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DeaconX Reviews SWTOR (5 months of testing)
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Someone should call press that in beta bugs were found which didn't effect everyone and because of this SWTOR is broken and not ready for launch. it would make headlines.
Bugs in beta? no way that almost never happens.
I don't think you can avoid 'kill x of y' quests in any MMO, but from what I read the thing that people are talking about are the repeater quests, lik you also see in Aion, where players are able to do the exact same kill quest over and over and over again for some slightly better XP gain. Aion had quite some of those (but not a vast multitude of them), from what I understand of the discussion 1 person is saying that SWTOR has lots of that specific repeater type of quests while another is saying that that isn't the case.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Disagree on the overall low rating, but definitely agree on the body types. It's my biggest complaint. Limited number of faces is understandable due to dialogue, but the lack of body types is pretty bad.
On dialogue: I haven't seen alot of mistakes like the one you mention. But there is one consistent mistake and that's when your ship holo projector automatically goes to a cutscene. The NPC often says something like, "I see you've touched down on X planet." when actually you're just orbitting at that point.
I could go into my "don't make my ship take off automatically when I click on the door!" speel, but that's for another thread.
On power players: No game will ever keep those players; it's just who they are; they play a game to finish it.
Wait so your telling me there are bugs in Beta? OMG
In Bioware we trust!
Skyrim has 100 hours of gameplay? So you're telling me that SWTOR has twice what Skyrim offers? How sweet is ithat?!!
You may not be given a voiced over quest to kill x of y, but you sure do have to do it to get to your quest location. It's nice that they added the bonus quests of kill x of y, but lets not kid ourselves. This factor is still a major part of the game. Still have fed ex quests too. Personally, I don' t mind kill x of y quests, I just mind being forced to clear a path to walk anywhere when sometimes I just want to get to the STORY.
I'd like to hear about this mythical main stream mmo where you do not kill things on your way to completing quests.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Or wait, let's instead rate every game that has mechanics and features that other games in that genre use before with a 5, because that makes so much more sense!
Not really...
The numbers below 7 are being used, like for example with an APB or FFXIV, but not if a game has good production and entertainment value and is overall well rounded in its delivery, even if the game might not be for all people enjoyable like any jaded, burnt out people who have lost the ability to enjoy a game if it isn't wildly revolutionary or innovative.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
The thief guild is by far the most fun,long and rewarding of all the faction quests. it think it took me a good 15 hours to complete.
I didn't do any exploits like you suggested but early on playing it was slow as shit to kill things, but as i leveled my damage exponentially increased to the point where i can kill Alduin with 6 duel power attacks. So mowing down "regular" enemies became very fast. thus, propelling me to level even faster.
Anyways Its a swtor thread, should probably stop the discussion
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
I have to agree with this review. TOR is a bioware game, with massively co-op mode.
Expect that and you'll be happy. Mostly.
Now if they can just fix the horrid character animations. Here comes Darth Scuba Steve with his inviso flippers of sithness.
lol NOWAI! Or maybe we should call the press and tell them that Kwai is a troll that likes to yell "fanboi" at everyone who doesn't bash The Old Republic.
Argh
Let me get this straight. After you created a BH some time ago, you found a bugged quest in a beta.
Wow...
Statements like that is why a review of a BETA is totaly asinine. Game must of been pretty good to keep you testing for 5 months.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
Actually Deacon is, was, one of the biggest fans of this gmae when it first was announced. I remember howexcited he was when he heardit was being made. His write up was really accurate on he whole of the game for the most part. To just blow off his commentary like he doesn't know what he is talking about is wrong. He is an avid MMORPG gamer with lots of experience beta testing and playing these games. I for one appreciate the time and effort he took to write this up. Thanks Deacon!
Not for me. I get your point, but if I don't get the body count on my way there and back, I won't sit out in the field and wait for them. There are plenty of other, better, more interesting ways to get XP: Heroics, Space missions(actually, I kinda like them), Flashpoints, etc...
The review was decently done, I don't agree with the scores, or the final score. He played the game for 5 months... 5... months.... lol,
I agree with character creation to an extent, the main issue I believe, are races, options are not bad, more is always better, too many is wasteful. Hair doesn't look very good due to art style.
Quest intro depends on class, which class are you talking about specifically? Your first quests for some classes were boring - consular, while others like the Warrior I found to be really good.
