The Church of Alvis

Scanned images I found on the net


**SPOILERS**

It's a tunnel shooter.
It sounds kinda lame.
I'm rather disappointed.

That is incredibly disappointing and disheartening. It sounds like they're making it a SPORPG (Single-Player Online RGP) like Hellgate: London rather than a full MMO. What's the point of having Star Wars if you can't have space battles? And each ship armed the same? Lame. Sounds like there will be no space PvP at all.

I want full 3D, 360-degree space PvP/PvE combat. Not having it is actually a rather large mark in the "do not want the game" category for me.

Please Bioware, don't screw this up.

Not having full z-axis space combat isn't a deal-breaker for me. JTL was fun but it wasn't the whole game for me.

My thing is I don't find rail-shooters that fun. Maybe I'll be wrong, but I would have much prefered something more similar to the XWing v TIE model or something like that. I can understand the weapon restrictions, etc. for balance, I'm good with that, but I want to have the freedom to chose my path. I want to dogfight, not be dragged by the nose through the fight shooting only at the targets that they want me to shoot at. I want to use all those old XWing skills I've still got out there and be able to shoot down a capital ship they didn't want me to.

It's just disappointing, I'll still try it, and they say in the article they take 8-20 minutes. so it'll be something to do while waiting for people to go do an instance or something, but it could be so much more than what it is.

A space mmo with a serious ground aspect is always going to be problematic in my mind. If you go too slow and steady (eve ship combat for example) you lose the dogfighty aspect which made X-Wing vs TIE fighter such a good game, and lose major star warsyness. If you go move space fighter sim (like JTL) did you risk marginalizing the bulk of the mmo market who traditionally don't do well with the z axis. (See Malygos WotLK 3rd phase) Or you make the game feel like 2 vastly different games and you might be gating content(which every dev wants people to see) because player X can do ground but not space.

I for one am with holding judgment about the space stuff until I get blown up. I'm more excited about the ground game anyway and running around with you nerds.

Blackferne wrote:I'm more excited about the ground game anyway and running around with you nerds.

I'm not a nerd, I'm a geek, I have hygene.

Furiel wrote:

Blackferne wrote:I'm more excited about the ground game anyway and running around with you nerds.

I'm not a nerd, I'm a geek, I have hygene.

It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.

Furiel wrote:

Blackferne wrote:I'm more excited about the ground game anyway and running around with you nerds.

I'm not a nerd, I'm a geek, I have hygene.

Yes, but it's fbad hygiene.

On the deal about it being a tunnel shooter, I don't know why anyone expected anything different. It's how Bioware handled space combat in both KOTOR games. And as fBlackie points out, it prevents content from being gated. Remember people needing help to run the Vette? Remember how annoying it would be if someone else finished off the fVette while you were trying to run the mission?

If you suck at flight sims, then a twitch-based flight aspect is gated to you in a game that doesn't force you to be good at FPS to win in ground combat. I can see why they wouldn't go that way. I agree that it would have been fbad-ass if they had had a more X-Wing style space aspect, but I can't be surprised or really even all that upset that they didn't go that route.

Dood wrote:

Furiel wrote:

Blackferne wrote:I'm more excited about the ground game anyway and running around with you nerds.

I'm not a nerd, I'm a geek, I have hygene.

Yes, but it's fbad hygiene.

Here's a little entry I like to call fDood and Reese go to a con

Dood wrote:It's how Bioware handled space combat in both KOTOR games.

Bioware had nothing to do with KOTOR II and as far as I can remember there was no space combat in that game either (though it's been a few years since I played it through). Neither were a MMO designed for interaction and combat between players.

I want space PvP and in this system I don't see that happening. ST:O doesn't have true 3D space and it made space battles annoying, but managable, and PvP is all that game has going for it with the lack of story-based combat. I just don't want to be limited to ground PvP in a space-themed game. The article even mentions SWG's lack of space combat at launch being a huge mistake, and this seems to go along the lines of adding in Swoop Races. A time-waster with little point other than getting token rewards.

Here is a link (http://s1018.photobucket.com/albums/af3 ... 110/SWTOR/) to scans of the English PC Gamer article.

They said the space combat was going to be side game. My first thought was a mini-game that had no effect on main game. I think it is good they start slow and work into it. They don't want to spread the communtity too thin at the opening of the game. People want to see other people to give the effect of a lot of people playing the game. The game has to have a linear feel to it in the beginning.

I'm glad space combat is limited. I think there are too many planets too. The bigger the world the less people will think it is a popular game.

Scarybooster wrote:I'm glad space combat is limited. I think there are too many planets too. The bigger the world the less people will think it is a popular game.

Yeah yeah gramps. I know "Back in my day you had to take the shuttle from Rori to Naboo to Corellia then to Taris, cause there was no hyperspace link. And we were grateful to even HAVE a Corellia!"

Sir Psyko wrote:

Dood wrote:It's how Bioware handled space combat in both KOTOR games.

Bioware had nothing to do with KOTOR II and as far as I can remember there was no space combat in that game either (though it's been a few years since I played it through). Neither were a MMO designed for interaction and combat between players.

Regardless of KOTOR2, if you feel like nitpicking that item, it's how space combat happened in the KOTOR game in which Bioware was involved.

And while I agree, again, with the fact that an X-Wing experience is what I would like, I can't really figure how it's surprising in the least that they went this route for space combat. It's faster, easier, and while it will rankle hard-core SW fans, they'll still buy the game because it's SW and it won't alienate the people with their 70 hotkeys mapped for their uber combo builds who can't play twitch-games.

