How casual is SWTOR?

[Rooflesstoofless]

Every time I have hit 50 so far

Wow...I'd like to hire you to level a toon for me...I have about zero tolerance for the non-grouped content (see: <50 single player content) in this game.

[klaps_05]

BioWare stated like a month ago that they want their game to be casual - so u dont have to browse logs, use addons, etc to maximize your performance. the game can be played entirely as singleplayer with the occasional grouping with other to clear some hardmode dungeon.

[Forsedar]

BioWare stated like a month ago that they want their game to be casual - so u dont have to browse logs, use addons, etc to maximize your performance. the game can be played entirely as singleplayer with the occasional grouping with other to clear some hardmode dungeon.

I would love to see the source saying they are keeping their game casual. I doubt any MMO will directly tell their hardcore audience to screw off.

[Paladin885]

If you die, you just re-spawn on the same spot or at the nearest town, your choice, no real penalty for either (durability loss, but no spirit healer sickness etc)

you do take durability loss.

[Deleted]

the flashpoints aren't harder than cata heroics were at the beginning of the addon ... the main difference is: there is WAAAAY more trash ... it really gets annoying.
The lack of addons hasn't bothered me by now, there aren't many boss-abilities to be tracked or stuff that really needs to be dispelled, but I really miss macros (especially mouseover macros)

And most of the Flashpoints only have three bosses and several "minibosses" that drop Tionese Crystals, which are really, really worthless, because you get so much of them and you don't get many commendations (you need both the commendations and the crystals to get gear). And you get way better gear with "normal" mode raiding, which is, if you leave out Soa, easier than HM flashpoints.

[OhpUldum]

Keep up the good discussion guys. I appreciate you taking the time to actually give constructive criticisms rather than rolling through with a one sentence statement about how terrible you think the game is.

Just a forewarning to keep it on topic otherwise we'll start pulling the trigger and giving infractions.

[Fencers]

I don't know why people take "casual" as an offensive term. SW:TOR can be a very casual-friendly game if played that way, and I see no problem with that. Why? Because the fun isn't boiled down to raiding, like in WoW. Leveling is fun in SW:TOR, and it's meaningful and long. If you're one of those players who will play 1-2 hours a night, then it'll take you quite a long time to get to 50. But it won't be strenuous, at least it wasn't for me, because the quests are better than the norm in MMOs.

Many enjoy specifically the raid experience to others. It's nice that TOR provides other avenues of entertainment, sure. But that doesn't necessarily mean virtual fishing or questing lights their fire-- no matter how engaging those are. A player might be there to raid, that is their focus first & foremost.

I do agree TOR offers a lot of nice breaks for other MMOs in non-raid content. The game is, IMO, pretty awesome. Though it's endgame content is right around that of Warcraft I'd say. So is what it is.

[Pulledtea]

Edit: To the post above me saying that its like Naxx40... no... no way. I was in the US 5 (there were only 46 ranked guilds) guild in vanilla and Naxx40 was still difficult. It was completely overtuned and we had 40 great raiders. Naxx25/10 was just an extremely dumbed down version of Naxx40. It was like getting spat in the face after working for months to clear Naxx40. Eternity Vault is a joke. Don't get me wrong, its the first raid... but its still a joke. Every fight has about 1 or 2 mechanics. That's it. 2/5 of the bosses are freebies too. Think of lootship... but easier.

Well, we can agree to disagree. When I was still studying in Spain, the European guild I was in, we did it pretty easily. It was just the length of the raid that caused alot of problems, simply because of timezone. There were no extreme learning jumps coming straight from AQ40. AQ40 i agree was difficult, but naxx 40? No, it was not hard at all for us.

[Forsedar]

Well, we can agree to disagree. When I was still studying in Spain, the European guild I was in, we did it pretty easily. It was just the length of the raid that caused alot of problems, simply because of timezone. There were no extreme learning jumps coming straight from AQ40. AQ40 i agree was difficult, but naxx 40? No, it was not hard at all for us.

Well after AQ40, I doubt anything was considered 'hard' at that point after going from BWL to AQ. It seemed like SUCH a learning curve that the transition from AQ-Naxx wasn't that bad.

Ontopic though, I am fine with raids having a difficulty level for those who aren't as dedicated- but I don't like how they can get pretty decent gear from it. The rakata is hardly an upgrade from Columi. Its just minimal. I do think this game is casual friendly in that sense because gear is easily accessible for anyone willing to put in a little time. PvP is just luck based for gear. I've seen people above 55 Valor with full centurion because all they get are empty bags. My friend isn't even Valor 30 yet and hes nearly full champion because he gets something basically in every bag. I wish there was a "be skilled and you can get this gear" option for those of us who went from being hardcore in WoW to SWTOR.

[notorious98]

It's very casual.

