What ToR did right and what it failed at

[therealpeni]

While overall I like the game.To me the UI is the only nickpick I have. Having raided in WoW since level 60 back in '05 I can say DPS meters came to rule the scene if you want to know how well you and your group is doing its simple. Did you kill the boss? yes = doing something right, no = people need to work together and figure it out. the old school way.

The game will still evolve and could bring surprises overall. And for those that are like for a game released in '11 you need to remeber that the game was 6 years in the making so when I am sure they were reaching the end overall design is when phasing in wow came into play with the what you did had a impact you must remember that it is a fairly newer aspect.

nitpicking, but.
phasing was from near end tbc
http://www.wowwiki.com/Quest:Interce...the_Mana_Cells
http://www.wowwiki.com/Quest:Maintai...Sunwell_Portal

that's most defo under 4 years of development ^^,
however i think most wotlk questing was done, and thus we do see phasing quests, but their not plentifull (and gladly so, compared to cata, sadly.)

[Slanderize]

Nope. HTC Incredible, Android OS.


I agree there, but since I leveled as a healer it was nice to have something along that hit harder than me.


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?

Notice how when someone who drinks Coke says Pepsi sucks on a forum, there's not a big bunch of random people telling the original speaker that they suck, or inferring that they somehow lack common sense.

People keep saying "It will get better" and you know what? I COMPLETELY agree, however, I DISAGREE with the notion that I, or ANYBODY ELSE has to continue subscribing to said game, UNTIL it gets better.
Am I the only one that finds this common sense, or am I going to get labeled a fanboy?

[Deadmedic]

And this,the music in swtor is incredible.

the music is good, when it plays, my issue with it is that it will randomly drop out, and im left with listening to nothing, many times, i have to stop and ask myself, why the hell is it so quiet. i feel they need better non epic music, for when your on your mount from point A to point "why the fuck is it so far away."

the AH design is terrible, but to be fair, i hate the default wow UI too, i have always used auctioneer, the big problem tho is a lack of a simple search, like i dont feel its necessary to use a drop down list when all i want to look for is a specifically named thing

i actually agree with many of the issues the OP had, however, i understand they are hopefully things that will be improved on,

the bigger issue is, will enough ppl stick with the game long enough for them to fix the problems, EA is an evil evil pimp

[OhpUldum]

Am I the only one that finds this common sense, or am I going to get labeled a fanboy?

Well if anyone does all you have to do is hit that report post button and problem solved.

You are right though, it makes perfect sense to not pay a monthly fee to a game that you are not enjoying. There has been numerous times that I stopped my sub to WoW for just that same reason. Even now I have a Rift account with a couple max level toons but I wasn't enjoying the game anymore so quit my sub.

Nothing wrong with not enjoying the game and cancelling the sub. What get's people upset is when users do that then feel that they are still owed something so they come to forums like these and cause unrest. You are not one of these people, for that I personally thank you.

[Dia73ion]

Things BW needs to do.

Rethink tradeskills, professions should reward ppl who burned money and time leveling them, the current reward is trash compared to the investment.

Companions, It'd be nice to be able to choose other companions while your leveling, being stuck with a companion that has poor abilities to suit your talents, like merc(healer) stuck with a healer pet... sniper with a tank pet that can't hold aggro. Even If I could get a hireling to help me, that'd be great, I'd just perma mission/gather my main companion.

AH, it's annoying slow to search for items, crafting mats etc, and you have to do a search before you can enter a item name to get other the item your looking for. AH needs a search feature that can quickly get you what your looking for, as well as other things.

Flashpoints and group quests need a LFG system that isn't terribad, also this system needs to be able to summon players to the FP or area where the group quest is so ppl can continue questing while their in queue.

Need/Greed system blows, ppl needing on gear for that companions while ppl who could use the item lose out. Flashpoint gear should not be equipable by companions. You should not be able to Need on an item that doesn't support your character.

