Old Republic Smuggler ReviewFollow

The review.

Now before anyone rages on me I'd just like to point out that I took it more in a satirical fashion as opposed to a legit review of how good it is. It did point out some legit issues and some similarities that just didn't need to be in the game, but just watch it for fun.

*Edit* Me no talk gooder.

Edited, Feb 1st 2012 6:03pm by snieh

I really have to disagree with you on this.

-What got me hooked on smuggler in the first place was I wanted revenge against you know who. Once I obtained my ship at the same time every other class does the story seemed to lose motivation in that direction and went with the whole treasure hunt thing. Which was really a let down cause I don't care about that.

Also, I'd be interested in some specific points he made that you didn't agree with. Perhaps I missed something while watching it. I'll go over it again and see what it is you're talking about.

To be fair he DID make it quite clear it was a first impressions video and that his take on it is just a small taste of the overall content.

-The first thing he touches on is that the game depicts over the top light saber fights and whatnot as a carry over from the prequels. I think this is accurate to say. I don't like Star Wars because of lots of light sabers and excessive battle scenes.

-Then picking a smuggler for his review character he comments on some of the various skills he was introduced to during his time including a nut kick that works on robots. Another fair comment. Then he comes to Corso's harpoon move. Obviously he picked Gunslinger and this was probably during the time that you couldn't permanently disable that move. I know I had that bug for a while and I hated every second of it. I'm not sure if it's still there since I've developed a serious love for it and never shut it off(I'm a scoundrel)

-He then went on to pointing out how the story is shoehorned into making you go to the exact same areas all the other classes are. Which is a feature I happen to like since I often play with a friend and going to one area to complete two story missions is damn good planning. I just want to point out that I DO see the point he's making and that has served to detract a little from the story for me knowing that I'm only going to this area for the sake of being the same as everyone else.

-Next on the list was single player story conversations which he did in fact like but didn't so much like the group aspect of it. Since your good or bad decisions mean nothing overall when somebody else gets their conversation choice. I agree with this to a point. It is annoying just getting bad points for the sake of adding to my tally. It feels cheapened basically. He also says that since all the alignment gear requires you to have high light or dark you have to pick all those choices. Which yeah, it's kind of annoying. He flat out got it wrong about you getting light side points from somebody elses decision, but I'll let that one pass since again, he mentioned he didn't get to play long.

-Back to the story ending when you get your ship. Yeah, I agree with that point too. In this instance I preferred the trooper class since my desire for revenge took me far beyond my ship. I don't agree with the assessment of space missions. it may seem like a gimmick at first but it leaves a lot of room for expansion and I like rail shooters. Star Fox was always one of my favourites. But the gimmick thing comes into play already for me since I'm only level 31 and I'm already repeating space missions. Twice now I've had to destroy the same space station...but in different places and my ship even takes the exact same path circling it again and again.

Despite all these things I still think it's a great game. Maybe I should take this down, clearly the "meant to be funny" part of it didn't seem to go over well.

To be fair towards Yahtzee (and not just because I'm a die hard fanboy), the O-board does mention that there's a sort of awkward transition in the Smuggler storyline after getting your ship back. And as for the stuff he didn't know, he did warn the viewer (us) in the beginning of the review that it was more of a first impression than anything due to the scale of MMORPGs.

And finally, this is Yahtzee. He's only done one or two reviews that weren't about stamping the game into the mud. That's why he's popular. He exaggerates his rants because he feels the positives are self-explanatory. And because there are so many "zomg ossim gaem!" reviewers out there to balance it out anyway (cough, IGN, cough). The fact that the review is so short and not as negative as some of his other reviews is a good thing.

That said, though, it wasn't one of his best reviews.

Other than the Dark/Light Side thing, what did he mention that you feel was based on ignorance?

Don't hate me for saying it, because I'm sure you're aware of it yourself, but I think your reaction is largely fueled by your rose-tinted glasses view of the game. I know because that's how I felt. I had an uncontrollable urge to scream "NO, YOU'RE WRONG, YAHTZEE! YOU'RE WRONG! THIS GAME IS AMAZING!" throughout the entire review, but the complaints he raise are mostly valid.

Yes, he @#%^ed up on the Dark/Light Side thing and some of the complaints he raises after are thus rendered invalid, but that's not a bad thing. It means the game is better than he portrayed it to be, which, in Zero Punctuation terminology, equals a positive review.

