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[Morn]

Not sure what you're trying to convey, especially with the FFXI pics. In FFXI, never once does the player character ever perform a complex animation that interacts with another character, in or out of cutscenes. Hell, in said cutscenes, your character spends the majority of the time in the background staring like a clueless moron.

Additionally, there are separate files for the same armor sets for every race/gender combination. The DAT swapping community for FFXI proved that. Modifying say, the monk AF gear for a galka wouldn't change anything for the other races. You had to custom model that same armor for each race/gender.

It's simply an issue of realistic expectations.

In TOR you're basically a talking head. Your character may gesture with their hand, but there aren't any complex animations interacting with other characters. There's plenty of conversation video out there.

There is absolutely no reason to not have non-human races other than they didn't want to bother with alien dialog and didn't want to rig and animate non-human faces.

 

[Cystm]

In TOR you're basically a talking head.

.

 

[gillty]

In TOR you're basically a talking head. Your character may gesture with their hand, but there aren't any complex animations interacting with other characters. There's plenty of conversation video out there.

There is absolutely no reason to not have non-human races other than they didn't want to bother with alien dialog and didn't want to rig and animate non-human faces.

I think you have seen the humanoid alien npcs...

The truth is either Bioware Austin employs terrible artists or the're working with extremely low poly count/texture limitations.

The NPC alien races look like turds (for the most part), they don't even deserve to be in launch EQ2 or WoW.

They barely got the Twilek lekku's to work, tonnes of clipping and annoying glitches that I expect to get ironed out for launch.

Hair looks like play-dough modeling clay so playable Wookiees are out of the question.

edit:
IMO, of all of the playable and non-playable races including humans, Ithorians are the best executed. They look great, unfortunately they are the exception, not the rule.

 

[DrBo42]

You guys are killing me. It's wookiee not wookie.

 

[Morn]

I think you have seen the humanoid alien npcs...

The truth is either Bioware Austin employs terrible artists or the're working with extremely low poly count/texture limitations.

The NPC alien races look like turds (for the most part), they don't even deserve to be in launch EQ2 or WoW.

They barely got the Twilek lekku's to work, tonnes of clipping and annoying glitches that I expect to get ironed out for launch.

Hair looks like play-dough modeling clay so playable Wookiees are out of the question.

I was going to play a Twi'lek Sith Sorcerer when the game comes out, but if the lekku still just clip through the back of the hood; fuck that.

In SWG they swapped out the lekku when you equipped a hood or helmet so that they came out of the front without clipping. And that was eight years ago.

 

[Speculator]

In TOR you're basically a talking head. Your character may gesture with their hand, but there aren't any complex animations interacting with other characters. There's plenty of conversation video out there.

There is absolutely no reason to not have non-human races other than they didn't want to bother with alien dialog and didn't want to rig and animate non-human faces.

Ah well.. that's actually quite an understatement. There are actually over 800000 lines of dialogue written and recorded (not including localization) for the game.
ME2 had only about 20000 lines and DA:0 had about 70000, so of course not every conversation & cinematic (which there are thousands and thousands of) can be built with custom performances.

However, there are dramatic moments, romance, fight choreography, and many many other moments throughout all eight classes which have been meticulously produced by animators, designers, artists, and audio engineers.

There are many variables involved in designing the cinematics..especially for an MMO. Theres actually really no real and dependable procedural way of creating the content. The designers actually have to account for the already existing bodytypes heights and sizes, the current number of players in the conversation, which companion is available, which NPC is available, and manually adjust for that. Its actually quite an arduous process.

 

[FieryBalrog]

You guys are killing me. It's wookiee not wookie.

lore lol

 

[Dresden]

Giving WoW as an example there is hardly fair. The gear looks quite horrible and bland on pretty much anything. Only the helmet and shoulders truly stand out and need a bit of attention.

The armor in TOR all look terrible, unless endgame+ armor is just a huge step up from what we've seen.

 

[Morn]

The armor in TOR all look terrible, unless endgame+ armor is just a huge step up from what we've seen.

 

[Emitan]

I think you have seen the humanoid alien npcs...

The truth is either Bioware Austin employs terrible artists or the're working with extremely low poly count/texture limitations.

That would be my guess. From a business position I would assume EA wants the game to playable by as many people as possible over having great graphics. I don't care about the actual fidelity of the graphics as long as the style is good.

