Posted by Lethality in Blue Milk & Cereal | 21 Comments
Blue Milk & Cereal: What Do You Think Of The Huttball Warzone?
No day would be complete without the breakfast of Jedi: Blue Milk & Cereal. Every morning, the team at Ask A Jedi will get Force-induced thoughts coursing through your head with delicious issues from around the galaxy! Join in the discussion below to make your voice heard!
One of the news items coming out of gamescom this week was word of a new, third Warzone called Huttball. Yes, you read that right – Huttball.
In this Warzone, opposing teams are pitted against each other on Nar Shaddaa in an arena run by a Hutt crime lord. From the videos we’ve seen, it appears to be a capture-the-flag style match, except where the flag is a “ball” and you can pass the ball to other team mates.
In concept, this actually sounds pretty fun! But the idea breaks down a little bit when you consider the canon, and setting for the game. Why would Sith play a game with Jedi that they otherwise would kill on sight anywhere else?
Writing Director Daniel Erickson responded in a thread to just this question:
Totally fair question. I wrote Huttball personally and gave it my big stamp of approval. Huttball came from a request by the pvp team to have a mode that could mix sides in the event of unbalanced factions. So it’s not Empire vs Republic playing insane death sports, it’s anyone who wants to win some prizes and flex their muscles going to Nar Shaddaa, gambling center of the galaxy, and blowing off some steam. Story is important but so are alternate, setting-appropriate activities that give some depth and variety to the world and the gameplay experience. There is a crazy Hutt that likes running huge arena events for his amusement. Your choice if that’s the way your Bounty Hunter enjoys spending his downtime.
So, as we can see Huttball was designed to address a potential game population balance problem, with Daniel doing his best to wrap some context around it.
But not everyone thinks that this explanation fits within the story setting of the game, or jives with statements made by BioWare in the past about other non-heroic types of content such as holidays or mini-games like Pazaak.
So what do you guys think? Does Huttball sound fun? Do you have any problem with Sith/Jedi mingling in this manner, given the narrative construct of the game as a whole? Will you play Huttball?
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I’m one of the weird ones who likes the idea, but won’t play it.
While it looks fun, there are a lot of things they could put in the game that are fun. But hey’ve specifically stayed away from things that are not driven by story, and this just jumps the shark and is too immersion breaking.
So I’ll ignore it.
I agree, I like the idea, am sure many will enjoy it. However, it does not fit with how I intend to play the game and will likely not play it.
Rugby/football type warzone in an mmo? I don’t even like to pvp, but count me in!
People have been complaining about TOR being a wow clone this and wow clone that.
This will set it above wow easily. Having not played it but watched I can see the fun that one would have in this and my gf whom is a big wow pvp’r said she would play that most exclusively.
Not the regular, capture the flag, steal and hold a base or zerg a base style combat we see in most pvp matches.
This seems like there can be a lot of laughs.
Yes, but… does the setting and narrative of the game mean nothing?
It’s one thing to have enemies mingle in a place like Nar Shaddaa… but to engage each other without killing each other, just for “sport”. I don’t see it making any sense lore-wise.
And before anyone dismissed that, believability in the setting is a big reason some people play MMOs. They derive fun from being immersed. This uncategorically breaks the immersion set up by the narrative of the main story arc.
I respect your opinion, but you must also look at it from the casual stand point. (which now-a-days is what keeps mmos growing). I care about story and immersion (which is a term overused this day in age) but not everyone does. Why shoot yourself in the foot by narrowing your audience to one group of people. Now I know as a hardcore player, we could care less about this. Reality is, you gotta spread the love for everyone.
I understand why people want to complain about lots of things in this game but it’s really starting to grow tedious. This after all is a game, it is not made to be realistic at all. There are no general chat logs in star wars, people don’t get resurrected to life from a droid or at a medical station thousands of feet away in an instant.
