What ToR did right and what it failed at

[conscript]

By biggest gripe with the game is how they pigeonhole everyone into being a pet class for single player. I want to feel awesome in games, I don't feel awesome babysitting and micromanaging a companion. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't HAVE to have one, but the game is absolutely impossible to go through solo without one.

The micromanaging aspect depends on your AC really. On my Trooper I didn't have to do crap with my companion except have Elara out. Thats it. I don't think I touched a single one of her abilities except to put her on passive once or twice while running away from mobs and to turn abilities on for the first time. My Sage has to do a bit more micromanaging with turning Qyzen's AOE on or off if I need to CC elites, but it isn't terrible. Unless you mean keeping up with their gear, then ya that could be seen as a bit annoying. Another area where I was spoiled by my Trooper since every companion except my robot tank wore the exact same gear.

[Role Unknown]

My biggest complaint is the UI. Customizable UI should be a standard for any new MMO.

Another thing that annoys me is, spell proc animation, again....should be a given in any new MMO. I shouldnt have to look for this 1/4 inch by 1/4 inch box on my buffs bar. Its unacceptable!

The other things you mentioned are tolerable.

While i must say this game has alot of great things about it, it feels like I have this fantastic shiny new Mercedes Benz....with only 2 buckets to sit on and nothing else.

[Omniclass]

The micromanaging aspect depends on your AC really. On my Trooper I didn't have to do crap with my companion except have Elara out. Thats it. I don't think I touched a single one of her abilities except to put her on passive once or twice while running away from mobs and to turn abilities on for the first time. My Sage has to do a bit more micromanaging with turning Qyzen's AOE on or off if I need to CC elites, but it isn't terrible. Unless you mean keeping up with their gear, then ya that could be seen as a bit annoying. Another area where I was spoiled by my Trooper since every companion except my robot tank wore the exact same gear.

/agreed. The companion system by and far has great aspects to it. I hope in the future they open it up more implementing companion talent trees etc so you can choose exactly what companion you want no matter your spec or ac choice

[conscript]

I'm more of a lurker than a poster but I've seen this comment too many times and it gets under my skin. Just because WoW didn't have something at release 7 years ago doesn't mean a new game shouldn't have it now. That's a poor excuse and I guarantee you'll never hear anyone from BW say something like that because they are smarter than that and know it's BS. If you can live with the UI great, but be honest about it being subpar to what WoW and Rift offers.

It is subpar in terms that you can scale WoWs, which is sweet because those two griffins at the ends of the bottom toolbar were sweet, and it has addons and from Rifts launch because everything was movable and scalable for sure. They should have at minimum had the scale and movement in place along with some system to make your debuffs and buffs actually noticable on mobs. I do not envy anyone who plays with a dot class right now. It is hard enough to track my one bleed on my Trooper tank when there are other identical debuff markers on the boss.

---------- Post added 2012-02-02 at 06:16 PM ----------

/agreed. The companion system by and far has great aspects to it. I hope in the future they open it up more implementing companion talent trees etc so you can choose exactly what companion you want no matter your spec or ac choice

A-freaking-men to that. I would love to actually use all of my companions and not the one or two I can actually use now because my tank companions are a waste on my tank. If I could make M1-4X my healer or DPS I would roll with him constantly.

[Nilan]

I think my biggest annoyance has been lack of macros, a feature that well predated Warcraft. Threat management would be nice - obviously the numbers exist so adding visual feedback for players wouldn't be as difficult as changing the UI to make it moddable. Definitely an achievable short term im provement. I agree with your postives, disagree with your music point but thats my opinion. Some people may say your negatives are unfair or personal opinion but even as someone immensely enjoying the game and raiding, I do agree with many and some improvement would be nice.

[Doozerjun]

/agreed. The companion system by and far has great aspects to it. I hope in the future they open it up more implementing companion talent trees etc so you can choose exactly what companion you want no matter your spec or ac choice

Even having a tactic screen so you can set a priority system for your companion would be nice.

[Rakatashi]

The part that killed the game for me, in addition to having no particularly "strong" points for me, was that shitfest of an engine. To me, it felt horribly un-smooth, and pvp was a nightmare because of it.

[Culadin]

A big issue that Bioware faced was EA putting the pressure on them to release at EA's predetermined release date. Bioware didn't even have the chance to say "hey we don't want to release this yet because we want to implement X number of things". I don't fault Bioware for lacking these key comfort of life utilities in their game. If anything I fault EA and their heavy handed practices toward their developers.

Bottom line is that EA is more concerned about the dollar than they are the product. I would love it if they were more like Blizzard who will push off a release date or scrap a whole game a month prior to release just to start from scratch because they weren't happy with what they had. However, that is not the norm.

Yes, this is one of the few times you will see me as a moderator actually take a stance so enjoy it while it lasts.

[Torethyr]

2) Lack of Competitive raiding: Again related to UI. in competitive raiding, people like to know how they are doing, they like to run numbers and get the best out of the team. Not allowing combat logs is a big mistake. It means that everyone is just playing in the dark with no idea if they're doing well or not.

