SWTOR experience & discussions

[remanz]

I thought I'd started a topic about something other than "follow broke" and "which class to dual box" for SWTOR.

First off, my thoughts on the game: It is pretty good overall. Much better than I expect it.

[Graphics]:
I bashed the graphics hard during the beta phase, calling it WOW vanilla level graphics. After experiencing more in the SWTOR world, I did change my view on this. It is not THAT bad. but it is not up to today's standard either. With Advancing Lighting and full AA (x16) enabled, the game looks ok.

[Combat & Control]:
probably one of the best "target based" MMO combat I have played. Melees skills are pretty responsive. Running around as Bounty Hunter shooting rockets is so much fun (think frost mage, but more explosive). There are "channel" like skills. But most of skills are able to use while moving. I can't stress this "running while shooting" part. MMOs like AION that ask you to stop moving while using skills are just fails.

There are some concerns about balance and too many stuns/CCs in PVP. I think those discussion can wait until we get to the end game.

[Questing]:
pretty standard. Nothing out of ordinary here.

[Story]
stories + voice acting topping all other MMOs right now. 150 million well spent right here. Even if you quit after 1 month, this game is worth playing it through (just to get through the main story).

[Instance]
FlashPoints are up to standards with other MMOs instances.

[Other Factors]
Companion implementation is the best I've seen in any MMOs also, powerful, and super addictive.

[Boxing]
Related to boxing it, yes "the broken follow" is pretty terrible. It requires you constantly checking if your slaves have caught up to you or not. and I have yet to find a good way to put melee boxing in there. Flashpoints are not too terrible to box with auto heal pets. I have no experience on later flash points. But I can't imagine it will be harder than any of the Cata 5 man. One thing I noticed is that the boss doesn't hit hard (could be just early levels), so I can play the aggro dump game, and potentially kite the boss to death with just 2 characters 2 pets(auto heals). Main guy hits boss. The boss will chase while my slave shoots at him. Then main guy would stop hitting him to let a slave gain aggro. Boss will stop chasing the main guy to turn on the slave. Then I just drive and run the slave. Repeat until the boss is dead. As range, the game provides semi-auto aim so it will try to face the boss even if you don't move. If you have 2 tank pets, you can do the same with taunt rotations.

All in all, definitely a good game from BioWare. I rank it higher than RIFT. and definitely can challenge wow in its current state.

what are your experiences.

[Lyonheart]

The /follow thing frustrated me at first. I still hope it gets fixed. That being said, I really enjoy playing the game solo. Although the companions make it feel like boxing, kind of. I leveled my BH to 20..maxed out his crew/gathering skills. Now I am leveling my other BH to 20, solo.

I think the story+companions give it an edge over WoW for me atm. I do look forward to being able to box it though, playing it solo is fun, but i am a multiboxer at heart.

[Oatboat]

Graphics i give an 8.5 out of 10. With them all on high and 16x i think it looks pretty amazing. not even close to wows crappy 4th grade quality

Gameplay - Very immersive if you take the time to watch cutscenes and listen to narratives. If you just click through them i can see someone getting annoyed if they dont like lore.

Flashpoints - Only done a couple but the ones i have are pretty easy straight forward and fun.

Companions - think of Diablo Lords of destruction type companions. Give them better weapons and armor. Be a tank with a healer companion and solo for days. Its very fun and very rewarding getting to know the companions. Their affection with you is dependant on the choices you make.

All in all.. i cancelled my wow accounts to play. I'm having fun just being new in a new environment... i embrace the Noob.

[Vecter]

For me I think because it is new and a familiar story I am really engrossed in the storyline. I find myself not skipping any of the voice-overs and still leveling ok.

Right now healing to me seems pretty under-tuned. I just don't feel comfortable at all healing under a heavy firefight. Not sure if it's the long cast times, no movement heals or the fact that we have no macro ability which makes me a heavy clicker. It just feels odd.

The space combat is pretty basic at the moment (only level 22) but it seems implemented well. Should be fun to start upgrading your ship.

[Teknetron]

Hey Guys,

Graphics - I give 6 out 10. I have not forced AA yet and the graphic options are slim. Going from Med. to High has little to no effect in visual change. Same with ground clutter. Going from the low end of the slider control to the high end has little to no effect. The world though is fantastic. I really can't wait for them to add "higher end" graphic options / capabilities to the game.

