Poll: Starwars: the old republic! zero story spoilers, please.

[archvile93]

The problem I've had with most MMOs is that grinding is treated as it's own reward. In SWTOR, grinding is like training so you can continue your story and see your Inquisitor microwave some more fools with lightning.

The voiced characters definitely improve immersion since the voice acting is actually quite good. When I started WoW, I read everything the quest giver "said" but there was still no interaction. Eventually they devolved from people to exclamation marks that made me do stuff for a reward. Honestly, I can say that, after playing the open beta weekends, I might actually want to spend money on this, even every month.

Combat. Well, it's an mmo, but at least it looks cool and normally involves more than you and one other thing which you are killing. Companion AI is actually quite good and you can normally just leave them to their own devices, beyond the occasional stand around and do nothing glitch.

Graphically, it's pretty despite having low reqs. The only problem I've had is slow loading textures, but that's a minor annoyance to me. The frame rate didn't chug unless I was in a large instance. Lag was nearly non existent for my.

The stories, at least the ones I've played, are quite intriguing and make me want to play more than just seeing the exp bar crawl across the screen.

Not interested even slightly interested. I already have little interest in MMO, which is only further discouraged by having to continue paying for a game I already paid for. I also heard it plays pretty much like WoW, which has, IMO, one of the most boring and uninteractive combat systems I can think of. Having voiced characters doesn't change everything else.

You could have signed up for the beta testing and let the game try to prove itself to you. Go into it as pessimistic as you want, but at least give it a shot. They'll probably let people have trial weeks or something after launch.

Or I could continue to purchase games that don't charge me for the privilage to keep having them, just so they can offer me the experience of beeing PKd for having the thought of going somewhere not instanced. Let's face it, what else are the other players for? Also I just can't enjoy uninteractive combat that's more about how you build your character than how well you can actually play. It's why I never enjoyed games like Baldur's Gate, Plansecape, Dragon's Age, or KOTOR and I'm not the kind of person who can enjoy a game for its story no matter how mind numbing or just plain shitty the actual game part of the game is. To be honest I think the combat of traditional RPGs worked so well with WoW is because it's more of a social experience than a game. Very uninteractive combat allows you to type to friends and beat up monsters at the same time. I just don't see TOR offering me anything I have any interest in and would cost me far more than the games I already know I like. I notice how even you seem to admit that the mindless grinding isn't even fun, it's just something you have to do so you can see the rest of the story. If that's the case, then it would be far cheaper of me to watch the cutscenes on Youtube, which comes with the added bonus of not having to slog through the uninteresting gameplay to see it.

 

[Whispering Cynic]

Actually yeah. I did pretty much everything solo. (except 1 flashpoint, but those are fun as hell.)

You cant avoid seeing other people. When you go through the open world of course theres tons of ppl running around, but it doesn't really ruint he experience at all. For starters, when you enter a conversation with an npc, its a private conversation. Almost like a cinematic. You dont even see other players when talking to an npc (plus the voice acting is good.) Every class has its own story. And thus, there are aras designated for you. you walk into a building where you say get a quest and it sais "entering story area ______ " and its just you. I spent more time with the story than anything else, and they definitly felt like kotor, and can be done completely solo. Halelluja. And also, the story is freakin long. I did a runthrough with a vanilla jedi knight and put over 24 hours on him.....and the story never really got dull (minus a few bossfights that required me to level up to stand a chance)and i didn't even put a dent in it. Hell, after 24 I only had just gotten 3 of the companions, and barely had time to explore my ship.

Thanks for elaboration, this is the kind of information I was looking for. It certainly looks interesting and I'll be getting it as soon as it turns free-to-play. This way I'll have more than enough time to see how the whole game turns out before commiting to anything.

 

[Nimcha]

Thanks for elaboration, this is the kind of information I was looking for. It certainly looks interesting and I'll be getting it as soon as it turns free-to-play.

Why are people thinking this will be the case? It's not gonna happen anytime soon. Only if it tanks, at which point it's not worth playing anymore anyway.

It just seems like so many people here don't understand what an MMO is exactly...

 

[babinro]

The beta was fantastic...almost makes me want to give in to my hatred for subscription based gaming.

I won't be getting it day one...far too many great games to keep me busy and there's the possible Diablo 3 release in January. TOR will have to wait until the gaming lull comes up around April 2012 if I get it at all.

 

[Digitaldreamer7]

I didn't expect this game to be a wow killer, but, it's really just WoW With a KOTR skin and cinematics instead of quest text. The #1 thing they could have done to make this better would have been to remove the auto-attack and let you mash mouse buttons to attack other then specials. A combo system with basic "white hits" would have put this over the top. It wouldn't change the amount of damage done by the white hits, but, it would break the "11121112114114" over and over again monotony. Something along the lines of the jedi knight games.

