Star Wars Squadrons

[Agamon]

It does support flight stick on PC, so I'm in. Looking forward to trying it in VR...

[Steven Pendleton]

Well, I decided to get it anyway and try it with mouse and keyboard. It controls much closer to Battlefront II (the new one) than X-Wing or TIE Fighter since it has the same floaty controls that BFII does. I am not really sure how to describe it, but it kind of feels like an arcade version of X-Wing or TIE Fighter. Not sure how to describe it other than that.

 

It is really hard on the highest difficulty. Strange to be able to take more than 2 hits in a TIE/LN, though, as 2 hits killed a TIE/LN in X-Wing or TIE Fighter. It can take quite a few more hits here, though, and all fighters can magically heal themselves by pressing Q once your healing thingy charges, but it takes a while to charge, you can't use it until it's full, it only heals a small amount, and you'll probably die long before you manage to get fully healed. Power works differently than how it does in X-Wing and TIE Fighter, but it's the same basic idea.

 

I must say that it seems to perform well. I started it up and it defaulted to max settings so I said okay, let's try it. It had crazy screen tearing, though, so I turned on v-sync. No problems here so far, but sometimes there seem to be some really odd frame pacing issues, like in the practice stage, which runs at like 200 FPS for me with v-sync on on my 60Hz monitor but still looks choppy as hell. In the actual single player thingy it runs flawlessly. I'm guessing this is a v-sync thing, but I checked and v-sync was definitely on, so I'm not sure why my FPS was hitting 200.

 

I have only played it for 92 minutes so far and need more time with it, but it seems okay so far.

Edited October 2, 2020 by Steven Pendleton

[Tanooki]

I saw so many mixed results saying I could get solid performance at 720 through 1080p on my computer despite its age at medium level, yet some sites moaned about my i7-4710MQ processor I decided to just buy the thing and try it out once I had enough time (probably tomorrow.) I let it download and unpack and it says I can do it now but being almost 1am I don't think so.  Given I do have 16GB of RAM and another 8GB on my Nvidia 980 I should be able to play this just fine.  I've avoided watching any of those trailers and stuff until today when I realized it was going live at midnight and I found at least that much impressive.

 

Going by the above comment, not sure how I feel about it feeling like BF2.  I played SWBF1 or 2 on my friends 360 or whatever it was, fairly good, but I never did try the flying on it much if at all as I remember just being on foot a lot.  I doubt the handling would bother me, but if a lot of the general carry over feel of how the systems and all that manage are similar to the old games of TIE or XW I'll be happy.  It is strange a TIE won't just pop after taking a hit or two but I guess they had to be a bit fair to balance the game some and giving them a more rugged thicker hull would make sense to not break canon.  TIEs of the first order, they had shields.

[Steven Pendleton]

19 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

I played SWBF1 or 2 on my friends 360

Wrong Battlefront II. I meant the new one from 2017.

 

Anyway, yeah, they made the TIEs a lot tougher for balance, I'm guessing. Nobody really liked dying in literally 2 hits. They are still quite fragile compared to the X-wing, which of course has shields.

[Steven Pendleton]

So I put some more time into it. It looks great, it runs well, and it's fun to play, if a bit frustrating on the highest difficulty since you mostly fly in circles waiting for your shield to recharge, but it recharges REALLY FAST if you set shields to max, unlike how it takes forever in X-Wing and TIE Fighter. You can kind of survive for a fairly long time with 1 HP but shields set to max recharge in the X-wing. I've also had a few TIEs and even a friendly Y-wing collide into me from behind and kill me, which is annoying. Haven't flown anything but the TIE/LN, X-wing, and A-wing yet, though. I still really wish the B-wing and TIE Defender were here.

Edited October 2, 2020 by Steven Pendleton

[Tanooki]

The B-Wing and Defender weren't included?  Ugh, missile boat?