Combat & Control - At first and during the beta phases I was really upset about the lack of auto attack. It just felt "really weird", and made combat seem really slow (even with ability que set to 0.0). I hated the fact that for my character it was like "run up to enemy, do an attack, stand there for 1 second looking like i'm lost, use another ability etc..." But now after playing the game in release it seems really** fluid. I'm not sure if they changed something, or I just got used to the combat. But I really do enjoy it now!

Questing - Ditto, same as every other MMO except it does draw me into the storyline more. I cant express the change in my immersion level. With all other MMO's your required to read all this quest text. So much by level 10-20 your just pressing the ok button and missing out on the lore and character progression. Having the quest speech is just so much more inviting to me. I can still bypass it with "space bar" if I want to. It just feels like my own personal movie heh.

Story - I agree. It really makes a huge difference in gameplay. See above^.

Instance - Have yet to box an instance, but have ran them solo (during betas). I enjoyed them. Pretty much the same mechanics as others, but having the story mechanics really adds to it.

Companions - Love them. I can craft with them, change their equipment, they do what their told and are integrated well into the game.

Boxing - Yes, lets hope that it gets fixed ASAP. Tonight would be awesome (crosses fingers). I have four accounts and stopped playing becuase of the follow issue. However from the time I was boxing it is going to be awesome. All classes seem to box very well.

Goals - Well I need to get on a server with other boxers. I haven't played wow in a long time now, so I'm excited to get my boxing groove on again!

I plan (already tested group makeup up to lvl 10) rolling (on server with boxers) the following:
Jedi Guardian (tank)
Jedi Sage (heals)
Trooper (Dps commando)
Smuggler (forget the name of the dual wielding one).

The abilites are awesome in this game, as far as boxing goes. My smuggler automatically finds cover and uses certain abilities if cover=true or other abilities if cover=false.

All in all, I am really excited about the game and look forward to what they do with it.

[Littleburst]

Nice post, looking forward to more replies.

[d0z3rr]

I'm not impressed with the character models, they are too cartoony. I wish they had been more realisticly proportioned like in KoToR. Having these big hulking humans just looks stupid. My sith warrior doesn't look menacing at all. I have the graphics maxed out, the environments look very well done though. So the character models are a big turnoff for me.

[Fat Tire]

I'm not impressed with the character models, they are too cartoony. I wish they had been more realisticly proportioned like in KoToR. Having these big hulking humans just looks stupid. My sith warrior doesn't look menacing at all. I have the graphics maxed out, the environments look very well done though. So the character models are a big turnoff for me.

I was and am still bummed out they didnt make it more like KOTOR, instead they made it a wow clone with robots instead of dragons SSDD. The number of unique models is also almost non existent and why does every faction go through the same planet order? Seriously, wtf. Also, why does my robot companion tank better than I do! Granted the storyline cinematics are very cool, however, I cant see how anyone wont be pressing the esc key the second time through. I was extremely disappointed in pvp, while I always have preferred world pvp I have had 1 encounter so far and the "wargrounds" of which I have played several are poorly designed and with almost everyone having stuns and knockbacks its laughable. My final thought is the game is way to instanced to be an mmo. Also, for anyone who says I didnt give it a fair shot, I got to lvl 50 pretty fast......thx pvp glitch. I will see what happens to end game/pvp and that will decide if I continue to play it further. I like it better than wow currently, minus not being able to box it or lack of pvp.

Edit: and everyone make sure and set your ability queue to 0 seconds in the options menu. yw

[Apps]

I thought I'd started a topic about something other than "follow broke" and "which class to dual box" for SWTOR.

First off, my thoughts on the game: It is pretty good overall. Much better than I expect it.

[Graphics]:
I bashed the graphics hard during the beta phase, calling it WOW vanilla level graphics. After experiencing more in the SWTOR world, I did change my view on this. It is not THAT bad. but it is not up to today's standard either. With Advancing Lighting and full AA (x16) enabled, the game looks ok.

[Combat & Control]:
probably one of the best "target based" MMO combat I have played. Melees skills are pretty responsive. Running around as Bounty Hunter shooting rockets is so much fun (think frost mage, but more explosive). There are "channel" like skills. But most of skills are able to use while moving. I can't stress this "running while shooting" part. MMOs like AION that ask you to stop moving while using skills are just fails.

There are some concerns about balance and too many stuns/CCs in PVP. I think those discussion can wait until we get to the end game.

[Questing]:
pretty standard. Nothing out of ordinary here.

[Story]
stories + voice acting topping all other MMOs right now. 150 million well spent right here. Even if you quit after 1 month, this game is worth playing it through (just to get through the main story).

[Instance]
FlashPoints are up to standards with other MMOs instances.

