I’ve been asked to talk about the GC 2009 Walkthrough of Star Wars: The Old Republic from a few readers. This walkthrough was provided by the official SWTOR team and, for some reason, hasn’t been available on SWTOR.com but available on IGN instead. The walkthrough is split into 4 parts, so be sure to watch parts 2, 3, and 4 after the part 1 below. Feels like there are a lot of videos to link you guys these days and I don’t want to overwhelm you with them on the front page, so you can view it after the jump.
I’ll now assume you’ve watched the Walkthrough.
I’m very impressed with the quality of gameplay being shown. I’ll start off by talking about the combat and then go onto more analytical commentary.
Watching the Bounty Hunter fight sent me back a few years to SWG (pre-NGE) when you would stand off against humanoids firing blasters. It was a little awkward at first to watch the BH just stand there exchanging fire, but not entirely ‘unrealistic’ since Bobba and Jango just stood around like a bad-ass all armored in their Mandelorian armor. I like how there’s more to it than just exchanging blaster fire. Listening to the developers talk about the BH flying up and raining down fire on his enemies sounds promising. The flame thrower and wrist rockets along with other gadgets like the charges and darts will likely accompany several other gadgets to make the BH a true Star Wars BH experience.
The Sith Warrior… wow. His combat is animations are better than I expected to see in a MMORPG. Albeit it’s not The Force Unleashed, the Light Saber use is great. Reflecting lasers, thrusts, flourishes, clashing with other sabers, and what you would expect from a Light Saber being used by a Sith(or Jedi) seems to be all there at a level beyond what we can fairly expect to see in a game like this. Force powers are also well done. The force choke and shockwave(what’s that called?) had the appropriate “oomph” and the Force Charge was one of the cooler abilities in a MMO yet. It was as fluid as can be expected.
Smuggler combat was hokey at parts with the gumbi-man placeholders for positional moves. I think it looked a lot better than the Bounty Hunter though. If I had to guess what class that character is without ever knowing anything about it I would have said “Han Solo”, so they accomplished their goal of having the Smuggler fit that role. I hope that Smugglers get a lot more than groin kicks and Kirk rolls though. I want them to be the type of people that will hang out in Mos Eisley. SWG, while not capturing much of the character of a Smuggler, at least captured the necessity of them in the community (even if it was only in a very small way). Looking forward to seeing more of their combat later.
The graphics in general seem to keep with the direction Star Wars has gone lately with the cartoon on Cartoon Network. It’s the popular stylized realism format – the only format that would have worked with a Star Wars MMO, imo. The general “look” can’t be scrutinized by me.  Considering the scope of the Star Wars galaxy, I think we’re in for a real treat in the environments. The Hutta palace better be more than a backdrop illusion. I want to go there. I want to see and feel the depth of my environment and be enveloped in the majesty of it all. The game will lose big points with me if I’m trapped and prevented from striking out and seeing the sights.
In terms of instancing, let’s face it: Everything we saw in these videos looks instanced. Everything shown felt like it was meant directly for that solo BH or the group. That doesn’t detract from how amazing it all looked and the quality of the play, but it detracts from the “massively multiplayer” part of the game – a part that made SWG really shine – which I really feel is necessary to capture how personable the “community” is to the experience — a ‘true’ Star Wars online experience.
The conversation mechanics are really important to how this game will accomplish its goal of being story-driven. It felt like I was watching a movie during the conversation and it flowed (albeit not entirely without some rough edges) nicely with who was present in the group and the responses they chose to make. I think if it’s handled correctly, this type of dialog can provide a cinematic feel to the game that will impress the story upon the player regardless of whether or not the player cares or even wants to know about the story.  I’m expecting my character to live the story of The Old Republic, and as a result I will live it too.
