The little things

Instead of working on Landscape Genetics today, I kept playing SWTOR's beta.


My parents would be so proud.


Anyway, I've now leveled the following characters to the following levels:


Trooper 11
Conselor 10
Bounty Hunter 7


I loved the Trooper storyline.  Its got a great twist at the end of it that I can only assume sets up the REST OF THE GAME for the class.  Its great, and I won't ruin it for anyone who wants to play.


The play on the Bounty Hunter was a blast.  Literally.  One of your initial abilities is the classic Fett "wrist rocket".  When you hit a standard enemy, it can blow them over, knock them down, and stun them momentarily.  If you KILL someone with it, their limp body/chassis/bits fly 3 to 5 meters.


IT. IS. GLORIOUS.  The play style is endlessly entertaining.  The story line there is solid, too.  It also has some good twists you'd expect from the typical scum and villiany that inhabits Nal Hutta.


The Counselor play style is good, by comparison I suppose its a little bland compared to the others, but that not saying much, considering how flashy Troopers and Bounty Hunters are.  The big push back ability is fun, but with limited use without a lot of big damage ranged abilities to take advantage of it.  The end of the Tython story line was very satisfying, and the twist that came afterward I actually expected sooner.  


There are a few other points I want to touch on here tonight.


The Legacy system


I actually stumbled on this, and it sounds like its old news.  Your "Legacy" will basically be your character's last name or family/clan/house/whatever identifier.  From what I read, it will be unique, self-chosen, and game wide (Across any and all servers).  The name you choose can be listed as a last name, below your name, as "the xyz legacy", or hidden.  So apparently you CAN choose a last name in the game, and my previous post was wrong.  You have to finish the first story tier.  I'm looking forward to this.  This SHOULD allow an anonymous method for cross server, User-to-user communication, a proxy for what the "RealID system" provided us in WoW.  


The Social hub


This was very well designed.  The social hub for the Republic (and, I assume, Sith) is a large space station.  To speak in terms of WoW, This will be the Stormwind/Ironforge for the Republic.  Initially speaking, its VERY well designed.  The social "hub" is literally just that.  The entire station is laid out as a large wheel, with most of the utility areas (Crew skills, class training, auction house, transit) along the rim, connected in the center by a cantina: literally, a "social hub".  The layout should make it very convenient and accessible.  


Sharding servers


Apparently, all the zones are instanced, or "sharded".  Even within the servers.  This was used by STO to allow all users to play on the same super-server.  I was NOT expecting this.  The good news is this means that zones can be kept to reasonable populations by adding more instances to the zone ad hoc to support the population.  The bad news is this sharding can separate players and friends.  You can still communicate between shards with general chat and whispers, but actually joining your friends' instance requires an entire reload of the zone.  Personally, I have found these loads to be fairly lengthy.  In the long term, I worry that random grouping may be discouraged across shards due to the time involved in the load for the new players.  Time will tell how this plays out.


Group quests and world bosses


I simultaneously loved and loathed the group quests in WoW.  They were a pain in the ass during leveling, but I was surprisingly disappointed to see them go in Cataclysm.  In SWTOR, they called "Heroic" quests, and they seem to provide bonus gear, but haven't yet been required to move the story forward. 


I'm also pleased to see that world bosses have been added.  They're scattered around, and I've found some as early as level 6.  Get a group together, and these can be fun.




Well, I think that's it for now.  I believe we'll be running a flash point tomorrow, we'll see how things go.


-Tris

Advanced classes

Well, Now I'm a bit concerned.  I just hit level 10 and selected my advanced class on my trooper (I went Commando. Giggity).  Anyway, when I was selected, the game dialog made it fairly clear that that your choice is permanent.  Their exact words were "You cannot change your mind, your training is with you until you retire"

What.  The.  Fuck.

One of THE most successful features in MMOs was WoW's addition of a dual specialization.  For anyone not familiar with this, Blizzard added a feature during Wrath where you could pay in game cash for an alternate set of talents.  You could move between the two sets out of combat, and doing so exhausted any "rechargeable" resources your class had (focus, energy, mana, w/w).  Furthermore, you could ALWAYS pay to respec your talents in a class.  It was in the almost from day 1.

