OceanwaveII
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Posts posted by OceanwaveII
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Finally someone who can think, thank you I thought I was alone.
hm they don't seem to learn that almost never works, no one will do there grind they'll find other thing to do and will drop it till the next story patch so essentially er they've failed ? if your going to have a long grind it has have some tangible reward a legendary reward , Not some gimped companion , 250 K Influences is a lot to grind . Take SWG the only reason for that blasted village grind was to unlock the Overpowered Jedi . That the ONLY reason why anyone bother to do it and invest all that time . No one going to grind alliances for some gimped companion and 208 gear and Tedious star fortresses over and over again for weeks . These will be as dead as hard mode flash points , Not to mention there separate from the group finder... so I can't see that lasting long.. . . You wouldn't get gear from them , when you can just do a Story mode ops get 2x the gear and rewards in a shorter period of time than it takes to solo one of the H2 Star fortresses. Without the Companion carrot defeat the point of doing heroics
. Frankly level sync is a very good idea there a reason why most MMO are doing it it solve a problem of being trapped on one planet and having to grind Ilum over and over again . . With the level sync it open up people to go to other planet do other things making the grind less annoying , Remove some of the tediousness of MMO grinds by opening up a variety of locations and area to go back to , , One day I feel like Voss maybe the other day makeb , Or Tython .. More variety of thing to do and choices to level more people happy more people for group content for lower levels . Your still really powerful, thing die pretty quickly , wasn't a big deal . Your not Valkorian but your not far from his right hand hand demolishing both golds and champion alike at lower levels . Ashara soloed a champion on her own on Narshadaar given I am level 65 it should be that good , Given high level of presence and influences she had .
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Why?
I pay a sub to play the game, not to alpha test every whim that EA comes up with!
All the testing should have been done by staff, well before any of it getting close to a live environment, yes the odd bug gets through or does not show up in the closed servers, there yes we should be giving detail and it should be getting fixed in a timely manner, but we are not talking about a bug we are talking about a change that more or less is a bait and switch of the advertised product!
Yeah honestly it not are job to "Test there crappy patches " They could of Easily postpone there patch or put it on a test server . It literally Improved NOTHING and it broke the damn patcher people still can't log on .It was completely unnecessary and done without warning and Rushed . I am not being paid by bioware to test there crappy content .when they refuse to even open there test servers.
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Oh come off of it.
It is still easy to do, you just have to use what is available on your character to get it done. If you are terribly undergeared or have no idea how to play your class, then you won't be completing it solo.
The only thing that should be easy to do in garbage gear is KotFE story and 1-50 class story. Everything else SHOULD require players to have some sense of competence with their class and not be lazy about upgrading their gear.
What the heck , why would anyone do this junk ? the star fortresses H2 drops 208 gear for a half an hour of work or longer and your reward for a 250 k alliance Grind is some gimped companion and no story . You might as well do story ops the rewards are better and it takes far less time to do than sit there mindlessly "LFG For Tatoonie star fortress"
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Pretty much the same here.
Hopefully if they lose enough subs they'll realize that listening to a small minority of people whose entire time is spent toward making a game less fun for others isn't the right way to do things.
Well I unsubbed and I've pretty much been subbed since launch . Simple of matter of logic for me
250 k grind = Gimp companion reward that can barely do existing content without the main player over gearing for it . Was expecting a very Heroic (Character companion ) Not it can barely survive in Tactical and Star Fortresses . Er this is the only content in the game Doing heroic to level for your character companions at the moment ....so you Nerf the reward Then expect me to pay till you get more story ? forget that I'll be back when there more story not about to grind Star Fortress for trivial rewards . Battlefront just came out there plenty to play . So count me as one of the lost subs.
And Add insult to injury not only do you screw up the companion you screw up the patch for the screwed up companions ! . god Bio-ware is incompetent .
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hm think it it illogical to keep faction as meaningfull post expansion but gotta realize the fleet is in the (Past) so yeah people 1-50 or who only want to do1-60 who don't own the expansion probably need a place to be so can't just remove it anymore than I can stop my ability to take quest on korriban at level 60.
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Actually, I have a better idea as to what will make my day happier.
Bye bye, fanboy.
(These forums would be unreadable without the ignore function...)
Think i'll ignore that guy to . I hate people who derail conversation with go play another game because they worships the butt crevases of EA . As a Star wars Fan Bioware-EA conglomerate have sole ownership of The star wars License . Meaning there are No Alternative Star wars RPG or Games made by alternative company . Meaning there are no Other choices compared ot the days when they licensed games to multiple company prior to Disney or when Bioware was independent . giving EA a total monopoly on the license . Unless your playing some off the books unlicensed mods your stuck with Bio ware .
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It will be interesting to see what happens with Treek, given there are players out there, like me, that paid cartel coins for all their toons to have access to her.
They won't touch thing we've paid for that rule one of business or people will start demanding refunds for cartel , It would be like taking away the togruta unlock >_> Treek and HK will be like everything else You can have treek at level 1 same with HK once it unlocked independent of story.
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this game can barely deal with clipping on slightly different aliens it can't handle hoods there no modifers to change part of the body., human there not a chance in hell there going to redo all the animation just so you can make a shrek female lol. Unless you want slightly modified males model+breast to look like female better put that to rest.
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why, because graphics are only a small part of this game.
cut scenes, quest management, inventory, grouping, NPC mechanics, and patches/updates are all bigger issues than visual effects.