 

I've actually taken some time during the day with this, all that worry about my so called old processor was bs.  It's running at medium levels across the board on all features, nothing turned off, and it's fluid.  I can only say I hate when it locks the game up demanding you do some new feature, but doesn't give you the button command for it, and you can't menu out to look up which button on the keyboard it is.  I got pissed and just ran my palm over the entire keyboard until it hit the right key to un-freeze it. That's just bad design.

 

So far I have it saved staring  Mission 2 Yavin for the new republic side.  The game is quite enjoyable outside of those jarring forced moments, wish they could just be shut off other than the always helpful reminder pop ups what button to push to do what's needed as it's hard to remember.  Finally a good use for my old thrift store finds of the fighterstick USB with its 16 buttons, throttle wheel, and pov hat as I got all sorts of fun stuff mapped.

[Steven Pendleton]

1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

The B-Wing and Defender weren't included?  Ugh, missile boat?

 

I've actually taken some time during the day with this, all that worry about my so called old processor was bs.  It's running at medium levels across the board on all features, nothing turned off, and it's fluid.  I can only say I hate when it locks the game up demanding you do some new feature, but doesn't give you the button command for it, and you can't menu out to look up which button on the keyboard it is.  I got pissed and just ran my palm over the entire keyboard until it hit the right key to un-freeze it. That's just bad design.

 

So far I have it saved staring  Mission 2 Yavin for the new republic side.  The game is quite enjoyable outside of those jarring forced moments, wish they could just be shut off other than the always helpful reminder pop ups what button to push to do what's needed as it's hard to remember.  Finally a good use for my old thrift store finds of the fighterstick USB with its 16 buttons, throttle wheel, and pov hat as I got all sorts of fun stuff mapped.

Yeah, no TIE Defender, no B-wing, no Missile Boat. I HATED flying the Missile Boat as a kid, though. Now that I'm no longer young and stupid, I'd rather have that than any TIE that doesn't have shields. lol I was thinking of the Assault Gunboat. That thing sucked. The Missile Boat is awesome! I LOVED flying the Missile Boat! I'd love to see the Missile Boat come back. Assault Gunboat was probably told to go to hell by Disney just like everything else, and honestly I think it can stay there.

 

I haven't had any problems with button prompts not showing up. Strange that they are not showing up for you. I might change the controls a little more than I already did, but I have not decided yet.

 

I noticed that they brought back the XQ platform from TIE Fighter! I actually always liked that platform, so it's nice to see it exist again, but it looks really nice now!

Edited October 3, 2020 by Steven Pendleton

[Tanooki]

I don't remember the AG so well, and I guess the Tie/D would be too powerful for the game in a way as I remember its raw power in TIE Fighter, but the fact that they left out at the least the missile boast, defender, and b-wing just seems kind of crappy but it's not the end of days either.  I mean, maybe they aren't left out, but it like in the 90s will be in an expansion.

 

I think you're misreading me on what I meant by the prompts.  The normal ones where it will say for using a repair hit button 3 type stuff.  It's when it comes up with a new command that first time, when it pauses action and doesn't tell you what the button is, just that you need to like 'do this' but they don't tell you what THIS is or what it's mapped to at all, then it's a guess, a stupid guess that shouldn't be there.

[Steven Pendleton]

28 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

I don't remember the AG so well, and I guess the Tie/D would be too powerful for the game in a way as I remember its raw power in TIE Fighter, but the fact that they left out at the least the missile boast, defender, and b-wing just seems kind of crappy but it's not the end of days either.  I mean, maybe they aren't left out, but it like in the 90s will be in an expansion.

 

I think you're misreading me on what I meant by the prompts.  The normal ones where it will say for using a repair hit button 3 type stuff.  It's when it comes up with a new command that first time, when it pauses action and doesn't tell you what the button is, just that you need to like 'do this' but they don't tell you what THIS is or what it's mapped to at all, then it's a guess, a stupid guess that shouldn't be there.

