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Details on Warzones and Crafting revealed
MMO.Maverick
Member CommonPosts: 7,619
It seems yesterday was some sort of EA event, and apparently quite some interesting newsbits was revealed there, namely some details regarding warzones and crafting:
look here for the detailed information at Darthhater
I just gave it a quick glance, will take a better look when I have more time.
As far as I read, the Warzone described sets your team against the other where both sides try to control and hold available anti-aircraft cannons, and if your side has control of the AA artillery, you'll be able to fire a massive cannon at the other faction's capital ship. When you die you spawn in a drop ship high above the battlefield where you get to take vehicles that deliver you back to the battlefield.
Every Warzone seems to have its own missions and mechanics.
The Crafting is split into 3 areas, and you send your Companions to do stuff in them, the areas being Crafting, Gathering and Missions. Missions have categories as Treasure Hunting and Diplomacy.
edit: lol, suddenly a number of sites put info about Warzones and Crafting up, here they are
Gamespot (including interview)
And here's the Warzone video:
I'm going to put some quotes from the articles here:
Darthhater, about the Alderaan Warzone:
Player respawns appear to be instant in its current form, as players spawn in a drop ship high above the battlefield. These drop ships are safe areas that house vehicles that then take players to the planet's surface to continue the fight. There are also turrets that continually bombard your ship that you can re-aim once they are under your control.
"There is this mechanic of two drop ships. Your objective as a team is to go down and control anti-aircraft artillery pieces that you literally see turn and fire on the other ships," explained BioWare's Blaine Christine. Once a team controls these defenses, they direct a massive cannon at the other faction's capital ship, and the first team to destroy the other team's ship is the victor. "You are destroying the ship which is inherently kind of a timer, because once that destruction occurs, the match is over," continued Christine. "The winner is the winner, and the loser is the loser based on whose ship is still alive."
We also learned that each Warzone will be governed by different mechanics and objectives. The developers teased the next Warzone will take place on a derelict starship and its mechanics will be completely different from Alderaan's.
Darthhater, about crafting:
Using their ship as a base of operations, players will be able to send their companions on crafting tasks, and particular companions excelling at specific duties. This Crew Skill system will be divided into three majors groups: Gathering, Crafting, and Missions. We were given two examples for each major group: Gathering will be comprised of jobs like Bio Analysis and Slicing, Crafting includes Artificer and Bio Chem, and lastly Missions will involve activities such as Diplomacy and Treasure Hunting.
And nice to see:
Christine: "I will just say there are some mechanics to it that will allow players who are more involved in crafting to really get deeply involved in crafting and be appropriately rewarded for it."
Also:
Your companions can also be given missions on the fly, and even while players are away from their ship. All of these crafting activities can be queued up and can continue when players are offline.
Gamespot:
From the ship, your companions can be dispatched to gather materials and commanded to craft items while you go about the business of being, for instance, a Darth Vader-like Sith badass. These crew instructions can also be radioed back to the ship while you are planetside (we saw companion characters toiling over a spaceship workbench in the presentation), and crew members might join you while you quest
In the Gamespot video, it has been confirmed that you gain xp from Warzones and there is a matchmaking system.
With recipe-like items, companion characters will be able to manufacture useful kits for you; with one of the crafting skills, biochem, they can craft stimpaks, adrenals, and implants to confer benefits on your main character. Alongside gathering and crafting skills come mission skills. Of these, Christine touched on diplomacy and treasure hunting (one of Vette's specialties, as a Twi'lek pirate). With the latter, you can send companions off on errands to gather treasure, while diplomacy missions, for a dark-side character, involve having crew members do your evil bidding and spread your wicked influence around the galaxy. For these missions (say, bribing a senator), you might be rewarded with a shift in your light- or dark-side alignment. The crew can also undertake this gathering, crafting, and evildoing while you are offline; progress is made both in game time and in your downtime, so you can queue up tasks.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Comments
Cool, thanks for the info
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
The Warzones, or that Warzone, sounds awesome.