I found combat to be much better than a 6.. its fluid, and in the later levels strategic awareness is a must. Did you not find that to be the case?
I find itemization to go beyond just what is dropped, but also what is crafted and what you do with these items. Being able to find drops, reverse engineer them, or create items with slots, and give those to your character or slot them for companions is much better itemization then you give the game credit for.
Bag space is expensive at the early levels, but worth it to invest, as you progress it isn't hard to find the cost for bags. They need to revamp the inventory, add sorting or extra pouches even if they don't add additional space.
The character sheet is.. well... a character sheet, don't know why you graded it, there really isn't much you should be able to do with one, slot your items, see them, and view your character stats.. what more do you want?
I agree with moving slow out of the gate, and wish they would move sprint to level 5 - 8 instead of 14. I find jumping to take a little getting used to, you need to master that jump if you are going to get holocrons...
I definitely disagree with the zones here, some are very small, others are very large, wide open, and explorable. City levels are essentially hallways, yet, there is still exploration to be done in them.
The graphics are very good in SWTOR, its the art style I'm not so sure of. Graphically the game is better than most we've seen, you don't get very much clipping, jagged edges, blocky textures, or anything of that sort.. or at least I didn't playing on all max settings. Performance scaled very well depending on graphical intensity.
Storylines.. I think it depends on the class as stated earlier, I would rate some classes at a 9, but others at a 7... all classes have better storylines than most MMOs to date.
The map needs a little work, but it is better than a 5, its pretty well detailed and the fadeout effect is very helpful. Minor tweaks could make it much better.
Guild Support, not sure what you're looking for here, but I would rate it at about a 6 instead of a 4 simply due to what we have currently for guild support in other games. You pretty much have most of the same features, lacking some functionality overall, but really, you aren't missing much here.
crafting I think you're way off on, the crafting system is pretty amazing with the amount of items you can craft, and how much you have to be involved in the process if you want to actually be a crafter. I had one character solely crafting and it was challenging, fun, and took a lot of my time. Dedicated crafters will have a lot to do if they want to be produtive at the early levels. Later on it will open up a bit, but the costs will be astronomical if they don't start selling, and thereby you have a dilemma: send companions out to gather or craft - and reverse engineer your items, or sell them so you can create more.... the system is really awesome and deserves an 8 minimum.
Space is fine with a 5, housing is fine with a 5. Those are mostly side stuff that has no real bearing on the actual game... whereas I don't feel the game should be graded on them as they aren't a main focus, they are in the game and the score reflects about what you can expect from them.
He wasn't.. he was pretty critical, especially on the SWTOR forums...
Just curious but how is a review ever not an opinion piece?A review is simply the reviewers thoughts on the game and its strong points and weaknesses, thats pretty much his opinion in a nut shell.
Granted you can be completely nonobjective about it or try and be fair, but either way it is still your opinion.
Leaving thread now, nothing more to talk about. OP meant well, but his review was obviously very biased and too opinionated to be relevant, therefore the thirty minutes it took him to write this was all to shit. Sorry, OP.
But, as I said earlier, you have the right info...it's just formatted improperly. You need to find a better way to express your viewpoints of the game. This is my criticism.
Argh
Must have been back in 08 cause all i see from his post history is him praising GW2.
I've only played the game for a few minutes, but that was all my quests for my darkside sith.
Go to the cave and kill worms, go kill bandits, go retrieve your sword... thats pretty much the definition of kill quests.
I take it you were light side and the quests over there are magical and well thought out?
He also said, skyrim has several 100 as in 300+ not 100.
WoW. Lotro. EQ2. They all have things to kill but not in such tight confines that you can't find fun ways around them if one just didn't feel like fighting. Not always of course, but for the majority of open world quests you can "thread the needle" as it were to get to a quest location.
Due to the nature of SWTORs zones, this is very difficult as you are tunneled more often than not toward your quest location and you can rarely if ever bypass mobs.
Don't you normally play something for 5 months that in your mind is at best average? I know I do lol.
In Bioware we trust!
Originally posted by Redemp
I didn't notice if you stated it, but how long did you beta test the game?
5 Months
Originally posted by skeaser
So the zones never open up? I'd only managed to finish the first 2 planets last weekend and was hoping things would open up later, I guessed that's why you couldn't get a bike until higher level. This bums me out, I need to EXPLORE!
