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Guide to the Fallen

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Chuk

Chuk

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Heh, referring to Tolkien, are we? Nah, I dunno what this story is. Certainly not anything normal. A chance for me to free my writing a bit, do whatever sounds fun. Like have a God banter with a mere mortal. I was originally going to make the humor come from Aurgur being high and mighty and making Admeri look like a bumbling idiot, but that's not how the story went, and I just said 'whatever' and let it go. :P

15-Jul-2011 06:32:59

Englishkid62

Englishkid62

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Mmm, okay. That’s a tough one to answer in 45 minutes, but I’ll try my best.

If you don’t know already, Swtor is a story-driven MMO which to me, means practically nothing: I have never played a 'story-driven MMO' and thus I wouldn’t know what one is supposed to be like. But I can elaborate on the game mechanics and design.

Bioware seemed quite proud of this game and in my opinion, they should be. As it currently stands, this is a massive game with a great deal of content and it is interesting enough to attract quite a large fan base. It is a fully-voiced universe (although there are still bounty boards at times where you pick up one or two quests from in an area) which they say help the immersion. It does – when you play it through the first time. You feel like you have real people speaking to you and I absolutely LOVE my character’s (Jedi Knight) voice. It does seem to put meaning into an otherwise traditional form of questing where you have to go to this area and kill an X amount of Imperial forces and destroy an X amount of sensor relays. On this front I believe Bioware had made the right design decision. Voice-acting does make quite the difference.

23-Apr-2012 10:34:00 - Last edited on 23-Apr-2012 12:28:15 by Englishkid62

Englishkid62

Englishkid62

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As I mentioned above, the quests in themselves were not that extraordinary, despite bringing in the voice acting which gives it a certain flavour, at least the first time you do them. Luckily there is a space bar to skip cut-scenes if you want to save time since you will probably always visit the same place again in a different character and do the same quests. There are, broadly speaking, five kinds of quests. Your class quest, which is individual to your particular class; World quests, which are local quests obtained in quest hubs in any planet; Heroic quests, which are significantly tougher quests than World quests is usually recommended to be completed by 2 or more people; Area quests, which could be anything from a puzzle to a Bonus Kill X quest, which are found once stepping foot into one area; Daily quests, which can be completed daily. In order to generate a great deal of content for 8 classes in a short space of time, I feel Bioware has developed a formula for quests which I will outline as thus: Main quest – plant 3 bombs. Bonus defeat 10 rakghouls. Bonus destroy 5 weapon caches. Bonus defeat Red Claw (some kind of huge rakghoul). Turn in Red Claw’s paws at mission dropbox. Of course, this is an example, but this kind of quest seem to appear quite a few times on a single planet and it becomes noticeable in the third or fourth planet in. My first thoughts were, can’t the developers think of anything else? In Kotor, there were quests on Dantooine where you try to settle this romance between two members of rivalling families. There were smuggling quests on Korriban and cross-planet bounty quests on Manaan. But in Swtor the most prevalent quests are the one or two-step ‘kill and delivery’ style quests. And this is entirely because you’re a Jedi Master and no one else seemed to be able to do their jobs properly. And the developers want you to explore the four corners of the area.

23-Apr-2012 10:34:18 - Last edited on 23-Apr-2012 13:01:07 by Englishkid62

Englishkid62

Englishkid62

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Luckily, there are practically no shortage of ways to level. Having played Runescape, I felt my tolerance for repetitive tasks extremely high. After all, someone did spend 200 hours doing high alchemy… So the above isn’t game-breaking for me. The grind isn't at all comparable to that. True that questing is usually the bulk of someone’s xp gain, but there are other methods to speed up/make the process more interesting. Space combat missions for example gives quite a hefty chunk of xp if you do them often enough, and can give you one or two levels in the mid 20s range. One flashpoint of your level can also give you half to three-quarters of a level – maybe even a whole level if you have rested xp. Rested xp is gained by logging out your character in a cantina or on your ship, and in a rested state all xp gained by killing mobs are doubled and the extra xp will be taken from the amount of rested xp. There are also warzones which also give quite a bit of xp per match. It is possible to level from 10 – 50 entirely on warzones, though that certainly would not be how I’d play swtor. Unlike Runescape though, you don’t get xp for killing mobs 6 or 7 levels below you, so grinding in newbie zones and stealing their kills is not recommended. As I was saying before, there are plenty of ways to get xp and since each planet has more content than is actually required to out-level it, it is perfectly okay to skip quests and do something else, or move on to a new planet without touching to bonus series for people who loved a planet so much they wanted to stay for another ten quests. Perfectionists will try to do every quest and kill every heroic world boss before moving on to a new planet, but they’ll find themselves at level 50 (max level) already when they’re at Hoth (Level 37- 41).

23-Apr-2012 10:34:33 - Last edited on 23-Apr-2012 12:55:04 by Englishkid62

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