Trailers: Star Wars: The Old Republic: Return

[Frawns]

Awesome, theses things just keep getting better and better!

Really hope the game comes out this year.

 

[fundayz]

wan to see you try and explain that to a boardroom of investors

they cant take huge risks with that kind of money backing it, they need something that already works and tweak it, 10 million+ people still play wow, so it might be stale but it works

Except it HASN'T worked for anyone since WoW. There is a string of MMO corpses that tried to do the same thing SWTOR is doing: WoW with some small twist.

By basing all of it's gameplay on a model that is a decade old SWTOR is setting itself up for a very short lifespan even if does become successful. It might be a big hit for a while but as soon as fun, innovative, quality MMO's come out their subscription numbers are going to dwindle down.

Think about it, it's like basing a game on Call of Duty 1 and expecting it to compete against Modern Warfare 3.

Heck, even Blizzard has said that their model for WoW is outdated and there are many thing they are going to change for their upcoming Titan.

SWTOR is not going to have anywhere near the 10 year life span that EA wants.

I'm not asking BioWare to redefine the MMO genre, but I did expect more passion and inspiration. Right now, it is very obvious that BioWare just wants in on the MMO cashcow.

 

[USSR]

Huh.
That sure looked familiar.

 

[Moffman]

So the jedi can beat up two sith at once but when taking one of those sith he loses? Yup that makes sense
Nice looking trailer. I'll see what people have to say about it, not a huge Starwars fan, so not instantly hooked.

 

[fundayz]

wan to see you try and explain that to a boardroom of investors

they cant take huge risks with that kind of money backing it, they need something that already works and tweak it, 10 million+ people still play wow, so it might be stale but it works

I want to see them explain to their board of investors why their product, which was supposed to have a life span of 10 years (according to EA), became obsolete after the next couple of MMO's came out (some of which are already in the horizon).

And the thing is it HASN'T worked for ANY MMO that has tried to do WoW with a spin. There is a string of MMO corpses attesting to that.

Copying WoW's model for a new MMO and expecting it to compete with other upcoming MMO's is like copying Call of Duty 1 and expecting it to compete with Modern Warfare 3.

Even if SWTOR becomes a hit, this will be for a couple of years at the most. As soon as innovative, fun, quality (and possibly subscriptionless) MMO's come out SWTOR will look just as dated as WoW.

I did not expect BioWare to redefine the MMO genre like WoW did, but I did expect to see more inspiration. As it is right now, it looks like SWTOR is just BioWare/EA's attempt to get a piece of the MMO cashcow.

Also bioware is really proud about how lightsabers actually connect during fights, instead of just swinging near or through the other guy like is customary in mmo's. But looking at the monsters attacks shown here it looks like it's just lightsabers that do this.

Saddest part? Their "heroic combat" is their second biggest selling point for the game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJPFNm38434

The only heroic animations I saw during the combat section were two blocks of a lightsaber. Everything else was standard MMO animations.

They should say "Heroic Combat...if you have a lightsaber...and you are fighting lightsabers or blasters!"

 

[ryai458]

Jedi have really gotten to the point where they ruin the "feel" of Star Wars. This trailer had me smiling in a few spots, but hardly ever when the Jedi were on screen. It can't even be thrown off as stupid lightsaber fights. The "I sense something" bullshit. Needlessly throwing your life away. A Sith killing his master just because. It doesn't feel like Star Wars and, even if it did, it's been overdone and I'm tired of it.

A freaking cowboy felt more Star Warsy than Jedi in this video (for me, at least). That's terribly sad.

A Sith killing his master just because makes total sense and goes along with SW just fine.

 

[RejjeN]

Oh man, that Zabrak Jedi has got to be the most badass ************ ANYWHERE, shame he dies at the end

 

[Ukomba]

Pretty.

Too bad the game's nothing like this.

How could you make any game like a cinematic, let alone an MMO? Even WoW has cinematics. Just enjoy it for what it is. Complaining a cinematic is representative of the game play is REALY stupid.

Anyways, SWTOR comes closer than most in that they've put a lot of work into choreographed combat. If you want a playable cinematic, go play heavy rain.

