Imperial Agent story complete... Superb #SWTOR

... and I hit level 50. Yay!

It's been said many times the whatever the longevity of SWTOR, the lasting legacy it will leave the MMORPG genre is the fully voiced mission content. That's part of it... but what will really be it's lasting legacy for me is the very, very high quality of story-telling.

Oh yeah... and I took a family portrait to mark the end of my first full SWTOR storyline :-)

I generally enjoy most facets of an MMO I choose to play, but I'm mostly a PvP type and so levelling up to be viable in PvP is often a chore. I can honestly say that levelling my Sniper to 50 was never a chore. I enjoyed it! Really, great job Bioware - particularly your team of writers.

I'm also reading Deceived by Paul S. Kemp on my Kindle at work and really enjoying the writing of that too. I may be a Star Wars geek but I'm generally quite a snob when it comes to the arts, so I must admit I'm pleasantly surprised. Anyone else reading the book?

Next step for me is to work toward a set of PvP gear for my Sniper (I respecced her to a AoE/Poison/CC build and it seems to work pretty well so far) and also spend a bit of time on another class. I have a level 31 Mercenary that I think I will respec to make a healer... I also want to try out a stealthy type. Not usually my thing but I've been knocked on my face so many times in Huttball by sneaky Operatives that I want to try it out! I'm not going Operative though as I just did the Agent story... So I'll make a Marauder I think.

Fun, fun, fun!

#SWTOR - Thought on crew skills and crafting

First of all I should mention that most of the guys I’ve played with in recent years would giggle at this, since I’m known to most of them as a fairly full-on PvP sort of guy. The truth is though, that what first got me in to MMORPGs was a combination of Star Wars and a player economy. As I’ve mentioned before, I played Star Wars Galaxies for a long time and although I PvPed plenty as various professions and hybrid builds, had a Jedi back in the days of holocron unlocking etc etc… I’m still best known to those who played on my server as a supplier of quality armour and weapons!

So what do I think of crafting and the economy in SWTOR? Well… on the whole I have to say the word that sums it up is… ‘meh’

By that I mean that I’m not at all surprised by how they have built it and I’m not surprised that it doesn’t even come close to being anywhere near matching up to what SWG provided for crafting/economy players… That was a given. But does it work?

Well here’s my problem… and this is a discussion I’ve had many, many times before relating to MMOs. How can player-crafted items create a viable game economy when there is no loss? You can’t build an economic system which is completely reliant on player turn-over and alt-levelling… Even in a game this size, that’s not going to work long-term. You have to have some kind of mechanism to generate repeat business.

In both SWG and SWTOR, weapons and armour have a ‘condition’ stat that reduces and once at zero, the item is ‘broken’. In SWG, if an item reached 0/100 then it was lost forever. You could repair items at any time but each time you did, the maximum condition of the item reduced e.g. a brand new item might be 100/100, then when it got to 20/100 you would repair it and it would become 80/80. Eventually, everything would break and need replaced. People who had rare and exceptional items would be very careful about when and how they were used so as to prolong their life… This helped to keep gear fairly balanced over the population too.

In SWTOR, one the condition reaches 0/100 you just pay a vendor to set it back to 100/100. Nothing ever actually breaks. So aside from selling stuff to people levelling up, where’s the market for crafted goods once you are max level and wearing nothing but PvP/PvE reward equipment?

The truth is that crafting doesn’t have the same place in SWTOR as it did in SWG. In SWG the Merchant/Crafter was a viable and separate career choice. You could play the game for 5 years and never fire a blaster if that was your desire, yet still have a fun time. In SWTOR, crafting is a mini-game within the game. All careers are combat careers and you do a little crafting on the side.

What I would love to see is SWTOR introduce actual gear loss when it breaks. Sure, people don’t want to lose the epic chest piece they grinded that Operation repeatedly for… or the Battlemaster helmet they did 50,000 runs of Huttball to get! There’s ways around that… Like have white and green items set at fairly low condition levels i.e. they can break fairly quickly but have the top end gear have much larger condition stats and so they take an age to decay. What you would ideally end up with is a situation where people have their “good armour” that is saved for the big raids or the group PvP mash ups on Ilum, while the rest of the time they have a set of disposable gear for doing whatever… warzones, flashpoints, helping guildies level etc. Replacing this stuff at low cost but regular repeat business is where you could create a viable economy.

