Pre-release thread discussion

[Azuredream]

I played my first game of Huttball today. Whoever designed that is a genius.

[lamaros]

Put me down as still haven't check it out, still don't care to and wont ever play it.

Also I'm still on the whole: "story" is a waste of resources for a MMO.

Awesome. Why did you post here again?

The original question didn't say I had to have played the beta, it just asked me if it had changed my thoughts. Maybe you should make your question more exclusive if you want to get a more limited range of responses?

[Der Helm]

EXACTLY. It's all bullshit. You have zero choice in any of this story stuff, it is completely mindless.

I got quite a few responses that made me raise my eyebrowes, prob. because the tried to make one answer fit as many statements as possible. And for me, it does work most of the time.

There are choices to make, just not as many as you or I would like. Pretty sure all the dark/light choices differ in the "response" and quite a few of the "normal" conversations as well. If you don't replay each of the basic on the classes/on the same planet back to back, I'd doubt you would even notice it.

[Rokal]

I loved the storylines the first weekend, they totally drew me in. I was fascinated with how my character was developing. Then the second weekend, I started to figure out it was all an illusion. In most cases, it didn't matter what I clicked.

This is how all Bioware RPGs work. They give the illusion of choice, not actual choice. It works well the first time through but the illusion shatters when you do the quests a second time on another character. I don't really have a problem with it as long as they sell you on the illusion the first time through, but I also wasn't expected to pay $15 a month for other Bioware RPGs.

[AcidCat]

There are choices to make,

Are there really? Because I didn't play/replay enough to know for sure. Are there any choices in these storylines that actually alter the way the story plays out? If not then you are not really talking about choice, just maybe getting a different canned response that sends you to the same result.

[caladein]

It's a BioWare RPG.  It's not about the choices having an effect on the game world, it's about the choices having an effect on you.

[Paelos]

Ugh.  You guys are making me consider cancelling my pre-order.  Does anyone have anything good to say about the story/characters?

Yeah I liked the Sith Warrior story. Essentially it takes place on Korriban and you go through the training at a very accelerated pace with a nemesis, a boss on the edge, and lots of backstabbing at play. Plus, you can take time out of your busy schedule to poke at prisoners with a shock collar!

[Velorath]

There are choices to make,

Are there really? Because I didn't play/replay enough to know for sure. Are there any choices in these storylines that actually alter the way the story plays out? If not then you are not really talking about choice, just maybe getting a different canned response that sends you to the same result.

There are choices that alter some things.  I can't say whether or not it alters them to the extent that you personally would want, but I've already seen a number of cases where you can save or kill a character and those choices result in conversations or story moments that wouldn't have happened otherwise later on.  From what I've seen, they don't dramatically change things (although I think sometimes choices can alter some of the fights in Flashpoints), but it's also not as simple as every dialogue choice always leading to the exact same thing.

[Furiously]

It's a BioWare RPG.  It's not about the choices having an effect on the game world, it's about the choices having an effect on you.

Well said.

[Ingmar]

It's a BioWare RPG.  It's not about the choices having an effect on the game world, it's about the choices having an effect on you.

Well said.

Yes, exactly. I've been trying to explain this to people forever in the DA2 thread but nobody seems to get it.

[kildorn]

Right now, I'm fighting two minions that I can get down easily, and then that main dude with like 4500HP, resists as fuck and lots of damage. I don't seem to be getting anywhere, expect dying a lot.

Unless Bioware is telling me to go level more and try next time.

--edit: Smuggler, in Dock 87, trying to get past that cantina dude.

If it's the fight I'm thinking of, it's hard as all hell and you pretty much need the cheat companion cooldown that heals you both for a minute.

I did a bit of damage, but mostly stayed way back and chain healed my companion. Every attempt at actually helping my companion deal damage wound up with us both dead. Half the problem is he does a lot of ground effect damage, and companions are difficult to get out of that without dancing with passive/attack.