TIE/D would be broken for sure, I think, considering how ridiculously good it is. Faster than everything else, more weapons than anything else except the Missile Boat (although the B-wing carries more warheads than the TIE/D, I think), as durable as the X-wing, turns like the A-wing, shields, hyperdrive... yeah, there's no way it would be fair unless they intentionally made it suck, which really defeats the purpose of it anyway since it was designed to be the best thing in the game originally.

 

I'd love to have all 3 of those ships, but I definitely understand why they are not there. TIE/D would be broken as hell, but I think that there's actually a really good reason for the Missile Boat and the B-wing to not be here, which is that the game's focus is on 5 vs 5 multiplayer, where I don't really think the B-wing has much of a role and the Missile Boat would basically just be a bunch of annoying concussion missile spam. Missile Boat is SO MUCH FUN in TIE Fighter, but then it immediately sucks once you run out of ordnance and have just a single laser cannon and not much else. At least you can resupply here, which would make it way better, theoretically.

 

But yeah, I did forget about those things where it says DO THE THING! YOU KNOW THAT ONE THING NOW DO IT! and doesn't tell you how to do it. Not much to be done about it, I guess.

[Tickled_Pink]

Haven't bought it yet but I will. The head of the dev team hasn't ruled out continuing to expand the game, but it obviously depends on what the response to the game actually is and how many people play it. I don't ordinarily buy DLC, but ones that I did buy were the ones for the first of the new SW Battlefront games. So, if there's enough new content then I'd certainly consider it and I think most of the hardcore base for this game would as well.

[Tanooki]

Yeah I imagine the TIE/D would be a disaster as would be the missile boat.  I think the B-Wing would have worked out, it's a slow large clunker like the Y-Wing, but it does have some better armor and shielding, which I think would have been well played off of having the assault gunboat included as a partner of troublesome ships to take out.

 

I'm glad I dropped the $40 on it either way and didn't listen the worries that it wouldn't run at all from here and more than 1/2 the asinine so called 'can I run it on my specs' websites.  I know which one of those places I'll be trusting going forward.  Systemrequirementslab.com can kiss my ass, said it wouldn't run at all.  PCgamebenchnmark.com was totally reliable and guessed it on the nose.  This is the direct link: https://www.pcgamebenchmark.com/star-wars-squadrons-system-requirements for the game.  It accurately put my processor right on the actual line for the requirement, GPU was a little bit above and ram at the max and that ended up being entirely correct and told me I could do medium settings on a deeper dive.  I could select required and recommended to get a different rating.  Under recommended it just fell in at 88% for CPU and GPU, 100% on RAM.

[Agamon]

Game is bit of a buggy mess at the moment, especially in regards to VR and online ranking, but when it works, hoo boy. VR + HOTAS = incredible experience. Constantly craning my head around as my fingers dance over the HOTAS (that took some training though; "To do this press button 9" Uh, which button is button 9??). Luckily, the VR graphics problems are all during the between missions cutscenes in single player. I've never witnessed this level of screen tearing before. How do you optimize zooming around in space so well, but heaven forbid I shift my head slightly while an NPC is talking to me in a static environment?

 

From what I've seen online cheating is rampant in online play and ranking doesn't work properly, so not sure how much I'll play outside the single player missions or playing AI fleet battles with friends...

[Steven Pendleton]

32 minutes ago, Agamon said:

Game is bit of a buggy mess at the moment, especially in regards to VR and online ranking, but when it works, hoo boy. VR + HOTAS = incredible experience. Constantly craning my head around as my fingers dance over the HOTAS (that took some training though; "To do this press button 9" Uh, which button is button 9??). Luckily, the VR graphics problems are all during the between missions cutscenes in single player. I've never witnessed this level of screen tearing before. How do you optimize zooming around in space so well, but heaven forbid I shift my head slightly while an NPC is talking to me in a static environment?

