MMOs, Console Games and anything else with buttons
Points of discussion:
– Dev post on SWTOR’s environments
– Advanced classes
– Fan Friday and why fan fiction seems to miss out
– Beta scams and why stuff isn’t being leaked in bulk from the beta
– A Mass Effect MMO on the cards?
– The ongoing release date debate
– Invite for segment contributions, original music
Listen via iTunes or right here:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:20 — 52.6MB)
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Now for the good stuff, the Community Q&A, where you ask the questions and the developers answer. This go round the devs answered over ten questions so I’ll post (in my opinion) the top three then you guys can read them for yourselves on SWTOR’s official website.
Q: Will Bounty Hunters be able to use their jetpacks outside of battle to get around faster or for another way of movement other than walking/jumping? – JornFalm
A: We have no plans currently for jetpacks as a mode of fast travel outside of combat. You’ll have to rely on your personal transportation for that (details to be revealed later!) which offers a much more comfortable ride anyway.
I think this one is EXTREMLY interesting for the fact that a dev confirms personal transportation! Speeder bikes anyone?
Q: Will all classes have a main Companion Character or several different ones? Also, how important will Companion Characters be? – Frozentorch
A: Over the course of the game, your character will meet a number of companions. There are several companion archetypes, each with their own ability set (including, but not limited to medics, ranged damage dealers and tanks). By maximum level, all classes will have one companion of each archetype. Which companion becomes your ‘main companion’ is left to your choice of playstyle and personal preference.
Furthermore, you can customize your companions with kits that add extra abilities such as Grenade Launchers, Flame Throwers, etc. Regardless of which companion you choose to travel with, they will shape how your character approaches combat and will complement your strengths or help make up for your weaknesses.
This question is great for those of you who like to solo. Being a fan of soloing, I love the idea of companions. Being a Tank it will be great being able to always pack a healer around with me, or for you healers imagine being able to constantly have a meat shield to take the heat while you get some soloing in. Or if you feel you’re up for it that extra damage from a DPS companion would be nice. Companions are one of the things that sets this MMO apart from all others, and I have a feeling its going to be a great addition to the MMO formula.
Q: Will both skill sets in a particular Advanced Class require the same set of stats, thereby enabling a Sawbones-spec Scoundrel to respec to a Scrapper-spec without having to carry a second Scrapper-specific set of gear to function at optimal capacity? – Finalcaliber
A: If changing skill distribution also involves a role change for the character (such as from damage focused to medic), chances are you will need to obtain a new set of equipment to go along with the change in gameplay experience. If no role change is involved (e.g. changing skills within the Gunslinger Advanced Class), you are likely able to reuse most if not all of your equipment.
This question and it’s answer pertain more towards end-game and PvP, but what I got from it was you will be able to re-roll your stats later in the game. So take a tank build – a Guardian can in-turn swap out his stats and skills to become a single saber damage dealer or a hybrid of the two to make a PvP build or go back to pure tank for endgame raids.
As always this is Alec “Dekin” Bailey signing off, and may the Force be with you!
This week Star Wars: The Old Republic gives us a Studio Insider: Environment Polish with Senior Environment Artist Robby Lamb. Also included in the update is a very nice Community Q&A. Lamb starts with talking about how important polish is to a game especially a MMO, and how it can turn a great game into an exceptional one. Polishing is pretty much the process of re-working and tweaking of something the design team or programmers have already made for the game, such as lighting, walls, floor, or anything that needs a touch up.
Every member of the development team polishes the game in a different way. For example, programmers will optimize code which helps in various ways, such as the frame rate and the lighting engine. While improving the game, those code optimizations can also help the other developers who are using game development tools; this gives designers the chance to polish game play. Artists like myself have the opportunity to revisit areas to re-work assets, adjust lighting or just ensure an area feels true enough to our story.
