View From The Road: Flash Frozen

[Pirce]

Anyone who is a fan of D&D is looking forward to the flashpoints for the very reasons you are worried about them. The people around you impacting your character is a good feature in my book. Some of my most memorable experiences in D&D come from someone in my party making a decision that not everyone wanted or agreed with.

 

[fezzthemonk]

I think we are thinking to much about this. Thjink about it in terms of reality, you might have a certain path you want to go, but somewhere down the line, some one does or says something that you cant control, and mess up what you want. from what I saw in the videoes, each flash point has multiple parts one that each person controlls. if youre team mate kills some one who you thought could help you, you can try to salvage the recage of the event.

 

[Shadowtalon]

I think you completely missed another option.

Pee. Vee. Pee.

If my party member points his blaster at the skull of some guy I like, what should stop me from doing the same to him? Of course you might have issues with 1v1 class balance or more players going the other way, but that's something Bioware should solve. If someone has the ability to do something I disagree with, then I should have the ability to disagree with him.

 

[matrix3509]

You know there is a very simple solution to all of this, make the game single splayer like it should have been in the first fucking place.

*goes off mumbling about "greedy bastards with their stupid monthly fee shit."*

 

[StriderShinryu]

No matter how this gets solved, it will be interesting to see what happens.

One thing that does seem pretty likely, however, is that PUGs will somehow be even less popular in TOR than they are in others MMOs.

 

[Aurgelmir]

"On the third hand, the system in TOR could let you go back and play through sections of the story as many times as you wanted"

Well there is also a problem in the fact that: Do you want to see the cut scenes 100 times to get your Blaster of Greatness?

I mean look at World of Warcraft at the moment, people hate Culling of Stratholm, because they HAVE to watch/listen to the into each time.

I personally think The Old Republic will become just a decent co op game, but as an MMO it will belly up like all other MMOs. Why? Because it use to much time on innovating small parts of the game, leaving many other important parts in the dirt.

 

[Steampunk Viking]

I, too, have pondered this matter and came up with the conclusion: "Well, Bioware knows what it's doing." Prehaps they've come up with some ingenius idea we haven't thought of.

Besides, they do a lot of research into their games before working on them, they have taken a while to begin development on an online game afterall. They probably spent all this time pondering on ideas they can use. MMORPGs are a completely different kettle of fish to single player ones and, whilst I see the logic in comparing TOR with games like Army of Two, I think it's a little unfair as they both aim to accomplish different ends.

We can only wait and see...

 

[DeadAccountMoveAlong]

Honestly with the Mandalorian/Hutt scenario, for a coherent storyline you can just screw the fourth person over. That is a real story, three people taking the one path while the other pouts five feet behind the group and bickers the whole way saying "I told you so." Sometimes you have to be the disgruntled third wheel.

How many times does a game make a choice for you? This is done by cutscenes, but how many times do you kill a boss, only to have him magically live in the cutscene and limp away while you stand there helplessly and watch? How easy would it be to put a bullet through someone's head while they run off in a pre-determined battle? You're in the middle of a small fight, and spot the antagonist sneaking off, while your character preoccupies himself with a few grunts, fully aware of the enemy.

We're always screwed over for the sake of extending a game or driving the story in the way that the creators (or the majority of your group in an MMO's case) desire. It makes it aggravating, but realistic.

 

[ldwater]

To be honest the only way I can see this working is that everyone in the party are given the choice and everyone selects which option they want. If everyone selects the same thing then great - you move on together as a group.

But if ANY one person in the group selects a different option I would imagine the game would simply disband the group and allow the players that selected the SAME choice in the same group. If that means that your the only guy left in your group then thats the way its gotta be in order to keep EVERYONE happy.

It should be very interesting for Bioware with these 'flash point' events simply because each choice needs to BALANCE in a MMO game. The game CAN'T punish you for your selection as it starts saying that it was the WRONG choice and people will start building the 'golden path' of the game the get the best results.

In the same vein it also means that each choice (or reward for making that choice) also needs to be BALANCED which pretty much neutralises the choice, reducing it down to a selection between the 'red apple or green apple' - neither gives an advantage over the other but different in order to show difference in the choice the player made.

Either that or rewards in the game will NOT be tied to choices you make and are simply story choices without any inherent reward.