Allow me to ellaborate: From level 8 every class has a pet, if you are a dps, then it will be a healer or a tank, if you are a tank it will be a healer or a dps, if you are a healer... you get the picture.

Professions can be levelled without ever moving from one spot, your companions do all the work for you.

Every class has a full re-heal and re-mana that can be used without cooldown out of combat.

If you die, you just re-spawn on the same spot or at the nearest town, your choice, no real penalty for either (durability loss, but no spirit healer sickness etc)

Can't comment on the operations, but looking at how fast all the bosses fell over can not be too hard, certainly there is no Ragnaros HC or Sinestra HC that acts as a brick wall for progression.

How do any of these things make the game casual? If anything it makes it convenient. Instead of the boring grind for mats, your companions can do it for a heavy price in relation to how much you get. Instead of the stupid spirit walk back to your corpse, you can respawn on the spot or rez nearby. Every class has a full re-heal and re-mana meaning they don't have to make sure they have food to replenish it. It works exactly the same, replenishing health/"mana" over 15 seconds, except you don't have to run back to the nearest town to replenish, thereby wasting time. Every class having a pet doesn't make it casual just like not having a pet doesn't make things hard. The content is all tuned based on either. Convenient does not equal casual. Wasting time does not equal hard.

These comments are all bred from ignorance and make no sense.

[Pulledtea]

I think most of us playing sw:tor at this point is in a wait and see attitude.
OP, there is not much to this question, simply because there is not that much to judge yet.
Consider vanilla wow battleground introduction (field-marshall gear etc) and introduction of MC and onyxia. At that point in time, all WoW was was a grind-fest, pvp and pve-wise. This question would be better suited somewhere down the year, seeing if BW can actually do the 2-3 month content update so on and so forth. This question right now would be like saying, are all humans unique?

And, as a tongue-in-cheek, my entire guild placed naxx 40 at the same level as MC difficulty. No disrespect, that's just how they felt at the time.

[Kouki]

It's very casual.

Allow me to ellaborate: From level 8 every class has a pet, if you are a dps, then it will be a healer or a tank, if you are a tank it will be a healer or a dps, if you are a healer... you get the picture.

Professions can be levelled without ever moving from one spot, your companions do all the work for you.

Every class has a full re-heal and re-mana that can be used without cooldown out of combat.

If you die, you just re-spawn on the same spot or at the nearest town, your choice, no real penalty for either (durability loss, but no spirit healer sickness etc)

Can't comment on the operations, but looking at how fast all the bosses fell over can not be too hard, certainly there is no Ragnaros HC or Sinestra HC that acts as a brick wall for progression.

In its leveling its casual, normal gamer casual.

Companions dont just do your professions for free though so you must do quests to earn credits to pay your companion.

Having an out of combat Hp Mp heal is better than carrying stacks of food. We dont have many action bars id hate the game atm if it had food lol.

You die take damage, and your punishment for going to the medicenter is being farther away from where you died being out of the action.
A similar death penalty exists in guildwars2.

Opperations are hard, and they just added a new one slightly harder than the first.
Developers themselves cant beat some of the bosses, as seen at the live game demo's.

[salamala]

Wow OP let me first apoligize for the influx of turd stupid people NOT answering your question. You asked specifically about operations and yet people are telling you about pvp and Flashpoints and dailies.... idiots.

For a seasoned wow raider (like you sound) I don't doubt the HM ops will still prove challenging for you - but will probably be cleared at a faster pace than wows HM raids. The normal mode will probably seem easy, but undergeared even those can be wipefests. I think that your best bet is sub for a month - power level something to 50 and give it a go yourself.

[sizzlinsauce]

ive had guildies who where big into swtor cancel after the 1 month was up. games boring. like they would literally be tabed into swtor during wipes on hard mode days lol... it just got extremely boring for them no matter the casual or not pace it has. was a pretty big thing knowing that once you hit 50 your hardest pve content's gear was crud against the best pvp gear.

[Gerion]

PVE content is incredibly simplistic. There are regular hard mode/nightmare EV pugs on my server now that raids are recognized as super easy. They may not down Soa but they're pretty much guaranteed 4/5. In fact, hard mode flashpoints will give you more trouble than the raids. The puzzle boss is easier than the original lootship. My guild downed hard mode EV in about an hour.

PVP is a mixed bag. You have to be very tolerant of stuns since every class has multiple and your trinket is on a 2min cd. Resolve is a poor system at best at DR. (If your trinket is down, you'll just get stunned twice, killed and respawn with your full resolve wasted as you run back to the fight.) If you're Empire on an Empire dominated server prepare to play a lot of Huttball. Don't even bother with Ilum since it's broken (unless you're on one of those miracle balanced servers).