Blackferne wrote:

Scarybooster wrote:I'm glad space combat is limited. I think there are too many planets too. The bigger the world the less people will think it is a popular game.

Yeah yeah gramps. I know "Back in my day you had to take the shuttle from Rori to Naboo to Corellia then to Taris, cause there was no hyperspace link. And we were grateful to even HAVE a Corellia!"

Didn't we used to have to go to Naboo to get to Lok too? Or am I going fsenile?

Dood wrote:

Blackferne wrote:

Scarybooster wrote:I'm glad space combat is limited. I think there are too many planets too. The bigger the world the less people will think it is a popular game.

Yeah yeah gramps. I know "Back in my day you had to take the shuttle from Rori to Naboo to Corellia then to Taris, cause there was no hyperspace link. And we were grateful to even HAVE a Corellia!"

Didn't we used to have to go to Naboo to get to Lok too? Or am I going fsenile?

Lok could be reached via naboo or Tatooine.

Blackferne wrote:

Dood wrote:

Blackferne wrote:

Scarybooster wrote:I'm glad space combat is limited. I think there are too many planets too. The bigger the world the less people will think it is a popular game.

Yeah yeah gramps. I know "Back in my day you had to take the shuttle from Rori to Naboo to Corellia then to Taris, cause there was no hyperspace link. And we were grateful to even HAVE a Corellia!"

Didn't we used to have to go to Naboo to get to Lok too? Or am I going fsenile?

Lok could be reached via naboo or Tatooine.

I have to ask...did you actually remember that off the top of your head or did you have to look it up?

I remember having to make that blasted flight every time I wanted to go home since I spent most of my time on Corellia. God, I miss old SWG. I know it had its flaws but it was the best MMO I've ever played.

Top of my head furiel. I think I can recreate the original planet map from memory if you want to see if I'm right.

Kitoshi wrote:I remember having to make that blasted flight every time I wanted to go home since I spent most of my time on Corellia. God, I miss old SWG. I know it had its flaws but it was the best MMO I've ever played.

It had a ton of flaws but damn if I didn't play that game for two years while WOW only held my interest for 9 months. (Yeah I mainly played SWG for that long because of you guys but so what?)

My big thing about SWG was that it was more open than any other MMO. If I wanted to change any aspect of my character (Aside from gender or species) I could. My Class. My Appearance. My Residence. My Faction. If I logged on and wanted to spend the day running around making money I could. If I wanted to run around exploring the planets I could and spends hours doing it because they were so big there always seemed to be something new. I could fly around in space and blow the crap out of stuff.

With WoW, EQ2, etc. it seems more like a grind.

Log On. Check Mail. See if anyone in guild needs anything. Try to find a group for dungeon. Fail to find a group for dungeon. Harvest mats for raid. Wait on raid to form. Raid and maybe kill some bosses and not get loot. Whoo! Finally I can log off.

It's the freedom of SWG which I loved. The players are the ones who drove the story and the devs threw in the mechanisms we needed to carry on with the story. Why they decided they needed NGE I'll never know. But I can only hope some game, some day will return to that style of MMO.

I am disappointed that ToR wont be that game, but I believe it will be better than other MMOs that are currently out atm.

MMOs have a spectrum of Disneyland to Sandbox.

WoW is very much the Disneyland experience where when you log in you see the sites. Oh look kids its Thrall! Everyone wave its the dread pirate Van Cleef! Well it is at least as you level. WoW's chief problem is that the end to the main story lines require raiding to see which leads to the dungeon/raid/prep for raid grind. I personally don't mind it so much because it at least gives me a goal I can keep working towards. But you definitely don't feel like you personally have a huge impact on the world. "Oh crap Hogger is dead!" "Don't worry he'll respawn in 3 minutes."

The other side of the spectrum is the pure sandbox EVE and SWG are those kind of games. You want to be some weird crafter/combat hybrid? Go to town. You have your unique setup? Not a problem. There is no amusement park rides, there are sites, but they are little more than geography. The problem with that is that you really need a strong community to make it stick, and that community will need some content if it is ever going to grow to a decent size. SWG had an amazing community, and it seems like EVE does too if you can get hooked into it. But that community in SWG died when the bugs and lack of things to do started pulling people away from the game.

I am hoping that Bioware can find a sweet spot in the middle. Just enough Disneyland to get people playing getting stuff done, and enough sandbox that we don't feel trapped in a box. Space combat imo was always going to be problematic, and so that they decided to simplify it (and hopefully make the ground game awesomesauce) doesn't bother me too much.

Kitoshi wrote:My big thing about SWG was that it was more open than any other MMO. If I wanted to change any aspect of my character (Aside from gender or species) I could. My Class. My Appearance. My Residence. My Faction. If I logged on and wanted to spend the day running around making money I could. If I wanted to run around exploring the planets I could and spends hours doing it because they were so big there always seemed to be something new. I could fly around in space and blow the crap out of stuff.

With WoW, EQ2, etc. it seems more like a grind.

Log On. Check Mail. See if anyone in guild needs anything. Try to find a group for dungeon. Fail to find a group for dungeon. Harvest mats for raid. Wait on raid to form. Raid and maybe kill some bosses and not get loot. Whoo! Finally I can log off.

It's the freedom of SWG which I loved. The players are the ones who drove the story and the devs threw in the mechanisms we needed to carry on with the story. Why they decided they needed NGE I'll never know. But I can only hope some game, some day will return to that style of MMO.

I am disappointed that ToR wont be that game, but I believe it will be better than other MMOs that are currently out atm.

Btw - the Oct issue of PCGamer with the SW:ToR stuff in it hit newsstands today.