Eh most of the MMO feature are not that spectacular on the SWOTOR engine... the fact is they screwed up and they owned that and admitted it...so yeah that a poor defense for the engine . It was selected originally for it ability to collectively collaborate in real time .if I remember the DEV debriefing .Team in different area can work together in real time on the same area ) This ended up becoming a curse and hindrance rather than a blessing were someone would edit an area without letting another team know ,causing major communication problems with the 300 + people they had employed .
Performance wise its pretty terrible for what it looks like . Aging games like AION run without lag and similar graphical feature to TOR and with minimal system resources and look just as good not to mention you can fly lol..something they've told us that isn't possible in the current version of the SWTOR engine ( having ships land on planets and be controllable etc ,or flying mounts) . Aion PVP centric game with a massive grind , I wouldn't want to play though and it not star wars.... , but feature wise the engine which is far older about 4 years older than tor it can do far more than TOR and they did upgrade there graphical engine in that time . When I run TOR runs like crap even on my Geforce 970 with 16 GB of Ram and 8 Core it definitely more resource intensive and it runs terrible on low end systems
They can upgrade there engine it a matter if they want to invest in the money to do it and hire enough skilled people to do it or if there some incentive outside of selling us more cartel junk.
If Tor had 40 woman/man raids or mass pvp with very little lag , could handle tons of particles without alot lagged and looked graphically like WoW, Quest builder or planet builders instances etc . I could understand the visual trade off for greater mmo functionality,...but as it stand it can barely handle 16 people in the same area without dragging the entire system to a crawl . It has none of those Super MMO feature that are touted by even crappy game like neverwinter.
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I hope they have a professional model the new characters' faces, rather than the intern who did Lana. Seriously, I hope they didn't pay someone to make that.
It not the model so much that makes it bad , her model no different than the other faces in the game ... it the incredibly low-grade dilapidated texture , lack of hair transparency and lack of eyelashes , Washed out colors the texture work is poor all around and low-res .
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"This small"? You know, I love how people assume that just because the textures and stuff appear "small" on their screen, that the amount of coding and design work put into it is equally small. Do me a favor and download "Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate" and code me a little GUI application. Tell me when you're done...
On a serious note, I've been waiting for this and Kel'dor since before release, when the first screenshots of a Kel'dor bounty hunter and a Togruta Jedi came out. I can wait two days longer.
Er because there right it is tiny from a features point of view .not some major overhaul of the game . I know the bioware defense forces comes out any time someone complains but come on , I am a 3D designer and pretty sure it pretty difficult for someone to go just make a new character head if they've never sculpted a character , Never used Maya or z brush in there life ,or worked on a production team , understand what an edge loop was . But for someone who knows it ? Making a head for an identical rig with zero changes to animation no new armor , No new body .yeah I wouldn't lie and say "YEAH That really difficult loll just because someone who is completely unskilled at the trade can't do it , even with that usually work on a TEAM to reduce the labor for something that minor even further . From a consumer point of view it would make me doubt the company capability if there talking about a grand expansion and they have trouble with minor features from a consumer point of view . While the fallen Empire is Massive . (there literally no new content beyond a new house and changes to ability cast in this current patch ) It would send the message to me that there systems have some extreme limitations there working and not to trust any of there advertisement .
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I know i'm gonna get some hate for this, but here goes:
Its business. There is simply no point in them bringing out another new race, after Cathar, if Cathar does not sell. There will always be a group of people in the community who will be unhappy with something released. Doesnt mean people wont buy it, however. I dont usually play alien species (unless you count Cyborg) in game. its not a racist thing. I can just never come to a decision on how i want a particular guy to look. But Cathar i might play.
Cathar would not have been my first choice for a race (three guesses which i would have picked
) It a business isn't a very good logical defense ,it a crappy business logic tired of gamer using that as-sine logic to defend whatever retarded things a company does. , If I want to maximize my money I give players what they want and a majority want to ensure I get a high return , I do a poll (Not just the forum, I poll multiple places to get the best possible statistical result , in game or at the launcher) . So if some species in high demand then most likely will get higher returns from adding that species and long term profit . I don't pick a species that far t less popular even hated ,because it "Easier " then go .. well if it sales well will consider the more popular one with Some ****** pr spin !. That horrible business logic you essentially set yourself up for failure ,then use outright bribery to make up for either them being lazy or a lack of desire to invest in the game. Not to mention it hurt your long term Trust with a consumer base that want to support your product and you wonder why people hate EA , they earn the hate they get.
Not like this game is carried on the merits of the game developer , it would of died a long time ago if it hadn't had the star wars IP backing it .
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How could anyone take the empire seriously?
That is like asking how hiter/stalin/sadam hussian etc got power.
Fear and control.
Here is my point of view:
The republic ideal is perfect in theory.
Coopeation, unity, equil rights, etc etc etc basicly everyone has the same worth.
Sounds perfect right?
While they failed to add in human nature.
Greed, arogant ,pride, lust etc.
In fact the sheer amount of grey jedi(i am looking at you gamers) show how few people accauly are willing to sacrife themself for the greater good(and i dont mean dieing i mean working a **** job every day of the week because nobody else will)
The republic is like a self-substaining cancer.
If it wasnt for the occiasinol good guy saving the day they would already have died many times over.
The empire on the other hand was very compitent.
WIth the key word being was.