In SWG item condition didn’t just decay on death, it decayed through use of skills… A Rifleman might have a great Krayt-enhanced T21 rifle for PvP and raiding but when he wanted to go farm Krayt Dragons for tissues to make a replacement, he’d take a standard T21 and set of composite armour. As he spammed overloaded rifle shots and took a beating from the dragon, his stuff would get torn up… but it was just standard gear so he’d maybe go to the ‘smiths and buy 10 T21s and 5 sets of cheap composite at a time. The rewards of his farming would more than pay for the broken equipment but it meant the crafter could continue to make factory runs of T21s in the knowledge he’d have regular customers coming back for more.

Lastly, just to touch on the age-old crafters vs power - gamer battle (of which I am actually both!): No, I don’t think players should be forced to rely on crafters for their gear… but I also don’t think that – in a game with a supposed player economy – players should be fully self-sufficient. PvP/PvE-ers should be somewhat reliant on crafters and vice versa. It’s arrogant anyone to expect their choice of play style to take clear precedence over someone else’s.

SWTOR - My honest opinion so far... #SWTOR

In short - I freakin' love it. No, it's not everything I (as a long-time SWG lover) would've wanted... but what it is, is a really fun game, expertly crafted and smoothly running. Before I ramble on about what I've done with my playtime and throw in the odd bit of criticism, may I first say an overall WELL DONE to Bioware for making an excellent Star Wars MMO.

This blog was named after the Inquisitor as that's what I decided, pre-testing, I was going to play as... I did so in the huge testing weekend and made it as far as around level 20. I really enjoyed the story but slightly regretted my decision to choose Assassin over Sorc.

When I started properly in EGA I wanted to try a different story, so me and my one or two pals who had also got in that day, all rolled up Bounty Hunters. So I've played Mercenary up to level 30 now, unlocked my Legacy name etc. I found the Mercenary really good fun and the Bounty Hunter story line of the Great Hunt entertaining.

Once I hit 30 and got my legacy name though, I was tempted back to something I'd tried briefly toward the end of testing... The Sniper! I LOVE THE SNIPER! I now have a very evil level 30 Sniper too. I found the Sniper to be crazy good in Warzones in the early levels... I'll make a quick mention of how I consistently topped the damage table against level 50s when I was level 12 in a moment.

Next however, I'm returning to my roots (and giving this blog some relevance!) by levelling up my Sith Sorcerer! Look out for another OP lightening-fingered mofo in a warzone near you soon!

So yeah... Particularly in early levels as a Sniper in Warzones. Here's my tip: Don't play it the way it's set up to play. Sniper is meant to be all about the cover. Get into cover to be able to use your big shots... Yeah, and as soon as the other team sees you kneel, you've got 4 force-leaping Jedi Knights on top of your head! I went for a different option... I basically made use of just 3 skills for most of the time:

Overload Shot: I chews up your energy but the great thing is it can be used on the move. At level 12 I was hitting for over 1000 damage fairly regularly with this.

Rifle Shot: When energy gets too low to use Overload, I switched to Rifle - the basic shot you have at level 1.

The only other skill I would use would be the AoE bomb if I found a group of enemies clustered together.

As I levelled up I would add in other skills as required, like Leg Shot to snare a target and Adreniline Probe to recover energy. With this tactic I'd be one of the few Snipers you'd never see in cover. I would stay as mobile as possible so as not to present an easy target for melee DPS dudes and just try to pump out as much damage as I could before getting taken out. 

Next time... My thoughts on crew skills and how the bolster mechanic in warzones is great but funny that you do better at level 12 than you do at level 30!

First Impressions

So after a long wait, I finally got to spend some time testing in the Old Republic this past weekend. My usual gaming time is on week nights, as weekends are reserved for family time with my girlfriend and her little boy. However, this testing weekend coincided with her having a date with some girlfriends on Saturday night. I had an access date booked for Saturday 10:00am CST… 4pm for me. Perfect!

I had the last minute updates downloaded just in time to be unleashed on the servers! I picked “The Fatman” server due to it being East coast PvP and having a name that tickled my schoolboy humour bone… I enjoyed the opening cinematics although it was tinged with a slight disappointment that I’d seen them before in all the media releases.

