Heh well this is just what I figred swtor would be, a dissapointing world of warcraft clone. The upcoming beta weeked that has gotten like 40k keys given out is going to be a major eye opener for many people. I too was excited for this game when I first heard of it but after reading more and more on it and watching some video's the game just seemed dull and unintersting to me. I am so tired of every mmorpg dev just cloning world of warcraft and thinking thats enough. They don't even try anymore it makes me sad.
It was a major eye-opener for a lot of people last weekend as well. In a good way. Just sayin'...
Heh well this is just what I figred swtor would be, a dissapointing world of warcraft clone. The upcoming beta weeked that has gotten like 40k keys given out is going to be a major eye opener for many people. I too was excited for this game when I first heard of it but after reading more and more on it and watching some video's the game just seemed dull and unintersting to me. I am so tired of every mmorpg dev just cloning world of warcraft and thinking thats enough. They don't even try anymore it makes me sad.
The same can be said of every First Person Shooter being a clone of each other. Real Time Strategy, all clones. City building simulators, clones. Flight simulators, clones. Fighting games, clones. Do you gripe about these other genres who just paint new skins on similar if not exactly the same mechanics as their predecessors? Maybe you should just accept that you're a burnout and need to move on to another genre for a while, take a breather, then come back refreshed and less jaded.
the biggest letdown in the game was the combat, it was not fast action lightsaber combat. It was slow, choppy and looked liked it was developed 10 years ago.
I dont mind tab targest to much but for a star wars game they did a piss poor job. I was wanting The Force Unleashed and I got Lego starwars. It was enough to turn me off from the game.
When you look at the types pf action based combat you can have in a MMO ( I will point out the FREE TO PLAY Dragons Nest) you know they could have done a better job. Star Wars is ACTION, Its a swashbuckling space opera with laser swords for gawds sake and thats not what we got.
To be fair, ranged combat (Imperial agent in my case) was more fun then the Jedi but it was still clunky and uninspired. To me it was almost like a big laggy single player game with a very old combat system.
Other than combat I liked it, good story looked better then average, great voice acting, it was a solid B+
the biggest letdown in the game was the combat, it was not fast action lightsaber combat. It was slow, choppy and looked liked it was developed 10 years ago.
I dont mind tab targest to much but for a star wars game they did a piss poor job. I was wanting The Force Unleashed and I got Lego starwars. It was enough to turn me off from the game.
When you look at the types pf action based combat you can have in a MMO ( I will point out the FREE TO PLAY Dragons Nest) you know they could have done a better job. Star Wars is ACTION, Its a swashbuckling space opera with laser swords for gawds sake and thats not what we got.
To be fair, ranged combat (Imperial agent in my case) was more fun then the Jedi but it was still clunky and uninspired. To me it was almost like a big laggy single player game with a very old combat system.
Other than combat I liked it, good story looked better then average, great voice acting, it was a solid B+
Why are you looking for a MMOFPS in a MMORPG? Shouldn't you be more interested in games like Darkfall, Tera or Planetside 2?
Ok first of all I started beta in the mid of Aug and ended around the end of September.
1. Story - It is ok but I did not find it that appealing as some. I just thought it was very predictable and it made me feel like I read this story elsewhere before. The story formate is basically some dialogue inbetween with a bunch of go fetch and go kill quests. Nothing really exciting at all.
2. Combat - I did not like it. It feels very tactical and slow. It made me feel like I was in Dragon Age again playing. I kept on looking for the pause and play button. If I had any comparison it would be similar to Lotro's combat.
3. Exploration - There is really no need to explore because all you will find is just lore pieces scatter around the planets and thats it. The planets may be big but there is really no incentive to make me want to see the entire world.
4. Loot - Loot was disappointing in flashpoints. I did the Black Talon flashpoint serveral times with people and not much drops and if it does it is nothing worth being excited about.
5. Mob AI - Dull boring and they have no clue what they are doing. They run around shooting aimlessly at you. You really have to be pretty bad at combat to keep dying. Who knows they might have improved it since my beta time but I'm not banking on it.
6. Character Creation - It is ok and it is nothing special to be excited about. Very basic stuff from the get go.
7. PvP - Did not participate.
8. PvE Difficulty - The only real challenges you will find are flashpoints are heroic quests but heroic quests can be done solo if you level above the mob ai.
9. Companions - Companions make the game more easier than it really is. My companion kept on healing me all the time, did not die once. Again, it makes you feel like it is Dragon Age again.
10 - Crafting - Did not participate.
11. Questing - It is basically go kill this or go fetch that. The bonus quests are basically go kill quests but who cares if a npc is giving you the quest or not, its still stuff most mmo players have done before time and time again. You get to make choices just like in Dragon Age but what is the sense of making choices when you have a gazillion ton of boring go kill/fetch quest s waiting for you. There is nothing appealing about it at all.
Overall Impression..
Honestly ? I love Bioware for most of their games but SWTOR is very disappointing. For 5+ years they had this game and this is the best they can do ? For a developer thats is highly respected for previous games I expected alot more out of them. All they did was copy/paste previous ideas and slip in some story. I know that is what they told us they was going to do but from top to bottom the game is average at best. I give it a C+ because SWTOR doesn't really improve the mmo genre much at all, if anything it pushes the mmo genre backwards. You are just better off rolling more characters in Skyrim!
Agreed pretty much 100%.
I personally found the game derivative, narrow, and boring, despite liking the environment, companions, and story areas.
The pace is slow and boring, the character creation/ development is limited and boring, the quests were repetitive and boring....don't even talk to me about the boring ship they give you.
Sure it was fun at first for the first couple of days, but the Star Wars sheen wears off fast and your left with a very pedestrian and dull little game.
i havent got past level where i get lightsaber. They have stated combat gets smoother as u level up due to the fact your skill gets better.
I dont know if its true but i do know i didnt play with a lightsaber in all my time and i still liked the combat. Especially on my jedi knight getting force leap made combat exciting for me .
