Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

[Mr Bean]

The Bioware forums are utter shit for the most part because Bioware has zero community guys, the people actually posting are devs which is always a mistake in an mmo.

Are you serious? That's fucking hilarious. EA/BW can't pay some guys $5.75 an hour to check forum posts or get some fanboys to do it for free?

There are forum moderators but they don't speak except to note when they edit/delete/oppress posts. There's a community guy but no community team.

Remember this is Biowares first MMO and they only hired certain types of people from pre-existing games. They should have hired some Funcom people who worked on Anarchy Online, people payed to be helpful, nice and happy despite giving PR speeches for a game that had more game stopping bugs than the other three mmo's at the time combined (Dark Age, Ashrons call and of course Everquest)

[TheFeniX]

Remember this is Biowares first MMO and they only hired certain types of people from pre-existing games.

EA has a shit-load of experience in how to fuck up forum/Internet backlash. They learned this the hard way with the BF2 release and it's shitty coding leading to server-side memory leaks (known about before release) and going back on their promise to give server side cvars for weapon/class unlocks. They had to know these issues would cause the backlash they did in a sequel to a massively popular FPS. And I'm seeing the exact same non-reaction from the SWTOR forum as I did from EA/Dice: deny deny deny, delete/lock threads, blame the players and their hardware.

Even if they didn't bother thinking of that, you would assume they'd hire some guys out of their multi-million dollar budget to look at the WoW clusterfuck during cata, especially with all the Alliance player backlash after the "lol faggot alliance should die" video at their own convention. The way Blizzard handled that was abysmal and developers/publishers should be learning from that, not blaming players for killing Ilum instead of the engine and concept being shit.

It's really just another line in a long list of amateur mistakes they've made. Really, if the PR team had half the competence of their viral marketing team, they probably wouldn't be in this mess.

They should have hired some Funcom people who worked on Anarchy Online, people payed to be helpful, nice and happy despite giving PR speeches for a game that had more game stopping bugs than the other three mmo's at the time combined (Dark Age, Ashrons call and of course Everquest)

Pretty much anything they did would be better than how they've been handling this trainwreck. It's fucking 2012 and you have a game that doesn't look all that much better than Jedi Academy and BW claims to be waiting on "technology" to give SWTOR features other games in and out of the MMO genre have had for the better part of a decade.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Playing around with some of the new stuff.

War Hero Guardian armor = hahahahahahaha. Oh, man. At least now you can properly mod up better-looking orange gear.
My fucking Champion saber isn't updated to be moddable, which irks me. At least the Battlemaster saber is, as soon as I save up the 30 gajillion WZ comms needed.

I like the Legacy system stuff a lot, and I've been waiting for it (im)patiently. That said, I'm a little disappointed in some of the family tree options. I had this vague notion of this character being that character's great uncle who was this other character's distant cousin, or somesuch. It only allows for a rather limited range of direct relationships, however. Everyone has to be directly connected, which sucks. I guess everyone in my family is a GREAT HERO, and there are no brothers, aunts, cousins, or red-headed stepchildren who just never really made the grade as a galactic hero.

Guardian is even more of a chore to play, but at least it's offset by the buffs it got. So I don't know how I feel. On one hand, I do more damage and have more survivability, and on the other hand I have yet another ability (an extremely Focus-intensive one, no less) to manage. I played a round of PvP to get my bearings and I felt like a drunken paraplegic bashing my forehead against the keyboard. Half my shit was off CD because I can't even remember that I have that many abilities to use.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

It's fucking 2012 and you have a game that doesn't look all that much better than Jedi Academy

I must contest this point.

JA had lightsabers.

SWTOR has glow-sticks.

It really is kind of sad, even KOTOR had decent lightsaber effects which are perplexingly absent in TOR. There's no fanning effect at all (apart from cheap imitation in the form of special attack weapon trails), and very little perspective shenanigans.

