I think it’s a wash. Some are happy to at least have the surname option. You don’t have to have it visible on all your characters. But, yeah, it’s definitely not seen as optimal. Most people have several distinct, completely unrelated, characters on a server to RP.
But they are doing things for us. We notice this shit. Sitting in chairs (at least in cantinas so far), speech bubbles, things like this look more likely to be in at launch.
Nobody’s going to mistake it for SWG (in the good sense, all the RP friendly tools and options in that game) any time soon but the changes they’re making show they’ve been listening.
My current concern is that they hire actual roleplayers as GMs for the RP servers. It’s fine, and frankly from my point of view preferable, not to have a special rules set but make sure the folks enforcing the general TOS rules are interpreting them from a roleplayer’s perspective.
Marcus
3082
I haven’t seen anyone in the thread talk about something that is very important to me. How does the game run? Is the graphics engine decent? What sort of Frame rates are people seeing?
Dejin
3083
I believe it’s scaled to run pretty well across a wide range of hardware. I’ve got a computer that was top of the line in 2008 that’s only had it’s graphics card upgraded (currently GTX285 1024MB) and I’m pretty much running at max settings at 1920x1200.
OTOH IMO it doesn’t really look that great (keeping in mind I don’t have a DX11 card, so it might look better on those). If you can accept the somewhat cartoony look, then it looks pretty decent. I most notice the cartoony look on characters that don’t have weather-beaten faces. Aliens and older characters IMO tend to look a bit better in-engine, smooth-faced people end up looking much more cartoony. Generally the scenery looks decent, but not as good as say Red Dead Redemption or any cutting edge modern game.
I think the cartoony look is going to make it look pretty decent at the lower-hardware end (which may very well be why they chose it).
Marcus
3084
Well that is really good to hear and it sounds like they are doing the right thing. I personally don’t need Crysis graphics in my MMO I just need them to run smooth.
MichaelD
3085
My current-generation top of the line iMac played it well at the default settings, but that was nowhere near native resolution. I think it used 1280*1024 (I increased it some after that and it was still ok). At native resolution it got pretty sluggish using the iMac’s 6970M. I didn’t spend any time playing with settings – just put it back closer to default. It looked good.
Gedd
3086
It’s been my experience, and I’ve seen a lot of chatter from others that agree, that the graphic engine is running much, much better this build. In prior builds I noticed that my FPS would drop a good bit in more complex, dense environments (like a city), but I haven’t noticed that at all this build.
The one issue I’ve had all through beta though is a sudden, inexplicable drop in frame rate coupled with control lag that I can sometimes fix by reloading the UI, but usually requires me to exit and restart the game. It used to be that it happened mainly when entering an interior area, like a tomb or an office, but I’ve had it happen a few times recently where I was outside. I have not seen a lot of other comments from testers experiencing the same thing, so it may be something in particular with my hardware setup, or an action that I’m doing.
Performed extremely well at max settings* for me on i5-2500k and radeon HD 6850.
*AA was not enabled during beta i guess?
Marcus
3088
Outstanding that is pretty much what I have except I have the 6870. Getting more pumped for the game the closer it gets.
I can’t wait until I get to play the game…something tells me that I will get “sick” during the weekend so I can’t work…
Meh…Swedish twins ftw http://youtu.be/iQmojMxvbCQ
Marcus
3091
That video is pretty awesome too.
Eh, with the NDA gone there’ll probably be videos up soon that don’t have quite as much cheetos-dust covered running commentary.
ok with the nda lifted…
Am I the only one that tried artificing and found it lacking?
My first character, a bounty hunter, took armor crafting to make her own armor. I was able to make new armor for almost every slot that was a bit better than what i could find (other than some rare item). This was fun and i had a chance to make an exceptional one too.
My second character and the character i want to be on release, a sith warrior, went artificing. Light sabers are not common. I got one from a quest and i found a light side only one which i couldn’t use being dark side. Now artificing cannot actually make light sabers to my knowledge, instead it makes addons for them. I’d imagine all light sabers have the same addon inputs, but maybe that changes. At my level though, they have a crystal (also controls color of beam), an overlay and a hilt. The quest light saber comes with a rare (i think) overlay that is way better than anything i can make. That leaves crystal and hilt. Each addon type i can make only gives something like one more stat than the one i started with.
Making addons for equipment is not nearly as fun as actually making equipment. Especially when i am limited to making addons for just light sabers.
The professions in general are a little more focused than i would like. I suppose this is good for some because it encourages/requires trade, but i like to be a bit more self sufficient.
The way the professions are designed, you basically need 3 support skills for each trade profession. The obvious problem is you only have 3 total slots. This means you have to choose between two gathering skills the profession uses. Armor crafting for example needs one gathering skill for heavy armor and one for medium armor (if i remember right), so you can’t craft both by yourself. Most people will probably just take the gathering skill which allows them to craft the items their current character uses (my bounty hunter took the gathering skill to make heavy armor).
I tried Artificing with the first character I played. It’s been revamped since then, and the weapon mod system has been changed a lot too, but I agree that it appears to offer the least of all the crafting systems (well, Biochemistry might fill that slot if you don’t think potions are that valuable - whether you think potions are good probably depends on whether or not you plan on raiding).
The thing with lightsabers is (I think) BioWare doesn’t want people being able to produce lightsabers, since they’re supposed to be pretty special in the Star Wars world. So while Armstechs can pump out rifles and pistols, Artificers can only make lightsaber components.
I honestly don’t know where they’re going with the weapon mod system. At one point they were saying you could get a lightsaber and upgrade its mods through the whole game, so you never had t buy a new one. Then they took all the mods out. Then they put some of them back. They’re obviously trying to find the sweet spot with weapon upgrade slots.
Ryslin
3095
The depth of crafting is all in the reverse engineering. You can get better and sometimes epic recipes from it. As for crystals, almost everything takes them so you aren’t just crafting for lightsabers.
Well… the everybody-who-wants beta is next weekend anyway, so it’s not that critical for people who are fence-sitters but were (ever) signed up for beta. Even if you weren’t there may still be codes that were sent to people who didn’t want/need them.
The email Bioware sent out told me not to redem any other codes on your account, even though I could get one from Curse. So I’m just wondering when Bioware will send them out and let me snag the beta. I suppose there is still another 5 days :) and 30GB shouldn’t take that long to download, provided their series of tubes aren’t clogged.
So blaster rifles use the same crystal that light sabers do?
No one has; if they follow the usual practice they’ll go out Tuesday night (last time went into Wednesday.) Happily, at least as of my beta, it was only 20g and change, not 30.
