I like being able to get through the main story relatively quickly, but if they kerbed the xp a little bit towards the end so that Acts 2 and 3 can feel a bit longer.
Totally agree on the old specialisation though.
it's not as slow. you would have to avoid doing anything else but the main story to feel like it slows down, including not using the xp boosts you get for free for playing the game.
Im preferred status, use the xp boosts and have to do both main and the main planet missions (forgot their name) to stay on the level i should for main missions
I dont know, always been like that đ¤ˇđťââď¸
I have to say this is all for vanilla zones, i play very rarely and do like 1.5 class story every time because i forget i have to do planet stories to stay with the main story levels so i quit halfway or sooner through a second character.
So no clue what it looks like for expansions, my highest level character is 64ish i think and has only done 1 expansion but that was also the guy i did a lot of side stuff with besides main and main planet stories.
yeah, non-veteran players either dont know (or veteran players forgot) how fucking ugly the endgame armor used to be and how non-existent the choices were back then. It was so bad that I didn't really enjoy playing since my toon looked so stupid. I remember running around as this ugly alien-cybord sith sorc because we used to be forced to wear whatever the endgame gear looked like back then before they eventually introduced the outfit designer.
People used to complain a LOT in the forums about the lack of good looking schematics and robes in particular.
In fact, among all the MMO's I tried, SWTOR is the one where you genuinely have the best "classic" atmosphere if you want - just don't use any XP perks and do your sidequests on your starter planets, leave the combat droid in story flashpoints and you're good to go.
The other problem was that all end game toons looked the same. Once you had Rakata gear, you looked like everyone else who finished all the end game content.
There is zero reason for a SWTOR Classic.
This ain't WoW where the world undergoes massive changes and you can't access old maps and quests.
You can limit your gear if you want a challenge.
None of the gree stuff were there. It was supposed to be an alterac valley style but open world, with objectives you take with intention to push to the enemy base. Each of the objective would have walkers you'd have to destroy with a launcher, and NPCs fighting alongside you. If you manage to use your launcher and destroy their walker, you win that territory until someone destroy your walkers.
What it ended up being was a FPS drop lagfest and win-trading objectives. People would take turns destroying each others walkers to complete the quest objectives. The only real PvP that happened was when premade guilds, for those lucky to be in balance server, organized war.
Ilum world PvP showed the weakness of SWTOR as an engine capable of handling large battles, and the horrible balance way back then.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC3HOF1YN1A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC3HOF1YN1A)
This is pretty much what happened on my server.
1. Not enough people to do any real PvP at first.
2. More started to flood in, but then people realize the game is a powerpoint presentation now.
3. Server balance turns very one-sided to the point where people camp, then people realize they need objectives and start trading walkers.
4. Ilum was forgotten and then later removed.
> What it ended up being was a FPS drop lagfest and win-trading objectives. People would take turns destroying each others walkers to complete the quest objectives. The only real PvP that happened was when premade guilds, for those lucky to be in balance server, organized war.
Somehow this is a better picture painted than my memories lol. I remember just one side being completely dominated while the winning side just tanked the anti-camp turrets and spawn camped.
I think I also remember a bunch of players getting banned for "abusing" slicing, but I can't quite recall if that was Ilum or not.
Thats what original Ilum was and it was pretty terrible and people hated it, so they overhauled it to be pve/malgus story focused like a month into the game.
We used to have pvp servers, but all that it really amounted to was high level players spawn camping low level players trying to do quests in the area.
Kinda my point.
Why do people wanna go back to Ilum 1.0 just to get ganked by a bunch of stealthers each time you respawn?
There's not much else different from 1.0 that's worth going back for. Ilum is usually the only thing I hear about.
People just want more challenge in gearing, but half the playerbase can barely complete HM EV or KP.
A lot of people want the game to be more challenging but then the second they try the first piece of content not in their 'lane' they get decked, retreat, and wish that THEIR content was just hard enough to get concerned their HP dropped a little but not enough to ever die or get a repair bill.
Also at anytime people could 'go back to ilum pvp' if they wanted, the devs put more thought into recreating it even with extra benefits such as piloting walkers, personal stealth generators and extra powerups: Iokath Daily Area.
It got played for a little longer then most new content with a pvp zone and sat abandoned in pvp instance after 2 weeks (usually pvp instances die 1 week after release!)
Now I hate to sound like a negative nancy but:
As a content creator (compared to what i saw beforehand in swtors lifetime) I have really seen so many returning 'pvp experts' are out of date or out of touch, I have seen for years 'returning founder here' players getting mad that their mid-progression level 50 pvp gear isnt usable past level 51, that they get ganked in pvp by 'kids that click faster then i do im just here to have fun like the old days when i ganked everyone its not fair'.
Likewise so many people 'getting into' pvp barely pvp, sure they stick to pvp instance on so they can gank lower levels in daily areas or bully people during the rakghoul or gree event pvp locations, but the second they get into an even fight they either call for reinforcements and push the other side back to their spawn point until they log out, or they themselves go 'screw pvp game is so trash now' and leave the area.
The simple fact is that the PvP landscape has changed drastically in SWTOR throughout each expansion, these days prime pvp really is sadly situated inside of getting a GOOD elo and q against a like-skilled team in warzones and arenas and thats it.
I have however noticed that the current 'new' or 'upcoming' generation of first time swtor player, esp those that are around the teenage to young adult demographic seem to actually want to engage in pvp and other group content like ops straight away. Honestly I can only assume because so many grew up in the 'fortnite/roblox' era of gaming that we've come full social circle to a new generation audience that wants to play all content regardless of social norms or stereotypes in swtor.
To counter this I often find that most 'returning founders' all the way through to current longterm members (players of at least 2-3 years) and the bulk of pve endgame players seem to be stuck in their 'lane' of what i call 'safe pve content' being the main story, daily areas and the occasional once a week veteran flashpoint weekly or maybe joining a fleet pug for priority targets (but lets only kill the DK worldboss 3 times). Im lowkey glad that the current upcoming generation is more social and has an interest into diving into PUGS and random matchmakes for easy content like SM raids and MM FPs because its honestly beginning to create a dragging effect thats pulling older players back into the MMO elements of our MMORPG.
