Show Notes & Discussion 62

[Musco]

Intro
---- What we did this week

This Week in SWTOR
---- Fan Friday
---- ---- Tang's concept scrapbook
---- ---- Vitellius - Darth Rasp 3d Animation
---- ---- Oxyjin Character painting
---- ---- Dev Corner - Cathar race
---- ---- new wallpapers and avatars

Discussion of the Week
---- Space Confirmed -

will indeed have Space Combat as part of the TOR experience! But what does that mean? Space combat is an alternative gameplay experience to the primary game of storytelling, questing, and ground-based combat. In space combat, you fly your personal ship to various “hot spots” on your galaxy map. From there, you will blast your way through asteroid fields, enemy fighters, frigates, destroyers, and a variety of other obstacles that will evoke memories of some of the great Star Wars™ space battles.

---- Ship customization

Hot Topics
---- Good news for all us jumpers... (guy asked Alexander Freed if there are places you can jump to your death in TOR in Coruscant and he said yes)
---- Thread against the use of companions in pvp

Mailbag/Q&A
---- Should there be a 1 v 1 arena similar to that of the one in Kotor? Should you fight NPCs or PCs? Will this be a big part of the Bounty Hunter's Story? (MasterShepard)
---- Do you think when a companion joins your group for the very first time you will have the option to customize their appearance? Facial appearance, etc. (Sabi)
---- Is it coincidence or planning that the most popular classes (force users) will have the ability to tank and/or heal, solving a common problem in MMO group-making? (Nomez)

Announcements/Closing
---- Fo's Article
---- ---- DBSI . . . Aliens are Class Specific
---- Game Tester Article
---- Live Show

Closing statements

Here's whats going to happen. Musco is going to be on one of those buildings on Coruscant out playing his Sith Warrior, while we're busy fighting off hoards of Republic Troopers. Then hes going to accidentally force leap off the side inevitably getting us all killed.

Just sayin'

-Dark

Please don't go all white knight on me, but Kimmi wasn't comfortable on the mic and her squeaking whispering really ticked me off. I'm all up for a female host, but she needs to bring something to the table instead of just being there because of her gender. Sorry for being the messenger, please don't ban me

Please don't go all white knight on me, but Kimmi wasn't comfortable on the mic and her squeaking whispering really ticked me off. I'm all up for a female host, but she needs to bring something to the table instead of just being there because of her gender. Sorry for being the messenger, please don't ban me

Sorry, /ban. No you are right. Kimiko is great, but she has either mic issues or talking issues. I have both, so I'm not one to judge, but its just how it is. You can also make fun of me for the latter all you like. I look forward to see what she brings to the table for the site however. Really do.

-Dark

I'm currently listening to the show and when Brandon (saying what he did this week) was like "Err ... I dunno .... JUST KIDDING!" I almost regurgitated all over my toasted sandwich. HiLOLrious.

EDIT: And the double rainbow spoof ... geez this is a good podcast

EDIT AGAIN: Oh yeah, WELCOME BACK SAMMBOARD! I <3 YOU!

I'm glad you decided to consolidate these.

-Bothans!? Of course there are Bothans! You had an effing show called "Battle of Bothawhat", so titled and inspired by the Bothawui Holorecord (#29, to be exact)! Christ! I'm going to let this one sink in before proceeding any further...








...They're also mentioned in the Republic faction page, there are avatars of them, and there's in-game footage...

-Samm, excellent Donnie Thornberry impression during the emoticon discussion.

-Link to auto-tune, please!

-Dookus failed to mention that I created the word 'Seanberg' during a vent convo! Aint nothing wrong with asking for credit where credit's due. And Seanberg does exist on the official forums. He's "2/3s Sean Dahlberg, which still makes [him] 100% more awesome than you!"

-I doubt space will be a railer. It would be an entirely counter-intuitive and pointless waste of budget, with no PvP or group PvE. And, yes, I will say, "I called it," when it's revealed that space is much more integrated than simply being a railer. Stop saying, "It sounds like blah, blah, blah". You're extrapolating on like 30 vague words. Also Musco, you've downgraded from 'cynic' to pure pessimist.

