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Star Wars: The Old Republic [Early Access: December 13th] Thread 2
- Thread starter Emitan
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Anasui Kishibe
Banned
I have some gripes, biggest of 'em is levelling to 17 in less than two days of playing, but overall it's a good MMO
I'll buy and I'm sure as hell won't use the horrendous black yellow crystal for my sabre
I'll buy and I'm sure as hell won't use the horrendous black yellow crystal for my sabre
I had to stop myself from playing the beta because I didn't want to see too much of the game before launch.
My main disappointment is how little I enjoyed the Jedi/Sith classes. I loved all of the ranged classes I played, Trooper and IA are great fun, but I don't think I'd ever play through as a melee going off the 1-10 experiences of them.
My main disappointment is how little I enjoyed the Jedi/Sith classes. I loved all of the ranged classes I played, Trooper and IA are great fun, but I don't think I'd ever play through as a melee going off the 1-10 experiences of them.
The source of that is the Kotor games!
I demand something outside of that. The Bioware invention is terrible and Lucas should have zapped their mid chlorine!
Yeah, it doesn't take screenshots well. Looks a lot better in motion tho.
Anasui Kishibe
Banned
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
They really dumbed down the flashpoint instances from the previous beta. It wasn't nearly as challenging as before. The story aspect was cool the first time around, not so much in subsequent runs. In fact, I didn't really want to sit through the same dialogues. Really need a more elegant way to skip them.
BattleMonkey
Member
It happens in Episode 3 to Anakin when he turns dark side. His eyes turn the sith sunburst yellow and his skin darkened around them. They also did it in the Clone Wars series with Asohka turning dark and then turning back with her eyes/skin changing.
LiquidMetal14
hide your water-based mammals
The thing I tell everyone is never, EVER, let other peoples impressions deter you. Watch videos, read some stuff, make your own mind up.
The game doesn't look or flattering in many of the screens. Does it at least have some great vistas and huge open environments?
BattleMonkey
Member
The early levels/planets are very linear and and not big, but the later planets get larger and larger and are big open zones for the most part. The game does have some gorgeous vistas I thought. Frankly find the game better in motion, but also the lack of AA really hurts the game in these beta screens.
LiquidMetal14
hide your water-based mammals
So a bad screenshot (best I had of the preorder crystal) Also wiped out some stuff just for sure and to ensure no spoilers.
Where's the lighting? Some textures? It looks like a glorified mid tier HD PS2 game. That is pathetically ugly. Please tell me that is not maxed and you can at least add some SSAA as that game does not look that graphically demanding. I know it's SW and the fanbase is broad but damn, you gotta give the PC gamer more options to make it look better.
You see if you can overwrite some AA in via RadeonPro or inspector?
Even with that, I'm not trying to be mean by saying it looks like a mid tier PS2 HD port.
BattleMonkey
Member
It really does not look like a HD port of a PS2 game, the game is a mixed bag largely due to some odd texture work where you have some high res textures in areas mixed with really bad ones. They have been improving the textures with each build polish update, but still some textures are likely going to remain low res possibly like character armor... hopefully not. AA is currently disabled in the game menu, supposed to be in the works and should be in by launch. Other players have forced on AA through various means depending on their card. It does make a big difference when AA is on.
New build coming out so I hope that some of these textures get sorted out
LiquidMetal14
hide your water-based mammals
I'm a bystander so it's not me trying to be mean but curious. I applied for the beta but didn't get in ><
Thanks for the responses. I just want to see some good AA shots like some of them screens I seen before the beta came out.
Thanks for the responses. I just want to see some good AA shots like some of them screens I seen before the beta came out.
New interview
http://www.videogamer.com/pc/star_w...ld_a_world_in_star_wars_the_old_republic.html
Q: How is the story going to continue after users have reached max level - is there a conclusive finale?
MH: We have plans for post-launch that we're not really talking about, but we plan to satiate the hunger fans are going to have. We have plans but we can't really talk about it.
They better talk about it soon!
http://www.videogamer.com/pc/star_w...ld_a_world_in_star_wars_the_old_republic.html
Q: How is the story going to continue after users have reached max level - is there a conclusive finale?
MH: We have plans for post-launch that we're not really talking about, but we plan to satiate the hunger fans are going to have. We have plans but we can't really talk about it.
They better talk about it soon!
-bakalhau-
Member
I didn't take any screenshots... But I had 4xaa in my game. It's as simple as adding it in a game ini...
I thought the game looked great. It's detailed, colorful, huge draw distances, good looking flora and trees, nice characters models (and honestly, the armor isn't low res, at least in 1680x1050)... AA makes a huge difference. The game looks really clean and it's then you can really appreciate the somewhat cartoony feel of the art style.
