Joined: Thu Sep 03, 2009 3:08 am Posts: 6465 Location: The Lab
So, the SSSP (Super Secret Space Project) finally has a name. This is content that has been rumored about endlessly since pre-release, and is now a reality.
I'm interested to see how fun it is, but am a little disappointed that there is no story or PvE content with it.
And the "Conflict Rising" trailer official news release: here
And on YouTube:
swtor.com wrote:
TAKE YOUR BATTLE TO SPACE! Experience epic Player-vs-Player (PvP) dogfighting in the new Free-to-Play Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ Digital Expansion, Galactic Starfighter. Join 12v12 free flight combat action and jump into fierce factional battles as the war between the Sith Empire and the Galactic Republic explodes into space. Compete and advance to earn ground game rewards plus new weapons, powers and abilities to customize your ultimate Starfighter!
SPECIAL LIMITED TIME OFFER Subscribers as of November 1, 2013, qualify for the following bonuses: Exclusive Gunship "Daring" Paint Jobs with Early Gunship Unlock - plus all Subscriber Early Access Rewards*!
SUBSCRIBER EARLY ACCESS BEGINS: DECEMBER 3, 2013 Subscriber Early Access Rewards (December 3, 2013 - January 13, 2014) Early Access Starting December 3 Exclusive Gunship "Daring" Paint Jobs with Early Gunship Role Unlock Only available to Subscribers who were also Subscribers on November 1, 2013 Strike Fighter “Valiant” Paint Jobs Scout "Valiant" Paint Jobs Imperial Battle Ace and Republic Squadron Commander Pilot Suits In-Game Titles: “First Galactic Starfighter” and “Test Pilot” Maximum leveling and progression
PREFERRED EARLY ACCESS BEGINS: JANUARY 14, 2014 Preferred Status Early Access Rewards (January 14, 2014 – February 3, 2014) Early Access Starting January 14 Imperial Battle Ace Pilot Suit Republic Squadron Commander Pilot Suit In-Game Title: “Test Pilot” Also available to Subscribers during this period.
FREE-TO-PLAY ACCESS BEGINS: FEBRUARY 4, 2014 Free-to-Play Access Rewards (February 4, 2014 – Ongoing) Imperial Battle Ace Pilot Suit Republic Squadron Commander Pilot Suit Available to all players with a SWTOR account during this period.
KEY FEATURES 12v12 FREE FLIGHT SPACE COMBAT Jump into fierce PvP space battles with your friends and Companions.
MULTIPLE BATTLE ZONES AND GAMEPLAY MODES Travel to multiple space locations and fight through exciting battles with different gameplay modes.
CUSTOMIZE YOUR STARFIGHTER Choose from a variety of unique ships and unlock an abundant set of new weapons, powers and abilities as you advance!
MASTER A VARIETY OF SHIP ROLES From a Scout to a Gunship, master various ship roles that suit your combat style.
EARN GROUND GAME REWARDS Gain additional XP that gives your ground game characters a boost. Galactic Starfighter will continue to evolve with regular updates for all players so check back often for more details!
As a space sim lover, I'm curious. As somebody who saw what they called starfighter combat at release... I can muster only mild curiousity, at best.
I figure the best that can be hoped for is Starfox 64 multiplayer mode?
Then again, I could be wrong. Jump to Lightspeed for SWG certainly surprised me by being a pretty quality space sim in its own right.
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Joined: Thu Sep 03, 2009 3:08 am Posts: 6465 Location: The Lab
Yea, I'm pretty skeptical myself. I suspect the atmosphere will be similar to the current space game, but the obvious big difference is that it's not going to be on rails.
I'm not nearly as much of a space sim buff as you are though, so my hopes don't have as far to fall.
As much as I love this game, I'm still waiting on more class story content before jumping back in. Another Makeb style planet arc might get me back, too. End game wasn't rewarding enough for me and I've never liked PvP so all SWTOR really has going for it is story.
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Joined: Thu Sep 03, 2009 3:08 am Posts: 6465 Location: The Lab
They have already said they are not developing any more class story content.
There are several new planetary story arcs, but no new class specific stories are being developed.
They have said that it's too expensive and takes too long to write, develop and produce this type of content to get content out at a reasonable rate, and they don't want the game to stagnate for long periods.
Since Makeb, they have added two new planets.
CZ-198 is a Czerka moon that has two 'any class' flashpoints (Groupfinder doesn't enforce the Tank/Heal/2xDPS roles) as well and new Weekly and Daily missions, and a reputation vendor.
Oricon was just released last week. It is the home of the Dread Masters, and has two new level 55 Operations and Weekly/Daily hub with reputation vendors.
The Oricon breadcrumb quest series (basically the same missions as the dailies) all reward Artifact (Purple) 168 (69) gear (Dread Forged/Dread Master i think it's called).
