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Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Given the lack of an extended announcement period I am intensely sceptical about this.

quote:

Recycled Battlefront 2 assets, short campaign, limited scope (but with room for an expansion pack/dlc) made quickly by a smaller studio using existing engine and basic flight mechanics/concept, cheap project to fill a release slot for new consoles in a year when many games have been delayed.

On the other hand, I feel like the problem with quite a few AAA games (in particular from EA's studios) is the tendency to try to do far too much and spend too much and lose focus. 'Take BF2's Starfighter mode and turn it into a tight 5v5 multiplayer game with a better flight model' is a kind of focussed pitch that I can see turning out okay.

Won't have long to wait in any case.


e: also recommending House of the Dying Sun. It manages to deliver a sense of pace that X-Wing v Tie Fighter never could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSBui-F6RnY

Alchenar fucked around with this message at 12:11 on Jun 16, 2020

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Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

hhhat posted:

I share in everyone's skepticism but at *least* based on the way they've approached the announcement and what they've shown so far, there's an indication that someone in charge is trying to fix their PR and has heard some complaints

Remains to be seen what that translates into but still, this is one of the few games on my dream list - X wing in VR - so they got me. Battlefront was fun for *a bit* so I don't regret the purchase, but it didn't have legs

I'm a weirdo with games, I just play one until I get tired of it, and despite everything wrong with Overwatch I haven't stopped playing it

I don't really like 5v5 for that reason though, but single player old school classic missions? sign me the gently caress up

It's a game that's supposed to release in October and yet the teaser trailer wasn't followed up immediately with someone talking about actual gameplay.

The way they are presenting this is a classic attempt to balance hype with not letting anyone ask too many questions about how much fun this all actually is.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Sombrerotron posted:

As suggested earlier, "5v5" might be a little deceptive - I could definitely see AI pilots being included and the Imps being given numerical superiority to offset the resilience of New Republic fighters.

Or just give all the Imps a T/I because in the hands of a good player it'll mop the floor with any Republic offering.

I think there's a little bit of deliberate balance trailing in having the Interceptor in the teaser survive bouncing off asteroids. I imagine there will be some heavy balancing so a 'post-Endor' interceptor has a shield generator and is functionally identical to an X-Wing, likewise for all the other ships and their direct analogues. I'm sure there will be a litte bit of differentiation but the fighters will be more or less the same.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

5v5 totally means there's a sidebet somewhere in EA on trying to make ESPORTS happen with this one.


e: the lore is also kinda wrong because if you go by the films then unless you are a hero unit x-wings and tie-fighters are presented as being basically equivalent.

In fact in A New Hope the rebel comms are distorted and the Imperial comms are clear in order to try to convey the sense that the imperial kit is better

Alchenar fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Jun 17, 2020

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Real talk for a moment: in X-wing v Tie Fighter there was an immediate obvious disadvantage to not having a shield, which was that attempting a head on attack was obvious suicide. Given that's literally the default starting engagement the Imperial ships have to be broadly as durable as the Rebel ships or the game is going to be extremely one sided.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Ion cannoning people in pvp and then leaving their totally disabled fighter and refusing to kill them was some excellent early trolling I learned.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Dapper_Swindler posted:

these fucks are genuinly pathetic. like who gives a gently caress. i am pretty sure you gonna be able to customize your multiplayer pilot anyway. so kelly tran sdosian xwing here we come.

e: also content from previous page - having one ship able to reliably beat others in a head-on is terrible for balance because that player just needs to point nose towards enemy and gains an enormous advantage as their opponent has to try to go evasive.

I'm hoping for something like warthunder jets with no gravity and the speed dial turned up to 15.

Alchenar fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Jun 18, 2020

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Eej posted:

Ah yes, the A6M5 Zero, well known for being able to head-on a Hellcat.

how do you energy fight in star wars

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

While I'm disappointed by the implied lack of missions where I spend 8 minutes flying from a nav point, 5 minutes docked at a station, then another 8 minutes flying back to the nav point, I am very happy by these clips. They absolutely seem to have nailed the 'pace' of star wars space battles in a way that previous games have not.