The empire is very single minded.
When failure means your death you are more encourge to make it work the first time.
The sith are basicly bullies with to much power you try to keep of your back.
You have to be compleetly inmoral just to survive.
This work well when you are running a small tightly control pupulation.
The main reson the empire is falling apart is the they have spread themself to thin.
Many conquered worlds are eager to rebel, with most of your army in conquered territory your slave's see a chance to free themself.
The emperor is in seclusion planting the seeds for many sith power play's.
Without the emperor the dark councle loses the only thing that binds them(the fear of the emperor)
Infact the entire empire is based on fear, and like many real life nations.
Fear only works to a point.
Once people are no longer afraid they will turn on you.
For example: If you point a gun at somebody who is afraid to die, he will probley do whatever you say.
But if you am your gun at somebody who isnt afraid to die you are suddenly fighting to keep control of your gun(after all you didnt expect them to fight back)
The empire runs like a effecent machine when properly controled.
The problem lies is that without control they fall apart.
Sound about right ,but to be fair if where talking about real empires , The Republic, would mirror the American empire (Ever Empire till-date has said they are morally superior to the savages and then committed genocide and the same crimes of the Empire who where more openly totalitarian or didn't hold themselves in such a high moral spotlight .)They held ideas high ideas of morality while committing all sort of crimes , lol kinda symbolic when Palpatine took over the Republic via a democratic and peaceful debate LOL and turned it into the galactic empire. His argument were from morality and peace to stop the separatist evil once and for all !!!! )
. Which remind me of the Jedi/republic relationship .But think they kiddify the story really or they could of easily explored that . Think in this day an age people are suspect of anything that sound way too noble to be believable , sinc ,since it does not take the flawed nature of human institutions into account and doesn't try to make believable human characters out it . People are more accepting of good people in bad situationist , than absurd moral purity ( I am saying things I really don't believe in ,but It sounds good and because it sounds good it makes me feel morally superior to the inferior people ) . it like the Christian church chanting about ending all sins while killing all the native people and anyone who disagree with there ideas , Reminds me of the Jedi to be honest . Only real difference is they despise anyone who doesn't believe what they believe and can't politically act on there hatred =/ like there deep hatred of the Voss .
Even the more modern star trek films had to re-characterizer the Federation as a flawed believable utopia completely different from Roddenberry perfect Utopia (The New Star Trek Movies /Deep Space 9)
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thats why u have to "Role-play" ur character, not just farm dark or light points....
No you demand bio ware put actual choice in there narrative and stop being lazy , consular story has to be one of the laziest one-dimensional branching writing I have ever seen . YOU do not force a player down a path then offer moral choices that are suppose have some effect on defining there character . Plenty of fallen dark Jedi in star wars lore hell there one in the imperial agent instead of getting a proper story with branching choices . Get some crap railroaded down one road . One of the reason so many people despise the consular story . (Sith Warrior Honorable warrior looking to redeem the emperor or a malevolent monster , and hell the Imperial agent story the choices damn near alter ever act and the ending , and a far as possible from black and white cartoony dark side/light side choices ? ) Hell there not even a companion on your squad that will vehemently disagree with you , Boring , At least the Jedi Knight has Lord Scourge who provide a completely different point of view ,
Consular ? Oh we are too lazy to write branching story paths with conflict or put any effort into it .lol.. think there a reason that Republic player complain Bio-ware is imperial biased LOL and a lot of people truly hate the consular story .I doubt it will change since the Empire sales better and will most likely get more resources.
. There was definitely more effort put into the Imperial story than the republic ones . Probably because it was more difficult. Most of star wars the Sith tend to be faceless evil caricature with very little realistic depth .To be fair the background jedi are just as one-dimensional , it really only the heroes that had any depth , Luke Obi-wan etc Leia , Her Children etc ) But the Sith in a classic pre-EU interpretation as pure evil is evil can get, going to conflict with a good/bad moral systems bio-ware typical employ, forcing them to philosophically flesh out the Empire story better ,
In-retrospective the Republic story are easier to write . they just had to copy paste ever generic element of star wars. Good guys this , Chant the good guys some more and your done. Not much a writing challenge to be honest . Jedi Knight is word for word a copy of ever plot cliche of the original trilogy while the consular story seem to have zero direction/story flow.. beyond to seem "Good". Writing a Light Side Sith /neutral sith iwas probably more of a challenge , Making the Imperial agent story took far more of a challenge and it shows in the quality and how human the character feels that they've been crapped on by the galaxy.
With the Jedi particular the consular Bio-ware seems like they didn't even care , They made a generic character zero branching narratives and zero depth , zero dramatic tensions , and no fallibility and zero consequences for any of there actions. . People are critical of it because in this day in age people expect more moral ambiguity from there stories , there little tolerance for old school generic Fantasy black/white morality .Also the Game TOR is based on (KOTOR ) was based on exploring the complexity of moral ambiguity and was famous for it . Jedi consular story spits on it really complete trash in comparison to the original kotor , .Hell in kotor 2 the Jedi where incredibly corrupt fearful and bigoted.
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Level 50 Consular Sage here; wasn't bored at all. Simply put, if you don't like diplomacy and following the Jedi Code, you're probably not going to be impressed with the consular storyline.
You're essentially playing an Obi-esque character; as you might recall, they're somewhat low-key until they absolutely have no other choice. For folk looking for excitement, thrills, and action, this likely doesn't hit the sweet spot of expectation. Then again, for those who get diplomacy as a profession and its affect on much larger events, it is exciting, thrilling, and action-filled.
