Hunter's Insight – A Guild Wars 2 Blog

A Light In The Darkness

A lot of new stuff out over the past few days but what I liked the most were the videos. Darth Hater has a ton of information on the rest.

As far as becoming a Jedi goes, you can’t beat making your own Lightsaber. It is the iconic moment. A light in the darkness. Could you even include making your own lightsaber without making a big deal out of it? Anybody catch what that monster was?

I didn’t necessarily like the voice of the master, but Jennifer Hale as the Jedi, well that just pleases me to no end. She plays everyone. Shepard, Jean Grey, Bastila Shan.

This voice work is great. Give me tons of menial tasks and cliched grind quests, if I get good story and interesting dialogue out of it I’ll be happy. check out that hint of moral ambiguity in the clip too. One of the Jedi padawans wants payback. Not very Jedi like.

There’s all kinds of hints and descriptions of those moral choices in the updates too. Whether it be blowing people out of an airlock to save the ship, or taking a bribe from Jedi who’ve broken the code. That doesn’t sound like the mundane quests some of have complained of.

The best recent screenshot? Probably this one.

I want to fight super giant robots from space.

For a more detailed rundown of, well, everything: check out Darth Hater’s post.

QFT: The Old Republic Edition

For those of you who couldn't read the post title.

With little to no news about Guild Wars 2 coming down the pipe until (probably) the new year, I was surprised to find an article about Star Wars: The Old Republic that I actually wanted to write about outside the weekly Friday updates from Bioware. Massively put up Brianna Royce’s impressions of her hands-on with TOR. At LucasArts. Like, in the building, with the game, for an entire day. Ladies and gentlemen, my arch-nemesis, Brianna Royce.

Let’s start from the beginning. The first thing Brianna tried to do was jump off a cliff.

Of course it didn’t work, because the zone designers anticipated my mischief.

I was recently confronted with a term I’d never read before. I’m not getting any younger and perhaps I’m starting to miss out on some types of internet parlance. Someone reacted to one of my ingeniously hilarious Guild Wars 2 jokes with *facedesk*. I was confused for a moment. Does facepalm really need to be taken to hyperbolic lengths?

Apparently so. Upon reading that she couldn’t jump off a cliff, I immediately thought of *facedesk*. When will game designers learn that if people want to jump off a fricking cliff, they should be able to jump off a fricking cliff. The first thing I’m going to do in Guild Wars 2, is go jump off a bridge, a cliff, a hill, a building, whatever I can. The 2nd thing I’m going to do is figure out how to join Tasha‘s cliffjumping society. 3rd will probably be dye my armour hot pink and troll some homophobic 14 year olds. 4th will be to find the hottest money making scheme and exploit that the much nerdier (and I mean much nerdier) players discovered within minutes of launch. 5th will be me jumping off yet another cliff.

Jumping off cliffs is important. Not to rant or anything. I may have gone slightly off topic. I mean, you can jump in TOR, we’ve all seen the videos. Force Leap, jumping down from a height in stealth. Later she even comments on jumping.

Jumping off of medium heights resulted in my rolling gracefully to my feet.

I just think it sounds like where you jump is being controlled. Never a good thing.

The early quests were all fairly standard MMO fare, which was just fine with me, especially given the top-notch quest-pointers (standard only in the newest games). I killed my critters, rescued hapless padawans, looted fallen enemies, equipped the good loot and brought the junk back to the vendor NPCs. Occasionally an NPC would contact me remotely and save me the run;

Standard quest fare doesn’t really bother me. Particularly early on. There has to be a common ground, some training wheels, to get people into the game. I’m hoping things diversify of course. What I do like is that you get commed and don’t have to do the whole run back. It just makes sense in a sci fi world.

I could also hop a speederbike for some on-rails real-time swift-travel (very handy when I needed to visit the trainer NPC, who highlighted on my minimap when he had new skills for me). When I got lost, an NPC terminal could direct me to my destination, or I could thumb through the Codex, a Mass Effect-style database automagically compiled as you adventure.