Yeah, they may have said that, but there has already been data mined stuff to indicate otherwise. I guess we'll see because not everything that gets data mined comes to fruition...but a lot has for this particular game.
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They have said that it's too expensive and takes too long to write, develop and produce this type of content to get content out at a reasonable rate, and they don't want the game to stagnate for long periods.
I had wondered about that. That's the double-edged sword of a fully voiced MMO with a different actor for each protagonist. It's a lot easier for a single person to write text for all genders and classes than it is to find time to have each actor go into a recording session and have someone direct them as well.
Well, they do add new voiced lines whenever they add a new quest that you don't get from a terminal. So they do still have to get the actors into the studio to record. But I'm sure they do it well in advance. I'd be willing to bet everything they've added since RotHC had already been recorded when they were doing the RotHC recordings.
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Joined: Thu Sep 03, 2009 9:59 am Posts: 15740 Location: Combat Information Center
Numbuk wrote:
Midgen wrote:
They have said that it's too expensive and takes too long to write, develop and produce this type of content to get content out at a reasonable rate, and they don't want the game to stagnate for long periods.
I had wondered about that. That's the double-edged sword of a fully voiced MMO with a different actor for each protagonist. It's a lot easier for a single person to write text for all genders and classes than it is to find time to have each actor go into a recording session and have someone direct them as well.
The MMO community wants new content (free) at ridiculous rates these days. With TESO, people are talking about they expect new content every 6 weeks. Content locusts want to burn through everything in search of constant "progression."
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Joined: Wed Sep 02, 2009 10:48 pm Posts: 753 Location: In some distant part of the Universe
Has anyone gotten a chance to try this out yet? Early access for subscribers went live today. I'm at work so I haven't checked it out, but it looks fantastic.
No rails. Completely free-flying. 3 different ship types (scout, Strike fighter, and gunship) with a fourth (bomber) to follow in February. Each type has different flight characteristics and loadout options. Returning from the x-wing / tie-fighter series is Energy management. You can manipulate lasers, shields, and engines to increase power to one system, at the cost of the other two.
You are locked in 3rd person view. No cockpit view. And out of the box, you will only be able to use the mouse and keyboard. Developers have stated that joystick/gamepad support is coming.
After reading all of this and watching several gameplay videos, I am completely stoked. I played the ever-living crap out of XvT and XWA. This looks right up my alley. I'm a little disappointed at being forced to use mouse and keyboard, but I'm still very excited and anticipate playing this for quite some time to come.
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Joined: Thu Sep 03, 2009 3:08 am Posts: 6465 Location: The Lab
I've been playing it off and on since closed beta.
I'm not really into PvP (at all), but I'll probably spend some time doing this in a casual way. If my guildmates are active, that might motivate me more.
The nice thing about it is, it is completely separate from the rest of the game in every way. Everyone starts from scratch. People who have a bagillion credits and/or a bunch of geared max level players have no advantage over people starting with a fresh level 1.
The one thing existing players do get is the ability to use their own companions in your crew slots. There is no tangible benefit to this except from a role playing/story standpoint though.
You will see three class of ships here: Scout, Strike Fighter, and Gunship. There should be two ships under each class except for Gunships. You will have two ships to play with initially, the other 5 are locked and greyed out until you can acquire enough Fleet Requisition to unlock them or purchase them via cartel coins. You cannot access the Components tab of ships that are locked but you can see a brief description, ship stats, and a list of their components when you click them on them in the Ships tab.
-Scouts: Fast and agile ships designed to fly from point A to point B faster than other ships. Combat capability is slightly limited compared to other types of ships due to limited weapon loadout and weak defenses but can easily outfly blaster fire and missiles. Max range is ~6000m.
-Strike Fighter: Standard lock-on missile carrying ship that comprise the bulk of most matches. Not as agile and fast as the scout but has a much bigger weapon loadout that allow them to carry two types or blasters or two types of missiles to handle any situation. Max range is ~7000m to 10000m depending on the missile loadout.
-Gunships: Designed to be a sniper ship that can shoot at enemies from afar (15000m) with its railguns that requires a few seconds of charge up and immobilize itself. Cannot carry any missiles but has some hard hitting blasters. Able to kill enemy ships in 2-3 hits but is vulnerable to fast moving scouts carrying rocket pods.
Crew
Companions fill crew slots in Galactic Starfighter. There are four new companions per faction exclusive to GS that serve as default companions for everyone. All of the companions belonging to your class are also unlocked if you have unlocked them already on your character in the “ground” game. You can unlock other companions belonging in the same faction as well with Fleet Requisition (1500 Fleet Requisition per companion).
There are five crew slots: Engineering, Offensive, Defensive, Tactical and Co-Pilot. Each slot have a roster of companions that can fill this role. For the co-pilot slot, you must pick one of the four companions you have selected for the other slots. This companion will double up as both your co-pilot and fill one of the other roles.
