SWTOR

[murdoc]

No escorts are fine with me.

I hate escort missions in ANY game. Having said that the point still kinda stands, they need some sort of slightly different questing system.

[Mosesandstick]

I think the lack of variety in gameplay is a massive negative for SWTOR. Most of the enemies I fought were brain-dead, though I understand they have been working on this.

[Fordel]

Yea, they've been adding in more abilities on mobs slowly. Not terribly worried about that.

[Mosesandstick]

Could you expand on that? I'd really like to know; there basically wasn't mob AI in the build I played. Group quests were pure cc + tank and spank and world mobs would just attack with the odd heal.

[TripleDES]

The game releases in a month. What's there exactly to work on during this one month? I'm sure crunch time over at EA-governed Bioware must be pretty fun these last days.

[Fordel]

Some mobs will drop Fire to not stand in, some duck into cover (the same cover smugglers/IA's use), you have some stuns, snares, I had a few ranged mobs actually kite me. It's not anything spectacular mind you, but it does add some flavor and dimension to these things. Silver and Gold elites can virtually mirror a players talent spec at times.

[Ratman_tf]

The game releases in a month. What's there exactly to work on during this one month? I'm sure crunch time over at EA-governed Bioware must be pretty fun these last days.

Sleep deprivation makes game development fun! 

[TripleDES]

Sleep deprivation makes game development fun! 

Insomnia induced tripping!

[UnSub]

Sleep deprivation makes game development fun! 

Insomnia induced tripping!

Lack of sleep is an important ingredient to the miracle patch.

[Fabricated]

I played a trooper to 20 during the last beta weekend and I rather liked it. The thing about there not being any real gimmicky quests is absolutely true at least for 1-20 in my experience. There's a lot of roleplaying and most of the grindy "kill x of y mob" stuff is handled through automatically triggered bonus quests and you'd literally have to avoid 90% of the mobs on the way to your main quests to not finish them.

It literally is WoW in space but if you honestly didn't expect that you are retarded. The companion system, crafting, and story are all good. Crafted items are generally solidly better than quest rewards if you bother keeping your crafting skills up, which is nice.

My main complaints so far from my one beta weekend are as follows:

1. While this was lower level stuff, tanking as a vanguard was terrible. The game gives you no idea what abilities generate additional threat and you have like 2 abilities that even vaguely look tank related (Ion Blast which you can talent to make enemies do less damage, and of course a shield wall knockoff). I couldn't hold a candle to Jedi Guardians or some tank specced companions for that matter. I did very competitive damage however.

2. Mob difficulty in questing areas is -wildly- inconsistent. I did the elesses flashpoint with no real tank or healer with an underleveled group and we barely made it through some boss fights but we did it. I had a full group of incredibly well equipped players and a dedicated healer, and we got our fucking balls torn off by this quest on Corusant where you go into a phased area to get some guy's property deed back. I literally died in 2 seconds after pulling a single group with 2 mobs CC'd, and they were the same level as me. It took like 7 wipes to get through it, and then only I got quest credit.

[Furiously]

Yea once whoever the instance owner is loots the deed, it stops respawning. So owner needs to loot last.

[Fordel]

1. While this was lower level stuff, tanking as a vanguard was terrible. The game gives you no idea what abilities generate additional threat and you have like 2 abilities that even vaguely look tank related (Ion Blast which you can talent to make enemies do less damage, and of course a shield wall knockoff). I couldn't hold a candle to Jedi Guardians or some tank specced companions for that matter. I did very competitive damage however.

Other then the actual tanking stance (Ion Cell), you don't have any specific attacks with extra threat. Troopers/BH just do more damage overall though, so threat isn't an issue (unless your group is a bunch of god damn retards   ). Generally you want to focus on the elemental attacks (we get some little upgrades for them and they ignore armor), which tend to be in that 10 meter range, but you also end up with a really beefy stockstrike that refreshes it's cooldown every shielded attack.