If I am reading this correctly, then not only are they not seem to anticipate allowing dual spec'ing for characters, but even if they did, you CANNOT respec into the OTHER advanced class of your class.

I REALLY hope I am mistaken reading this, because otherwise this is a MASSIVE failing on BioWare's part.  They will need to add some way to spec into a different advanced class to allow the same flexibility that WoW currently provides to accommodate instancing and raiding.  It was a wildly successful addition to WoW, and there is no reason it should be so restrictive in TOR.

EDIT: While I can't currently find it, it appears the ability to respec should be available in your skill tree screen, indicating you won't need to visit a trainer to change your spec.  A nice convenience compared to WoW.

Alright, level 3.  First impressions:

This is an awesome game.

Seriously, amazing.  Its classic MMO stuff, but the amount of time and effort that have gone into the quests is impressive.  The voice acting is TOP NOTCH.  

Quest locations are clearly marked, and the interactions are entertaining.

And the aliens don't speak basic.  Nice touch.

The quests take interesting turns.  I just got to the village where I was assigned to meet my contact, to find him KIA.  lets see where this goes...

Looking forward to this weekend, and back at other MMOs

After months of waiting, we are finally getting a chance to get into the upcoming MMORPG: Star Wars: The Old Republic.  This weekend is my first beta for TOR.  I will likely be creating a republic trooper, a class I have little interest in playing in the full game.  Given the games proscribed emphasis on story telling as a core "pillar" of game play, I want to be surprised when I create my Jedi Knight.  Together with a group of friends, we should have an operation guild from day one.  I suspect that TOR will be replacing WoW as a primary MMO for me, my friends, and a LOT of other people.  [Yeah, I get this isn't news]


I am very excited.


I've been spending time in two other games.  Partly to kill time, partly because their mechanics have come to interest me.  The first is Star Trek Online.  At launch, I purchased a lifetime membership.  Many people said this deal was for suckers, but I feel I got my money's worth, its broken down $10/month to this point.  In January, the game is going free to play, and to encourage micro-transactions to continue revenue flow, they're adding two new, and linked, systems:  Dilithium and Duty Officers.  Dilithium will replace all of the emblems currently in the game.  Dilithium can be earned by performing daily quests, sending your DOffs on missions, and can also be purchased for C-credits from other players via the dilithium exchange.


The duty officers generate dilithium, specific DOff XP, Skill XP, Bridge officer XP, and occasionally other rewards.  And since the DOff's perform missions while you're offline, it allows you to level while offline.  While the underlying purpose of the DOff system is to generate microtransaction revenue (The fastest way to expand your roster of DOffs is to purchase "Booster Packs" from the C-store), it adds a great level of immersion.  Sending these minor officers on these missions and having them come back with materials, and sometimes even wounded, makes your ship feel more alive.  I'll admit, I'm one of those weird gamers that enjoys a certainly level of micromanagement, especially when it improves immersion.   


Taking the game F2P is a great idea, and it will broaden access to the game to any fans of the Star Trek IP.  Increasing the player base will be extremely beneficial to the game.  I really hope it leads to STO becoming a preferred, high quality F2P MMO as an option to other pay MMOs.  The way the dilithium system works allows people to substitute game time with money, but not vice versa, since players can't exchange the C creds in for actual $US.


The second game getting my attention is the Facebook game Heroes of Neverwinter.  I strongly suspect this game is the product of the what was supposed to be the Virtual Tabletop system we were promised with 4th ed, that was later canceled.  Its a good, albeit simple, interpretation of the 4th ed D&D we're all so familiar with now.  There's a lot of room to grow (additional classes, races, level cap, mechanics etc).  But the real gem in this game is the "asynchronous multiplayer" concept.  Adventures assume that you have four party members, only one of which is your own PC.  To round out your group, you may "borrow" characters from your FB friends, and they are under your control during the adventure.  Your friends characters have their gear and skills chosen by their owners, but the action during the adventures where you "borrow" them is up to you.  Its a neat inclusive system that allows for quite a bit of flexibility and allows players to use the time they have when they have it, instead of having to organize "raid night".


That's it for tonight.  I hope to have TOR updates in the next few days, and hopefully a post on my thoughts about WoW, its future, and my future relations with it.

-Tris