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[Filth]

Has anyone had the bug where after you click play the screen turns black and nothing happens. And then when you try to control alt delete your system hangs and your forced to reboot unless you wait 10 minutes. That was my expirience with the beta all night :/ got to login twice and got a sith assassin to 14. Soooooo gooood. But the bugs have to go :/

 

[Moaradin]

Sooo much running in huge empty lifeless areas aaaah

"Why isn't this game better?"

Now that I've played it myself, I am absolutely amazed at how easily people dismissed the negative commentary about this game before beta was more open to people because "you haven't played it"

Probably because you haven't actually seen a fraction of the game. The first tutorial zone will not give you the full representation of the entire game. Try a different class. Get off of the starter planet.

 

[cartoon_soldier]

Sooo much running in huge empty lifeless areas aaaah

"Why isn't this game better?"

Now that I've played it myself, I am absolutely amazed at how easily people dismissed the negative commentary about this game before beta was more open to people because "you haven't played it"

It seems to differ from planet to planet. I would not call the Jedi Starter planet as lifeless

 

[spk]

Probably because you haven't actually seen a fraction of the game. The first tutorial zone will not give you the full representation of the entire game. Try a different class. Get off of the starter planet.

I'm not on the starter planet. I seriously doubt the game will suddenly become interesting enough for me to not feel underwhelmed and disappointed. It's not even a problem of not liking the starter planet or class...lol how many people need to say this

 

[cartoon_soldier]

I'm not on the starter planet. I seriously doubt the game will suddenly become interesting enough for me to not feel underwhelmed and disappointed. It's not even a problem of not liking the starter planet or class...lol how many people need to say this

My most experience has been playing as Jedi Consular till level 20 and never experienced a scenario where I would consider the planet/surroundings lifeless. Not sure what you are playing as though.

Level 9 as Imperial Agent, was definitely more lifeless than Jedi starter planet though.

 

[Alex]

Fuck, finally someone who sees it. I was playing with my brother and a friend last night and they just didn't want to see it. Fucking hyped out of their skulls I'm afraid. But yeah, I agree. It's unbearably ugly.

WoW is so uneven visually, I agree that some of its modern environments are stunning though, especially places like Vashjir. I don't think TOR is ugly at all however, and I do like its character art quite a lot. WoW is just so exceptionally weak, IMO, in terms of character design. To this day I still laugh at things like the one good troll face and the hare lipped human males. Oh god and the female worgen. Oh well, Draenei, goblin and maybe some day updated gnomes are enough for me.

but yeah, I really dig TORs character designs, playing a chiss agent with a friends bounty hunter and both look really cool.

I may not stick with agent though, like the story and love the style of its melee moves but I am not digging the cover stuff so much.

 

[Sax Russel]

My JK is stuck on a station airlock that won't let him go back to his ship, I was hoping the maintenance would fix it, but noooooope. I want to do Voss and Corellia, and this is my only high level character since the last wipe. Boooooo.

While I posted in defense of the visuals a while back, I do take issue with their LOD scaling. It seems a bit overly aggressive in a lot of aspects.

-Terrain meshes. Ground polycount can alter rather drastically around you as you travel. It's a lot more noticeable on worlds that are more open like Tatooine, Hoth, Belsavis.
-Yeah, those damn trees. The tree pop in is kind of boggling. Alderaan is the worst offender where you can go from seeing what looks like a relatively empty field to a somewhat dense forest when you actually get there.
-Animation frames. You kind of have to look for this one, but it really stands out on creatures with flapping wings or melee weapons (twirls, etc) and is pretty jarring. I also can't believe that cutting animation frames at range is any kind of noticeable performance gain at all.

Hopefully these will all be somewhat tweakable for release though!

 

[Fallout-NL]

WoW is so uneven visually, I agree that some of its modern environments are stunning though, especially places like Vashjir. I don't think TOR is ugly at all however, and I do like its character art quite a lot. WoW is just so exceptionally weak, IMO, in terms of character design. To this day I still laugh at things like the one good troll face and the hare lipped human males. Oh god and the female worgen. Oh well, Draenei, goblin and maybe some day updated gnomes are enough for me.

but yeah, I really dig TORs character designs, playing a chiss agent with a friends bounty hunter and both look really cool.

I may not stick with agent though, like the story and love the style of its melee moves but I am not digging the cover stuff so much.

