GDC: Trooper Hands-On & TOR Game Play Impressions
Last week, LucasArts & BioWare extended an invitation to Darth Hater for another round of Star Wars: The Old Republic hands-on game play at the beautiful Presidio campus in San Francisco. Eager to take another look, Meg and I left GDC and made our way to Lucasfilm where we were treated to playing Level 6 Troopers on Ord Mantell, and also spoke in depth with Jake Neri of LucasArts and Daniel Erickson of BioWare.
Talking Trooper Class Design, Group Play & A Hint of Paths
When we spoke with Jake Neri about the Trooper class, he first addressed the difficulty of making people see past the typical Stormtrooper in the movies. He explained the questions they asked themselves when they created the class: "how do you make him a badass? How do you make him competitive against a Sith or a Bounty Hunter?"
"I think when you start to look at class design of a game, we can stretch it. We can make it fun, we can make abilities that makes sense when going against a melee class like a Sith Warrior," Neri continued. "You got your Stock strike that knocks them down. And the Trooper is always trying to stay at range, because he wants to use his fire abilities or his grenades."
"So you have to stretch a little bit outside what you know in Star Wars, which is the Jedi always kicking everyone"s asses. But at the same time, we"re not just making a Force power game. We need to have diversity we need a Trooper that is really cool, fits in a spot in a group, can solo, and have fun in any situation."
And to how the Trooper worked in a group, Jake Neri explained: "We talked a little bit so far about the different paths for classes to go down. But what we showed of the Trooper is that he is pretty much a hybrid, range class -- a DPS class, if you want to use the trinity metaphor there."
"He would support a Knight," he said. "So a Knight would be up in front, using his sword and doing damage, while the Trooper is standing back, laying down cover, and just doing pure DPS. What is really cool about the Trooper is that we don"t have to over-think it. We really want to have someone that blows the crap out of people and just uses his rifle. There is no magic there; it is just pure visceral, rapid fire combat and that is really what the Trooper brings to the table."
During the hands on time with the game, we examined the buttons on the interface and noticed that the elusive seventh button we noticed on James Ohlen's monitor during Developer Dispatch 6: Return to Taris was present. Our original speculation was that it is a skill tree button, and sure enough, it was. However, when we clicked on it to see the panel, we received an error: "Requires Advanced Class" and the resulting large window was completely empty. We brought this up to Jake Neri, and asked him if he could tell us about the Trooper's paths and how they were distinct from each other.
"Well, that is our challenge with all these classes," Neri said. "We want to make sure that we have something unique on each side. Last year, we talked a lot about how you start your class design. It was mostly about 'what is the Star Wars fantasy?' As we start down that second path, sometimes we break that fantasy."
We brought up the Smuggler's Medicine tree in the Scoundrel path and inquired if the Trooper had something similar. "I suppose there might be something like that for the Trooper, but we might hold onto that and reveal that a little bit later," he replied with the stern "I can't answer that now" look.
"Understand we do need to have two distinct paths," Neri expanded. "We need to have companions that work really well with the Trooper. Ones that provide tools and the toolkit to how the Trooper is going to do battle whether in a group or by himself. Those are core challenges we are always getting at."
Jake concluded talking about these distinct paths by reassuring future Troopers that "it's not going to be like Gun and Gun."
Trooper Abilities
When we sat down to play our Level 6 Trooper, the abilities on the toolbar were set up from left to right. We noticed right away that the icons for these abilities were significantly different and more visually impressive than the ones seen in the PAX Trooper demonstration. We also learned during the demo that, with the exception of Full Auto, these skills could definitely let a Trooper "run and gun." Below are a list of abilities seen during the demo, however we should note that the game is in development and they may very well change.
Hammer Shot
Instant
Cooldown: 1.5s (global cooldown)
Range: 30m
Fires a series of hammering shots that deal 28-32 damage to the target. Generates 2 Action Points.
This was the main ability that built up action points, as the rest of the abilities consumed them.
Rifle Grenade
Action Points: 4
Instant
Range: 30m
Launches a frag grenade from the rifle that deals high damage and knockback to the primary target, and low damage to targets within 5m of the primary target.
We tried to test if there was a limit to the mobs this knock-backed and killed, so we assembled a pain train of five mobs, waited until they were within 5m, and launched. All targets were knocked back from the AOE, which was quite an impressive sight to see.
Full Auto
Action Points: 1
Channeled: 8s
Range: 30m
Fires a continuous stream of bolts that deal moderate damage for up to 8 seconds. The target caught in the blaster fire is stunned for the duration. Full Auto costs 1 Action Point for every second it is active.
This worked similar to the PAX Trooper demonstration you stood still and unleashed a ton of damage while stunning your target. If you moved, then the channeled ability would stop.
Sticky Grenade
Action Points: 6
Instant
Cooldown: 8s
Range: 5m-30m
Fire a sticky grenade that will detonate after 3s and cause the target to enter a state of panic. The explosion deals very high damage to the primary target and moderate damage to nearby enemies. All targets are knocked back from the blast.
