My thoughts on TOR and a little of my TOR history.

kaibigan34

Ok I was an avid SWG player back before the NGE... Then things took a turn. But I dont wanna dredge up the past so lets leave it at that.

When I found out Bioware was making an MMO, I just knew it was a Star Wars MMO. No way they wouldnt make their hottest selling rpg into an MMO. Then it was announced and there was much happy happy joy joy feelings in my heart. I started watching it closely. Every day I would go to the site and see if any news was coming out, check news articles, etc.

Once they started announcing classes I was there baby. But when they got to class #8 I was dumb founded. Only 8 classes and half of them were force users. I was immediately on the fence about it. Sorry but I am all "jedi'd" out. I hate jedi. I cant stand them. Everything in Star Wars has to have at least one jedi. Books, comics, video games. When I saw the first Star Wars movie as a kid I wanted to be a Stormtrooper, not Luke Skywalker. I knew at least one force user class per side. But not half. But I kept watching the game.

It seemed every bit of info coming out was crap and leaning more and more to the "Dont buy" side of fence. I did go ahead and preorder the CE. I figured even if I didnt play it, I could prolly get a nice profit on Ebay later. But still the bad news kept coming.

Huttball..... I will say that again for the cheap seats "HUTTBALL"!!! So let me get this straight. Jedi and Sith hate each other. They will kill each other on sight. Yet they will play a rousing game of football together? This was getting way too much.

Then came the space game. A poor excuse of rail shooter starfox ripoff. You gotta be kidding me. What the heck is Bioware doing over there? Throwing darts at the Wall of Crazy and whatever it lands on that is what you get? Well I wasnt on the fence anymore. I was clearly on the "This CE is going to Ebay when I get it" side.

Then I get a beta invite. I ignored it at first. But after talking to a friend he suggested "Hey its free for awhile. Oughta just load it up as something to do." I was waiting for Deus Ex 3, BF3, and Skyrim anyway. So I did. Install and logged in.

So what was my impressions of it? HOLY HELL! This is good. This is great. I love this. The stories I saw were amazing. Imperial Agent, Bounty Hunter, Sith Warrior.... Even the *cough*jedi knight*cough* story wasnt bad. Well now I am sold. I am definately playing this game.

Do I still hate the huttball, rail shooter space game, only 8 classes and half force user, etc? Yes I still do. I think they should have gone into an entirely different direction there. But the stories make up for it. That alone makes it worth it to me. That I can affect my character's story as I go along. I dont know of any other MMO that does it like TOR does. The voice overs and all that just make it pop to me. When I complete a leg of a story I feel like "I" really completed it. Yah others are doing the same story. But to me I feel like its all me!

So in the end. There is stuff I dont like. But alot more stuff I love. So I am sold, as I said. And hopefully some of it will change later. Plus once I found out that alot of it was because of money costs I realized it aint that bad, and hopefully if and when this thing turns a profit we might find a real space game, more non force user classes, and heck maybe better thoughtout PVP warzones. We will just have to wait and see what happens. But until then I will be there.

Kai

udorus

Glad you liked the stories i thought they were great too. Agree with Huttball although in 1914 on christmas day the german and allied troops climbed out of the trenches and played football before the horrors of that war became too bad as this is years before the atrocities of the starwars war who knows but i will give it a go.

SQTO

I think the main reason for huttball was for shorter queues for the over populated side, which in the long term will be a good thing. however since i think that the empire will be the over populated side they could have made a cool sith vs sith warzone. 

kaibigan34

Originally posted by udorus

Glad you liked the stories i thought they were great too. Agree with Huttball although in 1914 on christmas day the german and allied troops climbed out of the trenches and played football before the horrors of that war became too bad as this is years before the atrocities of the starwars war who knows but i will give it a go.

I thought of that too. The 1914 soccer game. But that was alot different then the war between the Sith and Jedi would be. It would be more like Fallujah on Christmas morning. I dont see the al qaeda coming out of the city to play baseball with the american troops.

It just doesnt mesh with me. I cant see it happening. The good news though, is its something I can avoid. So it doesnt affect me much.

Kai

Cthulhu23

Great post and it's refreshing to see someone that had a pre-conceived notion about the game beforehand, but decided to give it a chance anyway with an open mind.  Glad you like it.   