(And no, the storyline doesn't really "change" except that your encounters with the "evil" folk get harder as you go along.)
My $0.02 worth.
Obiwan had love affairs fought in a massive war ,lost his friend to the dark side was sent into Exile watch his entire Order wiped out in a genocide , (Was not Infalliable didn't win all his fights ,and the Narrative didn't say he was always right like the one in TOR does and gives slap on the wrist for committing crimes ) . Faced down thousand of tsuken raider to protect luke birth place , Had a personality cracked jokes , didn't always Blindly believe with the jedi counsel .Fought Darth Vador lol
If Consular story was like Obi wan I would have no Problems LOL. - please do not compare one-dimensional tripe consular crap to obi wan . If the Counslar story was a mirror of Obi wan or Yoda actual history it would be far better than the Imperial agent story . You wouldn't hear constant complaint that the story sucks in-game . Hell even yoda had a far more exciting life and he's a Jedi master , so that a load of horse-crap lol. that TOR consular has anything in relationships to them. bio-ware can do much better
if anyone has read the expanded universe and seen the Movies would know the Jedi archetypes are poor shadows of the heroes based on with the worse being the consular (They remind me of those generic jedi in the movie you know the one, the one no one care about and get killed easily ?The equivalent of the red shirt from Star Trek. ) The heroes always had something interesting about them to care about or make them laugh , Flaws , Generic jedi are fodder for Sith and separatist bombs ) .
Which is why I can't understand why someone would pick that for a main hero in TOR , (I mean the writer could be really really incompetent , Or so obsessed with making a character mirror the Jedi code she forgot to write a human being with flaws and complexity of real life ? ) it a generic Jedi , generic background jedi as generic as can be and you would never write a Star wars Movie/novel/or mainstream game with it as a starring character because they are narrative devices to be killed or ridiculed , or made fun of for being hypocrite . It the the kind that writer use to kill off normally or get rid of in the main star wars story , or used as essentially Narrative fodder for a villain . Not really a hero with human qualities and flaws anyone cares about .
In comparison to what character feel more human and have choice and consequences , You got (Imperial agent at the top ) and Consular at the very bottom , One-dimensional predictable ,zero choice (Pretty much there only Light Side and ur more light side !) Not sure why they did this the Sith get more choice between Light dark and neutral than the jedi get .When they made the consular they didn't write a human being with flaws and conflict they wrote *I am good , I am good I am gonna win because am Good !" No tension predictable dramatic conflict and frankly no story consequences. (Who care if I kill the master Or let them live , I'll still get a cookie for at the end of the day =/)
What makes it even worse is they try to make it Epic in chapter 3 and still make no logical sense why I should care or even believe in this characters ? Even the companions are one-dimensional . Not a fleshed out character that feels like they lived a life at all . Frankly hope the writer got fired and never works on another story in TOR again.
Remind me of Very bad fantasy archetype and less star wars , Something out of Guild wars 2 (I AM LAWFUL GOOD because you know I am lawful good , that what the name tag says , No emotional realism what so ever lol) And really you can't lose even the (Oh your looking weaker from the ritual ) doesn't have any long term narrative effects on the plot . Could of sent a death squad out to wipe out the Jedi corrupted and would of made zero-effect on the story
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What, you mean to say you're buying into the 200 million dollar rumors? Even including all the additional advertisement and such I think the 200 million dollar figure is a gross overestimation.
80 million dollars for the game and 40 million dollars on advertisement campaigns, initial hardware investment, etc is where I'd place my bets on.
Eh , Yeah 80 million sound more likely ,Well to be fair Fonix there so much Spin and Tabloidism in Gaming news Not sure what to believe anymore , Had an article on forbe mentioning 500 mIllion , Next year it might be 1.2 billion =/
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I think its unfair of you to expect that a 200 million dollar, six year design cycle game should have proper skin textures and exo-skeletons for its player characters. You should give Bioware a break. Clearly six years and 200 million dollars wasn't enough time and money to properly design and develop SWTOR.
I mean the amount of time and effort that went into designing the skin textures for the races in SWTOR clearly was a difficult thing for Biowares development team to manage. Its not like thats first year programing and design or anything.
I'd really like an accountant at EA to disclose where a lot of that money went lol... pretty sure it did not go into the game art direction/animation . and I seriously doubt that Voice acting alone can account for it . Voice acting is expensive , but not 200 Million dollars expensive . I am gonna guess it doesn't take up 200 million , The estimated 200 million dollar was not invested into this game the product. I love the game, but let be truthful yeah it not 200 million dollars .There are games with far more complex AI , rendering engines that don't even approach these numbers . If I was to make a hunch I'd say they money got soaked in a lot of ways that have nothing to do with the game play
Big Budget Internal Bleeding
Hype (Huge marketing campaign ) Commercial New-york Time Square Ads
Setting up a Network infrastructure where none existed before , compare to Nexxon or Ncsoft who already have there infrastructure in place for MMO in both North America and Asia.
