Star Wars: The Old Republic

[420]

Star Wars: The Old Republic

Thought I'd start a new topic since people are playing and commenting on the game:

I got Star Wars Old Republic for Christmas so I am on that now for at least 3 months. Then I will decide if I want to cough up my own cash to keep playing. Not too bad as far as RPGs go. I don't get much of a sense of urgency or real accomplishment for quests, though after 4 days I am still in the prologue. Visually its pretty weak. I know its an MMO and so it cuts down on the graphics to ensure better playability but a little texture and shading would be nice. It looks like NWN 2 on low settings. I'll post more about it later If anyone is interested.

We prefer "WoW 2.0 w/ Star Wars theme"

I'll put it this way.

Warhammer Online has better graphics.

And supposedly some of the EA Mythic peeps helped the Bioware team.

Post your screenshots, patch info, and opinions here! (Oh, and what class are people playing? Bounty Hunter looked like the coolest one in pre-release reviews.)

-420

[cuchulann]

Here are some screens. My Jedi and Bounty Hunter chars. The Jedi has the most elaborate armor i have right now. You can see in the char selection screen the lack of textures. You see my poor bounty hunter who ran away from the nerf farm to the lush swamps of Hutta. The game does have some rendering problems the least of which is skins. Note the difference on my droid companion in gameplay and in cutscene.

[420]

Cool stuff! Keep it coming!

-420

[cuchulann]

Alright I am near to two weeks into the game so here is an update on my thoughts about it.

Story: Pretty nice. Each char type gets its own thread and reason  for doing what they do. You get several opportunities to make ethic choices which affect the light-dark ratio as well as how companions view you. As an RPG it is very involved and has replayablilty for at least 8 times to do each class. Once past the first planet you share quests with all other classes but there are still many class specific areas and quests all over. 8 out of 10 so far.

Team play: Easy to do. You can get in on a group at anytime so long as they can see you and then ding! you share the mission. There are areas that are story driven and you have to do solo or at least with no other team members of your same class. Still you can track the location of your teammates as they break off into their own solo areas and see where they are in relation to yourself during those moments.  7 of 10

Crafting: Meh. crafting is crafting. Its something to do while you are waiting for your group to get together or when you are winding down with that last drink. I am still new at it so I can't really give it merit. (no score)

Builds: Oh dear now here we are going to loose points. Well there can be no really quirky builds which excel in one aspect and are useless in another. You can only affect your physical attributes by the mods on the items you equip. If you want more HP then you have to equip items which will give it to you. There are no points you can spend on endurance, strength, "aim" dexterity, etc. Skills are different. They are like feats. Your active sills/feats like say "force leap" you buy from a vendor when you are of the right level. Level and money are all you need to get them.  Then there are the "prestige" skills which you can get at level 10. This is when you get your new class and forever are bound to it. It opens a new set of purchaseable feats and also three skill trees which you then get points per level to spend on. This part is like Diablo 2 skill trees. Most of these skills are passive enhancements to the ones you can buy.
The down side is once you have chosen a path you are stuck with the skills it gives you. Each class only gets a certain set of skills. And this binds such things as can you use one or two weapons, what class armor you can wear, and can you even use a certain kind of weapon. Melee type chars can never use guns, and shooters can not use melee weapons. You cannot buy the skill/feat to cross class and the same goes for armor.  I imagine this is to help keep PvP balanced. I have not tried that yet.  4 of 10

So in the end of this two week run I give it overall 6 out of 10.

Screens: Bounty Hunter on second planet, Sith Capitol.  So that's a gundark. Come closer so I can pull those big ears off you!

[Mercy]

The skills are like that because that is what WoW is like. All your extra stats come from items.

[420]

Here are some screens. My Jedi and Bounty Hunter chars. The Jedi has the most elaborate armor i have right now. You can see in the char selection screen the lack of textures. You see my poor bounty hunter who ran away from the nerf farm to the lush swamps of Hutta. The game does have some rendering problems the least of which is skins. Note the difference on my droid companion in gameplay and in cutscene.

I found some interesting information about the low texture quality:

From [Official High Resolution Textures Post] Can we get a clarification on this?

Hey everyone, thanks for bearing with us as we investigated the concerns raised here.

After investigation, it seems that the confusion here is a combination of a UI issue that's been resolved and a feature that's working as intended, but the reason why it's 'working as intended' needs explanation.

First, the UI issue. The preferences menu as it is seen on the Public Test Server for version 1.1 of the game is correct - there are only supposed to be two texture choices, 'Low' and 'High'. This replaces the original three-choice preference of Low/Medium/High because in reality, there was never supposed to be a 'Medium' choice - that was a bug.