I’m a little unhappy with onrails travel. If it’s instant, fine, but give me control over it if not. LOTRO’s travel system is horrible. I nearly fell asleep multiple times trying to make my way from one place to another on automated horseback. I kid you not. I suppose that was more about distance (10 minute commutes) than the automation.

I do like that the skills trainer is highlighted when he’s got skills available. I tend to forget these things and play through entire levels without picking up new skills sometimes.

Personally I think a UI more intuitively fits with sci-fi games than fantasy games, so I’m looking forward to that improved immersion.

Everyone gets a resurrection skill too!

Well that sounds familiar. I wonder which games seminar gave rise to this design direction.

The dialogue system guarantees that returning to your quest-giver isn’t just a mad dash of clicks. Your quest choices actually matter. The NPCs talk to you, and you’re going to want to talk back. I never once had the urge to skip the quest text (in fact, I was terrified I’d miss something if I looked away!), and while sometimes I felt as though I were performing menial tasks in between watching a really awesome movie, I didn’t care, because it was a really awesome movie (and the menial tasks were amusing too).

This essentially sums up what I’ve been expecting from TOR. A frustratingly large number of people are so dead set against Bioware making a game that rests strongly on story. In other words, they’re worried Bioware might make a Bioware game. I expect that Bioware’s MMO essentially will end up like any other. A series of menial tasks. Bioware will of course have the advantage of the ‘really awesome movie’ part.

There are many descriptions of just how lush the story, characters, art and acting are, but the following was what impressed me.

A pair of Jedi Masters tasked me with determining whether or not their apprentices were involved in an illicit affair. When I confronted the Padawans, I decided to allow them to bribe me to keep my mouth shut about their romance. (I broke character, but I wanted to see what would happen.) The Masters didn’t seem to believe me, but they took me at my word. Later when I returned to collect my bribe (a rare lightsaber crystal), I got the option to refuse to accept it, which earned me the loving couple’s loyalty.

It’s not so much new or innovative. Just new and innovative in MMOs. I’m aware this isn’t exactly news either, but confirmation of the sorts of things I want to see are worth blogging about.

Here’s something I’ve been wondering about for a long time. Group dialogue.

We crowded around the first trigger NPC; once everyone had engaged, we were off and running in a synchronized conversation between her and the group. Your mates don’t all respond to the NPC or the event at once; every group member gets to choose his own response, then the game performs a silent roll to determine whose answer is actually used.

Apparently that’s well known, just not to me. Here’s more.

The interaction is shot like a movie. It’s believably cinematic; the camera swings around to focus on whoever’s talking, and there’s considerable potential to create some tense and amazing scenes (especially when the characters disagree about the correct course of action).

She does make it sound quite good. Those videos make it look even better. I’ll probably post those up tomorrow.

Sith Happens

Star Wars: The Old Republic is Electronic Arts biggest project to date. Probably costing somewhere in the range of (do not quote unreliable sources at me thanks) 100 million to make.

Bioware has a good reputation of turning out extremely well done games. If you’re not a fan of Dragon Age, Knights of the Old Republic, or Mass Effect, please avoid even blogging about how much you hate the game when it comes out. What would be the point?

These are a couple of the reasons I’m excited for the game, beyond my own Star Wars fanaticism. Bioware is throwing money at a problem and I love the problem.

Obviously Bioware’s main strength is storytelling. So this week’s Timeline, the story of the Sith’s rebuilding after the destruction of Korriban, is a pretty good story. They take an unknown character and make him pretty intriguing. No need for dragging up old characters and leaning on nostalgia to tell your story.

I will say he seems to be a little too much of a Jack of all trades, but that was just an after thought. I’ve enjoyed the timelines consistently and this one is no different.

