Hands-on time epicness!

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5974896#edit5974896

I wont spoil the details here <3

Gamewiz will have a great time compiling all the info

TIP: click on the link for a specific hand-on experience and change the "post" in the URL to "edit" and click enter, it will take you straight to the correct post in the page.

edit: Somebody said that Female Imperial Agent is voiced by FemHawke (Jo Wyatt). I'm so rolling one now...

Well this contained the most awesomest news ever!

We'll be allowed to replace party members with companions. This will ease grouping issues if it works well. I definitely see the Healer being the one who needs to supply the companion due to Presence. It does put some stress on Healers to develop their companions since I expect they will be expected (I guess I expect a lot, lol!) to bring their companion, and need to have at least one for each role they want to replace.

Also, TORWars has a transcript of Erickson clarifying some gameplay matters. Here's the link.

I'm definitely curious about how well 3 players and 1 companion will work now.

The companions replacing actual players on flashpoints is a really nice idea, that will certainly help those people with a tight schedule. They did say that they will not be as efficient as an actual player tho.

Oh, the Sweetness!!!!

Aldemarran wrote:

Well this contained the most awesomest news ever!

We'll be allowed to replace party members with companions. This will ease grouping issues if it works well. I definitely see the Healer being the one who needs to supply the companion due to Presence. It does put some stress on Healers to develop their companions since I expect they will be expected (I guess I expect a lot, lol!) to bring their companion, and need to have at least one for each role they want to replace.

I think I'm not following? I thought presence was something everyone in your party benefits from, i.e. also companions other players provide.

Grome wrote:

Aldemarran wrote:

Well this contained the most awesomest news ever!

We'll be allowed to replace party members with companions. This will ease grouping issues if it works well. I definitely see the Healer being the one who needs to supply the companion due to Presence. It does put some stress on Healers to develop their companions since I expect they will be expected (I guess I expect a lot, lol!) to bring their companion, and need to have at least one for each role they want to replace.

I think I'm not following? I thought presence was something everyone in your party benefits from, i.e. also companions other players provide.

I had not gotten that impression from what I've read. I had therefore just assumed that your stats affected your companion.

Aldemarran wrote:

I had not gotten that impression from what I've read. I had therefore just assumed that your stats affected your companion.

Mmh, possible, I'll have to read up.

Don't get me wrong, I like playing healers and I like gathering companions. The only thing that worries me personally is developing "reputation" with companions. I remember reading that your "reputation" or whatever they called it with companions affects their performance. In DA2 and to some extent even in DA1 I somehow tended to play character concepts that spend equal amounts of time ticking off and making happy, never achieving either rivalry or friendship.

So one worry is that RP may slide to be a good healer in groups. However the diplomacy trade may provide an alternative since it allows you to earn light or dark side points. It therefore may offer a way to work on companion's friendship or reputation (or whatever its called) rating. Of course that may push people to take that trade skill over others...

The other is that there will be an imbalance of demand on healers vs. other roles. This is pretty standard in MMOs though, and a very small concern.

Dresgar wrote:

The companions replacing actual players on flashpoints is a really nice idea, that will certainly help those people with a tight schedule. They did say that they will not be as efficient as an actual player tho.

I actually like that, right now, we can bring companions in flashpoint as a substitute...but at the same time they moved away from what they promised: a soft trinity.

/warning ranting

You realize that Companions are now only good for crafting, selling your junk and picking up nodes while you are defending the spot. Companions were supposed to soften the trinity (when it was 4 players + 4 companions), with this feature removed, it mean the game is now hard-Trinity for all group play. The setup for a group is invariable too: tank, off-tank/DPS, healer and DPS.

There's more off-tank than tank.
There's as many healers as there is off-tank.
There's more pure DPS then anything else and it's the less required role.

Most people will role DPS or DPS-hybrid, because it's the most useful for the levelling game. Which mean most players will be useless in endgame content and flashpoints for groups. It's like BioWare just realized that most people don't want to be tank or healer, so they decided to make more healers and tank/off-tank class so more people play them. They forgot that you can't force a playstyle on somebody...

In fact, Damion Schubert love the trinity so much that he forgot his conclusion that the trinity failed in WoW because their is too many DPS and that this is why they can't find groups...

The game went from "iconic class", to soft trinity, to hard trinity in less then 2 years. They are going more and more toward "for stupid" (aka tank&spank or "we lack imagination to come up with better encounters"). Just look at the awesome Smuggler in the Taral V flashpoint who spend all his time doing nothing beside clicking his heal button. And I don't believe them when they said that they have other type of encounters or that other strategy work, we saw 2 different flashpoints so far and both used Tank&Spank and they both require true healbot to take down the nerfed boss. The mechanics changed too much since the Black Talon to be used as a reference...

They changed the class setup at least 3 time already. Once because they wanted to have the trinity, once when they decided to ditch the soft trinity and finally because of testers feedbacks, which I doubt were Trooper and Bounty Hunters should have healing (it was probably more: I can't find a healer...).

/end ranting

Can't find anything on presence but I believe it was bonus for all party members. Maybe I'm wrong. Or maybe someone can explain presence all over again.

In any case, I don't think it will end up that healers have to spend more time working on their companions. This seems like something Bioware would definitely avoid.

Grome wrote:

Can't find anything on presence but I believe it was bonus for all party members. Maybe I'm wrong. Or maybe someone can explain presence all over again.

In any case, I don't think it will end up that healers have to spend more time working on their companions. This seems like something Bioware would definitely avoid.

