New Jedi Knight Game Rumors

[StaffSaberist]

DarkStarMojo, I agree with you 90%. The remaining 10%% is the fact that I liked the challenging puzzles, because they didn't feel like puzzles to me that were deliberately placed, they seemed... well... a bit more natural.

 

Remember Level 10 with that one forcefield that the only switches were behind the force field? When I first got the game (I was 12, cut me some slack), I ran up there and nearly killed myself looking for the switch. I was about to leave that spot when it deactivated - a glitch, really.

 

Anyways, I later learned the true solution: Shoot out the fan generator, go on the alternate path, and jump in on the foes. That seems like a Star Wars version of 007, and to me it was very immersive. But the puzzles weren't shoved in front of you like: "Look! A achallenging level! Rate me well!". Too many level-makers that integrate puzzles (and there are very few) do exactly that. The makers of JK knew what they were doing, IMO.

 

And the spinning thing on Level 18? I was synched with Kyle when he said "You have *got* to be *kidding*!" I can't tally how many times I died trying to cross it. However, it was the only way, and the game allows you to see that puzzle get into motion, you've been working with that slab since the beginning of the level... wow.

 

Then Level 19 had an interesting puzzle - pitch black with Kell Dragons! I was scared of that level for a month before I figured out that Force Seeing and a Concussion Rifle/Rail Gun are your friends. (Which proves your point about how guns were nerfed in HO and above - you needed to use your guns in JK unless you wanted to run)

 

So basically, my point is that the puzzles are what made JK such a kick-ass game. Sometimes, guns are needed to solve puzzles, and that makes it useful to conserve your ammo on the lower levels where you can.

[Doctor Shaft]

I disagree with the idea that the sabers needed to nerfed. I think JO/JA collapsed for three reasons. Most of them have already been mentioned.

 

1.) The Community

 

Nuff said. We had too many 12 year olds given extensively annoying and easy to use admin powers. Plus a forum battle that started within 1 month of JO's release in which people started talking about "Honor." This very thing has never existed in any FPS game that I have EVER played in my life, but here we were, four years ago, fighting over whether or not someone had "Honor" while hacking people apart in a FFA battle zone.

 

Top it on with the worst decision ever made in video game history, aka: "Duel Mode" which let you become invincible to everyone except your buddy, and then you had the very free-form, free play structure of JO fall into absolute ruin.

 

What kid could resist having his ego boosted as people both a) Demanded that they stop dueling, to which said kid could refuse and annoy everyone, and b) further boost his own ego by defeating said friend in usually really bad hack slash saber combat? The answer is no kid could resist that tug. Add on the JO+/JA+ admin creations that started surfacing, and now we had a whole league of uber-mensch admins with God mode, broken emotes that again stilted game play, and all kinds of other mess.

 

 

2.) Bad Patch Decisions

 

JO felt its quick demise the minute it decided that lightsabers had to be nerfed (a point of disagreement I have with even the people posting in this thread). There's a little myth that still apparently exists in the Jedi Knight community, and that myth is that lightsabers have somehow "taken over." This was never the case.

 

I've played on all kinds of servers. I even got to fight some of the early competitive clans (not officially or on a clan of my own, mind you). Guns were so far above lightsabers, especially after the nerf, that it wasn't even humorous. One only needed four Force Powers (two, technically) to get along if you wanted to use guns. It was called Speed, Jump, Push, and Pull. Speed and Jump allowed you to be the ultimate bunny hopper (a skill that helps Gun-Users, not "Saberists") and Push and Pull were basically your alternate guns.

 

1.03, and 1.04 brought in an age where saber duels were wiffle bat contests, and gun vs. saber combat was rare, at best. Sure, people would constantly gloat "THE LIGHTSABER SHOULD ONLY BE A TOOL!" but if we were to compare what kind of tool that lightsaber had become, one could only say, "COUNTERSTRIKE COMBAT KNIFE." And we all know just how great that is.

 

My point being that they never struck a good balance between saber combat and gun combat. If people wanted to use Force Powers and guns, the saber could still be used, but the learning curve was WAAAYYYYYY too high. I've never had a problem, in any version of JO, using a gun. I have had a problem trying to get a kill with a saber, even when I closed range (which is supposedly when the "TOOL" aspect of the lightsaber comes in... funny the Imperial Flechette did a better job even in that area).

 

 

3.) Lack of willingness to play mods or download maps

 

I guess this is another "Community" factor, but I feel it needs a mention of its own, and others have already said. Even when JO came out, for whatever mysterious reason, no one wanted to download maps or play any of the GOOD mods that came out.