Maybe I’m blind, or unobservant, but after taking a look at the timeline page today, I noticed there are brief summaries of the subjects of future timeline videos, how did I miss that? You know, I’ve probably already blogged about this. My memory sucks.

In any case, as I surmised, the holorecords go all the way back to the very discovery of the force, and the settlement on Tython. I have to say that although some of these timelines will surely reference major plot points, like the Voss, it doesn’t seem like the videos will continue to be particularly relevant. Sure, every good story has flavour and padding, I’m just not sure how useful a holovid on the founding of the Republic could be. “Hey did you guys know that when playing Star Wars: The Old Republic you will have the option of participating in a republic of some kind?”

Besides the point I suppose, as recently reconfirmed, SWTOR will be releasing sometime in the spring. The holovids it has been said will play out after release.

As for other SWTOR news I’ve been mulling over companions and crew skills for the past few weeks. I have to admit I’m really coming around to the systems. I guess I never really had much to complain about with companions, Guild Wars and other Bioware games have broken me of any fear of AI companionship. So I was pleased to learn that your companions like or dislike of you matters.

Companions with high affection will have their ability to perform crafting tasks greatly improved. For example, a companion with high affection can craft items faster

I’d be willing to be that crafting isn’t the only area where affection helps.

The major shift in my views is with crafting. Although I’m a proponent of doing everything yourself so that crafting actually means something, I got to thinking about Runes of Magic. I’m pretty sure I have a few posts about how much that sucked. At the very least SWTORs crafting won’t be such a time consuming hassle. More like, set it and forget it. Yes, that’s an infomercial reference.

Actually I’m sure the time mechanic might actually add some feeling of importance. Perhaps some part of what makes crafting in other games feel like an accomplishment is the huge time investment. Neither can I argue that the actual mechanic of running up to something and clicking into oblivion to get the materials I need is a fun mechanic. More like, literally mind numbing.

Then again I could just jump back into arguing that that very mind numbing quality is something that I like about crafting, a mindless activity that distracts from daily routine.

Anyway. Enough of that for today.

Bounty Hunter carbines.

Don’t Be Too Proud Of This Technological Terror You’ve Constructed

A skin tight leather outfit ought to really help out in all those battles Mako will be in

Crafting overall is kind of dull really. I can understand why people don’t care about it, or want to participate in it. That’s why you’ve got auction houses. If there is an extensive crafting system in your game, you also have an auction house where you can buy all the crap you don’t want to craft from crazy people who do.

So on the one hand I’m glad that I can direct my companions to seemingly handle the vast bulk of my crafting. I won’t have to sit around staring at a user interface, my companions will do that in Star Wars: The Old Republic.

On the other hand, they’ve still got you waiting around for the crafting to be finished. What the hell? Hours to finish crafting something. Who the hell has the free time to wait around for hours while crafting is going on? I’ve got things to do.

Sure I can go do other things while my item is being worked on, but it’s a whole mess of problems that could easily be solved by something not taking 6 hours to make.

So instead of watching a progress bar for 30 seconds, you actually know, “OK, I put my companion on this, and this is going to take six hours.”

Maybe I want to use the companion I’ve got crafting something, but to interrupt the crafting would waste 3 hours. Maybe I want what I’m having crafted during my current play session, not tomorrow’s. Maybe I’m out-leveling whatever I’m crafting as I’m waiting for it.

I’m sure some might point out that I’ve argued on behalf of crafting meaning something. I don’t think companions should do all the work, it takes the accomplishment and hard work out of the whole affair. However, neither do I think it should be grindy and tedious. Waiting 6 hours for something to be crafted is tedious.

I’ll wait until I use crafting to actually form a real opinion on it, but some aspects really seem like they’d grate on me. 23 hours for a diplomacy mission? Great for role-play, terrible for actual play.

Am I crazy or is TOR’s crafting based on Farmville? Point, click, done. Ahhh I’m just being negative. Too soon to tell.

