SWTOR looking to have a future.

[Baconeggcheese]

As I said, each to their own taste mate. You know your friend, I know mine and the people I played ESO with until recently and they agree with my opinion- does that make it a fact? No, just my and their opinion. So yes, while ESO is not perfect in that respect (or any other, unfortunately), for my taste what it does get good in terms of animation is miles better than SWTOR.

If the question is whether or not ESO has "fluid" animations then yeah it factually doesn't.

[Fkiolaris]

If the question is whether or not ESO has "fluid" animations then yeah it factually doesn't.

All of them? No. Some/a few/plenty of them? Most definitely yes. Are they better than SWTOR's? For my taste, and plenty of other people's taste, yes. That's as much as I have to say on this, you are free to disagree as you like.

[Jastall]

I returned to SWTOR a bit during WoW's quiet phase in between patches and man, there are some things that just bug me.

1. just too many skills. WoW may have pruned too much, but SWTOR needs to have a bit of an hedge trim. As a Mercenary I hardly even look at half my action bar, and the spec design, while fun enough, really seems to boil down to hitting whatever button glows, then whatever 15 sec. ability comes off cooldown, then spamming Tracer Missile. The lack of DPS meter to see how well I'm performing does not help matters. My Assassin is a hot mess of skills as well, at least that is more justified by some being stealth-centric.

2. I'm a Preferred status player that previously unlocked some things like Hide Helmet and unify colors so I don't have it so hard, but the game reminding you on every single menu screen that you could sub is a bit out of hand. At least the experience gain seems to have been fast-tracked a lot since last I played 4 years ago. Fuck the 1M credit limit and no way to do Operations however.

3. and worst, it just feels clunky to play in general. The camera doesn't zoom out far enough. Character movement and targeting feel stiff for some odd reason. Spell animations are so flashy that fights easily become a total clusterfuck when more than two players are involved and I have no idea what's happening anymore. I dunno, the gameplay is too similar to WoW, and that only highlights how inferior it is.

[cparle87]

YOu used to be able to play without a sub

They took away the warzone and raid passes....It's much worse

I had prepared my acct to truly play F2P, came back and they had done away with the key stuff that made that plan work.

You don't need to, though, don't you? There's 3 levels. Free to play, preferred, and subbed. If you were ever the latter if your sub lapses you fall back to preferred, not F2P, and it has a lot fewer restrictions. At least that's how I remember it.

- - - Updated - - -

I returned to SWTOR a bit during WoW's quiet phase in between patches and man, there are some things that just bug me.

1. just too many skills. WoW may have pruned too much, but SWTOR needs to have a bit of an hedge trim. As a Mercenary I hardly even look at half my action bar, and the spec design, while fun enough, really seems to boil down to hitting whatever button glows, then whatever 15 sec. ability comes off cooldown, then spamming Tracer Missile. The lack of DPS meter to see how well I'm performing does not help matters. My Assassin is a hot mess of skills as well, at least that is more justified by some being stealth-centric.

That's the point that WoW hit around Cataclysm time. Having bars of spells your spec never uses doesn't feel right, so they started trimming out things from each spec that they'd rarely use. Sadly they took it way too far.

[Fkiolaris]

That's the point that WoW hit around Cataclysm time. Having bars of spells your spec never uses doesn't feel right, so they started trimming out things from each spec that they'd rarely use. Sadly they took it way too far.

Having abilities you don't use every single time you do battle is not a bad thing in itself, the main issue is having abilities that are in effect the same thing with a different animation and/or CD between them and nothing else to differentiate them. Oh, and set-up abilities ("hit A and then B and then C so that D does full damage, repeat for ever"). I mean, in a tab-targeting game, how many charges does a commando need? How many slashes does a jedi need? Why remove the flavour/utility and leave an endless list of what could very well be different ranks of the same spell?