Keeping the game true to MMORPG form pleases me. The hotbar, the combat log, the UI, and how it flows are traditional in their appearance. Thus far, in the MMORPG genre, story has been delivered in bursts and filler has been the traditional act of leveling up and developing your character’s abilities. Let’s use LOTRO as an example. In LOTRO you start off with a lot of story, but then you’re sent off to level up a bit before you continue. During this interim period you’re free to explore, kill bears, socialize with other players, quest, dungeon crawl, collect things, farm, and do the usual things we do in these types of games. How will SWTOR handle this? Will it be a constant flow of these cinematic-type experiences or will we be set loose to do our own thing at our own leisure? Therein lies the true crux of our understanding how SWTOR is being designed. If we’re constantly being fed off in a new direction to experience story content, then we’ll be playing Guild Wars or KOTOR, and not a proper MMORPG. I hope they handle it how LOTRO handles their story quests.
This walkthrough doesn’t have me more excited than I already was, it just confirms how awesome this game will be. Even if it’s a highly instanced and personal experience, rather than a MMORPG, it’s going to be a lot of fun. Admittedly, most of that inherent enjoyment will come from being a life-long Star Wars fan. If you know about Hutta already, you’re going to bring an existing part of you to that place, and that is a powerful tool at Bioware’s disposal: to be able to bring to life something players already cherish.  I expect SWTOR to play well enough to be standalone, but I do not doubt how much more enjoyment Star Wars fans will get out of this game.
The HD video of the GC09 SWTOR Walkthrough is available after you click
Start here
I think instancing those story sequences is the only realistic way to do that, unless you want to see 4 or 5 other sith warriors doing your same mission at the same time, talking to the same dude.
That would be a bit weird no?
Instancing the story sequences is a must. I think the big important story archs need to be instanced, just as they are in LOTRO. It’s the rest of the game that I hope is open. After you kill (or let live) the captain of that Star Destroyer, I would hope you can arrive at a planet and go hunt on it.
I hope you can travel to other planets and hunt on them at your leisure instead of going planet to planet solely based on a story line.
Epic heroic combat. heroic combat. Totally epic. True to the SW experience. Epically heroic.
*yawn*
At no time did that combat look epic or heroic. It looked like a round of Serious Sam on god-mode. Epic to me means struggle. Challenge. The thrill of not knowing what’s going to happen. This video made combat seem completely trivial and boring because it had none of these “epic” elements.
Aside from that, the story and voice stuff seems pretty cool. As for Flashpoint instancing, I’m kind of in agreement that it’s the only way you can really have good and meaningful story and dialogue that will affect your character from that point onward. Here’s hoping their persistent world is of the same quality.
I see the KotoR, but I don’t see the MMO.
@Snafzg: That’s why I didn’t say “epic” once. 😉 I don’t think it looks epic either. It looks about as good as Star Wars combat is going to get in a MMORPG though. The past videos we’ve seen where the tie fighters in the cargo bay start flying and shooting at you… now that was epic in my opinion.
@Railith: I’m waiting for them to show some open-world MMO. So far it’s all been tiny little spaces. I think once they do that they’ll cement the game as a real MMO in peoples’ minds. Til then, it’s a multiplayer RPG.
General thoughts on these videos:
* Watching the bounty hunter combat really disappointed me. I thought this game was going to innovate–looks like they’ve just plastered Star Wars graphics over MMO tropes and added an awkward cover system.
* This game is doubtless going to have the same old “you must be good or evil” one-dimensional ethical nonsense. I can forgive that to some extent because of George Lucas’ universe being fairly childish and simple in general.
* I also did not think the combat was particularly epic. Looked like standard MMO fare plastered with Star Wars graphics.
* Conversation system looks nice, though I’m sure it’ll get boring as heck after you do the same “flashpoint” missions six times. The problem is that if you’re playing one character, and you’re RPing like you should, you would ALWAYS make the same decisions.
