Pre-release thread discussion

[Rokal]

As I already noted on the landmark 400th page, I really didn't see why I would be paying a subscription to this. I also don't see the box price being worth it either because I see them having a retention problem and major price drops, free trials and/or Pay to Crush coming to this very soon in it's lifespan.

The storylines are very cool, and I can see playing through them, and the cut-scenes are cool, but I really don't like the solo along together feel it had, or the limited enjoyment and set path the storyline would bring. I am an explorer who wants to just wander around, not be led by every single thing I do.

"Wait for a price drop" is the impression I came away from the game with as well. Let's say they do a good job with the Bioware story, so NPC/companion interactions and your class story are all pretty entertaining from 1-50. What is the benefit to playing this game at release instead of a few months later? Other MMOs focus more on group gameplay, and playing on release gives you a better chance of catching the 'wave' that your friends or a good guild will ride. SWTOR treads much more closely to the model of other single-player Bioware games, where you'll get the same story experience if you wait for the inevitable (and in the case of an MMO with retention problems - rapid) price drop.

EA isn't a stranger to lowering the cost of games shortly after release. Battlefield 3 just came out and was $30 from quite a few places (including Origin) this past weekend. Dragon Age 2 and Dead Space 2 came out less than a year ago, have both been on sale for $5-10 recently, and EA doesn't even have the option of getting monthly subscription revenue from those games. Rift saw pretty fast price drops, and that was a fairly successful MMO with a much more obvious retention model.

Waiting will give me the same story experience for significantly less money, and I won't have to worry about server load problems slowing down combat or creating an obnoxious amount of competition for quest objectives. The UI may also see some improvements by then. I might actually have a superior experience to people that play on release, for less money, without really trading anything away given story focus of the game.

[Thrawn]

Battlefield 3 just came out and was $30 from quite a few places (including Origin) this past weekend. Dragon Age 2 and Dead Space 2 came out less than a year ago, have both been on sale for $5-10 recently. Rift saw pretty fast price drops, and that was a fairly successful MMO with a much more obvious retention model.

The difference is SWTOR might actually be good.   

Although I can't really poke fun at BF3 being "generic FPS #1344" since SWTOR is just "generic MMO #1543".

[ajax34i]

I don't think they'll reduce the box cost, but my plan is to wait a couple months for some bug fixes and maybe a better UI, then probably play it for a month or two.

[Rokal]

The difference is SWTOR might actually be good.  

Price drops happen for big publishers regardless of the quality though. Mass Effect 2 sunk pretty fast and I thought the game was great. Ubisoft's games price drop extremely fast even when they're both critically and financially successful like Assassin's Creed. I don't see SWTOR's $60 price tag sticking around for long even if the game is a huge success without retention problems. I do suspect it will have retention problems though, so I'd peg it at sub-$30 within 3 months.

[Ingmar]

I doubt the price will drop significantly for several months at least. It probably won't be like WoW where you were still paying full price years later, but this doesn't look like a regular MMO scenario to me right now.

[Numtini]

I don't think they'll reduce the box cost, but my plan is to wait a couple months for some bug fixes and maybe a better UI, then probably play it for a month or two.

If in the first three months they add at least one major content item--a dungeon, raid, or new zone and they get a LFG system and a configurable UI, (ie, what Trion pulled off) then the game will be set to go for a while and you won't see bailouts or a price drop. But players today are locusts. They consume at a ludicrous rate and I don't think new games have the luxury to piddle around Blizzard style.

And I don't get a vibe that they're real nimble on the development--anyone who's been in beta a long time want to comment?

[Sjofn]

By the way, now that I have played a couple of classes into the advanced class point ( ), I still think no AC swapping is a huge, stupid mistake.

[kildorn]

Content within 3 months should be easy, it would be under development nowish. My concern is a suit 6 months down the line saying "what? more dev money? Fuck that, B Team support go!"

Players will consume at a crazy rate. The idea is to keep putting new stuff out so they don't unsubscribe, not to keep them logged in 24/7. You just can't do that, ever. If I consume 4 hours of content in a night, I can pretty much be sure that I will outpace anything they could be trying to churn out. Anyone who has no interest in alts will run out of content in the game quickly. But I was a little impressed with the raid lockout list. Assuming they're all in on launch, they're going to have a pretty large endgame content stable to start with.