There’s also a great video dissection done by the guys over at Darth Hater on the Crew Skills video that came with today’s update. If I had any photoshopping skills at all, this is how I’d dissect Guild Wars 2 videos.

Hard at work over their slave bench, erm, workbench.

Putting Away The Wizard Hat

Friday’s usual Star Wars: The Old Republic update was eagerly anticipated due to a little hinting from their reps that something big would be announced. They kinda sort of came through on that with further details about their Alderaan Warzone a PvP scenario, some crafting details, and even a little update on the Jedi Robe and Wizard Hat. Oh I mean, the Jedi Wizard subclass. I’m going to miss that joke.

I’ve always thought that the PvP in Guild Wars could stand to have a few more objective based scenarios. Random Arenas, Team Arenas, etc, are all just “go kill the other team” and while that is the point of most PvP, there is a reason most games have rules that go beyond “defeat the other team”.

Objectives are fun.

The Warzones appear to be just that.

Not only are there objectives, there are observable effects to what you’re doing. Taking control of that gun battery actually begins firing on your opponents ship. Destroy the ship, win the scenario.

Darth Hater notes that respawn appears to be instant, transporting you back to the drop ship. Whether or not that’s true I do think it’s a good idea. The more I play games the more I think a timed respawn is pointless. Sure there is some argument to be made for a death penalty, but for me the very inconvenience of having to make my way back to the warzone would be punishment enough. I think Guild Wars 2 gets this as well.

Darth Hater also quoted this bit of news.

The developers teased the next Warzone will take place on a derelict starship and its mechanics will be completely different from Alderaan’s. “If you say what kind of scenarios could happen on a derelict starship, you can kind of formulate scenarios to see what we mean,”

It really sounds like there is quite a bit of story attached to these scenarios and that they won’t all be some kind of cookie cutter, reskinned, battleground. I can only imagine what a derelict ship might have in store. My imagination wants a zero-g fighting experience but reality tells me it’ll probably be a lot simpler than that.

As for crafting I’m a little disappointed. Apparently one of the biggest concerns for players is that they wouldn’t have to be “Darth Vader picking flowers on the side of the road.” to quote the oft used phrase.

Personally I think if you’re into crafting, picking flowers at the side of the road is not something to be avoided. Nobody who is out there gathering and crafting is worried about whether it will make their character look like a dork.

Instead we’re getting a system where you send your companions out to do all the work, send them to their stations to do all the crafting, you just sit there and reap the benefits. Which seems to me to be kind of pointless. I’ll wait to actually use the system before crapping all over it, but, aren’t we taking away a sense of accomplishment here, or a sense of making something with your own two hands, in game anyway.

One of the better things I noticed about the system were things like one type of gathering skill is slicing. Slicing being the term used in Star Wars to describe hacking. That’s kind of awesome. I just wish I was the one doing the hacking. Instead I’ll send out my companion to hack loot or whatever they can find and bring back presumably, recipes for biochemical compounds, or intelligence on weapons.

At the very least the types of crafting seem original, well thought out, and interesting. I had expected that Bioware would throw together some mini-games as some kind of crafting mechanic, as they do like their mini-games. I haven’t seen much evidence of that sort of thing yet.

Finally it saddens me today to inform you that I’ll have to retire the robe and wizard hat joke that has long benefited this blog. They’re changing the name of the Jedi Consular subclass from Wizard to most likely, Sage. There was a lot of crybaby outcry when Wizard was announced, and I’ll admit I wasn’t a huge fan, but it did supply me with a good laugh.

Crafting stuff while offline eh? Isn’t that similar to Eve’s skill system? Not having played Eve I couldn’t say.

Controlling An Empire

Snooty. That’s the first word that comes to mind whenever I come across some higher up Imperial. They’re all snooty and aristocratic. Holier than thou. Pompous. Full of themselves. They got hubris coming out of their ears. The newest Star Wars: The Old Republic class video does nothing to persuade me from those stereotypes.