[Fabricated]

It feels like another KOTOR game with the shitty D20 implementation stripped out and a shitty DIKU implementation bolted in. Nevermind I would have enjoyed the shit out of a single player KOTOR4 game with TOR's combat and better enemy/ally AI.

It's still Bioware, so it's still well written and a lot of fun in spite of itself. I always kinda wanted a multiplayer KOTOR and kinda wondered how the RP-ish stuff would fit in; they did it about as well as you could. Your RP shit doesn't affect as much as it probably should but you can thank whiny MMO players (spoilers: It's you, YOU'RE HITLER) because any sort of "development" those players didn't like and couldn't immediately reverse would cause them to cry uncontrollably. "What do you MEAN I can't get item/achievement/cutscene/etc XYZ because I just acted like a dick/goody-two-shoes all the time!? That's UNFAIR!"

I had fun during the beta, and I'll probably keep having fun until I see all the content I want to see. At which point, the game will unconsciously devolve for me from enjoying the story/content/world to me crunching numbers on spoiler sites and complaining about nerfs/buffs or how bosses have too high numbers/too low numbers. Then I'll realize this at some point and unsub. C'est la vie.

[Sobelius]

It's a BioWare RPG.  It's not about the choices having an effect on the game world, it's about the choices having an effect on you.

Well said.

In the BH story line, I chose to play as much as a ruthless opportunist and mercenary as possible, and surprised myself in my willingness to choose some of the more grisly options/actions. My human Sith Inquisitor, on the other hand, is bound and determined to hold on to his humanity as long as possible. In almost every case, my approach to the game is to play as a character rather than myself -- I've never felt an MMO has supported this before in quite the same way. Yes, Saturday morning cartoon story lines -- including  Not quite the stuff of scooby doo, so I give them points for offering some truly dark choices for Empire characters. The art style also goes for the cartoon look (for the better IMHO). I'm hoping that with, supposedly, 200 hours of unique story per class, it may be at least entertaining to run through each of the classes once.

[Wolf]

I went in just to check it out because I knew I wasn't going to buy it. Got a Sith Inquisitor all the way through the first two worlds (level 16 or so) and three other characters to level 10. I enjoyed it way too much, and will probably end up getting it at some point, probably late january when Dragon Soul starts getting old. Chalk it up to star wars & bioware. I think I was hopelessly sold on it the first time my sith started running with her lightsabre out. sigh.

I think they should've went 100% (rather than 98% ) with wow and not try any new stuff to be honest. The whole cover stance is a complete mess and I cannot even imagine how it works in any dynamic pve encounter or pvp. 6 months of beta and noone realised that needs to be off the GCD? I like the IA's storyline and class to an extent, but the cover thing is completely ruining it for me.

So are the character stories only up to level 20? That's kind of disappointing. Expected, but still  

Also I think I made a mistake by being a good boy and filling out the first pop up thing that appeared. It got really annoying at one point where it would pop up in the middle of me having a conversation WHAT ARE YOU DOING RIGHT NOW? HOW ABOUT NOW? AND NOW?

Oh, and while I'm at it a couple more gripes - skill ranks and "increase the derp of herp by y" talents are soooooo last year.

[eldaec]

Character stories go all the way up through the levels, but become an increasingly small proportion of content as you go.

[AcidCat]

It's a BioWare RPG.  It's not about the choices having an effect on the game world, it's about the choices having an effect on you.

Really? You find this pulp fiction compelling enough to invest yourself and suspend disbelief? I think I should just park it here because further progress is just a pointless minefield. I'll say it does not work for me even on some kind of nerdy guilty-pleasure level and leave it at that I guess.

[kildorn]

Your story is what is driving you to be in all these odd places, so it should follow you until the end of leveling at the very least. One would hope that at 50 there's still a bunch of having it out with your big bads or whatever drives the various storylines.


As for cover: it's not actually that bad. You can just crouch anywhere to use the cover only abilities. Using real cover just grants defensive bonuses. I actually prefer the cover mechanic to the alternative in this game. Just because it may make sense for jedi to be standing in blaster fire, but fuck if anyone without a lightsaber or a deathwish isn't going to dive into cover. Upper Hand is a far more obnoxious mechanic imo.

