Thebmatt.com

So, as you’re probably aware, I’ve been playing the snot out of Star Wars, The Old Republic. It’s been pretty awesome so far, though I’ll spare you a full review. I’m really loving the class storylines and the chance to play in the Star Wars universe. It’s crazy fun.

However, the game ain’t perfect, at least not to me. It lacks some polish in areas that World of Warcraft has long improved on, but it’s also made some decisions independent of those issues that I either don’t get or just don’t like as a matter of personal preference. I’ll spare you the former for now, but I’d like to discuss some of the latter category here.

Again, this is strictly my personal taste, so take it how you will.

1. The game needs more “well known” races.

I really think Bioware floundered a bit here. Some of the race selections in this game just make no sense, especially when you look at what ISN’T here. I mean, your standard humans, Twi’leks, and Zabraks are fine. The Sith Purebloods make sense if you know the Star Wars timeline, and are just plain cool. And the Chiss are an amazing addition that I didn’t expect, but really, who doesn’t think the race that Grand Admiral Thrawn, villain of Timothy Zahn’s amazing trilogy of Star Wars novels, isn’t going to be fun to play as. But the rest? You’ve got Mirialans, a race of a VERY background character in one of the prequels. The Miraluka are a race of blind people who only appear in the second KOTOR game and are more or less identical to humans in every other respect. The Cyborg race had potential, but frankly, the “cybernetic” artwork looks less like robotics and more like something you’d wear in a hospital recovery room. I don’t even know where the Rattataki came from. They look similar to the slightly well known character Asajj Ventress (she mostly appeared in the Clone Wars comics and cartoons) but they aren’t apparently the same race at all, so I don’t even know what the deal is there.

So you’ve got a lot of wasted potential there, especially when you look at what’s missing. Just going from the original trilogy races alone, there’s no Wookiees, no Mon Calamari, no Sullustans, no Trandoshans, no Rodians, or any number of races to play as.

(Each link above, by the way, goes to the Wookieepedia entry for a well known member of each of the races that you’d recognize from the films. Just in case you don’t recognize the names. We’ll do it again below)

And while you might despise the prequel trilogy, they did give us some cool looking aliens. And again, far too many of them aren’t playable here. No Kel Dor, or Nautolans, or Togruta, or Chagrians, or Cereans. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, again.

“But Brandon, maybe they just didn’t have time to build graphical models for those races!” you might say. Except I’ve seen 90% of the above mentioned races as NPCs in this title so far. So clealy they could have done it. I just wish they would have. I mean, come on! Who wouldn’t want to play a Wookiee Jedi? That’s just COOL!

2. I don’t like the restrictions that are currently in place for lightsaber blade colors.

Currently in game, once you get at a certain level of dark side or light side “points”, you are unable to have certain colors for your lightsaber. Once you go dark enough, you can’t have blue or green. Going light enough restricts your ability to have a red crystal. Yellow, orange, and purple have no restrictions, though the latter two are apparently somewhat rare.

Yes, I know. You movie-only people will tell me that red blades are a Sith color and no Jedi has them. Well while that is true, there are written examples of Jedi wielding red blades. In the Clone Wars era, both Adi Gallia and the Padawan and later full Jedi A’sharad Hett. Want a later example? How about Leia Organa? She used a Lightsaber described as “ruby red” during her early years as a Jedi.

On the opposite side of things, the Sith Lord Exar Kun continued using his blue lightsaber that he had from his time as a Jedi, and even modified it to include a second blue blade, one of the first double bladed lightsabers ever recorded.

I know the restrictions are in place to cater to the movie folks (or heck maybe even Lucasfilm made them) and to give each faction’s Force-users a more uniform look, but really, they’re just annoying. I’d much prefer to just let it be open to any color you wish.

3. I really wish we could name our personal ships

Early on, around level 16, you get a personal ship. I just want the ability to name them. It would be a neat little touch, some extra personalization.

4.  There are a few, very few, minor art elements that could use an update.

Most of the artwork in this game is nothing short of astonishing. Things just LOOK amazing. Bioware has done an absolutly fantastic job trying to replicate the feel of the Star Wars universe.

Which unfortunately makes the stuff that doesn’t quite measure up stick out all the more.

When you make a character, it doesn’t take terribly long to get them gear that represents their iconic look. Jedi get robes with raised hoods on them. Your Bounty Hunter gets heavy, battle scarred with lots of weapons and a jetpack. Sith get some jet black hooded robes, and eventually a cool mask. The one thing that’s sticking out to me is the Helmets for Bounty Hunters. It’s taken me until my current level to find one that doesn’t look just awful. They look like helmets from ancient Japan. I’m not expecting a full-faced Mandalorian-style helm right off the bat, but something a bit more appropriate to the sci-fi realm would really be appreciated.

Cyborgs need an update, like I mentioned above. The implants that are currently available make them look more like hospital patients and have no real weight to them.

A common complaint I’ve heard concerns the limited number of body type choices for player characters. Most are seeking something more average than what’s available, the current choices are a bit limiting.

That’s it, so far. Admittedly it’s a very minor list. That’s really how good this game feels to play, as a Star Wars fan. I”m having a lot of fun, and I can’t wait to see where the game goes from here. Again, please note this does not concern gameplay mechanics or features that other games have improved upon, because I feel these are things we can all universally agree are features that need to be added. I’m speaking of things like an automatic random grouping utility, an API for mods, a more customizable default UI, dual specializations, those sorts of things aren’t quite what I was going for here. Those are no brainers.