They do open up somewhat, but never to the degree that has made me feel like there’s a world to explore. That being said, with the design route they went I’m sure they will be constantly adding onto the world zones.
Please don’t misunderstand me; the worlds aren’t ‘small’. The way a lot of it has been laid out however, feels restricting and there doesn’t seem to be much to find when you go off any beaten path.
Originally posted by Supersoups
I would like to ask what OP means when he says there is very less incentive to forrm communities in SWTOR? as far as i see incentive is PVP (both open and instanced), Flashpoints, Heroics and other group oriented PVE content.
Every guild is allowed to have 3 ally guilds so tools are there to form communities. What other incentive is needed to play together?
Could you please answer my question? my guild already has ally guilds all ready and set for launch days and not even once we thought that we lack incentives to form a strong community among ourselves and that is how we felt during beta too.
Now there’s a difference between grouping and creating a community. Right now, grouping only actually needs to be done for Flashpoints, some Heroic missions (some 2+ heroics can actually be solo’d..hehe, ‘Solo’d’, get it?).
The guild support is pretty bare minimum right now. I hope to see awesome guild locations in the future (BioWare has talked about Guild Capital Ships… awesome? Yes.) and maybe some player cities way later – I know it’s not SWG, but people really LOVE forging their own environment and become very attached to content like this which keeps them playing for the long run, growing a strong community etc.
Originally posted by solarine
Reading that comprehensive post, the first thing I thought was "Aww, it's such a pity Deacon did not enjoy the game". And I am serious: You were so excited about SWTOR even *before* it was announced Bioware was working on it. And you were sort of the go-to guy for the fresh and interesting bit of news.
Much-belated kudos to you for those times, by the way.
Thank you for your thoughts heh J I should note that while my review was very critical (and do I really have to state it was a personal and thus obviously biased review?) I have had fun with TOR.
Especially when grouping. The absolute best part of TOR in my opinion are the FLASHPOINTS and pretty much any time you get in a multiplayer conversation. The Flashpoints are fun, they feel like adventure and the multiplayer convo is a cool mix of competition/co-operation.
Originally posted by arieste
Thank you for reading - please feel free to ask any questions.
Good write-up. One of the best reviews I've read. Thanks.
Only thing I wonder about is this - you say you weren't impressed wtih the storyline, yet you still rank it 9/10. I find myself in the same boat, i'm not at all impressed with the quality of the writing, but the vast majority of people seem to think it's "amazing"... maybe it's because they've only played MMOs with really bad writing before...
I’m not too impressed because as a writer and an avid Star Wars fan, I think a lot of it could have been much stronger, more exciting and more engaging. However, I do believe that a LOT of the population will really enjoy it and will find it very strong and they should, because no MMO out there can compare with the storytelling TOR is bringing to the genre.
Originally posted by Teala
Actually Deacon is, was, one of the biggest fans of this gmae when it first was announced. I remember howexcited he was when he heardit was being made. His write up was really accurate on he whole of the game for the most part. To just blow off his commentary like he doesn't know what he is talking about is wrong. He is an avid MMORPG gamer with lots of experience beta testing and playing these games. I for one appreciate the time and effort he took to write this up. Thanks Deacon!
Teala! Great to see you still around here J and thanks for the kind words.
-- To explain my lacking enthusiasm for TOR in my post history, well, that just came with the more I learned the less I was excited about many directions BioWare was opting to go in. Not that it's wrong, I was simply less enthusiastic.
Still, go play it, you'll likely have fun. This is just my experience with it and I hope it will gradually improve with time and further development, even if core features aren't about to change.
As for GW2, it's a whole different topic but yes I've been impressed with what ArenaNet is doing with it and believe it could be a really fun MMORPG for me.
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.
If only i could find a game that can hold me for 5 months ... that would be so awesome!
The criterium you mentioned in your first post wasn't so much about 'it works', but about 'using features and mechanics that are standard'. Each MW game uses 90% and more mechanics and features that are standard, yet giving it a 5 because of it would be insane. Or to use your words, 'it works, and it is fun even if the mechanics/features used are standard' should definitely provide a higher value than a 5.
But then again, this whole discussion is meaningless, because you already said that it is how you rate things for yourself, everyone is entitled to use whatever grading system one wants to measure what'll appealing to them.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."