Spoiler

Unless there's tons of lekku clipping. Then I will rage like no tomorrow

 

[LowParry]

From the first panel:

11:13a - Q: What are the different difficultly modes of Operations? GA: Normal and hard modes now. We're working on others that we'll talk about later.


So more modes than just normal and hard?

 

[LowParry]

Oh, and this is the one you really want to pay attention to today. Suppose to be getting our new info here:

Star Wars: The Old Republic: The Force is Strong with This One: 2PM - 3PM PST

 

[Sigfodr]

Giving WoW as an example there is hardly fair. The gear looks quite horrible and bland on pretty much anything. Only the helmet and shoulders truly stand out and need a bit of attention.

Not sure what you're trying to convey, especially with the FFXI pics. In FFXI, never once does the player character ever perform a complex animation that interacts with another character, in or out of cutscenes. Hell, in said cutscenes, your character spends the majority of the time in the background staring like a clueless moron.

My point is that those games were built years ago, and even then the animations of TOR weren't realistic in an MMO. Now that those animations are possible, we're trading the variety of races and player models. (However, it always puzzled me how a piece of armor could fit on an Undead and a Tauren). I'm not logging a complaint against Bioware, I'm just seeing what tech for MMOs will eventually be capable of and I guess I just want what isn't possible yet.

Both Morn and Speculator make points that are mutually exclusive (barring that Morn may have not seen certain things in the beta Speculator is aware of), so I guess I'll just have to wait til I play it to make a judgement (holy shit, logic!).

I was going to play a Twi'lek Sith Sorcerer when the game comes out, but if the lekku still just clip through the back of the hood; fuck that.

In SWG they swapped out the lekku when you equipped a hood or helmet so that they came out of the front without clipping. And that was eight years ago.

^ They have to at least get this right, though.

 

[Yaska]

Can just wait and see. The first weekend of September is the next weekend. And then there's more so we can just patiently wait.

Spoiler

Who am I kidding. Effing Bioware give us the Euro beta. NOW!

 

[Iadien]

http://www.gamebreaker.tv/live/

will be covering the panel coming up at 2 PDT.

 

[Emitan]

High level in game content? Maybe they'll actually show Scoundrels? Please!

EDIT: Love how Bioware's official stream is showing Mass Effect trivia when they're doing a SWTOR panel :/

EDIT2: Oh, there's no internet in the theater.

 

[Morn]

Sounds like they're just doing a PVP match with people from the audience.

 

[LowParry]

http://www.gamebreaker.tv/live/

will be covering the panel coming up at 2 PDT.

It's so hard to watch. Oiy.

 

[Morn]

Whoops. Not PVP. Just Eternity Vault again.

Gamescom repeat confirmed.

 

[gatti-man]

That would be my guess. From a business position I would assume EA wants the game to playable by as many people as possible over having great graphics. I don't care about the actual fidelity of the graphics as long as the style is good.

Spoiler

Unless there's tons of lekku clipping. Then I will rage like no tomorrow

I want high res texture packs for mmos like eve.

 

[Cystm]

http://www.gamebreaker.tv/live/

will be covering the panel coming up at 2 PDT.

Going to have to pass. Kinda funny to see the guy from tankspot still rocking that man perm but, those other two guys are too annoying.

 

[syko de4d]

where can i see what they see? I only see them talking about sth. i want to see :O

 

[LowParry]

where can i see what they see? I only see them talking about sth. i want to see :O

You can't. The liveblog is below.

 

[Morn]

No premades in PVP? WTF?

Edit: Oh, only four man.

 

[Emitan]

No premades in PVP? WTF?

Edit: Oh, only four man.

Not being able to make eight man groups for Huttball is bullshit. That had better be in one of the first non bugfix patches.

 

[Morn]

Just showed screen shots of Ilum. No video.

 

[LowParry]

Not being able to make eight man groups for Huttball is bullshit. That had better be in one of the first non bugfix patches.

I don't mind if they restricted the other warzone types but not Huttball? Crazy. :/

 

[Morn]

"As of next weekend, the first weekend in September, they're expanding the number of people allowed into testing."

 

[Morn]

So only thing new was some talk about Ilum and how world PVP features territory control and they showed some screen shots of it.

 

[Moaradin]

That isn't the main one is it? Thought there was a big presentation at 5:00 PDT.

 

[Iadien]

Going to have to pass. Kinda funny to see the guy from tankspot still rocking that man perm but, those other two guys are too annoying.

That's great, I posted it for those that care, it's not as if I run the damn thing. lol

 

[Emitan]

From the chat on that live stream "do they have draculas in this game?"