Here's where we need to explain. As many of you have noted, your character in the game world is rendered using lower resolution textures than inside of cinematic conversation scenes. This was a deliberate decision by the development team. To understand why this was done, I have to briefly talk about MMOs and their engines.

In comparison to single player games and other genres of multiplayer online games, MMOs have much higher variability in the number of characters that can be potentially rendered on-screen at the same time. In MMOs, even though most of the time you'll see a relatively small number of characters on screen, there are certain situations in which many more characters will be seen. Some examples of these situations include popular gathering places in-game (in our case, the two fleets), Operations with large teams, and Warzones. In those scenarios the client (and your PC) has to work hard to show off a lot of characters on-screen.

During development and testing of The Old Republic, our priorities were to ensure the game looked great and performed well. In testing, we discovered that using our 'maximum resolution' textures on in-game characters during normal gameplay could cause severe performance issues, even on powerful PCs. There were a variety of possible options to help improve performance, but one that was explored and ultimately implemented used what is known as a 'texture atlas'.

To understand that I've got to get technical for a minute. When a character in the game is 'seen' by another character - ie, gets close to your field of view - the client has to 'draw' that character for you to see. As the character is 'drawn' for you there are a number of what are known as 'draw calls' where the client pulls information from the repository it has on your hard disk, including textures, and then renders the character. Every draw call that is made is a demand on your PC, so keeping that number of draw calls low per character is important. With our 'maximum resolution' textures a large number of draw calls are made per character, but that wasn't practical for normal gameplay, especially when a large number of characters were in one place; the number of draw calls made on your client would multiply very quickly. The solution was to 'texture atlas' - essentially to put a number of smaller textures together into one larger texture. This reduces the number of draw calls dramatically and allows the client to render characters quicker, which improves performance dramatically.

When it comes to cinematic scenes, however, characters are rendered using the higher number of draw calls and maximum resolution textures. This is because in those scenes, we have control over exactly how many characters are rendered and can ensure that the game performs well. The transition between 'atlas textured' characters (out of cinematics) and 'maximum resolution' textures (in cinematics) is mostly hidden by the transition between those two states (when the screen goes black), but obviously it's clear if you pay close attention.

In summary; yes, we had a small UI bug that unfortunately caused confusion over how the game is intended to work. The textures you're seeing in the course of normal gameplay are optimized for that mode of play. The textures you're seeing during cinematics are also optimized for that mode of play. They are higher resolution, but that's because we're able to control cinematic scenes to ensure good performance in a way we can't during normal gameplay.

We understand the passion and desire for people to see the same textures you see in our cinematic scenes in the main game. Because of the performance issues that would cause for the client, that's not an immediate and easy fix; we need to ensure we're making choices that the majority of our players will be able to benefit from. Having 'atlassed textures' helps performance overall, and that's a very important goal for us.

With that said, we've heard your feedback here loud and clear. The development team is exploring options to improve the fidelity of the game, particularly for those of you with high-spec PCs. It will be a significant piece of development work and it won't be an overnight change, but we're listening and we're committed to reacting to your feedback.

-420

[cuchulann]

They have just added anti-aliasing (if I am spelling that right) to the graphics options. So at least the edges are smoother now. Also I don't see a change in performance. Turning off the Bloom option seems to enhance the frame rate but it also turns off the "holograms" during cutscenes. Weird. Must have to do with the different skin levels.
Screens: My Pureblood Sith and his companion "Bruce."  Then Taris, the first planet from the first game 300 years later. I really did not expect that much plant growth in 300 years. Lastly my first ship, Corellian design. Pretty sweet looking. (All Jedi Knights get this one.)

[Mercy]

I'm playing a Jedi Knight on US - East PvP - Belgoth's Beacon!

[cuchulann]

I haven't tried PvP yet. How is it? Any builds that really dominate or is it well balanced?

[Mercy]

I haven't tried PvP yet. How is it? Any builds that really dominate or is it well balanced?

I haven't tried it yet either. It's just a PvP server. People in my guild seem to enjoy it though.

[420]

Interesting article: Star Wars: The Old Republic - the story behind a galactic gamble

Excerpt:

It may be the largest entertainment production in history. More than 800 people on four continents have spent six years and nearly $200 million creating it. The story runs 1,600 hours, with hundreds of additional hours still being written. Nearly 1,000 actors have recorded dialogue for 4,000 characters in three languages.