Go see some official screenshots from the various planets and you'll get an idea of how it looks. The ice planets look wonderful and honestly the Sith starter planet, Korriban, just pales in comparison to all the others. It doesn't have half the detail of the other planets.
I've said it like twice already, but it seems only bad screenshots count to form an opinion. You can't even say I'm a biased Star Wars fan because I couldn't be further from it, I have never had any interest in SW until now.
It's a shame I never took screenshots.
One thing's for sure, I feel it's unoptimized. It was a beta though.
I thought the game looked great. It's detailed, colorful, huge draw distances, good looking flora and trees, nice characters models (and honestly, the armor isn't low res, at least in 1680x1050)... AA makes a huge difference. The game looks really clean and it's then you can really appreciate the somewhat cartoony feel of the art style.
Go see some official screenshots from the various planets and you'll get an idea of how it looks. The ice planets look wonderful and honestly the Sith starter planet, Korriban, just pales in comparison to all the others. It doesn't have half the detail of the other planets.
I've said it like twice already, but it seems only bad screenshots count to form an opinion. You can't even say I'm a biased Star Wars fan because I couldn't be further from it, I have never had any interest in SW until now.
It's a shame I never took screenshots.
One thing's for sure, I feel it's unoptimized. It was a beta though.
BattleMonkey
Member
Game hasn't even launched yet. It's going to a be while before we see story continuations for the classes probably. New content for the first several months no doubt will just be generic stuff like PVP areas, flashpoints, and operations.
Player armour looks ok... NPCs can look shockingly bad, though. The runty Cyborg in Havoc Squad for instance, those type of textures would have been considered poor over half a decade ago.
rukland
Member
To echo both of these content is king in the long run. As long as BW keeps putting it out people will stay. Take too long and well nice knowing ya SWTOR
My impressions were pretty negative... I don't think it's a bad game, it just isn't very good either. Certainly not good enough to warrant paying a subscription, anyway.
The game isn't as responsive as WoW which may be a product of lackluster animation, it just feels unresponsive at times. The opening planet was boring and didn't do much to entice me to keep playing but that may be due to the fact that I don't really care at all about the SW universe/story. It doesn't really seem to be doing anything new or unique, it's the same tired formula, which is probably a business decision since MMOs are so expensive. It's not a very pretty game, either.
Things I can see other people liking: Voice acting, character alignment (good, evil, etc), companions, futuristic non-fantasy setting. With that said, I never had any performance issues, lag, nor did I experience random bugs.. so that's a plus.
If you're really desperate to play an MMO or if you're really tired of WoW the this is a decent alternative. I just really can't see myself getting into it and I'm glad I got to try it for free. I think I will wait for GW2. My advice would be to try out a later beta/free trial before buying.
The game isn't as responsive as WoW which may be a product of lackluster animation, it just feels unresponsive at times. The opening planet was boring and didn't do much to entice me to keep playing but that may be due to the fact that I don't really care at all about the SW universe/story. It doesn't really seem to be doing anything new or unique, it's the same tired formula, which is probably a business decision since MMOs are so expensive. It's not a very pretty game, either.
Things I can see other people liking: Voice acting, character alignment (good, evil, etc), companions, futuristic non-fantasy setting. With that said, I never had any performance issues, lag, nor did I experience random bugs.. so that's a plus.
If you're really desperate to play an MMO or if you're really tired of WoW the this is a decent alternative. I just really can't see myself getting into it and I'm glad I got to try it for free. I think I will wait for GW2. My advice would be to try out a later beta/free trial before buying.
Might want to ask what kind of hardware he's running the game on. I ran it on i5 2500k, gtx 560ti, and 8GB RAM, everything maxed and it didn't look anywhere near that bad for me. It is nowhere near Skyrim, or BF3 since I play those on high-ultra settings with some AA, but I've come to expect that you don't jump into the MMO genre to be wowed by the graphics. It could have been better for me if I had the option to turn on some AA, but I couldn't find the option anywhere.
rukland
Member
Just had to highlight that part to bring up a point that a buddy and I have talked about. Really this game is great IF you are a Star Wars fan, it's not a bad game but to really care about it you need to like the world of Star Wars.
I see this game drawing very few non-SW fans, but for those that are fans it's really got a lot to offer in terms of just feeling like SW.
Osiris
I permanently banned my 6 year old daughter from using the PS4 for mistakenly sending grief reports as it's too hard to watch or talk to her
I would argue that whilst content is indeed king, end-game play requires more than just quarterly/six-monthly content updates to keep players interested.
