SWTOR

[Fabricated]

For some reason I really want to be a trooper tank. Hope they aren't the bastard child of tank classes.

[Sheepherder]

Has anyone else ever done a ranged tank before outside of gimmick fights?

[apocrypha]

Sorry if this has been discussed before, but one thing that's really bothering me about the combat I've seen in these videos is all the standing still. Everyone seems to fight without moving around at all... it looks stupid.

One of the most noticeable things about the action in the films is that they're incredibly mobile. People are running around, jumping off things, falling off of other things, ducking & dodging, using cover in ranged fights, swinging over chasms with boobs gaffer-taped in place, banging their heads on things, dancing round one another whirling increasingly large numbers of light sabres around their heads, etc.

In these gameplay vids everyone seems to have their feet nailed to the floor and pretty much only their arms move. I think it looks shit as a result.

[Velorath]

My understanding is that moving while attacking doesn't interrupt most abilities.  Outside of PVP, I don't think there'd be much benefit to doing it though gameplay-wise.

[Sjofn]

I'd just as soon not run around like an idiot, personally.

[Sky]

I'd just as soon not run around like an idiot, personally.

I most emphatically agree.

[Lantyssa]

I like to run around strategically.

[Zetor]

Running reduces aggro, jumping increases DPS. It's true, I read it on the internet.

Moving around in instances/groups/raids may be beneficial depending on boss abilities. Plenty of WOW bosses need you to keep moving all the time (or during a particular boss phase), and almost all bosses throw random shit on the floor you have to step out of / avoid. You also need to stay behind the boss to avoid breath attacks and minimize the chance of your attacks getting avoided.

(yeah yeah, WOW parallels -- but then, isn't SWTOR going to be WOW in space with cutscenes/story/voiceacting?!)

[Nebu]

(yeah yeah, WOW parallels -- but then, isn't SWTOR going to be WOW in space with cutscenes/story/voiceacting?!)

That's what the masses want, isn't it?  Linear gameplay on rails dumbed down to a point that most of it can be macroed?

[luckton]

(yeah yeah, WOW parallels -- but then, isn't SWTOR going to be WOW in space with cutscenes/story/voiceacting?!)

That's what the masses want, isn't it?  Linear gameplay on rails dumbed down to a point that most of it can be macroed?

You're talking about Rift, sir.     TOR is testing the theory that if you can mask the linear gameplay on rails dumbed down to a point that most of it can be macroed with enough cutscenes/story/voiceacting, everyone wins.

[Crumbs]

With all the crap I've talked about the game, I went ahead and pre ordered.  I just hope Smuggler =/= Rogue.  I'd like to do at least a small amount of smuggling.

[Kail]

Has anyone else ever done a ranged tank before outside of gimmick fights?

One or two, yeah.

[Sky]

I like to run around strategically.

To be fair, she did say like an idiot :) I liked the marksman in Rift, a bit of kiting, a bit of positioning (with some assassin skills, especially), and some standing on the pedestal. But asking an mmo to depart so wildly from anything that has come before with action equal to an action movie is a bit much.

[01101010]

I like to run around strategically.

To be fair, she did say like an idiot :) I liked the marksman in Rift, a bit of kiting, a bit of positioning (with some assassin skills, especially), and some standing on the pedestal. But asking an mmo to depart so wildly from anything that has come before with action equal to an action movie is a bit much.

Them's thar fightin' words.

[Lantyssa]

Vindictus.

[Mrbloodworth]

Vindictus.

To name just one.

[Sjofn]

Running reduces aggro, jumping increases DPS. It's true, I read it on the internet.

Moving around in instances/groups/raids may be beneficial depending on boss abilities. Plenty of WOW bosses need you to keep moving all the time (or during a particular boss phase), and almost all bosses throw random shit on the floor you have to step out of / avoid. You also need to stay behind the boss to avoid breath attacks and minimize the chance of your attacks getting avoided.

(yeah yeah, WOW parallels -- but then, isn't SWTOR going to be WOW in space with cutscenes/story/voiceacting?!)

Moving to get out of fire and moving a boss around because of fire and moving to stand in fire because it protects you from different fire is all fine and dandy, but that was not what apocrypha seemed to be complaining about. He was saying that the characters are "incredibly mobile" in the films, running around like idiots (which is fine for a movie, obviously). I have zero interest in forcing that into gameplay. I have a certain level of "spaz" I can tolerate, and the movies (especially the shitty prequel ones) exceed it.