[drtrann]

also before this becomes an "its easy because no addons/combatlog" it has already been stated that combatlog are coming soon and an addon API should me kinda somewhat coming up soon in the future.

the reason for no combatlog in release was that the system they have currently designed would crash servers because it tracks so many things. they do plan on enabling a combat log once they have come up with a system that wont compromise server stability. (btw it was in the beta ~7 months ago for about 3 weeks and was taken away in the next patch, i assume thats when the found out about the instability)

How do any of these things make the game casual? If anything it makes it convenient. Instead of the boring grind for mats, your companions can do it for a heavy price in relation to how much you get. Instead of the stupid spirit walk back to your corpse, you can respawn on the spot or rez nearby. Every class has a full re-heal and re-mana meaning they don't have to make sure they have food to replenish it. It works exactly the same, replenishing health/"mana" over 15 seconds, except you don't have to run back to the nearest town to replenish, thereby wasting time. Every class having a pet doesn't make it casual just like not having a pet doesn't make things hard. The content is all tuned based on either. Convenient does not equal casual. Wasting time does not equal hard.

These comments are all bred from ignorance and make no sense.

you are mixing up elitist vs casual in this. casual is not a level of difficulty in that there is casual->normal->elitist game modes. casual refers to the fact that you can spend minimal time in a game and still succeed. with that definition his description IS EXACTLY RIGHT!

things being more convient then the convention is what you see with the mmo genre becoming more casual.... remember doing absolutely anything in everquest? it was a pain in the ass, not only because it was hard to do, but it also took TONS AND TONS AND TONS of time and even the effort of 10s of people.

---------- Post added 2012-01-21 at 07:17 PM ----------

Opperations are hard, and they just added a new one slightly harder than the first.
Developers themselves cant beat some of the bosses, as seen at the live game demo's.

im sorry but this statement is totally false. overall both instances are roughly = in that they are both laughably easy compared to the content of other games. and if the dev's cannot play their own content they should be fired. if your refering to when they first announced eternity vault and showed of annihilation droid, that was clearly set up to give people a taste of PVE but not show off their flagship boss.. as until this week is was truely the only hard boss in EV (this week they nerfed it to oblivions and he does almost 0 damage and even in nightmare doesnt require ANY coordination to complete, where before you used to need a sizable group effort to fight him.

the point being, that almost NO ONE SHOULD BE HAVING ISSUES WITH CURRENT CONTENT in any difficulty mode. while i consider myself a high end player. our guild has people clearing HM in full PVP gear. besides them, we also have another group clearing 2/5 nightmare who couldnt kill 4/7 fireland NORMAL. take that as an indication of the level of difficulty to be found here.

[Deleted]

Compared to vanilla WoW and TBC it's pretty casual.

There are no reputations to grind, no endless farming for mats, smaller raid sizes are easier to manage, no attunements or heroic keys of any kind, the game throws so much credits at you that they don't really matter in the end. Really, the only grind you'll do after 50 is for gear.

The game does not take over your life like some earlier MMOs used to do.

[Fencers]

Opperations are hard, and they just added a new one slightly harder than the first.
Developers themselves cant beat some of the bosses, as seen at the live game demo's.

The hard mode Operations are about as challenging as Warcraft Hard Modes for experienced/dedicated raiders. Though encounters are slightly cruder in some regards. In that there is simply a lot of damage output. Not necessarily a unusual amount of mechanical complexity or tactical consideration. Also TOR gen pop mobs are kinda not as thoughtfully designed as say.. lower Hammerknell, Vallon's Tower-C or post M-Shiraz BT.

That crudeness gives the illusion of higher difficulty. That isn't to say they are a walk in the park or "un-fun", but I don't think many progressive guilds have trouble blasting through some that content vis-a-vis Akky or H-Rag for example.

[Deleted]

I'd say its less casual that WoW currently is, but still swings heavily into the casual category.

[Deafknight]

Well, we can agree to disagree. When I was still studying in Spain, the European guild I was in, we did it pretty easily. It was just the length of the raid that caused alot of problems, simply because of timezone. There were no extreme learning jumps coming straight from AQ40. AQ40 i agree was difficult, but naxx 40? No, it was not hard at all for us.

Sunwell, AQ 40 and Naxxramas 40 define raiding for me.

We were pushing for europe firsts (got all the german firsts) in Naxxramas 40 while having to virtually make up all the strategies ourselves while keeping up a raid out of at least 35 good people. Getting up in the middle of the night to defeat thaddius since it wouldnt work in the daytime, gearing up our tanks just so they could taunt 4hm without resists, farming scarlet monastery for blindweed and many many more made a truly hard grindy and epic experience.

Naxxramas was definitely more difficult than AQ40, discounting twin emps of course which i still sometimes dream about after not having played wow for years XD
Not being as big a jump as BWL -> AQ does not qualify as easy.

Compared to any of this, swtor raiding is not even worth mentioning.

Also conveniency is part of a casual experience, not having to press more than 1 button all the time could also be called convenient but is rather reffered to as dumbed down