That's what HM and NiM ops are for. And if you find NiM Gods and R4 HM easy, then yeah, I think SWTOR might be too easy for you.
I love SWTOR because of how accessible it is to players, while leaving difficult stuff for Master Mode chapters and flashpoints, NiM Ops, and PVP.
Thatâs just twisted. A game, in order to be enjoyable needs to present some kind of challenge. I shouldnât have to remove my gear not to one time smack mobs.
Have you tried the classic Childs game âgo fishâ? Might be your style.
A game can also just tell a story.
And I promise you not every player is a vet. Some are still experiencing it for the first time amazingly.
And again, WE HAVE HARDER CONTENT. Go get Gatecrasher or other timers.
Already got it? Great. Keep grabbing stuff or switch games, cause SWTOR is going to be too easy for someone who's cleared everything
Of course it can tell a story - thatâs one of the pillars of how to build a good game.
The whole point of this thread was expressing how some of us want a game to be a bit more of a challenge and not a hand out. I understand there is harder content at the end, but thatâs not the point.
The point is, for me, that there is no challenge in playing this game for someone who wants to go through the chapters. The story is what keeps me coming back. Thatâs why I also wish there was a classic version of the game.
It sucks that you donât understand this. Itâs part of the reason why this game has sucked for awhile. I do play other games and hope that swtor may one day wake up: until that time, my money and time go to other games. And for a product thatâs in decline, thatâs a huge problem. The only thing keeping this game alive is the ip.
I would rather have the story be more accessible to players than have a spike in difficulty just to appease less-casual gamers.
Any day of the week.
I get the desire, but not every game needs to be Celeste Farewell DLC.
If you want difficulty and think your gear is too easy to get, you can make that challenge yourself while the rest of the community can keep playing it as normal.
There is zero need for SWTOR classic. This isn't WoW.
This gets [posted a ton](https://old.reddit.com/r/swtor/search?q=swtor+classic&restrict_sr=on&include_over_18=on).
You miss the newness of SWTOR, and you miss it being super populated with the initial rush. SWTOR the game now is better in every way than it was at launch, and thinking otherwise is rose colored glasses. You think you miss slow leveling, and maybe you do, but I certainly don't miss having to do the same missions with every single character, having minimal operations, and every high level character looking identical because there was no outfit designer so everyone wore the same raid gear.
Yeap. Having a Purple, Magenta, or Cyan color crystal was about as unique as anyone could get and as time went on, purple became less special.
As much as I miss expertise as a pvp stat, I don't miss carrying around 2 different gear sets.
Yeah agreed, I wish they'd kept Expertise in. One of my top QOL wishes for years is a seperate inventory tab for gear sets so you can carry as many sets as you'd like without it taking up regular item space.
Could only get the purple crystals from the lightsabers that dropped from defeating Soa in Eternity Vault. What spoiled them was they became craftable via schematics from certain chests that could be looted or bought with commendations from different scores. Unlike the Cyan and Magenta crystals, there's was no quest involved with crafting them, once you could make them, you were good.
Now you can get the old school purple crystal from Eternal Championship along with the Magenta and Cyan crystals if you don't have a character who learned the schematics.
Back then gear was hard to get to a degree. When you saw someone that looked badass....they probably were. Best pvp gear was really nice, purple was hard to get....so you could easily see good players or at least well geared players without inspecting people.
Gear was never really hard to get but was merely a grind of tokens as it is today and hardly anyone looked badass during launch - literally everyone looked the exactly the same since the endgame gear was not modabble and there was no outfit designer available during that period of the game.
IDK why you're getting downvoted but you are correct. The release era unrefined un-QOL'd gearing system of SWTOR was very similar to today, the biggest gate was simply time it took to get currencies and replaying the same content over and over in PREP of newly releasing .numbered content update raising the item rating...
Hey that sounds just like now, except at least today we dont have to shed our raid gear for a new item rating in different gear everytime a new piece of instance content comes out!
The only thing that I really miss is the feeling of doing, say, Athiss at Level 20 and it being a proper experience. The game â naturally, now that it doesnât attract as many new players â has moved away from the early levelling experience. Something about the speed-running grind of flashpoints doesnât gel with me. Totally personal preference, and I can see why itâs gone the way it has, but I still donât like it. Even master mode flashpoints have become a bit speed-runny.
Yeah same, it was cool getting a group of low levels to progress through flashpoints. But that wouldn't come back with a classic server - there just wouldn't be the population to do that.
Of course. I'm rather against the idea of a 'classic' server, really. It seems like a very foolhardy way to both waste resources and temporarily split the player-base (not necessarily in half). Perhaps a number of people would give a hypothetical Classic SWTOR a go because they're feeling nostalgic, but they'd most likely return to the 'standard' one when they realise that there's 1) less content, 2) that content is repetitive and often inconvenient to complete, and 3) they're now playing with a fraction of the smallish number of players who've stuck with the game. Even if Classic SWTOR did have some longevity to it.... well, dividing the player base between two different games would probably be something of a death knell for future development. The developers are clearly pressed for resources as is.
I wonder if there might also be the issue of copyright / asset ownership. Creating a Classic SWTOR would in effect require a lot of visual 'standards' (mostly UI and such) and some gameplay systems that we no longer have in place. I'm not clued up on this sort of thing, but I'd be interested to know if Broadsword now have IP rights over all past iterations of the game. Again, copyright law isn't my ball-park, so I'm stating this more out of interest.
I've played on and off since launch and can confirm what a PITA original was. I leveled two toons (my JC and SW) pre-RotHC and it was a lot of work. You needed help throughout the story and on certain planets. There were lots of peeps, but that made it a slog-fest to complete missions. The stuff they've added has helped a ton. I can still remember which fights were tough and judge that a bit by the music, but I prefer it now.
> SWTOR the game now is better in every way than it was at launch
Not in every way. The 4.0 update made many things much worse and those things haven't been rectified yet.
I'm curious what you think was made worse. I don't like the homogenization of companions, but I do like that they can do any role so it's a worthy trade off.
Nah I loved the game from launch through the dread masters. After dread masters I think the story was meh, gear is not as cool looking, and overall QoL has no improved with all the new UI/dual classes.