And no dual specs, no peace. AC switching would be neat, but I don't see it ever actually happening. It's an 8 class game, they just dance around letting you pick your class until level 10.

[eldaec]

The extra content will be paid for at the cash shop.

And 4 hours per day might be a lot, but a properly organised team would be able to keep up with non-poopsockers.

[Paelos]

Since release is over Christmas, I plan to beat the everloving shit out of the game between Christmas and New Years.

[kildorn]

The extra content will be paid for at the cash shop.

And 4 hours per day might be a lot, but a properly organised team would be able to keep up with non-poopsockers.

It really depends what you consider to be a proper amount of content consumption. Even if you assume you need to make say, 2 hours of Voice work a week, you're looking at a difficult schedule to keep. It's possible, I just don't see EA footing the bill if they think they can get away with a far smaller live team.

Heck, how much goes into producing TV shows for a season? This should be less (less art time, really.), but you're still talking a season of 12  episodes/12 hours of content taking months to produce.

[Sobelius]

I just don't consume content fast enough to worry about where this game will be in 2-3 months post launch. I might have my first toon approaching 50 after 3 months -- maybe -- with a stable of alts in the 10-20 range.  I work 60 hours a week, run a D&D game once a month, play LOTRO with friends once a week, squeeze in some RIFT, and try to make sure not to neglect my partner. Doesn't leave a lot of time for devouring a game like TOR the way some folks will. I think TOR will have a place in my onlne gaming for at least a year if not longer.

[kildorn]

I just don't consume content fast enough to worry about where this game will be in 2-3 months post launch. I might have my first toon approaching 50 after 3 months -- maybe -- with a stable of alts in the 10-20 range.  I work 60 hours a week, run a D&D game once a month, play LOTRO with friends once a week, squeeze in some RIFT, and try to make sure not to neglect my partner. Doesn't leave a lot of time for devouring a game like TOR the way some folks will. I think TOR will have a place in my onlne gaming for at least a year if not longer.

I found your scheduling problem 

I tend to play 1ish game at a time, so after work I make dinner, hang out a bit, and play until bedtime. It winds up being about 3-4 hours since I tend to go to sleep at 1ish, and my fiance goes to bed around 9/10. There's no way a live team could keep up with me, and I really don't expect them to be aiming for my demographic. You aim for me by having interesting dungeon content I can play with to amuse myself.

If anything, I'd more expect them to go for weekly TV show level content. 1-2 hours a week, even if in monthly chunks. It would keep enough interest to have people still retain subs if the core gameplay gets a bit more polish.

[Sky]

Spent the last hour taking screenshots of what I want my initial 8 characters to look like :) Figure I'll save some time at launch. Also grabbed a shot of this weekend's villain hero (random names for beta weekends ftw):

[Velorath]

Hate to say it but you're showing either your age or your lack of SW fandom.  The Chiss are in because they're ultra-badass in the EU and Thrawn is a very popular - if not iconic by now - character.

I don't know who the fuck Thrawn is in the EU, but if he's why we've been lumped with these charmless blue goons, he can go fuck himself :D

Uh, check like two posts up from your post...

[Sjofn]

I am going to pink twi'lek manquisitor SO HARD ... right after my smuggler and consular and IA. 

I need to like ... think of names for them all. It's hard.

[Pezzle]

Finished off Balmorra tonight as expected (outside 4 heroics and the bonus series).  Solidly level 39 and finally have my 3rd companion, not counting the ship droid.

I will give them this, the planets all look very, very different.  Quesh is.. hmm, I will reserve judgement.  

Over the course of my beta time I have seen new flashpoints come out and a large number of system fixes.  Obviously this is crunch time.  The number of fixes and updates that have gone in has at least been noticeable.  Today I heard talking during a space mission.  First time for that.  

Repeating the same planets quests 3-4 times might be a drag (then again that does not seem to stop WoW players?) but you can gain xp in plenty of ways.  Your quests give big chunks of xp, as do space missions.  If you can gain xp doing pvp then there are multiple paths to advancement.  Maybe I will make Hoth before the servers go live.

[Fordel]

Quesh is short, more or less a detour.



