Does SWTOR Suck, or is it just me?

[fulle]

Hello Everyone,
So, my friends begged me to play TOR with them, and while the launch went smoothly, the graphics seem clean, and nothing feels horribly broken per say, I can't help but get the feeling that the game sucks. For me, it feels like a WoW clone that missed a lot of the important stuff in the cloning process.

Examples of missed stuff?

"Click to move"
- I can't tell you how annoyed I was that this was left out. I can surely bind NumLock to a mouse key as a work around, but "Click to move" not making it into the game was something I found immensely annoying.

No meaningful UI customization.
- Even without Mods, WoW and Guild Wars both allowed me to change a lot of things in the UI.... and TOR just doesn't. It's a real step backwards.

No macro support.

No mods.

No taking short cuts.
- If you try to stray off the beaten path, you'll soon realize you can't.

Weak character customization.
- There will eventually come a time, when you'll wonder if you're speaking, or if it's another player in your party

Poor combat responsiveness.
- you know when you get a bad mod, and nothing in your UI responds very quick and has a lot of latency. It's a feature in TOR now.

Lifeless mob and NPC spawning.
- I'm not sure how to explain this, but picture groups of 4 mobs standing next to each other, quite obviously waiting to be killed by a player character. Served up like little dishes for you. NPCs standing at static locations, that never move. Now, think of an NPC in Skyrim going about their day, moving from their home to their job location, chatting with other NPCs along the way, and returning home at night to sleep. I know that MMOs are going to have lifeless mob and NPC spawning to an extent, but for some reason in TOR it feels really jarring in how bad it is.

Class based quests
- Yeah, you're damn right I listed that as a negative. Linear class-based story quests... basically splitting up my guild so that we can't quest together? I HATE THIS. Sure, my Jedi Knight friend can tag along while I do my Consular quests. But the entire time he's probably thinking "OMG, I want to get back to doing MY quests! This sucks!" instead of "I'm happy I can get my quests done with my friend", which would be what he'd be thinking if his objectives were the same. Plus they're horribly easy and boring if done with 2 people.... leading to us not wanting to do anything but Flash Points with groups.
- TLDR, this BS ruins incentives for people to group together, and makes the game less of a social experience, which is bad.

The Classes are all awkward hybrids.
- OK, OK. Maybe not ALL the classes are hybrid abominations.... just most of them.

PvP level brackets are broken
- Yay, a level 15 can fight a level 50 and somewhat fight back!.... wait.... why are they in the same PvP bracket? I... don't understand. The 15 is still missing a LOT of core abilities.... uh. How wasn't this seen as the most idiotic thing ever?

I don't know. I really really want to like the game, and I'm sure that's not coming across at all.... but.... it just.... sucks.

Is it just me? Or are there a lot of other people out there feeling the same way?

 

[gecimen]

Now that I've been playing the game for a good amount of time I'll be writing my comments as a 6 year top tier WoW raider.

pros:
+Single player game: The single player questing is good and the story line is naturally the best I've seen in a mmo. You choices mean something deeper than alignment points. They not only bring up different dialogue options but changes the quest line too.
+Companions: They mean something. You can gear them up, chat with them time to time, send them to missions and even get in a relationship with them. They are as deep as can be in a mmo.
+Environments: Well at least for a SW fan the environments are lively and they make you feel you're in an alien world... although much less than WoW:TBC.
+Fun: Bioware has put many fun stuff to do, such as spaceships which fill the lack of housing, world bosses that are extremely fun, space combat (which is an ordinary mini game but at least noone's forcing you to play it), datacrons that reward the explorers, and more. I still expected a card mini-game like SWG did but hey, maybe later?
+Class variety: Where as most classes are copied from other games at least they are somewhat given a different flavour. I quite like the difference in how they work, although some come up to the same thing in the end. Well, still they are very open to development.
+Economy: first of all even the vendors mean something. Many sell interesting stuff that you want to browse. While the AH is clumsy, the economy is beginning to get live and it works.