Skill wise, I slightly dislike ranks just because blah going back to my trainer sucks. I more dislike the either bugged or purposefully value tooltips. Shields target for a large amount of damage! Okay game, let's sit down and define "large" so I know what we're talking, here. And on all my characters I had at least one high damage ability that said "deals 2 damage to target." Tooltips should be easy to set an intern on fixing, though. So I have my hopes up for them being fixed shortly.

[Amaron]

In most cases, it didn't matter what I clicked.

The reason for Bioware style dialog is for you to choose how your character acts and what kind of personality they have.    That ALWAYS matters.

[Sky]

. In almost every case, my approach to the game is to play as a character rather than myself -- I've never felt an MMO has supported this before in quite the same way.

Absolutely. The 367 weekend I played the Consular pretty much as myself, do the right thing and respect people. It was a lot of fun and made me feel good.

This weekend I rp'd a Jack Bauer Knight. Quit dicking around and save the galaxy no matter the cost. And the story really supports that in an interesting way (though my first two companions aren't real fond of me). LOTS of opportunities to kill people off in dialog scenes, sometimes it's pretty intensely acted. I'd imagine the morality of the dark Knight and light Warrior interweave and can't wait to see how the other side plays out.

In both cases there were plenty of moments where I had to stop and think how I (or Jack) wanted to handle a situation. I struggled with the old stuff like good of the many vs the one etc, and my Jack-a-like struggled to adhere to an internal morality (or lack thereof) without stepping into puppy-kicking or what he perceives as weakness in the Jedi Order. Good stuff.

[Sjofn]

It's a BioWare RPG.  It's not about the choices having an effect on the game world, it's about the choices having an effect on you.

That's pretty much why I play them, yes.

[Ghambit]

I found myself getting disturbingly attached to a purely evil-as-fuck Sith Warrior.  To the point I wondered if different "darkside" choices actually were more "darkly."  I do believe in the climactic beginning treachery that your disposition creates more/less darkside alignment.

I'm sure the minmaxers will have all this stuff mapped out in a week or so for sure.

Upon playing a BH though, I took a fairly "professional" outlook and ended up pretty neutral... sometimes darkly, sometimes lightly, but balanced in the end.  My M.O. was simply honoring the jobs given to me and not backstabbing even if more credits were available.  It got me wondering...  is there ANY benefit to leading a balanced existence?  If not, I'd say the alignment mechanic is fairly broken for RPing your typical BH/smuggler.  Gear should not simply be dark/good.  If you can maintain a shade of grey near the endgame you should be adequately rewarded.

[Wolf]

As for cover: it's not actually that bad. You can just crouch anywhere to use the cover only abilities. Using real cover just grants defensive bonuses. I actually prefer the cover mechanic to the alternative in this game. Just because it may make sense for jedi to be standing in blaster fire, but fuck if anyone without a lightsaber or a deathwish isn't going to dive into cover. Upper Hand is a far more obnoxious mechanic imo.

Like I said, I don't mind the cover mechanic per se. It's the way it's implemented that annoys me. If it was off the GCD, I'd be very happy with it, jump into cover and start the pew right away. The only issue that can come of this is easily fixable by putting a 1.5s (or however long the gcd is) CD and we're set. Not jump into cover, wait for 1s, start the pew. I know it sounds silly, but it is what it is :)

[apocrypha]

Found half an hour to give this a try yesterday. Colour me deeply unimpressed. Feels like a pre-WoW era MMO done blandly.

I like the character creation, there's a good amount of variety there. The intro movie rocks too... and then dumps you into a game that looks nothing like that.

Everything seems to be made of tupperware. OK, crank the graphics settings up to max. Now it looks like shiny tupperware. Oh well, gameplay > graphics, right?

