Let's face it folks. Going full-dark is a lot more fun than being a goody good. Zapping people to death vs meaningful discussion and debate.
I think I'll go with lightning fingers.
Keyword: Meaningful.
While I've grown to accept BW's idea of "You must be <this> good/evil to convince Person A to help you", I really wish there they could find another way to approach that mechanic that would make the light side feel more... well, fun.
Our choices are essentially...
Badass Dark side: "It's just been revoked... <BAM>"
or
Whiny Light Side: "Pretty, pretty please x5"
Also, I know that you can pick through response choices during conversations with NPCs, but in TOR (and I apologize for not knowing) is there also the "convince" mechanic I mentioned above? I haven't seen or read about this being in.
I know in KoToR that if you were more dark aligned you had to have a high level of charisma(or something similar) when you were trying to convince people of something. I remember trying to tell a yoda type character that I didn't kill some people and he didn't believe me. Whatever, it just made my character more badass in the end.
I don't think anyone within the Star Wars Universe is aware of what Lucas has decided on the matter, and therefore, just as we do, thier opinions of Lightside vs. Darkside has to come from thier own observations and the stories they have heard. A "Grey" Jedi doesn't know that his/her path of walking both sides will, according to Lucas, eventually doom him/her to the corrupt nature of the dark side, because (s)he is a sentient being who is unaware of his/her nature as a fictional character... And if that never does happen, by the Word of Lucas, (s)he just happened to have the good fortune of dying before (s)he could fall to the Dark Side.
However, I'm also of the opinion that Mr. Lucas shouldn't have opened his mouth and said anything one way or the other, even if he had the idea in his head ever since A New Hope. Some things are better off left ambiguous...
Jedi don't ever really get "doomed" to the dark side, though. No matter what terrible shit you've done, you can pretty much always turn around and say "hey sorry guys I'll be good now I promise," and not only will the Jedi accept you back, the force doesn't seem like it cares. Which to me reinforces the idea that the force is just that, a force that some people learn to control, not a quasi-higher-power kind of thing. It certainly doesn't seem like there are necessarily longterm consequence of falling to the dark side, either. Sure some light side jedi might hunt you down and kill you, and you get a little bit wrinkly if you throw too much lightning around, but there's no final "punishment" really.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I don't think anyone within the Star Wars Universe is aware of what Lucas has decided on the matter, and therefore, just as we do, thier opinions of Lightside vs. Darkside has to come from thier own observations and the stories they have heard. A "Grey" Jedi doesn't know that his/her path of walking both sides will, according to Lucas, eventually doom him/her to the corrupt nature of the dark side, because (s)he is a sentient being who is unaware of his/her nature as a fictional character... And if that never does happen, by the Word of Lucas, (s)he just happened to have the good fortune of dying before (s)he could fall to the Dark Side.
However, I'm also of the opinion that Mr. Lucas shouldn't have opened his mouth and said anything one way or the other, even if he had the idea in his head ever since A New Hope. Some things are better off left ambiguous...
Jedi don't ever really get "doomed" to the dark side, though. No matter what terrible shit you've done, you can pretty much always turn around and say "hey sorry guys I'll be good now I promise," and not only will the Jedi accept you back, the force doesn't seem like it cares. Which to me reinforces the idea that the force is just that, a force that some people learn to control, not a quasi-higher-power kind of thing. It certainly doesn't seem like there are necessarily longterm consequence of falling to the dark side, either. Sure some light side jedi might hunt you down and kill you, and you get a little bit wrinkly if you throw too much lightning around, but there's no final "punishment" really.
Something to keep in mind with Lucas' Word on things, is that in the (OT) movies, which are the only canon everyone can agree on, and the number of Sith that renounced the Dark Side is exactly 1, and he didn't really get the chance to try being a Jedi again.
I'm pretty sure your trivitalizing the whole redemption thing as well... Well, for anyone who wasn't created by Kevin J. Anderson or whose last name doesn't starts with "S" and rhymes with "Big Talker" at any rate.
Yeah, but we only meet a total of what, four sith in the entirety of both trilogies? One imagines asking forgiveness isn't that common, else there'd be no more sith.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I might be the worst SW:TOR fanboy ever... For I never played through the original Knights of the Old Republic.
I've been playing it this weekend. I'm like 17 hours in. And holy shit, this game is actually really amazing. I think I may have figured out the big twist at the end, because I watched the most recent TOR Timeline video.
Or you could figure it out by the fact that it's bloody obvious and if that weren't enough, they pretty much do everything but literally spell it out in the install screens.
The first KotOR sucks. The second one is much better, if unfinished.