Lamb goes on to tell us about how environment in MMOs can go unnoticed, until something is wrong or seems out of place then it becomes an eyesore for players. Lamb uses walls in The Old Republic as an example of this. Some of you might think walls would be easy to create, eh? Well apparently they are not. Walls under go a lot of polish turning from basic walls with simple texture to being reworked several times to help tell the visual story of the game. Sometimes the walls need to be made to look more high tech or or more detailed than the standard panel style wall. Another form of polishing that Robby Lamb works with is re-lighting and dding of props to an area, all of which go back to the helping of the visual story. The original process begins with a description of a room or place, given by the writers and game designers, Lamb uses a computer lab as an example. The computer lab will begin it’s existence in the most simple form likely a room full of computers, desks, possibly book shelves, and a few NPCs. Lamb gives a great description of how it can change, he says “However later in development a more detailed description may evolve – describing this area as a computer lab, locked from the outside, with a hacker trapped inside who is enslaved to the Empire. Based on this description we will go back into an area and address it by either building new or reusing more appropriate assets to fit the scene, relighting the area, as well as adjusting the environment settings such as fog depth or color.”
Finally, Lamb goes over one of the more important parts of environmental polish: game performance. Most people wouldn’t associate the two but really you gotta remember that your machine has to load everything from other players’ character models, NPCs, the environment, and the lighting. So after all the visual polish is done in an area the team then checks how many lights and assets are on screen and how much memory the level uses as a whole to help keep the almighty frame rate up.
Men at Work
Maintenance. We all know what it is, right? How many of us have not had to do some kind of minor repairs to something around our houses, our cars, our computers? It is something that a lot of people take for granted, but it shouldn’t be. Speaking from painful, and expensive, personal experience, the car works much better if you keep the oil topped off and changed every 3000 or so miles. I don’t know about anyone else, but I am not going to be flying on SouthWest airlines ANYTIME in the near future, if they even stay in business. Something about having holes suddenly appear in the planes in flight really bothers me. But that got me thinking about maintenance in Star Wars.
One thing that I always thought was well done about the original trilogy was that things did not always work as they were supposed to. The Millennium Falcon in particular was one huge mess of problems. Han Solo and Chewbacca were always fixing things. In the Expanded Universe, the descriptions of the Falcon in particular were always somewhat on the hilarious side. It was a constant battle to see who would win, the ship’s multiple brains, the crew or the various and sundry people who wanted the crew dead. Without Han and Chewie’s skill at keeping the ship going, it would have fallen to pieces.
We see Rebel techs maintaining the fighters in the hangar bays before the battles of Yavin and Endor. Ground crews work to fuel, arm and basically get ships ready for battle. Fighter planes today are incredibly complex pieces of equipment. Pilots and ground crew alike have to know what they are doing with each and every part or bad things can happen. And if those bad things happen in flight…
This is the point. Maintenance is needed. Many people who should know better take things for granted. If the car is working, why bother to check the fluids, right? The brake fluid, oil level and radiator fluid level have to be good or a light would be coming on, right? Not necessarily. When the engine in the car I was driving seized up, the first notice I had was when it went ‘clunk’. Not a pleasant feeling, let me tell you, especially on the highway.
So… what does this have to do with Star Wars: The Old Republic? Well, every Wednesday, the website goes down for routine maintenance. This shows that Bioware is not as clueless about some things as a certain 18 year old was. They are also likely going to be taking hints from other publishers of MMOs who shall remain nameless. ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ doesn’t work very well in high tech settings. Ignoring problems when computers are involved is a recipe for disaster. The words ‘cascade failure’ sends shivers up and down the spines of most IT professionals who know them. That is, a small problem happens, and is not corrected quickly. It causes other problems and then those problems cause more problems, and on, and on, and on. It is also called ‘The Snowball Effect’. Roll a snowball down a large hill and it grows as it rolls. Entire networks have been taken offline in the past because one lowly tech decided that some insignificant seeming problem was not worth his time. Bets on how long that tech kept his job?