* This game will sell wonderfully because of the Star Wars IP and because BioWare generally make polished, fun games. I’m sure a lot of well-meant and well-considered criticism will be disregarded by the Star Wars/BioWare fanboys. It’s going to be a messy situation and one that I do not want to become entangled in.
You can probably do the same flashpoint mission 3 times and have it be different each time based on the different options. It has re-playability going for it at least, such as letting the captain live or die and how it will affect future missions that are available to you.
I think that the opposite of immersive and innovative is “Oh look, the exact same scenario has miraculously happened again with the exact same dialogue! I want to see something new, so I’m going to make a different choice, regardless of what my character would actually do, thereby eliminating the point of having a character (aside from characters being bags of abilities, stats, and shiny things), and putting SWTOR exactly where all other MMOs are.”
They did say that the dialog options would make sense for your class. That was in one of the videos a few months ago. I don’t think you’re going to be prompted with anything out of the realm of acceptability.
If you’re playing a Jedi I doubt you’ll be prompted to cut the guy’s head off and eat his brains, or as a Sith to give the guy a hug.
From the video the option to kill or let the guy live is acceptable as a Sith. They look out for their own interests. Given the BH with him, we know that the BH will affect the dialog options for the Sith as well.
Entirely too early to say whether it’s immersive or innovative. So far nothing stands out as innovative, and immersive is entirely based on feel.
We’ll have to wait and see.
1. In part 3, the commentator mentions that one of the conversation choices the character made resulted in some “dark side points”. Does that mean there’s min-max-ing we need to worry about in conversations? Like yeah you could just play the role and say what you want, but people in MMOs get caught up in making their character as powerful as possible. I do NOT want this to turn into us checking Old Republic thotbott for the most beneficial path in each conversation. Totally kills the flow and fun.
2. In part 3, what would happen if one of the party members dies? Does the whole thing start over, like a save point? Seems like a tricky situation, with this whole thing being very instance-y.
I think you are being way too optimistic. That gameplay looked boring as hell.
The bounty hunter stood still and shot at people, using a cone aoe stun flamethrower for crowd control. He also had it seemed a single target stun in the 4th part, and that death from above move. He looked boring as heck doing it though, and he never took any real damage.
The smuggler…man. A more boring form of the bounty hunter with a weird cover mechanic.
The sith warrior. Uh, well I think we can safely say not many people are not going to pick jedi, he did look cool, and seem to have more exciting moves, but that fight against the jedi boiled down to him standing in front of him meeleeing and hitting force choke. All he did was do the force leap and meelee most enemies, the deflection move was hard to pick out for me to see how it was used in the last walkthrough.
I didn’t see much to be excited about, gameplay really looked like stuns and meelee/ranged. The jedi boss was very weak, all he did was stand in front and meelee, no iconic force powers, no strategy, not even a force push.
As for amazing looks, well idk, I think mass effect had a much better visual style. The backgrounds are very nice though, and I loved the “going to light speed” blur, but characters looked generic and ugly. That “high level sith” didn’t look any different from the lower one, and character design was ugly, bland CGI. The cartoon wasn’t actually good CGI to draw from.
I didn’t expect to be so negative, I was very much looking forwards to this and grateful you put a link to the vids. But I don’t see combat as even involved as the KoToR games let alone an MMO. Not really going to comment on the story, it was too shallow to judge, really just single scenes.
I’m a bit torn by this whole SWTOR thing. I generally like what Bioware do, but I am only very marginally interested in Star Wars. And what I like most about Bioware’s work is probably what I am least interested in seeing in MMOs, namely “story”.
I hope it’s a success, but not too big a success. MMOs could use a touch of Bioware’s quality control, but the last thing the genre needs is to lurch off in the direction of ultra-instanced, quasi-single player decision-tree RPGs.
if they use instances right in this game I think it can be a plus. You know, if your the one send out the deal with that captain it would make sence that your the only one there. As #1 said it would be wierd to have 4 sith’s 3 BH’s and other dudes standing around.
But I think it will be a mix.