Hit 50 tonight, took me like, 3 weeks, a month? Anywhere from 1-4 hours a night. With a few weekends where I stayed up way to late and probably played like 6-8 hours. Haven't even started Corellia, that seems to be the last 'leveling' planet as far as I can tell. Can't say for sure though.

[eldaec]

The extra content will be paid for at the cash shop.

And 4 hours per day might be a lot, but a properly organised team would be able to keep up with non-poopsockers.

It really depends what you consider to be a proper amount of content consumption. Even if you assume you need to make say, 2 hours of Voice work a week, you're looking at a difficult schedule to keep. It's possible, I just don't see EA footing the bill if they think they can get away with a far smaller live team.

Heck, how much goes into producing TV shows for a season? This should be less (less art time, really.), but you're still talking a season of 12  episodes/12 hours of content taking months to produce.

2 hours of VO, would be what, 30 or 50 hours of gameplay?

You don't need anything like that much on a weekly basis.

You basically would need campaign on the scale of DA awakenings each month to keep up. Which is perfectly achievable if that is what EA wanted to do. Instead they'll just do the raid thing so whatever really.

Junk TV is the perfect comparison. If they have a steady production process geared to it there is no reason they couldn't produce similar regular output. The income off of this is going to be of a similar order of magnitude.

[Ingmar]

You wouldn't need as much as Awakenings. That would be pretty unprecedented for any MMO.

[kildorn]

If anything, I'd thing some of the ME2 DLC lengths a month would be more than enough (Kasumi's DLC or something. That was what, 2-3 hours unless I'm forgetting some major part of it?)

You still need a raid game (or more specifically, something for people to DO once they ran your new story content), but you don't need to keep giving me new content every night. Just regularly enough that I don't feel like unsubbing until the next content patch. Junk TV is the perfect idea behind the content. It's slightly interactive TV.

Actually thinking about it, I think the challenge would be making content hooks that don't feel like they're ripping your character out of their storyline/fiction. I think that's where a lot of their sticky subscription will come from. I feel a lot more attachment to my SWTOR characters than I ever did to my WOW characters because they have a personality of their own and a fiction that gives them a reason to be places and do things.

[Sjofn]

That is highly entertaining coming from you, Mr. "Why are we killing these raid bosses? I didn't read any of my quests."

[Amaron]

Junk TV is the perfect comparison. If they have a steady production process geared to it there is no reason they couldn't produce similar regular output. The income off of this is going to be of a similar order of magnitude.

With VO and story they actually have more opportunity to create content than a traditional MMO too.    Massive amounts of traditional MMO content would become boring very quickly.

[eldaec]

You wouldn't need as much as Awakenings. That would be pretty unprecedented for any MMO.

Continuous production of any amount of interesting content outside of an annual expansion would be unheard of in a mmog. But other mmogs don't claim story content as their reason to exist, or as justification for mediocre mechanics.

[eldaec]

If anything, I'd thing some of the ME2 DLC lengths a month would be more than enough (Kasumi's DLC or something. That was what, 2-3 hours unless I'm forgetting some major part of it?)

You still need a raid game (or more specifically, something for people to DO once they ran your new story content), but you don't need to keep giving me new content every night. Just regularly enough that I don't feel like unsubbing until the next content patch. Junk TV is the perfect idea behind the content. It's slightly interactive TV.

Actually thinking about it, I think the challenge would be making content hooks that don't feel like they're ripping your character out of their storyline/fiction. I think that's where a lot of their sticky subscription will come from. I feel a lot more attachment to my SWTOR characters than I ever did to my WOW characters because they have a personality of their own and a fiction that gives them a reason to be places and do things.

On your last point, I think they really need to give the universe as a whole an ongoing story which new content can tie to. Basically the same thing Asheron's Call did.

[Wolf]

So why do I still have beta? Wasn't this just a weekend thing? How do they expect me to stop playing when they're flaunting it at my face like that  

Played a bit more on my agent, I really like the hunter sniper. The way energy regeneration works and from what I can tell of the talent tree and skills this class has some potential for an interesting dps rotation. Totally needs a mod that puts numbers on the energy bar though. Also the first mechanic that's not lifted straight from wow and has potential. Anyone knows if the regen drops down below 75 or 70 energy?

