Star Wars: Questions Sort Of Answered
IGN nailed down a couple TOR producers to ask them questions about the game, with a few notable quotes:
IGN: A lot of people wanted to know about the healing system. Will The Old Republic use a trinity system; the tank, healer, and the DPS class. Will the healer play a massive role, or will groups be able to go with no healing?
Dallas Dickinson: We want to make sure that we have many, many MMO roles filled there, but it’s really important to us that players are able to actually play their experience either as a group or as a solo. So there are a number of ways that healing comes into the game. Several of our classes have healing branches that they can follow that will have some specific healing powers, but we don’t want to make it a requirement for the base core game. That said, you’re obviously going to be better off, especially when you get into higher-level stuff and into PvP, if you have healers on your side.
Jake Neri: I think we have a unique sort of twist on how healing works. I don’t think we’re speaking in total detail about it, but I think the people will be excited for it, and it’s definitely a unique function of our game.
I’ve seen a lot of people get this myopic view of predicting TOR — namely that there will be healing “classes”, but I couldn’t see it, especially with limited class numbers. I was thinking that your NPC companions would heal, but here we have some initial details about character customization (“branches”). I was really hoping that the game wouldn’t be demanding of any players to heal in a group as a primary role, but that quote seems to belay that somewhat.
Dallas Dickinson: The first one is that we’re not talking about space combat yet.
Boo! Boo! Boo-urns!
IGN: Will there be differences between the Sith and the Jedi combat mechanics?
Dallas Dickinson: Without going into details, sure, yes.
For instance, one will have blue lightsabers, and one green!
IGN: How do keep Jedi knights versus other classes from getting out of balance? When people think about Jedi knights, they’re complete bad-asses.
Jake Neri: We don’t have any specifics on any of the Jedi classes, so it’s hard to answer that. I guess I have heard that people are confused about how a Force wielding class wouldn’t just overwhelm a bounty hunter. I think at some point, as the folks making this game, there’s a tremendous amount of interest in classes like the bounty hunter and the trooper, so those classes will absolutely be competitive with any Force wielding class. I think that it will feel very natural and will make a lot of sense. It’s interesting that people are speculating about that, but I don’t think we would ever try to make just one overpowered class that just has its way with anybody else just because they are Force wielding.
Well, gee, BioWare, don’t sound so surprised that people are speculating about it — it’s pretty much a “no duh” issue that is on the minds of everyone who’s ever played a Star Wars game or saw how hard Star Wars Galaxies struggled with the issue of Jedi vs. non-Jedi.
- Posted in: Star Wars: The Old Republic
While Force user VS non-Force user balance is definately a big issue and something that needs to be watched closely, there are two reasons that I’m not exactly worried about it yet.
One is that I trust Bioware. They know they’ve never done an online game with this type of balance issue.
Two is that its a MMO. Anyone with that kind of desire for hardcore “lore realism” in an MMO will never be happy, especially not with any established IP like Star Wars.
I understand why lots of people are curious about how Bioware will handle it, but I’m perfectly fine waiting to get more info on the game as a whole.
I’m curious about healing. I think that was the least helpful part of this. You can solo, and some classes have healing branches, but they aren’t needed for the core game, just higher level content and PvP.
I can’t really see how that can be unless all characters have some form of passive or minor heal balanced for easy-mode solo mobs, but useless against bosses or other players due to increase attack power. Or like healing stations in instanced areas.
It’s odd because the solo branch of the game should work by the same mechanics as the rest, and I’ve never seen a MMO where healing wasn’t required at all as an ability to solo.
Have to say that I wasn’t too impressed with the answers. Specially this:
“That said, you’re obviously going to be better off, especially when you get into higher-level stuff and into PvP, if you have healers on your side.”
This sounds bad. Even if every class would be able to heal, there will be some class that is best at it. And after few months, when everyone realises it, that class will be cornered.
To me that sentence show that they will have the trinity. But I’m cool. It’s just the cold water down my neck that I needed at this time..;)
Seems like they are being pretty tight lipped about it all. Guess we’ll just need to wait and see.