Some internal testing responces on NGE dont look to bad....
PostedFri Nov 04, 2005 5:11 pm
Just picked this up over at the SOE forums.
The more I'm getting out of the testers who have been in it already...the more it doesnt sound as bad as we may think it is.
Reviews:
Blackferne
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Blackferne
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Last wednesday I was one of the lucky people who SOE invited to their studio to play and discuss this upcoming change. I figured it might be interesting for a recap of my experiences having actually seen what is coming instead of trying to divine omens from design docs.
Well I didn't get to play as a high level player, so I didn't get the joy of blowing things up in style. But I'll tell you how my 2 hours of play time was spent.
You start on this one space station and get rescued by Han Solo. It goes through the normal n00b things like "this is how you talk to an NPC and shoot these boxes." Then you get into a firefight with soem storm troopers with Han and Chewie giving you back up so you guys can get onto the Falcon.
So you are in the Falcon and TIEs are chasing you, Han directs you to the turrets to fight them off. (intro to space fighting and it wasn't hard). Guess what the hyper drive is broken (OMG on that peice of junk? NEVER!) So you have to land on this space station. Now depending on what class you took there are different intro to your prof quests. I did officer. You get to explore this really cool space station and run different quests. Sometimes you have to fly a Scyk to this potato shaped space station for some of these quests. (Rogue5 told me "fly to the giant poatato"). Once you get high enough level and help Han get some parts, he'll fly you to Mos Eisley.
Some of the cool things are that in the noob island space station a Harrison Ford sound alike (maybe even him?) and C3P0 occasionally have voice over tracks that made me feel more "into" the action. I don't know if that will be come common place for more NPCs on the ground, but it was a really nice touch. Combat was more fun. Yes there is a point click mentatilty and the keymap was different that what I was used to (I normally play in the keymap from launch, and this was WASD setup). But it was a more engaging combat system. You have to employ some basic strategy and there isn't really a method for AFK macroing because tabbing just gives you the info on a mob, not target it for you. You have to drag the crosshairs over the mob and click to shoot. Terrian matters, line of sight matters. You won't see guys with T-21s running up to the mob, standing 1m and just spamming specials. So it was fun. Once I got off the station and was on Tat there were still quests to do, but I was more interested in testing game mechanics with another correspondent. Stuff like healing, trading, getting into vehicles etc. From what I understood from one of the SOE employees getting our feedback the quests continue and help you explore tat, then naboo and corellia etc. It isn't required to level, but it gives you a story line to follow. You could just run to Dant and level if you wanted, but this gives you a chance to level while enjoying content. And that was one of the main failings of the old system I think, to get anywhere it meant (off to lok for gurks).
So I enjoyed it. I will be playing on TC to help test it, get rid of bugs and to be honest I think it will prevent me from cancelling. The way the game was, I just didn't have enough stuff to do. I was maxed out with no desire at all to be a jedi and this gave me hope that there is a point and purpose not only to the GCW, but to being a non jedi.
Jounville Blackferne
"No one plays SWG to be Uncle Owen" -Dallas Dickenson
Blackferne
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Posts: 9788
Registered: 07-16-2003
Blackferne
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Okay to answer a few questions: I spent 8 hours ther, two were actually playing the rest were asking questions of devs etc. They were very interested in our feedback and wrote stuff down all the time when we brought up concerns and points. And the group they brought in was a wide array of people who played lots of different aspects of the game.
But to the points raised:
"I won't kill and imperial soldier!" - Darth Vader choked an Imperial Admiral, so what is your point?
"What about BH and player bounties." -The reason they gave for the PC bounties were removed is that it promoted a bitter bitter rivalry between BHs and Jedi. I never was a Jedi, but having run BH missions I was upset to no end when I track somebody and find...a generic small house and tells respond with /afk message. Also they want the focus to be on the GCW and having parts of you population angry and upset they can't kill each other because the other is an exploiting **edit** doesn't really build a gameworld. So yes some people enjoyed that, but howmany people avoided teh BH/Jedi forums because of that.
