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STO as ToR and ToR as STO?
daedalus304
Member Posts: 1,049 Arc User
I've just come to the realization that the gameplay and story orientation of ToR is more attuned to Star Trek, and the combat plus ship flight is more attuned to Star Wars.
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With STO, you very well can play without EVER paying real money. Take me for example. ALL of my characters exclusively use Lockbox/Lobi ships, and they were all paid for by selling Contraband.
My Ship Builds: USS Conqueror, HMS Victorious, HMS Concord, ISS Queen Elizabeth, Black Widow III
Click here to view my DeviantArt.
This I get. If SWTOR went buy one/play forever I would call it a pretty good game (craps all over KOTOR's canon with what happen to Revan and the awful items they put in the cash shop).
But as it stands now SWTOR is just about the worst f2p game on the market.
Ladies and gentlemen... I was even crazy enough to grind out the DELTA PACK!
STO gives you the chance to work for just about anything short of subscription and LTS just by playing the Dilithium Exchange. TOR? Nope. Paywalls for Paywalls. Although I do dabble in TOR every once in a while, its only made tolerable by the fact I did break down and pay the $5 to get bank access. The stories are great, but that's about it. TOR's F2P model is essentialy blackmail as the ONLY thing free is the story and that's it. No access to basic services like a bank for item storage. STO has by far the best F2P model I have ever heard of, allowing people who are F2P a way to earn cash money store items by playing the game.
While STO does have its shortcomings... no game is perfect. And I actually enjoy being able to earn Zen in game to get C-Store items.
EAware's f2p model is a little greedy, yes, but no where near the worst f2p model out there. Personally I prefer b2p(buy to play) as long as you aren't ESO and trying to charge $60 for a game a year or two after launch. That model eliminates gold spammers(most of the time) and allows the cash shop to focus on vanity/convenience items not p2win items.
I dabble a little with SWTOR as well, but I just can't seem to get into it like I do STO. I have a smuggler at level 15 or 16. But every time I play it, I'm on for a an hour or two, then put it down for months at a time...STO keeps me coming back pretty much daily.
The story missions are very well executed in SWTOR but I dunno what it is, it just doesn't hold my attention.
And I love Star Wars.
One things that bothered me about SWTOR, getting in game mail with costume rewards filled up my basic inventory.
I guess they wanted to promote the use of buying storage.
But it just annoyed me. Either delete the costume gifts, or buy more inventory. I've not done either, and have a full inventory, and haven't touched the game for months now.
Defending The Galaxy By Breaking One Starfleet Regulation After The Next.
That probably because starfighter was launched and abandoned and all it amounted to was a couple maps of arena pvp. Was a decent concept that never got developed past its launch
Probably the WoW style grind mechanics they're promising to retire soon. If you subscribe atm you get 12x xp on class story missions to lv55. This allows you to plow through ONLY playing you class's plot. Rewards on class quests also include 12 planetary commendations each, allowing you to keep orange gear mods up to level easily since they only cost 2 each now
Actually, I just started up as an F2P player last week, and once I got my ship and tried to use the Cargo Hold, I was told that I could not unless I used Cartel Coins to purchase space.
I realized today that I really hate TOR. There is no complexity to it, gameplay-wise. You don't get to pick skills, you only really need a set of adaptive armour and an adaptive weapon and you just max out the primary skill and pick a secondary to boost, and you're done. Everything else is just extreme space Barbie, even though all the characters look the same. As a single player game goes, it almost works except that you have to grind an unpleasant number of stupid sidequests unless you pay, and it throws monetisation in your face at every friggen turn.
I compared it to a combination chatroom and Facebook game, in terms of complexity and monetisation. I don't think I'm incorrect.
well thats not entirely true... by lv60 you have like 4-5 skills you use most in a fight but yes, since they changed the spec trees to the newer WoW style TRIBBLE, any level of personalization to your skills has gone out the window. And yes, if you are not subbed atm the game is grindy as all hell just to level. People only THINK sto is alt, unfriendly because they havent tried swtor's current grind-it model. But again, come october, there will be a major overhaul there we're told. The biggest problem with swtor as it is atm, imo, is that until they decided to break and go do something Bioware is good at, they've been hell bent chasing WoW in every aspect trying to be a WoW clone with scifi themes.