Paying Lucas for the Star wars Brand Name Cost ,
Revising/Reverse Engineering the Crappy Hero Engine
Mismanagement of a Large Team of people over a long period of time which lead to the mass firing
(Stuff that happens when trying to manage 500 people )
As someone who taking some gaming classes and trying to get into the industry ,I came to realize a lot of game development suffer from internal issue that bleed money for all sort of reason that have little to do with the final product (The First Final Fantasy 13 ). Duke Nukem was in development for 13 years and when it came out it was literally garbage and trashed by most reviewer . TOR is a good game ,but it suffers from many development issue that any big budget game has due to massive amount of hype and money being thrown at a massive project and lacking efficient ways to channel those resources.
Many professional 3D designer on site like Cg-society when the game launched criticized the Texture (Not because of the cartoon style Nothing wrong that ) because it came off lazy and simplistic . Not something to be impressed by simplistic texture rendering . I gotta agree it is lazy the clipping on the armor also is another issue .
Twilek have 3 faces per -body type rest are just slight texture modifications . Sith Have 1 face per body type with slight texture reorganization and changes in how many things are sticking off there face . alot of the Colored Aliens /human for being very human still have such a limited amount of faces . For something that is so close to human and share the exact same body type, it just comes off extremely lazy that they couldn't be bothered to make helmet adjust for the one species that different . Seem like they were over budget and just tried to get the game out as quickly as possible by that time . Early months of the game suffered from far more issue than it does currently . Current game is paradise in comparison.
The rest of the species are Colored humans that require only to change the color of the skin and the eyes to make a new character .
I'll defend the game on somethings ,but I won't on this lol. With the Mass firing restructuring and the need to get more fundamental things into the game (Group Finder . , More Content After 50 , New source of revenue to support the game Freemium support ) I gave them a pass , Good now there making a steady profit to support new content with the cartel shop . Now there trying to sale "Appearances /Equipment " there some great thing in the cash-shop that are cute and innovative (Party Jawas , Balls ,Thrones ) but Equipment and appearances is not one of them. If there serious about making money off that cash shop they better improve the appearance systems by a huge percentage , Not just changing a few values in the game recoloring system on an outfit and trying to sale it to me because they artificially restricted it before, that worse than an artist stealing art and changing color in Photoshop and demanding money LOL .
There a reason they got screamed at for the recolor of the War hero and /Dread master so yeah that excuse doesn't fly anymore .
Could be a problem that widespread in the Western Game development problem in relationships to Art though East Asian Games Market have a much lower tolerance for lazy art design for cultural reason. Granted one can argue mass effect suffer from the same issue and had millions pumped into it
(Female with Male Skeleton Animation , FemShepard running like a man , Like the artist couldn't be bothered to even flesh out there own hyper-realistic rendering fantasy with you know actual realism lol..in terms of structure gone into it . Nope long as the Guns shooting looks right ! )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gayz4s82LHs
(Horrible dirty texture that make the character look like they have bubonic plague )
Some excuses for this Bioware/EA game (It was designed for consoles )... well.I don't buy it since an artist works within the technology limits to make something look good via illusion .and Uncharted doesn't look like that , there alot of photo realistic game using the same hardware that doesn't look like that crap .(Even the Texture in Dragon Age 2 are better than that )
But yeah, fix it bio ware Free 2 play game live and die on cosmetic vanity ,trying to pan the crappy visual equipments in the cartel shop as something worth paying for is insulting lol. along with being too lazy to create specific helmet for the "Slightly alien Colored human " LOL. give us some proper head-ware for twileks. . I believe they can do it , At first I didn't believe it , But Terror From Beyond is Gorgeous and showed real effort put into it , Now half assed like it has been up to now.
As for Example of Twileks ? There countless but i'll just post two
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Here's the thing. BioWare really should be trying to compete with Guild Wars 2, their biggest free to play competitor right now, but they don't seem like they are even trying. Guild Wars 2 not only grants full UI access without additional cost to players, but also grants access to 5 character slots, and the ability to equip any armor in the game. Then there's unlimited access to instanced PvP and PvE content as well. Guild Wars 2 also handles their equivalent to "cartel packs" better. You have a chance to find both their random item boxes, as well as the keys to open them, within the game itself. Alternately, you can purchase the boxes, or the keys, individually in the cash shop as well, if you desire.
The only items in GW2 exclusive to the cash shop are cosmetic items like "town" equipment (equipment only shown off while in town, like an appearance tab) and mini-pets, barber shop "makeover" items, and some minor EXP boosts (which could be seen as pay-to-win, but they offer fairly insignificant gains.)
BioWare is seriously behind the 8 ball, here. I don't think they deserve much praise for this one change alone. In order to keep their hybrid F2P/sub model running, they obviously have to restrict some things for the free to play crowd. But, there are currently far too many restrictions for F2P players in SW:ToR to even begin to compare to the competition. Games which are completely free to play, and thus have absolutely no guaranteed source of cashflow, manage to offer far more options to their players than BioWare does to their free to play accounts. That has to change.
Surely, BioWare must see that their model isn't competitive right now with other F2P games on the market. I mean, it's not even close.
-Macheath.
That doesn't make any sense you have to still pay 60 dollars for Guild wars 2 and there No Free Trial what so ever it one of the reason I've never touched the game . It B2P ,Jesus how many times do people have to keep mentioning this ? TOR you can play for free literally download and try and make a character level as far as you liked , You can't do that with Guild wars 2. it is no a Free 2 play game it like saying Mass Effect is a Free 2 play game after you pay 69,99 to access it .