"quest grinding instead of leveling"- Okay that could be a fair assessment, but I don't really see it that way. I would rather go through the SW universe exploring and doing content, then power levelling on dantooine. But there isn't any game mechanic preventing you from doing the latter. (When I wanted off the space station I went to the atrium and grinded out lvl 4 on flits) But as for endgame? They really want to make the GCW the endgame. But they couldn't before because they had to tweak 34 profession systems and a complex combat system that was flawed.
"I'm CL 40 now and I'm going to miss out on all this noob stuff"- Well two options, reroll or just start a new character (possibly on another server) just to play the n00b island. They are looking into second character slots for everybody (maybe more I don't know), and I'm pestering for teh ability to change class (my system would be keep pilot/politician skills, but start at lvl 1 in your new class).
Jounville Blackferne
"No one plays SWG to be Uncle Owen" -Dallas Dickenson
Blackferne
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Posts: 9788
Registered: 07-16-2003
Blackferne
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ArsatDarkrider wrote:
Sounds nice. It would b great if you could get some more "reviews" like this one rom others who tried it. Since I am an Ex-TKM (at least I will be soon ) I would like to hear about melee combat as well.
Ah I almost forgot this one.
The way it works is that you have "attributes" like strength, agility, precision, luck etc etc. These affect different things. Strength for instance affects damage done using melee. Precision affects ranged damage. Agility affects your defense modifiers.
Now as you progress these stats grow over time. I think at level 2 I hade 11 strength, a Dev who was at level 90 had over 300 (he was on God mode though). You can get bonuses to these through items etc. Now the thing is that you can choose whatever weapon you want assuming that you have the level for it. Some are class specific like commando grenades or the lightsaber, but you could be a melee BH if you wanted to. Just equip a sword and go Kill Bill on everyone. Alot of the specials/unique abilities aren't weapon specific from what I saw so, you can choose what your gimkmick is. I mean we have seen three BHs in action in the movies (pistols, carbine and rifles) and you could do that and more.
The devs said that players will find that melee is great for close quarter combat and base don what I saw I'd believe it. I always used a gun up there, but that's just my style. I mean I am the marksman corres.
Jounville Blackferne
"No one plays SWG to be Uncle Owen" -Dallas Dickenson
Blackferne
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Posts: 9788
Registered: 07-16-2003
Blackferne
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NiadLavigne wrote:
So basically Black you're saying that insted of the character professions and such we used to have to tell between a pistoleer and such its judged by the clothes we wear which increase our stats (and the weapon we choose)?
So for example if you want to be a full meleer, you'd spend all of you're time collecting up clothes which increase you're "Strength" statistic, so you could still handle a ranged weapon, but you wouldn't be as good with it as somebody who collected ranged stats enhanceing clothes/weapons?
That sounds interesting, sorta like what we have now except a few clicks of the inventory and you're changed... not sure how that'll pan out.
Well kinda. I mean all of them grow over time anyway, but I think you will see people collecting items that help their playstyle. The is a guy in guild who just loves being a tank. He loves running up to people's faces and getting into their grill. Knowing that I'd pretty much give him any rings, shirts, etc that I find that would help him do that. But I think that eventually it would all kinda pan out as well. So yeah he is this great melee guy, but what good is that If I call an orbital strike on him and my friend has him snared so he can't run away?
There is the possibility that somebody with a ton of money could buy all the great gear and have the best attributes, but in this system if he can't play, he won't last.
Jounville Blackferne
"No one plays SWG to be Uncle Owen" -Dallas Dickenson
Blackferne
Marksman Correspondent
Posts: 9788
Registered: 07-16-2003
Blackferne
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gerrah wrote:
Can you tell if it will be possible to play with higher pings (200-300)? In Counter-Strike it would be impossible, however in JTL it doesn't seems to be an obstacle.
It isn't as fast as a counterstrike or doom on the action front. I've been told it is like Diablo (I never played that so I don't know). But the speed of stuff seems to be akin to JTL in game play. They said they did a big internal test with like 150 people in a cantina fighting (some of which was on dial up) and they said there was some lag, but it was much better than way the current system would have handled it. They also said they reduced the number of permissions the client needs from teh server. For example you used to need permission from the server to do an emote. And the request for that would get queued by the server. Well they say they cut alot of that stuff out.