But it's an MMO. Kill 10 space rats. Find a weapon. Look out for those guys that are 3 levels higher than you. Choose from 3 dialogue options, none of which seem to make any difference, none of which say what I want to say and none of which represent what my character actually says after I choose one.

Oh and why does my lightsaber look like a yellow stick? That's not a lightsaber. Maybe it is actually a yellow stick, but I picked that character cos there was a picture of a lightsaber and it said "lightsaber" in the description. Where's my lightsaber?!

I'll give it more time later. Initial impressions are very, very bad however. This shit needs to be better than WoW, not blander.

[eldaec]

I found myself getting disturbingly attached to a purely evil-as-fuck Sith Warrior.  To the point I wondered if different "darkside" choices actually were more "darkly."  I do believe in the climactic beginning treachery that your disposition creates more/less darkside alignment.

I'm sure the minmaxers will have all this stuff mapped out in a week or so for sure.

Upon playing a BH though, I took a fairly "professional" outlook and ended up pretty neutral... sometimes darkly, sometimes lightly, but balanced in the end.  My M.O. was simply honoring the jobs given to me and not backstabbing even if more credits were available.  It got me wondering...  is there ANY benefit to leading a balanced existence?  If not, I'd say the alignment mechanic is fairly broken for RPing your typical BH/smuggler.  Gear should not simply be dark/good.  If you can maintain a shade of grey near the endgame you should be adequately rewarded.

It's bioware. The fundamental flaw in all their story output is that it only ever rewards playing as Captain Picard or Dirty Harry.

In a normal bioware game it doesn't matter because power creep obliterates any need to chase power. In this I don't know.

[eldaec]

As for cover: it's not actually that bad. You can just crouch anywhere to use the cover only abilities. Using real cover just grants defensive bonuses. I actually prefer the cover mechanic to the alternative in this game. Just because it may make sense for jedi to be standing in blaster fire, but fuck if anyone without a lightsaber or a deathwish isn't going to dive into cover. Upper Hand is a far more obnoxious mechanic imo.

Like I said, I don't mind the cover mechanic per se. It's the way it's implemented that annoys me. If it was off the GCD, I'd be very happy with it, jump into cover and start the pew right away. The only issue that can come of this is easily fixable by putting a 1.5s (or however long the gcd is) CD and we're set. Not jump into cover, wait for 1s, start the pew. I know it sounds silly, but it is what it is :)

GCD is always stupid and restrictive design.

There is a reason it never occurred to anyone before 2004.

[Wolf]

I don't agree. There are very little reasons for GCD to not be there, and a whole lot of reasons for it to exist. It doesn't make sense for some skills though, and there's precendet even in TOR for abilities that do not trigger or are not affected by gcd.

For example, just looking at the talents, I can see why 1 month into release there will be a 150 page thread about snipers dumping their focus in 5 globals and oneshotting tanks through shield wall. No GCD and it will be a true one shot, because you'd macro the shot progression :)

[Modern Angel]

They did say that they're adding neutral alignment gear, I believe. Just not yet.  

[jakonovski]

They did say that they're adding neutral alignment gear, I believe. Just not yet.  

I feel a great disturbance in the Force. It's as if millions of prospective Han Solos cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

[kildorn]

As for cover: it's not actually that bad. You can just crouch anywhere to use the cover only abilities. Using real cover just grants defensive bonuses. I actually prefer the cover mechanic to the alternative in this game. Just because it may make sense for jedi to be standing in blaster fire, but fuck if anyone without a lightsaber or a deathwish isn't going to dive into cover. Upper Hand is a far more obnoxious mechanic imo.

Like I said, I don't mind the cover mechanic per se. It's the way it's implemented that annoys me. If it was off the GCD, I'd be very happy with it, jump into cover and start the pew right away. The only issue that can come of this is easily fixable by putting a 1.5s (or however long the gcd is) CD and we're set. Not jump into cover, wait for 1s, start the pew. I know it sounds silly, but it is what it is :)

GCD is always stupid and restrictive design.

There is a reason it never occurred to anyone before 2004.

