I’m currently really enjoying SWTOR, the advanced classes, companion characters and storylines breathe new life into an aging genre, but Bioware are falling down on some key MMO aspects among other things. Here are my complaints and possible fixes.
Raid icons for enemies
For a game with a lot of group content it’s criminal that we have no way to distinguish between enemies. Chat often gets confusing right before a pull with who wants to Force Lift who and what the tank is focusing on.
Just some simple shapes would do wonders to group content, right click the enemy portrait and pick a shape from a list and group members can clearly see what needs to be done about the upcoming fight.
Dedicated LFG screen/tab
It seems that toughest part of group content is actually finding a group to join, granted its beta and there are less people then when this thing goes live but the system in place is just awful!
To begin with not many people know about the LFG system in the “Who” tab, hell it took me ages to find. Why not put a separate LFG tab in the social window, that way it can be better dedicated to actually finding groups rather than being tagged onto another function.
In this new tab the player can mark himself/herself as wanting to find a group and pick what kind of group they want (group quests, flashpoints, pvp, etc) while seeing available groups in that area.
Group leaders can also use this tab to see people that are looking for a group and can invite or whisper them from there.
Painfully small raid UI
I have only tried out the raid panels for Warzones but they are just horrid to look at. Whose idea was it to have them so small, as a healer I want to be able to see people’s health values but this is impossible if I look solely at the raid frames.
It doesn’t even make sense why they are there in warzones, the groups aren’t that big so why is loads of room wasted with empty panels?
A fix would be to just borrow from the group frames and shrink these a tiny bit, remove all information bar the health bar, force/heat (energy?) bar and their name. Would make the UI a lot nicer to look at the life’s of healers way better.
Less group quests, more flashpoints
The Esseles flashpoint was brilliant, at first I thought it was just another group quest but it became this wonderful story and was extremely fun.
I’m level 25 now and I haven’t even smelt another flashpoint which is a crying shame, these are what distinguish you from other games but they are way too reserved, yet the amount of separate group quests is way too high.
A great way to solve both of these problems would be to merge some of these group quests into flashpoint content. For example the group quests involving one of the major gangs on Coruscant could be merged into a single flashpoint. The group starts to investigate the area before being ambushed by that gang’s kingpin and then they go after him while taking down various key parts of their operation. A little basic (I’m sure the story wizkids at BioWare can do a lot better) but it shows how easy it would be to group and merge certain aspects to create new and exciting flashpoints.
Crafting
The crafting is awesome, the way it works and the high variety of jobs is really good and doesn’t distract the player from the main story. However there is one fatal flaw that could turn people away.
I currently cannot lever my Artificing any more due to not having the correct mats, my archaeology skill is so high that I have way too many Nixon crystals but not enough Elaram crystal. To get my artifcing skill up I need to use recipes that use Elaram crystals but as I can no longer get these I am at a dead end. I have tried using the Auction house but nothing is up on there (this will be different come release but people shouldn’t have to resort too much to the AH) and I really don’t want to return to lower level planets just to farm crafting mats.
Now this will probably affect a small minority of players, I will admit I’ve been a bit of an idiot by not levelling both skills equally. But if this happens now then it is going to happen when it goes live. It has really deterred me away from crafting which is a shame as I really did enjoy it.
A way of solving this would be to provide blueprints (from vendor, drops, experience) for a new recipe that breaks down higher level mats into lower level mats. That way players will not get stuck when levelling their crafting skills and encourage them to use the system more then give up with it.
Trainer costs
As I hit 25 I had a horrible decision to make, new attacks or a mount. I picked mount (I really regret that decision for reasons I will explain later on) and now am poor with lesser powerful attacks.
2000+ credits for a single attack upgrade is a bit much, couple this with the fact that most a levels a player can upgrade 2 or 3 attacks or learn a new one and you can see how fast players are going to lose money. Hell I feel sorry for Sardoni, I don’t want to think how much those level 50 upgrades are!
Any MMO shouldn’t penalise a player when learning a new attack or upgrading old ones, it’s a natural part of the game and its really unfair to players when they have to choose. Certain moves and abilities like mount training should remain high, they are a privilege after all but basic attacks and skills needed for gameplay. Charge something so it’s feasible and makes sense to the story but at least lower the cost a bit.