Bioware is likely not going to be making these mistakes. They have seen, from other publisher’s mistakes, how small, seemingly insignificant issues can cause HUGE problems. Star Wars Galaxies comes to mind, but many MMORPGs have had the same thing happen. Who remembers having a patch come out, and all of the sudden, no one can play the game? A hotfix, or quick patch later and things are almost back to normal. We can hope that Bioware does not have to do rollbacks. There was nothing quite so annoying as logging in and finding that an entire week’s worth of playing was just gone. Well, except logging in and finding out that several YEARS worth of playing was gone with the NGE… but… no ranting today…
Without maintenance, any high tech equipment will fail, given time. Nothing made by man is perfect, especially when things are made by the lowest bidder. A quote from the Bruce Willis movie Armageddon comes to mind. “Rockhound: You know we’re sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder.” Kind of puts things into perspective, doesn’t it? We need to maintain what we build, or it will fail, usually at the worst possible time. Bioware knows this. Whether they can keep up with the needs of what will probably be one of the most demanded titles of the twenty-first century is open to debate. We will have to see, but I for one have hope. And I will not get on another plane for quite a while…
Picture from http://burhanchambers.com/
To me, the combination of Star Wars and Lego is about as good as it gets. Add to that some outright dedication and innovation and you have what you see pictured – one almighty big Sand Crawler.
Check out all the pics for yourself and then dream of owning one.
This week Greog Zoeller, the Principal Lead Combat Designer for Star Wars: The Old Republic, takes us through how the advanced classes game system has changed in the last few months based on iteration, game testing, and focus groups.
In Zoellers previous blog he introduced us to the advanced classes game system – if you didn’t read it it can be found here. Advanced Classes (AC) are obtainable on your home planet once your charcter reaches level 10, each main class has two distinct ACs to choose from that will define your role in parties from that moment on.
I’ll go into more detail on what each classes ACs are and what changes have been brought about a little later in the review. Each AC unlocks two exclusive skill trees then a third which is shared by both ACs( pretty much universal powers for that class.)A characters ability points can be allocated in three ways: through base class trainers, advanced class trainers, and through skill points spent in the advanced class skill trees.
Each skill tree allows access to both active and passive abilities. Active abilities are those that can be hot keyed and used in battle when needed and passive abilities are always working – once a point goes into it that ability is always on.
“It is important to note that the choices you make in your skill tree never subtract from your base class abilities; they instead improve and add to the character’s arsenal.”- Zoeller
Zoeller also goes into some of the differences you’ll get in your ACs within the same base class. Say you go with the Sith Warrior – your choices for ACs will be Juggernaut (Tank or Melee Damage) or Marauder (Melee Damage). One choice the Juggernaut can make is to learn Force Grip, an upgraded version of Force Choke, which takes away the need for the choke to be channeled, so instead of standing with his hand out stretched like Vader, the Sith Warrior can cast Force Grip and then move on to another enemy while the one being choked takes damage and is immobilised. The Marauder on the other hand can choose to learn Close Quarters, an ability that allows the Marauder to use his Force Charge at any range so instead of just using it to close the distance at the opening of the fight , he can now leap from enemy to enemy on the battlefield dealing damage where it’s most needed at that time.
“As well as these two Advanced Class-specific skill trees, both the Juggernaut and the Marauder have access to the shared ‘Rage’ skill tree. Abilities in this skill tree improve the control, mobility and burst damage capability of characters who invest into it – all traits desirable to both the Marauder and the Juggernaut.”-Zoeller
The next part of Zoeller’s blog goes into what has changed in the ACs through the input of the game testers. I highly recommend reading this in full on SWTOR’s site Here! I will go into it a little bit, but it’s just too much information for me to cover every bit of what has changed, so I’ll list each base class along with it’s AC and it’s general role, and any major changes you should definitely see.
