@Saravi_ to @dawnsrose Ever tried to navigate the swtor Fan Art forum? So much hard work/talent, lost under new posts. There’s got to be a better way!

This is a good point. I have posted in that forum, and I read a couple of people’s work. But, my word, there is a ton of very good products in this forum. Is there truly a better way to organize it? Continue Reading »

Here we go with the trailers again. Just when you think they’ve shown everything they have to show in video form, sans live streaming all 50 levels of the game, Bioware starts another amazing series of trailers. New trailers, including today’s, are focusing on showcasing a single class from each side of the conflict, urging future players to “Choose their side”. Reminiscent of the epic fight between Jango Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi the first trailer pits a Jedi Knight versus a Bounty Hunter class. The trailer consists of commentaries by writers and game designers that designed these classes and we get some great in-game footage of the two fighting it out. Jedi Knight with his “up in your face” combat style and Bounty Hunter trying to keep his distance at all costs makes up for one great trailer full of action. No matter how much make up you apply to it or no matter how many great CGI cinematic you throw out, the in-game stuff is always the best part of any trailer for me. Every time I am reminded why I am a fan of the game, because all in0game footage looks exactly as I imagined it should look. Enjoy the first Choose Your Side trailer and tell me – who wins the fight – Knight or Hunter?
 

These class progression trailers are immense fun. They are one of the few things forum trolls do not hate or fuss much about, which just goes to prove my previous sentence. There was a big squeee in SWTOR Life virtual office because 80% of staff are planning to play Bounty Hunters at launch. SWTORCrafter even managed to play the first levels of it during the Fan Site Summit, so you can check his hands on impressions to complete your overall impression of the class.
The progression trailer shows some great footage of new armor and skills. I particularly liked the last armor they show in the video. It is very “savage” looking. There’s flamethrower AOE-ing, carbonite freezing, rocket launching, jetpack flying, knife in face action all over the place in the video and I am sure you will enjoy it. I have one objection though. I know they’ve done this only to show the skills and that action is a bit staged, but I still can’t get it out of my head. There is no way in hell that anyone or anything, including Bounty Hunters, can one shot Jedi (padawan or not).
 

Su cuy’gar, ner vode.  Ibi’tuur copaani miit’gaanar be kebi meg vut’yc par ni, bal balyc par an beroyase – Mando’ade bal val joha, Mando’a.  Still with me?  Fret not, for it shall all be made clear momentarily!

Class is most definitely in session...

Those of you familiar with Karen Traviss’  “Republic Commando” series may have already had some exposure to the Mandalorian language, Mando’a.  Originally, I planned on merely crafting a lengthy treatise about Mando’a and its grammar, but in the end I thought this would be a great opportunity instead to speak with a member of the larger Star Wars community whom I have followed for awhile, Natasha Morea, AKA “Mandalorian Girl.”  I recently had the great pleasure of sitting down with her at a dusty cantina, where she graciously allowed me to ask all manner of questions.  Below is an excerpt from our conversation.

Read on for more!

One of our favorite forum do-gooders, Georg Zoeller, dropped by the main forums today to wish us a Happy Rapt… no, my apologies!  He wanted to clear up a few things about auto-attacking, and whether or not there would be macro functionality in SWTOR at launch:

Macros are a pretty broad term for certain convenience and advanced user functions at this time. Some of those features are present as possible key binds in the game, others are not.

We’re not opposed to macros, we don’t hate them, in fact we will probably add them, but probably not for launch.

So what does this mean for us?

Continue Reading »

Ah springtime, when a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of… number crunching?

Gabe Amatangelo, SWTOR’s Lead PvP Designer and purveyor of mirth, stopped by the forums today mostly to quash the fun we might have otherwise had PvP’ing in the buff, but also to shed some rough insight into how Bolster may work in practice.

Those who dreamed of fighting bravely in their skivvies may want to take a few deep breaths before continuing… Continue Reading »

First off let me start off this little article with the props so due to SWTORCRAFTER and SERGE for the awesome interviews and hands-on reports from the fan summit.   I was as happy as a Sarlacc full of Boba when I got all those articles and reports.  Well done guys. Remind me to send you both a nice can of nuts, and a $50 space hooker for Festivus this year.

Today’s topic of whine:   Game systems.   That’s right. You read it right. I’m gonna go off on a tangent about something I have absolutely no clue about, have never heard about, and have never seen.   Why you ask in a perplexed and angry tone?  Simple: I have way to much time on my hands and very little to do.  I also enjoy bitching about crap for no good reason.

