idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
This is not even remotely limited to Star Wars, though. Establishing materials that are resistant to lightsabers and blasters makes complete sense for a lore base in which those are the primary weapon systems.
In fantasy games, for years, I have watched as I hacked at animals with weapons larger than them. There's only so many times you can hit a wolf, rarab, etc. before it becomes absurd that it isn't dead.
My "suspend disbelief" skills have become quite honed.
I know fantasy games are absolutely no better at this than Star Wars, or sci-fi as a whole. Does it make sense that that raid boss is being blasted with fireballs, his knees are being hacked at by daggers, his mind is being assaulted by shadow magic, etc. but he continues on fighting like normal until the instant his hp hits 0? No.
There's a trope for that, by the way. That's pretty much games as a whole. Not just fantasy or Star Wars or shooters or any specific genre. It's a mechanic that we have all come to live with.
What gets me about Star Wars is that in the movies, the Jedi and the Sith, i.e. the Force users in general, are so much better than the average trooper. If you went at a Jedi with a blaster, chances are you would end up as chunky salsa. Part of that was because the storm troopers apparently blacked out the inside of their helmets and were
trying to shoot targets they couldn't see or something, but even ignoring that, an army of them likely wouldn't have been able to stand up against a single well-trained Jedi.
My issue is that the Jedi and the Sith are portrayed as so much more vastly powerful than anyone else that it just doesn't translate well to an MMO.
Let's imagine they made a Harry Potter MMO. The available classes were a wizard, a muggle, and oh I don't know, a centaur. Centaurs got archery related skills, muggles got guns and stuff, but were pretty much powerless against wizards as in the books, and wizards got a huge array of spells, including the killing curse. Obviously, that would be horribly imbalanced and they would never do that in a real MMO, because everyone would just play as a wizard, right? Well, it's the same thing with Star Wars. If it were like it were in the movies, then Jedi and Sith would be vastly overpowered and would be the one everyone plays. The fact that it's not is because they had to change a lot to make it work, and that huge amount of changing makes it so different from the movies that I just have a hard time working with it.
Mazra wrote:
IDrownFish wrote:
One thing that never made sense to me was how lightsabers had to be treated in games, or else they would completely break mechanics. Lightsabers can cut through almost anything, right? Barring examples such as another lightsaber or "certain materials", like unobtanium, the rare mineral pulled from the far reaches of the author's ***. Well, how do you apply that to a video game? All lightsabers are roughly equal in "damage" inflicted, in that they will all burn through whomever they are used against like a blowtorch through jello. How do you make it so that some lightsaber you get at a higher level is any better than the one you started out with? I cuts the same, doesn't it?
You can apply this to fantasy games as well. Why does a level 85 bow do more damage than a level 10 bow? Both shoot arrows and taking an arrow to the face would kill, or seriously wound, you regardless of the bow used. Same with swords. Doesn't matter if you're using a level 10 sword or a level 85 sword, both should, realistically, do the same amount of damage if you hit someone in the face with it.
Basically, you should only have to hit someone once or twice with a sword to kill them. Maybe three or four times with a blunt weapon. One shot from a gun should bring most targets to their knees. A critical hit/shot should one-shot the target.
[quote=Mazra]Sure, it sucks that hitting someone with a lightsaber doesn't slice them in half like it "normally" would (lul, focused light beam that ends in mid-air), but that's how most games work these days. Even shooters use health bars, although a lot of them have gone over to the "screen turns bloody for 20 seconds as the player super-heals" mechanic. Technically, barely missing someone with a Barrett M95 in a shooter should still get you a kill. You don't have to shoot someone in the face with a .50 cal high-powered rifle to kill them. Just hit in the near vicinity of their body and they'll get torn to pieces.
That's not how games work, though. That's why they're games.
I know that, as elaborated earlier in this post. I guess it's not the hit points, or the Force points, or the fact that lightsabers aren't insta-kill for me that bugs me. Those are all necessary game mechanics. What bugs me is that they have to change so much from the movies just to make it work, and to me it's just not the same Star Wars any more.
I liked Star Wars for its basic, archetypal plot. Sure, it was cool seeing the epic fights, the music by John Williams made my ears ******, etc. But the basic reason I liked Star Wars was because it was a good story at heart, about a boy being one of the last of the Jedi, and he's the only one that can save the galaxy from the Sith. In an MMO, that doesn't translate. And while Bioware has some
excellent stories involved (I mean, it's freaking Bioware) it's not Star Wars, and I feel like an MMO is just them trying to prolong the value of the name more than it should. One of the things that bugs me the most is carrying on a franchise long after it should have died, keeping it on life support to try and squeeze out every last dollar. And I feel like that's what this MMO is. They're making new stories to keep it going, making an excellent MMO, but it's not the same Star Wars as the movies.