The tank'ish stuff fills in as you level up and fill the talent tree. Smoke Grenade (which was recently moved up so you can get it earlier), Adrenaline Rush (A sort of laststand/HoT), Harpoon (death grip), Storm (charge), increased shield chance/amount. The actual mitigation is really passive, but you have a decent amount of control and interrupts.


It doesn't really start to fill in till 25-30 though  yea.

[Baldrake]

Baldrake, how crap? My creaky old core 2 duo 2.4GHz/4GB ddr2 800 was running it great, though I had a gtx460 upgrade at the time. Only slowdown I saw was the final minutes of the weekend, dance party on the senate steps with tons of people shooting off aoes.

Thanks Sky, I'm not sure how crap, but now I have a good datapoint...

[Mosesandstick]

2. Mob difficulty in questing areas is -wildly- inconsistent. I did the elesses flashpoint with no real tank or healer with an underleveled group and we barely made it through some boss fights but we did it. I had a full group of incredibly well equipped players and a dedicated healer, and we got our fucking balls torn off by this quest on Corusant where you go into a phased area to get some guy's property deed back. I literally died in 2 seconds after pulling a single group with 2 mobs CC'd, and they were the same level as me. It took like 7 wipes to get through it, and then only I got quest credit.

The two quests that caused people to go absolutely mad on the Rep side were this one, and a Mandalorian group quest on Taris.

I'm surprised the bank deed quest hasn't been changed. Compared to everything else before it, the difficulty is insane. When I did it we had an ideal team comp with dps, cc, tank and heals. Still couldn't do it. The global chat about the quest was pretty funny. Up to that point you didn't need a healer for anything, and people who hadn't done it would try and do it without a healer and promptly wipe on the first group of mobs. You also couldn't re-enter the dungeon if you'd finished the quest, another thing I really hope they've changed.

The Mandalorian one wasn't as difficult, but it was much, much, longer and extremely bland. It was pick up X, destroy Y whilst you ran around a map wondering where everything was / waiting for things to respawn. Took 5 hours to finish that one, and there were only around 4 different groups of mobs you'd fight.

[Shatter]

Ive been pretty successful in flashpoints, etc with groups by having decent heals.  Having at least 1 full healer and a backup almost anyone seems capable of tanking the early content.  This seems to work ok at least to around level 20.  Im sure at later the levels the need for a true tank is probably much more prominent. 

[koro]

2. Mob difficulty in questing areas is -wildly- inconsistent. I did the elesses flashpoint with no real tank or healer with an underleveled group and we barely made it through some boss fights but we did it. I had a full group of incredibly well equipped players and a dedicated healer, and we got our fucking balls torn off by this quest on Corusant where you go into a phased area to get some guy's property deed back. I literally died in 2 seconds after pulling a single group with 2 mobs CC'd, and they were the same level as me. It took like 7 wipes to get through it, and then only I got quest credit.

The two quests that caused people to go absolutely mad on the Rep side were this one, and a Mandalorian group quest on Taris.

I'm surprised the bank deed quest hasn't been changed. Compared to everything else before it, the difficulty is insane. When I did it we had an ideal team comp with dps, cc, tank and heals. Still couldn't do it. The global chat about the quest was pretty funny. Up to that point you didn't need a healer for anything, and people who hadn't done it would try and do it without a healer and promptly wipe on the first group of mobs. You also couldn't re-enter the dungeon if you'd finished the quest, another thing I really hope they've changed.

The Mandalorian one wasn't as difficult, but it was much, much, longer and extremely bland. It was pick up X, destroy Y whilst you ran around a map wondering where everything was / waiting for things to respawn. Took 5 hours to finish that one, and there were only around 4 different groups of mobs you'd fight.

The Mandalorian one (Ravaged Reconstruction if anyone wants to know to avoid it) was actually made much, much easier this past build. Previously, the Mandos would be in groups of 5-6, with 3-4 Elites, and sometimes with a Boss. Now they're 5-6 Mandos, but with 3-4 Strong mobs and a couple normal ones. It's still extremely long, as it took over an hour, even with me knowing where everything was and avoiding as many mob groups as possible, but it's much less of a ball-kicker filled with enemies that take forever to die. The old-style spawns are still there, but limited to the very last part of the area, so there's only a few pulls which will destroy your ass.