 
Need moar epic SWTOR rant? Click here to read the full article

So as we make our way closer to that fateful date where we can all log into the The Old Republic and make a character to finally play, I start thinking of things that go along with Character Creation. Sure, the initial part of this process is choosing a race, sex, appearance and finally class, but there is also another part of this and that is HOW you choose to play that character. With the story part of the game and the effects of the choices we make, how you play your character is a bigger part of the direction you want your character to be.

One thing to think about is that this probably isn’t going to be as easy as you think. Light/Neutral/Dark as a Bounty Hunter takes different roles compared to the other classes. I see the role of Bounty Hunters (BH) as something out of the box in regards to what they do in each setting. Let’s take a look at how I see the roles playing out.

• Light (good) I know, you are thinking “How can a Bounty Hunter be good?” I look at this in the mechanic of the Healing role. If you mainly run as a healer, then you might play the role of a support BH that is specialized in protection a person for the right amount of money. How many criminals in the Star Wars Universe do you think would pay for a top level BH that is specialized in protecting their target? This might involve having to go out and eliminate any suspects that pose a threat before they take action. You aren’t killing innocents unless they need to die and you don’t target indiscriminately. So being “good” while being “Bad” has an easier take in the class.

• Neutral (balanced) Being a BH gives you a lot of leverage in this play-style. You take on jobs to either kill or capture. There is always a price when people want this type of service. Your employers might like it if you just went in blasters blazing but this is your show, not theirs. Just because you were sent to kill a person doesn’t necessarily mean YOU have to be the person that kills the target. You might capture them and take them back for your employer to do the dirty work themselves. You could turn down jobs that involve killing those that do not need to be killed. There are so many ways of playing a BH that is just there for the money it isn’t funny.

• Dark (evil) Evil as a BH isn’t the same as being evil as a Sith Warrior, per say. As a BH, you are just plain bad. You take no crap from anyone. You don’t play by any rules but your own. Your only goal is money and self preservation and you will do whatever it takes, kill anyone you want and take or destroy as you see fit.

Now you see how I look at the paths we walk through the story element of the game. It’s up to you to decide what you want to make your Bounty Hunter. I actually plan on playing a balanced role as the Bounty Hunter. I’ll kill as the situation sees fit. I may take out an annoying NPC, when available, due to their chatter or inability to accomplish things gets on my nerves.

Granted, these are my interpretations of how I think each role could be played, but it is up to you to define how you play your Bounty Hunter. Have fun with your character and play the role you choose to the fullest of your potential.

Going through all the blog posts and tweets and everything else has left me exhausted. The amount of information given in this last Friday Update is staggering if you think about it, as it is something actual about our classes we are playing at launch. In the bigger picture, if you look at it like I do, it really breaks down class roles, and that leads to the reality of how close we actually are to finally playing this game. With all of this, I am going to try to dissect some of this information in relation to the Bounty Hunter.

Diving straight in, I am going to start with this quote below:

Choosing an Advanced Class is very important in The Old Republic, as within your Advanced Class, your character will reach their full potential. Your Advanced Class choice dramatically alters the gameplay experience of your base class by providing access to two exclusive skill trees per Advanced Class, with a third being shared between both Advanced Classes.

So how I take this is that this plays out like any other MMO so far, even the venerable Warcraft and how their Talent trees used to be when it wasn’t so restricted. This basically say “Hey, pick the AC you want, you still get the base class abilities of the class itself, thus this being the Bounty Hunter. You can even place some points in the other AC. So, just like WOW, we get 3 talent tress to mess with to fine tune the type of player we want to be and how we play.

Now, as much as I hate “cookie-cutter” builds on classes, I don’t see a way Bioware can stop this. Some abilities are going to be better than others and there will be those that will probably force those upon you depending on the role you pick. With this in mind, I hope that Bioware gives us the “Dual Spec” option so that we can have 2 builds based on what we are doing (Soloing/Group).

Something else I picked up on is this:

As you level up, your character will gain abilities from three sources:

• Through trainers, from their base class (e.g. Sith Warrior)
• Through trainers, from their advanced class (e.g. Marauder)
• Through skill points spent in the skill trees of their Advanced Class

So no longer is it the run to one trainer and you’re done. We now have to hit up the Base Class (Bounty Hunter) but we also have to fine the AC trainer that we are playing, in my case which will be the Mercenary. This is interesting as unless these are always grouped up, you have to make sure to remember where each are to make sure all of your abilities are up to par.

