You're Doing it Wrong: SWTOR's F2P Model

With the MMO market rapidly shifting to a free to play philosophy there are games that do it right and games that...well make you want to kick yourself for even thinking it was a good idea to play it. Star Wars: The Old Republic is one of those games that I has generated a high level of self-kicking.

When you embrace a free to play model you have to go all or nothing. If you want to turn your game into an exclusive pile of garbage then you do what EA and Bioware did and divide both the content and the players themselves. SWTOR's free to play model essentially breaks down to allowing players to do the bare bones content and not much more. You are restricted with experience, loot, PvP, and high grade equipment. To make this even more silly players are able to purchase items from a cash shop that lift some of these restrictions...for ten dollars a week. The game is a 14 dollar a month subscription. If that isn't the most counter intuitive business plan then I don't know what is.

The strategy here breaks down to making the free to play players feel so ostracized from the rest of the community that they are almost forced to subscribe. The only content allowed for free players is the basic story content and almost no end game material. Heck, you can't even use half of the stuff you'll acquire along the story.

For comparison you could look at AION's "Truly Free" model that restricts ZERO content and the cash shop exists simply to supplement the game-play experience rather than choke money out of an already dwindling player-base like SWTOR's.

Personally, I resubscribed to SWTOR earlier this week to get the dust off and play with some friends who were going to try the free model. Needless to say, our hopes were dashed quite quickly as we realized they couldn't even run PvP content or benefit from instances.

I find it hard to believe that the companies running MMOs like SWTOR would look around at the rampant success other companies are having with their F2P policies (NC West's Q3 earnings went up 426% when they switched AION and Lineage 2 to F2P) and just disregard them and still fail horribly. 

I tried to love SWTOR, I did. I played to 50 at launch, did the whole SWTOR thing for a few months and then dropped it. EA has just delivered a series of upsetting failures resulting in an equally shoddy free model for a game they expected to be a hit without even bothering to look at the numerous ways they could have made it better.

Read More

SWTOR: Meet the Sniper (PVP)

Alright so my main character on SWTOR is a Sniper and I've really enjoyed the playstyle despite it being a bit odd for me to play a ranged class in an MMO as I am typically an assassin. But yeah, the sniper is a heavy ranged DPS class that utilizes a cover system to demolish opponents in both PvP and PvE without taking any damage, ideally. The particular specialization I chose to pursue is the Engineer, a spec that focuses on explosions and other area of effect skills (AoE).

The sniper's role in PvP is definitely in the vein of covering your teammates as well as blowing up high priority targets before they have a chance to do their thing. An Engineer is focused on putting a dent in a large number of players to change the tide of larger fights by using things like grenades, probes, and even an orbital strike to inflict massive damage on other players. Snipers also have some damage mitigation skills that allow us to either absorb damage with a shield or dodge it altogether which makes us viable even at close range. Our ideal distance is between 20 and 30 meters since most other classes need to be closer than that to do the majority of their skills. We're also given skills that slow other players down or immobilize them completely in order to kite (the act of maintaining distance from a target by use of slows and strategic movement) melee classes that can close distances quickly.

Despite the value of our ranged combat, Snipers can still be useful at close range if we use our skills properly while paying special attention to the placement of your area skills. If you see a warrior or two...or three (there are lots of warrior classes) coming at you its not a bad idea to pop whatever defensive buffs you have and put area skills down right over yourself. Nothing is more hilarious that watching three frustrated melee classes chase you around in a circle while being hit by an orbital strike, burned by a probe, and having grenades chucked in their faces every few seconds. Snipers can be extremely effective in a sort of one vs. many scenario provided the player knows what they're doing it is possible to drop three or more people at once as an engineer due to the extremely high AoE damage you can put out.

