SWTOR

[Fordel]

If you want to skip the quest dialogue, mash the space bar. It auto skips to the next line until you reach a point where you have to reply. If you picked a wrong choice in a dialogue, hit the ESC key, it resets that particular dialogue.

You can turn a conversation that would take several minutes of speaking into a 10 second click fest if you really want too. I don't know why you would want too, but you can.

[Sjofn]

Oh, and!

Ingmar liked the knight because he could manwhore it up. Don't let him tell you otherwise. My male twi'lek consular didn't get to slut it up at all. What is he supposed to be, some kind of monk? 

Wait a minute.  What happened to the prequel's 'Relationships lead to the dark side so stop lusting after Padme because she's smooth and not like sand' BS?

He got dark side points for it. Ingmar simply didn't care. 

[Modern Angel]

If you want to skip the quest dialogue, mash the space bar. It auto skips to the next line until you reach a point where you have to reply. If you picked a wrong choice in a dialogue, hit the ESC key, it resets that particular dialogue.

You can turn a conversation that would take several minutes of speaking into a 10 second click fest if you really want too. I don't know why you would want too, but you can.

Why would I want to?

That's missing the point. The point is that I'm playing the game on its own terms (STORY! VOICE ACTING! CHOICES!) and it's still not very good in parts. I don't want it reduced to a clickfest; I want it to be better.

Or, alternately, you can alt things up and then you have to clickfest it to make it tolerable. Arguably, I don't know that it's true because I'm not going to end up being an altoholic.

[Murgos]

Well a) they're not competing with the games of four years ago and b) maybe the complaint isn't "WoW has more" but "I'm sort of over doing the exact same content on alts, especially in a game arguably geared toward having lots of alts".

Fine go play the other game that has what you want.

[Modern Angel]

I'm sorry, are we only supposed to paste positive things here? HERE, the place that arguably ripped a couple games worse than any other site its size out there?

My review is pretty fucking balanced, all told. I'm trying to offer some perspective on the too much repeat content argument and why it matters.

[Fordel]

The issue is going to be can Bioware (Austin) keep up with new content.


I'm relatively confident they will figure out the technical faults between now and release, but say 3-6 months from now, after I've played my Trooper twice and Sjofn has played all 8 classes fourteen times, will we have new stuff to do? Will it be generic story stuff, or will our class stories continue?

[Trippy]

COH 1 starter area, 1 leveling path.

CoH had 2 -- Atlas Park and Galaxy City

Doing what I can to get us to 400!

[Modern Angel]

The issue is going to be can Bioware (Austin) keep up with new content.


I'm relatively confident they will figure out the technical faults between now and release, but say 3-6 months from now, after I've played my Trooper twice and Sjofn has played all 8 classes fourteen times, will we have new stuff to do? Will it be generic story stuff, or will our class stories continue?

That's going to be the big question. I'm not entirely optimistic, given that they have to go back to the voice actor well each and every time. I wouldn't be surprised if they have some stuff ready to go already but once that's exhausted...

[Sjofn]

COH 1 starter area, 1 leveling path.

CoH had 2 -- Atlas Park and Galaxy City

Doing what I can to get us to 400!

To be fair, Galaxy City suuuuuuuucked.

[Trippy]

Yes, yes it did. I did it once with a new character and never again

[eldaec]

"I'm sort of over doing the exact same content on alts, especially in a game arguably geared toward having lots of alts".

This I have heard from an awful lot of beta testers.

It basically tells me that for the game to last they need to be outputting content on an industrial scale from day 1, because most nda breaking reviews saythe same thing, it has nowhere near the 8x a typical bioware rpg that was implied by the dev team.

Won't stop me enjoying the game first time through, but they aren't going to have long to get more content into the game. Unless actual testers are going to tell me the guys saying this are wrong and you don't end up doing 90% the same content on each alt.

[Mosesandstick]

I can't see people enjoying having to redo any of the higher level stuff.

[Trippy]

How is the game geared towards having lots of alts?

I need to plan for how many accounts I'll need

[Evildrider]

How is the game geared towards having lots of alts?

It's not technically geared toward having a lot of alts, although the legacy system does promote it a bit.  I think it's more that they expect people to want to try the different stories and factions that they will have a few alts.

Although to it does offer more when rerolling than pretty much every other MMO out there atm.

[eldaec]

The argument goes that it is about story, hence alts.

There isn't enough in the combat mechanics for it to be about endgame.

Also...

The number of buttons you're going to have at the end is obscene. It's completely over the top and they're going to have to do something about it. With the lack of base UI customization, I could fill all four hotbars with abilities. Some of them overlapped and really need to be consolidated.