PvP.. more BGs, better designed not to give advantages to some classes, more tiers, currently 10-49, and 50, level 10s simply lack most of their class abilities, add even 1 more tier 10-20 would help some. bonus based on capping nodes, opening doors, and touchdowns, fix the buggy MVP system and make it mean something

Targeting. tab targetting ppl out of range or out of sight is annoying. Give options for you to select for your personally needs

I'm sure other posts can have more ideas that could help the game, and my list is short because it'd turn into a rant if I listed more

[dlouhys]

See but that's not a fair comparison. Automotive production is fairly standardized because automotive production by and large only has ONE function. Creating cars that get you from A to B. Software development is far more niched than that because software can do so many different things. Any given piece of software can have so many functions and features to it that it starts to become incredibly complex. Complexity leads to Chaos in the form of errors and bugs and so forth. Even on those terms the automotive industry still has its "patches". A couple years ago Toyota had to recall a bunch of cars because of faulty break lines. Does this mean Toyota is crap and Corollas are shit and should never be purchased?

The thing is this direction is more or less because of consumers. As the demand for more and more functionality and features increases you can clearly see that consumers are also demanding for products NOW as opposed to later. At the same time as the scale and complexity of these programs grow, the amount of investment required to complete them grows. With that we see a growing demand for a return on that investment sooner rather than later. Given all of that and adding the fact that the internet is so widespread and pervasive allowing for easy patching/service packing, its not hard to see why software is developed how it is today.

Not the greatest comparison, but one I had at the time. But you can certainly make the argument that class of cars equate on some level to genre of games. While on a different timeline, cars have seen alot of innovation and complexity added over the years via customer demand, regulation and competition. And not to derail the thread but I replaced a 2007 Corolla with a 2009 Corolla after an accident. I would imagine it is the gas pedal issue you're referring to but yes that was a major concern, things do slip through the cracks, and I was more then irked that while the press focused on the Toyota issue the press didn't provide the same coverage to the Ford, GM and Dodge recalls/warranty work that were going on in the same time frame. But I can assure you that if my 2007 Corolla had the issue with no estimate of a fix, along with dozens of other QoL issues and the explanation of "buy it and hopefully we'll get to it" it would have been the last one I bought.

Getting back on point, my goal was to highlight that in any other industry this approach would be suicide. I don't want the coolest new radio in my car if it doesn't work and I certainly don't want to pay for the cool radio but get an old crappy one and a promise of a new radio one day. I feel like there was a serious division of how these 2 examples split and went in 2 different directions years ago and the gap only continues to grow. It just baffles me that not only would people accept it, but fight to embrace it.

If you can't make it well then don't make it. If you can only deliver 50% then charge 50%.

[Glorious Leader]

Not the greatest comparison, but one I had at the time. But you can certainly make the argument that class of cars equate on some level to genre of games. While on a different timeline, cars have seen alot of innovation and complexity added over the years via customer demand, regulation and competition. And not to derail the thread but I replaced a 2007 Corolla with a 2009 Corolla after an accident. I would imagine it is the gas pedal issue you're referring to but yes that was a major concern, things do slip through the cracks, and I was more then irked that while the press focused on the Toyota issue the press didn't provide the same coverage to the Ford, GM and Dodge recalls/warranty work that were going on in the same time frame. But I can assure you that if my 2007 Corolla had the issue with no estimate of a fix, along with dozens of other QoL issues and the explanation of "buy it and hopefully we'll get to it" it would have been the last one I bought.

Getting back on point, my goal was to highlight that in any other industry this approach would be suicide. I don't want the coolest new radio in my car if it doesn't work and I certainly don't want to pay for the cool radio but get an old crappy one and a promise of a new radio one day. I feel like there was a serious division of how these 2 examples split and went in 2 different directions years ago and the gap only continues to grow. It just baffles me that not only would people accept it, but fight to embrace it.

If you can't make it well then don't make it. If you can only deliver 50% then charge 50%.

