Any Jedi or Sith? SWTOR

[The_Warpact]

Anyone currently playing SWTOR? Seems like another "older" mmo that just got another expansion. 

I love Star Wars overall but have never played this or Legends. Typically in the past its been Battlefront and Force Unleashed all console games.

So is it any good?

[TheOtherTed]

Not currently playing, but I poked my head in a month or two ago for a nostalgia fix.  Here's my take, but some of this information may be outdated.

 

The good:

1. Most of the class quests are well written and engaging.  My personal favorite was the Imperial Agent series.
2. Lightsabers!
3. The ambient artwork and music is pretty good IMO, considering its age.
4. Two forms of player housing - a ship you get as part of a class quest, and your own "dollhouse" in a city that you can decorate.
5. Companions are a lot of fun (or, at least, I've never had one I hated), and add an extra dimension to your class quests.

The bad:

1. It's "powered by WoW."  What I mean by that is the developers seem to have deliberately reverse-engineered every aspect of the WoW engine.  It's changed a bit over the years, but under the hood it still feels like a WoW clone made by die-hard WoW fans.
2. A side-effect of point 1, it's very much built around the classic MMO "trinity" of roles (tank, healer, DPS).  Of the 8 classes on each side, 6 have an explicit tank or healer spec, and they don't necessarily make much sense.  For example, Operatives, the stealthy, vibroknife-wielding advanced class of the Imperial Agent base class, have a "medicine" spec.  Because doctors use knives, to heal people, right?  So, you know, totally natural fit.
3. You rise through levels very quickly.  If you do the zone quests as well as the class quests, you're pretty much guaranteed to outlevel the zone in short order.  As a result, I stopped doing zone quests almost as soon as the game was launched, just so fights could be at least kind of interesting.
4. It feels like a single-player game.  There's almost no reason to team up for ordinary questing.  There are Flashpoints (similar to TFs, I guess), but the structure is very much WoW-ish (see point 1) with all the potential drama that entails.
5. Costume customization isn't great.  You can define an overall outfit according to bits and pieces of costume you pick up, and you can match colors across costume pieces, but the latter feature often doesn't work the way you'd expect it to.
6. Even though there is fast travel in each zone, expect to walk.  A lot.  I used to call WoW "World of Walking" until I played SWTOR.
7. The game has gone through multiple server crunches, and to my knowledge, names have never been freed up.  If you think getting a good name on CoH is tough, you ain't seen nothing yet.  With one exception, all the fun, cool, unique names I came up with for the dozens of characters I've made are irrevocably gone.

The indifferent:

1. Classes are "mirrored" across the two factions.  Meaning, for instance, that a Republic Gunslinger has the same abilities "by the numbers" as an Imperial Sniper but with different animations, weapon models, and special effects.
2. Lots of microtransactions.  Lots and lots of 'em.  If you're not a subscriber and want to play a Mirialan or a Twi'lek, for example, you'll have to buy it, per server, per faction.  The silver lining is that if you pay a sub, you'll get a monthly allotment of "cartel coins" (or whatever they're called) that you can spend on those microtransactions.
3. The game has an alignment mechanic, where certain decisions or dialogue choices can score you "light side" or "dark side" points.  Get enough dark side points, and your character pick up scars or other marks of their evilness.  I personally like it, but I put this in the "indifferent" column because it's not everyone's thing.
4. There's also a social mechanic, where if you're teamed up with others, you can get "social points" when you get to choose dialogue options for the group.  Get enough points and the game will throw little neato-keen rewards, ranging from a handful of cartel coins to unique costume pieces.  However, it depends on teaming, which points to #4 under the "bad" column.  It's also another source of potential drama - I got all kinds of flak for making the "wrong" dialogue choices in Flashpoints.

All in all, I think it's worth playing, at least for the class quests.  It may also be worth making one character on each side to do the zone quests as well, just to see if that's your thing.  Just be aware that you can't advance to the next zone until you've completed your class quests there (unless that's changed).

