Off-topic: Star Wars: The old Republic walkthrough my thoughts..

Geee..what a long title..

Thanks to Keen for pointing me to the STOR walkthrough.. videos from GC 2009…

So my thoughts on the videos..

I want to start with something positive. I really like the graphics of the game. The world looks really good. The animations are not so good, but I think this might change.  I don’t want to judge on animations too much, though I believe that Bioware always  struggles with animations…

The dialog sequences look nice, but then I start to think that this is a single-player game..not multiplayer (I don’t count two as multiplayer like shown in the videos). That’s a real design problem if you ask me. You can’t combine both elements… The solution Bioware chose is the only way to tell a story, but imo it just doesn’t fit to a MMORPG. I don’t think that this will  a “game-breaker” as it might be an important element of the game, but not the whole game.. So it’s a nice teaser for this part of gameplay and we have to wait until more of the game is presented.

Two things bother me when I look at the videos..

Those heroic fights.. aren’t heroic at all. If you look at the hp-bar of your sith warrior he stays above 90% all over the fight with the.. hard.. enemy. No fight..just a slaughter of a NPC. Where do you have to fear for your live?

The gun fights aren’t heroic too. It’s quiet static imo. I hope that the AI will improve as imo it doesn’t act too smart. Running around a corner to take cover was the only presented form of AI.. Otherwise they just stood there got slaughtered. The cover-mechanism of the smuggler seems.. strange to me. You can’t have everywhere possibilities to cover.. Naming just Hoth or Tatooine as two examples with rare cover-possibilities. It just feels strange and unnatural, that there is always a cover-possibility there..

The fights themselves don’t look fluent.. But that goes for several MMOs. KotoR didn’t feel fluent too..So I think that this will be final hit, wait and watch, hit.. rhythm we might see in the final version of TOR.

The things shown are good.. if you consider a single-player game. Much instancing was shown.. this might be due to the nature of the walkthrough just being an exhibition of certain parts of the game or that the shown elements just require heavy instancing; flashpoint stuff.

I’m still interested to see where this game gets the first to MM’s of MMORPG.. So where is STOR getting massive and multiplayer-like?

Leave the ballast…

I just read a post from Werit and the comment from Keen made me think about a new scenario layout for Warhammer..

Well..it’s not really new, but it’s not in the game. Let me first explain the current situation in scenarios.

There is always one or more objectives to get you additional point, capture the flag, king of the hill, etc.. plus points earned from killing enemy players. In some scenarios people just ignore the objectives and go “brain afk”..Happens way too often *sighs*. They ignore the objectives and lose by a big amount..

What about the well known team death-match. No objectives, just maps for fighting against an equal sized force? WAR has not such a scenario and I start to ask me why this is so?

Would it draw people away from ORvR? Is it too much of e-sport type? I have no idea.. Just a well layout map (like Reikland Factory) and only points for killing players.. Sounds like fun to me. In terms of imbalance and domination(*) in a scenario this would be no change to the current situation. The entrance has to be guarded well and the fall-damage should be taken away… which I suggest anyways. It’s plain stupid that you enter the scenario, fall and lose 80% of your hitpoints.

The one thing I want from the maps is a good layout, with possibilities to hide, to make an ambush, to retreat and reform.. just to use the terrain in tactical and not only cosmetic way.

(*)You could do ridiculous stuff to prevent domination.. something like the good old “wrath of the god”-card from Magic the Gathering: Every 100 or 200 points every character on the map will be killed or there is a button near the enemy camp, so that everyone will be killed. A wipe-out/small scenario-reset.. could be fun and frustration ;) Especially the player-driven scenario wipe could make things interesting as there has to be some sort of guard at that button…
Well..that was just some rambling before weekend.. Have a nice weekend everyone ;)

On request.. What about PvE?

In a comment I saw a request to write something about PvE in Warhammer..especially Lost Vale.

Well.. PvE in WAR seems like a not loved stepchild, but I have fun in it.

I will talk about my experiences in the Altdorf Instances (Warblade Tunnels and Sigmar Crypts) and Lost Vale. The other dungeons changed in the last weeks or I had trouble to find a group for them.

In general I like PvE stuff, but I am not and never was something like a “hardcore” raider… I can enjoy a dungeon because of the people who are in my group or because I like the layout of the dungeon.

Let’s take a look at the dungeons in WAR.. The layout is quiet straight forward. I like the art of the dungeons, though the Warblade Tunnels seem like a little bit too much of a cave than something under a city. It’s a nice atmosphere in it. Especially Lost Vale is nice.. even though this is an elf dungeon ;) So the art team gets some plus points..

Looking at the technical side things get really ugly. The path-ing of NPC’s in WAR is since release in a bad shape and I wonder why it’s so ugly in the dungeons. In the Sigmar Crypts some mobs lately started to stand behind the walls and weren’t attackable. That really disturbs the dungeon experience..

So a plus on art and a minus because of technical issues.. But art is not all the design.. What really makes the dungeons feel mediocre and only loosely attached to the game is the layout of trash-mobs and bosses.

It’s a … nicely said.. well-know layout. Nothing special. The bosses themselves are so and so.. There are some nice boss fights, e.g. Zakarai and Verimus in the Crypts, the spider-boss in Lost Vale.. and some quiet boring ones, were it’s just tank-and-spank..

Lost Vale and the Tombs in the land of the dead as end-game dungeons are too easy.. City dungeons too far away and not planable.. This is what frustrates the PvE-faction in WAR. Most of the PvE-”raiders” I know do the dungeon crawling for items. So they reach this “end” in PvE quiet fast in WAR. On Drakenwald the cities are rarely contested (maybe once a month or even less frequent..and that means just stage1. Stage2 was never reached in the past four months), so the PvE dungeons in the enemy city are just not existent.

I really like the Sigil System..It gives you character more freedom, as you can change and mix gear and are not forced to wear that one set you have.

In terms of gear progression PvE is not the best way in WAR. It’s easy to get some good gear via sentinel stuff, but the really good gear is obtained in ORvR and there is no way around it. I don’t think that this is bad, as the people who focus on ORvR would otherwise complain that the PvE’ers go the easy way, because they only fight scripted fights and not real enemies. Sentinel and Darkpromise gear is not too shabby anyways.

Coming to scripts…There are some PvE’ers who complain(ed) about the difficulty of the boss fights in WAR. I don’t see the fights as subpar compared to my time in WoW (pre-WotLK).. You have to face the fact.. Boss fights are easy in a way as you can understand the tactics (if they are already known and told to you) in ..let’s say.. three tries at most. In that time you will get the general feeling for the fight. Everything else in boss fights boils down to dps/hps comparison. I don’t see a difficulty factor there as it just depends on gear or on luck, e.g. Nkhari hitting the tank twice for 7.5k. Beating a boss, just because of better gear is no real accomplishment or challenge. My respect goes to those who figure out the tactics.

Long story shortly told.. PvE in WAR is to me not as bad as some people think, but it’s definitely not near a jewel-status of the game. Nothing I would focus my advertising on ;) It doesn’t stand out in any aspect to other games (I can even agree with those who say that it’s not as demanding and difficult as in other games) and could need some attention..At least some scary bugs could be squished ;)

Nevertheless I have fun running those dungeons in WAR with my guildmates.. No matter if I need anything. It’s a nice change of pace when I’m are not in mood for the big zergs in ORvR.

The fun is to me an important factor for dungeons at level cap. Are they fun to you so that you can enjoy them even though there is nothing to get for you? That is something everyone has to answer for himself… I did it and you see me in that dungeons ;)