…in my opinion, of course. It’s quite a silent week for me, this one, at least in regards to writing here. The reason being that the nursery school teachers in germany are on strike indefinitely, which means at least this week, possibly going into next week. So our son is home and i stay with him- which in turn means that the time i usually write something is blocked. In terms of playing, his being sick at the moment doesn’t help. It’s nothing too bad, bad his sleep is uncalm. So, well, not much of a gaming week here.
That is a bummer, because you know these times when you can’t wait to log into a game? I’m in one of these phases. Doesn’t matter if it were FF14, SWTOR or ESO- my current trinity- i’m really enjoying my time in those games i play- although it has been SWTOR, exclusively, in the last week.
While i like the game very much and am surprised at how good its design fits both my preferences and my available time to play, there are some things i miss in SWTOR. So here are a few pointers.
Planetary storylines should be their own thing
I do realize that this is what later on happens anyway, after the class stories are finished. But i wished quests in SWTOR came three-fold: class quests, planetary quests and sidequests. With 12XP currently going on a seperation like this would help a lot in making use of the experience bonus in place while still following the main theme of the individual planets. If there is a way to tell the planetary story apart- or experience/read it ingame without doing every quest there is on a planet, let me know. I’m unaware of an option like this.
If planetary quests were highlighted in some way, i guess my approach to quicker levelling in SWTOR while still experiencing more of the story would be to finish the planetary questlines first and the class stories after.
Mentoring
Ok, i don’t know anyone in game (yet – made contact with Shintar, though), so this wouldn’t be of much use for me except maybe in flashpoints, but every MMORPG, in my opinion, needs to provide the option to experience content together in a ‘challenging’ and ‘worthwhile’ way for friends to play together. It would certainly help social guilds in planning and executing social events that make use of available content.
If there was the ability to set your own level, it would also help with the 12XP issue of “levelling too fast” since you could do both- level quickly and experience the stories you’d want to experience.
Usable decor
Shortly after the FC meeting in FF14, i went out of our guild house (or whatever they’re called), saw a fountain and clicked on it. To my surprise, something happened. That, of course, was after we sat on couches while discussing FC-related stuff in our house. In SWTOR, as far as i can tell, usable objects are in the majority. Sure, you can read mail, store items, gather resources and probably do other things i don’t know about. But sitting on a couch is done by jumping on the seat and using the /sit command- success varies. It might be an engine thing, but it’s a bummer that housing is mostly limited to “looking nice”.
Account or legacy wide friendlist
This is a stealth-edit. When i tried to contact Shintar, i added her to my friendlist. For a while afterwards, i kept wondering why i didn’t see her online anymore. Then i realized that i was on a different character, so i’ll have to add her 6 or 7 republic chars to each and every friendlist of my characters- if she’d want to do the same for me, it would involve even more work. I appreciate the ability to sometimes play with a “secret” character if you don’t want to meet anyone (especially useful for guildleaders), but it would still be a great help if there was at least a faction-wide friendlist for accounts/legacies.
That’s all?
I’m pretty sure there’s more. I could join the chorus and wish for more open planets. I had a disappointing experience the last time i played Soofoo on Tatooine. I saw a gate-like structure on the edge of the spaceport/first town and, of course, went there to explore. I was out of the gate for a few meters/yards when i got the warning: “exhaustion zone. Turn back”.
But i’ve made my peace with the zone design, realizing that maybe it isn’t really about the planets. When all those important people in the movies land on a planet, they don’t go hiking, after all. They are on these planets for a mission- so are we, the players. So i changed my stance and just view them as setpieces/backdrops where the action takes place. Still, i hope for more open maps sooner or later, and as far as i know, they’re there.
I’m still hugely enjoying my time in both FF14 and SWTOR, hope to be able to join the next fc meeting in FF14 as well as a guild in SWTOR soon.
Party Business 
Interesting points and I kind of agree with you on all of them in theory. The decorating of houses really was an afterthought in SWTOR unfortunately. I think they kept it simple enough so as to not break their coding. Since the “useable items” are items that they probably cloned from existing in game useable items, that was an easy fix. It has to be really cool to have clickables in a player’s/Guild stronghold. I wish they did have that as well. Unfortunately I don’t think it will happen for SWTOR. The Legacy wide friendlist I think should be an attainable thing from the developers, other games did that well after the initial creation, so I wouldn’t think that too hard to accomplish. I don’t think currently there is a way to figure out how to separate planetary/side quests. That would be a cool concept!
The account/legacy-wide friends list is number one on my own list of wishes for SWTOR.
As for housing, while you’re right that most items are not interactive, they have been working on adding more usable decorations lately, such as the Custom Huttball Stand.
Planetary stories aren’t clearly labelled, but if you pick up all the quests at the first hub of a planet and do them, you should only be left with one mission that sends you onward to the next area… that would be the planetary story then, so you could ignore everything else from then onwards if you wanted.
Thanks! I’ll try and go that route the next time i play.
Shintar, nice info!