--Niniel EU-Kilrogg --Niniel EU-Kilrogg

Swiftmend

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.

2012-01-03

[SWTOR] Characters and initial impressions

How could I not try this game? :)

I bought it during the holidays and I really love it so far. I've already decided that I will keep subscribing. I'm not sure I'll raid or become serious about flashpoints but I very much appreciate the story and the starting areas. I'll probably at least level one of each class up to level 10 and then press on with a main and maybe 1-2 serious alts.

I've chosen the Jedi Sage as my main, a fairly obvious choice for a resto druid perhaps? Wanting to see the other side of the story I also created a Sith Sorcerer. I can't help but notice that lightning feels better than throwing a rock at someone but I'm sticking to the Republic side as my main side. I got goosebumps when my consular got her green lightsaber crafted and I cheered when I could choose Force persuade in a dialogue, I'm such a nerd :)

I must say that I care more about my characters and their story already after one week of SWTOR compared to 5,5 years of story in WoW. I've assigned them some basic personality traits to go with their light/dark side choices.

Jedi Consular - Light side. My main, über-good, wise and rational.


Trooper - Light side. Tough veteran, a bit grizzled perhaps. Can make dark side choices for the greater good.


Jedi Knight - Light side. Very zen.


Smuggler - Light side. Adventurous and humoristic. She just wants her ship back dammit.


Sith Inquisitor - Light side. A tough, sarcastic survivor. Kind towards those who deserve it. Cold towards the arrogant Sith.


Bounty Hunter - Light side. A nice guy, will defend the weak but doesn't mind if he earns a few credits while doing it.


I might create a Sith Warrior to explore the Dark side of the force, I can't help it though, you might be able to tell from my characters inclinations that Dark side feels weird to play.

Because of the initial queues I spread out a bit on the realms. I'm playing republic on Peragus Mining Facility and Goluud Corridor and Imperial on Sith'ari and Ludo Kressh.

So, good points and bad points then?
+ Story
+ Voice acting
+ Immersion
+ Sound effects
+ Graphics

- UI (the auction house is so poorly done that I want to cry)
- No addons (I really want to move things around better)
- Did I mention the useless Auction House?
- I miss Right click to move
- No macros

I would really like if it was possible to zoom in a bit more before the first person perspective takes over. It would be nice to get close the facial expressions of your characters, now it's a bit impersonal when you're so zoomed out that you can't really make out the details.

Another thing that annoys me is that there's an option to disable action bars, I think it should be show/hide, not enable/disable. I want to put abilities on keybinds and not have them shown in the UI. Is that not possible? I added an ability, got it keybound, removed the action bar and hell no the keybind didn't work any longer. Why would it be a good thing to disable something like that, can't it just be hidden please? I also miss macros and modifiers on the same button. It would add so much to the gameplay to be able to use Alt, Shift etc to alternate one buttons ability.

11 comments:

Shannara said...

I created a jedi sage/seer as well. Did you end up putting 2 points into 100 more force points as well? Seems like some things in the healing classes weren't really thought out ,, ergh

Niniel said...

No, while leveling I've focused on dps and other utility talents first. I got Will of the Jedi first, then Inner Strength and Clamoring Force.

I'm only about level 15 or so yet but I think I'm going to focus on the middle tree and switch to healing later on. Do you find yourself running out of Force too soon while healing?

Shannara said...

Yes indeed. I focused on the healing tree except for the two points for 100 more force. I am level 18 as of last night.

I end up using my lizard companion to tank while I focus on healing him, and some DPS (except on elites). It's kinda like having a Turtle or Bear hunter pet :)

It looks like BW did not put a cap on respec. I find that healers and tanks are sorely needed for Heroics, flash points, and world bosses. So I stay in Seer spec :)

Niniel said...

Isn't Inner Strength better than Mental Longevity? I would expect that to scale better with longer fights.

I'm not sure about the regen aspect but say you're +100 Force at the start and spend it, now for the rest of the fight that's not coming back. The longer the fight is, the more good will having 9% off all abilities cost do, or am I wrong? I'm not a math wizard, I'd just expect cheaper spells to be better than a larger pool.

I love bringing elites down with my companion too, it feels nice to dps, cc and heal in the same fight. I've soloed the +2 missions so far thanks to him.

Nobody said...

i've heard considerable grumbling about the auction house interface.
personally, i didn't have any trouble using it. it seems far simpler than the one found in lotro for sure.
you right click to move? in wow?

Niniel said...

Selling items is simple enough. I think it's very strange when buying to first have to choose category then subcategory, search and then filter. Why not just be able to search regardless of category or within a category immediately? The usability could be improved a lot by copying WoW AH and it's addons.

Well I don't right click to move in combat or so in WoW. You can right click anywhere on the ground though and your character will run there. Your character will run in a straight line so it's not like you'll run around obstacles but the nice thing is that you'll stop when you get there so it's better than auto run.

What I mean is that it's a nice feature to be able to right click a point by the horizon while chatting with someone or while running out to the kitchen to get coffee and know that you won't run off a mountain in the meantime but still keep running without being at the keyboard. It's just a little convenience.

Nobody said...

@Niniel
i guess i just learned something, i never even thought about right clicking to move in wow. not sure why it couldn't at least be optional in swtor. seems there are quite a few ledges/precipices in the game, so you might wake up dead :-)
back to the AH; there were some nice mods for WoW i admit, but the fact that they were practically mandatory was always frustrating to me.
and i don't have extensive mmo experience, but i still say what we've got in SWTOR is better/simpler than the unmodded WoW or LoTRO AH interface.

Christopher said...

Blizzard's UI design is head and shoulders above the competition. What drives me cuckoo in swtor is the inability to compare stats on mods, combined with only having two windows open (sometimes only 1). I actually write down the stats on some of my gear to avoid opening and closing three different windows over and over just to see if something is an upgrade - how archaic is that?

Niniel said...

Yeah it can be improved a fair bit.

I'm guessing the User Interface/Tooltip section wasn't much help for you? 'Enable Comparative Tooltips' and 'Enable Stat Summarization in Item Tooltips'. Probably not what you are referring too.

Melyanna said...

I love how you made your Jedi Knight! I share your complaint about the auction house interface - I wish it were a little less clunky to use. I stayed away from it initially and after I got used to the various categories items came under I've slowly warmed to the interface.

Niniel said...

Thank you :)

Yeah the AH has gotten a little better since I've used it more. I wish categories were something else than dropdown menus, being able to expand them and see subcategories would be better than dropdown I think.

Love your Force Mocha blog btw, *subscribes*