It's a bad comparison and people should really stop making it. The total investment and man hours that wen't into SWTOR are massive and the level of complexity is so far ahead of what happens in automotive production and design. That's not to denigrate or undermine the work that goes into automotive design, it's just not on the same level of computer programming. Currently I'm studying Computer Networking at the local college. They teach us a bit of scripting in Unix as a means to automate many tasks server administrators are expected to do. Last year the final assignment involved creating a script that would aggregate various web pages and parse them for specific information and then categorize them according to various criteria. Using the bash shell and VI editor I was expected to execute this "aggregator" program using various commands "Cut" "Grep" "Sed" in combination with regular expressions. The schools Linux server has a automatic check program that checks your script for errors and tells you if its okay to submit. I was stuck for quite awhile, it literally took me 2 hours to find a missing piece in my script that completely changed the expected results. Literally it was a value that I plugged in by accident. Took 2 hours to find, 2 seconds to correct. This was an incredibly simple piece of software, I cannot stress how complicated something like an MMORPG is by comparison. Actually even single player only games have so much more for consumers these days that these errors will almost always creep in. Now I also spent a year as an automotive apprentice for a local Ford shop including automotive schooling at the local college. I can tell you unequivocally in terms of complexity its nowhere near as absurd. Yes theirs alot of science that goes into automotive design but programming something like an MMORPG is such a massive undertaking that it's not even in the same ball park.

Software design is not like any other industry and comparisons to it are poor. It's not fair to apply the same standards to it because its unrealistic. It's not a fight to embrace anything, its just a simple acknowledgement that complicated software is complicated.

If you can make it well enough and patch it to be excellent in the future make it. That is the new standard. I went over the reasons why this is so. You can either attempt to rage against this and fight the windmills. Or you can accept it. Hell 4.3 had a huge LFR exploit and nobody got a particular hard on against that bug. Given that the implementation of LFR is almost exclusively based around an already existing system (the cross server dungeon finder), I find it curious in the extreme why SWTOR has to get ripped a new asshole for bugs while other games get along just fine.

[namelessone]

Speaking of music, I really can't say it's bad. Sometimes it creates the mood quite well. If anything, I'd say there isn't enough of it. I do hate the cantina music, it sounds like it came right from 80s porn flick.

[Tehfred]

Notice how when someone who drinks Coke says Pepsi sucks on a forum, there's not a big bunch of random people telling the original speaker that they suck, or inferring that they somehow lack common sense.

What forums have you been reading? You must know some mellow caffeine drinkers, because the ones I've seen are just as rabid. That was my point.

I never said people lack common sense for not enjoying the game. I think the "X should have been done in beta," or "Y feature is mandatory because Z game has it" attitude is unrealistic bullshit and far from common sense. If someone doesn't like the game, they should unsub. But like Culadin said, instigating arguments with people who are enjoying it is dumb. That is what I'm referring to. I couldn't care less if someone doesn't like the game and just quietly leaves.

[Glorious Leader]

. Everyone keeps rerolling Empire daily.

Last week. Fatman server. 100+ republic on Tython. 100+ on Coruscant. 60+ on Ord Mantell. My experience so far on Fatman has been the opposite.

[aekya]

Mod Edit ~ Remember people this is an opinion based discussion. Keep it civil and respect one another. While opinions may differ both sides want a successful game.

I have now been playing pretty much since release and here is my summary of what all ToR did right and wrong, some of this mistakes will turn out to be the arrow in ToR's knee.

Things ToR did well or better than others:

1) Story-telling: No one even comes close to ToR on this. The cinematics don't have the cheap feel like uldum and the class storylines, especially deserve accolades

2) Casting animations: Every movement feels fluid, it must have taken a lot of work to make the light saber hit single bullets and deflect them but it is very well done. Some spells etc have amazing animations as well.

3) Vehicles level progression: I think they got it spot on, the timing for the first speeder is good and then we get to go faster at 40 and 50 works well too.

4) Storage system: Well done, no complaints

5) Levelling experience: This is again a good one, mostly because of the story telling aspect.