When he was down in that crypt in that vally it did not look instanced at all, so I think it will be a mix of instanced missions and none instanced missions. And if they just do it right I dont think that will be a problem.
I though the combat looked nice. Lets remember its a MMO we are talking about. Standing infront of each other while switching to hit each other is pretty damn standard in MMO’s. Heck, most normal mobs in MMO’s just auto-attack and nothing else.
#11 saying the combat looks boring. Combared to which other MMO?! The cover idea is great and realistic. Yeah the bounty hunter was standing still a bit of the time just shoting, but thats what my Sorcs in WAR does 99% of the time when doing PVE.
As keen said its not the forced unleashed. But its still pretty cool for an MMO imho.
And #11 says that the combat looked like stuns and melee/ranged?! I dont get that. Melee/ranged? Thats what Star wars is about I think. And you complain that the Sith force leaps alot and then just Melee them. He said that the Sith is a melee class, it would be wierd if the startet blasting away. But my guess would be that there will be some throw lightsaber skill. Just because they did not show all the skills this time around, does not mean that there aint more.
I did get the heroic part he was talking about a little bit. It did not look heroic, but I can see the coolness in taking on multi enemies instead of 1 at a time. To me, it does not make it easy mode. I mean, if the game is just designed so you allways take on 3 instead of 1, it aint much of a difference is it? I think its all part of making you feel special.
Looks like a cool video. I really hope it’s a good game and can challenge WoW in it’s dominance over the MMO empire. However, I’m slightly worried that it turns out to be a gloried single player RGP that last limited replayability…
Meh.
I’m really unimpressed. It could be a decent KOTOR game by itself I suppose. However, the appeal of a Star Wars MMO to me is the possibility of making my own character in the Star Wars universe. The seems like it is just trying to translate the movies into a video game, which doesn’t seem all that interesting to me. Playing the iconic character types aren’t the most interesting possibilities. It seems to me like they are going so far towards the iconic that every bounty hunter will be a boba fett clone, every smuggler will be a han solo clone, and so forth.
*shrugs*
I actually liked almost everything I saw with the exception that the characters seemed overly resilient, perhaps they are just too Heroic – even in the final “Boss Fight” the Sith took virtually no damage from the Jedi Knight.
Also standing about firing Blasters looks a bit dull for now and I fear a gamut of Sith/Jedi dual-wielding Lightsabres rather than a spread of classes.
@Intruder313: It looked like they had invuln on. Their HP barely moved at all. More than likely so that they didn’t die showing off their own game to the press (it’s embarrassing when that happens).
The combat looks like it’s true to form for MMORPGs. Personally, I’m glad it’s not trying to be one of those “action MMO’s”.
@Keen #9
You didn’t address my point. The dialog options are realistic choices for a character of a certain class, yes, but when confronted with the EXACT SAME encounter multiple times, a player who is actually roleplaying his character even the slightest amount will always have to choose the same dialog choices, because only those choices fit his character’s motivations and ethics. The game is forcing people to stop roleplaying in a system built around roleplaying explicitly just so that they aren’t bored. I see that as a big flaw in this flashpoint system.
@evizaer: Ah, I think misunderstood what you were saying.
Are you thinking that someone will be able to go back and play these flash missions multiple times on the same character? If so, it was my impressions that these were a one-time thing you could do and once you did them you were pushed forward in the story. I hadn’t thought about replaying them on the same character, in which case you’re absolutely correct that someone would have to choose the same option every time.
That would be a very good question to ask them at a dev panel or a Q&A. Maybe it’s already been asked? Anyone have a link answering whether or not flashpoints can be replayed multiple times on one character? Maybe I completely missed it.
Lost:
What I meant was that there were a lot of things missing that we take for granted
There were no debuffs visible solely as debuffs. I’m not discounting the stun attacks may have them, but all they did was run up and engage the enemy and meelee, or stay at range and shoot.
