E3 Revelations, Praise and Discontent Discussion: A Treatise - Mongbat

VorAbaddon

Evening All,

Starting up a thread because there's lots of things I'd like to discuss regarding ToR and wanted to get some feedback and a discussion going regarding the game ('Specially as we're s'posed to be recruitin'! Look, I've recruited three apostrophes in this aside alone!) I figured E3 and the release of info would be a natural focal point.

That said, what did I hear/see that I liked:

The graphics look very sharp, very crisp, as do the animations. There appears to be a significant amount of polish.
The dev reactions to certain inquiries seem to be measured, intelligent concepts. Items like "Of course we're not showing complex boss fights, that's a spoiler." or the weapon swap considerations. Even when someone did the normal "The Dev didn't enable my 'sploiting/didn't give me everything I wanted for free" bit, the response was a measured "No one would reasonably do that, if you want to be my guest but we're not enabling it." (Note: Watching new Star Trek on main HD monitor while typing this, head turned to the left to type... ever have a Star Trek warp line in the edge of your vision. MOST disorienting.)
There seems to be a wealth of content, and there's going to need to be. I plan to devour this crap like a buffalo quesadilla mid-rum spree. There seems to be a lot of different types of content and I'll likely wind up with several characters.
The crafting has an interesting conceptual basis and as long as they can balance the availability of materials and cost to the time taken and reward gained, I'm predicting a significant success.
The trailers were basically a reverse of the first three movies conceptually. You had the Sith winning the first outting, followed by the Republic fighting back, but in the end the Sith prevailed. I know they're probably backwards from a lore standpoint, but I just liked that symmetry.
The focus on story. If you don't care why you're character does something, it's just a gear grind.

Now, onto the concerns. Let the discussions, disagreements, and pie throwing commence!

The group size worries me. I haven't seen it in action a huge amount yet, but the 4 player size seems very limited in your capabilities. Perhaps the NPC comrades make up for more of that, but then I have questions as to their competence/capability.
The same thing is said for the raid size. Both may be a result of my long-term EQ experience. I'm used to six-man groups and cut my teeth on 72-man raids, now down to 54. These size raids still happen regularly in a population that's less than a 20th of WoW's worldwide, so it's possible to run those. I'm not sure why WoW reduced their raid size, so perhaps some of the folks here can note some insight. I just feel that 8 man runs aren't exactly as epic as I would hope.
The art style - I know this directly contradicts what I said earlier about the game looking beautiful, etc, but there's a lot of lighter shades and this makes me concerned for the story. It reminds me of WoW and one of the things that eventually drew me away from the game was the story. I had a very hard time taking it seriously even knowing the kind of fantasy game it was. There were too many jokes, too many "LOL, Pop culture!" and, worse, "LOLZ INternetculturz!" references than I was entirely comfortable with. It became completely evident that I was playing a game with other MMO players, instead of having a significant amount of immersion. Their story focus makes me think this won't be a significant issue, but other MMO disappointments have soured me a tad.
To expound on the above point, basically I worry that the story won't be nearly dark enough. The Sith are a culture, and so aren't Firefly Reavers or Khornates. They think, they appreciate art, etc, but underneath they are a violent, oppressive culture. I want to know they've done truly vile things, hell, I want my character to do truly vile things. Things like what the Noghri were put through in the Thrawn series. They need to be hated. I recall a memory walking out of Episode 1, and the oldest of my three neighbors who were my impromptu older brothers had his fists balled and red faced. Why? Palpatine at the end. They were huge Star Wars nerds and to see a character they know is that horrid standing there, innocent as pie, affected them.

Thoughts?

Amobius

A little insight on why I think WoW reduced raid size. In Vanilla raids were 40 man but very much your usualy tank and spank fights that you are familiar with. In every expansion raids have moved away from large, yet easy to understand fight to smaller raids which are challanged b a more dynamic fight with more movement and adaptation required. Having raided in TBC, WotlK and now cataclysm I have to say that the raids have for the most part grown harder with wrath being a bit of a jumbled experience. Smaller groups means that you are expected to be more coordinated and therefore should be able to cope with more challenging raid boss scenarios.

Lets exam for instance Gruul vs Magmaw.

Gruul: Spread out, avoid falling aoe graphic (not always present), when you are knocked back just maintain distance from surrounding players. Really not too complicated of an entry level raid boss.

