Pre-release thread discussion

[Ingmar]

You can buy a dark or light piece with the same stats. Forget if there was also a non-morality piece, there should be. All cosmetic differences.

There definitely needs to be neutral allignment gear if that's the case. I'd argue it's just as hard to stay in the grey as it is to lean toward an extreme. I certainly plan to play my Smuggler and Bounty Hunter as neutral as possible. Getting locked out of gear/rewards/whatever because of that would be somewhat irritating.

Note that you accumulate both light side and dark side points, they don't offset each other, so really you will probably end up being able to use both to a certain extent if you are splitting the difference on your decisions.

Yes they do, your Dark side point total is subtracted from you light side total or the other way around.


You can laugh all you want, it just gets buggy and doesn't play a sound/animation some times.


Kildorn is a soulless creature if he doesn't like T7.

Ah, ok. That kind of makes the way the interface displays it a bit retarded though.

[Montague]

FWIW my Sith Warrior got jumped by an assassin as a result of one of my quest choices. There might not be world changing consequences for your actions but some of the choices you make are at least referenced later on, at least in my experience with the SW.

[Tannhauser]

Went in really excited, but was tempered by some issues.  Really started getting annoyed with navigating Corusant and finding the one(!) trainer.  But last night I slowed down and smelled the roses.  Suddenly the Sith Inky was fun to play and felt powerful (with tank). 

Crafting is very weird but getting used to it.

So, after a downward spiral, I'm now excited to play it at release, especially with my BC cohorts.

[Sjofn]

That is highly entertaining coming from you, Mr. "Why are we killing these raid bosses? I didn't read any of my quests."

Mostly theme wise! Some of them made sense, the only one I think I actually asked about was Mr Blue Dragon who was apparently explained in a book or something. But at the time it was very much "look, just go through this portal and kill the thing on the other side. DON'T ASK WHY HE'S RIGHT BELOW US ALL AND WE AREN'T DOING ANYTHING ABOUT IT OKAY?"

Actually, I can't remember the reason for going to Uld either. We were fighting a big bad lich king across the land, and for some reason decided to go pick a fight with an ancient god or something to save the world?

Blue Dragon was Malygos, he was explained in game. It was the black dragon dude that was seriously "wtf, why." Yogg'Saron is an old god, they fuck everything up (and he was implied to be sort of fucking with all sorts of shit to boot in his boss fight, not that Slap made it that far). But you definitely asked in (five man) dungeons "why are we here" when we had quests IN OUR QUEST LOG TELLING US more than once. 

[kildorn]

That is highly entertaining coming from you, Mr. "Why are we killing these raid bosses? I didn't read any of my quests."

Mostly theme wise! Some of them made sense, the only one I think I actually asked about was Mr Blue Dragon who was apparently explained in a book or something. But at the time it was very much "look, just go through this portal and kill the thing on the other side. DON'T ASK WHY HE'S RIGHT BELOW US ALL AND WE AREN'T DOING ANYTHING ABOUT IT OKAY?"

Actually, I can't remember the reason for going to Uld either. We were fighting a big bad lich king across the land, and for some reason decided to go pick a fight with an ancient god or something to save the world?

Blue Dragon was Malygos, he was explained in game. It was the black dragon dude that was seriously "wtf, why." Yogg'Saron is an old god, they fuck everything up (and he was implied to be sort of fucking with all sorts of shit to boot in his boss fight, not that Slap made it that far). But you definitely asked in (five man) dungeons "why are we here" when we had quests IN OUR QUEST LOG TELLING US more than once. 

I'd never ask if I had a quest in my log!

.. because it would say Lord Whathisface 0/1, thus TELLING me why I'm there!

[Sobelius]

I'd never ask if I had a quest in my log!
.. because it would say Lord Whathisface 0/1, thus TELLING me why I'm there!

Just realized that over the last 2 TOR betas, I opened my quest logs to check something maybe 5 times -- maybe less. I felt I always knew what I needed to do and where to go, and if I needed a refresher, i just hovered over the shiny map arrow thingy. I can actually remember the various quests -- save Odom's daughter from a wrongful arrest, get the support of the Twilek villager's matriarch, interrogate three prisoners and decide their fate, and on and on -- I'm not going to write them out but I'm just running through them in my mind and they're flooding back. It's not that they're especially memorable -- but I'm guessing the verbal element leaves a stronger imprint on my brain than walls of text.

I like the way bonus missions are handled -- they admit they are nothing more than kill counts and don't ask me to know anything more about them than that.