[Other Factors]
Companion implementation is the best I've seen in any MMOs also, powerful, and super addictive.

[Boxing]
Related to boxing it, yes "the broken follow" is pretty terrible. It requires you constantly checking if your slaves have caught up to you or not. and I have yet to find a good way to put melee boxing in there. Flashpoints are not too terrible to box with auto heal pets. I have no experience on later flash points. But I can't imagine it will be harder than any of the Cata 5 man. One thing I noticed is that the boss doesn't hit hard (could be just early levels), so I can play the aggro dump game, and potentially kite the boss to death with just 2 characters 2 pets(auto heals). Main guy hits boss. The boss will chase while my slave shoots at him. Then main guy would stop hitting him to let a slave gain aggro. Boss will stop chasing the main guy to turn on the slave. Then I just drive and run the slave. Repeat until the boss is dead. As range, the game provides semi-auto aim so it will try to face the boss even if you don't move. If you have 2 tank pets, you can do the same with taunt rotations.

All in all, definitely a good game from BioWare. I rank it higher than RIFT. and definitely can challenge wow in its current state.

what are your experiences.

Im gonna +1 with just about all of this. Only difference for me is Graphics.
Combat is awesome. I think they really nailed it with this one alone.
Voice Acting is what you make of it. I personally think my sarcastic female sith is hysterically funny. Whereas the Jedi Knight goody goody, is starting to sound over cliche'-ish.
Missions and Instances, are a huge YEP for me. same good cookie cutter method. No reason to change what isnt broken.
Companions... I really didnt think I was going to like them as much as I do. Crew Skills are a very neat, unique and in my opinion, much needed change of direction for gathering in an MMO. Love this.

But back to the Graphics. I like the graphics. I think they did exactly what they intended, which was to create a 3D world, with all the skills, spells, and whistles that offer the game to the average users computer. Afterall... what are we really comparing this games graphics to? And WHY compare the graphics to any other game but SW. As video and visual tech gets better, games look neater, cleaner. The idea, I would conceed to, is to make a game thats close to industry standard for that particular time period from the game genre. I.e. you wouldnt want to be comparing this game to say Kings Quest, nor Sonic the Hedgehog, nor Skyrim.

the game is new, its full of new exploration, new missions, new characters, new stories, and yet its still an old legend that people are familiar with.

the only other MMO Id like to see now is a Vamps vs Wolves.

Im happy.

(oh, and I deleted my wow accounts for good.)

[Zappy]

For those wondering about how to set the AA. I'll credit Remanz for finding the right info for that one.

Anyway, you'll need to edit client_settings.ini located in the directory:
\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Local\SWTOR\swtor\settings

The best settings I found was adding the two following lines before [Game]:

AntiAliasingLevel = 1
DebugAdvEnviroLighting = true

You can set the AA to 16 or whatever else here, but if you're running nvidia card(s), all you need to do is set it to anything over 0, then you can override or enhance it within nvidia control panel. I'm running tri-sli 580s, and since the game doesn't utilize sli (nor does it need to), I run it @ 96x CSAA which puts all 3 cards @ about 95+% usage, but makes everything look very smooth.

[remanz]

I seriously need SLI profile (support) for this game. 1 card is not cutting it for me when I open multiple windows. Obviously if SWTOR has native SLI support that would be good, but can Innerspace utilize SLI somehow for the game ?

@Zappy: tri-sli 580s, awesome. are you running with nvidia surround ? I am still on last gen PC. Recently went out and bought 2 580s at a discount. I came home all excited. and only to found out my motherboard would not fit 2 cards~. Even though it supports SLI, the 2 PCI slots are too closed to each other. Fail design. There is no way I can fit any of the two current gen cards in there. Ended up exchanged for a 590 again.

[remanz]

new nvidia driver just released Dec -21 .

can't really tell for sure, but seems to improve performance a bit.

beta driver 290.53

[Kris1234]

new nvidia driver just released Dec -21 .

can't really tell for sure, but seems to improve performance a bit.

nice find, the automatic nvidia updater thingy tells me nothing. althouh in the patch notes TOR isnt listed we may see a few percent increase in performance hopefully.

[MiRai]

I seriously need SLI profile (support) for this game. 1 card is not cutting it for me when I open multiple windows. Obviously if SWTOR has native SLI support that would be good, but can Innerspace utilize SLI somehow for the game ?
SLI/CF has never been recommended to multibox with because it pretty much sucks in Windowed Mode (which is what mode
you multibox in unless you're using hardware and have 1 client per machine). The point of multiple video cards is to split the
load between them and this requires multiple monitors to do so.