-WoW Clone: We all know that WoW is based on EQ and a little on DAOC but it also brought a lot more to the genre and proved to be a much better game than both combined. SWTOR takes all it has from this successful pack and brings almost nothing new. I can't keep myself from comparing the 7 y/o game to this because SWtor had everything to inspire from out there, unlike WoW did. Noone can deny it's Space WoW and I'd at least expect it to be up to the same quality standarts.
-Graphics: I know it's bioware's default to make incompetitive graphics but this is a 1/3 billion dollar project and it's supposed to satisfy the user. It doesn't as of now, but of course it's no big deal improving it tenfold.
-Character customization: .... doesn't exist. Races are nothing but head cosmetics on a human body. With a lot of examples out there such as WoW, LotRO, WHO that defines what a race should be, SWTOR shows it's rushed. And I can't even expect this to be fixed in the future.
-Involvement of companions: I expected your companions to talk a lot more. They only give you points in non-class quests and rarely talk in the rest. I think even some basic tag lines such as "hell yeah" or "I've got a bad feeling about this" coming from them would render them a lot more valuable to carry around.
-Combat responsiveness: When compared to vanilla WoW, swtor is much less responsive in combat. You rarely feel the results of your actions, no effects or sounds indicate the dot you've put on a mob or a crit dmg you deal on your opponent or even you've finished casting a 2 sec spell. Yes there are small visual effects but they are almost invisible. I would even expect alerts that tell you an important cooldown or debuff is ending. The only useful effect is the laugh that your smuggler does whenever he gets a random UH buff.
-Talent tree: ... is obsolete. Even WoW is trying to get rid of it and I can't agree more on how boring it is. I don't want to spend my 10 hour play reward on a talent that reduces cast time of X by 0.2 seconds (and is a must have). If you don't have anything exciting to give me, than don't bother.

 

[themanwiththeplan]

Well for those still on the ropes about getting it at this point, most if not all the complaints have been delt with (Such as combat delays, character scaleing, pvp adjustments, and etc.) 😉 They do patches and updates frequently, and are alway listening to the community. Personally if you feel like the social aspect is drawn out from it, that is totally on you. Heroics Q and Operations totally force you to find parties, and . . . . . SOCIALIZE. One pro tip is to look into "Vent," join a guild or make one, then enjoy the social spoils of a planned out pvp match. The personal stories are interesting, especially if you at least like Star Wars. There is no real reason to have someone help you with it, so just do the side quest with a friend. The biggest drawback I have seen is that pvp dominates this whole game. The best armor and weapons come from it! I love pvp but not everybody does. What they should of done is have Godly PvE gear and godly PvP gear seperate but equal for their purpose. But like I said patches and weekly shutdowns for maintenance are always happening. Their is tons to talk about, but I hope I have helped. If you do purchase this game, feel free to check out the guild PURGATORY in the PERLEMIAN TRADE ROUTE Server. My personal name is "Atalas." As of now 103 members strong, 10 plus lvl 50 characters, and we fight FOR THE REPUBLIC! Oh and a little side note, please, please, please play at least to lvl 20 to really get a feel for everything it has to offer. 😛

 

[Ziovolos]

Hello Everyone,
So, my friends begged me to play TOR with them, and while the launch went smoothly, the graphics seem clean, and nothing feels horribly broken per say, I can't help but get the feeling that the game sucks. For me, it feels like a WoW clone that missed a lot of the important stuff in the cloning process.

Examples of missed stuff?

"Click to move"
- I can't tell you how annoyed I was that this was left out. I can surely bind NumLock to a mouse key as a work around, but "Click to move" not making it into the game was something I found immensely annoying.

No meaningful UI customization.
- Even without Mods, WoW and Guild Wars both allowed me to change a lot of things in the UI.... and TOR just doesn't. It's a real step backwards.

No macro support.

No mods.

No taking short cuts.
- If you try to stray off the beaten path, you'll soon realize you can't.

Weak character customization.
- There will eventually come a time, when you'll wonder if you're speaking, or if it's another player in your party

Poor combat responsiveness.
- you know when you get a bad mod, and nothing in your UI responds very quick and has a lot of latency. It's a feature in TOR now.

Lifeless mob and NPC spawning.
- I'm not sure how to explain this, but picture groups of 4 mobs standing next to each other, quite obviously waiting to be killed by a player character. Served up like little dishes for you. NPCs standing at static locations, that never move. Now, think of an NPC in Skyrim going about their day, moving from their home to their job location, chatting with other NPCs along the way, and returning home at night to sleep. I know that MMOs are going to have lifeless mob and NPC spawning to an extent, but for some reason in TOR it feels really jarring in how bad it is.

Class based quests
- Yeah, you're damn right I listed that as a negative. Linear class-based story quests... basically splitting up my guild so that we can't quest together? I HATE THIS. Sure, my Jedi Knight friend can tag along while I do my Consular quests. But the entire time he's probably thinking "OMG, I want to get back to doing MY quests! This sucks!" instead of "I'm happy I can get my quests done with my friend", which would be what he'd be thinking if his objectives were the same. Plus they're horribly easy and boring if done with 2 people.... leading to us not wanting to do anything but Flash Points with groups.
- TLDR, this BS ruins incentives for people to group together, and makes the game less of a social experience, which is bad.