Character selection is easy and clearly labelled. Here’s my first disappointment though… I’d like to see a wider selection of playable races and more customization of appearance. Keeping in mind the cinematic nature of the story-telling to come, you need to be able to really like your character’s appearance and identify with it. I’m not a roleplayer… In my 2 notable incarnations in MMOs I was both a hardcore crafter/econ guy and then a hardcore PvPer… but I’ve aways enjoyed tweaking their appearance to be able to feel like that little character is an extension of me.

Anyway… As is suggested by the name and following my choice from all the pre-launch info I had read, I opted to make a Human Male Sith Inquisitor.

Story-telling… I love it. Having been what some would call a power-gamer, I really enjoyed the change of pace of not really caring how quickly I was levelling up but just getting into the story. However, I have to admit that by the end of my 2^nd day testing, when I had created and started to level up 4 or 5 different classes, I was starting to hit spacebar through the chat just to get on with it! However, when it’s for real at launch, whichever class I choose I will play through the story properly.

Combat… In terms of animation and sound effects I think they’ve done a great job of creating combat that you really feel is action-packed! My saber moves were smooth and the force lightning crackles with satisfying evil. I found the cooldowns on the skills a little clunky and often I would be hitting buttons to activate attacks then look down at my skill bar and it wasn’t clear which one had just fired off as they were all on cooldown.

Actually, I’m going to jump straight to my biggest frustration with this game… and it’s not one they can fix. It’s just too WoW. I appreciate that World of Warcraft is the most commercially successful MMORPG ever released. I agree they did a lot of things that have been proven to work… It’s just not to my taste a lot of the time. I played Star Wars Galaxies for years and would’ve far preferred a little more sandbox and a little less themepark… but hey… I know I’m in the minority so either accept it or move on. For most of the time I tested, the general chat channel was full of people discussing what WoW class they played, what WoW server they were on and whether they would keep up both a SWTOR and WoW account… I wanted to scream “**** WoW… This is Star Wars!” but I have to admit, those who dismiss this game as just a WoW clone with Star Wars IP and some nice acting have a point.

Being such a Star Wars geek though, and in the memory of my great years in SWG, I carried on… As a fellow Sith once said, My resolve has never been stronger!

Companions… This works well I think. However, it is a bit of a let down after getting your awesome new companion to run out of town and see 20 of the same dude running around beside you! I know the companion is tailored to your story and also equipped specifically to support your class as you adventure but it’d be nice to feel a little more unique. The makeover packs you get with them could maybe be a little more extensive…

Crew Skills… I don’t know much about this yet. I picked up salvaging and got that up to about level 80. I had also randomly picked up a couple of other skills and had notice the crew skills mission page but I was too busy following my main story line to bother with that yet.

So, as of today I have a level 17 Sith Assassin. I also played an Imperial Agent up to level 9, a Smuggler to level 7 and both a Bounty Hunter and Jedi Knight up to about level 4. I’m torn about whether to try and experience what the game plays like at higher levels, since I feel that if I play the Assassin up to say level 25-30 then it’ll spoil the chances of enjoying playing that class at launch. As there’s only Monday evening left for me to test this weekend, I think I will spend playing most ever class for the first 4 or 5 levels, just to get a feel for them all and try to decide which I really want to invest my time in when I play for real. I also want to spend a few hours figuring out the crafting side… In SWG I made a name for myself as a Weapon and Armorsmith and would like to try and recreate that as much as is possible.

That’s it for now… I recorded myself playing for a few minutes last night too and will try to find time to make it into a video tonight and post it here. SPOILER ALERT – The part I recorded was within one of the main story missions for the Inquisitor.

By way of introduction...

As it's my intention to have a serious go at playing Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) MMORPG when it comes out (or when I get in to the beta, preferrably) I thought I would use this blog to keep track of my experiences doing so.

I'm both a life-long Star Wars fan and also a lover of online MMOs. I played Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) from launch on the Eclipse server up until the much hated "NGE". At that point I quit SWG in disgust and found Pirates of the Burning Sea on my station launcher. I'd played a lot of Sid Meier's Pirates on the Commodore Amiga as a kid and loved it, so I gave it a go and have been playing it on and off ever since.

I have also dabbled in such MMOs as World of Warcraft, Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, APB, Darkfall, Mortal Online and Football Manager Live (RIP).

Hopefully I'll find enough in SWTOR to inspire me to make full use of this blog and maybe provide a useful source of experience and/or information on the game.

Check back soon!