3521

So for you folks who have played several different classes, is there any quest overlap or are all the quests unique?

3522

Class Quests so far are very unique, although the jedi’s start on the same planet, so at the beginning its the same overarching story and enemies that are there and some standard quests are shared, since its the same world those two classes start at.

3523

My pet theory is that volume atenuation for companions is broken so you heard everiyone companions even if are on the far way of the dungeon. So you are in a cave alone and can heard robots and aweird rogue voice behind you all the time.

3524

Through level 18 I did not witness much in the way of phasing or quest decisions that really meant anything once the quest was over.

A lot of the planets have multiple instances per server, so even if you’re in the same room as another person on your server you might not see them. If you bring up your map screen the zone title in the bottom right is in a drop down box that will let you select which instance you want to be in (so you can choose from Coruscant 1, Coruscant 2, etc). At least in beta there was a 30m cool down on switching instances manually. I’m assuming it spawns these instances as more people enter the same zone so you’re more likely to see it happen in the low level zones (like Coruscant) and common areas when the game first ships.

It’s one aspect of the game I’m not crazy about, but on the other hand performance and lag were both great for me all weekend.

3525

It’s one aspect of the game I’m not crazy about, but on the other hand performance and lag were both great for me all weekend.

Yeah I have never cared for games that do this.

3526

At least somewhat. In cinematics I had NPCs refer to decisions I’d made earlier in that quest, or in earlier quests. Also, I recieved in-game email from NPCs I’d met, updating me on what happened after I’d left, or thanking me and sending gifts or cash - hopefully NPCs can also send hate mail (or assassins).

After you finish the first few tutorial-ish class-quests and they let you leave your starting planet, you aren’t locked into a particular planet progression. There’s a point early in the Jedi Knight class-quest line when the quest giver basically says “we have problems on these two planets, deal with them in whatever order you want”. There’s another mission in the Knight quest line that sent me to a planet that appered to be the starting planet for another class; I passed through some lvl 1-10 areas on my way to an island with lvl 16+ enemies loitering outside the entrance to my target building.

Of course, if you don’t like any of the planets in a given level-range, you can just use space-combat missions and/or PvP to level up.

3527

So, weekend impressions and results.

Assassin 22 / PVP rank 21:

  • Melee class, best suited for grouping and fighting easy mobs. Works in pvp in most cases, but best to gank people who are low hp.
  • Companion is good for tanking stuff until he dies.
  • Expect a lot of running, or using vanish to get away (but boss reset)
  • Best moment: none

Operative 21 / PVP Rank 4.

  • Ranged DPS + Healer. The healing part is very hectic when you are pugging, since people cant hold aggro, or all 3 of them hold aggro on different targets. the key thing seems to be to conserve your mana. Having to target people on their party frames, then throw a heal, then target the boss (or better yet, 2 champions and 3 elites) in the 3D world to dps him while regenning mana, then retargeting back again got very annoying. Especially since you are standing at range, and you’ll sometimes click the players instead of the enemy target. With 18 second hots that stack in 2s, and trying to keep them up on all 4 players made for a lot of clicking.
    Really wish I had buf-timers addon so I didn’t have to look at the Tiny icons (that have a gradient cooldown indication, instead of a number) to see when I needed to re-apply the buff to make it keep its stack going.
  • Companion is free dps, and also a sort-of-tank you can heal
  • Healer; so groups are a “guarantee” even with the SHITTY LFG system they have. Well, they do not have a LFG system, they have /WHO and then find people who are LFG. So your best bet is to spam /1 General chat for groups, or just ignore it entirely and solo to 50.
  • Best moment: Killing a 21.000 HP champion (l:14) as level 16. Took a fair number of minutes to do so.

Bounty Hunter 8

  • The companion is awesome, as a healer.
  • A lot of dps, so very good to just nuke stuff

The UI is horrible. Game crashes that reset all your settings (including keybinds) is even worse.

3528

It needs to be more customizable.

3529

As a start

Fix’d

3530

After you finish the first few tutorial-ish class-quests and they let you leave your starting planet, you aren’t locked into a particular planet progression. There’s a point early in the Jedi Knight class-quest line when the quest giver basically says “we have problems on these two planets, deal with them in whatever order you want”. There’s another mission in the Knight quest line that sent me to a planet that appered to be the starting planet for another class; I passed through some lvl 1-10 areas on my way to an island with lvl 16+ enemies loitering outside the entrance to my target building.
Quest for planet is definitely locked in.

you go from 1-10 on the newbie planet.
then 10-15 on Kaas or Coruscant to pick up your ship.
then you technically have 2 choices to go after your ship, but only one of those choices are applicable because the other one is literally 5-6 levels above you.

example on my level 33 Sith Assassin.

