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The last stroke? Space is on rails
Deewe
Member UncommonPosts: 1,980
[Edit]: here's an example of what you can expect as a SW tunnel space sim
Thanks to Lethality on SWTOR forums and to Lobii for an updated version:
Well, it looks like the german PC Action magazine is out with the feature on The Old Republic. Apparently they were given the same information as PC Gamer will have later this month.
SWTOR-Onlinewelten.com summarized the article, and it's in Gernan of course... but running it through Goggle translator provides at least a framework for the details.
http://swtor.onlinewelten.com/articl...enfassung.html
The main thing that stuck out to me, is the space combat. If this is translated correctly, and is true, I'm disappointed to say the least that the space combat is on rails. And that it doesn't (yet?) let you fight other players...
Now, we should all wait until we get a good translation, or the PC Gamer article (or info from BioWare) before jumping to conclusions. Even if the article is right, there could be a lot of details we don't know.
As an example, the advanced classes for the Jedi Knight are listed as Guardian and Guardian 
Translation is poor. But I guess we know at least one of them will be Guardian for sure. Later it looks like the word Ambassador is used.
"Battle space and spaceships
* The space combat is similar at first glance appeared the 1993 Rebel Assault. You fly a predefined path and shoot at opponents. This way of playing is called tunnel-shooter.
* They preferred this variant instead of a free game style because they deemed a tunnel shooter to be more accessible and for easier implementation of 'events'
* From the bridge of the spaceship you can get to special hotspots to start such space missions. These hot spots are probably activated by levelling of the character.
* Various weapons are available.
* You get quests before you start and can get sidequests during missions.
* Spaceship combat is not the core of the game, but a quick 'snack' in between. Players who have no interest, must not play it either.
* Combined Ground / Space-quest series will not be excluded completely and may well be available in the future.
* A complexity as in X-Wing or TIE Fighter is not available, the space combat is more for casual players. You fire a few minutes by movielike staged space battles.
* The missions do not last particularly long, there will be no missions lasting 15, 20 or 30 minutes.
* There will be many different missions and each environment is different from the others. There will be, for example, a typical asteroid fields.
* If you start a new mission, you start in a different environment with other mission objectives.
* Scenarios, similar to a chase through the trench of the Death Star, should not be missing. There will be no uneventful space flights.
* Escort missions are planned, where you have to accompany a ship and protect them from enemy bombers. Perhaps they also have space stations, you have to destroy or defend.
* In the demo, the task was to shoot down 20 fighters and destroy the capital ship.
* PvP combat in space seems to be not to be in yet, you meet only computer-controlled opponents. There is no Space PvP planned before publishment, but that might still change.
* There will be six different types of spacecraft, which depend on the character class. Jedi classes will have the Vanguard-class, while Sith classes will have the Fury class.
/sad
Comments
Well so much for that. I was really hoping Bioware would do space combat justice.
Steam: Neph
Im going to continue to reserve judgement till I can get a hands-on experience with it. So far it exceeds my expectations when compared to the turrent shooter game in KOTOR.
That article also gives a good bit more info about the class branches and some companions for them as well.
Cheers!
MMO Vet since AOL Neverwinter Nights circa 1992. My MMO beat up your MMO. =S
This whole conversation is getting weird ... Just plain weird
I don't believe it. That didn't come from Bioware.
What would their article be called if they came out with this?
All the reasons why space combat sucks?
It just seems like somebody pointed out all their opinions about how bad space combat would likely be. No factual evidence. Just more assumptions and opinions.
I don't understand how companies are totally not in touch with the modern gamer base, if they listened and put in things that should be staple in a star wars MMO then people would be stoked for the game coming out instead of reserving judgement on a game that probably doesn't have what the player base wants in the first place this thread highlights another part of the game that will be equally unspectacular
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Well it seems legit, if you read the official forums as well. There is quite heated discussion about this.
Have to say that it is rather dissapointing direction from Bioware.
