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

[vrumpt]

I know one thing that i heard was really cool is some of the atmospheric aspects to give certain parts of the game a more exciting feel. Like for the example that i heard, during the first flashpoint on the ship after you leave your origin world, that the ship is under attack so theres some explosions and there are bulkheads coming crashing down around you sealing shut space vacuums and general other craziness that ensues after your ship has been boarded.

[niwaar]

This was one of my main concerns and i'm happy to hear it has this feeling. The early vids that were leaked made it look like everything took place in confined indoor spaces. I much prefer the huge outdoor open worlds.

I won't kid you. The planets are relatively small. Travel is slower than most games and that makes them feel much larger than they actually are. What you will find is that a lot of the inside areas are quite large and multi-layered, giving each planet a lot more space than you can account for on the world map. That being said, the starting worlds are no larger than the one of the smallest zones in WoW. That being said, the worlds do get bigger as you gain levels and are out exploring the worlds that do not belong to your faction. There are a ton of flightpaths on most of these worlds to make them easier to navigate and they make the planets feel larger than they actually are. In terms of Coruscant, the flight paths actually give the planet its huge, skyscraper feel even if you are really just putzing around a small area near the senate tower.

Still no beta invite but i only have 2 posts on the forum. Dying to give this a whirl. Are the people that got in active posters?

There is no post count, the test is purely random selection. The few people I know who have gotten an invite had zero posts on their forums.

Q. The official website shows us a few of the current professions. Could you tell us about the unknown professions? And what abilities they have in short terms?
A.
Gathering
Scavenging
Archaeology
Slicing
Bioanalysis

Crafting
Artifice
Armstech
Armormech
Cybertech
Synthweaving
Biochem

Missions
Diplomacy
Investigation
Treasure Hunting
Underworld Trading

You can have 3 professions in the game. Only one of them may be a gathering profession. There is no limitation on the others. Mind you that the "Missions" category is kind of misleading. As there are Gathering missions as well. ALL crafting is done by your companions and takes real time and credits to complete. The earlier missions take 5-10minutes to complete at which time you will be without the services of your companion. These missions have a difficulty rating on them and CAN fail. When successful you will receive a small amount of materials and profession skill points. As for the "Mission" only professions they each give a specific type of material. So they in reality another gathering profession. Treasure Hunting may come back with gems, Underworld Trading may come back with Medium Armor mats, Investigation is Heavy Armor and Diplomacy is Light armor materials. There are certain other things that these missions can give as well. Take Diplomacy for example, this is the single profession that will actually give you Light or Darkside points upon completion. This is also where you will be able to find Companion Gifts used to "romance" your various companions.

Hows the actual clothing and armor look? Does it flow or look painted on? This was my beef with LOTRO. The game world was amazing but the characters and armor looked terrible, minus the cloaks which i loved.

The game looks like a stylized cartoon cell to a degree so the armor itself can have a very "painted" look, but it doesn't necessarily look "painted on". The one graphical option besides the "hide helm" option they have is to "match colors with chest" or something similarly worded. This option basically changes your feet/leg/glove armor match the color scheme of your chest piece. Its quite nice never to have to run around looking like a circus clown with randomly colored armor. This option also gives a hint as to if it would easily be feasible for them to add armor dyes later on.

[Elvis]

How does the art direction 'feel' in general? It looks cartoony from the pics I've seen but I don't consider it bad.

[niwaar]

How does the art direction 'feel' in general? It looks cartoony from the pics I've seen but I don't consider it bad.

I don't know how to categorize how I feel about it. I am disappointed but it does have a "Clone Wars" cartoon feel, and that is what Bioware was going for. I think its successful in that regard, but the game itself doesn't hold any real "beauty" which is a sad thing considering all the chances they could have with multiple worlds and such.

The game look ok for what its trying to be. As I said before, I really wish they had spent more time in character design, but they are cutting that corner to focus on the story aspect of the game.

