SWTOR: State of the game at this point

[Klingers]

Some brief thoughts on the current state of the game:

It's funny, but almost every single thing about the game has a good side and a bad side:

• There's eight brilliant, engaging and very expansive single-player RPGs buried in an overly-linear MMO campaign.
• Same-faction replayability is hurt due to the limited replay value of fetch quests, travel time and drawn-out fights. Big =/= good if your world is lifeless.
• I understand and even initially agreed with where Bioware came from on making fights last longer, but it gets old fast. You have to pay way too much attention to something that is inherantly mindless.
• Looking at it from a software engineer's P.O.V., "bonus quests" are a cunningly brilliant concept. They mean you can still have that bullet point on the box saying "All our quest content is fully voiced!". From a player's perspective? Please strangle me with the Tauntaun entrails I just collected.
• The game engine is horrid, but you can't help but be impressed with what they've done with it. It just wasn't ready for what they threw at it. Too many loading screens. Too much travel time and too much pop-in.
• Orbital stations need to die in a fire. What needs to happen here: While the world is loading, show a cut-scene of ship docking with orbital station. Fade-out/fade-in. Cut-scene of transport shuttle going to planet. Rinse-repeat in reverse when returning to ship. One load screen.

In fairness though, there are some things you have to give Bioware points for:

• They delivered on a scalable, customisable UI.
• They probably don't listen enough to their beta testers on things like PvP rewards, but they do listen to their live community.
• High-res textures were renabled.
• Novare Coast is a lot of fun.

Any thoughts on this? I think we need to take the good with the bad. I think Bioware made some very novice mistakes, but at the same time they're willing to learn from those mistakes and considerably less bloody-mindedness than other developers.

[Leonard McCoy]

[*]The game engine is horrid, but you can't help but be impressed with what they've done with it. It just wasn't ready for what they threw at it. Too many loading screens. Too much travel time and too much pop-in.

I don't want to be belligerent but I'm so tired of seeing this argument. It comes from a basic misunderstanding of how software coding works. The travel time has nothing to do with the engine, it's a design flaw that they they implemented. Something I think their looking to correct in a number of ways. Like how is the engine horrid? Have you personally designed or built anything with the swtor engine? Or for that matter the hero engine? It has many advantages that don't get talked about. Go to the hero engine website and do some research. Don't just spread the standard internet vomit please.

In general I agree with you though. It's a "vanilla" release for what it's worth and the important thing is what they do with it over the course of the next several months. So far they appear to be heading in a good direction. If they keep adding features and content at a rate equal to or better than the competition the game will have a healthy future. If they fall asleep at the wheel forget about it.

[Deleted]

To sum it down.

Game is sad to play since there are too less people playing now.
reason being that there was and still is some huge flaws with the game, which should have been seen and fixed before the game even launched.

[Lilly32]

I think quests need to be looked at. Every quest should give exp when you finish it. Those 4 part bonus quests are a perfect example. Should get exp after every stage. Also quest Hubs are beyond terrible. Taris is pretty bad. Its only like 1-2 quests per Hub and they send you to the opposite side of the map every time. If I wasnt an assassin with stealth I would probably be 2-3 levels lower from having to kill random crap along the way before I even start killing quest mobs thus slowing me down a lot.

Heroic quests...They removed them from WoW for a reason. Even during prime time cant get groups for any of them. Have soloed a few using stealth and sap but most arent worth the effort.

Rolling alts is a pain because you are forced to do the same quests over and over. When I roll Alts in WoW its not boring because you can choose to level in Eastern Kingdoms or Kalimdor so I alternate which continent I use every time I level an alt. Also liberal use of dungeon finder speeds leveling up immensely. I know they are adding one but if its not cross server it has already failed.

[Deleted]

I'm just sad I dont have time to play as much as I like =)
Still not lvl 50 but I'm having a blast leveling up and enjoying the story. I also enjoy warzones and they are running way smoother now than before the patch.
Unlocked my legacy and feels fun to progress through it with the things I will be able to unlock.
Having fun, but so limited sparetime unfortunately :P

[Shadylol]

Before I cancelled, and got my refund in January, the State of the Game was: Dying

From what I've read on the Forums here, and the SWTOR Official site, most Servers are very low population, so I can't imagine it being any better off now

[Butterball]

I did play swtor but never really got passed level 25. One of the things that put me off was the excessive amout of load screens and how faffy it was to travel anywhere. There should have been a much more seedless way of travelling between worlds. At the moment there is far too much waiting and far too many loading screens.

