I’m in love with Star Wars the Old Republic. I love the class quests and the flashpoints and the companions and the crafting and the space missions and all that shit! I could go on and on about how great I think the game is but that’s no fun. Here are the things I hate:
My biggest problem with the game right now is actually a pretty minor issue. I really feel like all Jedi should have a “Jedi Robe” gear slot so that no matter what ridiculous outfit I end up with I can always toss a dark brown robe over the top. I had a great hooded robe early on that I recently had to replace with a ridiculous looking white dress because of its stats.
There are plenty of times in MMO’s where your character just looks dumb. As a general rule it feels like SW:TOR goes out of it’s way to minimize this but it’s still going to happen. The problem is that it doesn’t bother me as much in other games because I’m not acting out an epic space opera with my friends every night. When we are in a shared cut scene and the camera passes over Tycho in his bad ass trooper armor and lands on me with my goofy silver headband and white dress I feel like an idiot trying to deliver my bad ass lines. I just want to be able to throw on a robe, pull the hood up and kick some ass. If Bioware really wants to be nice they could even give us the option to put the hood up or down! The robe doesn’t even need to have stats. Think of it like the shirt slot in WoW. You could get them in a handful of different colors and they’d just be for looks.
I’ve seen some pretty cool looking gear at the higher levels and I’m certainly excited to try and get some of it. But think about it, Obi-wan Kenobi had to have been at least level 50 and that fucker just wore a brown robe. Give me the same option!
I also really dislike the Orbital Stations. When someone on another planet asks for help I think “I’ll need to go from ship to airlock to hallway to elevator to orbital station to shuttle to spaceport to fuck you I’m not helping you with that quest.” If I want to quick travel (or space hearth as we like to call it) I click on a doodad and a shuttle is sent to pick me up. How about you just send my ship? or a shuttle to take me to my ship or whatever just get me to my ship without making me go through a maze of hallways and load screens.
Finally how about the ability to undo your choice of talent branch. Personally I like my choice of Jedi Shadow but I’ve seen people in our guild level characters to near twenty before deciding they should have picked the other branch and they end up rolling a new character. Obviously this could cost a ton of money or have limited uses or whatever but at least give people the option. Ideally I’d love the ability to have a couple talent specs I could switch between as well. What’s interesting to me is that these sorts of options exist in other games and so it almost seems like not allowing them in SW:TOR is a conscious decision rather than a careless omission. I’d be very interested in hearing the thinking behind that.
Finally if you aren’t playing Hero Academy on your iOS device you should be.
-Gabe out