Things where ToR failed:

1) UI : There is absolutely no excuse of making such a UI in this day and age. I ahve seen the video for the "so-called" customisation coming too. It just has one slider which makes everything on your UI smaller or bigger. What if I want my map to be big and rest small or something like that. This is what ended the game for me because BW are just behaving like control freaks. It's not a point of 'they will fix it', it's a point of how could they release such abomination of a UI, I know I am not the only one who will quit because of this.

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.

3) Lack of Macros: Again, how can this be absent from a game released in 2011 is beyond me and this yet again points to a very "control freak" attitude on BW's part. Do things as we want you to, you can not come up with any ideas yourself.

4) Environments: I am primarily comparing the environments to those in WoW. personally i would pick storms peaks over Hoth any day. Most environments just feel not so heart warming. Even alderaan looked so much more beautiful in movies, it does not give me the same feel in the game. Same goes with things like night and day and weather changes, come on BW, this is not 1990...if you want to give immersion, dialogues is not the only thing to do. make the world feel real and changing.

5) Your actions do not seem to have any impact on the world, outside of your tiny green phased room: This is a big gripe, even WoW despite it's age has been trying so that when people do something radical in game, the environment around them changes, again soemthing that one should not have to ask for in a game of this generation.

6) Things that should have never made it to live: Things like camera reset to max zoom out at random, minimap randomly zooming in all the way, Too many black dull screens (it's not that hard to slap a small portrait indicating what one is upto), companion pet mission windows popping in, no matter if you are ina boss fight or at 200HP in a fierce PvP battle (how did BW not see that no one cares what the companion came back with, when we are in combat?)

7) Auction House Design: All I can say about this is "What the F*** were they thinking". Things like this making it to live gives the game a very unfinished and rushed feel.

8) Music: WoW, Dragon Age, Skyrim...they are all better than ToR. Also, really that hard to make loop music? Many wil say 'that's what itunes is for' and thats good for you, I played WoW with WoW music because I loved the music so much, I do not see why it is blasphemy to expect a game to have good music. Music is important to many people.....I have not played WoW in ages but still sometimes I like to hook up the soundtrack and just chill out, that is quality music.




I understand that many people will disagree with a lot of my points and some will brush them off as being not a concern but these are things that many people expect from an MMO. Only making a good story and having voice actors is not enough. People want to play as they like it. Whena company starts imposing it's own wishes so hard on users from get go (such as in UI, macros etc), it feels that one is playing as the company wants them to and not in a way that we find fun.

I think BWs biggest failure was not to learn from WoW's high points. Things such as customisable UI, dual specs, raids like ulduar which have multiple kinds of environments withing one raid.
BW could also have tried to lessen the number of load screens, it is very annoying, get out of ship in a load screen, run a 4 metre corridor, load screen again.

While many will jump on my throat about giving the game time and what not, that is valid to say, however One can not deny that First Expressions go a long way. What I have listed above are not bugs, these are mostly features that deserved more attention and features that are game breaking for many people.
I was very very excited for this game and I must say if GW2 is not upto scratch either, it might just be time to leave the MMO genre all together because the companies really seem to fail to understand what their consumer wants.

In summary, it is a good concept but rather poorly executed and they game is playable and enjoyable at times but it's not a game I will fall in love with.

Heh, 1 2 3 5 6 of your bad points were also in wow.
1: UI was bad, true, not as bad but still bad, UI scaling and extra slots came after a looong time.

2: There was no competitive raiding for half a year... the bosses were bugged and it wasnt possible to do it

3: wow didnt have macros either for half a year or more

5: your actions have impact in WoW exactly... how? they have far more in swtor, also legacy system which is what is supposed to change isnt finished yet

6: bugs... all mmos have bugs... at least they arent all gamebreaking, annoying? for sure but that is it.

