NDA lifted. You can talk about beta now.

[Blackferne]

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthre ... it10939389

So Dood, Veela, Kitoshi, Roza, Happyclam, Jeezbus, Sir Psyko....spill it.

[Sir Psyko]

It sucks, you don't want to play.

My sig background is a cropped screen shot of Drommund Kaas.

I'll upload some screenshots to my PhotoBucket later.

[Blackferne]

So SirP you were initially not happy with the implementation of crew skills as a means towards crafting. I assume you've done crafting now and I assume it isn't as involved as SWG, but do you still find it somewhat interesting or rewarding?

[Dodd Formeianna]

This thread has potential. I'm eager to hear what other people think, in more detail.

I like this game. Difficult to pinpoint a number of features that I like that make it stand out the most.

The conversation scenes and camera angles a-la classic Bioware give the dialogue a great starwarsy feel. They also make you care about what happens to your character even more than any MMO I've played. You also get more invested in the character personality. Also - joining in a conversation via holocall is an amazing feature. Also another note on quest-sharing...you can share quests with folks in your party, no matter what distance they are from you (not like WoW, I believe).

The maps for each of the planets are huge. Running around them takes forever. Gaining sprint as an ability will be appreciated at lvl 14, and make you extremely thankful for a speeder at level 25. I found that even gaining a ship, travel times are rediculous. For space travel you need to go to your instanced hangar in starport, run through the map to board the ship, watch/skip cutscene, load the ship map, run to cockpit, plot hyperspace route, jump to lightspeed, exit ship, watch/skip landing cutscene, load hangar, run back to the space station via hangar, take exit elevator. I hope they add a "bind-to-starship" feature to save time.

Companions are great. They do act as a moral compass, help you by selling junk, and can even fill in as "dumb" participants if you need them during a flashpoint. We had some guy LD last weekend, and so Happy and I pulled out Mako, and voila...instant heals.

I haven't played around with crafting much yet. I've sent my pet on quests, and gained a bunch of crafting parts, that's pretty much it so far.

All classes I played had amazing stories. The BH one was the most engaging one.

Spoiler:

You're the next big badass BH, and you want to make a name for yourself by joining the Great Hunt. You join forces with some guy who works as your "underword marketing agent" who gets killed off. Turns out someone else in the race feels threatened by your existence, but you can't kill him outright due to the race rules. So you earn the favor of a local Hutt to gain entry into the Hunt. Then you need to qualify, then they give you bounties...you need to draw them out. Where I left on Nar Shaddar, there was some dude I had to draw out of hiding by sabotaging his business links. Can't wait to find out what happens next...

Nar Shaddar was where I ended last weekend's beta with my Powertech. The graphics were phenomenal...it's a planet owned by the Hutts, like the entertainment district in Coruscant, except the WHOLE planet looks like that.

I'll post some screenies and thoughts later. I have my company Christmas party to attend now. Cheerio...

[Sir Psyko]

So SirP you were initially not happy with the implementation of crew skills as a means towards crafting. I assume you've done crafting now and I assume it isn't as involved as SWG, but do you still find it somewhat interesting or rewarding?

It's absolutely nothing like SWG. To me, SWG was the ultimate crafter's dream. Unfortunately, most people think it was too complex, yet had no problems building the class-of-the-week...

I don't think you should ever have to pay for materials, and every profession requires three gathering skills to craft the Artifact level gear. For Synthweaving, you need Archaeology (can gather from nodes in the world or do missions), Diplomacy (missions only, and expensive) and Underworld Trading (missions only - don't have this skill as there's only one or two mats per tier, and I just buy them to make Artifact gear if I unlock them). And you need the actual crafting skill, so you're still dependent on others... and I believe Artifact gear in all catagories work the same way... Basic and Prototype gear can be made completely by yourself.

Reverse Engineering is pretty cool, but it's annoying that I can only RE gear without a "prefix"... I can RE Savant Gloves, but I can't RE looted Alderanian Savant Gloves. It also gets REALLY expensive. I'm currently 27 and about 20k short for my speeder because the GTN was broken for so long last build that people kind of ignored it (and now there's only a couple GTN terminals, Capital Planet and the Fleet, which I hope is for testing purposes or they've just killed the economy for crafters.

