A Solution To Railing About Space?

Hey, Ty-Odi and Archfikos, I've resurrected the TOR forum "Space V2.0 (If it ever happens) thread and here's why:

from http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/33881/LucasArts_Hires_Tomb_Raider_Franchise_Director_For_Unannounced_Game.php

LucasArts told Gamasutra on Friday that it hired on Crystal Dynamics' former Tomb Raider creative and franchise director Tim Longo as creative director on an unannounced project.

It's not the first time that Longo has worked with LucasArts. He previously worked on LucasArts-published titles including Star Wars: Starfighter and Jedi Starfighter as lead designer, and was creative director on Star Wars: Republic Commando.

Longo even has a LucasArts credit as a playtester on the original X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter from the late 1990s. A LucasArts rep said in a statement that the company is "thrilled to welcome him back to the LucasArts family."

Why point that out? Look at these posts in the Space V2.0 thread from last September.
First, there was this from Archfikos:
[completely improbable speculation]
Maybe one thing that could be done would be to release a completely optional expac with only space content, maybe developed in conjunction with an experienced space game developer.
[/completely improbable speculation]

Not that I expect the above, but what the heck

And then this from yours truly:
Okay, since you've voiced one completely improbably speculation, try this one:

LucasArts is an experienced space game developer. They've already announced they plan to make all future Star Wars games in-house.

[begin completely improbable speculation #1]
Speculate that LucasArts makes a new full-blown Star Wars space game. BioWare makes a small expac for SWTOR. That expac has one purpose: to directly import/export to/from the LucasArts space game with SWTOR characters and game results.

LucasArts gets to sell their game. BioWare gets to sell an expac. BioWare doesn't have to devote major resources to developing a space game. Neither company competes against the other. Those that want a full SWTOR space component have it. Those that prefer the existing tunnel/tube/rail have that.
[end completely improbable speculation #1]

[begin completely improbable speculation#2]
Now, if you really like far-out speculation as a hobby, speculate that is what the two companies have already planned for several years.
[end completely improbable speculation #2]
:jawa_biggrin:

Aha! We can now upgrade from completely improbable to wildly improbable ... yet not impossible.

I believe this is way off. I don't see this happening.

Guild Capital Space Ships are coming Grome (just not on release day)...

Although, I suspect it won't be that much different from the on-rail stuff for xpac space content.

I know, even If I'm not responding to everything I'm reading these forums

Guild ships have however nothing to do with a full open space expansion which I believe will never come. The devs were pretty convincing and I think it would really not be worth the effort.

Alright, then again, It's true they might change or add things to space - which I fully expect (well with guild ships announced it is more or less confirmed).

The rumor mill sparketh! I hope they do a ton more with space...just my 02.

Very interesting

We can but hope i suppose!!! hehe

Honestly I think not having a slightly more dynamic and impressive space content option for a Star Wars game is actually stupid to be honest. Yes I know many have no interest in space, i never did either until JTL hit in SWG, I was always a ground based player, and honestly JTL was as welcome as that irritating office person coming over to ask you the same question a 100 times over when i first heard about it.

But you know what? I was far from the only sceptic who was converted when it finally did come out. It was different, flying around in my little tie fighter was actually a lot of fun. Making space ships became my first ever crafting profession. It actually opened up my horizons. This can never be a bad thing?

And the best thing about that experience, was that it did not impact the ground based game in any way. If you loved space, it was awesome. If you did not? Well simply don't go up in it. It honestly made no difference to you one way or the other.

If you can put something into an MMO which would make a ton of people happy, but without impacting those who don't wish to do it, I just don't see an arguement for not doing so? That is one of my main pet hates with certain people on the main forums. They act on the basis that if something in game is not personally something they want, if it is something that does not interest them, they could not care less about the fact that it might just make an awful lot of other people very happy. its incredibly selfish. Yes I don't want something added which may throw the games developement back several more months, but honestly? They have the entire team who made JTL for SWG working for them, what on earth are they doing with them?? They could surely make something which was at least equal to JTL, and do so without impacting the development of the main ground based game, make them their own team. Heck, even sell it after as an add on for those who want it, and justify their expense that way?

I am sorry, but an on rails experience for space will be dated, and boring within a few days. Replayablilty will be almost zero. Adding dead content like this is simply pointless. A Space content which had almost endless replayablilty for some people like JTL did, and made so many people happy?

Well thats surely a better use of time and resource?