Jedi are pretty cool, generic, but cool. The Sith are just over the top idiots. They try to hard to be assholes, which breaks any sort of immersion I had. The dialogue was cheesy and tedious. The cutscenes were cool... the first couple of times, after that i was begging for quest text. Cutting them back to only big events in story etc would have been better.

Don't get me wrong, the "wow formula" works but this game is something new, yet brings nothing new to the table. It didn't even copy all the good stuff from other MMO's. It doesn't give me a reason to play it when I've invested time elsewhere in games similar to it that have been polished and improved. This game feels like it was built for the die hard KOTR and SWG fans. Not a carrot on a stick, not anything to make me interested in the story or the game, not any newer or repackaged game mechanics that draw me in, nothing.

Unless they completely re-skin everything, the graphics engine alone dates this game right out of the gate. The graphics are terrible. The art style they are using is very very unforgiving with the engine they are using. WoW has aged gracefully because of the art style they use. Everything looks great even though it's 7 years old. It really feels like the just expanded the base code of the original KOTR. They look almost exactly the same.

TLR - It's a mediocre MMO with bad graphics. Which, is pretty much all free to play MMO's except that they want money for this. I wouldn't pay for it, but, if ti goes free to play ill check it out when they patch it.

 

[Tilted_Logic]

The #1 thing they could have done to make this better would have been to remove the auto-attack and let you mash mouse buttons to attack other then specials. A combo system with basic "white hits" would have put this over the top. It wouldn't change the amount of damage done by the white hits, but, it would break the "11121112114114" over and over again monotony. Something along the lines of the jedi knight games.

I was in the middle of typing a confused response when what you're saying finally clicked. So you'd prefer something like how AoC did it? Where every ability had a key combo attached to it? 'w s s d w a' sort of thing, but with the mouse instead?

Unless I'm completely missunderstanding, wouldn't that just be 'M1 M2 M2 M2 M1 M1' instead of '11121112114114'? I'm not seeing a strong difference, aside from the fact you'd be unable to make use of your mouse during that time to change the view etc. Granted though I haven't played the jedi knight games, so I might not be understanding you correctly.

Although, there is no auto-attack in SWTOR, so that's half of it I guess?

 

[Kingsnake661]

Hehe. I was raving about the beta to a friend, and have talked about it to alot of different people, and almost everyone says it's good, but it's just like WoW. That seems to be the common responce. Its fun, but it's just like WoW. But you see, that ISN'T a problem for ME... i've NEVER played WoW. So it's all new to me. I'm PUMPED. I'm accually feeling alittle withdraw today, what with not getting to play... and i'd JUST finished Phase I of my Sith Warrior. LOVED it. Taking some vacation time during the headstart and going to go crazy. LOL.

 

[Grygor]

The #1 thing they could have done to make this better would have been to remove the auto-attack and let you mash mouse buttons to attack other then specials. A combo system with basic "white hits" would have put this over the top. It wouldn't change the amount of damage done by the white hits, but, it would break the "11121112114114" over and over again monotony. Something along the lines of the jedi knight games.

I'm not really sure what you're talking about here; SWTOR doesn't have auto-attack. The closest thing to is is the basic "free" attack (costs no energy/ammo/force, generates no heat, or generates focus/rage, depending on class), but even that attack has to be manually triggered. (If you right-click on an enemy, this free attack will fire exactly once.)

Don't get me wrong, the "wow formula" works but this game is something new, yet brings nothing new to the table. It didn't even copy all the good stuff from other MMO's. It doesn't give me a reason to play it when I've invested time elsewhere in games similar to it that have been polished and improved. This game feels like it was built for the die hard KOTR and SWG fans. Not a carrot on a stick, not anything to make me interested in the story or the game, not any newer or repackaged game mechanics that draw me in, nothing.

I don't know about "all the good stuff", but it certainly borrowed a lot, and improved some of it. The companions are like FFXI's Adventuring Fellows, except actually useful. Guild formation is borrowed from games like Champions Online - form a full party of founding members and talk to the registrar - rather than WoW's "sign my guild charter" nonsense. The medical probe (one of the available options when a character dies) is akin to Rift's soul walk. Quick Travel (equivalent to WoW's hearthstone among other things) can take you to any activated bind spot on the current planet, rather than just the last point you bound yourself to.

I'm not sure that fans of SWG in particular will find it to their liking, since many of them are more specifically fans of Raph Koster's original design for the game, which is frankly not reflected in any mainstream MMO to my knowledge - it probably appeals more to fans of Star Wars in general.