 

To my recollection, JO saw the release of some fairly good mods that actually got completed as opposed to simply announced one thousand times. Of course... people were too busy playing "Admin Mod" instead of an actual mod, which has perplexed me to this very day. We had:

 

a) JK++ : A competition mod that put more speed into the game, actually evened out saber vs. gun combat by making the saber lethal as opposed to "counterstrike knife tool," and made CTF incredibly fun. And yet... no one wanted to play it. All I could remember were the big competition clans, with their egos way in the stratosphere, crying, "But sabers are cheap man... no one kills ME in one hit. They have to beat me with the Imperial Repeater/Imperial Flechette first to gain respect!" I'm still left wondering why that was necessary. Oh well, needless to say, JK++ fell by the wayside when everyone decided that nothing was good enough unless it was an "OFFICIAL RELEASE" from Raven Software, which was never going to come.

 

b) Promod : This was a personal favorite of mine. It evolved from a simple lightsaber modification, to a bounty hunter versus Jedi, to a highly polished system that put rating on ALL the weapons, gave saber combat a little more depth and structure, and made bounty hunter versus Jedi fun to play. It wasn't perfect, but it was light years ahead of what was out there and what has come since. And yet!!! No one played it.... Or at least, there were only 20 or so of us who enjoyed it constantly, and then it was no more.

 

c) Forcemod : It was a fun creation. Not exactly much on the precision and competition side of things, but hey, it had some neat things in it. I liked messing around with it once in a while. This is probably the only mod that still lives on. Of course, even then, most people play it to its most broken levels.

 

 

I know there are other mods out there today. I know people are serious and use the OJP, etc. But basically, JO/JA died because everyone was just too stubborn to accept things. The first release had a few bugs... but no one could accept that combat wasn't exactly like the "Good ole days" of JK and MoTS, where Force Speed and a Conc Rifle ruled the day. When mods came out, no one supported them, either because it wasn't "official," or they didn't like mixing their swords with guns. It was either Swashbuckling or blow stuff up. No compromise. I encountered that attitude everywhere I went.

 

To be honest, I haven't even been thinking about a new release for JK because I'm afraid the precise same thing is going to happen to the community and the game. We'll get a decent game with decent multiplayer settings and balance to start. Then the nerf bat will come and return the game to the dark ages of the originals. Then they won't ever reverse these affects because the community is too busy complaining about a nebulous concept called "Honor in Videogames" instead of asking Raven/Lucasarts to make good, constructive changes to the game. The Mod community will release a few small gems of content, but everyone will ignore because it's either not official (and you can only be l33t if you play the official game), or actually involves both guns and lightsabers as viable forms of combat, as opposed to one or the other.

 

I'm more than a little bitter.

[Kurgan]

I don't have time to respond to the other stuff just now, but I will say that one major reason for the lack of use of mods in the community is do to the antiquated and crappy auto mod download system in the Quake3 engine. It is capped at a very slow speed and doesn't have any options. UnrealTournament had a much better system where you could specify a URL to download the mod right in the (excellent) built in server browser.

 

The Q3 engine server browser sucked royally compared to UT, but nobody who used the Q3 engine to make an FPS seems to have tried to really improve on the old design. As a result, a lot of people just said "screw it."

 

Of course people downloaded tons of skins, hilts, and saber blade colors, but that was fine because you could use those files even if nobody else had them (of course only you would see them but still).

 

People did download and use maps, that seems to be the one exception, but typically they favored a handful of poorly done maps that had gimmicks in them or were used by clans for "Training." The excellent Raven bonus maps were hardly used.

 

The nerfed sabers were done specifically to appease those who felt Duels were "too short" and wanted them to seem more "cinematic like single player."

 

In JK2 1.04 they specifically put in a cvar to allow you to use 1.02 damage again if you wanted, and advised people to use this for "best results." It was in JA like that from day one.

 

Powerful sabers made sense for all weapons play or for class based play. Weak sabers only made sense in a dueling setting to make the fight last longer and thus (to some) feel "more cinematic" and more like what they were used to with single player battles.

 

The game itself or the Raven developers can't be blamed for crappy mods, but I agree, the popularity of crappy mods did hurt the reputation of the game long term in the community by pushing out the people who didn't like or got sick of, the style of play of those mods (and those mods were easily spread because they only required the server to use them and were thus virtually "invisible" and many noobs even got confused and thought they were the default game settings!).