Bounty Hunter
Mercenary (Mid-Long Range Damage Dealing, Healing)
Healing is part of the “Bodyguard” Skill Tree for the Mercenary
PowerTech (Mid Range Damage Dealing, Tanking)
Imperial Agent
Sniper (Mid-Long Range Damage Dealer)
Sniper was reworked to be more viable in PvP, the AC got two new skills one allowing him to be entrenched in his cover so he cannot be knocked out of it, and Cover Pulse allowing him a knock back ability to keep melee players at range.
Operative (Close-Mid Damage Dealing, Healing)
Jedi Knight
Jedi Guardian ( Close Range Melee Damage Dealer, Tanking)
Based on the feedback from SWTOR community they added single saber DPS on one the Guardian AC skill trees, before it was a pure tank class.
Jedi Sentinel (Close Range Melee Damage Dealer)
Jedi Consular
Jedi Shadow (Close-Mid Range Damage Dealer, Tanking)
The Shadow AC got a new Skill tree that allows them to become an effective tank.
Jedi Sage (Mid-Long Range Damage Dealer, Healing)
Smuggler
Gunslinger (Mid-Long Range Damage Dealer)
Scoundrel (Mid Range damage dealing, Healing)
Sith inquisitor
Sith Assassin (Close-Mid Range Damage Dealer, Tanking)
The Sith Assassin much like the Jedi Shadow now has a Force and defensive lightsaber Tanking class.
Sith Sorcerer (Mid-Long Range Damage Dealer, Healing)
Sith Warrior
Sith Juggernaut (Close Range Damage Dealer, Tanking)
Similar to the Guardian the Juggernaut has gained access to a single saber DPS skill tree.
Sith Marauder (Close Range Damage Dealer)
The Marauder gained a short term cloak among other updates to this AC.
Trooper
Commando (Mid-Long Range Damage Dealing, Healing)
The Commando, much like the Mercenary gained a healing focused skill tree, making the Commando a completely viable medic.
Vanguard (Close Mid Range Damage Dealing, Ranged Tanking)
Be sure to check out the full update on SWTOR’s Official Site, Lots of great info.
May the Force be with you!
On April 1st, you obviously know what that means: April Fools day.
Last year we got the Sarlacc Enforcer update – this year we got an update over the localization of Star Wars: The Old Republic into Shyriiwook, the native tongue of the Wookies. This faux update includes three videos of the Shyriiwook version of SWTOR and a new HUD skin that is pretty much a fur ball. Other than this small April Fool’s joke no real content was posted to the site by Bioware, and as usual half the community took the joke and the other half are outraged that the release date wasn’t revealed.
No matter which side of this argument you’re on, be sure to check out the funny videos and HUD skin here on SWTOR’s official site.
I personally like these funny updates, the game will drop when Bioware and Lucas Arts decide it’s ready, so enjoy this update and may the Force be with you.
One of the most regular points of contention for those looking to play SWTOR in the Oceanic region, is the lack of support to-date for the region – something we’ve discussed on the Flash Point podcast a couple of times. The guild hosting option recently announced only allows for selection of European and US time zones. Over at the SWTOR forums there’s a great discussion thread on Oceanic guilds, and Bioware’s David Bass has responded there on the issue:
For those that find the type too small:
I know we don’t talk about it much on the forums, but we are aware of the worries and concerns of our Oceanic community, and we take any feedback from the community very seriously, no matter how large or small. Of course, a lot of the decisions made fall on the business side of development, which means that there’s not much we can talk about or respond to at this time. We will pass your feedback on to the appropriate people, to ensure that your voice is being heard, but beyond that we can’t promise anything.
It’s a fairly safe statement to make: we understand there’s a concern but we can’t promise anything. That said, at least there’s an acknowledgement of the issue. It’s hard to envision anything substantial happening pre-launch given the guild hosting is well underway, but here’s hoping.
