# SWTOR Beta



## Kzach (Nov 27, 2011)

Meh.

Honestly, there's really not much more to say about it. This thing WILL crash and burn because it's seriously terrible. Hardcore SW fans might keep it going for a year or two, but that's about as far as I see it going before becoming another F2P POS.

MMO makers really need to learn from Blizzard's example by KISS. They've gone and tried to make it a CRPG using MMO methodology and the end result sucks both as a CRPG and an MMO.

Oh well, I hear Secret World is being released March next year so not too long to wait for a decent MMO.


----------



## MarkB (Nov 27, 2011)

I'm enjoying the beta a great deal so far. The bounty hunter start-up storyline was a bit uninspiring, but the Sith Inquisitor one has been highly entertaining. Multiplayer is a little thin on the ground, but when there've been group quests it's been fairly painless to find groups for them.

Until I play it to higher levels (I've only just got the player starship and thus easy travel between worlds), it's hard to say how it'll stack up as a community game, but I'll definitely enjoy playing through the storylines.


----------



## Kzach (Nov 28, 2011)

MarkB said:


> I'm enjoying the beta a great deal so far.




Your expectations must be extremely low. The entire game lacks polish, from the clunky menus to the ill-conceived powers, horrible GUI & unintuitive levelling/class system. The gameplay reminds me of cheap knock-off games from fifteen years ago and the graphics aren't much better. The combination of mouse targeting, keyboard turning, and power usage is just pure awful, as is the 'cover' system.

The only thing that explains why they've taken so incredibly long to develop this game is that it was obviously done by committee with no real leadership, vision or cohesive overview and control over the various elements of the design. It's pretty obvious that this is a mishmash of square pegs forced into a round hole in order to complete a jigsaw puzzle that although it vaguely resembles he picture on the box, is like a low resolution, digital version of an analogue picture.

I'm not surprised though, given everything I've heard about the development of it and all the excuses and delays. It's sad that things like Star Trek and Star Wars and other big names can never get any GOOD development in games because of all the politics and BS that goes on behind the scenes. I think it's telling when games like Mass Effect, of which I'm a HUGE fan, come from the same developers and one is super awesome and the other is pure crap on a stick. Game producers should just stick to their own licenses.


----------



## MarkB (Nov 28, 2011)

Kzach said:


> Your expectations must be extremely low. The entire game lacks polish, from the clunky menus to the ill-conceived powers, horrible GUI & unintuitive levelling/class system. The gameplay reminds me of cheap knock-off games from fifteen years ago and the graphics aren't much better. The combination of mouse targeting, keyboard turning, and power usage is just pure awful, as is the 'cover' system.




Have you played MMOs before? Because all this, with the possible exception of the Cover system which I haven't tried yet, comes straight out of the tried-and-tested MMO playbook, and felt perfectly intuitive to me after playing games like WoW and Lord of the Rings Online.



> I'm not surprised though, given everything I've heard about the development of it and all the excuses and delays. It's sad that things like Star Trek and Star Wars and other big names can never get any GOOD development in games because of all the politics and BS that goes on behind the scenes.




I can only assume you also believe that games like the X-Wing series or the Jedi Knight series or Knights of the Old Republic aren't good games. In which case, I'm not surprised you've been disappointed - your expectations must be somewhere in the stratosphere.


----------



## cignus_pfaccari (Nov 28, 2011)

I got into this weekend's beta testing, figured I'd give it a try while it was free.  I got my Jedi Consular up to 12 and my Sith Warrior up to 4.  So, not terribly far up, but I got the Consular up to his advanced class, and went Shadow with that.

I wasn't terribly impressed, for two reasons.

First, it's way more of a CRPG than an MMO.  The conversational options don't really seem to change the overall outcome much, as far as I can tell, except when there's the VERY CLEARLY MARKED Light Side/Dark Side option.  As a result, the cutscenes seem endlessly talky with no real point to them, other than as a way to artificially extend playtime.  Note:  I freely admit that I'm not, and never have been, a CRPG player.  As such, I'm really not the target market for this.

Second, I just couldn't buy into the setting.  It just doesn't seem to possibly matter.  The Sith Empire will eventually implode of its own accord, and nothing my character can do will affect that either way.  I honestly think it was a mistake to place it in the Old Republic time period because of this.  After the original trilogy would've been better, in my opinion; that way, you don't necessarily know what's going to happen, because everything after the original trilogy is up in the air (Lucasfilm could easily ignore the entire EU if they wanted).  But I suspect Galaxies might've poisoned that well.