TOR doesn't seem to have anything like public quests a la RIFT or WAR. I would kind of like to have seen Republic players have to deal with massive scale invasions (or Empire players for that matter), but that appears to be off the table.

[Sjofn]

The multi-stage bonus quests seem to be the closest you get to a public quest. They'll go faster in a group (and usually the end thing involves killing a gold elite or whatever), but they avoid the public quest trap of "fuck, I am the only person here, guess I can't do it at all."

[Fordel]

I'll be honest, a LOT of those quests start to bleed into each other if you play for longer sessions.


Please, please recuse my son/daughter/senator/general/orphan/droid/sickpuppy/alligator. 

[Sjofn]

Yeah, I imagine 50 levels is a lot of kitten rescuing/puppy kicking.

[lamaros]

Both my Consular in the 367 weekend and my Knight this past weekend were actual characters. They made choices, had a certain way they acted and grew over the first 20ish levels. They disliked some npcs, they liked others. They had good times with other players, who were actually memorable because you interacted with them in the story. In no other mmo since UO has casual roleplay created such memorable characters. I couldn't tell you a single thing about my Rift characters I took to 50, there was the big purple guy and the little guy with the limp bizkit haircut. In EQ2 I played a pale wizard. In both games they did some stuff. Were they good, evil, what did they think about the quests they were accepting?

My black sphere evolves to a purple parallel.

I had a story for my N. Elf Hunter and my DK in WoW, but they were PURELy in my head and not supported by the game at all.

Poor DK never got the $20 Arthas owed him, either.  Kill a man for his money and what do you get?
   Nothing because goddamn undead kings don't carry cash.

Serious question: Does TOR let you play any character you want, or do you have to fit in with the pre-recorded voice acting?

I can appreciate RPGs like Mass Effect 2 (good game), but the role playing element is really tightly controlled. If you're playing with the same feeling as the designers it feels really powerful, but once you escape the programming everything becomes laughable and breaks immersion. Playing a taciturn guy who cares about his team worked for male shep, but trying to play as an "ends justifies the means" fem shep just made me jump between mother teresa's little sister an a comic sneer. Does TOR have this problem too?

I just wonder because it seems that with MMOs the point would seem to be more about carving an individual space, which was easy in something like WoW (original, 'blackrock depths isn't meant to be finished by most of the playerbase', wow) because it had a very strong sense of world and let you loose in it with much more freedom. Even though you had 300 players running about alongside you you felt different, because they were probably doing things in a different order, or aiming at different end goals. Is this lessened when you have 300 similar characters running around following the same path, and you know that 1/3rd of them are making the same choices as you?

P.S. Sky, that screenshot... those are on the lowest graphics? or is that a joke screenshot from another game? (not really following this anywhere outside this forum, but still interested)

[Sjofn]

You know, it never occured to me to give even a tiny fuck about what other people are doing. Those people are making similar choices to mine? Well, good on 'em. That's still not the same as my character doing it. I mean, I did DA:O ten times ( ) and some of those playthroughs made the same exact choices, but were still distinct characters in my head, because why they made those choices varied.

If you are intent in never just letting go and suspending your disbelief or letting your character just ... do their thing sometimes (you have to do this with the voiced protagonist to some degree, always. And I totally get why some people don't like that, by the way.), then no, this game isn't going to give you the warm fuzzies it gave some of us.

[lamaros]

You know, it never occured to me to give even a tiny fuck about what other people are doing. Those people are making similar choices to mine? Well, good on 'em. That's still not the same as my character doing it. I mean, I did DA:O ten times ( ) and some of those playthroughs made the same exact choices, but were still distinct characters in my head, because why they made those choices varied

Yeah but then why are you playing a MMO? I seriously don't get this. Surely you'd just play single player games if that is what you are after? Either the studio is being stupid throwing millions at something people will dump once they've got their single player value, or players are being stupid, throwing MMO money at something they can get cheaper by playing single player games?

I am just confused about what the MMO element is adding in these situations, is it just co-op, or a forum to bond over shared single player experiences?

Edit: Typos.

[Sjofn]

Because it's a shared experience. I can do shit with them if I want to, and I plan to (I enjoyed the flashpoint I did with Ingmar, for example) but I don't think to myself "man oh man, do I need to be the most unique snowflake in this blizzard" or anything.