[Vampyrr]

Criticizing a game is considered "game bashing" on this forum and will be treated as trolling. Don't look at me, I didn't write the rules.

That is so false, critiqueing a game is NOT the same as bashing. It is giving a personal opinion about the state of the game which is fine bashing is more baseless insults and spouting things that are only half true.

[Doylez]

What needs to happen here: While the world is loading, show a cut-scene of ship docking with orbital station. Fade-out/fade-in. Cut-scene of transport shuttle going to planet. Rinse-repeat in reverse when returning to ship. One load screen.

Why are shuttles or orbital stations needed at all? I have my own bloody spaceship why can't I land it on the planet? Did Han Solo park his Falcon at a Orbital station and then take a shuttle down to Tatooine...? NO... because that would be stupid.

[Daverid]

I did play swtor but never really got passed level 25. One of the things that put me off was the excessive amour of loaf screens and how faffy it was to travel anywhere. There should have been a much more seedless way of travelling between worlds. At the moment there is far too waiting and far tooany loading screens.

Excessive amount of loading screens to get to level 25? Really?

You load once to log in and reach your home planet.

You have one small load to get to the Orbital Station and then 1 Big loading screen to get onto Coruscant.

TINY load screen to get on Ship ... Small Load Screen to get to Orbital Station ... Big Load Screen to get to Taris

Rinse and Repeat Last step for every planet here on in... ALSO note that with 1.2 you can bypass Orbital Stations and go straight to the planets.

Ok sure that's more loading screens then WoW .. But really? THAT'S NOT ALOT. Skyrim you have to Load every time you walk in a house, and that wasn't really a big deal. Those Minor load screens which happens once every 4-10 levels was fine, it was actually good because it gave me reason to get up every few levels and grab a drink, Stretch ETC.

That said however I do agree with many of the points, I still love SWTOR but there is normally a Bad that Goes with a Good. Which you can overlook if you like the game enough but for many both aspects were very prominent.

Everyone wanted, I really wanted, an alive Galaxy.. One big world ... But with planets, that's just not possible to do. Unless BioWare had created THE ENTIRE GALAXY and you flew your ship around the stars and when you got close to a planet it said, "Do you wish to land on Coruscant?" they couldn't have created such a feeling. And creating the Entire Galaxy would just be insane. Regardless of how they had done it, you would always have had load screens and planetary loads, The Galaxy just cannot persist in the same way the Streaming WoW world does.

[Keosen]

So basically the doomsayers are false once again and those who were saying that SWTOR is nothing beyond an over-hype is right?

Got some friends(8) playing it but they all cancelled their sub since there was no one to play with.
Are there any server merge plans?
Since the main problem at the moment seems to be the deserted servers.

[Odegon]

That is so false, critiqueing a game is NOT the same as bashing. It is giving a personal opinion about the state of the game which is fine bashing is more baseless insults and spouting things that are only half true.

There are lots of people either flat out lying or giving old information as if it is current. For example lets look at the post below yours: He is complaining about orbital stations and implying that you need to pass an orbital station to reach tatooine. Well A few minutes ago I went to Tatooine. There is no orbital station.

[LonestarHero]

I quit in January and resubbed for 1.2 and the nice freebies.

My complaints were vast, but Bioware has fixed some of the little things which I find encouraging:

-Can mount in all space stations/spaceports.
-Option to bypass an orbital station and go straight to the fleet or your ship from the planet.
-GTN interface allows searches without entering categories.
-Sprint available at level 1.

I think Bioware could have marketed the stuff above a little better because those gems were buried deep in the patch notes. They are a much bigger deal to me than new operations/warzones/flashpoints.