My Ship Builds: USS Conqueror, HMS Victorious, HMS Concord, ISS Queen Elizabeth, Black Widow III
Click here to view my DeviantArt.
The new 12 x class storry skill point thing or what it is should be ideal for my purposes.
No reason to grind in that game. Grinding is only sensible if you like the gameplay, and if you like the gameplay, grinding is also not terrible. (I wonder if many people that complain about the grind in STO ultimately don't like the gameplay of STO.)
You're living in the past, iconians. It's Elite dangerous with its millions or billions of star systems worth of exploration that is going to kill this game.
And if that doesn't kill it, it will be Star Citizen. Or No Man's Sky.
I am sure Dreadnought will kill STO's PvP. Oh, wait. That's already dead.
Having a desk that is shaped like an L has great advantages that way.
My Ship Builds: USS Conqueror, HMS Victorious, HMS Concord, ISS Queen Elizabeth, Black Widow III
Click here to view my DeviantArt.
That was probably just the rabid Star Wars nerds talking.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
And yet I only started playing it long after it went f2p and my first character was in his mid lv30s by the time I spent my first $10 on the game and I had cargo access for free as soon as I got my ship.
SWTOR was not a bad game... the FTP (which I was not) restrictions, imho, were a little harsh... but one thing I did like... items sold in the Cartel Market had VERY LITTLE to no game play impact. Unlike STO where you either must grind out the Z-Mart ships, or drop some cash... yes the fleet versions are easier to get, but lack the special consoles... STO has doubled down on this with the T6 and Starship traits... Console and Trait is not available in game (save a grind that I can not possibly imagine, nor stomach).
The short story, if you didn't pay... you were not at a distinct disadvantage. Here, you are... Yes... you can absolutely grind out and sell the dilithium necessary to purchase anything in STO... but seriously add up how long it would take you to grind out a new T6 ship (just 1), enough refined dilithium to equip that ship, and so on... assume rep gear, or fleet gear. Assume 1 character... assume 3 characters (more dil refining a day)... top end gear in SWTOR is earned, not bought.
Edit: Also, most things needed by F2P Players (Ops passes, gear authorizations, etc) could be purchased on the GTN (that games version of the Exchange.).
They both have their pluses and minuses. In the end.... cant wait for Star Citizen's Persistent Universe.
Star Trek Online, Now with out the Trek....
TOR game design has some serious flaws, among them slow, tedious combat and obnoxious skill bloat. If you need to bind half the keyboard to use your overly situational skills, or expect people to create macros to use them, you have a bad game. There is of course the obscenely bad F2P model, the gross overuse of voice acting, especially when much of it is bad voice acting, and the terrible jumping mechanics.
What TOR has over STO is, oddly, the monetization. The stuff they sell, it isn't obscenely overpriced, and it isn't power. STO has the better F2P model, no question, but the things actually sold are overpriced and while not P2W, it allows buying power. I believe balance in TOR is much better as well, but the game is so bland it is hard not to balance.
I agree. Each game is different to be sure, but the OP is wrong on both comparisons. TOR's storytelling is not "more Trek", it is just good storytelling. STO's ship combat is not "more SW", it is just good ship combat. Long story short, this whole thread is basically just a half off topic discussion about another game.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
It's also possible he may have gotten it via referral -- I can't remember, but I think one of the perks of being referred by a subbed member is that unlock.
You can also only purchase one inventory size upgrade as an F2P, which rapidly gets filled up; any more and you must pay CC. So much thrown in the free player's face. If you want to use purple gear? That's an unlock. Want to be able to play more than a couple group missions per week? Yep, that's an unlock. You want to be able to use more than two emotes per category? You'd better believe that's an unlock.
God, that game design is awful.
$30 USD every two months is insignificant to the amount of money-grabs and grind in STO. Everything (outside subscription) in SWTOR is vanity. Everything ,(outside of subscription) which is roughly 97%, is FAR from vanity (excluding outfits but that's negligible since Crptic/PWe gives them away anyways) so if you were to blow money at all on either game you would end up paying about 80% more in STO than SWTOR BY FAR! This is beyond obvious.... So please enjoy my reaction to your post:
Now THAT is a possibility, I do not recall if I used a referral code or not by that point.