Edited February 19, 2022 by TheOtherTed

[The_Warpact]

51 minutes ago, TheOtherTed said:

Snipped

Thank you for the comprehensive explanation, I was interested after reading an article on it with the launch of the new expansion. 

Your critique coupled with reading their forums has led me to my decision. 

[Greycat]

Man, been ages since I poked my nose in there...

 

And yeah. The class quests were pretty good. I seem to recall, though, the thing that annoyed me is paying to level. Million credits to swing a lightsaber a little faster... while it may have changed by now, it felt a great bit like the plan was "grind or fall behind."

 

[Apparition]

If you don't mind paying a subscription, SWTOR is definitely worth playing for the stories alone.  It's not really a free to play game, it's a free to try game that pushes you towards a monthly subscription.  I have no problem with that, but just letting you know.  But if you do opt to pay it, you can get hundreds of hours of great Star Wars stories, and it feels like Star Wars.

[PeregrineFalcon]

What Apparition said is completely true, except in a specific case.

 

I played SWTOR during beta, at launch, was subscribed for the first year, and have subscribed for a month here and a month there 3 or 5 times since then. I go back about once a year to play for the stories and level a couple of characters to max before going off for another year. I just started playing a few days ago after the latest expansion went live.

 

Playing free-to-play is so not worth it unless, like I have, you've subscribed and purchased specific unlocks. In my case, I was able to purchase the unlocks nearly for free since I got a bunch of Cartel Coins (the cash shop currency) just for being a subscriber.

 

TL;DR: Subscribe for one month and play. If you like it then purchase the specific unlocks you want and then play for free.

[Haijinx]

SWTOR is a great solo game.  

 

And you can play all the 0-50 stuff for free.  That is like 8 single player RPGs since there are 4 Class specific storylines per faction.  

 

You won't get very good gear, etc, but that really isn't necessary to play the game solo.  I would suggest instead you play the solo stuff free for a while, then decide whether or not to suscribe.  Since the expansions are not truly class specific you can suscribe AFTER you have made it to 50 for one or more classes (I'd suggest all 8 but w/e ) 

 

Its also a MMO, but that's where PeregrineFalcon's points come in. 

 

But I have subscribed off and on for years and honestly I spent very little time teaming up to do anything.  In fact while leveling the class quests actively discourage teaming up due to the way the system works.  

[Luminara]

16 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

I played SWTOR during beta, at launch, was subscribed for the first year

 

Ditto.  I left when they started talking about changing to the F2P model.  I had no idealized objection to that, at that time, but in concert with the efforts to pigeonhole classes into the trinity, the lack of content at max level (was in a guild, was participating in PvP, and was still spending most of my time just standing around, waiting for something to do), and the game not meeting my expectations for a Bioware product (wanted Star Wars, not Space-WoW), it was enough to convince me that it was time to move on.  Never returned, still don't regret leaving.

[Oubliette_Red]

I have sub'd several times over the years as well. I'm glad that the teaming restrictions/requirements don't awing in the other way and force teaming on you. I've leveled several characters to 70 completely solo and enjoyed the stories along the way. It's been a while since I've logged in and played and it seems that every time I do I have forgotten how to play whatever character I choose to log onto.  <.<

 

[Xeres]

The class storylines are great and worth playing for them alone.  I would definitely try it.

[Techwright]

On 2/19/2022 at 9:16 AM, TheOtherTed said:

Not currently playing, but I poked my head in a month or two ago for a nostalgia fix.  Here's my take, but some of this information may be outdated.

 

The good:

1. Most of the class quests are well written and engaging.  My personal favorite was the Imperial Agent series.
2. Lightsabers!
3. The ambient artwork and music is pretty good IMO, considering its age.
4. Two forms of player housing - a ship you get as part of a class quest, and your own "dollhouse" in a city that you can decorate.
5. Companions are a lot of fun (or, at least, I've never had one I hated), and add an extra dimension to your class quests.