Please just let some things happen in a video game so that it can be fun and illogical. That is half the reason you are playing the game, the other is because it’s Star Wars. I know people are voting yes which is fantastic but I just had to get it off of my chest a little bit.
Live life and let the small things not bother you and just enjoy the videogame that we will all be so lucky to play thanks to Bioware and EA.
It is fun. I got to play it by mistake at Gamescom 4-1 we won. I was crap as i was playing a spec i would not have chosen… got better towards the end. ;-)
Good to hear! It looks like a blast… if only Jedi and Sith weren’t involved!
I see the value in a festive PvP enviro but I believe it erodes the pillar of story.
Will be a place I don’t use
I believe that every single person saying they won’t play Huttball believes it. I also believe that every single one of them will end up playing it. You can preach immersion and story all you want right now, but three weeks after you hit 50, you’re going to want to have fun things to do. And in my book, this looks like pure, unadulterated fun.
I know you’ll all disagree with me right now, but time will tell. The golden rule (for me) with any game, i don’t care if it’s an MMO, single-player RPG, FPS, or anything else, is gameplay > everything else. A game with the best story in the world that is not fun and a miserable experience to try to navigate is terrible. Gameplay > story, > immersion, > believability.
This, to me, is a perfect example of developers understanding that at the end of the day the “players” need to be able to “play.” As long as there are many, many other wonderful ways to murderfy each other in the name of the Empire/Republic, then having a li’l something else to do is just fine.
PS. Every time people decry new/innovative/fun gameplay features by using the “heroic” phrase and nailing Bioware to a cross of their own words, they reinforce the reason Bioware is so tight-lipped about everything. Something as seemingly innocuous and simple as promoting “heroic” gameplay gets thrown back at them time and again. Can’t really blame them for not wanting to give specific details about other things.
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Well I guess you could say that since it is ran by the Hutt that they have rules that are in place so you cannot kill anyone. Plus “Credits Rule Everything Around Me” and as in RL people will do anything to gain wealth. For story purposes I would just say that I cannot kill that Imperial/Republic person or I would be terminated on site by the Hutts.
Actually from the video I saw you actually DO kill the opposing teams players to retrieve the ball. So people saying it’s not good because you are playing a sport with the opposing faction and not killing them, seem to be mistaken. You can actually hear the announcer say, “Someone hurry up and kill someone already”, or something along those lines.
I’m indifferent, but if the idea is that it is a crazy Hutt who likes to attract gamblers, will I be able to wager on matches?
I would really like my story to involve a gambling addiction.
I think this is a chance to step outside the us versus them mold that the story places us into and just be a “person” for a while. Forget politics, forget agendas, forget dark or light, and just play a game. This is a chance to stop taking ourselves too seriously. Such an opportunity is rare.
I’m not into PVP, but this sounds intriguing despite that fact.
I like this comment, that’s a great way to put it. I like how Bioware isn’t try to totally separate the two sides, because while one is sith and the other republic, both sides are players.
It`s as simple as this, IF you think playing a PVP Warzone like Hutball is “Immersion breaking” then steer away from it. Bioware knows that their will be millions of people playing this game, and every single one of them will have a diffrent reason to why they play SWTOR. So if you dont like something Bioware is doing then, DONT PLAY IT. Other people like myself will enjoy it as much as we want. At the end of the day like many other posters have state it, it`s just a game. Now don`t get me wrong, i`m all for the fourth pillar/Story immersion and all, but i also want to have some laughs in the game. Where is the harm in that? So dont be complaining already about something you have not personally tried yet.
It looks and sounds fun to me and i don’t see it as breaking story immersion any more than being able to swoop race, play pazzak or an arena would be since you would compete non violently with the other faction in those games and people seem to want those in the game. Relax and just think of it this way, the Hutts are neutral in the war and will do anything to make a buck or to amuse themselves. I think they need to have a way to bet on games for it to truly fit in, story wise though.