 

"Honor" existed in Heretic II, also made by Raven software, but that game was not really an FPS (It was 3rd person and combined some shooting with lots of melee fighting). Raven put in the saber challenge to appease the "dueling purists" but they never dreamed it would be pushed to the extreme it was by the honorz n00bs.

[DarkStarMojo]

Most of the points I've made here in the past have been with regards to the singleplayer aspect of the game. The lack of weapon balance and the saber being an overused uber weapon were mainly in reference to SP combat where it was just easier to use the force and hack an enemy to pieces than shoot them most of the time. Basically I've focused my attention on singleplayer because that's where I've spent most of my time. Still, MP is a crucial component to the success of a game because of the replayability factor and the fact that a good MP match is a helluva lot of fun. Essentially, the problems that existed in JO/JA are a good model for future developers on what not to do. We can anticipate that future games will have people who are going to have a whole "honor" complex because of the nature of the SW movies and Jedi and all that. They take their game seriously but in a different way from people who just want to have a good, fun, enjoyable experience. Personally, there needs to be a balance so that people who want to play the game with "honor" can do so via duels but can't exclude people who are just looking to have fun and kill some time. Maybe a time limit on duels and a limit to the number of times you can challenge a particular person to a duel within a set period of time would help. As for the lack of mods being played, I think Kurgan is right. Hopefully, a new engine will have better mod support for MP games so people will actually go to the effort to download them. But again, the problems with JO/JA can, if a good company designs the next game, be used as a blueprint to avoid them in the future and make a better SP/MP experience. Plus, they really need to keep listening to the community and find a general concensus for what should and should not be in the game.

[rozo100]

DarkStarMojo, I agree with you 90%. The remaining 10%% is the fact that I liked the challenging puzzles, because they didn't feel like puzzles to me that were deliberately placed, they seemed... well... a bit more natural.

 

Remember Level 10 with that one forcefield that the only switches were behind the force field? When I first got the game (I was 12, cut me some slack), I ran up there and nearly killed myself looking for the switch. I was about to leave that spot when it deactivated - a glitch, really.

 

Anyways, I later learned the true solution: Shoot out the fan generator, go on the alternate path, and jump in on the foes. That seems like a Star Wars version of 007, and to me it was very immersive. But the puzzles weren't shoved in front of you like: "Look! A achallenging level! Rate me well!". Too many level-makers that integrate puzzles (and there are very few) do exactly that. The makers of JK knew what they were doing, IMO.

 

And the spinning thing on Level 18? I was synched with Kyle when he said "You have *got* to be *kidding*!" I can't tally how many times I died trying to cross it. However, it was the only way, and the game allows you to see that puzzle get into motion, you've been working with that slab since the beginning of the level... wow.

 

Then Level 19 had an interesting puzzle - pitch black with Kell Dragons! I was scared of that level for a month before I figured out that Force Seeing and a Concussion Rifle/Rail Gun are your friends. (Which proves your point about how guns were nerfed in HO and above - you needed to use your guns in JK unless you wanted to run)

 

So basically, my point is that the puzzles are what made JK such a kick-ass game. Sometimes, guns are needed to solve puzzles, and that makes it useful to conserve your ammo on the lower levels where you can.

 

*NOTE* This is NOT rozo, this is his sister. *NOTE*

I agree with you completely. I have ALWAYS used guns more than saber, saber usaly just annoys me.

1.) They have to have puzzles

2.) Kyle. I despise jaden above all others. Dnt ask why, cuz i dont know.

3.) BRING JAN BACK!! And less ugly

Maybe in the next game, you could be kyle looking for Jaden after he/she runs away in JKA? ANd trey to turn him/her back to the light side, but if you cant you have to kill him/her. I wanna kill jaden :-P

[toms]

DarkStarMojo, I agree with you 90%. The remaining 10%% is the fact that I liked the challenging puzzles, because they didn't feel like puzzles to me that were deliberately placed, they seemed... well... a bit more natural.

 

Remember Level 10 with that one forcefield that the only switches were behind the force field? When I first got the game (I was 12, cut me some slack), I ran up there and nearly killed myself looking for the switch. I was about to leave that spot when it deactivated - a glitch, really.

 

Anyways, I later learned the true solution: Shoot out the fan generator, go on the alternate path, and jump in on the foes. That seems like a Star Wars version of 007, and to me it was very immersive. But the puzzles weren't shoved in front of you like: "Look! A achallenging level! Rate me well!". Too many level-makers that integrate puzzles (and there are very few) do exactly that. The makers of JK knew what they were doing, IMO.

