SW: The Old Republic - Episode VIII (May RNG Be With You)

[ShadySands]

Yeah, I thought the quality was fine but the quantity was lacking. 6 or so hours of combined story content is pretty thin for an official expansion even though the dailies, the op, and the flashpoint pad the total gameplay time.

That's really my biggest gripe and only because I actually dared to hope again with this game but no budget is gunna no budget

[213374U]

Guess the plan is to keep raiders from leaving, and story players re-subbing for episodic content, a la KotFE/KotET.

Crafting is in total shambles right now, and the jury's still out on whether the Spoils of War system is better than the previous token-based way of gearing. Despite my extremely negative impressions from PTS, I'm surprised to say that I think it may be...

[213374U]

The Star Wars MMO, The Old Republic, Has Now Made Almost $1 Billion In Revenue

Guess that should put the "game ded lul" comments to rest for a while.

Ah, who am I kidding...

[ShadySands]

I think the some of the "game ded" stuff, at least from people I know, comes more from the perceived lack of investment rather than the game itself being in the red. 

The content drip is easily the slowest of any MMO I've ever played and I really like the game but I've always thought it just need more of a certain I don't know what to really make it pop.

[213374U]

Yeah. It's rather impressive how far a Star Wars license will get you. They have obviously not spent even half of that $1bn in modernizing the tech or developing content, that's for sure. But hey, we got Andromeda and Anthem, right...?

[Gromnir]

23 hours ago, 213374U said:

Yeah. It's rather impressive how far a Star Wars license will get you. They have obviously not spent even half of that $1bn in modernizing the tech or developing content, that's for sure. But hey, we got Andromeda and Anthem, right...?

the thing is, EA has had a goodly number o' games such as andromeda and anthem. swtor, which am guessing generates dependable revenue, needs pay for all those failed games while ea hopes for the rare hit. is a weird business model.

have nothing insightful to share 'bout the new content which ain't already been said. is entertaining if paltry. we weren't expecting much, but even so, we got a bit less than we expected, but what we got were okie dokie.

is more buggy than we expected given how much time were spent testing. is an onderon daily which as o' yesterday were still functional impossible to complete, 'less you manage to be first person to complete when a new instance opens. took a couple days to get the force push/leap bit corrected.  etc.

am slight annoyed that we are once again grinding esseles and black talon 'cause it is an efficient way to gear-up even if it doesn't provide much in the way o' renown. got to 280 in only a few days doing esseles, though admitted we started monday and and stopped on wednesday, so we got benefit o' a repeat weeklies. we may do a bit more this weekend, but grinding esseles is soul numbing.

crafting...

*shrug*

not sure what to make o' crafting at the moment. am gonna keep making artifact cell grafts and selling 'em for as long as people keep buying' em at ridiculous prices, but am otherwise waiting for a rebalance to see where crafting settles. am understanding during the first week slicing were providing improbable returns, but we weren't 'round to take advantage o' such.

current situation appears to much encourage us to try and achieve beast-mode on a single character. as such, am not aware o' how classes have been rebalanced. gen chat suggests tk sages benefited from a big upgrade, but we kinda heard such by accident as we ignore chat for the most part. am unsure o' veracity. 

after we get to +300 gear on our guardian, we will likely take a nautolan through from level 1 on the imp side, perhaps a sorcerer, after which we will likely grow too bored and stop playing 'til the next expansion. seems to be a pattern for us.

HA! Good Fun! 

[213374U]

On 11/2/2019 at 7:21 PM, Gromnir said:

current situation appears to much encourage us to try and achieve beast-mode on a single character. as such, am not aware o' how classes have been rebalanced. gen chat suggests tk sages benefited from a big upgrade, but we kinda heard such by accident as we ignore chat for the most part. am unsure o' veracity. 

Telekinetics/Lightning seems to be overrated when you actually look at the parses, and the reputation it holds is mostly a result of a PTS conditions that have changed on the live version. The spec is an anomaly in the sense that it is a burst spec that also does more sustained damage than the dot spec -- not in an absolute sense compared to other specs. I wouldn't expect that to last either because Lightning sorcs can stack some serious DR too, which makes PVP folks ornery.

