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Star Wars: The Old Republic 7.0: Lessons in How *NOT* to Down-Grade Your Game....
Tyranthraxus
Member
TL;DR: SWTOR 7.0 is ***BAD***, and no fan-boy defense of it will convince me, otherwise!
First off? Kudos to Intrepid on NOT deleting negative-feedback threads/posts. This is NOT allowed on the SWTOR forums; If they catch negative feedback, it's GONE! It doesn't even have to be inherently negative: Yours truly has posted several times about how nonsensical it is from a game-development standpoint of view to *PURPOSEFULLY* not allow joysticks in a flight combat simulator - and without any kind of messaging nor notification, all said threads have been removed within hours, of posting.
I gave 7.0 a determined try tonight, after somewhat knowing the degree of downgrade that it would be. The result? I've cancelled my sub, and can't imagine going back until MAJOR changes come to pass. From the perspective of beginning a new character? Well, first off, the character creator no longer allows you to zoom all the way out; You can now only preview your new characters from the waist-up. Also? There was previously epic graphics in the background. Oh, that's GONE; All you need now is apparently just an all-black, non-descriptive background. Your character customization also looks akin to flat, non-dimensional menus from the best of the 1990s' Super-Nintendo games. Who doesn't like 30-year-old gaming menu formats?
The same goes for the character inventory, the character sheet, and vault-storage. Previously? It fit the screen well, had transparency options, and had *something* to provide a background for it. Now? It's all-black, the item-icons are dinky, and the entire user interface has been replaced with something that looks amateur-ish at *BEST*. Asides from Unlimited Adventures, Neverwinter Nights (the later thing) and a couple of walk-throughs with some Unity game-engine modules? Yours truly has no game-dev experience - but even I would NEVER have approved the sheer crap that is the SWTOR 7.0 down-grade.
And make no mistake: it *IS* a down-grade to the game. The companions - which have previously been a fairly unique aspect to SWTOR gameplay? - have now been made nearly useless. In the beginning, you used to have to gear-up your companions, so their abilities and roles in combat were refine-able. Later, it was down-graded so that you only needed to choose their role, and they performed better than some dill-weed players - even without having to gear them, any longer. No concerns there, anymore with 7.0, though; They're nearly use-less in combat now, so that anyone who joins you in GroupFinder won't feel impotent and use-less, when they quit on your group without an explaination, and you can no longer finish a Flashpoint (dungeon) by using an often previously-more-useful NPC companion, rather than a half-way competent player.
Gearing is my favorite part of any MMO. With 7.0, you don't need to worry about gearing, anymore; Anyone who invests a couple of hours per month past the max-level point will be COMPLETELY on-par with anyone who plays long-term. And gearing strategy - things like set-piece bonuses? - well, who needs those, even though they've existed almost the entire length of the game? Now, it's all taken care of, for you; No planning nor effort to obtain any of it is of a concern, anymore.... Great job, SWTOR devs!
/SarcasticPatOnBack
Even if we have to wait until the mid-2020's for AoC to launch? IT WILL BE WORTH THE WAIT! Clearly, no one approving changes to games like SWTOR has ever played it; SWTOR is a top-down corporate-dictation model of MMO, wherein the need for updates - ANY UPDATES! EVEN AWFUL ONES - take absolute precedence over player-preferences nor player-feedback, and are valued more for their marketing value, versus their potential for player-retention.
Now if you'll excuse me? Ima go try either Lineage 2, or return to Star Wars: Galaxies, via the Legends emulator. Yeah, I know SWG went offline 11 years ago (I was online for light-out!), but it has always been the better game, versus BioWare's SWTOR.
First off? Kudos to Intrepid on NOT deleting negative-feedback threads/posts. This is NOT allowed on the SWTOR forums; If they catch negative feedback, it's GONE! It doesn't even have to be inherently negative: Yours truly has posted several times about how nonsensical it is from a game-development standpoint of view to *PURPOSEFULLY* not allow joysticks in a flight combat simulator - and without any kind of messaging nor notification, all said threads have been removed within hours, of posting.