MagMaw: Aoe dmg on raid, lava spikes spawning under players at range, little adds that must be kited around while killed, heavy tank dmg phase, coordinated melee dps phase where you must apply chains on boss within a short amount of time, high dmg / recovery phase. Rinse repeat.

I guess my point is that there is a lot more going on that isn't really feasible with a large group of players. Sure there were some multi-boss fights in earlier expansions but they really just boiled down to tank and spank when you considered each individual boss.

Aldric

Great discussion topic!

Graphics: I like them. I think they look good and also don't look like they'll destroy my computer.

Style: It definitely is a matter of taste, but I don't find it nearly as cartoony as I did WoW. And I'm pretty sure they've said in interviews that there will not be pop culture references and that everything will relate to and be consistent with Star Wars.

And actually, I have the opposite concern as you regarding the Sith. I'm afraid the stories will be too dark, even if trying to go lightside as I always enjoy doing more. Judging from the descriptions and reactions to various story events from the fansite week, it sounds like there will be plenty of horribly vile options. I think this has been reinforced by the depictions of Sith in the 3 cinematics and novelizations.

Group size: I disagree here too and it's a huge relief to me that things will be smaller. Organizing 40man raids twice a week in WoW was a nightmare worse than herding cats. And dealing with DKP charts for loot rules was also a hell to which I hope never to return. I think smaller raid groups are easier to get going and have more camraderie and coordination than a huge mass of people. I am hoping to see larger, epic numbers in an open PvP setting or PQs where things don't require as much fore-planning.

So those are just my reactions. I'll be back with my personal concerns and worries soon. :)

Aldric

So my biggest concerns are simply releasing this year without further delays, and what happens at "the end".

Being so story-based, I'm worried that finishing the class arcs will feel like too much of an end. There's no getting around that it will have to be an end to your story in order to be satisfying, but I'm hoping they manage to somehow keep it from feeling like the end of the game. I'm worried that it won't be as fun as hyped to start over with new classes, and I'm worried that it was said a short while ago that social activities, like Pazaak, aren't likely to make it at launch. I don't feel like repeated instances will be enough of a hook for the long-term without an enjoyable, social community. And getting back to the story aspect, I'm very curious as to how they will handle expansions and continuing the story in general.

And in more of an unconfirmed hope than a worry, I want to see open world PvP areas that make sense in the cold-war storyline and also bring PVP players together for the possibility of epic battles. Something like WAR's RVR lakes would make me very happy.

Yog

PvP wouldn't make sense with a cold war...that would mean we would have no direct combat with the enemy. Can't really call that pvp.

Aldric · Post edited by Aldric at 2011-06-09 08:36:15

Sure it would; in remote places, done through proxies, and covertly. Anyplace where the powers can get away with it diplomatically without escalating into full war, they will. And with a whole galaxy at play, there are plenty of backwaters to fight in without full war declarations or the general populace of capital worlds ever knowing about it.

Just look at the history of our own cold war with the former Soviet Union. We have numerous covert actions, especially at the height of CIA power, and direct involvement in many proxy wars including Afganistan, Angola, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and tons of little things throughout the Middle East. The cold war meant a tenuous peace where we didn't directly launch our armies and nukes at each other, it was not an end to sporadic fighting in out-of-the-way places.

And by that same token, you would never see Soviet and US soldiers shooting each other on the streets of Paris, in the towns of Switzerland, or on Embassy Row in DC. Which is an example of why, in my opinion, full server PVP doesn't make sense in SWTOR's setting. But I still really want to have open world PVP in certain locations that do make sense (like the Dune Sea). :)

Yog

It wasn't direct combat with the enemy though. Like you said it was all proxies. We fought in korea and vietnam but the soviets didn't, they just funded the communists there. We didn't fight in afganistan, just funded the natives while they fought the soviets. We never actually fought each other directly. If SWTOR were to follow that we'd see the empire fighting the republic funded but technically unaffiliated natives of some random planet. And vice versa. We'd never actually fight the players of the opposing faction.

Aldric

Actually SWTOR is following precisely that. The Treaty of Coruscant ended the war and established peace between the Empire and Republic. The devs have directly said this has established a cold war like status between the two. So we can expect to not see the Empire again attack Coruscant or vice-versa. Alderann looks to be a neutral world that both sides will attempt to manipulate and potentially have covert combat over that. We now know that Czerka has hidden something under the sand of Tatoiine, so the Dune Sea is likely to be a hotspot over whatever is there.

