Star Wars: The Old Republic - a Player's Observations

Star Wars: The Old Republic is a great game. I take that back. SWTOR is a good game, but with some deep flaws going beyond simple bugs and reaching deep into the basic design of the game.

I'll back up to the beginning. When SWTOR was announced, I knew my first, and much beloved (however gutted) MMO would be going away. Star Wars Galaxies was finally canned on SWTOR's launch day. So I did have a deep-seated resentment for SWTOR going back many years since it was first announced that a new Star Wars MMO was going into development.

Things were no better when I learned that Bioware was in charge of development. I'd never enjoyed the Knights of the Old Republic games. I just couldn't get into them. Bioware has no experience with making a massively multiplayer game. I was certain this experiment could only end in disaster, and immediately noted to everyone I knew that I was certain we would be seeing another KotOR sequel that was a massively singleplayer online role playing game. Essentially a single-player game with a multi-player component. I imagined a game where there was a "lobby" on each planet with minimal content where everyone hung out, and then the rest of the game would be primarily instanced.

I wasn't entirely correct. Yes, the game still feels somewhat like an MSORPG in many respects, and the content is rather scripted, as opposed to my preferred sandbox experience. But it works quite well. A few weekends in the beta test made me realize I had judged the game unfairly, and I would certainly buy it. I preordered it. Now, after nearly a month of play and dozens of levels across several characters, I know I'm going to pay for at least one additional month of subscription time.

I love my characters, I am adoring the story line quests for my Jedi Consular, Sith Inquisitor, and Republic trooper. I'm also enjoying other classes' storylines as I run them with friends. It's a fun game!

The Old Republic is also deeply flawed.

Character Creation
Your selection in character creation is beyond terrible. Admittedly, I'm coming from games like Star Wars Galaxies, Star Trek Online, EVE Online, and others with a great amount of customization in their character creation. In SWTOR you can choose from a smattering of species, limited by allegiance and class. That's not unusual for the MMO world, but in the Star Wars universe it makes less sense with most species. Besides, I have a very basic argument with that philosophy. Has there never at any time been a Chiss who wanted to help the Republic? I find that difficult to believe. Not every member of a species fits the stereotype. Most, sure. But not all. I despise it when your class or allegiance determines your choice of species. It's annoying, because it reinforces stereotypes we attempt to let go of in real life, but are entrenched in these games. For example, in real life you would be a social pariah if you wanted to force every person of Asian descent into being a mathematician or martial arts expert. But this sort of crazy stereotyping is accepted in games. I just don't get it. What are game developers thinking?

Aside from the appalling specisim, SWTOR's character creation gets worse once you choose a species. You are given a choice of four body styles. Skinny and short, "average," hulk, and "stout." I understand why they did this. It's much more difficult to design clothing and armor that looks good when players have sliders to determine the height, weight, and muscular build of their characters. You end up with problems like the one that plagued SWG for years--hoola hooping belts. You get into clipping issues and random graphical flaws that just don't happen as much when your game has pre-determined character body shapes. Nonetheless, I would have much preferred having some sliders here. Optimally it would have a body sculpting system like EVE Online.

Character customization options are so incredibly limited it's difficult to list all the problems with the system. Not enough hairstyles, no lekku styles, not enough tattoo and scar options (try a system like Star Trek Online's where you can literally stretch, reshape, and move a scar anywhere so you can be truly unique). Skin color choices are atrocious. You only have to look at the difference in color palettes between SWG's Twi'leks and SWTOR's Twi'leks to see the problem here. Eye colors are OK, but not fantastic.

The point is, character creation is terribly gimped, and I was incredibly disappointed in it. They could have (should have) done so much more with it.

Legacy
The SWTOR Legacy system is one in which you can choose a surname for your character which is applied server-wide to all of your characters. Keep in mind, your first name must be unique on the server. All your items, email, private messages, etc are linked to your first name. But your Legacy name must also be unique to the server.

Misunderstanding the system at first, a friend and I created two Miralan troopers as brothers. We didn't realize at the time that Legacy names must be unique. When we got around to creating Legacy names, we found out that we couldn't have the same surname. This was deeply disappointing, and completely unnecessary on Bioware's part. The first name is already unique on the server. The last name should not have to meet that requirement.

Fortunately, we saw a way around the system. I would name my Legacy Kassell, and my friend would name his KasseII. Capital i's match lowercase l's in the game's typeface. We figured, after all, that they would not bar a player from having a Legacy name like McDonald or RaKar or somesuch. Wrong again. Legacy allows a single capital letter and it must be at the beginning of the name. Great.

Right now there isn't much to the Legacy system, and what does exist just doesn't work out well. Imagine me using Kassell as the last name for a Twi'lek. Crazy. Into options, toggle off legacy name display. I'm certainly never going to use it. I can understand their choice to make it unique to a single account on the server, but it really screws with the way I want to play my characters. Buh-bye, Legacy.