The bad:

 

1. Even though there is fast travel in each zone, expect to walk.  A lot.  I used to call WoW "World of Walking" until I played SWTOR.
2. The game has gone through multiple server crunches, and to my knowledge, names have never been freed up.  If you think getting a good name on CoH is tough, you ain't seen nothing yet.  With one exception, all the fun, cool, unique names I came up with for the dozens of characters I've made are irrevocably gone.

 

1. There's also a social mechanic, where if you're teamed up with others, you can get "social points" when you get to choose dialogue options for the group.  Get enough points and the game will throw little neato-keen rewards, ranging from a handful of cartel coins to unique costume pieces.  However, it depends on teaming, which points to #4 under the "bad" column.  It's also another source of potential drama - I got all kinds of flak for making the "wrong" dialogue choices in Flashpoints.

It's been several years, but I played it a lot in its "Vanilla" format through its first expansion, and popped in periodically until about 4 years ago.  It's one of the few games where I actually enjoyed playing the "villain", though the way I played would probably be classified as "rogue" in City of Heroes.  I really enjoyed playing the Sith sorcerer (was that the name?) as a slave race member elevated due to his force ability. I took it a step further by pushing towards a pure "grey" morality.  Essentially, he's forced into the Sith Academy where everyone hates him and expects him to die, and instead he fights ferociously not only to survive but thrive.  His conversation were always chosen to be sassy.  Essentially, he enjoys sticking it to "the man", in this case, the entrenched Sith regime, but realizes to do so he has to walk a balance between conformity and outright rebellion. It change much of his interactive conversations, and created a fascinating character capable of ruthless manipulation and aggression while also just as comfortable showing mercy if he felt like it.

 

Likewise I found playing the Imperial Agent to be tons of fun when played as a gray morality, whatever-gets-the-job done character.  I chose to play that character as Chiss and it seemed such a good fit.  The trooper and bounty hunter characters were likewise quite entertaining.  I probably enjoyed the trooper storyline more than any other blue side story in the "Vanilla" pathing, though I've heard others found it a bit too straightforward for their tastes.  Of the Jedi, dual blades knight and double-blade staff Jedi consular were my favorites, the latter probably being my best design if I ever took up role playing (which I didn't).

 

I did have some dislikes, one of which was enough for me to cancel my account:

1.  Walking: @TheOtherTed was on-point about the walking problem.  Even with hover segways, it is quite time consuming, especially when you have to go through a (usually unnecessary) orbital space station to land on a planet, followed by a large land-based spaceport.  I suppose this was created originally to keep players in the game longer despite less material in the game, but when I left, this had not be reduced and it had reached a very annoying level at times.

2.  Platform jumping - some improvements to your character can only be found by searching weird, hidden corners of the world.  While I like Easter egg hunts in games, I don't like things that take you through an exceptionally long, convoluted path over tighter and more tricky elements where a slight misstep drops you and you have to start all over.  Early in the game this was especially frustrating as my hardware just barely fit the game, and the level of precision needed on some secret pathing was just more than my old mouse and keyboard could perform at.

3.  Known issues at key moments never repaired.  This is the one that caused me to leave.  I'd put a lot of time into all my characters and finally got the Jedi Knight up to his finally challenge and pulled through it.  At that point, there should have been a story moment where he's awarded for his victory, sort of the award sequence at the end of the original Star Wars.  Instead the game just ignored it and cut over to ordinary, meaningless stuff.  I thought I must have misunderstood, that perhaps there was something left to do still, but researching it, I discovered it had been a known issue for years, and apparently the devs had no intention of addressing it, leaving a host of players without their reward for their hard work. Glitches happen, and I understand that.  But that the players were denied their 15 minutes of fame after years of registered concerns was quite telling to me at how the players were viewed by the development team.  It was not the only major glitch left unattended for years, I discovered.  Just the one that hit home.