 

[Baresark]

snip

snip

He tells him "you've failed Master" before he cuts him down. With him being previously stabbed, you don't need to know anything about the Sith Empire and how it works to learn at that very point "ok - these guys don't tolerate failure". When Darth Vader started choking people left and right every time they failed him, no one demanded an explanation as none was needed. Same goes here. It doesn't need any previous storytelling to make someone understand that and if you don't, it's your own shortcoming, not the trailer's.

Besides, a trailer can leave a lot to the imagination. Even if it was unclear as to why he cuts him down, that should incite a potential player to think "hmm, why just kill him like that? I should look into this". And then you find it the rest in the game. This trailer is not the story. It's a teaser to the story. The same way an excerpt from the book can be found on the back outside it's context, the same way a trailer works for the game. It's there to whet your appetite and lure you into the game so you can find out more. It doesn't need to explain everything that's happening from it's start to it's end, it needs to incite you to look further into it.

Oh and fan fiction isn't the only thing made for fans alone. Fan fiction is fiction written by fans, not for fans. A lot of fiction is written for fans alone and it's good fiction. Not everything needs to appeal to everyone. That's not universally good storytelling.

LoL, it's reasons like that that my fiction writing instructors called Science Fiction/Fantasy, not real fiction, and didn't consider it a legitimate genre. A cinematic is a short story, and all the same rules should apply. It would be this exact argument that prevents Star Wars from being accepted in the literary world as legitimate. Basically, there is no good reason to not present a story, no matter how short it is, properly.

Also, it's not a trailer, it's an actual in game cinematic, as is explained. It's a chunk of story. A trailer is an assortment of image and soundbytes meant to pull someone in and make them interested. The title of the article says trailer, but in the upper right hand corner it clearly says, "intro cinematic".

 

[fundayz]

Anyways, SWTOR comes closer than most in that they've put a lot of work into choreographed combat.

From what we've seen this choreographed combat is only present in lighsaber vs lighsaber/sword and lightsaber vs blaster combat. Any fight not containing lightsabers still looks like the same "trading blows" system.

This wouldn't be a big deal, anything is better than nothing, but the fact that they make this "heroic combat" the second biggest selling point of the game makes me seriously doubt the game as a whole.

 

[Feylynn]

It's going to be really depressing when this isn't the game they release.
Because it won't be.

Really impressive trailer though, hopefully Bioware can step to that and try to get close to half that cool.
Unfortunately I don't have a lot of faith in despite of that hope.

 

[Vrach]

I don't get this argument. You don't click, you simply control a character via hotkeys. And frankly compared to all the bullshit broken combat systems we have seen in so called action games, hotkey controls are just fine. Besides, how come everyone sucks Blizzard's Johnson over the clickfest that is the Diablo franchise but whenever they see an MMO, those same people yell "omg, click until they die, boringz"

That's not what people mean by that, they just don't express it well. The problem with what I've seen of SWTOR's combat is that it plays exactly like MMO's released a decade ago.

The "traditional" combat system used in EQ, DAoC, WoW, WAR, etc is getting boring. The genre is stagnant and all BioWare can come up with is better animations? It's incredibly disappointing that they resigned themselves to making WoW in space with a better single player story.

When your second biggest selling point are your combat animations(which you won't see very often unless you are a lightsaber class) then it's pretty clear the game is bringing almost nothing new to the table.

This is what one of SWTOR's lead developers had to say about MMO design:
?It is a touchstone,? Zeschuk said of WoW, according to GamesIndustry. ?It has established standards, it?s established how you play an MMO. Every MMO that comes out, I play and look at it. And if they break any of the WoW rules, in my book that?s pretty dumb. If you have established standards, WoW established them.?

It's just one way to do a combat system and I find it a stupid argument to say "well it uses the same mechanic that we had 10 years ago". So what? Did FPS work differently 10 years ago? Did we do something other than point, aim, shoot? What did we add, iron sights instead of zoomed hip fire and more scopes to look through?

Some genres simply work really well with certain systems. I've seen nothing to date in MMOs that give any better result than a hotkey MMO does in either feel or functionality. I agree, hotkey MMOs aren't the future, they definitely aren't the top of what we can do. But for now they work and they work just fine and doing something completely different is just not feasible at the moment.