It's really hard to tell how well it will transition over to retail, given that a lot of people give stuff away for free or try to rip people off on the GTN. They added chat channels this build, finally, so a Trade Channel is back (missing last build or two). I'm mainly going to be crafting for my guild, so most of the mats will be free. Not sure if I want to be a merchant like I was in SWG or not, until I get to 50.

Crafted gear is rewarding. Prototype gear I make at 20 is better than Basic stuff I can loot at 25. Artifact gear rocks, plain and simple. Given there's limited schematics you can unlock... So far it appears to be 4 Prototype per base item, which unlocks one Artifact each....

Basic Item
Prototype I
Artifact
Prototype II
Artifact
Prototype III
Artifact
Prototype IV
Artifact


Do I get the satisfaction I had in SWG from crafting? No, it's not nearly as involved and everyone can make the same stuff at any time, which takes a lot of the fun of hunting for those mats to make the best stuff (and hoarding a few 100k of it when you did).

I haven't had a chance to test the Bank crafting, so I don't know if it only works on the ship, or if I can craft anywhere with bank mats... that's the only really annoying thing... having to use half of my limited (and expensive) inventory for mats when I don't do the crafting.

And the new build has some serious lag issues right now, so it's going down for maintenance...

Photobucket's resizing all my SS so they're hard to see anything

[Sir Psyko]

Beta Weekend... my Trooper... Female Zabrak, black skin, white cornrows and bright green eyes. Cruising in the Nar Shardaa Taxi.



Yeah, PhotoBucket sucks... that's supposed to be a 1680x1050 screenshot


Edit, I guess I can link from Unrepentant... not sure if you can see it though...

Here's Modro, my Sith Inquisitor standing in the Dune Sea on Tat...

[Dodd Formeianna]

By a taxi station in Nar Shaddar...



There was a bug in the last weekend where if you jumped a lot, your companion might get whiplash. Here we are in front of the laser bridge in Hammer Station. This is the same bridge where Happyclam got incinerated.

[Bulwark]

The game just isn't Star Warsy enough for me because they totally screwed up the layout of the cities. There are guard rails around all the bottomless pits. Whats with that? Darth Vader would have never allowed guard rails on the Death Star; it's called survival of the fittest, people.

[Veela]

It's an unholy union of WoW, Mass Effect, and SWG.

[Blackferne]

It's an unholy union of WoW, Mass Effect, and SWG.

Gooo ooooonnnnn.....

[Happyclam]

The game just isn't Star Warsy enough for me because they totally screwed up the layout of the cities. There are guard rails around all the bottomless pits. Whats with that? Darth Vader would have never allowed guard rails on the Death Star; it's called survival of the fittest, people.

Actually, the guard rails just exist on the space station. They don't exist on the planet.

With the legacy system, my whole family can be Dingleberries!

[Sir Psyko]

Darth Hater has a TON of charts and other info out now. Some is still blank, but it's probably the best source of info right now... though I'm not sure how accurate some of the items info is with the changes this build...

[Dood]

My impressions:

1. This game is a casual player's dream. The companion system especially means that you can play on off-hours and be able to solo stuff. Yes, if you want to do the heroics and flashpoints you'll want people, and it's just more fun with other people, but you can play at your own pace/schedule pretty readily.

2. This game is a casual player's nightmare. The storylines are so fucking good that you find yourself unable to walk away from teh computer because FUCK I NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT! Do I get to go kill Darth SoAndSo and replace them? Is Flarg Fleedleback really a spy and I am merely his puppet? How many licks WILL it take me to get to the bottom of this tootsiepop?

C. I don't understand the crafting so I can't speak to that. I've not explored the system at all because I am the Anti-SirP. I do like getting stuff by sending the droid from my ship to do treasure hunting missions.

IV. +1 to Dodd's complaint about running to your instanced hangar, then running through the instanced hangar to get get on your ship, to run through your ship to the cockpit to choose your destination of travel to travel there to run to the exit of the ship, through the instanced hangar on the other side to the actual starport. I don't mind having to do some of that, but doing ALL of it is a bit tedious.

7. The graphics and voice acting are all superb.

8. I forgot what 8 was for...

D. Weapon and armor customization are pretty killer. I love being able to pick up a mod and then drop it into a modable weapon to improve aim or endurance or whatever. Though not all gear is modable.

[Sir Psyko]

C. I don't understand the crafting so I can't speak to that. I've not explored the system at all because I am the Anti-SirP. I do like getting stuff by sending the droid from my ship to do treasure hunting missions.

