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Was I too hard on SWTOR?
jacklo
Member Posts: 570
I've made a lot of posts about SWTOR over the last couple of months. Pretty much all of them have been negative and as such I have been labelled a "hater" by some.
So with the experience of SWTOR beta weekends and 2 months of gameplay behind me, I started playing the TERA beta.
I've got up to level 12 as an archer on TERA and in some ways it's very similar to SWTOR with regards to linear questing. I did enjoy levelling up in SWTOR and I'm enjoying TERA in the same way.
Do I miss the voiceovers? Not at all but that's a personal opinion.
The difference playing TERA over SWTOR is quite simply the polish at this point in time.
I have yet to come across a single bug. Yes it's early days, but SWTOR was full of them, not only in beta but also 2 months into release.
Other than bugs, the game plays very nicely on my computer at full graphics settings, which are arguably far superior to the graphics in SWTOR where it was barely playable at the lowest settings.
TERA appears to have the polish I admired in RIFT and on that basis I say "No, I wasn't too hard on SWTOR".
Polish CAN be achieved in an MMO and there's no excuse for releasing poorly coded and poorly performing games to us anymore.
The message we need to be sending out to game publishers now is that they need to try harder or suffer the wrath of disgruntled customers.
Comments
obligatory TERA has been out for a year in Korea and has had a year to be polished past its release post.
TItle of post is rather confusing.
Tera's leveing is in no way better than swtor. In swtor i could stand to level to 50. In Tera the quests become so redundant you want to stop playing after you hit 20.
I didn't just play in beta either i've been playing korean months before beta even came out.
I haven't played Tera, don't plan on it, but from what I know...it's been released in Asia for a little while now, so that is probably why it seems more polished. They have had more release time to work on those things. We all know that SWTOR was going to be released before Christmas this past year, whether it was ready or not. EA and Bioware needed that holiday money. Granted, with the amount of development time and money thrown at SWTOR, you would think it would have less bugs and more features. Unfortunately it didn't work out that way.
I don't know if you were too hard on the game as I haven't read your previous posts, but it's ok to be upset with how that game turned out imo. I started watching that game in 2008, have been a life long Star Wars fan since I saw Return of the Jedi in the theaters in 1983 (Which was the FIRST movie I ever saw in a theater, I was very young, but remember it like it was yeseterday), played every Star Wars video game pretty much...and I even quit after a month. It was a rather disappointing game for as well.
I'd be interested to know how long the two have been in development, the budgets and the number of developers, to compare.
Either way, realeasing a game in the state that SWTOR was in is just not good enough for me anymore.
That's irrelevant to the OP's point as its just personal preference, although the Op was comparing apples to oranges as Tera had been released for a year.Sorry if you got the impression that I said the levelling was better in TERA. That wasn't what I was trying to say.
I'm really talking about the state the game was in at release.
SWTOR had very few bugs considering the amount of content they released with. Skyrim for example had tons more. Can't comment on Tera, but SWTOR is in pretty good shape now and with next two patches BW is addressing the issues that people have voiced most.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
It's kind of apples and oranges. Tera was developed in Asia, with completely different operating costs, no overpriced Hollywood voice acting, different publishing avenues, marketing costs, etc. I see SWTOR ads on mainstream TV, I do not expect to see any Tera ads anytime soon. They are both MMO's yes, but pretty different games if you ask me. We all know that tons of money was sunk into SWTOR, probably unmatched by any other MMO to date.
at this point in time I agree with you, though I wouldn't have a month ago, simply isn't enough content even for someone playing the game casually. Oh and far too many game breaking bugs... :-(
So what were those gamebreaking bugs that stopped you from playing and which have not been addresssed by Bioware so far?
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
First, SWTOR was the most expensive MMO ever made. EVER. BY FAR.
Second, it billed itself as an MMO.
What did we get? An MMO so small scale and unoriginal that people are bailing on it already. It's not even remotely a good MMO and its barely an above average singleplayer game.
No, just because there are other bad games doesn't mean SWTOR wasn't also bad.
The Empire Strikes back was the first movie I ever saw in a theatre (beat EPi 6 by a mile IMO), but I never bought into the TOR hype. I never felt like the whole light side - dark side thing fit particularly well in a 2 faction WoW straightjacket. In Q&A/presentation sessions I also just saw too many people that sounded like salesmen that didn't believe in their own product. I still think not buying the title was the right decision for an old SW enthousiast.
heres my list
WZ wins not counting - recently addressed
Ilum... just ilum - still is a terribly designed outdoor PVP zone
Many skills still acting strange, my force grip often will just not work at all, for no explicable reason, my overpower will not knock people away, for again, no reason at all. I'll grip mobs and then they'll reset to where they were. Many instances are riddled with bugs, Kaon can be bugged to make it the most easy flash point in the game, yet it drops the best FP gear?
This is just off the top of my head...
OH my force lightning still will not fire off sometimes, animation goes off yet no damage or healing. Same thing for my lacerate.