306 unaugmented non-set bonus gear is more than enough for HM level 70 content and the 75 SM ops, which is good, considering that everything is legacy bound now. So having three full sets of gear (one for each role) allows you to play any character in any spec at a basic degree of competence. The only thing you may need to obtain specifically for each spec is the tactical.

And yeah, selling mats is incredibly lucrative currently. It has always been a good way to make credits, but it's just insane now with so many people trying to cap skills and obtain BiS recipes.

 

Edited November 4, 2019 by 213374U
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[bugarup]

On 11/2/2019 at 8:21 PM, Gromnir said:

artifact cell grafts

*looks them up in the market* So, um...you not on Satele Shan, right? If so, mind if I undercut you for a wee bit o'time? Ol' me kinda temporarily poor here, after all the unlocking of crafting and additional cargo bays for the Hoard and if there is so much money in need to part with its fools...

[Gromnir]

On 11/4/2019 at 11:11 AM, bugarup said:

*looks them up in the market* So, um...you not on Satele Shan, right? If so, mind if I undercut you for a wee bit o'time? Ol' me kinda temporarily poor here, after all the unlocking of crafting and additional cargo bays for the Hoard and if there is so much money in need to part with its fools...

good luck with that. Gromnir is the guy selling 'em in bunches o' 5 or 10, and we sell 20-30 per day. am the current basement on price save for a few single unit outliers. blame us for ruining the market, but am satisfied with our returns given minimal effort.  been doing for six days and will keep up the pressure for as long as we can.

those three companions at 50 is finally earning their keep.

repeated esseles runs has us at gear 298 with a few 300 pieces and a nice pair o' tacticals. not certain how much will we have to push onwards, but at least full 300 before taking a break. 

HA! Good Fun!

[Gromnir]

update: yesterday we managed to reach gear 306 for our guardian--tank and dps. 

we don't have augments or ideal tacticals for tank. we don't yet have ideal set bonus gear neither. even so, less than two full weeks o' mostly esseles runs (+ the 2 mek-sha heroics and 6 onderon dailies) and am at 306.  all we need to finish the trifecta is heals gear.

coulda' cut total time by /14 to 1/3 if we had used a shadow instead o' a guardian. coulda' stealthed esseles for ultra-fast speed runs.

am not a big fan o' grindy, but am nevertheless thinking 10ish days is too fast to get to 306 for two roles.

HA! Good Fun!

[213374U]

Unlike DPS or healers, there are no ideal tacticals (or amps) for tanks. They are situational at best, when not plain trash. Set bonuses are underwhelming too. There were a few that were useful on PTS, but as with the Force Speed DR nerf, it seems BW thought tanks were overperforming so they had to take away some of our toys.

Don't even get me started on the augment situation...

[Gromnir]

37 minutes ago, 213374U said:

Unlike DPS or healers, there are no ideal tacticals (or amps) for tanks. They are situational at best, when not plain trash. Set bonuses are underwhelming too. There were a few that were useful on PTS, but as with the Force Speed DR nerf, it seems BW thought tanks were overperforming so they had to take away some of our toys.

Don't even get me started on the augment situation...

given how easy it were to get tank and dps gear, am thinking we will do a heals before we burn out again. swtor don't have crates check spec until they are opened, and they are tuned to gear level regardless o' kinda gear. guardian in 306 dps gear will get 306 tank gear as long as he/she is current spec'd as tank. as soon as we hit 300 gear, we changed spec to tank when we opened crates. esseles runs provided our dps.

am not particular worried over augments at the moment. crafting is typical wonky following an update. as such we will focus on wringing as much juice as possible from artifact cell graft market before situation stabilizes... though we were complete focused on gear grind the last couple days so for all we know the market has already changed. 

however, is second week in november and we got clear skies and temps near 80 degrees in the sac valley. with 1 day remaining in billing cycle, our electric costs for the month is under $40.  no a/c. no heat. is ideal weather and temps and so am gonna get outside and enjoy rl while weather remains idyllic. would be criminal to play swtor given how beautiful it is at the moment... which is rare 'cause where we live is always too hot or too wet or too foggy or...

HA! Good Fun!

[kirottu]

Now on steam!

[kirottu]

Since I finally have a computer capable of running this game, I bought some game time. Only to discover the stuttering was still there, but only in some areas. After playing the game and fiddling with graphics settings, which did nothing, it finally hit me. Name plate scaling was causing all the stuttering. How can text cause low fps? I don't know. Luckily playing in windowed full screen fixed the stuttering. Why? I don't know. 