As for his rant about the social stuff, I didn't understand it as if he was saying the game's multiplayer portion sucks, just that the game puts a lot of focus on the single player experience, which means that when the single player experience stumbles (Smuggler storyline transition) then it's more noticeable.

Really, compared to his review of WoW, this one was surprisingly positive. You'd think BioWare owned shares in The Escapist.

That was funny!

Gonna have to disagree with you having an issue with the harpoon complaint here. While it's obvious to us that the harpoon is obviously there to generate more threat, the Ranged vs Melee factor is also correct and is completely logical for Yahtzee to scratch his head over that. My MMO buddy, who is primarily smuggler, also made this complaint because it screwed up AoE abilities. Yeah, you can disable it, but that would make it an apparent bad ability, right?



You're looking at the complaint far too literal which results in missing the point. "Collecting buttons" equates to quest grinding... which, lets face it, is 90% of TOR's content. It doesn't take long for quests to suddenly start blending together as well. I stopped playing Trooper because of the sudden realization I'm doing the same thing over and over again and needed to refresh myself (not to mention Chapter 2 is pretty bogus compared to Chapter 1).



I do, which I will elaborate upon in the next quote.



Three words: Final Fantasy Eleven.

This MMO forced you to group up to do practically anything in this game. Leveling, missions, events, endgame, you name it. Overtime the playerbase got better to the point they don't always need a party to do everything, but the benefits of having a party, such as kill speed, vastly outweighed the viability of going solo most the time.

As such, it's completely false to say other MMOs just allowed you to breeze through leveling content alone, and I bet Yahtzee's MMO background is similar to my experiences.

Most of his arguments are valid. If not valid, it's understandable because it's a first impression, as in he wasn't able to take the time to fully understand everything. Yeah, he got the group conversation thing completely wrong, but he also stated he didn't understand it in the first place.

Ohgod FFXI. I played it in the early days, apparently they tidied some things up after WoW came out, but back when I played it was head to the main city to find a group, either get snatched up immediately because you're a Brd/Rdm/FotM DPS (Black mages and Dark Knights are the ones I recall) or sit there for hours because everyone would rather spend two hours looking for a FotM dps than "waste time" with someone else. Finally get a group, get out to the grinding spot (no quest leveling, those took you to places nobody wanted to go to get items with a 2% drop rate that still required a full party to kill) which hopefully wasn't overcamped, and kill as many things as you could before somebody needed to go, with penalties for taking a break between pulls. If you were lucky (as one of the non-instantgroup DPS) you'd make a name for yourself as competent, only to take a few days off to find that your contacts all gained a couple of levels and now can't group with ya, so you get to go sit in the main city to once again prove yourself.

I want to do MMO things in groups, I want it to be easy to find groups to do the stuff (loadtimes are the main killer for me in SWTOR right now aside from finding people, I get that bug where the thing hangs 1/3 of the way through for 30 seconds and it adds up should I be on another planet), but I will never again play an MMO in which grouping is mandatory.

While I definitely agree that MMOs have definitely changed, it wasn't all that rare to find MMOs where grouping was heavily emphasized. FFXI took it a step too far for sure though, which is why the devs made it considerably more effortless to group up with 18 people and grind on mobs for EXP by implementing what is coined "MMO-style gameplay", except these quests are infinite and can be done at a rapid amount of time. Before then, another tactic (they didn't bother to fix) was going to an area that was meant for level 75+ as a level 30 and getting into a group and just stand there gaining EXP while the party grind on mobs, allowing you get 5+ levels per hour if not more. As such I can say FFXI was my first MMO which I stuck with for a long time because SWG was pretty much dead and I just couldn't find the appeal behind WoW. It was definitely bad MMO design looking back now and in it's present state it's just an exploitable mess.

...Where was I going with this? Oh right.

Looking at TOR I realized a lot of the "Single player MMO" stigma comes from the fact that there are many different planets which more or less makes up the linear path to level 50. That said, early on the game feels small up until you reach Tatooine or I guess even Taris, but at the point the game feels unpopulated because everyone is so spread out. Obviously it's a good thing that no one is around to make your quests harder for you by killing the mobs you need for that bonus quest or taking out the boss you needed to loot from. However this security comes at the price of natural interaction, where you only interact with people once you feel forced to via Heroic 4 (which you can duo) or flashpoints (which you can also duo).

I liked the harpoon rant. Whenever I ran Esseles, some Smuggler would bring Corso and he'd harpoon my primary target. Every. Single. Goddamn. Time!

