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ZeroXcape

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Hey everyone, just got back in town from checking out Battlefront last night in San Fran. If you haven't already checked out the news today, I added a couple pictures from the event itself.

 

Check back tomorrow for my thoughts on the game and the levels we played. Rather than just the standard preview, I'll try and drop in some information that gamers care about :)

 

If you have any specfic game questions, ask them here and I'll respond if I know the answer.

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The key thing I want to know is whether there is too much emphasis on vehicular combat. While I'm not averse to using vehicles, I'm still worried that the game is going to become 'vehicle heavy', and that playing the sniper or assault classes is simply lining yourself up as canon fodder.

 

Is there a good range of cover for the 'pedestrian' classes to shield from attack from vehicles - particularly aerial vehicles? On a related note, are there some good indoor sections for these maps?

 

Is there a limit to the number of vehicles on the maps, and how long do they take to respawn? I mean, if a heavy weapons class has justy taken down an AT-ST - are we simply going to be faced with another one straight away, or does that put the other team at a disadvantage for a good few minutes?

 

Lastly, how easy is it to take out a vehicle with a manned turret?

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Originally posted by yaebginn

here's one- was it as good as we hoped? describe your playign experience.

I loved it... the learning curve was low enough to pick up the game right away, but there is plenty of details that will differentiate good players from great players. The action was fast paced and strategy is going to play a huge roll in winning.
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Originally posted by StormHammer

The key thing I want to know is whether there is too much emphasis on vehicular combat. While I'm not averse to using vehicles, I'm still worried that the game is going to become 'vehicle heavy', and that playing the sniper or assault classes is simply lining yourself up as canon fodder.

 

Is there a good range of cover for the 'pedestrian' classes to shield from attack from vehicles - particularly aerial vehicles? On a related note, are there some good indoor sections for these maps?

 

Is there a limit to the number of vehicles on the maps, and how long do they take to respawn? I mean, if a heavy weapons class has justy taken down an AT-ST - are we simply going to be faced with another one straight away, or does that put the other team at a disadvantage for a good few minutes?

 

Lastly, how easy is it to take out a vehicle with a manned turret?

 

Vehicles won't completely overrun the game simply because there aren't enough for everyone to have. Those who are lucky enough to hop in a vehicle can have an advantage when attacking groups of people, but to individually hunt everyone won't work because the respawn rate is every 10 seconds.

 

Another reason that I don't the vehicles being too overpowerful is because while inside one: you cannot capture control points. I saw one opponent that realized this and hopped out of his AT-ST to capture our position. Rather than sniping him, I thought it would be more fun to hop in his AT-ST and destroy him that way, so that's what I did :cool:

 

If you check out my thoughts, I definitely go into how powerful the AT-ST is. When we were playing on Endor, there were only two available, but both were quite powerful. Their biggest disadvantage is that they can't go everywhere someone on foot can. Overall, Pandemic did a great job of balancing the vehicles and still making them useful.

 

As for the vehicle respawn rates, I'm not really sure how long it took... but I would guess 30-60 seconds. Speeder bikes always seemed to be available on Endor when you needed one, but starfighters on Kamino would take a while to come back. Honestly... if a team focuses on the attacking abilities of vehicles over the transport benefit, then I that team will probably lose the map.

 

A manned turret took 5-6 shots to take out most vehicles... Most of the turrest were pretty quick to reload, so it wasn't too bad.

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Originally posted by SITH_ShadowCat

One question that has been bothering me for some time is: How is the lag? I heard from several previews that lag was apperant, even with LAN. How was it for you, ZeroXcape? Also can you name the conditions of the game such as how many people were on one server?

Heh, what preview said there was any lag? I'd actually like to see what they had to say. I honestly experienced no lag what-so-ever... I think the largest ping time I saw was 16ms and it was only for a second. Even when we had 16 people on the PC, the lag seemed to stick around 5ms or less.

