SWTOR
Whenever we hear that name we think of that WoW clone that ate dust after some bad choices and poor implementations made by Bioware. Although SWTOR failed, I for one was really hoping for it to succeed. I was thinking about some of the things that made SWTOR just another poorly made WoW clone, and so I would like to highlight some of the things that I believe need to be fixed, and some of my thoughts about them.
I think Bioware should have done well, they had experience with KOTR and they had a successful game they could look at and study, to figure out what works and doesn’t work in the community.
Ships
Don’t get me wrong the ship idea was cool, but they really made it seem like it wasn’t finished. You can’t buy a new ship, or customize it in any way. This should have felt more like player housing, they even instanced everyones ship, but they won’t let me add giant cannons to it, or change the wall color. I think being able to call your ship, your ship would have attracted people to stay on and play the game longer.
The other part of working with the ships is space battles. Now I love the game Battlefront, and I was wondering why they didn’t do something similar. By putting your ship on a roller coaster track, it ruins the epic space feeling. I think the whole ship mechanic should feel like Eve, where you can fly around. While flying around, you should be able to see other players and clash in some real epic open world space fights as you commute to your next leveling hub. At the same time you should be able to explore and travel around, and find cool areas, just because. There should be pirates for me to fight, and I should be able to deck myself out in all the latest weapons and equipment for my conquest of the skies.
Maps
Star Wars was my favorite movie series as a child, because of the diversity in it. Yeah they have cool ships and gun and light sabers, but they also go to all kinds of different worlds with different features throughout the films. I think a big mistake on Bioware’s part was to not include large enough planets. I don’t think they should have split the factions up, because this discourages you from really backing up the faction you play for.
I like me some good open world PVP, and when I don’t get to see anyone till level 20, I get bored. As well as letting people quest in the same zones, you need to make the quests close enough together that I can still fight other people, without going too far out of my way. At the same time the zones should be large, they are planets after all. I think they need to add in places that I can just explore and run through; I don’t think that every ten steps I should see something new, no I want to see large things to check out, but open ground in-betweens, just showing what the planet is like, and ground for me to cover to give a better sense of scale.
Achievements
I am an achievement whore to say the least! I love achievements and I really felt like these were needed in the game to add a sense of what can I do next? Also achievements can act like mini quests, because people will try and complete them and in doing so will provide themselves with hours of play. And of course I love to show off all the achievements I have completed and the cool reward that I unlocked for doing them all. (Add these in to please)
Crafting
Crew skills were a cool idea, being able to tell my annoying companion to do stuff for me was really handy and something we haven’t seen before. The problem with it is that none of the skills were actually useful. I could grab max armor tech, and I could make some armor, but almost everything I got from quests and at end game really just outranked the gear. Also I could only do some of the skills in certain points, and some none at all. I like being able to send someone else off to do it, but at the same time I would like to be able to make some of the stuff myself.
It came down to you picking Biomed as a skill, for PVP so that you could make the one good item in the game that made you just a little more overpowered in PVP. I think they should have let me, or my friends build stuff for our ships and then implement it. Or make it so the other skills have something they can offer for the leveling and for end game as well, much like WoW has done.
Story Choices
I loved the story in SWTOR, but I have a few problems with it. First the whole decision thing was cool and it made me that much more interactive and immersed in the game, but once I figured out my choices didn’t actually matter, it ruined itself. I think the choices should have affected something, more than just a few different lines, or to kill this guy before you proceed. I think that if I choose to kill this Sith Lord maybe I piss everyone off in the headquarters and they are now hostile to me, unless I do something to get back in their favor! They could have put in a whole bunch of reputation stuff here, and done some really cool features.
Reputation
This would have been nice to have, because without it, in a lot of ways it feels like I am only working toward my faction the whole game and am never progressing towards the other races and species that exist in the universe.
Abilities
If you ever look at the abilities, you will notice they are almost the exact same as in WoW. The gear image is also similar as well. Heroic leap is almost the exact same thing as force leap, heck they even sound the same. And Priest and Sith Inquisitors where the same style of gear, one is just reskinned of the other. Heck the head pieces are almost mirror images of each other.
All in all SWTOR was disappointing
I thought it would have potential being a Star Wars game and all, but it really fell short of my expectations and I am disappointed. I think any game that wants to try and beat WoW, needs to study it. WoW may not be the best game in the world, but it has loads of subscribers and has tried a lot of different methods out. I think for now I will stop trying to hope SWTOR, because Bioware has shown us they don’t know how to fix this game.
I realize a lot of the stuff I have mentioned would be hard to add, but I think if Bioware took the time and implemented some of these; it would really make the game much better from the player’s perspective of things.
