Star Wars: The Old Republic Random Question/Discussion thread - F2P

[Grey Jorildyn]

Thank you Tonko.

That guy was starting to get on my nerves even.

edit: isn't Foxer that guy who is gonna "lead" BG Tera?

[Lucavi]

To be fair, I haven't seen any MMO that promised a "huge amount of content" to deliver. Rift had the most content I've seen yet right out of the gate, and people still got bored quickly. The "thickest" content tends to be content that players can directly influence, aka. PVP. Look at how long FPSes hold their 3 or 4 stages until they have to pop out extra ones.

[Katlan]

To be fair, I haven't seen any MMO that promised a "huge amount of content" to deliver. Rift had the most content I've seen yet right out of the gate, and people still got bored quickly. The "thickest" content tends to be content that players can directly influence, aka. PVP. Look at how long FPSes hold their 3 or 4 stages until they have to pop out extra ones.

Most games come out the door expecting to have a lot of content for ppl, but the dev's don't anticipate how fast ppl will clear said content or it comes out horribly unbalanced so ppl don't enjoy it (obviously there are exceptions to this.... XIV....). I haven't heard anything about what they intend for endgame... I just assumed it would be the same type of WoW end game content (please no Hard mode stuff and recycling content that way) w/ raids and instances and pvp BGs based on the combat being similar to WoW

And yes, while rift came out the door w/ a lot of content. a lot of it was gimmick stuff. Yeah, all dungeons had HM's and you had to get tokens from the Heroic dungeons to do raids, but repeating dungeons 50x+ to get enough tokens to gear up for raid is kind of artificial content (least to me). And rifts problem was that it copied WoW pretty heavily in the end game content

[Grey Jorildyn]

It was both its problem and its allure (being a near-perfect WoW clone). They played it real safe and they are making their money. For a company that just launched its first mmo which was innovative on 0 levels, they're doing rather well.

I think Bioware knows what they need to do, but they may not know how to do it. Who knows though... sure the gameplay doesn't look very polished now but sooner or later it will be. I am not even concerned about the graphics because that's not what I care about. That gameplay better improve though or else they're in for some heavy (and negative) criticism given the time this mmo has been in development. I am mostly faithful Bioware has its priorities straight on this one.

[vrumpt]

I'm really really really hoping Bioware adds some other kind of endgame content other than raids. They're fun but they get old quick and just turn into a game of finding people who want to run them or who are good enough to run them. I know i can replay Mass Effect over and over and it stays fun but idk if new storylines will be enough to keep me playing by rolling alts, which i think is something they're hoping for. Aww hell, alts will always be fun to roll.

[Bombur]

E3 2011: Companions Walkthrough

They talk about companions in this one, he stated that it would take about 100 hours to get a companion to lvl 30.

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3...ar-wars/715705

[Alderaan]

The thing i'm really hoping for is the thing i dislike most about Rift, and that's having more than 2 starter areas. Leveling an alt in Rift is so dull when you're doing the same zones over and over. I'm sure it'll be more fun in TOR with the personal stories.

[Lordender]

I'm not gonna lie but hiring bitches(companion) or w/e to do your crafting for you sounds pretty cool or being able to send them on diplomatic missions and have them working on it while your offline.

This game is going to be interesting if they can pull it together, lotta complaints seem to be coming out of the alpha/closed testing. I'm iffy on the game as of right now, I loved Kotor 1 and 2 so we'll see. I hope they can pull it off though because it does sound like it is an interesting game.

[CasualPlayer]

People really believe them when thy say they're showing the demo on "the lowest graphical settings"? Not only does this make no sense for them to do from a marketing or even business standpoint. It would also be unprecedented with no advantage. The game is ugly and will he ugly when it releases.

[Lucavi]

There seriously is no advantage to that. Look at GW2's earliest vids, when shit could have been glitching and blowing up: absolutely beautiful. I mean, this makes no sense; you're going to make a bullshit excuse for why your game looks terrible, and and on top of that, you fail to really include good combat clips (they should have never put the guy firing the blaster in - shoulda stuck to lightsaber melee).