 

From what I've seen online cheating is rampant in online play and ranking doesn't work properly, so not sure how much I'll play outside the single player missions or playing AI fleet battles with friends...

Oh, joy, cheating already? What the hell? I think it runs on Frostbite and they figured out Frostbite literally about a decade ago, sadly, so this doesn't really surprise me that much. Still, do you have your v-sync on? Try it, as that should fix the screen tearing. I had it really badly too until I turned it on.

[Agamon]

1 minute ago, Steven Pendleton said:

Oh, joy, cheating already? What the hell? I think it runs on Frostbite and they figured out Frostbite literally about a decade ago, sadly, so this doesn't really surprise me that much. Still, do you have your v-sync on? Try it, as that should fix the screen tearing. I had it really badly too until I turned it on.

It's fine non-VR, but it's a known VR issue. The Steam version is apparently even worse with SteamVR, so glad I went with the Epic/Origin version, at least it's playable.

[Steven Pendleton]

6 minutes ago, Agamon said:

It's fine non-VR, but it's a known VR issue. The Steam version is apparently even worse with SteamVR, so glad I went with the Epic/Origin version, at least it's playable.

Interesting. I don't have VR, so I can't test it, but I did have a huge frame pacing problem after alt-tabbing to desktop and then back. Have not played the game since then, so I wonder if that will happen again.

[Agamon]

8 minutes ago, Steven Pendleton said:

Interesting. I don't have VR, so I can't test it, but I did have a huge frame pacing problem after alt-tabbing to desktop and then back. Have not played the game since then, so I wonder if that will happen again.

Yeah, when I first fired it up, I couldn't play fullscreen as the resolution was off and I could only see part of the screen. And I didn't want to play windowed, so I started off in VR. Which worked fine until the menu button, both on the stick or the keyboard ESC, stopped working (didn't realize the game default non-inverted controls which drove me crazy during tutorial). So I had to CTL-ALT-DEL out of the game. Happened again the next day, but not right away, as I was able to fix the controls and stuff, and double checked after I started playing, but when I was done, had to hard close the program again.  Yesterday, playing both VR and non-VR, things worked better, and the fullscreen problem was gone, so they're working on plugging the leaks.

[Tickled_Pink]

Just got around to playing it. I did watch a YouTube review where the reviewer complained of not being able to move around the capital ship and thinking this was to make it easy to implement VR. Nope, it's very reminiscent of the original X-Wing series and the overall design has been influenced by that. It very much has an X-Wing vibe to it. I haven't played multiplayer yet. I'm dreading it as I only have mouse/keyboard, although it isn't particularly difficult to get to grips with.

 

At the moment, I'm finding that the starfighter assault in BFII is more fast paced and more exciting (I'm actually quite good at it), but I'll see how things are in multiplayer. Still, at around £5 from Epic Game Store, who's complaining? ?

 

I'll definitely get VR for this - probably Oculus Quest 2 as that's quite reasonably priced.

[CaptainCanadian]

I have a really high end system and both PSVR and Vive.

 

Refunded after an hour.

 

Was also not a fan of the new PlayStation Battlefronts, total garbage..  I have to say though, Battlefront for PSP  in VR is a more immersive experience. The Dolphin VR emulator for GC has rogue squadron, which works in cockpit mode... excellent game, awesome graphics, blows this sh1t out of the water. XWAupgrade VR fork [free] is next level compared to this piece of crap. Even the older battlefront games are more fun..... I would even wager that the STARWARS Arcade games were more fun.

 

So for VR you are getting a re-skinned EVE: Valkyrie. That game sucked and was a huge disappointment. The graphics OUTSIDE the ship are garbage and look exactly the same as EVE. It really looks as though all of the effort was placed on building the cockpits (which look cartoonish or cell shaded). The ships are weird and the TIE's are wonky as hell. Not much makes sense really, TIE's feel similar to alliance fighters, this is BS. A TIE fighter should not be able to go one to one with an X-Wing. A Y-Wing should not be able to take out an Interceptor by itself. It feels as though this wasn't made by Star Wars fans. It makes about as much sense as the new movies, no skill involved at all, just pew pew nonsense. 

