PLAYER GAMEPLAY...(General Overview)

I just wanted to get your initial opinions on the "combat" gameplay shown so far in SWToR...

I actually think they should work on the upper bodies of the avatars. They are running all over the place, yet, never seem to move their arms in a jogging motion. Its a neat pose, but man, your arms would get tired constantly in a "i'm ready and looking cool" mode. Comments?

Also, I think the actual fighting "specials", and "animation" looks awesome! From the "impale" of the sabers, to the "hide shot" of the smugglers. It looks vastly better than the other MMO's I've experienced.
Comments?


(Actual TOR Combat Gameplay)--->


Cheers!

They call it Heroic Running

Nice article and excellent manifesto.

lol, Darka.

Actually, I have 2 theories for the "stiff" running: they have a technical limitation or they just didn't upload the new animations, because they are not ready yet or they haven't reached that milestone yet.

Because Dragon Age 2 use some those running animations and the upper body and arms move a bit. A mage with a staff run like a force user with a double bladed lightsaber and a rogue dual wielding run like a force user dual wielding. It look more natural.

The other animations are simply beautiful, I really like the Jedi Knight elegant fighting style, but I'm still wary of the end result. Individually, the animations looks good, but the actual combat result might end up weird looking, Uncanny Valley rules: looks too natural, so the tiniest "error" stand out a lot.

azarhal wrote:

lol, Darka.

Actually, I have 2 theories for the "stiff" running: they have a technical limitation or they just didn't upload the new animations, because they are not ready yet or they haven't reached that milestone yet.

That what I feel is probably happening, because they've said they're still working on the animations.

Personally, I've seen some leaked beta footage of an SI fighting 4 melee opponents at once, and it really doesn't look that bad while you're actively engaged in combat. He was moving around a blocking various attacks with his saber quite well even when moving through them etc.

Running around though, and you notice the insanely rigid upper body, and the cloak/robes around the legs still look stiff and stuck to a players leg.

Thx for the Comments,

I was just throwing that out there to see if I was the only one noticing that. By no means am I bagging on the game. I know its not even in Beta testing yet, so, I think they will hopefully "fine tune" the running animations. If not, Oh well, I guess my toons going to be constantly ready for some nuna to jump out and gank him!

Lol Darka!!

Thx Zeph!

Kai, yeah, I noticed the cloaks too...

Az', I totally agree...the landscapes are stunning....

They're getting better when it's not a full robe, but the SI robes around the legs for that one particular look just don't work at all.

Consular's robe during the Multiplayer demo was doing it too, but I feel they probably know about it.

The cloak/robe "leg sticking" is probably going to stay that way. It's related to the object mesh and texturing and so far it look 100 times better than in a lots of games. Most games don't bother with having robes or cloaks, anyway.

azarhal wrote:

The cloak/robe "leg sticking" is probably going to stay that way. It's related to the object mesh and texturing and so far it look 100 times better than in a lots of games. Most games don't bother with having robes or cloaks, anyway.

While it isn't horrible, they could have it work a little better by having it stretch a bit better maybe. I'm fine if it goes live with it, in any case.

I'm no game designer though, so, take what I have to say about rendering/etc with a grain of salt.

Schwendo wrote:

I just wanted to get your initial opinions on the "combat" gameplay shown so far in SWToR...

I actually think they should work on the upper bodies of the avatars. They are running all over the place, yet, never seem to move their arms in a jogging motion. Its a neat pose, but man, your arms would get tired constantly in a "i'm ready and looking cool" mode. Comments?

Also, I think the actual fighting "specials", and "animation" looks awesome! From the "impale" of the sabers, to the "hide shot" of the smugglers. It looks vastly better than the other MMO's I've experienced.
Comments?


(Actual TOR Combat Gameplay)--->


Cheers!

Hope I never run into that smiley-face sith in-game..

azarhal wrote:

lol, Darka.

Actually, I have 2 theories for the "stiff" running: they have a technical limitation or they just didn't upload the new animations, because they are not ready yet or they haven't reached that milestone yet.

Because Dragon Age 2 use some those running animations and the upper body and arms move a bit. A mage with a staff run like a force user with a double bladed lightsaber and a rogue dual wielding run like a force user dual wielding. It look more natural.

The other animations are simply beautiful, I really like the Jedi Knight elegant fighting style, but I'm still wary of the end result. Individually, the animations looks good, but the actual combat result might end up weird looking, Uncanny Valley rules: looks too natural, so the tiniest "error" stand out a lot.

Hopyfully they just haven't upload the new anims.

Kai-Sun wrote:

While it isn't horrible, they could have it work a little better by having it stretch a bit better maybe. I'm fine if it goes live with it, in any case.

I'm no game designer though, so, take what I have to say about rendering/etc with a grain of salt.

Everybody have the right to have opinions about things, especially visual ones, I do think it look a bit weird myself.

But I have high tolerance for "bugs" in games, being a computer programmer and all that come with it. I love to say that I make bugs.

azarhal wrote:

But I have high tolerance for "bugs" in games, being a computer programmer and all that come with it. I love to say that I make bugs.

Oh I have an exceptionally high tolerance. I'm pretty laid back about just everything. Been in the Beta of quite a few games and, things change so quickly and the amount of work people put in is staggering. Bugs and all.