I find this to be incorrect. Competition in raiding doesn't come from trying to out-DPS your guildies, it comes from trying to beat other guilds. In this regard competition is healthy on a server-by-server basis (for instance, the guilds on my server tied or surpassing my guild's progression are: Sith'ari, Anomaly, and Republic Ascension. I know the people in these guild and we know of each others progress to the minute). Regional competition will be established as soon as we have some kind of offline verification for boss kills (an Armory, basically).

[rabbimojo]

A big issue that Bioware faced was EA putting the pressure on them to release at EA's predetermined release date. Bioware didn't even have the chance to say "hey we don't want to release this yet because we want to implement X number of things". I don't fault Bioware for lacking these key comfort of life utilities in their game. If anything I fault EA and their heavy handed practices toward their developers.

Bottom line is that EA is more concerned about the dollar than they are the product. I would love it if they were more like Blizzard who will push off a release date or scrap a whole game a month prior to release just to start from scratch because they weren't happy with what they had. However, that is not the norm.

Yes, this is one of the few times you will see me as a moderator actually take a stance so enjoy it while it lasts.

It's certainly possible that the blame for TOR's faults can be laid at EA's feet. I'm giving Bioware the benefit of the doubt for now, since the game is fun enough for me to keep playing. However, the faults are frustrating enough that I haven't been pulled back into it aggressively. This is probably the least weekly playtime I've ever had with an MMO I was subscribing to, so I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to maintain.

For people like me, Bioware has a couple months/patches to convince me. They're not off the hook, and the patches so far haven't impressed me (on the quality-of-development angle, not so much on content).

If April or May roll around and I still feel like I'm playing a game that could have been released a decade ago, with no real light at the end of the tunnel, then I'm going to put the blame on Bioware and be done with it.

[walbomb]

Notice how Coke and Pepsi don't taste the same? But they both have their own unique flavors, and they don't release their recipes to each other. Nor are their product developers clones of each other, so I imagine they think differently. It's going to be the same in software development. You're talking about a company that has concentrated on mostly single-player RPGs, with minimal UIs, for years. Give them time to develop their product. Am I the only one that finds this common sense, or am I going to get labeled a fanboy?

I'm not going to call you fan boy but I will say you are making excuses for them. I'm not saying they can't try a different UI. I argued about people giving BW a free pass because WoW didn't have such and such feature when it was released 7 years ago. Gamers are used to a customizable UI these days, and not just in MMO's. Games like Skyrim have UI mods within weeks of release. It would be naive of BW not to expect there would be complaints about their UI but they released it anyways with the promise to make it better in the future. The OP has a legitimate gripe about the UI in my opinion.

And please don't make comments like such and such should be common sense. You're really just trying to insult people that don't agree with you and you're better than that.

[igame]

WoW didn't have a built in meter for years, but that didn't mean that threat was never of a concern in game play. It always was. Hell I remember raiding back in MC and being told not to do anything until 5 sunders were up on every mob. Ironically, it seems that once Blizzard did make threat a non-concern by making AOE tanking vastly easier than it ever has been, that is when they finally added an in game threat indicator lol. TOR absolutely needs something in that form whether it be through an in game tool or an addon because tanking is a pain in the ass right now with being completely unable to tell where people are on threat and who the hell mobs are targeting without spamming my get target's target hotkey.

My only comment to the OP is about this. Are you quitting or staying because you seem to waffle back and for with every post/thread you make. Truth be told, I figured you would have quit about a month ago when you made that other thread complaining about the UI saying it was game breaking for you. Everything else is opinions and you are more than welcome to have them, especially since you stated them in a constructive manner, and you are damn right about the AH interface being terrible.

I know, I am really really trying to love the game but it's just not meeting the standard I have set. it's a good game but there are something that become a part of a generation of products. it's like getting a smartphone with no wifi, and the manufacturer saying that they will add wifi later....I would be going it's a basic feature in this day and age and how can you not have it.

I also find it very strange that people compare ToR release to WoW release when there is a 7 year gap between the two. In 7 years BW has had time to study WoW players closely, to learn from wow's ups and downs....It's just that the game boasted to be the most expensive game ever and then it seems to be missing basic elements...I donno if I am explaining this properly.

[Elhana]

Many games are released with a similar UI. Take wow for example, personally I think it's horrible and it's little different to swtor.

no combat log, action bars are glitchy, guild UI is fucked up, no /roll, can't /who "search words", can't search AH (only categories), UI looses focus sometimes and you can't even click it so have to reset, no target of target, no mouseover healing, raid UI is barely useable and was not even updating HP until later patches... and no mods. WoW didn't have half of this on release either, but they had mods from the start (Cosmos UI). Again it is a bad excuse - swtor released now, not 10 years ago and should provide what people expect from it.

fyi, my wow acc is cancelled and I play swtor, but saying that it's UI is fine is wrong - it is probably my top concern with swtor atm.

p.s. WoW had damage meters almost right away with mods, KTM was there ready for BWL (was not perfect, but worked for most cases). You could at least make an addon saying "boss targeting you" in the middle of the screen easy and until recently (theyve put in announcements) on SOA you had to run around trying to guess if that ball following you or someone else.