"Does it give you the option to pick rebel or Imperial"- in what I saw no. It didn't give you an option. They may add one, I don't know. But remeber this is "noob station" and before you eneter the real game world.
Message Edited by Blackferne on 11-04-2005 07:34 AM
Jounville Blackferne
"No one plays SWG to be Uncle Owen" -Dallas Dickenson
KStarfire
Blue Glowie
Posts: 3196
Registered: 06-27-2003
KStarfire
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Heres a tidbit that i posted on my guild forums:
-------
Ok it looks likes everyones read the FAQ so let stop with the info lession and try to explain things a bit more from what i saw.
This change is so immense, its hard to even put it into words. Its one your going to have to play to understand. I highly recommend you load up TC and start patching you are GOING to want to try this one out before it hits live. I sat there as it was explained horrified, a class based system in SWG? The loss of my sandbox style gaming for the more linear one. Im still not completely sure how i feel about that, theres other things too which ill ethier talk about in a bit or hopefully just answer the questions and let you guys ask away.
First off the game has become more "twitchy" i say more, because its not exactly twitch. Some have said Planetside, well no its not that extreme at all, it feels even less twitchy then Jump to Lightspeed. More importantly it felt Star Wars, and it was fun. Basically there is no more tab to targeting, you fire by mousing over your target and holding down the fire key. Any spot on the player will do. Currently you can only fire on legal targets, but phase 2 of this thing is going to allow for world firing. This means you will be able to lay down cover fire by actually laying down coverfire. This means throwing grenades at locations instead of players, this is huge. Can you imagine it. Now i know our non-so-loving twitch members are going to freak out about this system, but honestly try it. I dont think youll find it even close to as hard to attack as JTL and did i mention the new Trader class will not draw any aggro (unless you attack first).
Anyway, the i hoped in, and while i dont want to spoil everything it was Star Wars. Think of newbie Island on Everquest, basically its an instanced area that you start out in doing a few tutorial quests with instructions, you even talk/interact to key iconic players in Star Wars universe. Combat is fast pased and fun, i had a blast. Regular combat with a NPC takes about 3-7 seconds its quick, your regen on health is quick too. I managed to take out 4 training droids at white con with barely any health left and survived. It was fast, action packed, intense, and Star Wars feeling....
Now the reason professions were removed was to simpfiy the system, basically there was way too much going on to give anyone some focused content. Players wanted focused profession content, and thats what this new system will give them. Is it good, is it bad, time will tell, im not trhilled about the change from skill to class based but its understandable given what they want to do. And that is to bring profession based quests to the game. And they have done that, in fact one of the cores mentioned the new dev on the team was a former god of EQ in quest writing, and it shows. Oh, one of the great things was landing on Tatoonie (outside Newbie Island) and reading that my former actions have caused Jabba to have a bounty set on me, and i needed to talk so and so to try and get my named cleared. Smugglers want to smuggle, bounty hunters want to hunt, spys want to spy... well your going to get it...
Its going to take a little getting use to the new system, specials as we know it have changed. Currently they are setup to be que'd and triggered using the right click on the mouse. After numerous times just trying to click on NPCs i learned that regular click is a fire button, and not my select button. It didnt take me long to get into that grove. One thing about this change is that i never even noticed the UI any more. I was watching all the action in game, and not my HAM, my specials bar, or the HAM on my enemies. In fact i had to stop and really look to see the changes to the UI. In no time i was following my targets into me as i blasted away with my carbine. And most importantly it was FUN.. it really was, i cant wait to play.
One thing to note, GET TESTCENTER... go get it going now... this is going to TC on Friday.. THIS WEEK! Needless to say my time on Mustafar is going to be cut down considerably. This is huge, and its fun, you really have to play it to believe it!
------
KStarfire
I love the idea of being able to set up a cover fire =)
The more I'm getting out of the testers who have been in it already...the more it doesnt sound as bad as we may think it is.