Now the fine folks over at Bioware even gave us the break-down on the roles for the Bounty Hunters:

Bounty Hunter Advanced Classes

Mercenary (Roles: Mid – Long Range Damage Dealing, Healing)

PowerTech (Roles: Close – Mid Range Damage Dealing, Tanking)

• As previously announced, the Bounty Hunter’s Mercenary Advanced Class now features the ‘Bodyguard’ skill tree, allowing this iconic class to fill the role of a medic if desired.
• The ‘Advanced Prototype’ skill tree, shared between both Bounty Hunter ACs, now features an upgrade to the base class flamethrower, which allows the player to rotate while using the ability.

We now see how the Bounty Hunter breaks down. Mercenary breaks down into a DPS/Healer role and the Powertech breaks down into a DPS/Tank role. Now for all you WOW’ers out there, Bounty Hunters look to have the possibility of being Paladins of Swtor.

Those that are going the Tank Bounty Hunter will also have that DPS chance of speeding up their leveling without sacrificing the Tank aspect of it. It also plays

I, like many, think this last update was a great one. it really moves use one step closer to that fateful date where we all get to jump in game and put all this information we have been hoarding for so long to the test. In regards to the Bounty Hunter, playing a main healer and knowing I have DPS choices to help in the leveling process make me very happy as well.

So recently I, like many others, purchased the Deceived novel by Paul S. Kemp. Mainly I did this to read more on the Deceived trailer and some of the back story into that trailer, as well as the game  while waiting on the actual game to come out. While getting into both the novel and the trailer, I started thinking on each character as a class in the upcoming MMO. This led to some interesting thoughts on game-play and of course thoughts on the only Bounty Hunter in both.

First, let’s talk about the Bounty Hunter Shae Vizla. In the trailer, you get a glimpse of Shae watching Darth Malgus as he approaches the temple,  in which she then  jetpacks up the temple and enters through what appears to be a ventilation shaft. She then appears to kill off two guards as she enters the inside of the temple itself. We lose track of her there and then later reconnect when she pops in the main temple hall to blast some guards that are coming to join the fight. Aside from a flamethrower attack, this pretty much concludes our over-whelming joy of seeing the Bounty Hunter in action.

In the novel, our glimpse into Shae isn’t so greatly portrayed. The events pretty much play out the same as the trailer but in a much less diminished role. this isn’t to downplay the Bounty Hunter or Shae’s role, but more of the need to tell the larger story than focus on one character who plays a small part in a larger story. So what to take from both the trailer and the novel? What could be possibly gleamed from what we see and what we read to maybe give us thought on what may be possible in the actual Swtor game once it is released?

Let me start by saying that everything I say now is purely conjecture on my part, but what I hope may be partially true as it relates to Bounty Hunter game-play. Let’s start this with the fact that the Bounty Hunter is able to infiltrate into a major building that is full of guards and Jedi. All of this undetected. Now, while not expecting to do this in game, I do think we may play a bigger part in how we bring abilities that let groups by-pass secured areas of a Flashpoint or other areas of the game. We have all seen the Bounty Hunter trailer where the door explodes and the Bounty Hunter comes barging in with guns blazing. Imaging that door with no Bounty Hunter? What does a group have to do then to get the door open? Slice a console somewhere else in the area? Find an NPC to get the code to open it? Who knows, but blowing the door might have saved some time.

The Flamethrower and Gauntlet Missiles have pretty much been verified through the class trailer as is. In both the class trailer and Deceived trailer, these abilities are used in conjunction with large groups, so we have our AOE abilities. Throw in some blaster shots and we have standard game mechanics we pretty much know will be our standard fare. The one I think might be a surprise if it plays out would be something along the lines of Infiltration.

Shae achieves this through getting into the temple without setting off alarms or getting caught. Bounty Hunters are known to use a number of tricks to reach their marks the easiest way possible. So maybe this is something we can look forward to? I am not talking about stealth and creeping around in broad daylight 2 feet from an NPC and never being seen. More like a distraction technique that could be used to divert attention or lower the aggro range of NPC’s so that you can sneak around without getting caught. It is a fun thought on what could be an interesting mechanic if it is actually in the game as such.

We won’t really know if I am close to something or way off target until later once we all get into the game, but it’s fun to sit and think about things like this while we wait.