*****Official Star Wars: The Old Republic Thread*****

Zefan said:
LateX'Dog - Not sure as I haven't played either KOTOR games yet but I get the feeling that is a pretty massive spoiler. If it is please edit that out.
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Sorry which bit, Malgus?

EDIT:

I've already removed a picture from the screen shots due to it containing a massive spoiler, if it is Malgus your talking about, its not a spoiler.
 
CaptainRAVE;20016021 Darth Malgus there is a great of what I mean with the graphics at the moment - his face looks absolutely fantastic (as do many of the characters in the game). Then you look at what he is wearing and wonder what is going on with the textures - there is so much potential here said:
I think that's more due to the art style than anything else. I doubt higher res textures would add much more meaning is there actually any more painted detail in there. Most of these look hand painted so I doubt your going to see any higher res textures as we paint mostly at 1:1 especially for bespoke models. Of course there will be mip maps but not that close.
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Like most of you, I have been following this game's development for going on three years. Here is my quick-and-dirty review of what I have seen.

Graphics/Art: 7/10

Lacking (or redundant) character creation really drags this stat down. I find myself loving the worlds more than I do my character, and every time I create a new one, I marvel how I can have 20 different choices of face or makeup etc. and find only 1-2 'acceptable' (I haven't seen any I would define as captivating, though). Sadly, you can see this system hard at work undermining the game in one of it's most iconic character. Satelle looks like a foot -- there is no other way to describe her. I know she's older now that she was in the cutscenes, but she looks downright ancient, and terrible to boot. On the plus side, the animations are strong, and small problems (such as overly-bulky lightsabers -- remember when that was an issue?) have largely vanished.

Interface: 2/10

To say the interface is dated would be a denial of reality. It is archaic. Why can't I move my bars? Where are my additional bars? Why can't I right click names to invite people to group? Why can't I similarly friend them? Why can't I link items? Where is my dressing room? I NEED A BLOODY DRESSING ROOM, BIOWARE. Why don't enemies display nameplates and health bars unless I am targeting them specifically? There are just so many problems with this system right now, and while I eventually got used to most of them, rest assured that people who aren't necessarily diehard Star Wars fans will take one look at this clunky setup and split. They won't give your story a chance, they won't care about your voice acting -- they'll take off. MMORPGERs are quite flighty when it comes to new games, and they will not endure things of this nature.

Combat: 8/10

I enjoy the combat in TOR more than in any MMO I have ever played, and my experience in this genre dates back to the days of original EQ. I find the combat both fast-paced and exciting, with a lot of movement and decent complexity in terms of mechanics. Why the 8/10, then? Because the instance tuning goes from stupidly easy (Esseles, BT) to ridiculously over-the-top in the matter of 5 levels.The Esseles is a breeze, BT is a joke, and then you get to the final instance on Coruscant and you're fighting bosses with 35k HP take upwards of 4-5 minutes to burn down. Not only is this agonizingly taxing on the resources of healers at this level, but Jedi Knights don't even have a snap taunt at that level -- they have to get by with a sunder and a single-target aggro redirect. Bad.

Questing: 7/10

The questing is solid, but there hasn't been a lot done here that isn't present in spades in a million other games. I have only encountered two broken quests in 15 levels on my JK, so no complaints in that regard, but nothing -- with the exception of the lightsaber quest for the Sith Inquisitor (why, by the way, was that quest so much better/harder/longer than the Sith Warrior version? [yes, I have rolled a lot of alts to 10 this weekend]) -- made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I expect more epic stuff to come, although I am not holding my breath.

Voice Acting/Overall Voice Implementation: 7/10

I like the voice acting; I do... however, I do not see the need to have a long-winded conversation every time I need to go out and pick up fifty gears, or loot a data-pad from some common thug. In those situations, I don't think back story is either necessary or desired -- and even my character often responds 'get on with it' or 'out with it' or 'speed this up, please,' and it's amusing and a bit ironic how often I am given the option to say that. I am glad I can skip the dialogue, although I wish I could read everything that was said when I do. I simply don't have the time to sit through it all, though. Also, as an aside, the choice trees are utterly meaningless when you are forced into a result. Almost all quests break down to 'accept' or 'do not accept' -- if the choices don't alter those two results, why even bother putting them in?