The Classes are all awkward hybrids.
- OK, OK. Maybe not ALL the classes are hybrid abominations.... just most of them.

PvP level brackets are broken
- Yay, a level 15 can fight a level 50 and somewhat fight back!.... wait.... why are they in the same PvP bracket? I... don't understand. The 15 is still missing a LOT of core abilities.... uh. How wasn't this seen as the most idiotic thing ever?

I don't know. I really really want to like the game, and I'm sure that's not coming across at all.... but.... it just.... sucks.

Is it just me? Or are there a lot of other people out there feeling the same way?

I'm at level25 and I must say SWTOR missed the mark. How could they not take the best that mmo's have to offer and leap frog everyone. The whole experience is frustrating, non-intuitive and just plan disappointing. No matter how good your product is if the end user is not the focus it will flop. I speak as a Senior Software Design Engineer with more years designing then I would like to admit to.

The GUI one size fits all approach is immature as with the Action House, Quests; on that point to run you around the map shows no thought went into the layout of the game and it looks like the quests are cut and paste. Seems the point was the graphs hmmm, some of it is nice but overall not that impressive.

My brother, who is a full time gamer, says give it time; I say WTF this game sucks someone chimed in and said STWOR is a WOW killer I had to laugh at the thought that a brain dead kid who knows nothing about anything repeats what other have said just to say it. When I ask him what makes SWTOR a WOW killer he mumbled something and shuffled off.

So unless you want to spend your money on a non-finished game I would pass on SWTOR and look into another game that has better everything. Maybe in a year or two it will be the game everyone thought it would be.

 

[Jprobes]

So unless you want to spend your money on a non-finished game I would pass on SWTOR and look into another game that has better everything. Maybe in a year or two it will be the game everyone thought it would be.

The why don't you suggest a game that has better everything instead of implying that such a thing exists.

As someone who has played WoW from day 1, I have yet to find that game.

And anything non MMO doesn't count.

 

[Darkithanime]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/5323-Star-Wars-The-Old-Republic


i think this is a great summary of it XD

 

[tzko]

I don't get people that complain about SWTOR being a WOW clone and then go on pointing out differences. The problem with MMo is that WOW set the standard and most opinions in this tread and beyond compare everything with wow, even without mentioning it.

I like to think BW tried something different when it comes to questing and the dialogues. You have actually a main story that takes you through several planets and keeps interesting all the time since you get presented choices on how to deal with some situations (usually light/dark issues). Next to that you get your average gather or kill x y times. Not much special there but then again the same goes for wow the first years.

It bothers me that people compare SWTOR to WOW. There is a huge difference. The argument that SWTOR should start from where wow is now is impossible. As pointed out before does BW not have the experience when it comes to MMO's. And yes they started with a big budget but that does not compare to what wow has generated over its lifetime. Its easy to imagine that wow has more resources to spend then BW. BW had a big budget to develop something it had not much experience in while wow has a vast player base which generates a monthly income. I believe that the trick in suceeding as MMO is to start well, attrack as much players as possible and then use that income to keep developing your product.

What is BW good at then? Storytelling and you can say what you want but that BW has brought and improved upon if one compares it to wow. Only the fact that you can have a dialogue with other party members participating and each one having a chance to reply makes it more MMO then clicking accept asap to keep moving.

Btw the companions are a nice thing to do because they do the crafting for you and not in a way that you can get it all done for you while you sit in the fleet and chat with your friends. Professions are, so far as i tried them, what you want to expect from them. You get decent recipes as syntweaver, often better then quest rewards. Add the reverse engineering (recycling the items you made in an attempt to discover a better version of it, take it from green to blue to purple) to it and you'r set.

Yes of course some thing could have been better and should have been there. meaning macros and add ons but arent those the things that cause wow to be plagued by bots? Maybe its BW way to evaluate the game as without and with to sort out how to handle bots when they appear? Lots to speculate about

Speaking of speculations. There is most likely none of us that knows BW or Blizzards strategy when it come to games. So all we can do about what is going to happen to the game we currently play is speculation.

I am one of those that like to judge a game on its own. its fun and easy to compare it to others but its not always fair, its too easy to find better elsewhere (greener grass on the otherside). Also do we tend to forget negative experiences we had with other games in the past. Many servers crashed frequently after wow started for exemple.