The Bonus line for it, though, can fuck off. It leads you all throughout the (non-instanced) complex you slog through, and you finally get to the final boss-kill objective as you reach the end of the normal quest objectives. Then you find out that you have to go all the way back down to the bottom of the area, fighting off dozens of freshly-respawned enemy packs, to find the optional boss.

[Modern Angel]

IIt literally is WoW in space but if you honestly didn't expect that you are retarded.

There's a difference between expecting it and wondering if that's enough anymore. And if it IS enough for you, how long is it enough for you?

[Thrawn]

IIt literally is WoW in space but if you honestly didn't expect that you are retarded.

There's a difference between expecting it and wondering if that's enough anymore. And if it IS enough for you, how long is it enough for you?

This is kind of how I stand with the game, WoW in space will only keep me interested for so long and I'm sure a lot of people feel that way.  The frequency and quality of the updates seem likely to make or break this game.  With EA being involved I worry it's going to be quantity over quality expansions, and trying to charge for everything.

[Furiously]

Since the NDA is down what server is everyone on?

[Fordel]

I'm on Leviathan I think? Christ I don't actually remember now, 90% sure it's Levi though.

[Lantyssa]

Leviathan

Sith Assassin - Lantyssa
Baby Trooper - Ailuria

[UnSub]

It's still extremely long, as it took over an hour,

Heh, I remember when playing CoH taskforces that were considered "short" at 4 hours. And that was when CoH was the 'fast, twitchy MMO'.

How times change.

[koro]

It's still extremely long, as it took over an hour,

Heh, I remember when playing CoH taskforces that were considered "short" at 4 hours. And that was when CoH was the 'fast, twitchy MMO'.

How times change.

The difference is, of course, that if Ravaged Reconstruction were a dedicated flashpoint/dungeon with a storyline to follow as opposed to a simple group quest padded out with "KILL TWO HUNDRED MANDALORIANS (this is not an exaggeration) WHILE GETTING LOST MOVING FROM POINT A TO B TO C TO D BECAUSE THERE IS NO INTUITIVE WAY OF KNOWING WHERE YOU HAVE TO GO", nobody would have a problem with it taking around an hour to do. But when your rewards are only a blue-quality item of dubious usefulness, some commendations, and a headache, it begins to not be worth it. The earlier Taris 4-man heroic mission Fall of the Locust is pretty much the complete opposite: it's got a split of about 25% outdoor non-instanced stuff and 75% indoor instanced stuff, with some at least somewhat challenging combat without it being a wipefest or rushing to beat respawn timers. It even has a little bit of dialogue stuff to play around with, and a cool "let's get ready to kick ass" pose your entire group makes at the end of a scene before you move on to the last stretch. And it takes about half the time of Ravaged Reconstruction.

But I played early CoH too. Even "short" TFs like Synapse were still excruciatingly long, and felt so at the time. It's just when you had eight hour TFs like Quarterfield or the six hour wipefest of Positron to compare them to, the relatively shorter stuff seemed like a fart in the wind at times. It wasn't considered good design back then either; aside from a handful of vocal forum diehards or some of the people who spent their entire CoH career at level 14 RPing in some godforsaken corner of Galaxy City, everyone bitched at Cryptic to chop out some of the very obvious filler missions in most of the TFs. As an aside, it speaks volumes to Cryptic's design sense that it took the studio splitting off from NCSoft for that to finally happen.

I remember when Croatoa was released in, what? Issue 4 or 5? When when some folks managed to get the par time for the Katie Hannon TF down to about 45 minutes, some people that were so conditioned to the absurdly long Everything Else felt like it was cheating. Since then? Katie Hannon's been the baseline for how long to design a TF to be.

So no, I don't think times have changed so much as devs have more or less wised up that players aren't going to do silly things like treat Task Forces in CoH as mini D&D campaigns where the group agrees to come back at a later date because the thing is just so fucking long.

[luckton]

For those about to rock, the client is up and ready for download.  For previous weekend people, you need to go back to /tester and RSVP for this weekend's test in order to update your client.