Just my 2 pence

Well, I'm certainly interested to know what they have planned for space because obviously there is so much to be done there and at some point they are gonna give us more.

I understand it is not necessary or viable to make a more extensive space experience for release. But I wouldn't trash the current model of space experience yet. Play it, then rate it.

It seems inevitable they will do make some additions though. It's certainly something to look forward to.

I hear ya, but so far the "tunnel shooter" is'nt grabbing my imagina'schwen...

I feel like I need to put another quarter in to "continue", hehe. I have'nt ruled out anything as of now...it's still too early to "over speculate".

I think we can all agree the space game is just a sort of mini-game at this time. But it's probably the best mini-game ever in an MMO or even any game. It looks fantastic and has different missions and environments.

I'm just saying it is undeservedly being bashed. For what it is, I think it is fantastic.


I'm pretty sure we can expect space pvp to be introduced somewhere down the road. Whatever it may look like.

I'm not sure if I want a "JTL" in TOR. It just doesn't work with the kind of game TOR is (i.e. theme park).

A couple of free from flight map with objectives will be grand though. And they can copy Black Prophecy controls scheme for mouse+keyboard, it work pretty well. In fact, it's exactly like driving a character with wasd, you just have to check to not collide with stuff and use the barrel roll once in a while...

Grome wrote:

I believe this is way off. I don't see this happening.

I don't see it happening either, which is why the whole thing was labelled as wild speculation in the first place. It's just ironically amusing to note that the game which declares itself as having everything for every Star Wars fan might be beaten to the space punch by an XWing-Tie Fighter update?!?

Again, wildly improbable, but with just enough fact tossed in to make a conspiracy guessing game of it ... kind of like blaming the Mafia for killing U.S. President Kennedy.

For TOR, I expected and would have been happy with a multiplayer KotOR turret. Being in the turret is a good Star Wars film adaptation for a game. Flying and controlling a whole ship could also be a good Star Wars adaptation, unless it was on rails or single player only or something really odd like that.

Well, being in the turret is not that much different than piloting a ship on rails.

I do hope they expand that component some day. It's a very big part of SW but won't be in TOR, for now.

Hey guys & gals,

I haven't posted in a while, but I figured I couldn't resist chiming in on this subject.

• I agree with the sentiment that it's selfish in the extreme for non-space supporters to actually not even want it as an option; but really, I don't expect anything else from a lot of the current generation of gamers.
  
  
• As for "a JTL in tOR" and whether or not "it works"... sorry, I think that's somewhat irrelevant IMO.
  The thing of it is, free-flight -- however it is done -- would need to integrate into the style of the game, (but not the game itself if it's to be optional), and I see no reason why the development team would not take that into their design philosophy while building it. There's nothing at all that is a "mismatch" regarding a FPS space game to the ground game except that: style. Style can easily be adapted. As for the challenges of development...?
  Volition Inc. managed to make a visually stunning, competitive PvE/PvP game that was completely playable over a 14.4k modem back in 1998. (FreeSpace and FreeSpace II). The "theme park" in space can be easily done, and these games prove it. You can rest assured that the budget for that was far, far less than even the "Rail Shooter" tOR has, let alone JTL. JTL was a very poor copy of that (with crafting of parts added in) 6 years later, despite improved connections and faster/more powerful computers.
  Quite frankly, the "rail shooter" was poorly thought out; clearly someone higher up the ladder thought it was adequate and felt the way the anti-space posters on the main forums felt, so since SW games *must* have a space component, we got the cheapest method of throwing it in there. Poor decision was poor.
  
  
• Here's the fun part:
  While more people in all polls posted in the main forums to date are decisively against than "absolutely must have", the total of votes *still* shows that about half support FPS space in some form (ranging from YES to "meh, I'd try it"), while approximately only 3/8 of the forum base is actively against it. Decisively less than half the forum voters. While it's only a sample, the sample is large enough to warrant paying attention.
  
  Now, BW has shown themselves to be attentive to the desires of the players (Jedi Sage vote, anyone?), so it is not at all a stretch to presume they are working on updating / redesigning the space combat. If they WERE doing so, there's another guarantee you can take to the bank: They would not say a word about it out of house until they had something to release, as their track record proves.

So, the long and the short of it is: IMO, we're going to get improved space (a la FPS).
It's just a matter of *when* and *how much*.
Wild speculation wasn't that wild...

Velaxi wrote:

...There's nothing at all that is a "mismatch" regarding a FPS space game to the ground game except that: style. Style can easily be adapted. As for the challenges of development...?

