SWTOR: beta testing

[Urian]

Nobody expects the Sith Inquisition but the Sith Inquisitor doesn't expect the kick to the groin the smuggler gives him!

I'm still waiting on word from the store if my computer will be delivered today (which they've promised twice to do but I've heard several friends say that their deliveries are weeks late currently due to store's warehouse moving to a new location). I downloaded DCUO of PS3 so I'll be playing an MMO one way or another :) (And as I posted earlier, going out partying)


EDIT: Whooop! I got my computer after much nagg.. I mean discussing it. Had to go to the warehouse and pick it up though but all is good and SWTOR is downloaded and installed.

[Flesh_Engine]

Props to you!

Im cueing right now :p

[Urian]

Good thing the servers went down for maintenance or I'd still be playing. Got to level 15 but spent a lot of time crafting in the elevator.

[Rugaard]

Good thing the servers went down for maintenance or I'd still be playing. Got to level 15 but spent a lot of time crafting in the elevator.

nice, ive only gotten to lvl 10 before i got too annoyed with the commando so i switched to the jedi, so far its not too bad

[Urian]

The beta weekend has another 12h to go but I'm done. I've played SWTOR for 47h since Friday evening and that's enough for now. I must say I'm impressed with how smooth the stress test went, very little lag/low latency even in the severely crowded areas.

[Rugaard]

The beta weekend has another 12h to go but I'm done. I've played SWTOR for 47h since Friday evening and that's enough for now. I must say I'm impressed with how smooth the stress test went, very little lag/low latency even in the severely crowded areas.

yea i agree, they did a very good job with it, they also did a very good job with the game itself, one of the things that annoyed me was how spread out some of the quest givers were and it often took 10 to 20 min to turn in a batch of quests, ive noticed there are speeders one could buy but those only are available to higher lvl players, i think it was lvl 25

space combat was fun but not very rewarding and a bit short, dont exactly mind the path style flight but i prefer freeflight

the story missions were well done and i liked how they created critical areas as some sort of instance, didnt have to wait for mobs to respawn, i also liked how they did the dungeons, or flashpoints as its called int this game, turning it into some sort of story rather than a boring grind to some quest objective though loot can be a little lacking

im not very happy with character customization, SWG had a lot more options and races to choose from aswell as a couple more classes, the most popular as i expected was the jedi though i saw a lot of them were guardians and consolars

crafting was interesting though i never got the chance to try using crafting stations so other than having your companions craft for you its more or less the same as most other mmos out there

and somehow this turned into a critic of the game... oh well
those that tested what did you think of the game and how they did certain parts?

[Urian]

This is the review I posted on my guild's forums:

I enjoyed the beta very much, to the point where I spent almost all my waking hours playing it. There were some issues ("screenquakes", lack of option to see info on person in chat, etc) but for a stress test I think it went very well and I had no problem with FPS and perhaps two or three instances of noticeable lag (each only for about one minute).

I played all four base classes up to at least level 11 in order to get a feel for them and they were pretty much what I expected.
- Sage feels very similar to mage/sorcerer classes in most MMOs and the healing is also pretty standard formula.
- Gunslinger is something new with the cover mechanics and although it took some time to get used to I think I like it (although I didn't really do PvP with him so mostly talking about PvE).
- Trooper/Commando was a blast (pun intended) and is probably the class that most exceeded my expectations. There is something very gratifying of mowing down hordes of enemies with an assault cannon or just knock an enemy down with a grenade and then run forward and rifle-butt him when he's lying down.
- JK/Sentinel was better than I expected, mostly due to the jump mechanics. I mentioned in chat at some points that I hated the warrior mechanics in WoW so I didn't expect to like the JK very much either. While it is still the class I liked the least and I felt PvE was a bit weird (probably due to soloing with my tank droid...) I must say that PvP was perhaps second only to Sage and the jumping opened up new possibilities in Huttball.

The crew skills were another thing I wanted to test since crafting is usually one of my favorite aspects of MMOs. I pretty much only did Synthweaving/Archeology/Underworld Trading but it seemed to be quite fun. The crafted items aren't that good at first but if you get the new schematics from re-engineering them a couple of times then they're pretty much up to blue Flashpoint drops status. With the huge amount of new people at low levels it could be a pain to find resources through nodes so the ability to also gain them from missions while e.g. PvPing felt like a godsend (even though it costs quite a bit).