I gave 7.0 a determined try tonight, after somewhat knowing the degree of downgrade that it would be. The result? I've cancelled my sub, and can't imagine going back until MAJOR changes come to pass. From the perspective of beginning a new character? Well, first off, the character creator no longer allows you to zoom all the way out; You can now only preview your new characters from the waist-up. Also? There was previously epic graphics in the background. Oh, that's GONE; All you need now is apparently just an all-black, non-descriptive background. Your character customization also looks akin to flat, non-dimensional menus from the best of the 1990s' Super-Nintendo games. Who doesn't like 30-year-old gaming menu formats?
The same goes for the character inventory, the character sheet, and vault-storage. Previously? It fit the screen well, had transparency options, and had *something* to provide a background for it. Now? It's all-black, the item-icons are dinky, and the entire user interface has been replaced with something that looks amateur-ish at *BEST*. Asides from Unlimited Adventures, Neverwinter Nights (the later thing) and a couple of walk-throughs with some Unity game-engine modules? Yours truly has no game-dev experience - but even I would NEVER have approved the sheer crap that is the SWTOR 7.0 down-grade.
And make no mistake: it *IS* a down-grade to the game. The companions - which have previously been a fairly unique aspect to SWTOR gameplay? - have now been made nearly useless. In the beginning, you used to have to gear-up your companions, so their abilities and roles in combat were refine-able. Later, it was down-graded so that you only needed to choose their role, and they performed better than some dill-weed players - even without having to gear them, any longer. No concerns there, anymore with 7.0, though; They're nearly use-less in combat now, so that anyone who joins you in GroupFinder won't feel impotent and use-less, when they quit on your group without an explaination, and you can no longer finish a Flashpoint (dungeon) by using an often previously-more-useful NPC companion, rather than a half-way competent player.
Gearing is my favorite part of any MMO. With 7.0, you don't need to worry about gearing, anymore; Anyone who invests a couple of hours per month past the max-level point will be COMPLETELY on-par with anyone who plays long-term. And gearing strategy - things like set-piece bonuses? - well, who needs those, even though they've existed almost the entire length of the game? Now, it's all taken care of, for you; No planning nor effort to obtain any of it is of a concern, anymore.... Great job, SWTOR devs!
/SarcasticPatOnBack
Even if we have to wait until the mid-2020's for AoC to launch? IT WILL BE WORTH THE WAIT! Clearly, no one approving changes to games like SWTOR has ever played it; SWTOR is a top-down corporate-dictation model of MMO, wherein the need for updates - ANY UPDATES! EVEN AWFUL ONES - take absolute precedence over player-preferences nor player-feedback, and are valued more for their marketing value, versus their potential for player-retention.
Now if you'll excuse me? Ima go try either Lineage 2, or return to Star Wars: Galaxies, via the Legends emulator. Yeah, I know SWG went offline 11 years ago (I was online for light-out!), but it has always been the better game, versus BioWare's SWTOR.
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Comments
From early on, the Devs took a "We know what's fun, you'll play it and like it" attitude, which is always a big red warning sign to me in games, especially now.
Again, feature creep can be a problem, but Devs that outright reject player feedback, even relatively minor things that would obviously be good, is far worse.
To make it worse? I hated WoW - and it seemed to be SWTOR's dev's mantra that "well, if it's not in WoW, then why do *we* need it?" They didn't want to take any chances, like Star Wars: Galaxies did - and SWG (while horribly mis-managed) was such a rewarding and magical game to play. Granted, SWG didn't teach you *CRAP* about how to play it, and it's gameplay doesn't hold up against modern games - but it still took VERY rewarding chances and had such a good number of very intriguing mini-games. To this day, I've yet to see a more-engaging and in-depth Starfighter game.
Heheh - just as a point of reference? SWTOR did have starships and a starship game at-launch: It was that AWFUL rails/arcade space game that everyone hated so much that they made an *entirely* different, second space game - in which there was (mostly) free-flight. But what the hell kind of reasoning leads a dev to think that things are better in a flight combat sim if you're NOT ALLOWED to use a joystick?!