Haven't bought it yet, but... how is it REALLY?

[Solo4114]

Single player sounds pretty good, but I'm most curious about multiplayer. Are the stances balanced and useful? Are there "uber moves" that everyone spams? Is it all just a question of who hits force pull/push and whatever combo first?

 

And, as for the siege mode, does everyone REALLY just play Jedi all the time?

 

I haven't bought the game yet, as the title indicates, but I'm curious. After the last go-around, and from what I've read in reviews, the new game doesn't sound like much of a departure in terms of design from the last game. I'm betting sabres are still not one-shot kills, which leads to a ton of uber-move spamming, and that people basically end up doing rinse 'n' repeat combos a fair amount, rather than playing with strategy. And everyone wants to be the jedi in siege mode. BUT, I'm open to hearing differently, if that's the case. So, someone, please fill me in on how the game is.

 

Thanks!

[AJL]

Its good game... definitely worth buying

 

But it do have its bad areas too...

 

And everyone doesn't want to be jedi in Siege... no no

no... Most players are some kind of demolitions guys or

something who fill rooms with hundreds of mines and

thermals... so that IF you try to advance you WILL die

and usually before you can even see any enemies...

[txa1265]

I spent a few hours on multiplayer this weekend - thanks to the 'All Seeing Eye' utility. I'm not a big MP person (I also logged a few more hours of SP), but wanted to try the new modes. I only played Power Duel and Siege, more time on Siege.

 

I was thrilled.

 

Power duel was lots of fun. I played both the single and the paired, and with single, dual and lightstaff. There was one guy who had some nice lightstaff moves and was raking up the kills.

 

I also liked Siege - it is reminiscent of the objective based modes from the WWII games, but in a Star Wars way. I played 3 or 4 servers over the weekend, and found them fairly well balanced - generally 6 on 6, more or less. A couple of Jedi, some demolitioners, I generally played weapons. There were some good snipers on one map, which was fun when I found a nice spot and a missle launcher

 

Again, not being a MP person, my SP:MP will still be >95%, like it was for JKII ... I'm cranking through yet again. SP is a blast, lots of SW-geek homage and just fun battles.

 

Mike

[Jaden007]

well i would rate SP 9 out of 10 but MP is a 7 ......

 

 

yes it IS worth buying

 

1. it has a cool story

 

yes its awsome i liked it and the jedi and dark jedi are way better

 

But it has AI problems it got rated 8.4 but i give it a 9.0

[Master William]

Buy it after the new patch comes out, or else you'll be bugged by the bugs.

[Kurgan]

Single player sounds pretty good, but I'm most curious about multiplayer. Are the stances balanced and useful? Are there "uber moves" that everyone spams? Is it all just a question of who hits force pull/push and whatever combo first?

 

As far as I can tell, Single, Dual and Saberstaff are all well balanced.

 

Some people try to "spam" moves (hard to do though if the serv er uses regular mana regeneration) and some people swing randomly and jump around like idiots, but they lose to skilled people.

 

The game is just as skillful as JK2 ever was, it all depends on who you ask. Some people say the game is unbalanced, others say its very balanced. I tend to agree that once you learn the moves and if your ping isn't horrible, and you're playing on a server that doesn't have jacked up settings, you should be fine.

 

I will say that people on servers with LOW saber damage tend to complain more, because certain moves are more powerful. I point out to them that Raven recommends settings g_saberdamagescale to 2, I play this way and I find it makes the battles more realistic and eliminates some of the perception of inequality of moves.

 

So really it depends on the skill of the players and the server settings. Most of the time though it works just great.

 

And, as for the siege mode, does everyone REALLY just play Jedi all the time?

 

The Siege games I've played (and I've played my share believe me) most people are NOT Jedi (except on Korriban, because it's nothing BUT Jedi). In fact, usually only 1 or 2 people go Jedi, while the majority of people go Assault (which isn't odd because Assault is the easiest to learn and they can usually accomplish all the objectives). However, more people are learning the other classes and finding them useful too. Most people realize that Jedi are support classes, not "do it all yourself" and so they don't over-use them.

 

I haven't bought the game yet, as the title indicates, but I'm curious. After the last go-around, and from what I've read in reviews, the new game doesn't sound like much of a departure in terms of design from the last game.

 

It's not. If you expect a revolution over JK2 1.04, you'll be sadly disappointed. If you expect a more polished version of JK2 with a new single player storyline and a ton of kick a$$ features, this game will make you very happy I predict. ; )

 

For me though Siege alone (with its classes, drivable vehicles and massive potential with the mod community) is worth the price of admission! And the SP campaign has held my interest throughout, unlike JK2 which took a few missions to really get good (IMHO).

 

I'm betting sabres are still not one-shot kills, which leads to a ton of uber-move spamming,

 

The options are there to be changed. You can make sabers super weak or you can make them super strong (I prefer 1-2 hits being deadly because I hate taking an hour to kill somebody with a saber or waiting forever while they block every blow like it's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon). Spamming moves is MUCH harder in JA because all of the special moves and katas use up Force Mana.

 

Now of course there are some admins who up mana regeneration so that you CAN spam these moves, but then that means you can spam force powers as well. But it's not the game's fault that people use that option. At the default 200 level you can usually only "spam" a move so much before you're out of mana and can't do it anymore.