ON smuggler cover takes getting used to but can be fun if done right. Sure no one dies in 1 shot i like that. i liked the combat in tor.
if i was rating parts i tested.
story 10 on a 1-10 scale
enviroments i saw 10- they were just amazing.
combat id give a 7 it was fun and enjoyable for me. i liked watchign blaster bolts wizz by me.
mechanics 8 . Id give a 10 if some of them werent so familiar but that was part of why they worked so well and on my gfs comp the game ran really smooth. the mechanics as a whole though wre very familiar. a few additions to normal would of been ice but arent necessary.
questing 9. The story based quests made it seem like my quests meant more. The pop up for kill 10 of this kill 10 of that quest s i didnt have to go out of my way to finish as i had to kill them to recover my objective anyways was a nice change. The one compaint i had was i had to kill alot of flesh raiders on tython that got old. Wish theyd had more variety in enemies there.
i tried a number of diffrent clases like smuggler i got to 10 and went to fleet , knight i got to a 7 , inquistor to a 7 woudl of been higher but beta ended while iw as questing. bh 4, I just wanted to test the diffrent classes see how they felt smuggler story is amazing as is inquistor .
I personally found the game derivative, narrow, and boring, despite liking the environment, companions, and story areas.
The pace is slow and boring, the character creation/ development is limited and boring, the quests were repetitive and boring....don't even talk to me about the boring ship they give you.
Sure it was fun at first for the first couple of days, but the Star Wars sheen wears off fast and your left with a very pedestrian and dull little game.
IMO!
Couldn't disagree with you any more if I tried. But the good news is, I can take your review to be as biased as you take the positive reviews from the "shills or weekend beta testers." So it evens out.
Ok first of all I started beta in the mid of Aug and ended around the end of September.
1. Story - It is ok but I did not find it that appealing as some. I just thought it was very predictable and it made me feel like I read this story elsewhere before. The story formate is basically some dialogue inbetween with a bunch of go fetch and go kill quests. Nothing really exciting at all. my problem with the story is that the over arching story of each planet accounts for much more of your questing then your characters story does. This limits the replayabliity factor that many people think this game has.
2. Combat - I did not like it. It feels very tactical and slow. It made me feel like I was in Dragon Age again playing. I kept on looking for the pause and play button. If I had any comparison it would be similar to Lotro's combat. I felt it was fine i knew what to expect and i expect hotbar/otation combat.
3. Exploration - There is really no need to explore because all you will find is just lore pieces scatter around the planets and thats it. The planets may be big but there is really no incentive to make me want to see the entire world. Holocrons are out there but the exploring is so predictable, on most of the planets you will see some boxes stacked on top of each other...ohh just around the height that you can jump up them....its not what exploring should be about.
4. Loot - Loot was disappointing in flashpoints. I did the Black Talon flashpoint serveral times with people and not much drops and if it does it is nothing worth being excited about. Non-issue its just a loot system, typical MMO
5. Mob AI - Dull boring and they have no clue what they are doing. They run around shooting aimlessly at you. You really have to be pretty bad at combat to keep dying. Who knows they might have improved it since my beta time but I'm not banking on it. Agreed, while i know Mob AI is an odd subject, but you think Devs, ones with the biggest budget for an MMO, could ahve worked harder its a real imersion break when i kill a mobs 2 buddies then he just sits there and shoots me, and does no dmg
6. Character Creation - It is ok and it is nothing special to be excited about. Very basic stuff from the get go. slightly better then most games, but really not anything close to Aion, COH, CO
7. PvP - Did not participate. its the same old same old in BGs personally i can't talk about Open World.
8. PvE Difficulty - The only real challenges you will find are flashpoints are heroic quests but heroic quests can be done solo if you level above the mob ai. flashpoints are a joke once you know the machanic of the boss. its simple as WoW is. Hardest part is getting people who know what they are doing
9. Companions - Companions make the game more easier than it really is. My companion kept on healing me all the time, did not die once. Again, it makes you feel like it is Dragon Age again. Compainons would have been great if they were done differently. choices you make do not determine what compaions you get. everyone gets their five. the problem is you dont care about them at all. only thing you care about is which one helps you the most.
10 - Crafting - Did not participate. Compaions craft for you its even further dumb down crafting
11. Questing - It is basically go kill this or go fetch that. The bonus quests are basically go kill quests but who cares if a npc is giving you the quest or not, its still stuff most mmo players have done before time and time again. You get to make choices just like in Dragon Age but what is the sense of making choices when you have a gazillion ton of boring go kill/fetch quest s waiting for you. There is nothing appealing about it at all. Agreed, people get caught up in the story, but the imersion breaks are everywhere, the game lacks replay ability and the class are exact mirriors. questing was simply boring as soon as the convos stopped
Overall Impression..
Honestly ? I love Bioware for most of their games but SWTOR is very disappointing. For 5+ years they had this game and this is the best they can do ? For a developer thats is highly respected for previous games I expected alot more out of them. All they did was copy/paste previous ideas and slip in some story. I know that is what they told us they was going to do but from top to bottom the game is average at best. I give it a C+ because SWTOR doesn't really improve the mmo genre much at all, if anything it pushes the mmo genre backwards. You are just better off rolling more characters in Skyrim! Its not so much that it pushes the genre backwards so much as it changes things that do need to be changed, after you get over the fact that the Voice over is the bigest time sink in the game and the quests are nothing but shallow after a man who you dont care about tries to give you a sob story about his lost son...but you dont care you only got the quest because it was in the quest hub.
The game is like a person who changes clothes...yeah he goes to school and looks different but everyone knows that he is still the boring, bland, basic, socially akward kid...just in some nice clothes
Why are you looking for a MMOFPS in a MMORPG? Shouldn't you be more interested in games like Darkfall, Tera or Planetside 2?
Kid.. RPG dosnt mean boring Combat. I have seen Tara vids and it looks good, thank you for another example of a MMO that has some action combat. But we arent talking about Tera are we? This is a STAR WARS game, it should have had better combat, with all the advances we have seen in MMO combat there is no excuse for the poor performance and lack of style we have with TOR.