In the cutscenes, the TOR models look better, mostly because of their faces being properly animated and the polycount is higher. But on the whole, TOR doesn't hold a candle to WoW in terms of look and design.

It's fairly useless arguing stuff like this, but I'm inclined to make an exception here, simply because I'm baffled that not everyone feels the same way about this. I had to double check whether my res was actually set at 1920/1080 it looked so bad. Started as a smuggler by the way.

 

[CzarTim]

I wish they would let you update your pre-order code. I want to go into the VIP area, but it still has my canceled standard edition attached to it.

 

[Alex]

In the cutscenes, the TOR models look better, mostly because of their faces being properly animated and the polycount is higher. But on the whole, TOR doesn't hold a candle to WoW in terms of look and design.

It's fairly useless arguing stuff like this, but I'm inclined to make an exception here, simply because I'm baffled that not everyone feels the same way about this. I had to double check whether my res was actually set at 1920/1080 it looked so bad. Started as a smuggler by the way.

Modeling looks great all around to me, environments just look nice, not great and not as inspired as WoWs zones but blizzards environment designers are the lifeblood of their visuals to me, their big project zones which tend to be universal set pieces look better than even games on modern tech.

I'm mostly focused on models though, so for me it's nice to see none of the seams or tradeoffs im used to in characters. Everyone I played (all wow players from old guild) with mostly made nice remarks about the visuals In the areas we were in and the designs we had, cept the brown hutta planet is indeed fairly bland!

I'm surprised that you're surprised though, considering how often we bitched about art and armor designs and how tacky wow can be outside of zone art (and the game world is so insanely underutilized) in the WoW topic. Sort of a revolving door convo. To me blizzard art is just really uneven and their policy of painting everything up for badassery and flaming magenta skulls doesn't sit well with me. New rogue set? Time for glowing green and hot pink orbs!

But yeah, i do like me some wow zone art despite my ranting. I cheered for pandaria just in hopes of getting an Asian styled continent in northrends design style. That modeling (even the new stuff) and armor art though... Cataclysm was all enemy themed too, looks like a high school art class took a swing at monster hunter fan art

Oh how I miss bc equipment design. Awesome draenei priest in t5 where have you gone. Hoping for some less absurd armor for my Draenei monk in the future.

 

[cartoon_soldier]

In the cutscenes, the TOR models look better, mostly because of their faces being properly animated and the polycount is higher. But on the whole, TOR doesn't hold a candle to WoW in terms of look and design.

It's fairly useless arguing stuff like this, but I'm inclined to make an exception here, simply because I'm baffled that not everyone feels the same way about this. I had to double check whether my res was actually set at 1920/1080 it looked so bad. Started as a smuggler by the way.

I agree that some textures can definitely use some work, more high res especially for foilage, grass and characters.

Till now, my Jedi character play through has provided the best visuals though. Sith has provided the worst. Which sucks because I am now more conflicted than ever on rolling Republic vs Empire. Sigh

 

[Sax Russel]

I agree that some textures can definitely use some work, more high res especially for foilage, grass and characters.

Till now, my Jedi character play through has provided the best visuals though. Sith has provided the worst. Which sucks because I am now more conflicted than ever on rolling Republic vs Empire. Sigh

On the bright side, once you're off the terrible starter world, Dromund Kaas looks much much better than Coruscant!

 

[cartoon_soldier]

On the bright side, once you're off the terrible starter world, Dromund Kaas looks much much better than Coruscant!

Oh I haven't gotten that far, maybe I will level up my SI.

Actually I think if they just did some higher res textures for Ground, Grass, Foilage and Trees the game would instantly look a lot better.

 

[Maleficence]

Awesome. I wanted to have the download run all night but at some point the patcher crashed meaning I wasted quite a bit of that time. :/

 

[Alex]

I don't understand why they can't just rip some assets from the weekend beta client, at least the cinematcs, but i guess it's just how they're setup. Too bad they don't have a flashy streaming client like blizzard because downloading 20 plus gigs for two days is really ridiculous, feel sorry for anyone with a tight cap

 

[Thoraxes]

Sooo much running in huge empty lifeless areas aaaah

"Why isn't this game better?"

Now that I've played it myself, I am absolutely amazed at how easily people dismissed the negative commentary about this game before beta was more open to people because "you haven't played it"

If I remember correctly, you get Dash at 15, and mounts at 25.