Today’s update is over Jedi armor progression and a community Q&A. The Jedi Knight Progression video was pretty nice, not as epic as the Bounty Hunters, but still a good update. The video begins with a Jedi Knight in his padawan styled robes very reminiscent of Luke from A New Hope. The second set of armor shown is darker in color and has a high collar with golden trim, the Jedi is shown wearing this when obtaining his first lightsaber. The next set shown is of the Jedi Guardian tree, a heavier styled green armor almost trooper like with a traditional Jedi robe on top, making the Jedi easily identified as the tanking advance class.
The second set of Guardian armor pushes the tank look even further with large armored shoulder pauldrons and a large armored collar. This set doesn’t have a robe, but a large black cape, the armor also has large armored bracers making it look very intimidating. This part of the video also shows the Guardian using a taunt debuff ability where he holds his saber above his head and a large blue blast of light bursts from the saber and swirls around the Guardian before dissipating.
The next set shown is a lower level Sentinel armor set, comparable in level obtained to the green Guardian armor. The first set of Sentinel armor shown is a very light looking short sleeved hooded robe. The lighter look to the Sentinel armor coupled with the duel sabers makes the Sentinel easy to distinguish from the tanking Jedi Guardian. The second set of armor in the Sentinel progression is one of the best looking armor shown for the Jedi so far, It’s very similar in style to the previous set shown but is a dark brown, and the hood is pulled up, giving the Jedi Sentinel an almost assassin like look. This part of the video also shows the Sentinel fighting a Sith Warrior, blocking the Sith’s blows with first his right handed saber then his left, a very cool animation. The Sentinel then uses some unknown ability that involves overcharging his sabers then launching a blue blast to damage the Sith from range.
The main thing I noticed in the armor progression video, besides the obvious distinction in advanced class in armor, was how much more the Guardian blocked ranged attacks than the Sentinel did. This shows that in choosing the Guardian your Jedi Knight will have more defensive oriented skills.
The community Q&A was part of last week’s update, but I kind of missed it because of all the PAX stuff I was searching through it got overlooked. The community Q&A is all about Flashpoints and Bioware answered a lot of questions – you can view all of them here, and I’ll just quote a few of the more interesting ones.
Q: How many hours of game time must players invest on average before their first Flashpoint is available to play with friends? – Fortunetek
A: You’ll encounter your first Flashpoint after your Origin World – how long you take to complete that is up to you, really. By this time, you’ll be familiar enough with your class to feel confident taking on content that requires a group.” – SWTOR
(My guess, from what I’ve read on the net is that it’ll probably take between five to eight hours to complete your origin world depending on your skill and how much exploring/side missions you do)
Q: How intricately will the boss fights in Flashpoints be scripted? A typical example would be nice. – Sungil
A: Bosses are scripted to match the fiction and the environments. They change phases and require players to think on their feet. Most of all they require coordination. An example off the top of my head is an Imperial officer who jumps behind cover and calls in a squad of soldiers with jetpacks. He then spends one stage of the fight sniping you and sending traps at you while his men arrive in waves.”-SWTOR
Q: How exactly will class roles inside Flashpoints work? Will it be like in WoW or similar systems with fix systems, in which only damage dealer can deal damage, in which only tanks can block and only healer can heal? – Sarnave
A: This is an area where we try to distinguish Flashpoints from dungeons. While boss fights often require traditional tank and healer roles, some sections of Flashpoints are paced in such a way that healers can switch into damage roles and tanks can get a bit more reckless.”-Swtor
These were just a few of the questions asked and answered in the community Q&A so be sure to check out the whole story on Star Wars: The Old Republic’s website.
May the force be with you.
This week I want to look more closely at the Taral V walk through from Pax East. The video posted to the site starts with an introduction from Bioware’s director of production, Dallas Dickinson, the narrator of this update. A Jedi Master from the same unknown species as Yoda, named Master Oteg, is talking to four Republic players, one of each class.