My opinion is that, like any MMO, the game is always in developement and as long as BW says they are working on improvement we are good. Give the game a fair chance and you will be impressed. Just don't expect it to do the same as another game and then call it a clone of it anyway.

I'll exploring the galaxy and storylines.

Live long and prosper! 😉

 

[aviconus]

After grinding in the game for 4 months + Beta, I have hit the wall. With 3 lvl 50's, I just cant bring myself to really play it any more. Was fun for a while, but became grindy at times, doing the same quests that you did on that last char. Yes the Sith stories were GREAT, but the Operative/Bounty Hunter stories are BOOOORING. Also have a 40 Jedi Knight, same crap as the sith just with a goody 2 shoes story. If you are bored of Wow, and cant wait till D3 or GW2, then try it out. It will amuse you until those are atleast released. Good Luck.

 

[surihtanil]

Read story wars novels, and graphic novels. I love the movies etc. but I have SWTOR and I think its lacking something... Its just very cookie cutter, and seems like nothing new has been added to it over WoW other than voiced storyline. I thought SWTOR was going to be perfect, but I was wrong.

 

[rglaredo]

Hello Everyone,
So, my friends begged me to play TOR with them, and while the launch went smoothly, the graphics seem clean, and nothing feels horribly broken per say, I can't help but get the feeling that the game sucks. For me, it feels like a WoW clone that missed a lot of the important stuff in the cloning process.

Examples of missed stuff?

"Click to move"
- I can't tell you how annoyed I was that this was left out. I can surely bind NumLock to a mouse key as a work around, but "Click to move" not making it into the game was something I found immensely annoying.

No meaningful UI customization.
- Even without Mods, WoW and Guild Wars both allowed me to change a lot of things in the UI.... and TOR just doesn't. It's a real step backwards.

No macro support.

No mods.

No taking short cuts.
- If you try to stray off the beaten path, you'll soon realize you can't.

Weak character customization.
- There will eventually come a time, when you'll wonder if you're speaking, or if it's another player in your party

Poor combat responsiveness.
- you know when you get a bad mod, and nothing in your UI responds very quick and has a lot of latency. It's a feature in TOR now.

Lifeless mob and NPC spawning.
- I'm not sure how to explain this, but picture groups of 4 mobs standing next to each other, quite obviously waiting to be killed by a player character. Served up like little dishes for you. NPCs standing at static locations, that never move. Now, think of an NPC in Skyrim going about their day, moving from their home to their job location, chatting with other NPCs along the way, and returning home at night to sleep. I know that MMOs are going to have lifeless mob and NPC spawning to an extent, but for some reason in TOR it feels really jarring in how bad it is.

Class based quests
- Yeah, you're damn right I listed that as a negative. Linear class-based story quests... basically splitting up my guild so that we can't quest together? I HATE THIS. Sure, my Jedi Knight friend can tag along while I do my Consular quests. But the entire time he's probably thinking "OMG, I want to get back to doing MY quests! This sucks!" instead of "I'm happy I can get my quests done with my friend", which would be what he'd be thinking if his objectives were the same. Plus they're horribly easy and boring if done with 2 people.... leading to us not wanting to do anything but Flash Points with groups.
- TLDR, this BS ruins incentives for people to group together, and makes the game less of a social experience, which is bad.

The Classes are all awkward hybrids.
- OK, OK. Maybe not ALL the classes are hybrid abominations.... just most of them.

PvP level brackets are broken
- Yay, a level 15 can fight a level 50 and somewhat fight back!.... wait.... why are they in the same PvP bracket? I... don't understand. The 15 is still missing a LOT of core abilities.... uh. How wasn't this seen as the most idiotic thing ever?

I don't know. I really really want to like the game, and I'm sure that's not coming across at all.... but.... it just.... sucks.

Is it just me? Or are there a lot of other people out there feeling the same way?

it does not suck if you like the sw universe. Its better than last sw fiasco from sony. I love the non macro thing keeps 1 button smashers out but some classes are just that lol ..my only thing against this game ...does not have mages and warlocks/necro class lol ...but then again why would they its not that kind of a game...i would love the game more but i like mages and necro/lock classes more so ...im back to rift ...WoW just got boring after 6 years ..no panda will bring me back there lol ...

 

[Guest]

Okay lets address your points....

UI customization can now be changed...

No mods, the games been out not that long and already you were hunting around for mods?! Mods take time you know, the game wouldnt come released with mods already made. Wait a bit and mods will come out.