[vrumpt]

Q. How many flashpoints did you know of while you played? How many did you experience, how was their overall feel?
A. By the time I got to level 20, I had the opportunity to do at least 20 flashpoints. You have flashpoints in space, on Korriban, all over the place. As for the feel, they are great. There is always a reason for why you are doing them and they are really fun. If you have a hard time learning the mechanics, getting rid of trash, etc, you are in for a rude awakening. Flashpoints can be difficult, even with experienced MMO players.

btw this is most likely wrong, based on the comments below it looks like he got flashpoints mixed in with general heroic quests. Still exciting nonetheless, since it sounds like the same type of story and group play found in flashpoints are in these heroic quests, the only difference is you run quests only once.

[Katlan]

Group flashpoints are "meh". Its where multiple ppl in your group are in the same conversation and you all pick a choice, and its a random roll as to who gets credit. You level up your "social" skill by being chosen, but if you dont get to pick the response you don't get the potential light/dark side points, ect... related to it. So I'm not a big fan.. and it's kinda slow atm.

The best way to summarize up the game is this "They turned a MMO into an RPG." That's how it feels. I like it for what it is. Its fun. But you remember in KOTOR1 where you would run around for 45 minutes talking to ppl or just spend 30 minutes running around the epic landscapes? Well.. its here lol. everything is epic in scope and your gonna spend a lot of time running around. There are mounts, but I don't know if they have been implemented yet as I don't see anybody w/ them (been in Corsucant - one of the main cities - so I'd assume I would have seen some here). Even instances have thet epic story feel. It's not like WoW where we all hate those RPG instances that have us waiting around while ppl finish talking.. it's npc's doing stuff as your going through the instance... and the group flashpoints everyone skips through anyways and just goes straight to the choices to picks a response so they don't take too much time lol. It makes instances fun, but this is coming from my first time doing them, not my 10th or 50th.

I've been drawn in by the story, its grade A console quality EA/Bioware story. It's pretty good. So far I have had a lot of fun playing it though, outside of it's UI issues. It's not talk to ppl > kill stuff. I think I spend more time in conversation and running around then I do in combat lol. So it;s really a different take on the MMo scene.

And vrumpt. Yeah.. as you leave the noob island and go to the main hub, the space station gets invaded by sith and it's a pretty long 2-4 man instance. The way they set it up you would have no idea it's an instance because it happens naturally, but it is.

And about the graphics. There is zero graphical options outside of draw distance. Textures are bland and foilage and stuff is missing, but Id only like to assume that all this is because there are no options yet and its to be added later once they deal w/ server lag and stuff

Spoiler: show

[Katlan]

oops double

[Zerocool]

Lack of more graphical options aside, the environments look pretty epic. I see what you're saying about the scope, everything looks huge. Which is how I hoped it would be. Does it actually feel like you're in the Star Wars universe when you're exploring them?

[Katlan]

Lack of more graphical options aside, the environments look pretty epic. I see what you're saying about the scope, everything looks huge. Which is how I hoped it would be. Does it actually feel like you're in the Star Wars universe when you're exploring them?

to me it does. I never played KOTOR2, but if you ever played KOTOR1 it has that same epic and star wars'y feel. Everything is huge. I can't really explain it, it on par or more extreme then vanilla XI w/o chocobo's. A space station feels like a space station, not some tiny room. Coruscant feels like some huge epic city even though it only has like 5 different maps to the "main" city. Even the starter island was huge. They do a good job of drawing you in.

[niwaar]

btw this is most likely wrong, based on the comments below it looks like he got flashpoints mixed in with general heroic quests. Still exciting nonetheless, since it sounds like the same type of story and group play found in flashpoints are in these heroic quests, the only difference is you run quests only once.

You are correct here, there are only a handful of flashpoints (group instances). The first flashpoint on both sides is the "transport" from your noob "space station" to your faction's main world. This instance is designed with the fact that you do not necessarily have access to Tank and Healer specs as it may be attempted before you complete the questlines where you choose your advanced class.

The flashpoints themselves are completely storybased instances that include checkpoints. These checkpoints are not unlike "instance lockouts". ie, when you complete certain story dialogue's within the game, you are checkpointed into that point in the instance's storyline and anytime you enter after then you will always start at that point. These can be reset only by dropping your current quests for the flashpoint allowing you to begin at the beginning. You will also be synced to whoever "owns" the instance when you zone in. So if the owner is at the third checkpoint, you will start there. These checkpoints are independent of the group, so if the server boots you off (which is extremely common atm) you will still begin where you left off.