 

And the spinning thing on Level 18? I was synched with Kyle when he said "You have *got* to be *kidding*!" I can't tally how many times I died trying to cross it. However, it was the only way, and the game allows you to see that puzzle get into motion, you've been working with that slab since the beginning of the level... wow.

 

Then Level 19 had an interesting puzzle - pitch black with Kell Dragons! I was scared of that level for a month before I figured out that Force Seeing and a Concussion Rifle/Rail Gun are your friends. (Which proves your point about how guns were nerfed in HO and above - you needed to use your guns in JK unless you wanted to run)

 

So basically, my point is that the puzzles are what made JK such a kick-ass game. Sometimes, guns are needed to solve puzzles, and that makes it useful to conserve your ammo on the lower levels where you can.

 

Too true. JK had some of the best level design and environmental puzzle integration of any fps. Playing JO and JA just felt like linear, almost on rails, Quake 2 action... with the odd tacked on puzzle thrown in to try and be like JK.

 

The comment about the prequel saber style rings true too. JK felt much more like the OT saber style, and the balance between saber, force and guns was much better.

 

In JO they went much more for the flippy-do prequel saber style, with everyone fighting like they were in a jet li film. Which was definately fun for a while, but ultimately it was ALL there was, and so it soon got repetetive. (same goes for the prequels btw).

This is probably a very personal preference, but i prefer the samurai styled combat of the OT to the kung-fu styled combat of the prequels.. and liked flipping between guns and saber as you did in the old JK...

 

If anything it was multiplayer that killed JO. JK was clearly a single player game, with some basic (but fun) multiplayer added on. But that was because back then not many people did online multiplayer. Now every game has to have a balanced online multiplayer... and they sacrificed the feel, depth and enjoyment of the single player to try and give a fair, but unexciting, multiplayer environment to people.

*squelches back to swamp*

[katanamaru]

True about guns needing a come back but I am worried the game would turn out to be another run of the mill shooter. It would suck if the developers focused on the guns so much that saber fighting took a step back and the level design was too generic. Sure FPS look good but they aren't really bringing anything new to the table now days. The JK series is great to me since I get to decide how I play the game. I can run around using nothing but choke, throw, and lightning to blast away my enemies; use all my guns and bombs to blow everyone to smitherens; and lastly be a whirling dervish of death with my saber or an honorable fighter who duels against the great injustice in the galaxy. Sure better puzzels, great level design, awesome mods, and such help make any game great when they are well balanced but JK has always been better than that since it features all those on top of letting me play my way.

[Kurgan]

On the contrary toms, I think multiplayer was one of the awesomest things about this game, because up till that point all the FPS games were pretty run of the mill. It's true, Quakeworld had just been taking off by the time JK was released, but despite the fact that it was limited (at the time you could only play via trading IP's like on an internet forum or on IRC or something, or via the Internet Gaming Zone which at first was IE only, at a time when IE was inferior to Netscape Navigator, which most people used to surf the WWW those days). The MP gameplay was unique because it added force and saber and incredible speed (meaning full 3-d movement in the environment) to the FPS formula. No other game was like it in its heyday.

 

It's true the Single Player is what won it awards, but anyone who played the MP for any length of time can tell you it was sheer brilliance. The game fell behind in graphics and server capability (it was peer to peer, and typically didn't do very well with more than 8 players, unless you were on a LAN, though now with the tickrate limit bypasser reg file somebody put together, it may be possible to have those 32 player games we all dreamed about... at least on some good sized maps!).

 

***

 

Well to some purists, putting "guns" and "sabers" together is akin to blasphemy (though this is not something they could have garnered from the movies).

 

What always made the JK series unique (not counting the original DF of course, which had no sabers/force OR multiplayer) was how sabers, force AND guns all went together in one massive battle.

 

Granted, the lightsaber was NEVER up to the exacting standards of many fans. That's fine, because we can never be real jedi and representing swordplay realistically (but also being able to stand up to gunfighters) in a video game that you control with a keyboard and mouse (or gamepad on occasion) is just going to have certain limits. The JK series basically pioneered this idea in many ways, at least in an online context.