Crafting is also very intresting. A little bit more information is needed to really get a grasp of how it fully works but that will come in due time. At least we have a basic understanding now.
Looking good so far.
Thanks for the info by the way
Complementary information / interviews at Gamespot btw...
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
UPDATED
Warzone Trailer/Video
http://www.swtor.com/media/trailers/warzones
Dissection of warzone Video
http://darthhater.com/2010/11/05/dissection-and-analysis-of-the-alderaan-warzone-video/
Courtesy of Darth Hater:
Yesterday, Electronic Arts presented its annual Winter Showcase in London, and Darth Hater was there to watch for news on Star Wars: The Old Republic. BioWare revealed the Imperial Agent at last year's showcase, so our expectation bar raised a few notches. With information on both PvP Warzones and the eagerly anticipated crafting system, this European event did not disappoint.
Earlier this year at E3, we learned SWTOR will incorporate Warzones as just one of the forms of player versus player combat, and a brief mention the planet Alderaan would feature a Warzone without any significant details. Yesterday, we learned that Alderaan's Warzone will be an 8 vs. 8, objective-based PvP with a goal of controlling planetary defenses, and provides rewards in the form of tokens and XP. Although we asked, we don't yet know if there will be any group size scaling for Warzones.
Player respawns appear to be instant in its current form, as players spawn in a drop ship high above the battlefield. These drop ships are safe areas that house vehicles that then take players to the planet's surface to continue the fight. There are also turrets that continually bombard your ship that you can re-aim once they are under your control.
"There is this mechanic of two drop ships. Your objective as a team is to go down and control anti-aircraft artillery pieces that you literally see turn and fire on the other ships," explained BioWare's Blaine Christine. Once a team controls these defenses, they direct a massive cannon at the other faction's capital ship, and the first team to destroy the other team's ship is the victor. "You are destroying the ship which is inherently kind of a timer, because once that destruction occurs, the match is over," continued Christine. "The winner is the winner, and the loser is the loser based on whose ship is still alive."
We also learned that each Warzone will be governed by different mechanics and objectives. The developers teased the next Warzone will take place on a derelict starship and its mechanics will be completely different from Alderaan's. "If you say what kind of scenarios could happen on a derelict starship, you can kind of formulate scenarios to see what we mean," Christine hinted. "It is going to be a different experience; you'll have different objectives, different things going on, and different mechanics. Still immersive -- but different."
BioWare's PvP designer Gabe Amatangelo said they wanted Warzones to fit in with the story element of the game. When they looked at PvP, they decided that banners, flags and points were "too game-y."
"I think that the biggest thing is we have to look at where these pieces fit into the story, because we still want them to tie to the story," Christine replied when asked about the challenge developing unique Warzones that made sense to the planet's background. "We sort of looked at it like what is the action that is occurring at that point in time... whatever level the player is at, so it is partially based on the player's level and what abilities they have. We also considered what events are occurring within context on that particular planet, and how it would make sense to fit in those mechanics and/or area that you would be fighting over."
The developers also presented an overview of The Old Republic's crafting system. BioWare announced they will use a Crew Skill crafting system, very similar to the one we speculated on in a recent podcast. Using their ship as a base of operations, players will be able to send their companions on crafting tasks, and particular companions excelling at specific duties.
This Crew Skill system will be divided into three majors groups: Gathering, Crafting, and Missions. We were given two examples for each major group: Gathering will be comprised of jobs like Bio Analysis and Slicing, Crafting includes Artificer and Bio Chem, and lastly Missions will involve activities such as Diplomacy and Treasure Hunting.
Companions utilizing Diplomacy can spread influence and change morality alignment points, while those seeking Treasure may find rare items based on a random number generator. The Bio Analysis example illustrated a logical dependence of gathered material to create a crafted item; using the skill on a dead creature produces components for use in creating stimpaks as a crafted item in Biochem. They also mentioned in passing that crafting would be a key part of their yet unannounced Auction House system.