Anyone expecting full blown space simulator, like X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter, was of course going to be dissapointed, but at the very least it should be better than on "on-rails" shooter.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
Color me not surprised. As I've been saying from the start, this game is going to worse than a WoW clone, as its going to take the casual simplification of everything to a whole new level, and is trying to ride entirely on its garish overuse of star wars iconography. Brace for the most expensive, most polished, most dumbed down and least complex game in MMO history. It's going to take WoWs throne, but only as the new game to compare against when talking about "dumbed down clones".
Yes, it's a backseat arcade feature for when you're tired of being on the ground. Too bad, so sad, don't play if you don't like it. BioWare could easily expand it in an *gasp* expansion later on, if they feel they should and the playerbase really wants it, but most people weren't expecting it to be in at launch at all.
Um, so what? Can't expect a MMO to be released in a near perfect state with all features right from the get go. Unless you want the game to be in development for 35 years...
Let's be happy there's any space combat right now and take it as a step in the right direction. The idea of better space combat in a future expansion is the most likely scenario. Remember, MMOs work on the old carrot on stick method. Expansions typical introduce new 'revolutionary' things to the game. From new classes to new continents to new faction alignments etc etc. 'Real' space combat falls under this and I wouldn't be surprised if it was a tactical calculation of both dev time and 'carrot on the stick' feature for an expasion.
Haters gonna hate.
Now, when i saw space combat going into the game, i thought to myself that space combat at release would be great. But, honestly, whats the point to this mini-game nonsense?
My biggest beef with this game thus far is how much TIME and RESOURCES they are wasting on however many HUNDREDS of hours of voice overs they are having. Voice overs might be cool people, but think of what you could be getting as opposed to them?
Fully fleshed out space combat with a plethora of ships to choose/customize.
Many more planets to explore
Other classes
Other professions
More PvP options?
The things that we could be getting for the time/money being put into voice overs are limitless. And when this game releases, and you think to yourself "Man, i would like to have had more options here or able to explore this planet more there" Then you should be furious to the fact that the quest givers speech that you didn't even listen to took that from you.
I'm gona wait for PC Gamer's article in English in order to get some solid details since this translation looks a bit sketchy. However, if the info presented here is accurate then yes, i'm a bit disappointed with the way Bioware implements space combat. Of course it was made quite clear that it would be only a side feature and not core stuff.
Of course this is an MMO game which will have a number of content patches and expansions. So there is still hope that Bioware given the request for this will be high is going to upgrade space combat to a more complex level.
You know that's never going to happen. Drop the fanboy act for a second and think about it.
"* Man, this variant preferred a free game because they deemed tunnel shooter as accessible and could be installed easily events."
Says it all. They want to be "accessible". Anything with more complexity than "point at, click mash, accept rewards for failing anyway because you're all winners!" is never going to make it in. They're bucking for the casual dollar, and the games mechanics are going to suffer for it.
The problem isn't the state its in now and "boo hoo it won't be ready for launch." Fact is its never going to happen, and this same mentality of keeping things "accessible" (IE: Overly simplistic and moronic) is likely to be found across the game as they attempt to make WoW look like rocket science by comparison.
I couldn't care less if the space part of this game is glorified player housing and I don't think I'm alone. It would be nice as a break from the rest of the game, but I never saw space combat as a major thing in Star Wars, just a backdrop to the Saga. BioWare never promised wide open, seamless space combat in the first place. People seem to be assuming that since the last Star Wars MMORPG had space combat, this one would have to as well.
coulda woulda shoulda. WAr could have an xpack that makes it the bestest game ever, so could uo still it "could". I don't believe in maybe or could . It is or is not.
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i personally don't trust this German magazine. I find it very strange that they would have the first info on such a huge E3 annoucement that Bioware made.
It seems kinda of sketchy and riddled with poor translations from the get go. Bioware themselves said that the big reveal was gonna be released in PC Gamer first, not some other mag.
Now this is not to say i thought the Space Combat was gonna be as epic and broad as say Eve, or some others, but i still believe that there is way more to it than what is being discussed at the moment.
THis german magazine pc action has no clue what they are talking about. They just wanted to be the first to come out with some information on it and this is all the information that peopel were speculating and assuming to begin with.
This is just pure speculation and probably from a bias point of view to begin with.