Space Combat: 1/10

The only reason space combat gets one star at all is because it didn't crash. I know that there are people on both sides of the argument in this arena, and I know that nothing can be done at this point. However, suffice it to say, this system is as bad as I could have possibly imagined, and the Trolololoers are going to have a field day with it. It's boring, unintuitive, lacks challenge, is slow, repetitive, and feels as clunky as a stand-up arcade similator from 1985. It's been compared to Star Fox by some people, but the problem with that comparison is that Star Fox is at least compelling. This isn't. I tried it once and will probably never do it again. Star Wars screams for a dynamic, next-gen system for space combat, where guilds own capital ships, launch snub fighters, and engage on vast, empty battlefields over forsaken worlds. Following a set path flying in circles while doing loops in a ship half the size of a Corellian Corvette is fail by comparison.

Companions: 7/10

Every companion I have gotten has looked down their noses at me when I do bad deeds. This is particularly upsetting given when they are either A) my slave, B) my apprentice, or C) my droid, all of whom should be either respecting my orders, or learning from my actions. Additionally, companions sadly do feel like pets... something we were promised that they wouldn't be like. I enjoy them for the social perks, and the crafting options, but I think they're a drag on the combat experience overall. I would rather be a stronger character than have to rely on the presence of a pet at all times.

Here's a quick list of likes and dislikes:

Liked:

Environments -- Fantastic. I think Coruscant is a little flawed, but DromundKaas is insanely moody and absolutely perfect. Story -- The story moves along. I haven't loved the side quests, but the primary arc is decent. Ships -- Space combat sucks, but I like the ships. We definitely need to be able to decorate them, though. How many ranged players there are -- I was really worried that there would be an overabundance of melee, but I have been pleasantly surprised in this beta. Hopefully this continues to hold true post launch.

Disliked:

Jumping -- Horrible. Absolutely terrible. I am a Jedi. Its the one world where I actually should be flipping around, and instead I just kinda 'lift' into the air like I'm on some invisible magic carpet. Sitting -- Similarly awful. The animations and pose are terrible, and I can't even do so much as sit in the chairs on the bridge of my own star ship. Also, most of the social animations are pretty bland. The Map -- The map is bad, Bioware. You seemed pretty proud of it in that Friday preview you did a month ago but... it stinks. Auction House -- Substandard. Auto facing in PvE -- I don't like how it contorts my character's body. Lack of true saber customization -- We should have been given a list of parts with which to design our lightsabers. I wanted something unique, not these stock models. The sheath saber bug -- I hate getting stuck in this pseudo-combat mode where I can't put my weapon away. The way Sith Warriors stand -- My wife describes the stance as 'woman taking a number two.' I mean, seriously, it looks bad. By contrast, the Jedi Knights look superb. Unfortunately, for this reason alone I may wind up going Republic over SE. Yes, it does matter that much. Music -- Why can't I listen to it all the time? Why don't some places have any at all? That we're playing on a build 2 months old -- Why? All I can say, really. Makes no sense.

Overall reaction: 7.5/10

It's the best MMO I have played in years, but it still feels (in this build) like it needs about 4-5 months of additional polishing. If it's released in anywhere near this state, it will be another Rift/AoC etc. It's a great product; phenomenal, even -- it captures the feel of Star Wars perfectly -- but it is superficially flawed to a degree where the 'WoW crowd' (who are used to a spit-and-polished product with regards to intuitive design over at Blizzard's place) will not tolerate how badly put together aspects of it are right now.