What it annoys me is instanced worlds, loading screens and lack of content so far, but then again WoW at release didnt have much content either

[Hoticehunter]

[B][COLOR="#008000"]
4) Storage system: Well done, no complaints

Really? The lack of auto-stacking isn't a complaint for you? Having to manually stack everything yourself instead of being able to simply right click on something is just pure awful.

---------- Post added 2012-02-03 at 10:49 PM ----------

5: your actions have impact in WoW exactly... how?

Have you played any of the Cataclysm stuff? If you quit during WotLK, I can understand this objection, but the phasing in Cata is so prevalent, I can't imagine how someone could say that. You can affect the world in WoW so much that the maps themselves change. Nothing changes in TOR. Good, evil, kill a guy, let him go, it doesn't matter. It doesn't change anything. You might get a different response in the mail after finishing a quest, but you still get a bonus reward.

[javen]

Is auto-stacking still an issue for some? It may just be a bug, since the 1.1 patch, auto-stacking has worked fine for me

[Tore]

Really? The lack of auto-stacking isn't a complaint for you? Having to manually stack everything yourself instead of being able to simply right click on something is just pure awful.

Firstly that only affected your bank not your inventory, and secondly that's been fixed for quite some time.

[Glorious Leader]

Have you played any of the Cataclysm stuff? If you quit during WotLK, I can understand this objection, but the phasing in Cata is so prevalent, I can't imagine how someone could say that. You can affect the world in WoW so much that the maps themselves change. Nothing changes in TOR. Good, evil, kill a guy, let him go, it doesn't matter. It doesn't change anything. You might get a different response in the mail after finishing a quest, but you still get a bonus reward.

Actually that's not true at all. Their's a quest on my Jedi Knight I ran across where you have the option to euthanize this guy who's been turned into a cyborg or convince him to overcome his implants and programming. If you convince him he comes to fight by your side and he helps you fight some sith dude. Theirs also been a quest where you the option to finish off this sith dude but if you don't he turns himself into the jedi master order and i suspect youl'l see him again. not sure.

[Hoticehunter]

Firstly that only affected your bank not your inventory, and secondly that's been fixed for quite some time.

I didn't sub past the first month, so... They fix that bug, but what about all the combat/raid bugs? Like the Pylon "boss" in Eternity Vault that was bugged on Hard and Nightmare modes where you have to hope it doesn't bug out halfway through the fight forcing you to reclear trash because you have to reset the instance. Or the bounty hunter+ship boss in False Emperor which seemed to bug out in a new way every day which usually ended up in the ship being unkillable and killing your group.

Glad to see they've got their priorities straight on what bugs to fix first. /sarcasm.

[dlouhys]

If you can make it well enough and patch it to be excellent in the future make it. That is the new standard. I went over the reasons why this is so. You can either attempt to rage against this and fight the windmills. Or you can accept it. Hell 4.3 had a huge LFR exploit and nobody got a particular hard on against that bug. Given that the implementation of LFR is almost exclusively based around an already existing system (the cross server dungeon finder), I find it curious in the extreme why SWTOR has to get ripped a new asshole for bugs while other games get along just fine.

If you settle down, go back over what I posted and reread it I stated it is an issue I have with the industry in general.

I posted some of the things I consider to be issues with ToR because this is a ToR thread.

[Vulcanasm]

I agree with most of your points. Three things I observed that were the most defining aspects of TOR:

1.) Bioware have some excellent writers. Most of the class quests and even a majority of world quests are well written. Unfortunately, Bioware also have some terrible writers -- starting quests for the Sith classes sound like someone gave pens to death metal kids and said "write stuff down that's REAL EVIL". But, on the whole, the writing alone makes it worth a play through.
2.) Bioware have no idea what they're doing when it comes to the multiplayer and dynamic aspects of MMORPGs. For example, there's no macro system in a game with pervasive ability bloat; and all professions except Biochem become useless the second you finish your fourth quest on Ilum.
3.) Bioware know how to make an excellent one-player game. That game is Mass Effect. The worlds, instancing, and quest design are at least half Mass Effect. They even recycled exact Mass Effect personalities ("hi Jack, uh, I mean, Kaliyo"). To put this diplomatically, "fans of this sort of thing will find it the sort of thing they like". Personally, I thought ME2 was shit, so I'm really not impressed with the bleed-over.
4.) This game was released at least three months too early. There were, and are, too many bugs for a completed product, some of which are severe enough to make a new player decide that the game simply isn't worth it. Each individual bug is minor, but there are SO many, and they add up to an untenable result.