Installed it on steam, so I have no install screens.
I didn't think it was obvious, I certainly wouldn't have guessed it if I hadn't seen that Timeline video.
Unless what I think is the twist, isn't in fact the twist and we're talking about different things... Hmm.
Melkster, do some google searches for widescreen kotor etc. One of the sites is called widescreen gaming or somethign like that. It will give you isntructions on where you can download a patcher for the resolutions and the UI files you just copy to the override folder. It will have instructions on how to do it for steam too. It's basically copying and renaming the execute file so Steam doesn't auto update it.
I've got only basic skills when it comes to screwing around with things like that but I got it working and I've been playing KotOR recently in widescreen with native resolution on my screen.
It says that you'd need a No-CD crack to do it, and I don't install such things on my machine.
- WORLD SIZE: "We began to split up a little bit and explore the world. It was much larger than I thought it would be, and the rumour on the street is that this is one of the smallest of the planets. It took a little under an hour to roam from one end of Hutta to the next, but that was on pretty much a straight line with only a couple little side ventures. To cover every inch of the map, would take a pretty good chunk of time, and that's if you stayed outside and didn't go into any of the massive interior sections." Okay, let's take this with a grain of salt. I know Bioware are magicians, but either he was questing from one edge to the other, or he has no sense of time. Why do I say that? Because if he really was just running from one end to the other without stopping, Hutta would be as large as Azeroth. (It takes ~20 minutes to run East to West across Kalimdor, and about 4 times that to run North to South.)
- OPEN WORLD more or less confirmed, with small quest 'instances' covering the world area. One example: We "approached a small hut that had someone who I was supposed to talk to in it for my main quest. Initially it had a big red barrier in front of it for Samm, but a green one for myself. After I walked into it however it then became blue for Samm, allowing him to come in behind me." These quest instances seem to advance the story of the game, and they seem to be the EXCEPTION to the open world "rule." MOST of the world is wide open, WoW style, with smaller huts, hangars, buildings, etc, that are instanced and story-driven. RED portals to these instances mean you can't go in yet (you're not at the proper stage, or perhaps not the proper class). GREEN portals mean you can go in to advance an active quest. BLUE portals mean it's not your quest that's being advanced, but your party member's whom you can help. Also, ZERO loading times on these "instances" help retain that open world experience.
- NO LOADING TIMES ON INSTANCES - at least the open world instances.
- SPEEDER TAXI. Yep, just like the Gryphons. 100% confirmed. You aren't able to control the Speeder at all, and it works exactly like WoW's Gryphons.
- POSSIBLE LEVEL CAP OF 50? The elite higher level friendly NPCs in the newbie area of the game were level 50.
-Saber combat was awesome. You can really feel when someone blocks your attacks, or vise versa. Right click was to attack with a basic attack, and it almost felt like an action game. It took a bit to get used to it though, because your "normal" right click attack almost counts as an ability, in that it activates a cooldown on your special abilities. So if you keep spamming what would be the Auto-Attack in other MMO's you wouldnt be able to use any special abilities. You have to make the effort to stop attacking that way and attack with a special ability instead. Long story short you cant be attacking with a basic attack and spamming special attacks at the same time, you have to choose between one or the other.. every half second!
This is exactly how I described my impression of the game months ago in previous threads.
You're in a room and it's your own place with voiced NPCs where you can interact and toil around then you walk out onto the street and find all the other players filling the streets going from one place to the other and interacting with eachother.
If you've played WoW, just picture Ironforge or Stormwind but with some of the houses being personal instances.
reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited June 2010
I wonder what's the benefit of using regular attack. If it's just "well, all your abilities have shitlong cooldowns so it's all you can do most of the time", that's not going to be terribly much fun.
They might have have some low to long cooldowns depending on the ability, also depends on your resources. You may over heat your gadgets as a Bounty Hunter and want to shoot rather than do nothing.
Your normal abilities may also have some penalty built in like KotOR. Flurry gave an extra attack but it reduced your defenses (I can't remember exactly, might be chance to hit)
What I don't get is why I have to keep clicking to attack. I don't mind auto attacking or the queued system in KotOR. But I haven't played yet and the guy who has says it's fun. Guess we'll see.
I wonder what's the benefit of using regular attack. If it's just "well, all your abilities have shitlong cooldowns so it's all you can do most of the time", that's not going to be terribly much fun.
I think it's probably a non-heat generating/ ammo-using/ whatever attack, to use if your OOM or for efficiency etc. That's my tentative speculation...
Why did the guy say take world size with a pinch of salt?
I thought we knew the swtor worlds are bigger than old world wow continents.
