f13.net

I almost posted this as a front page article, but it's not really a review so much as just my impressions.  Little wall of texty too.
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SWTOR the mmORPG - minimizes the massively multiplayer

“When I began this journey, I was but the apprentice, but now I am the master.”  Ok, enough of my trying to shoehorn movie references into this post.  I have been playing SWTOR since Christmas almost by accident and having fun – one of my boys got a copy so I decided to try it on his account with no beta experience and really only learning about it from watching posts on this board.  What I have discovered is that this game works for me because I am basically playing it as a huge single player game that happens to have other people in it, but only if I want them.  There’s no question that over the years, I have firmly been moving away from the massively multi player part of MMORPG’s b/c most really only seem to work well as multiplayer experiences and my available time is not what it was.  I definitely do not have 3 hours to spend of a raid for gear drops to increase my efficiency 1% and wouldn’t want to spend it that way even if I did.  The design choices in this game with the fully voiced cut scene conversations for every quest and reward, the companions that are like Fallout/DA/ME companions, the fire and forget crafting, the space battles, even the pace of leveling, all seem to support the single player experience much better than in any game prior.  It’s KOTOR 3 with other people and I’m good with that.

I’m currently level 26 or halfway to cap on my first character a mere 3 weeks in, playing maybe two hours most days. During my time, I think I have grouped up a grand total of 3 times with some BC folks, which while fun never felt required.  I don’t feel like I’m missing content because I haven’t grouped more.  I’ve done no PVP, no Flashpoints, and after doing a handful of Heroics solo by over leveling them, I’m skipping them too.  Space battles are a nice change of pace occasionally but have only done about 10 missions.  My quest log consistently stays full, the quests thus far have all been doable either at my level or +1, the bonus awards give enough XP to be worthwhile to do, and even though the quests themselves are really the bog standard “go here kill X rats/rebels/jawa” or “find flashing object Y”, the voice overs and star wars setting are keeping my interest.  My gear is a mix of blue, purple and orange, I’ve touched the auction house only once, and I'm actually keeping up with crafting at a natural pace.  My abilities are varied and useful and to date I really haven’t had to manage my companion combat at all; she does just fine.  I know there are more companions to come, and story chapters, and new planets and such, which ought to hold me through to finish capping out.   That hardly ever happens in online games for me.

As an long time player, you can definitely see the problems with some of BW’s choices (i.e. UI, combat logs, max level game, pvp imbalances, as well as the typical bugs, nerfs and such) which could easily lead to it not have nearly the retention rates of say WoW.  It also is oddly designed in that if you were brand new to MMORPG’s, I think you would struggle with it because they do a horrible job explaining so many important game systems and concepts inside the game itself.  From companions, to ACs crafting, pvp, holocrons, commendations, affection, many of the talents and abilities, LS/DS points, modable gear etc. Most either aren’t explained at all as you play, or get a short codex reference that really doesn’t do it justice.  And no manual in the box of course.  From that standpoint, not having other people to ask about some stuff would have been potentially frustrating.  I also think the pace at the beginning too slow to hold a newbie, but part of that might be my class (Imp Agent).  I didn’t get my first companion until level 9 and they are such a huge part of the game.  I didn’t get a ship until late teens, which locks space combat away for newbies until they have stuck around a while.  And while I’ve heard I’ll get another companions after “chapter 1” that seems to be quite far apart from my first one (I don’t count the ship droid as he only seem useful for crafting).

But quite frankly, at this point I don’t care a bit about that.  If I only play for a month or two I will have easily felt like it was a worthwhile game, much like playing Skyrim, DA1 or ME2 for a month or two.  I don’t know if that was really Bioware’s intent since clearly it’s subscription revenue they are after, but for me is basically a single player game +, which is why I like it.  Other players looking for elder game stuff or pvp competitiveness may have quite the different opinion. We shall see what the future holds for both player retention as well as the influence it has on future games.  But for now, I’m back to hunting womp rats.

Nice write up.


I had never even thought of this before but I think you are 100% correct.  I'm a long time MMORPG player and I still had areas that I had a hard time figuring out how to do some of the basics and only found them because I knew they were "supposed" to exist in an MMO and went searching.

I run a big-ass guild full of a lot of people and it really is the catalyst that makes the game feel alive. Lacking that (and a pretty beefy server population) I could definitely see why you would absolutely feel the emptiness. Comes nowhere close to Hellgate London's massively singleplayer, but

I agree with your last two paragraphs in their entirety. I'd only add that space combat had almost no explanation either. It's a simple Flash-like game so kinda easy to get. But except for some throwaway loading screen tooltips, you aren't really told what's going on, nor why it's so fundamentally different than normal MMO play, nor why you can't group, etc.

