Why do you hate/love this game?

Creslin321

I know that this thread seems like it's just going to wind up being a trollfest from the title...but please bear with me here.

Anyway, I don't think I have ever seen a game as divisive of SWTOR is.  The amount of strong emotions that people have towards this game is pretty staggering, and I wanted to create a thread where we could all explain why we feel the way we do.  The goal here is maybe to better understand both sides of this argument by knowing where they are coming from.

So both "haters" and "fanbois" please post why you feel the way you do about this game.

I will be posting in a post below the OP so that my opinions don't influence folks responding to the OP.

Creslin321

I feel pretty negative about SWTOR.

But I feel this way because it seems like SWTOR is the culmination of everything I have been arguing against on these forums for years.  I have always said that games that simply try to clone WoW and then add a "gimmick," just don't work.  You can see evidence of this in the massive drop in subscriptions of game's like WAR (gimmick = PvP focus) and Rift (gimmick = flexible class system).  I feel like these games, being clones, are never really as good as the original (WoW), and their gimmick, while fun, is just not enough to make them preferable to WoW.

So along comes SWToR, and it is one of the biggest budget games to date, it has a very respectable developer behind it, and it boasts one of the most popular IPs in the world.  And yet, it used the "WoW + gimmick" design, its gimmick was a single player esque story.  It seems like even fans admit that, in exception of the story stuff, the game is extremely similar to WoW.  I felt like SWTOR was the ultimate test of my theory...if ANY game could succeed with the WoW + gimmick deisgn, this would be it.

So I will admit, I did feel a bit validated when it became clear that SWToR was not going to be successful.  It not only gave more credence to my theory, it also lessened the chance of us getting more "WoW + gimmick" games in the future.

I do not mean to offend anyone who enjoys the game by showing my pleasure in the fact that the game basically failed.  If you are enjoying the game, then more power to you.  But for me, I'm happy that SWToR's failure may help usher in a new era of innovative MMORPGs.

MMOGamer71

Love:

1) It's Star Wars

 

Hate:

1) Fraud marketing of substandard MMO game.

2) The "cover" and coverage this game gets that lacks simple 2011 features.

3) The lack of a the gaming industry to ask EA/Bioware any hard questions, i.e. what perks do people that Beta tested and/or paid top dollar for a F2P game get once game goes F2P.   Show me one story/article where the player who paid is addressed anywhere to include MMORPG.com.

4)  EA/Bioware disregard/arrogance to Beta tester input.

5)  Developers actually saying top graphics mode "is a glitch".

 

ktanner3

People have every right to post their views regardless of their feelings. As to how I feel, I consider it the best MMO I've ever played. 

When I first saw the game's look in alpha I was NOT impressed. The characters looked way too cartoony but over time it got much better. I wasn't too enamored with the class structure and I still feel that it should been a choice of force sensitive and non force sensitive with your class determined by the choices you make in the game. I also didn't agree with the late reveal that this was going to be another gear grind. I knew then that there would be no point to crafting because the best stuff would be gotten by raids.  I was intriqued by the emphasis on story because that was a different direction than other games took and I knew the impatient crowd would hate it. But the more I saw of it the more I liked it. There was no way I would play another WOW like  text based quest game. To me they are so boring and monotonous. 

I enjoyed my time in the game. It was the best leveling experience I ever had and it was also the smoothest. I only ran into a couple of glitches in the entire six months I played whereas recenlty in The Secret Wolrd I ran into so many that I finally got flustered and stopped playing. It reminded too much of the fustrations I had in SWG and I wasn't about to pay another sub fee for another broken game. 

Why did I stop playing? It's very simple. After six months I decided to take a break. I had two characters at max level and another only ten levels away. My Bounty Hunter was full battlemaster while my Sith Warrior was mostly PVE and grinding dailies. I'm all Star Warsed out and figured I would come back when 1.4 hit. But now with this recent announcement of letting the free loaders have a free ride to 50 I'm not so sure. I've talked with several players that were around when LOTRO offered FTP and it doesn't sound like a community I would want to be involved with. The majority of the complaints I see on the official forums is the same.We'll just have to wait and see. 

I never had any problem with people that didn't like the game. Not every game is for everyone. But don't take your personal grudges with the game against me. If  you do then don't complain or play victim when someone like me lashes back even stronger.  Sorry, but I've never been one to just turn the other cheek. 