[cparle87]

Having abilities you don't use every single time you do battle is not a bad thing in itself, the main issue is having abilities that are in effect the same thing with a different animation and/or CD between them and nothing else to differentiate them. Oh, and set-up abilities ("hit A and then B and then C so that D does full damage, repeat for ever"). I mean, in a tab-targeting game, how many charges does a commando need? How many slashes does a jedi need? Why remove the flavour/utility and leave an endless list of what could very well be different ranks of the same spell?

I very much enjoyed the jedi shadow assassination combat playstyle. I had no idea what I'd be doing two spells from now, with the way the slashes, rock smash, force crush, and backstab interacted with one another.

[Muajin76]

As a Sith saving the galaxy is essential. If someone else is ruling the galaxy, it means that I'm not.

*Evil should be combated by another form of evil*

[Swnem]

I returned to SWTOR a bit during WoW's quiet phase in between patches and man, there are some things that just bug me.

1. just too many skills. WoW may have pruned too much, but SWTOR needs to have a bit of an hedge trim. As a Mercenary I hardly even look at half my action bar, and the spec design, while fun enough, really seems to boil down to hitting whatever button glows, then whatever 15 sec. ability comes off cooldown, then spamming Tracer Missile. The lack of DPS meter to see how well I'm performing does not help matters. My Assassin is a hot mess of skills as well, at least that is more justified by some being stealth-centric.

2. I'm a Preferred status player that previously unlocked some things like Hide Helmet and unify colors so I don't have it so hard, but the game reminding you on every single menu screen that you could sub is a bit out of hand. At least the experience gain seems to have been fast-tracked a lot since last I played 4 years ago. Fuck the 1M credit limit and no way to do Operations however.

3. and worst, it just feels clunky to play in general. The camera doesn't zoom out far enough. Character movement and targeting feel stiff for some odd reason. Spell animations are so flashy that fights easily become a total clusterfuck when more than two players are involved and I have no idea what's happening anymore. I dunno, the gameplay is too similar to WoW, and that only highlights how inferior it is.

1. Ok, so your spec doesnt use all skills. This is the same case as fire mages having frostbolt. But everything else is something you will use in pvp at least.
Get star parse for your damage meter.

2. So stop being cheap and sub. WoW doesnt let you raid if you don't sub either.

3. This is you not being used to it. Though there are things that could be better like the target marker. Its easy to lose track of it.

[Kikazz]

I'm an OCE player, The latency is a bit annoying but easily manageable. No worse than what I played with in WoW from Vanilla->Cata

Agree its Manageable, but going from 20-30ms to 3-400ms was noticeable especially when playing voidstar and huttball, and having people on 20-30 ping while you are rocking 3-400 on a good day, just killed it for a few people.

[Katchii]

Having abilities you don't use every single time you do battle is not a bad thing in itself, the main issue is having abilities that are in effect the same thing with a different animation and/or CD between them and nothing else to differentiate them. Oh, and set-up abilities ("hit A and then B and then C so that D does full damage, repeat for ever"). I mean, in a tab-targeting game, how many charges does a commando need? How many slashes does a jedi need? Why remove the flavour/utility and leave an endless list of what could very well be different ranks of the same spell?

I actually like this gameplay, where you have to use a few abilities to set-up full damage on this other ability.

There are several abilities that simply don't get used, either at all or get used very rarely, and that needs to be looked at but the idea that you have ~5-6 abilities that are all in synergy with each other to increase overall damage output is one I honestly really like, as it makes combat more complex without making it daunting and makes it so you have things to watch and pay attention to in an encounter.

[Kathandira]

If the question is whether or not ESO has "fluid" animations then yeah it factually doesn't.

The biggest offender to that is LA Weaving and animation cancelling. Those things make your character look like it is having a seizure while fighting.

[Fkiolaris]

I actually like this gameplay, where you have to use a few abilities to set-up full damage on this other ability.

There are several abilities that simply don't get used, either at all or get used very rarely, and that needs to be looked at but the idea that you have ~5-6 abilities that are all in synergy with each other to increase overall damage output is one I honestly really like, as it makes combat more complex without making it daunting and makes it so you have things to watch and pay attention to in an encounter.

