Okay. So I've been playing this game more than I've really played any game since WoW back in the early days. I've been exclusively leveling my Sith Assassin. I have some thoughts.
In no particular order:
1) TOR really is "Game of the Year 2006." Because that's what it's like. It's like playing WoW when it first launched. The world is beautiful, the story is compelling (but exhausting, more on that in a bit), the abilities are varied, but...it's dated. It's like going back and playing the original Final Fantasy, where you could only save at an inn. It's like getting in a car from twenty years ago and wondering where the CD player is. The game launched absurdly feature-poor -- seriously, group-focused content, daily dungeon quests, and no LFG? No built-in threat monitor? No addon API? No macros, for the Light's sake?
We're screaming headlong into 2012. For a game that plays almost exactly like WoW (more on that in a minute), TOR sure is lacking some basic essential functionality. I really hope it's in their plans to patch it in ASAP, because frankly I find the game somewhat vexing to play. I can deal without addons, but I have way, way too many abilities not to have macros.
(Yeah, I know people played games like this without threat addons and suchlike. People also lived thousands of years without air conditioning. You don't get to compare your shiny new game with the state of the art six years ago -- I mean, imagine if a PS3 game was released with PS1 graphics. This is really exactly the same thing.)
2) The Sith Assassin is what you get when you take a WoW Paladin (Wrath-era), remove his heals, and give him Stealth. No, seriously. I charge my lightsaber with different effects (Seals) which I then discharge on my enemies on a cooldown to inflict damage and status ailments (Judgment). The tanking seal is a minor self-heal. I have this really fun AoE knockback which isn't really like Consecrate but hey, they couldn't copy it exactly. I have an ability that, when activated, gives me extra block chance for a certain number of charges (Holy Shield). I have a 20-minute cooldown that puts a big HoT on me and my companion (sort of like Lay on Hands). I could go on, but I think you see the point.
And he's fragile. I can't handle an on-level Elite without my companion's help, and even then I lose half the time. This might be because I suck at the game (probably), but even so -- I'm fully tank-specced, I feel like I should be able to absorb some bigger hits than that.
3) The WoW item color hierarchy is preserved. Which is fine, really, it's a good system and everybody understands it. I just hope they're aware that actively stealing part of WoW's aesthetic, one which is so integral to the very essence of the game (lootz), really invites and welcomes comparisons.
4) The game is too goddamn long. It's exhausting. It just goes on, and on, and on. And you're running everywhere until halfway through the game, which is tedious.
I'm going to put forth an opinion here that's probably going to be unpopular: I don't think it's necessary for every goddamn quest giver to be a fully fleshed-out individual with his own voice and mannerisms and dialogue. Maybe it's because I'm an introvert, but I find having to have a three-exchange conversation with every single NPC who wants me to go over there and kill some dudes to be unbelievably draining. Having to decide which conversation option to use, especially when the choice has no outcome on the story, just wears on me. I'd really rather the voice acting and choice making was kept to the important storyline quests; simple go-and-kill or gather quests could easily be handled the old-fashioned way (and, indeed, a few of them are -- there are mission boards that just give you a page of quest text, no dialogue required).
In the same vein, I don't much care for the fact that there's this single overarching story that you're basically required to do. I guess that's a selling point of the game, but man...I'm never going to want to level another Sith Inquisitor because it'll mean playing through the exact same questline all over again, and doing it Dark Side isn't going to make it different enough. One zone per level bracket sucks. Feh.
Okay, I didn't mean for "the bad" to come first. Let's do some "the good."
5) The "main story" is engaging. So engaging that I'm honestly very annoyed by the piles and piles of sidequests I have to dig through in order to level up enough to get to the next phase of the main story. Some Trade Trolls managed to spoil the upcoming plot for me, but that doesn't really bother me too much -- it just makes me want to get to the end even faster. It's Space Opera at its finest, with plotting and intrigue and assassinations all against the tapestry of the entire galaxy. Good stuff.
That being said...I do wonder what the end-game is going to be like. I realized that the number one reason I play MMOs instead of "traditional" video games is that, in an MMO, the story never "ends." You might overcome the "final boss" of the expansion, but there'll always be more expansions. Always more to do, more to earn, more to gain. When the story of TOR ends, what will we be left with?
6) I love that I can be a Light-side Sith. Even though some of the morality choices seem counterintuitive (a nice way of saying "wrong,") I like that I can be a good guy even though I'm playing a "bad guy." Because the Sith power-set is much more interesting to me than the Jedi, and because I'm not a huge fan of Jedi morality. There's an entire post coming on that subject soon enough, but for now, I'll just say that I'm glad that your choices matter at least that much. And I'm always tickled when some character is incredulous that I'm actually being nice to them. Always have to play the black sheep, I guess.
7) I have a companion! And my companion has a personality! Now every class can be a Hunter. And the companion's AI is pretty good too. Khem Val is a fun guy -- he's a destructive force of nature and his little side comments always make me grin. Even if he's kinda upset with me for being such a soft touch. Doesn't matter, I can just buy him an ammo belt again and he loves me. I suppose the only vexing thing about this particular companion system is that your companion has to be geared up too, which eats into your profits and quest rewards. (Particularly if you want to keep two companions on par at once.)
8) I dig the crafting system. I like being able to send my guys out on little missions, and they come back and, hey, skillup! I also like being able to "reverse engineer" my stuff and come up with better schematics. And slicing is a great moneymaker; I had no trouble affording my riding skill. Other than all that, it's just the WoW crafting system, with all the attendant strengths and weaknesses.
And "the ugly!"
9) I'd estimate about forty percent of the crafting nodes I come across in "the wild" can't be interacted with. They show up on the minimap, but when I mouse over them, it's like they aren't even there. And I know they're supposed to be because the graphic for the node is there. Just can't clicky.
10) While the "phase" system has its strengths, I think the zone-transition system is, in a word, shitty. I want my elevators to move, dammit, not just teleport me from one floor to the next. I want my spaceship door to open so I can just walk inside it and sit down in the pilot's chair and actually fly it out of the dock before hitting the hyperdrive. The current system, where you click on the door and the ship launches and then you're there inside it, standing beside the door you just walked into, is silly and jerks me right out of the game. Again, Bioware, the year is soon going to be 2012, and you have the backing of one of the largest game companies in existence. You can do better than this.
I'm not going to say that I love this game. Even though I've been playing it nonstop for the last week, I don't think I love it. I think it's something new, something shiny, and I want to see how it "ends." But after that? I don't know. It's a fun game, don't misunderstand: it just doesn't go anywhere new. It treads the same old ground. It's just WoW in the Star Wars universe, and I'm already pretty heavily invested in WoW.
I haven't found a guild to join yet. I don't know if that would help or not. One sure thing is that if Bioware doesn't implement at least some kind of macro functionality, if not a full addon API, there's no way I'm going to stick with this game. The other "missing" functionality I can just shake my head at, but not those two. Those two I just gotta have.
No comments:
Post a Comment