What's most crictal part of the game for you

[FusedMass]

Is it the

A: Combat- Are you a hardcore player Solly focused on the raids and end game combat and dungeon.

B: Story- Do you want just skip to the story. Make interesting moral choices.

C: A mix of the two.

Honestly. Myself I care more about the cut scenes and less about the combat. The class is what keeps me going and the combat is just something I do to get to point A to point B. I am really in it for the story but that's just me. I know with cut back funding they might have to pick and choose if they want spend resources on improving the engine or the story expanding class mission and companion side quests.

[Qatol]

Some kind of balance. These days I'm more of a solo player, but I care about my combat, my character's story and interaction with the world. End game not so much as I used to.

[Jalek]

You need decent combat as you will spend a lot of time doing that, and you need a story to make you want to see what is around the next corner. So definitely a mix.

I don't think people give SWTOR enough credit for it's combat, it's actually pretty smoot and involved. At launch, almost all classes and specs had a role in PVP and/or PVE unlike other famous games that had broken specs for years and resources actually mean something and are non-linear for a lot of classes.

[Deleted]

Here is a problem:
You can't just slap some combat mechanics and story writing together and call it a day. That's one of the reasons I disliked Mass Effect 3 (other than the ending), because the whole game of ME3 was shoot -> moral choices -> shoot -> moral choices, rinse and repeat.

Here are some examples of the other elements of an RPG:

How about sometimes, you create a bridge between the two? Story and combat should not be totally segregated. In some games your choices may lead to you gaining different abilities (such as in Kotor 2, dark side gets Force Crush while Light Side gets Force Enlightenment). That's er...not plausible in an MMO other than maybe cosmetic abilities, but at least give us different amount of credits (an amount that should matter, not 100-ish credits difference when the quest has a baseline reward of thousands of creds) for some of the dark/light choices in the story?

And in some games, moral choices are made through gameplay (in Mass Effect 1, one paragon choice involves carefully throwing gas grenades; in neverwinter nights, one moral choice involves physically destroying an object in combat).

The world is also important, in fact as important as the writing of the story if not more important. The world should feel alive; and that is one area that TOR is lacking.

[WarpedAcorn]

For me, its a mix of both. Before I'll even play, the game has to have a decent enough storyline and setting to make me care enough about what I'm doing in game. While I don't consider myself an RPer, I do care about things in the story making sense. What keeps me playing is the gameplay. If the combat and controls are lackluster then I simply get bored and stop playing.

[Kelimbror]

The world is also important, in fact as important as the writing of the story if not more important. The world should feel alive; and that is one area that TOR is lacking.

I agree that it's not as vibrant as it could be, and that I am a huge proponent of the story doing things for the game. With that being said, I think SWTOR is stuctured to where just being in a zone and doing certain quests makes you feel a part of the story, even if you space bar through everything.

A lot of this is obviously accomplished with the class quest, but it's the combat style that keeps me going. I even tried to play KotOR like an MMO...all the pausing everytime I entered combat started getting annoying. So it's really that good balance between the two concepts that brings it all together.

[sarahfireworks]

Well, maybe it's just being new to the game and everything, but the stories are what's really catching my interest right now. That may just be too many years of reading little text boxes though.

Not that I plan on avoiding the end game or anything if the opportunity arises. What will really keep me playing if anything though is the people. I mean, even on those antisocial days when I'm soloing, are there still people making jokes in guild, some light-hearted chatter or gossip to catch up on, or the good-natured person who wants to run some group quests or something? Those are the kinds of things that will make the decision for me more than storylines or awesome PvP (though it certainly helps!).

[Arlee]

What pulling me in initially was the class stories. I really felt immersed in the game and kept wanting to get to the next thing to see what happened. It also helped (despite people's claims of swtor actually being a single player game) that I leveled with two friends the whole way and that I also got to take part and watch their class stories as well. It was extremely entertaining and fun.

What has kept me playing is that I have a good guild with fun people who want to do the content available but also don't feel the need to be "first" but also work to play their charecters to the best of their ability. It's a fun and laid back environment which I really enjoy.

[Crimsonfiend76]

im probably gonna pick (c)... it really depends on my mood which AC i prefer to play at a given time, but if the story is boring or otherwise lacking, no amount of combat will motivate me to continue playing.

[KCguy]

Story goes a long way as it grips you in, but game play is equally as important if not more. Good game play can make up for a lack of a good story much of the time.

[Siltah]

C. But I lean more towards story than combat. I love the combat on some of the classes here, but I play because I love my character and what they're doing, not how they look killing something. If that makes sense...?

I dunno, so yeah, both, but with an emphasis on story.

[Ixator]

right now its the PvP. In the future Im hoping for more story and maybe get back into opsing

[icedwarrior]

While I'm not playing SWoTR, I figure I'd give my input in a general sense:

Gameplay is more important to me. Obviously story is important to me, but if you have a great story, and a horrible game, I don't know if I would play it. If the exact opposite is true, there's still a good chance that I'd play it. That's how I see it.

[Kuthe]

It's an MMO, so I care more about the combat.
The thing about SWTOR is that every single 'kill x of y' you need to put up with the loading *slow internet here* just so you can hear them say it.
I'd prefer the typical 'WoW' questbox, but with voice acting saying the lore/reason behind it.
The whole choices don't matter much in a game like this to me.

[Cempa]

PvP makes or breaks a game for me. 1.2 destroyed this game and marked the beginning of the end. Game designers dropped the ball and should have reverted 1.2 and started over.

[Ragnarocket]

You have to give me a compelling story, I will not play a game if I can't understand or care about why I'm doing these arbitrary tasks.

It's why I couldn't get into TERA, it had GREAT combat but my lord the questing bored me to tears while the story just didn't do it for me.