And I was the same as you in terms of the Jedi classes.  I felt everyone and their mother would be flocking to those classes, and they really didn't excite me anyway, so I had plans to not touch a force-using class for a while.  Well, then I played a knight during beta and was actually pissed at how much fun I had with it.  Now I may have to play a Jedi much sooner than I wanted. 

markelphoenix

Off duty hours, I sign up for a Hutt Ball match. The Hutt chooses the teams to keep things interesting. I find the schmuck who I am not to fond of from the opposing faction on my team. If I turn against him, the Hutt has me killed.

 

Also, keep in mind that the Republic and Empire are technically not engaged in an open war. It is very Cold War stuff right now. If it was open war, it'd be better represented by an RTS than an MMO, so glad that they set the Cold War feeling to allow for interesting hooks.

markelphoenix

Keep in mind that being a story based game, they created classes that they felt had strong story hooks. Like it or not, the current divide provides a pretty good set up for the stories. Will there be future classes? Maybe. I think we will see new planets first, as mentioned in their plans for the future.

 

Part of a new class would be having a new starter planet. Look at how they divided up the current classes. Two per planet. The forcers get a planet, the non-forcers get a planet. 2 classes per. So, the question is, what classes would fit into an epic story?

monoth

Huttball is awesome....

 

It's even more fun if you play with people who know how to pass the ball....

kaibigan34

Originally posted by markelphoeni

Keep in mind that being a story based game, they created classes that they felt had strong story hooks. Like it or not, the current divide provides a pretty good set up for the stories. Will there be future classes? Maybe. I think we will see new planets first, as mentioned in their plans for the future.

 

Part of a new class would be having a new starter planet. Look at how they divided up the current classes. Two per planet. The forcers get a planet, the non-forcers get a planet. 2 classes per. So, the question is, what classes would fit into an epic story?

Other classes huh? Well I thought of a few.

For Republic what about the Gambler? Can anyone say "Lando"? For the Sith how about their Sith Trooper? I mean come on. One of the ACs could be the Grenadier. I remember those guys from KotOR. I absolutely hated them at higher levels. Then you got the martial classes like Echani types. I know Echani is a race but you get my meaning. Not Tera Kasi though.

I also had an idea when I first heard they didnt want a bunch of players beating up on one boss, they wanted epic battles. That was the Combat Engineer. Not a full blown crafter type. Just someone who could drop emplacements on a battlefield.

A dedicated crafter class would be neat too though. How they can do it with the current system is beyond me and prolly not possible.

What about a Sith Royal Guardsmen type. Not the ones from the movies. But the elite of the elite bodyguards. If they arent force users.

But the point is, on new classes, the sky is the limit. There are so many possibilities in the Star Wars universe. And I really hope they do add more classes.

The big problem will be voice over work and storylines. That would take alot of time and resources. So I dont expect any like in the next 6 months. But in a year? Its possible.

Kai

Robsolf

Glad you gave it an honest try and liked it, OP. 

Just goes to show... "fun" isn't just a checklist of features.  It's not based solely on whether a game has this or that feature, or doesn't do things this way or that.  "Fun" can't be easily determined by watching a video of someone playing a game.  Show me a video of the best RTS's around and they don't look like the slightest bit fun to me, but playing them is a whole other matter.

It's so easy to discount the strengths of this game. 

"Meh... big deal.  So they added VO and RP choices.  Wutevva.  Not like the choices make any big effect on the rest of the game." 

if voiced dialog doesn't matter, why would watching a movie be any better than reading the script?  Let alone CHANGING the script of the movie based on your words/actions?

What makes a "talky" any better than a silent movie?

The h8ters are starting to realize it's a silly argument.  That's why the new line of criticism is more and more becoming, "If you take away the VO/cutscenes/fact that it's Star Wars..."

Yep, then it's still a better game than most.  Has its warts, but still fun.  And that's even humoring the absurd argument that, "if you take away the best parts of something, it's not that good." 

Sure.  take the cream cheese out of cheesecake, and suddenly it's not so great, is it? 

 

markelphoenix

Another big problem that you didn't address is the class mirroring. I agree with you on principle about a Sith Trooper type, but problem is that the Bounty Hunter is already the mirror class for the Republic Trooper.

 

Any class made for one side would have to be mirrored to the other to keep things the way they are as far as balance. That being said, easier way to do this would be to make one class that both sides can choose. To borrow from your example of Teras Kasi, which was developed 25 years prior to the Treaty of Coruscant, could be something taken by both sides. Just an example, plenty of hurdles for making that work too, but we are just throwing out ideas.