This is promising, how many abilities are on a hotbar? If the answer is 20, then it sounds like they have it about right.

[Modern Angel]

Oh god, I'll need to fire it up to see. 1-0, - and =... two more? So 14 slots?

Thing is, I don't mind a lot of buttons. But this was a bit much, not strictly because of the number but because of the sameness of some of the abilities. Also, because you're forced to put some of the more active ones on the side hotbars. Sorry, those are reserved STRICTLY for non-combat, long cooldown abilities.

[Evildrider]

From what we've seen and been told there should be a bit of endgame out there.  Heroic Flashpoints, 3 difficulties for the 2 Operations, Ilum with it's solo endgame PvE and open world PvP zone, and the Gambler's Den FFA PvP area on Tatooine.  That's pretty decent overall for launch.

[Trippy]

How is the game geared towards having lots of alts?

It's not technically geared toward having a lot of alts, although the legacy system does promote it a bit.  I think it's more that they expect people to want to try the different stories and factions that they will have a few alts.

Although to it does offer more when rerolling than pretty much every other MMO out there atm.

Can a character switch between Advanced Classes or am I going to need 8 accounts if I wanted to be able to play multiple characters at the same in any combination of (adv.) classes?

[Evildrider]

Nope, no AC switching was confirmed by Zoeller and unlikely it will ever be an option.  Oh and don't worry it's not 1 character per server!   

[Modern Angel]

Yeeeahhhh, but so did everyone else who ever did this stupid idea. AoC and EQ2 both buckled. It might take some time, but SWTOR will, too.

[Evildrider]

Yeeeahhhh, but so did everyone else who ever did this stupid idea. AoC and EQ2 both buckled. It might take some time, but SWTOR will, too.

So I guess WoW should make it so you can switch classes too then.

[Sky]

That's a problem for all the tank specs, something that we've bitched about for builds now. You don't get your tanking stance/buff till like 4-6 levels past 10. Specifically the shield generator thing doing nothing for 4 levels bothers me, because if you don't read the tooltips in your future abilities, you'll have no idea why your shield generator is useless.

Ditto for heals, but they said the pre-20 game was being balanced for everyone to just be dps because nobody really got their skills. I was kind of laughing when everyone was asking for healers for instances, because the measly heal was pretty lame...if you needed it, you were probably screwed anyway. On a few fights it was nice to have, though.

I played to 20 as a Jedi Shadow, I was surprised they're a tank so I set mine up to do so. Since I didn't really get the skills, well, it was a mixed bag. But I did tank a bunch of group stuff pretty well. I grouped more in the 4 nights I played TOR than I did in the 6 months of Rift alpha, and I grouped more in the Rift alpha than all previous mmo except EQ1 where we played on networked pcs. The most steady group was a dps knight, a smuggler and a sage. We pretty much rolled through most stuff, a couple wipes learning stuff but all in good fun.

The questing in this game is great, the writing and VO is apparently what I've been missing in mmo. I really went full catass for 4 days straight and wanted more when it was over. I hope between BC and SLAP we can avoid teh pug crap as much as possible, but even that wasn't too bad (though beta crowds are usually much more fun and less selfish).

I'm surprised MA's post was as balanced as it was after the 'but wait until you guys know the TRUTH' stuff a while back   It was a pretty good run down based on my limited experience. The thing I come back to personally is I never burned out on WoW. I still enjoy the mechanics, it's just a background thing to the story. In something like Rift, the story is not enough to keep me around. I really enjoyed the stuff in TOR and look forward to digging in some more.

[Nevermore]

COH 1 starter area, 1 leveling path.

CoH had 2 -- Atlas Park and Galaxy City

Doing what I can to get us to 400!

And ironically, they actually removed one of them recently.

[Evildrider]

For me I don't mind WoW in concept, it was a powerhouse for a reason.  I did mainly play it cuz that's where my friends were though.  SWTOR pulls me in way that WoW was unable to do.  The first two weekends I think I put in more hours than I had in the last 2 months of playing WoW.

[Trippy]

Nope, no AC switching was confirmed by Zoeller and unlikely it will ever be an option.  Oh and don't worry it's not 1 character per server!   

But if I wanted to do any combination, of say, 2 classes (aka dual-boxing), I need them to be on separate accounts

[murdoc]

Said already, but I'll repeat it: Your enjoyment of this game is directly related to your enjoyment of the story.