Nearly all MMO's have suffered loss of players at endgame due to repeatable content becoming tired and stale after a while, and the producers of MMO's need to at some point move to a model of dynamic content / regular world events to solve this.
It's a shame that the promise of "Persistent World States" was reduced to "cloud storage for characters and items" rather than developing into systems for a truly changable world environment.
Nearly all MMO's have suffered loss of players at endgame due to repeatable content becoming tired and stale after a while, and the producers of MMO's need to at some point move to a model of dynamic content / regular world events to solve this.
It's a shame that the promise of "Persistent World States" was reduced to "cloud storage for characters and items" rather than developing into systems for a truly changable world environment.
BrLvgThrChmstry
Banned
I'll post some in a few; forced AA via inspector, took a few screens... Though I'm NOT entirely fond of the game itself, I am very pleased with the visuals. When AA is enabled...
BattleMonkey
Member
Probably because it's not something easy at all to implement or would be too hard to maintain. Attempts to make dynamic content systems really have not panned out or really just end up being random repetition. Any dynamic system would not be able to satisfy players long term, it has to be truly new material that has to be made from scratch that can keep players interested long term.
RIFT did a pretty nice job with putting in new content on a regular basis, though it never took off huge and it seems to be bleeding members now, majority of servers are low pop now with just some getting to even medium pop now during prime time. Server merges are likely not to far off for that game.
BrLvgThrChmstry
Banned
I hope to see a developer challenge this and succeed at it. EVE is the closest I've come to experiencing this. Wasn't perfect... but it was something.
Interfectum
Member
That is the perfect way to state the current trend for MMOs. The promise vs the reality.
Is anyone confident that Bioware is even going to come close to matching that level of content output? It seems far more likely they're going to end up following the wow model of 3-6 months for a few new instances and pull in the extra money with an expansion every year or two.
It's sad that Rift is losing players, if I could get my friends to actually raid I'd still be playing. They've provided the most content in the first year (Or the entire lifetime for most games) of any MMO.
In the end an MMO's success will always be about social forces and licensing more than content though which is why there's no incentive for Bioware to follow that model. Especially when you plan on having voice acting for every line of dialogue you add to the game.
BattleMonkey
Member
Having random enemy invasions/spawns is as close to "dynamic" as things get, but it becomes repetitive and doesn't really do much to extend the game. I think it's a nice thing to have in games, and most games should do it, but it's not going to satisfy lot of end game demands of players, those especially who are obsessed with raid running as their end game choice. EVE though largely is all about players creating their own world and basically supplying their own content, but it's also really a niche game and doesn't have the mass appeal these theme park MMO's are going for.
Winterblink
Member
Not sure how old that screenshot is, but even on my 5850 the game looks a billion times better than that. The engine seemed to be improved a lot between the previous beta weekend and this one. I'd post some shots I took this weekend, but I'm at work. :\
Osiris
I permanently banned my 6 year old daughter from using the PS4 for mistakenly sending grief reports as it's too hard to watch or talk to her
Long ago I used to be part of a forum (long gone now) that used to have many devs from the MMO world and had many discussions with devs from different MMO's and some of their revelations could be quite surprising.
One was that long-term players were not generally wanted by the MMO publishers, as they tended to be the most vocal about issues, both minor and major, the most demanding with respect to changes and content updates, and were generally detrimental to the longer term health of their games.
Instead they wanted high turnover, new content was released not to keep players playing, but to entice newer customers to join and that a player that played for a year and quit was better for them than a player that played from launch for evermore.
It explains the move to themepark MMO's overall, the levelling experience *is* the game, and end-game content was considered to be anathema to the goal of high turnover.
I wonder if WOW has changed this perception, or validated it.
One was that long-term players were not generally wanted by the MMO publishers, as they tended to be the most vocal about issues, both minor and major, the most demanding with respect to changes and content updates, and were generally detrimental to the longer term health of their games.
Instead they wanted high turnover, new content was released not to keep players playing, but to entice newer customers to join and that a player that played for a year and quit was better for them than a player that played from launch for evermore.
It explains the move to themepark MMO's overall, the levelling experience *is* the game, and end-game content was considered to be anathema to the goal of high turnover.
I wonder if WOW has changed this perception, or validated it.
Slayer-33
Liverpool-2
Some PVP vid's for you guys, I'm Voidrayz, friend Territo upped this. I was level 13, friends are 17 Rockstedie, 23 Territobeta
Alderaan
http://youtu.be/kJ7JCH-ayOw
Huttball
http://youtu.be/oOJ20KpysX0
All of us are BH's, 2XMerc 1XPowertech
FUN TIMES.