[Lagmonster]

Just picked it up, hamming it up as a Sith on a PVE server because I'm just getting my feet wet and don't know dick about supporting a team in MMO gameplay. Frankly, any criticism I find about the game itself becomes immediately squashed when I realize that I'm killing things with a lightsaber. It's surprising to learn that one falls into the category of "doesn't give a fuck about mechanics, plot, or graphics as long as it appeals to my inner child", but I think that comes from being old enough to HAVE an inner child.

[PREDATOR490]

The combat in this game is woefully shit to the point of absurdity in calling it equal to the JK series... that game had a better lightsaber fight feel with trail effects and people getting limbs cut off.
TOR just feels like your using baseball bats that light up. Hence Why I have yet to play one of those melee characters.

Update is going slowly and I little expectations of what this new content will be.

I would have expected more interesting legacy stuff like Shared storage and being able to remote manage your other characters companions and possibly transfer between characters.
The inherited abilities seem interesting... I already have a max Jedi Sage and Sith Sorc with a Bounty Hunter and two Imperial Agents in the works.
The Operative was kinda fun but I find the Assassin is going to be hilariously more effective at the Stealth game.

Kinda sucks balls the Agent has a decent story but seems woefully lacking in both ACs.
Bounty Hunter has a piss poor story but seems to have a fairly decent AC selection.

Personnally, I would have found it amusing for the inherited Agent ability to be the Stealth Generator and the Trooper Stealth Detection.
However... I suppose a flamethrower and nut kick are at least something.

[TheFeniX]

Guardian is even more of a chore to play, but at least it's offset by the buffs it got. So I don't know how I feel. On one hand, I do more damage and have more survivability, and on the other hand I have yet another ability (an extremely Focus-intensive one, no less) to manage. I played a round of PvP to get my bearings and I felt like a drunken paraplegic bashing my forehead against the keyboard. Half my shit was off CD because I can't even remember that I have that many abilities to use.

Oh yea, that "focused defense" bullshit? I had 20 fucking binds to manage to be effective in PvE and PvP. I didn't want any more. Guardians really need macros. I can think of a bunch that would clean loads off my toolbar, but forum kids and the devs just talk shit about anyone who requests them on the forum as "elitists." God, just a macro like "if friendly /cast Guardian Leap ; if enemy /cast force leap" would make my life so much easier.

And that still does nothing to help the perception that Guardians are weak PvE tanks compared to Vanguards.

It really is kind of sad, even KOTOR had decent lightsaber effects which are perplexingly absent in TOR. There's no fanning effect at all (apart from cheap imitation in the form of special attack weapon trails), and very little perspective shenanigans.

I've considered loading up JA (I bought it again off Steam for shits and grins) and editing a SWTOR UI into some screenshots (and/or possibly the same with KOTOR1/2) and posting them on the official forums for a laugh, but I am pretty lazy.....

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

lol, fail patch is fail

So they brought the servers up this morning... and half of 1.2 was missing. Guild banks, Corellia, Legacy stuff, you name it. So I guess they're bringing the servers back down now, presumably to unfuck everything.

[TheFeniX]

I loaded the game up again last night (I forgot, I still have 5 days left on my sub) just to mess around.

I do like that you can now edit the UI. I ended up stacking one of my sidebars to create a 3 tier setup in the bottom middle of my screen. They really need a "lock to grind" option.

I didn't load up my main because I wanted to avoid my raid team thinking I'm coming back. I ended up playing my Vanguard a bit. Everything still feels about the same. My issue is the way they "fixed" Mortar Volley. Same Animation, same trajectory on the volley, but it fixes 6 shots extremely rapidly now and it's look fucking dumb. The way to projectiles acted before was bad (they would follow an arc, then immediately cut a 90 to hit the placeable target). Now the idiocy of the design is very noticeable.

