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Our gear now is settling in a pretty good state, in my opinion.-DamionSchubert
artemisentr4
Member UncommonPosts: 1,431
Interesting Dev Post about gear. Traditional RPG heavy, medium and light as you would expect. You will be able to put on gear from another class, but the stats will be terrible. So you will gemp you character to try to look different. So classes will have the more iconic look with class specific armor.
So does that mean all end game classes will look the same? Will the Raid, PvP, and Crafted end game gear look different enough to add spice? Could there be end game gear for all 16 Advanced classes or just the base 8 classes? The Jedi Warrior armor progession video seems to say that there will be 16 different sets with each AC having a different role.
They have talked about a large number of gear sets in the game. There is a screenshot of a part of a 40 foot wall filled with pictures of gear. They want an "amount of freedom in letting people choose a visual look for themseleves". But at the same time they "want to be sure that the easy path, the path of lest resistance, ends up with people looking like Star Wars."
I am ok with the iconic look for my class. Even if others look similar or the same in the end. But others want more freedom to look how ever they want to look without gemping their character. Is this dev post good or bad?
Originally Posted by ElanJo  |
Okay, for starters, fake screenshot is fake.
Moving on: it's very important to some on the team that the look and feel of characters tend to gravitate to match their classes - this concept of gravity is the important thing. While we do want to allow a certain amount of freedom in letting people choose a visual look for themselves, we also want to be sure that the easy path, the path of least resistance, ends up with people looking like Star Wars. This was, and remains, an important goal for those of us doing itemization.
Along the way, we've tried a few things. Incidentally, 'tried a few things' is one of the reasons we tend not to tell you guys about features until we've tried them out a bit - many ideas that sound good on paper fail in practice, and we prefer to weed those out before, say, people get attached to said failed idea and get angry because we took them out.
One of the things that we tried was gear that morphed when you put it on, so if a Trooper puts on armor statted for a Jedi, the armor would suddenly look like Trooper armor. This ended up being disconcerting to a lot of people playing the game: icons didn't match, for example, and gear that looked lame on you would look awesome on your companion character, which felt pretty sucky when you put it back on you. ('Felt sucky', incidentally, is code for, 'bad designer, no cookie').
Our gear now is settling in a pretty good state, in my opinion. We've taken the coolest and most emblematic armor, first off, and made it class only.
For the rest of the armor, we are following a reasonably standard RPG model of heavy, medium and light. Knights and Troopers both chase heavy, for example, but care about different stats. Armor with Knight-favored stats looks a closer to the Jedi ideal, whereas armor with Trooper stats looks more like the Troopers we know and love.
Yes, you can put on some vaguely 'Trooper-esque' armor as a Knight, but your stats will be terrible, thus the gravity of, you know, being good at your class is going to mean that it's rare.
And let's not forget that there is social value in seeing a Knight in vaguely 'Trooper-esque' armor - you know he's probably terrible at his class, and you probably shouldn't let him tank. 
I've been playing our test server a lot lately, and I can tell you right now, people who are concerned about this are worrying too much. Our Knights look like Knights, our Troopers look like Troopers, and our players by and large are ending up with appearances that are appropriate for the class.
How many people long for that "past, simpler, and better world," I wonder, without ever recognizing the truth that perhaps it was they who were simpler and better, and not the world about them?
R.A.Salvatore
Comments
Little something from a while ago. Take it for what you will
Quote: We have more class specific gear than most MMOs have loot total (3.18) - GirlGamer
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
Good point, and makes me believe that they will have class sets for all 16 Advanced Classes. And that should include crafted, PvP, class quest and Raid sets.
So overall, everyone should look different, even in the same class. Not as much in the same class, but still 4 options.
How many people long for that "past, simpler, and better world," I wonder, without ever recognizing the truth that perhaps it was they who were simpler and better, and not the world about them?
R.A.Salvatore
Yeah a bounty hunter will look like a bounty hunter but within a class there will be plenty of diversity I think.