I can also see some appeal to disillusioned WoW fans. In some ways, the gameplay reminded me of WoW back when I still really enjoyed it (the BC-WotLK era) - so I can certainly see players who didn't like the changes that came with Cata or the ones coming with MoP jumping ship to SWTOR.

Unless they completely re-skin everything, the graphics engine alone dates this game right out of the gate. The graphics are terrible. The art style they are using is very very unforgiving with the engine they are using. WoW has aged gracefully because of the art style they use. Everything looks great even though it's 7 years old. It really feels like the just expanded the base code of the original KOTR. They look almost exactly the same.

Different strokes for different folks. I had no problem with the graphics.

As far as WoW goes, while it may be "aging gracefully", it has never really looked "great" - not necessarily bad, but by no means great. The design of the skinning system (where most gear slots are just a texture slapped onto the character model) means that a lot of gear is ridiculously skin-tight (apparently strapping on a steel breastplate magically compresses my ribcage and internal organs) and short capes don't animate properly (because all capes use the same model, just with varying amounts of transparent texels). The animation is lackluster at best (it's always bugged me that the mounted pose is literally a static pose), as are the visual and audio effects, so most abilities aren't really all that satisfying to use beyond making large yellow numbers pop up on-screen.

To say nothing of WoW's many copy-pasted buildings, many of which don't even have unique set dressing to differentiate them...

 

[Digitaldreamer7]

The #1 thing they could have done to make this better would have been to remove the auto-attack and let you mash mouse buttons to attack other then specials. A combo system with basic "white hits" would have put this over the top. It wouldn't change the amount of damage done by the white hits, but, it would break the "11121112114114" over and over again monotony. Something along the lines of the jedi knight games.

I was in the middle of typing a confused response when what you're saying finally clicked. So you'd prefer something like how AoC did it? Where every ability had a key combo attached to it? 'w s s d w a' sort of thing, but with the mouse instead?

Unless I'm completely missunderstanding, wouldn't that just be 'M1 M2 M2 M2 M1 M1' instead of '11121112114114'? I'm not seeing a strong difference, aside from the fact you'd be unable to make use of your mouse during that time to change the view etc. Granted though I haven't played the jedi knight games, so I might not be understanding you correctly.

Although, there is no auto-attack in SWTOR, so that's half of it I guess?

Like how they did combat in Star Wars: Jedi Knight, yes it's a lot of M1 M2, but, it would have had numerous animations that could be attached, timing the mouse clicks could perform different attacks and mouse click+ability could lead to a cool animation or feel. It's nothing wildly different. Just more of an involved version of auto-attack. Something slightly different from other MMO's to give it a better feel.

 

[2xDouble]

I wasn't getting my hopes up, but I was definitely excited to play the Beta this past weekend. I was bored within two hours, even playing with RL friends, but I powered through the starter zones because I'd heard so many people say "it gets better later"...

Spoiler

It didn't.

 

[The Lugz]

Different strokes for different folks. I had no problem with the graphics.

As far as WoW goes, while it may be "aging gracefully", it has never really looked "great" - not necessarily bad, but by no means great. The design of the skinning system (where most gear slots are just a texture slapped onto the character model) means that a lot of gear is ridiculously skin-tight (apparently strapping on a steel breastplate magically compresses my ribcage and internal organs) and short capes don't animate properly (because all capes use the same model, just with varying amounts of transparent texels). The animation is lackluster at best (it's always bugged me that the mounted pose is literally a static pose), as are the visual and audio effects, so most abilities aren't really all that satisfying to use beyond making large yellow numbers pop up on-screen.

To say nothing of WoW's many copy-pasted buildings, many of which don't even have unique set dressing to differentiate them...

this!

when i first went in to swtor, i found the graphics terrible... then i turned them up and i thought.. really? that it?
( i'd just been playing skyrim, so i was a little spoilt i guess )
then as i levelled and explored i found more clutter, plants, buildings ect so i think the first area really acclimates you, your pc and the obvious crush of people to the game without causing a ton of fps drop, it definitely got better when i left the starting worlds but
it's certainly not cutting edge, even for an mmo
i really found myself acclimating to it though it felt right after 50-60 hours ( yes, i stayed up all weekend.. )

i think my favourite feature sofar is that i can go on space missions and pewpewpew when i get bored of questing

I wasn't getting my hopes up, but I was definitely excited to play the Beta this past weekend. I was bored within two hours, even playing with RL friends, but I powered through the starter zones because I'd heard so many people say "it gets better later"...

like i say, i don't think it actually changes, just they definitely add more clutter and stuff and you get used to it slowly

 

[Ashadow700]

I would love, LOVE, to play SWTOR, but... well, Origin.

you don't need origin to play SWTOR. just buy DVD edition and play without program.