I have now played through the KOTFE/KOTET content once and I'm not sure how many times I can do it again. For me one of the worst things a game developer can do is to make a boss battle, where after I have defeated the boss, I have to watch a cutscene, where the boss escapes or worse yet defeats me. KOTFE/KOTET were so cutscene heavy I started wonder I they had forgotten that games are meant to played. I guess that would make sense since they clearly forgot they are making a MMO and not a single player game.

I did like the content after KOTFE/KOTET and I think the game is actually pretty now that I can run it.

[bugarup]

9 minutes ago, kirottu said:

For me one of the worst things a game developer can do is to make a boss battle, where after I have defeated the boss, I have to watch a cutscene, where the boss escapes or worse yet defeats me.

Never play JRPGs. That's, like, bloody customary for every enemy ever, every time, everywhere. 

Haven't logged into SWTOR for...more than a year, methinks? More, probably. Still checking on what's new from time to time, but always find new content lacking and can't be arsed to see for myself. 

 

[213374U]

3 hours ago, kirottu said:

Since I finally have a computer capable of running this game, I bought some game time. Only to discover the stuttering was still there, but only in some areas. After playing the game and fiddling with graphics settings, which did nothing, it finally hit me. Name plate scaling was causing all the stuttering. How can text cause low fps? I don't know. Luckily playing in windowed full screen fixed the stuttering. Why? I don't know. 

I have now played through the KOTFE/KOTET content once and I'm not sure how many times I can do it again. For me one of the worst things a game developer can do is to make a boss battle, where after I have defeated the boss, I have to watch a cutscene, where the boss escapes or worse yet defeats me. KOTFE/KOTET were so cutscene heavy I started wonder I they had forgotten that games are meant to played. I guess that would make sense since they clearly forgot they are making a MMO and not a single player game.

I did like the content after KOTFE/KOTET and I think the game is actually pretty now that I can run it.

The game's engine is its biggest problem currently. Things like nameplates causing the framerate to tank (as with flytext, it's almost mandatory to disable them in 16m instances) preclude features such as speech bubbles which are common in MMOs and a long time request from SWTOR players. Desyncs keep getting worse, as do deaths by map. I suspect even the current dev team don't really know how to fix it as evidenced by several failed attempts.

In KOTFE/ET, you are the companion. The player is a secondary actor in the Valkorion family soap opera. For that and other reasons it's regarded by many as a low point in the game, and I'm just happy that you can skip it and go straight to... whatever comes next.

In all fairness though, the game has had a few graphical improvements over the years so it's now objectively prettier than it was when you quit.

Edited May 18, 2021 by 213374U

[Gorth]

On 11/2/2019 at 3:22 AM, ShadySands said:

I think the some of the "game ded" stuff, at least from people I know, comes more from the perceived lack of investment rather than the game itself being in the red. 

The content drip is easily the slowest of any MMO I've ever played and I really like the game but I've always thought it just need more of a certain I don't know what to really make it pop.

I've only really played 3 mmo's and tried out a few more (when they went free to play or had trial periods). WoW was definitely not my thing (never made it to level 10 on my one and only character). Black Desert Online... it came, I saw, it got uninstalled. Final Fantasy XIV... same. Tried it for 3 days. Bye bye. Not that it was bad, I just didn't "dig it". Warhammer Online was the first I ever tried and that only because I'm passionate about the lore of Warhammer/WH40k. It was a realm vs. realm mmo with a cardinal sin (the combat was probably the worst, clunkiest poo pile of any mmo). Which leaves me with swtor and GW2. I enjoyed the 6-7 years I played swtor, but as you guys mentioned, the lack of content slowly drained my interest. The uninteresting grind fest that was KotFE and worse, the droid planet (which I've repressed the name of) killed the game for good for me. Disclaimer, I did get a 2 month non recurring sub recently to play through the Onderon story line and level a toon up to 75 on imp side. Struggling to find the motivation to repeat the feat on pub side.

GW2 on the other hand? Playing it daily for years now. Content (story content and open world events no less) coming out at a pace where I'm struggling to keep up...