 

Anyway, yeah, I think seperating "guns" and "sabers" into to rival spheres, so that you have your "gunners" and your "saberists" Playing on different servers, that is a mistake. However if people decide to do that ANYWAY there isn't much you can do to stop them, but I don't think that they should make a game where you can ONLY fight blade to blade, or make the lightsabers good for NOTHING BUT dueling. Jedi Academy had it pretty close (as did Jedi Outcast 1.02) to what I would consider a "good job" of putting sabers and other weapons together to make a fun FPS.

 

That may not gel with what certain people portraying a "true Jedi" ought to be, but frankly I don't care what those people think, as they seem never satisfied. The JK series has always been about First Person Shooting, first and foremost, the single player campaigns nonwithstanding...

 

Other shooters out there seem content to be generic tech demo fodder, or the most part, or else seek to refine "stealth" and "tactical realism" squad based type stuff, or else go the route of games like Q3:TA (and QuakeIV which I hear is just a carbon copy in MP in that game anyway) and UT. So the JK series will always have something to offer, unless he skips out of the genre entirely and becomes sabers only (which would suck, frankly), or worse, a generic type Star Wars shooter (look at what happened to Republic Commando... then again you could say their effort was sabotaged.. here they had an opportunity to give us a squad and class based tactical FPS, but it ended up just being a rather generic FPS, even if you could do a few neat things like club people with your gun and have limited carrying capacity or force your flag carriers to go unarmed).

 

I agree about playing "your way." Some people preferred to use only lightsaber, while others picked up guns, and others (including myself) grabbed whatever came to hand, even if you had "favorite weapons." Class based play was cool too, in MotS and JA.

[toms]

I don't want to cross-post, but i made a more detailed post in the "ideas for JK4" about what i'd want from a new game.

 

To sum up it would be a new character, in the tween-trilogy timeline and basically be JK meets Deus-Ex with better graphics.

 

Everyone has different ideas about what Jedi should be like, and what star wars should be like... so its better give people a gradiation between saber only at one end and gunbs only at the other. A deus Ex style system could do that, as you could add your points to saber skills, or force skills, or gun skills... or any combination of the three. Plus, modding your blaster seems to fit in really well to the OT way of doing things.

 

I actually played a bit of JK multiplayer and loved it.. but all the MP guys always used to complain and seemed to think JO was a big improvement.. and they played it more than me so i took their word for it. I tried it once and thought it was bland.. but i never gave it a proper try.

 

I think i'm the only guy who prefered the saber in JK to JO. Maybe its more down to the "imagination always beating real" factor, or the repetition factor... but somehow playing as a jedi in JK always felt more like *I* felt playing as a jedi would than playing as a jedi in JO. Even though JO had more complex saber stuff, more advanced force effects, etc.. I'm weird i guess.

 

I don't know if JK meets Deus Ex would sell big... but it would be a dream game for me, thats for sure.

[JoesGuy]

Well George Lucas was never one to stop. Remember the original Star Wars? Remember the second trilogy? And now a tv series, after saying he'd end Star Wars with RotS. I'm sure a new Jedi Knight game will pop up.....eventually.

[katanamaru]

I'm pretty sure you're not the only one toms, check out massassi.net and you'll meet a lot of guys who prefer JK to JO. Nothing wrong with that at all either. I prefer the original Soul Blade to any of the Soul Calibur series, it's all just taste.

[toms]

I kind of feel that there is a space for both types of game. 3rd party saber games are probably better accomodated with games like Episode III... full on action games with loads of moves and combos.

 

Then a mode varied, in depth experience could be provided by a level of FPS/RPG that had a more tactical approach.

 

JO struck me as being a bit too stuck in the middle. Its saber combat wasn't as immediate or fun as Ep3, but it's level design and FPS/character development elements wern't as developed as JK.

 

Please sir, i want both!

[Kurgan]

Hmmm, from what I've heard and seen about Episode III:ROTS (the) game, it probably wouldn't be the greatest title to base a new JK on. Terrible camera, frustrating and repetative gameplay and letdown coop mode.

 

Seriously, a consolized "3rd person saber only" Jedi game (especially one limited to what was seen in the movies) would suck... royally, for a fan of the JK series. Those are the kind of throw-away liscensed titles that are released to cash in on a new SW production, not inspire a dedicated online MP and modding community that lasts for years. (No offense to any Episode III: RotS fans, hey, I know Enter the Matrix had a huge fanbase too, despite being a mediocre overhyped game).

