Shu
Celestial Council
Number of posts : 10794
Location : Singapore
IGN[Game NickName] : Ashura/Iori Yagami
Current Status : Busy at Work
Registration date : 2008-03-31
 |  Subject: Star Wars: The Old Republic: Flashpoint Interview  Sun May 01, 2011 4:30 pm | |
| MMORPG.com:
| For
those not following the game closely can you give us an overview of
what Flashpoints are exactly? How do they differ from your typical MMO
dungeon romp? | Daniel Erickson:
| Sure,
so a Flashpoint is our chance to do huge scripted amazing storytelling,
and bring it in balanced for a four player party. It allows you guys to
go in and have your own adventure separated out from everyone else.
Because it is in a separate instance we can do some of the huge things
that are hard to do in a public space. We can have ships explode, we can
have you running through places that are being destroyed. We’ve got
places, you got to see Taral V when we brought it to PAX, and there were
ships running into towers that were falling over and exploding, and if
you ran through you caught on fire. It’s a chance to do big
big exciting stuff; and as you guys got to see, you guys got to play
through a Flashpoint, they don’t play at all like a typical MMO dungeon.
They are story focused, they are big, they are cinematic. You come out
feeling like you’ve really accomplished something. And they’re, when
talk about, “Oh. We haven’t seen some of the endgame stuff; we haven’t
seen some of the other features.” What I always tell them is, “Look at
our Flashpoints, and understand that is what RPG MMO means to us.”
Right, we take that sort of approach for each feature. For basic
questing, what did we do? We took the basic questing and we said we
needed to give you context, we needed to give you story, we needed to
make it exciting. Flashpoints, same thing; we’re going to give you
choices, we’re going to give you scenes, we’re going to make this much
more exciting, much more like you’re doing a cinematic piece. Same thing
for everything we try to do in the game. |
| MMORPG.com:
| Can you give us a taste of the one we saw today? The Black Talon? | Daniel Erickson:
| Absolutely.
So, the Black Talon is actually a, probably the one we talked about the
earliest, and one of the first ones we conceived of. The Black Talon
is, you’re on your way from your origin world just trying to get to
Dromund Kaas, you’re just minding your own business. A Grand Moff calls
you up and says, “Hey. There is a Captain on your ship that has refused
to do what I told him to. He thinks for some reason, that taking his
small transport craft and attacking a large military fleet is a bad
idea, but I want you to do it anyway. So you go hijack the ship and
attack them.” So, you end up fighting your way through your own ship,
taking out the Captain, making the bold decision whether or not, killing
the Captain is really a punitive measure that is not asked of you, and
if you this it has fairly far reaching consequences. Crew morale goes
pretty bad, some pretty bad stuff happens at the end, and there are
several other decisions like that all the way through. You get
to fight across yours, and then you get to go and invade another ship,
take out all their people, chase it down. It’s a big big, really amazing
sort of piece, that frames the battle. It’s really there to introduce
you to the conflict with the Republic. Just in case, like if you’re one
of the characters that came off Hutta, you actually haven’t really been
introduced to the idea of the Republic and what they represent, and so
this gives you a taste of it before you get to Dromund Kaas. |  | MMORPG.com:
| Roughly how many Flashpoints are expected to be available in the game at launch? | Daniel Erickson:
| We’re
not talking numbers yet. Basically, because what we do is we plan out
more than we’re ever going to get in. We have more written than will
come in, so the ones we don’t get in will hopefully come in later.
Basically, all of the ones that we can get, to that level of polish, and
that cool, ship out. The rest of them we’ll hold on until later. | MMORPG.com:
| Are all Flashpoints locked to a particular faction? Are there cross-faction Flashpoints? | Daniel Erickson:
| There
are no cross-faction quest givers, so there are places that you end up,
most of them are locked to a particular faction. Later on, there are
some that can be run by both factions, but they’re sort of in different
contexts and everything you do as far as actual dialogue and
role-playing are all different. You’ll never have a time where you’re
going to go in and talk to the same Imperial Moff that told the Empire
to go do something, and your Jedi is going to go, “OK! I’ll do that
too!” |  | MMORPG.com:
| On
a related note, are there Flashpoints where Imperial and Republic
players must band together to thwart a greater enemy? If not, is this
something you have considered? | Daniel Erickson:
| One
of the things that, so no, there are no things that where they get
together and fight together. It is my personal opinion, and this is
something we may explore later, but until you’ve exhausted the war,
until you’ve exhausted the conflict there, the third party thing always
sort of weakens both sides. There’s very little in the Star Wars
universe that’s ever been as exciting as the Empire vs. The Republic
conflict, so bringing in the space worm of whatever that everybody’s
gotta go and battle, while very economic, because it allows us to just
do one piece. Originally in the game, we thought we were going to do a
lot of quest content that way, as well. It’s much more expensive to do
everything completely unique on both sides, but contextually it just
doesn’t work as very good storytelling to say, “Hey. Let’s band together
and team up and kill each other later.” | MMORPG.com:
| In
some recent discussions regarding gear it was revealed that players
will generally be free to wear most gear that falls under their armor
class regardless of whether it looks and is statted for another class
that uses the same armor type. For example, a Jedi Knight who wears
Heavy armor can wear some armor that may have the stats and appearance
of Trooper gear. Does this extend to gear dropped in Flashpoints? Can a
Jedi roll on Trooper armor and vice-versa? |  | Daniel Erickson:
| Yeah,
absolutely. So a Jedi could roll on just about anything and the Trooper
will probably get really mad at him, but you can absolutely roll on it.
It’s not going to ever be as good as Jedi gear, because the Trooper and
the Jedi are looking for different stats. So, he could roll on it, he
could put it on, he could run around looking like a Trooper; but if you
see a Jedi that is dressed like a Trooper and he tries to join your
Flashpoint group, you’re probably going to tell him no, because he
clearly doesn’t know what he’s doing. |
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