Run speed is painfully slow for the stupidly-sized early zones (especially Coruscant), which makes the pre-14 games kinda painful. I'm not rolling an alt until I can twink some perma speed-boost gear. Story-wise, things in general get off to a slow start for all classes it seems.

It's fun, and is WoW-enough to have some staying power for MMO dabblers. For a bit anyway. This month is critical.

Server loads aren't quite what they used to be, but there's so much engaging single player content that a non-poopsocker (did I use that correctly) won't be able to experience all they want in one month. I'm looking to at least finish one Empire and one Republic career and then dabble in alts, which I expect will take about 3 months.

Which is why if you are interested in the MM part of the genre SWTOR sounds a bit of a tragedy. With all that money, a prestigious IP, and a huge company behind them they could have done some work on adapting or pushing forward the multi-player mechanics to support this sort of game. Instead they pretty much ignored it and just copied existing mechanics without much thought or care so they could go back to focusing on character dialogs and romancing your pet. And a game of this size sucks so much oxygen out of the genre it has probably starved some other more promising alternatives from development.

I mean the LOTRO system of traits and CoH style doors and scaling content (both done better) would have allowed a single player experience that "scaled up" into MP for those who wanted it. But instead they've got a lovingly detailed SP / levelling experiences and a half-baked MP component. That's just bad design and I hope it bites them hard in retention.

Don't think anything like this exists.

I wonder how much EA internally recognise the points you make.

Because an interesting thing about it all is that apart from UI polish, everyone here called almost all of this in 2008, again when early gameplay videos were released, and again in beta. The only debate was really about how much the mmog compromises would damage the single player experience - and whether an mmo without multiplayer at the core would be fun.

What I find interesting is this game is very rewarding if you DO group. When you're grouped up, they've done basically everything they could to make it just as fast as when you're solo, be it quest drops dropping for everyone or clickies being available for everyone in the group to click (as opposed to only letting one person click it), the holocommunicator, etc. Add on the whole social points/shared conversation thing, and it's really fun to play in a dedicated duo.

Its only a single player game if you want it to be.  Grouping is rewarded better than other MMOs IMO.

That's just like any other co-op game and not very impressive. A real mmo has spontaneous group activity. In SWTOR you're lucky if you see another player once an hour while questing.

My experience so far is that places that are completely deserted during the week have a line to click on the quest item on the weekends.

And yes, the game is great fun to play in a dedicated duo.

It's impressive for an mmo, which are notoriously bad about it and hardly like these 'other co-op games', being some 5+ years behind the curve and all.

I must have the best luck in the world then or Shien is somehow unique. There's people passing by, people in the quest hubs and people asking in chat for groups to do the quests (usually the bonus heroics ones, but regular group ones as well)

There's plenty of that. I have random people milling around bonus quest zones waiting for spontaneous groups with my duo on regular occasions. I think it's a server by server thing, not a game thing.

I fully agree.  First, the heroic quests are so...out of place amongst the solo content.  I've yet to do a single one.  I'm not going to sit around waiting for random strangers to group with when the solo progression train is laid out nonstop in front of me.  And my experience on Shien is that no one is ever around (except on the fleet and perhaps in the main, initial area of the planet).  It's incredible how rarely I see other people.  My MMO vet friend looks over my shoulder when I'm playing, and has asked "does anyone else play this game?".  I have to explain it's heavily instanced and spread out such that you almost never see another soul out questing.  I'm fine with that.  The treadmill is quicker with no one else around.  It rarely makes sense to actually want other players when you are climbing the treadmill in WoW clones, SWTOR just recognized this and made it happen.

Is this another one of those things where we bitch about no community but immediately leave every public chat channel there is?  :why_so_serious:

I play in EU hours on US servers.

There are people in the quest hubs all the time.

Every now and again I randomly invite people to clear an area with me. Pick-up duos are easy to get and usually easier to manage than larger groups. The companion system helps a lot.

I have to do this by random blind invite because nothing else works (if you are one of the RARR BLIND INVITE RAGE people, well tough shit, it is all that works).

The designers have clearly worried about how they encourage grouping (social points etc) but the fact is the systems they have don't work and most people don't try. I don't have any easy answers for how you take the game from where it is now to a place where grouping happens, but EA could make the game much stickier if they found a way that does work.