[kildorn]

I'd prefer, realism aside, to NOT have to run around chasing things with my lightsaber because melee in a heavily mobile fight sucks.

WoW gets around that by having hilarious hitbox sizes on mobile boss fights. But PVP as a melee class usually blows, or turns into "all melees have permasnares"

[amiable]

I'd prefer, realism aside, to NOT have to run around chasing things with my lightsaber because melee in a heavily mobile fight sucks.

WoW gets around that by having hilarious hitbox sizes on mobile boss fights. But PVP as a melee class usually blows, or turns into "all melees have permasnares"

Paladins never had a snare, but they vacillated between being overpowered to useless based on their ability to global someone in the length of their 6 second stun.

[Sheepherder]

Also, unless I'm forgetting something Crusader Strike and Exorcism were the only attacks in their rotation that required the target be in front of you.

[kildorn]

I'd prefer, realism aside, to NOT have to run around chasing things with my lightsaber because melee in a heavily mobile fight sucks.

WoW gets around that by having hilarious hitbox sizes on mobile boss fights. But PVP as a melee class usually blows, or turns into "all melees have permasnares"

Paladins never had a snare, but they vacillated between being overpowered to useless based on their ability to global someone in the length of their 6 second stun.

At some point they also gained a pseudo snare mechanic, in the form of a personal run buff, and a judgement that prevented the target from moving more than 100% speed. But Paladins pretty clearly show off the plight of melee in highly mobile situations: either you can kill them the second they stop moving, or you're pretty much going to break your keyboard.

[Fordel]

I'd just as soon not run around like an idiot, personally.

It's a proven fact running in circles makes Tree's heal better.

[sam, an eggplant]

All the melee classes get a short cooldown "force leap", so it's not much of a problem.

[Sheepherder]

Melee abilities in MMO's should automatically turn the player towards the target and lunge forward if the target is within a few feet of being in melee range.

Or, the ability should queue and wait to fire as soon as the target enters the appropriate range and arc.

[Chimpy]

Melee abilities in MMO's should automatically turn the player towards the target and lunge forward if the target is within a few feet of being in melee range.

Or, the ability should queue and wait to fire as soon as the target enters the appropriate range and arc.

BUT AUTOFACE WOULD MEAN NOOBS WILL BE ABLE TO CIRCUMVENT MY MAD LOW PING CIRCLE STRAFEZ SKILLZ!!!!!

[amiable]

At some point they also gained a pseudo snare mechanic, in the form of a personal run buff, and a judgement that prevented the target from moving more than 100% speed. But Paladins pretty clearly show off the plight of melee in highly mobile situations: either you can kill them the second they stop moving, or you're pretty much going to break your keyboard.

There is a world of difference between a slow and a run speed buff due to the inherent latency issues in any online game.  I can't count the times that an enemy was standing right in front of me while I had my speed buff but I couldn't execute any abilities because the server said I was not in range.  Slows are are preferable because they allow you to sync up MUCH better.

Unfortunately every MMORPG I have played eventually devolves into an arms race between ranged and melee, with whoever has the best snare/snare removal being the OP flavor of the moment.  Even worse however is when some developer gets it in their head that it would be fun to make a "ranged cc class" which inevitably dominates in PvP until they are nerfed, which always occurs far to late to cure the damage done (see: early WoW warlock, current WoW frost mage).

[Furiously]

Melee abilities in MMO's should automatically turn the player towards the target and lunge forward if the target is within a few feet of being in melee range.

Or, the ability should queue and wait to fire as soon as the target enters the appropriate range and arc.

At that point it wouldn't be my character, it would be someone I am advising on how to proceed... Which might be ok in the right kind of game.

[apocrypha]

All valid points, and I agree that running around like an idiot isn't great gameplay in and of itself. However one of the major criticisms leveled at SWG was that it wasn't "Star Wars-y" enough, and for the vast majority of people that refers to the movies. The combat we've seen in videos so far looks nothing like the movies. That's going to put a lot of people off.

I don't have answers on how to do it, but I consider such a gulf between expectations and delivery to be a potential point of massive failure. I mean just some ducking animations might help!

[Riggswolfe]

All valid points, and I agree that running around like an idiot isn't great gameplay in and of itself. However one of the major criticisms leveled at SWG was that it wasn't "Star Wars-y" enough, and for the vast majority of people that refers to the movies. The combat we've seen in videos so far looks nothing like the movies. That's going to put a lot of people off.

