Some post-beta test TOR thoughts
I usually do my posting over on Google+ these days, but for a big ol' fashioned info-dump why not use the classic LJ, eh?
Just finished a ~4-day tour of Star Wars: The Old Republic's beta test. Since the NDA's been lifted I can share comments, thoughts, etc freely now.
TL;DR version: I generally liked it, will be getting it and am looking forward to playing when it goes live despite some of its flaws/problems.
It's too late at night to get into a really serious "review" - it also wouldn't be entirely fair as they're still got several weeks of development to do. But I did want to pass along some notes I'd taken about things I liked/didn't-like.
Loved: The smooth transitions between private and public areas. Almost no zoning at all. The passage between areas is smooth and well-managed.
Loved: "Splintering" High Population Zones - A system I think I first saw in City of Heroes, and worked GREAT there, TOR will split high-population areas into sub-instances. You can move freely between them, if you want to party up with folks you know. But otherwise this system helps ensure minimal lag and a fair distribution/access to mobs, etc. My only issue with this kind of system is that if you can splinter a zone, why do we still need so many servers/shards? Why not reduce the number (and keep more folks together) and just splinter as-needed?
Loved: In-combat animations and movement: Characters in action looked great. Light saber fights, something I was initially very dubious about, looked fantastic. Lots of attention to details and capturing the "little things" make combat visually wonderful.
Hated: Out of combat animation/movement: ...which makes me wonder how they fucked this up so badly. As good as the in-combat movement was, the out-of-combat movement (running around, emotes, etc) seemed jerky, stilted and wooden.
Hated: Too much time to get to your real class: This game, like several others before it, uses a system wherein you start as a semi-generic class and then at level 10 you acquire your advanced class. And, honestly, it just feels like too long to get there. Anyone that played the early days of EQ2 knows how frustrating it can be. Even DAOC, that had a pretty trivial early stage got rid of the division. I don't mind the evolution of the character in-game, I think it's definitely got value, but I felt like it needed to come a bit earlier.
Loved: Game performance: I had read/heard a lot of horror stories about the demanding system specs for TOR. I knew my system was above the minimum specs, but it wasn't above them by much. So I was pleasantly surprised when I was able to turn up almost all of the settings to their highest while still maintaining a very respectable framerate. It helps that my Windows box doesn't run at a terribly high resolution (1280x1024), but still, this was definitely a 'win'. Any improvements I make to this box will only mean that I can turn things up even higher.
Hated: Models & Hair: A lot of the player models left me pretty cold. Many of the women looked like Dora the Explorer to me, and many of the males had hair 'helmets' that i found less than satisfying. There's also an unfortunate side-effect of how they do quest rewards and how they group starter-areas for there to be thundering herds of the same class looking perfectly identical in terms of gear. There's more variation as the game progresses of course, but never as much as I would have liked.
Loved/Hated: AE Looting/Auto Looting: for some reason they went through the trouble of adding one of the greatest features in Rift, AE Looting, and then didn't turn it on by default. In fact, if I didn't make a point of pouring over the settings on my first character I probably wouldn't have known about it at all. It's a great feature. Auto-looting is present in a number of games now, so it's not as big a deal, but it did bother me still that it wasn't on by default.
Hated: Where are the new game mechanics?: For all it's awesomeness, and it is pretty awesome, there really didn't feel like there was much in the way of newness to the game. In many ways it felt like "WoW in Space". The only really major differences to that tired old MMOG formula are the Companions and Conversation-based Quests (see below). Otherwise, it was a lot of skill-bar mashing while you killed 10 Space Rats for another quest. That doesn't make it a bad thing, but I did hope to see something new when I get a new game - especially one that's been in development for so long and by such an otherwise prestigious game studio.
Hated: Can't Re-position Dialogs/Windows: Hopefully something that will be fixed ASAP, as it stands you can't move a window or dialog box in game. This makes it hard to see/use the chat window while doing some tasks and makes some other tasks more difficult than they need to be.
Loved/Hated: "What do I do now?" : You can really feel the hand of different game designers, quest devs, etc across the game. Some areas, tasks, etc have a very clear "you should do this now" feel to them, others leave you scratching your head as to what you should be doing. The crafting system, for example, left me scratching my head. How to interact with your Companions (dismissing, etc) was another example of a poorly explained mechanic.
About the only two mechanics that were truly unique were Companions and Conversational Quest Interaction. A few thoughts...
Companions:
- Some were much better than others. I didn't find the one that attached to my Sith warrior to be especially helpful or useful except in the tougher fights when I needed more DPS. Others were complete game-changers (for the better) - I was ready to scrap my Jedi consular until his companion joined; the game really opened up for that character at that point. I think I would have liked a system closer to the one in LOTRO that gives you more options about what kind of companion you get (i know you get more options later in the game, but I want some level of fine-tuning earlier).