Master Oteg starts with asking the heroes to keep an open mind as he enables all of them (even the non-force sensitives) to see a Force ghost, the Force ghost proceeds to tell the heroes of a great evil threatening the galaxy. Oteg tells the group that there is a prisoner in the maelstrom nebula that is key to the Republic’s war effort, but the only way to free him is with a navi-computer located on Taral V. The four Heroes accept this mission and leave for their captured Sith shuttle to sneak past the Sith’s warships guarding Taral V. When the team boards the shuttle the game jumps to a cut scene of the ship flying out of the hangar and into space, then the cinematic cuts to the ship landing on Taral V and the players exiting the stolen craft.
As soon as the players exit the shuttle they all cast their buffs and set out down a dirt path. At this point in the video we get to see some of the reactive environment effects, a lightning bolt strikes the ground in front of the group and sets the ground on fire, shortly after a small skirmish that takes place there, lightning strikes an imperial ship and it crashes into a not so distant guard tower that crumbles and falls to the ground.
The video also shows a “Bonus Mission” inside of the Taral V flashpoint where the group of Heroes must destroy a small Imperial research station. This side mission looks like it wasn’t much of a challenge, a small ambush then some free XP for blowing up the research station.
After completing the bonus mission the team faces constant action on its way to the next objective on Taral V, a mini-boss fight against two trained vine cats and their handler. The smuggler neutralizes one of the vine cats with a stun dart while the Consular puts the other in a stasis field, leaving the mini-boss handler alone to face the four heroes. The team make pretty quick work out of the handler but amidst the fighting the Trooper throws a sticky grenade on the handler that breaks one of the Vine cats out of its stun, but the Trooper does a great job of keeping aggro of both the mini-boss and the vine cat. After a short trek, destroying another research station, and an elite droid the team finds itself in its first real boss fight against Captain Shivanek and his pet ripper. The Trooper and smuggler team up against the Ripper which has much more health and is much more deadly than the Captain the two Jedi are engaging. The two Jedi kill the Captain, but this gives his already powerful pet Ripper a buff called enraged making it even more powerful.
This boss fight is much longer than the previous one, and the teams health actually gets noticeable chunks taken out. After defeating the Ripper the party is contacted by Master Oteg who tells them that before they can enter the compound they must disable it security systems. The video then cuts back to Dallas Dickinson telling us that the only way to experience Taral V and all the other flashpoints is to play the game, imagine that.
All together it’s a great video full of combat and exciting action well worth the 16 minutes it take to watch.
As reported by our friends at Darth Hater, a recent presentation by Electronic Arts CFO Eric Brown has nailed down a little more firmly the potential release date for SWTOR:
So we said it’s going to launch sometime in calendar, but not within Fiscal 11. So that basically pens down between you know, April 1st and December 31st of this calendar year. It’s also reasonable to infer that it’s not in our Q1 guidance. We gave Q1 Fiscal 11, Fiscal 12 non-GAAP revenue guidance, minus 39 minus 44 cents and I think it’s not unreasonable to infer that it’s not included in that 90 day period.
So that rules out a pre-July release date, which is no real surprise given how little of the beta process has been completed, something Brown alludes to further into the presentation:
You need months of different flavors of beta testing to making the product generally available. We’re really focused on providing a great user experience, because not only do we want to retain, kind of the core tier 1 users. We want word of mouth reference ability to bring in tiers 2, 3 and 4.
Given we’re only at closed beta so far, July is probably a pretty optimistic launch month as well. There’s the cohort of observers saying 2012 will be the year for SWTOR. I’m not that pessimistic but it seems a pre-Xmas launch may be about the best to hope for. I am of course very happy to be proven wrong.
The steady drip-feed of information coinciding with PAX East continues, this time with a 16-minute walkthrough of the Taral V Flashpoint. It covers pretty much anything and I’d argue it’s the most substantive gameplay demonstration to date. This is certainly a game that’s starting to look pretty polished and engaging. As mentioned on our podcast, we were hoping for some end-game content, and that may still be unveiled, but this is a great taster.
The introductory part of Taral V will be a must-skip after the first couple of times but it sets up the story nicely.
Anyway, have a look for yourself:
Recent Comments