been in development independently for months and years before the devs even knew about it.

 

Again, I think that EA and BioWare have been considering a way into the untapped console market and will definitely jump at the chance of bringing SWTOR and other games to handhelds now that Valve made it suddenly happen without any additional work on their end. I don't think however that BioWare knew about this when they were developing the features of LotS and decided to prune abilities, change the UI etc.

Edited January 23, 2022 by Phazonfreak

[Cedia]

This further strengthens my theory that the expansion was pushed back due to the Steam Deck's release date being pushed back.

[Phazonfreak]

This further strengthens my theory that the expansion was pushed back due to the Steam Deck's release date being pushed back.

 

This doesn't make a lot of sense considering that SWTOR's delay announcement came an entire month after the Steam Deck delay announcement. It is much more likely that they intended to push the 10 year anniversary deadline in december but couldn't ignore the critical issues with the new mechanics over the holidays.

 

I also don't really see how releasing the expansion at the same time as the first batches of Steam Decks will benefit this game in any meaningful way, since the Steam Deck will release later than the expansion at a slow and steady pace.

Edited January 23, 2022 by Phazonfreak

[CaldoChaud]

Personally, regardless of the Steam Deck, I would like to see full Linux support if nothing else.

 

With the hardware requirements of Windows 11 forcing people to discard perfectly good hardware (more unnecessary e-waste) and run out to buy new Windows 11-compliant computers, I have foregone the upgrade and am currently migrating to daily-driving Linux Mint... although I am dual-booting with Windows in order to play SWTOR.

 

While I appreciate the difficulties the devs have faced with HeroEngine over the past ten years, I sincerely hope that SWTOR can be ported over to Linux or at the very least made to take full advantage of Proton.

[cjmarsh]

Why would you even want to play SWTOR on a controller? How would you keybind 30 different abilities? Seems like a ton of development time for very little benefit.

[ThomaJones]

I mean is that a bad thing?

 

Yes.

 

10 year old game. Low population. Who would think its a good idea to make such radical changes risking driving away many long time paying customers in hopes to pick up a tiny amount of people wanting to play an MMO on a portable device? Jesus...just because it exists, does not mean its good for the game.

 

And the players have already spoken. Steam numbers are back to December numbers and still dropping every single week and the complaining about this horrible update has not slowed down.

[fushnchips]

I said the changes to abilities - utilities and the new UI had to do with Steam Deck compatibility. Next stop will be Xbox compatibility.

 

If this game goes on the xbox and ps5 it will become what it used to be but then the lack of content could also cause a downslide for new comers once they hit max level with stale events and so on.

[nkarapinha]

Hi Guys,

 

For those of you that don't know.

Steam deck is a gnu/linux computer with a console form factor.

The "Playable" means the game works well on linux.

https://www.protondb.com/app/1286830 => Platinum rating by the community.

 

There is no "swtor goes mobile" nor "swtor goes console"

steam deck is a pc like you guys have just uses linux and does not have a keyboard by default.

 

For swtor to go for a "VERIFIED" status it would probably requires the launcher to go away (since it requires keyboard) and for the game to add controller support. Which it does not have.

You can use controller on swtor because steam maps keyboard keys to the controller buttons...