I dunno. I didn't make the questionaire, I'm just relating the info from the link. When I said 'current scores', I meant, those are the current highest ratings for each category on the questionaire. Sorry, I should have been clearer.
Current test scores:
Graphics: 4/5 - 47%
Gameplay: 5/5 - 42%
Story: 5/5 - 75% !!!!
Animation: 4/5 - 44%
UI: 3/5 - 37%
Theres been about 1350 votes so far.
I suppose Gameplay is combat and stuff and UI is menu's and hotkeys etc?
UI is how the actual user interface and menus appear and work; gameplay is the way the game plays.
Not terribly difficult, and not really related at all 😛
While I'm not even going to go into the fact that the storyline has an average rating of 5/5 (don't make me laugh, people, the story has the depth of a puddle an hour after it stopped raining)...how the hell do the graphics have that high of a rating? Do people seriously think they look good?
Originally posted by Peach
UI is how the actual user interface and menus appear and work; gameplay is the way the game plays.Not terribly difficult, and not really related at all 😛
While I'm not even going to go into the fact that the storyline has an average rating of 5/5 (don't make me laugh, people, the story has the depth of a puddle an hour after it stopped raining)...how the hell do the graphics have that high of a rating? Do people seriously think they look good?
You have to take into account that many of the people who voted highly for this game, are first time video game players. How? Just factor in the rise in unemployment. My brother just bought his first console ever, and never played video games till recently when companies like Hewlett Packard, decided to outsource a large percentage of jobs.
I recall seeing his face when he played Gran Turismo on his PS3 (bug eyed does little to describe it). My point is, that there are many more people out there just like him. So delving into KOTOR, or any game with better graphics than Pac-Man is, or may be a big deal to some. Perhaps even huge, if they're Star Wars fans.
Originally posted by Stoic
You have to take into account that many of the people who voted highly for this game, are first time video game players. How? Just factor in the rise in unemployment. My brother just bought his first console ever, and never played video games till recently when companies like Hewlett Packard, decided to outsource a large percentage of jobs.I recall seeing his face when he played Gran Turismo on his PS3 (bug eyed does little to describe it). My point is, that there are many more people out there just like him. So delving into KOTOR, or any game with better graphics than Pac-Man is, or may be a big deal to some. Perhaps even huge, if they're Star Wars fans.
Rise in unemployment = less money to spend on games, though, particularly one that will require a monthly subscription cost. And being as the current test weekends have been on, well, weekends...doesn't really mean a whole lot. New to MMOs, maybe, but not new to gaming in general.
Most people who're playing TOR have actually played games before; they're also just all rabid KOTOR/BioWare fans, so they think it can do no wrong. When the reality is that the game is doing a lot wrong.
Yeah, not a surprise.
And during the beta isn't the best time to get an unbiased response, anyway. Most people following and playing the beta are people who 1) have been following the game for some time and 2) are big SW fans. Particularly, KOTOR fans. They'll be willing to handwave away the issues, since many fans tend to be of the "can't criticize something EVER" persuasion.
The best time to try and get feedback like that would be a month or so after launch, once the newness has worn off.
Originally posted by Peach
UI is how the actual user interface and menus appear and work; gameplay is the way the game plays.Not terribly difficult, and not really related at all 😛
I consider the user interface to also be the gameplay because they are both the "user interface". I find the distinction to be arbitrary. I wish they would use other measures that made since like "'menus" or something. Maybe I'm just behind the times and people have been calling the menus and such the "UI" for a while. But UI is similarly the "GUI".
Originally posted by Peach
Rise in unemployment = less money to spend on games, though, particularly one that will require a monthly subscription cost. And being as the current test weekends have been on, well, weekends...doesn't really mean a whole lot. New to MMOs, maybe, but not new to gaming in general.
That's a very good point. How are they buying these consoles? Shows how shitty some people's priorities are. 🙁
I DO know that piracy has increased...no doubt partially due to the unemployment.
Originally posted by Nephthys
Betacake has a lot of TOR fans.
Indeed. Like a whole lot. 😆
So in case anyone wants to see the number of options available in character creation, I put this together tonight:
Skipped body type, complexion, and (for most of them) skin tone. And start skipping scar options since for most of them they are exactly the same.
In fact, across the different races...pretty much everything remains the same. Kinda sad.
Well, that's my testing done! My feelings are much the same as I expressed earlier. I only played a Jedi Knight; got him to level 16 so I got a reasonable feel for things.
The start is not highly impressive; early combat is very monotonous and you spend a lot of time waiting for triggers to reset as other players have tripped them- this is a very outdated mechanic. In fact, much of the game looks and feels outdated. I wouldn't mind the bland graphics so much except that for some reason they are unreasonably taxing; my game slowed right down inside the Jedi temple for no reason I could find. They look like graphics from a few years ago but seem to give frame rate issues constantly.
