Hello everyone!

Introduction:

My name is Maddhawk, though in game my character is named Medeoan. I am veteran newbie! By that I mean I an a veteran player of many MMORPGs however I am a newbie when it comes to Star Wars The Old Republic. I play a Sith Sorceress. I can usually be found doing dailies, the odd heroic mission, or healing heroic dungeons. I guess you guys call em master mode(?) flashpoints?

A Little Background About My Time In SWTOR:

Anyway, I started this game a bit back in Feb of 2018. I played a few months, taking a break from WoW, then went back to WoW full time until the end of the Legion expansions. After Legion ended and Battle for Azeroth launched I permanently quit playing retail WoW. I hopped around between several MMORPGs I have played in the past during this time.

Lineage II had its own "Classic" relaunch, which turned out to be anything but classic. It was just another cash grab/pay to win bait and switch from one of the best companies to use such tactics. Played Tera Online some more, but sadly the game population is so low, unless you are part of some cliche, it is REALLY hard to get into the game again. Then I decided to come back to SWTOR.

I had fun during my time at the start of 2018 and figured it would be a good way to tide things over until the release of WoW Classic. I started playing again during February 2019 and played fairly consistently up to June 2019. I got bored and felt the need for a break by time I had gotten my main full 258 (minus weapons) and my first major alt into full 252.

WoW Classic came out and I have been back there playing that as my primary MMORPG. However, I am now at a point in WoW where much of the prep work is complete. Now, I am just waiting for Blizzard to release some additional phases and logging in each Tuesday for raids. That leaves me with plenty of time to enjoy other games, like SWTOR.

So I have been playing this again, did a 2 month sub, gotten to 75, and 306 on my main. Since then I have been exploring the new gearing options available as well as working on trying to finish developing my characters perks those last final (and expensive) perks. Buying remaining tabs in my bank, my legacy bank, last remaining shared legacy perks, getting companions to level 50, etc. This brings me to some Observations and Feedback I'd like to share.

Observations:

***Author's Note: Please don't try and respond to "debate" me on what I see or think. I am not going to respond. I am just sharing my own thoughts for the sake of feedback to the developers at BioWare Austin to ignore as they see fit. That is all.***

So first off, I noticed as I leveled through the first time back in 2008, that as I gained levels, each world had a level cap to it. Once I surpassed that cap, I kept gaining levels, but my power would not grow beyond the power expected for the level cap of that world. The only exception was for new skills that might alter how my abilities interacted with each other to improve the flow of combat. This results in a very unsatisfactory feeling. I don't feel as if my character is growing and becoming more powerful, more skillful, more accomplished. Retail WoW started doing the same thing in Legion on a smaller scale. It is like playing Elder Scrolls, struggling to kill a skeever (basic rat) at start of the game, going through it all, becoming a ****** demigod, AND STILL struggling to kill that same skeever all cause it scaled up with me (at least until you install a mod to remove that crap). I get why it is done this way. It helps promote group play on low level worlds between high level players and low level players, but still. . . also leveling is so easy in this game, it sorta is a wasted effort in my opinion.

I noticed that my companion, especially when set to heal, made for a nice time in the world. It wouldn't save me if I screwed up and pulled too much, but it certainly gave me a fighting chance. For regular pulls, my companion helped make fights just go so much better. Really helped bring home the "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3" vibe I was looking for when I originally decided to try this game.

On the topic of subscribing, is it worth it? Back when I first started I couldn't find a very good objective answer. That was at least not until I discovered SWTORISTA. Thank god for her. She has done more to promote this game, answer questions, and generally make this game less confusing than anyone else out there. By rights, she should be hired by BioWare to head up the entire SWTOR team. It was ONLY thanks to her videos that I learned that subscribing not only all the annoyances of UI restrictions and quality of life restrictions removed, but also got monthly infusions of cash shop coins as well. This was was something I had tried to ask on the forums but was forbidden from doing so unless I was an active subscriber at the time. (I had tried to ask this question back like 2014 or 15.) This fact is not openly advertised as something that comes with subscribing.

The UI, oh man the UI, Only two action bars for free to play players? Limited stash space. Harsh credit caps. Limitations on gear. Limitations of content one can do. I get it, you want people to subscribe. Pays the bills, keeps the lights on, keeps the servers running, keeps the suits in corporate and wall street happy. But, the amount of restrictions that free players have to put up with and even preferred players have to put up with . . . There is only one other MMORPG I have seen as restrictive that is free to play at its base and that was Rift. Not even Lineage II, which is produced by NC Soft, one of the greediest companies on earth, is as bad as the restrictions are in SWTOR.

Cash shop. Sure is awfully big, lots of cosmetic items in it. More than any other MMORPG I have seen to date. Thankfully, there is honestly no pay to win here. So on that score, I am genuinely impressed. So many other MMORPGs fail to keep even a tiny amount of pay to win out. Mind you, that is other MMORPGs with a free to play business model. My only complaint really is, if you get a cash shop item, you have to pay additional money to unlock it account wide.

Game Chat. One of the most annoying things in any MMORPG is gold seller spam and those who like to advertise their guild a bit too enthusiastically. To date, only WoW has developed a base line effective means of dealing with this spam. In fact WoW's problem is that it goes too far. When reporting someone for spam, it should remove the offending chat from the chat log, and put a session long ignore on the individual in question. Once you log out, the ignore is lifted. The former is mainly to purge chat of gold adverts and the latter is mainly so you can ignore guild recruitment spam, but not permanently ignore the guild recruiter should you find yourself in a group with them down the road.

Game Engine. Hero engine is just trash. I like the Datacron hunts. It is something cool for exploreres to do and gives everyone a worthwhile reward to at least make the effort to try and find them. But the game engine is just awful. Can't say I am surprised though cause I don't think BioWare has EVER had game engine software engineer for any game. A programmer who truly knows the nuts and bolts of what is going on under the hood and can fine tune it into a smoothly running engine of power. Someone like Rseding91, who is an optimization programmer and troubleshooter for Wube Software the makers of Factorio. Currently, the physics engine in the game is just awful and makes for some very frustrating experiences in the game.

In the theme of the game engine, while this game does run at 4k resolution, it does so poorly at times. Onderon in particular and Ossus as well, all have significant framerate issues at 4k. This on an Nvidia GTI 1080 and equivalent AMD alike cards. Older planets are pretty decent. At least until the player count gets really high. Then again, many MMORPGs have problems if player density gets too high.

This game's strong suit is its story. The original story up to prior to KOTET/KOtFE was actually pretty good, minus Revan (seriously *** is wrong with people and constantly bringing things back to life????? Let the dead stay dead.) Still, starting a KOTET/KotFE and on, the story is still entertaining enough.

The mirrored nature of the class designs between factions is also nice. It means you only have to learn them once on either faction and the other plays just the same. Makes experiencing the story on the other side much more fun since you don't have to worry about learning how to play as you go along.

Feedback:

There are a few things I'd like to see changed. I make these suggestions while keeping in mind the adage that customers are GREAT and finding problems, but often terrible at offering solutions.

Free to Play / Preferred Credit Cap - Raise it. I know you just raised it once, do it again. Minimum cap should be equal to the most expensive legacy perk, which I think is the GTN hub for your ship at 5 million credits. Preferred cap should be double this at 10 million credits. I'd say eliminate it, but we all know such a thing would never get green lighted. This at least lets players buy all the things truly worthwhile from a gameplay perspective, yet still locks them out of many of the better cosmetic items since then tend to go for 10s of millions of credits on the GTN.

Action Bars - All players should have access to all 6 bars. Just common sense plus good customer service that even free to play players should be able to enjoy the full base game. Nothing advertises more effectively than quality.

Bank Tabs - This one is a bit annoying. In no other game does purchasing additional inventory space, up to the character maximum, does it cost ever increasing amounts of gold. Even WoW Classic, which is far more hardcore than SWTOR is, caps out additional bank slots at 50g each. My next slot will be 3 million credits. Only way I can see this making sense is if the total number of buyable bank tabs is absurdly high, like north of 20 tabs on the basic bank and not counting guild or legacy banks.

Gold Income - One of the big themes for Onslaught was "Play your way, Gear your way". Play the content we want to play and we can gear up through it without any restraints. As it so happens, the most effective way to gear up and make money (if yer not a GTN player), is to spam heroic dungeons. You get more credits and more loot than by doing anything else. While I get it that the harder challenges should be the most rewarding, it does mean that the other things to do in game, heroics and dailies, are left severely under-rewarding for the effort they require. All activities are under-rewarding in terms of gold income.

I'm not gonna advocate for a large increase, but I do believe that the rewards for doing the planet tours for heroics, the daily and weekly quests for doing X dailies, daily missions and heroics themselves all are in need of a general boost in how well they pay. The meta quests in particular, ex. Do 5 heroic missions on Hoth, could say give 200k credits instead of 23k. The missions themselves might give say 30k each. Also they could use some tech fragments and perhaps a smaller version loot crate for those at 75 in addition to the existing rewards of xp, credits, and alliance crate.

Bottom line is, the only gameplay that FEELS rewarding are heroic dungeons and doing that all the time can became stale quickly (especially if people are rude while inside a dungeon). Regular dungeons, dailies, and heroic quests just come across as lackluster in the extreme by comparison. They feel pointless.

Crafting Complaints:

Sadly, like so many MMORPGs out there today, crafting either IS or FEELS like it is an obsolete after thought. SWTOR is no exception.

One of the things that immediately appeals to a new player, or at least certainly appealed to me, was the idea of wielding a light saber. Ya see, swords are cool. And a sword CANNOT get cooler than the light saber. The best part of the light saber is the glow of the blade. So I decided I wanted to be able to craft color crystals.

I did some reading, watched some SWTORISTA's videos, asked questions in game, and learned about "Crew Skills" (what a dumb name for crafting. Seriously, SWTOR is the ONLY MMORPG that doesn't call it crafting.) So I learned Artifice, Archaeology, and Treasure Hunting.

It didn't take me long to realize that crafting was pretty much pointless. But still, I kept at it for completeness sake. Got all three to 600 and then more or less forgot they even existed. Now Onslaught has come and with it an increase in crafting skill.

As others have noticed, credit sinks seem to be part of the name of the game with this expansion. Unlocking each crafting skill from 600 to 700 is no exception as it costs a rather pricey 500k. But that isn't that big a deal.

I was able to level Archaeology and Treasure Hunting both very easy. No surprise there really. Just sent my companions off and sat back to let the results return. Artifice however, has been another story.

I started going through the recipes list to see what would be the easiest and cheapest to level. Starting out I am crafting Iridescent Bondar Artifice Bonded Attachments. Now I arrive at my first real bit of complaint (besides the fact that crafting is pointless) and that is the cost of Travella Cloth (level 10 item from Archaeology.) With the expansion, level 11 crafting materials have been introduced. The level 11 cloth is Standard Veda Cloth.

Veda Cloth can be purchased from the trade goods vendor at a price of 300 credits each. This puts on par with the overwhelming majority of "white" or "standard" quality crafting materials. Travella Cloth, however, costs 2,550 credits each. This means the only cost effective method of getting cloth is to do the Rank 10 cloth mission in Archaeology. This results in a delay in getting into crafting in Artiface. Just to clarify, with a full set of shells with max efficiency to Archaeology and a level 50 companion, the mission for Travella Cloth takes 3 minutes and 8 seconds to complete.

At the end of the day, this is frustrating for several reasons:

1. Trade Goods Vendor exists. - Convenience though this may be, it is frustrating when I see the cost of the materials so much more than equivalent trade goods both above and below in grade.
   
2. No way to gather Travella Cloth in the field. - Building on the above, I can't go run focus on harvesting the materials I need except for power and color crystals.
   
3. Can either wait out the NPC time gate on materials or spend credits on overpriced materials. - All this results in me either having to for out credits unnecessarily or having to wait a lot longer than I would if could just go exploring and gathering in the fields of the game world.
   

Then there is the final matter of the new "Artifice Bonded Crystal(s)". These are needed and mandatory crafting sub-components for more comprehensive recipes. These crystals require components from another crew skill that, until now, hasn't ever been needed before, Slicing. To get these components I must either go buy them from other players, make an alt and level slicing, or pray I get them from the resource bags obtained while doing level 71-75 content.

Now, I get that this being an MMORPG and all, community play is expected to truly get full benefit of what the game has to offer. That said, I'm not trying to craft ultra top of the line gear or anything here. I am just making sub-components that are needed to craft basic green items that serve no other purpose than to provide a path to leveling up the skill of the crafting profession in question. That is a problem when I can no longer do basic crafting without having to either make an alt or engage other players in trade. Such measures should only be needed for advanced crafting when you are getting into the things that truly have value to the community as a whole.

Recommendations:

Bottom line, to ease the frustration I am now experiencing I have two recommendations.

First, change the price of Travella Cloth to 300 credits, this merely brings it in line with all the other cloth component prices. While at it, do a pass on the prices of other components too.

Second, remove the slicing components from Artifice recipes for sub-components. If there are some final products that would makes sense using them, then place them there, but on recipes that server no purpose except for skill leveling.

I think the only problem is with the marketing. The game shouldn't be adveirsed as "free to play". It's like WoW is free to play, because you can reach lvl20 in trial. They should make it buy, or suscribe style, or only suscribe style, and market as a "large trial". We can play more in f2p, than WoW, but to fully enjoy the game you either need to pay a lot for each character, OR suscribe.

The rest of the game are mostly good. There is always room for improvement, but i don't consider this as an issue, because it's true for pretty much every game. The only way to erase that issue is make it single player, and give Bethesda style modding capabilites. Then modders make the game into whatever each player want it to be.

The level scaling is not critical issue, but i agree, that it doesn't really matter. They could at least make optional. If you want no challenge and breeze through the low level stuff, then let it be done.