Reading through the 'PR approved lines filter' I also really like the stuff about playtesting the game every day and fiddling until it felt right. It's surprising how rare that is and is a good sign that they won't be suddenly disappointed by public reaction.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Thom12255 posted:

Flashbacks to the 2nd tutorial mission in XWA where you spend 30 minutes scanning cargo and it's kind of easy to mess something up at the end of the mission and have to do the entire thing again.

Oh man I remember that now but that's not even the mission I'm thinking of. It's an Otana mission though.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

It's this. This is the most boring mission of Alliance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVswU_v5cec It is less long than I remember.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

I really wouldn't recommend a flight stick until some people actually play the game and come back, it's likely to be designed around the common denominator (a console controller) with joystick support being there because it's expected.

However:

If you want to spend not very much money, then logitech will do just fine for you.

If you want to spend a bit of money, the Thrustmaster T-Flight Hotas is for you.

If you are a fool with money then Thrustmaster will do you a stick, throttle and pedals: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thrustmast...R0D0WF716KZBEY6

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

A MIRACLE posted:

I have the T-Flight HOTAS mentioned above (for Sturmovik) and it's pretty good. several years old and has survived three moves and a bunch of drops and other goony clumsiness

whatever you get just make sure it has pitch, roll, yaw (twist the stick) and throttle. hat switches are dope too

Same, I bought mine 6 years ago, survived a bit of rough treatment and plenty of use. A couple of the buttons stopped working and my new desk doesn't really have anywhere to put it so I've stopped using it and started using the xbox controller for Elite Dangerous and don't really feel the need to replace it. If this is the beginning the The Great Space Sim Resurgence then I'll change my mind, but using House of the Dying Sun as a reference it's clearly possible to make this sort of game around a console controller assumption.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Xenomrph posted:

I’m looking at the T-Flight in Amazon and there’s an $80 “for PC and PS4” model and a $58 “for PC and PS3” model. I assume the cheaper one is the older model, but it’s also rated higher than the new one and has 10x as many reviews. Is there an appreciable difference between the two, and is it worth spending the extra $25 for the newer model?

No idea. The spec is identical, the newer one just happens to be bluer. The extra money you are paying for will get you:

1) Any improvements in quality control they've made along the way
2) Up to date software/drivers, which might make a difference in some incredibly rare niche circumstances you are incredibly unlikely to encounter.


e: value 'intangible improvements in quality control' bearing in mind that you've just seen two posters talk about how theirs has lasted for 5+ years.

Alchenar fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Jun 19, 2020

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Symetrique posted:

The Warthog isn't that great of a recommendation anymore. It's a seriously outdated product with a premium price. VKB and Virpil are both much better alternatives.

Okay yeah, if you have money to burn on this hobby then the spec manufacturers are the place to go.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

George H.W. oval office posted:

Kinda sucks that it’s a one and done if that’s to be believed.

It's entirely credible that EA have been burned enough times on making promises they can't keep

e: also super loving dumb of them to keep on promising free content/season pass content into the release cycle of their own competing next game

Alchenar fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Jun 19, 2020

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Space sims are still super niche, this is dipping a toe into the water to see if there's a market. If people buy then we'll get future games.

e: \/\/ oh yeah, you need terrain in your space sim otherwise it's just a fish tank.

Alchenar fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Jun 19, 2020

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

An E-Wing is what happens when Lego are all 'we need a new product and we want to make it out of these X-Wing pieces we already make, what can you do for us Lucasfilm?'

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Xenomrph posted:

Look at this amateur who didn't know about capital ship blindspots and dumbfiring ordnance. :smug:

It was weird and clearly not well thought through though. What's even the point of all this slow moving locking ordinance if the AI turrets will immediately shoot them up with perfect accuracy?