The genre is stagnant because it has been dominated by a single MMO for a long ass time. We have to get through the little things, the obvious things first. Polish, end game. No game so far had them aside from Rift and you saw the success of it because of it. TOR has the IP going for it as well - it'll do fine.

You can't innovate everything at once. It simply can't work. You can't shell out a 150 million dollar project and then say "ok, our combat system is something completely new and untried, users may hate it and refuse to play our game because of it". That's not how it works. You've gotta work in little pieces or all you're doing is setting yourself up for a failure and that's not good for the industry, the consumers or anyone. Anyone out there looking at MMOs is already scared enough of getting into the business of one without watching the single biggest publisher with one of the best development studios in the business go all out and still fail miserably. They have to play some of it safe - it's neither bad, stupid nor selling out and looking out for the bottom line. It works for all corners.

Rift, GW2 and TOR are great things and they're great things for one reason. They're gonna open up the market. It's not gonna be one asshole on the throne, you're gonna have 4 successful games coexisting. They're not gonna kill WoW, they're gonna kill it's stranglehold on the genre. Blizzard will be introducing us to Titan - whatever it is - eventually as well. The genre is starting up again. With little guys designing MMOs too, Fallen Earth and the like, it's starting to breathe. The innovation will come with time, but you can't force it at a moment like this.

As for the final paragraph, you're taking it out of context. The man was saying about WoW setting standards and there's nothing wrong about that. He didn't say "every game needs to be a WoW clone", he said "if it's a feature, WoW has it and you don't, you're doing something stupid" and he was obviously simplifying to a point. If you launch an MMO without end game for example, that's stupid. If you launch it without good customer support, that's stupid. That's the kind of stuff he was talking about.

 

[Ukomba]

Anyways, SWTOR comes closer than most in that they've put a lot of work into choreographed combat.

From what we've seen this choreographed combat is only present in lighsaber vs lighsaber/sword and lightsaber vs blaster combat. Any fight not containing lightsabers still looks like the same "trading blows" system.

This wouldn't be a big deal, anything is better than nothing, but the fact that they make this "heroic combat" the second biggest selling point of the game makes me seriously doubt the game as a whole.

That's true if you're just talking about your basic attacks fighting against a ranged enemy also only using basic attacks. There are so many other skills out there that it's not true at all when you're talking about other skills. Bounty hunters jet packing around, agents and smugglers popping in and out of combat, stealthing, lightsabers flying. From the demo's I've played there's an amazing amount of variability in combat between classes and within classes.

Not to mention people generally don't pay all that much attention to the minutiae of your toon while in combat anyways. WoW's combat is as basic as it comes and does fine. The little added touch of some choreography is nice. I think all those people who haven't played it and are hating on it will really be surprised once/if they try it.

 

[Kragg]

wan to see you try and explain that to a boardroom of investors

they cant take huge risks with that kind of money backing it, they need something that already works and tweak it, 10 million+ people still play wow, so it might be stale but it works

I want to see them explain to their board of investors why their product, which was supposed to have a life span of 10 years (according to EA), became obsolete after the next couple of MMO's came out (some of which are already in the horizon).

And the thing is it HASN'T worked for ANY MMO that has tried to do WoW with a spin. There is a string of MMO corpses attesting to that.

Copying WoW's model for a new MMO and expecting it to compete with other upcoming MMO's is like copying Call of Duty 1 and expecting it to compete with Modern Warfare 3.

Even if SWTOR becomes a hit, this will be for a couple of years at the most. As soon as innovative, fun, quality (and possibly subscriptionless) MMO's come out SWTOR will look just as dated as WoW.

I did not expect BioWare to redefine the MMO genre like WoW did, but I did expect to see more inspiration. As it is right now, it looks like SWTOR is just BioWare/EA's attempt to get a piece of the MMO cashcow.

Also bioware is really proud about how lightsabers actually connect during fights, instead of just swinging near or through the other guy like is customary in mmo's. But looking at the monsters attacks shown here it looks like it's just lightsabers that do this.

