Lvl 50 Jedi Sage Review

[thomasden2]

This is not mine, it's taken from the official beta forum

"Since the test phase is ending and people are wrapping up their reviews/input for the game I thought I would throw my 2 cents into the mix. Here is my review of the game from the perspective of a lvl 50 Jedi Sage. I'll try not to include any story spoilers but the review will contain content spoilers. I will also rank the elements on the game from a personal perspective on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being unacceptably bad... 5 being average for todays mainstream MMOs... and 10 being balls to the wall awesome). Played with max settings on a mid-high machine.

The Character Creation: 4

Needs serious improvement to stand out. Some limitations are understandable given the need to make all skins align to the basic interaction patterns (facial expressions, combat moves etc) so you can't expect a Elder Scrolls type of character creator but even by current MMO standards the creator is disappointing. First impressions matter and since the character creator is the first game feature people get to experience it should make a good impression.

Keep in mind that many people will be spending hundreds of hours with their characters. Given the way character interactions work, unlike most other MMOs, we actually get to see the characters face... you don't want the player to cringe every time he starts a conversation. You want him to be able to make his character as close to his ideal as possible (regardless if that means pretty/ugly/silly).

The User Interface: 3

Standard MMO issue interface. Very underwhelming and definitely needs improvement. Standard customization options could/should include resizing, moving windows around, a better way of editing the interface (Preferences-->Interface--> 20 checkboxes is just sad).

But most importantly... player customization options. I hate to bring up the elephant in the industry but WoW and to a certain degree most "successful" MMOs offer the possibility to create and implement add-ons. By ignoring this feature you are alienating and excluding a VERY important demographic. The coders/builders can literally do your work for you. ALOT of the features now integrated into WoW first appeared as player built add-ons. This had two VERY important effects: it gave the developers insight into what the community wants and needs and secondly it provided a solution to problems before they were solved by the developer... problems that might have caused the developer to lose customers... problems like raid organization, buff/debuff trackers, enemy cast bar display (none of which were standard features in WoW at release but were integrated because add-ons offering these features were popular enough to catch the developers attention... features whose lack would have made many a player possibly quit in frustration). Macros would also be a nice addition.

The most horrendous aspect of the UI has got to be the chat system... if it were its own category I would rate it a 1... it's absolutely unacceptable to have such a limited/broken/god-awful chat system in a MMO today. -2 on the UI just for that.

The Combat: 7

The combat is fun and actually pleasant to look at. Most skills have fairly unique animations and people can actually feel like a Jedi when they are fighting stuff. Can it be improved? Most certainly.

Very few skills are extremely flash... which in my opinion is a good thing since I dislike the seizure inducing Korean combat style. The Sage is your typical mage/healer and plays as such. Nuke, Nuke, proc Nuke, Nuke... nothing to write home about gameplay wise but the fact that it's a sci-fi setting and that you have a lightsaber out makes it stand out among the typical MMOs. This is however just a flavor element which will eventually wear out (around level 40). Unfortunately there is little to replace the flavor loss. The skills you gain from the talent tree are very underwhelming and few (3 in each tree) but that's a separate discussion.

I would have hoped that this reduction in "ooh shiny"ness would result in improved game performance when numerous characters are on screen at the same time but from what I hear that turned out to not be the case (according to the 20 man Tatooine skirmish report). Hopefully they can tweak this.

Bottom line: standard MMO fare with some bonus points for the change in flavor.

The Voiceover: 9

By far one of the most unique features of the game and very nicely implemented to boot. I fully expected the dialog to be 2-3 voice actors who by the middle of the game had the enthusiasm and voice range of Ben Stein. I was very surprised to find that the diversity and quality maintained a very high level up to and including lvl 50 areas and quests.

Some quests are missing their voice work but I'm guessing it's only a matter of time/patching.

A select few quests have some problematic voice work like the voice actor changing his pitch mid conversation (it's even possible they changed the voice actor altogether) or simply sounding very bored/out of it but such cases were a rarity.

The Story: 8

The voicework and story complement each other very well. For the most part it was fairly enjoyable and definitely above average for today's MMO market.

Some things ticked me off however: Each planet is extremely standardized. In each chapter you visit several planets but at the end of the day each of the planets follows the same pattern (since I don't want to spoil the story I won't go into detail here but anyone who has completed chapter 1 should know what I'm talking about...at least in the Sage play-through). By the time I visited the last planets of each chapter I already knew what to expect and was desperately hoping something awesome and unexpected would happen... that wasn't the case. A "oh ****" moment here and there would definitely make the game more memorable.

The Itemization: 7

A fairly well designed system. I never felt that my gear or the companions gear was inferior to the enemies I encountered and I never felt the need to "twink" my character. This also brings us to a problem in the game which will be discussed in the next section.

The stats are well thought out and the quest rewards had stats appropriate to my class with a variety of items to choose from based on my spec/adv class. The option to choose commendations or BoE lockboxes instead of gear made every quest reward worthwhile in some way. The addition of companion armor rewards was also a nice touch. The stat effects also scale very well with the level and enemy difficulty.

The gear looks good. However I was a bit disappointed by the gear progression. It seems that the end game gear still needs to be worked out since it looks like a throwback to the level 1-20 items and nothing like the progression shown on the website (could be that I was just unlucky and equipped ugly items).