The benefit of the crew skills is that you can choose not to craft anything, pick 3 Mission skills (or a mix of Mission and Gathering) and still get things. Diplomacy is the Dark Side/Light Side points, and I'm rather disappointed they took that from Synth (it's all Underworld Trading, so all crafters can now be self-sufficient I believe). I still managed to get within about 1200 points of Dark IV by level 27 before having to drop it and start power-leveling Underworld (which has literally left me broke and credit-less)

8. I forgot what 8 was for...

I thought it was supposed to be...

8. Something...

[Dodd Formeianna]

2. This game is a casual player's nightmare. The storylines are so fucking good that you find yourself unable to walk away from teh computer because FUCK I NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT! Do I get to go kill Darth SoAndSo and replace them? Is Flarg Fleedleback really a spy and I am merely his puppet? How many licks WILL it take me to get to the bottom of this tootsiepop?

This. Big time.

[Dood]

8. I forgot what 8 was for...

I thought it was supposed to be...

8. Something...

Music reference fail.

[Sir Psyko]

8. I forgot what 8 was for...

I thought it was supposed to be...

8. Something...

Music reference fail.

I know the song, but pulling a reference from the early '80s? From the Violent Femmes? Come on... college was how long ago?

[Happyclam]

Eh, crafting is really pretty much nonexistent. Your companion does all the work, though there are actual nodes that you can harvest sometimes. It does have a handy little guide that tells you what gathering and mission skills complement what, though you can do what was suggested and go all missions or all gathering. Archaelogy and slicing are apparently the money makers.

Personally, the storylines are incredible, even if the gameplay just isn't all that great. (I'm looking at you smuggler/imperial agent, but I have never really liked playing the 'rogue' type classes) The animations /really/ fit the class being played. The sith warrior vs. the jedi animations really show a difference even though they are essentially the same class. The sith has a lot of powerful, angry strikes, while the jedi is more graceful. The bounty hunter uses his jet pack and missiles while the trooper uses grenades and a grenade launcher. They really did a good job differentiating the mirror classes to make them feel unique.

The group system is just, wow. It really makes you want to group and also gives you a vested interest in the choices you make, plus gives you a little thrill when your choice wins out in the conversation. Bioware did an /incredible/ job making the conversations unique with each choice from each class, as they will say something different even if the choice is the same. Plus, even if you lose the choice, you still get light/dark side points based on your choice.

[Dodd Formeianna]

Sounds trivial, but another small game feature that I really liked...

I noticed there's a jukebox in the cantina on Hutta. You can get coins from the bartender and change the music selection. I'm guessing most cantinas have this feature too, although I didn't use it. Just the little cool things about this game that make it neato.

[Dood]

Sounds trivial, but another small game feature that I really liked...

I noticed there's a jukebox in the cantina on Hutta. You can get coins from the bartender and change the music selection. I'm guessing most cantinas have this feature too, although I didn't use it. Just the little cool things about this game that make it neato.

I noticed that too, though I never made use of it. I HAD PEOPLE TO KILL DAMMIT!

[Miragel]

Awesome feedback guys!

OMG DOWNLOAD FASTER

-Mira

[Happyclam]

Another awesome thing that looks fairly new is that you will receive mail from various NPC's that you might have helped in the past, either with information or some credits. It's really a cool feature that adds to immersion.

Oh, and the Sith Warrior has a social animation that you girls will appreciate.

[Sir Psyko]

Sounds trivial, but another small game feature that I really liked...

I noticed there's a jukebox in the cantina on Hutta. You can get coins from the bartender and change the music selection. I'm guessing most cantinas have this feature too, although I didn't use it. Just the little cool things about this game that make it neato.

I noticed that too, though I never made use of it. I HAD PEOPLE TO KILL DAMMIT!

Yes, this works in all Cantinas. Not sure if the tokens are the same for each planet though.

You can also buy drinks that give stat boosts, much like Adrenals.


The annoying thing this build is that most GTN terminals are gone and there's only a couple left, killing the economy... the fleets and capital planets have them, and Nar Shardaa is the "Black Market" which is the only place you can buy/sell cross faction.

[Jimer Lins]

Can I make epic armor?

[Sir Psyko]

Can I make epic armor?

No, because it doesn't exist!

It's called Legendary... but I'm not sure you can ever craft it. You can craft Regular, Prototype and Artifact quality gear though.