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

[Draylo]

Why haven't I been chosen :/ I signed up like a year ago.

[Ezek]

I signed up on 6/12/09 so lol 2 years and no invite still. I even cared and updated my computer specs every time I upgraded shit.

[niwaar]

The test is VERY small at this point. There is one server running. This is one of the reasons why I believe that we are farther off from a release than most people think. I am sure there will be more invites going out within the next month as they move to multiple servers. But right now its a single server that they are doing their damnedest to stress test.

In the last patch they increased the server max and are now using "instanced" areas ala Aion to spread the server load. They are being very systematic at trying to solve their load/lag issues before they increase the size of the testing pool.

[Katlan]

Finished the DL yesterday, I'll play this weekend (at least try to get to lv 10) and give my initial impressions.

Character creation is as depth as WoW and Rift

[EternityEnd]

What does that mean? Rift's character creation far surpasses WoW's.

[DeathbySnoosnoo]

Finished the DL yesterday, I'll play this weekend (at least try to get to lv 10) and give my initial impressions.

Character creation is as depth as WoW and Rift

which are both bad

[Katlan]

What does that mean? Rift's character creation far surpasses WoW's.

Rift's character creation surpasses WoW's (6 year old game), but its still extremely lack luster w/ the small amount of options available (I guess Rift's was good, but the models were ugly and I could not make a character I was truly happy w/for the life of me). SW:TOR is worse then Rift.. less in depth. I'll post screenies when I get home. I just messed around for like 10 minutes before I went to work. Oh wait, its much closer to WoW's then Rift's

It's basically: (all presets - no slider or palette table)
#Hairstyle
#5 different body builds (can't customize at all, have to do 5 different presets that determine build, height, weight, ect...)
#skin color
#scar
#different facial builds (ala WoW style - presets, no small customization like Rift)
#Hair color

I was dissapointed. Am making a Twi'lek... and while I was able to add tatoo's to their tentacles or w/e they are called. The "Hairstyle" option is to choose different "head ornaments - ala small crown's." I was really hoping I would be able to choose different style tentacles

[EternityEnd]

Ah, okay. That's kind of disappointing.

[Lucavi]

Also, I wouldn't get your hopes up for massive changes between character creation options from alpha to launch. I can name the number of MMOs that had sweeping, massive changes in that developmental timespan on my fist.

Which is to say: none.

[vrumpt]

I don't get why people gripe over lack of good character customization in MMOs. Any time you spend making your character look cool is just lost when you start to gear up your character, and armor in the end is what you see anyways which is really what defines your character (at least i think so). The only thing about WoWs character creation i hate is that its 7 years old and the models are dated, which isn't about the creation really, and Rift didn't bother to make unique races and removed any cool racial differences right before launch. Maybe i'm the only one who doesn't sit in town all day and stare at my pretty face, but i value character creation lowest when it comes to my uniqueness. Again this is just me though, obviously you guys aren't with me here.

Also, at the end of the day, a lacking character creation system just means i can play the game quicker, instead of spending all afternoon making my char to find out the name i wanted for him/her was taken.

[Katlan]

Character creation is important to an extent. Face (and all things related to it - scar's, ect...), skin color, height, hair style / color, build (how thick vs skinny) are the most important to me as they determine how gear looks on you and stuff. I'm also a person that never shows my helm in a mmo

[Lucavi]

I don't get why people gripe over lack of good character customization in MMOs.

I don't get why you'd be so upset over a perfectly valid complaint about a game. A lot of people spend a LOT of time crafting their character, and more choice is always better than less. You don't need to make excuses for Bioware and EA; the decision to skimp on character creation was theirs, not yours.

At the end of the day, people have varying opinions; some aren't going to be like yours. For a company dedicated to making money by having as many subs as possible, I'd be focusing on capturing the largest sure market I could. Knowing how rampant Starwars fanboys are, I'd have opted for a pretty in-depth system. Just because you don't care about it (or really like white knighting a company that doesn't even send you a paycheck every other week) doesn't mean others don't care, and their money is just as valuable as yours is.

[vrumpt]

RAGE

I'm actually not upset, but you sure seem to be. Excuse me for inquiring about the opinions other people have about things. Its called a conversation. Its this thing where people politely talk about certain topics, this one was about character creation in MMOs. Its nice to know how other people feel about certain particular topics from time to time, and putting in your two cents about certain things is actually pretty common in conversations. If you look carefully, nowhere in the accused post did i defend Bioware for only putting a few character creation options in game.

Thanks for the accusation though.

[Lucavi]

If that's your definition of rage (coming from a guy that's admitted more than once that he's let his temper get the best of him in this very thread), then so be it.

If you want to know how other people feel about the topic at hand; well, I just gave you an example. Lots of people like spending time on how their characters look. Its smart to add as much detail as you can, to bring in a wider audience. Pretty simple stuff.

[EternityEnd]

I agree that character customization should be a sizable concern, as someone who never wears helms / agonizes over the perfect aesthetic. That said, I played WoW for years and its customization . . . sufficed, so it won't be a deal-breaker for TOR not to have Rift-level customization.

[Lucavi]

Rift's customization isn't even that good. Its passable, and Trion caught a little flack during the end of the beta when they said that the only other things they were doing was going to be adding a few more hairstyles. Even Trion can do much better than what they currently have. You want to check out Aion if you want customization. That game caters to the absurd, at least before you actually start playing the game.

[Katlan]

While WoW may be old tech and its character models are lacking, its races are diverse enough (at least now - current day). Rift has decent customization, but it has terrible races and ugly models (outside of race names and elf/dwarf, they are all different colored humans w/ different proportions and then given a different race name). SW:TOR, at least from a "good alliance perspective" (haven't looked at evil side yet), has the following:

Race names don't matter to me, this is how they look:

#Humans w/Tentacles coming from there scalp (can be blue, green, red, yellow, ect...)
#Humans
#Humans (blind) who have Star Trek Geordi La Forge style customizable eye pieces. They are darker skin colors only
#Humans w/green skin that are SLIGHTLY scaly.

All races share the same body archtype, they are just re-skinned differently. If you look at SS's... some may seem skinnier, ect... then other races, but the "body structure" archtype is the same for all races.

I'm not trying to rant on the character customization... it's an important facet to me and this is how I see it to be.

[DeathbySnoosnoo]

#Humans (blind) who have Star Trek Geordi La Forge style customizable eye pieces. They are darker skin colors only
#Humans w/green skin that are SLIGHTLY scaly.

the blind humans arent darker only, they share the same color wheel as humans, basically all the same options as humans except eye pieces instead of facial hair
green guys arent scaley they just have funny tatoos, they are just green humans

[Zerocool]

The last MMO I played that had an in-depth character creation was Aion, and at the same time a very severe lack on in-game content. If I had to choose one or the other, I'd choose content every time. Not that I'm saying we should have to choose one over the other, but still. Though I can see it being a bit more important in a game like TOR where there's a lot of cutscenes that show close-ups of your characters face and stuff. Especially since they won't show whatever helmet you may be wearing during them.

[Katlan]

You know what... so far I don't hate the game. Combat is just like WoW, but slower.. but that aint terrible. Graphics are better then Rift (I thought the game was super ugly) and so are animations. UI and interface is terribad and I've had to run around so much it reminds me of vanilla XI travel. Voice acting isn't bad so far, but Ive alrdy been skipping through a lot of it

tagged because huge

Spoiler: show