I would have delayed my Legacy choice until they had fixed the system somewhat, but unfortunately the developers made the choice to have the Legacy system be a must-do thing. When I completed chapter 1 of my storyline I clicked on my skill tree to assign a skillpoint, and up came the Legacy popup. I exited the Legacy dialogue and spent my skillpoint. I ran to my ship, loaded in, Legacy popup. Closed it, flew to the fleet, Legacy popup. Uggh! Logged into a different character, Legacy popup. Grrr! I assigned my Legacy name just to get rid of the damn popup!

Class Storyline Missions
Do you know what is worse than class discrimination? Showing it to the other classes. My Jedi Consular has been running missions with a friend's Jedi Knight. This is a great demonstration of class inequity. Not because our skills suck--we get along just fine in that sense. It's in the quality of the missions. Don't get me wrong, I love my Consular's storyline. What I hate is that most of my Knight friend's storyline quests have bonus missions involved (Kill x number of NPC's, for example). It is a rare mission indeed when my Consular gets a bonus mission. I'd settle for a mini-game bonus mission of toggling off force fields in the right order or something. But right now it's just run in, hit the objectives, and go. Nothing extra. That annoys me.

Running class storylines with two characters of different classes isn't bad. But have you tried running them with a friend of the same class? A buddy and I are playing troopers. The brothers who can't be brothers I mentioned in the Legacy section. We aren't allowed to run our storyline missions together. Every time we hit an instanced storyline mission, which is quite often, we have to run it separately (defeating the purpose of an MMO), or we have to repeat it together twice (once for each of us, because the other becomes a spectator). This is deeply disappointing. Yes, I understand that in Bioware's judgement, with their highly scripted storylines it just doesn't make sense to have two people of the same class do the same storyline mission together, because it'll affect their storylines in different ways based on conversation responses and other choices. Nonetheless, I don't see that as a problem. Why can't we have different responses, and different ways of playing through the storyline missions? Companion affection and Light Side/Dark Side points can be distributed based upon which choices each person makes. This is already done in many areas of the game, particularly the Flashpoint content. If one persn chooses to kill an NPC in dialogue, but another does not, what happens on-screen is based on the conversation roll, but each player gets Dark or Light points based on their individual choices. Why can't this be carried over to same-class players running storyline together?

Other Missions
Regular mission running goes much more smoothly than class storylines for all the multiplayer pairings I play. However, this system is also deeply flawed. Let's discuss mission items first.

I consider mission items and mission objectives to be very similar, and what one member of the group does or gets as far as a mission item or objective should carry over to the entire group. In other words, if we must obtain 12 passcodes to assemble a full passphrase to enter a restricted facility, it shouldn't matter if one groupmember loots 7 and another loots 5. That adds up to 12, we have enough to enter the facility. But no. In SWTOR, each group member must find 12. So rather than being able to run missions faster because you're able to pool your resources, you spend even longer trying to get the items you need to complete a mission than you would have singly. In the above instance, with a full group you would have to gather 48 separate passcodes! This is beyond ridiculous.

Additionally, mission objectives are all over the board. Sometimes a mission objective will complete for all group members within a large radius when one group member achieves it. Sometimes the mission objective will complete for only group members within a small radius. Other times each individual group member must complete the objective him or her self. The current hodge-podge of these leads to a lot of confusion, and it leads to constantly having to ask group members, "did that count for you?"

Finally, and I never thought I would say this about a game, but SWTOR gives you too many experience points for missions. I am a completionist. It pains me to leave any missions undone. When playing the beta I realized that I couldn't go along with my usual method of killing things along the way to missions, completing the missions, and then killing my way back. That just wasn't working. I was level 12 on my Consular in beta before I left Tython, because I had so much xp. On live I made a commitment to avoid all combat I possibly could, except which was directly related to completing a mission or bonus mission. Leaving Tython I was level 10. Not bad. Leaving Coruscant I was level 18. Not bad. On to Taris, which is levels 16-20. Leaving Taris I was level 24. My next planet was Nar Shaddaa which is levels 20-24. At this point I realized I needed to cut back on even completing all missions (something that really bothers the completionist in me). The next planet was Tatooine, levels 24-28. I started it at level 28, despite leaving much undone on Nar Shaddaa. Even after skipping many missions on Tatooine I was level 33 before I got to Alderaan, which is for levels 28-32. I started Balmorra (levels 32-36) at level 38, and I didn't even explore half of what is available on Alderaan.

You see the problem. Even avoiding combat wherever possible and skipping many many missions I was struggling to progress slowly enough to get to the next planet before I had passed its level range. If players are really expected to run side missions on planets, the xp for missions needs to be reduced. Right now I'm truly frustrated that I am "not allowed" to complete every mission I come across.

Crafting
Crafting was obviously an afterthought in The Old Republic. The system is just not rewarding to players who wish to craft. Crew Skills are an interesting way of going about crafting, but it just doesn't play out well. Diligent crafting at early levels will leave you broke, and often companionless. This is the biggest flaw with the crafting system in SWTOR. Each crew mission you send a companion on not only costs you credits, but a chunk of time. To really understand this, you have to understand the economy of games. I'll give you the basics: Time=Money.