The voice acting felt very much like a single player BioWare game which is a huge plus IMO. The group discussions took some time getting used to but they soon felt quite normal (even though the rolls seemed to hate me). The only negative thing about the group discussions I can think of right now is that if you just want to repeat a flashpoint for drops/xp then the discussions can slow it down by quite a lot.

So yeah, I'd say it's looking to be a very good game and I'm looking forward to launch in three weeks.

[gftweek]

I played for about 18 hours (my wife even bought dinner to me in a bowl bless her), but I didn't want to spoil the game too much (contentwise) for myself, so stopped at level 12 max, but tried out the smuggler, jedi knight, bounty hunter and imperial agent classes. Although I am left wondering what happens if you play a sith side character with the light side choices, do you get shunned by your side, or disadvantaged in some way? A moral bounty hunter seemed like an interesting playstyle to me, all I noticed though, was that you couldn't get the dark side titles based on dark side points though.

I found the non-cover based and melee characters harder to play as they take more damage and deal less in the same amount of time, so it was much easier to level up as the smuggler and agent, with less deaths, but I guess that would even out more when you can specialise and the tank type characters can get better armour.

I found the performance excellent even from New Zealand with all the servers in the states (weren't many in Europe that I saw), only a few glitches at peak times, and the bugs I encountered were fairly minor.

The story based content really shows through and is enjoyable, but still skippable for repeated playthroughs.

I never got as far as crafting or getting a ship (or getting it back in the smugglers case), but I look forward to trying those in December.

I didn't get a chance to try a flashpoint since they are all mostly available after level 10, are they soloable or are groups required? I managed to do 3-4 of the heroic quests solo or with a companion character.

For an MMO I found the character customisation quite extensive, there are plenty with much more limited options, and I like that you can customise your companions, so not everyone from your class has an identical one.

Looking forward to December 15th (yay, pre-order), hope I can finish Skyrim in time, and maybe get a chance to try out BTW for Minecraft 1.0 before then.

[Rugaard]

ill say one thing, i wasn't entirely convinced that this was going to be a good game when i first heard about it but this beta test just made me want to buy it

[Flesh_Engine]

I played a Sith Inquisitor to lvl 11 & an Imperial Agent to lvl 9.

Like Urian pointed out, no lag, smooth experience so that went exceptionally well imo for a stress test. The ingame prompts to evaluate current quests/activities were also a good initiative.

If i had time to play an MMO (which i don't) then i'm not sure i'd sign up for SWTOR at this time. The game felt a bit too much like WoW to my liking and when you start comparing things from the Republic & the Empire, the classes (or at least the driving mechanics) were copy/paste and that's underwhelming.
Nitpick is that, although i'm not a tool, i did find it rather difficult to make an informed discision regarding the crafting skills.
You do get the Codex entries which are a big help, general produce types should be listed though.

What i found to bother me most however was that they were going on about giving the person a reason to do things, a frame to place their actions in, etc. This succeeds to a degree...until you turn a corner and see 4 other players running around with the same companion, you're talking to an NPC and 2ms from where you are a mob spawns and proceeds doing it's idle animation until the conversation ends and then attacks you...

While playing the Inquisitor line i couldn't help but feel like i'm playing KOTOR again. Bad thing? Not really, but it's not "new" if you get my meaning.

In the end i'm sure that the chaps at Bioware will put in the extra effort and smooth things out after a year or so.

Does feel awesome to run around SW universe again though ;)

[screally]

I probably ended up putting about 30-36 hours of play into the beta (given I was a saturday tester, thats a good portion of my weekend).

I managed to get Jedi Consular to level 23 and Bounty Hunter to 12 (who I surprisingly really enjoyed playing as).

Overall I really enjoyed myself, but taking my gold-tinted star-wars goggles off, I can see there are some issues with the game that is making me hesitate whether to pre-orer or wait and see if I can get it cheaper later on, mostly inspired by a huge post on their forums by a long term tester.

I played the game on lowest graphical settings, in part because my laptop is fairly outdated and full of dust afaik, and also because I run an old, mobile ATI graphics card (and there were issues with ATI graphics cards and SWTOR), so graphics weren't hugely inspiring for me, but even on these settings I was fairly pleased with how it looks. Also, with these settings I managed to get the game to run for long periods at a time, but it tended to crash every 4-6 hours of continuous play (becoming more frequent the longer I play).

Missions were really good, especially at first, although perhaps a little more intelligence could be put behind some of them. For example the bounty hunter has your manager (an npc character) die about 10 minutes in, and I felt no emotional connection to them. While my character could have chosen to be upset by this (by the talking choices), I couldn't care less IRL. Consular was a bit better; your master gets sick at the end of the first world (which took me a few hours to get to), and I was definately a bit more worried about her.