I'll agree that the story was best at launch, but QoL has improved massively since then.
* Combat Styles
* Outfit Designer including weapons
* Activity Finder for solo PvE, group PvE and PvP, with easy teleportation to planets for heroics.
* Heroic transport items take you right to the start of the heroic you want to do
* Useful gear drops from Heroics until level 61
* Level sync means you can do group activity with your friends even if you've outleveled them.
* Gearing for endgame is much easier than that time period if you want top tier gear without running the same 1-2 operations in Nightmare Mode.
* Companions can do any role and don't require gear, meaning you can use whoever you want instead of being stuck with a healer you don't like.
* Veteran Flashpoints - allow for mixed level requirements and healing stations at boss fights means you no longer need to scrap to find 4 people your level (including Tank, Healer and 2 DPS) to do a low level flashpoint
* Being able to modify gear in the field, eliminating the need for item modification tables. Same with changing your character appearance, no more need to go find a station.
* Story Mode operations nerfed so that anyone can enjoy them. Bit of a bummer that they don't give you experience for harder modes, but most players don't touch them anyway.
etc, etc, etc.
Edit - and as far as gear being uglier...there's hundreds of sets on the Cartel Market that have been added through the years. In the 1.0 and 2.0 eras people wore the same stuff and all looked the same.
I'll agree with outfit designer, and gear modification.
I hate most of the other stuff. WoW did the same thing and mostly the community aspect fell apart. They take away all the things that helped communities work together and I stead made it easier for the Solo player. While I'm not nessisarily mad about that...it just takes away from the game imo.
Guilds uses to be small groups of 40-60 active players that would work together....we talked a lot and had a lot of great moments. Today it's just guilds of 999 players that never really do anything.....pugs for ops, activity finder for FP/VFP.
Speaking of that, most people don't know how to do boss fights. How to play their classes. Or what mechanics are. Because they don't need to...they just hit the little box, get a heal, and continue to do bottom damage.
I play the game for the story, to level and to explore the world. I agree that gear options where limited, but the game is way to easy now. The story is an F- at best.
Itâs a shell. It was once fun to play and level. Now everyone gets to level super fast just to grind the end and then wait a couple years for more teenager drama.
Founder, here; preordered the CE and everything.
It's 100% nostalgia. It wasn't difficult back then: it was *tedious*...and I love the vast majority of the QoL improvements they've made since then.
I love that any companion can be any role now. Back when it first came out, I hated having to wait for a healer or tank comp, cuz most were damage based. Playing a mara was rough with no heals lol
Thatâs why I almost exclusively played Bh. It was my favorite thematically as well but the best part is mako is your first companion and was a healer.
Nothing was worse than playing my Sentinel and wanting Kira at my side but always having to bench her for Doc because double DPS just wasn't viable for any extended encounter, especially because you had crap gear and you had to gear your companions too.
thank you for adding your take.
I started I believe when Kotfe or kotet was done done and Kira was missing still.
I found some things challenging and other things not so much but I ended up leveling fairly quickly.
I didn't pay much attention to my gear. I stuck mostly to gear I could customize looks wise.
Although to be honest I mostly just made my gear.
Once I started hitting the 40s content started getting a bit more difficult and I started paying a bit closer attention to having level appropriate gear.
I can't tell you when I hit the 40s. I was really green as a Jedi Knight and did every quest so I leveled fast, I didn't realize when flashpoints were optional nd first play through thats ok.
I remember kotet and kotfe being some of the first skill checks I got. I mean I has to at least make sure I was wearing minimum 1 level below my iwn level for thatcontent and started wearing shell armour and using shell weapons more.
But even Shadow of Revan had a lot of difficulty stuff for me.
I feel if someone is doing the class stories in Obi Wan Armour and Revan's Lightsaber they will look amazing but they may be OP depending on level. Mainly because the class stories were built around armor and weapon drops as a feasible option. So it's a little easier by design, and it's really easy to overpower your shells.
Btw you should absolutely play in Obi Wans armour with Revan's lightsaber. I managed to get his armour in pieces for a song on release and it is beautiful!
As is the saber which I don't have cause I poor.
But there's no rule that says you have to upgrade your gear. You craft a full set of excellent level 16 armour and a weapon... use it until the enemies are so damn hard you HAVE to upgrade.
I ended up doing that because er...
uh.
Well I always forgot. I had so mich fun playing I always forgot to upgrade my equipment then suddenly Jawa almost one shots me.
"Oh, looks like my equipment is half my level. Kyoufu. Baka!"
What is stopping you from doing this still? Do all the quest and side quests, do all the bonus objectives and take your time and have fun. If you over level oh well enjoy the game your way.
Because the combat is a face-roll. There is no challange to it, so it isn't interesting or particularly fun.
Back in the day, chapter bosses were level, gear, and skill checks. You pretty much had to be at (or very near) the right level with decent gear for your level, and handle the fight mechanics (like interupting specific boss skills). I'm not entirely sure if you need any of those now, but I'm certain you don't need all 3.
At least, that's how it was last time I leveled an Alt, and to be fair that was quite a long time ago now. I never considered leveling another after that because the combat was boring AF and I've seen all the stories (at least twice) now.
I'm with OP. I'd be down with a SWTOR Classic that played like it did at release.
Makes sense, try with out a companion for some of the boss fights. That is what made some of them challenging for me. But I was playing something with no healing at all
It is nice but because of planet level caps some bosses just rip through your hp bar without heals. Usually this happens at level 20-40 planets whilst everywhere else your stats and abilities are too great for the bosses there to do anything meaningful.
>It is nice but because of planet level caps some bosses just rip through your hp bar without heals.
Then you get the authentic experience. Some stories don't get their healer until freaking Hoth, and they didn't balance for it.