[Numtini]

While the COX taskforces were really on the long side, the big difference between COX and current games is you didn't have to do TFs or foreswear group content whatsoever. Simple random missions formed the standard of your 30-60 minute runs. I think this is where a lot of current games, WoW Cata in particular, have run off the rails--trying to make serious involved dungeons be the same ones you use for generic easily repeatable group content.

[UnSub]

I agree that what TFs were originally set up for - for teams to log in, play a few missions in it, then log out for another time - was very rarely used that way. It sounds like Flashpoints are the evolution of that idea, only much shorter still.

The Katie TF was an interesting TF that some groups ran in less than 20 minutes. Maybe even less than 15 minutes. Lots of people ran it. No-one wanted to run the Quarterfield TF, which was a 6 - 8 hour monster of highly repetitive missions.

However, I'm still wondering out loud how long the shine will remain on such flashpoints. WAR's PQs were lauded very loudly at launch about how great they were, yet within that 30 days post-launch there were only 1 or 2 being run over a few zones and those were the easiest to do.

It doesn't help that reports of mob AI in SWOR is very, very vanilla. If 80% of the game experience is killing mobs, you want that to be interesting. At least in BioWare non-Austin's other games you can turn the game to easy mode so the combat is quick to get through (haven't seen any reports of that in player reports, but if its in there that will be interesting to know).

[Merusk]

For those about to rock, the client is up and ready for download.  For previous weekend people, you need to go back to /tester and RSVP for this weekend's test in order to update your client.

Thanks for the heads-up. They hadn't sent out the e-mails to the other testers yet but the /tester page has been updated and those of us with the "next phase" e-mail can download now as well.

[01101010]

For those about to rock, the client is up and ready for download.  For previous weekend people, you need to go back to /tester and RSVP for this weekend's test in order to update your client.

Thanks for the heads-up. They hadn't sent out the e-mails to the other testers yet but the /tester page has been updated and those of us with the "next phase" e-mail can download now as well.

 While I applaud them for kinda sorta taking security seriously, every fucking time I try and do this beta stuff I have to reset my password, or set a ton of security questions, or light my hair on fire... pain in the ass all around. Just allow authenticators already so we can test those out and stop fucking making me reset my password every week.

p.s.: they better have authenticators for Android phones... 

[Der Helm]

For those about to rock, the client is up and ready for download.  For previous weekend people, you need to go back to /tester and RSVP for this weekend's test in order to update your client.

Thanks for the heads-up. They hadn't sent out the e-mails to the other testers yet but the /tester page has been updated and those of us with the "next phase" e-mail can download now as well.

Downloading at 5 MB/s... weeeeeee ...

[luckton]

p.s.: they better have authenticators for Droid phones... 

Fixed

[luckton]

This came out back in August, but the NDA was still up, so I didn't want Rasix to get all angsty 

Since we're now in the clear, I thought I 'd share it.  The first part is BW at GamesCon '09 showing off a quest conversation.  The second is the same quest conversation, but with two years of further development poured in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT-qwewvSAM&feature=feedrec_grec_index

[Sky]

They really need to get their email notification shit figured out imo.  

Improving security does not bother me. Limiting the characters I can use in a password to about half of my normal length does.

[Sand]

Correct me if Im wrong but are testers saying that mobs are respawning inside the instanced areas?

If so that screams old school to me, how immersion breaking is it to refight and kill the group you just killed 20 minutes ago. Unless its some big assualt with waves after waves of bad guys, having guards you killed 20 minutes ago magically reincarnate is silly in an instance.

[luckton]

Correct me if Im wrong but are testers saying that mobs are respawning inside the instanced areas?

If so that screams old school to me, how immersion breaking is it to refight and kill the group you just killed 20 minutes ago. Unless its some big assualt with waves after waves of bad guys, having guards you killed 20 minutes ago magically reincarnate is silly in an instance.

Would you feel better if you just thought of them as 'reinforcements'?

[Mosesandstick]

Flashpoint mobs should not respawn, whilst mobs in normal group dungeons will.