[Steve]

You know, when it comes to the lightsaber effects issue.... TOR isn't a single player RPG game. It's an MMO, with potential stuff like 40 Jedi and Sith hacking at each other in Ilum PvP. That would be a lot of lightsaber effects to render simultaneously.

Honestly I don't get the sheer negativity in this thread. It seems to me that people here are letting their demands for perfection keep them from enjoying the game. I know I'm having a lot of fun with it. I've mostly enjoyed the stories (save Chapter 3 of the Jedi Consular one) I've seen on Republic side (haven't really played Imp side yet because, well... I freaking hate the Empire) and had a lot of fun, especially with my Jedi Sentinel. Do need to continue my Scoundrel sometime, he's technically my main and I've been enjoying the Smug storyline a lot.

[TheFeniX]

You know, when it comes to the lightsaber effects issue.... TOR isn't a single player RPG game. It's an MMO, with potential stuff like 40 Jedi and Sith hacking at each other in Ilum PvP. That would be a lot of lightsaber effects to render simultaneously.

I would expect some slow-down if the game looked better and had more detailed textures, whatever. But the fact of the matter is: it doesn't. And the game doesn't have "issue" with 40 player combat. The game fucking dies when that happens. The game has "issues" when there's an 8vs8 going on in the middle of Huttball. Star Trek online has loads more particle effects, better textures (in space at least), and has no issue with large battles on my PC at max-everything. Man, even as old/ugly as WoW is, SWTOR gear/character textures aren't any better.

Honestly I don't get the sheer negativity in this thread. It seems to me that people here are letting their demands for perfection keep them from enjoying the game.

Wanting a game to work isn't demanding perfection. It's wanting a game I paid money for to do what's advertised on the tin: fucking work. I've been in this since the open beta. I've watched abilities not fire constantly, atrocious ability delay, and my computer wanting to die just running around Taris. I've watched BW constantly remove high-end settings from the game because they don't work right or blow your computer up. I could go on and I understand no game this large at release is going to be free of bugs. But these are major issues with the core of the game and they've known about them for over a year before the open beta.

Next time you log in, turn on auto-run. Then hit B (or whatever opens your inventory) fairly fast and watch your computer shit it's FPS into oblivion. And have you ever noticed on Ilum how your entire computer locks up for a second every time an objective updates? How the fuck does shit like this get past QA considering the developer and the development time?

Then we have shit like:

The scope of this update is much larger than our first update and is probably one of the largest free updates ever released for a MMORPG.

Hey, guys! Free update, over 18,000 words! So what if we're adding in functionality that most other MMOs have at launch ("Interface customization, Guild banks") or fixing shitty design implementations ("Galactic Trade improvements"), it's "free!"

The sad fucking part about it all? I'd still be playing this game, all that shit aside, if my buddies hadn't had to quit for different reasons (school, moving, etc) and our server population didn't fluctuate so much.

Sidenote:

One day you will get to live out your Wedge Antilles, General Veers or Sebulba fantasies.

It's like he's taunting us.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Oh don't get me wrong, for the most part I enjoy the game. I just have some issues with its endgame and aesthetics, a few of which are mitigated by 1.2 (if 1.2 isn't half missing, anyway).

I loaded the game up again last night (I forgot, I still have 5 days left on my sub) just to mess around.

Plus 30 days. If you've got a 50, you get a free month.

[jegs2]

Still enjoying the game, but mostly because it's the only Star Wars RPG-style game my wife and I can play cooperatively. If it fails and goes FTP, no skin off my nose, and we'll save $30 a month.

[TheFeniX]

If it fails and goes FTP, no skin off my nose, and we'll save $30 a month.

Even with all the "Doom and Gloom,™" I doubt SWTOR will fail. I could be wrong, but there's too much weight behind it and at least the endgame is existent (unlike Star Trek Online). And I'm just not seeing the game ever going F2P, especially since SWG never did. I personally feel, and offer nothing to back it up, is that the game is just going to spend a good amount of time fighting to correct issues, rather than working on actual good/new content. Kaon was pretty cool as an instance, it was also cool when I played it years ago as an FPS.