If there will be varied gear catering for advanced classes, and when there will be crafted, pvp, class quest and raid gear for all of those, there will be a lot of options. If what artemisentr4 predicts is true and I think it is very likely, you'll have 8 endgame sets catering for each specific class, 4 for each advanced class.
Probably people will mix and match between those too, on the way to completion or stat optimization.
Next to that there will be at least a color match option so I am not worrying too much myself.
My brand new bloggity blog.
/thumbsup to the colormatch button
I must say i would like it if it would be in Lineage 2 there u could wear what u want its ur decision ofc u dont gonna profit from heavy armour or bows as healer but u could wear them.
Did I read that right, that you can put armor that you had on you on your companion character? That leaves a lot of options for customization if that is the case.
In Bioware we trust!
That is true. I believe they have 8 slots to fill. And as each companion can have multiple roles based on the kits you give them. I believe the armor and weapons will help define how your companions plays. As well as make them look different from other companions.
Quote: James Ohlen: Players can also equip items to his companion character. This includes standard gear such as armor and weapons. Additionally, what a player equips to his companion can change the companion's behavior - IGNHow many people long for that "past, simpler, and better world," I wonder, without ever recognizing the truth that perhaps it was they who were simpler and better, and not the world about them?
R.A.Salvatore
Oh, nice quote. Thanks, that really made my day. To be honest though, after seeing different pictures of the "Walls of Armor" I lost all my fear for look a like characters. I'm still hoping we get to choose our our color patterns on the armor though, that would be awesome!
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
Gear wise until TOR implements a social clothing tab they can have whatever cool gear they want we wont' look how we like it especially since:
Rich Vogel: With the way that MMOs work, gaining and upgrading loot over levels, you're not going to end the game with the same lightsaber you started with. That might mean a succession of different lightsabers ...
James Ohlen: Yeah, our game is about loot. There are things in our game that as you progress you definitely can tell a new player from a high-level player.
If this will be true, then it sounds pretty impressive.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Not that a Jedi or a Tropper would ever COLLECT armour pieces let alone WEAR them!
A Jedi wears the robe given to him by the Order. End of story. Or if dire need of armour pieces (see Obi Wan in Clone Wars) would overrule it, again the Order would GIVE him some. But Obi Wan Kenobi would NOT loot or do armour raids, EVER. That's NOT what I ever imagine a Jedi doing.
As to a Tropper: A tropper is a soldier of an army. He gets standard gear from the government. End of story, again.
And why not? CoX and CO are entirely independent of gear drop making a visual change. You could add gear with mere stats like in the case of CO if you really need an grind to keep people playing, and open up the customization look in the char generation.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
How was it in SWG? There were no loot drops, of anything that could remotely be used as gear? And Jedi in SWG didn't make any money from things looted from mobs but had a different, more appropriate income means?
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I hope their game is about other things beside loot,if the game ends being another gear grind like most mmos and they make end game all about raids and loot,i would not buy the game even if is bioware and star wars.What is the point of a great story if the end game is all about raiding for loot ?
In the REAL SWG there were no Jedi.
Later, the Elder Jedi had Elder Jedi robes, and the NGE Jedi had Jedi robes of their own. You COULD wear everything you wanted, but it didn't make sense, stats-wise, similar as in the SWTOR concept. My Jedi often was dressed in casual wear with a robe tho. But SWG was tinkered over so many times, as much as I loved it, I wouldn't use it a good example in the loot and gear department.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
*shrugs*
People need a carrot on a stick, a reward for completing something while hopefully having a lot of fun in the process. It's not the end to a game itself, but more of something which you can't do without in general game design.
Next to that, rpgs specifically are about character progression and a big part of that progression comes from rewards you get for completing challenging content. Whether it are drops, token rewards, quest rewards, storyline rewards or something else. You can't get around the need for and the appeal of phat lootz.
If you don't care about raiding, grinding or doing whatever daunting task to upgrade your gear, don't participate in that part of a game. I was never so keen on raiding myself either in for instance WOW, and I disliked Arena's as well, but it didn't stop me from having fun in other ways.