[conscript]

A big issue that Bioware faced was EA putting the pressure on them to release at EA's predetermined release date. Bioware didn't even have the chance to say "hey we don't want to release this yet because we want to implement X number of things". I don't fault Bioware for lacking these key comfort of life utilities in their game. If anything I fault EA and their heavy handed practices toward their developers.

Bottom line is that EA is more concerned about the dollar than they are the product. I would love it if they were more like Blizzard who will push off a release date or scrap a whole game a month prior to release just to start from scratch because they weren't happy with what they had. However, that is not the norm.

Yes, this is one of the few times you will see me as a moderator actually take a stance so enjoy it while it lasts.

In EA's defense, /vomit never thought I would say that, Bioware was taking roughly eight decades to get this game done though. So incredibly long in development and it didn't feel like a complete game until late, late in beta when the end planets actually started functioning properly. It feels like they just got to a point where they needed to show some production for the money being poured into the game. Plus the whole zombie production process where it is a bunch of appendages from around the world stitched together. I don't know. The production process seemed so screwed up it is baffling that the game came out as good as it did.

---------- Post added 2012-02-02 at 06:33 PM ----------

no /roll

I think that is my biggest WTF missing feature. That is like by far one of the biggest parts of every RPG ever from pen and paper to video games. How do you forget or not add a /random system of some sort. Seriously. That couldn't have been that hard of a system to implement at all.

[soulcrusher]

you should retitle your post - from a raider perspective.

lack of macros, meters and add ons arent seen as a bad thing by most players just the 10% that enjoy slogging away on boss fights every night. i dont miss meter spam or addons telling people what to do.

[WretchedSimmons]

I love it when the fanboys fly out of the woodwork to defend a subpar game. It's fun and all, but it's got so many 'F2P' feels.

[Bongomadness]

I love the Ui, proper dig the neon blue colour...thing is though take away all the add ons and what are you left with in wow? ye exactly....people as per usual forgetting that one.

[AnthonyUK]

I'm not going to call you fan boy but I will say you are making excuses for them. I'm not saying they can't try a different UI. I argued about people giving BW a free pass because WoW didn't have such and such feature when it was released 7 years ago. Gamers are used to a customizable UI these days, and not just in MMO's. Games like Skyrim have UI mods within weeks of release. It would be naive of BW not to expect there would be complaints about their UI but they released it anyways with the promise to make it better in the future. The OP has a legitimate gripe about the UI in my opinion.

And please don't make comments like such and such should be common sense. You're really just trying to insult people that don't agree with you and you're better than that.

He has a gripe yes, but they're already adressing said gripe, and frankly its not even a big one, the UI isnt terrible it doesnt make the game unplayable, ops/heroics/pvp are easy enough to do as it is. This poster is usuing to bitch, all this poster every does is whine and heap on the negativity. Here hes hiding behind it by pretending to be balanced saying heres good things - a line on each then putting in a far bigger list and paragraphs of his whines.

i mean to add the music as one....

I love it when the fanboys fly out of the woodwork to defend a subpar game. It's fun and all, but it's got so many 'F2P' feels.

1.7 million would disagree

[conscript]

I know, I am really really trying to love the game but it's just not meeting the standard I have set. it's a good game but there are something that become a part of a generation of products. it's like getting a smartphone with no wifi, and the manufacturer saying that they will add wifi later....I would be going it's a basic feature in this day and age and how can you not have it.

I also find it very strange that people compare ToR release to WoW release when there is a 7 year gap between the two. In 7 years BW has had time to study WoW players closely, to learn from wow's ups and downs....It's just that the game boasted to be the most expensive game ever and then it seems to be missing basic elements...I donno if I am explaining this properly.

True story, when i got my Droid X at launch, the Wifi didn't work on some N networks (like the one at my house!) and the answer was it should work with all of them in the future lol. The 7 year launch difference experience thing works for some stuff, but I agree that it is a stupid excuse for most things. Lack of custom UI I'm fine with for a launch product. Lack of target of target is WTF stupid especially in a game where you are always fighting multiple mobs or bosses that have random target elements. Lack of /roll they have had what 40 years of D&D they should have drawn that feature from. Maintenance being randomly inconsistent is fine. Split windows not existing is stupid and something they should have anticipated. They should have gleaned more from the WoW CS experience (I blame EA).

[DeltrusDisc]

I actually have to agree with the OP on music. I've always been a huge Star Wars nerd, a huge video game/movie music nerd.... yet I just can't get into most of the music in SWTOR. I find myself constantly going to youtube to listen to some good ol' WoW music, but SWTOR music? The only SWTOR music I remember from my one month of playtime, is the music they used from the movies, which got old after a bit...

In fact I found myself agreeing with just about all of his positive and negative points. The fact you can't move things on the UI around *at all* is just kind of... dumb.