What do I think they should improve?
1.) Don't be afraid to redesign sub-par quest lines. For example, the starting Sith quests feel like I'm in Cobra, and the Smuggler series from Chapter 1 onward is a bad joke.
2.) Macros. For fuck's sake, macros. TOR needs to steal Rift's macro system.
3.) Completely redesign some worlds. It's not that they resemble Mass Effect's sloppy seconds, it's that some planets are just profoundly bad in every way imaginable. Nar Shadda (both sides) and Taris (Sith side) are so wildly unpopular (everyone I know tried skipping them) that they should be reworked from the ground up. Quesh has no reason to exist. Belsavis needs six more flight points per faction, and half the mobs should be perma-despawned. Modify worlds that feel like isolated chunks, too -- that includes Corellia and maybe Coruscant.
4.) Make mounts cost less and allow them sooner. The epic walks aren't fun.
5.) Less tedium involved in going from point A to point B. You frequently sit out a load screen to run down a hall to wait out a load screen to run down a hall to wait out a load screen. That gets you...oh, halfway to your destination. Interactive tedium is a lot worse than a game where you click a flight point and go AFK.
6.) Completely redesign the Auction House interface from the ground up. Your criticism of it couldn't be more accurate. Ghetto-tastic garbage that bugs out frequently. Feels like they wrote it in one day.

[Glorious Leader]

I didn't sub past the first month, so... They fix that bug, but what about all the combat/raid bugs? Like the Pylon "boss" in Eternity Vault that was bugged on Hard and Nightmare modes where you have to hope it doesn't bug out halfway through the fight forcing you to reclear trash because you have to reset the instance. Or the bounty hunter+ship boss in False Emperor which seemed to bug out in a new way every day which usually ended up in the ship being unkillable and killing your group.

Glad to see they've got their priorities straight on what bugs to fix first. /sarcasm.

Actually they do. If you'd like some insight into the process it was provided recently:
http://www.swtor.com/blog/developer-...ixing-exploits

Not that I think it will change your mind one god damn bit but at the same time its an informative piece.

---------- Post added 2012-02-04 at 03:40 AM ----------

If you settle down, go back over what I posted and reread it I stated it is an issue I have with the industry in general.


I posted some of the things I consider to be issues with ToR because this is a ToR thread.

Oh I don't really care about warcraft. It's just good evidence for the case that bugs will happen in complex software. I mean they've been at this for 7 years and the implementation of LFR was more or less an extension of a model that had been working for years already. Still a massive bug occured.

[Hockeyhacker]

I like the way the story is driven, and the immersion into the story. The UI and macros and what not Ill give them some slack for a bit, but the way the AH is done is a bit ridiculous, but can be changed so hopefully it will. My only real complaint is that once you complete your story which yes I do know there are 2 more chapters being added in soon, but that point aside, is that there is nothing in the game to make you want to stick around level cap. Leveling is great and much better then WoW, but once done with the story its just "eh ok".

All in all I enjoy the game and will stay for a while doing all the stories a few times each in different ways, I just don't see myself sticking around much after completing the 8 stories 2x each since there is nothing about the game other then the story that makes it better, atleast GW2 you can impact things still once your story is done because dynamic events are not always the same every time you log on (unless you only log on right after server reboots probably).

Once GW2 comes out I see my "MMORPG time" being split 60-70% GW2 and 30-40% ToR, mainly because like I said the story is great and feels fun, but its not only its strongest point but only real point... still funner for me then WoW but don't see it as being my main MMORPG.