Saddest part? Their "heroic combat" is their second biggest selling point for the game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJPFNm38434

The only heroic animations I saw during the combat section were two blocks of a lightsaber. Everything else was standard MMO animations.

They should say "Heroic Combat...if you have a lightsaber...and you are fighting lightsabers or blasters!"

i am really worried though that a fully voiced MMO is a bigger weakness than a strength, other MMOs like Conan and WAR still go on with relativly low (well 200-500k isnt nothing ofc) sub levels, and go free to play even, but the extra costs that fully voicing every quest gives might slow down new content and kill it faster if subs ever go under a certain number. i do not think this MMO can sustain itself over time with half a mil of people playing it

 

[bliebblob]

Double post.
Two more and drinks are on me.

 

[Vrach]

snip

snip

He tells him "you've failed Master" before he cuts him down. With him being previously stabbed, you don't need to know anything about the Sith Empire and how it works to learn at that very point "ok - these guys don't tolerate failure". When Darth Vader started choking people left and right every time they failed him, no one demanded an explanation as none was needed. Same goes here. It doesn't need any previous storytelling to make someone understand that and if you don't, it's your own shortcoming, not the trailer's.

Besides, a trailer can leave a lot to the imagination. Even if it was unclear as to why he cuts him down, that should incite a potential player to think "hmm, why just kill him like that? I should look into this". And then you find it the rest in the game. This trailer is not the story. It's a teaser to the story. The same way an excerpt from the book can be found on the back outside it's context, the same way a trailer works for the game. It's there to whet your appetite and lure you into the game so you can find out more. It doesn't need to explain everything that's happening from it's start to it's end, it needs to incite you to look further into it.

Oh and fan fiction isn't the only thing made for fans alone. Fan fiction is fiction written by fans, not for fans. A lot of fiction is written for fans alone and it's good fiction. Not everything needs to appeal to everyone. That's not universally good storytelling.

LoL, it's reasons like that that my fiction writing instructors called Science Fiction/Fantasy, not real fiction, and didn't consider it a legitimate genre. A cinematic is a short story, and all the same rules should apply. It would be this exact argument that prevents Star Wars from being accepted in the literary world as legitimate. Basically, there is no good reason to not present a story, no matter how short it is, properly.

Also, it's not a trailer, it's an actual in game cinematic, as is explained. It's a chunk of story. A trailer is an assortment of image and soundbytes meant to pull someone in and make them interested. The title of the article says trailer, but in the upper right hand corner it clearly says, "intro cinematic".

You probably wouldn't see much respect for hip hop, rap, metal and stuff like that at a music academy from the professors either, it doesn't make them any less legitimate forms of music or art, so excuse me if I call pretentious bullshit on that argument as a whole.

And you know what, yeah that is the intro cinematic. But that kinda sinks your whole previous argument of "oh so it'll be explained later in a game no one has played yet?", doesn't it? If it's a part of the story, why is it necessary that every single piece of the story is 110% apparent right there on the spot? If it's a part of the story, can't another part explain it? And if so, by what rule would that be inferior storytelling? Is Memento a shit movie cause it takes you going through nearly the whole thing to understand what the fuck's going on at the start?

 

[bliebblob]

Cursed post is cursed.
Third time's the charm I guess.

 

[bliebblob]

Also bioware is really proud about how lightsabers actually connect during fights, instead of just swinging near or through the other guy like is customary in mmo's. But looking at the monsters attacks shown here it looks like it's just lightsabers that do this.

Saddest part? Their "heroic combat" is their second biggest selling point for the game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJPFNm38434

The only heroic animations I saw during the combat section were two blocks of a lightsaber. Everything else was standard MMO animations.

They should say "Heroic Combat...if you have a lightsaber...and you are fighting lightsabers or blasters!"

In all fairness: in a different interview they said that by 'heroic combat' they mean that you take on entire squads by yourself from the very first level.
Looking at the gameplay video I posted earlier that mostly seems to apply to solo gameplay though. And somehow I have a feeling solo play will only get you so far.