If these problems are fixed, I would improve my review to about 9/10 (I feel like some issues, such as character creation, aren't going to be rectified pre-launch and thus remain flaws), but right now I can't give it a little gold star. I'd recommend it to a friend, but I can't promise that my friends would keep playing it as-is.
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I will first discuss my thoughts and opinions on the leveling process, planets, both class quests and side quests, and phasing.

Leveling Process and Quests:

During this weekend i was able to get a Sith Inquisitor to level 24, a Sith Warrior to 10, a Bounty Hunter to 9, and i briefly played a Imperial Agent and Trooper. Since i had gotten the furthest with the Inquisitor i will use that experiance for the bulk of my feedback. Overall the leveling process was very smooth process only until recently, questing on Tatooine and Alderaan, did i notice that i was falling behind with the leveling process. This is my fault however because i started to rush my questing progress to finish the class quests and i ended up neglecting the side quests. For the most part i skipped almost all of the heroic quests, mostly because i wanted to maximize my play time, and even though i skipped those quests they did not hinder me from maintaining my leveling pace.

Almost all non-heroic quests were actually very easy, this was due to the help of my companion. Now to some this may be a good thing or a bad thing but ill leave it up to the individual player to decide, and even though that the majority of my play time was solo it was still very enjoyable and i did not feel bored. I could see some minor tweeks with the leveling system but if the current system (ie the amount of quests and bonus quests, experience gained) that we tested were to go live, i would still be very happy. My only negative for the questing system were the item rewards. An a example being rewards for one quest would be 4 belts, a commendation, and a lockbox containing a random item, and you could only choose one. Well out of the 4 belts, 3 of them would have the exact same stats, that last one would only be slightly different. Im not sure if this was a bug or intended, but if it was intended i think that would be a waste.

A system that i would like to see would be that you could get 3 items, so lets say 2 of the items were "belts" and the stats differing for your class's ACs, and the third item would be the lockbox in case the "belts" weren't as good as your currently equipped item. As for the commendation that could be a guaranteed reward from lets say every other quest, in addition to the items.

Planets and phasing:

I have been extremely pleased with the overall design of the planets, that i've been too. It has gone above and beyond my initial expectations. The size of the planets, the flow of the quests, and just the sheer amazing environments and backdrops. The only planet that was slightly annoying in terms of size was DromundKaas, and that was only because you only had your basic run speed, so i think a possible solution would be to allow players to receive the Sprint skill at level 10 instead of 15.

In-depth planet thoughts: • Korriban: No complaints with this Origin planet, very good size, good content, almost no bugs found while playing. • DromundKaas: As i stated above only only problem was that the size is too big for normal run speed. • Balmorra: Very good story line here, however this planet i found the most bugs by far and not just graphical glitches. Flight paths going through terrain, visible flight path routes, when engaging the world boss on this planet the entire zone lags. Attaining certain camera angles in some rooms would cause the environment to disappear and in one case it caused me to fall through the world. This planet needs a lot of work. • Nar Shadda: This planet was the exact opposite of Balmorra in terms of bugs, only found one graphical glitch other than that this planet was flawless. Favorite planet so far. • Tatooine: This planet suffered from some really bad bugs also. Biggest two were that in some locations you were able to angle the camera and actually look through the world and in other cases the terrain doesn't connect so its a thin white line where you can look into nothingness. Other than that its Tatooine, a lot of sand
• Alderaan: The planet's environment and backdrops look amazing, other than that cant say anything because it servers are lagging too hard at the time of this post.

Now for phasing, i was blown away by how well this system works, granted i never tried the planet phasing because i didn't have a need too, but not having to fight over major quest mobs was amazing. I had zero bugs or glitches with phasing, this was done very well. Bioware this is going to be one of your biggest selling points. Do not change a thing.