 

The Combat Engineer would work too. Would even be able to split into specialty classes quite nicely.

kaibigan34

Originally posted by markelphoeni

Another big problem that you didn't address is the class mirroring. I agree with you on principle about a Sith Trooper type, but problem is that the Bounty Hunter is already the mirror class for the Republic Trooper.

 

Any class made for one side would have to be mirrored to the other to keep things the way they are as far as balance. That being said, easier way to do this would be to make one class that both sides can choose. To borrow from your example of Teras Kasi, which was developed 25 years prior to the Treaty of Coruscant, could be something taken by both sides. Just an example, plenty of hurdles for making that work too, but we are just throwing out ideas.

 

The Combat Engineer would work too. Would even be able to split into specialty classes quite nicely.

Here is one of the ideas I offered up on the TOR forums before and got flamed out over it (Only thing I will really hate about TOR is the community. More aggressive then a pack of womp rats).

Ok you take the smuggler and bounty hunter and remove them from their faction. Wait for it now. Dont say anything yet. You replace smuggler with an officer type class. You then replace bounty hunter with a sith soldier class. Again one AC would be the grenadier. Sorry I just love that.

Next you take the smuggler and bounty hunter and you add them to...... ta da..... a new faction. The criminal faction. You also add in a gambler class. And for the force hungry you add in the greys... You know the grey force users? Or even better you add in the melee teras kasi type that while not using force they still have something similiar. So the criminal faction has ZERO force users at all.

Now of course you would have to try to mirror, somehow, the gambler to the force mage class and the teras kasi to the force tank class. But it could prolly be done. Just take some finagiling.

So you got 3 factions and 12 classes. The third faction can ally with whoever they want when they want.

"Hey bounty hunter, we are going to beat on some Sith players. Wanna join us?"

"Sure. How much you gonna pay me?"

Yah I know it wont ever happen. But I think its a neat idea and how I would do it if I was CEO of Bioware.

Kai

jerlot65

Originally posted by kaibigan34

Originally posted by udorus

Glad you liked the stories i thought they were great too. Agree with Huttball although in 1914 on christmas day the german and allied troops climbed out of the trenches and played football before the horrors of that war became too bad as this is years before the atrocities of the starwars war who knows but i will give it a go.

I thought of that too. The 1914 soccer game. But that was alot different then the war between the Sith and Jedi would be. It would be more like Fallujah on Christmas morning. I dont see the al qaeda coming out of the city to play baseball with the american troops.

It just doesnt mesh with me. I cant see it happening. The good news though, is its something I can avoid. So it doesnt affect me much.

Kai

Actually in this game, the war between the empire and republic is not even happening so it wouldn't beeven close to WWII let alone your terrorist analogy.

TOR is set more like the Cold War in the 80's.  And there was a lot of "friendly" competition between capitalists and communists during that time.

Isawa

Originally posted by monoth

It's even more fun if you play with people who know how to pass the ball....

Hahaha, thats pretty good. So many people have no clue or they're busy fighting and revenge killing in the center to even care about points

Nethermancer

im playing for top notch bioware story. I am not playing for purple gear, raids, bad unbalanced pvp and bland unversatile classes.

 

jerlot65

Originally posted by kaibigan34

Originally posted by markelphoeni

Another big problem that you didn't address is the class mirroring. I agree with you on principle about a Sith Trooper type, but problem is that the Bounty Hunter is already the mirror class for the Republic Trooper.

 

Any class made for one side would have to be mirrored to the other to keep things the way they are as far as balance. That being said, easier way to do this would be to make one class that both sides can choose. To borrow from your example of Teras Kasi, which was developed 25 years prior to the Treaty of Coruscant, could be something taken by both sides. Just an example, plenty of hurdles for making that work too, but we are just throwing out ideas.

 

The Combat Engineer would work too. Would even be able to split into specialty classes quite nicely.

Here is one of the ideas I offered up on the TOR forums before and got flamed out over it (Only thing I will really hate about TOR is the community. More aggressive then a pack of womp rats).

Ok you take the smuggler and bounty hunter and remove them from their faction. Wait for it now. Dont say anything yet. You replace smuggler with an officer type class. You then replace bounty hunter with a sith soldier class. Again one AC would be the grenadier. Sorry I just love that.