Anyway, how are you guys enjoying SWTOR and are their any other design choices you would like to see differently?

Edit: I’ve embedded Youtube vids which show each of the classes I’m interested in doing what they do best. Watch if you like!!

Anyone who knows me well knows I am TERRIBLE at making decisions. I question myself over and over again. I’m trying not to be this way, I really am, and I have to commend my lovely wife for having patience with me, heh.

But Star Wars: The Old Republic has presented me with one of the harder decisions to make in a long time: Picking which class to start with when the game comes out. There are so many awesome choices, and me being a huge Star Wars fanboy, all of them look appealing in their own ways.

I should state that I had made a decision at one point. I was done, committed. My guild from WoW was going to be on the Sith Empire side, I’d looked over the class choices available to that faction, done the research on what they could do, and picked one. I was good.

Then they announced that they were going to try something new in this game, we were going to establish guilds on both factions for this game, as an experiment. So now we’d have a presence on both the Sith Empire and Galactic Republic sides! Well now my decision isn’t so firm! I have more options to consider! So I started looking over and researching the Republic’s classes, which led me to doing more research on the Empire’s classes, and, well, you see where this goes. I have too many options, all of which sound awesome for various reasons, and now I have no idea how to pick. So I’m asking for…I don’t know if help is the right word, because I’m not sure if I CAN be helped in this matter. Additional information, perhaps? Opinions I hadn’t considered?

Before I list the options, let me explain SWTOR’s class system. Each faction has 4 base classes to choose from. At level 10, your character can choose from 1 of 2 Advanced Classes. At the time of this writing, this choice is permanent, so you have to decide wisely.

The classes on each faction aren’t necessarily different, however. Each class has a “mirror” on the other side. One class and it’s mirror will play very similarly, but their look and feel will be different. For example, the Republic’s Jedi Knight Base class is a mirror of the Empire’s Sith Warrior. Both have one Advanced class that focuses on a Single saber, and the other that focuses on Dual Wielding Lightsabers.  With the Jedi and Sith classes, it’s easy to see the parallels, because they use the same weapons and their Force powers are similar mechanically, though they appear different.

Let’s try another example. On the Republic side, you have the Trooper class. He wears heavy armor, he wields big guns, and throws lots of grenades. His mirror on the Empire side is the Bounty Hunter. Heavy Armor, has rapid fire Blaster pistols, wrist mounted rocket launchers, and other fun toys. You see the idea. Similar design but with different flavor. And of course, their storylines will be completely different. It feels much like a different class.

So now, we come to the options I’ve narrowed down. I’ll list them by their Base Class, then Advanced class, then talk a bit about what the class is designed to focus on and what about that in my own Star Wars interest lures me to the class in question.  And I’ll link each to the SWTOR Wiki, you can go there and read more about the other classes that are available and berate me for not considering them. I can feel the Smuggler fans glaring at me already, heh. Sorry guys, never really wanted to be Han Solo as a kid. Aighty, here we go.

Trooper - Commando: The Trooper is the classic armored guy with a huge gun, mostly inspired by the Clone troopers of the prequel trilogy. These guys are the elite troops with the best equipment and most powerful guns. The Commando class focuses more on firepower, whereas the other class, the Vanguard, focuses on building up their armor systems. Consequently, the Commando gets access to the biggest heaviest blaster rifles in the game, and are pretty much capable of filling the air full of blaster bolts! Heavily armored with a huge amount of firepower, ya gotta love it.

Jedi Knight – Jedi Sentinel: The Jedi Sentinel advanced class is all about the swordplay. This class focuses on dual-wielding lightsabers. That alone is just made of awesome.

Jedi Consular – Jedi Shadow: The Jedi Consular splits into very two odd paths. The first one, Jedi Sage, focuses primarily on Force powers, and has a lot of telekenetic based abilities. Hurling rocks or other objects around, or Force pushing things over, that’s their speciality. The Jedi Shadow, on the other hand, is all about stealth, sneaking around, and quickly dispatching foes with a double-Blade lightsaber. Think a good version of Darth Maul here. I love the double-blade lightsaber and the idea of playing a stealthy Jedi that appears out of nowhere and takes down his opponents sounds sweet.

Bounty Hunter – Mercenary: Mercs Dual wield pistols and focus on their wrist and backpack rocket launchers. They don’t have as heavy of armor as their Powertech brothers, but they have more long range damage dealing to make up for it.

Sith Inquisitor – Sith Sorcerer: The Sith equivalent of the Jedi Sage, these guys focus on Dark Side force powers. That means lightning. Lots and lots of Lightning. I make lots of jokes about being a Sith Lord, well if I was, this is the kind of Sith I’d want to be, hurling lightning around like crazy, demonstrating my RAW POWAAAAAAH!

Imperial Agent – Sniper: I admit, this was the class I was dead set on before the Republic guild became available. Sniper Rifles? Check. Droids you get to control and have blow stuff up? Check. The Chiss as a playable race? Check.

So that’s my choices. I want to have SOMETHING chosen before I start. I mean, sure, I could create another character later, but I would still like to have an idea in mind before I get started on Day 1, you know? So if you have any advice, please share!

Edit: Now that I’ve added character class progression vids for all the classes I’m looking at, here’s the two I’m not thinking about, the Smuggler and the Sith Warrior