E3 2011: Gameplay Impressions

E3 2011: Gameplay Impressions



Darth Hater once again sent a substantial team to E3 and experienced a new demonstration of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Several staffers share their personal impressions of various classes on Tatooine in the following pages, and you are welcome to ask them questions about their experiences at tonight's Q&A. Please note that even though Orionark and Emlaeh also attended, they both felt their time spent with the game was too limited comparatively to give substantial written impressions.

Individual Impresssions Pages


Algiebba's Impressions


I played the Level 26 mission on Tatooine several times as both Imperial Agent Advanced Classes and also as a Sith Assassin. I'll start out with some general impressions, and then move on to more class-specific thoughts.

In general, the game felt familiar enough to be intuitive. The user interface was easy to navigate and comfortable to use; the default key binds were easy to guess at (like "M for the map), and the game's mechanics didn't have any unpleasant surprises. I went through several combat passes before I remembered that there was no auto attack, so apparently it wasn't even a big enough deal that I noticed it missing. The only general problem that I had was that I didn't know my abilities nearly as well as if I had leveled the character from the start, so I had to spend a bit of time reading tooltips, and this made combat less fluid than it could have been.



Aggro range for mobs seemed to be a little on the short side, but not so markedly short as Lord of the Rings Online. In the open world, it was possible to dodge around groups of creatures without entering combat-though I would frequently see the "alerted icon illuminate as I zipped by on my speeder.

Speaking of speeders, Tatooine seemed quite large, and transport was definitely nice to have. Although it may not be an indication the game would release with this feature, my speeder was usable inside as well as outside. This was particularly nice given the length of some of the caves and passages I had to get through.

Both Operative and Sniper were a lot of fun to play, though it took me longer to kill things as an Operative. I'm not sure if that is the intention, or if it is just a reflection of the positional requirement of Operative combat. It could also be that I'm just more used to gunning things down at range. I was able to do a lot of sneaking about as Operative though, which sped up my mission runs considerably; it is way easier to just walk past the mobs than to fight them.



The Sniper was a ton of fun. On occasions when I crit on my "Ambush opening move, I was able to one-shot one of a group, and Scorpio's crowd control grenade would take another out of the picture for long enough that we could burn down a third while taking minimal fire. Cover Pulse was an amazingly handy ability when melee mobs closed; it would knock them back and keep them at range for a few seconds, which was usually enough time for me to take care of them. The only problem I had with it was in the final encounter of the mission chain, when my Cover Pulse knocked a mob I needed to kill over a balcony, which triggered an evasion glitch.

The Sith Assassin was also a lot of fun to play. I had plenty of area effect melee attacks, and was able to kill groups of mobs in pretty short order. I didn't seem to take much damage, but I'm guessing that's because Dover was doing his job as a Powertech and keeping all the baddies pointed at him.

Overall, the game was a ton of fun to play, and I'm even more excited to get to actually play it on release.
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Comments

  • Jaswar's avatar
    Spice Runner
    • Posts: 239
    #51 Jaswar Posted 6/19/2011 3:16:47 PM
    Sado, I agree with your impressions about the "Speeder." I know the devs stated that there will be different types available in-game. This particular one that was revealed just did'nt look "Star Warsy" to me at all, in fact, it looks Star Trekish. It would have been much better,imo, if they had modeled one like Darth Maul's from that epic disaster Episode 1. This one looked like a "Segway."