Taking shortcuts?! Why would you want to... the idea of the game is to get a good idea of star wars lore and its a follow up 300 Years after the KoToR games. Play them and you would enjoy this game more.

Weak character customization?! Jesus man have you not been playing this game often, there are hundreds of MODABLE!!!! items in which you can use. Giving each character a unique look, this is probably the most customizable game you can get? There are so many option to give your character. Even creation of your character there are hundreds of options to choose from.

Poor combat responsivness?! I've been playing the game since it came out and have never come across this issue? My ui works fine everything activates when I click it or push a button. You must just have slow clicking abilities.

Lifeless mob spawning... of course lets compare an MMO to skyrim seems fair? of course its not its better to have mobs spawn in one location when you have to kill them, rather than hunting down 30 people who are wondering all over the map, this saves time.

Class quests that give each character an exclusive story adding to the lore of star wars and making the game so much more interesting, of course the game sucks because they put some effort into making it more enjoyable.

Classes are all hybrids? Ever since playing I've noticed that you can't hybrid... Tanks work as Tanks Dps is Dps healer is healer? You always go down one path. You can't be a very decent hybrid.

PvP is fixed there are now brackets and it's all fair.

Lets be perfectly honest of course lets compare it to WoW cause who wouldn't I mean a game thats been out for at least the best part of 10 Years and lets compare it to a game thats just come out, But of course I'm dead sure that WoW was perfect as soon as it came out? Wrong its had Years of improvement, expansions and lots of work done on it. If you were to compare this to WoW when wow had just come out this game would be far superior.

 

[jaymz2012]

I'll tell you one reason SWTOR Sucks, customer service.

Let's face it, to keep customer's coming back you need two things:
A good product at a fair price.
Customer Service that is unmatched (just look at Best Buy)

SWTOR delivers on the first point but, in my experience, stops EXCEEDINGLY short on the second. Let me explain why.

I have submitted several requests to their support mailboxes and most the time I get a canned answer, which is fine....if it actually answers the question. For example, I was having issues with my game time card and had to submit two tickets before getting a response back saying to reset my password. I coudln't help but laugh. So that meant a third email was sent.....then a fourth.....finally someone responds, three days later.

Long-story-short, I bought the "wrong" game card. I bought an EA Cash Card and needed to buy an EA Origins Card. Seriously? Even though the EA Cash Card says in big print on the front - good for subscriptions??

I find this ridiculous, how am I to know that that is not the correct game card!? Their website for the game is http://swtor.com, the user account page is https://account.swtor.com/user/account. Nothing with an "EA Origin" in it. Even the subscription page where you type in your game card says nothing about an "EA Origin" game card.

They told me to return the card back to the retailer, but I have already technically "cashed" it in. I have the money sitting in my EA Wallet, but since I only played (notice past tense) SWOTR, it is effectively worthless. EA could of made this right in so many ways but chose not to.

I will not be going back to SWTOR and will seriouly consider not playing any future EA MMO games.

Customer Service, it is what keeps customer's happy and coming back or sends them running to a competitor.

 

[fulle]

@Anonymous

You actually LIKE being on rails, and thought that the static mob spawns were convenient?!

*deep breath*

OK, I'll still give my best shot at responding to your points...

- You are correct that more UI customization was added in patch 1.2
- You are incorrect that it's a matter of waiting for mods to arrive. BW has taken a stance against mods in SWTOR.
- The bracket issue was fixed, but was a ridiculous joke that shouldn't have ever happened.
- Character model tweaking is limited in character creation. Mod-able equipment allows for players to have more choices on what the character is wearing. End result means your doppelganger might have a different outfit on.
- For the Hybrid comment, I was saying that, for example, a Seer Sage didn't feel like a pure healing class to me, but more of a hybrid class, with CC, DPS, and Healing, with an emphasis in healing. I wasn't suggesting that people should allocate points across multiple trees. Whether or not the classes "feel hybrid" to you, and whether or not that's even bad thing, is heavily weighted in opinion.
- I gave reasons why I hate class quests. If you liked them enough to have that override those reasons, I can only assume that you really, quite badly, wanted a sequel to KotOR. Thing is, I wanted an MMORPG.
- Comparing the existing status of a game with the past status of a game is... a weak argument.

 

[fulle]

Best answer selected by fulle.
n
nJust picked someone with a different opinion who put effort into their answer

 

[JBADS]

It sucks, i found myself getting stressed. not enjoying myself at all. Seemed more like work than fun, worst Bioware game to date.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey