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A Story of a Brand New SWTOR Player


Wilsu_Addar

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I will give a simple anecdotal experience for SWTOR and this idea that ability pruning is necessary.

 

My fiance had never played an MMO ever. I played this game at launch and played WoW for over a decade. I'm an MMO veteran. I use an MMO mouse with 12 buttons, and tons of keybinds.

When I introduced her to the game for the first time, she enjoyed the game play and especially the story.

 

But of special note, she really enjoyed the amount of abilities each class had. Some quotes from this brand new MMO player:

 

"I feel like I always have an ability to answer a problem in the game."

 

"Even if I don't always use all my buttons, I really like knowing they're there."

 

"You really feel the difference between the bounty hunter and secret agent. Not just like, the looks and all. But the way you press the buttons. The options. It's fun knowing you can do so much."

 

When I told her they were planning on pruning abilities:

 

"That seems really stupid. Why would people want less things to press?"

 

When I explain the game might be easier to play:

 

"Wouldn't that just be boring?"

"What is so hard about pressing a few more buttons?"

"What if people lose their favorite abilities? Won't they be upset? Why would they want players to be upset?"

 

These are all from a first-time MMO player. She's not a gamer. She's a mild Star Wars fan, and enjoyed the game immensely. Specifically, all the options and abilities.

 

Might not mean much to you. But she's as casual and new as it gets. Just one opinion amongst many.

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Nice read. I understand her way of looking at it. Yes there is some pruning and condensing about to happen but you'll have multiple loadouts. So the ability you are missing on one loadout you can put on another loadout and switch between them. It's not the same as having them all at once but I'm sure we'll all get used to it.

 

PS: I think you'll get more traction and views in the general discussion section of the forums.

Edited by TonyTricicolo
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"I feel like I always have an ability to answer a problem in the game."

 

"Even if I don't always use all my buttons, I really like knowing they're there."

 

This is one of the reasons I keep coming back to SWTOR despite all the other MMOs out there. Every ability has a use somewhere in the game. You don't need to use them all the time, but when you need them, they're right here waiting.

 

I still don't like that we're losing abilities even though I can understand the other side to the argument. What the game really needs is a better tutorial experience for new players that details simple rotations/combos and a list of what abilities are needed for what content. This morning I saw a post on reddit where a new player couldn't complete a class mission....turns out they had no idea what an interrupt was and kept getting one-shot by the boss because they didn't interrupt. Imagine if every class had a story mission where a boss uses a channelled/cast time ability, and the game teaches you what ability interrupts the target and when to use it - that player wouldn't have needed to go and ask for help on reddit, a site that has no direct ties to the actual game.

 

I definitely understand pruning for PvP and in fact I cannot wait for less defensives and cc in PvP, I think it'll make it so much more enjoyable. But for PvE, the experience will just be more bland even with the new ability tree choices because we're forced to choose between abilities we already had (some of which are admittedly meh abilities) and passives. On the other hand, if it means we get more and faster balancing between classes because there's less of an arms race between defensives and mobility and we also new combat styles in the future, maybe it's not all bad?

 

I've recently been playing my newest Guardian who I started after the Guardian got put onto PTS in the first place, to see how the experience is different on live than on the PTS. I cannot imagine playing through master mode knights of the fallen empire/ eternal throne without all my defensives and I don't know how the devs are going to rebalance every npc fight in the game to accommodate the fact that I won't have at least 2 of my current defensives. Further, in PvP I use things like guardian leap in literally every single fight as a DPS Guardian because it is impossible to keep up with faster ranged classes - I won't be able to do this in 7.0 because guardian leap is being removed from DPS specs.

 

Either way, to me it feels like both sides are right in their own way. For me a lot of it is riding on how well the npc fights are rebalanced, how well each individual combat style is balanced in relation to each other, whether we are actually getting new abilities (Jackie's original posts had the Guardian and Sentinel getting new abilities that every spec receives) and whether we do in fact get new combat styles in the future.

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  • 1 month later...

I was about to reply "I don't care about your fiancee having an easier time with less abilities"

Then I read a little bit.

Problem is, people continue to coddle and want new players that quite frankly just lack braincells. I'm sick of doing things for the common individual, who is typically so confused they ask questions about the simplest thing in a game IMMEDIATELY before even bothering to experiment, figure out, or read what is in the game itself.

Ability pruning is something I've always argued against, time after time - and despite the forum-goers seeming to finally start being against it NOW, the common majority that Bioware/EA likes to lick the taint from just plays the game, offers no constructive criticism, likely quits after a short amount of time because its "Too complicated", and repeats the cycle with every game in existence minus something like Angry Birds.

 

God forbid they try to actually get people that enjoy games to play, rather than bored individuals that have zero sense of commitment to learn anything.

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