 

And everyone wants to be the jedi in siege mode. BUT, I'm open to hearing differently, if that's the case. So, someone, please fill me in on how the game is.

 

I've NEVER had a problem with "everybody wanting to be a Jedi" in the Siege games I've hosted and played in. Often you'll go through games where there are NO Jedi in fact. Jedi are useful, but most people realize that they can't do all the work, except on Korriban and then it's not a problem since everybody has to be one.

 

Thanks!

 

Anytime. It sounds a little like you're a saber duel only kind of guy (just the impression I'm getting) in which case you should take a long hard look at the game. If you are really stubborn about "not messing with the formula" I don't know what to tell you.

 

Some people are mad that JA "ruined" the perfect balance of JA. Others (like me) feel that they polished the old formula and actually improved it. Others are mad that they "didn't do enough" to "take it to the next level."

 

So its a matter of personal preference. Though you did seem interested in Siege and over-use of Jedi, so maybe I'm wrong and you do play other game types.

 

Jedi have a role to play in Siege, and you'd think that people would over-use it, but I haven't seen that myself frankly, which is encouraging.

[Kurgan]

One thing I will say right up front.. if you buy the game, READ THESE FORUMS (especially Technical Help, Dedicated Server, and Strategy Shack)!

 

You'll learn a TON of cool features and easter eggs that are NOT in the manual and readme, plus a lot of stuff to help you with problems that are common.

 

A lot of people have had performance problems because the default settings take a KICK BUTT computer and not all hardware supports all the features. Even I had problem at first, but with tweaking I have JA running within 5 FPS as fast as JK2 was.

 

The other thing is GET ALL SEEING EYE (ASE). It's a program that lets you see all the servers online (500+).

 

The in-game browser has a bug so it only shows you a tiny fraction of them (like 20 or 30).

 

ASE is shareware, but I'm told that people have used it for more than 21 days and it still works perfectly for them. I'm not saying don't support the makers of this great program, but it's up to you. ; )

 

If you install it today though, I bet you anything that in 21 days when it "runs out" the patch will have fixed the server bug.

[Solo4114]

Thanks for the input, folks.

 

Kurgan,

 

My favorite types are actually the siege type games. I've been playing them since the original Team Fortress mod for Quake 1, and LOVED Return to Castle Wolfenstein's multiplayer. I'd read in a review that a lot of people were going Jedi, which made me wary about that, but if what you're saying's true, then peopel are just finding the balance and it'll work itself out relatively soon.

 

As for my preferences in lightsabre fighting, I don't think that any of the iterations of JK2 got it "right", really. I always wanted to see more strategy and thought put into the game. It bothered me that certain moves did very little damage, whereas other moves were instant kills. I felt this led to spamming "Special" moves like the yellow DFA, red DFA, and the various blue specials, not to mention the infamous backstab/ass-fighters fiasco from 1.03.

 

From what you're saying, it sounds like you can't really get away with that anymore, and even if you can, regular moves can be just as lethal. That, to me, is the way it ought to be. The sabre should have always been uniformly lethal. 1-2 hits anywhere and you're toast, regardless of which stance or move you use. The key differences, as I saw it, should've been the ability to penetrate defenses, the speed, and the reach of the various moves. IE: red stance would be great for long range attacks and could batter down defenses easily, but would be slow and leave you open to short, controlled counter-attacks. Blue stance would be the polar opposite, using shorter, controlled attacks which strike faster, but have a tougher time knocking down defenses. Yellow would be the middle way -- decent on both penetration and range, slower than blue and faster than red, and just another stance you could use.

 

That, to me, was the ultimate goal for sabre fighting: every move is equally lethal, but more or less useful depending on your circumstances. If that's the case (provided you play on servers with proper damage scale adjustments), then it sounds like they did a good job after all. Lord knows I hated how people fell into the pattern of "pull, kick, backstab" or some similar technique designed to end the fight quickly. It made the game and fighting so homogenous.

 

The siege addition sounds like the other key feature I was looking for for MP, which is to say, maps where you actually do something besides just run around and kill people. Duel was fun, but always took too long, I found -- in that you had to wait for it to be your turn. FFA/TFFA bore me because I find deathmatch too simplistic in its goals. CTF was misguided due to the changes of 1.04 and many of the maps (I HATED the Nar Shadda maps -- all pushing, pulling, and gripping). Siege was what I was holding out for -- an objective based mode where you have classes that accomplish different goals.

 

If the game basically conforms to what I've described, I may have to go out and buy it, and then get myself DSL again.

 

As for system specs, at the moment, I'm operating on the following:

 

AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (2.0 GHz)

somewhere in the 700s for RAM, DDR

Geforce2 MX 32mb onboard video card (shares with the RAM pool)

 

I think that should be about all that matters really for this game.

 

I'm going to be upgrading to a Radeon 9600 Pro soon, too, so the video card will be changing in relatively short order. Anyway, thanks again for the info.

 

Oh, and as for ASE, I've known about that for quite some time. I bought myself a year's membership to it, and I still have some time left on the subscription. I may up it to lifetime if I switch to DSL again, and know that I'll have DSL pretty much permanently.

[MMP]

I know you're looking for multiplayer opinions here, but I'd just like to add my endorsement for single player. It has MUCH better level design than JO. It has quite a few fun and unique levels and the game has a nice flow.