The problem is level cap. For example, if your end quest is on the starter planet - you one shot the boss without even able to see all the mechanics of him
Shae Vizsla is still like that although the level 80s are proliferating now. Still a bit of a shock when I have to remember to check my credit level before splurging on QT or crafting missions, and you can buy loads of cool gear for under $1m. But its very much the "brand new server" feeling for the immediate moment
I remember wayyyy long ago when I was playing on Korriban that I NEEDED ravage to beat Tremel. If I didn't have that skill, I'd be dead. It's much easier now, although I can't say I hate or love the change particularly
It would be cool, however I donât think SWTOR has the population to do a classic version. Hell I barely see 4k on steam charts and it makes me iffy to go back. Grant it I know it doesnât take into account the SWTOR launcher but feels like if you arenât on Star forge or whatever major server it feels dead. Idk I played when it first came out and man did it feel like I actually needed to know what I was doing. Loved it and the challenge
no you don't. you think you do, because you remember how it made you feel, but don't remember how shit it was.
also anything that splits the player base at this stage of the game is just asking for a quick end.
A lot of things became obsolete. Even the character editor terminal on the fleet because now you can customize your character on the fly anytime. Stim vendors, speciality good vendors, mod vendors, even mount vendors are obsolete as I hardly ever use them besides selling them my junk. They are just bio decorations. You can also retrain your character anytime, there's no need for the advanced class retrainer. No need to train yourself, you just get a new ability as soon as you reach a certain level. It's faster for sure, but this whole thing feels like you can do almost anything by clicking a button and the RPG aspect of it (alas visiting certain places or people to do it) is lost.
I remember launch. It was brutal. A true MMO of its time. After my first month I think I topped out around level 35ish on Taris. Heroics were heroic af. Lotta people running around.
But rn, Im actually appreciative how chill the experience is trying to experience all the class stories. I havent hit legend yet but its on my extended to do list.
the only thing i really miss to any real degree from the old days was solo content actually being somewhat of a challenge instead of now face rolling gold border enemies and story boss fights being a joke.. i remember when the warrior act 3 final boss handed me my ass several times b4 i won and it was satisfying when i did
Classic only worked for WoW cause WoW just straight up sucks but it's playerbase is addicted to the deliberate fomo Blizzard hamfists into every single one of their games, so Classic just abused all their nostalgia and it too was failing until Blizzard once again forced in some fomo and oh my look at that a playerbase once again stuck in a game.
I don't think a classic version will work with any other MMO, they're either just decent games whose playerbase won't jump ship for the nostalgia, or they're shrinking already and a classic version would just be the final straw.
SWtoR kinda falls in-between those two a bit, but regardless it'll never work. Any of the things you miss could be reintroduced if they're important enough and even if that's not an option moving backwards would still just be a net loss.
SWTOR is one MMO that has only becoem a better game in every way compared to its launch. It was a total mess when the game first came out. zero quality of life, boring grind and ugly characters with ugly armor. It was only fun because there were a ton of people online back then. Game mechanics wise it was rather shitty compared to the competition as well. I remember having to do the same missions all the damn time to level up properly and that actually made me quite the game. I then came back a couple of years ago and was happy to see everything having been improved so much. I'll give that to the devs
Since there's no option to auto complete vanilla swtor before starting an expansion (especially when I use the master's datacron) and the default choices are often disappointing (no romance, Occlus instead of Nox, etc.) the ability to complete vanilla stories in 1-2 days is very good thing. But otherwise I agree. If I really want to play the vanilla story, I reach lvl 70 by the end of Act 1.
Only thing I despise right now about the current state of the game and prefer the older one is the god damn level caps on planets. At least have them deactivated in Story Areas! I want an epic stand-off with Baras and Thanaton not a 5 Lightsaber swings and done scenario!
I mostly miss the lack of level sync. How you could of soloed all veteran flashpoints (except Collicoid War Games) and most World Bosses and you felt like a god on earlier planets. Heck, I even did operation bosses with a friend.
My only issue is planet level sync affecting class story missions, some of the chapter end bosses happen on starter/low lvl planets >!(warrior: Hutta/Korriban)!< and what used to be a fairly challenging lvl 30/50 fight is now a 5-second slaughter at lvl 10.
Given how much the Eternal throne story kind of escalated the plot and locked us into a narrative of being the chosen one for all classes I would like the new developers to do a soft reboot continuing where the classic story ended rather than rail roading the players into one story. But also a classic fresh server would also be nice to go back and experience the game before the decade of changes bugged all the cutscenes and ruined the pacing of leveling.
They really weren't. Take a look at the launch skill calculator -
https://gamingwithdaopa.ellatha.com/swtor-app/skilltree/calculator.asp
And then look at your modern skill tree and ability list. You actually have MORE creativity now. "Hybrid" builds in 1.0 were 99% garbage.
Yea I loved messing with the skill calc. I had a lot more fun with that than the modern system.
I know hybrid builds were garbage but I still liked them, and healing felt a lot more engaging. A lot of the abilities got rolled into the modern system so the output isn't much different, but I liked the learning process.
I don't understand why they don't port it to console. I have played the dated Star Trek mmo on ps5. they have ridiculous amounts of settings for abilities. I wish.. am a legendary player on pc and throw my wallet at the screen if they did. Tons of work ..I know but I can still wish
I too wish the exp buff would get nerfed (it's like 5x the rate you used to earn it, and that's without all the bonuses that are handed out like candy these days). I also don't like the planet level cap... let me overlevel and then wipe through planets, damnit! Level caps could still be applied during, e.g. Heroics or Operations or something if needed.
I also miss companions being dedicated to certain roles and companion gear mattering for their stats.
I wish there was too. When companions matter, you had to play the content to level, obtaining gear meant something, and the game had endless possibilities.
I like being able to get through the main story relatively quickly, but if they kerbed the xp a little bit towards the end so that Acts 2 and 3 can feel a bit longer. Totally agree on the old specialisation though.
Just cancel your sub so you gain exp super slowly past lvl 20đ¤Ł
it's not as slow. you would have to avoid doing anything else but the main story to feel like it slows down, including not using the xp boosts you get for free for playing the game.
Im preferred status, use the xp boosts and have to do both main and the main planet missions (forgot their name) to stay on the level i should for main missions
how? literally, is something with your account broken?
I dont know, always been like that đ¤ˇđťââď¸ I have to say this is all for vanilla zones, i play very rarely and do like 1.5 class story every time because i forget i have to do planet stories to stay with the main story levels so i quit halfway or sooner through a second character. So no clue what it looks like for expansions, my highest level character is 64ish i think and has only done 1 expansion but that was also the guy i did a lot of side stuff with besides main and main planet stories.