Im not looking for a FPS here, but I am not looking for Turnbased combat either. Im not a fanboi to blindly overlook glaring flaws in a game becase Iwant to love it so much. The combat suck, it hurts the game seeing as how thats about 80% of it. the other 20% being crafting , the MM aspect, and .. run from point A to point B to do what? oh yah.. combat
You didn't participate in PvP and crafting because you didn't make it off the starter planet I'm guessing. That would explain your Mob AI.
The mobs get way smarter later on. In fact most of the stuff gets way better after the first planet.
in fact i felt the opposite. I thought the starter planets were really well done and they have a huge focus on your character and their advancement and the stories (aside from the sumggler) was written really well. but as soon as you left the different planets had more problem then your character, and the focus switched, sure you had your story..but the planet's story was just too many quests that you were derailed from your own story.
Ok first of all I started beta in the mid of Aug and ended around the end of September.
1. Story - It is ok but I did not find it that appealing as some. I just thought it was very predictable and it made me feel like I read this story elsewhere before. The story formate is basically some dialogue inbetween with a bunch of go fetch and go kill quests. Nothing really exciting at all. my problem with the story is that the over arching story of each planet accounts for much more of your questing then your characters story does. This limits the replayabliity factor that many people think this game has.
2. Combat - I did not like it. It feels very tactical and slow. It made me feel like I was in Dragon Age again playing. I kept on looking for the pause and play button. If I had any comparison it would be similar to Lotro's combat. I felt it was fine i knew what to expect and i expect hotbar/otation combat.
3. Exploration - There is really no need to explore because all you will find is just lore pieces scatter around the planets and thats it. The planets may be big but there is really no incentive to make me want to see the entire world. Holocrons are out there but the exploring is so predictable, on most of the planets you will see some boxes stacked on top of each other...ohh just around the height that you can jump up them....its not what exploring should be about.
4. Loot - Loot was disappointing in flashpoints. I did the Black Talon flashpoint serveral times with people and not much drops and if it does it is nothing worth being excited about. Non-issue its just a loot system, typical MMO
5. Mob AI - Dull boring and they have no clue what they are doing. They run around shooting aimlessly at you. You really have to be pretty bad at combat to keep dying. Who knows they might have improved it since my beta time but I'm not banking on it. Agreed, while i know Mob AI is an odd subject, but you think Devs, ones with the biggest budget for an MMO, could ahve worked harder its a real imersion break when i kill a mobs 2 buddies then he just sits there and shoots me, and does no dmg
6. Character Creation - It is ok and it is nothing special to be excited about. Very basic stuff from the get go. slightly better then most games, but really not anything close to Aion, COH, CO
7. PvP - Did not participate. its the same old same old in BGs personally i can't talk about Open World.
8. PvE Difficulty - The only real challenges you will find are flashpoints are heroic quests but heroic quests can be done solo if you level above the mob ai. flashpoints are a joke once you know the machanic of the boss. its simple as WoW is. Hardest part is getting people who know what they are doing
9. Companions - Companions make the game more easier than it really is. My companion kept on healing me all the time, did not die once. Again, it makes you feel like it is Dragon Age again. Compainons would have been great if they were done differently. choices you make do not determine what compaions you get. everyone gets their five. the problem is you dont care about them at all. only thing you care about is which one helps you the most.
10 - Crafting - Did not participate. Compaions craft for you its even further dumb down crafting
11. Questing - It is basically go kill this or go fetch that. The bonus quests are basically go kill quests but who cares if a npc is giving you the quest or not, its still stuff most mmo players have done before time and time again. You get to make choices just like in Dragon Age but what is the sense of making choices when you have a gazillion ton of boring go kill/fetch quest s waiting for you. There is nothing appealing about it at all. Agreed, people get caught up in the story, but the imersion breaks are everywhere, the game lacks replay ability and the class are exact mirriors. questing was simply boring as soon as the convos stopped
Overall Impression..
Honestly ? I love Bioware for most of their games but SWTOR is very disappointing. For 5+ years they had this game and this is the best they can do ? For a developer thats is highly respected for previous games I expected alot more out of them. All they did was copy/paste previous ideas and slip in some story. I know that is what they told us they was going to do but from top to bottom the game is average at best. I give it a C+ because SWTOR doesn't really improve the mmo genre much at all, if anything it pushes the mmo genre backwards. You are just better off rolling more characters in Skyrim! Its not so much that it pushes the genre backwards so much as it changes things that do need to be changed, after you get over the fact that the Voice over is the bigest time sink in the game and the quests are nothing but shallow after a man who you dont care about tries to give you a sob story about his lost son...but you dont care you only got the quest because it was in the quest hub.
The game is like a person who changes clothes...yeah he goes to school and looks different but everyone knows that he is still the boring, bland, basic, socially akward kid...just in some nice clothes
Holocrons are a lot tougher to find that people give them credit for, don't know how far in the game you got but once you are off the home world, holocrons are pretty tough to find. I bet you didn't find even a quarter of them on Nar Shadaa, and don't even get me started on tatooine. Most people don't even see the ones they miss, if you aren't interested in actually going way out of your way to find them, or you aren't observant, its unlikely you'll find many after the easy homeworld ones.
The loot system is fairly typical, don't know how you could change a loot system, as I stated the accomodation system is very good, as well as social points, which allows you to get different gear, all of which are available from flashpoints.
I agree with you on a lot of your other points, character creation, yes it better than WoW, but terrible in comparison to any superhero game and some fantasy. Really I was just disappointed with the small race selection, which hopefully could be fixed by the legacy system.
I too can't say much about open world PvP, I did do some, but nothing of a more "structured" open PvP system, everything I did was by chance as I was on a PvP server for the months that I played, I only recently switched to a PvE server.
The early flashpoints are fairly easy, with some nuances depending on what choices you make and whether or not you complete all the side quests in the flashpoint. Once you know a mechanic of a boss you're right, it becomes much easier, but then again, when you have a pattern to defeat any enemy no matter the game, it becomes a lot easier. Hard mode flashpoints are also available, though I was not able to try any.
