Star Wars: The Old Republic Random Question/Discussion thread - F2P

[Rulke]

Other BW games, like ME3 for example, have far superior graphics than SWTOR. It doesnt take away from the gameplay imo, but its nothing stellar.

[ringthree]

First off, you don't have the right to judge what is in it even a little fucking bit, because you haven't played it. You call it "nice", and you're a fucking retard for doing so because you sit here criticizing a game you've had a negative judgement around since before launch and don't even play. You haven't seen whats in it, you don't get to judge if it was worth the money you haven't spent.

Second, as Aza said, its only $10. Thats less than map packs for CoD. That's the same amount people paid for Leviathan and From Ashes in ME3. What you get for $10 is better than all of those by a wide margin. I know, because I've actually played it. And for the record, I went in with a pretty mild opinion, and came out very pleasently surprised (as did everybody else if you weren't out cherry picking biased negative reviews, if you even actually looked any up).

It was definitely more of a mini-expansion than a full fledged expansion you'd get from Rift or WoW, but it was also priced appropriately. They didn't charge $40 for this and an extra $20 for the version with a pet and an item for a completely different game.

Bottom line, terminology aside, it was worth the money.

I have played the original. You are correct, I am just going on reviews, and most of the reviews are positive with the asterisk that it should have been free. Value is subjective of course, I am just saying the most people have said that it is decent content that should have been free.

Saying that you can't make an assessment because I haven't played the content has a morsel of truth to it, but taking it further than that notion would negate the entire logic behind reading reviews or even discussing content at all.

[Shiyo]

You failed to note that the content update offered about another 30~ hours of content. TBH that's more content than most anticipated game releases in the past few years priced at $60.

The question should be: Was the content any good to spend the $10?

Not to seem the swtor fanboy. But it wasn't much worse then some of the recent console games that have released. It's worth doing if you were just in it for the story anyways.

I'd say toss some of the jaded visions away for a bit and realize the game HAS gotten much better since release. Playing for 30mins and tossing it to the side isn't an issue with the game but with the player not willing to try to see more than the bad aspects. SWTOR has done pretty well for itself after going F2P. Clearly they are doing something right.

PSO2 has released more content for free. PSO2 is giving away an entire expansion this summer for free that adds new weapons, new classes, new zones, etc. They've already added multiple new zones for free and 3 new classes and 5 new weapons(not gear, actual NEW weapons, fists, double saber, twin miniguns,etc that have 6+ photon arts and a gear for every weapon) within 5 months of the games release. SWTOR is being EA'd, charging for stuff that every other MMO gives you for free or includes in the $15/month. PSO2 is also a purely F2P game. It's hilarious they'd charge people who pay $15/month already an additional $10 for a content update. That just screams "WE WANT TO NICKEL AND DIME YOU AND THIS IS A MONEY GRAB!" Not as hilarious as people defending it, though.

That's not even mentioning there was MONTHS when they started to transition to F2P where they didn't release ANY content at all, or very very little. Some of the "big patches" after the first few 2(where the game was still decent, before it started to go to complete shit) that added a single battleground. Yes, that was the entire patch, a single fucking battleground. Seriously? Then I think another patch months later added a single 5 man, again, seriously? The patches before this always added 5 man|raid|PVP|dailies, lots of content. So it's pretty "duh" that this $10 expansion added lots of content, they weren't releasing it to you normally for months and months and saving it up to release to you for $10 because why not? Idiots eat that shit up, they think it's worth paying for a content update. It's a very EA thing to do. This isn't mentioning that the entire $10 content update was advertised as a free content update MONTHS before it's release.

You're blinded by the fact it's a decent amount of content and not seeing that it was like 6+ months of content saved up that they didn't release to you normally just so they could score an extra $10 off everyone. It was successful I bet, meaning they'll keep doing it. I personally won't ever play a MMO that offers a monthly sub and charges me to pay for content updates, because I'm not stupid.

There's a reason no one I know plays SWTOR anymore. Whenever I read the SWTOR general forums I see a bunch of confused people that compare it to horrible horrible HORRIBLE F2P MMO's I've never heard of, and it's generally uninformed people who have never played a decent MMO before. They don't know what good is, they don't know what real MMO companies/devs do, so they're used to being fucked royally and don't care. Battered wife syndrome.

