It's already wearing thin.

So yea, here we are and it's February. EA is crowing about SWTOR, fanbois are raving, haters are declaring doom, and I am sitting here just shaking my head with a mild headache. Now, as I promised, I gave SWTOR a fair shake, but, now I think I am going to go ahead and say I've pretty much done it all. The game is WoW 2.0, and I am sure naysayers will come out of the wood work to defend it, but the whole game plays, feels, and pretty much acts like WoW. The whole talking thing was novel, and while the crowing of choice was always BioWare's forefront, it's not really there as any choice you make has no real impact on any of the 5% character story arcs you do, and has no impact on any of the world story arcs. And as Yahtzee just proclaimed, the whole morale choice system was complete bullshit anyways.

And the game is way too padded out to boot. In fact the padding is so over the top and unnecessary especially since BioWare has basically proclaimed that they are focusing all their forward efforts on the endgame. Now I applaud this, because basically anyone saying that endgame doesn't matter is full of more gas than a politician and any developer trying to make believe they aren't designing any future content with the mind set of their highest level and most powerful players in mind is lying out their ass or completely incompetent.

Now while I am sure there are people who will say they love SWTOR, and I can't tell them they are wrong, I don't really care for it anymore. It was fun at first but the reminder of WoW was pretty much everywhere for me, and considering that BioWare is even going so far as repeating Blizzard's exact mistakes in everything they do, I am just baffled at every turn by this. Needless to say, that's probably another influence in this whole process the fact BioWare has bafflingly made the exact same mistakes that companies before them have made. And they keep making them. And it puzzles me further because they have people working on this title that have been in this industry for over fifteen years.

Another thing that has actually hurt my enjoyment is the utter destruction of RP in this game. While people will try and defend it all they want, RP is utterly and hopelessly destroyed in SWTOR. The only thing you get to decide, albeit briefly, is your appearance, but even that becomes generic after sometime thanks to same weapons and armor your class has to wear. Your personality, your interests, and even the entire character voice and mannerisms are chosen for you. This is not role play. And anyone saying it helps boost their RP experience is in denial at this point because there is no way you can say that with a straight face. So in closing that, I guess we can call that atmosphere. There is none. The moon has more atmosphere than SWTOR at this point.

The planets all feel stock and generic, and it's all linear and forced. I mean you can feel how forced it is, the attempt at giving you a planetary choice at level X early on, but even then you are forced to go to the other planet just to continue your class story. So really, that went down to a fuck it moment as well from BioWare as there's no choice there either, at least if you really want to finish your class story, and your story pretty much follows the exact same path as all the other classes. So anytime I hear someone mention story and choice about this game I am left doing nothing but rolling my eyes with an audible, exasperated sigh, because quite frankly, that's a lie to.

I am sure that when some read this I am going to get a whole bunch of either tweets or maybe even one who posts something telling me how wrong or stupid I am for actually having an opinion that doesn't jive with the belief that BioWare is incapable of bad decisions or designs or just really not giving what they promised. Personally, I consider the Mass Effect series to be a vapid, inferior game experience in a vain attempt to try and create a legend they instead went the cheap route and let a leak out saying there was sex in their game to sell more copies because of the easily predictable nature of gaming nerds. And, like HALO, Mass Effect is held up as some sort of crown jewel of games, but I just find them to be average at best, and pretentious just being their normal.

So basically what it boils down to is I am bored already, I am tired of the gimmicks when I just want to play (turning movies off doesn't help) and I am just tired of not being able to just pick up the game and start doing something I want to do. A dungeon finder in this game would be worlds of an improvement. It doesn't even have to be cross server, but instead they opted for the scream in general till you get a few people willing to help. This is a step backwards on many fronts, and it's going to hurt the longevity. I know there are some, just because they are Star Wars fans, who love this game, but I was never saddled with that burden really. And while some will say that's sacrilegious or what have you, I just never thought Star Wars was the end all be all people put it as. It's a quaint story to me, but that's really all.

So, in the end this will probably be the last month I play TOR for the foreseeable future. It was fun while it lasted, but it's already grown old and stale in my eyes. I don't know where I will go, I'm still looking at The Secret World with casual interest and a wary eye, but I have some interest in it. And strangely enough, a lot of suggestions I made a while back ago, Cryptic seems to have gotten the message on and are looking to actually do the things I've suggested time again. I can only hope that means they woke up, but I can already hear the bitching and moaning of the weakest links already complaining that an MMO is being aimed at being a game for teams instead of just solo fap that fails hardcore.