Next you take the smuggler and bounty hunter and you add them to...... ta da..... a new faction. The criminal faction. You also add in a gambler class. And for the force hungry you add in the greys... You know the grey force users? Or even better you add in the melee teras kasi type that while not using force they still have something similiar. So the criminal faction has ZERO force users at all.

Now of course you would have to try to mirror, somehow, the gambler to the force mage class and the teras kasi to the force tank class. But it could prolly be done. Just take some finagiling.

So you got 3 factions and 12 classes. The third faction can ally with whoever they want when they want.

"Hey bounty hunter, we are going to beat on some Sith players. Wanna join us?"

"Sure. How much you gonna pay me?"

Yah I know it wont ever happen. But I think its a neat idea and how I would do it if I was CEO of Bioware.

Kai

Actually, you are not the first to come up with this idea.  Bioware even admitted they initally had plans for a third faction.  I even touted a third player faction when the game was first announced.  And even if a third player faction wasn't doable, a seperated "nuetral" npc faction would have been nice to help with the balance of the servers between the two player factions.

 

Anyways, not sure if I would have flame dyou or not.  It all depends on when you made this suggestion.  If it was around the same time I did (like 2 years ago) then I would have not flamed and probably been right there with you.  But if you made the suggestion lat week, then that crap ain't helpful or feasible.  Thats when people get start to flame.  When people jump on a site and try making /suggesting sweeping huge changes when its already set in stone the direction they are going.

jerlot65

Originally posted by Nethermancer

im playing for top notch bioware story. I am not playing for purple gear, raids, bad unbalanced pvp and bland unversatile classes.

 

Playing for both.  And how are the classes not versatile?  These classes can be specced for pure roles but in this game you can step out of those roles any time and still do pretty well.  At least a lot more then the usual MMO.

ktanner3

You'll be suprised by how many non-force users will be playing this game. There are three possible skill sets for each class so there are a lot of options for the smuggler,bounty hunter,trooper and imperial agent. Plus the stories written for them are top notch.

On the force wielding side there will most likely be more sith than jedi due to the fact that jedi have been done to death in games. Sith will be a new gaming experience.

Thorbrand

Why is everyone saying it has top notch story line? I think for BioWare the story is very under par given the other games they have made. They are completely static stories at that.

Each AC should have it's own story and each of those stories should have a 100 different ending depending on how you played. Given the money put into VO there is no reason it is not.

kaibigan34

Originally posted by jerlot65

Actually, you are not the first to come up with this idea.  Bioware even admitted they initally had plans for a third faction.  I even touted a third player faction when the game was first announced.  And even if a third player faction wasn't doable, a seperated "nuetral" npc faction would have been nice to help with the balance of the servers between the two player factions.

 

Anyways, not sure if I would have flame dyou or not.  It all depends on when you made this suggestion.  If it was around the same time I did (like 2 years ago) then I would have not flamed and probably been right there with you.  But if you made the suggestion lat week, then that crap ain't helpful or feasible.  Thats when people get start to flame.  When people jump on a site and try making /suggesting sweeping huge changes when its already set in stone the direction they are going.

Yah the community is going to take some getting used too. But this is my first MMO in over a year. If I can deal with the Call of Duty kiddies I am sure I can deal with these guys. I mean yah some TOR community members were awesome. They werent flamers, trolls, or whiners. But the majority just seemed to be little kids in mentality.

Now in game was much different. I dont know about you but I found the Sith side seemed to have alot more level headed players while the republic side seemed to be more entitlement types. But, for my observations in MMOs that seems to be about the same everywhere. In WoW the Horde seemed more level headed. In SWG the Empire.

A friend of mine had a theory on this. And I know this is a huge tagent I am going off on but hey this aint the TOR forums and shouldnt have to worry about "Keep it on topic!". His theory was that good side players have this "I am good so I am better" attitude. And since they are on the side of all the other good players they tend to want to be better amongst everyone. This gives them this sense of entitlement as well. "I am good so I must always prevail.". Where as the evil side is more like "Hey I am already evil so why expect anything?" attitude. I am sure he could explain it better then I did if he was here. But maybe you get my jest.

Here is an example of what I mean though. While playing the Imp Agent I came across a spawn of desh. But there was a gold mob in front of it. So I started beating him down. When I died the first time another sith player messages me "You gonna take that desh?" I replied "Was planning on it" and he helped me beat down the gold mob the second time. And he ran off and grabbed another desh spawn further down the line.