[vrumpt]

PSO2 has released more content for free. PSO2 is giving away an entire expansion this summer for free that adds new weapons, new classes, new zones, etc. They've already added multiple new zones for free and 3 new classes and 5 new weapons(not gear, actual NEW weapons, fists, double saber, twin miniguns,etc that have 6+ photon arts and a gear for every weapon) within 5 months of the games release. SWTOR is being EA'd, charging for stuff that every other MMO gives you for free or includes in the $15/month. PSO2 is also a purely F2P game. It's hilarious they'd charge people who pay $15/month already an additional $10 for a content update. That just screams "WE WANT TO NICKEL AND DIME YOU AND THIS IS A MONEY GRAB!" Not as hilarious as people defending it, though.

That's not even mentioning there was MONTHS when they started to transition to F2P where they didn't release ANY content at all, or very very little. Some of the "big patches" after the first few 2(where the game was still decent, before it started to go to complete shit) that added a single battleground. Yes, that was the entire patch, a single fucking battleground. Seriously? Then I think another patch months later added a single 5 man, again, seriously? The patches before this always added 5 man|raid|PVP|dailies, lots of content. So it's pretty "duh" that this $10 expansion added lots of content, they weren't releasing it to you normally for months and months and saving it up to release to you for $10 because why not? Idiots eat that shit up, they think it's worth paying for a content update. It's a very EA thing to do. This isn't mentioning that the entire $10 content update was advertised as a free content update MONTHS before it's release.

You're blinded by the fact it's a decent amount of content and not seeing that it was like 6+ months of content saved up that they didn't release to you normally just so they could score an extra $10 off everyone. It was successful I bet, meaning they'll keep doing it. I personally won't ever play a MMO that offers a monthly sub and charges me to pay for content updates, because I'm not stupid.

There's a reason no one I know plays SWTOR anymore. Whenever I read the SWTOR general forums I see a bunch of confused people that compare it to horrible horrible HORRIBLE F2P MMO's I've never heard of, and it's generally uninformed people who have never played a decent MMO before. They don't know what good is, they don't know what real MMO companies/devs do, so they're used to being fucked royally and don't care. Battered wife syndrome.

There's a lot of truth here. Last year at E3 they showed off a trailer containing a montage of content that was "Coming soon to SWTOR!". Over the past year they've been slowly releasing that content to us, and yeah a lot of the 1.X updates were basically 1 or 2 of those items at a time. This is entirely during a period where BioWare Austin was restructuring themselves internally (read, firing people left and right) and where the people who were working at Bioware were depressed as fuck. Now, at GDC this year, James Ohlen comes on stage (surprisingly he wasn't fired) and tells people this along with that morale at the company is high for the first time since launch and that SWTOR is finally profiting since the F2P switch.

I basically take it as, this last really shitty year with SWTOR was a result of the fallout of the shitty launch and them scrambling to convert it to F2P ASAP. I'm giving BioWare the benefit of the doubt here and excusing 2012 entirely. If 2013 follows the same pattern though and they don't put out then there's gonna be hell to pay.

[Hioki]

PSO2 has released more content for free. PSO2 is giving away an entire expansion this summer for free that adds new weapons, new classes, new zones, etc. They've already added multiple new zones for free and 3 new classes and 5 new weapons(not gear, actual NEW weapons, fists, double saber, twin miniguns,etc that have 6+ photon arts and a gear for every weapon) within 5 months of the games release. SWTOR is being EA'd, charging for stuff that every other MMO gives you for free or includes in the $15/month. PSO2 is also a purely F2P game. It's hilarious they'd charge people who pay $15/month already an additional $10 for a content update. That just screams "WE WANT TO NICKEL AND DIME YOU AND THIS IS A MONEY GRAB!" Not as hilarious as people defending it, though.

That's not even mentioning there was MONTHS when they started to transition to F2P where they didn't release ANY content at all, or very very little. Some of the "big patches" after the first few 2(where the game was still decent, before it started to go to complete shit) that added a single battleground. Yes, that was the entire patch, a single fucking battleground. Seriously? Then I think another patch months later added a single 5 man, again, seriously? The patches before this always added 5 man|raid|PVP|dailies, lots of content. So it's pretty "duh" that this $10 expansion added lots of content, they weren't releasing it to you normally for months and months and saving it up to release to you for $10 because why not? Idiots eat that shit up, they think it's worth paying for a content update. It's a very EA thing to do. This isn't mentioning that the entire $10 content update was advertised as a free content update MONTHS before it's release.

You're blinded by the fact it's a decent amount of content and not seeing that it was like 6+ months of content saved up that they didn't release to you normally just so they could score an extra $10 off everyone. It was successful I bet, meaning they'll keep doing it. I personally won't ever play a MMO that offers a monthly sub and charges me to pay for content updates, because I'm not stupid.

