Quite a hefty article on SWTOR

Hello,

I'm curringly reading this article : http://gamasutra.com/view/feature/183525/the_burning_of_star_wars_the_old_.php

It's imho rather hefty, and full of criticism.

I can't say much about it, since I'm still quite early into the game, but I do have my fun right now (level 18 Smuggler). The story content is imho great.

However, I personally didn't find their F2P approach to be very intuitive, and - frankly - much of a hindrance, if this is true. You just have to buy imho too much for good play (details in the article), and the so-called "Cartel Coins" deliverance is buggy, to.

What do you think about it ?

Alrik

(who plays as smuggler "Wrw" on the server called "Vanjervalis Chain")

All I've heard about it so far is that instead of initial two free spaces for skills (dunno how to call it nor how they call it), they "patched" the game and now F2P got billions of free spaces… Um… No… Wait… Only 4 free quicktabs. You want more? You pay. Microtransactions? Hell, no. It's rather macrotransactions.

On a biggest gaming site in my country the game's fraud2pay model is rediculed so much I don't think it's all true, but the SWTOR thread there is full of trolls, spammers and offtopic so I couldn't bare to read it all, I mean… I'm ignoring it there.

So wait till I read this GS article…


[EDIT]

The author is definetly disappointed, but I laughed like hell on this:

The one major free thing in all of SWTOR's F2P is the single player storyline. If you're happy doing nothing but the storyline in a fairly single-player-esque and slow, limited, grindy fashion, and you don't mind not getting any quest rewards (you have to subscribe for those), you really don't need to spend a cent on SWTOR. And that single player story is probably SWTOR's most redeeming feature.

So here's the conundrum. Droves of people are going to download SWTOR for free, connect to the servers for free, play through the story for free, and quit (for free). BioWare doesn't just get nothing from these F2P players, but in fact pays for all that bandwidth so the F2P player can do it on the servers. It'd actually make more sense for BioWare to release an offline, stand-alone version of SWTOR on The Pirate Bay then to build its online F2P MMORPG around that model.

Click to expand...

Anyways, I didn't plan to try the game at all and after reading the article I definetly won't give it a try. While all MMOs that want to repeat wow's success obviously fail, I'll stick with games like LoL and Wizard101. In LoL you don't have to pay for anything there except if you want to change your looks and hell I've enjoyed the game so much for free that in the end I bought a certain amount of ingame currency just to support devs of such a great game. In Wizard101 there is no restriction really, but to have to pay or subscribe to open and play more areas - that game was so damned fun I've opened all areas not with subscription but with the coins option - for life.

In the case of SWTOR, if we'll believe the author, seems that the content is not fun enough to persuade you to support it and not only that, but it's free part is too restrictive and your skills depend only on how much you payed. I'm really unsure what were their managers trying to do with cancelling SP Kotor3 and moving onto this scheme.

Well, I'm currently using a "Game Time Card", which works exactly like a subscription - only that it is time-limited.
And I do have quite some fun with the game !

However, my "Game Time" run out within the first week of January, then, I think, I'll live to see the F2P model with my own eyes ...

The so-called "story mode" imho really plays to a great deal (apart from the imho unnessessary, but common to MMOs, respawn of enemies) like a Singleplayer RPG.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Well, I'm currently using a "Game Time Card", which works exactly like a subscription - only that it is time-limited.
And I do have quite some fun with the game !

However, my "Game Time" run out within the first week of January, then, I think, I'll live to see the F2P model with my own eyes …

The so-called "story mode" imho really plays to a great deal (apart from the imho unnessessary, but common to MMOs, respawn of enemies) like a Singleplayer RPG.

Click to expand...

Like I've said, SWTOR is a good game that you can enjoy (I did) for a couple of months. Problem is that EA/Bioware wants you to play for much longer than that.

Let me just say when you reach lv 30 the F2P will work agaisnt you. Its just a restricted demo of the full game.

You will have to buy some coins or a subscription for the useful benefits.

I completely agree that their F2P model is quite confusing. Personally, I still subscribe, and will continue to do so, because I'm having fun with the game and consider it worth it. It's a great MMO, and the story aspect really does work a lot better than in other MMOs.

If I feel like taking a longer break at some point, I'll just cancel the subscription and stop playing - I just don't see myself playing the game with the messy F2P model. It's either subscribe or don't play for me.

Personally, I use F2P as a demo - and I would never play a game using that model, unless if it was actually true to the concept of free.

Obviously, it can never really be true to it. I know a lot of people who play F2P games and they have this strange strategy meta-game on the side, where they're calculating how to avoid paying - and it seems to me they get more enjoyment out of that strategy than actually playing the game.

That's something I would never do to myself, because I can't enjoy a game if I have to think about what I need to do without, to avoid paying money. I'd rather just not play at all. I want everything or nothing, basically.

So, aside from testing games for a short time - I wouldn't recommend F2P models for ANY MMO, but I do realise that most people are fine with the restrictions. It's just me.

As for SWtOR, yeah, it's a strange model. On one hand, it's silly and restrictive - and on the other hand - they give you the entire story content for free. Seeing as how the story content is, by far, the best part of the game, it's really a weird approach.

I don't think EA truly understand that their non-story stuff is rather weak compared to their competitors. Especially in terms of end-game content.

A new blogpost from developer:
http://www.swtor.com/info/news/blog/20130102

I don't know if I should cry or laugh my arse off.
I mean… One of points that should persuade more players to come is samesex romances. I mean… Players are so excited with romances, especially samesex ones, and no matter how bad the game is, they'll instantly start p(l)aying.

This is a disaster.
So EA will, instead of improving the game and their F2P concept, allow you to romance anyone. Or anything. And you'll be so happy and play the game till you die because, hell, who cares if the game sucks when it has wide romance options inside!


P.S. Don't get me wrong, I do think well written romances are a nice addition to any RPG, I have nothing against any type of romance, but to announce that and hope for a sales booster is plain rediculous.

I've read it - and I was instantly disappointed because of the total lack of promise to fix bugs.