 

I don't want to just saber duel and solve puzzles while hacking down the odd brainless enemy or two. I want to rush around the map screaming with my big Star Wars cannon (perferrably a Concussion Rifle or Rail Detonator!) blazing, leaping dozens of feet in the air while gripping somebody and/or force shoving them over a cliff while my gun gets yanked away and I smack them in the face with my saber that I just whipped out and blast them in the face with more force before hitting the dirt and landing in somebody's stack of mines on top of the flag/goal, for the win... And it all happens so quickly that only my previous experience and training lets me realize what happened.

 

THAT is the essence of the JK series, to me... and what I hope is striven for in any successor to this series.

 

And please, don't make it like Battlefront (1 or 2)! And don't leave the MP half finished and unsupported like Republic Commando!

 

Honestly? Unreal Tech for the next JK game... combine the best elements of UT2k4, Jedi Academy, and Mysteries of the Sith... release it on PC (moddability and dedicated server support a requirement): for the ultimate JK game. I'd buy it in a heartbeat...

[toms]

Nah.. i wasn't saying they should make JK like Ep3... more that they should farm off the full on saber battle game into EP3 style games... then make the JK games less flippy and slightly slower paced. (i heard it was quite good... like a poor man's ninja gaiden)

 

I'd rather it wasn't as fast paced as you describe... not like an UT2K style sports deathmatch game. I thought JK and Half Life had more "weight" to them because they were slightly more slower paced. Everything felt a bit more solid.

 

I'd want stamina bars, crosshairs that expand when you run or jump (though less so if you have a higher ranged weapon skill), limited but very customisable loadouts, slower movement when carrying a rocket launcher, some powers that work better from hidden positions, saber locks that are determined by timing not killing your mouse, etc.. , saber combat with maybe less styles and moves, but more tactics and timing.

 

I'm not sure i'd want a full on BF2 multiplayer... and i'm not at all bothered about vehicles as they've been completely pointless in all the JK games so far.

 

As for single player, i want branching dialogues, branching plots, open levels that can be attempted however you like (blast, sneak, saber, force, jump, hack persuade), the ability to buy, customise, repair and upgrade your equipment, etc..

 

I'd rather it was on the Half Life 2 engine than the UT one. It just seems a better fit visually and realism wise. UT (like quake) seems better suited to bright, colourful, almost comic book style games.. whereas the HL engine seems to be better suited to the dirty, rusty, industrial but real feel of the OT.

[TK-8252]

Well George Lucas was never one to stop. Remember the original Star Wars? Remember the second trilogy? And now a tv series, after saying he'd end Star Wars with RotS. I'm sure a new Jedi Knight game will pop up.....eventually.

 

George Lucas has not played a role in the Jedi Knight series I'm pretty sure. The only game he was involved in the creation of I believe was the Episode III game.

 

I'm not sure i'd want a full on BF2 multiplayer...

 

Oh, that'd be sweet!

 

Siege mode from JA but not sucky!

[katanamaru]

I agree about the 'weight' with JK and JA. UT is a little too fast for a Jedi Knight game unless it was force speed, and console fps seem too slow. No matter the hype I still can't seem to bring myself to play Halo.

[Rumor]

Hmmm, from what I've heard and seen about Episode III:ROTS (the) game, it probably wouldn't be the greatest title to base a new JK on. Terrible camera, frustrating and repetative gameplay and letdown coop mode.

 

Seriously, a consolized "3rd person saber only" Jedi game (especially one limited to what was seen in the movies) would suck... royally, for a fan of the JK series. Those are the kind of throw-away liscensed titles that are released to cash in on a new SW production, not inspire a dedicated online MP and modding community that lasts for years. (No offense to any Episode III: RotS fans, hey, I know Enter the Matrix had a huge fanbase too, despite being a mediocre overhyped game).

 

I don't want to just saber duel and solve puzzles while hacking down the odd brainless enemy or two. I want to rush around the map screaming with my big Star Wars cannon (perferrably a Concussion Rifle or Rail Detonator!) blazing, leaping dozens of feet in the air while gripping somebody and/or force shoving them over a cliff while my gun gets yanked away and I smack them in the face with my saber that I just whipped out and blast them in the face with more force before hitting the dirt and landing in somebody's stack of mines on top of the flag/goal, for the win... And it all happens so quickly that only my previous experience and training lets me realize what happened.

 

THAT is the essence of the JK series, to me... and what I hope is striven for in any successor to this series.

 

And please, don't make it like Battlefront (1 or 2)! And don't leave the MP half finished and unsupported like Republic Commando!