Change color option of UI
A very simple idea, why does the UI have to be blue all the time? I’m a Jedi so it fits my character but I’m sure that Empire classes are a bit annoyed that all they keep seeing is this goody too shoes blue. Hell even some of their holograms are red!
Players love to customize their HUD, it helps bring a sense of control and not every thinks the same when it comes to aesthetics.
I simple colour slider that changes the colour of the frames would be lovely, keep the blue as default and hide the slider somewhere in the options menu so it doesn’t get in the way but at least give people the option. Some people may want black/red to suit their game style and I’m pretty sure some players would want lovely hot pink frames while touring the galaxy
Space combat
Despite what others are saying about it I really enjoyed space combat, its not too fancy as to distract the player from the main RPG elements of the game and not too simple to be overlooked as a tacked on mini game. However it does need some fixing.
The first escort quest was awesome; sadly it’s the only bit of combat I can do until I can afford some form of shield regen.
The missions are way too hard, there is little the player can do to dodge incoming laser fire (from the front and back) and it really isn’t fun. I did grind enough to buy a shield thinking it would help but instead it bought me about 30 seconds more of combat. Something needs to be done:
A) Nerf the damage from incoming enemies for the first couple of missions, these are the starting levels, why are they noted as “Normal” difficulty and bloody impossible to finish? Gently introduce players to the concept and they will love it instead of failing a lot and never doing it again.
B) Put shields and shield regens as standard in our ships, everyone else seems to have them so why do we have to grind to get them? The regen will make combat much more bearable and force players to think tactically so they can survive.
Or
C) Let us buy basic shields and shield regens with good old credits. I don’t really think anyone wants to grind the same level 10 times just so they can move onto the next. Let players invest in new but basic equipment with credits at first so that they can complete the harder levels are unlock new stuff with what they win.
Advanced classes
“O hello, young Consular, you are now a Jedi Shadow, here have a bunch of new stuff and abilities”.
That was the process of picking an advance class for me the first time my main got to level 10, something so important to the player’s gaming experience has been seriously overlooked and forgotten about. No big quest, no cinematic, just a choice between option 1 and option 2 to decide how you play your character for the rest of the game.
This badly needs to change and there are many ways already up on these forums on how this can be fixed. For me I would suggest either:
Sample quests – Let the player try out each advanced class through 2 different quests and then let them pick
Early skill tree view – Show players both skill trees as they level to 10 so that they can research and study both sides and then pick
Retcon tokens – When a player chooses their advanced class they are given a single bound token good for a single swap. If players don’t like their advanced class they can swap to the other one but must stay as that for the rest of the game.
Mounts
I was really looking forward to getting a mount, after about half an hour finding the vendor (seriously put in a quest or a unique icon to help players find him on Tatooine) and then actually getting my mount I was met with sheer disappointment at what I had just wasted my time and money on.
Now when you think of a Jedi rushing into combat on a vehicle you would think of a really cool speeder bike going at break neck speeds (kinda like the Endor chase in Return of the Jedi) what I got was my Sage squatting on what looked like the shop mobility scooter of the future. “Ok so I look like an idiot, no matter let’s see how fast this baby can go!” I thought to myself. It felt slower than a shop mobility scooter!
Now granted this is just the level 25 mount (the level 50 ones better be fast) but they need to be faster. Everything is really spaced out and far apart in SWTOR and any MMO player will tell you that running to places is not fun AT ALL. Also I have sprint, ok a mount is faster but it just doesn’t seem it. Sprint I can just toggle it on and I’m away, with my mount I have to summon it, hide my embarrassment and then I can go (at what feels like a snail’s pace). With sprint I can even use my boost move to make myself even faster, with a mount I am forever stuck at a painfully constant speed.
At the moment I just can’t justify the 44k credits I spent on this hover scooter, it needs to be a lot faster or needs to give me something new. A boost, a shield, a cool laser turret attack just something to justify the purchase, hell I’d settle for an actual speeder bike model and some added motion blur!
Well that’s some of my thoughts; sorry that this little rant has gone on a bit, feel free to discuss and challenge my ideas below. Hopefully we can all come up with some really cool ideas for existing problems and make this game even more awesome before release.
See you all in game
- I say sadly because they are absolutely brilliant.