So, that concludes this blog. I am sure some will probably seethe at what I described here, some may even agree or most won't care. Hehe. So, maybe another blog in a few days or so.

RP Feeling Pointless in SWTOR

So, here we are at the end of the year, been occupying myself with trying to get a guild under control and playing SWTOR. I think that much is probably very obvious to those who actually care, but there are some things I still think about when it concerns the gaming world. Today, I am going to talk about role-play in TOR, or actually, the lack there of because of the simple fact that BioWare has basically written your character for you removing any sense of self in that regard.

RP is something I was hoping to get back into but just frankly, there is a very huge wall that's in the way in SWTOR. Of course, this has been around for a while, with games being more like WoW in all sense, but it's most evident in SWTOR because, well, your character has a predetermined voice, predetermined lines and the choices, though have different flavors of them, ultimately have the same ending regardless of what actual choice you make in the entire conversation.

Now, I know there are going to be people that tell me "No, it's not true, your choice has meaning and impact" the real answer is, no it really doesn't. Any game altering choice comes towards the end when the NPC in question or item has lost its usefulness regardless of which direction you got. So if you gave an item away or kept it, or killed an NPC or kept them alive, the final answer has little bearing on the ending outcome.  Let me give two examples of this;

On the Esseles, you come across a situation that you can either go power down conduits or kill engineers. The power down conduits results in about 2 extra minutes in a circle that over all doesn't really add enough time to matter, while killing the crew just lets you access the elevator faster. The end result is the exact same regardless of choice there.

Same instance, this time at the end you are given a choice to either leave the Ambassador behind or keep her with you. Regardless of if you do or don't or you tell her of the plot against her, the ending is the exact same with a few differences in words spoken. The final result is this entire "Choice" system is a disguised choice as it really doesn't exist and in the end it's just arbitrary padding for the alignment system, and given how little that actually impacts, I would wager that the alignment system will be the first victim come expansion time as it provides no actual benefits or incentives and actually just arbitrarily restricts items that shouldn't be restricted. And the first situation above has absolutely no bearing on whether you escape or not because those engineers never, ever are mentioned again after that cut scene.

So, let's get back on the whole role-play thing.  Now, people tend to mistake a choice wheel as actual RP in games, hence BioWare often being labeled as some sort of guru in the RP gaming world. However, this is actually not the case. This is an interactive menu system, more akin to a choose your own adventure novel, or in this case with SWTOR, an interactive movie. While this isn't a bad system in itself, as far as role-play is concerned it puts a huge damper on the field for those people that actually enjoy to create and play the character they imagine.

Let me explain this. Most RPers tend to imagine their character. Now while there are many people who have an imagination as deep as a tea spoon, hence all the Darth Maul's, Yugiohs, and Naruto clones that wander around (let's not even get into super heroes in super hero MMOs) many more players actually spend time coming up with an idea, a concept and a personality for their character. They even spend time trying to think up habits, likes, dislikes and what they might even sound like. However, the conundrum created with SWTOR is a large part of that is actually taken away because the voice, the words and the personality is actually taken out of the players hand and put in a wheel that, even though you might pick a choice that sounds close to what you were imagining in your head, the actual words spoken by the character don't even sound remotely close to how you interpreted the response.

I've talked to many RPers about this, and many of them find that this actually kills the mood for RP for them. It's bad enough most MMOs these days do not support sandbox elements to help make a nice and viable RP atmosphere, but now they are pushing to actually removing the things we RPers spend time actually trying to create with our character. This, to me, is a huge step in the wrong direction.

Now, I want to make it clear I am enjoying SWTOR. I can see myself playing after the initial month. Though I will be honest there are many nagging QOL issues creeping up that are just pissing me off that should be ironed out now. Things like the UI, to the latency in PvP are part of those issues, but that's just a start for me, and I am sure there are many others. Things seem to be working well but as far as the RP, even being on an RP server, that just doesn't seem viable because right now I keep trying, but every time I get into a cut scene the whole mood is ruined because of a predetermined script.