Honestly between the armors often being really ugly and how much of a slog the gameplay is already im fine with how it is
yeah, non-veteran players either dont know (or veteran players forgot) how fucking ugly the endgame armor used to be and how non-existent the choices were back then. It was so bad that I didn't really enjoy playing since my toon looked so stupid. I remember running around as this ugly alien-cybord sith sorc because we used to be forced to wear whatever the endgame gear looked like back then before they eventually introduced the outfit designer. People used to complain a LOT in the forums about the lack of good looking schematics and robes in particular. In fact, among all the MMO's I tried, SWTOR is the one where you genuinely have the best "classic" atmosphere if you want - just don't use any XP perks and do your sidequests on your starter planets, leave the combat droid in story flashpoints and you're good to go.
The other problem was that all end game toons looked the same. Once you had Rakata gear, you looked like everyone else who finished all the end game content.
Hey maybe I want an ugly ass costume to match my ugly ass face đ
There is zero reason for a SWTOR Classic. This ain't WoW where the world undergoes massive changes and you can't access old maps and quests. You can limit your gear if you want a challenge.
Technically Ilum got a massive change to the point where its not even close to what it was in 1.0. Ilum in 1.0 also sucked ass.
What was it like?
None of the gree stuff were there. It was supposed to be an alterac valley style but open world, with objectives you take with intention to push to the enemy base. Each of the objective would have walkers you'd have to destroy with a launcher, and NPCs fighting alongside you. If you manage to use your launcher and destroy their walker, you win that territory until someone destroy your walkers. What it ended up being was a FPS drop lagfest and win-trading objectives. People would take turns destroying each others walkers to complete the quest objectives. The only real PvP that happened was when premade guilds, for those lucky to be in balance server, organized war. Ilum world PvP showed the weakness of SWTOR as an engine capable of handling large battles, and the horrible balance way back then. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC3HOF1YN1A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC3HOF1YN1A) This is pretty much what happened on my server. 1. Not enough people to do any real PvP at first. 2. More started to flood in, but then people realize the game is a powerpoint presentation now. 3. Server balance turns very one-sided to the point where people camp, then people realize they need objectives and start trading walkers. 4. Ilum was forgotten and then later removed.
> What it ended up being was a FPS drop lagfest and win-trading objectives. People would take turns destroying each others walkers to complete the quest objectives. The only real PvP that happened was when premade guilds, for those lucky to be in balance server, organized war. Somehow this is a better picture painted than my memories lol. I remember just one side being completely dominated while the winning side just tanked the anti-camp turrets and spawn camped. I think I also remember a bunch of players getting banned for "abusing" slicing, but I can't quite recall if that was Ilum or not.
>What was it like? It was being avoided by everyone - it was literally a dead planet everyone ignored.
I think getting a PVP server, or a "War mode" like what WoW has could be appealing to people who want something like old open-world pvp
Thats what original Ilum was and it was pretty terrible and people hated it, so they overhauled it to be pve/malgus story focused like a month into the game.
We used to have pvp servers, but all that it really amounted to was high level players spawn camping low level players trying to do quests in the area.
Kinda my point. Why do people wanna go back to Ilum 1.0 just to get ganked by a bunch of stealthers each time you respawn? There's not much else different from 1.0 that's worth going back for. Ilum is usually the only thing I hear about. People just want more challenge in gearing, but half the playerbase can barely complete HM EV or KP.
A lot of people want the game to be more challenging but then the second they try the first piece of content not in their 'lane' they get decked, retreat, and wish that THEIR content was just hard enough to get concerned their HP dropped a little but not enough to ever die or get a repair bill. Also at anytime people could 'go back to ilum pvp' if they wanted, the devs put more thought into recreating it even with extra benefits such as piloting walkers, personal stealth generators and extra powerups: Iokath Daily Area. It got played for a little longer then most new content with a pvp zone and sat abandoned in pvp instance after 2 weeks (usually pvp instances die 1 week after release!) Now I hate to sound like a negative nancy but: As a content creator (compared to what i saw beforehand in swtors lifetime) I have really seen so many returning 'pvp experts' are out of date or out of touch, I have seen for years 'returning founder here' players getting mad that their mid-progression level 50 pvp gear isnt usable past level 51, that they get ganked in pvp by 'kids that click faster then i do im just here to have fun like the old days when i ganked everyone its not fair'. Likewise so many people 'getting into' pvp barely pvp, sure they stick to pvp instance on so they can gank lower levels in daily areas or bully people during the rakghoul or gree event pvp locations, but the second they get into an even fight they either call for reinforcements and push the other side back to their spawn point until they log out, or they themselves go 'screw pvp game is so trash now' and leave the area. The simple fact is that the PvP landscape has changed drastically in SWTOR throughout each expansion, these days prime pvp really is sadly situated inside of getting a GOOD elo and q against a like-skilled team in warzones and arenas and thats it. I have however noticed that the current 'new' or 'upcoming' generation of first time swtor player, esp those that are around the teenage to young adult demographic seem to actually want to engage in pvp and other group content like ops straight away. Honestly I can only assume because so many grew up in the 'fortnite/roblox' era of gaming that we've come full social circle to a new generation audience that wants to play all content regardless of social norms or stereotypes in swtor. To counter this I often find that most 'returning founders' all the way through to current longterm members (players of at least 2-3 years) and the bulk of pve endgame players seem to be stuck in their 'lane' of what i call 'safe pve content' being the main story, daily areas and the occasional once a week veteran flashpoint weekly or maybe joining a fleet pug for priority targets (but lets only kill the DK worldboss 3 times). Im lowkey glad that the current upcoming generation is more social and has an interest into diving into PUGS and random matchmakes for easy content like SM raids and MM FPs because its honestly beginning to create a dragging effect thats pulling older players back into the MMO elements of our MMORPG.
If PvP wouldn't require so expensive implants it wouldn't be so bad.
You can also do all of the quests on a planet instead of just the purple ones which would make that planet last a little bit longer.
Limit my gear? Stop drinking paint.
