**OFFICIAL** Star Wars: The Old Republic Thread

[nageov3t]

No crafting components drop from mobs AFAIK.

bio chem components are gathered from "scanning" dead creatures, but idk if what mats are generated depends on the creature level or not (I've only used it on the second planet so far)

 

[s44]

bio chem components are gathered from "scanning" dead creatures, but idk if what mats are generated depends on the creature level or not (I've only used it on the second planet so far)

Also droids. And yes, the mats depend on creature level.

 

[Merad]

True. I was just thinking about items dropping as part of general loot for some reason.

 

[paperfist]

Not true at all. You have to do reverse engineering to get blue & purple recipes, but once you do that and if you can get the mats to make them, they're easily some of the best items you'll get while leveling.

I stand corrected then, all I see is people bitching on the SW:TOR forums about how useless crafting is and how if you want real equipment you need to raid. I'm only level 25 at synthweaving so I don't know from experience how true that is.

 

[Merad]

No idea about endgame. It's useful while leveling, if you're willing to spend the money to keep it leveled with you.

 

[Neoczar]

Hi folk, this is my first post on the forum. I usually stick to the hardware sections of the forum and just lurk.

I'm a long-time member in another forum which is mostly centered around a server in WoW. Everybody has been very excited (including myself) about SWTOR, and the thread there about it has reviews ranging from positive to lukewarm, until this:

Forgive me for the long quote, but I need your opnion on this:-

As i can see that most people are very happy with this game in a sense i cant really recognise, so i figured i would give my views on it.


The game has 2 advantages going for it.
1. Its starwars, for anyone who loves starwars this gives alot of points in itself.
2. Storyline, the add of speach and personal storyline is fantastic and really help
leveling and having fun.

and thats it.


The rest of it is a very poor excuse for an mmo.
If you tage the way it works and look it is very clear to me (My personel view) that they
bought a standard mmo basis system and used all the time to add graphics and speach and
NO time to improve functionalty. The game is a poor nodeveloped version of games like warhammer
and rift. The stat system, the gear system, the token system etc etc works the same way and it has all the bad design and bugs too, like shit avatar looks, shit movement, the same bugs of char. that drops down and keep getting up and dropping again in the bad char. movement system it has, as well as many other.

The Ui is just the basis shit looking noworking crap. You cant focus a windue, you cant change or move anything. Health bars dont update, you have no overview of buff debuff etc etc, no time spent at all on any development.

The quest is the standard of all games, except for the speach, and mobs is spread out as the normal 10 year old system of 1 group each 40 meters, timesink system.

The graphics is plain, it might score maybe 5 of 10, really have a hard time understanding how people can say its great but hej each to there own.

So basically a very poor technical game.

Now as i see it the game has 2 major gamebreaking faults.
1.
They have not done any programming development on the standard system that they bought.
This means that they havent reengineered anything and have no people yet, who know how everything works. This means that any major development of interface, optimizing or addons etc is NOT going to happen for at least 1 year or even more. And for that matter they will be fully busy with correction bugs for a long time.

2.
The responsive of the game. this has to be the most shitty of any mmo ever made. If you think of playing a warrior in wow and charging into a group of mobs you know that damage numbers start flying when you just think of activating any abilities, wow most likely has the worlds best responsice system but still this is a major item for any game. This game is just shit, (and note we are NOT talking lag or old computers here, that has
to be added on top, it is purely the systems response.) and this is extremely annoying.

Because of the problem with having a standard system and yet no focus on any development this is not going to change for several years.



Now with all the bad things said and i have only mentioned the most annoying of all the bad things, i am playing it and having a very good time, both from the fact of it being starwars and the storyline which is like, well just me.
I thing this will keep me intertained going to level 50 with at least 2 char. for maybe 1 month playing, which all in all aint that bad. But this will fade eventually and all that is left then is a very poor technically game with
no hope of any good improvements for a very long time. Its a HYPE game mostly a mini AOC .

Forgive the spelling and punctuation, I just copy-pasted. What do you think? Naturally I haven't bought the game yet, or else I'd have my own opinion about this.

 

[thepaqster]

I don't think that guy has played very many launch quality MMO's. Animations and responsiveness have been sub-par in nearly every new MMO I've tried be it WoW, Rift, Warhammer:AoR (this one was particularly clunky) or SW:ToR. Animations are one of the aspects of the game that get the most polish with time, so of course WoW would be the best in that category.