“Oh shall we have tea and crumpets in the arboretum mother?” “Why yes Tobias, and don’t forget the tea cozy this time!” *both laugh*

That said the Imperial Agent is one of the classes I most look forward to playing. Sure the rogue-like class is one of my favourites and I haven’t really played one since Dragon Age several months ago, but the very substance and style of a spy has always been a winner with me.

If I’m going to work for the Sith, it’s going to be as an agent.

Half of Star Wars is covert operations. Adventures through back alleys, backroom deals, dark corridors, and desperate escapes through secret passages. What is the original film but big muddle of trying to sneak around and lie and cheat and when all else fails shooting your way out of it. Perfect spy behaviour.

There are loads of examples throughout the novels and comic books Some of my favourite novels hardly have any major characters but plenty of intrigue. Though if anyone brings up Coruscanti Nights, I may have to take a lightsabre to their legs.

So why am I complaining about the snootyness? The gameplay video of course. It really reinforced the whole snooty air Imperials give off and I really don’t want to be a snooty character. What else? Again, as with the sawbones mechanic for the Smuggler, I don’t see why an Imperial Agent would be good with advanced medical tech. If you’re a good spy you don’t get shot.

I suppose the ship is okay, sleek, smooth, and looks highly advanced. I’d expect nothing less from a spy, you’ve got to have your gadgets.

An assassin for a companion only makes sense. Spies kill people or hire people to kill people. My only question is why do all Rattataki seem to be bad people. Sure we haven’t run into many but they’re all turning up jerks so far.

Tip to Bioware, please include pronunciation tips. Djannis? So DeeJannis or DuhJannis or Jannis or Dannis?

The Timeline of The Old Republic

Nomi Sunrider

Star Wars: The Old Republic began releasing Timeline videos over a year ago in March of 2009. Today they released their 10th Timeline video, this one about Exar Kun.

I first remember Exar Kun from Jedi Search, but later, Tales of the Jedi comic book series, which the Timeline briefly summarizes. The series itself is a pretty good read and covers much of the era’s history. Ever wonder why Onderon in KOTOR 2 felt like it had a deeper history than the game led you to? That’s because of the comic book series. Ever wonder where all the history of ancient Sith Lords comes from? A lot of it comes from the comic book series.

The Timeline itself isn’t particularly informative to someone familiar with Exar Kun or Ulic Qel-Droma, said the huge Star Wars nerd. I was a little disappointed to not see Nomi Sunrider, he continued.

Today’s video also got me thinking about future Timelines. There are 9 marked points which presumably note future editions of the videos. After a year and a half, they’re only halfway through. Surely they’ll have to start releasing these much faster at some point?

Some of the marks seem to indicate videos that go way back. So far as to focus on the very discovery of the force, the founding of the Jedi Order and the schism with the Sith. None of which have ever been covered very much to my knowledge.

Side Note. I didn’t really feel like making an entire post about EA Louse. For one he’s an anonymous guy with a grudge, who, if real, has certainly been fired. A lot of the inaccuracies in his post seem off kilter, which throws doubt onto everything he says. Warhammer didn’t have enough marketing? There was huge buzz and they sold 1 million boxes. They had marketing. He authoritatively offers his opinion on Sanya Weathers, and is rebuked by Sanya Weathers.

I just see way too many people taking his word for it. Or they’ve already got a TOR effigy going and this is just one more thing to throw on the bonfire.

300 million dollars is ridiculous and would never happen. Even EA isn’t stupid enough to throw that much money on a single game, stop using it as a figure. The gaming industry is about profit, and there is no way to make a profit on a figure like that. You know what else? I like voice over work and sound. It’s one of the best things about Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age, and Knights of the Old Republic.

In summary, Bioware Austin is a new studio, so maybe SWTOR will be a disaster, but in absence of proof that the game sucks, all I have to go on is other Bioware games. And those games pretty much kick ass.