Another crowd control ability we saw before. This coupled with the AOE was pretty powerful.
Stock Strike
Action Points: 60
Instant
Cooldown: 30s
Range: 4m
Strikes the target with the butt of the rifle dealing low damage and knocking it down for 5s.
This ability said 60 AP on the tooltip, although it might be a typo because we were able to use it on a melee range attacker after building up some points on the ranged mob for a bit.
Call Shuttle
10s cast
Cooldown: 1800s (30m)
Shuttles you back to the pre-designated travel station. Not usable in combat.
We explained this hearth stone or recall ability in December, but we thought we'd show you the full tooltip with the cooldown.
Recharge & Reload
Channeled: 15s
Cooldown: 60s
Field check your gear, restoring your Health and Energy over 15s. Only usable out of combat.
This is the Trooper's OOC heal over time. Once we figured out you could use it every minute, we used it every time the cooldown was up because we could switch to our more damaging, AP-consuming abilities faster on a new set of mobs.
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Posted 3/17/2010 4:16:57 PM-
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Posted 3/17/2010 9:50:07 AMThanks fellas.
Where do we donate?
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Posted 3/17/2010 10:42:12 AM-
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Posted 3/17/2010 7:57:55 AM-
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Posted 3/17/2010 7:19:47 AMWas really hoping that they would make a meaningful iteration on that system to curb some of the glaring problems that crop up like:
Grinding one particular instance over and over because you have bad luck with an item that is the best for where you're at.
Being forced to wear gear that you may think looks terrible just to stay competitive.
Everyone at endgame wearing the same gear.
Etc... etc...
If you instead make the armor just aesthetic, and rely on 'upgrades' on items for the stats similar to the Kotor system, then you not only make it easier for the item teams to pump out new gear, but also fix some of the biggest problems that WoW's itemization encounters.
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Posted 3/17/2010 1:01:07 PM-
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Posted 3/17/2010 2:32:10 PMBioware doesn't "copy" anything... they make something that already exists, better.
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Posted 3/17/2010 2:58:42 PMThe fact that all the hands-on imagery shows multiple troopers together makes me hope those are different players in the same hands-on, each wearing identical gear(no sense giving each hands-on player a different set of gear), but each having gear with their own unique looks. Even though it's minor, the stripes on one armor being blue and the other being orange helps a lot for distinguishing between different people. I hope that's indicative of the game itself. It's Mass Effect 2-ish, and really helps shake things up so no two people of the same class look alike.
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Posted 3/17/2010 6:18:33 PMIf you could link us to the info that you refer to, I would be thoroughly grateful.
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Posted 3/17/2010 6:53:51 PMhttp://darthhater.com/2009/12/13/wearing-a-path-in-the-holonet/
http://darthhater.com/2009/12/18/charting-a-path-to-class-customization/
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Posted 3/17/2010 7:59:33 PMUnfortunately they don't really put to rest any of my fears about item mechanics.
Yes, we can be pretty certain that there will be character customization in the form of facial features, size, etc. Yes, there could be character customization in the form of class customization, which coincides with the types of armor you can wear (this is still just speculation as of now, right?).
But neither of those things solve any of the major problems with WoW's item mechanics that I mentioned above.
I guess I'm just hoping that there is much more to the item mechanics than we've seen so far.
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Posted 3/17/2010 8:49:21 PMAlso did you watch the dev blog with all the armor sets on the walls? Sure some pieces of gear may be wearable by other classes but the sheer amount of class specific sets should alleviate some of the problems of matchy-patchy gear.
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Posted 3/17/2010 9:46:22 PM-
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Posted 3/17/2010 10:27:34 PMSure, patterns and color differentiation are good for appearance diversity, but that's all they solve.
Ideally, they would scrap WoW's static itemization and go back to something similar to what they did in Kotor. That way the piece of armor itself only determines mitigation or damage type, and then you add stats onto those pieces with upgrades.
Lower level gear has less upgrade slots, and the upgrades themselves have level requirements. This way you keep itemization from getting stale (don't want to be using the same item at level 1 as you use at level 30), but you still give players a ton of appearance options. For example there could be 10 sets of light chest armor for trooper that are all look completely different, are level 10, and have 2 upgrade slots.
This way you could wear the piece of armor you like the best visually, and then put stats on it that support your specific character build.
If you think about it, Blizzard already started to go this route with sockets and enchants. The problem is, if you leave the base stats on the items, min/maxers will still all be wearing the same base gear and then adding onto it.
If you take away the base stats and make ALL stats come from sockets and enchants, then you'd suddenly see huge amounts of character diversity.
On top of that, it would also make it quite a bit easier for Bioware to pump out new armor designs because you wouldn't have to worry about balance issues until they went about creating new upgrades.
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Posted 3/17/2010 11:17:10 PMBut yeah, I like your slot system. Seems great for customization. I love having my own unique look, so I wholly endorse your proposal.