 

Two of the tents had 8 PCs in each, but apparently LAN can support upto 64 people. Over the Internet, 32 is the max.

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appreciated the preview on the news page. thanks.

 

Couple of questions about the game:

 

Gameplay questions:

  • Is there a Bothan Spy unit in the game?
  • Does the radar display covert units like the Rebel Marksman?
  • How many shots does it take, with each type of weapon, to take down other players?
  • What exactly is the scattergun that the Rebel pilot is armed with?

 

Map questions:

  • How large are the maps?
  • How long does it take to traverse a map from end to end?
  • How effective are camo uniforms on maps like Endor/Hoth?
  • How long does a map take to complete in multiplayer mode?
  • What are the benefits that are acquired in Galactic Conquest mode?

 

Any insight would be appreciated.

 

Idei

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Thanks for doing this!

 

what is the music like in the game? (typical starwars game, anything really intersting about it?)

 

how were the sound effects, was there anything noticebly different in the sound effects for vehicles, blasters, characters?

 

Did you have a chance to switch from 3rd to 1st person views, if so was one better then the other, do they both have advantages?

 

How does the scope of the game feel, with a small number of people playing does it still seem as though you are in the thick of a huge battle?

 

one last question, when you were playing the game for the endor level how did it capture the feel of the actual movie battle, did it feel like you were right in it, did it look and feel different at times?

 

thanks again

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[*]Is there a Bothan Spy unit in the game?

- Not that I saw

 

[*]Does the radar display covert units like the Rebel Marksman?

- the radar will display your teammates, vehicles on the map, or NPCs.

 

[*]How many shots does it take, with each type of weapon, to take down other players?

- blasters (and pistols for the most part) take about 4-5 unaimed shots... If you're aiming for the head, it's definitely faster. sniper rifles usually take one, sometimes two if it's bad aim the first time. rocket launchers are pretty strong, so if you can hit someone dead on: you'll usually get them (aside from Droidekas with their shields up... they require several rockets.) thermal detonators do a ton of damage and any direct hit will literally throw your body 100ft in the other direction.

 

[*]What exactly is the scattergun that the Rebel pilot is armed with?

- The scatter rifle shoots like a messed up shotgun almost... it's really nice close up, but don't bother from a distance.

 

 

[*]How large are the maps?

- they're large enough... kamino was probably the smallest that I tested, but it was the most control points. Endor was real, real long. to run from side to side, it would take at least 5-6 minutes.

 

[*]How long does it take to traverse a map from end to end?

- kamino 2 mins... endor 6mins

 

[*]How effective are camo uniforms on maps like Endor/Hoth?

- not very. If I scrolled the mouse around the screen long enough, it would change colors and show the player's name if it was an enemy. I'm not sure if LEC plans on leaving this feature on or not, but I wasn't a big fan of it. It helped pick out snipers that you normally would have never seen in a prone postion. In our next interview, I may bring this up again...

 

[*]How long does a map take to complete in multiplayer mode?

- If all control points are captured, a 20 second timer starts for the losing team to get at least one control point to go back to neutral before the game ends. Otherwise, if the fighting is pretty even.. maps can take around 20 minutes.

 

 

[*]What are the benefits that are acquired in Galactic Conquest mode?

- We didn't see any such benefits. They may not be implemented yet, but I am pretty sure they were just not included in this build. The pre-alpha build we tested had very limited options available. The majority of the options menus were 2-3 options and mouse inversion wasn't on the PC version when we played. I really wouldn't expect them to have their latest build ready to go for us. When I accidently exited my game and restarted it, I did see an option to try single player. I never did go back and do that though since I was too involved in the MP game that I was currently in. If I had remembered to, we could have talked about the A.I. Only three more months!

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what is the music like in the game? (typical starwars game, anything really intersting about it?)

- typical sw music, not much more. really great sound effects though. I may upload some from my iPod (i had it recording most of the time.)