WTF

 

[Morn]

That isn't the main one is it? Thought there was a big presentation at 5:00 PDT.

This is the main one.

 

[Sigfodr]

So only thing new was some talk about Ilum and how world PVP features territory control and they showed some screen shots of it.

What the hell? This was supposed to be a decent event, something to look forward to. God dammit, I'm never going to get excited for anything ever again. Pure apathy from here on out.

 

[LowParry]

TOROcast:

"They said "if you don't get in next week, don't fret. It is a very HIGH chance you will get in this month."

 

[Moaradin]

This is the main one.

Pretty sure there was one called "The Force is Strong with this one" starting at 5:00. This one just seems the same as the other Q&A conferences that happened this whole weekend.

 

[Morn]

Pretty sure there was one called "The Force is Strong with this one" started at 5:00. This one just seems the same as the other Q&A conferences that happened this whole weekend.

Floor Hours: 10AM - 7PM
Main Stage Presentation: 11AM
Star Wars: The Old Republic: The Force is Strong with This One: 2PM - 3PM
Main Stage Presentation: 5PM

The main stage presentation is just the Q&A. They had one at 11am as well. They did two each day. The main one was from 2pm to 3pm

 

[Moaradin]

Oh well.

 

[LowParry]

Well that was fun. lol

I guess I'll get to play test some time in Sept. Along with BF3

 

[Jarmel]

So went over to my friend's house and starting playin beta with Jedi knight from scratch and got up to level 16. All I have to say is lol to anyone thinking this is coming out early October. Late October is pushing it.

 

[Retrofluxed]

So went over to my friend's house and starting playin beta with Jedi knight from scratch and got up to level 16. All I have to say is lol to anyone thinking this is coming out early October. Late October is pushing it.

Care to elaborate?

 

[BattleMonkey]

That was a dissapointment, can't imagine this launching in Oct with how little info they have put out.

 

[AzureNightmare]

So went over to my friend's house and starting playin beta with Jedi knight from scratch and got up to level 16. All I have to say is lol to anyone thinking this is coming out early October. Late October is pushing it.

I think you underestimate how quickly glitches and bugs can be mopped up

 

[Emitan]

I think you underestimate how quickly glitches and bugs can be mopped up

Especially considering the build he's playing isn't even the most recent one. September is probably when we can start guessingwhen it releases.

 

[Jarmel]

Care to elaborate?

Sure. Camera angles spazzing in dialogue cutscenes. Satele Shan on Tython never appeared in the Council Room so I ended up talking to a chair. Also some of the animations were a little funky too in the dialogues. My companion falling through the ground on atleast 4-5 separate occasions. Still could fight lol but I couldn't see him. I myself got stuck once and had to teleport to get myself out. On Coruscant, in one section NPCs are firing blasters and the blaster bolts are going backwards. The UI is still a bit buggy. The top right hand section where my quests go had a glitch on Tython where the text overlapped each other making it impossible to read. The appearance of the experience bar also pretty mcuh never worked the entire time I was playing. Then some of the quests are bugged on Coruscant. Boom is pretty much broken as I had to go to a different instance to finish it and everybody had to camp around a single crate and wait. Also Senator's Stolen Goods is badly bugged too in that only two boxes are respawning. Then there are some animals in Coruscant and I atfirst thought they were pink but turns out their skin texture never loaded and you just see"default" written on their bodies.

So that's just the stuff I directly experienced up to 16.

Then there is the lack of Operations and post 50 stuff along with the classes being way out of whack right now.

 

[EhrgeizVII]

Does anyone know if player characters will have idle animations? I guess it'll look a bit weird when you run through a city and all you see are either players running or standing still like they're robots.

 

[BattleMonkey]

Does anyone know if player characters will have idle animations? I guess it'll look a bit weird when you run through a city and all you see are either players running or standing still like they're robots.

Yea you can see them in different videos. Some are kinda amusing

 

[EhrgeizVII]

Really? I couldn't find any videos showing that. I've seen some when they have their lightsaber unsheathed, but not otherwise.

Edit: Even pets have it in WoW!

 

[kyo_daikun]

That was a dissapointment, can't imagine this launching in Oct with how little info they have put out.

Seems like even november would be an extreme stretch at this point.

 

[BattleMonkey]

Seems like even november would be an extreme stretch at this point.

Well can see them launching it soon, but I can imagine lot of stuff is going to get cut and left out at launch.