I also love the Legacy system and the credit dump it causes. I'm glad to be putting my credits to good use now. I'm saving up for the rocket shoes now. I'm actually now excited to get my second toon to 50 so that I can complete all my companion quest lines and roll another alt with the +presence bonus.

With these changes it's obvious that Bioware is trying to make the game less of a hassle and pack more fun into it. For that they got at least another $15 out of me.

[Odegon]

So basically the doomsayers are false once again and those who were saying that SWTOR is nothing beyond an over-hype is right?

Got some friends(8) playing it but they all cancelled their sub since there was no one to play with.
Are there any server merge plans?
Since the main problem at the moment seems to be the deserted servers.

There will be free character transfers before 1.3 from low pop to high pop servers.

[CyberTod]

The main problem with the game as I see it are the empty servers. And the legacy benefits can not be used on another server.
So I started on an empty server and was ready to stop the game. Now I made a char on a highly populateted server and it is much better, but I can not use my legacy stuff.
They should really think about server merges and fast. Also a cross-server queue for flashpoints will be nice addition.
Also the warzones are fun, but again if you are not on a dead server because you play with exactly the same and vs the same ppl every single time and either you always win or always loose. Which is not fun.

[xeonix]

90% of the negative bashers here , have either
a) never played SWTOR
b) never actually max'ed any toon
c) stopped playing 30days after they subbed

Neither of these 3 cases make them eligible to actually comment in a thread named " CURRENT state of swtor " . My guesses is their 'game' is not proviiding them with the fun they want so they try to troll to pass their time .

[ZeroWashu]

Why are shuttles or orbital stations needed at all? I have my own bloody spaceship why can't I land it on the planet? Did Han Solo park his Falcon at a Orbital station and then take a shuttle down to Tatooine...? NO... because that would be stupid.

Well because they had too opposing design issues. One was it would be so cool for all players to have their own personal ships but the second was, they needed to drive a story and having free reign does not make it easy to tell a story. So you have to really do some stupid things to get it to all work. Worse than the example you gave is, why does my character have a star ship at 14/15th level but have to wait till 25th to have a ground vehicle? Really? I have a ship capable of taking on fleet level ships and I don't have a ground vehicle in this bad boy?

My number one issue with the game was the punitive travel in regards to quests. Even after you had sprint and finally a vehicle if you timed it you would see that the distances simply increased. It was as if they had based the layout on making sure there was at minimum X amount of travel. It got tiresome fast. My least favorite quest in that regard was traveling to fleet only to have a NPC with no dialog give me a quest to go right back to the place I came from - which, yes, required me to use one of those interim stations to land on the planet.

[Klingers]

Why are shuttles or orbital stations needed at all? I have my own bloody spaceship why can't I land it on the planet? Did Han Solo park his Falcon at a Orbital station and then take a shuttle down to Tatooine...? NO... because that would be stupid.

I agree with you totally... It would be nice if we landed on every planet. I was a little surprised that we couldn't. But what I was suggesting was a semi-viable way of getting rid of the problem in the short-term.

[djdidi]

I played 1.2 for 2 weeks and was so displeased on the changes and canceled my account and went and started an f2p mmo and I'm glad I did turns out I love this new game . I won't say I'll never play swtor again but for right now with all the frustration i've suffered from winning 80% of the time pre 1.2 in WZ's to only winning 5% to 10% of the time post 1.2 I had to go. I don't mind balancing it out to where I only win 4 out of 10 matches even but jeez 1 out of 10 matches, don't cut my nuts off BW cmon...

[Duskmourne]

90% of the negative bashers here , have either
a) never played SWTOR
b) never actually max'ed any toon
c) stopped playing 30days after they subbed

Neither of these 3 cases make them eligible to actually comment in a thread named " CURRENT state of swtor " . My guesses is their 'game' is not proviiding them with the fun they want so they try to troll to pass their time .

Nice statistics!

I've been playing it since launch. I have two 50s and many other alts on both sides, I've done a lot of raiding, many hard mode flashpoints, a little pvp and too many daily quests.

And I'm on the fence about quitting now. Leaning towards the cancel button. I could go into detail, but crux is that the endgame isn't doing it for me and maxing more alts is pretty much my only option for fun at this point.