bioware doesnt want to you to finish swtor quickly.
this is evident by the transportation system designed in swtor.
once you unlock ‘travel’ running and your speeder mount the game decides its cool to double and triple the lengths you have to move around. suddenly tight, small planets dense with content are exchanged for large sprawling planets with the exact same amount of content. the way aspects of the game are set up seem designed to waste your time. for example:
to go between planets you use a starship, but you cant speeder from your ship to the planet surface, you have to walk through the startport areas, and its never a straight line. you cant fast travel into your ship.
the ‘capital city planet’ for imperials has a gap in its transportation network. to get to the story zone of this place you have to take a speeder from the spaceport to just outside of the city, then walk to another transport hub, take that, and continue walking to your story area. im told the republic side has a similar setup. you repeat this process many times over the course of your classes storyline. it serves no real purpose other than to eat up time.
you do have a fast travel ability that lets you zip to areas you have been to before, but it is on a 30 minute cooldown. this feels punishingly large given how big some of the planets are.
allegedly this is about conveying a sense of immersion and scope, but there are plenty of ways a well crafted cutscene could do this better. in fact there are such cutscenes between loading screens. and there are plenty of places to stare across the vast expanse in front of you. but there is rarely an interesting vista to behold in the game. the terrain is copy pasted throughout so anytime you think you are seeing something interesting, you are sure to see it again, somewhere else, poking its face at you.
you walk and rewalk the same interiors with the same design all to pad out your playtime.
just so you dont finish the game too quickly.
just so you stay subscribed.
so bioware can collect $15 a month to finish their unfinished game.
i play games sometimes.