[Ingmar]

You know, it never occured to me to give even a tiny fuck about what other people are doing. Those people are making similar choices to mine? Well, good on 'em. That's still not the same as my character doing it. I mean, I did DA:O ten times ( ) and some of those playthroughs made the same exact choices, but were still distinct characters in my head, because why they made those choices varied

Yeah but then why are you playing a MMO? I seriously don't get this. Surely you'd just play single player games if that is what you are after? Either the studio is being stupid throwing millions at something people will dump once they've got their single player value, or players are beign stupid, throwing MMO money at something they can get cheaper by playing single player games?

Because there are *other* areas of content besides just the level up personal quest type stuff? That you do with a group, not to mention the whole shared guild chat experience, etc. It's the same answer it *always* is for "why do people solo in an MMO."

[lamaros]

Because it's a shared experience. I can do shit with them if I want to, and I plan to (I enjoyed the flashpoint I did with Ingmar, for example) but I don't think to myself "man oh man, do I need to be the most unique snowflake in this blizzard" or anything.

How do you define the role if you're sharing an experience with someone who seems to be almost identical? Don't you lose some of that identity? And if not, if it's all in your head, why do you need the game to play it out for you with voice acting?

I am not trying to have a go here, I just obviously have a very different mindset and I struggle to understand the logic behind some of these design choices.

Because there are *other* areas of content besides just the level up personal quest type stuff? That you do with a group, not to mention the whole shared guild chat experience, etc. It's the same answer it *always* is for "why do people solo in an MMO."

I get that, but people here seems to be mostly talking positively about the story driven stuff, with the other MMO stuff being boring and stuck 5 years in the past, so I thought that was the main lure.

[Ingmar]

Well given that most of us probably spend 90% of our time in MMOs solo, a much-improved solo experience (to me anyway) seems like a pretty big leap forward.

[kildorn]

You're sharing an experience with the players more than the characters.

Besides, I don't know what all of Ingmar's Consular's choices are. So if he makes one I would have made, it doesn't diminish my character at all in my mind. I have my story, and I have the shared experience of hanging out with other folks doing a story.

I mean, in an awesome world when the group conversations happen, your party would totally squabble about the choice if they picked different things. But that's nowhere near where we are at.

[Ingmar]

I expect there to be hilarious consequences to flashpoint dialogue choices, at least in guild chat.

[Sjofn]

Because it's a shared experience. I can do shit with them if I want to, and I plan to (I enjoyed the flashpoint I did with Ingmar, for example) but I don't think to myself "man oh man, do I need to be the most unique snowflake in this blizzard" or anything.

How do you define the role if you're sharing an experience with someone who seems to be almost identical? Don't you lose some of that identity? And if not, if it's all in your head, why do you need the game to play it out for you with voice acting?

I am not trying to have a go here, I just obviously have a very different mindset and I struggle to understand the logic behind some of these design choices.

Because they aren't me? That's the thing about art, see. We can all go see the same play, on the same night, for example. Same exact performance. Technically the same exact experience. But we will ALL take away something different from it, because we are all different people.

So you can playthrough on your ManShep, making the same exact choices as me, down to using the same exact model. But we'll have had different experiences. Because you aren't me. I'm not you. What's important to you is not important to me. Even when there's overlap, well, that's just something we can grin at each other over, saying, "Yeah man, exactly. You get it," rather than "OMG MY IMMERSION."



FAKE EDIT: And Kild, wait until you do some flashpoints with us. There will be fussing.  

[kildorn]

I expect there to be hilarious consequences to flashpoint dialogue choices, at least in guild chat.

My consular is going to spam the "your thanks is all the reward we need" button SO HARD.

[Ingmar]

I expect there to be hilarious consequences to flashpoint dialogue choices, at least in guild chat.

My consular is going to spam the "your thanks is all the reward we need" button SO HARD.

While my jedi manwhore spams the "how about a kiss from a pretty lady" one.

[Sjofn]

And my smuggler will be off in the corner making time with all the boys. 

[kildorn]

The only flashpoint I've done in the beta was four jedi, all spamming their light side oh so humble buttons. Quite boring. I think I had the only surprise line, because I thought something slightly snarky would be funny. Turns out the voice for it was downright dickish.

[Sjofn]

Ing was a trooper and I was a consular. He was a much bigger bitch than I was, I think we only actually overlapped responses like ... twice, not including the lightside stuff. It was pretty fun, I look forward to even more slapfights and teasing over that shit.

[Surlyboi]

My knight walks the line between light and dark making the choices that will keep the galaxy from going to shit.

My Imperial Agent however has a personal code and doesn't trust half of her handlers and none of the sith at all as they're all self-serving bastards that would sell out the entire empire if it meant more power for themselves.

