Originally posted by Teala

I am not your a-typical reviewer.  Sorry, I do not rate grades simply based on fun factor or if they had a good launch or if this one class was fun to play.  I grade a whole game - everything....I do not give game companies a free ride.

And all reviewers i know actually play the game for atleast 2 to 3 weeks before giving the review. How can you review a game without playing it? not that i personally care for your reviews because for me ign.com is last stop for my review/preview needs.

Originally posted by maskedweasel

Originally posted by Teala

Originally posted by maskedweasel

 

I don't grade games based solely on a good launch.   As for me wanting a virtual world, I play WoW, it is not a  sandbox game.    I just want a good game.   A game that launches with the basic bells and whistles.   Bioware had 8 years of work done for them on what makes a good themepark game - its called WoW.   All the work was done for them.   Bioware claimed they used WoW as their model to make their game...yet I am not seeing it.   Couldn't they have at least gave us more robust UI customizable by the players?  What about something as simple as adding more "world" to the "worlds" - no wind, no rain, no night and day cycles, no weird creepy crawlies or birds?   What about high res graphic textures, not just for cutscenes, but for the whole game(they were in beta when I was testing it), but now they are gone?   The list can get longer...and we shouldn't be making a list like this...this is basic stuff.  

So do you see my point?   I can see people being a little less critical and giving the game a 7 or 8, but a 9 score is not warranted.   If you cannot see my point, I guess we're just going to have to agree that we disagree.

But you again, miss the point,  wind, rain, night and day have no bearing on playability,  they are aesthetic.  As are high res graphic textures (which they have, but not on everything for some reason).   UI customization I agree with,  they do need better customization there,  but these are very minor, nitpicky things.

 

Would you rather have wind, rain, birds, and a moon every 4 hours... or 3 warzones to play instead of 2.  

 

In a perfect world, we could have everything in the game that we want, and infinite amounts of time to create said game without people getting frustrated it was taking too long, or investors complaining they have yet to see a return,  but this isn't a perfect world.  They've already mentioned customizable UI is incoming,  as well as AA and graphical enhancements.  

 

The foundation is rock solid, and the game is playable and enjoyable.  No game has come close to the amount of content and polish in all aspects as SWTOR has... so why shouldn't it get a high rating?  Because we can't watch the sunrise?

Yes they do matter, to me, and many others it seems, becuase you see post about it on the main forums all the time.   It's called immersion.   It helps draw me into their game and makes me want to continue to play their game.   So yes, things like this does have an impact on my perception of the game and how it plays.    Imagine how cool it would be to see Coruscant at night!  What about any ofthe worlds at night? 

Anyway...we can discuss this till we're old and grey.    We see things differently.   I wish to see a better game.   You are OK with what you got.   Well you got what you wanted.   Enjoy it.   I'll be waiting for the better game to arrive before I play it.  :)

Originally posted by Shivam

Originally posted by Teala

I am not your a-typical reviewer.  Sorry, I do not rate grades simply based on fun factor or if they had a good launch or if this one class was fun to play.  I grade a whole game - everything....I do not give game companies a free ride.

And all reviewers i know actually play the game for atleast 2 to 3 weeks before giving the review. How can you review a game without playing it? not that i personally care for your reviews because for me ign.com is last stop for my review/preview needs.

IGN?... they gave Dragon Age II 8.5/10  :/

Their other reviews seem ok though..

Originally posted by Shivam

Originally posted by Teala

I am not your a-typical reviewer.  Sorry, I do not rate grades simply based on fun factor or if they had a good launch or if this one class was fun to play.  I grade a whole game - everything....I do not give game companies a free ride.

And all reviewers i know actually play the game for atleast 2 to 3 weeks before giving the review. How can you review a game without playing it? not that i personally care for your reviews because for me ign.com is last stop for my review/preview needs.

Good for you.  :)

I rated the game in the Games Rating Menu and had 7.8 as outcome.
Which is already a rather low rating - i really dont see a 6 or lower justified and believe such a rating is coloured by personal preference, especially as any rating below 7 means a game is utter crap and SWTOR is very far from being crap.
In fact its a good game that has some averages and some outstanding parts.

"In short, SWTOR is great for Star Wars fans, but mediocre for everyone else."

I have to wholly disagree with this comment.  Although I can respect that he has his own opinion of the game, I can't say that he should make a broad statement such as this one, that seems to speak for all the other mmo players.  I say this with this to back up my opinion:  I am really far from a Star Wars fan whatsoever.  Although I enjoyed the movies at least once, I never was a big fan beyond the respectful nod to its success.  Yet in spite of this, I found SWTOR (which I played in the beta so far) to be outstanding from an MMO perspective.  It was immersive, and enjoyable for the entire 25 + hours I played over the weekend I got to play...  And when I get the chance you can rest assured that I'll be buying the game too. 

So as one of the "everyone else" group, I say that statement was an exaggerated one based on his own lack of enjoyment.