It was something that was mentioned in a interview. I remember spotting it on Darhthater and it should be somewhere on this site in the TOR news as well.

Presence was supposed to improve your companions abilities, which made them stronger for the weaker class (aka Consular, Smuggler, AI and Inquisitor) who rely on Presence a lot and as such made the class "balanced" with the others, but that was at a time where Companions could be used in Flashpoint and PvP (and at some point only for the "weak" class). They probably dropped that concept now, because Companions can't be in group play (Flashpoint, PvP).

They have been struggling with the class balance for more then one year now. They have redesigned all the AC since last Fall:
- Commando and Mercenary gained competitive Healing.
- Guardian and Juggernaut gained competitive DPS.
- Gunslinger lost the Dirty Fighting discipline to something else, the shared tree of the Smuggler is now Dirty Fighting.
- I expect all the "DPS/DPS" AC to have dropped one "DPS" discipline as well. So Shadow/Assassin/Marauder/Sentinel/Sniper were also changed.
- Sage, Scoundrel, Operative and Sorcerer were the weaker AC that relied on Companions to be "balanced", they were the first to change.

It's like BioWare shoot themselves in the foot somewhere...

Az, I completely understand your frustration with the direction is going with the trinity and companions. At the same time I realize that a lot of these changes are coming about because of tester feedback. It seems like people didn't like how companions/soft trinity were working out in flashpoints. Now without Bioware specifically saying why this is my suspicion is that either a) people didn't want to be forced to manage a companion while playing in a group (and not having a companion would weaken there characters overall contribution), or b)people didn't like not having the trinity. I suspect the former is the truth, but I had seen people complain about the latter before the trinity proved to be alive and well in this game.

On the other hand, I disagree with you that presence was designed to have companions compensate for otherwise weak classes. That would be pretty awful game design to have some classes all around weaker than others. I believe presence was meant to allow healers to play the same role solo that they do in groups. Presence added the same increase effectiveness to companions that going down a beastmaster path would in other games, therefore the companions could keep agrro from transferring to the player.

Yeah, healers in TOR look to be playing the same game of dedicated healing they do in many other games while grouping, but I don't think groups will think that the healer is weaker because he doesn't have his companion.

I think allowing companions replace player slots in groups is an interesting compromise to the situation. This may allow a couple of dpsers' out there pull out one tank companion and one healer, if they don't mind controlling companions or wait to find a true tanks/healers if they don't want to control companions. I think companions will need to be buffed and have a wonderful AI for it to work.

A better solution to the needing more tanks and healers when everyone want to be dps would be allow people to dual- or multi-spec.

Ultimately I agree with you that the fact that they appear to have gone with a hard trinity makes me a sad panda. That has definitely pushed my interest more to another game coming out in the equally indeterminate future that isn't going to have the trinity.

Az:

Well it's no secret that balancing is probably the biggest hurdle in making an MMO. It can crush a lot of good ideas and it seems that is what happened when Bioware apparently at some point decided to move closer to trinity class-types (and less companion involvement) for balancing reasons.

As for the Smuggler, in the info compilation thread in the off. forums Dirty Fighting is still listed as a tree for the Scoundrel, Luck being the shared tree.

I'm not frustrated about the trinity. I'm actually scared, because BioWare don't seems to know what kind of group/combat/playstyle balance they want or that their original design was so flawed that they had to remake entire AC (or a big chunk of them at least).

What I don't like is "rotations" and standing in the back watching the UI, which actually have nothing to do with the trinity and everything to do with how the classes are designed.

Quote :

On the other hand, I disagree with you that presence was designed to have companions compensate for otherwise weak classes.

I can search for the quote about them considering Companions only being allowed in Flashpoint and Warzone PvP for "weaker" classes. We can actually see this in a few official videos from last year, were only the Smuggler and Consular had companions in group play. But it's irrelevant now.

Quote :

Ultimately I agree with you that the fact that they appear to have gone with a hard trinity makes me a sad panda. That has definitely pushed my interest more to another game coming out in the equally indeterminate future that isn't going to have the trinity.

See you in GW2.

@Grome. For the Smuggler info, that's from a PAX screenshot of the Scoundrel character in the Taral V flashpoint. It had the 2 Scoundrel disciplines + Dirty Fighting. No Luck discipline. Which mean that they renamed Luck and that the Gunslinger have something else now (although it doesn't mean the abilities changed). Screenshot of Scoundrel Disciplines in flashpoint, you can see Dirty Fighting, Sawbones and Scrapper.


And I'm really derailing this thread, sorry. At least the low level stuff seem fun.

I'm Grome-kicking my thoughts into a separate thread.

HOLD ON! HOLD ON!! ...That's clearly my job!

Alright buddy, let's take this outside! (talking to Ald's thoughts)
I'm 'onna letcha go ahead.....
BAM, HE GOES DOWN, KICKED, in the NUTS (smuggler style), and then just randomly, you know, whatever is in range. BEAT IT - GET OUTTA HERE!! If I see you in here ONE MOAAR TIME, you know,...... I'll kick YA 'GAIN! Your mother's MOTHER gonna be sorry to ever have LETCHA MOTHA GETOUTTA THEAAAR FOR YA TAA BEE PUTT INN THISS MISAAREYY!!

...Alright, that's Grome-kicked for you.

rofl!

I was not sober while typing that.

Still think it's funny though, lol.

DW Grome, I was the king of "late night drunk texting" in the olden days. I would come home from a show, and, it would be like Christmas the next day. I would read what I posted and go, "I wrote that?!?!" lol

Seriously, I needed a "slur" and a "drool" key or something back then