Gameplay (i.e. the non-talky cutscene bits) reminded me strongly of WoW in space.  I still find it odd to hit someone over the head with a lightsaber and not have that kill them*.  I also find it blatantly bizarre that not only does a force-user start with a glowy LED stick, but everyone else in the galaxy seems to have one.  You could win most of your fights just flailing about with your lightsaber.  

It was quite satisfying, as the consular, to pick things up and hurl them at the enemy, though the graphics on that really should take into account where you are.  It's vastly unlikely there's a deactivated droid underfoot a third of the time.  I also found it irritating that you're forced to play a pet class.  Granted, you could probably dismiss them, but I suspect a lot of your class's combat power is wrapped up in the companion.

* - Certainly, they did fall over pretty quickly once I could Backstab, er, "Shadow Strike" them.  Which pretty much required my companion to tank for me.  Yay.


I think it'll do okay, but I don't think it's going to kill WoW.  Hopefully it'll stay a while and serve as competition, and encourage Blizzard to improve WoW.  I certainly don't plan on spending any money on TOR, though.

Brad


----------



## Kzach (Nov 28, 2011)

MarkB said:


> Have you played MMOs before?



Seven or so over the last ten or so years.



MarkB said:


> Because all this, with the possible exception of the Cover system which I haven't tried yet, comes straight out of the tried-and-tested MMO playbook, and felt perfectly intuitive to me after playing games like WoW and Lord of the Rings Online.



So because it's all been done before I should like it and think it's good enough?

The 'tried-and-tested MMO playbook' sucks. The things that this game does differently, it doesn't do well. And the things that it mimics, it doesn't do well either.



MarkB said:


> I can only assume you also believe that games like the X-Wing series or the Jedi Knight series or Knights of the Old Republic aren't good games.



KotOR is one of my favourite games. However, it's also over eight years old and despite this, the gameplay in it is better than that in SWTOR.



MarkB said:


> In which case, I'm not surprised you've been disappointed - your expectations must be somewhere in the stratosphere.



My expectations are in line with a game that was announced almost four years ago, requires modern hardware to run, and has been developed by Bioware. It doesn't meet any of those expectations.

I get that you're a fan, but rose-coloured glasses won't help you win this discussion.


----------



## Umbran (Nov 28, 2011)

Kzach said:


> I get that you're a fan, but rose-coloured glasses won't help you win this discussion.





And being abrasive isn't going to serve you for long in it, either. 

I get it that you don't like the game.  But that doesn't give you license to abuse people who do.  Say what you want about the game, but we expect you to be respectful to other posters.


----------



## MarkB (Nov 28, 2011)

To be fair, I wasn't at my most diplomatic either. I should know better than to post at 3am at the end of an extensive beta-testing weekend - and I probably would have, if it hadn't been 3am at the end of an extensive beta testing weekend.

I think a lot of people were expecting this game to be something it's not, based purely on the name of the production company, and ignoring the information that's actually been released about it.

Having read what the producers wrote about it, and seen the developer videos and gameplay videos, it was obvious for some time that they were building a Star Wars themed WoW clone with enhanced storytelling.

I went into the beta test expecting to play a Star Wars themed WoW clone with enhanced storytelling, and I played a Star Wars themed WoW clone with enhanced storytelling - and I enjoyed doing so. I expect to continue to enjoy it when it's released.


----------



## Raunalyn (Dec 1, 2011)

I actually enjoyed it. Yes, it's not completely ready yet, but what I played was nicely polished. It still has bugs, but those were easily overlooked because I was genuinely enjoying my experience. 

The cover system is a little bit wonky. I was expecting it to provide some sort of protection, but it just makes you a better target. It's similar to the stealth mechanic in WoW in that you can't use some of your more interesting abilities unless you're under cover. Plus, the cover command is slightly delayed. I played a smuggler for a while; the story was good.

I really enjoyed the Sith Warrior. The story is excellent, and the mechanics are well done.

The Jedi Consular was also entertaining, particularly when you got to use Force Persuade in conversation. "These are not the droids you are looking for."

There were several features that I thought were pretty cool. The party system for group quests is different, particularly when you are having conversations with NPCs in group. Each party member can choose their conversation option, and they get a random roll. Whoever rolls highest get's to talk, but everyone gets a social reward for participating. This could make for some interesting situations if others in your party don't have the same motivations as you.

It is easy to compare this game to WoW, but I don't necessarily think that's a completely bad thing. The story feels more personal, to me, than WoW's does. Less generic. The voice acting is very good. It feels more like a CRPG than an MMO at most times, and that is something I liked. Sort of a KOTOR 3.

In my opinion, this is not going to be the WoW killer that everyone thought it would be. It's not a bad game, though. I will probably buy it and subscribe.


