First Impressions:
The Good:
The graphics are fairly good. Its an MMO, and BW is trying to keep it accessible to everyone on earth with an 8 year old computer and a 3dFX graphic card. Framerates were pretty good, and lag was fairly nonexistent.
I played tonight as a Trooper, and I was delighted to hear femShep as my character's voice. Ahh Jennifer Hale. My favorite unrepentant puppy murderer. (More on that in a minute)
Actual dialogue choices? In an MMO? Nifty! I like the idea of playing Saintly or UPM... feels KOTOR/MEish. I like that.
The first group mission (Flashpoint) thingy. Ran through with Dal, Kaf, and Rane and had a blast. Well paced, and good to hang out with some good players.
The audio. Not intrusive and ambient. And Star-Warsy. Very well done. The voice acting, while IMO there's too much of it, and other aspects of the game suffer, it is pretty high quality work.
The Not So Good:
Every single quest is voiced. Even the insignificant ones. I found myself hitting the spacebar more than a few times to get through them. This is just personal preference, and the "bonus quests" of "Kill X separatists" pretty much just happen. So this is more of a nitpick really.
So I picked Trooper. I get the choice between tank or heals. Forever. This is bad. I don't know if they're planning a dual spec later, or if I get one later... but pigeonholing people is not a good thing anymore. I'm far too used to the flexibility that Rift and hell, even WoW provide to be happy with this lack of mechanic in an MMO anymore. Even within AC, I only get one spec, so I can't have a healy focused spec for missions and a solo oriented spec for all other times. This just barely misses the inexcusable heading. But only just.
Bioware has a problem. Good is *good* and bad is... well, you're an unrepentant puppy murderer. In the flashpoint mission:
Hence Dal's line about "DAMMIT FYS!!!"
Heals. I dunno if I'm supposed to be a single target, a support or an aoe healer... but I got "Medical Drone" or whatever at 10. Its bad. 2.5 sec cast for 300ish HP. Healing my Jedi friends in The Ellessellessses almost seemed pointless. Fast cast = small heal, slow cast = larger heal. Looking ahead, I get rank 2 of medical drone that does 450ish at 13. Then, at 16 I get
Advanced medical drone with a 12 sec c/d that heals... 300ish. Ok, maybe that's instant... no, that's a 2sec cast too. /boggle
That brings me to C/Ds. The game has a 1.5sec GCD. And no auto attack. Combat felt... I dunno, nonresponsive. There's a queue setting that you can use that can be adjusted to 1sec... /boggle. Ok, fine, I can get used to the 1.5sec GCD. Why are there lengthy C/Ds on my combat skills? I have a conditional attack that I can use to shoot someone for pretty good damage that's on fire, or knocked down. That's cool. I like that. Its on a 15 second c/d. Wait... what? I have a rapid fire channeled ability that does decent damage. Its on a 15sec c/d. I got a cool AoE attack that shoots balls of fiery death with a 3sec cast time... on an 60sec C/D. Maybe there's something I'm not getting. It lacks fluidity. Most of the time, it feels like all the good stuff is on C/D.
The Inexcusable:
The UI. Oh. My. God. The UI is an absolute horror. The only movable element is the chat window. The minimap is stuck in the lower right, and the group interface is stuck in the lower left. Quests drop down from the upper right, and the upper left is... I don't think there's anything up there. Furthermore, the UI DOES NOT SCALE. This, IMO is particularly inexcusable. I don't need hugeass buttons taking up my precious screen real estate, I want to be able to size them down to something more reasonable. I want my minimap in the upper right, character info upper left, group dropping down from there, chat windows on either side of the button bar. Not being able to do this in a AAA title in 2011 after how many years of development? Inexcusable. This is going to make healing more difficult than it needs to be. Auto target doesn't work reliably, and there is no macro support built into the game as yet. Yeah, beta is beta, but this is just a stress test. The game, for all intents and purposes is shipping in three weeks.
Spoilered for huge image.
I suppose its good that the only things I have a major ***** about are the UI and C/Ds. Overall, I did have fun, and hopefully they'll improve on things. Its not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but its good enough I suppose. It'll be fun to play as long as there are people to play with.
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However, you're right in that dark points shouldn't be awarded for returning the meds to the proper authorities.