Four reasons:
#1. It's a starter world. We've been told these worlds are smaller than normal planets.
#2. If it really did take an hour to walk from one end of the starter planet to the other without stopping, the starter world is about the same size as both continents of Azeroth put together. Considering there are thirteen planets so far announced, this seems absolutely impossible. There is no way that Bioware has developed content for a space an order of magnitude bigger than WoW's old world. Five times, perhaps. But not ten times and certainly not thirteen times or more. That strikes me as approaching impossibility.
#3. Bioware has indicated they want to get you out of the starter zone and on your way quickly. The highest level mobs in the area are around level 7-8, I believe. Azeroth, on the other hand, spans the first 60 levels of content. I think it's pretty obvious that they don't want you to stick around on the planet for quite that long.
#4. It contradicts the Darth Hater group, who said the Starter Planets are definitely bigger than WoW's starter zones, but did not strike them as very massive. They were asked directly if it took an hour to cross the world, and they said that wasn't possible, but that they didn't "time it" themselves. (They did throw out the number "30 minutes" but it was off hand.)
Also, as far as I know, Bioware has made no comparison of their planet size to any WoW continent.
I'm going to guess that each planet is as large as Azeroth. Looking up the square miles, Azeroth was onyl 80 square miles. There are quite a few games that beat that. Even playing WoW there were only a few zones that really felt huge. With the right design and points of interested being a little more spread out to feel more 'planety' you could
Think about it. 80 square miles is only a 9x9 square. Fine for running and horses. Not so fine if you have spaceships.
Cat, you certainly might be right about the non-starter worlds.
However, the starter world is most certainly not the size of Azeroth. Do you remember how long it took you to quest from level 1 to 60? For me, it took a month and a half.
The starter world goes up to level 8 or so and they want you outta there quick. It will be huge, but not Azeroth huge. Not in content, and not in space.
Melkster on
0
reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
Do you remember how long it took you to quest from level 1 to 60? For me, it took a month and a half.
That's because vanilla WoW had horrible exp requirements and quests gave pretty shitty exp and all your gear was stamina/spirit crap so it took forever to kill shit. It had nothing to do with the size of the world.
That said, I never pay any attention to "it took me x time to walk across the world" when it comes to MMOs. Who cares? It's an MMO, the world's gonna be pretty big.
I believe they stated their smallest planet (considerably smallest) was a little bigger than eastern kingdoms I.e half of azeroth
Louie on
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited June 2010
To expand on why "it took me x time to run across the world" is a completely worthless statement all by itself. What are the qualifications of this statement? Did they do nothing but run? Did they have to stop every now and then not to get ganked by big monsters? Did they spend time dead after being ganked by big monsters? Did they stop to take in the scenery? What was the scenery anyway? Was it just barren wasteland or was there something there? Shit, I could make a map that takes you three hours to run from one end to the other, but that doesn't mean I'm going to put any NPCs or trees or decoration or anything there.
It's a tricky balance. You don't want something so small that it feels like a backyard, but spreading it out too much just makes it a slog to get from place to place.
We're also assuming you never go back at higher levels. Hard to imagine the current home for Jedi's and the Sith's Koriban only play the smallest part in their stories.
"Welcome, you're a Sith. NEVER COME BACK TO KORRIBAN!"
Maybe the rest of the galaxy will keep you so busy you don't miss it.
Let me be clear: I would absolutely love it if every planet was the size of Azeroth and was filled to the brim with content. That would be amazing.
But I'm also something of a realist. A game that's effectively 15 times the size of Azeroth with content density to match is a monumental investment of resources. And there are limits to those resources. I certainly believe that it's possible to do that... but Bioware aren't gods. They aren't superhuman. And their funding isn't limitless.
I have no idea if building such a massive world is possible with an acceptable level of polish, even given 7 years and more money than any single EA project. If it is, that just goes to show you that Bioware just might be gods among us. If it isn't, then I'll still be happy.
In a darth hater podcast, a dev said ord mantell was half the size of Kalimdor and it is by far the smallest planet, though the other starters are all comparable in size.
In this translation from a Belgian gaming site, the writer says it took them 7 (EDIT: oops it actually days 'several', which is meaningless) minutes to travel to a mission on nal hutta (I think.)
In a darth hater podcast, a dev said ord mantell was half the size of Kalimdor and it is by far the smallest planet, though the other starters are all comparable in size.
That's pretty big for a starter world though. The biggest starting zone in WoW is Durotar and it's probably only like 1/15th the size of the Kalimdor map.