In addition to the stimpak example, the presenters stated other crafted items include weapons, and when asked if this provided for creation of weapon modifications, Christine couldn't provide details but commented "it is a very robust system, and there are still some details that we haven't revealed yet which I know players are going to be excited about. I will just say there are some mechanics to it that will allow players who are more involved in crafting to really get deeply involved in crafting and be appropriately rewarded for it."
As mentioned above, specific companions will be better at certain mission types. For example, Vette, a pirate and companion to the Sith Warrior, will excel at Treasure Hunting. Your companions can also be given missions on the fly, and even while players are away from their ship. All of these crafting activities can be queued up and can continue when players are offline. We did see a screenshot of two companions on one ship performing crafting duties at the same time. However, it should be noted that we don't yet know if they are working on the same activity or separate ones.
"Only passive companions would assist in crafting," explained Christine. "Pretty much all your active companion can do while out adventuring with you crafting-related is gathering activities. Even though I can send them out on missions and gather items, when they are adventuring with me and I see a gathering node in the world, I can right click on that. Rather than my character going over to that node and performing that gathering action, you'll see what you saw in our screenshot today that the companion character performs that action."
Finally, these reveals appear to keep with BioWare's promise of maintaining an epic feeling throughout Star Wars: The Old Republic. They described Warzones as reminiscent of key events from the movies, where you are able to hear the captain of the capital ships relay messages and objectives, and the demonstration video echoed these statements. Also, the revealed crafting system Damion Schubert hinted at a few weeks ago allows player crafting without "Darth Vader picking flowers on the side of the road." BioWare and LucasArts saved some great reveals for this European event and we now have a good chunk of substantial information to digest... but, as always, our appetites hunger for more.
http://darthhater.com/
Thanks Haters. Another Great Article.
This game just keeps looking better and better.
Really interesting. So the companions hunt for materials and you do the actual crafting? And they can hunt for materials while you are out adventuring and while your offline? If this is so it is very interesting. Really love the warzone info.
In Bioware we trust!
If it's anything like KOTOR they will be doing the crafting. They did not have matt gathering but you could ask a companion to make you something. Each companion made something diffrent.
Thanks for the info I like what they are doing with the crafting and PvP.
I can feel your anger. This game is defenseless. Take your weapon. Strike this game down with all of your hatred, and your journey towards towards the Dark Side will be complete.
So. Sith companion, Vette, excels at Treasure Hunting.
Treasure Hunting is used to find rare items.
So..... You're going to have certain classes with companions that excel at finding rare loot.
D2 Magic Find, but for certain classes? Bahahahaha
I don't see how you gathered that from the example that was written. I would assume the compaions from all classes would each have a specialization in one area. And since classes have multiple companions I can see how this would even out.
In Bioware we trust!
Ahh yes, they made it interesting and somewhat fresh for once. We shall see how it plays, but I like what I hear so far. It's kinda different.
Wait...how can this be? Crafting? And a crafting system that can be DEEP? But...this was simply supposed to be a story driven, single player, once and done type of game. And a PvP system/scenario that sounds f'n awesome?! How can Bioware do this?! What about the story? What about what EA louse said about how they were panicking?
Fantastic info! Glad to get some new details about the game.
They put up a friday update with a video about the Alderaan warzone:
see here for Warzone video
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
They must have done a 180 after the Louse outed them. LOL.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
LOL! Good answer
So...does this mean it's now a $600 million dollar game?
This crafting system seems appalling - much more simplistic and peripheral than even Wow's.
I am unhappy in the first place that your 'companion' will craft and not your 'PC' but it also implies that a lot of crafting will be outside your control - "...players will be able to send their companions on crafting tasks...'. Why would I send them when my PC could do it themselves?