Alderaan
http://youtu.be/kJ7JCH-ayOw
Huttball
http://youtu.be/oOJ20KpysX0
All of us are BH's, 2XMerc 1XPowertech
FUN TIMES.
Interfectum
Member
Makes sense... I guess that's why Blizzard has never offered any kind of veteran or consumer appreciation awards for long term subscribers.
This is extremely interesting. I would have loved to read that forum.
Apparently the 2nd will be the last day Guilds can accept members pre-launch. After that, you'll have to join from the within the game after launch. As such, this is your last chance to join the GAF guilds before Early Access.
PVE East Coast Republic
PVE East Coast Empire
PVP Europe Republic
PVP Europe Empire
PVE East Coast Republic
PVE East Coast Empire
PVP Europe Republic
PVP Europe Empire
It certainly makes sense. I generally play MMO's with friends as really long coop games. If you treat them like that the value for the purchase is enormous, even if you have to pay for a second month (Which I prefer because it means the game has a ton of content to experience).
I'd say WoW has somewhat validated that though most of the really intense wow players I knew had multiple alts they would level and put an absurd amount of time into that game. In a way it supports the idea of leveling content as the game but it might have the opposite effect in terms of increasing turnover.
Personally I can play a game longterm and do the hardcore raiding scene but my less insane friends really have no interest in that. The most important part of the experience are the dungeons, group content, and PVP (Both battleground and world pvp). The people that get into heavy raiding aren't a great customer base because for the most part they're really analytical and unforgiving. My girlfriend isn't going to see or care about rampant class balance issues as long as she can play a cool thematic character and it doesn't suck.
My favorite part about SWTOR is that it seems like we'll be able to 3 man all of the leveling content (And really you could duo everything if you have two skilled players I'm sure) and if the story is interesting enough I might be able to get my friends to do the raids/operations once or twice. I'll still get more time for my money than anything else outside of Skyrim.
So torn on this game at the moment. On one hand I want to play a Star Wars MMO. I enjoyed my time in SWG and the idea of playing in another one is appealing. However on the other hand what I played of the beta just had me going through the motions for the most part. I didn't even continue with the other phases as a result. 30gig redownload was also a turn off but would have gone through with it if I cared enough. It wasn't horrible but it was really a been there and done that situation. It was boring for a lack of a better word. It felt really linear, no exploration in my eyes. There is a serious lack of scifi mmos but I wouldn't suggest this to people looking for one.
The biggest negative for me is also perhaps the games biggest strength. The focus on story. I enjoy the lore in MMORPGs. I like reading the various books in games or reading up on the settings for the games. I did this a LOT with Everquest 1 and Everquest 2. If I'm given so much story (which is different from game lore) to play through, that I must play through, I don't want to be spending $15 a month on top of paying $50/$60. That's the biggest turn off for me. Star Wars: The Old Republic to me, from what I experienced, is a single player game (made up of kill and fetch task) that you need to pay $15 a month to access. It's really crazy and a rip off the more I think about it. Perhaps I'm just over the P2P model after all these years and no longer see the worth.
The biggest negative for me is also perhaps the games biggest strength. The focus on story. I enjoy the lore in MMORPGs. I like reading the various books in games or reading up on the settings for the games. I did this a LOT with Everquest 1 and Everquest 2. If I'm given so much story (which is different from game lore) to play through, that I must play through, I don't want to be spending $15 a month on top of paying $50/$60. That's the biggest turn off for me. Star Wars: The Old Republic to me, from what I experienced, is a single player game (made up of kill and fetch task) that you need to pay $15 a month to access. It's really crazy and a rip off the more I think about it. Perhaps I'm just over the P2P model after all these years and no longer see the worth.
AzureNightmare
Banned
Being some one who has played WoW since vanilla, and having played in two different betas of SWTOR (one NDA'd one not) I can safely say I will be keeping my preorder of the Collector's Edition and meet this game head-on in 2 to 3 weeks. Star Wars The Old Republic has earned my seal of approval. I really like a lot of what this game does and look forward to seeing how it grows and evolves over the years.
BrLvgThrChmstry
Banned
One of a few screens I have without the HUD, on the starter planet. AA forced through inspector. Click for full size. -- it really is a game that looks better in motion, to an extent.
They really do.
They really do.
Interfectum
Member
One of a few screens I have without the HUD, on the starter planet. AA forced through inspector.
The player character models look so stiff and awkward.
I guess I feel about the same as you do. I've been in beta for quite a while. I put in some good time in that first phase. All the ones after I didn't even bother to download except once. It's so run of the mill with the exception of all the talking which ends up doubling the amount of time you spend doing nothing.
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