[Raithe]

I think part of the troubles with SWOTR is that the initial idea was great. The storytelling that went into the class quest lines, those initial planets, they way it all merged together, was quite excellent.

But then they never really seemed to have an idea of what to do once you finished them. It dripped along with some generic grindy end-game content, that wasn't that satisfying because the story pulled a lot of people in, and end-game repeatable grind just isn't very "story" so it lacks that pull.

 

[ShadySands]

IIRC the early endgame was also almost non-existent. Which was weird because of how fast you could hit the cap compared to some other games of the time. 

[kirottu]

On 5/18/2021 at 5:09 PM, 213374U said:

The game's engine is its biggest problem currently. Things like nameplates causing the framerate to tank (as with flytext, it's almost mandatory to disable them in 16m instances) preclude features such as speech bubbles which are common in MMOs and a long time request from SWTOR players. Desyncs keep getting worse, as do deaths by map. I suspect even the current dev team don't really know how to fix it as evidenced by several failed attempts.

In KOTFE/ET, you are the companion. The player is a secondary actor in the Valkorion family soap opera. For that and other reasons it's regarded by many as a low point in the game, and I'm just happy that you can skip it and go straight to... whatever comes next.

In all fairness though, the game has had a few graphical improvements over the years so it's now objectively prettier than it was when you quit.

Flytext? Really? I just don't understand how text can be a problem. I've read some dev posts and they say it isn't just the UI, it's all the logic behind it. That would be understandable if the hit was like 5 frames, but difference so huge it isn't even funny. 

It's kinda funny how there is almost like a logical "progression" to story content. Rise of the Hutt Cartell cut off class stories, Shadow of Revan cut off republic and imperial stories, and KOFTE/KOTET cut off player story. 

[kirottu]

12 hours ago, ShadySands said:

IIRC the early endgame was also almost non-existent. Which was weird because of how fast you could hit the cap compared to some other games of the time. 

I remember that. I think some dev even said the different class stories were meant as "end content".

[213374U]

17 hours ago, ShadySands said:

IIRC the early endgame was also almost non-existent. Which was weird because of how fast you could hit the cap compared to some other games of the time. 

Endgame content in the game even now is pretty much standard fare for the genre, as well -- either raiding or 4v4 ranked PVP. If you aren't into either, once you are done with story content, the game holds little for you  because "Conquest" or the new battle pass aren't content, just strategies to keep players busy grinding the Tatooine heroics 32456624 more times.

Which is a bit weird because people are going to be dragged in because of story, but then find an endgame that is completely different. It's not a bad endgame either, just not what people looking for a story-driven experience would be after, I think.

 

[majestic]

Bioware also stated they were surprised that players hit the level cap so quickly and wanted more content. They thought they had six months or longer to prepare the first content patch after launch (like it was for Blizzard with WoW, with a completely different levelling curve at a very different time). Instead what they had so far was petered out over several content patches, and the actual large content pack they planned was turned into Rise of the Hutt Cartel. I don't know if the images of the planned roadmap are still online somwhere, but that was pretty interesting to see.

I understand that EA wanted to have the game out for the 2011 christmas holiday season, but seriously, that ended up hurting SWTOR more in the long run than it brought in with short term sales.

6 hours ago, kirottu said:

Flytext? Really? I just don't understand how text can be a problem. I've read some dev posts and they say it isn't just the UI, it's all the logic behind it. That would be understandable if the hit was like 5 frames, but difference so huge it isn't even funny. 

It's kinda funny how there is almost like a logical "progression" to story content. Rise of the Hutt Cartell cut off class stories, Shadow of Revan cut off republic and imperial stories, and KOFTE/KOTET cut off player story. 

The engine has some essentially unfixable issues that I know about because an acquaintence of mine was a high level backer of The Repopulation and was on friendly terms with the developers. It takes ages to prepare a patch, it's not possible to hotfix anything, the underlying technology is a mess that the company developing the engine has grabbed from various sources, and a bunch of other things. You'll never see properly working fly text or chat bubbles.

Not unless you take the engine apart and start from scratch. It must have taken BioWare an absolute mad scramble to uncouple the animations and actions after the launch for a more reactive gameplay feel.

