06-20-2003, 06:20 PM
I'm in the SWG beta. Your conclusions for the most part are correct.
Crafters provide players with most of their equipment. The NPCs are mainly a source of experience, missions, credits and resources. But you can be lucky enough to find some nice rare stuff on them, and I do mean RARE. Personally I really like this system, there just needs to be more weapon and armor to choose from.
There are some tough mobs, just last night a group of us were overwhelmed by a few rather nasty creatures. But the thing to remember is that the maximum group size is 20, so you are almost encouraged to just zerg the hell out of things, which makes any one creature seem like nothing. If it were up to me I would drop the group size to about 10. Not only would it make groups easier to manage, but I think it would force players into tougher situations and discourage zerging. The high end content, in the traditional sense, definitely needs work. There needs to be more, I don't think anyone will deny that. But I think if people were more open-minded about pvp they would be pleasantly surprised. Really, other players have the potential to be your toughest opponents. Hell you can have stormtroopers and AT-STs as pets!
As in all of these games, the combat itself is relatively crappy compared to say... Ricochet or CS =). I really don't expect much in the way of combat from these games. Usually I just want it to look cool. I will say again that SWG needs to somehow work group tactics into the game. That was really the only gratifying part about combat in EQ.
The pace of advancement is pretty nice actually. If you hunt in large groups you will have no problem getting your first profession. Though, it's possible that it will be tuned for release to make it slower. Again, I definitely prefer this quicker advancement. I can log off after just an hour feeling like I actually made some progess.
It's pretty funny. Before I got in the beta I always saw these posts about how it was just EQ in space. After getting in, it became very obvious that these people were just talking out of their ass. It feels nothing like EQ. Yet, you would be surprised how many people actually WANT it to be EQ in space.
Considering the number of features that they cut and the number of features not included (ie. vehicles, flying, underwater swimming, player cities), the game is still quite enjoyable. Most of the time it really did feel like I was in the SW universe. Like any mmorpg at launch, it still needs a lot of work, but in 3-6 months it will be the next evercrack. Which is why I would never play it after beta ends on Thursday, since I would actually like to get my degree sometime soon. Seriously. But I've certainly enjoyed the beta experience and I hope it does well.
Crafters provide players with most of their equipment. The NPCs are mainly a source of experience, missions, credits and resources. But you can be lucky enough to find some nice rare stuff on them, and I do mean RARE. Personally I really like this system, there just needs to be more weapon and armor to choose from.
There are some tough mobs, just last night a group of us were overwhelmed by a few rather nasty creatures. But the thing to remember is that the maximum group size is 20, so you are almost encouraged to just zerg the hell out of things, which makes any one creature seem like nothing. If it were up to me I would drop the group size to about 10. Not only would it make groups easier to manage, but I think it would force players into tougher situations and discourage zerging. The high end content, in the traditional sense, definitely needs work. There needs to be more, I don't think anyone will deny that. But I think if people were more open-minded about pvp they would be pleasantly surprised. Really, other players have the potential to be your toughest opponents. Hell you can have stormtroopers and AT-STs as pets!
As in all of these games, the combat itself is relatively crappy compared to say... Ricochet or CS =). I really don't expect much in the way of combat from these games. Usually I just want it to look cool. I will say again that SWG needs to somehow work group tactics into the game. That was really the only gratifying part about combat in EQ.
The pace of advancement is pretty nice actually. If you hunt in large groups you will have no problem getting your first profession. Though, it's possible that it will be tuned for release to make it slower. Again, I definitely prefer this quicker advancement. I can log off after just an hour feeling like I actually made some progess.
It's pretty funny. Before I got in the beta I always saw these posts about how it was just EQ in space. After getting in, it became very obvious that these people were just talking out of their ass. It feels nothing like EQ. Yet, you would be surprised how many people actually WANT it to be EQ in space.
Considering the number of features that they cut and the number of features not included (ie. vehicles, flying, underwater swimming, player cities), the game is still quite enjoyable. Most of the time it really did feel like I was in the SW universe. Like any mmorpg at launch, it still needs a lot of work, but in 3-6 months it will be the next evercrack. Which is why I would never play it after beta ends on Thursday, since I would actually like to get my degree sometime soon. Seriously. But I've certainly enjoyed the beta experience and I hope it does well.
-Sockhole
"If ya SMELL ... what the SOCK ... is cookin."
"If ya SMELL ... what the SOCK ... is cookin."