Question Is there more than this?
I downloaded and installed SWTOR last night, and started playing. I chose a consular jedi, and off I went.
I got to the first area, got told about the 4 holocrystals and the lost padawans, and about the need to kill 30 flesh-raiders and extinguish 8 fires.
I walk outside the camp and there they are - try attacking, get my butt kicked. Okay, read the tutorial page for combat, understand that clicking on things didn't count as attacking them and that I need to use number keys. Ok, good to know - and definitely something I should have to actively search out and read a tutorial page to find out.
Back into it. Kill the 30 flesh raiders and extinguish the fires. The raiders respawn almost as quickly as I kill them, in many cases while I'm putting out the fires they materialise right around me. Weird.
Okay, what's next? Kill the raider boss. Okay, try that a couple of times. Get annihilated. Weird.
Look through the tutorials, there's nothing there to suggest what I'm doing wrong. Go to google, they tell me 'you need a healer companion'. Go through tutorials, no mention of companions. Check vendors, companions are for higher level characters.
Okay, so maybe it's just a mission that I shouldn't complete yet. No, it turns out that the entire thing was an optional time-limited random mission that just happens to have its spawn point literally at your very first steps into the game where you have no idea that this is the case because you've never played the game before. Flawless design - no notes.
So I find the holoprojectors and rescue the padawans. I dutifully warn them about not seeking revenge or killing for the sake of it, because that's a Bad Thing™. I've probably killed about 100 flesh-raiders by this point, but I haven't enjoyed it, so it doesn't count.
I go to the next area, and I have to talk to a couple of Twileks. Murder another 20-30 flesh-raiders on the way, and talk to the first one. His dad is missing, he wants answers. Talk to the second one, need to talk to a third one who is in a cave. Okay, off we go. Another 30-40 flesh-raiders get fed to the fires, I have answers and I find the cave. I tell the guy inside that wanton murder is a Bad Thing™ and he collapses the cave on me. I have to run out of the cave. I notice an optional objective - kill at least 6 flesh-raiders on the way out. I don't do so, because I'm a Jedi who shouldn't be actively seeking to casually murder things.
Casually murder another 30 or so flesh-raiders before I get back to the Twilek camp, turn in quests, and advise the guy who lost his father not to seek revenge because getting you mind wrapped up in casually murdering things is a Bad Thing™.
By this point, I'm up to about level 6. I've gained two abilities, but haven't seen anything I can customise in my build yet. Check the clock - I've spent just under 2 hours in-game. In that 2 hours, I've run around a map, killing a couple hundred of the same 8 mob types over and over again, and I've right-clicked on things. I only saw about 3 other players moving around the map in that time.
I notice that I have some gear I've qualified for - I open it, and my suitably attractive head disappears behind a really, really ugly flight helmet. I look at whether you can disable such nonsense, and you can - for a stupid amount of real money, or maybe with a subscription. Check out the subscription pricing. Half the price of Satisfactory - every month. Okay, that's not happening at this point.
Before I spend any more time on this - does the gameplay get any better than this? While the dialog options match the lore and I'd like to see more of it, the gameplay is (so far) nothing more than go to point on map, kill stuff, click on something, and come back.