So I'm just about to 50. It's been, by and large, best described as "okay". A few of the worlds are places that you just want to be done with and feel akin to taking out the trash. Others manage to be alright. It's very much a mixed bag. BioWare certainly seems to enjoy making desolate landscapes of one form or another, though, and that gets old after awhile.

I think that a part of the problem for me is the class. When I rolled a consular, I wasn't expecting a combat class. I was expecting a class that had a story line around diplomacy, investigation, and generally something a little more "Star Trek: Next Generation"-ish. A story that's more about the characters, people, and circumstances than the pew, pew, pew - THAT would be for the Jedi Knight.

As it turns out, my expectations were entirely wrong. BioWare made the Consular class just another "bash them in the head" approach to gaming. It's very disappointing, and the class never becomes more about diplomacy. Every class mission is you being sent into a location to kill a bunch of bad guys. Never once are you making any real decisions, meeting politicians (who you don't kill, anyway), or in any way being a diplomat, unless you think that stuffing a light saber into someone's back is, in fact, legitimate diplomacy - then you do it constantly.

I think that SWTOR would have been more interesting had I rolled a Knight, or any other combat class. Everything would have felt like it fit. As it is, it's like they give Hillary Clinton a machine gun and tell her to make a surgical strike against the enemy in order to further her diplomatic ends. While certainly amusing, it just doesn't make any damned sense. You get a few diplomatic responses in text when making your "choice" during cut scenes, but those are immediately brushed off by the NPC that you're talking to. All roads lead to Rambo Hillary; just you, your light saber, and your companion taking out entire armies.

There's also the issue of your character's abilities (otherwise called "spells" in other MMOs). Basically, you'll be using the same three main attack abilities from level 1 to level 50. In regards to the consular, that's the Pebble Pew ("Telekinetic Throw"), which toss a lot of tiny rocks at your target, and the Chunk Chucker ("Project") that you've seen in the videos that tosses a large rock or such at your target. Those are your primary attacks, and your skill trees revolves around them. Your basic rotation is: Double Strike to get the critical hit bonus to pop, then Project to hit them with a guaranteed critical hit. You do this three times, while using your single, basic light saber swing between these attacks because that builds up your "Force" (aka "Mana"). Once you do this three times, you get a stackable buff that causes your Pebble Pew to do a lot more damage as well as heal you (I have no idea why throwing a bunch of rocks at people heals you O.o).

Between that rotation you'll be using your interrupts / brief stuns in order to stop the bad guy from using their special abilities. It's all very basic and repetitive.

Is the game terrible? No. Is it very simple and full of single player game issues? Yes. Maybe I can talk more about those later. For now, I've typed enough and I'm going to go do something else.

So I'm just about to 50. It's been, by and large, best described as "okay". A few of the worlds are places that you just want to be done with and feel akin to taking out the trash. Others manage to be alright. It's very much a mixed bag. BioWare certainly seems to enjoy making desolate landscapes of one form or another, though, and that gets old after awhile.

I think that a part of the problem for me is the class. When I rolled a consular, I wasn't expecting a combat class. I was expecting a class that had a story line around diplomacy, investigation, and generally something a little more "Star Trek: Next Generation"-ish. A story that's more about the characters, people, and circumstances than the pew, pew, pew - THAT would be for the Jedi Knight.

As it turns out, my expectations were entirely wrong. BioWare made the Consular class just another "bash them in the head" approach to gaming. It's very disappointing, and the class never becomes more about diplomacy. Every class mission is you being sent into a location to kill a bunch of bad guys. Never once are you making any real decisions, meeting politicians (who you don't kill, anyway), or in any way being a diplomat, unless you think that stuffing a light saber into someone's back is, in fact, legitimate diplomacy - then you do it constantly.

I think that SWTOR would have been more interesting had I rolled a Knight, or any other combat class. Everything would have felt like it fit. As it is, it's like they give Hillary Clinton a machine gun and tell her to make a surgical strike against the enemy in order to further her diplomatic ends. While certainly amusing, it just doesn't make any damned sense. You get a few diplomatic responses in text when making your "choice" during cut scenes, but those are immediately brushed off by the NPC that you're talking to. All roads lead to Rambo Hillary; just you, your light saber, and your companion taking out entire armies.

