Nesrie
2901
Sometimes rushing is simply a matter of catching up. Most people don’t have cookie cutter friends and family which means someone is usualy trying to catch up with their core group, grab quests and join in. If Bioware’s answer to that is just play solo… I think it’s an oversight for an MMO.
Aki
2902
Why does anybody ever bother replying to Brettmcd? The guy is aggressively and angrily wrong about every possible topic in the world.
Maybe because people can actually have different opinions on things and be allowed to discuss them? I am obviously not the only person who is less then impressed with the game as it is right now.
Achiever: What’s holding you up? Everybody is waiting for you.
Explorer: I’m stopping to smell the roses.
Achiever: Why? We’ll level faster if you just choose the options as quickly as possible.
Explorer: I’m trying to enjoy the story. I’m not trying to level fast.
Achiever: I don’t understand. You’re trying to suck? Intentionally?
Griefer: This guy is probably sitting in his mama’s basement wearing Yoda ears and yanking off to his posters of Princess Leia.
Socializer: Can we please stop the drama? You’re making everyone upset. We’re all ready to go. You’re the only one being difficult.
Explorer: I’m not causing a problem! I’m just playing this game the same way everyone plays single-player games!
Achiever: What are you talking about? I finished Skyrim in the time you’ve taken to do two quests tonight. And that’s not an exaggeration. I finished Skyrim in two hours, twenty-seven minutes, and seven seconds.
Griefer: This guy probably plays those pansy single player RPGs where it’s all “forsooth” and “Oh sir knight, now that you have rescued me I want to take off your pants.”
Socializer: People play single player games?
“NDA Breaker” make it sound so bad. If they removed it, perhaps we would hear counterpoints to it. And its not really just what this “NDA Breaker” has mentioned, but also from every video I’ve seen of the game, it seems pretty “controlled”, not to mention combat/animations look stale.
I suppose 2-3 weeks then another beta + open stress-test, so should be time to cancel any CE pre-order before release if it is horrible.
And considering the Starter Area would be every players “entry” into the game, it better be fucking awesome. Just look at what AOC did, Tortuga (or whatever it was called) was great, it was just the rest of the game that was shit - but by then they had fooled everyone (at least for a few weeks/months).
–
Speaking of Quests / Story.
I hope there is some kind of journal that tracks everything you have gone through, so you can view it later. While playing you dont have time to read/listen, but must level fast, but it would be nice to have the option to “look at it later on”. I remember a nice addon that came early in WOW was one that stored the information on every book you had clicked, as well as one that stored tonnes of worthless statistics and numbers from things you had done. When using the flightpaths it was a good time to read up on stuff. But once the feet are on the ground, it is time to work, digging XP.
Ok, i honestly thought brett was being honest earlier, but his last couple posts in this thread confirmed he is just trolling.
Constantly referring to the dialog as cutscenes, saying the cutscenes/story is just another time sink, saying he wants a story but not one that takes more time than auto accepting a quest in wow…
It is a mystery.
I am being completely honest about my impressions from when I played the beta this past weekend, if you think I am trolling or lying about how I actually feel about them game then go fuck off.
Mazuo
2909
Then you’re delusional. You’re perfectly free to skip right through the dialog if you hate it so much. There’s none of this forced to listen for ‘2 minutes’ crap that you describe.
Gedd
2910
For people who are replaying, it will, again, be just like any other Bioware game. You can space bar through conversations pretty rapidly. Is it as quick as right-clicking a quest guy and clicking Accept Quest in WoW? No, but it won’t take more than 10-15 seconds.
If you are trying to level quickly on a replay, it’s probably a lot faster to skip the side quests and just grind MOBs on your way up the main storyline. That should cut out the vast majority of dialogs and cutscenes. The rest, you can just spacebar your way through.
nomaar
2912
So … your keyboard doesn’t have a spacebar?
Murbella
2913
The point is he shouldn’t need to press spacebar. The game should automatically detect that Brettmcd is a man of action, not talk, thus skipping all dialog without any user input.
I actually think Brett is on the money with this. You guys are seeing this through a dedicated CRPG player perspective, while the vast majority of MMOG players are not. My experience with WoW has shown me that the bulk of the player base hasn’t a clue about plot or anything other than rapid progression to end game and then gearing up. The “achiever” type has become the dominant type as MMOGs expanded out of the solo gamer market. Bioware may want to sell a story-centric MMOG, and that may be what the majority people reading this want, but in order to retain those achiever types as subscribers they will need to focus on the standard carrots - clear path to end game, then character power expansion as used in whatever vehicles the game provides (PvE raids, etc).
I say this as someone who will buy the game and who will try to squeeze whatever juice I can out of the story. I just put 200 hours into Dragon Age: Origins, heh…I’m half tempted to try and find KOTOR again just to refresh my memory (I never did play the sequel). I’m old school though - the core crowd doesn’t care about dialogue, spoken or not. They will have to be catered to.
Aceris
2915
Bioware aren’t expecting people to want to sit around for story in their MMOs. They are expecting people to want to sit around for story in their STAR WARS.
The fact that the NDA is still up speaks volumes.
Dejin
2917
It seems very clear that they’ve got a polarized set of testers. One set of testers really likes the game, really enjoys the insertion of the Bioware style dialog system, and thinks that the game is a lot of fun. Another group thinks that the game is really dull, more of the same, and is very disappointed that Bioware didn’t try innovating.
Realistically I don’t see that much benefit to Bioware to dropping the NDA. I suppose arguably more of those that dislike the game are willing to ignore the NDA, but having lots of angry haters posting all over the place just isn’t going to be a good thing for Bioware, even if there’s an equally vocal group of fans.
I am curious as to whether or not there’s a group of Star Wars fans that either just hasn’t played MMOs yet, or maybe wants a mostly single player experience with occasional multiplayer interactions. That seems like a potentially large group of players that Bioware might be able to get to play.
Yes as Brett says, there are other experiences that you can have without paying a monthly fee. OTOH, for many of us the monthly fee isn’t that much of a concern if there’s real quality gaming to be had.
The maximum group size is four. There are NPC companions. All you need is -one- like minded individual, and you’re golden.
Ryslin
2919
My other half had the beta this weekend, I will prolly get my shot this next one. Either way what worries me are things he was unable to test. Places to sit, places to wander, things to look at idly.
He did test the crafting system to the point of finding a recipe no one knew existed. He watched many a player abandon normal gameplay mechanics in favor of brute force, and get wasted in the tutorial areas. He taught several folks new meanings of the word cover but not necessarily what the devs had in mind. (combat , he isn’t an explorer/rper like me)
The unspoken truth seems to be that many of those beta testing are going in just to find out if they like it as it is, with little attempt to CHANGE what they do not like. We are at the last moments before launch and what could have been changed was either not reported or seen as the same old as they walked out the door. I feel for bioware on that.
It was his summation of how the dialog trees were working, along with judicious use of the escape key (didn’t know about the spacebar but it was never time consuming enough to worry about it). If you just want to be told …go kill 5 goats and bring me their bladders, there are many games out there. I think I prefer being told to go kill 5 goats harboring dark energy and bring me a body part so that we may study it. To each their own.
Has anyone been able to reset their password successfully? I keep getting an error message when I try.
Edit: never mind, apparently it worked one of the times, despite giving me the error.