I don't have answers on how to do it, but I consider such a gulf between expectations and delivery to be a potential point of massive failure. I mean just some ducking animations might help!

The combat doesn't look like the Prequels. I'd say it bears a fairly good resemblance to the OT however and so far this game looks 100X more Star Warsy than SWG did at launch though admittedly JtL is a better space game than what this game will have at launch.

[Malakili]

All valid points, and I agree that running around like an idiot isn't great gameplay in and of itself. However one of the major criticisms leveled at SWG was that it wasn't "Star Wars-y" enough, and for the vast majority of people that refers to the movies. The combat we've seen in videos so far looks nothing like the movies. That's going to put a lot of people off.

I don't have answers on how to do it, but I consider such a gulf between expectations and delivery to be a potential point of massive failure. I mean just some ducking animations might help!

The KOTOR games were well received, and that combat was less "Star Warsy" than this is, I don't think its going to be that big an issue.   Would I prefer a Jedi Knight II type combat - sure, but that also seems unrealistic to expect in an MMORPG (unfortunately in my opinion but that is neither here nor there).

[Surlyboi]

Fuck anybody and everybody that uses "Star-Warsy" as an adjective to describe anything. It was fuckstupid when it was used to indict SWG and it's fuckstupid now.

[Count Nerfedalot]

I don't have answers on how to do it, but I consider such a gulf between expectations and delivery to be a potential point of massive failure. I mean just some ducking animations might help!

Random duck, flinch, ouch! and such animations played as a result of being hit/missed would be a way awesome improvement to the cinematics of just about any game.  Most? games with a knockback/down effect have something like that that plays when you get back up, but I can't recall any that threw that kind of thing in all through combat.  In a Star Wars setting it could definitely go a long way towards making the pew-pew combat with many shots but few hits or at least few critical hits a lot less ridiculous looking. 

Scenes having two sides just standing there firing away at each other at 10 paces remind me of a particularly sad paintball experience back in the late 80's early 90's I had with some friends where we went to an outdoor paintball course(?) as noobs and had to use the cheap-ass rental guns.  Our max range with any chance of hitting at all was about 30 feet, and trying to hit something as far away as 50 feet required lobbing it at a 45 degree angle.  And at 50 feet even if you did happen to hit someone, there was a real chance the ball wouldn't even break.  So we warmed up with a mock battle that ended up with the two sides facing off at about 30 feet and just blasting away and mostly missing.  And you couldn't always even tell if you got hit without checking to see if you had paint on you.  Meanwhile most everyone else had their own much more powerful guns and several had customized $300+ guns which would leave bruises at over 100' range.  So when we got thrown onto teams with the regulars it was like having blow darts vs assault rifles and was an absolute slaughter if you got caught in the open.  Deep woods and in buildings were the only times we had a chance.  Payback was a bitch though after I successfully nailed one guy who thought he was invincible in a close combat scenario he decided to be a prick when he caught me in the open an hour later and nailed me 6 or 8 times from about 40' with his turbo powered gun.  It was like being shot with plastic bullets and left bruises that lasted most of a week.  A fine example of pay-to-win PvP that I never went back to.

[Sky]

he decided to be a prick when he caught me in the open an hour later and nailed me 6 or 8 times from about 40' with his turbo powered gun.

Well, at least you can go over, break his leg and shove your rental gun up his ass. Not an option when you get rolled by a guild with all "BIS" gear and voip, eh? In online pvp, you are either alpha and adapt to those methods or bring your own lube because otherwise you're going to be very sore for a very long time.

To quote myself from the Rift thread, roflpvp. That shit needs to be split away from the pve game and kept in some quarantined hermetic vault so that the two sides never infect each other. Otherwise you get people bitching about autoface and shit that is nothing but helpful in pve but creates rivers of tears in pvp. Or control effects that can make for an interesting game on the one hand and totally ruin the other. They are so incompatible that it honestly boggles my mind that so many developers feel that abilities need to be shared across both rulesets, because you're going to do nothing but water everything down so that neither ruleset is very good and everything has a sort of half-assed sheen of compromised design.

[Reg]

I've never understood that either. Having spells and skills work differently in PVP vs PVE just seems like such an obvious way to defuse the tension between fans of the two game types.

[Surlyboi]

I've never understood that either. Having spells and skills work differently in PVP vs PVE just seems like such an obvious way to defuse the tension between fans of the two game types.

Cue the PVPtards complaining about being treated as second class citizens for having to learn another ruleset to pwn newbs.