There seemed to be no hate system-you see it in the jedi fight where the bounty hunter is drawing zero hate and is just standing back shooting with an occasional stun. There was no healing or status effects beyond a stun-enemies didn’t move slower, or seem to have accuracy or defense affected.
No real use of tanking or defensive moves either, save for that deflection move and cover, and as often or not they didn’t use it.
That’s what I mean by boring. Even in solo PvE in other games you do more, if it’s only to throw debuffs on the enemy or an occasional heal on you, or to start the fight with a sneak attack.
And all the enemies were the same. They all shot from range, and closed in and used the exact same sword up close. Except for those worm things, they didn’t show any variation in tactics or styles. The Jedi were actually weaker because they had no blasters, they just ran in and swung away. They just had a ton of HP, and I’m assuming will have higher damage dealt.
In comparison, tanking with my ninja in FFXI had me cast a defensive shadow spell, utsusemi ichi, count the hits an enemy did, and then cast utsusemi ni, the second form, to overlap and replenish shadows. in between the cooldown to ichi, I used provoke, cast elemental damaging spells or debuffing spells, change my position to allow a thief to plant hate on me through sneak attack, and maybe use a weaponskill.
When the third shadow from ni was gone, I had to judge casting enough to recast ichi and manually cancel the fourth shadow, because ichi didn’t overwrite ni. I had to cancel it just right-too early and the mob gets a hit in, too late and it wasted and i’m defenseless.
Even like the meelee classes in FFXI had to worry about timing multiple stances for offense and defense, knowing how to ride the hate line. I know this is an early preview, but you’d think they’d have more mechanics than just stand still, shoot, and occasionally use a hotkey move that stuns.
Full voiceover, but low quality avatars and Turbine style animations… yeah, I see KOTOR and a zzzZZzz movie style experience, but no MMO.
GREAT DIALOGUE – no
AMAZING CINEMATICS – no
and we also see why lasers/blasters in general look bad in MMOs, when chars stand still like a brick and take it like a man… brrrr!
I was glad to see the actual game footage after seeing the many cinematic movies. If you follow this game like I do, the SWTOR forums were screaming for game footage. The devs gave it to them. Give them some credit for listening to their future players. The game play video was released way ahead of Bioware’s schedule I believe.
Bioware is the type of company does not release information, show you something, what have you, until they feel they have it right. I say take your time until you have it exactly right.
A story line gives you some purpose in the game. I like to follow a story line. LOTRO gives you story as well, a path of some type to follow, to give you another reason for being there. All MMO’s have a story line. Bioware is just taking it to the next level.
Bioware will have to balance the instances with the open world feel to capture the diverse gamer. As long as I can cross over that far away mountain or go into a cave at the bottom of it, I can deal with instances.
I liked the ability to take cover. I never played a game that had it, so it was new to me. When some of the NPC’s were attacked, they took cover too. They just did not stand there or charge at you like so many other games. Fighting multiple NPC’s gives you exactly what all Star Wars fans enjoy. I am sure once the game is released you will see your hit points dropping unless you take cover.
One poster did not like the bounty hunter. I did. When he used the stun dart the NPC kind of tilted his head back, like he was trying to regain composure. The flame thrower was an AOE attack and looked cool. I am sure as you level that flame thrower will have a longer reach or the ability to inflict damage to more NPC’s. A blaster is a blaster. It’s Star Wars. When the bounty hunter engaged his rocket booster and continued to fight, it showed us exactly what we are used to seeing from a Bounty Hunter. It can’t be done any better in my opinion.
Some of you wanted to see buffs, maybe more abilities etc… I can wait to find out all the many things we did not see, when I get a beta invite.
Evizaer, I read and post on this forum because I enjoy reading other peoples opinions, even yours, about games we all play. I am a 51 year old Star Wars gamegrandfather.
@Keen #19
“Are you thinking that someone will be able to go back and play these flash missions multiple times on the same character?”