The things hte Q/A guy referrs to as flashpoints are along the same lines of the actual Flashpoints. The flashpoints are merely "story areas" that are designed for a group and are easily accessible. The Story Areas (easily identified as Green Portals) are found EVERYWHERE in the game. These range from mini group quest areas that usually involve some kind of "event" or "boss" encounter. These are just there so there are no "lines of spamming players trying to tag a quest monster". The other types are class specific story areas. All story areas allow entrance only while you have not completed the story quest. Some areas are used repeatedly. They are an interesting idea but limit exploration.

One thing to note however, if you die inside a story quest area, you will be ressed at the nearest medarea (graveyard) which is usually relatively near the entrance. You will reenter a "fresh" instance however. Even in the story areas where there are multiple objectives you will reenter a fully respawned instance when you leave it. There does not seem to be a "saved" instance like in WoW, rather the game merely saves your progress within an instance and you need to reclear trash each time you enter.

[vrumpt]

Those are some great things to hear about the game so far. It sounds like a lot of or all of the things that aren't that good (like the UI) can be fixed, which is nice to hear. So, leaving Courscant, what kind of progression path are you on? Do you have more than one planet you can choose to go to?

Also Katlan check ur PMs.

[Katlan]

There is a lot to do in Courscant outside of the main city. There are like 5 other locations in the city you visit for quests. Ive only been to 3/5. So dunno how long I will be there. But, when I left the noob area, I had 2 choices. I could go to the space station or some other planet (blanking on name). I'll let you know when I get out there. So far its pretty linear even though there are more options available to you.

Oh yeah, seems like jedi are the least prominent. I see a lot more troopers and smugglers

[Zerocool]

I'm sure there are also a lot of people that plan on playing Jedi as mains for retail and probably don't want to spoil the story yet. That's probably what I would do anyways.

[niwaar]

Troopers are pretty damn powerful in both PvE and PvP. While doing some PvP you will notice that the ranged classes are quite OP right now. They have a good ways to go to balance the classes. More often than not will you see "<Random Trooper Name> is Unstoppable!" flash across the screen. Especially in Alderaan.

[Insanecyclone]

So what's the skill tree like? That's all I'm really interested in.

[Zerocool]

Troopers are pretty damn powerful in both PvE and PvP. While doing some PvP you will notice that the ranged classes are quite OP right now. They have a good ways to go to balance the classes. More often than not will you see "<Random Trooper Name> is Unstoppable!" flash across the screen. Especially in Alderaan.

So is it like Warhammer where if you're getting killing blows without dying it says stuff like xxxxx is on a rampage, xxxxx is on a killing spree, etc.?

[Lucavi]

Fuck yeah old school Quake sounds.

[vrumpt]

Another Q&A is up

http://betacake.blogspot.com/2011/06...r_20.html#more

something that stood out to me:

Q. Could you tell us a little bit about the third/unrevealed warzone?

A. The Pit on Nar Shaddaa. You join one of two teams in a kind of big epic game of hardcore rugby.
There’s a ball in the middle and your goal is to grab it and dump it in the opponents goal. There are pits of fire, buffs you can pick up. Bunch of ramps, platforms, etc. Best of all, this warzone isn’t based on a Faction vs. Faction story. It’s like a sports game. Mascots, team logo, etc. You can actually end up with Imperial team vs. Imperial team, or Republic team vs. Republic team. I don’t know why no one has leaked this yet, because it’s epic as hell and way different from any PvP I’ve ever seen in any MMO.

[Zerocool]

I like this. Hopefully they keep it this way and don't dumb it down.

Q. Your rough guess on how long it takes to go from 1-50?

A. A lot longer than 1-85 in WoW currently. We’re not talking EverQuest levels of grind here, but the leveling pace is slow. But it’s packed with content. There isn’t a lot of filler.


Q. Is the combat more challenging than what is shown in videos from E3 and other conventions?

A. Hell yes. They either have some kind of cheats on in those demos or have things tuned down, because you can get utterly destroyed if you’re at all careless. You gotta be on top of things if you don’t want to die a lot. You can’t just herpaderp your way through the leveling process like in WoW.

[Alderaan]

I've always said that i don't care if it takes a year to get to max level as long as there's content to support it. If i have to go out and grind repeatables or some shit, i'll be disappointed.