SWTOR

[ezrast]

I thought it was annoying in Rift and turned it off. *shrug*

[Merusk]

I did after a while in the beta, too.  If I've got the map open and I'm traveling I'm looking at other things on the actual map that the fade-out makes hard to see.  I'm not using it to navigate to the quest objective, that's what compass-map indicators are for.

The Swg Diablo-esque map, however, I'd make regular use of.

[sam, an eggplant]

I spy a guy on a classic speeder in that dev blog:

A taxi.

[Lantyssa]

I'll be nice to SWTOR today and say those maps look pretty slick.

[Surlyboi]

I spy a guy on a classic speeder in that dev blog:

A taxi.

That

[DraconianOne]

I will say though that it perks my interest that they recognize the coolness of the feature enough to not just steal it, but to bother mentioning it in a post.  Presumably that means there's more than one dude there able to recognize that it's a worth-mentioning feature, which is good.

The map fading while you move was shown at PAX last September so it's not new or just been implemented after Rifts release. Source.

[Abelian75]

The map fading while you move was shown at PAX last September so it's not new or just been implemented after Rifts release. Source.

Ah, cool.  To be clear, I didn't mean to imply any negative connotation with the word "steal."  Stealing is almost as good as inventing.

[eldaec]

Overlayed maps in rpgs aren't exactly new.

[Draegan]

Speaking of RIFT features, every game needs to steal their AOE loot ability.  Looting one corpse at a time is so 2010.

[eldaec]

Fuck aoe looting.

Just have loot drop directly into inventory (see : CoX and others).

[Nija]

That ________ in the background reminds me of ________ in WoW. 

Repeat about 500 times in your first 15 minutes of game play.

[Sky]

Speaking of RIFT features, every game needs to steal their AOE loot ability.  Looting one corpse at a time is so 2010.

Yep. Having AE autoloot is so nice, and being able to shift-loot to bring up the dialog (like in dungeons where space is at a premium) rounds it out nicely.

[luckton]

http://www.gamereactor.eu/news/8053/GRTV:+Star+Wars:+The+Old+Republic/

Apparently Game Reactor's been sitting on this video for a while since E3, and decided to put it out.  Doesn't give us too much new info that we didn't already get from various E3 sources, but the fanboys now have a direct quote from the lead writer saying "This is our launch year."   

[Sky]

Lot of pro-group 'traditional' mmo talk in that interview. Some good things, but as someone who's not in a raiding guild, some pretty awful things as well.

[Surlyboi]

You'll be ok Sky. Trust me. 

[luckton]

It's a mixed thing so far with the traditional/non-traditional thing they've been doing so far.  Combat mechanic-wise, they're going non-traditional by providing every class with an out-of-combat rez to use on others, and giving all Consular Sages and Sith Sorcs in-combat rez (regardless of them specing in their respective healing/support trees)

We're just going to have to wait and see how it plays out for real.  I don't doubt that as a first-time company trying to get a wrangle on the whole 'raiding' thing is going to get into pit-falls, esp. when the people that brought us DAoC and WAR got merged into 'em halfway through production.

[Reg]

Since I've already decided that my the endgame will involve rolling an alt I'm not going to be a jerk and complain about the devs spending a little time on the raiding endgame for people that don't want to play exactly like me.

[Amaron]

He dropped a hint in there that there's going to be some endgame thing that we haven't seen before which they haven't revealed.   They must be worried they won't get it in by release or something.   Would be nice if they did think of something new though.

[luckton]

He dropped a hint in there that there's going to be some endgame thing that we haven't seen before which they haven't revealed.   They must be worried they won't get it in by release or something.   Would be nice if they did think of something new though.

It does seem that they're trying to play everything they consider to be 'new and exciting' (besides the whole 'It's got a STORY' deal) pretty close to the chest.  That fear of Bliz stealing their thunder must be pretty large. 

[Surlyboi]

He dropped a hint in there that there's going to be some endgame thing that we haven't seen before which they haven't revealed.   They must be worried they won't get it in by release or something.   Would be nice if they did think of something new though.

It does seem that they're trying to play everything they consider to be 'new and exciting' (besides the whole 'It's got a STORY' deal) pretty close to the chest.  That fear of Bliz stealing their thunder must be pretty large. 

Because that's what Blizz does. They don't make great games out of whole cloth, they make solid, polished affairs cribbed from the failures and successes of other games.

[Sky]

Since I've already decided that my the endgame will involve rolling an alt I'm not going to be a jerk and complain about the devs spending a little time on the raiding endgame for people that don't want to play exactly like me.