    http://www.segway.com/individual/models/index.php
  • dmaimon's avatar
    Spice Runner
    • Posts: 112
    #52 dmaimon Posted 6/20/2011 6:27:35 PM
    100% agree - with no seat it looks like a piece of advanced technology crap... I personally would not want to ride one after a battle. Think that is all it needs: a seat. I understand the game design issues they mentioned about the length of a regular speeder; but this creative design needs some star warsy TLC.
  • AgentOP's avatar
    Dark Lord
    • Posts: 409
    #44 AgentOP Posted 6/17/2011 5:50:59 PM
    Thanks Dover and Algiebba, I needed to hear this positive information about the Operative and it's good to know it was specced Concealment and not Medic because I have a funny feeling the Operative you may have played during the Alderaan warzone Dover may have been Medic-specced. I'm very confused about my 2nd alt now though. Originally I was going to play a Consular, now I'm falling for the Marauder.
  • FeskMunk's avatar
    Spice Runner
    • Posts: 124
    #42 FeskMunk Posted 6/17/2011 3:33:30 PM
    So the rocky desert planet looks beautiful? Can't wait to see it personally :) Nice read!
  • farcrow's avatar
    Nerf Herder
    • Posts: 2
    #39 farcrow Posted 6/17/2011 11:03:24 AM
    Algiebba: Thanks a lot for the reply and clarification. I was really concerned about that, but you've alleviated that concern for now :) Much appreciated.
  • rp2009's avatar
    Nerf Herder
    • Posts: 28
    #38 rp2009 Posted 6/17/2011 9:50:21 AM
    Thank you guys for all this cool hands on impressions. I can't wait to try this baby once it is delivered...
  • Socrates's avatar
    Dark Lord
    • Posts: 419
    #35 Socrates Posted 6/17/2011 5:42:41 AM
    I don't know what to believe. Some people say the SI Assassin is disappointing, Daniel Erickson seemed to really like it. Would be nice to see some video of it with somebody who knows what they are doing playing it. There was a video of a Sith Marauder from E3 that looked amazing, and almost makes me want to play that. But, I really think it all comes down to who is controlling the class. Can't blame anybody. If I was told to hop on and play this level 26 of something I had never played before, I would probably look pretty bad too.
  • Hermon's avatar
    Nerf Herder
    • Posts: 4
    #43 Hermon Posted 6/17/2011 4:00:16 PM
    I was not at E3 this year, but I was fortunate enough to play in a phase of beta last november. My main character I played was a Sith Assasin. I can say with certainty, the class is FUN AS HELL. I made a few videos while I was in beta, and I can tell you, looking back on those, if you know how to play the class, they can be DEADLY.
  • Moday's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 98
    #32 Moday Posted 6/17/2011 3:43:13 AM
    "Aggro range for mobs seemed to be a little on the short side" this is because the aggro was turned down for the people playing the demo, as they wouldn't have survived with the regular aggro. ( DE told us this in a demo he was doing during e3)
  • darthuser4586's avatar
    Nerf Herder
    • Posts: 9
    #31 darthuser4586 Posted 6/17/2011 3:31:39 AM
    People seem to be down on the speeder design. It reminds me of the hover vehicle that Serpintor used in GI Joe.
  • alodestone's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #37 alodestone Posted 6/17/2011 9:41:17 AM
    that's true. i never thought of that but it totally does. cobraaaa!!!!
  • John_Roy's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 60
    #27 John_Roy Posted 6/16/2011 10:58:06 PM
    I really hope they add actual cover locations to Tatooine, and to every in game location. The portable cover laser fence looks awful to me, and incapable of actually protecting you. I would love Dev confirmation that they really are fixing it.
  • Jecalips's avatar
    Spice Runner
    • Posts: 196
    #46 Jecalips Posted 6/18/2011 12:08:29 AM
    "That is not the case. As we communicated to some during E3 (but I guess, not all), Tatooine just hasn't had a complete 'cover pass' yet.

    Natural cover has not been removed from the game."

    ( StephenReid, http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=6866786#edit6866786 )

    You, for obvious reasons, probably know this by now but, hopefully others will find it helpful.
  • emlaeh's avatar
    Dark Councilor
    • Posts: 995
    #50 emlaeh Posted 6/19/2011 11:46:15 AM
    Glad Reid posted that.

    I know most people understand, but for those who don't: we have to report what we see in the game at the time we see it. I hope people appreciate that if there is something off in the game, we're not going to blow smoke up your asses or cover it up (pun NOT intended) because we respect our community's collective intelligence.

    I know for myself that I want to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly because I like to see progress in development. Now if we go back to play Tatooine again further down the road, we can say "hey, they did a really good job adding cover points in an environment that sometimes doesn't exactly lend itself to that and they did it in an interesting way. For example, blah blah blah."

    And we never know how old the builds are that we play. They could be 2 weeks, 2 months, or even 2 years old (that would be more devious than even I can personally imagine).
  • darthuser2815's avatar
    Dark Lord
    • Posts: 307
    #23 darthuser2815 Posted 6/16/2011 9:09:27 PM
    I got to try the demo (after a 3 1/2 hour wait). I played the Sith Marauder, I felt the Sith Marauder's damage was actually pretty low. Reading the gameplay impression made me scratch my head a little bit. But, given this was the first time I got to play any of the classes I don't really have anything to compare it to. I will say I noticed even though I was not a Juggernaut I tended to be very durable. I don't believe I ever dropped below 1/2 health in battle even after doing multiple encounters in a row.

    I wanted to try something different to see what completing the group quest would net me, unfortunately the random person I invited to my party seemed to not have any idea how to play as they did not even fire a single shot while I attacked the group mobs. I believe in order to complete the group quest a sith marauder combined with a healer would be optimal for a two player setup but unfortunately I was unable to defeat a single mob in the group of 4 "elite" mobs. This was surprising to me as the quest suggested minimum of 2 players for the quest so I expected me to be able to take down 1 or 2 of the 4 solo. I will say I did get fairly close to killing one of them solo.

    One of my biggest hopes is that Bioware would let us setup our talent trees at least, but I can understand why they didn't. With my current build I felt sort of like a rogue as I had a bleed effect that needed to be applied to maximize my damage with certain abilities. I am hoping that is based more on the talent points then anything else, but I wouldn't be surprised to find bleed effects as a staple for the marauder. Force choke felt just as great as I suspected it would, except it kept bugging out for me. Instead of the target hovering in the air and taking periodic damage they would be laying on the ground grasping for air until they died. I only had it work one or two times as expected. I am assuming that perhaps my companion knocked the target down each time around the same time I choked the target. I am hoping its just a bug though.

    Within the 20 minute window I got to attempt the group quest and made it to the dialog with Lord Silthar in the cave. Just as I started the conversation they said time's up! I asked if I could finish the dialog and they were totally cool with it. I decided to go out with a bang and kill him. Overall, it was a great experience and I look forward to slaughtering many many more sand people in the future.
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