My fastest 1-60 in WoW was two weeks (did it about a month ago.) I don't see that being the case for this game. For me, WoW was always about getting to a level to get something that made the game less annoying. Getting a mount, getting useful spells, building a talent tree to actually accomplish the role of your class and be less grindy with less time just traveling from spot to spot. Obviously, WoW has made big strides to change that with mounts at 20 and swiftmounts at 40 (also drastically lowering the gold requirements.) Dungeon finder was certainly a big help. I know a lot of people aren't fans of how they make things easier and easier since launch:
Remember when Journeyman riding cost 900 gold?
I'm less concerned about that kind of stuff for this game because the story will be giving payoffs instead of just the chance for the game to be better. Hopefully, that's the idea.
Posts
I know in KoToR that if you were more dark aligned you had to have a high level of charisma(or something similar) when you were trying to convince people of something. I remember trying to tell a yoda type character that I didn't kill some people and he didn't believe me. Whatever, it just made my character more badass in the end.
Jedi don't ever really get "doomed" to the dark side, though. No matter what terrible shit you've done, you can pretty much always turn around and say "hey sorry guys I'll be good now I promise," and not only will the Jedi accept you back, the force doesn't seem like it cares. Which to me reinforces the idea that the force is just that, a force that some people learn to control, not a quasi-higher-power kind of thing. It certainly doesn't seem like there are necessarily longterm consequence of falling to the dark side, either. Sure some light side jedi might hunt you down and kill you, and you get a little bit wrinkly if you throw too much lightning around, but there's no final "punishment" really.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Something to keep in mind with Lucas' Word on things, is that in the (OT) movies, which are the only canon everyone can agree on, and the number of Sith that renounced the Dark Side is exactly 1, and he didn't really get the chance to try being a Jedi again.
I'm pretty sure your trivitalizing the whole redemption thing as well... Well, for anyone who wasn't created by Kevin J. Anderson or whose last name doesn't starts with "S" and rhymes with "Big Talker" at any rate.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
It says that you'd need a No-CD crack to do it, and I don't install such things on my machine.
It's $10 on Steam. You have no excuse!
Oh but I do. I'm unemployed, so all my money has to go towards my bills.
And I already own it. So there's that.
Edit: I do have $11...
You can afford a sub to WoW, and food on your table, you can afford some Star Wars goodness for ten freakin' dollars.
They hide the discs until you have repurchased, then put them right where you will see them moments after installing the new cd key.
Maybe they are temptations to the darkside, anger et al.
Purchasing leads to Installing.
Installing leads to FINDING YOUR GOD DAMN ORIGINAL FUCKING DISCS! FUCK!
6/22/10
Lots of fan sites are giving their personal take on their personal TOR playthrough from a player's perspective.
Here's Darth Hater's Ventrilo Q&A from Monday
Here's TOR-AID's playthrough reflection
A few interesting notes from these comments:
- WORLD SIZE: "We began to split up a little bit and explore the world. It was much larger than I thought it would be, and the rumour on the street is that this is one of the smallest of the planets. It took a little under an hour to roam from one end of Hutta to the next, but that was on pretty much a straight line with only a couple little side ventures. To cover every inch of the map, would take a pretty good chunk of time, and that's if you stayed outside and didn't go into any of the massive interior sections." Okay, let's take this with a grain of salt. I know Bioware are magicians, but either he was questing from one edge to the other, or he has no sense of time. Why do I say that? Because if he really was just running from one end to the other without stopping, Hutta would be as large as Azeroth. (It takes ~20 minutes to run East to West across Kalimdor, and about 4 times that to run North to South.)
- OPEN WORLD more or less confirmed, with small quest 'instances' covering the world area. One example: We "approached a small hut that had someone who I was supposed to talk to in it for my main quest. Initially it had a big red barrier in front of it for Samm, but a green one for myself. After I walked into it however it then became blue for Samm, allowing him to come in behind me." These quest instances seem to advance the story of the game, and they seem to be the EXCEPTION to the open world "rule." MOST of the world is wide open, WoW style, with smaller huts, hangars, buildings, etc, that are instanced and story-driven. RED portals to these instances mean you can't go in yet (you're not at the proper stage, or perhaps not the proper class). GREEN portals mean you can go in to advance an active quest. BLUE portals mean it's not your quest that's being advanced, but your party member's whom you can help. Also, ZERO loading times on these "instances" help retain that open world experience.
- NO LOADING TIMES ON INSTANCES - at least the open world instances.
- SPEEDER TAXI. Yep, just like the Gryphons. 100% confirmed. You aren't able to control the Speeder at all, and it works exactly like WoW's Gryphons.