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Second that seems like the CS have fallen asleep on the job , Not sure why They tolerate they could be like Area net where they outright ban people for even using curse words . Can't be nice to people on the internet
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Yes, a large portion, which to me still is not a surprise considering as to how one simply doesn't need as many people working on the product after launch. As for the multiple times part, I think that's basically just a contractual thing. Not sure how things are in the US, however in Europe as a company you're better off to let someone's contract run out and have them keep on working for you, rather than firing then and needing to keep on paying them anyway whilst actively helping them to find a new job. In the US there are probably limitations set to firing someone as well, as in most likely not being financially beneficial.
As for what it means to a company, you apparently do need a degree in economics as it can go many, many ways.
It may be maximizing profit by cutting needless overhead, it may be forced lay-offs due to not being able to afford the overhead costs, projecting not being able to afford the overhead costs. It may be lay-offs due to the fact that those people in particular don't meet the qualifications to maintain employment on the products at hand. In part it may be the employees own choice. And there's many more viable reasons.
Of course it's nice to grab the first best reason you may think off which suits your belief, but as long as EA doesn't disclose their internal correspondation on the matter, it all holds as much value as the ramblings of the toilet lady at the subway station.
And the larger the number on such products, the larger the lay-offs close to launch or soon after launch have been.
The gaming industry has changed rapidly over the course of the past few years. Small development teams of roughly 20 - 30 men are no longer standard. Instead such a figure forms a core team. To which wandering vets get added for certain projects, vets which keep moving on a project by project basis. Along with the addition of several hundred artists, programmers, etc on temp contracts.
What does this lead to? Scenarios such as Blizzard firing 600 employees earlier this year. EA, Ubisoft, THQ, etc all laying off big number of employees on multiple projects. All of that, which due to people being so obsessed with doom & gloom, not just in terms of SWTOR, keep reaching gaming media headlines. Whilst the fact that at the same time the same companies are again hiring great numbers into other dev teams, is quickly forgotten and barely gets any media attention.
Shush !can't have logic , investigative journalism ,talks about economics and evidence , Gotta remember Gaming journalism is equivalent to that tabloid that talks about Brittney spears having a marriage with Big Foot lol.. It essentially Tabloid-ism since there is no money in actual journalism for an Entertainment product most writers are hobbyist with little professional training in journalism. , It not held to the same standards or even presenting multiple perspective to contrast bias , Rarely get that .
A good reviewer firstly present there own personal bias before stating anything (Eric Kain from Forbes does , of all places a financial magazine ) is who the target audience is , does it full-fill the target audience (or multiple audiences ) . Recognizing is is a Social product , Not some object that carry inherit qualities that make it Evil or bad or good or Perfect , Some people love Korean grinder for whatever reason , Terrible game for some ,great game for others . The more I see of Gaming press worse it seems to get , I remember a time where Euro-gamer only game 10s for something Extra-ordinary now anyone with enough money can buy a 10 and had a clear set criteria for what got what ... now ugh.. looks like IGN if not worse
First I'd argue is this Euro-gamer gave the game an 8 when it came out , meaning your criticism or praises in that review/criteria should be compared if you did another review or it reflect badly on the company. That the basis of a re-review give it a 4 , Firstly a review are subjective.So you gave it an 8 what exactly was your criteria for the original score , then you backpedal and call all the things you stated as good = bad now( Don't care if the same writer or a different writer it reflect on the credibility of the whole sites ,makes me think there degenerating into Fox-news or IGN) . Means I can't Trust the judgement of the reviewer or the site in itself there very little consistency in there point of view. very little open statements about prior bias of a particular writer . A reviewer is suppose to firstly state there bias ( there human beings ) secondly step away from the product and say well (I may not like it ) but Is it good for a certain audience ? Obviously someone playing the game since there always some grand controversial news article attracting 400 Comments and thousands of hits to read .
Second is it a slow news day or something ? Free 2 play came out in the 15th why is the review coming out near December ? reviews usually come out day 1 or at least day 2 . What the purpose of the review.
Anyway
I can dislike My Little Pony Cartoon since it not meant for my demographic , but my review should have little to do with that , I should state is a good shows for the target age group and comparable product then give a logical investigative news piece on why I believe that is . The problem with gaming press is the hobbyist writer can't separate there obsession with the gaming toys and step back away from it .
So you give it an 8 then review it and call all the same praises within the 8 horrible , then give vague comparison to other games and talk about how X or Y Game has a better story but gives nothing substantial in terms of writing to explain why you believe that . And how do you re-review a game let alone an MMO ? What is the Criteria to compare it to , What is the Criteria for an MMO that are suppose to change or expand on there original goals of specific structure of that MMO ? What the criteria of the piece beyond ( think this and this and this sucks ! )
You can ask several different people and they'll give you seven different opinions of what they consider a good MMO , Some belief EVE is the pinnacle of MMO, while other hate the game the grief and the directionless and unfriendliness to new player . Some will say GW2 is the greatest game ever , while other hate it lack of gear raid ,etc . Many people love WOW and are perfectly happily playing .All opinions ,since at the end of day good or bad are relative to the target audience or consumers , Not something you can "Prove " That why you state the target audience and who might like it or who might dislike it .