My brand new bloggity blog.
Probably because they want this game to be successful.
Uhm . . . CoX is successful, though CO might be debatable with it going FTP and all. For Elikal though, CoX does have gear drops to make visual changes to costumes. They are called Costume Recipes and even require you to gather "ingredients" from drops in order to craft them. Thanksfully in that game though, once you craft them, you can use them for ever!
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
If the developers have other things planed for end game beside raiding,like more quests,areas to explore,crafting,pvp,housing then i have nothing against raiding which is a problem only if is the only end game activity that lets you advance your character.There are other things to get beside epics,like spells,stats,pets,diferent ships,companions etc so if bioware wants to get away from the classic instance grind for end game they have enough choices.Repeating same content 10-100 times to get some piece of armor maybe is the "classic" mmo way but in a game which wants to be about story this kind of end game will be a disappointment for lot of players.
I'm not worrying so much considering what we know.
All in all it looks like they are going for the full package of mmorpg content and then some;
The worlds will be huge (some are 7-8 wow zones), detailed and immersive and probably a wet dream for explorers.
What we know about crafting and gathering so far is not much regarding professions itself but we know that companions will be heavily involved with that, having their own specialisms, etc. Video on crew skills here. ( A tad outdated graphics compared to newer stuff in this one)
Regarding quests: next to the class storyline (which can bring you to max level all on its own) there will be world arcs, world quests, bonus quests, heroic quests, etc.
"On the Origin worlds it's about 60% Class Quests, dropping to about 40% on the Capital worlds and then even lower for the rest of the game."
Then there are probably many flashpoints: not so much raiding but instanced, small group content.
Battlegrounds + world pvp if that's your cup of tea will be in too.
Everyone gets to have a ship which you can use for crafting and kind of functions as a player home.
More info on endgame here.
My brand new bloggity blog.
Well they stated there are multiple ways of getting gear in this game, here are just 3 ways you can get gear.
Raiding: this is the normal way of getting gear in most MMOs.
PvP: You can PvP to get special items to turn into a person to get gear.
Crafting: You can craft your gear. This will most likely require you to get items from other proffesion as well.
Note: it's important to note all 3 of these ways can get you to end-game gear. So a person could craft gear that will be good for people at end-game
I'm not sure on the crafting end but they stated Raiding gear and PvP would look different.
Crafting might not get you levels as far as i know (would be cool if crafting things gives you exp) but PvP certainly does, so if you wanted you could simply do PvP the entire time and still hit end-game
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
so far they only only faction specfic worlds are the starter planets and the capital planets. some of planets sizes will be hard to determine because they won't be built big horizontally but vertically. this may trick some people because its different than most games. Also they have said they won't restrict planets by class(obviously this won't apply to faction restricted planets). The example for this was non force using classes being to go to ilum because the lore says the force is required to find the planet. some people thought maybe it would be force class exclusive and then maybe hoth would be the ice planet for non-force users.
In Ilum's lore, only Force users could go there. Is that true in Star Wars: The Old Republic as well?
Daniel Erickson: No. The way we always interpreted that was only the Force users would have a reason to go there. The planet does not repel people off into space or anything when they land on it. But it is a barren horrible wasteland that if you aren't kitted-out, geared up and ready for it. You would die if you went there if you weren't a Force user because you don't have the ability to regulate your body temperature and all these other things. But if someone really wants to go to this cold wasteland of awful, they absolutely can.