Things pick up once you get off the starter world- more interesting things to do and more skills to play with- and the game is fun but... just not hyper-fun. One impression I got is that, outside the flashpoints (I played through one) and a couple of missions where grouping is recommended, it felt like a very great mis-match between being a single player game and being in an MMO environment. The other players didn't make me feel like I was part of a great world because the plot of the game world did not acknowledge they were there; convos say things like "Oh, good to see another Padawan out here at last!" when there are two dozen others within sight range alone. The other players around were not fellow soldiers in the cause; they were irritations that made me wait for stuff or killed my mission targets, making me wait even more. They've made no effort to integrate these two visions together and I was rather affected by that.
The environments are MUCH more open than the ones I complained about in Mass Effect and Dragon Age (and also KOTOR and especially KOTORII; the lifeless worlds there have been replaced by something much more vibrant here)... but this is not an explorer's game; your process through it all is linear and there is virtually nothing at all off the track you are shown down.
Style-wise, I was very pleased to see that you can play a straight-up Jedi Knight (the good guy responses were exactly what I wanted from such a person) and the game seems quite sympathetic to GL purism in terms of needing balance, attachment being bad and so on, though obviously it leaves room for alternate viewpoints there as that is Bioware's style. Nonetheless, it is still a brute force morality system and Bioware needs to come up with something better than 'good guy or bad guy' points, though I could talk about that sort of thing for ages on its own. If you liked it before in their games it's still the same now.
I don't want to dwell on this as it has become a default response but I will quickly mention that there were a LOT of places where I was thinking "GW2 is doing this better." Of course, until I actually play GW2 I won't know that for sure.
Anyway, the game is not bad and for being a not bad game in a genre I like in the Star Wars universe I would buy it... but I will not pay a subscription for it. It would have to be stellar for that, and it's not.
I actually found the good guy responses got a bit grating at times - they were just a shade too "Oh, sure, I'll drop whatever I'm doing to take on that little task that you could surely handle on your own, what is your bidding? 😄" for my taste.
Of course, on the other hand, nine times of ten the Dark Side responses were just standard kill everything or be a complete jerkass, so.
Esseles flashpoint- longer than I expected and with two tricky points that the team of four I was with got trashed at; I came back later with a couple more levels with just one partner and it went fine.
Still, it was nothing THAT special; just a long line of fights against three Imperials at a time with another three droids turning up as reinforcements, punctuated by the occasional slog against something bigger. One conversation gave you the option to betray the Republican agent you were with on the behest of the cowardly Captain who thinks the ship would be safe from pursuit without her, but I honestly cannot see even amoral players taking that option other than to gain dark side points deliberately or see what it looks like. It's not really presented as a logically viable choice- and, indeed, the ship gets away with absolutely no trouble if you don't betray her so it was not even an ethical dilemma.
The absolute best thing about them is that you don't have to do them in one go. I assume the others are like how this one was- virtually every progression you make in it is something you can pick up again at a later point. I like this in games; I cannot stand huge missions that have to be done all at once and that you lose all of it if you fail, possibly wiping out hours of work (Guild Wars elite missions, I am looking at you).
Huh. It sounds like Black Talon was actually the better mission of the two.
It was still plagued by the game-wide issue of three-enemy fights, but it told a story well and felt more dynamic than the rest of the game. There weren't any ethical dilemmas as you'd been ordered to intercept a Republic ship at any cost, so killing the resistant captain was only a matter of course.
As you went through your own ship the Republic forces fought back, using drill-like boarding ships that smashed through the walls in real time to dispense enemies. That part was fun, though it's worth noting that Metroid Prime 3 did it better four years ago.
There was a droid boss with constant explosive minions that we had some trouble with; unfortunately I had connection problems during the fight and the other three had to withdraw while I ran back from the entrance. That one took some very simple strategy with me using Lightning on the bomb droids to keep the others safe while they focused on the boss.
Then we boarded the Republic ship, and things got decidedly more boring until the final boss, which was a ridiculously overpowered Padawan who wiped our team of four 10-12 Sith once, and almost ended us a second time before we got her.
We beat her literally seconds before the servers went down to end the beta, so I don't know how the story ends.
Seems to set the tone- the first Republic mission is running away whilst the first Empire one is attacking and capturing.
Btw, one comment I should make is that I found it curiously unintuitive to find out how certain things work. Examples include how long it took me to find my companions inventory and equipment, the fact that I was gaining Guardian skills on a different page to my other skills (and hence me not noticing them for a while), and also where the damn codex was. Grouping for flashpoints was also very primitive, especially for a not very social gamer like myself. I'd prefer it if you had the option to just queue for random groups with flashpoints (there were plenty of people waiting outside of them that could have been processed in this way), with people obviously also forming parties if they wanted.
By the end, I remained very fuzzy about how companion skills work, though I did not really look that hard.
Still, seems a lot of people are knocking the UI and that sort of thing is easily sorted over time.