Ahnog

I really love the game. Here's why....

 

1. As a good mmo should, the game provides for social interaction.

 

2. The class stories are great.

 

3. Leveling is fun.

 

4. There is a ton of things to do at 50.

 

5. The dailies do what dailies should do--provide a way to make the credits you need to play the game. The great thing is they don't have to be dailies. Doing any one of the planets will give you enough for basic game play.

 

7. Crafting is a blast and is really useful leveling up, and providing a starting point for the end game.

 

8. The Instances and Operations are well made. Some complain they are to easy, but remember the target audience is not hardcore mmoers who hit 50 in a day, but Star Wars fans.

 

9. Heroics while leveling up prepares on for the end game, and provide plenty of opportunity for social interaction while leveling.

 

10. Pursuing datacroms is a good challenge for 50s.

 

11. Playing the GTN is fun and profitible.

 

12. There are plenty of opportunities for role playing.

 

12. While the world pvp didn't work out so well, the instanced pvp zones are great.

 

Overall, a great and exciting game.

Aerowyn

to me as a huge star wars fan they pretty much made the game feel as little star warsish as possble. Combat is nothing like you would expect star wars combat to be like,  look at games like force unleashed( I know not a MMO) on how jedi combat should be. Everything is so restricted so forced so linear. Taking the space aspect out of star wars and taking the WARS out of it almost completely just ruins the entire game for me. 

KenFisher

Love, hate?  Neither.  I sort of lump it in with STO.  Great concept, didn't quite hit the potential.

stormseekaz

I got my money's worth out of SWTOR, but like many others have said, the game lacked longevity.  My other main beef with the game was the HERO Engine.

People will say over and over again, "omg no HERO engine is fine" or "SWTOR used an old version of the HERO engine and wasn't keeping it in line with the updated version" and other bs.

But I myself have played Faxion Online for several weeks, and played SWTOR as well.  I have written several graphics / engine optimization posts on this forum, and I know how games perform.  I know for a fact that there are serious flaws in the source code of the HERO engine which cripple it.  The engine is the biggest reason I quit SWTOR.  I even upgraded to a i7-2700k and reinstalled SWTOR for one of their free veteran weekends, just to see how the engine would perform, and it still ran like garbage.

 

STOP using HERO ENGINE.

 

And STOP making SHALLOW THEMEPARKS.

 

That is all.

Distopia

First and foremost I got to see a bunch of old SWG friends in TOR, second the stories I played through were decent enough as far as videogame standards go (smuggler and BH). I'd gladly play through the rest after the F2P conversion.

Where it failed for me was in it's MMO features, I'm a sandboxer so it just didn't fit with what I want to see from an MMORPG. I never really thought it would; instead I only hoped seeing old friends would be enough to keep me around a bit, wasn't enough for me or them either.

WarriorNeeds

Originally posted by stormseekaz

I even upgraded to a i7-2700k and reinstalled SWTOR for one of their free veteran weekends, just to see how the engine would perform, and it still ran like garbage.

I've seen this complaint a lot but have never experienced performance issues with the game.  I play it on two different machines (one i7, the other is an older intel processor..dont know the type) and am able to run with full graphics and 40+ fps consistently. 

 

What I liked:

1) Graphics and production are top notch (art style...meh)

2) Responsive controls

3) Star Wars

4) Great storylines

5) Fun PVP arenas

 

To me, I started to stop having fun when the max exodus began after the first month was up.  It began to feel empty.  I think it really requires a heavy population to feel alive (just like swg did after post nge).

 

busdriver

Hate is a bit too strong word to use against a software, but w/e. I hate it because it has all the worst elements MMO can have, it's basically a SPG.

The bigger SWTOR fails, the more this industry moves away from those elements. At least that's my theory.

 

I also dislike EA and LA.