There's also the issue of your character's abilities (otherwise called "spells" in other MMOs). Basically, you'll be using the same three main attack abilities from level 1 to level 50. In regards to the consular, that's the Pebble Pew ("Telekinetic Throw"), which toss a lot of tiny rocks at your target, and the Chunk Chucker ("Project") that you've seen in the videos that tosses a large rock or such at your target. Those are your primary attacks, and your skill trees revolves around them. Your basic rotation is: Double Strike to get the critical hit bonus to pop, then Project to hit them with a guaranteed critical hit. You do this three times, while using your single, basic light saber swing between these attacks because that builds up your "Force" (aka "Mana"). Once you do this three times, you get a stackable buff that causes your Pebble Pew to do a lot more damage as well as heal you (I have no idea why throwing a bunch of rocks at people heals you O.o).

Between that rotation you'll be using your interrupts / brief stuns in order to stop the bad guy from using their special abilities. It's all very basic and repetitive.

Is the game terrible? No. Is it very simple and full of single player game issues? Yes. Maybe I can talk more about those later. For now, I've typed enough and I'm going to go do something else.

I've played a consular to 31.

I'm kind of confused about your expectations. The consular trailers emphasized 'mysteries of the force', and so far I've been doing that. I'm researching old holocrons and using forgotten magic to counter Sith sorcery. Perhaps you were under the impression that it was a political adventure game or something, but it seems like you're disappointed that it has gameplay in it. I can understand not being blown away by the actual content of the cutscenes, maybe they fall apart by act 2 and 3, but I would have expected a game about fighting dudes would intend for me to fight some dudes.

I would love a game that is a choose-your-own-adventure and just 8 hours of dialogue choices... But this isn't that game, and judging it based on what it isn't is kind of crazy. Because Gears of War is a terrible hockey game. They don't even have pucks.

I've got a lvl 50 Jedi Shadow, and I've finished the story. A Consular storyline that is more about diplomacy than the usual MMO combat would be awesome, but it also wouldn't be technically feasible. You're expecting too much. They could also make a smuggler storyline that is primarily focused on actually smuggling.

But this expectation would require them to essentially create several different games in one - and not only that, but several different games with the days and days of content that an MMO requires.

I just don't get what your gameplay expectations were going in. MMO's currently have technical and resource limitations that they have to operate within - that means a lot of repetitive combat and spell using. Despite that, they still managed to create a class story that has plenty of interesting people, "intrigue" in the form of ancient sleeping armies, long lost healing techniques, conferring with long-dead Jedi preserved in holocrons, the usual "turn them back to the light" Star Wars tropes, and so on. But as was to be expected, MMO Combat makes up the vast majority of the actual gameplay.

I have a question - did you pick Sage or Shadow as your advanced class? I've felt somewhat lack luster about the consular story myself (it's not bad, but at least act one is so freaking repetitive since it's literally the same story for you on every single planet. Jedi master missing, find them, find out they're affected, hunt them down, try and convince them to let you help them, beat them down, save them.) But around, maybe the third planet or so, I had the very strong impression that the Shadow advanced class description seemed to fit in line with the story much, much more than what the Sage did. The Sage still fits since you're healing people, but with the shadow having been described more as a "policing our own order" it feels like that's more what it has been so far.

As for the fact that you have a basic rotation and it's repetitive, I've never understood this. Yes, it is repetitive. But aren't first person shooters repetitive because all you're doing is shooting guys in the face? Aren't 3rd person action games repetitive because all you do is hit X, X, X, Square, O, Triangle over and over again to murder stuff? I'm not saying that you're wrong and that it's not repetitive, but, games, by design, are pretty much nothing but repetition, so.. it always seems weird to me. Maybe it's not engaging enough, I could see that, but, most gameplay is really basic and repetitive in games. Heck, look at Tetris, that game is probably as basic and repetitive as it comes, and yet, no one complains about the gameplay in that because of it. Ok, maybe that's not a fair comparison, and I'm sure gameplay can feel more repetitive in one game than another, but just saying that it IS repetitive seems misguided.

Sage has several places where he can choose to fight or talk himself out of a fight.

I don't play a consular, but I do play a sorceror, so I'm your equivalent on the dark side. I agree with @FateOfNever: that the real problem with the story is that, though it manages to be sort of interesting on a point by point level, the biggest problem is that the actual arc of the story is very short. For me it's 1) Find the artifacts (3 times) 2) Find the sith ghosts (3 times), 3) Find out you couldn't control the ghosts and learn how to control the ghosts - in essence three things have happened between levels 1 and 45. I don't see how it would have cost substantially more to choose a somewhat faster pace throughout.