 

Honestly? Unreal Tech for the next JK game... combine the best elements of UT2k4, Jedi Academy, and Mysteries of the Sith... release it on PC (moddability and dedicated server support a requirement): for the ultimate JK game. I'd buy it in a heartbeat...

you forgot flipkicks and the other things that made ff/so so great in jk2

[Kurgan]

Well the flipkicks and all that assumes the next game just takes the existing system from JA and builds off of it, rather than re-creating it anew.

 

Flipkicks are not strictly necessary, though they could be a fun addition. As is, they're a bit, shall we say, exploitable (though admittedly many enjoyed this aspect of play). Not seeking to enter into a flame-fest about it, I'll leave it at that.

 

 

 

One more thing about gunplay in the JK series.

 

Keep in mind:

 

Dark Forces 1 had no multiplayer. It was supposedly originally planned, but scrapped before release. Obviously, there were no lightsabers or force powers included so it would have been more like Duke Nukem 3D or Quake 1.

 

Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight and Mysteries of the Sith had identical gameplay in Single and Multiplayer. This was different than Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy which used a seperate executable (essentially a second game, using the same engine) for Single and Multiplay. The physics, animations, damage values, velocities, and all sorts of things were changed between the SP & MP of JK2/JA.

 

When you compare them, you'll see that the gunplay in the SP of JK2/JA is HORRIBLE. The guns tend to be extremely nerfed. Enemies can actually dodge the projectiles quite easily, and they don't do a whole lot of damage in most cases. Some of the guns fire fast, but have many disadvantages. I think they did this purposely to up the difficulty and encourage saber use. Multiplayer is completely different, with the guns be much more powerful (but some fire more slowly) and the projectiles are harder to dodge for the most part.

 

The point I'm making is that using guns in JK1 SP was actually fun, but in Jedi Outcast it sucked, which is why those first few levels where you didn't have force/saber yet were really really crappy to slog through (the only thing that kept me going was the storyline and the promise that I'd soon by using my Jedi stuff again finally).

 

Mysteries of the Sith was the first game in the series to actually start you off already with some powers and a saber to use, and on the last few levels they forced you to rely on saber/force. But multiplayer had tons of variety, including player classes for the first time (all of whom had only limited force and didn't spawn with sabers... though they could pick them up and use them off a dead Jedi or on certain maps there was a saber you could pick up, a real Jedi could force pull it away quite easily).

 

So people who've only played JK2/JA single player would probably agree that gunplay sucked, but those who've played extensive MP know better.

 

A lot of people have said that they prefer the single player saber battling in JK2/JA to the multiplayer version (though I disagree with them), while in JK1/MotS it was quite the opposite (most people preferred the online version).

[Kurgan]

PS: SWG was a success, but I think the point was they've lost a lot of fans to various changes, especially lately. They've been considered a disappointment by fans. And they're not so hot compared to other MMORPG's, especially WoW and EQ (which SWG was based off of).

 

The main criticism seems to be that promises were made, took forever, and then didn't live up to expectations, and overall the game lacked the "feel" of a true Star Wars game, feeling instead like a typical fantasy sword & sorcery MMORPG (a la EverQuest) just with a Star Wars paint job. At least that's what I've been hearing from former players and critics (myself never having ever played a single MMORPG).

[JasperFett]

I think I may be one of the only ones who kind of liked the game. Maybe I need to dig deeper into the game, but so far, I don't have any compliants.

[Kurgan]

When did you start playing it, before or after the "Combat Upgrade"? Did you use any of the "Expansions" (Jump to Lightspeed, Rage of the Wookiees, Trials of Obi-Wan)?

 

How long have you been playing it?

 

It seems the folks I've talked to who seem the most normal who have a good time are the ones who know other people in the game that they regularly play with. Of course none of them play SWG, they all played EQ and then moved on to WOW.

[Prime]

When you compare them, you'll see that the gunplay in the SP of JK2/JA is HORRIBLE. The guns tend to be extremely nerfed. Enemies can actually dodge the projectiles quite easily, and they don't do a whole lot of damage in most cases. Some of the guns fire fast, but have many disadvantages. I think they did this purposely to up the difficulty and encourage saber use.

Which I think is a misguided theory, since it is probably safe to assume that the majority of players do so because of the Jedi/lightsaber aspects, and so do not really need any such encouragement.

 

As for the ROTS game, I quite enjoyed it and in terms of lightsaber combat I think it does a lot of things well. While an exact copy of the system probably wouldn't be as appealing in a JK game, there is lots of good stuff that could be incorporated into a new system.