This is why I'm still waiting for a Neverwinter Nights esque privately run servers MMO-like game to come out again.  All the benefits of an MMO, with a community small enough to manage.  Also, banning asshats isn't a problem.

Hey, I want community but I don't want to deal with people!

It's only a handful of people ruining General most places. But I lose my ignore list everytime chat decides to reset font/channels so I keep seeing the same asshats trolling.

Yeah, I'll turn General on once I am content with having shit spoiled.  Like, maybe after character 3 or so.

Can't say i've had anything spoiled yet through chat. Could be again server-based thing, but it's quite impressive when you think of it.

I heard they are actually suspending/banning for talking about spoilers in open channels.  Don't know if that's true (I seriously doubt anyone is actually getting banned over it) but even the rumor is likely to keep the open conversation about spoilers down to some degree.

I think it's an unavoidable consequence of SWTOR being a story game. It's a great game but I think EA/Bioware are misguided if they try to make it anything else. It will never have anything like someone kiting Lord Kazzak to Stormwind, or the general melee in Hillsbrad. Opening of Ahn-Qiraj is probably as far as it could go.

LFD sure would help.  :oh_i_see:

That would ruin "casual" players immersion through some magical means.

This is my approach to MMOGs post EQ. I don't want to interact with the general population of a game. You only need 5, 10 , 25 people to run multiplayer content, not 100's of asshats running around saying "FUCK MY CORNHOLE, ASSLICK!"
I'm a member of a raiding guild in WoW and a small friends guild in TOR. That's all the multiplayer I care for and is required by the game.

Fuck LFR and LFD. I activley avoid Random Q Chucklefuck. Why would I use a tool that puts me in a group with him?

"You sense that this area is too difficult to attempt alone.

Press Y to leave a beacon that will alert you if another qualified adventurer stumbles upon it, or any other key to continue on your way."

:oh_i_see:

"You radio in for reinforcements!"


<--- Lore Master  :why_so_serious:

Well for starters, when there's only 3 of your guildies on and you want to do something together, instead of going "whelp," you can actually do something. Random Q Chucklefuck is, nine times out of ten, a perfectly normal person, in my experience.

Secondly, if you DO have a full group, it sure is nice to just hit "queue for dungeon" and GO instead of all the traveling bullshit, all the deciding which instance to do, etc. I didn't realize how much I liked WoW's LFD for a full guild group until I did a flashpoint in SWTOR recently.

Stuff that can be addressed without using LFD. Make some dungeons that only require 2-4 people. Hell, make dungeons scale to number of characters.
The insta-travel to dungeons is valid. But not necessarily something that has to be tied to LFD.

I'm glad you don't encounter shitheads in your PUGs very often. I have done a few, but only with a couple of guildies or more. I like having at least a few groupmates that I know I can count on.

While I would not cry over dungeons that require a mere two people (their flashpoints only need four, by the way), I don't think the answer to how fucking annoying it is to get together a dungeon group is "make it require less people." Especially if you're concerned people aren't playing with each other enough.

The fear of other people that pervades some of you is stunning at times, really.

My comment was sarcasm.  I forgot it's some folks gospel.

You're basically arguing that because you'll never use it, you don't want it in the game. Are you doing PUGs *now*? If you aren't, why would you care if they change how PUGs work to what the majority of players clearly want?

I don't mind LFD in theory, as long as it's confined to a single server. It's when they make it cross server that I don't care for it. Until we have an MMO with more permeable servers, having anything cross server destroys community. I'd elaborate but we've had this argument 9001 times now.

I just wanted to pop in and say that while this game is totally designed to let you play solo, I feel that you have a completely different, and in almost all cases more enjoyable experience if you group, or even duo.

I have a alt character that I only play duo with a friend of mine, and so far it has been the most fun I have had in this game. The combat, which starts to get slower around 20 or so, gets much faster, and more explosive feeling as you just mow through mobs, and the dialog gets more involved as the other player has input also.

My 2c.

I'm level 40 on a second character ( :oh_i_see: ) and I tend to agree, I had more fun duoing up with Ingmar than I have been solo (although I have been pretty entertained solo too, mind you, otherwise Jassan the trooper probably wouldn't be level 40). Something about the shared experience goes a long way with me.

I've also found that dialogue is a lot of fun in a group (or even just duo)... it also keeps groupchat alive. During flashpoint cutscenes everyone in the group becomes a comedian. This may be compounded by the fact that I'm playing on a RP server. :why_so_serious:
(referring to Kilran) "Oh man, not the secret HANDS CLASPED BEHIND BACK technique! We're so dead"
(referring to Oteg) "We'll get your honey back, Master Pooh!"
There's also the tradition of making fun of hammy cutscene voice acting, which in my guild goes back to the Guild Wars days (if anyone remembers Rurik, Kung-fu Villain Togo, or the UNDEAD LICH, you'll know why).

