Star Wars The Old Republic

[The Saltman]

Belgoths beacon doesn't ever have ques. Loving it

[The Saltman]

I took Kurbs advice and turned off shadows, MUCH better thanks!

So far...

I'm at level 8 and so far the game is VERY linear - story trumps all. The Jedi temple location is very nicely done but the area seems pretty constrained as to where you can go and what you can do. The interaction of the NPCs via video and audio gameplay looks great, and the ability to ask questions a certain way is cool - but sometimes I get a bit bored listening to them talk and would rather have the text boxes back so I can skim and get to the meat of the matter. It seems the've crafted this game for casual gamers that like Star Wars and want to hit things with a lightsaber. I'll have to create another character like a bounty hunter and check that out as well.

I can only compare this to LOTRO - and I think that LOTRO has a better ability for the character to move around and choose different things to do, more side quests that don't always involve killing stuff, etc. SWTOR is a more advanced UI with better battle animation that has the potential for way cooler stuff down the line.

Once off the starter planet things get much better especially on the republic side. Much bigger planets.

[cookinwithgas]

I figured as much but don't want to miss anything -

I guess the issue I have so far is Star Wars is supposed to be BIG, and when I hop on a speeder to go to one of the other "travel locations" I'm simply going over a hill and arriving at the next spot. You can't control the speeder (do you get your own later?) which is kind of odd.

The plot is a bit contrived with the "you are a special Force person!!!1!" but it's interesting. The idea that the Jedi teacher sends you out on all these missions critically important to the order instead of working with say, the Council on them, is quite a stretch.

[mav1234]

You do get your own speeder at level 25.

I don't know the JK story, but the agent, BH, and Consular stories all made sense from a "Why me?" standpoint.

[natty]

I figured as much but don't want to miss anything -

I guess the issue I have so far is Star Wars is supposed to be BIG, and when I hop on a speeder to go to one of the other "travel locations" I'm simply going over a hill and arriving at the next spot. You can't control the speeder (do you get your own later?) which is kind of odd.

The plot is a bit contrived with the "you are a special Force person!!!1!" but it's interesting. The idea that the Jedi teacher sends you out on all these missions critically important to the order instead of working with say, the Council on them, is quite a stretch.

Ha, wait til you get to Coruscant. I almost feel like they made stuff big just to make it big. I do think they didn't do a real good job of making stuff 'feel' big, which is something WoW pulled off perfectly imo.

There's a difference between something with a large scale and something that feels wide open. Idk if I'm describing that well but wow just felt bigger because I could start running at the north side of a continent and run for hours. I understand that swtor is a galaxy, not a world, so they can do that. But perhaps if you left a planet and had free control to move around in your ship it could give that same feeling. Simply seeing the approach to the republic/empire fleet instead of loading the hangar bay would do a lot to make it feel bigger and more epic.

And I think the JK and JC stories are a little bland. They have their moments but I'm enjoying the Sith much more. I just finished the main quest line for a planet working under a sith lord that I flirted with the whole time. Once everything was finished up I gave her a little pickle tickle and went on my way. It's the little things. Playing as a sith you get more smart ass dialog options and everything just seems more fun. The dark side options can get pretty brutal though, I've felt like a total asshole a few times and actually regretted my decision(on the flip side I made a light side decision that came back to have a negative consequence and I felt bad too).

lol - after just posting this I see this. And fyi, the result of that quest is the light side option. Jedi dark/light options are whether to tattletale on 2 padawans in love or keep it secret, sith dark/light options are murder a rogue sith's son and wife or just murder his son and bang his wife. Sith ftw.

[natty]

Not really liking the talks of linear gameplay.

I haven't played Rift but I don't think swtor is any more linear than others. Often linear could be replaced with streamlined. Being a story driven game it makes a lot of sense to be linear to a point. You can go anywhere you want but you have to follow the questline to level properly and the side quests complement the main class story line for each planet. Honestly it feels a little awkward if you don't follow the set path. I just finished rushing through the class quests on a planet because I knew I'd get the healer companion and I really needed him because SWs and JKs are pretty gimped. Now that I'm going back and finishing the side quests they seem weird because I've already completed the planet's story arc(i.e. I'm fighting rebels that I've already put down).

[cookinwithgas]

Well I'm looking forward to getting off the training planet then.

I was an original SWG player and actually really liked it until they changed combat. You could travel around entire planets, drive speeders, then starships; and it was biased towards being a rebel (which I felt was more true to the concept of Star Wars). It had a lot of issues but for it's time I thought it was great.

[Toolbox]

damn down until midnight.. sucks.. I been spending a lot of time hunting down the holocrons lol.

[stankowalski]

Gotta say it. I'm a bit underwhelmed with the game. Still way early as I'm only level 6....just hope it gets better.

[The Saltman]

What class are you playing and why underhwelmed?

[stankowalski]

Playing Jedi Knight. There are a few minor gripes I have. The game isn't terrible and honestly it's still to early to say how good or bad it is.

Some gripes:

1. I feel like I'm right on top of my character. Would like to be able to pull back further with the camera.

2. No macros? Or am I missing something?

3. Input lag. After pressing an ability their seems to be some lag with the amount of time it takes the game to recognize and do what I wanted.

4. Cartoonish look to the character.

5. Having to accept the EULA EVERYTIME i log on. (Not a gameplay issue but still rather annoying).

6. Animations don't look particularly well done to me (regarding combat).

7. Inability to place waypoints. Perhaps I've missed this somewhere.

[CarolinaSock]

I'm with you on the being close to my character as I'm used to DAOC which was considerably further away but it's easy enough for me to overlook.

There are no macros as of right now.

Ability lag could be the ability queue. It's defaulted at .5 seconds. So you can queue your next ability half a second before the universal cooldown is up. You can change that to up to 1 second or down to nothing. Don't know if this is what your experiencing or if it's really just lag.

I was very disappointed when I first saw the graphic style they were going with. I understand why they went stylized graphics rather than realistic even if I wish they hadn't. Once you start getting cooler looking gear it's easier to ignore the simplistic faces at least for me.

I don't have to accept the EULA anymore when I log on, so I don't know why you would.

Combat flows better as you get more abilities at least in my opinion. When you start seeing your character blocking blaster fire from behind and actually reaching behind their head with their saber to block them is pretty cool.

I can't speak on the waypoints because I've never tried.

[The Saltman]

there is a way to zoom in and out...just cant remember now right off the top of my head.

[Guest Irv]

are the servers diverse or are there thousands of jedi running around with maybe one or two bounty hunters.