While playing republic side I had the same situation only it was two silver mobs near a crystal node. And this republic player just runs in, grabs it and stands there watching the fight. When I die (because I had my companion out doing a mission) he actually laughs at me.

This was my general time in game and interacting with other players. But that isnt to say all republics are brats and all sith are nice. I did meet a republic player that showed me all the datacron locations on tython and then on coruscent. He didnt have too but he did. "Hey want me to show you where the datacrons are here?" Real nice guy actually. Even got me to understand crafting.

So its really just generalization. But one that is important to me when picking what I will play.

Kai

sanosukex

Originally posted by Thorbrand

Why is everyone saying it has top notch story line? I think for BioWare the story is very under par given the other games they have made. They are completely static stories at that.
Each AC should have it's own story and each of those stories should have a 100 different ending depending on how you played. Given the money put into VO there is no reason it is not.

 

when I first started reading about this game years ago it sounded like this is more the direction i thought they were going... unfortunately we got a very less extensive story with much less ways to effect the final outcome.. it is better than same old wow stuff but I find it more than just a little disappointing

onthestick

Reading last couple of replies we know which direction this topic is going now. Very nice discussion now being ruined by same two or three names in every other topic which go downhill fast moment they start posting.

kaibigan34

Originally posted by Thorbrand

Why is everyone saying it has top notch story line? I think for BioWare the story is very under par given the other games they have made. They are completely static stories at that.

Each AC should have it's own story and each of those stories should have a 100 different ending depending on how you played. Given the money put into VO there is no reason it is not.

First off did you try the Imperial Agent story? That story was the best of them all. But even the Bounty Hunter story was cool to me.

Plus how are they static? I played the jedi knight story 3 times and each time was a little different because I made different choices. That isnt static. That is very far sweeping. Plus decisions I was making early on was affecting me at much later levels.

Look at the Sith Warrior class, there is part where you have to make 3 choices. And those choices affect how your "master" reacts to you after.

In the Imp Agent story there is a part where you have to decide something about giving certain data. If you pick one way you are told alot of people could die and if you pick the other they wont. Now I cant say 100% for sure but after I did that part of the story and was returning to city each time I saw fewer and fewer NPCs hanging around. Could have been server bugs or what not. Gonna test it again when the game launches. But I think they were taking away the NPCs so I couldnt see them because of what I chose.

Kai

sanosukex

Originally posted by kaibigan34


Originally posted by Thorbrand

Why is everyone saying it has top notch story line? I think for BioWare the story is very under par given the other games they have made. They are completely static stories at that.
Each AC should have it's own story and each of those stories should have a 100 different ending depending on how you played. Given the money put into VO there is no reason it is not.

First off did you try the Imperial Agent story? That story was the best of them all. But even the Bounty Hunter story was cool to me.

Plus how are they static? I played the jedi knight story 3 times and each time was a little different because I made different choices. That isnt static. That is very far sweeping. Plus decisions I was making early on was affecting me at much later levels.

Look at the Sith Warrior class, there is part where you have to make 3 choices. And those choices affect how your "master" reacts to you after.

In the Imp Agent story there is a part where you have to decide something about giving certain data. If you pick one way you are told alot of people could die and if you pick the other they wont. Now I cant say 100% for sure but after I did that part of the story and was returning to city each time I saw fewer and fewer NPCs hanging around. Could have been server bugs or what not. Gonna test it again when the game launches. But I think they were taking away the NPCs so I couldnt see them because of what I chose.

Kai

 

IA story is great from what I played which is why that's going to be my first character...not all of them are as interesting though Jedi Knight for example is pretty boring through the entire starting area

Robsolf

Originally posted by ktanner3

You'll be suprised by how many non-force users will be playing this game. There are three possible skill sets for each class so there are a lot of options for the smuggler,bounty hunter,trooper and imperial agent. Plus the stories written for them are top notch.



On the force wielding side there will most likely be more sith than jedi due to the fact that jedi have been done to death in games. Sith will be a new gaming experience.

My first choices will be BH, Smuggler, IA, THEN probably a force user.  Yep, after having tried every class, I haven't bought the "everybody's a force user" line for a second.

Cthulhu23

Originally posted by Nethermancer

im playing for top notch bioware story. I am not playing for purple gear, raids, bad unbalanced pvp and bland unversatile classes.

 

Well, that's good since the PvP in this game isn't unbalanced, nor are the classes bland or "unversatile."