Korribaan -> Kaas -> Balmorra -> Tatooine -> Alderaan -> Taris, there is no skipping ahead.

the difficulty of enemy scale so much it’s not even funny once they have 5+ levels on you. I could solo a Gold elite that’s 5 levels higher than me but I lost to a silver elite that’s 6 levels higher every single time, I will literally miss every single melee strike and have all my spell resisted.

There usually is a main quest on every planet aside from your class quest, once you successfully completing that main quest(yes you can fail due to choice you make), you will get access to a bonus series of quest(literally call “Insert planet name” bonus series), which usually end up with another extra level gain and some nice loot.

example of the fail main quest

On Alderaan I was suppose to support Noble House Thul against House Organa for the empire, I received a holo call after almost completing the main quest requesting help repelling Jedi attack on House Thul, I ignored, after completing the main quest, I got a nice visit from local imperial telling me due to my act, The house thul person who was supporting empire was killed. I didn’t receive a bonus series quest for Alderaan.

3531

Couple of things:

the “I can kill a mob 5 levels above me but not touch a mob 6 levels above me” is straight from Vanilla WoW. As you noted, you just get a ton of resists and/or misses due to the level difference.

There’s no phasing as in WoW. You do have a lot of solo instances, especially for your storyline quests, where mobs won’t respawn and you won’t see other players, so that works in a lot of the same ways that phasing does (but on a personal level only).

The class quests are unique, but as mentioned above, all the quests (regular and Heroic) you get from the non-class guys are given to all characters.

The bonus quest series is a set of quests you get after you complete most of a planet’s storyline. It’s usually - but not always - given to you as you run to the spaceport to get the hell of that planet because you’re sick of it. The reward for the bonus series is always a quite nice item, and the quests are just regular quests, so it’s definitely worth doing it. Some of the bonus questlines happen later.

The quest (planet) progression is pretty linear. You’re stuck on your starter planet until you’re sent to your homeworld. You’re stuck on the homeworld until you get your ship. Then, as noted above, most classes get a “choice” of 2 quests - one of the appropriate level, and one 5 levels higher.

One thing I haven’t seen people talk about is how much the game opens up once you get off the homeworld (I recall discussions by some prior to the NDA dropping about how linear the planets were). My progression as a BH was Hutta -> Dromund Kass -> Balmorra -> Nar Shaddaa -> Tatooine -> Alderaan. I actually like the look of Dromund Kass, but it is a bit linear. Balmorra is better, Nar Shaddaa is worse (I really hate super-industrialized planets, Coruscant included). But Tatooine and Alderaan are really wide open, and when I fiddled with a level 40 a little while ago, Hoth was even more so.

@Instant: I played Assassin in a prior build and think they’re awesome. Not sure if your comments are more PVP oriented than PVE, because he could take on all sorts of mobs. I was putting points into the tanking tree so he had high survivability. But they’ve got all sorts of utility, which really appealed to me.

Your complaints about Operative healing are really due to not having a UI that’s suitable for healing. The UI really hamstrings healers, I think, and will lead to a bunch of healer frustration. I’m sure it will be improved, but it’s lacking now.

As to the min-maxing of Light/Dark points, it’s been noted for a while that there needs to be some sort of “neutral” gear. Someone asked why play a light side Empire character? So you can get good deals on all those pieces of gear on the Empire auction house that require Light I or Light II! Also, when you pick light side choices in the Empire, you can sort of RP a guy who thinks the system is too brutal and is working to soften it. Unfortunately, when you pick dark side choices as a Republic character, you’re just RPing a brutish jerk.

3532

I only got up to level 18 as a Jedi Knight, but I did not find that to be the case at all. I can think of at least three decisions where I chose light side, and I’m not convinced I made the right decision, in fact, I’m likely to choose the other option when playing through at release.

I found the choices to be a decision between doing the perfectly morale thing and hoping everything works out vs. making the Realpolitik choice on the understanding that sometimes hard choices need to be made for the betterment of the Republic. I didn’t get far enough to see what the long term consequences (if any) from my decisions are, but I can see a situation in which Bioware decides that “light side” choices are always rewarded as if there were a benevolent god that always rewards proper morality and “dark side/Realpolitik” choices always lead to ashes, or they might write their stories with a more realistic view where sometimes doing the prim and proper moral thing causes big problems down the road.