- Loved that they included the "sell my junk" feature. I can tell my companion to return to town and sell my gray loot (junk loot). S/he'll be back in 60 seconds, my inventory is freed up and I didn't have to trash anything.
- Also liked the system they have for sending companions on "missions" of their own. I can send my companion out on a mission and in a few minutes (real-time) they'll come back, potentially with some loot for me.
- I'm a little torn about the crafting system. In general I like it, but it is very slow, as it uses that "go-on-a-mission" style interface. If you want to make a blaster, you tell your companion to go make it happen, and a minute later (real time), they come back with the completed craft project. That said, the REAL limitation I found in crafting was a shortage of proper supply, so I don't think this is going to be a real problem.
Conversational Quest Interaction: All of the NPC's you interact with for quests involve going into a cut-scene and include some conversational options. All of them have good voice work and clearly a lot of effort has been put into them. It's a really nice step forward in adding a real sense of Role Playing Game to the MMOG world. It's not perfect though.
- Holy crap big. The installation footprint is just under 20 gigabytes. All of the sound and supporting elements for this feature are a non-trivial part of that size.
- Loved: Really gives a nice sense of interaction and I dare say "ownership". You're in control of the game in a way us players haven't been before. And it's not just on select, epic quests, but on Every. Freakin'. Quest. You can finally, REALLY role-play with the NPCs in a meaningful way.
- Hated: Almost no real impact. While the conversational options can result in a change in your good/evil alignment, companion approval, etc and will generate different role-playing conversational results, the end result is nearly always the same. You get the quest, you get the quest-loot, etc. Only in some cases will you get different sub-quests as a result or have any real consequences from your choices.
- Most conversational choices boiled down to the trio of "good guy", "bad guy", "mercenary/greedy guy" choices. I would have liked to see a little more variety. It's not bad or anything, but once you notice that pattern it's hard to STOP noticing it.
I wasn't going to comment on these two aspects, as the game still has a few weeks left in the furnace, but for the sake of completion:
Loved: Client Stability: The client software was rock-solid for me all weekend. No unexpected crashes or disconnects, which is great. I know that not everyone was so lucky, but I was left really quite pleased with the stability of the game.
Hated: Fit & Finish: While the software was very stable for me (no crashes, disconnects, etc), there were a LOT of sad bugs there were still in the game. Lots of little and not-so-little things that really shouldn't still be an issue at this late stage. The expectations from the player-world these days are very high and I think this is going to cost them points and good-will and will mar the launch of what, otherwise, is a pretty solid game.
Just finished a ~4-day tour of Star Wars: The Old Republic's beta test. Since the NDA's been lifted I can share comments, thoughts, etc freely now.
TL;DR version: I generally liked it, will be getting it and am looking forward to playing when it goes live despite some of its flaws/problems.
It's too late at night to get into a really serious "review" - it also wouldn't be entirely fair as they're still got several weeks of development to do. But I did want to pass along some notes I'd taken about things I liked/didn't-like.
Loved: The smooth transitions between private and public areas. Almost no zoning at all. The passage between areas is smooth and well-managed.
Loved: "Splintering" High Population Zones - A system I think I first saw in City of Heroes, and worked GREAT there, TOR will split high-population areas into sub-instances. You can move freely between them, if you want to party up with folks you know. But otherwise this system helps ensure minimal lag and a fair distribution/access to mobs, etc. My only issue with this kind of system is that if you can splinter a zone, why do we still need so many servers/shards? Why not reduce the number (and keep more folks together) and just splinter as-needed?
Loved: In-combat animations and movement: Characters in action looked great. Light saber fights, something I was initially very dubious about, looked fantastic. Lots of attention to details and capturing the "little things" make combat visually wonderful.
Hated: Out of combat animation/movement: ...which makes me wonder how they fucked this up so badly. As good as the in-combat movement was, the out-of-combat movement (running around, emotes, etc) seemed jerky, stilted and wooden.
Hated: Too much time to get to your real class: This game, like several others before it, uses a system wherein you start as a semi-generic class and then at level 10 you acquire your advanced class. And, honestly, it just feels like too long to get there. Anyone that played the early days of EQ2 knows how frustrating it can be. Even DAOC, that had a pretty trivial early stage got rid of the division. I don't mind the evolution of the character in-game, I think it's definitely got value, but I felt like it needed to come a bit earlier.
Loved: Game performance: I had read/heard a lot of horror stories about the demanding system specs for TOR. I knew my system was above the minimum specs, but it wasn't above them by much. So I was pleasantly surprised when I was able to turn up almost all of the settings to their highest while still maintaining a very respectable framerate. It helps that my Windows box doesn't run at a terribly high resolution (1280x1024), but still, this was definitely a 'win'. Any improvements I make to this box will only mean that I can turn things up even higher.
