Overall, it plays a lot like KOTOR (I never got to KOTOR2, so I can't say anything about that), in the sense that it's very story driven. Most quests are picked up through conversations, and your character can drive the progress of the conversation (though unlike KOTOR, some conversations seem streamlined, so even if you pick an option that seems to allow you to smash the quest giver's face in, the NPC will semi-ignore you and direct the conversation back towards making you kill rabbits for them. (That being said, there are some conversations that let you smash the NPCs face in.) I'm finding that as you progress through the game, the later planets feel a little incomplete, and the story isn't very engaging, so it feels very grindy like WoW.
There is a very MMO feel to SWTOR, so I wouldn't recommend it to someone just because they enjoy KOTOR or are interested in Star Wars lore. I mean, you could definitely roll on a PvE server and just pretty much play it single player all the way through to see the story, but there will be periods where you will feel the grind. I think because they're trying to streamline players to 50, there are a lot of repetitive quests (e.g. "We want to attack the Republic, we need you to do some initial recon/guerrilla attacks and we'll clean up afterwards."). Other than the class quest and a few quest chains on each planet, there isn't very much story/lore that I've found engaging.
The main class I've decided to play is Mercenary, one of the advanced classes of the Bounty Hunter. I'll try to make this review as spoiler free as possible, because I really enjoyed most of the Bounty Hunter class quest line. I've been doing a bit of MrMan5.5's quest line along with him, and the Sorcerer class quest line gets really lame towards the end.
Good Things
Holocall
One of the great things about the quest system is that for some quests, you don't need to be at the quest giver to start/end the quest. One player in your group can start the conversation with the NPC, and everyone else can holocall in to join the conversation. This means you don't need to wait for the entire party to meet up and pick up all the quests, then head out. The only limitation they gave to holocalls is that you can't choose certain conversation options - generally the ones that require you to make a physical action such as slapping someone.
Bonus Quests
One of the things that annoyed me the most about questing in WoW was when you see an outpost or something, but there are killer rabbits all along the road to the outpost, so you practically have to perform mass murder to get to the town only to be told that a farmer has been having trouble with his crops because of killer rabbits, and could you be oh-so-kind as to kill 25 of them so that he can keep growing pumpkins to feed the starving children in Stormwind. Then you will be told to harvest the pumpkins which requires going back again, and killing more rabbits. In SWTOR, a lot of the quests are more along the lines of collect X of these items from the group, or destroy X things. If you happen to kill creatures in the area that are part of a bonus quest, then the quest pops up right away as you are doing it, and any subsequent parts of the quest also pop up after you are done, so that you don't need to walk all the way back to the quest giver and walk back to the quest area. And since they're bonus quests, you know that they won't end up being part of a quest chain.
Dismount On Damage
Although this is a bit annoying while questing, I think that overall, it's a good thing. If you take too much damage while mounted, then you end up being dismounted. I was really frustrated in WoW as a lot of the time, I would try to kill an Alliance player, only to have them ride away on me. I think the fact that every class has the ability to dismount someone is a good thing. It also means players can't (as easily) ride through a huge group of mobs, aggro everything, then cause those aggroed mobs to attack you as they ride away to freedom.
Phases
I think a lot of MMOs sorely need something like this, especially during launch, or crowded times. A lot of the quests with big bosses make you go into a "phase" where your group can enter and do the quest uninterrupted. Like mini-instances. This removes the long waits for bosses to spawn and the need for fast reflexes to tag the spawn before anybody else can. There are also class-specific phases where your class storyline quests take place, and they're restricted to one person of that specific class (i.e. the person whose storyline is being progressed).
 |
| Bounty Hunter Phase |
Crew Skills
I thought I'd hate this part, but the crew skills have grown on me. You get companions throughout the game, who are NPCs that accompany you, and that you can send on tasks like crafting items or searching for crafting reagents or recipes. This doesn't mean that you can't still mine resources in the world, which I think is a good thing. The great thing about it is that you can send your crew off to craft and do other things in the meantime. They can also craft while you are offline. This removes the need for those circuits around Sholazar Basin to mine ores and level engineering. You send your crew off while you are questing, and 3-30 minutes later, they return with some goods. The only downside is that it costs money to send them away, but I am rarely finding myself short of cash - even with the slicing nerf*.
Reverse Engineering
This skill allows you to break down the things to use their raw materials (like disenchanting, but every crafting skill has the ability to break down something. For instance, my Bounty Hunter is a biochemist and can breakdown medpacks). I love this, as it means it's a lot easier to level crafting skills, and as you outgrow the things you've crafted, you can reverse engineer them and sell the raw materials on the Galactic Trade Network. Plus it makes it feel less wasteful to create 30 medpacks just to level your skill.
Med Probe and Out of Combat Regen
Two things that reduce downtime. The med probe lets you come back to life where you died (you also get an 8 second stealth to stop yourself getting owned again after you resurrect). I absolutely love this, as I can see it removing the need for the healer to run back to their body and res everyone up while everyone else takes a 5 minute break. Add to that the fact that every class can resurrect others. You also have the option to resurrect at the nearest med center, which Yaksha sees as a fast way to hand in your quests. Out of combat regen is a channeled spell (with no cooldown) that every class gets which heals you and regens your mana (or removes heat in the case of Bounty Hunters). As you might have guessed, it can only be used out of combat, so it's not that great in PvP. This removes the need to eat/drink between fights (though in some of the flashpoints (instances) I've done, people seem to still expect the healer to heal them up between fights rather than channeling their OOC regen).