I really disagree with crafting, I think the crafting is the best system we have seen to date in terms of what you can craft and how you obtain it. You select your skills and you have to closely manage your crew and reverse engineer everything (even items you can't create) which opens up more blueprints. As you progress you get better and can create higher level items, but also reverse engineer a lot of different schematics that can have a number of effects making gear different. You can also crit gear, put extra slots on, and so on which is really different then the "everyone makes the same thing" crafting we see in just about every MMO.
The questing issue is your opinion, I was fine going through each different class story, though when I felt I needed a break I easily leveled through flashpoints, space combat, or PvP (mostly PvP, I did a lot of that).
The thing about the game is theres a story that will entice anyone to keep playing, and thats a BioWare hallmark. The more you play, the more you want to play, at least in my experience... starting at square 1 over and over again (as some people have tried character from 1 - 15 then reroll) is the easiest way to get burned out. The sad thing is, this will be similar for a lot of the games coming out, things will eventually repeat or you'll see the same areas, same kinds of quests over again, in SWTOR you have an overarching story as well as a number of other things to bring you through the game.
Dress it up, dress it down, but every MMO to some extent could be broken down to what WoW does.
The NDA drops. Nothing changes. Even if the hate mongers enjoy the game, they're not likely to admit it. Most criticisms I've seen for SW:TOR could be said for pretty much any game on the market right now, so I'm not sure why SW:TOR gets the brunt of the venom. BioWare stated from day one, that SW:TOR wouldn't reinvent the wheel. Even so, I feel as if they've done a good enough job to where I don't simply feel like I'm playing WoW with a less talented dev team like I did in Rift.
I was in one of the October beta weekend tests, and while I didn't get as much play time as I would like, I still managed to get my jedi sentinel to around 20 or so, and I completed Tython, Coruscant, Taris, and half of Nar Shadaa before the end of the beta weekend. I felt that character control was incredibly tight and responsive, and animations flowed together nicely. I'm not sure why people keep bashing the melee combat. I'm not sure I've played a game with flashier melee combat outside of AION. My character's melee attacks would even rebound off the melee weapons of various mobs to create mini-saber duels -- something I hadn't seen since Everquest II.
People say the questing is terrible, yet this wasn't my impression. Sure, there's plenty of kill x of y and retrieve x of y quests out there, but those kinds of quests are in every MMORPG -- can't wait to see some of your faces when you find them littered all over GW2. The difference in a game like SW:TOR and Rift is that there are other, more varied, quests. Taris has a lot of really fun quests with some specific references to the original KOTOR like a quest that has you explore the wreckage of the Endar Spire or the quest that has you fight through a cave to find out what happened to the Rukil's lost tribe. I can't say I ever played an MMORPG with more interesting solo quest PvE. Even the standard quests are more interesting than in most games due to the voice acting and dialogue options. For the first time since EQ2, I am compelled to sit and listen to what the NPCs have ot say. If I'm in a hurry, there's still a skip dialogue button that lets me skip through the conversation. If the voice acting didn't apeal to you, I have to ask why you even looked into SW:TOR, as the devs promised from day one that SW:TOR was a standard MMORPG with a story-based focus.
Speaking of quests, SW:TOR doesn't feel like such a quest grind. You are certainly given direction on where to go from level to level, but the quest hubs are all large areas, and quests are spread all throughout the quest hub or out in the game world. You don't exactly march up to a tiny camp ala WoW or Rift and load up on 6 or 7 quests, turn them in, and get 6 or 7 more. Questing feels much more in line with vanilla WoW or LotRO. I actually missed several quests on Tython because, quite frankly, I failed to even notice them because the NPCs weren't just standing around in a tiny area waiting for me. On that subject, it's not even necessary to do all the stories to progress. The main storyline is the only means of true progression. The side quests just help you get to the point where you can defeat the mobs necessary for your story quest. You can skip plenty of the side quests if you feel like doing so, because anything about 3 or 4 levels above you is still killable. I can see side quests becoming more important post 20 and on into the 30s, 40s, and 50s, but again, it's nowhere nearly as essential to do every quest as it was in WoW or Rift.
Companions are a neat addition even if they are not as in depth as companions in Mass Effect or Dragon Age. You can have different ones which fulfill different roles, and you can outfit them as you please. You can also have them do some crafting for you (no experience with this), and you can have them run off to sell your trash loot while you are still in the field. That alone makes them worth having. I can't speak for companion specific content. I assume I wasn't a high enough level, but during my playthrough, there was only one line of dialoge every time I clicked on my companion, and that was about the only exposition I got. From what I understand, there are romance choices for each class, however.
Combat was solid. It's standard MMO fare; however, there's a twist in that you'll be fighting multiple mobs in almost every occasion. I love this. It was a real treat watching my character voice jump from mob to mob with AoE stuns and then cutting them down in seconds. Because most multi mob encounters consist of mobs with less HP than the single mob encounters, the multi mob encounters aren't really any easier or harder than a single mob pull in WoW or Rift. The fact that your character takes on multiple mobs is just to serve the purpose of making your character feel stronger, which I love.
Of course, I do have criticisms. I think the game has far too few classes. The only Republic class in SW:TOR that I care about playing is the Jedi Sentinal, and even if I were to make an alt, aside from the personal story, I see questing being largely the same as it was on my main. Of course, this is an issue on most all new MMORPGs. Secondly, SW:TOR doesn't feel like a cohesive world. Well, I guess technically it's a whole galaxy, but really, the planets feel about like they did in KOTOR only more open to facilitate the larger player base. As big as it the areas are, you're dropped on a specific splotch of the planet that's related to your story, and that's the only spot you see. There are no day/night cycles, so it the game world tends to feel fairly artificial or at best, similar to how the world of GW1 felt.
SW:TOR isn't a world beater. It's exactly what BioWare said it would be -- a WoW-based MMORPG with a storyline. It's not a single player game like so many people feared. It's every bit the MMO that the other games are with the addition of a story.
Honestly, and I mean no offense to you, but I have a very hard time beliving you were ever part of the general testing program.
Every single bit of information you complained about could easily have been gleaned from information that was previously available prior to the NDA drop. You don't have anything in there that wasn't already public knowledge, seems slightly suspect imho.
