Class specializations and lore accuracy

[VitalityPrime]

The Consular has a bunch of telekinetic abilities to match the Inquisitor's lightning, when I don't know if we've ever seen a Jedi fight solely with telekinesis before. The Knight has a "Force Lift" power that comes out of nowhere to match the Warrior's Force Choke. And so on. I think it was in ability design, not story design.

 

Yeah...watch the clone wars cgi series...Anakin uses Force Stasis.

Edited September 23, 2013 by VitalityPrime

[Zardac_the_Great]

I don't see how that applies to a single one of those archetypes.

 

You see this complaint come up a lot - or a variant of it, that the Pub stories in general are just inferior copies of Imp originals. It's a bizarre complaint, because there's not that much congruence between them. How in the world do the Knight and Warrior stories, for instance, even begin to look similar? What it does is say more about the people making the complaint than it does about the game.

 

I was talking about the characters, not the story or appearance.

 

 

I'm not saying it doesn't make sense from a gameplay perspective (it IS a bit disappointing), but I agree that Force Stasis is a good example. Instead of being something simply to hold your enemy in place for a while, it now...somehow...damages your opponent. It is simply a reskin of Force Choke. Even though it never has been before, at least to my knowledge.

 

Another example is Saber Storm. Force Screaming has been a Sith power since at least KOTOR2, so it gets put into the Sith lineup...but now we need something for the Jedi to have so we invent something new to do the same job because the Sith have it.

 

Again, it makes sense from a gameplay perspective, but it's still disappointing.

[VitalityPrime]

I was talking about the characters, not the story or appearance.

 

 

I'm not saying it doesn't make sense from a gameplay perspective (it IS a bit disappointing), but I agree that Force Stasis is a good example. Instead of being something simply to hold your enemy in place for a while, it now...somehow...damages your opponent. It is simply a reskin of Force Choke. Even though it never has been before, at least to my knowledge.

 

Another example is Saber Storm. Force Screaming has been a Sith power since at least KOTOR2, so it gets put into the Sith lineup...but now we need something for the Jedi to have so we invent something new to do the same job because the Sith have it.

 

Again, it makes sense from a gameplay perspective, but it's still disappointing.

 

So they added the damage for game mechanic balance. The power itself is still a power used by Jedi.

 

I can't say if blade storm was ever used by Jedi in any media...but the idea of it is definitely something a jedi could do.

 

I just don't see what is "disappointing" about this.

Edited September 23, 2013 by VitalityPrime

[Zardac_the_Great]

So they added the damage for game mechanic balance. The power itself is still a power used by Jedi.

 

They took what was in essence Force Lift as it appears in the game and made it a Damage ability. This is exactly like making a Flash/Bang grenade (stun) turn into a damage over time attack.

 

Stun abilities should not be made into damage abilities.

 

Though again, I do understand why they did it. That does not make me like changing the basic nature of an ability.

[VitalityPrime]

They took what was in essence Force Lift as it appears in the game and made it a Damage ability. This is exactly like making a Flash/Bang grenade (stun) turn into a damage over time attack.

 

Stun abilities should not be made into damage abilities.

 

Though again, I do understand why they did it. That does not make me like changing the basic nature of an ability.

 

It's a 1 min cooldown.

 

The damage is definitely a plus...but it's "basic nature" is still definitely for stopping all action of an enemy for 3 seconds.

[Stinghen]

People take the force powers in the game's skill set for granted. Five (or more) different incarnations of Force Lightning (shock, electrocute, Force lightning, lightning strike and chain lightning) is also not seen anywhere but here, but people don't complain. The truth is that most of these abilities never come into play into other lore sources than videogames, and abilities within a videogame exist solely for one purpose: game balance.

 

I personally do not consider them as anything more than balance elements, just as I consider the inspirations for the particular classes nothing more than surface inspirations that absolutely do not come into play when considering game balance.

 

Clear-cutting every class and every role trying to fit previous lore into the restrictive game mechanics is a step back from the diversity expected from a galactic-spanning population Nomi Sunrider was identified as a Consular, yet she wore Jedi armour of the same sort of Ulic Qel-Droma's (a notable Jedi Guardian). Yoda was a master lightsabre duelist and identified also as a consular. Anakin was a vergence in the Force and still a Jedi Guardian. Maul used Force push and no lightning, and several prominent Sith Warriors from other times were capable of using lightning (as Darth Bane), and Darth Zannah (perhaps the best example) was a sorceress who wielded a dual-bladed lightsabre and was a master of Soresu. But that does not take a single bit from the inspiration to the classes, that remain the same, and were stated countless times before by the devs.

[AlrikFassbauer]

I'm not saying it doesn't make sense from a gameplay perspective (it IS a bit disappointing), but I agree that Force Stasis is a good example. Instead of being something simply to hold your enemy in place for a while, it now...somehow...damages your opponent. It is simply a reskin of Force Choke. Even though it never has been before, at least to my knowledge.