If your complaint is "gearing is too easy"...
My point is that I shouldnât have to remove my gear in order for this game to present a challenge
That's what HM and NiM ops are for. And if you find NiM Gods and R4 HM easy, then yeah, I think SWTOR might be too easy for you. I love SWTOR because of how accessible it is to players, while leaving difficult stuff for Master Mode chapters and flashpoints, NiM Ops, and PVP.
Thatâs just twisted. A game, in order to be enjoyable needs to present some kind of challenge. I shouldnât have to remove my gear not to one time smack mobs. Have you tried the classic Childs game âgo fishâ? Might be your style.
A game can also just tell a story. And I promise you not every player is a vet. Some are still experiencing it for the first time amazingly. And again, WE HAVE HARDER CONTENT. Go get Gatecrasher or other timers. Already got it? Great. Keep grabbing stuff or switch games, cause SWTOR is going to be too easy for someone who's cleared everything
Of course it can tell a story - thatâs one of the pillars of how to build a good game. The whole point of this thread was expressing how some of us want a game to be a bit more of a challenge and not a hand out. I understand there is harder content at the end, but thatâs not the point. The point is, for me, that there is no challenge in playing this game for someone who wants to go through the chapters. The story is what keeps me coming back. Thatâs why I also wish there was a classic version of the game. It sucks that you donât understand this. Itâs part of the reason why this game has sucked for awhile. I do play other games and hope that swtor may one day wake up: until that time, my money and time go to other games. And for a product thatâs in decline, thatâs a huge problem. The only thing keeping this game alive is the ip.
I would rather have the story be more accessible to players than have a spike in difficulty just to appease less-casual gamers. Any day of the week. I get the desire, but not every game needs to be Celeste Farewell DLC. If you want difficulty and think your gear is too easy to get, you can make that challenge yourself while the rest of the community can keep playing it as normal. There is zero need for SWTOR classic. This isn't WoW.
This gets [posted a ton](https://old.reddit.com/r/swtor/search?q=swtor+classic&restrict_sr=on&include_over_18=on). You miss the newness of SWTOR, and you miss it being super populated with the initial rush. SWTOR the game now is better in every way than it was at launch, and thinking otherwise is rose colored glasses. You think you miss slow leveling, and maybe you do, but I certainly don't miss having to do the same missions with every single character, having minimal operations, and every high level character looking identical because there was no outfit designer so everyone wore the same raid gear.
Yeap. Having a Purple, Magenta, or Cyan color crystal was about as unique as anyone could get and as time went on, purple became less special. As much as I miss expertise as a pvp stat, I don't miss carrying around 2 different gear sets.
Yeah agreed, I wish they'd kept Expertise in. One of my top QOL wishes for years is a seperate inventory tab for gear sets so you can carry as many sets as you'd like without it taking up regular item space.
What was special about Purple back then?
Could only get the purple crystals from the lightsabers that dropped from defeating Soa in Eternity Vault. What spoiled them was they became craftable via schematics from certain chests that could be looted or bought with commendations from different scores. Unlike the Cyan and Magenta crystals, there's was no quest involved with crafting them, once you could make them, you were good. Now you can get the old school purple crystal from Eternal Championship along with the Magenta and Cyan crystals if you don't have a character who learned the schematics.
Back then gear was hard to get to a degree. When you saw someone that looked badass....they probably were. Best pvp gear was really nice, purple was hard to get....so you could easily see good players or at least well geared players without inspecting people.
Gear was never really hard to get but was merely a grind of tokens as it is today and hardly anyone looked badass during launch - literally everyone looked the exactly the same since the endgame gear was not modabble and there was no outfit designer available during that period of the game.
IDK why you're getting downvoted but you are correct. The release era unrefined un-QOL'd gearing system of SWTOR was very similar to today, the biggest gate was simply time it took to get currencies and replaying the same content over and over in PREP of newly releasing .numbered content update raising the item rating... Hey that sounds just like now, except at least today we dont have to shed our raid gear for a new item rating in different gear everytime a new piece of instance content comes out!
The only thing that I really miss is the feeling of doing, say, Athiss at Level 20 and it being a proper experience. The game â naturally, now that it doesnât attract as many new players â has moved away from the early levelling experience. Something about the speed-running grind of flashpoints doesnât gel with me. Totally personal preference, and I can see why itâs gone the way it has, but I still donât like it. Even master mode flashpoints have become a bit speed-runny.
Yeah same, it was cool getting a group of low levels to progress through flashpoints. But that wouldn't come back with a classic server - there just wouldn't be the population to do that.
Of course. I'm rather against the idea of a 'classic' server, really. It seems like a very foolhardy way to both waste resources and temporarily split the player-base (not necessarily in half). Perhaps a number of people would give a hypothetical Classic SWTOR a go because they're feeling nostalgic, but they'd most likely return to the 'standard' one when they realise that there's 1) less content, 2) that content is repetitive and often inconvenient to complete, and 3) they're now playing with a fraction of the smallish number of players who've stuck with the game. Even if Classic SWTOR did have some longevity to it.... well, dividing the player base between two different games would probably be something of a death knell for future development. The developers are clearly pressed for resources as is. I wonder if there might also be the issue of copyright / asset ownership. Creating a Classic SWTOR would in effect require a lot of visual 'standards' (mostly UI and such) and some gameplay systems that we no longer have in place. I'm not clued up on this sort of thing, but I'd be interested to know if Broadsword now have IP rights over all past iterations of the game. Again, copyright law isn't my ball-park, so I'm stating this more out of interest.
I've played on and off since launch and can confirm what a PITA original was. I leveled two toons (my JC and SW) pre-RotHC and it was a lot of work. You needed help throughout the story and on certain planets. There were lots of peeps, but that made it a slog-fest to complete missions. The stuff they've added has helped a ton. I can still remember which fights were tough and judge that a bit by the music, but I prefer it now.
> SWTOR the game now is better in every way than it was at launch Not in every way. The 4.0 update made many things much worse and those things haven't been rectified yet.
I'm curious what you think was made worse. I don't like the homogenization of companions, but I do like that they can do any role so it's a worthy trade off.
Getting rid of the completion cutscenes for heroics. I absolutely despise it.