Personally, I'd sit on this review for at least several weeks.

Like it or hate it, you're going to get a message board firestorm either way.  Let people relax, give your mods a rest.

TOR is the most content rich MMO game in history and one of the most polished and technically sound MMORPGs ever released.

Is it the most feature rich?

Nope. Not even close.

But as the game stands RIGHT NOW, the 8/10 reviews are 100% correct. For what it is, it is brilliant.

That's what a review is, a good one anyway, a "REVIEW" of what the game is and how well it does what it does.

WIsh lists and "I wish it had X" are all fine and dandy, but every MMO ever made has had and will always have a wish list 10 miles long. Even the holy SWG had massive complaining from players and non-players alike in regards to their "wish lists" for the game.

Hell, even the 6/10 review was accurate because the reviewer described what THEY felt about what currently exists in the game and how they felt about it.

Wish list reviews should all be a 10/10 because a wish list review is "the" recipe for a perfect game.

They are also 100% total and complete crap.

Originally posted by Blutmaul

I rated the game in the Games Rating Menu and had 7.8 as outcome.
Which is already a rather low rating - i really dont see a 6 or lower justified and believe such a rating is coloured by personal preference, especially as any rating below 7 means a game is utter crap and SWTOR is very far from being crap.
In fact its a good game that has some averages and some outstanding parts.

It depends on how you look at the grading system.  If the grading system is based on 1-10, that means a 9 is on the threshold of perfect.  If someone rates that game say 5, that means they think it is average.   Nothing special, just average.   A rating of 1 would mean the game is far below average and I would stay as far away from that game as you can. 

Too many games get ratings that are wonky.    I myself have never played a game I can rate a 9 - ever.  8 yes...a 9.  LOL!

Originally posted by Teala

 

Yes they do matter, to me, and many others it seems, becuase you see post about it on the main forums all the time.   It's called immersion.   It helps draw me into their game and makes me want to continue to play their game.   So yes, things like this does have an impact on my perception of the game and how it plays.    Imagine how cool it would be to see Coruscant at night!  What about any ofthe worlds at night? 

Anyway...we can discuss this till we're old and grey.    We see things differently.   I wish to see a better game.   You are OK with what you got.   Well you got what you wanted.   Enjoy it.   I'll be waiting for the better game to arrive before I play it.  :)

"Better" is subjective,  and night and day doesn't change the actual game,  but if thats what works for you, then great.  I don't like the premise of playing a game and grading it on the potential it didn't reach,  thats counter productive.   Skyrim would have been so much better if they kept all the spells and schools of magic from the prior games,  right?  But why knock it?  

Whether you decide to play it now,  or later,  or not at all,  at the end of the day we're left with our perception which is made up of our experiences plus our personal tastes.   In my experience, I have never been part of a launch that had this much content, with this much polish, ever.   My personal taste likes the story based content and can easily overlook minor annoyances in favor of a bigger vision with a truly immense amount of content.

I hope whatever you decide to do, you end up happy,  I don't think we'll ever see day/night cycles.  Probably not very many birds either,  though you will get to see plenty of roaming bantha later on.

 I'm with Teala. The key issue with Immersion and Playability is without rain, night cycles and various life the game feels like a static stage. A lot of the same mechanics apply to movies, tv and even broadway. The passage of time is especially important. Say for instance you see one scene in a movie and a character passes on to a new time period in the scene of the movie but the environment stays exactly the same, even after prolonged time has passed. You end up feeling the lack of scale and time passage. It makes it feel.... futile.

The weather and animals are important as well because a empty stage is hard to synch with as a actor. The same with games in many cases. The oddest part, there is the capacity for weather in the game. Ive seen it rain in a few locations... Not sure whats going on with that. Is there just a issue with timing or rendering?

At this point albiet all those problems I give the game a solid 6.5

Originally posted by Teala

Originally posted by Shivam

Originally posted by Teala

I am not your a-typical reviewer.  Sorry, I do not rate grades simply based on fun factor or if they had a good launch or if this one class was fun to play.  I grade a whole game - everything....I do not give game companies a free ride.

And all reviewers i know actually play the game for atleast 2 to 3 weeks before giving the review. How can you review a game without playing it? not that i personally care for your reviews because for me ign.com is last stop for my review/preview needs.

Good for you.  :)

 

So you still didn't answer my question..how do you plan to review the game without playing it?

Forum PVP - how original and innovative. Google the names of the reviewers and see if anybody has any published cred if individual critiques are that important to you. I pre-ordered SWTOR, played a couple of betas, subbed and I am now playing and enjoying the game.  Doubt anyone cares if I like/dislike any or all of the game - except Bioware. So Bioware, I like your game. Well done!

I'm getting really disheartened these days by the ludicrous scores people give games. I wonder if it's just that our expectations are non-existant or wether there is some other problem? It isn't even as if I'm incredibly old and miss the 'good old days'. What I do appreciate though is good game design and implementation of technologies within games (and software/hardware in general of course).