----------



## JRRNeiklot (Dec 3, 2011)

I played the beta as well, so I thought I'd chime in with my thoughts.  I really liked playing through the class story line.  Play the same class and go down a different advanced class tree and you'll be replaying the same quests minus the AC line which is what - 10% of the quests?  Even playing a different class altogether will only be somewhat different until you get out of the starting area.  It will keep the story whores entertained for 6 months or so, until they've seen the story unfold from a couple different perspectives.  After that, the story is done and it will have to live or die as a standard mmo.  
     The combat is identical to WoW sans autoattack, so anyone looking for something different is not gonna find it in combat.  The graphics are acceptable, a tad better than WoW, nowhere near the quality of Rift.  If you're a graphics whore, you won't like TOR.  
     My biggest beef, though, is the emptyness of the world and the linearity of the game.  I walked through Drommund Kaas and it's empty.  There are a handful of npcs standing around, but unless they're there to hand out a quest, they just stand there mutely.  They never move a pixel.  They should be vibrant, pathing about and speaking.  In WoW, merely clicking on an npc at least gets you a vocal response.  It's odd that a game where the major selling point is the voice acting neglected to voice anything outside the cutscenes.
     The story is very linear.  Go here, do this, then that, kill 10 pigs while you're there.  Return.  Go somewhere else, repeat.  You are led from one linear quest zone to the next.  No choice in the matter at all.  Why can't I go to another zone?  Sure, I might get my ass handed to me, but that should be my choice.  Hell, I ran a level 20 something all over Outland in WoW doing the Midsummer Fire quests.  It wasn't easy, I died MANY times, but I did it.  In TOR, I can't even see another zone until I finish with the prior one.

That said, I really enjoyed playing through the story lines.  The one Flashpoint I did was AMAZING.  I didn't like losing the roll to talk so that the ending came out different than I would have chosen, though.  I think TOR will ultimately be a (very hot) flash in the pan.  It will be great for 6 months or a year then slowly trickle off as people return to WoW or whatever mmo they were playing before.  It's sad, really.  This game had such promise.  And it's not like it shipped with a bad engine, it shipped with a ton of tiny little cosmetical failures.  But these add up to being a pain.  It's like buying a new Corvette that runs great, handles well, and is comfortable enough to sleep in, yet the left blinker doesn't work, the lights won't dim, the horn doesn't work, the power window on the passengers side will only roll down, the radio plays only static, etc.  It will still get you where you're going and looks great, but it will annoy the piss out of you during the drive.  A lot of the flaws can be patched in, and I hope they do so, but some of it will require too much effort and cost.  They are not gonna hire voice actors just to voice a couple lines for npc vendors and peasants.  
     I preordered, and I don't regret it.  I'll play it for a few months, but I fear I'll be back to Rift in no time.  And Rift's voice acting is so horrible, I'd RATHER there be none.   I wish some company would take a risk and not copy WoW.  A WoW clone with a couple new things is never going to dethrone WoW.  Why would I leave a game I like to play the same game reskinned and start over with a new guild, leaving all the friends I've made behind?   It will take a different experience altogether to make me want to do that.  I'm playing Rift now, and I think it's superior to WoW in almost all aspects (voice acting, story writing blows), but I'm sure I'll return to WoW at some point just to hang out with my friends.  

Tl;dr - SWTOR is worth playing, but has little end game appeal, and too WoW-like to leave WOW for longterm.


----------



## Kzach (Dec 3, 2011)

I really don't understand how people are saying the gameplay is very WoW-like. To me, there are similarities for sure, but that's going to happen simply due to the restrictions of creating a real-time gaming environment.

Criticise WoW all you like, but in the end, the gameplay experience is very smooth and mostly fairly intuitive, ie. you can guess most of the strategies and combinations. Sure, it's simplistic, but sometimes simplistic is better than complex if complex results in a cruddy experience. And that's what I feel SWTOR's system is TRYING to be, ie. complex, and yet it comes off as just clumsy and ill-conceived with odd combinations that don't really do anything other than give you variety and a new button to push.

But JRR, I think, has hit the nail on the head in terms of defining how the game has inconveniently divided the CRPG and MMO elements without blending them into a coherent whole that will give a unique gaming experience. Personally I'd rather play a dedicated CRPG or a dedicated MMO than the resultant mess that SWTOR turned into.


----------



## TwistedBishop (Dec 4, 2011)

JRRNeiklot said:


> The story is very linear.  Go here, do this, then that, kill 10 pigs while you're there.  Return.  Go somewhere else, repeat.  You are led from one linear quest zone to the next.  No choice in the matter at all.  Why can't I go to another zone?  Sure, I might get my ass handed to me, but that should be my choice.





You can go anywhere you like once you get your ship.


----------