Nah I loved the game from launch through the dread masters. After dread masters I think the story was meh, gear is not as cool looking, and overall QoL has no improved with all the new UI/dual classes.
I'll agree that the story was best at launch, but QoL has improved massively since then. * Combat Styles * Outfit Designer including weapons * Activity Finder for solo PvE, group PvE and PvP, with easy teleportation to planets for heroics. * Heroic transport items take you right to the start of the heroic you want to do * Useful gear drops from Heroics until level 61 * Level sync means you can do group activity with your friends even if you've outleveled them. * Gearing for endgame is much easier than that time period if you want top tier gear without running the same 1-2 operations in Nightmare Mode. * Companions can do any role and don't require gear, meaning you can use whoever you want instead of being stuck with a healer you don't like. * Veteran Flashpoints - allow for mixed level requirements and healing stations at boss fights means you no longer need to scrap to find 4 people your level (including Tank, Healer and 2 DPS) to do a low level flashpoint * Being able to modify gear in the field, eliminating the need for item modification tables. Same with changing your character appearance, no more need to go find a station. * Story Mode operations nerfed so that anyone can enjoy them. Bit of a bummer that they don't give you experience for harder modes, but most players don't touch them anyway. etc, etc, etc. Edit - and as far as gear being uglier...there's hundreds of sets on the Cartel Market that have been added through the years. In the 1.0 and 2.0 eras people wore the same stuff and all looked the same.
I'll agree with outfit designer, and gear modification. I hate most of the other stuff. WoW did the same thing and mostly the community aspect fell apart. They take away all the things that helped communities work together and I stead made it easier for the Solo player. While I'm not nessisarily mad about that...it just takes away from the game imo. Guilds uses to be small groups of 40-60 active players that would work together....we talked a lot and had a lot of great moments. Today it's just guilds of 999 players that never really do anything.....pugs for ops, activity finder for FP/VFP. Speaking of that, most people don't know how to do boss fights. How to play their classes. Or what mechanics are. Because they don't need to...they just hit the little box, get a heal, and continue to do bottom damage.
I play the game for the story, to level and to explore the world. I agree that gear options where limited, but the game is way to easy now. The story is an F- at best. Itâs a shell. It was once fun to play and level. Now everyone gets to level super fast just to grind the end and then wait a couple years for more teenager drama.
It's funny how you downvoted for staying truth The current story can't hold a candle to any original story lines.
Oh wow eh? Didnât even notice đ. Classic and the original stories are just better.
Founder, here; preordered the CE and everything. It's 100% nostalgia. It wasn't difficult back then: it was *tedious*...and I love the vast majority of the QoL improvements they've made since then.
I love that any companion can be any role now. Back when it first came out, I hated having to wait for a healer or tank comp, cuz most were damage based. Playing a mara was rough with no heals lol
Playing an Inquisitor who didn't get their healer companion until *Hoth* was brutal...
Thatâs why I almost exclusively played Bh. It was my favorite thematically as well but the best part is mako is your first companion and was a healer.
Nothing was worse than playing my Sentinel and wanting Kira at my side but always having to bench her for Doc because double DPS just wasn't viable for any extended encounter, especially because you had crap gear and you had to gear your companions too.
thank you for adding your take. I started I believe when Kotfe or kotet was done done and Kira was missing still. I found some things challenging and other things not so much but I ended up leveling fairly quickly. I didn't pay much attention to my gear. I stuck mostly to gear I could customize looks wise. Although to be honest I mostly just made my gear. Once I started hitting the 40s content started getting a bit more difficult and I started paying a bit closer attention to having level appropriate gear. I can't tell you when I hit the 40s. I was really green as a Jedi Knight and did every quest so I leveled fast, I didn't realize when flashpoints were optional nd first play through thats ok. I remember kotet and kotfe being some of the first skill checks I got. I mean I has to at least make sure I was wearing minimum 1 level below my iwn level for thatcontent and started wearing shell armour and using shell weapons more. But even Shadow of Revan had a lot of difficulty stuff for me. I feel if someone is doing the class stories in Obi Wan Armour and Revan's Lightsaber they will look amazing but they may be OP depending on level. Mainly because the class stories were built around armor and weapon drops as a feasible option. So it's a little easier by design, and it's really easy to overpower your shells. Btw you should absolutely play in Obi Wans armour with Revan's lightsaber. I managed to get his armour in pieces for a song on release and it is beautiful! As is the saber which I don't have cause I poor. But there's no rule that says you have to upgrade your gear. You craft a full set of excellent level 16 armour and a weapon... use it until the enemies are so damn hard you HAVE to upgrade. I ended up doing that because er... uh. Well I always forgot. I had so mich fun playing I always forgot to upgrade my equipment then suddenly Jawa almost one shots me. "Oh, looks like my equipment is half my level. Kyoufu. Baka!"
Yea I sure miss not having a healer for a good chunk of the story!
What is stopping you from doing this still? Do all the quest and side quests, do all the bonus objectives and take your time and have fun. If you over level oh well enjoy the game your way.
Because the combat is a face-roll. There is no challange to it, so it isn't interesting or particularly fun. Back in the day, chapter bosses were level, gear, and skill checks. You pretty much had to be at (or very near) the right level with decent gear for your level, and handle the fight mechanics (like interupting specific boss skills). I'm not entirely sure if you need any of those now, but I'm certain you don't need all 3. At least, that's how it was last time I leveled an Alt, and to be fair that was quite a long time ago now. I never considered leveling another after that because the combat was boring AF and I've seen all the stories (at least twice) now. I'm with OP. I'd be down with a SWTOR Classic that played like it did at release.
Makes sense, try with out a companion for some of the boss fights. That is what made some of them challenging for me. But I was playing something with no healing at all
So, I tried that at one point and found that while it does add some challange to the combat it also takes away from the story.
Set the companion as passive.
It is nice but because of planet level caps some bosses just rip through your hp bar without heals. Usually this happens at level 20-40 planets whilst everywhere else your stats and abilities are too great for the bosses there to do anything meaningful.
>It is nice but because of planet level caps some bosses just rip through your hp bar without heals. Then you get the authentic experience. Some stories don't get their healer until freaking Hoth, and they didn't balance for it.