You've been posting negatively about the game for months on this forum. Everyone was well aware of your opinion regarding the game, so what is the point of this impression? You've already made yourself more than clear that there was nothing Bioware could do to make this game enjoyable for you.
I just don't get it, seems like the entire purpose of the post is based on spite for no reason other than to ensure that the fans have some opposition.
I have to agree with Kost on this post here. Weither or not you actually betaed the game you already hated it and didn't like it either way. Nothing you revealed wasn't already public knowledge. Your post really reveals nothing that you haven't said nothing before the NDA.
I totally agree with both of you. When you spawn negativity for endless months and now you finally have a chance to speak, it does little to interest those looking for any sort of objectivity.
I totally agree also. It's getting more difficult to understand the mentality of some of the modern mmo players. These are games. There is nothing to hate here, especially months before you even get an opportunity to check it out. Makes no sense.
Why are you looking for a MMOFPS in a MMORPG? Shouldn't you be more interested in games like Darkfall, Tera or Planetside 2?
Kid.. RPG dosnt mean boring Combat. I have seen Tara vids and it looks good, thank you for another example of a MMO that has some action combat. But we arent talking about Tera are we? This is a STAR WARS game, it should have had better combat, with all the advances we have seen in MMO combat there is no excuse for the poor performance and lack of style we have with TOR.
Im not looking for a FPS here, but I am not looking for Turnbased combat either. Im not a fanboi to blindly overlook glaring flaws in a game becase Iwant to love it so much. The combat suck, it hurts the game seeing as how thats about 80% of it. the other 20% being crafting , the MM aspect, and .. run from point A to point B to do what? oh yah.. combat
There is a distinct reason why FPS are not integrated often with RPG's and that is because RPG gamers don't want twtich combat. I fail to see why you think TOR should have your preferred style of combat. TOR has always been about typical MMO combat, so I get a little peeved when people continue to bash it for that reason. It's fine that it isn't what you are looking for, but stop insulting those of us who like that style of combat, by calling it "poor performance and lack of style" type of descriptions. It's rather arrogant of you to sit there and insinuate that your playstyle perferences are better than ours.
I also don't appreciate you trying to denegrate me or my point of view with terms like "Kid" either.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
So the Beta testers and the videos I have seen just confirm what many of us already thought, that it's just a highly fluffed WOW clone. Thats not ENTIRELY a bad thing IF you have some substance to back it up beyond fluff, but it Sounds like alot of aimless running around, tons of unused areas, and historically when your game has vast swaths of unused land its bad for the game. The worst draw is that it sounds like WOW but with more boring PVP which isn't good. And IF all of that is true then the PVE is gonna have to be AMAZING to draw enough players and keep them.
Opinions are so all over the place with SWTOR, it makes it impossible to make a judgment one way or another whether I'll like this game. So, this is definitly a case where I'll have to judge for myself. Bio/EA will get my money for the box/online purchase, but we'll see if the game will keep me subbing.
I make spreadsheets at work - I don't want to make them for the games I play.
the PVE, something that the designers pride themselves on, was very boring. cutscenes aside, the PVE is not really any different from WoW's.
graphics and animations were actually beyond expectations.
i wish i could give some feedback on PVP (most testers had few positive things to say about it)....i got bored of the game by lvl 6. it was really painful doing WoW-esque quests, and all the other players kept stealing my mobs, which i needed to complete the quests. wtf is up with that?
the worst part of it is that the world felt really really DEAD. static and..well, dead. i actually enjoyed the atmosphere of the Burning Crusade and Wotlk more =(
So the Beta testers and the videos I have seen just confirm what many of us already thought, that it's just a highly fluffed WOW clone. Thats not ENTIRELY a bad thing IF you have some substance to back it up beyond fluff, but it Sounds like alot of aimless running around, tons of unused areas, and historically when your game has vast swaths of unused land its bad for the game. The worst draw is that it sounds like WOW but with more boring PVP which isn't good. And IF all of that is true then the PVE is gonna have to be AMAZING to draw enough players and keep them.
You don't know what you're talking about.
How about instead of making baseless claims you actually play the game and see for yourself? Beta keys are still available.
Unused land???? I have no idea where you got that from but it's completely untrue. Absurd.
Aimless running around???? Again...absurd.
The pvp is definitely not more boring than wow. Huttball, Illum, and Outlaw's Den (FFA open world pvp zone where you can attack your faction and the enemy?) Yeah sounds pretty boring
If you want substance then the story content and questing cutscenes are more substance than any other themepark mmo has offered...ever.
the PVE, something that the designers pride themselves on, was very boring. cutscenes aside, the PVE is not really any different from WoW's.
graphics and animations were actually beyond expectations.
i wish i could give some feedback on PVP (most testers had few positive things to say about it)....i got bored of the game by lvl 6. it was really painful doing WoW-esque quests, and all the other players kept stealing my mobs, which i needed to complete the quests. wtf is up with that?
the worst part of it is that the world felt really really DEAD. static and..well, dead. i actually enjoyed the atmosphere of the Burning Crusade and Wotlk more =(
back to EVE and Skyrim for me until GW2 is out.
Strange, I found fighting multiple opponents at the same time in PvE, even at the earliest levels, to be very satisfying and VERY different from WoW. Much more dynamic. Add to that the multiple animations for the same powers I saw kept me changing up my power selections to see what other animations I could get. Then there is ambushes that I sometimes got when I attacked what I thought was a single target. Oh and seeing people actually BLOCKING incoming attacks instead of ignoring all of them? That was very cool to see in person. So basically, though SWTOR uses the same basic mechanics as WoW, the feel is very different and much more satisfying, that is unless you are specifically looking to find only the most negative aspects of the game.
I agree on the graphics and animations. I was disappointed at first when I started seeing them in 2009, but they have grown on me and seeing them live when I played the game put every SWTOR video I have ever watched to shame.