1 hour ago, 213374U said:

Endgame content in the game even now is pretty much standard fare for the genre, as well -- either raiding or 4v4 ranked PVP. If you aren't into either, once you are done with story content, the game holds little for you  because "Conquest" or the new battle pass aren't content, just strategies to keep players busy grinding the Tatooine heroics 32456624 more times.

Which is a bit weird because people are going to be dragged in because of story, but then find an endgame that is completely different. It's not a bad endgame either, just not what people looking for a story-driven experience would be after, I think.

For a while the endgame had a really engaging storyline, but that still required getting at least 7 other people and get through the story mode raids. That was easy enough, but still quite a hurdle for the more casual players, I guess.

I also liked the hidden 16 man bosses, but hey... can't really argue with the argument that making content for 0.1% of the player base is a waste of money, especially given how limited the team's resources were after the Rise of the Hutt Cartel launch.

[213374U]

4 hours ago, majestic said:

The engine has some essentially unfixable issues that I know about because an acquaintence of mine was a high level backer of The Repopulation and was on friendly terms with the developers. It takes ages to prepare a patch, it's not possible to hotfix anything, the underlying technology is a mess that the company developing the engine has grabbed from various sources, and a bunch of other things. You'll never see properly working fly text or chat bubbles.

Yeah, I remember reading that one of the two swtor.exe processes the game runs simultaneously is actually an instance of something called "Awesomium" (yeah), a Chromium-derived framework that provides browser-like capabilities for applications. In SWTOR's case, the UI. Awesomium has actually been discontinued by its developers and I couldn't even find when it was last updated. Heh.

 

4 hours ago, majestic said:

For a while the endgame had a really engaging storyline, but that still required getting at least 7 other people and get through the story mode raids. That was easy enough, but still quite a hurdle for the more casual players, I guess.

I also liked the hidden 16 man bosses, but hey... can't really argue with the argument that making content for 0.1% of the player base is a waste of money, especially given how limited the team's resources were after the Rise of the Hutt Cartel launch.

Barring the newest two instances, Storymode ops are completely brain-dead now --  after 4.0 was rolled out, any checks (including mechanics) are trivial. Which is a good thing for the reasons you stated, and the HM and NiM difficulties are still there for players looking for a little extra engagement.

The last few posts also evidence one sad fact: there's also the fantastic Galactic Starfighter, which predates Squadrons by about 7 years and which no one seems to ever remember because a) it's essentially decoupled from the rest of the game, and b) it has objectively received the least amount of content, updates or promotion of any game mode in SWTOR.

Edited May 20, 2021 by 213374U

[majestic]

1 hour ago, 213374U said:

The last few posts also evidence one sad fact: there's also the fantastic Galactic Starfighter, which predates Squadrons by about 7 years and which no one seems to ever remember because a) it's essentially decoupled from the rest of the game, and b) it has objectively received the least amount of content, updates or promotion of any game mode in SWTOR.

It's a game mode that also barely has a place in SWTOR. I only played it before the great Strike Fighter rebalancing patch, but I did have roughly 10k matches under my belt, was de-facto the VC server  first player to earn all GSF achievements. De-facto only because there's (still, as I haven't logged in since the very early days of SoR) one ship left to master on my Republic pilot toon. I even have more than enough requisition, I just... never got around to logging in on the Rep pilot and clicking on it.

I even had my own hate thread in the German GSF forum, people accused me of all sort of cheating. It was fun. Actually, my favorite part next to nightmare mode raiding, and the latter was soured by the players I had to interact with to do so - also the reason I quit the game.

Didn't mention it because I feel like a broken record, I'm pretty sure that even this very thread (or maybe its predecessor) has exactly the same post.

GSF's biggest problem is that it is an almost purely skill based arcade shooter with a tactical component in a hotkey/GCD APM locked MMO. While it was fun to collect the tears of the usual PVP heroes who think that MMO PVP is "hard", they also never really stuck around. At best they'd yell "go play real pvp, I'll kill you!" at me and left, before I coud yell back that this IS real pvp. More so than picking the FotM class to faceroll newbies who don't know that they need to stack <mmorpg pvp stat> to be competitive.

Thing is, I'm not even that good a shooter player, or at least, I'm no longer the 15 or 16 I was when I started playing Quake World and was physically in prime condition for that.

Agree with you there, though. It was... probably still is a fantastic game mode.