[Sjofn]

My consular was a man with a ridiculous capacity for forgiveness, to the point where other jedi were like "dude, you are too nice." He also took everyone at their word, always, forever. Sort of dumb, really. He even trusted everything Hutts said to him. 

[kildorn]

My consular wasn't quite that naive. But I did play up the humble servant of people in need angle a lot. Qyzen was NOT amused.

I just liked the theme of a very humble and peaceful consular who is trying to do his thing in the galaxy, and sighs deeply and atones any time he needs to Force Brain anyone with a priceless urn or droid.

I think I once managed to talk my way out of a fight. Every other time "this doesn't need to come to violence" never actually makes it not come to violence. I think that line just infuriates Sith.

[lamaros]

Because they aren't me? That's the thing about art, see. We can all go see the same play, on the same night, for example. Same exact performance. Technically the same exact experience. But we will ALL take away something different from it, because we are all different people.

So you can playthrough on your ManShep, making the same exact choices as me, down to using the same exact model. But we'll have had different experiences. Because you aren't me. I'm not you. What's important to you is not important to me.

I dunno, it all seems question begging to me. But I'm going to just retire in bafflement.

Well given that most of us probably spend 90% of our time in MMOs solo, a much-improved solo experience (to me anyway) seems like a pretty big leap forward.

This is the answer that makes most sense to me. (I still don't know why people are buying MMOs if they mostly want a single player game, though.)

[Sjofn]

I don't see what's so baffling. I don't need to be reassured at every turn that I am a unique person, because I already know I'm a unique person. What you see is not what I see, ever. So you can be playing your dude similarly to mine, but it's just ... still not the same as me or my experience. It's just similar. What *I* don't get is why it burns you so bad that someone might be having a similar experience to you, off on their own. Who cares?

[Rendakor]

This is the answer that makes most sense to me. (I still don't know why people are buying MMOs if they mostly want a single player game, though.)

Some of us wanted KotOR 3; it's not our fault Bioware decided to make it an MMO.

[Ingmar]

This is the answer that makes most sense to me. (I still don't know why people are buying MMOs if they mostly want a single player game, though.)

That word "mostly" is pretty important. And when you're playing in an active guild, even that "solo" gameplay time is not solo in a social sense, since you still have all the trappings of your guild line, etc. It feels very different to me than say, playing Skyrim solo and chatting with all the same people in IRC.

[lamaros]

I don't see what's so baffling. I don't need to be reassured at every turn that I am a unique person, because I already know I'm a unique person. What you see is not what I see, ever. So you can be playing your dude similarly to mine, but it's just ... still not the same as me or my experience. It's just similar. What *I* don't get is why it burns you so bad that someone might be having a similar experience to you, off on their own. Who cares?

If I was playing a RPG with my friends and everyone decided to be a elf mage I'd decide to be something other than an elf mage, because diversity of character would make the game more fun for me (and I would hope everyone else). It has little to do with me as a person and how I want to be seen and more to do with having an experience that is filled with diversity and different possibilities.

What you see is not what I see, sure. What I see today is not what I see tomorrow either. That doesn't mean I'm content to watch the same movie for the rest of my life, only see productions of Hamlet, or only eat Indian food.

Some people are more content with that kind of stuff, they are much more self contained. That doesn't mean it burns me up. The relationship between your self-contained experience an the MMO bit is something I don't really understand, and I thought I might be able to get a little insight.

This is the answer that makes most sense to me. (I still don't know why people are buying MMOs if they mostly want a single player game, though.)

That word "mostly" is pretty important. And when you're playing in an active guild, even that "solo" gameplay time is not solo in a social sense, since you still have all the trappings of your guild line, etc. It feels very different to me than say, playing Skyrim solo and chatting with all the same people in IRC.

I get that.

I would rather play Skyrim the MMO than Mass Effect 2 the MMO if I had to choose though. (I would rather just play them both as single player games, really).

[Fordel]

Now I'm confused. We aren't all elf mages to begin with?

[kildorn]

But in the fiction of the world there is more than 1 elf mage. It's entirely possible for there to be 400 of them in an area (unless your personal fiction is you are the LAST ONE ALIVE, which is hard to maintain unless the game makes that the premise)

The suspension of disbelief in SWTOR is that all those other Jedi Knights aren't on the same super mission you are, and you just happen to meet them in the world to team up and do X activity. But you're still the only one doing your great personal quest.

Heck, four troopers would make perfect RP sense.

[tmp]

Now I'm confused. We aren't all elf mages to begin with?

I'm the druid who dances on your mailbox, thankyouverymuch.