I also have not had a chance to try out the PvP. I was so engrossed in the personal and world stories, that I completely forgot about trying out the PvP (and the crafting unfortunately). Funny thing is I have seen very few negative impressions of it from testers though, the opposite in fact. I can't help but thinking you are exxagerating simply to try and prove your point and instead you are weakening your point with your dishonestly.
Static world? I can agree that they need to spice up the NPC's actions a bit, but most of the "life" of an MMO is in the other players, NOT the NPCs.
As for your other games, enjoy. Personally I found Eve incredibly boring, but that is me. Skyrim is interesting, but I am burned out on SPGs so it is not worth the money for me. GW2 I used to be interested in, but I find that game more and more lackluster as time goes on. Especially with what appears to be a horrible community getting behind it, the "Hopping House Elf" race and the "Designed by pedophiles" race. Still, you go ahead and have fun over there because if you like it, then I hope you can get a lot of enjoyment out of it.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
Originally posted by GMan3 Funny thing is I have seen very few negative impressions of it from testers though, the opposite in fact. I can't help but thinking you are exxagerating simply to try and prove your point and instead you are weakening your point with your dishonestly
well this is because most testers have not actually gotten around to the PVP, and many of those who have dont really have a clue about balancing, and what a good PVP experience should be about. many of TOR's testers are PVE'ers. the testers who have actually done things like arenas and rated BG's in WoW are highlighting many flaws that WoW has ironed out years ago.
Comments
It was a major eye-opener for a lot of people last weekend as well. In a good way. Just sayin'...
The same can be said of every First Person Shooter being a clone of each other. Real Time Strategy, all clones. City building simulators, clones. Flight simulators, clones. Fighting games, clones. Do you gripe about these other genres who just paint new skins on similar if not exactly the same mechanics as their predecessors? Maybe you should just accept that you're a burnout and need to move on to another genre for a while, take a breather, then come back refreshed and less jaded.
the biggest letdown in the game was the combat, it was not fast action lightsaber combat. It was slow, choppy and looked liked it was developed 10 years ago.
I dont mind tab targest to much but for a star wars game they did a piss poor job. I was wanting The Force Unleashed and I got Lego starwars. It was enough to turn me off from the game.
When you look at the types pf action based combat you can have in a MMO ( I will point out the FREE TO PLAY Dragons Nest) you know they could have done a better job. Star Wars is ACTION, Its a swashbuckling space opera with laser swords for gawds sake and thats not what we got.
To be fair, ranged combat (Imperial agent in my case) was more fun then the Jedi but it was still clunky and uninspired. To me it was almost like a big laggy single player game with a very old combat system.
Other than combat I liked it, good story looked better then average, great voice acting, it was a solid B+
Why are you looking for a MMOFPS in a MMORPG? Shouldn't you be more interested in games like Darkfall, Tera or Planetside 2?
Agreed pretty much 100%.
I personally found the game derivative, narrow, and boring, despite liking the environment, companions, and story areas.
The pace is slow and boring, the character creation/ development is limited and boring, the quests were repetitive and boring....don't even talk to me about the boring ship they give you.
Sure it was fun at first for the first couple of days, but the Star Wars sheen wears off fast and your left with a very pedestrian and dull little game.
IMO!
i havent got past level where i get lightsaber. They have stated combat gets smoother as u level up due to the fact your skill gets better.
I dont know if its true but i do know i didnt play with a lightsaber in all my time and i still liked the combat. Especially on my jedi knight getting force leap made combat exciting for me .
ON smuggler cover takes getting used to but can be fun if done right. Sure no one dies in 1 shot i like that. i liked the combat in tor.
if i was rating parts i tested.
story 10 on a 1-10 scale
enviroments i saw 10- they were just amazing.
combat id give a 7 it was fun and enjoyable for me. i liked watchign blaster bolts wizz by me.
mechanics 8 . Id give a 10 if some of them werent so familiar but that was part of why they worked so well and on my gfs comp the game ran really smooth. the mechanics as a whole though wre very familiar. a few additions to normal would of been ice but arent necessary.
questing 9. The story based quests made it seem like my quests meant more. The pop up for kill 10 of this kill 10 of that quest s i didnt have to go out of my way to finish as i had to kill them to recover my objective anyways was a nice change. The one compaint i had was i had to kill alot of flesh raiders on tython that got old. Wish theyd had more variety in enemies there.
i tried a number of diffrent clases like smuggler i got to 10 and went to fleet , knight i got to a 7 , inquistor to a 7 woudl of been higher but beta ended while iw as questing. bh 4, I just wanted to test the diffrent classes see how they felt smuggler story is amazing as is inquistor .
Couldn't disagree with you any more if I tried. But the good news is, I can take your review to be as biased as you take the positive reviews from the "shills or weekend beta testers." So it evens out.
The mobs get way smarter later on. In fact most of the stuff gets way better after the first planet.
Shadow's Hand Guild
Open recruitment for
The Secret World - Dragons
Planetside 2 - Terran Republic
Tera - Dragonfall Server
http://www.shadowshand.com
Kid.. RPG dosnt mean boring Combat. I have seen Tara vids and it looks good, thank you for another example of a MMO that has some action combat. But we arent talking about Tera are we? This is a STAR WARS game, it should have had better combat, with all the advances we have seen in MMO combat there is no excuse for the poor performance and lack of style we have with TOR.
Im not looking for a FPS here, but I am not looking for Turnbased combat either. Im not a fanboi to blindly overlook glaring flaws in a game becase Iwant to love it so much. The combat suck, it hurts the game seeing as how thats about 80% of it. the other 20% being crafting , the MM aspect, and .. run from point A to point B to do what? oh yah.. combat
in fact i felt the opposite. I thought the starter planets were really well done and they have a huge focus on your character and their advancement and the stories (aside from the sumggler) was written really well. but as soon as you left the different planets had more problem then your character, and the focus switched, sure you had your story..but the planet's story was just too many quests that you were derailed from your own story.
Could not in a milloin years disagree more.
I don't care about innovation I care about fun.
yeah? what/why?