Now if your still reading this next section im going to talk about the in game features, over all latency, frame rate, and space combat

In-game features: • World map: For me this weekend my feeling for the world map was one of ups and downs. At first i was amazed by the detail and scale of the world map, but as continued to play i started to get annoyed, mostly from how faded the map would get when you moved. I know that this was a normal feature from before the test but i figured we should have an option to make it less faded. Now that its the last day of testing i finally find out we had this functionality the entire time in the UI options >.<. So my only suggestion is that instead of having the map options in the UI options, just put all the options on the world map itself. Oh and the option to get rid of the fog of war is brilliant. • Galactic Trade Network: Didn't really mess around with this, looks like a standard AH. • Social options: The ability to ignore guild, trade, and group invites is good. Allowing same classes into your class quest phase is also good, but the heavy hitter here is the ability to unify your colors to your chestpiece, aka no more looking like Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. This is a huge plus for me and i know many others, this a very big part of the whole immersion that Bioware is going for. • Tooltips: The options for tooltips is something at all mmos should have, detailed, comparative, companion comparative, stat summerys. All good. • General UI options: Everything here is pretty standard, but the ability to track your quests based on the area your in is a great addition, no more looking around to see where you do this quest only to find out its on a completely different planet.

Latency:

Overall my latency was amazing, 95% of the time i had between 40-60ms. Only problems were late Saturday night and at the time of this post. Very good for a beta server

Frame Rate:

So as soon as i logged in on Friday, i said screw it lets see if i can max out the graphical settings. So i put the resolution to my monitor's native of 1920x1080, turned everything to high. Turned on bloom, conversation depth of field, and blob shadows. With all these turned on i was getting 40-60 fps in crowded areas and up to 90fps when i was out in world alone. Needless to say this game looks amazing when maxed out.

Space Combat:

In all honesty i didnt expect this to be good because lets face it, its a game within a game, but i was again surprised at how fluid it played. My only suggestion is that maybe in the space stages you could put in items like hp gain and missile restocks.

Final Section people stay with me now! We got PvP and final thoughts

PvP:

I mean lets face it i wasn't expecting to see some high level pvp, or any form of coordination for that matter, for a game in beta, but the experience was still enjoyable, huttball was a blast even though people would run the ball towards their own endzone>.<. I also like the fact that lower level players can get their stats boosted to play the with bigger dogs. In terms of balance, EVERYTHING THAT ISNT MY CLASS IS OP!. J/k again the game is in beta so to expect balance now is just foolish.

Final Thoughts:

In terms of a beta this has been one of the smoothest betas i've ever been apart of. Parts of it felt like the final version it was so smooth. This weekend was a sleep deprived blast, but all good things must come to an end, and our end comes tonight at 12 am CST. I would have loved to see the higher level planets and learn what happens with Zash and the artifacts(SI class story) but we only had a few days to play. There was a lot more things that i wanted to mess around with also but i just never got around to, crafting and crew skills are the two biggest. I also would have like to experienced more flashpoints, but it looks like i will have to wait till retail. I hope everyone that has read this has enjoyed their beta time as much as i, and to all those that didnt well to each his/her own, you cant please everyone.
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First of all, I'm just going to say that my overall impressions of this game are great. It's well designed, very enjoyable, approachable and just fun! I pre-ordered the game the first day that we could and based upon my play this weekend I would be 100% happy playing it in its current condition.

Below I have laid out some highlights about specific things that I think are praiseworthy or in need of work.

The Good: • Voice acting:It's been great through and through and it adds a great dimension to the game. • Story: Goes hand-in-hand with the voice acting. Top notch stuff, it really keeps me wanting to come back. Generally in MMOs one of the main driving forces is that sort of Pavlovian desire to advance just to see the little bar move across the screen or for advancement's sake itself. In TOR I want to come back and play to see where the story takes me. • Ability Animations:Simply put, these are the best animations that I have ever seen in an MMO. Good stuff. • Huttball: To me, Huttball is great because it's taking existing PvP ideas and putting a little extra twist on them to make the experience novel and enjoyable. I enjoyed Huttball a great deal and think that it was very original. The whole concept of throwing the ball around is nice and the environmental traps / design were great. I would highly recommend that for future PvP instances you use this same innovative mindset rather than just giving us a rehashed version of other MMOs in a Star Wars skin.