Lol, u remember Rift endgame at launch? or AION?, AoC? etc etc etc. SWTOR have a lot of endgame content compare with all those games, and you have content updates pretty fast. And only 3 months after launch they will realese a massive update, how many MMOs did that?. ¨game Breaking bugs¨, clearly you didnt play a single MMO in the past.
The most expensive MMO of all time should launch with end game. But the end game is not the problem, the whole game is broken.
Well to name one, I couldn't join a warfront for a month after release. I lie, I could generally join one, but after that I would get kicked to character select screen, along with most of the guild (not just me).
For other bugs, they're too numerous to mention, if you really aren't aware, spend some time on Youtube or search the forums (any game related forums will do).
The nail in the coffin though is that the game is barely playable for many people. Ability delay and FPS issues are still not fixed, nor are likely to be fixed within a reasonable time frame.
Wow didn't launch with BG's, it was added in months later, how did I know? I played WoW then.
DAoC launched with no bugs that I can remember... but its been a long time I can barely remember it, I do remember their first ex pack had a ton of bugs, including things like Necromancers being able to kill people out of line of sight and Bone dancers being able to solo bosses.
UO, ah UO when it launched you could Dye everything with Dye pots, magic was really really OP, and everyone was a Hally mage in full plate. Also its why we call servers Shards.
I do remember all those games Endgames at launch, then I also remember that they cost about 1/8th or less to make and were about as fun, and offered very similar things....
Well a lot of them offered much more.
Just to emphasise, I don't care how many games have been released years ago with bugs or lack of content.
MMO's were a new concept back then, not that that's an excuse for bugs anyway.
I am currently a GM of one guild and none of our members have had those problems. Sure some got kicked from WZ, but it did not last for a month, just few days. Also, only one seems to have FPS issue and he was playing with a laptop with rather poor video card.
Not saying that some did not have those issues, but it was not as wide spread as you make it sound. I got DCed twice during the levelling of my first char, encountered one quest that I could not complete, and did have some ability delay issues that were mostly fixed already. Comparing to other launches I have participated in, like AO, WoW, EVE, AoC, Aion, Lineage 2 etc, this was without the doubt the best so far.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
I'll be the first to say they fixed a lot of the bugs, yet they have no intentions on changing ilum to be something that is actually different than what it is now... which everyone admits is not a success...
I can't stand it, its dull and not fun. I'd go on for hours about why, but if you've played it you can imagine why.
Sure a lot of ability delay has been fixed, yet some of it in some situations have not been.
Again, most of my personal complaints are that my classes abilities are by and large broken. Not in the good way. Being an inquis tank is simply irritating when every ability has a failure rate that is off the charts, and not because of mechanics, but because of bugs.
My gaming blog
I hope you have fun in that Asian uninspired grind fest that is Tera. Have fun with trying to target and heal ppl properly in raids btw, it's a fucking mess.
SWTOR's graphics are stylished and made to run on lower end PCs (yes it still needs some optimization). Tera is hands down a pretty game, with some over the top outfits (way too out there for me). Tera has also been out in Korea for a good year, so what do you think SWTOR will be like a year after it's out of the gates? The amount of content in SWTOR is also quite huge, which increases the amount of potential bugs vs some other games. Yes you could spend the next 2 years ironing out 100% of bugs then release the game only for everyone to QQ about how outdated it is.
[mod edit]
Remember Aion? That's what Tera's future is, so have fun with it.
I've run into two class quest bugs. One of them is so messed up that I'm currently just parked in a local cantina so I can log in and go check to see if it's fixed every few days. And, what's worse, is that I saved that quest for last (it was a long chain) and now, other than heroics, it's the only thing I have left to do on the planet. I can't go further with my class storyline until it's complete. That's all on ONE character. I have the same problem on another character's class quest on a different planet.
You know what tech support suggests? They say they are aware of those specific bugs and are "working on it." In the meantime, why not abandon the quest and start over to see if that fixes it. O_O WTF.....who wants to do THAT?
I'm still playing the game and enjoying it, but I have to admit....I hold my breath a LOT when on class quests, just HOPING the next one I do won't also be broken. There are so many things wrong with the game, I'm not sure where they should even START to fix things.
I just try to grin and bear it and hang in there for TSW and GW2 and hope they will be better. I guess I remain optimistic. I enjoy almost any game I play to some degree, some more than others, of course.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Also agree.
Darkfall Travelogues!
I don't know what to say to your post really.
I was in a guild of over 100 players, the core of which I have played with a long time in other games.
My computer is certainly no powerhouse, but many of our guild have wicked computer specs and still were not immune to the delay and FPS problems.
Despite my somewhat humble computer, it manages to play Skyrim, Witcher 2, any other mmo... well practically anything else you can throw at it, at high to ultimate settings.
I digress, but I have to disagree with you and say that the issues are far more widespread than YOU lead us to believe.