 

The story is so much garbage, I won't even get into it.  It's heavily political and none of it has any business in the Star Wars universe.

 

[Tanooki]

Your wager would be lost.  I've enjoyed the Star Wars arcade games enough, but this one, even if marginally, it is better.  I already think I said what my problems were with it, but also, let's be honest that EA just sucks.  They shovel out unfinished, or at (being nice) unpolished stuff.  There already have been a few updates to make things run better, fairer, bug fixes, the works.  If I could remove some of the forced popups that stop actual flight to make you learn the buttons vs the casual reminder boxes the game would be so much better.  It's also a prissy bitch about where it allows you to go, it's on a track, don't think it's not, because if you stray you'll get mowed down in seconds with an intentional kill shot.  That's my problems with it, story mode at least, not touch the rest and not sure I want to since I don't get that asinine drift mechanic they shoved in there and I bet the live players probably love spamming it.  I'm an excellent pilot for dogfighting stuff with online console games and some PC have been for decades, not the best, but not a loser or pack middling either, and I'm not convinced with the wonky drift mechanics and some other oddball choices in control I'd do very well even with my solid stick I have (ch products fighterstick usb.)

 

All I can do is compare to what they so called strive to meet or exceed, which they largely did fail at, which are the X-Wing+addon and TIE Fighter + addon packages from the 1990s.  The games make me want to even put down newer stuff I need to do, and go back to play those to wash some of the bad taste out of my mental mouth over the complaints I had above.  If you're a solid pilot in those old games, you could fly wherever in a campaign (around getting your primaries failed) and go after secondary and tertiary targets for more points/promotions/medals.  I could take an x-wing and take a long while and whittle down a cruiser, frigate, or even a cap ship and succeed.  In SWS though, if I dare attempt to go near one, when it's not a primary objective, it's damn near insta-kill.  Like really of all the numerous targets out there, every laser on a star destroyer of mon calamari ship will suddenly ignore them and fire off one volley at me...bullshit.  Those old games won't lock the entire game up and demand even if it takes 20 repeats to do some stupid move to learn it, or fail you from completing the mission let alone even flying further in it...also bullshit.  I like and hate the game, I play it one or two nights a week to roll the story along until I get my fill.  If it was as well designed as what was done over 25 years ago, I'd be through with it and going nuts on people online.

[kisrael]

Got this for PS4, and just finished single player (which is probably the only version I'll bother with)

 

It makes me realize... i don't think I love VR that much.

 

I didn't play MUCH X-wing, but loved Rogue Squadron (esp 2: Rogue Leader on GC)

 

The one game it really reminds me of is the original Wing Commander... the way you talk w/ other pilots between missions and the emphasis on briefings (Or rather, listen to what they have to say). 

Maybe because I played it on Easy, it ended up not feeling as epic as Wing Commander or Rogue Leader.  I was trying to think of why. It's certainly doing tons of things right... Wing Commander had even more repetition on missions, but individual duels felt harder. Rogue Leader had a similar amount of mission diversity and numbers of enemy ships to mow down... I guess I liked the planetary missions in it better.

Man. if they hadn't worked so hard to make this a multiplayer game, it might have been even more up my alley.

[kisrael]

Don't know about "political" re: the story. I liked the idea of seeing the empire after Endor, when it's a bunch of warring fiefdoms... that's pretty rich! and (spoilers? maybe?) Yet Another Superweapon is super well worn territory for these games, though interesting it's one of the good guys. (I like when they lampshade it a bit... "yeesh why don't we just build our own death star and be done with it"

 

I wish their super weapon had looked more cobbled together-- getting an "Ugly" type of design for a giant ship, not just a starfighter, would be pretty sweet

 

Actually I wish I could read the script. I ended up skipping a lot of the monologues because they were just talking head shit, but it seemed like they were finding some ok angles. 