I won't be quitting wow any time soon, so I don't care much about content generation. The game will have enough content to take me for a few months at least. I have no interested in the endgame, so as soon as I chew through a couple of chars up to the end (one for both sides) I'll be unsubing.

[Mosesandstick]

Can someone confirm whether any of the higher flashpoints are like the Esseles/Black Talon?

[01101010]

Can someone confirm whether any of the higher flashpoints are like the Esseles/Black Talon?

Meaning what?

[Wolf]

I'm guessing a contained story, with some trash and a couple of bosses, all with similar level quality. I've been wondering that myself.

[Modern Angel]

Most everything I've read which I trust says that they're less good than the first couple. Same in theory, but way blander and more like traditional dungeons.

[Pezzle]

Can someone confirm whether any of the higher flashpoints are like the Esseles/Black Talon?

Not that I have seen.  They are just dungeon crawls.

[Dark_MadMax]

So summary of this 3 day marathon playing , 25 Sith Inq ,10 IA, 5 Trooper


Bad:
 -Textures and graphics. Well its omfg year 2001 all over again. In game textures are so low rez that they replace them during cutscenes. Which is even more jarring than the low rez. No Antia-aliasing . It looks way worse than it could
- World PvP. - there is none to be found. You cant even see other side even you try really hard (there is "exhaust" field you cant cross to other faction city). That is on pvp server. Whats point of pvp servers at all?
- PvP minigames- well they are laggy uninspired POS.  CC in this game is over the top as well
- The boring kill "50 mobs" quest. I am shitting you not , on balmora there is at least 6 quests which make you kill over 50 elite mobs. And elite mobs are really slow to die
- Its a gear  themepark (DIKU some would say but I dont want use words I dont 100% know :) ). So its pretty boring from that perspective
- its fucking Star Wars. Star wars are for dorkiest nerds.



Good:
-Storylines are great. Seriously single player quality at least for start 20 lvls
-Dark choices are funny and seriously entertaining
-Its effing fun!


And verdict is - Buy , play every major char to lvl 20 and 2 of them to 50 ( for empire and republic) .Shelf afterwards.  Game has really great content. Its like 4 single player games in one. Majority of areas I seen are very well made and all the shortcoming are mostly of technical nature (engine is POS), not art direction or design.

But  it offers nothing beyond that. The  fluid storyline flow from first 15 level morphs more and more into standard MMO routine by the time I hit 3d planet (was balmorra in my case) .

I honestly didnt expect this game to be simply good. I dont like SciFi, dont like  Star Wars , hated Kotor. But there  it went from
"never buy" to "pre-order". I dont think the game has any longevity  but before you run out of content there is lots of great one to experience.

[Fabricated]

Can someone confirm whether any of the higher flashpoints are like the Esseles/Black Talon?

I did Hammer Station and it had pretty much a single RP moment; the whole flashpoint however is way shorter and far less trash filled than Eselles/Talon. Rather than RP it has a bunch of little stuff you can do in the instance with gathering skills to bypass areas or unlock more content; like using scavenging to fix a drill to knock out a wall or using bioanalysis to turn off poison gas. You get a non-dialog RP thing towards the end where you either sabatogue parts of the station to explode and kill a mess of the badguys and their grunt workers indecriminately to get by, or just mess up their security...that's about it for light/dark in that. A later flashpoint I saw played beginning to end had about as much RP as Black Talon/Esseles however.

I also did Athiss but I was only able to get one boss in due to bugs. There was another non-dialog RP thing right after the first boss that made no sense however from the republic side if you chose dark side. It literally might as well have been "kick a puppy" because you get no tangible benefit from being a dick, even RPwise.

[Amaron]

Someone in the other thread indicated that system doesn't work as you level up anyway.  something about how raid gear (and I assume pvp gear) would need to be used instead because mods can't come close to their stats.

Now that torhead is back up I went and checked this and it seems to work with raid gear too.   Here's some raid gear: http://www.torhead.com/item/4XuSRdY.    It has the same slots as lower stuff.   It looks like PvP gear does not use the slots though.

[Wolf]

umm, there's no armor on that chest?

other than that it's a cool system, does it have to be an epic chest/pants to have all the important sockets or do rare ones work too?