Yes. I assumed that the flashpoint missions were BioWare’s innovation in the questing department. I doubt there will be hundreds of them, considering the amount of time doubtless required to make them (which is orders of magnitude longer and more expensive than playing through them). If they are not to be repeated, do you think that they’re going to have normal quests in the MMO vein to do between the 10 flashpoint missions your character can play through in its career? That mix of gameplay styles would be jarring and awkward.
It looks like there’s a world outside of flashpoint missions, but what kind of world is it? A typical MMO world with mobs standing around waiting to be killed and quest givers standing vigil all day and night?
Imagine playing through a flashpoint missionand being really immersed and engaged, then finishing it and getting booted out into a WoW-clone world with Star Wars skins. Yuck. “You’re telling me I have to do fifteen kill quests before I can attempt my next flashpoint mission? *unsub*”.
For all we know, they have some great system to hold this stuff together, but judging from what I’ve seen, it’s a toss-up.
@evizaer: That’s technically how LOTRO does it, and it works surprisingly well. It could honestly go either way. I hope there’s a typical MMO world with mobs standing around. I think the mix of gameplay would indeed be weird, but at the same time not entirely unheard of in this genre.
We should seriously try and push these questions on Bioware devs to see if we can get an answer. This has me really curious.
I’ve played LotRO and this looks nothing like those story mission. LotRO’s story epic quests have NO interactivity–you’re character just does exactly what it is told to do silently and fights what he/she it told to fight.
The flashpoint missions are a lot more immersive. They change based on your class and your input. I’d consider them a different beast entirely to instanced quests-on-rails.
Thomas:
I didn’t see cover being used much outside of the smuggler section. Most of the fights looked like open world stuff, and if cover was important we would see the environments having more opportunities and choke points. Plus, cover is very static, and i can’t see constantly rotating my smuggler from corner to corner while my jedi party member just teleports 200 feet into the middle of the fray. I mean serious that sith warrior just leaping down to the lower level was like wtf.
I don’t know about the bounty hunter. They really aren’t that well developed, even boba fett, and tend to get punked in the films. It just doesn’t seem to be exciting from a gameplay sense to me.
evizaer-
I bet what will happen is that the light side dark side mechanic will only count the first time you do the flashpoint mission. If your conversation choices matter, they will only matter once, and each repeated mission is just for fun-you could rp a saintly sith just to see dialogue options.
However the mechanic and the points should only be a one-time deal, to avoid players having to do exactly as you said, “grind” conversation trees. Because they can’t be one time only, players have to and like to help other players through them.
[…] to Keen for pointing me to the STOR walkthrough.. videos from GC […]
So much hating so early, the mmo crowd is so tough to please. First, I want to talk about everyone bitching about the “epicness.” From what I saw in that video they never had a character over level 10. Please show me a mmo where your character has tons of cc and situational epic moves by level 10. Oh thats right, it doesnt fucking exist. Had they shown us a high level dungeon with high level characters I would be bitching too but the fact is we got a very small taste of combat with this video.
Second, the level 10 was fighting level 6 enemies for the most part which would explain the health not moving much on our heros. Although they may have buffed their defenses for the demo so they didnt die in front of press.
IMO the combat looked pretty damn good for a mmo. Im not sure what people are expecting but at least these npcs are moving around some and taking cover sometimes instead of just running right up to you and exchanging blows like just about every other mmo out there.
I will be reserving judgement until we see more. Unfortunately it’s just too hard to make any solid criticism on any game mechanics without more details. By all means if you want to declare this game a steaming turd based on one video of a low level quest from beta then go for it.
@evizaer: No, I’m not saying the missions themselves are alike. I’m referring to story missions being instanced and off by their own to tell/give the player the story. Then, after the story missions, players are set loose back into a traditional MMO world.