Anyways, This is all the new gear put side-by-side. First off, I've noticed gear seems to really be modelled on the Type 4 (I think, whatever the BEEEEEFCAKE!body-type I picked was) body type to make it look decent. The smaller types make the gear look like tight fitting spandex. Certain armor should be bulky, even if your character is skinny.

That said, this gear is just horrifying looking with the possible exception of the Trooper PvE set, but it still looks more like clothes than armor. Have any of these designers even seen a Star Wars movie? Have they ever seen how clothes are worn or how armor is supposed to fit? The sage once again really got the shit end of the stick, though I must say it perfectly balances "ugly" with "bland."

The conspiracy theorist in me is still screaming "they're rubbing stamping this shit so they can focus on fixing the game/finish content they cut." And that's my problem: we're getting shit content while they try and fix a broken game.

[Mr Bean]

I disagree with you there, it's clear from the forum interactions, the Guild Summit that they simply hired half their gear designers away from from some Korea fantasy MMO and it's bloody obvious how totally fantasy inspire the armor sets look. The end game armor simply does not look right and they know it but for whatever reason they won't fire the designers and get some real sci-fi artists in there. What good sets they make they always ruin by adding one extra element.

Example look at the Inquisitor gear
Now imagine it without the giant bits of metal sticking off the legs and gauntlet
Looks a lot better right?

The rest of the armor (Except the one trooper set) suffers from the giant protrusions which don't look cool or make sense. Whoever designed those armor sets must have used to work under Rob Liefeld. I know it's not Rob himself... not enough pouches but the giant shitty looking armor designs make perfect sense in the 90's comic book hero visual style they have going.

[TheFeniX]

The end game armor simply does not look right and they know it but for whatever reason they won't fire the designers and get some real sci-fi artists in there. What good sets they make they always ruin by adding one extra element.

We could write a book on who they should fire though. The PvP team, the PvE balance team, whoever decided a prepubescent girl on Coruscant should have F-sized breasts, an ass that won't quit, and skin so porcelain it's actually shiny. That quest is the stuff of nightmares. Like I said, my inner wacko believes there's so much white-noise, they don't even know where to begin to start producing quality content.

Example look at the Inquisitor gear
Now imagine it without the giant bits of metal sticking off the legs and gauntlet
Looks a lot better right?

Yea, if you're a Rogue in WoW or Rift. I get your point though.

The rest of the armor (Except the one trooper set) suffers from the giant protrusions which don't look cool or make sense. Whoever designed those armor sets must have used to work under Rob Liefeld. I know it's not Rob himself... not enough pouches but the giant shitty looking armor designs make perfect sense in the 90's comic book hero visual style they have going.

We already made that joke about our Trooper when we were leveling. He ended up with a chest piece with 4 large pouches, two of which I thought were actually subwoofers, and a belt that was just a ring of ammo pouches.

But you may be on to something. Some guy posted pics on the official forums a while back showing the profile of the male character model sans gear. Combining that with some the the hilarious hourglass female models, this shit may all be the brain-child of Mr. People have 4 billion teeth in their mouth.

[White Haven]

I am a Sith Assassin. I have butt-sails. That is all.

[PREDATOR490]

You will easily spend the better half of your entire leveling system hunting for orange items that look decent. The Light armor wears get it easy if they go the social armor route.
Everyone else is effectively screwed unless you scrounge really hard. Fortunatly, the Empire has at least one decent looking Red armor set which when combined can make a close approximation of the Imperial Red Guard.

[White Haven]

Only if you're particularly dumb, as far as endgame goes. You'll spend time and/or money trying to get crit-crafted oranges, but found oranges are effectively pointless now, as are actual drop gear pieces.