There nothing in that review ...Just comes off as a Rant , to get Sensationalized hits like most of the crap in the gaming press remind me of destructoid to be honest they do that alot . ,I'd like to say I am surprised by the poor journalistic ethics ,but I am not . Reads like some random forum post on TOR that get . Similar to posting something about the ME3 Ending pick something Controversy " Woman in gaming , COD is horrible ! " get a certain group riled up to get advertisement hits on the sites for a meaningless piece of fluff on a slow news-day. That simply what the Gaming press does .Next Game EA releases will most likely sale millions and they'll give it tens ,and they'll start attacking the angry fanbois on the internet , to get them to post rants and give them more web-hits because now this angry haters are now boiling mad that the game they release are selling millions and the Dark Lord EA is rising , Great for Web-hits to be honest . They did the Same thing on Mass effect 3 ,who they side with is all dependent on what will lead to the most web-hits and advertisement . With ME3 they almost universally sided with the publisher against the fans , Think Forbes was the only one who explored in detail if the fans had a valid point.
Doesn't read as someone exploring pros and cons of MMOS structures , How would you re-review WOW now ? Compared to Vanilla wow ,How would you re-review The Original EQ .
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I wasn't on to see this today, but i'll take your word for it. Either way, that's the most i've seen on since the first day of f2p.
This. So much this. Not even the articles, I avoid IGN like the plague. But any forums or gaming community on the web except these very forums will tell you how much of a laughing stock SWTOR is....and even some people here.
Honestly, some crappy article on wired quoting John Smedly from SOE as expert isn't what I consider journalism given that most gaming is barely journalism . Most gaming is essentially IGN , spin article to get web hits from angry nerds and arm-chair hobbyist writing . People love tabloid-ism it's an Entertainment form in it'self and shouting about the end of the world ,Last thing I'd would do is listen to people on an internet forum to make my consumer choices and most people don't "There is no community " just a bunch random individuals hiding in anonymity . Not people I trust or would like to know.
There countless article in the same vain for Nintendo , they release a Wii U and it sold out everywhere , next day " IS Nintendo DOOMED?!" It just what idiots do and it easy simple writing that require very little investigation proof or even evidence that would push it into the realm of good journalism. There basically professional rants for the most part with no journalism standard what so -ever . With Good reason , there very little money to be made as a internet journalism , there very little demand for critical analysis or anything it's entertainment writing , Not investigating corruption in Halliburton , scary enough American news isn't too far from that either news is Entertainment .
Anyway same can be said for Bio-ware . most of the games that gather a lot of hate sold extremely well including mass effect and the average person buying the game for ME3, probably isn't online writing petition for it even if they disliked the ending . It is that hardcore niche who feels obsessively about it and devote years of there life to the cause .
Even going to use WOW as an example the countless time I've heard Wow is gonna die.and doomsday prophecy like some raving cult lunatic .Literally ever year of the game even when it was peaking . You'd think WOW was some small dying Chinese game struggling to make it the way idiots on the internet would talk about the game ,despite consistently turning a profit and being basically stable.
And another thing why would large percentage of people pay attention to a forum community to be honest let alone this one ? People who pay monthly to have deep profound hatred for game. I just can't understand it something peculiar to gamers coming from a entertainment niche to spend literally years of there life stalking a game/publisher for-whatever reason . I dislike Final fantasy I am not sitting on there forums talking about how it the end of the world lol when FF13-2 made a decent profit just because I dislike a game personally. It is psychologically bizarre and I'll never understand these people and they should seek professional help. If I stop liking a game I stop talking about it like most normal people do, I say It sucks didn't like and I move on .
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Thanks OP for the article. It was simple and makes sense.
And it nicely sums up everything in the end.
Why minecraft and Sims are so popular, take a guess.
There not Cardboard boxes in the slightest , There an Engine that is programmed with limits , with content base , New houses new pets new decoration released by a publisher if were talking about the Sims. There are goals and mission to take ,Nothing Cardboard-box or imaginary about any of it when it comes to the sims( Down to the Fuzzy AI emulation of life Algorithms ) . And MineCraft ?most people who play minecraft probably use other people mods created by folks that are more talented than themselves who have skills in modeling or programming , . With Minecraft there is no cardboard box , just an offloading of content development onto hobbyist with the skill and time to create those mods to make it enjoyable. Same with Skyrim , Most of people that bought that game never made a mod or never will make a mod or even touched an art program for that matter.
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Soooooooo, its players fault that EA couldnt deliver what they promised to deliver?
Remember THEY repeated many times SWTOR would get 1 content update/month.
THEY were in full control of what kind of game to make, they chose the model (pure Theme Park) in which they either:
a) provide rapid game updates (much faster than fastest existing ones)
b) fail miserably
And, of course, b happened, as expected, and people HAVE COMPLETE RIGHT TO POINT OUT THE STINKER.
Nobody pointed a gun to their head and said "make a WoW clone". It was their OWN CONSCIOUS DECISION and all obligations and responsibilities were known. They failed and get picked on. THEIR OWN CHOICE.
I cant believe someone can defend bad product so fiercely, its really mind-boggling.