There's a reason no one I know plays SWTOR anymore. Whenever I read the SWTOR general forums I see a bunch of confused people that compare it to horrible horrible HORRIBLE F2P MMO's I've never heard of, and it's generally uninformed people who have never played a decent MMO before. They don't know what good is, they don't know what real MMO companies/devs do, so they're used to being fucked royally and don't care. Battered wife syndrome.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/...pace-questing/

Sega is also still in the process of figuring out how to best monetize the game. It’s the company’s biggest move into the free-to-play game market to date, and it’s trying to build a game of high enough quality that it can compete with the heavyweights of the industry. “We are seeking to create a business model that functions while still allowing PSO2 to remain as much of an enjoyable experience as possible,” explained producer Satoshi Sakai in April 2012, “I honestly think Sega is the only maker that is willing to go this far [with free-to-play]. Even if we fail, we can get people to say, ‘They were five years ahead of their time.’”

Trust me, I really want to play PSO2. I fucking love pso. I'm still waiting for the NA release. But they're only doing it to play catch up till they can properly monetize it.

Next, I don't remember any official source saying that it was gonna be free. I remember a lot of forum people shouting that it should be free for subscribers. That shouting I agreed with. If you could find an official source to the claim that would be great. Maybe it just went under my radar.

I held off for the longest time on RoTHC either way. I didn't bother dropping money on it until I knew exactly what was going to come with it. Sure it was a cash grab. But I got what I wanted out of it, as did many others. I'm satisfied dropping $10 to play another part of a game that gives me entertainment. At the same time I dropped 10$ on a borderlands 2 content pack that gave me entertainment.

You've had a serious plague of posts regarding your 'opinions' of recent mmo's. As most of them have been awful and uninformed it is hard to take your posts serious anymore.

[Shiyo]

You've had a serious plague of posts regarding your 'opinions' of recent mmo's. As most of them have been awful and uninformed it is hard to take your posts serious anymore.

What?

Proof?

[Hioki]

Sure let's take a walk over to the Neverwinter thread.

[Shiyo]

Sure let's take a walk over to the Neverwinter thread.

Show me where I said anything inaccurate in that thread.

[Hioki]

Show me where I said anything inaccurate in that thread.

IT IS about being innovative and new. Those games don't get boring as fast because you're actually playing an entirely new game and not the same shit with a different coat of paint.

This game is awesome.

A bad game like neverwinter? I'll hate it by level20, because it's a BAD game.

$200 for a OP as fuck race(I bet it's OP as hell and game breaking)

Seeing as how all of your qualifications for Neverwinter being bad have all been retarded personal anecdotes and personal preference, I really don't think you're capable of making that judgement. You want the game to be something it's not, I get that. I wanted Dishonored to have better stealth aspects. We don't always get what we want but doesn't diminish the fact that Dishonored and Neverwinter are actually decent games.

Could Neverwinter use a bit more tweaking? Absolutely, but it's fucking beta for fuck's sake and you make such wild judgements with very little basis that it's really hard to take you seriously.

Clearly I'm not the only one who has said it before. Maybe you've simply out grown mmo's. That or I see your posts at awful times and just catch the piss and vile parts of them.

[Viq]

That or I see your posts at awful times and just catch the piss and vile parts of them.

I love Shiyo posts these days. He's like the super negative comic relief of the MMO forum. And it's the best kind of comedy: unintentional.

[Anoat]

Just a heads up for anyone who came back to the game with 2.0 like I did...don't use any of your PVP gear until you hit the 55 cap. Expertise does nothing for your gear pre 55, and bolster will not apply to you if you have any expertise at all on your gear. Meaning that dude in full PVE gear is gonna be bolstered and much, much stronger than you if you have on ANY PVP gear from levels 1-54. At 55 you can use your PVP gear again. I'm guessing this is why the level 50 PVP gear was removed from the game entirely, though if you like how it looks I suppose you could rip mods out of the newer stuff.

[Pere]

I love Shiyo posts these days. He's like the super negative comic relief of the MMO forum. And it's the best kind of comedy: unintentional.

Indeed, she is so bipolar it's extremly fun to see her bitch about how a game is terrible in one page, then in the next page the game is great and she is having a blast with it. Her avatar fitts perfectly her atittude.

[Hitoru]

Just a heads up for anyone who came back to the game with 2.0 like I did...don't use any of your PVP gear until you hit the 55 cap. Expertise does nothing for your gear pre 55, and bolster will not apply to you if you have any expertise at all on your gear. Meaning that dude in full PVE gear is gonna be bolstered and much, much stronger than you if you have on ANY PVP gear from levels 1-54. At 55 you can use your PVP gear again. I'm guessing this is why the level 50 PVP gear was removed from the game entirely, though if you like how it looks I suppose you could rip mods out of the newer stuff.