Although SW:ToR is another descendant of the western MMO style established by the likes of UO and EQ, there are a few minor details that really set this game apart in my mind. For example, the addition of orange gear that is fully customizable makes levelling up really, really cool. For the first time, I could select gear because it looked good on my character and not worry about missing out on stats or completely gimping my levelling experience. I had never seen this in any modern MMO, and that single change for me was epic, epic win.

 

[Fingolfin269]

Hey guys just wanting to check in for possible hardware upgrades I may want to consider for TOR. I'm getting in the neighborhood of 20-30fps with most settings on high but do have shadows either low or off. I'd like to keep the expense as minimal as possible so I'd say we're limited to ram and video card because I really don't want to deal with a new mobo/proc.

Q6600
3GB Ram
Nvidia 9600GT

BTW, if it's not really something that would provide a noticeable performance difference then I'll probably just stick with what I've got. Seems playable enough but then again I haven't spent much time in major cities or PvP environments.

 

[Fingolfin269]

Forgive the spelling and punctuation, I just copy-pasted. What do you think? Naturally I haven't bought the game yet, or else I'd have my own opinion about this.

I've played one character up to 11 and am working on another right now so it's not like I'm deep into this game or anything...

To be honest, imo this game is basically WoW set in the Star Wars universe but without the polish WoW has gained over the years. If this game were branded something other than Star Wars I doubt it would be doing very well past the first month or two.

With that being said, I'm having fun for now but we'll see how long that losts. The problem I'm running into now is that I realize this is just the same old MMO grind so the allure of 'new' is probably going to wear off quickly.

 

[Merad]

Eh, whoever wrote the long article obviously has no idea what they're talking about regarding programming. Yes, Bioware chose to license an engine (HeroEngine) but if they had no idea how to program with it as he claims the game wouldnt exist. 🙄

Unfortunately the industry norm now is to release half finished MMOs. Some of the things in TOR are almost shockingly bad (things like no UI customization at all, settings that don't save correctly) but its obvious that Bioware chose to focus heavily on the quest/story aspect, and that part is very good.

 

[Lumathix]

I had another bad day today was a long 2 hour grind quest doing a mission and one of the NPC bosses killed me on Hoth,that was to be expected as the other players had already killed him as a group and left so I had nobody to group with,even worst on the way to the mission point I was fighting a normal NPC mob when 3 sith PvP flagged players somehow got me flagged for PvP?...I thought wtf all I was trying to do was my quest and not even PvP flagged (on a PvE server btw)until they somehow got me PvP flagged plus they were 3 levels above me as well,anyway it was enough that I've quitted TOR for good never going back.

I tried hard to get into this game but in the end the game/frustration etc beat me.

Too much frustration and other things for me to even think about paying for this game.


Back to EQ2 and Skyrim for me, this is my last post in this thread.

Wow.
Dude stuff like that happens. It's not that big a deal.

 

[nageov3t]

trying to work out trade skills with only one companion just seems like shit design.

like, really? I'm in the field and want to crank out a stim so I've got to sit there and wait for 60 seconds?

 

[paperfist]

Now with all the bad things said and i have only mentioned the most annoying of all the bad things, i am playing it and having a very good time, both from the fact of it being starwars and the storyline which is like, well just me.

Sorry to me that make zero sense, laundry list of complaints, but still having a good time.

I played WoW for 10 levels and hated the grind, while SW:TOR has a grind it is not the same as other MMOs and is what sets it apart. Sure it's got some strange omissions, but like any other game of its type it is expected to have features added for $15/month.

BTW, that blurb forgot to mention the most awesome feature I've never seen in an MMO, a map that dims while your moving on it to show the background and your destination. 😛

 

[lupi]

trying to work out trade skills with only one companion just seems like shit design.

like, really? I'm in the field and want to crank out a stim so I've got to sit there and wait for 60 seconds?

as soon as you get your ship you've got one that is good for nothing other than crafting.

 

[paperfist]

trying to work out trade skills with only one companion just seems like shit design.

like, really? I'm in the field and want to crank out a stim so I've got to sit there and wait for 60 seconds?

I haven't crafted since DAoC so just having a companion to craft is amazing! 😛

Did you get your ship yet? Pretty sure you can have them craft while your in the field. Just select them from the crafting list and assign them a task. It almost feels like cheating to me to have a queue setup for my droid to synthweave 15 items at a time while I'm out questing.

 

[nageov3t]

as soon as you get your ship you've got one that is good for nothing other than crafting.

that's good to know.

I haven't gotten the ship yet, just my first companion. I can queue her up for a max of 5 craftings and then I'm stuck without a companion for 5 minutes.

I'll time it so that she's crafting while I'm running to the bathroom or eating lunch, it just seemed like poor design.