The Bad: • Ignore: There is no ignore button. I assume that this will be in for launch. But just for emphasis, there needs to be an ignore button! =) • "How do I get my advanced class?": Personally, I didn't have a problem figuring out to "get my advanced class," but I can't count the number of times that people asked in general chat how/where to choose their advanced class. It should be more obvious how this process goes because clearly a lot of people were really confused. • Crew Skill Introduction: Had I not been following this game intensely and gobbling up each and every bit of information about it voraciously, I would be totally lost in the crew skills system. There simply isn't an explanation for how crew skills work, what each one is good for etc etc. For new players who aren't as familiar with the game design as some of us, this might prove to be a problem. • You can't create chat channels: This seems like a basic thing that you should be able to do in a contemporary MMO.

The Meh: • The Interface: It's adequate. There needs to be more customization options though. For instance, I would like the ability to move more panes, etc. • The Aldeeran Warzone: It's fine, but doesn't seem very inspired. The problem is that we've all basically played this exact same type of PvP zone before. The Aldeeran Warzone isn't bringing anything new to the table. That being said, I don't think it would be difficult to fix. The most obvious solution would be to make it more "Star Warsy." Add some NPC spawns? Do something, because right now it's not very inspired. Especially compared to the awesomeness that is Huttball.
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These are almost 100% likely to be the sub prices (give or take a few % difference for the discounts), you heard it here first.

$14.99/mo – One Month
$13.99/mo – Three Months 7% Discount ( $38.97 Total Cost )
$11.99/mo – Six Months 20% Discount ( $71.94 Total Cost )
$9.99/mo – Twelve Months *BEST VALUE* 33% Discount ( $119.88 Total Cost )
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Seems we are only weeks away from an announcement on this.
 
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LateX'Dog said:
Obvious question is where did you get that information from?
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Part of the on-going survey as one of the hand picked beta testers for the first playtest.

We had a similar survey a while back, just before the pre-orders went live that presented scenarios similar to the ones we faced i.e. limited early access, CE details, PR, marketing etc.

I have noticed a trend of
a) A survey released just before something happens e.g. preorders go live, subs announced etc.
b) The questions are very similar to the end result, there aren't many options - in this case the only difference between the sub choices were a few % difference between the discounts.
 
LateX'Dog said:
Everything you ever need to know about Itemization and Crafting in TOR
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The only thing I'm anticipating to see is what a Jedi Guardian will use to make armour, as they use heavy armour you'd think you would use Armourmech.
But as you listed "Force user crew skills: Artifice and Synthweaving - Lightsabers, offhands, STR and WILL armor of all types."
So I guess "of all types" means, I'd pick this.

Also the whole slicing debacle, everyone I've ever seen talk about it says you must get it, as it's so crazy with giving money.
I hate the idea there's such a skill about, I want to make armour, which needs a gathering skill, and a mission skill for recipes/companion gifts etc.
I guess it will get nerfed, or you just use that excess cash to buy materials.

I just hope bioware release this infomation before launch and not leave it up to the community to find out because until now, the very generic info on their info page isn't enough to decide, or know what does what.

Edit: What stops you having a bunch of alts all doing slicing, friend did a mission for 95 cred, returned 600, funded by your main if they fail it.
 
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I can't remember if I asked this already or not, but does anyone know if troopers gain access to some of the more bulky looking armuor, such as the katarn-class armour worn by clone commandos:

Clonecallouts.jpg


Most of the screenshots I've seen of troopers seem to be either realy light looking armour for the early levels, and then more clone/storm trooper looking armour with only minor variations later on.
 
CaptainRAVE said:
These are almost 100% likely to be the sub prices (give or take a few % difference for the discounts), you heard it here first.



Seems we are only weeks away from an announcement on this.
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about £7 a month for the 6 month deal and about £6 a month for the year deal

very good I think, that's if theses are the deals
 
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