Companions in the Engineering, Offensive, Defensive, Tactical slots grant you passive bonuses to your ship. Different companions grant different passive bonuses. Your co-pilot will grant you with an active ability you can use in combat with a cooldown (usually 1 minute cooldown)
_________________ "I Live, I Love, I Slay, and I Am Content." - Conan the Barbarian
Joined: Wed Sep 02, 2009 10:48 pm Posts: 753 Location: In some distant part of the Universe
Now that I've had some time to play, I can post my thoughts.
First of all, I really, really like it. Galactic Starfighter is vastly superior to the in-game, single-player space missions. Not only is it free flight, instead of on-rails, but you're also going up against human opponents instead of computer AI. Each mission is different, as is every opponent you face.
As far as the controls, it took a while to get used to, but now I feel very comfortable with them. I'm not even sure I would switch to a joystick, when that option becomes available.
The ship-types are very interesting. I do pretty well in a Strike Fighter. First upgrade I took was Proton Torpedoes. They do good damage, but they take forever to lock-on (4 seconds). On my next character, I opted to get Quad-Lasers first. This was a much better upgrade path, for me. I'm still not sure if I like torps or cluster missles better, but quad-lasers is a must-have upgrade.
Gunships are very cool. They literally are a sniper, in space. Insane damage and crazy range, at a pretty high cost of mobility, and limited visibility.
Scouts....man, I don't know about scouts. I suck in a scout. I literally cannot kill anyone in them. They are super-fast, and have crazy agility/mobility. But they have no firepower. I dunno. Maybe I just need more time playing in a scout, but for now, I just avoid them and stick to the other ships that fit my playstyle better.
What I really like is that anyone can jump in, at any level. You can literally start a level 1 character, jump right into Starfighter, and level up that way if you like. Each match is a max of 14 mins, and I'm averaging about 8K to 10K exp per match. Plus 1K to 3K credits. And all of the ships are competetive with the default loadouts. So there is virtually no difference between a lvl 1 character, or a level 55 character. They both start out on the same footing. Naturally, the people that play more will be able to upgrade their ships and get better components, but in the end, it really does come down to skill and situational awareness.
_________________ "I Live, I Love, I Slay, and I Am Content." - Conan the Barbarian
Joined: Thu Sep 03, 2009 3:08 am Posts: 6465 Location: The Lab
That's pretty much my thought's exactly.
I primarily played a gunship in the betas and had a lot of fun with them. Of the three current ship types, it probably suits my playstyle the best.
I'll be interested to try the bombers when they become available.
And I wholeheartedly agree with you about the (lack of) barrier to entry being really cool. I have several friends who no longer played, and aborted attempts at coming back because they didn't want to grind new gear, and they were afraid that somehow existing players would have an advantage over them.
After I explained that there is no crossover whatsoever (other than your character name and available companions) between GSF and the rest of the game, they jumped in and started playing, and are having a blast.
There was some typically ranting on the forums about the items on the cartel market being Pay to Win. I hate this stuff. The ships on the cartel market are not superior in any way to the ships you buy with your 'requisition'. The do give a slight increase in requisition gain over the other ships, but this is the equivalent of using an XP boost in the 'ground game' PvP. Players may be able to gear their ships up a a little faster, and their ships may look a little cooler, but once everyone's ship is fully spec'd, they will all be exactly the same.
Joined: Thu Sep 03, 2009 3:08 am Posts: 6465 Location: The Lab
Players who play more frequently or have been playing longer will have upgraded their ships, so they will have better upgrades (range, shields,blaster power, etc...).
I've never played CoD at all, so I can't say if it's the same.
New players will definitely be at some disadvantage over those who have played longer, but I don't think it's terribly significant. I would say that the learning curve in learning the ship controls and the game mechanics is going to be far more limiting than your ship having fewer upgrades.
The point I was trying to make is that a max geared level 55 who has nearly unlimited ability to grind PvE and PvP comms and credits has no advantage over someone making a brand new level 1 character and jumping straight into space with Galactic Star Fighter.
Someone on reddit aggregated a bunch of online guides (mostly from dulfy.net).
Joined: Wed Sep 02, 2009 10:48 pm Posts: 753 Location: In some distant part of the Universe
Numbuk wrote:
I guess I can just log in and play and see for myself but...
Is this like the Call of Duty model, where "all players are not created equal" since the long-time players have upgraded to the best of the best guns?
In a manner of speaking, yes. But it's much less pronounced. For instance, the best laser cannons for the Strike Fighter are quad lasers. You can upgrade to those after only 2 - 3 matches, depending on how well you do in those matches. Now there are upgrades (think skill trees) for each component on your ship. So a veteran player may have a maxed out skill tree for quad lasers, that will increase their effectiveness, but it's not necessarily such a large disparity that you can't overcome the gap.
_________________ "I Live, I Love, I Slay, and I Am Content." - Conan the Barbarian
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