There doesn't seem to be any surveying, any direct mining or gathering or harvesting, any tool dependency or factory production. And why would diplomacy, conducted by a character outside my control, play any part in crafting?
What's worse is that it appears that the skill element in 'crafting', which to me actually is important, is missing: "... those seeking Treasure may find rare items based on a random number generator..." Really?
To me, this seems as much a shoddy bolt-on with no relationship to the main game as the flight element.
Oh yes, Bioware, this really is the way to earn back your hundred and fifty million dollars. ^^
Your avatar will have access to a number of different companions so it would stand to reason that most if not all classes could just have a companion that was capable of all the different elements.
ZERMINUS You seemed to have gotten alot more from what has been revealed then I did, for instance I only saw a poster on here elude to they MAY do crafting like in KOTOR where the companions actually did the crafting. I missed where Bioware said your created avatar could not craft would love if you could direct us to that part though.
Now in reference to the fact that the companions play any role in the crafting I recall reading something about a player character being able to click on some type of node and send the companion he was traveling with to pick up the item instead of side tracking himself to do it. For the life of me I can't see why any of this would matter anyway you speak as if somehow there are crafting systems in place that are so good you actually learn to create the items in real life.
I don't want to rain on your parade but when crafting in any game that has crafting as a component you are in essence clicking a button which through your control (clicking that button) sends some type of animation in effect which then generates an item.
So is your complaint that you are worried that there may not be some nifty animation that won't be included of your character tooling around a workshop/kitchen? If so I still didn't read anything that indicated it wouldn't be possible.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
wow game info. I hope this appeases some of the haters a bit. I cant wait to go read up on this myself and watch the video.
Pvp is a part of mythic mmo's that has always been top notch i didnt expect it to be any diffrent in tor. I dont knwo why anyone else would. From dark age of camelot to warhammer pvp has been a big focus of previous mythic games.
As for the crafting it will be really cool if u can send one companion off on diplomacy, one to farm matts, and one to fight with u or something to that degree while u level. Sounds cool and interesting.
As for ea louse anyone who wants to belive every word a guy who stated he never worked on tor and didnt know anything about it other then it would suck and fail well thats therre bad and they were never gonna like tor anyways.
I for one think this info is nice and cool and cant wait to hear more about it.
Oh come on we know what a few things about crafting. we only saw that they can go gather for us. I didnt see anything that said we cant go gather and craft ourselves. Just that our companions can also.
No, I think the player will be doing most of the actual crafting. Companions will mainly gather materials or perform simple tasks for crafting (for instance, it'd be cool if you had a weapon that required 3 components - you make one and each of your two companions make one at the same time, bam. 3 birds with one stone). Maybe the Missions crafting "professions" are Companion-only, but we need more info at this point.
You think this crafting system is "DEEP"?
You think the PVP system/scenario sounds "f'n [sic] awesome"?
Really? Really? These are things you honesty think about a bolt-on feature mini-game you don't control and a rather ordinary BG system that WOW was doing four years ago? Really? Seriously?
Are you OK?
Well they have earned about $80.00 from me because I have to get the collectors edition.
In Bioware we trust!
Has it just dawned on you peoples opinions can and will differ? Yes I agree with all of TUX's points and no, I'm fine, thanks for asking.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Go make the next revolutionary MMO where EVERYTHING is completely brand-new, then let me know. Charge me $200 for the box and $50/mo. I'd play it.
Hmm. I am actually intrigued by the Warzones and the Crafting info. This has elevated my interest from Antipathy to Raised Eyebrow.
Thanks cyphers.
There is this quote as well: "it is a very robust system, and there are still some details that we haven't revealed yet which I know players are going to be excited about. I will just say there are some mechanics to it that will allow players who are more involved in crafting to really get deeply involved in crafting and be appropriately rewarded for it."
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
Probably a good idea. Don't open it though. That's an instant $500 on eBay three years after launch and one year after the game shuts down (just kidding).