The only way to avoid the GCD is to either put huge cooldowns on things, or make everything have a cast time. The GCD is there to avoid "I press macro button, seven spells hit you instantly" issue with instants.

What this game does need is a quartz-like UI element, since there is a point during a cast where you can start casting the next spell due to latency. Just mashing the 2 key casts far faster than hitting 2, waiting for cast, hitting 2.

[Minvaren]

Played this 2 weekends ago and the past weekend a bit as well.

Sith Inquisitor storyline was interesting.  Republic Trooper storyline was meh.

You can definitely feel the diku-like crack in it.  But even so, I was splitting my time between this and DCUO, of all things.  As was said earlier, this feels like KotOR2.5 in a shared space with other people, only with throwing in the dialogue wheel complete with random answers from ME/DA.  I might get a month or two out of this at best, but I don't see me sticking with it long term.

Not sure what has changed in me as well, but I found myself frantically trying to fast-forward through the quest dialogue as well.  I used to replay the KotORs to see all of the dialogue in the past, now it's just "...ok, get to what life-threatening and time-consuming kill 10 foozle quest you want me to do..."   

[01101010]

Played sparingly last beta weekend. This weekend, I transformed myself back into a keyboard creature complete with arc'd spine, raccoon-like, bloodshot eyes, and unkempt hair. The bounty hunter arc was good fun, though now I have no clue what to play at release since I was whole-heartedly set on Jug. Even took a sin to 15 and even that is tempting. But my Merc was just plain sick with a healbot pet. Finally got done with my story on Kaas and got my ship. They had me on the normal ground game, but I get a player house with hyperdrive, a droid butler (whom I have given the name, Benson), and a california king bed? Sold. Hell, I might even preorder through Origin... though I kinda want another MMO tombstone on my shelf.

[Miasma]

It's pretty much what I expected it to be, a good single player game that happens to have other people around doing their own single player games.  The stories are very good and I will play through at least one lightsaber and one gun-type class on each side (unless they all wind up being too similar as they level up).  Then I will cancel and wait for an expansion because the MMO and grouping side of things are cringe inducingly out of date and unfun.  I don't know why, since it should be such a little thing, but the mobs just instantly popping in on respawn instead of a nice fade-in made my skin crawl.  Probably flashbacks to blocked out memories from all the older MMO's I've played, the fact that since you are usually killing groups three of them pop in at once just exacerbates it.

I was also surprised at how serious they were about the republic/empire classes being equivalent.  I did not realize it meant they would have the exact same abilities and class trees.  I started out with a smuggler, then tried agent and was able to use the same layouts and timings since they are mirror images.  There are really only four classes in the game.

Also, the talent trees are painfully boring and weak.

Fake edit - On re-reading this my post sounds very negative but it really isn't meant to be.  I like the game a lot and will have fun for quite a while I'm sure, it's KotOR 3 but with other people to trade loot with really.  I think a lot of the posts that people might be miss reading as negative are like this too.  It's a very good game but only a mediocre MMO.  I have no experience with end game but if that winds up being really well done I could overlook the more basic, dated MMO qualities.

[Wolf]

Was your agent actually called Miasma? A rattattattatta female?

[Miasma]

No, chiss male with a different name.  Miasma is usually taken or the name of an ability/mob and reserved.

[Merusk]

I don't get the "It's all an illusion" complaints.

So are choices in single player games.  So is reading a book, or watching a movie, or television.  You want choice you have to create your own content or write your own story.  Everything else is just an illusion and caring about that character in their situation, nothing more.

I view the whole thing as a shared reading experience, like a book club in game form.  A missed mark if Bioware were designing for the old generation of gamers. However, we're in our 30s and 40s and there's a new crop in the Gen Y and Millenials who are no where near as antisocial a group as we were.  Social experiences are where everything's headed as they become the target.  The old recluse gamer with only a few close friends or none at all in game is going to find themselves enjoying less and less as they're forced to be more and more social.

Fuck, this game even has a social ladder grind.  That should tell you something.