Reviews:
Blackferne
Marksman Correspondent
Posts: 9788
Registered: 07-16-2003
Blackferne
PA: Church of Alvis
Server: Scylla
Reply 1 of 55
Viewed 2482 times
Last wednesday I was one of the lucky people who SOE invited to their studio to play and discuss this upcoming change. I figured it might be interesting for a recap of my experiences having actually seen what is coming instead of trying to divine omens from design docs.
Well I didn't get to play as a high level player, so I didn't get the joy of blowing things up in style. But I'll tell you how my 2 hours of play time was spent.
You start on this one space station and get rescued by Han Solo. It goes through the normal n00b things like "this is how you talk to an NPC and shoot these boxes." Then you get into a firefight with soem storm troopers with Han and Chewie giving you back up so you guys can get onto the Falcon.
So you are in the Falcon and TIEs are chasing you, Han directs you to the turrets to fight them off. (intro to space fighting and it wasn't hard). Guess what the hyper drive is broken (OMG on that peice of junk? NEVER!) So you have to land on this space station. Now depending on what class you took there are different intro to your prof quests. I did officer. You get to explore this really cool space station and run different quests. Sometimes you have to fly a Scyk to this potato shaped space station for some of these quests. (Rogue5 told me "fly to the giant poatato"). Once you get high enough level and help Han get some parts, he'll fly you to Mos Eisley.
Some of the cool things are that in the noob island space station a Harrison Ford sound alike (maybe even him?) and C3P0 occasionally have voice over tracks that made me feel more "into" the action. I don't know if that will be come common place for more NPCs on the ground, but it was a really nice touch. Combat was more fun. Yes there is a point click mentatilty and the keymap was different that what I was used to (I normally play in the keymap from launch, and this was WASD setup). But it was a more engaging combat system. You have to employ some basic strategy and there isn't really a method for AFK macroing because tabbing just gives you the info on a mob, not target it for you. You have to drag the crosshairs over the mob and click to shoot. Terrian matters, line of sight matters. You won't see guys with T-21s running up to the mob, standing 1m and just spamming specials. So it was fun. Once I got off the station and was on Tat there were still quests to do, but I was more interested in testing game mechanics with another correspondent. Stuff like healing, trading, getting into vehicles etc. From what I understood from one of the SOE employees getting our feedback the quests continue and help you explore tat, then naboo and corellia etc. It isn't required to level, but it gives you a story line to follow. You could just run to Dant and level if you wanted, but this gives you a chance to level while enjoying content. And that was one of the main failings of the old system I think, to get anywhere it meant (off to lok for gurks).
So I enjoyed it. I will be playing on TC to help test it, get rid of bugs and to be honest I think it will prevent me from cancelling. The way the game was, I just didn't have enough stuff to do. I was maxed out with no desire at all to be a jedi and this gave me hope that there is a point and purpose not only to the GCW, but to being a non jedi.
Jounville Blackferne
"No one plays SWG to be Uncle Owen" -Dallas Dickenson
Blackferne
Marksman Correspondent
Posts: 9788
Registered: 07-16-2003
Blackferne
PA: Church of Alvis
Server: Scylla
Reply 18 of 55
Viewed 2008 times
Okay to answer a few questions: I spent 8 hours ther, two were actually playing the rest were asking questions of devs etc. They were very interested in our feedback and wrote stuff down all the time when we brought up concerns and points. And the group they brought in was a wide array of people who played lots of different aspects of the game.
But to the points raised:
"I won't kill and imperial soldier!" - Darth Vader choked an Imperial Admiral, so what is your point?
"What about BH and player bounties." -The reason they gave for the PC bounties were removed is that it promoted a bitter bitter rivalry between BHs and Jedi. I never was a Jedi, but having run BH missions I was upset to no end when I track somebody and find...a generic small house and tells respond with /afk message. Also they want the focus to be on the GCW and having parts of you population angry and upset they can't kill each other because the other is an exploiting **edit** doesn't really build a gameworld. So yes some people enjoyed that, but howmany people avoided teh BH/Jedi forums because of that.