[TheFeniX]

Only if you're particularly dumb, as far as endgame goes. You'll spend time and/or money trying to get crit-crafted oranges, but found oranges are effectively pointless now, as are actual drop gear pieces.

He's talking looks, you're talking stats/gear progression. Anyways, you're both right. All the gear my synthweaver could craft was balls ugly, but augment slots will likely be king in any kind of endgame situation.

Really, just put in a costume system and it solves everyone's issues.

[PREDATOR490]

The augement system has been screwed up with the change to slicing anyway so getting augments is harder and finding them for the low to mid levels is not worth the effort. Went out and used my characters to craft augmented armor and guns only to have little to put in the augment slot.

That said, kinda funny that my characters are going to literally end up using the same level 10 augmented orange piece of shit from start to endgame. Get yourself a Cybertech + Armormech and Armstech and your effectively set for life as three alts can cross share the same scavenging resources.

Costume slots was suggested ages ago but Bioware seem intent to not listen despite it keep being brought up. They even have the basic idea with the appearance slot for your companions so fuck knows why they dont go the really lazy route and just add a slot players can use to get a complete set visual. All those social armors could be condensed into a single appearance item and everyone could use it.
Instead social and legacy vendor oranges are worthless with the addition of the augmenting and restrictions.

[Knife]

Yeah, two weeks off line and I'm back. I like what they did with the hangars and star ports, can use my scooter now. The round a bout at carrack is nice too. New war zone is fun. Maybe I'm not as cynical as some of you, though I still don't have a lvl capped toon.

[TheFeniX]

Tuagrim did a pretty good write-up of what the issues with 1.2 are and also pointed out the good stuff. I really don't know a lot about the guy, but his write-up is pretty spot on my issues with the patch, even though I've played very little.

My main problem of note:

Since November and up through 1.1.5, I have stated that SWTOR had the best class balance of the major MMORPGs. Of course, the balance was not perfect, but I thought BioWare was taking the wise approach from 1.0->1.1.5 of incrementally making class changes to improve balance.

Some classes needed retuning, but for the most part BW got the class balance system down once they hit Operatives with two good nerfs. Shadow Tanks were to good in PvP and Marauders had way to much burst, consistent damage, survivability, and mobility. But both were easily dealt with in a team environment. But rather than tuning balance, they went the Blizzard route and just went big on changes. I was there when Frost DKs got creamed in 4.2, it really wasn't necessary. They just needed to give us a reason to not spam Death Strike.

Now they've messed with the DPS numbers, giving an increase on expertise which is higher than the defense portion. And they also reduced healer output..... so.... yea.

Yeah, two weeks off line and I'm back. I like what they did with the hangars and star ports, can use my scooter now. The round a bout at carrack is nice too. New war zone is fun. Maybe I'm not as cynical as some of you, though I still don't have a lvl capped toon.

This game is pretty damn fun from 1-49, even with all the engine issues. Even the warzones are a blast if you can avoid the twink wannabe 45+ level players. The player balance really showed when gear was taken out of the equation. On the PvE end, there's loads of content to level with, way more than you need to actually hit 50.

The problem is endgame isn't really all that it was cracked up to be. None of the raid boss fights feel all that awesome with the exception of Soa and that fight has been buggy since the beta (they "fix" it and just keep creating new bugs). On the PvP front, the grind once you hit 50 is brutal unless you're on the zerg faction on your server and the server also happens to have a healthy population. And they totally killed Ilum and forced everyone into WZ queues.

If you like having multiple characters, then this game will give you months of enjoyment.

[jegs2]

Still playing, though my server (Fort Garnik) is mostly a ghost town now. Actually works out fine, since I really just wanted to play cooperatively with my wife. Darn shame there aren't other Star Wars RPGs out there that allow cooperative play without the MMO monthly price tag.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

I just want to say that the Imperial Agent story is freakin' awesome. It's actually pretty fun to reroll a new character in this MMO.