- POSSIBLE LEVEL CAP OF 50? The elite higher level friendly NPCs in the newbie area of the game were level 50.
No Auto Attack?
http://www.tor-aid.com/20100616226/TOROcast/brandons-hands-on-impressions-of-swtor.html
You're in a room and it's your own place with voiced NPCs where you can interact and toil around then you walk out onto the street and find all the other players filling the streets going from one place to the other and interacting with eachother.
If you've played WoW, just picture Ironforge or Stormwind but with some of the houses being personal instances.
3DS FC: 5086-1134-6451
Shiny Code: 3837
I thought we knew the swtor worlds are bigger than old world wow continents.
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Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
Your normal abilities may also have some penalty built in like KotOR. Flurry gave an extra attack but it reduced your defenses (I can't remember exactly, might be chance to hit)
What I don't get is why I have to keep clicking to attack. I don't mind auto attacking or the queued system in KotOR. But I haven't played yet and the guy who has says it's fun. Guess we'll see.
3DS FC: 5086-1134-6451
Shiny Code: 3837
I think it's probably a non-heat generating/ ammo-using/ whatever attack, to use if your OOM or for efficiency etc. That's my tentative speculation...
Four reasons:
#1. It's a starter world. We've been told these worlds are smaller than normal planets.
#2. If it really did take an hour to walk from one end of the starter planet to the other without stopping, the starter world is about the same size as both continents of Azeroth put together. Considering there are thirteen planets so far announced, this seems absolutely impossible. There is no way that Bioware has developed content for a space an order of magnitude bigger than WoW's old world. Five times, perhaps. But not ten times and certainly not thirteen times or more. That strikes me as approaching impossibility.
#3. Bioware has indicated they want to get you out of the starter zone and on your way quickly. The highest level mobs in the area are around level 7-8, I believe. Azeroth, on the other hand, spans the first 60 levels of content. I think it's pretty obvious that they don't want you to stick around on the planet for quite that long.
#4. It contradicts the Darth Hater group, who said the Starter Planets are definitely bigger than WoW's starter zones, but did not strike them as very massive. They were asked directly if it took an hour to cross the world, and they said that wasn't possible, but that they didn't "time it" themselves. (They did throw out the number "30 minutes" but it was off hand.)
Also, as far as I know, Bioware has made no comparison of their planet size to any WoW continent.
Think about it. 80 square miles is only a 9x9 square. Fine for running and horses. Not so fine if you have spaceships.
http://www.actionradius.com/jdl/default.asp?id=1801&qty=1
3DS FC: 5086-1134-6451
Shiny Code: 3837
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
However, the starter world is most certainly not the size of Azeroth. Do you remember how long it took you to quest from level 1 to 60? For me, it took a month and a half.
The starter world goes up to level 8 or so and they want you outta there quick. It will be huge, but not Azeroth huge. Not in content, and not in space.
That's because vanilla WoW had horrible exp requirements and quests gave pretty shitty exp and all your gear was stamina/spirit crap so it took forever to kill shit. It had nothing to do with the size of the world.
That said, I never pay any attention to "it took me x time to walk across the world" when it comes to MMOs. Who cares? It's an MMO, the world's gonna be pretty big.
Twitter - discolouie PSN - Loupa Steam - Loupa
"Welcome, you're a Sith. NEVER COME BACK TO KORRIBAN!"
Maybe the rest of the galaxy will keep you so busy you don't miss it.
3DS FC: 5086-1134-6451
Shiny Code: 3837
I'd love to see the source on that, I'll add it to the OP.
But I'm also something of a realist. A game that's effectively 15 times the size of Azeroth with content density to match is a monumental investment of resources. And there are limits to those resources. I certainly believe that it's possible to do that... but Bioware aren't gods. They aren't superhuman. And their funding isn't limitless.
I have no idea if building such a massive world is possible with an acceptable level of polish, even given 7 years and more money than any single EA project. If it is, that just goes to show you that Bioware just might be gods among us. If it isn't, then I'll still be happy.
In a darth hater podcast, a dev said ord mantell was half the size of Kalimdor and it is by far the smallest planet, though the other starters are all comparable in size.
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http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=140695
I suck at reading, still was a new article for me.
Edit2: someone else says the translation should read 'a lot' and not 'several'.
I want to know more PA people on Twitter.
That's pretty big for a starter world though. The biggest starting zone in WoW is Durotar and it's probably only like 1/15th the size of the Kalimdor map.
Remember when Journeyman riding cost 900 gold?
I'm less concerned about that kind of stuff for this game because the story will be giving payoffs instead of just the chance for the game to be better. Hopefully, that's the idea.
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