 

how were the sound effects, was there anything noticebly different in the sound effects for vehicles, blasters, characters?

- answered one above, but you can tell that they were all new effects. The AT-ST's sounded right out of the movies, and the droids did as well.

 

Did you have a chance to switch from 3rd to 1st person views, if so was one better then the other, do they both have advantages?

- I rather play and pilot vehicles in 3rd person, so I didn't do much switching... but it's very easy to do both. You simply hit "q" at any time, and it will switch for you. It doesn't matter if you're in the middle of a fight, vehicle, or sniping. That feature made a lot of people testing the game pretty happy.

 

How does the scope of the game feel, with a small number of people playing does it still seem as though you are in the thick of a huge battle?

- Obviously, I think the more people playing... the better. I wouldn't want to play a level like Endor without 10 people, but Geonosis and Kamino would have both been fun with small numbers.

 

one last question, when you were playing the game for the endor level how did it capture the feel of the actual movie battle, did it feel like you were right in it, did it look and feel different at times?

- Endor was by far the best level they had showing. You can tell that they've polished it up because it is so detailed. If you haven't already seen the "flythrough" on their planet page... do so. You'll hear some of the sound effects, and also see one of two open trees (logs) that you can fly your swoop through. There's plenty of places to hide on Endor.

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Originally posted by ZeroXcape

[*]Does the radar display covert units like the Rebel Marksman?

- the radar will display your teammates, vehicles on the map, or NPCs.

 

The game seems to be coming along very nicely.

 

I did have a few more questions based on the answer to the question about Rebel Marksman. Earlier they mentioned that the Bothan Spy kit was moved to the Rebel Marksman. Was this function working in the pre-alpha? Were there any players that played with the spy feature?

 

Does the radar display units across the entire map or does it display units only in the nearby vicinity? Are all vehicles displayed on radar, or are only team vehicles displayed?

 

Earlier this week there was a posted link to an article that stated that both teams are displayed on radar. Was this an option that could be activated?

 

Finally, are units on radar distinguishable from others? Can a player tell if a unit on radar is a Vanguard, or Stormtrooper by their radar signature? Are vehicles a different size on the radar display?

 

Many thanks,

 

Idei

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I think I'd like the pilot character best, so I have a few questions regarding them. Note that many of the questions are based on thinksI read a few months ago, and since them many things have been changed.

 

  • I read vehicles are very easy to handle. Does that mean that a noob can pilot a vehicle as good as an experienced player?
  • A (long) time ago (in a galaxy far far away) it was mentioned that pilots would be able to construct structures. Did you see anything of this in the game?
  • Is flying a vehicle as a pilot a big advantage?
  • I read (also a long time ago) that rebel pilots would have a worms like ninja rope. Did you see anything of this?
  • Something else I read was that pilots can capture vehicles driven by enemie nonpilots. Is this true?

 

Ans I also have some general questions

  • In read the characters would look different on different planets. On the screenshots, I saw the imperials and the rebels having two outfits, and the separatists and republic even less, onone, outfit. Did you hear more about this?
  • I read AT-ATs are mobile spawnpoints. How many troops are the able to carry and how can they get out? Can rebels take over AT-AT's?
  • How where the graphics :D

 

Could you answer them please?

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Originally posted by ZeroXcape

the learning curve was low enough to pick up the game right away

Uh oh. Now the "competative" players are going to be bitter because the game doesn't take madd skillz to be good at it.
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Originally posted by tFighterPilot

unrendered? It's not even a word, and obviously has no meaning whatsoever

 

:rolleyes:

 

Let's put it this way, not rendered. You know like when they are showing one of those "making 3D model" **** documentories where you see the person modelling it showing the piece without the proper textures on. That is what it looks a bit like to me, but then again I dunno what on earth is going there, maybe that's the way it's suppose to be.

(shrugs shoulders)

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