Pretty standard MMO travel fare as far as lots of them go.

 

[Alex]

Games need to bring back the rune/portal system from UO, clearly

 

[SteveO409]

Wow there are major issues at the bounty hunter area...I got "stuck" randomly on open areas lol. I don't see how the game has been around in beta for that long and have an issue that major

 

[Rapstah]

Wow there are major issues at the bounty hunter area...I got "stuck" randomly on open areas lol. I don't see how the game has been around in beta for that long and have an issue that major

There's a /stuck command that immediately kills you. Or it says it does, but it might just teleport you to the nearest point you would teleport to if you died. I used it a lot yesterday as I got stuck mountain climbing.

Regarding mountain climbing, it's a lot harder and a lot more pointless than in say WoW. There are no hidden or developer areas behind the mountains, the world just ends. And because of the way most mountains are built up, you will get stuck a ton too, in free falling mode between rocks meaning you can't use any abilities with cast times.

 

[SteveO409]

There's a /stuck command that immediately kills you. Or it says it does, but it might just teleport you to the nearest point you would teleport to if you died. I used it a lot yesterday as I got stuck mountain climbing.

Regarding mountain climbing, it's a lot harder and a lot more pointless than in say WoW. There are no hidden or developer areas behind the mountains, the world just ends. And because of the way most mountains are built up, you will get stuck a ton too, in free falling mode between rocks meaning you can't use any abilities with cast times.

I got stucked again 3 steps after using the /stuck command and reviving with medical drone. I facepalmed I still enjoy it though

 

[Moaradin]

There are hidden holograms on every world. Some are specifically made so you have to do some climbing and platforming to get them.

 

[SLV]

Is the beta already available in Europe ? As it states in the SWTOR homepage test area, it says that it is ongoing atm, but the play button is grayed, the game is fully updated :/

 

[CoolS]

Is the beta already available in Europe ? As it states in the SWTOR homepage test area, it says that it is ongoing atm, but the play button is grayed, the game is fully updated :/

I am playing on a german server, so yes it is definitly available.

 

[Andiie]

I find the group quests fairly neat. I tried Esseles and something Speech(?) in the earlier levels and they were a lot of fun. It feels rather cinematic compared to anything in WoW.
I think the group conversations are interesting, one part in Esseles I found hilarious when I was outrolled for the major decision in there, though I can see it getting old fast having to run it more than once.
Are these the games dungeons?
The experience was slightly soured though when we couldn't down the last boss, despite trying twice and the last time with a third person, since we were double dps. I'm curious to see where else it takes us.

I think I love the game, though I'm not sure I'll be buying it. It reminds me a lot of KotOR, which I've mentioned, story is interesting when you get into it and the voice acting is a huge plus, just it doesn't really feel like anything significant.
I wish I had a lot more time to play passed the next couple of days to see how it sits with me over a more substantial period.

 

[SLV]

I am playing on a german server, so yes it is definitly available.

Well, changing the language to german, did not help, Spielen is still grayed, im actually amazed that you are playing if you are from Europe that is, as it is supposedly 4 UK time when it opens for EU, which is some 3 hours from now, for me atleast.

 

[mxgt]

Despite my gripes with the game (shit graphics, horrible pop in, some janky animations, no UI scaling) i'm having a blast. haven't had this much fun with an mmo since I first played WoW. probably purely because it's star wars

 

[Tworak]

Well, changing the language to german, did not help, Spielen is still grayed, im actually amazed that you are playing if you are from Europe that is, as it is supposedly 4 UK time when it opens for EU, which is some 3 hours from now, for me atleast.

you're a day late.

Despite my gripes with the game (shit graphics, horrible pop in, some janky animations, no UI scaling) i'm having a blast. haven't had this much fun with an mmo since I first played WoW. probably purely because it's star wars

same here. pretty much exactly my feelings.

 

[CoolS]

Well, changing the language to german, did not help, Spielen is still grayed, im actually amazed that you are playing if you are from Europe that is, as it is supposedly 4 UK time when it opens for EU, which is some 3 hours from now, for me atleast.

EU Servers are open since yesterday 4 pm UK time.

 

[Dunlop]

reinstalling the game fixed my previous issue, thankfully I am not on a typical canadian data plan or I would have busted my cap on one game.....