I'll just briefly mention the other two specializations you can choose from. First you've got your basic marksman spec which, as the name implies, is entirely focused on ranged skills and your fundamental sniper skills. The spec's main benefit is that it powers up critical hits on a lot of your skills and offers a very high amount of chain-able skills such as instantly cooling down "Series of Shots" and allowing you to use two more without a cooldown. So basically that means you can put heavy dps on a target for a solid 20 seconds without consuming much energy. My favorite part of the marksman tree had to be the skill "Followthrough" which, again as the name implies, follows up one of your snipes or ambushes with a powerful shot that takes no time to prepare and does extremely high critical damage. This spec, as well as the other two, is very viable for PvP and PvE alike.

Next is the Lethality spec. This is a tree focused on dealing damage over time with your poison skills and is widely regarded as the "best" spec for PvP, an opinion with which I strongly disagree. However, this is still a great spec for dealing with a lot of the heavier classes under the label of "tank". It's very possible to tag a target with multiple DoT (damage over time) skills which just pile up damage and is very difficult to out heal or even get away from. If a lethality sniper has you in it's sights then you better focus on killing it quick.

Engineers like making things go boom and so do I. It's a perfect fit. That's pretty much all I've got to say about Snipers for the time being. I'll probably do a Meet the Operative after I finish mine and they get nerfed.

Thanks for reading!

-Fest

Read More

Star Wars the Old Republic: Overview

Alright so this will just be a moderately brief look at the overview of the game discussing things like various classes/roles and gameplay as well as some aspects of what makes SWTOR a good game and also some things that need touching up. I'll start with the class system.

Classes: SWTOR takes a pretty typical approach to an MMO class system. You start out as a basic class and advance to one of two advanced classes at level 10. To add more depth to this fundamental system Bioware added specialization trees to each advanced class which essentially changes your playstyle based on what spec you choose to pursue. You can also mix and match to create your own spec that suits your playstyle the best. People will always try to figure out the "best" one but that is totally subjective and most specs are viable in PvP. The class list goes as follows

Imperials: Agent, Sith Warrior, Sith Inquisitor (Mage-ish), Bounty Hunter

Republic: Smuggler, Jedi Knight, Jedi Consular, Trooper

Imperial Agent: Sniper, Operative

Sith Warrior: Juggernaut, Marauder

Sith Inquisitor: Sorceror, Assassin

Bounty Hunter: Powertech, Mercenary

Smuggler: Scoundrel, Gunslinger

Jedi Knight: Guardian, Sentinel

Jedi Consular: Sage, Shadow

Trooper: Commando, Vanguard

I personally play a Sniper as my main character so I'll discuss that in depth in my next post. The cool thing about all the classes is that there are multiple roles that each can fill based on which skill tree you pursue (same as a spec). For example, the "Assassin" class has a basic DPS (damage per second) spec that makes for a great PvP tree but it also has a spec for tanking that is filled with defensive skills. What kind of assassin can tank stuff? Point being, SWTOR has pushed some classes that are, by themselves, very traditional into very non-traditional roles. There are also options to turn your character into a healer for three of the four basic classes meaning that depending on your group's needs you can fill the role of healer if need be. This also makes things interesting in PvP because you can have a mercenary who sits there firing missiles off his back and another one healing. It makes it difficult to determine target order until you're part way through a match. That's enough about classes for now though I'd like to move onto some of the aspects of the stories that make SWTOR stand out.

Story: Story? In an MMO? Nonsense! Is what many people might say about your typical MMO since, by in large, MMOs have basic lore and not much else in the story department. But even the lore in most MMOs is shaky at best and eventually it develops into something really, really stupid. Like pandas. Yeah, thats right WoW I'm looking at you. Thank the lord I never touched that game. Anyway, WoW's megafail isn't my point here. SWTOR's story is actually quite well done and plays out in a similar manner to it's predecessors, KOTOR and KOTOR II. Each class has a unique story that follows the same underlying plot and it takes you from level one right to level 50. My Sniper's story quest was actually the last quest I completed that leveled me right to cap which I found to be quite amazing that they pieced together a three part story for every class that brings them straight to the level cap and through all the different planets SWTOR has to offer. So lets think about that real quick. There are eight classes in total with their own unique story that lasts, if you did them all in a straight line without stopping or factoring in your level, about 15-20 hours in total. Multiply that by eight and you've got the content that Bioware developed just for the story.