I agree strongly with most of what you said. However, I believe there is one technicality you have overlooked in this statement. Introducing an FPS component completely re-defines the lag requirements of the game. With what they have now you should still be functional up to about 1300 - 1400ms of lag. The moment you go FPS you need to pick the server that can support 100-200ms restrictions.

As regards the "mismatch" word itself, adding an FPS component changes the game's reflex requirements from "timed chess match" to "the quick and the dead". Which I don't necessarily have a problem with. I enjoy FPSes and so long as it is not a required or strongly rewarded aspect of gameplay people without strong reflex times could simply ignore this aspect of the game.

What matters about this is that people could be forced to choose servers based on performance, rather than preference. That said, it looked to me that the rail shooter may already have introduced that to the game. /worry

EDIT: For grammarlessness.

Well, as I said... I was able to play FS & FS2 over a 14.4k connection back in the day, though it was sometimes a bit rough.
It got better when I could connect at 33.6k. So, consider your average connection (broadband) compared to that...
It can be done.

Besides that, the average player usually has a ping somewhere around 250ms - 350ms, which isn't so bad.
1400ms is really, really bad connection, and people *should* be moving to a server that gives them lower numbers, IMO. Even the ground game's flashpoints and raids will give people serious issues with a connection like that.

On top of that, as long as it isn't a one-shot-kill scenario (like JTL) in PvP, it really shouldn't present that much of a problem, IMO. There will always be people who are better in some way at *any* game type, whether it be reflex-based, rail-shooter, click-fest, what have you. In JTL I was the 2nd or 3rd person to hit Ace when it came out, and I bought it the day after release and solo'd the whole thing. Most people (are) were incapable of that. So I wrote forum guides to help people (which are still linked in the stickied "Pilot Academy" lol). I helped people with their tougher missions. I tought others to fly more competently, and gear their ships more effectively. In the end, people without "strong reflex times" ended up enjoying the space aspect as much as anybody else. They just stayed away from PvP...

That's the thing about the space-FPS game: if it's not instanced per-person (like the rail shooter), people can do it in groups and have a blast, even if ... well, even if they suck.
________________________

The original "Mismatch" point though was to address Azarhal's point...:

azarhal wrote:

I'm not sure if I want a "JTL" in TOR. It just doesn't work with the kind of game TOR is (i.e. theme park).

Which, as I said, given the examples of other games, can easily be accomplished (theme-park) in an open-space, first person shooter type of space game.... which, to be fair, is *just like* the ground game, while (IMO) the Tunnel Shooter is the mismatch, being restricted.


P.S.:
This is why I don't post about the space game on the main forums... I just cannot shut up... lol!
Peace,

I never said theme-park FPS game can't be done, I said that JTL like space game didn't match with TOR, i.e. sandbox space games.

I'm actually playing a theme park FPS right now (Black Prophecy) and I think the format would work great for TOR as does the control it use (really smooth for mouse/keyboard so far), The "instanced" quest map (PvP, solo, small group and clan sized) would really fit if designed correctly.

Then people just have to deal with the "3D".

azarhal wrote:

I never said theme-park FPS game can't be done, I said that JTL like space game didn't match with TOR, i.e. sandbox space games.

I'm actually playing a theme park FPS right now (Black Prophecy) and I think the format would work great for TOR as does the control it use (really smooth for mouse/keyboard so far), The "instanced" quest map (PvP, solo, small group and clan sized) would really fit if designed correctly.

Then people just have to deal with the "3D".

Yeah, I'm fiddling around with BP also.
Pretty decent, insofar as that goes. I'm not fond of the PvP though, it was a bit of a surprise to find the forced PvP, and getting myself blown away by groups of players 3-6 levels higher than I was.

Of course, I went into it with little-to-no research, hoping to get the best "newcomer" experience.

I did really love the storyline, was pretty sweet the first play through.

And yeah, "sandbox" has its perquisites, but there would need to be a heavier element of theme park for tOR than JTL offered.

I think you both have interesting points.

For myself, I do pretty well at CS:S. I know if my ping goes over 100 my score starts dropping. Therefore I could definitely see an FPS element in the game affecting my server choices... which could make building The RiG much more difficult.

I do suspect that they can find a format that works within the MMO community context, I just hope that the Devs keep it in mind if they build an FPS element. For that matter I hope the rail shooter isn't TOO ping dependent.