-I also think your player ship will be all that you get. Don't forget that the M.Falcon saw action and was plenty offensive. And Samm, accept that player ships are the solution to player housing. Especially since the economy will be very small, not complex player economies. Since we're extrapolating, though, I'll quote SD:

In space combat, you fly your PERSONAL SHIP to various “hot spots” on your galaxy map.

-Again with the effing companions! Jeez, playing the same class doesn't mean that you're going to have the same tag-along companion. And let's be honest, you can b'tch, but when you're playing, I doubt you'll give much of a crap from a multi-player perspective that you're companions are the same.

-No vertigo here.

-No companions in PvP! Agreed, Musco. It's called PLAYER v PLAYER (Not Player-&-companion v Player-&-companion) for a goddamn reason.

-Companion micro should be optional, similar to the original Mass Effect's companion AI adjuster. I won't be micro-ing. I might not even bring a companion along.

-Yes to 1v1! Purely for the fun and challenge of it and perhaps for special titles! Betting on pvp, though, would so easily break the economy due to cheating. I want leaderboards and rights to the revocable title of 'Champion'.

-I think that players will have to spec heavily into a trinity role.

First off I'd like to say Great freaking podcast. I literally laughed my ass off. Oh, and thank god the Sammboard is back. All is right with the world once again.

I'm going to assume you guys didn't watch the 50 minute BW panel at Comic Con, because they answered some of the things you were unsure about. Here is the link
http://comic-con.gamespot.com/video/6270912/.

1. Your personal ship is going to be the one used for space combat. James Ohlen mentioned your personal ship having turrets and missles and needing something to use them on, so there is space combat. That's pretty much how he revieled it.

2. Alien species will indeed be class/faction specific. Fo wrote that article right on time.

3. Your companion character will have your name, as well as it's name on the name plate above his head, so you can tell the difference between similar companions.

4. It seems there will be multiple PC Star Ships flying around in these zones. Whether or not this is indicative of PvP is unclear.

Question: So there's gonna be alot of Star Ships flying around, I'm guessing
(Drew Karpyshyn seems to be nodding his head in agreement and Alexander Freed jokingly says I can think of at least one off the top of my head, cue laughter)
umm and if two bounty hunters have the same star ship how much will we be able to customize said star ship?

Answer: Blah blah blah "we have announced that there will be customization of a sort, maybe that involves customizing the look of your starship... no official annoucement yet you'll have to wait into the future maybe later this year...(lots of smiles while James was answering) They didn't shoot down the notion of multiple PC star ships, and I can't imagine space being a single player mini-game anyhow, so I think I'm safe in my assumptions.

37:20 into the video is where this question was asked, so feel free to take a look and let me know if you think I'm just reading too much into it.

While I agree that Kimi seemed a bit uncomfortable at the beginning of the cast, she really delivered overall. I probably laughed twice as hard as Samm did when she said "They came... from... behind." She brought quite a few more laughs to the cast after that point and contributed in the discussion. One thing she does need to work on is speaking up. Sometimes she was clear and other times it seemed as if she was mumbling. I don't know if it was a mic problem, or just the sheer magnitude of speaking alongside an Emmy that left her breathless, but just fix the volume issue and she's cool by me.

The one thing I don't like about ships as player housing is this thing that only your party members can enter your ship. To me it's very important that I can get like 20 friends in my ship for a party. I mean ... MMO?

The one thing I don't like about ships as player housing is this thing that only your party members can enter your ship. To me it's very important that I can get like 20 friends in my ship for a party. I mean ... MMO?

Think of it this way. If space combat is PvP, that means you can blow up someone's home. Not only do you get the satisfaction of killing them, but you prevent them from leaving anything to their next of kin.

Nice show and you noted space mini games as "combat" railed or not, I wonder if this is the only space we will see, with a class like the smuggler it seems a little wrong to limit space to combat only.