I can't think of any game - ever - that purposefully dropped down to minimum settings when showing the game off to a venue or area in an attempt to build hype. It just makes no sense. They're lucky that they've got people stroking their beards over the interesting companion mechanics.

[vrumpt]

And because the game isn't a graphical orgy of colors and detail pretty much anybody who has a graphics card is gonna be able to play it at a smooth frame rate, which is pretty much what EA wants since they've openly stated they want WoW subs on their side. I guess if you've invested a ton of money into your machine i can definitely see how you might feel robbed of having less than stellar graphics. Thats still no reason to criticize them for going this route when we've known about it for years now.

[Katlan]

When people think of Star Wars... what do you first think of? For me, its lightsabers. Yeah storm troopers and bounty hunters and all of that stuff, but I want to see lightsabers and deflecting bullets and being awesome like a jedi.

This is a honest question. Yeah its in line of them showing off a bounty hunter class in the demo, but curious none-the-less.

And because the game isn't a graphical orgy of colors and detail pretty much anybody who has a graphics card is gonna be able to play it at a smooth frame rate, which is pretty much what EA wants since they've openly stated they want WoW subs on their side. I guess if you've invested a ton of money into your machine i can definitely see how you might feel robbed of having less than stellar graphics.

That is where graphics scaling comes into play. You can have an absolutely stunning game on high settings, and low settings can look like shit (when compared to high settings) but can allow most ppl to run it. Making a game that ppl w/ 5 year old tech can play on high I don't think is a wise system anymore. that used to be Blizzards ideology w/ gaming, but they even pushed that aside to make their high end settings really amazing. Graphics don't make a game, this is true, but it helps ppl get immersed in the experience.

My comment for graphics isn't even SW:TOR related.. it's a general statement. I know Rift had some nice graphical moments, but the character animations / detail / originality sucked and it took away a lot of immmersion because I couldn't make a character that I was happy to look at

[Lucavi]

And because the game isn't a graphical orgy of colors and detail pretty much anybody who has a graphics card is gonna be able to play it at a smooth frame rate, which is pretty much what EA wants since they've openly stated they want WoW subs on their side. I guess if you've invested a ton of money into your machine i can definitely see how you might feel robbed of having less than stellar graphics. Thats still no reason to criticize them for going this route when we've known about it for years now.

I'm not even going to touch this, because its not going to work like EA or you think it will, or hopes that it will. WoW didn't just put out shitty graphics to capture the market, and for a company to basically bank on that as a selling point is laughable. There's a billion Korean F2P MMOs out there that do the same thing and aren't rolling in WoW's profits. But anyway.

Okay. Now handle the ranged combat aspect and why it looks so terrible, and what they can do about it, considering that blasters are nearly as important in Star Wars as lightsabres. You're on the clock.

[Ohemgee]

Yeah there's honestly too many people shitting on this thread.

Shut the fuck up and post relevant information towards the game

[Lucavi]

If there's no new information coming out, then all one can do is discuss the game. Stop backseat modding.

[vrumpt]

When people think of Star Wars... what do you first think of? For me, its lightsabers. Yeah storm troopers and bounty hunters and all of that stuff, but I want to see lightsabers and deflecting bullets and being awesome like a jedi.

This is a honest question. Yeah its in line of them showing off a bounty hunter class in the demo, but curious none-the-less.

Lightsabers are just capitalized on and used so frequently i hate them. I don't even know what i think of anymore when i first think star wars, probably force push. no lie.

That is where graphics scaling comes into play. You can have an absolutely stunning game on high settings, and low settings can look like shit (when compared to high settings) but can allow most ppl to run it. Making a game that ppl w/ 5 year old tech can play on high I don't think is a wise system anymore. that used to be Blizzards ideology w/ gaming, but they even pushed that aside to make their high end settings really amazing. Graphics don't make a game, this is true, but it helps ppl get immersed in the experience.