And yes, the US and Soviet armies never fought directly, but we did have special forces in Afganistan officially for training purposes, etc and I think it very plausible that they did a lot more than just that without us knowing. That's how I imagine our heroes in SWTOR. We won't be official representatives of the militaries, but rather the few agents who fight for our sides behind the scenes.

Of course, maybe I'm wrong and full war will break out over the course of the story, but at the beginning it is an established and enforced cold war. And especially on the Sith side there is a lot of resistance to the Emperor's order to stop fighting, particularly from Darth Malgus.

Yog

I guess I'm just saying I don't think they'll properly represent a cold war with PvP since that would make PvP small scale at best and non-existent at worst.

VorAbaddon

Muah, hahha! Discussions!

To Yog: I can see why that made sense then, but I guess I don't feel that it necessarily has to be that way. I've seen very complicated events run by 54 man raids, so I think it's just a matter of the dev team and their creativity. I in fact think that you can be more creative with 54 man raids.

The reason I worry is that while I never raided in WoW, being an MMO-genre fan as much as I was an EQ fan, I kept up with the raids for awhile and read the strats, and a lot of times it was a "You need a this rogue, that warlock, this priest for certain fights" With only 25 people, you start to run out of "Non necessary" spots really quick. Not that it can't happen in larger raids, we tore through one expansion being irredeemably tank heavy, then got hurt bad for lacking DPS in the next, but I think the more people, the more creative you can make things.

Aldric: I guess I'll have to see how it goes, I just think that small groups mean less variance becuase MMO communities have a DISTINCT tendency to think "Tank, healer, DPS + fill" and I worry about group filling. Then again, maybe with being able to switch out companions, that gets easier.

Grax

We do know that story wise it is necessary for the resurgent Sith Empire to collapse in some form or another (probably related to the demise of the Sith Emperor and the fracturing of the Dark Council) At some point they either have to be driven into the unknown regions again or once and for all annihilated never to return again. I am of course only talking about the last true Sith tradition before the establishment of the Rule of Two. the Brotherhood of the Sith under Lord Kaan was a joke....

Dukault · Post edited by Dukault at 2011-06-10 12:07:13

I would rather have raids be exclusive due to a small size limit than be exclusive due to a large size limit. It is impossible for us to put together even small scale events currently and will continue to be until we get many new recruits that have similar play schedules.

In WOW, the game where Mongbat has the largest presence, we can't get 8 people online at the same time. Sure we'll have more people in SW:TOR, hopefully a lot more, but the community size limits our involvement in large scale activities. If the size of raids was limited to 42+ people, there would *be* no Mongbat raiding. We would be at the mercy of PUGs. And that is something that we have to deal with currently.

Hypothetically, if we had 12+ people interested and raid caps were (as per WOW) 10 and 25. We could still have the majority of people be in Mongbat and run two groups of 6. Or one full group with people rotating.

I don't have enough information on SW:TOR's raids to make specific criticisms, but I know this: a) We're competitive casual, b) We're relatively small, c) We have a mixed bag of schedules and availability. None of these things lends itself towards large scale raiding.

VorAbaddon

Hmm, I guess I should note that perhaps my skepticism comes from some good fortune. I was part of an organization in EQ called the "Planar Campaign", which was basically a non-official group of players (I.e, we did not have a guild tag called that) comprised of people within other guilds. Sometimes entire guilds took part, sometimes groups in a guild took part, other times it was only 1-2 members of a larger guild. For example, when I started, I was in a 45 or so member organization with maybe 8-9 active at a set time frame. But I was the only person in our raiding alliance.

In this way, groups that could not individually staff 72 person raids had their individual members who cared about that style of play join up with those of similar mindset, and there were days we easily fielded 100-120 people.

Which brings me to a question: What sort of non-guild social functions have they announced? Can we create our own private chats, etc, to invite people to?

Trez

I think smaller raids will be good for us anyway. We aren't a huge guild nor have we struck an alliance with another Sith guild yet. So far according to our roster we will be able to fill all of the essential roles, ie; tanking and healing so we should be good. I think 8 to 12 man raids would be cool.

swtorcrafter

dont even get me started about how lame E3 was this year. I was highly disappointed and pissed because me and my partner spent a lot of money getting me there.

just as a side note I did a interview with Daniel there if anyone hasn't seen it yet.

interview with Daniel Erickson

Aldric

I don't remember E3 being particularly lame, but my memory of what was released when is terrible. It must be very frustrating though to have it not live up to expectations after shelling out the money to be there in person.

Meeting DE must have been fun though.

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