Having a story you can experience by yourself is a strange concept to me since most MMOs focus on the group aspect of playing. However, this was incredibly nice since my satisfaction was not based on how many of my friends were playing at the time, I didn't have to wait for a group to get on to experience content. In reality the story plays out more like a single player game with the option of inviting friends along for the ride but you can complete the story all by yourself if you want to. Giving players the option to play and level their characters solo or questing with a group is a nice change of pace from other MMOs.

Leveling: The typical grind of an MMO is not present in SWTOR. There are hundreds of quests and a large amount of content you can use for leveling via questing but that isn't the only way to level. You can also level using space missions which essentially play out like a Star Fox 64 level where you fly around in your spaceship on a pre-determined course shooting down baddies for experience and commendations to buy things for your ship. Any space mission of "heroic" mission will also reset every morning allowing players to repeat content at their leisure to gain significant experience without having to log on for five hours a day just to get a level.

Yet another way to gain experience as well as money and even gear is the instanced PvP or "Warzones" which net you the average quest experience for your level and it scales up as you level as well so it remains a constant option for leveling, money, and gear. Warzones also buff up your stats to that of a level 50 character which allows for equal play in the non-50 bracket despite the level gaps.

So that went a bit longer than I expected...more later as I do a sort of "Meet the Sniper" kinda thing.

Read More

Break is over!

As of tomorrow I will be starting my Spring Semester of my "Junior" year of college. Should be tons of fun and I've got high hopes for both my academic success as well as being consistently posting things about various games I'm playing, have played, and am looking forward to playing. I'll try to keep it interesting and really go in depth with whatever I'm talking about which may involve multiple posts discussing one game.

The first thing on my list of stuff I need to write about is the new Star Wars MMO. In case you've been living in a cave/hole/box for the past month or so its basically Bioware's attempt at creating an MMO out of their successful KOTOR franchise. I'm a KOTOR fan and an avid MMO gamer so I hopped right on board the SWTOR train and leveled myself a character to 50 (current cap) over my break. But much more on that later.

Things to look forward to! Woo! I love looking forward to games that are coming out in the coming months its so exciting to see what my future holds in the gaming world. First of all, the Resident Evil 6 trailer ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS_bGpe9qE8 ) can anyone say...HELLLLL YEAAAAAA? I sure can, and I did, many times while watching this reveal. Old heroes, new ones, and zombies! Yay zombies! It looks like they've tweaked a lot of gameplay issues that arose in RE 5 and are kind of implying that this is a climactic conclusion to this saga with mention of a cure and all sorts of other thinly veiled concepts shown in the trailer. Looks epic. In an earlier post I mentioned Darksiders 2 and was all giddy about it and whatnot. Well, I still am giddy but now even more so since they released a full trailer which I will provide a link to once Youtube stops being weird and not letting me sign in...but anyway! Lots of tweaks and improvements appear to have been made and it gives me something to look forward to for a good kickoff to my summer.

What I'm playing right now. Still derping around on SWTOR with PvP and some alts and helping some friends work their way up to cap but I'll probably have very little time for it with the semester starting up, got plenty to write about it anyway :). Also playing through one of my absolute favorite games remade on the 3DS...Ocarina of Time. I have dabbled a little bit with the ICO/Shadow of the Colossus HD remake for the PS3 recently and that is one of many games on my list to complete. Keeping with the fantasy theme I'm also going to dig into Skyward Sword after I finish Ocarina of Time. So many great games to play right now, plenty to keep me busy throughout the next month or so.

Expect much more soon, thanks for reading!

-Fest

Read More