Freespace 2 remains the absolute pinnacle of Fighter/Bomber/Capital Ship combat.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

plester1 posted:

I thought the mechanic was targeting the turrets to shoot them out so you can then fire ordnance.


Well yeah, but at the point at which you've taken out the turrets you can just sit in the blindspot you've created with all power to lasers and hold down the trigger for five minutes.

Wing Commander and Freespace both got that the more interesting and engaging gameplay is have bombers make attack runs starting out from long range, with the skill being to hold your nerve and get close enough so that when you launch your ordinance it doesn't get blasted by turrets, while not getting so close that the turrets blast you. There's a tradeoff there that the X-Wing games never got.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Its an arena based video game, not a faithful recreation of the actual historic star wars that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far far away

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

All of the historic records from the star wars are lost and the video is referencing fictional accounts

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

The model designer clearly intended Radar dishes, but the obvious implication of the script is that it has to be the shields.

I always thought the belly dome was the power generator, being in the centre of mass of the hull and positioned right in front of the engines.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Tom Guycot posted:

Interesting tidbit from this article on Squadrons https://www.ausgamers.com/features/read/3628729

Que every pubby in every game suiciding over and over again to try to do this.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

When I watched Poe's bits in TFA I immediately thought 'oh this is where they're selling the tie-in video game they're clearly making, because this just looks like an LP of Rogue Squadron'.

Then they never made the game.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

There's 5 enemies, you should be able to roughly track where they are on the map.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Cross-Section posted:

Reading this reminded me of that XWA mission where you have to juggle destroying an interdictor with defending a Nebulon-B and later, a MC80, from said interdictor and a Star Destroyer. Good times.

It was upsetting that for some reason in XWA they decided that none of the Rebel ships should get turbolasers, so there ended up being precisely zero memorable capital ship duels.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Lord Koth posted:

While true, there's a massive difference between "life comes at you fast" and "a galactic polity that still massively outnumbers the insurgency completely collapses within a year." Given the sector authority setup of the Empire it splintering into factions is reasonable (warlords in Legends), at which point cleaning up a divided Empire is certain doable by a smaller force... but in a battlefield the size of a GALAXY it's sure as hell going to take more than a year.

For all the issues with Legends (and oh boy are there a lot), at least some of the writers seemed to have some idea of the scale of the conflict - something that's seemed completely lacking from virtually all the Disney stuff (all the material, this isn't specifically aimed at the movies).

I mean there's enough there in the Original Trilogy to make it work. The background premise of ANH is that the Empire doesn't actually have a political base and the whole thing has become the Emperor plus the military ruling through threat of force - a threat that's negated by the end of the film. By the end of Return there's nobody alive who actually has a reason to want the Empire around, so the last part of the story is a Military flailing about trying to justify its own existence.

Yes if we were talking about a historical/real analogy then the more likely outcome is warlords everywhere, but for a space fantasy story where we already accept a bunch of unlikely things as the premise this isn't a stretch too far.


e: ^^ The OT films show the Rebellion progressively getting larger and more sophisticated. In ANH it's a few hundred guys at a single base with some light fighters. By the time of Empire they're up to thousands, have a field army, a more sophisticated base (with a shield and a gun that negates the previously invincible star destroyers) and some bigger ships, and in Return there's a fleet large enough that 'the Imperial Navy is scattered across the galaxy in a vain effort to engage us' and the Rebels are confident enough that nobody thinks it's a suicidal risk to engage the Empire in a set-piece battle (albeit expecting most of the navy to be elsewhere).

It's very much in the background and nobody explicitly talks about this stuff because it's not the story of our heroes, but across the three films you can see the momentum of the galactic civil war is very much with the rebellion.

Alchenar fucked around with this message at 12:59 on Aug 30, 2020

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Cross-Section posted:



This part (in the Falcon, anyway) can die in a rapidly-expanding fireball though

Not realising that the cockpit is actually the centre of the Falcon made that mission hell.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Are people genuinely mad that the sides have been balanced from a starting point of symmetry and then tweaking the nature of that symmetry and adding a little bit of asymmetry for flavour?