4. Removal of companion customization.  It used to be that I could craft empowering gear and do other customizations to my companions to aid me in the storylines.  This stopped and all the companions were stripped to what I (and several others) felt was a very blah version of them.

 

Irritating, but okay:

1.  One thing that actually started as good and got irritating over time was the story scene characters' pantomimes.  At first I thought these were pretty good, but then I started seeing the same moves again, and again, and again.  Some were even used in some weird situations that just didn't seem to fit them.  I figured they'd get some fresh stuff when the expansion rolled out, but nope.

2. "Stolen" names.  @TheOtherTed: actually there were name grabs.  I had several of my characters names "stolen" during one brief time away.  The crazy thing is I'd put a lot of thought into the names and felt I had some original stuff.  I guess someone had seen the names and written them down with the idea of swiping them at first chance.  Bit of a turn off for me since it happened in a relatively short time away.

[Saikochoro]

I played SWTOR from launch through the end of 4.X and quit upon the launch of 5.0. I popped back in for about 2 months last summer and had some fun, but not anywhere near the fun I had in the past. 
 

I was purely a pvp player in my swtor days and loved every bit of it through 4.X. Sure there was always the class imbalance frustrations, but I really enjoyed pvp.  Back then queue pops were frequent, especially before 4.X, even in lowbie brackets. 
 

Even if 2.X - 4.X era were to return I wonder if the pvp population would also return. If so, I may give it another shot again. 

[Tahliah]

A bunch of us went over to SWTOR after COH went dark.  It was okay.  Different, parts of it very fun and exciting, the story compelling for each AT.  But it got old fast; no matter how many levels you gained, you were still doing the same thing (which I guess is true in COH, but different. Because. So there.).  Back then, we all subscribed, so we didn't miss perks, but it was just flat and so repetitive.  The way teams were handled was a huge problem for our gang, too, as I recall, the whole sharing missions thing was bizarre, so we'd end up having to do the same thing six times (or whatever, it's been years). 

 

Ultimately, we didn't stay long and went over to Secret World, which also had problems.  And then we all kind of drifted . .  . until Homecoming!  I cannot even express the depth of my gratitude that we have COH back again!

 

I have recently installed SWTOR again and played it, but it's just a long slog of walking for ages to get to the contact (or using your speeder for the still long slog) and having to double back over the same territory a zillion times.  Go to point A to hit the glowie, go all the way to the other end of the map to hit glowie 2, which springs up a glowie exactly where you were five minutes ago . . . before your rode your speeder across the desert to the other beacon.  Sigh.  And don't get me started on the crazy long march through the castle (up three floors!).  Annoying in the extreme.  On the bright side, even as a FTP player, I can often take advantage of Quick Travel because it literally takes the 30 minute cooldown to get from one contact to the next.

 

I'm free to play this time and see zero incentive to sub.  My money is far better spent on Homecoming.

[Amaterasu]

I still play, both sides, still love Imperial Agent.

 

There's been a MASSIVE overhaul of the systems, unlocking the actual classes from being side based, but still origin based

My jedi can have a full jedi guardian build, or a fully powered sith juggernaut build (As in the actual powers/abilities)

Same for tech, I have a trooper who uses blaster rifle and imperial agent knife attacks as a spec ops trooper.

 

The new UI however, is eye searing and very very bad.

 

Tah I also played secret world, recently went back and all of my characters are gone so *Shrug* not playing that again ever.

[Oubliette_Red]

On 3/12/2022 at 6:24 PM, Amaterasu said:

I still play, both sides, still love Imperial Agent.

 

There's been a MASSIVE overhaul of the systems, unlocking the actual classes from being side based, but still origin based

My jedi can have a full jedi guardian build, or a fully powered sith juggernaut build (As in the actual powers/abilities)

Same for tech, I have a trooper who uses blaster rifle and imperial agent knife attacks as a spec ops trooper.

 

The new UI however, is eye searing and very very bad.

 

Tah I also played secret world, recently went back and all of my characters are gone so *Shrug* not playing that again ever.