Probably the best comparison I can make is with Mass Effect 1 and the Rachni Queen, where I’m still convinced that the “dark side/renegade” option is actually the morally correct choice and that the “light side” choice could potentially lead to the extinction of all non-Rachni life. I felt like I was asked to make those kind of choices in several places – not quite with that level of import, but certainly cases where the “dark side” might realistically be the better choice for the citizens of the Republic.

I actually found the Sith dialog to be more problematic. I didn’t get that far with my Sith Inquisitor, but I found it bizarre that she was constantly giving lip to powerful people who already didn’t like her very much. Why would I mouth off to someone who is powerful enough to squash me like a bug? The proper response is clearly to mouth platitudes while secretly planning to get powerful enough for payback, and then to catch your enemy in a dark corridor somewhere and then gut them with your light saber. IMO her constant mouthing off to her superiors made her sound like an idiot.

3533

Regarding giving Lip:

[spoiler]

  • Be carefull… is all I can say without spoiling too much =)[/spoiler]

And you need to be carefull with your LIGHT v. DARK choices, and also the missions you send your companions on (as they give points in either).

Some Gear have a DARK/LIGHT requirement to them.

3534

That’s the Diplomacy mission skill, which in a lot of ways, is a mission skill that allows you to “make up” for any Dark/Light hits you’ve taken during questing.

Other mission skills don’t have any Light/Dark consequences.

Some Gear have a DARK/LIGHT requirement to them.

Yeah, people have been talking about that. What doesn’t exist is gear that rewards people for shades of grey - stuff like “Dark I, Neutral, or Light I” on high level gear" - that would be something a neutral character could use.

3535

RE: Spoiler

That’s nice to hear! I did feel like the majority of conversational options did result in giving lip though.

I’m not much of a min-maxer so I figured I’d play through doing what I thought was the right choice for my character, and not worry too much about gear. Although I suppose I could live to regret that decision.

I’m also considering going for the Diplomat crew skill, which AIUI gives Light Side/Dark Side points.

3536

Now did I miss something, or is there really no way to export/import your keybinds?

3537

Dark/Light

Since you can get dark/light in any flashpoint (even on the repeat) and there are dailies on most planets to go into a heroic zone and do whatever, the problem of being neutral when you hit endgame can be solved easily enough.

Questlines->story progression
I am not sure if the jedi shadow’s line is different than the jedi sage. I certainly hope so. The jedi sage was very heal oriented. That makes sense considering what the sage is, but it would be vastly out of place as a Shadow.

Interesting to note that the game is so subjective. What one person considers a dick move, to someone else is an agonized choice. One quest on Corsucant had me pissed off as there was no good way to go about dealing with it with my characters limitations. If I didn’t care about my choice the path was obvious, if I just wanted points that too was obvious. Doing the right thing by my particular chosen standard at the time was a pain in the ass.

I am finding the bits about how relationships work for jedi interesting. There have always been folk who swear all jedi are celibate. Other situations indicate any nookie leads to the dark side so on. The general feel I am finding is that sex is fine, don’t get involved long term and no you can’t have my number. Sith on the other hand use relationships as weapons (which seems to be what the jedi fear)… some horrific and amusing arguments will happen on rp servers when this launches.

3538

One thing I found interesting, and a bit annoying if I found out after-the-fact is that some quests might give you an ‘extended’ ending… say, you fight a guy who would otherwise given you a reward, and you might get an extra reward for this. So it is really a matter of picking the right options… or even googling it to make sure you get the “most” rewards per quest.

3539

Min/maxing for teh win… Not.

Sometimes I might happen to make the optimum choices, sometimes not. My smuggler managed to negotiate an additional reward from a quest giver on occasion. I kinda enjoy the fact that, this not being a single player RPG, you can’t quicksave and reload to try various outcomes.

I’m certainly not about to google and spoil quests because I want to wring fractional additional rewards. If I play the game, I’ll keep in mind equipment requirements of some of the gear I might want. But I don’t want to go any further in optimising my play.

Wendelius

3540

Overall I loved my weekend with swtor with some minor annoyances.

a) Preferences don’t stick from toon to toon and I couldn’t find a way to make that an option or transfer them. I change about a dozen keybinds so that’s annoying.

b) The L/D choices as discussed by others.

c) Cutscene quests. A couple are fine, but all of them?! I was just annoyed after the first couple and hammering the spacebar. There should be an option to just give me the full text all at once. People talk about the poor graphics and ui saying that it’s dumbed down to be accessible to people without great pc’s, what about those of us without sound?

d) Trooper/BH felt more powerful through level 12 than Knight/Warrior. That just felt odd.

I can’t wait to get back into it.