 

[coloumb]

Hi folk, this is my first post on the forum. I usually stick to the hardware sections of the forum and just lurk.

I'm a long-time member in another forum which is mostly centered around a server in WoW. Everybody has been very excited (including myself) about SWTOR, and the thread there about it has reviews ranging from positive to lukewarm, until this:

Forgive me for the long quote, but I need your opnion on this:-

Forgive the spelling and punctuation, I just copy-pasted. What do you think? Naturally I haven't bought the game yet, or else I'd have my own opinion about this.

From my impression of following the game about 2 years ago and beta testing for about the last 6 months of "closed" beta - it's KOTOR in a multiplayer world and nothing more. Don't play the game expecting a revolutionary new MMO - play the game for an extremely good class story.

I tend to ignore any review that compares it to WoW - the game that literally ripped off and continues to rip off every idea from other games and the media.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Hey guys just wanting to check in for possible hardware upgrades I may want to consider for TOR. I'm getting in the neighborhood of 20-30fps with most settings on high but do have shadows either low or off. I'd like to keep the expense as minimal as possible so I'd say we're limited to ram and video card because I really don't want to deal with a new mobo/proc.

Q6600
3GB Ram
Nvidia 9600GT

BTW, if it's not really something that would provide a noticeable performance difference then I'll probably just stick with what I've got. Seems playable enough but then again I haven't spent much time in major cities or PvP environments.

Are you running a 32 bit or 64 bit OS? I'd recommend a RAM upgrade as TOR can grab around 2 GB of RAM or so by itself.

 

[Rebel_L]

Forgive me for the long quote, but I need your opnion on this:-



Forgive the spelling and punctuation, I just copy-pasted. What do you think? Naturally I haven't bought the game yet, or else I'd have my own opinion about this.

I am always amazed at what many former wow players call unresponsive combat, personally I find the combat quite responsive, the only difference is that you dont get a long list of instant abilities and the global cooldown is 1.5 seconds. Any time you want to add some decent animations for combat you have to have a bit of time between attacks to have them happen, its kind of like switching between a rogue and warrior in wow back in the early days where the rogue had mostly instant attacks and the warrior was full of on next swing attacks. It works at a bit slower of a pace but its not unresponsive.

 

[Fingolfin269]

Are you running a 32 bit or 64 bit OS? I'd recommend a RAM upgrade as TOR can grab around 2 GB of RAM or so by itself.

I've got Win 7 and pretty sure I opted for the 64 bit version. You're right that is probably the easiest bang for the buck fix. What about vid card upgrades? It's been a long time since I've really researched the state of hardware tech so I'm not sure if an incremental vid card upgrade will just result in a cpu bottleneck or not.

 

[s44]

You want at least 4gb RAM and 64-bit Windows for TOR. There's an occasional memory leak you don't have to worry about if you have 8gb RAM.

9600GT is definitely on the low end of decently playable. You'll definitely get better performance with an upgrade -- 6870 or so will let you run AA as well.

 

[Clinkster]

I've got Win 7 and pretty sure I opted for the 64 bit version. You're right that is probably the easiest bang for the buck fix. What about vid card upgrades? It's been a long time since I've really researched the state of hardware tech so I'm not sure if an incremental vid card upgrade will just result in a cpu bottleneck or not.

I would most def upgrade that video card. CPU is more than fine for this game.

I'd figure out your budget for a new card and go from there.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

I don't think that guy has played very many launch quality MMO's. Animations and responsiveness have been sub-par in nearly every new MMO I've tried be it WoW, Rift, Warhammer:AoR (this one was particularly clunky) or SW:ToR. Animations are one of the aspects of the game that get the most polish with time, so of course WoW would be the best in that category.

Although SW:ToR is another descendant of the western MMO style established by the likes of UO and EQ, there are a few minor details that really set this game apart in my mind. For example, the addition of orange gear that is fully customizable makes levelling up really, really cool. For the first time, I could select gear because it looked good on my character and not worry about missing out on stats or completely gimping my levelling experience. I had never seen this in any modern MMO, and that single change for me was epic, epic win.

The responsiveness gets annoying as well. Ive died a few times because of it whether it be leveling or pvp.

 

[nageov3t]

it took me awhile to realize that there doesn't seem to be any auto-attack.

 

[Merad]

trying to work out trade skills with only one companion just seems like shit design.

like, really? I'm in the field and want to crank out a stim so I've got to sit there and wait for 60 seconds?

In 15 levels or so when you have 4+ companions to send out at once, it's awesome. 🙂