 

Another example is Saber Storm. Force Screaming has been a Sith power since at least KOTOR2, so it gets put into the Sith lineup...but now we need something for the Jedi to have so we invent something new to do the same job because the Sith have it.

 

Again, it makes sense from a gameplay perspective, but it's still disappointing.

 

The underlying problem - like the Force Scream, for example, is the "the evil one gets the toys" problem, combined with an "good is boring".

 

It even goes down to the "The villain makes the plot" trope : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheHeavy?from=Main.PlotDrivingVillain

 

The thing is, that incomics, books, movies, etc. the evil ones get new things, new toys, new abilities, everything -

- meanwhile the good side does not.

 

James Bond (at least the movies) is the only exception to this rule I know of.

 

In the case of Force Scream this means : The villain drives the plot - because he or she is evil - and therefore needs to get a new ability which becomes a danger the good ones must battle against. Without them getting new abilities, of course, because otherwise it wouldn't be a challenge.

 

The bad ones get the new abilities solely to provide challenges - this is meta-thinking, now - for the good ones.

And challenges = conflicts, and modern stories are about NOTHING BUT conflicts. Which are - of course - driven / pushed forward by the villain.

 

In SWTOR, however, the designers have followed these tropes FAR TOO MUCH - with the result that the "Good Ones" needed similar abilities, because they had to be MIRROR classes.

 

And that went wrong, because in the Expanded Universe, exclusively the Bad Ones get exceptional abilities, NOT the "Good Ones" ! (There are a few exceptionbs, though, like the Dark Woman, for example.)

 

So, no-one had examples from either the movies or from Expanded Universe for the "Good Ones".

 

Which forced the developing team to invent new abilities. Telekinesis does exist - on Bespin you see Darth Vader use it, on Geonosis you see Darth Tyranus use it. But you NEVER see a Jedi use it (or at least I don't remember).

The only exception would be Yoda on Dagobah (and a very brief scene around the Jedi Temple on Coruscant).

[Xakthul]

Jedi who had telekinesis:

 

Luke (V and VI)

Obi-Wan (I-IV)

Yoda (II, III, V)

Ahsoka (Clone Wars)

Mace Windu (II and III)

 

And that's just on TV. Not even going into EU stuff.

[Euphrosyne]

James Bond (at least the movies) is the only exception to this rule I know of.

Not as much of an exception as you'd think. James Bond, especially in the Connery incarnation, was basically a bad guy who happened to be on the "right" side (the side of Queen, Country, and Empire, instead of the side of causing chaos and making money). He repeatedly engages in sexual abuse and rape, he tortures his enemies for information, he commits casual murder, and he does all this largely as a loose cannon, not being particularly concerned with following direct orders from his superiors.

 

Now, to be sure, when the Connery movies first came out, there was very little that was "bad" about them. Bond was a glamorous hero. He was a role model for kids, especially young boys. A lot of his attitudes about enemies, women, etc. were simply the "prevailing attitudes of the time". But try going into one of those older movies "cold", without really thinking about them in a 1960s context. I mean, the entire reason he foils Goldfinger's plot to seize Fort Knox is because he rapes a lesbian woman (and turns her straight because lololol). Or take a look at Dr. No, when he casually orders the black Jamaican fisherman/spy - and his ally - Quarrel to "fetch his shoes". In any movie, the unwitting pawns of the Big Bad are fair game for casual murder - unless they're women, in which case they get to be saved on account of being eye candy.

 

The franchise started taking a serious look at this image starting in the late 1980s, but it's really only the Craig movies that have tampered with the usual Bond tropes in a way that makes it seem as though they recognize that Bond is effectively a bad guy - and even then, they play an awful lot of stuff straight.

 

So, yes, I would say that Bond qualifies as a bad guy, and him getting shiny toys to play with certainly fits in with the rest of your trend.

[Xakthul]

SW good guys (outside of Jedi) who get cool toys:

 

Han Solo: The Millennium Falcon. 'Nuff said.

Chewie: Bowcaster, Claws, Holochess.

R2-D2: Is an arsenal of weapons, tools, and bada**ery.

C-3P0: Is a little *****, but he's painted gold. Gold is nice.

Padme: Big shiny *********** starship. 'Nuff said.

[Stinghen]

SW good guys (outside of Jedi) who get cool toys:

 

Han Solo: The Millennium Falcon. 'Nuff said.

Chewie: Bowcaster, Claws, Holochess.

R2-D2: Is an arsenal of weapons, tools, and bada**ery.

C-3P0: Is a little *****, but he's painted gold. Gold is nice.

Padme: Big shiny *********** starship. 'Nuff said.

 

You forgot a rather long list of other toons.

 

Every Jedi ever:

 

Lightsabers. Can't get much cooler than that xD