Greetings Force-fanatics! It has been nearly a week since Game Update 1.2 went live and, while it did spark a couple controversies, I’d say the general feeling is fairly positive. While I’m not a hard core PvP gamer, I know that many were disappointed to hear that the Ranked PvP was yanked out at the last minute from patch 1.2, but I’m sure Bioware had a very good reason for doing that. On that same note, I have not had an opportunity to try out the new Warzone so I can’t really offer a perspective on it – though I hope to give it a try in the near future.
I also won’t be able to provide any feedback on the new Operation, Explosive Conflict, as I do not have a toon that is ready for operations.
So lets talk about the things that I have actually taken the time to investigate and the two biggest components would be the UI Customization and the Legacy System changes.
In Your Face, User Interface!
I have to say that, hands down, the UI Customization is my favorite part of Game Update 1.2. It is very similar to the X-Perl addon I have used for years in WoW. In fact I think its probably better then X-Perl. I have to admit when I first clicked on the Interface Settings button on the menu, it looked a little intimidating but once I started playing around with some of the predefined layouts, it became less intimidating. In fact I might have even gotten a little obsessive compulsive with it. I love that you can save your own custom layout so you can easily apply it to your next character.
Bioware did offer some options to try to reduce how intimidating the screen appears when you are customizing your UI. They have a dropdown box that will hide/show specific UI elements based on what you might be doing (ex: Conversation, Party, General, or you can view all the elements). You can move, scale, or hide just about everything on the UI. In fact I don’t think I have found a UI element yet that cannot be customized. They even have a way to customize the tooltip element, which is something I’ve always wanted to be able to do in WoW.
Defining Your Legacy
The changes to the legacy system has received the most criticism and, generally, I have agreed with what some of them have said. I should qualify that statement by clarifying that I generally agree with those that have provided rational, intellectual criticism. Hater’s are going to hate, so sometimes I find it difficult to take extremely harsh, irrational criticism seriously.
I like most of the legacy rewards and several of them are features I have been looking forward to, however they do require not only to be unlocked but a money sink as well (ex: Repair Droid on your ship). I think what most people find dissatisfying is that most of the early legacy rewards are silly emotes. Also, while I think unlocking a race for every class is a neat feature, chances are, if you wanted to play a Chiss Sith Warrior you will already have a Sith Warrior before you unlock the Chiss race and you are probably not inclined to level another Sith Warrior. I suppose you could do a race change (if that option becomes available).
Conceptually I like the changes to the legacy system and I feel like it is on the right path and I expect that it will improve with each iteration.
It’s The Small Things That Help Too
The new Warzone, the new Operation, the UI Customization and the Legacy System updates were the most talked about features in this patch, but there were some minor tweaks that I feel also improved the quality of the SWTOR experience. Here are a couple of my favorites.
In the beta there use to be an option in the preferences to match the gear with the chest piece. I was disappointed to find this option had been removed when the game went live. Well, now its back but instead its called “Unify Colors” and you get to it from your character sheet. If you look next to the feet armor slot you should see a small armor icon. If you expand that you will be able to toggle your head slot, sith corruption and there is the Unify Colors button. Clicking the button will toggle a small checkbox next to most of your armor slots. Each checkbox that is toggled ON will dynamically update that piece of gear to match the chest piece. (NOTE: When you equip a new piece of gear that checkbox is toggled off by default. You will need to toggle it on after equipping it to make it match.) Unfortunately these features are not available for your companion.
I love the inventory feature that separates quest items from the rest of your inventory, but the inventory window was cumbersome sometimes when you needed to click on a quest item to “use” it. In 1.2 the usable quest items now show up in your quest tracker (assuming you have it enabled) so now you simply left-click on the item there instead. This is such a great and handy feature and I find it very interesting that we received this feature in such an early iteration when it was something WoW didn’t have until the second major content patch of the second expansion (Wrath of the Lich King). Perhaps this is an example of Bioware taking a few lessons from World of Warcraft. I hope we see a LFG/LFR tool in SWTOR sooner then we did in WoW.
Ok, I think I have probably reached the “long winded” point in this post now. There are more tiny tweaks and easter eggs in this patch that I would love to talk about (ex: skipping the Orbital stations and going straight to your ship) but I want to leave a few there for you to find for yourself. Or, if you are actually [still] reading this, perhaps leave a few that you found in the comments. Overall I feel like the patch was a success and a definite improvement but there are still some features that I hope to see added soon.
Cheers!