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Looks aside, VR mode looks incredibly fiddly to try to actually play.

e: I'm starting to lay my bets on the control scheme being very War Thunder esque 'you can use a gamepad or joystick if you really want, but KB+M is the optimal'.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

I've watched a few streams and fleet battles seem to consist of 4 tie bombers and a support ship wrecking everything.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

CuddleCryptid posted:

Adding on to what other have said, if you are playing in fleet battle then don't be afraid to book it for one of the light cruisers if you can't get them off your tail. New players tend to have tunnel vision and will gleefully chase you into the autocannons of your cruisers. Just make sure you bob and weave while you are running.

This might seem cowardly or whatever but you AFAIK you gain just as many morale points by having the cruiser take them out as you would if you did it yourself.

One of the streams I watched had the streamer's team get utterly wrecked by the opponents taking the advantage and then doing this. They'd stick to their cruisers, come out as 5 to burn someone down, dash back to their cruisers while being repped to survive and watch as 2-3 more people die to the AI. Then they'd use that window to make passes at the capital ship. Streamer's team took their beating in good nature but couldn't think of a counter as long as the enemy refused to be baited out.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Bleck posted:

on the one hand representation is super rad and I'm pleased as hell about it, on the other hand it's weird that they specifically put the gay one on the nazi team

Conflicted. On the one hand I don't like diversifying the team that's the bad guys because they are nazis. On the other hand, it's 2020. If you make a game with an unambiguous white-male-supremist side then there will be plenty of people who unironically think it's cool and for them.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

https://steamcharts.com/app/1222730#1m

This is not a chart that suggests a game that will be alive much past Christmas.

e: yes, steam players are a part of the total game population. But if we assume steam players are no different on average to people on other platforms, that's a very steady day-on-day decline from an already fairly low start.

Alchenar fucked around with this message at 10:30 on Oct 12, 2020

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Ineffiable posted:

Yeah I was thinking it was 2021-2022 for some reason. Still they might be able to make a squadrons 2 with improved multiplayer and another campaign for release in end of 2021 or possibly 2022. But they might have to delist the game for sale once the deal expires (assuming they don't extend) so it's a tricky situation.

The only sane licensing deal is that they have until x date to release games, not that they lose the ability to sell already released games with the Star Wars IP. Likewise it would be strange for Disney to agree to another exclusive license period, but if EA want to negotiate for more games it's good to be able to demonstrate you can a) make money and b) enrich the IP doing so.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Warner Bros has produced more Lego Star Wars games than EA has regular Star Wars games.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Great Beer posted:

I hope they lean into the PVE mode more. It's more fun for casual players like me who aren't great at dog fighting. Plus they can design modes that aren't evenly balanced.

They are not actively developing the game. It is what it is.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Arquinsiel posted:

It just plain does not work for me. I don't know what it is about it, but it doesn't say "Star Wars" to my brain.

It says Star Wars to me but the design says 'heavy duty space trucker' rather than 'warship'.

Which in a sense it is but it doesn't look like the 'hopes and dreams war winning superweapon' its supposed to be.


e: I really can't understand why Disney wrote themselves into a hole saying that the war lasted 1 year after ROTJ. They had 35 years between ROTJ and Awakens which they treated as effectively real time, they could easily have said it took another 5 years. That gives you space to tell a lot more stories in that original trilogy era conflict without running up against a plausibility wall.

Alchenar fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Oct 25, 2020

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Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Symetrique posted:

Lets not forget how DICE handled the Tiger campaign in BFV, or the Elite characters:



It's the PR line that's terrible. Yes it's okay to say the Nazis were the bad guys. The actual story is pretty anti-Nazi: the end message is that indoctrination of children into extreme doctrines is horrible.

Also it's okay for your video game protagonists to be bad people as long as you acknowledge it. That's every Rockstar game.

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