Most of the dialogue for planet quests is really simplistic though. (accept quest gladly / accept quest grudgingly / refuse quest)

I think a big part of the problem is that quest difficulty is all over the place. Some 2s I can solo without blinking an eye, boss and all. Some destroy me. Some 4s I can solo very slowly and carefully - one 4 on nar shadaa had pulls of 1 yellow with 3 silvers. I have a 4 at the moment on tatooine with pulls of 3 yellows, 2 silvers and 2 regular mobs :ye_gods:. I have general/trade/pvp open in a separate window. Since I got the quest Saturday morning, there has not been a single pug for it while I have been on.

I also don't particularly like that I can't see the reward. Yeah, it's fun getting surprised. But if it's a blue and a commendation, I wouldn't bother someone to come boost me. If it's a piece of orange boots I or a comp will be wearing all the way to 50, well I'd bug someone caped to come help me out.

So, yeah, sign me up for LFD. Especially if you can queue for heroic quests.

"A little elaboration is required!"

My first experience with group convos was starting and ending a flashpoint. It was cool to see all our characters responding in turn. I imagine the novelty will wear off though.

When LFD came out, it was much harder for me to get a guild group for a dungeon because everyone had already run it using a LFD pickup group. It's a bit selfish, I know, but LFD meant to me that I'd get to run fewer dungeons.

And note that I didn't say I never use it. I said I use it rarely.

That's going to happen anyway. Once the population wave crest passes a leveling instance it quickly becomes difficult to find people to run it with regardless of whether an LFG system exists or not. However your chances of finding a group are improved by the size of the population you can draw from so an LFG system is a good thing.

Server community... hah. Server communities existed when leveling was slow, online games were a novelty and progress happened in a group (eg. EQ, FF). In a game as on rails and spoon-fed as SWTOR I doubt you'll find a meaningful server community amount players focused strongly on their progression goals. On top of which those who want it will look for it within the context of guilds.

I was tooling around with a warrior alt yesterday and hadnt turned off General Chat yet and saw this exact same discussion was occuring there.  "Boy, everyone seems to be playing this as a single player game".  "No, the grouping stuff is great with increased xp and shared conversations" "People sure seem to hate on this game on the official forum" "Only idiots go to the forum" etc etc.

Of course, being general chat in an mmorpg, it devolved into name calling and general asshattery in about 30 seconds. 
General chat, dont you ever change.

Tbh, I've yet to fail at finding a group and I'm well behind the leveling curve... been taking it slow.  I do believe a lot of this has to do with many people already having decent leveled alts on my server.  Also, there's plenty to do while you search so it's not like you're sitting around twiddling your thumbs.

Speaking of Shien, it's full of friendlies.  Routinely I've gotten people to group with me and they've already run the instance a million times...  they just do it for the fun of it, errr after they get sick of me spamming gen. chat.   :oh_i_see:

I see.  :grin:

I came here to post the same thought. Similar to DDO, the game doesn't feel 'massive' but the multiplayer part works really well. It's the first MMO I've played where it feels like playing with other players while leveling directly enhances the experience, rather than just allowing you to do harder content or move through the areas faster. Playing as a Bounty Hunter, I'm having a lot of fun following the Sith Inquisitor story along with my friend. The normal quest conversations are also much more entertaining when different classes get different responses and you and the other player(s) are randomly selected to answer the NPC after you make your dialogue choice. I didn't expect all of the quest conversations to allow multiple players input, just Flashpoints, and it really helps what might have otherwise been pretty boring quest dialogue.

The friend and I agreed on a couple days a week that we both could devote 2-3 hours to playing and it's been working out really well. As long as you actually stay dedicated to playing together instead of occasionally grouping up, I think you'll find that the experience is much better. It stops feeling like Space WoW and starts feeling like co-op KOTOR.

Grouping is fun in this game.  I just wish that they'd pump up the healing ability of the Merc/Commando and Scoundrel/Op classes so that they'd be more in line with sorcerers.  Requiring a sorc healer for group encounters really creates a bottleneck for those without a strong guild and multiple dedicated healers.  Hell, having dual speccing would solve this as well.