"quest grinding instead of leveling"- Okay that could be a fair assessment, but I don't really see it that way. I would rather go through the SW universe exploring and doing content, then power levelling on dantooine. But there isn't any game mechanic preventing you from doing the latter. (When I wanted off the space station I went to the atrium and grinded out lvl 4 on flits) But as for endgame? They really want to make the GCW the endgame. But they couldn't before because they had to tweak 34 profession systems and a complex combat system that was flawed.
"I'm CL 40 now and I'm going to miss out on all this noob stuff"- Well two options, reroll or just start a new character (possibly on another server) just to play the n00b island. They are looking into second character slots for everybody (maybe more I don't know), and I'm pestering for teh ability to change class (my system would be keep pilot/politician skills, but start at lvl 1 in your new class).
Jounville Blackferne
"No one plays SWG to be Uncle Owen" -Dallas Dickenson
Blackferne
Marksman Correspondent
Posts: 9788
Registered: 07-16-2003
Blackferne
PA: Church of Alvis
Server: Scylla
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ArsatDarkrider wrote:
Sounds nice. It would b great if you could get some more "reviews" like this one rom others who tried it. Since I am an Ex-TKM (at least I will be soon ) I would like to hear about melee combat as well.
Ah I almost forgot this one.
The way it works is that you have "attributes" like strength, agility, precision, luck etc etc. These affect different things. Strength for instance affects damage done using melee. Precision affects ranged damage. Agility affects your defense modifiers.
Now as you progress these stats grow over time. I think at level 2 I hade 11 strength, a Dev who was at level 90 had over 300 (he was on God mode though). You can get bonuses to these through items etc. Now the thing is that you can choose whatever weapon you want assuming that you have the level for it. Some are class specific like commando grenades or the lightsaber, but you could be a melee BH if you wanted to. Just equip a sword and go Kill Bill on everyone. Alot of the specials/unique abilities aren't weapon specific from what I saw so, you can choose what your gimkmick is. I mean we have seen three BHs in action in the movies (pistols, carbine and rifles) and you could do that and more.
The devs said that players will find that melee is great for close quarter combat and base don what I saw I'd believe it. I always used a gun up there, but that's just my style. I mean I am the marksman corres.
Jounville Blackferne
"No one plays SWG to be Uncle Owen" -Dallas Dickenson
Blackferne
Marksman Correspondent
Posts: 9788
Registered: 07-16-2003
Blackferne
PA: Church of Alvis
Server: Scylla
Reply 32 of 57
Viewed 2708 times
NiadLavigne wrote:
So basically Black you're saying that insted of the character professions and such we used to have to tell between a pistoleer and such its judged by the clothes we wear which increase our stats (and the weapon we choose)?
So for example if you want to be a full meleer, you'd spend all of you're time collecting up clothes which increase you're "Strength" statistic, so you could still handle a ranged weapon, but you wouldn't be as good with it as somebody who collected ranged stats enhanceing clothes/weapons?
That sounds interesting, sorta like what we have now except a few clicks of the inventory and you're changed... not sure how that'll pan out.
Well kinda. I mean all of them grow over time anyway, but I think you will see people collecting items that help their playstyle. The is a guy in guild who just loves being a tank. He loves running up to people's faces and getting into their grill. Knowing that I'd pretty much give him any rings, shirts, etc that I find that would help him do that. But I think that eventually it would all kinda pan out as well. So yeah he is this great melee guy, but what good is that If I call an orbital strike on him and my friend has him snared so he can't run away?
There is the possibility that somebody with a ton of money could buy all the great gear and have the best attributes, but in this system if he can't play, he won't last.
Jounville Blackferne
"No one plays SWG to be Uncle Owen" -Dallas Dickenson
Blackferne
Marksman Correspondent
Posts: 9788
Registered: 07-16-2003
Blackferne
PA: Church of Alvis
Server: Scylla
Reply 35 of 57
Viewed 2680 times
gerrah wrote:
Can you tell if it will be possible to play with higher pings (200-300)? In Counter-Strike it would be impossible, however in JTL it doesn't seems to be an obstacle.