My comment for graphics isn't even SW:TOR related.. it's a general statement. I know Rift had some nice graphical moments, but the character animations / detail / originality sucked and it took away a lot of immmersion because I couldn't make a character that I was happy to look at

I guess this is something that me personally don't have an issue with at all. I've gotton so used to games selling on graphics and failing on being fun, and vice versa (hello minecraft, borderlands), that i don't even look at graphics seriously anymore on any game. If a game is fun and looks pretty its kind of just an added bonus for me. So honestly, when people go ahead and blame graphics i honestly just don't even understand how they could think like that. I'm not trying to subtly poke fun at anybody, i'm just explaining how i feel about graphics role in the quality of games today, and overall, very very little.

On ToRs graphical state right now, no it is by far not the prettiest game in existence and probably won't get much better even maxed out.

I'm not even going to touch this, because its not going to work like EA or you think it will, or hopes that it will. WoW didn't just put out shitty graphics to capture the market, and for a company to basically bank on that as a selling point is laughable. There's a billion Korean F2P MMOs out there that do the same thing and aren't rolling in WoW's profits. But anyway.

Okay. Now handle the ranged combat aspect and why it looks so terrible, and what they can do about it, considering that blasters are nearly as important in Star Wars as lightsabres. You're on the clock.

Every single company whos openly stated that they want to compete with WoW normally falls flat very early. Bioware's chances aren't any different. I can't say much on ranged classes because everybody playing them just stands around looking for their buttons half the time.

[Lucavi]

I still feel like PVP is going to make or break this game. Bioware has an excellent shot at keeping a large PVP crowd around simply through a real feeling of hatred between Jedi and Sith. This isn't the same as Alliance vs. Horde, where its okay to dislike the other guy even though you're both out to save the planet again and again. Bioware should be hyping the SHIT out of the fact that you're supposed to hate the other guy in this game - so very much that it hurts - and should have been showing PVP right out of the gate.

Yes, a good plot and storyline is always helpful to have, and yes, the companion system sounds refreshing, especially in the age of do-it-yourself-for-everything MMOs, but this game, at its core, should not only be about delivering an authentic Star Wars experience, but also combating the opposite faction repeatedly, and not simply through NPCs.

I hope they don't drop the ball there. It could make them a lot more money than they may realize.

[Man0warr]

And rifts problem was that it copied WoW pretty heavily in the end game content

Not like Blizzard invented their system of end-game content. Every MMO with a pve end-game will be the same, been that way since EQ.

There seriously is no advantage to that. Look at GW2's earliest vids, when shit could have been glitching and blowing up: absolutely beautiful. I mean, this makes no sense; you're going to make a bullshit excuse for why your game looks terrible, and and on top of that, you fail to really include good combat clips (they should have never put the guy firing the blaster in - shoulda stuck to lightsaber melee).

I can't think of any game - ever - that purposefully dropped down to minimum settings when showing the game off to a venue or area in an attempt to build hype. It just makes no sense. They're lucky that they've got people stroking their beards over the interesting companion mechanics.

Or maybe they just don't give a shit. There are 1080p leaked videos of people playing alpha and beta out there and the game looks great, much better than those 3 gameplay videos some random guy took a camera video of.

Do you seriously think a company like Bioware is going to release a game with subpar graphics?

[Lucavi]

We'll find out when they release actual quality vids, eh?

[volcanicweather]

Graphics debates are good times. All you need to do is look at Kyo's very first post in this thread - 10/7/2008. Game has been in development seemingly forever (~3 years) so of course they aren't going to be on-par with the ME games that they can churn out in a year or less. As long as it doesn't look like ass people will give it a shot so the whole discussion is irrelevant.

Let's get back to bitching about healing rockets please, I miss those days.

Lightsabers are just capitalized on and used so frequently i hate them. I don't even know what i think of anymore when i first think star wars, probably force push. no lie.

Force push over lightsabers? Seriously? Lightsabers are capitalized on because most IPs could only dream of having something as iconic as a lightsaber. I bet more Americans know what a lightsaber is than know our own Vice-President. Katlan is on the money, for them to not feature lightsabers is a mistake. Your dumb statements in this thread have earned you a valuable place on my ignore list, congrats.