BW has sold the story to PC Gamer, so if you want the real information you have to wait for this magazine to release it. PC Action is not the official magazine to have the story directly from BW.
More or less they are just speculating and have no idea what they are talking about.
i couldn't care less about space combat, did the fans of KOTOR whine about no space combat? go play something else if you don't like it, anyone who actually expected extensive space combat and content in this game is either not familiar with the bioware brand or they have unrealistic expectations and are just here to cry about it.
either way, go play one of the other mmos that does have extensive space combat and get over it.
I wasn't expecting anything like in Xwing vs Tie-Fighter or SWG for that mather. It would have been nice but atleast we have some sort of space-action.
Well I did say not to get your hopes up. It seems people have very unrealistic expectations from SWTOR already. Did you really expect a full blown polished ground based RPG and then a full blown polished space sim MMO? Come on now, No matter how much money and resources you toss at something like that, its just way to unrealistic.
I mean look at Eve Online. It's taken them 6+ years to get the space side polished up and working nicely and they are just now getting to the point of adding very VERY basic ground functions into the game. Yet we somehow managed to expect Bioware in a 4-5 year time frame to pump out an amazing story, polished MMORPG, polished Space Sim MMO.
And just because they are spending money on voice overs (something that a small team of 5 people can easy record others voices and add into the game) does not mean that money is wasted / dev power is wasted. I doubt much of the games budget is actually going into the voice over side of the game. Most voice over artiest (famous or not) get paid little compared to acting jobs.
I can already see there is going to be alot of out cry over the game come release. People are expecting way too much out of Bioware and the game. I can almost grantee people are going to complain about the hybrid business model the game will use and theres going to be just as much complaining about there not being enough endgame and pvp not being some amazing super sport.
First, the features to which you allude are not 'limitless'. Second, nobody is taking anything from you. There's this company, and they're writing a game, and if it looks like something you'd enjoy playing, then you can pay them money to play it. You're not entitled to anything, and they're not indentured to your personal preferences. So no, I shouldn't be 'furious' about anything, because I'm an adult and I realize that the universe doesn't revolve around my particular likes and dislikes.
Third, the fatal flaw in your argument is the assumption that if they deallocated resources from the sound design then they could effectively reallocate them to other areas and achieve more robust development in those areas with the additional man-power. This almost never works. Adding people to a project in mid-development is like turning up the heat on your oven while your cookies are baking: it doesn't result in perfect cookies sooner; it results in burnt cookies.
Regarding to the german website the spacecombat is something alike Rebel Assault.
That means the general flight path is given and one can only maneuver a bit.
Space Combat can be seen as sort of a quick done minigame.
Well i will not play the game bcs of space combat i hope for a great Story.
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There is a famous book in software design, called the Mythical Man Month, meaning that just adding people to a project does not make it go faster. My basic rule of thumb is that 1 programmer=1 programmer's work. 2 programmers = 1.5 programmer's work, since they waste time talking to each other. 3 programmers=2 programmer's work, etc.
This applies if the programmers all have the same skills. If you take art resources, sound resources, database resource, etc, and try to move them to other areas, you not only pay the Mythical Man Month penalty, but the new resources may not be able to do the job at all. It is not clear you could shift art/sound resources to programming or level design, for example.
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hmmm so much for the OP's plea for people not to jumpt to conclusions 8P.I guess on an internet forum that's equivalent to asking rain not to be wet.
If this is true ( I guess time will tell), then it is a really strange decision Bioware made...
It would have been far better to just leave it to an expansion 6 months down the road and do it better, rather than to make a strange, tacked-on mini-game on rails that not even the space-fans will be satisfied with. If they had been honest about making it an expansion later, the fans would have probably been ok with it (probably moaned a bit about it though).
And no, this is not likely to get "expanded upon" to later make it an amazing, free-flying space experience. They would probably have to put a crapload of work to turn this from a on-rails thing to a free-flying thing. If it gets expanded, it'll probably be... more railroad minigames, go figure.
The discussion on the main site is pretty wild about this, so it has ruffled some feathers it seems.
Just for the note, it seems they choose this game design as less complex than a regular 3d space sim.