In-game money is simply a representation of your time. You are capable of earning a certain amount of money in-game in a given amount of time. This is the basis for pricing items in the game's economy. Rare items are more expensive, not just because they are rare, but because it takes more time to obtain them. A rare loot drop that takes roughly an hour to find as loot is going to be valued about the same as a steady loot drop where you have to run an hour-long mission to get it. That's just the way it works in MMOs. Time is the equivalent of in-game money.

Under SWTOR's crafting system, players are being double-billed. When you send a companion out on a crew mission you are spending time proper for them to go out and retrieve items you need for your crafting, and you are spending credits (past-accumulated time) as well. Additionally, in order to get better items you have to reverse-engineer what you craft, losing more time in the process of that for a slim chance of learning a better schematic than the one you originally crafted from. Let us take a level 29 implant I was making the other day. I purchased the schematic, and then sent my companions out on missions until I had enough to make nine of these basic implants. The total cost of the missions was around 10,000 credits. The total time invested in gathering supplies and crafting was over two hours. I then reverse engineered all of those without learning the blue schematic for that implant. After crafting and reverse engineering 4 more I finally learned the blue schematic. This was a total credit investment of over 10,000 credits and 2 1/2 hours for a blue-level schematic, and I was after the purple version. 8 blue schematics crafted and reverse engineered, and I have still not learned the purple version. We're talking more than 20,000 credits and five hours of time here. And I'll have to spend more time and credits to finally learn the schematic I need, then to gather the materials for it and finally craft it. For a level 29 item that might sell for at most 5,000 credits. I would need to sell dozens of these things to break even on my investment.

That is a broken system. Something that would make it instantaneously better and more worthwhile for people who are not masochists like me, would be to change the basic way crew missions work. Have them cost either time or money so crafters are no longer being double-billed. If a cost must be involved, make it minimal based on the player's choice. Say a player could choose to send a crewmember out on a mission and have it cost 100 credits and 20 minutes, or have it cost 2,500 credits and one minute. This would allow crafters some chance to re-claim their costs with fewer sales than is possible under the current system.

I, and friends who have participated in the crafting system struggled to have 40,000 credits for the speeder piloting skill at level 25. But when I played a character to 25 without crafting, I was easily able to afford the speeder piloting skill. The current crafting system in SWTOR is flawed, and more of a chore than a fun time.

Customized Clothing and Armor
I love a good-looking outfit. Unfortunately, I have neither the time nor the inclination to spend a day or two in front of the market terminal *hoping* to see a good looking piece of custom armor that matches the rest of my armor turn up so I can spend more credits upgrading it as I level. This is especially bad for my trooper who is currently wearing a clown-like assortment of armor.

Whoever made the decision to remove the "match armor colors to chestpiece" option is a grade AA idiot. When come across a new piece of armor I quickly compare its stats to what I'm currently wearing in order to determine if I want it or not. I don't give a damn about whether it's a different color than what I'm wearing if it has better stats. I need the stats in order to be effective. It's only later when I'm looking at my guy that I realize wearing green leggings, orange helmet, red chestpiece, yellow bracers, and brown boots I look like a bloody clown.

The rationale given for removing this option was that because there was no color differentiation when a player matched colors, when they picked up new items they didn't have a sense of progression, because there wasn't much, if any visual distinction between the items without color differences. And thus it was removed.

But most players don't consider color first. Yes, we want to look cool, but most players look at the stats of an item to determine whether it is better or worse than what we're currently wearing. That is how we determine item progression, not through colors and item model.

Again, this is a simple solution. Obviously the ability to re-color clothing items was in the game during beta, since there was an option to color things to the colors of the chest armor. I would be happy if just that option re-appeared. An even better system would be just like the customization on orange-named items. Ctrl+Rt Click opens a dialog box, and you select the color(s) you want that item to show. "Simple."

I will never understand the thought process of developers who think it is a good idea to take away working systems to "refine" them and possibly reintroduce them again later. The recolor system wasn't broken. It just didn't quite have the range some very vocal beta players wanted. So it was removed. That's ridiculous. It should have remained in the game so players could continue to have the option not to look like clowns unless they really wanted to.

Wrapping it Up
In addition to these deep design flaws, SWTOR has many random bugs, leading to a game experience that can quickly become annoying. It is certainly not the extra-polished game experience many of us were hoping for from a company like Bioware.

Nonetheless, despite having these flaws, The Old Republic is a good, solid game. Despite all my previous bias and personal distaste for it, I love it. SWTOR is fun to play, and I will certainly continue playing it and enjoying it for awhile. A couple of months at least. If these flaws and some of the bugs could be worked out, I can see playing it long-term. Until these items are fixed, however, I don't see the long-term playability for myself or any others who care about these aspects of a game.