 

It seems that every time I go back to play Secret World, it's been so long that I can't remember how to play and I end up re-rolling and starting over again anyway.

 

[Sabrehawk]

On 2/19/2022 at 6:10 AM, The_Warpact said:

Anyone currently playing SWTOR? Seems like another "older" mmo that just got another expansion. 

I love Star Wars overall but have never played this or Legends. Typically in the past its been Battlefront and Force Unleashed all console games.

So is it any good?

 

I am. I've played for many years now and really love the game.

 

As for if it's good, I think it's the best MMO out there. SWTOR is to me what CoH is to many people here. So I am more than a little biased and your experience might not match mine as mine is colored by the fact I adore the mechanics of the game.

[FrauleinMental]

I mained a Jedi Sage for a few years during the Existential Shutdown Crisis.  Enjoyed the flashpoints, put way too much work into a mostly-inactive guild doing weekly conquest tasks.  Didn't really like some of the writing choices they made with KOTFE/KOTET.

 

Imperial Agent had an awesome storyline and the best looking personal ship (I wanted one for my Sage), but I wanted to airlock the totally-sus first companion they force on you.

[Akalabeth]

I played for a while before I quit gaming a couple weeks and then returned to HC.  I got "stuck" on the Scoundrel storyline because I was supposed to *deleted due to spoiler sorry* I thought... "That's something I would never do." and quit doing the story missions and there was no way to continue.  I don't really RP that I'm my character exactly, it just seemed so incredibly stupid I refused to do it.  The first chapter of Scoundrel was REALLY good in so many ways, but the 2nd chapter was completely different and I hated it and the 3rd was what I quit on.  I barely touched the other stories as I only played for a few weeks and I was very slow compared to others in my guild.

 

There seemed to be nothing else to do after I quit the story and reached max level.  I didn't want to go through "dungeons" for the same reasons I quit doing them in other games.  The achievement system was very lacking.  Conquest was cool in theory and I was really into that especially since my guild gave out rewards based on performance and it was just fun getting points until I realized... the main ways to get points was doing "dungeons" and pvp crap and without that I couldn't get enough points to get the guild rewards. 😞  Pvp is really popular there.  I never did it but there's apparently battles with characters and battles with ships.

 

I do task/strike forces in this game which may make no sense since I wouldn't do it in SW.  I don't pvp at all though.

 

I agree with the naming system as being the worse.  Also... it was like every name I "made up" in other games was somehow taken in the game as well even misspelled things with a letter dropped off at the end.  Also I tried using my real first name along with various other added names on, but none of them were acceptable by the system because my first name has a certain combo of letters in it which really made me mad. 😕

 

SW definitely beats this game in one way though: the dancing is phenomenal.  Soooo many fun dances. 🙂

Edited June 27, 2022 by Akalabeth

[trunkmud]

I have been playing SWTOR for a while. I think it's a good story-based RPG MMO that you can play solo, or with groups. There are literally hundreds of hours' worth of adventures, quests, and special events that you can play through in it. In most areas, the game scales to your level appropriately so it makes it possible to do a lot of missions and experience many places without worrying about being overpowered. 

Edited November 17, 2022 by trunkmud

[Cybersbe]

I've been subscribed since launch day and still play occassionally.

 

Emphasis on "occassionally" though. I'm a casual, so I'm mostly drawn to single player content, and nothing released since launch has quite captured the essence of playing through eight different storylines seeing the galaxy from different points of view. Only the Eternal Empire story came close, but it seems EA has given up on the model those expansions used. These days, only my initial two characters (a Jedi Knight and a Sith Inquisitor) get played because I see little reason to play anyone else. 

[kelika2]

With how hard WoW has fallen in the past few years its weird to see SWToR be up there now.  I got sucked back into it recently and just like with CoH I play a buncha alts, gear them up for end game but make more alts.  30 some characters at 330 rating with their special implants and tacticals just ready to sit on the fleet while im pumping out more alts.