The Economy: 4

Contrary to popular opinion I had few problems with money. This may have been due to my choice of professions: Slicer/Archeologist/Artificer. I looted ever enemy I encountered and sliced each lockbox I could find. I always had enough money to train the skills at each level (with 1-2 exceptions when I had to buy the speeder skills). This however brings us to the problems... there is literally no economy... being that it's a beta it's somewhat understandable but I was shocked to see that there were only about 100-200 auctions on the market at any given time and that the blues I put up for auction never sold. This is most likely due to the fact that the quest rewards are so consistent and numerous. Hopefully the issue will resolve itself on release when the population will be considerably larger and supply and demand really starts to play a role.

The Companions: 7

A very interesting addition to the game with alot of potential but at the same time alot of wasted potential.

In terms of gameplay they are a outstanding addition, complementing your character very well... to the point where a good duo can 2man 4man quests with ease. In extreme cases I could even solo some 4 mans with Quezy (50% damage reduction shield companion skill and the Sage Cooldowns/CCs)... more on this in the class review.

Companions offer some flavor and the quests you go through to get them also offer some attachment/background on their character. This however is not exploited to its max potential. Think Mass Effect here... where some of the funniest moments came from queued character dialog and ship conversations. Since it's an MMO you could have these responses displayed only for the owner to avoid spam in public areas.

Loyalty seems to play virtually no role whatsoever except for opening up a few very underwhelming character specific quests/discussions. This has the potential for ALOT of improvement. I got to 10000/10000 with Nadia Grell... and 4000/10000 with Quezy Lizardface. All Nadia offered were a handful of conversation quests with no apparent benefit except for a laughable amount of exp. Quez gave me a 4 minute long quest with very underwhelming rewards. Make loyalty play a role... give us companion skills or special items that open up at certain thresholds, add to their crafting efficiency/crit (this actually seemed to be the case with Nadia, who at full loyalty crafted faster than the others did (Artificing, not her specialty)) .

The Alignment and Social Systems: 5

Alignment has alot of potential but seems to play virtually no role whatsoever. In my experience the characters you interact with react the same way regardless of your alignment from my experience on Tython and Coruscant up to level 20. Add some flavor and diversity to conversations/quests based on alignment, add companion interactions/influences based on alignment. Have it do something beyond providing a shiny light in conversations.

PvP: 4

standard fare. So standard as a matter of fact that it gave me a feeling of Deja Voo (5). Same skill-set that's required in every other game, some interesting variations on traditional battlegrounds: +1 for flavor, +1 for some interesting/nail biting moments, -1 for taking the shortcut of level normalization, -1 for not being able to select the battleground you que for, -1 for only having level 20 PvP items. I Except the system to be vastly improved for release so that the negative aspects can be removed (bringing the score up to a 7).

Space combat: 7

interesting minigame addition. I've finished all the space combat missions and found most to be quiet enjoyable as a distraction from the hours of questing/ running around. Many are very challenging and will require ship upgrades to complete but also offer some nail-biting moments and very decent rewards.

The idea of incorporating cash/xp/quest rewards for the missions was a awesome idea. It makes grinding missions not a complete waste of time/effort and at higher levels it actually makes them viable for lvling/cash if you complete the bonus objectives consistently (gained 1/2 of lvl 40 and about 100k cash in about 1 hour).

Many seem to judge the space combat too harshly. For me it's a minigame and participating in it is completely voluntary. As such, you shouldn't expect a built in flight simulator... that's just naive and unrealistic.

The Jedi Sage Class: 7

A couple of points on the Sage. I enjoyed the class very much... it plays like most MMO mage classes when specced in Telekinetics and like most Healer classes when specced in Seer. Could heal FPs without problem even when I was specced in Telekinetics and deal damage when I was specced in Seer. This is also one of my major concerns. The talent trees are VERY underwhelming. Each one offers 3 new skills which don't change the class all that much. Most talents have minimal impact and because you are limited to 40 skill points, you don't have that much flexibility to throw around. Because you are forced to invest 5 points in each tier you actually end up being forced to take all but 4 of the Skills regardless of what choices you make. Most of the time the choices will also be very clear cut since the useless talents simply jump out at you... meaning that most people will have identical specs before the spreadsheets even hit the internet.

The skills are interesting and offer some variety and strategic options. The huge damage potential of Telekinetics coupled with the Sages inherent healing abilities and CC make it a very powerful solo class. Using Quezy (the tanking companion with a Personal Force Field Gadget) I could solo some 4 man group quests (1 boss, 2 elites, 2 strongs groups)... which was actually the most challenging/enjoyable part of the game since it required perfect timing/skill tracking.

There are other elements I'd like to discuss (FPs, instancing,mounts) but I haven't experienced or given them enough attention to warrant a review so I'll leave it at that.

Final Score: 6

Verdict: above average... even in its current beta build. With some improvements which are bound to come (if the developers have 1/2 a brain... which they seem to do) it can become a excellent and successful game. The potential is without a doubt there. Now it comes down to building on what will hopefully be a successful launch and a thriving community (read idea/money source)."

[*ChAoS*]

Thanks for all the information. It sounds like it's on the right track. Were you able to try any of the instances (I assume that the higher level content wasn't available yet)? If so, could you give us any additional information on them?

[lxhackdxl]

@Chaos, he stated that this was from the beta forums and not from OP. Just wanted to point this out before alot of people start asking questions when he is unable to answer them.