In principle I like it too, I mean I cut my MMO teeth as a feral druid back in TBC and WotLK and I enjoyed it for what it was. And of course there are different ways where you can set that playstyle up (buffs/debuffs, ability costs, CDs etc). However, there are/were (haven't played in some time) specs like Focus Jedi Knight with stupid amounts of rotational abilities that were like 3 different strands of priorities going on at the same time with different timers and CDs and 90% of them could be simply be called "slash level x". My scrapper on the other hand was playing nicely because he had stealth (and pre-Revan, cover) to spread abilities out in different "stances" in a way, while my Gunnery Commando was kind of in-between the two.

Don't get me wrong, they have already removed abilities (in 2.0 if I remember correctly) that were pretty much unused because they only served the purpose of "use this till level X where you get ability Y and then forget about it forever". I do believe though that before they touch utility/flavour abilities, they have to prioritise what are considered to be mandatory abilities for a disciplines rotation.

The biggest offender to that is LA Weaving and animation cancelling. Those things make your character look like it is having a seizure while fighting.

Agreed on that 100%

[Pony Soldier]

As long as they continue to support until I at least complete all class stories. I was on and off with this game over the past few years. I just started playing again a few days ago after not playing it for a couple years and I forgot how fun it can be. I always loved the individual storylines for each class, it's really cool how they did that.

So if I can just at least get all of them completed before they stop supporting this game, I'll be satisfied. Although it'll be a sad day whenever they turn off the servers.

[Dakhath]

6.1 launched today and it was under 10 minutes of content. If SWTOR had a budget and a bigger team, this game could be great, but thats not the world we live in.

[Edge-]

6.1 launched today and it was under 10 minutes of content. If SWTOR had a budget and a bigger team, this game could be great, but thats not the world we live in.

They did...and the game was a disaster at launch despite hundreds of staff and $300M+ in rumored development+marketing budget. This is what we have after years of poor decisions on their part cut development resources to this point.

[Dakhath]

They did...and the game was a disaster at launch despite hundreds of staff and $300M+ in rumored development+marketing budget. This is what we have after years of poor decisions on their part cut development resources to this point.

I'm aware of the history of the game, I'm talking about in the here and now. The game finally has a good director but it always seems like they're operating on a shoe string budget. Onslaught was a step in the right direction, but it was too short.

[Edge-]

I'm aware of the history of the game, I'm talking about in the here and now. The game finally has a good director but it always seems like they're operating on a shoe string budget. Onslaught was a step in the right direction, but it was too short.

Well...probably because they are.

They don't have a ton of staff available to work on the game, much of BW Austin is working on Anthem as the lead studio and other multiplayer projects (that's apparently their "multiplayer" studio). So short of staffing up considerably, there's nobody to really pull to work on the game.

Beyond that, it's aging (8 years old by now?), brings with it tons of negative baggage, and likely brings a lot of "technical debt" with it as there still seems like there are all kinds of engine-related issues with the game.

Sadly, this is the best we can likely expect moving forward. BW Austin had their chances to fix things and they blew it. F2P helped, but wasn't as big as they needed it to be and they made repeated missteps with server decisions and more that gutted their chances for real success. From there, we saw each expansion get smaller in scope (2 stories, down to a single story) and the team trying to do a lot more with less resources, including some big missteps with the Zakuul arc. KotFE was a huge financial boon for them...until it launched and pretty much faceplanted, and KotET didn't even do enough to get the game mentioned on earnings calls again (KotFE at least did).

I think its chance at greatness has long since passed. The game is just too old and brings too much baggage for that to be a realistic possibility to warrant EA making the investment.

[Katchii]

6.1 launched today and it was under 10 minutes of content. If SWTOR had a budget and a bigger team, this game could be great, but thats not the world we live in.

I thought you were exaggerating at first, then started the new missions up last night....this wasn't worth a patch, it's just walking around your base and a single conversation that alludes to actions that need to be taken...and then nothing.