You can also pvp now without any expertise gear and still tear full pvp geared people a new asshole with little effort. Oh, and dyes today! Yay dyes! (incoming need bullshit prereq in order to use).

[Lucavi]

I love Shiyo posts these days. He's like the super negative comic relief of the MMO forum. And it's the best kind of comedy: unintentional.

I dig Shiyo, but reading through MMO threads lately is like observing a case study on bipolar disorder. Swinging from one extreme to the other seemingly randomly, and assuming that everything he says is 100% undeniable fact.

"I HATE this game!"

"Okay now its awesome but it sucked before!"

"Okay now it sucks again and for REALS THIS TIME!"

[vrumpt]

I dig Shiyo, but reading through MMO threads lately is like observing a case study on bipolar disorder. Swinging from one extreme to the other seemingly randomly, and assuming that everything he says is 100% undeniable fact.

It's the inherit problem of MMOs where you just play it long enough to notice every little detail way too often. If you put enough hours into any game, you're gonna start to hate it as you pick up on the little stuff that annoys you. It's true for every game. Its why I have to facepalm every time a game comes out, they put 200 hours into it in 2 weeks and then bitch about how bad it is and how the cracks start to show after you play for a bit. It's like, "Well thanks Sherlock Holmes, maybe next you can tell me how boring the same movie is after you've watched it 20 times".

That and fanboi's. You can't fix fanboi's though

[Shiyo]

I dig Shiyo, but reading through MMO threads lately is like observing a case study on bipolar disorder. Swinging from one extreme to the other seemingly randomly, and assuming that everything he says is 100% undeniable fact.

"I HATE this game!"

"Okay now its awesome but it sucked before!"

"Okay now it sucks again and for REALS THIS TIME!"

I really shouldn't have to defend myself over something like this, but I will anyways.

That isn't bipolar, that's called playing a MMORPG and leveling up.

- level1-10, ok I finished the "tutorial" part of the game, I got some skills, I've played with the combat a bit, I keep getting new skills every 5 levels that are fun, I've done a bunch of fun well designed mini-dungeons with secrets and traps and hidden stuff all over. Done a few bosses in the mini-dungeons, pretty easy still but that's expected as I'm low level. I say "This game is awesome" - it has potential and it's fun right now, at level 10

- Level 11-15 Ok I'm still getting some skills, still very easy, but the dungeons are pretty cool still. Expect the game to get harder soon. Do my first foundry, learn about player-made campaigns, love it, still having fun and game still has potential.

Level 15-20 Ok do my first skirmish, very disappointed in how easy it is, do my first dungeon, also disappointed. Still doing the same fetch quests, still doing same mini-dungeons, game is too easy, getting bummed out at how the games difficulty doesn't go up and it stays easy

level 20-25 Do second dungeon, see it's just as easy as first, get VERY bored, do 2nd skirmish, infinite hp Honor of the waves level of infinite hp boss, no mechanics AGAIN, summon adds - > cleave - > randomly teleport, that's it. No mechanics in the 2nd dungeon or 2nd skirmish outside of that, see I don't learn any new skills for 10 whole levels, get even more bummed and lose all motivation to play. 25 levels and game is still holding my hand like it's my first day in preschool. Log out because game is easy as hell for the first 25 levels, read multiple forum posts saying bosses don't get harder, people at level50 have seen bosses do nothing but summon adds, teleport, and cleave, lose all hope for the game.

level 25-30. Log on next day, game still easy..push through it in hopes of stuff getting harder at 30. Read multiple posts that people say 30+ ups the difficulty 10fold, and the 30 dungeon is INCREDIBLY hard. I keep leveling, with hopes, and motivation, 30+ stuff DOES start to get hard, increases 10fold in difficulty, I get a lot more fun abilities at 30, I do the first 30 skirmish and its really hard with mechanics, then I do the 2nd 30+ dungeon and 2nd 30+ skirmish and fall in love with the game again. Very hard mechanics, challenging bosses, requires teamwork and strategy, tons of fun! Love the game again.

etc, etc.