Rictis

Likes:

1) Class design in PVE

2) Story is voiced

3) Everyone can be a jedi or a sith

4) Groups are optional

5) You can buy gear from tokens picked up at planets (which is nice if it doesnt drop for you)

6) Most of the quest rewards are useful

7) Money is a non issue until later on in the game

8) I don't have to farm resource nodes

Dislikes:

1) Class design in pvp

2) Story is voiced and can often be annoying when making an alt. (Especially annoying in instances)

3) Everyone can be a jedi or a sith

4) Groups are not necessary  for 90% of the content which means we dont have to group, and most of the times players need incentives to group

5) No community building tools (we were missing proper lfg tools at launch etc,)

6) Items bought from the planet vendors are often better, take less time and cost less then crafting

7) Crafting is/was unbalanced and needed a lot of work

8) you cannot craft your own gear

9) You have to worry about rolling against group mates AND their crew (pets)

10) Star Wars IP given to Bioware that has no experiance on how to make a proper well balanced MMORPG

11) PVP is broken, either its fotm due to bad class balancing or lag kills you before you can do anything about it

12) PVE to PVP transition is the worst I have ever seen in an MMO. I am referring to being stunlocked until death almost always. I understand there is a cc debuff now in game, however it does not work properly.

So those are some likes and dislikes. I am sure I can think of more.

arieste

I love TOR because it proved that "story matters".   TOR's main selling point was story, the story sucked and the game failed.  Means people actually cared about the story enough to quit because it was bad.

 

I love TOR because it proved that selling the most boxes or spending the most money does not equal success.  Success comes from making a good game, not from how many copies it sells.

 

I love TOR because it - hopefully - has taught BioWare enough harsh lessons that BioWare will not fuck up ME Online when it comes time to make it.

 

I hate TOR because I'm pretty sure that it's put the final nail in the coffin of my decades-old love affair with Star Wars.

TheLizardbones

I have mixed feelings about the game.

I loved the personal story line, the companions, personal space ship and space missions.

World quests were a distraction from the personal story line. Crafting was tolerable, but even with companions it was ultimately worthless. Instances were well done, but not terribly memorable. Datacron hunting was actually a good idea, but I never got into it.

Most everything else seemed like it was copied from WoW, but not nearly as good, which I did not like and found disappointing.

I never thought the game felt like a single player game, but I found myself wishing it was a single player game where I could invite other players to play. I think that overall it would have been a much better game.

AlBQuirky

For me, SW:TOR was just not MMO material. The world's are dead (non interactive NPCs, no day/night cycles, no weather, no exploration). It did not warrant $15/month. It is a SPRPG. It was not a "bad game", it just was not a MMO, worthy of a monthly sub.

eye_m

So I'm probably not supposed to partake in this thread, as I neither hate nor love this game.  I do, however, hate LucasArts.  It pisses me off how all the potential that could be had, ends up being forcably caressed by the Lucas stinkfinger.

 

 

just1opinion

 

I'm not a hater or a fanboi.  I'm just one gamer with opinions.  I loved the game until level 27 on two characters, one Sith, one Republic.  After that....the game just got very boring suddenly for me.  I think I might play it on free to play, but only if I still had access to the two characters I already made.  In other words, I don't want to do that all over again.  I enjoyed it twice, but I'm not interested really in a third time.  I would, however, like to get both of my original toons to max level and try out PvP then.

 

So....for me.....I don't hate it OR love it.  I like it, mostly, but not totally.  lol

Orthelian

I loved it because it was like a single-player RPG.

Single-player RPGs have for so long been massively better than multiplayer RPGs, for no good reason that I could see. MMORPGs have been painfully bad in comparison to the likes of BioWare's and Bethesda's actual RPGs, so all I've wanted for more than a decade is to see the superior design of these games made multiplayer, and that's exactly what TOR makes important steps toward accomplishing.

I loved it because I could play an RPG with my friends for the first time since the crappy attempts at it that were the BG and NWN series. It accomplishes this in a much better fashion.

NeVeRLiFt

ToR failed because it was a linear story driven game full cutscenes with nothing to do but the story quest line.

The game was single player with multiplayer elements tacked on.

 

Serious calling ToR an mmo is pretty silly it in no way felt like an online world to play in.... it felt like a large instanced zone that was barren of anything to do.

Rednecksith

Love:

Class stories (Agent, Trooper, and Smuggler) were great.

It's Star Wars!

Voice acting is top notch, and very cool the first time around.

New planets are fun questing in the first time through.

Sound effects are spot on, and make the game feel very Star Wars-like.

Graphical style strikes a good balance between realistic and cartoony.

 

Hate:

Linear worlds with very little opportunity for exploration.

Hero Engine (EAware's version of it at least) is complete and utter garbage.

No swimming! (WTF? Explains why Naboo / Gungans aren't in the game at least, lol).

Too many redundant / overly situational skills.

Too many trash mobs standing around.

Not enough NPCs or players in the cities, making them feel very static.