Hated: Models & Hair: A lot of the player models left me pretty cold. Many of the women looked like Dora the Explorer to me, and many of the males had hair 'helmets' that i found less than satisfying. There's also an unfortunate side-effect of how they do quest rewards and how they group starter-areas for there to be thundering herds of the same class looking perfectly identical in terms of gear. There's more variation as the game progresses of course, but never as much as I would have liked.
Loved/Hated: AE Looting/Auto Looting: for some reason they went through the trouble of adding one of the greatest features in Rift, AE Looting, and then didn't turn it on by default. In fact, if I didn't make a point of pouring over the settings on my first character I probably wouldn't have known about it at all. It's a great feature. Auto-looting is present in a number of games now, so it's not as big a deal, but it did bother me still that it wasn't on by default.
Hated: Where are the new game mechanics?: For all it's awesomeness, and it is pretty awesome, there really didn't feel like there was much in the way of newness to the game. In many ways it felt like "WoW in Space". The only really major differences to that tired old MMOG formula are the Companions and Conversation-based Quests (see below). Otherwise, it was a lot of skill-bar mashing while you killed 10 Space Rats for another quest. That doesn't make it a bad thing, but I did hope to see something new when I get a new game - especially one that's been in development for so long and by such an otherwise prestigious game studio.
Hated: Can't Re-position Dialogs/Windows: Hopefully something that will be fixed ASAP, as it stands you can't move a window or dialog box in game. This makes it hard to see/use the chat window while doing some tasks and makes some other tasks more difficult than they need to be.
Loved/Hated: "What do I do now?" : You can really feel the hand of different game designers, quest devs, etc across the game. Some areas, tasks, etc have a very clear "you should do this now" feel to them, others leave you scratching your head as to what you should be doing. The crafting system, for example, left me scratching my head. How to interact with your Companions (dismissing, etc) was another example of a poorly explained mechanic.
About the only two mechanics that were truly unique were Companions and Conversational Quest Interaction. A few thoughts...
Companions:
- Some were much better than others. I didn't find the one that attached to my Sith warrior to be especially helpful or useful except in the tougher fights when I needed more DPS. Others were complete game-changers (for the better) - I was ready to scrap my Jedi consular until his companion joined; the game really opened up for that character at that point. I think I would have liked a system closer to the one in LOTRO that gives you more options about what kind of companion you get (i know you get more options later in the game, but I want some level of fine-tuning earlier).
- Loved that they included the "sell my junk" feature. I can tell my companion to return to town and sell my gray loot (junk loot). S/he'll be back in 60 seconds, my inventory is freed up and I didn't have to trash anything.
- Also liked the system they have for sending companions on "missions" of their own. I can send my companion out on a mission and in a few minutes (real-time) they'll come back, potentially with some loot for me.
- I'm a little torn about the crafting system. In general I like it, but it is very slow, as it uses that "go-on-a-mission" style interface. If you want to make a blaster, you tell your companion to go make it happen, and a minute later (real time), they come back with the completed craft project. That said, the REAL limitation I found in crafting was a shortage of proper supply, so I don't think this is going to be a real problem.
Conversational Quest Interaction: All of the NPC's you interact with for quests involve going into a cut-scene and include some conversational options. All of them have good voice work and clearly a lot of effort has been put into them. It's a really nice step forward in adding a real sense of Role Playing Game to the MMOG world. It's not perfect though.
- Holy crap big. The installation footprint is just under 20 gigabytes. All of the sound and supporting elements for this feature are a non-trivial part of that size.
- Loved: Really gives a nice sense of interaction and I dare say "ownership". You're in control of the game in a way us players haven't been before. And it's not just on select, epic quests, but on Every. Freakin'. Quest. You can finally, REALLY role-play with the NPCs in a meaningful way.
- Hated: Almost no real impact. While the conversational options can result in a change in your good/evil alignment, companion approval, etc and will generate different role-playing conversational results, the end result is nearly always the same. You get the quest, you get the quest-loot, etc. Only in some cases will you get different sub-quests as a result or have any real consequences from your choices.
- Most conversational choices boiled down to the trio of "good guy", "bad guy", "mercenary/greedy guy" choices. I would have liked to see a little more variety. It's not bad or anything, but once you notice that pattern it's hard to STOP noticing it.
I wasn't going to comment on these two aspects, as the game still has a few weeks left in the furnace, but for the sake of completion:
Loved: Client Stability: The client software was rock-solid for me all weekend. No unexpected crashes or disconnects, which is great. I know that not everyone was so lucky, but I was left really quite pleased with the stability of the game.
Hated: Fit & Finish: While the software was very stable for me (no crashes, disconnects, etc), there were a LOT of sad bugs there were still in the game. Lots of little and not-so-little things that really shouldn't still be an issue at this late stage. The expectations from the player-world these days are very high and I think this is going to cost them points and good-will and will mar the launch of what, otherwise, is a pretty solid game.