As for your concerns about diplomacy, however, I'll admit I"d like a greater dialogue to killing balance, but... it's an MMO, and not a revolutionary one in that regard. Maybe next time.

Repetitive combat in MMOs is going to be the standard until there's a quantum leap in server technology, and greater proliferation of higher speed internet connections, to be able to parse more variables server-side, as well as be able to push them out to the clients fast enough.

@VengefulGiblets:

Your post makes me think that you've never played a) a Bioware game, and b) an MMORPG. Specifically, the following points:

Standard MMO Design:

BioWare certainly seems to enjoy making desolate landscapes of one form or another, though, and that gets old after awhile.

BioWare made the Consular class just another "bash them in the head" approach to gaming.

Every class mission is you being sent into a location to kill a bunch of bad guys.

Basically, you'll be using the same three main attack abilities from level 1 to level 50.

Standard Bioware Design:

Never once are you making any real decisions

You get a few diplomatic responses in text when making your "choice" during cut scenes, but those are immediately brushed off by the NPC that you're talking to.

All the above are unfortunate design flaws to both the MMORPG genre and the Bioware RPG formula. To walk into a Bioware-made MMORPG expecting otherwise is simply you having uninformed (or misinformed) expectations for this game. It would be like walking into a Mario title expecting a gripping narrative piece.

Unfortunately, none of your decisions can be terribly impactful on your experience. Otherwise, carefully constructed decision guides would make their way onto the internet almost immediately. Hence why companions cannot leave your crew under any circumstance. Affection cannot benefit combat, as it would also lead to the above. Decisions in dialogue cannot lead to severe penalties for players (read: severe credit loss)--again, for the above reason. And unfortunately due to the breadth of decisions, dialogue, and content, making each decision impactful would require an uncanny budget to fund. Just look at how "impactful" (sarcasm) most of the decisions carried over from Mass Effect 1 were in Mass Effect 2, and we're talking about a game that has likely less than 1/10th of the total content in SWTOR.

Finally, onto the bit about not being diplomatic: MMORPGs have to cater to the lowest common denominator in most instances. So when you say you would like to be diplomatic, consider what that entails: frequent, lengthy conversations with dialogue decisions--moreso than any other class. What if a player hated dialogue and cutscenes, and wanted to role that specific healer style for the guild? All of a sudden, he has the worst gameplay experience out there: nothing but talking to people.

@Veektarius: That's a bit of an unfair reduction of the Inquisitor story. While I haven't played it much past level 20, I'll say that it is no more or less complex than KOTOR's "lets go find the starmap pieces! Yay!." You're visiting new areas, meeting with new characters, and I'm sure that each adventure breaks down into something far more complex than "go to artifact and collect it."

war breaks out no matter what so it's not like your diplomacy would even work! I will say Voss has a slightly more diplomatic theme to the story.

Which spec are you using? i play TK sage and hardly use those skills like that (the basic attack doesn't generate force for me?)

*Consular class name is a name only and does not offer any significant changes in quest structure or narrative interaction. Sorry.

Playing as imperial agent (currently lvl 25 on Nar Shadda) gave me a lot of mingling with politicians, officials and such, and, surprisingly, in more than a couple of situations there's a lot of "talk your way out of a fight" occasions, if you read the dialogs and choose adequate responses. The lack of real "diplomacy" in mumorpeger, doesn't shock me, it's about killing mobs on vast, sometimes pretty good looking, but empty plots of land. What baffles me, as always with Bioware RPGs, is the dark\light choices which can be pretty ridiculous as far as my understanding of good vs light goes. Well, in case of imperial agent doing light side, there's more common sense involved than in other classes I have seen, but there are some dialog choices which sound idiotic and are pretty much against the side I hvae chosen, but I have to make them to stay consistent.

You are a Consular In "TRAINING". If we let would be Diplomats gain work experience by talking to foreign nations as the sole diplomat we would be a messed up world. I am playing Consular and I chose Jedi shadow. Threw me a little how I suddenly became a rouge however it dosnt seem out of place for Consular. I have been doing diplomatic things on the small scale.

So if you want a political simulator and to be a diplomat and rise up a revolution. Play this "Old" Republic game. http://www.giantbomb.com/republic-the-revolution/61-14101/ Get it! See what i did there!

Otherwise you are playing the wrong game mate.....and if your lvl 47 you have played the wrong game for a very long time. Aswell as your build is diffrent from mines I am useing 8 moves and thats while I am lvl 14.