The Old Republic Unveiled: Combat, PvP, and Heroics
by Michael Zenke 
Oct 23rd 2008 at 3:00PM
Filed under: Sci-fi, New titles, Massively Event Coverage, Star Wars: The Old Republic
You mention the feel of Star Wars combat. How does that compare to previous BioWare games like Jade Empire or Mass Effect?
Rich Vogel, Co-GM BioWare Austin: When we talk about Star Wars combat, what we want to bring to the MMO space is combat that feels like it comes straight from the movies. Standard MMO combat is very slow paced, kind of Flintstones combat. You run up to a creature, hit the creature over the head with your weapon. In the movie we showed earlier, we tried to show how we're going for combat that looks much more visceral, that looks more like it could have come from a movie. Where you're having a lightsaber duel, where you're having blaster combat that's fast-paced and heroic.
Another thing we don't want ... I'm sure that anyone here that's played an MMO knows you can get into a situation with a whole bunch of players smacking on one dude. You all surround him and it's like "yeah, kill him!" Wow, that's heroic. It's great that all of us good guys got together and slammed that orc down. That's something we don't want to have happen in our game and we're working towards much more epic, heroic battles. Where you're the guys who are outnumbered.
When you think about the movies, the heroes are the ones that get to act a certain way because they're fighting against the odds.
You said earlier that you wanted to avoid a bunch of guys beating up on a single character. How do you make the experience epic for a single player without requiring him to join up with 24 other players to do a raid, to allow him to progress the story?
Rich: One of the things we've been doing is making sure that when we build content, we have representatives of the different playstyles. Whenever we do a design discussion or implement systems, we have the different player types. There's the solo guy, the guy that hates other people. There are a lot of them actually.
Gordon Walton, Co-GM BioWare Austin: I love MMOs, but I hate other players.
Rich: It's surprising but they've done studies, and there are lots of players like this out there. They don't want to adventure with anybody but they like that there are other players that can see all the cool stuff that they've done. They are in a virtual world. Then there are the players that adventure just with their friends. They have a group of buddies and they just play with those guys all the time together. And then there are the people who like to join guilds and become social butterflies, like to adventure with different peoples in the guild. They like to be part of big groups that do major events.
We want to make sure that each of those player types has fun in our game. I can't go into detail on the systems we've designed to make sure that that happens, but I can say we have made sure those different player types are taken into account when we're building content.
PvP – can you talk about how you are going to do that?
Rich: We have PvP in our game. There's a reason we decided to go with two factions – the Republic and the Sith Empire.
Gordon: It is called Star Wars.
Rich: The game is called Star Wars, Gordon has it right on there. This is a game about conflict, about change. It's something we always have to remember. When the writers are working on the story it's something we always have to remind them: Star Wars, there always has to be conflict. So for any kind of PvP mechanic we have, we want it to feel important in that context. There are certain things that means. That I can't get into.
Battles in Star Wars sometimes feature hundreds of characters on screen. Are players ever going to be put in any situation like that, is that something you'll strive towards?
Rich: We want the player to feel outnumbered ... maybe not a hundred to one, but we do want the player to feel outnumbered. In public areas we can start to do that, and in private areas we can do that even more. It is part of the package of feeling heroic, that feeling that the odds are against you.
Rich Vogel, Co-GM BioWare Austin: When we talk about Star Wars combat, what we want to bring to the MMO space is combat that feels like it comes straight from the movies. Standard MMO combat is very slow paced, kind of Flintstones combat. You run up to a creature, hit the creature over the head with your weapon. In the movie we showed earlier, we tried to show how we're going for combat that looks much more visceral, that looks more like it could have come from a movie. Where you're having a lightsaber duel, where you're having blaster combat that's fast-paced and heroic.
Another thing we don't want ... I'm sure that anyone here that's played an MMO knows you can get into a situation with a whole bunch of players smacking on one dude. You all surround him and it's like "yeah, kill him!" Wow, that's heroic. It's great that all of us good guys got together and slammed that orc down. That's something we don't want to have happen in our game and we're working towards much more epic, heroic battles. Where you're the guys who are outnumbered.
When you think about the movies, the heroes are the ones that get to act a certain way because they're fighting against the odds. You said earlier that you wanted to avoid a bunch of guys beating up on a single character. How do you make the experience epic for a single player without requiring him to join up with 24 other players to do a raid, to allow him to progress the story?
Rich: One of the things we've been doing is making sure that when we build content, we have representatives of the different playstyles. Whenever we do a design discussion or implement systems, we have the different player types. There's the solo guy, the guy that hates other people. There are a lot of them actually.
Gordon Walton, Co-GM BioWare Austin: I love MMOs, but I hate other players.
Rich: It's surprising but they've done studies, and there are lots of players like this out there. They don't want to adventure with anybody but they like that there are other players that can see all the cool stuff that they've done. They are in a virtual world. Then there are the players that adventure just with their friends. They have a group of buddies and they just play with those guys all the time together. And then there are the people who like to join guilds and become social butterflies, like to adventure with different peoples in the guild. They like to be part of big groups that do major events.
We want to make sure that each of those player types has fun in our game. I can't go into detail on the systems we've designed to make sure that that happens, but I can say we have made sure those different player types are taken into account when we're building content.