Games should ALWAYS be scored relative to each other and by the level of standard we have come to expect from a game in this day and age. Are we really giving this game better scores just because it is Star Wars? Shouldn't we be doing the opposite given the utterly massive scale and limitless possibilities the IP brings? Fair enough, they didn't want a sandbox game and that's fine.. but comon.. You take one of the biggest and most famous IP's to have ever been created and all you managed is to copy the feature set from other products in your genre?! How did they even manage that??? Story in an MMO I hear you all say... yeah that would be true.. if story was actually the focus. I mean seriously.. the game gives you how many choices in dialogue? Proper story driven games that have had some serious work put into them make Mass Effect/Dragon Age and SW:TOR's story look like a childrens book. You want an example of story in an RPG go play Planescape: Torment and then come back and tell me SW:TOR is story driven. Let's not even get started on the fact that your, already limited, choices hardly effect anything story-wise in the first place then shall we?

Here are some examples of games that deserve a score of 8/9 or above when they were released.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/planescape-torment

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/neverwinter-nights

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/baldurs-gate-ii-shadows-of-amn

http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation/oddworld-abes-oddysee

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/counter-strike-source

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/battlefield-3

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/mechwarrior-4-vengeance

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/command-conquer

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/frozen-synapse

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/sid-meiers-civilization-iii

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/sid-meiers-alpha-centauri

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/age-of-empires

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/star-wars-jedi-knight-jedi-academy

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/call-of-duty-4-modern-warfare

I played SW:TOR beta a lot when I got the chance due to boredom and you know what? It doesn't hold so much as a candle compared to those games I've listed above and that has nothing to do with having fond memories of these games, some of them I hated (Abe's Oddysee being one in particular), but instead I respect what they bring to the table for the format and genre they are within.

So what if SW:TOR is polished? Why is it being marked up for this? We all know that a MMO that isn't polished will do terribly. Polish is expected, not a bonus. Something that is expected of more or less any game in the genre simply can't be marked as something above average unless the level of quality is leaps and bounds above the competition. So what if the combat works.. the combat in Baldur's Gate & Torment 'works' but you wouldn't expect it of an RPG from 2012 would you?! We need to stop giving out ludicrously good marks for stuff like this...

Props to Danny for being sensible and calling it what it is. There are plenty of MMO's out there that match and even surpass the overall quality of SW:TOR, in my honest opinion. SW:TOR most certainly does not match what I would expect from one of the biggest IP's to date and it certainly does not match the quality of overall feel of a game with so much financial backing. I would personally give SW:TOR somewhere in the region of 6.5-7.0 out of 10. Had the game came out in 2007-2008 my score would have been a much better 8.5-9 out of 10. Sadly they completely missed the mark with this one by several years. No doubt it will have a good following, but then pretty much anything labeled Star Wars does.

Originally posted by Honeymoon69

lol when they hit 50 with nothing to do they can always come back and reduce the score to 7/10 lol.

 

Apart from raiding , gearing up ,crafting , world and instanced pvp of course . Then theres rolling alts to level up . This should keep people busy for a few months untill theres more content out .

Point being theres probably as much to do in this mmo as any other in terms of the endgame .

So its a bit of a silly comment  ,shame really because you thought you were being so clever .

Originally posted by OkhamsRazor

Originally posted by Honeymoon69

lol when they hit 50 with nothing to do they can always come back and reduce the score to 7/10 lol.

 

Apart from raiding , gearing up ,crafting , world and instanced pvp of course . Then theres rolling alts to level up . This should keep people busy for a few months untill theres more content out .

Point being theres probably as much to do in this mmo as any other in terms of the endgame .

So its a bit of a silly comment  ,shame really because you thought you were being so clever .

Which actually isn't a whole heck of a lot when you come down to it, just the same rehashed raiding gear grind with mostly pointless crafting and meaningless PVP is what you are saying.  Let's hope they do better than that in the long run.

Pity, and yes, I am being clever.

I would go for an 8. Sure, there are still many things they can add but the state it is in now is solid with enough to do (expect when you rush things of course...). Ratings lower than 6 are nothing but biased hate and should not be taken serious at all cause they were expecting things that were never said to be delivered or are just trolling.

Originally posted by eric_w66

The one comment here that I have to wonder about is "Combat was bland and unoriginal".

Easy to say, hard to follow up with a combat system that is "flavorful and original". It's all been done before, so how can something be original when our input systems are keyboard/mouse and sometimes joystick/gamepad? Seriously? How many ways can you make a combat system with those tools? FPS vs turn based, tab targetted vs "aimed" (ala skyrim/fallen earth). What would the reviewer DO to make combat "original"?

Griping about something no one can change is a bit silly. Unless, of course, he has the next big idea that NO ONE thought of in 31 years of PC gaming.

First, game design is a job.

Second, there are as many ways to innovate as you want, as long as you're inspired.

Third, fatalism leads to nowhere ;)

TEAM WOJCICKI!!!!