Side quests were good at the start, for perhaps the first world, but on the second world they started to get a bit tedious. Especially when you'd get a "bonus" quest to kill 'x' amouint of a unit in one area, then a second one to kill significantly more of another unit further on in, and finally kill a boss or a group of stronger npcs, usually at the start or end of the area. If, like me, you miss out killing all of the first npcs from the first stage of the bonus quest on your way in, you'll end up coming out of the area, finishing the first stage of the bonus quest after having completed everything else, then realising you have to go all the way back in to kill many more npcs for stages 2/3. On top of that, unless you want to die from aggro-ing every npc on the way out, you have to then kill the original ones on the way out again.

A simple fix would be to show all 3 stages of the bonus quest at once, instead of only revealing them one by one (thus allowing you to kill half on the way in, half on the way out).

Also, the sheer number of side quests (given by different npcs) tended to make me lose interest in their stories, and by the end of the second/begining of the third planet, I stopped really caring about them. I ended up just picking the best conversation options (for light/dark/companion points), and did the quest without knowing what was going on. Also, none of the choices had any major impact on the the quest, or anything else in the game, no matter what option you picked (except perhaps a small pay change). I did get lost a few times during these side quests, possibly as a result of not paying attention to their instructions (but I was also very tired at the time, so who knows).

Instead of this, they could connect groups of side quests together, to make longer side quests. This allows you get to know the npcs involved better. Perhaps if they are split them between zones (so maybe 2 parts of the mission in zone 1, and a further third part in zone 3 of the planet) the choices you make in the first part could have outcomes in the second (so you have a reason to get involved in the story).

Light/dark choices for quests, as well as the ones which affect your companion's opinion of you were very bad in my opinon. Either you pick what you/your character wants and occasionally/commonly suffer from it (loss of companion respect and not being able to spec light or dark side). OR you only pick those, but the conversations become forced to the ideals of your companion/light/dark side. Not sure how to fix this one.

Companions themselves are useful, but choosing and sticking to one is difficult. I had a tank companion, fairly well equipped, and then I got a healer one. I actually liked the personality of my tank (despite there not being much story relating to him), as I had gotten to know him, so I didn't change to my healer. The tank also had a bunch of equipment that I'd been buying/collecting for him, so changing out would have been hard work, since I'd have to equip the healer with top range gear. Fighting with companions is generally good, though they do make occasional mistakes like not targetting units, but ok overall.

Crew skills are interesting... Didn't get to do too much, and they are very complicated. I feel they could have done a bit more explaining about how they work, and also make the interface for it a bit simpler. I didn't understand reverse engineering. I tried reverse engineering a few high level items I wasn't using anymore (I had artifect), but I got nothing but materials back. How do I improve what I can actually craft?

Item mods are another tricky thing, and working with them I found to be very clunky. It's very difficult to add/remove mods, figure which setup is the best, and then remember to apply everything and equip it.

Space combat felt tacked on, they need to do something about it. It can provide a little fun downtime though. Owning your own spaceship is cool as well.

Didn't test pvp or get my own speeder, can't comment on them.

And finally, this is supposed to be an MMO, but apart from the occasional Heroic quest or flashpoint (I did 2 flashpoints over the 3 days) I had very little interaction with other players. You just don't need to group together to play this game. Chat is difficult to use, and not divided into rooms well. I feel unless you know someone before getting into the game, you'd have a hard time actually making friends. Maybe its because it was beta weekend and everyone was rushing.

[gftweek]

And finally, this is supposed to be an MMO, but apart from the occasional Heroic quest or flashpoint (I did 2 flashpoints over the 3 days) I had very little interaction with other players. You just don't need to group together to play this game. Chat is difficult to use, and not divided into rooms well. I feel unless you know someone before getting into the game, you'd have a hard time actually making friends. Maybe its because it was beta weekend and everyone was rushing.

I prefer MMO's like this, that you can share with your friends, but can still play solo if they aren't online, or force you to join a random (and often useless) PUG. Sure some of my colleagues will play and I may meet some of this forum's members in game, but we all have our own schedules (and timezones), so enforced group play can be detrimental to gameplay enjoyment in my experience (mark me down as introverted in M!C's upcoming questionnaire).

[screally]

Anyone else get an email for THIS weekends test?

[Urian]

Anyone else get an email for THIS weekends test?

Yup.

[gftweek]

Sadly no, but less than two weeks to go now till the pre-order early access starts!