They shouldn't have released any story in this patch if this was what they were going to do, release the patch with the fixes and under the hood updates, but leave out story updates until you actually have some meat to release. If I hadn't already subbed prior to this, and subbed back just to see this patch I would be furious to find out it took less time to complete the ENTIRE STORY released in this patch in less than 15 minutes with no combat or action to speak of.

[Shibito]

im enjoying the game gotten most classes to kotef but its bad onslaught is amazing tho

[Swnem]

I thought you were exaggerating at first, then started the new missions up last night....this wasn't worth a patch, it's just walking around your base and a single conversation that alludes to actions that need to be taken...and then nothing.

They shouldn't have released any story in this patch if this was what they were going to do, release the patch with the fixes and under the hood updates, but leave out story updates until you actually have some meat to release. If I hadn't already subbed prior to this, and subbed back just to see this patch I would be furious to find out it took less time to complete the ENTIRE STORY released in this patch in less than 15 minutes with no combat or action to speak of.

That is silly. We knew what it was gonna be. They were very clear it was just a story beat like Hearts and Minds. If you don't know what is coming on the patch then of course you will be disappointed.

But i won't disagree that i wish the game had a bigger team so they could make more content. But, heck, they fixed some big bugs and that really needed fixing, so i'm glad for that. This wasn't gonna be a big content patch. I predict the next one will be a new planet with a new story chapter. We have already been told it will be the Kira/Scourge story.
So, get informed guys, and you will know what to expect. Check the SWTOR forums yellow posts at least.

- - - Updated - - -

Well...probably because they are.

They don't have a ton of staff available to work on the game, much of BW Austin is working on Anthem as the lead studio and other multiplayer projects (that's apparently their "multiplayer" studio). So short of staffing up considerably, there's nobody to really pull to work on the game.

Beyond that, it's aging (8 years old by now?), brings with it tons of negative baggage, and likely brings a lot of "technical debt" with it as there still seems like there are all kinds of engine-related issues with the game.

Sadly, this is the best we can likely expect moving forward. BW Austin had their chances to fix things and they blew it. F2P helped, but wasn't as big as they needed it to be and they made repeated missteps with server decisions and more that gutted their chances for real success. From there, we saw each expansion get smaller in scope (2 stories, down to a single story) and the team trying to do a lot more with less resources, including some big missteps with the Zakuul arc. KotFE was a huge financial boon for them...until it launched and pretty much faceplanted, and KotET didn't even do enough to get the game mentioned on earnings calls again (KotFE at least did).

I think its chance at greatness has long since passed. The game is just too old and brings too much baggage for that to be a realistic possibility to warrant EA making the investment.

That is a bit of an pessimistic view.

It is true the game has been mismanaged for the longest time, but the new Producer is actually making a great job with the limited resources he has.
But it is also clear to me as someone who played before Onslaught hit that the game is growing in population. Theres hundreds of players on the fleet and in most early planets these days. I was leveling my Sage yesterday and had to go back to Tython and was impressed at how many people there were around, it was pretty cool. Hadn't seen that since launch. The fleets are always packed these days as well.

So, i think for the first time since launch, the game is growing and has an organised development team albeit a modest one. So, yes, we can't expect patches the size of WoW's or FF's, but we will keep getting stuff. They have announced already that the next patch will be the Kira/Scourge thing (probably a new planet/zone or operation/flashpoint) and they also announced they have something big planned for the 10th anniversary. We are modestly expecting another expansion with hopefully 64bit support to improve performance with new machines.
So, the game is here to stay, it's growing and EA is pleased. There is hope that more support might happen depending on how things develop. I don't think there is no hope. But, it will depend if the game continues to do really well and if Anthem continues to falter, wich is also likely.

Regardless of support though, the game is really fun to play. Love the classes so much and the gearing system is quite satisfying after the vertical progression. Legacy wide gear is a dream come true for alters and people who want to see the content on both sides and double their new story content amount. So, you know, big teams might help with making a big game (content) but not necessarily a fun one (case of WoW atm).