The narrative is so huge that writers created a 1,000-page 'bible' to keep the details straight, and the director recently asked a colleague not to spoil moments he hadn't yet seen.

It's not a movie or a TV series. It's Star Wars: The Old Republic, the most expensive, ambitious and riskiest video game ever produced.

-420

[Mercy]

Hmm, I'll have to check that out when I get home from work. Sounds cool.

[cuchulann]

Some screens of Nar Shadda. Gee, does anyone else get the feeling that the designer of this word really liked Blade Runner? 
"Is the Doctor in?"
"Who?"
"Yes that's him."

[420]

Some screens of Nar Shadda. Gee, does anyone else get the feeling that the designer of this word really liked Blade Runner? 

Totally.

-420

[Mo]

Totally.

-420

They also seem to like Doctor Who.  That last screenshot definitely has a future TARDIS in it.

[Illutian]

I see "opinions" in the topic..so...


My opinion: meh

Also, irritated with the bait 'n switch Bioware pulled with the textures. 'High' detailed was a bug¹? lolwut?

Other than the voice overs (waste of money²) and a Star Wars theme it's essentially World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade in terms of gameplay and difficulty.

Final recommendation: Wait till trial before giving it a try.

1) http://www.gamezone.com/news/swtor-s-confirms-that-high-resolution-texture-setting-is-a-lie
2) I, and others, just skip past it when in FPs. I only listen to the class quests, I skip the others. That money spent on 'side quest' voice acting should have gone into development.

//Other thoughts

I've become the grumpy old man in regard to MMOs
GET OFF MY LAWN!
/wavecane
*goes back to Lineage II*

[cuchulann]

So version 1.2 just went live and released the first parts of the Legacy system. All chars on a single server get classified under a "Family Name" of your choosing, and get a shared XP bar to unlock shared traits. Like the Smuggler's, Dirty Kick, feat. After all who has not wanted to give that over confident Sith or the holier-than-thou Jedi a good swift kick to the specials. Also you can get species that were restricted to one faction open to all, as well as items that you can transfer across sides. There is also a Family Tree which is just for fun and can be re made over and over.
 
Here is the Fogtreader tree and some unlockables. Finally, oh yeah that's what having the dual wielding feat is all about. (rendering bug)

[420]

Finally, oh yeah that's what having the dual wielding feat is all about. (rendering bug)

Dual-wielding dual-lightsabers?!?! I'd chop off all my own limbs in the first fight!

*Pictures the scene with the Black Knight from Holy Grail.*

-420

[Mo]

Dual-wielding dual-lightsabers?!?! I'd chop off all my own limbs in the first fight!

*Pictures the scene with the Black Knight from Holy Grail.*

-420

Hehe that's actually pretty cool.

[420]

Heard a report on the radio this morning that EA's latest financial report indicated that Star Wars: The Old Republic is down 400K subscribers. (Down from 1.7 million to 1.3)

Anyone here still play and notice a difference or played for awhile then stopped for some reason?

-420

[Illutian]

Heard a report on the radio this morning that EA's latest financial report indicated that Star Wars: The Old Republic is down 400K subscribers. (Down from 1.7 million to 1.3)

Anyone here still play and notice a difference or played for awhile then stopped for some reason?

-420

I cancelled and came back during their FREE WEEKEND...only 'The Fatman' had "Heavy" or "Full" tags; rest had "Standard". This was around 12AM EST - 5AM EST. So, I should have hit the end of US Prime Time and hit the beginning of EU Prime Time.

It was during the Rakhoul Plague event, and most of the players in 'Fleet' were....jumping....in a pattern (ie anti-AFK Script). In order, to farm DNA Samples to get gear.

In short, the game's dying and it's Bioware's incompetence with ME3 that's largely to blame for the final nail in SWTOR.

...maybe they shouldn't have spent $250mill on SWTOR, though most of that has all ready been recouped due to the idiots* who got the CE.

*Guild Wars, WAR, and AoC...all CEs, so I can rightly call those people idiots...wish I had that extra ~$200 now

[Mercy]

I played it for a few days... and uninstalled. The game was super boring. I would rather level a toon in WoW than play SW:ToR.

[cuchulann]

I am still poking at it as I wait for D3. I noticed in April that the amount of people had lessened. There was a short up surge when they released the new content patch but it's settled back down again. It became a real chore slogging through to the end of act one. Then *Ding* Okay time to start a brand new story arc! Ugh really? No consistent plot thread? I think what I've liked the least about the game is that the Character builds are pretty tightly restricted. Oh well.

http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0010.html