Load times have majorily been improved since the last 2 beta's as I was.

My original problem stands, I got my inquisitor to level 12 the first time and find I do not want to go through all the dialogues again so I will just fart around on republic classes

 

[Woorloog]

Frame rate is horrible, even with minimal graphics settings (high textures, no effect on frame rate). Laptop, certainly over minimun specs if not quite recommended, newest drivers. Yeah, sure, notebook graphics card are weaker but the frame rate is still too low... Maybe this is only on starter planets however, due to large amount of players?
Any ideas if tweaking .inis could help?

I liked WoW, this is like WoW with Star Wars skin so i like this already though the story feels strange in a game like this.

Tython looks very pretty.
Korriban is not nearly as good looking as in concept art and very, very confusing. Elevators? Tunnels? Not good. Nor is it as interesting as i thought it'd be. Maybe i've seen it in SW games too many times.
Nal Hutta is... well, ugly. Not very interesting looking place. But all right.
Need to test Trooper or Smuggler yet to see... Ord Mantell? *shrug*

Character customization is okay, body types are odd though. I wonder why female type 4 is not fat like male type 4. Social abilities are lame. Cyborg "species"... eh, not very cyborgish and rather lame, only a few pieces, might as well be pieces of headgear rather than cybernetic implants.

Voice acting is good so far (if cliched) but BioWare still doesn't get how the dialogue menu should work. The short dialogue choices are completly different from what the character actually says most of the time.

EDIT oh and there's a stupid delay in combat beetween clicking something and something happening, latency is merely 50ms or so that's not the reason.

 

[Lord Phol]

I find the group quests fairly neat. I tried Esseles and something Speech(?) in the earlier levels and they were a lot of fun. It feels rather cinematic compared to anything in WoW.
I think the group conversations are interesting, one part in Esseles I found hilarious when I was outrolled for the major decision in there, though I can see it getting old fast having to run it more than once.
Are these the games dungeons?
The experience was slightly soured though when we couldn't down the last boss, despite trying twice and the last time with a third person, since we were double dps. I'm curious to see where else it takes us.

I think I love the game, though I'm not sure I'll be buying it. It reminds me a lot of KotOR, which I've mentioned, story is interesting when you get into it and the voice acting is a huge plus, just it doesn't really feel like anything significant.
I wish I had a lot more time to play passed the next couple of days to see how it sits with me over a more substantial period.

The rolls are quite bugged atm, it's been announced in the beta forums for awhile. They tried out a new system but it went haywire and tried to detroy the world, so yeh it gets kind of silly seeing the same two people making all the decisions in the dialogues.

As for the end boss in Esseles, it's probably the easiest in the flaspoint, just dps dps dps and when you see a purple mark on the floor run away. The hardest one IMO is the first one.
And yes flaspoints are the instance/dungeons of this game.

 

[bill0527]

So apparently, I'm beta testing customer support instead of the actual game.

Its failing miserably.

They actually did bother answering my email about why its asking me a security question at log-in. A question that I did not pick as one of my security questions, of which there is no correct answer for.

They gave me a nice automated email with 2 solutions, none of which worked, and said that if these don't work, to call the toll-free number. That same number when every time you call, says all reps are busy, call back later, then hangs up on you.

 

[LowParry]

I'm not getting the whole "graphics sux" argument. There's more places that look very well while there's minimal areas that do look like crap. AA makes a big difference.

But in any event, I'm at lvl 14. Trooper Vanguard to tank. That first Flashpoint, Esselas, took us probably ehhh, 1 hr 30 mins roughly? The thing with Flashpoints, I love the character interactions of how it sets up the play. But having to wait for your PUG is just outright annoying. Spam your /p "Come click this you stupid bastard!". Etc.

Animation I think look great. What are people going off about the "janky" animations? (No, we're not going to go into comparison mode with other MMOs). There's area's that this game needs improvement on. I've put in multiple feed back with some of the glitches with clothing, shadows, etc. There's been some small instances where there are no sounds from the interactive parts.

PvP. Pretty straight forward though the thing I like best is 1v1 are just that. It felt balanced to where any of us had the winning chance. Really liking that. Hutball is just a glorified farm area. You score once then if you have the ball, you just farm up your kills, etc. Sadly that's all I've been able to get when cuing up for pvp. Would like to get Voidstar at some point.