That isn't bipolar, that's the MMO devs being HORRIBLE at slowly introducing you to the game. You can play with your feet until 30, then the game gets harder at 30, and keeps getting harder and harder. Now that I'm 60, I'm kinda bummed out about the game again after doing T1 epic dungeons because they are the EXACT SAME as the level 20-25 dungeons, no new mechanics, no new loot(same loot with same skins and same name just scaled up to level60 and purple quality), and so easy I got a headache from boredom. The game just does it's difficulty and fun very badly, it starts you off on training wheels then makes you ride without hands and with a blindfold on after putting you on training wheels for a week straight. I expect T2 dungeons to have that 10 fold difficulty increase as well, but I have no motivation to sit through boring as shit no fun T1 epic dungeons to get enough "gearscore(the worst thing ever added to a MMO, the fuck did you copy it cryptic?) to run T2's.

People also being insane tryhards, and elitists, not even doing foundry maps and ONLY playing for loot and char progression in a game that stands out because of it's player made content and foundry, a game that is only different from other generic MMO's because of the foundry, yet gets completely ignored and people ONLY want to run epic dungeons for loot while also only wanting to "2 cleric CW TR + CW/GWF" in T2-T3 epic dungeons when I've seen multiple people clear them with only 1 cleric, Guardian fighters, etc makes the game even less likable. I want to do T2 epic dungeons, but I don't want to be bored out of my mind going in with PLD BRD WHM BLM THF DD killing things at 1mph with zero threat of every dying. People have done the dungeons without 2 clerics and these face roll comps, yet people think it's "required" to run them that way - I'd rather have fun and play with competent players playing the class they enjoy, not boring face roll comps.

I could understand the foundry map thing if they were BAD or EASY or boring, but there are multiple foundry maps that are harder than any dev created content, and ones with better stories too. People missing out on so much fun/good content just because it doesn't give them loot to AFK in the main city with and show off. Seriously?

The games overall community is pretty trash as well, from the tryhard elitists, to the people on the official forums not even caring about game-breaking bugs(Level scaling scaling you 10+ levels below your current level in PVP instead of scaling you UP to everyone else's level) and completely imbalanced abilities in PVP, or just broken bugs on skills and set bonuses that make things get 1 shot or don't function at all, and instead complaining about the cash shop, troll posts, and "the game is pay to win".

I like the game, the game just refuses to ramp up in difficulty properly, it's not bipolar to notice things like this and have zero fun with the game for HOURS at a time because you have to sit there walking through shit to get to the gold at the end of the tunnel. I don't like doing that.

[Senji]

Nah, its you. In every mmo thread.

[Kiarax]

Pretty funny how 95% of the level headed posters seem to agree with her the majority of the time then huh? You could probably take any single post of hers and see she has a habit of grossly over exaggerating her points. Keep that in mind and none of her posts are far from the truth. It's always funny to see people try to pick apart her posts based on the way she carries herself rather than refuting points she makes though. Unless I'm remembering names incorrectly, vrumpt is probably the closest thing BG has to a SWTOR fanboy (sorry bro) and he's agreed with most of the crap she's said here. On the other hands we have morons like you who think making gear a more important factor than skill in PvP is acceptable game design who disagrees with her. How about you stick to your circle jerk instead of making worthless posts here just to sling shit?

[Lucavi]

You could probably take any single post of hers and see she has a habit of grossly over exaggerating her points.

That's exactly what I said, but okay. The annoyance comes not only from the lack of sitting on one's hands until a proper assessment of a game can be made (IE: playing a game for an hour and then bashing it with a foaming mouth, only to post again 15 minutes later praising the game seemingly in a complete about-face), and once again, for assuming that each and every statement typed into one's keyboard is 100% infallible and without flaw.

Also, spare me the the numbers argument. Its too easy for you to sit here and say that "the 95% people I personally consider to be level-headed agree with her, and thus, with my assessment". That type of talk is irrelevant and serves no purpose other than to buttress one's own argument.

[Kiarax]

It's all well and good to take issue with that. When a new game comes out I can appreciate people posting their opinions of the game on a day by day basis. I know to take them with a grain of salt, especially in the case of MMOs which have a habit of holding off the "fun" content until end game. If you don't feel the same way? That's cool, scroll on or comment on it at the time if you really feel it's worthwhile. But when you resort to pointing out something silly like that from a completely separate and irrelevant thread in an actual discussion or argument you just come off as a cunt with no basis behind your point. He talks about how "uninformed" she comes off as when she's talking about PSO2, a game she both plays and has put money in to. What did anything she posted here have to do with her opinions on Neverwinter?

And let's be real here, any regular to this forum is probably pretty familiar with the other active posters. When I label people as level headed I'm not just making a blanket statement about people whose opinions I agree with. Just for examples sake, when GW2 was first coming out Takiwaki was fanboying that shit hard. Everyone knew to take what he said with a grain of salt when it came to him defending or promoting the game. He's a cool dude but at the time level headed isn't something I'd label him as.