[Musco]

Please don't go all white knight on me, but Kimmi wasn't comfortable on the mic and her squeaking whispering really ticked me off. I'm all up for a female host, but she needs to bring something to the table instead of just being there because of her gender. Sorry for being the messenger, please don't ban me

Anytime you throw someone into being on the show the first time they rarely sound comfortable (go back to show 1-5 and listen to me and Samm) so I am sure she did sound a bit uncomfortable as most anyone would. If/when she comes back on and gets more comfortable I have complete faith you will hear why we brought her on. She quite literally has more MMO and SW than almost anyone on the show, she is a world class raider =)

Brandon says: "I hope they know it's just a big act"

Oh, and I suppose you want an Emmy for that one too, huh? You really do have a big ego

[Musco]

Also it should be noted that somehow I missed the fact that there was the audio for the comic-con panel, silly me. I will be going through it fo sho.

Also it should be noted that somehow I missed the fact that there was the audio for the comic-con panel, silly me. I will be going through it fo sho.

Yea, you guys probably shoulda watched the video first. Some of the things you guys spoke about were cleared up in the panel. I listed a few up there, as well as the link.

[Musco]

-No companions in PvP! Agreed, Musco. It's called PLAYER v PLAYER (Not Player-&-companion v Player-&-companion) for a goddamn reason.

Btw this is brilliant simplistic logic for no companions in pvp.

please Musco stop talking :p

Player Ship do have customization. When they announced Player Ships they said they don't want thousands of the same ship flying around. And except the color i believe there will be more options.
Also at that time they confused us saying they where talking for customization for players! bah!

I don't think there will be player housing in land but the player ship will account for that one too.

[Musco]

please Musco stop talking :p

What does this mean?

=)

Got through the first half of this show on the way to work this morning, so I might update/revise later once I've heard the rest. But I'll comment on the first half so far while it's fresh on my mind!

Space and Ships:

I don't know, for some reason I just don't see them doing space combat as some mini-game. I just don't think that would mesh well with the rest of the game. I would expect something a bit more extravagant. If you can truly go up against frigates and destroyers as the quote said, then I'm guessing multiplayer could be involved or you might join various AI ships on missions or quests etc, cause a single player ship certainly isn't taking down one of those alone. I don't think space will be very PvP focused, at least not yet, but it very well could be I suppose. If it was, I doubt they'd call that an "alternative player experience" as it'd probably be more significant than that. Could very well be a trial run which might lead to more space involvement in an expansion or something later on. But, if it is a mini-game I think they could probably do it in ways that hopefully wouldn't suck, be curious to see how it'd play out if so.

Housing:

The housing you discussed (I think you were talking about EQ or EQ2) sounds exactly like DaoC housing. It had large housing zones you could enter, with tons of plots that players could purchase and build their personal (or guild) house. Set permissions to it accordingly, and you could wander the zone checking out the houses, even use crafting tools if you had permission to them, or their bind/recall stone, etc. Also could have your own consignment merchant (store) to sell items which was pretty nice, and there were market NPCs to search all houses in the zone for certain items. Anyway, I think Musco said he's never heard of anything like it in another MMO...well now you know

Ok that's about as far as I got...can't wait to hear the rest!

[Musco]

Housing:

The housing you discussed (I think you were talking about EQ or EQ2) sounds exactly like DaoC housing. It had large housing zones you could enter, with tons of plots that players could purchase and build their personal (or guild) house. Set permissions to it accordingly, and you could wander the zone checking out the houses, even use crafting tools if you had permission to them, or their bind/recall stone, etc. Also could have your own consignment merchant (store) to sell items which was pretty nice, and there were market NPCs to search all houses in the zone for certain items. Anyway, I think Musco said he's never heard of anything like it in another MMO...well now you know

You just pwnd me hardcore, especially considering I played and love DAoC. Although they added this in a much later expansion after I had stopped playing.

Thank you for bringing the samm board back, I really missed the Vader Thats it.

I also found Kim to be a cool gal. But she was really lacking confidence, and was acting like if she said the wrong thing everyone would get mad at her. I liked some of her ideas and i found it fun.

And did Musco forget that he was going to tell the cast my ideas for the weekly column?