Yeah, I was thinking that, too. Until he started talking about raiding being the way you find out the story /behind/ the story. And grouping being the way you wrap up big plots.

So casual players, don't expect to be seeing any big name characters or really digging too deep into the story.

[Paelos]

Since I've already decided that my the endgame will involve rolling an alt I'm not going to be a jerk and complain about the devs spending a little time on the raiding endgame for people that don't want to play exactly like me.

Yeah, I was thinking that, too. Until he started talking about raiding being the way you find out the story /behind/ the story. And grouping being the way you wrap up big plots.

So casual players, don't expect to be seeing any big name characters or really digging too deep into the story.

I think I see a flaw in their story-based system. 

[Velorath]

Depending on whether or not raids will be viable for casual or PUGs, I think I can at least stomach doing each raid or flashpoint once for the story.  I'm not going to bother farming them for gear though (unless they happen to be really fun somehow).

[Amaron]

Yea they haven't really revealed anything about raid difficulty yet.   It's certainly possible they are going to shoot for a more casual friendly approach.

[Velorath]

Hopefully. It's not really the idea of raids I hate, it's raid progression.  I don't like the concept of doing the same content over and over until I have the gear I need to do the next piece of raid content.  Also, while I can see flashpoints having a heavy story focus still, I don't see raids really working story-wise, or rather since the dialogue system would pretty much be pointless with more than one group of people, I don't see story in raids going beyond cut scenes.

[Stabs]

What disappoints me with raids is how fast the gear gets superceded. I raided in Rift and I had two guilds collapse as people simply couldn't be bothered to raid (we were doing well, no dramas).

After thinking about it I put it down to how fast the gear becomes obsolete. In Rift there was a new raid instance every 6 weeks so what's the point of killing yourself to get the Sword of Mightiness when in a couple of weeks a) it will be no longer Best In Slot and b) you'll be able to farm it in a pug full of terrible players with no effort.

Now back in the old days when your Priest got a Benediction from Molten Core you had it for a couple of years before it became bank filler. That is worth raiding for.

However in the current MMO climate Rift is mocking WoW for being slow to provide new content which may create an arms race that SWTOR gets sucked into. And we'll have the issue of why raid when a) you can't even remember the name of the dungeon you're raiding b) you could get the shiny next month in a pug and c) the world is essentially a lobby where no one outside your guild ever cares what you're wearing.

[Rasix]

That cart lapped the horse. 

[Numtini]

After thinking about it I put it down to how fast the gear becomes obsolete. In Rift there was a new raid instance every 6 weeks so what's the point of killing yourself to get the Sword of Mightiness when in a couple of weeks a) it will be no longer Best In Slot and b) you'll be able to farm it in a pug full of terrible players with no effort.

Yeah, I love raiding because I love working with other people, but the speed of progression is insane. I think the entire concept of "tiers" of gear is a big contributor. I'd also add that it's not just that the gear isn't special, it's also that it means that old content is worthless. EQ2 had this very shallow slow progression so raids were good for two full expansions (they only raised the level cap every other expansion) and then occasionally beyond that. We used to two group the shard of hate long after we outgrew it because it had a couple of really fantastic items, the pink sparkly cleric shield, which I never got, being one of them. It was a low pressure fun thing to do with friends. Slower progression also means you're not under the same "gotta get gear now" pressure.

Also agree on the "is this a world or a game lobby" thing. Honestly, for diku dungeons and raiding, I'd be happy with a game lobby.

[01101010]

When the carrot overshadows the story... I recall my first MC run and thought it was fucking awesome that we were there to destroy Rags. Epics were fun to see, but that wasn't my impetus for being there... same with BWL - and there you actually took the dragon head back for a little song and dance that made it feel like doing the dungeon had a purpose rather than for the shinies. Of course, running it after was all about the shinies and the story had no replay value - well a little if someone was doing it for the first time. That eventually lead to group runs with people that only knew the dungeon for the sole purpose of gaining the shinies and thus split things...at least in the guilds I was apart of.

Purpose has little replay value unless you reroll and make a different class with different choices to see a slight bend on the story. Then again, with the ravenous hordes of MMO players who's only purpose is the dress up their virtual dolls and chase carrots, it will inevitably devolve into the same chase.

[Malakili]

Purpose has little replay value unless you reroll and make a different class with different choices to see a slight bend on the story. Then again, with the ravenous hordes of MMO players who's only purpose is the dress up their virtual dolls and chase carrots, it will inevitably devolve into the same chase.