Harkens back to set parties in FFXI. Of course, you did it there in order to grind through mobs for levels. Here, it works better with the story. However, it also pays to have a buddy system/set party in the game, if for nothing else, grinding social points.  :why_so_serious:

But I do agree... playing with at least one other person does make the game a lot more fun, as long as you know/sorta-know the other person. Random player #3476 you tried this with usually ends up in frustration. I keep thinking back to WoW adding in Dumass to the horde quests...that is the exact player you do not want to get stuck with, but seems to happen to me a lot in pugs.

So it's broken in sorc's favor? I was talking to a guildie about this and we were wondering which way it'll go. There's a reason why monks are getting a mana bar on their healing spec in the pandawow.

I don't know if I'd say broken so much as sorcs/sages have access to a larger power pool and their regen mechanic is better.  My hope is that the other two healers will come up to the ability of the sorc, not that sorcs will be nerfed. 

it just doesn't work. Other way around is sorc's heals are not effective (due to the larger power pool and regen mechanic) and energy healers destroy her with throughput. You either have all energy or all mana healers, even with wow's energy mechanic, which is better suited to accomodate a healer. Or you break both, make healing irrelevent, and hence not fun.

The Commando/BH healing issue isn't the power pool or the regen, it's the filler heal.

When you DPS or Tank as a Trooper/BH, the resource mechanic works because your basic attack isn't THAT far off your specials. You can afford to hit the basic once or twice between a string of specials to keep even, or even to recover after a burst/panic situation.

The Commando filler heal, is no where close to being able to keep parity like that. If you could handle a spike situation, then keep everyone even with your filler and regen, it would work. Right now, you are allowed to handle one spike situation every 2 minutes, otherwise you'll just fall behind and never catch up and bad things happen.

Or in other words, a Commando healer keeping himself in 4 pips isn't doing bonus healing, he's doing baseline healing.

You're asking for more throughput on your free heal. That will make you perform much better than a sorc, since she doesn't have a free heal. Let's then give Sorcs a free heal, ok now they're even with energy classes, but her regen is basically lifetap, so to keep up with the always healing energy class and not run out of mana she has to spend globals on regaining mana. Now energy healers are outperforming her by a ton, since they don't have dead globals. Let's scrap that mechanic and just let her regen more mana when she's at higher mana. Good, she's an energy healer now and we have balanced healing classes and can design encounters accordingly.

Once again - There's a reason why the monk gets mana in his healing spec.

Basically, yes. When I ran my merc, I tried healing and the heals were restricted to major heat producing ones which worked fine for getting through a huge spike, but heat produced was significant. To drop it, I would shoot my friendly target with my free heal which gave me a lot of little green 25s on the target, but did fuck all to heal through flat incoming dmg. So in essence, I was behind on my heals with whole time. A small adjustment up on the free heal would not be out of the question since it is rather pointless. Better off, dropping a new can in and doing dmg with the base attack then try actually healing with it.

The heal being free doesn't automagically make the spec the best healer Wolf.

I'm playing the game with an old friend of mine who is a hard-core roleplayer. He has the general channel turned off and the only way he'll group with "random" people is by going to a canteena and seeing if anyone suitable is there. If so then he goes through the process of asking them, in character, whether they are available for hire or not, and negotiating rates.

Just thought I'd share that - feel free to steal our idea if you like!

You're asking for your free heal to be able to go on it's own for any ammount of time, that makes your class better than the one without the free heal. There are ways to balance a mixed mana/energy healer system, but all of them lead to either healing being too powerful, hence irrelevent, hence unfun; or putting major restrictions on encounter design.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE healing on my trooper. It's an incredibly fun mechanic. That doesn't make it any less of a headache to balance.

So you're saying he solo's a lot?

Must be Republic-side roleplaying.  I don't imagine that Siths would react well (in character) to any "are you for hire" dialogue.  Maybe Bounty-Hunters...

No, that is not what I am asking. The same way I can't keep threat while tanking but just mashing 1, you wouldn't be able to heal forever by mashing 1.

You aren't immediately doomed to lose aggro the second you HAVE to press 1 as a tank though. The same can't be said for healing here, because the filler heal isn't anywhere strong enough. Like, I don't think the free heal even keeps party with a Sage HoT currently.

And this is the point when someone mentions lack of combat logs to hash all this out.  :oh_i_see:

What is LFD (I'm used to LFG)? That what they called it after croo-server dungeon groups in WoW?


Yea, the reason I haven't rolled that alt  :grin:

I gather LFD is what wow calls automatic group matchmaking for dungeon instances.

Click button, wait, be dumped in dungeon with group, do a thing, receive xp and stuff.

Correct, LFD is what the WoW system is called; eldaec sums it up nicely.