I was saying that sounds like what you were explaining when you said: “..do you think that they’re going to have normal quests in the MMO vein to do between the 10 flashpoint missions your character can play through in its career?”
The’re definitely different looking and feeling in SWTOR, but I hope they handle the gameplay in the same way as LOTRO: Give us these flashpoints, but let us have a traditional MMORPG world to prop them up on.
If we look at this game as an online single player game it will be amazing. If we look at it like a MMO alot of true MMO fans will be disapointed I think.
The game looks fun, but it doesn’t look like it has the epic MMO community feel.
@Nobs: If they bill it as a MMORPG, they’re doing themselves and the fans a disservice. It needs to be billed as a multiplayer RPG, not a MMORPG, if there will be no “epic MMO community feel”.
@ Keen
Totally agree. They could be holding back some great community driven features but that remains to be seen.
What Bioware is doing is cool… but I don’t recall any forums or bloggers saying they didn’t like a game recently because of the lack of story line. It’s always bugs/polish and community.
If Bioware really can develope this into a MMO and not just an online RPG I think they are going to be very happy with their long term return on investment. If they don’t I don’t see the game sustaining it’s pre-order subscriptions past 6 months.
For me it’s all about how I anticipate a game. If they say it’s going to be a MMORPG, then I’ll expect it to play like a proper MMORPG and I will build my hopes up around the idea of it being one – I will create a false impression in my mind. When games release and they don’t live up to what they’ve been marketed as, then I feel like the game didn’t live up to the hype.
If they market it as a multiplayer rpg, then I will know what to expect and I can still get excited about it. The difference for me will be that I don’t build this false impression of what the game will be that it can never live up to.
Either way, it will be a very successful game. Will it be a successful MMORPG or Multiplayer RPG is what I’m wanting to find out.
If it is an “Online RPG” as we have been discussing under the banner of a MMO I forsee a large amount of pre-orders but then a large drop out rate a few months in.
If SW:TOR is marketed as an online RPG and is a F2P that has a subscription system more like a console game; where you can play the basic game for free and just purchase extra “chapters” as the game progresses I actually see it being a bigger sucsess. Atleast from a business marketing stand point.
The game looks fun no matter how it is marketed. If it is very heavily instanced and story driven I just don’t see the end game replayability. I do see it being an ejoyable game to rerollin though. This is all based off what little info we have so far.
I could still be dead wrong.
The make or break for me on this game will be if there is ship combat. Without it, Im just not that interested.
A smuggler who can’t smuggle is just kind of lame. Same for the Bounty Hunter.
From what I have seen they have not said whether there will be ship combat yet, someone please correct me if I am wrong.
I haven’t heard anything. I wouldn’t get my hopes up for ship combat/flight.
@ Noob,
I just wonder how you see the difference between a proposed ‘heavily story driven instanced end game’ and what is currently delivered by the gorilla that is WOW? The only difference I can see is the story telling dynamic prior to fighting, and the new Argent Tournamanet raids has that in droves now (but you get no interaction).
WAR seems to be one of the few that has a markedly different end game with the world PVP, but people seem to not like that very much at all.
@dblade:
Your right about the cover. Smugglers are the only ones who can take cover.
@keen
I also made some observation as I re-watched some of the game footage. If you watch video#3 you’ll notice in the bottom left hand corner what looks like a random number generator. That generator appears to me that who ever has the higher number does the talking. Which could mean your choice is the choice other people in the group must live with. They talk about it to some degree in the video link below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8A8f3fWTGc
I thought one of the earlier videos discussed that there are a couple of skills and stats that effect who will be the one talking to the NPC in party situations?
Thomas
Now that you mention it I do see that. It looks like they “roll” for a chance of acting, and maybe win the opportunity to influence the flashpoint-by killing or sparing the captain.
That’s a dangerous thing, depending on how much the flashpoint influences character development. If each character develops among a lightside/darkside spectrum, and a flashpoint affects all characters in a party globally in terms of points, you make it risky to group up.