Honestly don't think there a huge audience for sandbox games beyond a lot of bitter nerd raging Vocal MMO veteran who grew up with those games and inhibit game forums because major companies have abandoned them (Kinda like the person who swears Atari was the greatest system ever since that what they experienced in there childhood ) .Even in there heyday they never got close to the amount of money games like Guild wars 2 pull in a single month or a single week , despite losing there population afterwards . Even with Eve Success is based on being a Hardcore PVP , Being Anti-Newbie or obsession with running a corporations and making as much in-game money . When it comes to the ultimate kind of sand boxing modding only about 1 % of the actual players have the design skill or even time to make very basic mod content, There a reason people pay /train professional to make content and artist to create content , It is time consuming and require a lot of energy and time that an everyday joe just doesn't have. Nor does everyone want to live in an aimless/ directionless world for some false sense of freedom there an audience for that ,but definitely not a large one , not large enough to fund large games at least .Anywa Most of my memories of SWG came from simply having absolutely nothing to do and grinding the same deathwatch bunker or random cave on Yavin and people talking about how great it was to have an alpha super jedi that could kill everything/grief .If that a sandbox then it seem to rely on the freedom of ganking and market competition as the driving reason to play the game along with the general social element.
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I highly doubt it, after all don't forget:
In Cataclysm Blizzard already began bleeding players rapidly, multi-million losses in subscriber figures. Recent release of MoP didn't bring in the desired success either.
Why? Because the game are genuinely bad? I don't think so.
I've said this many times before already as well over the last couple of years, and always the response is pretty much similar within communities, but I blame the gamer. In particular when it comes to MMO's the expectations are unrealistic, and not a single company will ever be able to fullfil that demand. Especially not considering there's not even a single demand, it's numerous conflicting desires.
Like, what is the community looking for? Well, it's obviously a full-fletched sandbox game in which content is community driven, there's full ongoing warfare open PvP, accompanied by delivery of months worths of massively difficult raids, prestige gear elements, no instancing, sublime performance on a core2duo with 2GB of RAM and a mobile GPU, questing with meaning, an impact on the world, exciting vistas, beautiful cities, player owned housing, guild housing, a developer driven story, hand-crafted landscapes, no forced PvP, prestige gear to come from crafting, a high focus on economy, etc.
So yeh, it's waiting for that developer who comes with:
- Full ongoing warfare open PvP, without forced PvP, and maintaining sublime performance on a core2duo, 2GB of RAM and a mobile GPU, which impacts the world yet fits in with a developer driven story.
- Massively difficult raids with prestige gear, which ultimately ought to be done to pieces by crafting.
- There ought to be no instancing, everything should be a single world, in which players should be able to build their houses and guild houses, yet the massive world to ensure everybody has a spot, shouldn't just be a typical korean grinder big-worlds generated plain.
If these were the 50's, people with ridiculous ideas like that would be locked up in an asylum. The demands are so ludicrous there's nothing to be done with it. Developers are desperately trying to please to a range of it in order to be able to maintain development costs of titles such as these, just to result in a scenario in which players who dislike the game will no longer just move on; no they make it their sole purpose to try and defile the game as best as they can, in many locations as they can, and have no rest till servers are ultimately shut down so they can go by and say "told you so".
To be fair, for many of those so-called MMO players these days, it feels as if tearing down MMO's has become the ultimate MMO for them.
And people like John Smedley can say whatever they want, but PS2 just as well will be tarnished by the community. My bets are going for:
- Not enough content.
- Repetitive.
- If I'd want to play a shooter, I'd play a quality shooter like CoD.
- Etc.
MMO communities have simply been let turned into the ghetto's of online gaming. Up till around 10 years ago, it was the FPS community which was very much like that.
Never seen so much truth posted in a post xD
Pretty much Bioware could turn around tomorrow and fix the problem with the game (Lag , Adding non-raid content like mini games , Same sex romance , Expanded Races and Appearances , and a Full 3D space , more than one way to level a character up to 50 or whatever )
and
You'd just have a completely new group of people finding new things to complain about just as loudly that where the worse company on Earth ,etc etc and they should die and burn .. That just what people do on the internet , it a form of Entertainment .
But anyway ,wouldn't Trust a word of Smedly ,I road the train wreck of SWG into a wall.
The Major Problem with games ( all games really not just MMOs ) is it expensive to make and demands of the player base have outpaced both common sense ,technology and internet infrastructure limits and budget limits . With Console games it not a problem since they only last for a month , but for MMO that have to last for years it is .There no real solution to any this but t think one solution would be this .
Mine-craft /hybrid Theme park(Offloading some of the content demands onto the player while allowing the developers to guide direct and still control the world. but this offloading is not just Throwing people into a world and telling them to be cut-throad capitalist and PVP gankers the way EVE is )
I think Mine-craft has a solution, the idea of giving a limited set development tools to gamers and having some kind of committee to overlook it and put the design in game .Bosses and other Concepts . This by itself could exist along side standard development theme-park content with voice over and stories balancing . Player come up with the Shell or basic concept via development tools and it can be submitted to the developers ,long as it doesn't violate any kind of rules could be put into the game . Could be as simple as adding planets with a simple terminal for quest , but all sort of star wars world could be added , to new faces and armor types . If you look at sky rim there are modder who put ridiculous amount of time in developer whole set of armor .(Probably a lot of legal stuff to setup though)
. (That about as close as you will ever get to mods in an MMO ) It a win-win situation , get new content to keep people busy ,along with the high quality prestige content that attaches people to voice acting and stories .
) 
Bioware's real Intent is finally coming to fruition...
in General Discussion
Posted
Eh there dumb and incompetent game designer , but there not idiots , they start losing subs then there goes the whole plan of story based content per month The Logic of there patch is the majority of the people playing are causal according to there metric only a tiny precentage do hardmode content or even ops , . They'll reverse it as quietly as possible to try to avoid it leaking onto game media . hence the complete silence .