It isn't as fast as a counterstrike or doom on the action front. I've been told it is like Diablo (I never played that so I don't know). But the speed of stuff seems to be akin to JTL in game play. They said they did a big internal test with like 150 people in a cantina fighting (some of which was on dial up) and they said there was some lag, but it was much better than way the current system would have handled it. They also said they reduced the number of permissions the client needs from teh server. For example you used to need permission from the server to do an emote. And the request for that would get queued by the server. Well they say they cut alot of that stuff out.
"Does it give you the option to pick rebel or Imperial"- in what I saw no. It didn't give you an option. They may add one, I don't know. But remeber this is "noob station" and before you eneter the real game world.
Message Edited by Blackferne on 11-04-2005 07:34 AM
Jounville Blackferne
"No one plays SWG to be Uncle Owen" -Dallas Dickenson
KStarfire
Blue Glowie
Posts: 3196
Registered: 06-27-2003
KStarfire
Reply 38 of 57
Viewed 2656 times
Heres a tidbit that i posted on my guild forums:
-------
Ok it looks likes everyones read the FAQ so let stop with the info lession and try to explain things a bit more from what i saw.
This change is so immense, its hard to even put it into words. Its one your going to have to play to understand. I highly recommend you load up TC and start patching you are GOING to want to try this one out before it hits live. I sat there as it was explained horrified, a class based system in SWG? The loss of my sandbox style gaming for the more linear one. Im still not completely sure how i feel about that, theres other things too which ill ethier talk about in a bit or hopefully just answer the questions and let you guys ask away.
First off the game has become more "twitchy" i say more, because its not exactly twitch. Some have said Planetside, well no its not that extreme at all, it feels even less twitchy then Jump to Lightspeed. More importantly it felt Star Wars, and it was fun. Basically there is no more tab to targeting, you fire by mousing over your target and holding down the fire key. Any spot on the player will do. Currently you can only fire on legal targets, but phase 2 of this thing is going to allow for world firing. This means you will be able to lay down cover fire by actually laying down coverfire. This means throwing grenades at locations instead of players, this is huge. Can you imagine it. Now i know our non-so-loving twitch members are going to freak out about this system, but honestly try it. I dont think youll find it even close to as hard to attack as JTL and did i mention the new Trader class will not draw any aggro (unless you attack first).
Anyway, the i hoped in, and while i dont want to spoil everything it was Star Wars. Think of newbie Island on Everquest, basically its an instanced area that you start out in doing a few tutorial quests with instructions, you even talk/interact to key iconic players in Star Wars universe. Combat is fast pased and fun, i had a blast. Regular combat with a NPC takes about 3-7 seconds its quick, your regen on health is quick too. I managed to take out 4 training droids at white con with barely any health left and survived. It was fast, action packed, intense, and Star Wars feeling....
Now the reason professions were removed was to simpfiy the system, basically there was way too much going on to give anyone some focused content. Players wanted focused profession content, and thats what this new system will give them. Is it good, is it bad, time will tell, im not trhilled about the change from skill to class based but its understandable given what they want to do. And that is to bring profession based quests to the game. And they have done that, in fact one of the cores mentioned the new dev on the team was a former god of EQ in quest writing, and it shows. Oh, one of the great things was landing on Tatoonie (outside Newbie Island) and reading that my former actions have caused Jabba to have a bounty set on me, and i needed to talk so and so to try and get my named cleared. Smugglers want to smuggle, bounty hunters want to hunt, spys want to spy... well your going to get it...
Its going to take a little getting use to the new system, specials as we know it have changed. Currently they are setup to be que'd and triggered using the right click on the mouse. After numerous times just trying to click on NPCs i learned that regular click is a fire button, and not my select button. It didnt take me long to get into that grove. One thing about this change is that i never even noticed the UI any more. I was watching all the action in game, and not my HAM, my specials bar, or the HAM on my enemies. In fact i had to stop and really look to see the changes to the UI. In no time i was following my targets into me as i blasted away with my carbine. And most importantly it was FUN.. it really was, i cant wait to play.
One thing to note, GET TESTCENTER... go get it going now... this is going to TC on Friday.. THIS WEEK! Needless to say my time on Mustafar is going to be cut down considerably. This is huge, and its fun, you really have to play it to believe it!
------
KStarfire
I love the idea of being able to set up a cover fire =)