PvP – can you talk about how you are going to do that?
Rich: We have PvP in our game. There's a reason we decided to go with two factions – the Republic and the Sith Empire.
Gordon: It is called Star Wars.
Rich: The game is called Star Wars, Gordon has it right on there. This is a game about conflict, about change. It's something we always have to remember. When the writers are working on the story it's something we always have to remind them: Star Wars, there always has to be conflict. So for any kind of PvP mechanic we have, we want it to feel important in that context. There are certain things that means. That I can't get into.Battles in Star Wars sometimes feature hundreds of characters on screen. Are players ever going to be put in any situation like that, is that something you'll strive towards?
Rich: We want the player to feel outnumbered ... maybe not a hundred to one, but we do want the player to feel outnumbered. In public areas we can start to do that, and in private areas we can do that even more. It is part of the package of feeling heroic, that feeling that the odds are against you.
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BioWare has finally unveiled Star Wars: The Old Republic, their new MMO! Massively's got you covered on all the details -- from liveblogging the announcement to screenshot galleries and more. Join us in the Galaxy far, far away! |
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
colbyjack said on 3:16PM 10-23-2008
I want to be able to walk into enemy territory and walk around unnoticed (without my name being flagged hostile ... usually with yellow or red text) ... and then if I'm *discovered* ... then have the fun begin ... that would be epic. I love the idea of ordinary citizens going about their business and the player being able to blend in when necessary (or spy).
It's an artificial pvp flag ... you could play it safe and rarely have those experiences or you could play it more aggressive ... either way, your play style comes with certain risks and benefits.
Reply
djpostman1 said on 3:46PM 10-23-2008
Ive been watching this like a hawk since they announced, on top of following it for a few years now, and really at this point in skeptical until we really start to see more concrete answers about the game iteslf. everything i've read is pretty vague. sounds good on paper though, not sure if the pvp system is going to be that fantastic though
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virtualworldgame said on 3:52PM 10-23-2008
Star-knitting and star-dancing? That's nice, I take it the author is referring to the non-combat aspects of SWG, which, whether he appreciates them or not, brought a lot of innovation to a genre that has been sorely lacking it since, oh, forever.
The kill 'em all crowd that infests the MMO space like rats on a sinking ship have driven that kind of innovation out of these games, and that's unfortunate, almost as unfortunate as reading yet another article that says absolutely nothing about this new game.
Do us all a favor, Massively, and IGN, and all you other game journalists who think anything that spills out of an executive's mouth is worthy of an article: enough already.
When there are some details to report, report them. So far, in the deluge of 'coverage' this site has devoted to SW: TOR, the endearing refrain has been 'we aren't commenting on that yet.'
Amateurs and fanboys, the lot of you.
/rolleyes
Reply
Wjowski said on 10:59AM 10-24-2008
Sorry, but if you thought a Star Wars game revolving around tradeskills and cantina dancing was going to do anything but crash and burn you're delusional. People play those games to be the equivalent of Luke Skywalker the Jedi or Han Solo the Bounty Hunter, not Uncle Owen the Moisture Farmer.
Keith said on 4:09PM 10-23-2008
It's also called Star Wars. Each of the movies had quite a bit of screen time dedicated to space combat. Not one, but two had climatic endings involving the destruction of a planet busting, hyperspace traveling, "millions of voices cried out in terror" space station appropriately dubbed the "Death Star". Let's hope BioWare launches SWTOR complete with space combat ranging from dogfights between Aurek tactical strikefighters and Sith interceptors to larger tactical bombing raids against and Inexpugnable-class and Interdictor-class command ships!
Reply
-=iGGy=- said on 4:45PM 10-23-2008
ive only recently heard about this game from what ive read it all sounds nice but it also sounds like what was being said about SWG before it was comming out. i played SWG for about 3 years from launch day. And i really hope they learn and fix A LOT of the flaws that were inherent and rampant in SWG. as many flaws as that game may have had it was still an AMAZING game and i cant wait for this game. I was a part time crafter and entertainer in SWG i went through all those professions as "lame" as some ppl may have thought those were they were definitly necessary to the game and HUGE part of forming and maintaing the community.
~iGGy~
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FarSpace said on 6:33PM 10-23-2008
Great review Massively 07, 1st of all this review is fine, I do not expect get everything from every article written about something, it's better then fine, it's not meant to be the only article ever written.
Speaking of Heroics, if CoX can be so awesome and fun in PvP and PvE
Then SWTOR and years later will be fine and even better. :)
It's not going to be anything like that other old decrepit sw mmo, if
Played it again and it was the best we could get back then but today
is different, games are getting better now.
There are much better ideas going around now the MMORPG’s have.
IMO There are MMO’s out right now were the action is great and PvP
and PvE is plenty awesome but then their actual world is lacking, the
only thing I would be worried about is if the SWTOR world would have
Plenty of quality of life things to make it feel less then dead
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FarSpace said on 6:42PM 10-23-2008
Actually sorry about using the word "fine" by that I mean this article is well written and tells us allot more info then I knew before I read it, if some of you do not want to appreciate that then that's cool but I do, so thanks Massively and Mr. Zenke 07 I solute you!
If I thought these articles were not pretty darn awesome and was appreciative of them I would not be any ware near here reading them.
Reply