If I want to skew my bounty hunter lightside, its going to be sucky if the sith’s kill gives me a ton of darkside points I need to work off. Maybe it’s only the “winning” character that gets the points though, and that way only environmental changes affect everyone.
I heard the same as Matt (#39) that certain skills determine who talks. Maybe the number gen is a temporary thing. Having it be random is a dumb idea; Bioware has to know that.
@Matt
Not sure if you are trying to make fun of me or not, but it’s Nobs, not Noob.
One of the worst parts about WoW is the poor attempt at story telling. It’s like they have one foot in the water one foot out of the water. AoC proved what many MMO only tried to do. You can’t have an epic story for every person. It just comes off cheezy.
WoW has an overall story of what is going on with the world, but in the end you are just another nobody. WAR is the same way, even more to the point that WAR tries to emphasize that you are just a soldier. (Phasing is neat but again it’s a story more about the world than you)
Everyone can’t be Luke Skywalker or Han Solo… because as Syndrome said in The Incredibles: “And when everyone’s super, no one will be.”
I am personally very tired of questing. I don’t want to quest in another MMO to max level. Go here, kill 10 of that, come back. It gets old. It was nice at first coming from EQ and EQ2 but now I miss grinding mobs. I would prefer a game that doesn’t force me to play it any specific way in order to earn exp effeciently.
Not sure skills would be better keen. You’d have to roll with them anyways, because I don’t think you’d want a higher-ranked persuasion person dominating every conversation.
if i were designing it, I would just let players set a hierarchy of response. Primary flashpoint speaker, secondary, and tertiary/flavor speaker. That way players could progress the conversation in specific ways and choose a role, without randomness or skill imbalance counting. I think skills should just be like in KoToR, opening up alternate ways to respond and change instances.
@ Nobs (and mistake)
Was just pointing out that a game like WoW has as it entire end game instances (Raid, Arnena, BG). It is the most effective end game in the landscape today given its player retention post max level. I gather from your comment that you believe that once a player has done their max level flashpoint instance then what would be there to do? If WoW is any indicator then you do it again, but with the ability to ignore the story.
The thing that I think will be a lot harder for SWOTOR than WOW is who do you take down in end game. People seem to not mind taking out all the largest Lore figures in WOW (how many are queuing up to kill Arthas), whereas if you had players killing a Darth Vader level villain at the first end game content of a Star Wars franchise people may be up in arms.
Will be interesting, but I think I will play it through once to see the story. I have it pegged in my mind as a single co-op game where I will treat everyone bar my mates as NPC’s. An Online RPG for me.
@Matt
I sort of agree. If the game is so dependant on story then you are going to have to repeat it at some point for a “raid encounter”. Unless they some how have reinvented raiding, which I doubt.
I think I came off to anti-story in my other posts. I’m not against story telling in a MMO. In fact I think they really could benefit more from it. What I’m against is stories as an excuse for quests or an instance. Every story chapter doesn’t need to require you to kill 10 jawa’s.
I’m also very much against another story that works how AoC did. Not everyone can be the saviour of the world because it just comes off stupid.
Hmm..Well My first impression was “Mass Effect.” This isn’t a bad thing, but I can see a lot of the technology there used in this game. Weather or not this game satisfies your definition of “Massive” in MMO, is sort of a pointless debate. I will play the game on its own merits regardless of how you want to argue where it should be classified. 🙂
The strong story element has the chance of making this game an Alt-er’s paradise. That is not only will you be able to get different experiences between Republic and Sith, but between individual classes and maybe even with the same class.
Actually not having a healing class is a good thing, I like the fact they finally breaking the bad arch types set by early MMOs and if they are using star wars for their archetypes they should be using the system that George Lucas used to create the characters. Though not sure how they would deal with 16 different characters…
Another thing is there is a normal MMO setting because you see it when they walk outside as the bounty hunter and kill random mobs.