Some bugs are awesome, even if they don't make it to live

azarhal wrote:

Kai-Sun wrote:

While it isn't horrible, they could have it work a little better by having it stretch a bit better maybe. I'm fine if it goes live with it, in any case.

I'm no game designer though, so, take what I have to say about rendering/etc with a grain of salt.

Everybody have the right to have opinions about things, especially visual ones, I do think it look a bit weird myself.

But I have high tolerance for "bugs" in games, being a computer programmer and all that come with it. I love to say that I make bugs.

Well your tolerance is only equalled by my own, who then has to test you programmers software......yes, as someone who helped me out for one day once said....'You must have the patience of a saint' lmao.

Bugs do not bother me in the slightest, I expect them, and then report them when I find them, the one thing that does annoy me with them though, is when you report them, spend hours doing a ton of PD (Problem Diagnosis) and so on, and then months and months go by without anyone even trying to fix it.....

Still this is a game, not my work, heheheh, so I will just report them, then be on my way

<---Luga, that guy is like uber high level, hehe


I also am no "stickler" for too much detail, just posting a "I hope it get fixxed" comment...

and bugs are awesome (not the ones IG)...

Darka wrote:

They call it Heroic Running

Seriously though, judging from the amount of thread/posts on the official forums, you're not alone in having these concerns.

If it's any comfort, animations are often one of the very last things getting polished in game development, so IMO we can probably expect them to be worked upon until the very last days before release.

Thing is, animations depend greatly on other more fundamental mechanics (combat abilities for example) which are likely to get tweaked and altered up until release... so if they were to polish animations before all that other stuff is "set in stone", chances are they'd just have to redo it all later.

Cheers

SE

Thx SE for posting that info...I agree....not whining..or..worrying...just "noticing"

That is a pretty good point, SE, probably why they said they'd still be polishing the game right up until release, and mentioned they had more animation work to do.

I'm pretty happy with the game as is, but the more polish will just help from here on out.

I'm really excited.

I don't mind if some animations are a little clumsy.

So what if running is a little stiff, even at launch? They can still patch it up then. I'd be more worried if it launches with serious bugs in it.

I remember one of the first videos, running through green walls to enter another zone, I'd be more worried if those were still in all the videos, but not much more. Last vid that had something like that was the "kill the captain" dev walkthrough (from where the republicans spawned). Though as long as it's limited I can live with those as well.

All the threads (on the SW:TOR official forums) on the "stiff" animations and not a single "Steven Stiffler" or "Stiffler's Mom" remark that I've seen. Amazing!

Sylrah wrote:

(from where the republicans spawned)

Is it bad that I want to somewhat style my Trooper after Ronald Reagan?

The "green walls" and "red walls" indicate personal instances that you have access too or not, they act like and looks like forcefields (from the leak I have seen they changed and animated them).

That's actually something I find really good about the Hero Engine: no loading screens (or just a few of them).

Back then they didn't look like forcefields at least, except maybe the one in the dev walkthrough (didn't see it in a while).

But I clearly remember the green one to be pure green, wouldn't call that a forcefield. But that was what I saw as Alpha footage anyway, so I completely expected that to change sooner or later anyway. Don't know how it looks now, but if it's at least partially see-through I'll be happy enough.

And yes, the no loading screens (aka seamless transitioning) is a great plus.

Ty-Odi wrote:

Bugs do not bother me in the slightest, I expect them, and then report them when I find them, the one thing that does annoy me with them though, is when you report them, spend hours doing a ton of PD (Problem Diagnosis) and so on, and then months and months go by without anyone even trying to fix it.....

Bold emphasis added.

The lack of fixing is when bugs do bother me.

Quotes from various Happy New Year posts from Rich Vogel, Executive Producer, Star Wars Galaxies:
..... We have worked hard to have an open dialogue with our community and involve them in the development of this game, from the early phases of design, all the way through the last stage of beta. We made it our goal to always be open and direct with our players, to listen to the comments and to be guided by the impressions of the community. It is you who helped us make this game and we want to say thank you.
..... Over the next few months, we'll be adding content, finding and fixing bugs, and working to establish a healthy live community that will continue to guide our development efforts. I hope you will participate on our message boards--this is your galaxy, and we want to hear what you think.
..... My major disappointment this year was not getting the Combat Upgrade done before JTL was out. That was our original plan but after reviewing the initial design we realized that combat was going to be a deep change that would affect the majority of systems in the game. This combat upgrade is requiring lots of implementation, iteration, and testing time and we have been working on it since the end of Publish 9. Our goals are that it will be fun, engaging and rewarding before we release it to our players.
..... Going forward, 2004 is looking to be a great year for us. With the launch and post launch features behind us, we can concentrate on three major elements. The first is adding more content and features to the game. We are solidifying our monthly publish schedule and I'm excited by the things that are coming up. Expect to see a new publish Theme every month and well as a new dungeon. This will include the Imperial Crackdown this month and the Droid Invasion next month.

Of course there might have been more but for some reason I stopped keeping copies of the promises sometime in 2005.

I can live with the animations as is, but I will admit that, for some reason, I detest the power attack flip animation they imported from KOTOR.

Godric_Barbarosa wrote:

I can live with the animations as is, but I will admit that, for some reason, I detest the power attack flip animation they imported from KOTOR.

Is it still in the game? I remember them saying that was temporary until they made something better. It really doesn't work with the rest of the animations for the Jedi Knight. It's too crude.