As for the rest, Digg, you're in defensive mode. I recognize the points you raise as the exact same points I raised when I watched the review. It's the same mode I get into whenever my parents start asking me about my financial situation. They're right, of course, but I don't want to admit it.

On the grind, he mentions the gathering of buttocks as an example, because that's what you do. Whether it's scanning robots, collecting holo disks or killing x amount of critters/eggs, it's still mindless grinding. It's in all MMOs, which is why Yahtzee dislike them so much. He's all about content and grinding is the cheap way to implement content.

He says the leveling experience is single player-ish and then raises the point that single player content in a multiplayer game is bad. He's right. We're not playing Star Wars: Mass Effect Origin where you roll with an AI crew. We're playing a multiplayer game. You're supposed to interact with other players in the game, yet, you can level to 50 without talking to anyone. Ever.

It's not so much a rant on Star Wars: The Old Republic as it is a rant on the MMORPG industry of late. MMO games are beginning to cater to the offline single player types, at the cost of the multiplayer experience. Don't tell me the social/multiplayer aspect of WoW got better after the 1-60 revamp and the implementation of LFD/LFR.

People keep saying this, and I don't get it. I talk to folks all the time, it's what turns a run with a newbie from "how could he not know that" to "here's what you wouldn't know going into this fight blind." I've made friends on random dungeon finder runs. I've met folks from my own server who become chat buddies.

You're part of the party. If nobody's talking ask yourself why you're not doing so.

I'm a chatty type when I play, but a monologue is not a conversation. It's not uncommon that my co-players tell me to shut up and play the game while we're in a dungeon.

Digg, I also find that I socialize a lot more in SWTOR due to the game's emphasis on group quests. It reminds me a bit of Vanilla WoW, in the good way. Doesn't mean Yahtzee wasn't right when he said that single player focus in a multiplayer game is a bit odd. Of course, he was exaggerating the issue, but that's what he does.

Edited, Feb 3rd 2012 10:07pm by Mazra

Two different game genres.

But like you say, most people buy the game for the multiplayer...

Of course not. They're doing it because it's fun. If people played MMO games to be social, we'd not be debating this right now.

I don't mind single player content in an MMO game, nor does Yahtzee apparently. He raised that point so he could push his other point through, which was that the Smuggler storyline transition was a bit meh - especially in a game that focuses this heavily on the single player experience.

Ok, now I really feel odd since I also willingly make small talk in supermarket lines. They're my neighbors after all, otherwise they'd be shopping somewhere else. I'm an introvert, I have folks I consider great friends who live a few blocks away who I haven't seen in months. I am perfectly comfortable enjoying myself in my own space. I can spend an afternoon staring at a wall letting my imagination roam free and not feel bored. But apparently I'm defying all sorts of social norms by actually talking to people. I'm glad I also have a sense of humor that lets be find this hilarious, rather than being self-conscious about it.

LFD allegedly destroys server community? Who cares about server community? It opens things up to an entire game community, and the people on my server are still part of that larger group. I don't get out of a flashpoint, see Fleet chatter and say "why are y'all talking to each other, you're not part of a community anymore."

I live in Portland, there're lots of supermarkets. I think we're using a different definition of "neighbor." I don't need to know someone to consider them a neighbor, to toss out a sincere "good mornin'" as I pass them on the sidewalk, or to ask if they want a hand should I see them struggling with something heavy. My neighbors are the people I encounter, regardless of if I've encountered them before. If someone needs help I'll offer it, if something's worth sharing I'll share it, and if someone's clearly antsy about the supermarket line wait I'll strike up a conversation to pass the time.

On another note, thank you for spurring my comments in this direction. I've been dealing with clinical depression for years now, and until I vocalized it here (well, written but yaknow what I mean) I hadn't realized how far my outlook had progressed. These kinda life improvements can be subtle, one step at a time until you look back and see how high you've climbed.

Yeah, that's firmly how it is in the East Coast. Hell, if you go into NYC, there are pretty much unspoken rules about how to even look at other people. You do it through quick glances, and you don't keep eye contact.

And it's not to be rude--it's actually considered a sign of... consideration. You've acknowledged their presence, but are otherwise leaving them to their privacy.

One of my best friends lives in Maryland, and even just going that far south does change things. People are more apt to make significant eye contact, talk, etc. It's just weird for a northeasterner. :P

That would probably be an accurate definition, yeah. If you translated 'Love thy neighbor' you'd get 'Elsk din næste' while 'I love my neighbor' would translate into 'Jeg elsker min nabo'. Nabo is your physical neighbor while næste is your "fellow man," if that makes sense.