Really? But don't you have to be connected to the Origin-servers in order to play online? If not, that that would be great =D

 

[The Lugz]

I would love, LOVE, to play SWTOR, but... well, Origin.

what about it? this is a bioware game ea are only supplying the dosh it does not require origin in the slightest,
if it did i wouldn't be pre-ordering it, buying it or supporting it in any way

trust me if that little piece of junk ever appears on my system i'll go ape on ea, i emailed them personally and told them to keep their poorly coded piece of spyware / malware off my pc or i would pursue legal action against them
also, i'm not joking. fyi

( they emailed me they'd auto updated my ea account to an origin account. )

#Edit#

also, you can get the game on-line without origin too, it is not downloaded through origin
it has no connection to origin whatsoever.

 

[Saltyk]

The only thing I'm worried about is that a lot of people seemingly have no clue what an MMO is about and are just playing as if it was a singleplayer game. Now on the lower levels there's not much wrong with that and there's probably going to be more than enough players interested in instances and group quests etc.

But I hope the game eases everyone into group play at higher levels. Endgame needs to be impossible to do solo. And needs to be focused on doing it with friends/your guild. I quit WoW because that game went the way of the antisocial Puggers, and I really don't want to see that happen again.

I did most of the game solo. Mostly because I wasn't playing with anyone else (that will change in the future), but anytime I saw an extra strong elite or something, I would look for another player and ask if they wanted to team up to take the foe down. Especially if it was part of a bonus mission and usually they were happy to do so.

I'm really happy that TOR doesn't use PUGs. Having to actually look for people makes for better groups. Every group I had was generally friendly and would crack jokes and such. All in all a really good experience.

One thing I'm curious about is how necessary will dedicated healers be. Most of the gameplay I saw showed healers being able to actually fight so I'm curious if a DPS with healing abilities (like a Jedi Sage) would be able to handle healing.

 

[croc3629]

The game looks like it may be enjoyable, but I'm holding out for Guild Wars 2 at the moment.

 

[The Lugz]

One thing I'm curious about is how necessary will dedicated healers be. Most of the gameplay I saw showed healers being able to actually fight so I'm curious if a DPS with healing abilities (like a Jedi Sage) would be able to handle healing.

i did this on my sorcerer pretty easily, now granted it was low level and there's usually allot of freedom at lower levels so you can adjust to your class but i think standard groups will definitely be able to be healed by dps-off-healers as-long as they aren't stupid and unreasonable about it ( which honestly most people are ) bioware just aren't going to make dps-off-healers the only thing to play because it would destroy pvp
( everyone would heal, no one would die, it would be dumb )

 

[Saltyk]

One thing I'm curious about is how necessary will dedicated healers be. Most of the gameplay I saw showed healers being able to actually fight so I'm curious if a DPS with healing abilities (like a Jedi Sage) would be able to handle healing.

i did this on my sorcerer pretty easily, now granted it was low level and there's usually allot of freedom at lower levels so you can adjust to your class but i think standard groups will definitely be able to be healed by dps-off-healers as-long as they aren't stupid and unreasonable about it ( which honestly most people are ) bioware just aren't going to make dps-off-healers the only thing to play because it would destroy pvp
( everyone would heal, no one would die, it would be dumb )

I brought it up because among my group I plan to be a Juggernaut (Sith Warrior) and most of the others plan to be DPS (Bounty Hunter, Sorcerer-Sith Inquisitor, Sniper-Imperial Agent). Now, if I'm gonna tank, I'm worried about my survival if no one is a dedicated healer. With that group, I think I might be able to get a couple of them to throw some minor healing my way to keep me alive, though, since all three classes have some healing abilities. I just hope that it is enough.

 

[The Lugz]

I brought it up because among my group I plan to be a Juggernaut (Sith Warrior) and most of the others plan to be DPS (Bounty Hunter, Sorcerer-Sith Inquisitor, Sniper-Imperial Agent). Now, if I'm gonna tank, I'm worried about my survival if no one is a dedicated healer. With that group, I think I might be able to get a couple of them to throw some minor healing my way to keep me alive, though, since all three classes have some healing abilities. I just hope that it is enough.

if your inquisitor is specced right and an experienced player( force talents, reduced cast time, or even a point in instant heal - it isn't really that far up the tree ) he could do it by himself reasonably

with 3 supports? even if they only use minor amounts of healing you should be totally fine

 

[Nimcha]

I'm really happy that TOR doesn't use PUGs. Having to actually look for people makes for better groups. Every group I had was generally friendly and would crack jokes and such. All in all a really good experience.

That's because it's all new. Wait until the game is a few months old and you'll be scolded for not knowing your class inside out.

It seems to be the trend these days anyway.