Map
A cool feature is that when you bring up your map, if you are moving, the map will go slightly transparent and you have an idea of which direction you should be going to get to your destination. You can also toggle icons for various NPCs so you know where to go to train new skills or get to a mailbox if there is one in the area.
Quick Travel
I haven't unlocked many on this planet yet, but there are plenty of Quick Travel points scattered around the place, and they're the equivalent of setting your "home" in WoW so you can hearth there. Except you never need to set your home, you can travel to any QT point you've unlocked on the planet you're on. The cooldown is 30 minutes, which is pretty short consider how time flies while playing. I'm really glad I never have to set my hearth to some stupid area for raids (Kargath, anyone?).
Flashpoints in the Fleet
All flashpoints (dungeons/instances) can all be accessed from the Imperial Fleet (or whatever the Republic's equivalent is), and most planets will have a shuttle to take you to the Fleet. This means you don't have to make your way to the ass end of the world just to get to an instance (and also cuts out waiting for people to make their way to the ass end of the world). It also means there's a central place you can go to in order to look for a group for flashpoints as there are plenty of people hanging around the Fleet, so you can just advertise in general chat there.
Jawa
One of the Bounty Hunter's companion is a Jawa who is so cute! I am 100% sure Olek rerolled from Sniper to Powertech (the other BH advanced class) just for Blizz.
Bad Things
Elevators
Why, why, why would any MMO have elevators after the failure that was the elevator bosses in Undercity (I'm sure more people died to falling from an elevator than died to Ragnaros back in the day). Sure, I think it made UC one of the hardest cities to attack in WoW, but it was also frustrating as hell for anybody who actually wanted to go there (at least for impatient people like me).
 |
| It's a looooooooooooong way down |
Waiting for elevators is a pain in the ass. There are some elevators in the game where you press a button and tell it which floor you want to go to (like in Pokèmon), I don't understand why all the elevators in the game aren't like that. And it's not even like you can just jump down, die and someone can revive you at the bottom - apparently you can't revive people on elevators (maybe because the game considers you to be "moving").
PvP Brackets
Apparently PvP brackets are decided by Valor level (you get Valor points from PvP and go up levels depending on how many points you have) rather than player level. While this does make sense at the higher levels, as you want to be grouped with people of similar experience, this can mean that you have a level 12 player in the same warzone as a level 50 player. Everybody gets a buff so that they all have roughly the same amount of health, but level 50 players will have way more spells than level 10 players and just end up dominating the warzone. I find that it's becoming slightly more even as we get closer to level 50 (I assume because they are more level 50 players who can play against each other), but I still cringe whenever I see someone under level 30 in my warzone.
Black and White Light/Dark Side Options
Like KOTOR, you have the option of going to the Light Side or the Dark Side. To keep things balanced, the difference between them at end game is only cosmetic (for instance, at Light Side 3, I got a little Sand Crawler pet). However, the options for each side are pretty clichéd, and a lot of the time don't really take into consideration the wider implications of your actions. I remember letting someone live which was a LS option, but I wonder if letting them live was really the better choice, as they may say they won't do bad stuff anymore, but people will say anything if it means saving their own life. I think Olek described it the best by saying the light side is really naive.
Conversation Ganking
Something that someone mentioned in general chat was that there are players who wait for someone to end a conversation and then proceed to kill them once they lose their conversation immunity. It's probably just a minor annoyance, but you would think that they could make people briefly invisible or something as they come out of a conversation. I haven't had any problems while questing with MrMan5.5 though. I've found we can usually take on most people, as there is no healer debuff like in warzones, so you do get a bit of that invincible healer feeling (especially when Bounty Hunters get to wear heavy armor - yay!).
Galactic Trade Network
I thought they would have learned from Blizzard's mistakes with the Auction House, but I guess not.
I think it's a little unintuitive at first. You need to know what category your item is, then subcategory. Then you can click search which will bring up all of the things in that subcategory (which can be filtered by rarity, usability, level or cost - but I've never used these fields). Only then can you type in the name of the item you're looking for to filter the search even further. You can't even shift+click the item from your inventory to populate that field, it seems you have to type it yourself, and there are some weirdly named things in this game. Selling things is also a bit of a pain, as when you are selling multiple items of the same type, you need to enter the same details each time, it doesn't remember them. Auctioneer was basically an essential if you wanted to sell things on the AH in WoW. I think even if Bioware doesn't want to allow automated market undercut calculations by mods, it should at least look at some of the other cool stuff Auctioneer introduced, like being able to see a list of similar auctions when you put an item in the sell tab.
Fishing
There is no fishing, and no sign that they will be adding fishing to the game. WHAT THE HELL, BIOWARE?!
Thing I'm Undecided About
Starship Travel
Travelling between zones (or planets, in the case of SWTOR) is easier than in WoW, as you can just fly their in your ship. You just click the section of the galaxy, then select your destination. The good thing is that it takes just as long to go from one side of the galaxy to the other as it does to go to the planet next door. The bad part is that it takes just as long to go from one side of the galaxy as it does to go to the planet next door. I guess it's a bit of a trade-off, like linear search vs a hash table with moderate cost for look up. I'm not sure if it's my computer or our connection, but loading a planet seems to take forever, so I usually avoid travelling unless I have to.
----------------------------------
*Slicing was a crew skill where you could basically send your crew member out to farm money for you. It got nerfed so that now they are more likely to return with less money than it cost to send them out whereas before it was a bit ridiculous. I could send one out for about 1000 credits, and they'd return with about 4000-6000 credits.
No comments:
Post a Comment