Just afew points that I disagree with:
Holocrons are a lot tougher to find that people give them credit for, don't know how far in the game you got but once you are off the home world, holocrons are pretty tough to find. I bet you didn't find even a quarter of them on Nar Shadaa, and don't even get me started on tatooine. Most people don't even see the ones they miss, if you aren't interested in actually going way out of your way to find them, or you aren't observant, its unlikely you'll find many after the easy homeworld ones.
The loot system is fairly typical, don't know how you could change a loot system, as I stated the accomodation system is very good, as well as social points, which allows you to get different gear, all of which are available from flashpoints.
I agree with you on a lot of your other points, character creation, yes it better than WoW, but terrible in comparison to any superhero game and some fantasy. Really I was just disappointed with the small race selection, which hopefully could be fixed by the legacy system.
I too can't say much about open world PvP, I did do some, but nothing of a more "structured" open PvP system, everything I did was by chance as I was on a PvP server for the months that I played, I only recently switched to a PvE server.
The early flashpoints are fairly easy, with some nuances depending on what choices you make and whether or not you complete all the side quests in the flashpoint. Once you know a mechanic of a boss you're right, it becomes much easier, but then again, when you have a pattern to defeat any enemy no matter the game, it becomes a lot easier. Hard mode flashpoints are also available, though I was not able to try any.
I really disagree with crafting, I think the crafting is the best system we have seen to date in terms of what you can craft and how you obtain it. You select your skills and you have to closely manage your crew and reverse engineer everything (even items you can't create) which opens up more blueprints. As you progress you get better and can create higher level items, but also reverse engineer a lot of different schematics that can have a number of effects making gear different. You can also crit gear, put extra slots on, and so on which is really different then the "everyone makes the same thing" crafting we see in just about every MMO.
The questing issue is your opinion, I was fine going through each different class story, though when I felt I needed a break I easily leveled through flashpoints, space combat, or PvP (mostly PvP, I did a lot of that).
The thing about the game is theres a story that will entice anyone to keep playing, and thats a BioWare hallmark. The more you play, the more you want to play, at least in my experience... starting at square 1 over and over again (as some people have tried character from 1 - 15 then reroll) is the easiest way to get burned out. The sad thing is, this will be similar for a lot of the games coming out, things will eventually repeat or you'll see the same areas, same kinds of quests over again, in SWTOR you have an overarching story as well as a number of other things to bring you through the game.
Dress it up, dress it down, but every MMO to some extent could be broken down to what WoW does.
The NDA drops. Nothing changes. Even if the hate mongers enjoy the game, they're not likely to admit it. Most criticisms I've seen for SW:TOR could be said for pretty much any game on the market right now, so I'm not sure why SW:TOR gets the brunt of the venom. BioWare stated from day one, that SW:TOR wouldn't reinvent the wheel. Even so, I feel as if they've done a good enough job to where I don't simply feel like I'm playing WoW with a less talented dev team like I did in Rift.
I was in one of the October beta weekend tests, and while I didn't get as much play time as I would like, I still managed to get my jedi sentinel to around 20 or so, and I completed Tython, Coruscant, Taris, and half of Nar Shadaa before the end of the beta weekend. I felt that character control was incredibly tight and responsive, and animations flowed together nicely. I'm not sure why people keep bashing the melee combat. I'm not sure I've played a game with flashier melee combat outside of AION. My character's melee attacks would even rebound off the melee weapons of various mobs to create mini-saber duels -- something I hadn't seen since Everquest II.
People say the questing is terrible, yet this wasn't my impression. Sure, there's plenty of kill x of y and retrieve x of y quests out there, but those kinds of quests are in every MMORPG -- can't wait to see some of your faces when you find them littered all over GW2. The difference in a game like SW:TOR and Rift is that there are other, more varied, quests. Taris has a lot of really fun quests with some specific references to the original KOTOR like a quest that has you explore the wreckage of the Endar Spire or the quest that has you fight through a cave to find out what happened to the Rukil's lost tribe. I can't say I ever played an MMORPG with more interesting solo quest PvE. Even the standard quests are more interesting than in most games due to the voice acting and dialogue options. For the first time since EQ2, I am compelled to sit and listen to what the NPCs have ot say. If I'm in a hurry, there's still a skip dialogue button that lets me skip through the conversation. If the voice acting didn't apeal to you, I have to ask why you even looked into SW:TOR, as the devs promised from day one that SW:TOR was a standard MMORPG with a story-based focus.
Speaking of quests, SW:TOR doesn't feel like such a quest grind. You are certainly given direction on where to go from level to level, but the quest hubs are all large areas, and quests are spread all throughout the quest hub or out in the game world. You don't exactly march up to a tiny camp ala WoW or Rift and load up on 6 or 7 quests, turn them in, and get 6 or 7 more. Questing feels much more in line with vanilla WoW or LotRO. I actually missed several quests on Tython because, quite frankly, I failed to even notice them because the NPCs weren't just standing around in a tiny area waiting for me. On that subject, it's not even necessary to do all the stories to progress. The main storyline is the only means of true progression. The side quests just help you get to the point where you can defeat the mobs necessary for your story quest. You can skip plenty of the side quests if you feel like doing so, because anything about 3 or 4 levels above you is still killable. I can see side quests becoming more important post 20 and on into the 30s, 40s, and 50s, but again, it's nowhere nearly as essential to do every quest as it was in WoW or Rift.
Companions are a neat addition even if they are not as in depth as companions in Mass Effect or Dragon Age. You can have different ones which fulfill different roles, and you can outfit them as you please. You can also have them do some crafting for you (no experience with this), and you can have them run off to sell your trash loot while you are still in the field. That alone makes them worth having. I can't speak for companion specific content. I assume I wasn't a high enough level, but during my playthrough, there was only one line of dialoge every time I clicked on my companion, and that was about the only exposition I got. From what I understand, there are romance choices for each class, however.
Combat was solid. It's standard MMO fare; however, there's a twist in that you'll be fighting multiple mobs in almost every occasion. I love this. It was a real treat watching my character voice jump from mob to mob with AoE stuns and then cutting them down in seconds. Because most multi mob encounters consist of mobs with less HP than the single mob encounters, the multi mob encounters aren't really any easier or harder than a single mob pull in WoW or Rift. The fact that your character takes on multiple mobs is just to serve the purpose of making your character feel stronger, which I love.