[Kurgan]

Well compare the success of the JK series vs. the "success" of Obi-Wan and RoTS the game.

 

The replay value of those latter games is far lower (necessary when you cut out most or all of the gunplay and the first person capability, and limit the multiplayer to dueling modes as in the case of Obi-Wan, though RotS the game had limited coop), the modability nonexistent, the multiplayer extremely limited. Their sole claims to fame are that they were movie-tie in products that were shipped soley for big name consoles (which are virtually guarenteed to pull in big sales figures simply because they can charge more, and their customer base is used to generally lower standards in gameplay/variety.. let's face it, console gamers are used to repetative gameplay to unlock bonus items and sub-par graphics, I'm not even talking about official patches, which used to be relagated only to pc games, anyway, not to get off on a rant there).

 

The only draws I saw in ROTS were its use of co-op play (Jedi Academy actually had coop play straight out of the box, but it was completely unsupported and untested, meaning a lot of maps had major glitches in them, and only OJP mod has made any concentrated effort to work on improving that, that I have seen), which was limited to a select few maps anyway.

 

Otherwise it was a rushed (and overrated, thanks to the movie tie0in) game with bad controls and sloppy gameplay. I think what people are assuming here is that the saber and force combat systems in Episode III were that much superior to Jedi Academy/Outcast.

 

My question is... did RotS have online play? Because saber combat systems are complex affairs, meaning you have to compensate for lag. When you play on a console multiplayer, 9 times out of 10 you're playing on the SAME MACHINE meaning there is zero lag. That means you don't have to worry about latency and all the problems of any JK game.

 

Single player wise it hardly matters, they can do whatever they want. But a JK game would have multiplayer, which means putting up with lag in MP, which means your saber combat system has to be able to compensate for that and still be playable and somewhat fun. Thus even if the Episode III system turned out to be the best ever, it may not translate well to an internet multiplayer model.

 

It's true that real-time "Sword play" (and "sword play + magic") games, on any platform, are pretty rare, but not as rare as the gunplay + sword play + magic, which makes the JK series a class by itself (I don't count Diakatana, since not only was it a horrible flop, but it's melee weapon was just a fancy Quake axe/Half Life crowbar).

[toms]

They are going for very different experiences... I always felt the JK games were more in depth than the console beat-em-ups which essentially take you through linear levels in a very narrow path.

 

I guess the DF and JK games did that too, but somehow they felt more open, like you had more freedom of movement, like everythign had more weight/mass.. maybe it was an illusion created byt he RPG-lite elements, or the larger arsenal of weapons and items..

 

I did think that JO and JA lost that feel a bit though.. htey certainly felt more linear, more lightweight... maybe because they nerfed the weapons and lightened up the RPG even more. Maybe just becuase of the Q3 engine being so familiar by then.

 

I do agree that it has to be very hard to create a good, balanced mutiplayer melee system that allows enough depth to be interesting, allows lots of people to fight at once and can cope with lag. Expecially when you then have to factor in exploits and cheats. I guess they did an ok job with JO, but since i only MPed it a few times and never really got into it I'm not really an expert.

 

I did feel that in some ways i prefered the JK saber combat.. which wasa very basic and basically consisted of 3 moves depending on your movement as you struck... but it also felt more simple and more tactical, as it was more about positioning. Maybe i just never mastered the JO system, but it always felt a bit cheap and a bit unreliable in places.. when I'd pull off moves by accident that i wasn't expecting.

 

Its hard enough to make a good 3rd person combat game, but when you have to take into account force powers, jumping all over the place, and the fact that really a single hit with a saber should remove your arm it becomes a nightmare...

 

I bet there are some good mods out there that have come up with a better system though.

 

For me, i'd be happy with a slightly simplified, slightly slower saber system, without the choice of styles. And with a Soul Calibur style Scissors/paper/stone basis.. and where the timing of attacks and chaining attacks was more important than the speed.

 

Maybe if there were three basic attacks (strong slow vertical BEATS medium side slash BEATS quick weak stab BEATS strong slow vertical) and you could cain them in a simple Prince of Persia style freeform/branching combo system. (where each stage of the combo would increase the damage of hits, but repeating moves would reduce the damage)

 

Ahh... who knows... make it too much about the saber moves and then it becomes too tricky to cope with both saber combat and movement at the same time.

But then if they slow the whole game down a bit to something more like BF2 than Q3 then maybe it would work.

[Fortune Hunter]

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