[Steven Pendleton]

I finally just completed the story about 20 minutes ago on the highest difficulty. As of the achievement completion stats right now, only 0.1% of all players have been stupid enough to do this, it seems... but still, only 7.7% of players have done it on the lowest difficulty or higher, which is probably for a reason

 

Spoiler

like because the game isn't fun to actually play, at least on the highest difficulty...

 

Anyway, this game... yeah, it has problems. Enemy pilots smashing into you, friendly pilots smashing into you, the fact that all of the enemies like to target you and only you (maybe because almost all of your allies are completely invincible, so the only thing they actually can kill is you), strange inconsistencies with targeting enemies because apparently sometimes you just can't unless you look directly at them, a limited area in which you are allowed to fly, almost guaranteed insta-death if you fly anywhere near an enemy Nebulon-B for some reason, idiotic friendly AI that doesn't do anything useful unless you tell them to do so and then immediately return to being stupid once that single thing you told them to kill is dead, enemy AI pilots that seem to be able to crash into stuff and just bounce off without taking any damage or make 90 degree turns without having to actually turn (they just kind of snap into position), having to repeatedly fly back and forth ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE LEVEL IN YOUR SLOW-ASS TIE BOMBER to go back to your Star Destroyer to get healed after taking a single hit because it takes so long for the 6 button to recharge, etc..

 

On top of all of this, all of the Imperial characters are edgy enough to be in 90s Sega commercials. What the hell.

Edited October 19, 2020 by Steven Pendleton

[kisrael]

I've sort of adopted "life is kinda short, there are lots of other things I could be building up" approach to games, but maybe I overshot by going for the easiest "tell me a story" level-- the autoaiming was a bit too friendly. It DID gloss over some of the other evils Steven mentions... I didn't have to worry that much about healing up or brain dead AI. (Actually maybe on the lower levels they take care of more stuff for you ) 

I actually had some trouble because I set the voices too similar to some of the squadmates, so I wasn't even sure when I was being asked for help or vice versa. But mostly, I knew my situational awareness was pretty crap. 

one of the things that bugged me: there's a fair amount of flying in formation, which is cool, but stupid that every ship no matter how slow keeps up with you, even when boosting with the fastest ships. (Also that thing where allies want to be at a certain positive relative to you AND your horizon, so if you keep rolling they are constantly adjusting) 

And yeah, balancing this game for Republic vs Empire multiplayer definitely takes away some of the real flavor from each ship.

They did a LOT of things right though, I thought the controls were really clever.

 

Story Spoiler:

Spoiler

The death of Lindon Javes being undone... if you're going to play the moral ambiguity thing, and have the Imperial character kill him, own it!

 

I know I'm an old fogey, but companies following the money of online battle arenas doesn't thrill me. I'm glad they put as much attention as they did to a pretty reasonable story mode, but so many compromises.

I do try and think... why did Wing Commander and Rogue Squadron 2 mean so much more to me? Am I just old? Is it just I've seen this before? Or is it the plotting of stories... or how each battle in WC1 seemed like such more of an event (says the guy who played the new game on easy-easy)

[Lord Helmet]

I’m actually enjoying the missions quite a bit. Visuals are good and the arcade dogfighting has just enough of the old 90’s sim stuff to keep me happy. I’m only about 2 hours in though so maybe it’s too early to really tell? I haven’t noticed anything overtly political yet.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Steven Pendleton]

I finally played it online today. It's okay. I really hate this whole unlocking crap that modern games have. Why can't I just have all of the ship parts that I want right at the beginning like it used to be? I know why it's in modern games and it doesn't take long to get everything I want in this game, especially since I think I already have everything that I want, but it's still annoying. Cosmetics I don't care about. Those are fine to unlock or whatever. Just give me all of the equipment immediately.