Of course, I do have criticisms. I think the game has far too few classes. The only Republic class in SW:TOR that I care about playing is the Jedi Sentinal, and even if I were to make an alt, aside from the personal story, I see questing being largely the same as it was on my main. Of course, this is an issue on most all new MMORPGs. Secondly, SW:TOR doesn't feel like a cohesive world. Well, I guess technically it's a whole galaxy, but really, the planets feel about like they did in KOTOR only more open to facilitate the larger player base. As big as it the areas are, you're dropped on a specific splotch of the planet that's related to your story, and that's the only spot you see. There are no day/night cycles, so it the game world tends to feel fairly artificial or at best, similar to how the world of GW1 felt.
SW:TOR isn't a world beater. It's exactly what BioWare said it would be -- a WoW-based MMORPG with a storyline. It's not a single player game like so many people feared. It's every bit the MMO that the other games are with the addition of a story.
I totally agree also. It's getting more difficult to understand the mentality of some of the modern mmo players. These are games. There is nothing to hate here, especially months before you even get an opportunity to check it out. Makes no sense.
There is a distinct reason why FPS are not integrated often with RPG's and that is because RPG gamers don't want twtich combat. I fail to see why you think TOR should have your preferred style of combat. TOR has always been about typical MMO combat, so I get a little peeved when people continue to bash it for that reason. It's fine that it isn't what you are looking for, but stop insulting those of us who like that style of combat, by calling it "poor performance and lack of style" type of descriptions. It's rather arrogant of you to sit there and insinuate that your playstyle perferences are better than ours.
I also don't appreciate you trying to denegrate me or my point of view with terms like "Kid" either.
+1 for Marty Feldman.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
So the Beta testers and the videos I have seen just confirm what many of us already thought, that it's just a highly fluffed WOW clone. Thats not ENTIRELY a bad thing IF you have some substance to back it up beyond fluff, but it Sounds like alot of aimless running around, tons of unused areas, and historically when your game has vast swaths of unused land its bad for the game. The worst draw is that it sounds like WOW but with more boring PVP which isn't good. And IF all of that is true then the PVE is gonna have to be AMAZING to draw enough players and keep them.
Opinions are so all over the place with SWTOR, it makes it impossible to make a judgment one way or another whether I'll like this game. So, this is definitly a case where I'll have to judge for myself. Bio/EA will get my money for the box/online purchase, but we'll see if the game will keep me subbing.
I make spreadsheets at work - I don't want to make them for the games I play.
the PVE, something that the designers pride themselves on, was very boring. cutscenes aside, the PVE is not really any different from WoW's.
graphics and animations were actually beyond expectations.
i wish i could give some feedback on PVP (most testers had few positive things to say about it)....i got bored of the game by lvl 6. it was really painful doing WoW-esque quests, and all the other players kept stealing my mobs, which i needed to complete the quests. wtf is up with that?
the worst part of it is that the world felt really really DEAD. static and..well, dead. i actually enjoyed the atmosphere of the Burning Crusade and Wotlk more =(
back to EVE and Skyrim for me until GW2 is out.
You don't know what you're talking about.
How about instead of making baseless claims you actually play the game and see for yourself? Beta keys are still available.
Unused land???? I have no idea where you got that from but it's completely untrue. Absurd.
Aimless running around???? Again...absurd.
The pvp is definitely not more boring than wow. Huttball, Illum, and Outlaw's Den (FFA open world pvp zone where you can attack your faction and the enemy?) Yeah sounds pretty boring
If you want substance then the story content and questing cutscenes are more substance than any other themepark mmo has offered...ever.
Shadow's Hand Guild
Open recruitment for
The Secret World - Dragons
Planetside 2 - Terran Republic
Tera - Dragonfall Server
http://www.shadowshand.com
Strange, I found fighting multiple opponents at the same time in PvE, even at the earliest levels, to be very satisfying and VERY different from WoW. Much more dynamic. Add to that the multiple animations for the same powers I saw kept me changing up my power selections to see what other animations I could get. Then there is ambushes that I sometimes got when I attacked what I thought was a single target. Oh and seeing people actually BLOCKING incoming attacks instead of ignoring all of them? That was very cool to see in person. So basically, though SWTOR uses the same basic mechanics as WoW, the feel is very different and much more satisfying, that is unless you are specifically looking to find only the most negative aspects of the game.
I agree on the graphics and animations. I was disappointed at first when I started seeing them in 2009, but they have grown on me and seeing them live when I played the game put every SWTOR video I have ever watched to shame.
I also have not had a chance to try out the PvP. I was so engrossed in the personal and world stories, that I completely forgot about trying out the PvP (and the crafting unfortunately). Funny thing is I have seen very few negative impressions of it from testers though, the opposite in fact. I can't help but thinking you are exxagerating simply to try and prove your point and instead you are weakening your point with your dishonestly.
Static world? I can agree that they need to spice up the NPC's actions a bit, but most of the "life" of an MMO is in the other players, NOT the NPCs.
As for your other games, enjoy. Personally I found Eve incredibly boring, but that is me. Skyrim is interesting, but I am burned out on SPGs so it is not worth the money for me. GW2 I used to be interested in, but I find that game more and more lackluster as time goes on. Especially with what appears to be a horrible community getting behind it, the "Hopping House Elf" race and the "Designed by pedophiles" race. Still, you go ahead and have fun over there because if you like it, then I hope you can get a lot of enjoyment out of it.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
for me, the story was not enticing because the world around me was dead (with the exception of the private, instanced sections).
while every MMO can be broken down to what WoW does, TOR actually does quite a few things worse (in my opinion), which is not a good sign.
well this is because most testers have not actually gotten around to the PVP, and many of those who have dont really have a clue about balancing, and what a good PVP experience should be about. many of TOR's testers are PVE'ers. the testers who have actually done things like arenas and rated BG's in WoW are highlighting many flaws that WoW has ironed out years ago.