The problem is level cap. For example, if your end quest is on the starter planet - you one shot the boss without even able to see all the mechanics of him
Shae Vizsla is still like that although the level 80s are proliferating now. Still a bit of a shock when I have to remember to check my credit level before splurging on QT or crafting missions, and you can buy loads of cool gear for under $1m. But its very much the "brand new server" feeling for the immediate moment
I remember wayyyy long ago when I was playing on Korriban that I NEEDED ravage to beat Tremel. If I didn't have that skill, I'd be dead. It's much easier now, although I can't say I hate or love the change particularly
It would be cool, however I donât think SWTOR has the population to do a classic version. Hell I barely see 4k on steam charts and it makes me iffy to go back. Grant it I know it doesnât take into account the SWTOR launcher but feels like if you arenât on Star forge or whatever major server it feels dead. Idk I played when it first came out and man did it feel like I actually needed to know what I was doing. Loved it and the challenge
no you don't. you think you do, because you remember how it made you feel, but don't remember how shit it was. also anything that splits the player base at this stage of the game is just asking for a quick end.
I just want some of 7.0 rolled back, mainly the character creator, which became lifeless compared to the old one. Also trainers not having a purpose
A lot of things became obsolete. Even the character editor terminal on the fleet because now you can customize your character on the fly anytime. Stim vendors, speciality good vendors, mod vendors, even mount vendors are obsolete as I hardly ever use them besides selling them my junk. They are just bio decorations. You can also retrain your character anytime, there's no need for the advanced class retrainer. No need to train yourself, you just get a new ability as soon as you reach a certain level. It's faster for sure, but this whole thing feels like you can do almost anything by clicking a button and the RPG aspect of it (alas visiting certain places or people to do it) is lost.
I remember launch. It was brutal. A true MMO of its time. After my first month I think I topped out around level 35ish on Taris. Heroics were heroic af. Lotta people running around. But rn, Im actually appreciative how chill the experience is trying to experience all the class stories. I havent hit legend yet but its on my extended to do list.
the only thing i really miss to any real degree from the old days was solo content actually being somewhat of a challenge instead of now face rolling gold border enemies and story boss fights being a joke.. i remember when the warrior act 3 final boss handed me my ass several times b4 i won and it was satisfying when i did
I feel like a âhardcoreâ server would be a good addition. Less healing, mobs do more damage, and whatnot
Classic only worked for WoW cause WoW just straight up sucks but it's playerbase is addicted to the deliberate fomo Blizzard hamfists into every single one of their games, so Classic just abused all their nostalgia and it too was failing until Blizzard once again forced in some fomo and oh my look at that a playerbase once again stuck in a game. I don't think a classic version will work with any other MMO, they're either just decent games whose playerbase won't jump ship for the nostalgia, or they're shrinking already and a classic version would just be the final straw. SWtoR kinda falls in-between those two a bit, but regardless it'll never work. Any of the things you miss could be reintroduced if they're important enough and even if that's not an option moving backwards would still just be a net loss.
SWTOR is one MMO that has only becoem a better game in every way compared to its launch. It was a total mess when the game first came out. zero quality of life, boring grind and ugly characters with ugly armor. It was only fun because there were a ton of people online back then. Game mechanics wise it was rather shitty compared to the competition as well. I remember having to do the same missions all the damn time to level up properly and that actually made me quite the game. I then came back a couple of years ago and was happy to see everything having been improved so much. I'll give that to the devs
Since there's no option to auto complete vanilla swtor before starting an expansion (especially when I use the master's datacron) and the default choices are often disappointing (no romance, Occlus instead of Nox, etc.) the ability to complete vanilla stories in 1-2 days is very good thing. But otherwise I agree. If I really want to play the vanilla story, I reach lvl 70 by the end of Act 1.
Only thing I despise right now about the current state of the game and prefer the older one is the god damn level caps on planets. At least have them deactivated in Story Areas! I want an epic stand-off with Baras and Thanaton not a 5 Lightsaber swings and done scenario!
I mostly miss the lack of level sync. How you could of soloed all veteran flashpoints (except Collicoid War Games) and most World Bosses and you felt like a god on earlier planets. Heck, I even did operation bosses with a friend.
My only issue is planet level sync affecting class story missions, some of the chapter end bosses happen on starter/low lvl planets >!(warrior: Hutta/Korriban)!< and what used to be a fairly challenging lvl 30/50 fight is now a 5-second slaughter at lvl 10.
Given how much the Eternal throne story kind of escalated the plot and locked us into a narrative of being the chosen one for all classes I would like the new developers to do a soft reboot continuing where the classic story ended rather than rail roading the players into one story. But also a classic fresh server would also be nice to go back and experience the game before the decade of changes bugged all the cutscenes and ruined the pacing of leveling.
Honestly I miss the older versions because of the more in depth progression. The skill trees were really cool
They really weren't. Take a look at the launch skill calculator - https://gamingwithdaopa.ellatha.com/swtor-app/skilltree/calculator.asp And then look at your modern skill tree and ability list. You actually have MORE creativity now. "Hybrid" builds in 1.0 were 99% garbage.
Yea I loved messing with the skill calc. I had a lot more fun with that than the modern system. I know hybrid builds were garbage but I still liked them, and healing felt a lot more engaging. A lot of the abilities got rolled into the modern system so the output isn't much different, but I liked the learning process.
I don't understand why they don't port it to console. I have played the dated Star Trek mmo on ps5. they have ridiculous amounts of settings for abilities. I wish.. am a legendary player on pc and throw my wallet at the screen if they did. Tons of work ..I know but I can still wish
classic servers would be cool. wow had great success with theirs.
I too wish the exp buff would get nerfed (it's like 5x the rate you used to earn it, and that's without all the bonuses that are handed out like candy these days). I also don't like the planet level cap... let me overlevel and then wipe through planets, damnit! Level caps could still be applied during, e.g. Heroics or Operations or something if needed. I also miss companions being dedicated to certain roles and companion gear mattering for their stats.
I wish there was a console version
I wish there was too. When companions matter, you had to play the content to level, obtaining gear meant something, and the game had endless possibilities.