So many missed opportunities for minigames (swoop racing, pazaak, etc.).

Endgame is a joke, and the punchline is Ilum. I trust I don't need to explain what a complete cock-up that was.

Lastly, and the reason I quit, is that EAware quite frankly doesn't know what the fuck they're doing. They have ZERO clues about class balance, piss poor support, nazi-like forum moderators, seemingly little technical knowledge about game mechanics, and an insultingly condescending attitude toward the playerbase. They don't take responsibility for their own shortcomings regarding the game's design and instead choose to blame the players / the market / the government / God / Flying Spaghetti Monster  / Godzilla / Etc. for all their woes.

Such a company is not deserving of my money or anyone else's. Oh, plus they ruined Dragon Age and Mass Effect.

Unknown

I only come here for the "can't not look at a train wreck" effect.

Crazy_Stick

Oh geesh! Even I will admit to being bothered over this silly game more than I should be and trapped in a fencing match with disagreeable sorts possessed of region locked minds dim on potential, drunkenly over bright in outlook for their favored EA soccer team and cursed with contentious spirits liable to riot like a teen from the poorer neighborhoods.

 

Careful there. Or I might go salty...

 

I think I am going to pop the tab on another soft drink while waiting for some work emergency to develop and avoid the stabbing for a day, anyway. While I might exchange the sharp word, I am not hating on anything or anyone even if my opinion in the moment dips. Though I admit to seeing some people that are and they carry these grudges for months on end.

 

You see, to a degree, rote forum PVP has become more entertaining than high level PVP in game and that’s the real problem. SWTOR simply isn’t good enough to keep people playing it and out of the forums and they feel a need for some return on the investment. SWTOR was supposed to be the next big thing and that managed to be a burnt cookie rather than the promised cake. I guess on the plus side EA’s paid forum trolls are actually having to work for their dollars and fifure out who has an aganeda to attack.

eddieg50

  I loved;

1. voice overs

2. cut scenes

3. production values

4. Story (obviosly)

5. small grouping w social

6. felt like I was part of a story and not a boring rush to end game

7. great for casual player

8. great for alt maker

9.companion

     Did not like

1. No real space game-wtf this is star wars after all

2. PVP was bad-Huttball-really

3. crafting was blah (in most games it sucks, Vanguard, fe, eve, the exceptions)

4. it did need more open worldness

5. cannot control your own speed racer like in swg-wtf this is star wars after all

    Over all a good game, not great, please get a space game, even copy SWg jump to light speed

saluk

Wow + gimmick fails not because they are WoW + gimmick. They fail because 1) the gimmick is usually actually bad for the game, and 2) the WoW portion is woefully unpolished compared to actual WoW.

Here is no exception.

The rich storytelling focusing on your character and a bunch of npcs is at odds with playing with others and feeling that mmo connection. Moreover, the insistence on using voice acting for every quest has the opposite effect intended. When you get in the habit of skipping through quest text to get started killing 10 more gubbins, the few times you stop to read the text usually make it seem interesting. Some quests really just don't need the flavor. SWToRs rigid dialog for even the most banal boring content filler quest is like nails on a chalkboard. It slows down the part of the game which, by design, is already slow! So their gimmick, as neat as it is the few times it works, actually makes the game worse.

WoW + gimmick could have worked if devs focus a little more on making the WoW part solid, and use gimmicks that are actually decent. Example: Age of Conan's more active combat was a precursor to the dynamic combat in more recent games. Not a bad gimmick. The implementation of that combat wasn't wonderful, but if the rest of the game had actually compared favorably; it would have done really well.

WoW's game design isn't that great, but their content people have a keen sensibility for how to work within the confines of its system. None of Blizzards immitators have really gotten this, expecting some new system to make up for poor content design. MMO's live and die on content. When it really comes down to it, unless the systems are really badly designed, the system doesn't make that much of a difference.

zaylin

Hated

1. Dailies,Reminded me to much of other games. Get to end level do your #of dailies,rinse repeat next day

2. the way they did server transfers. Basicly forced you to move to the server they choose for you or get stuck on a dead one. Or deal with Q'ez, well at least the Space Slug ->Harbinger. I never saw more than 6 people on fleet on Space Slug,and Harbinger had 5-20min Q'ez...what ta do >.0

Other than that it was a fun trip to end level.

Pelagato

well, i used to like trolling people into the acidpit... but... its no longer fun....