Crafting is simple as hell and I enjoy it for that fact that I have to do less work in terms of gathering. You still have the opportunity to gather materials as you level (which is faster) but I like how it all works out. The modding system for the armor and weapons I very much like.

In the end, if I had to rate my experience, I'd rate it as a 8/10. Good times. Game still needs a bit of polish but they're small nit picky things.

 

[TheExodu5]

I think the animations are actually decent. However, the art style and inconsistent graphical engine really bring the game down.

 

[SLV]

Can anyone from US tell me how much does the regular and deluxe pre orders for SWOTOR cost on Origin? Might contemplate on someone gifting one of them soonish if the gifting works on Origin as it does on Steam.

 

[Dina]

What's a good way to find Flashpoint groups? I just queued for PvP, but you can't search for PvE flashpoints?

 

[LowParry]

What's a good way to find Flashpoint groups? I just queued for PvP, but you can't search for PvE flashpoints?

No. Only place you'll be looking for Flashpoints is when you reach the destination (and get your quests). LFG it up in General chat. (Unless you know where the place is and just want to go in and do the instance)

 

[BattleMonkey]

EDIT oh and there's a stupid delay in combat beetween clicking something and something happening, latency is merely 50ms or so that's not the reason.

I never had this for the most part in months of beta outside of moments of lag. The mass testing is likely involved with folks lag issues, the servers are packed

 

[LowParry]

I never had this for the most part in months of beta outside of moments of lag. The mass testing is likely involved with folks lag issues, the servers are packed

My guess is people are either running out of their ability bar or there is the wait between attacks if someone is spamming the 3 key or whatever.

 

[LowParry]

Curious. Is the weekend build any different from the general build? I've been reading up on impressions over at MMO that the general build has less frame rate issues.

 

[cartoon_soldier]

Curious. Is the weekend build any different from the general build? I've been reading up on impressions over at MMO that the general build has less frame rate issues.

I thought they were the same builds now. You probably see less Frame Rate issues in General because of population differences

 

[froliq]

Not digging the melee in this game. Got a jedi consular to 13 and picked shadow as advanced class. Not having troubles with enemies or anything, but when I tried some bounty hunter and trooper it was much more fun and satisfying to play. Sure, it's all early levels still, but I've always prefered melee and especially in a mmo.

So far playing from europe on a US server has been very smooth. The difference was barely noticeable when I finally got on a EU server. Overall I'm pretty impressed by it and I might even buy this game and try it at release. The biggest con for me are the graphics aswell and I'm having a inconsistent framerate. It's just not a very pretty game while it still seems to be pretty demanding

 

[cartoon_soldier]

Started Sith Inq playthrough on Darth Bandon. Let's see how the launch preference suits me.

 

[Jarmel]

Curious. Is the weekend build any different from the general build? I've been reading up on impressions over at MMO that the general build has less frame rate issues.

No. They're using same servers, same everything.

 

[Hasemo]

I'm on a notebook, with medium settings and I haven encountered (or noticed) any fps related issues.

On the other hand, the game itself seems just so... bland. I don't know, I'm a huge star wars expanded universe fan, but I guess the Eq-clone gameplay just kills this title for me.

 

[Rapstah]

I've always been a healer in all the MMOs I've ever played, and since the game is currently not letting me update so I can get to that point, I'll ask you guys instead:

1. Is levelling as a healer viable outside of groups, or is it slow and boring like in most MMOs? Can you level on PVP and flashpoints to the point where you're essentially levelling on your ability to heal?
2. How is healing as Jedi Consular? What is the endgame like for healers?

I don't even know if the beta weekends so far have been long enough for anyone to be able to answer these, but thank you anyway.

 

[Jomjom]

Woohoo loading up the beta right now!

Awesome intro!

 

[cartoon_soldier]

Motherfucker killed the bitch I was flirting with

I hope I get to kill him later...overseer

Also my current pants gfx are fucked, so my SI has no pants showing...lol

All this Sith pureblood nonsense is turning me off though

 

[TheExodu5]

How do you force AA with NVidia inspector? I assume I need some compatibility bits.

edit: found it "0x0000F0C1"

 

[Ricker]

My Trooper is still there to play but I've been stuck at the Trooper Prologue screen with the blue meter bar halfway for 15 minutes now,guess i'll try later.