There aren't any places where only Force users can go. There are definitely some places that tie into another thematically. Even if you are playing one particular class, you still get to experience the feel of the rest of the classes. Although they can run around with their lightsabers and threaten to dominate and all that, both the Jedi and Sith are kind of fish out of water on Nar Shadda. There is a very different kind of power structure going on, there are hugely different cultures, and you really can't threaten the Hutt Cartel. They are huge, independent, and completely without any morals or ethics. Planets like that it is kind of fun to see where that goes. Whereas when you go to a place that is much more about the Force legacies and what happened before, then maybe the Smuggler or the Agent have sort of a different take on it and kind of have to interpret what is largely alien to their day to day lives.
http://darthhater.com/2010/12/15/interview-daniel-erickson-on-the-jedi-classes/page/2
I'd say we should also be careful not to naysay or hate on game all the time
So, as a counterpoint let's take a positive view on what's been told /shown so far:
- in earlier times a few years ago they spoke about 'dozens' of planets, so that would lead to around 24 planets. Especially since 6 Republic planets have been revealed and only 2 Sith planets.
- they stated that the largest of the starter worlds would be less than a quarter the size of the normal planets. They didn't say 'some of the normal planets', no they said 'the normal planets', referring to the non-starter worlds
- demo player reports talk about the larger starter worlds being as large as a few average WoW zones, with one player mentioning that it took him half an hour to an hour to cross a starter world from one end to the other in a fairly straight line, fighting on the way included.
- since starter worlds that are already this large are still only a quarter or less of a normal planet, this would mean that normal can easily amount to 8-12+ average WoW zones in total explorable area.
- Some planets will have several levels, like Coruscant that can each be the size of a whole zone or area. One demo player stated that he saw like 6-7 surrounding areas on the map around the area that he was in at Coruscant.
- there's little really known how accessible the worlds will be besides the knowledge that some planets will be faction bound, and that SWTOR would be as open and freeroaming as themepark MMO's like WoW.
- So far only of 1 planet has been announced that it had a PvP zone, that was Alderaan, and nowhere has been said that it was strictly PvP, on the contrary.
- Outland in WoW has 7 zones, Northrend 11 zones, meaning that Alderaan and other SWTOR planets can easily be larger than Outland and about as large as Northrend (or larger)
- WoW zones can vary, but in total WoW has about 70 open world zones with all the expansions included. Taken into consideration that Alderaan, just one of the planets, is 7-8 WoW zones and that planets can have a total of explorable landmass of 8-12 WoW zones per planet, and that still more planets need to be revealed to maybe up to 'dozens', that makes SWTOR a hell of a lot larger than WoW or LotrO are even now, with all their expansions included.
That was the positive view. Now, to take something of a middle road between over-pessimistic and over-optimistic and keeping closer to a realistic viewpoint
:
- Some people did some rough measuring with actual travel times and such, and all the more concrete reports taken together seem to point towards the larger starter worlds being the size of about 2 average WoW zones. Maybe a bit more, but not much.
- Since the largest starter worlds are 'less than a quarter the size of normal planets', the size of an Alderaan of 7-8 WoW zones makes sense. It also means that this is a normal kind of size for normal planets, else it wouldn't be true that starter worlds are all less than 25% the size of normal planets.
- As they also said that some planets wouldn't be expansive but work with levels, it also makes sense that such planets would be smaller but have more levels/layers, which in total still amounts to having a total sum of explorable landmass of 8-10 WoW zones.
- Considering that launch isn't that far off as it was (less than half a year), it's hard to believe that they could make that quota in an earlier statement of 'dozens of planets'. They did say that they weren't ready at all yet with revealing planets, so we could expect at least 2, maybe 3 additional planets.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I hope SW:TOR companions have smarter A.I and are more useful than STO Bridge Officers.
the quote about dozens of planets was from gordon walton and im not sure when it was but i want to say pax prime 2009 but can't be sure(ill see if i can find it and edit it in if i do)
also bioware has never stated any planets as pvp only. However based on their descriptions, planets such as hoth, quesh , and belsavis have been speculated by the community to be pvp oriented. hoth for the technology from the starships that crash, quesh for the adrenals that produced on the planet, and belsavis for the ancient prison on the planet. there are others but these are the ones to immediately come to mind.
I'm skeptical about the dozens of planets, since that was a statement made two years ago. However, the statement of that they're not done with revealing planets was recently, so 17 won't be the limit.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."