Loot collection meta games are fun.  Hell, people have been enjoying fancy loot in games since table top days.  The real issue is that in those games you could create an unique dungeon every single time, even on the fly if the DM REALLY had to.  When you go to a CRPG, you're going to have to repeat content if you want continued progression.  I guess Torchlight tried to do it differently, (endless endgame dungeon, loot earned from randomly generated "bosses" that appear on each level), and it might have worked had their actual loot have been worth farming for in the first place.

I guess my point is, the RPG genre is popular in a large part because of character progression (hell, include story progression if you want).  Insofar as story progression can't possible keep up with demand, character progression has to take over, and you can't possible create enough content that people don't end up farming.  If you don't like loot collecting to begin with, I don't know there there is a multiplayer RPG on PC that will satisfy you for longer than the duration of one play through.

[Sky]

I just settled into really enjoying Rift again a couple days ago (about two weeks in), when I stopped worrying about rushing to get things done and just took time to relax and enjoy the activities. I've done one dungeon run and luckily it's one I did in beta (IT), because if I didn't know the script, I'd have been left way behind. It was just a marathon to get it over with and get your loot dispenser. At that point I was wondering where the enjoyment was, it's the event that set off my reset switch to relax and get casual again.

And the folks I was playing with invited me into their guild because my rogue's dps was apparently +++...but mandatory 3x/wk raid attendance 7pm EST is just lulz imo. It's funny that every time I find a group I click with for grouping...it's a strict raid guild. It's happened probably a good 8 or 9 times in Rift.

[01101010]

Purpose has little replay value unless you reroll and make a different class with different choices to see a slight bend on the story. Then again, with the ravenous hordes of MMO players who's only purpose is the dress up their virtual dolls and chase carrots, it will inevitably devolve into the same chase.

Loot collection meta games are fun.  Hell, people have been enjoying fancy loot in games since table top days.  The real issue is that in those games you could create an unique dungeon every single time, even on the fly if the DM REALLY had to.  When you go to a CRPG, you're going to have to repeat content if you want continued progression.  I guess Torchlight tried to do it differently, (endless endgame dungeon, loot earned from randomly generated "bosses" that appear on each level), and it might have worked had their actual loot have been worth farming for in the first place.

I guess my point is, the RPG genre is popular in a large part because of character progression (hell, include story progression if you want).  Insofar as story progression can't possible keep up with demand, character progression has to take over, and you can't possible create enough content that people don't end up farming.  If you don't like loot collecting to begin with, I don't know there there is a multiplayer RPG on PC that will satisfy you for longer than the duration of one play through.

Completely agree. It's not that I don't like chasing the carrot... I just don't make it a priority any longer. Chalk it up to age, less free time, whatever else...

[eldaec]

With the right authoring tools, the focus on bioware style story as content, and relatively lightweight wow+ combat mechanics, I don't see any reason a content authoring team couldn't outpace my ability to consume content. If, as advertised, the primary campaign for a class is equivalent to a DA or ME game, that means Bioware have to churn out one new campaign every couple of months, and they have at least a year's head start while I burn through the first 8 campaigns.

If they are genuinely set up for that it seems achievable. They won't be able to outpace *everyone*. But they only need to outpace people who hate repetitive raiding. Those people want to repeat raids for shiny are easiest to serve.

Personally I like occaisional raiding but repeated content bores me to tears. My biggest fear with swtor raiding isn't repetition though. My biggest concern is how much they'll rely on traditional dialog rather than player interaction to deliver the story. In a multiplayer session I'm primarily interested in how the team works together, not how we chat with the npc. In a story driven raid I'd ideally want exposition and team decision points to come through ongoing play. For instance, explain the upcoming decision over a comlink while we fight the first wave, then instead of choice by clicking, have us choose between orphan saving or kitten drowning by shooting the red shirt or blue shirt, or following the bridge or the tunnel.

[Malakili]

With the right authoring tools, the focus on bioware style story as content, and relatively lightweight wow+ combat mechanics, I don't see any reason a content authoring team couldn't outpace my ability to consume content. If, as advertised, the primary campaign for a class is equivalent to a DA or ME game, that means Bioware have to churn out one new campaign every couple of months, and they have at least a year's head start while I burn through the first 8 campaigns.

If it was possible to crank out content this fast, someone would've been doing it already I think.

[Pezzle]

More organic plot development would be fantastic.  Not possible in an MMO like this.  Someone in your group will invariably grenade the wrong spot and muck things up for everyone.  The majority of your player base will be enraged by not having concise enough control over destiny or whatever.