For groups they try to get the same feeling by keeping them pretty small (max is 4). Thing is it won't matter much as long they stick with those big single bosses. So if you are reading this bioware, here comes a free idea.
Instead of the usual bossfights against a single juggernaut, try putting in bossMOMENTS. Like a standoff where the 4 of you have to hold your ground for a while against a pretty big wave of bad guys ( not too many ofcourse, hardware limitations and such). Or a part where you have to plow through a large group guarding a gate or something. Maybe even throw a timer in there: the gate is slowly closing or whatever.
Basically like a left 4 dead finale but with classes. THAT should get you the heroic feeling you are looking for.

 

[fundayz]

SNIP

There is a lot more to gameplay and combat than hotkeys. In fact, with any skill-using game hotkeys are the simplest and most direct way to perform actions. I have no problem with hotkeys.

I do not want change for the sake of change, I want changes that makes gameplay more fun and remove the flaws of previous MMO systems.

I have a problem with static combat, formulaic skill rotations, a hard trinity, content lockouts, etc. These are all things that BioWare believes are FUNDAMENTAL to MMO's when nothing is farther from the truth.

Yes, lack of polish and content are why main recent MMO have fell flat on their faces but polish won't guarantee you a blockbuster(which is EA thinks SWTOR will be)...not any more, not after WoW. Even Rift players admit that the game is basically a WoW clone and many people are already getting bored of it or gone back to WoW.

Will SWTOR fail because of this? I doubt it, specially with the Star Wars and BW logos on the box, but it will definitely hurt it's lifespan which is very bad for a long term investment such as an MMO.

Also, Greg Z was NOT just talking about game features, he was talking about all gameplay elements. That is, he believes that if you don't follow WoW's template for character progression, gear acquisition, questing, dungeon lockouts, etc your game will fail.

All of these elements are almost exactly the same in SWTOR as they are in WoW.

That sort of thinking is exactly why the MMO genre is stagnant: Developers don't want to take any sort of risk and would rather just copypaste all features found in other games.

That's true if you're just talking about your basic attacks fighting against a ranged enemy also only using basic attacks. There are so many other skills out there that it's not true at all when you're talking about other skills. Bounty hunters jet packing around, agents and smugglers popping in and out of combat, stealthing, lightsabers flying. From the demo's I've played there's an amazing amount of variability in combat between classes and within classes.

There's no denying SWTOR has a lot of animation variety but that's the thing, you are talking about regular animations not choreographed combat. In fact, VERY few non-lightsaber skills make use of choreographed combat.

All I'm trying to say is that having animations be your second biggest selling point does not inspire much confidence of the actual gameplay.

Instead of the usual bossfights against a single juggernaut, try putting in bossMOMENTS. Like a standoff where the 4 of you have to hold your ground for a while against a pretty big wave of bad guys ( not too many ofcourse, hardware limitations and such). Or a part where you have to plow through a large group guarding a gate or something. Maybe even throw a timer in there: the gate is slowly closing or whatever.
Basically like a left 4 dead finale but with classes. THAT should get you the heroic feeling you are looking for.

This, exactly. These are the types of innovations that would make SWTOR stand out from other MMO while moving the genre forward.

A boss moment like that or a boss fight that requires team mates to each go 1v1 against a strong boss would feel MUCH more heroic than simply dividing a mob into four and saying "omg look at how bad ass you are, you can fight 4 static targets at the same time!"

You don't have to reinvent the genre to be innovative, you just gotta use your creativity rather than copy what everyone else is already doing.

 

[sir.rutthed]

Jedi have really gotten to the point where they ruin the "feel" of Star Wars. This trailer had me smiling in a few spots, but hardly ever when the Jedi were on screen. It can't even be thrown off as stupid lightsaber fights. The "I sense something" bullshit. Needlessly throwing your life away. A Sith killing his master just because. It doesn't feel like Star Wars and, even if it did, it's been overdone and I'm tired of it.

A freaking cowboy felt more Star Warsy than Jedi in this video (for me, at least). That's terribly sad.

Agreed. I like to role play Star Wars with my friends, and I've never done a Jedi/Sith character just because of that. I'm GMing an Old Republic game right now, but it's with my vision of the Sith/Jedi, so we don't have any of that "I sense some bullshit, Master" bullshit.