I personally really like both stories I played and the first Flashpoint. Even my wife, who has nothing to do with videogames, came over to watch me run through the first Flashpoint because the VOs and music got her attention and she thought it looked pretty cool that four of us were sprinting across a hanger bay with all our lightsabres out and Star Wars music blasting.

[Fordel]

There are too many buttons overall, some classes are worse then others in terms of 'why do I have 5 of the same fucking attacking?'. Once you add in medpacks, trinkets, stims, it gets to be a bit much. I'm sure the EQ2 fans will be fine with it  


It will be helped once the UI is customizable, or even if they just let me move those fucking sidebars to the bottom, I have the screen space for it. Another flaw is the companion control bars, you can't rearrange them currently. This is slightly maddening, especially since there is a mini companion bar when the main bar is minimized that shows the first 4 companion abilities...

Another fucking super annoying thing about the UI is keybinds, you can't use keybinds on hidden bars, you need those stupid side bars opened if you want to keybind abilities to them.




As for leveling paths, you have two completely distinct ones. Empire and Republic. Otherwise there is quite a bit of overlap on the planet stories, though each class story is unique AND the reactions classes get from NPCs is slightly different, often amusingly.

Like, my Trooper will walk into a military outpost and people will be like "Oh thank God, command sent some reinforcements!", where a Smuggler often gets "Wait, who are you, how did you GET here, it's a military base!".

[Mosesandstick]

The further you progress, the more time you spend doing planet quests and the less covering your personal storyline.

[Modern Angel]

So I guess WoW should make it so you can switch classes too then.

Uh, no. Because WoW classes aren't subclasses of a "main" class.

Look, EQ2 and AoC did this *exact* same thing. Play X levels of your big meta class (MAGE THIEF WARRIOR FART) and then choose your "real" class. If you choose poorly, well... reroll and do the first X levels over with the exact, 100% same thing.

I promise you. I'll put imaginary e-money on this now: it will change. It might take a year but they'll change it.

[Nevermore]

Firstly, it's incredibly dependent on if you like your character's story. If your character's story is dogshit, and fully half of them are mediocre to dogshit, then you won't have a good time. Some of the stories vary wildly by quest, going up and down like a yoyo (Smuggler, I'm looking at you). Then there are a couple really pretty decent ones, as far as video game stories go.

Ok, I'll bite.  Without spoiling, who has the 'dogshit' stories?

[Furiously]

But then the game would only have four classes!

[Modern Angel]

I'm surprised MA's post was as balanced as it was after the 'but wait until you guys know the TRUTH' stuff a while back

I'm in a good mood and honestly, this last build and a half or so softened my outlook considerably. When I posted it I was absolutely convinced the game was total dogshit. That's because, I think, performance was pretty shoddy and I was playing a Jedi Knight, whose story was just awful do-gooder garbage, even with Dark Side stuff thrown in.

I really prefer playing the Sith side. It's over the top and cartoony evil but fun in a campy sort of way.

[Evildrider]

So I guess WoW should make it so you can switch classes too then.

Uh, no. Because WoW classes aren't subclasses of a "main" class.

Look, EQ2 and AoC did this *exact* same thing. Play X levels of your big meta class (MAGE THIEF WARRIOR FART) and then choose your "real" class. If you choose poorly, well... reroll and do the first X levels over with the exact, 100% same thing.

I promise you. I'll put imaginary e-money on this now: it will change. It might take a year but they'll change it.

Umm if I play a Mage to level 20 and decide I hate it in WoW, I still have to run through the same garbage on another character.

[Fordel]

Firstly, it's incredibly dependent on if you like your character's story. If your character's story is dogshit, and fully half of them are mediocre to dogshit, then you won't have a good time. Some of the stories vary wildly by quest, going up and down like a yoyo (Smuggler, I'm looking at you). Then there are a couple really pretty decent ones, as far as video game stories go.

Ok, I'll bite.  Without spoiling, who has the 'dogshit' stories?

I wouldn't call them dogshit, but I found the two Jedi stories to be fucking boring, especially compared to the Trooper and Smuggler hooks.

The Smuggler hook is god damn hilarious, I am so glad Sjofn didn't have that spoiled for her  





I'm still undecided on the AC switching or not. Are the AC's different ENOUGH to be different classes, or just extra fancy talent specs? I dunno, let me level a commando to 40 and I'll tell yea. 

[Nevermore]

Yeeeahhhh, but so did everyone else who ever did this stupid idea. AoC and EQ2 both buckled. It might take some time, but SWTOR will, too.

So I guess WoW should make it so you can switch classes too then.

Yes, let's have this argument again.