Star Wars Squadrons

[CaptainCanadian]

I was hoping during the XwA age that we would see a X-Wing Commander Privateer game. I heard that Star Wars Online had something like that but it was too expensive for me at the time and building thousands of crappy blasters and selling them for a dollar didn't really appeal to me. I complain a bunch but it's been giving me some great ideas for VR games. I don't know why they didn't just remake the old engine with all the stats and AI behaviors included and re-skin it for VR. Seems like Xwing Alliance had it down pretty well. If I were the dev team lead, I would've had my entire team playing the Xwing Alliance VR mod for 2 weeks before running off to build my own environments. Why bother starting from scratch when they already had  decades old winning flight sim formulas to pull from?

Edited October 22, 2020 by CaptainCanadian

[Steven Pendleton]

So has anyone else played it online yet? I'm curious to know what everyone else's online experiences are like. Mine usually involve someone disconnecting as soon as I find a game and it starts loading, which means that one team starts with a massive disadvantage and is guaranteed to lose. The other thing that happens is I always get stuck on a team with someone who flies around in circles and doesn't do anything but die, which is essentially the same thing as not having another person but worse since it gives kills to the other team. Yay~

 

I also seem to get stuck as Empire in Fleet Battles, unfortunately, and I hate flying giant targets and shooting at tiny targets when I'd much rather fly things that are not massive targets and shoot at huge targets. The auto-am is extremely aggressive, though, even when you don't use the auto-targeting lasers that I don't have unlocked yet.

 

Anyway, these are my thoughts after ~10 online matches. What do YOU think?

[MrBeefy]

I have yet to try online yet. Single player was fun though.

[Tickled_Pink]

On 10/23/2020 at 6:20 AM, Steven Pendleton said:

So has anyone else played it online yet? I'm curious to know what everyone else's online experiences are like. Mine usually involve someone disconnecting as soon as I find a game and it starts loading, which means that one team starts with a massive disadvantage and is guaranteed to lose. The other thing that happens is I always get stuck on a team with someone who flies around in circles and doesn't do anything but die, which is essentially the same thing as not having another person but worse since it gives kills to the other team. Yay~

 

I also seem to get stuck as Empire in Fleet Battles, unfortunately, and I hate flying giant targets and shooting at tiny targets when I'd much rather fly things that are not massive targets and shoot at huge targets. The auto-am is extremely aggressive, though, even when you don't use the auto-targeting lasers that I don't have unlocked yet.

 

Anyway, these are my thoughts after ~10 online matches. What do YOU think?

I've had a couple of games. I'm not very good at the minute. I think this is really a bit of an odd game to judge in multiplayer. Strangely, I find Starfighter Assault modes in the Battlefront games more enjoyable and more "seat of your pants". Probably because I was pretty good at it - almost always on the "podium" at the end of a match. I am kind of struggling to get the motivation to play this game as, despite the apparent depth in terms of eventual loadouts and tactics that are available to you, it currently doesn't feel that deep.

[Tanooki]

That's an interesting way to put it, it feels shallow. (doesn't feel that deep.)  I think maybe that is the problem with it.  The game has a quite extended game pausing tutorial of sorts you're forced to muddle through over and over on a loop until it is done.  Then the other stuff you are tasked to do, you must do it, no deviation, or the game just blows you to bits in single player.  It's almost like a rail flight game, but just doesn't look like one.  You must go from A B C or death, kind of like a rail shooter (such as starfox) following each point like connect the dots.  If you're someone who has played anything from the old DOS X-Wing through Alliance which was in windows 9x/xp era the game feels very thin with no depth at all other than the cooked up story which isn't bad.

 

If you go back to what was in the realm of the old stand alone X-Wing and TIE Fighter games, they were less story driven between stages as far as depth of prattling on about stuff goes, but it kept a line of thought and story progression on with the agent/solder you'd check in, then the bridge over amazing sprite work clips they'd run between campaigns too.  Within each stage you could do the straight and narrow playing it safe, but it didn't use kid gloves or the immediate threat of death either as you could tackle secondary and in cases tertiary objectives to rank up more military level and medals too.  It created a game with a lot more fulfillment and enjoyment that sucked you in, didn't ever feel like just doing the motions on the straight and narrow.  I've rarely gone back to it and have probably dropped 2/3 of the story mode, but my mood isn't there for how it works.  I've been actually contemplating since flightstick is out firing up TIE Fighter for the first time in at least a decade.

[Steven Pendleton]

2 hours ago, Tickled_Pink said:

I've had a couple of games. I'm not very good at the minute. I think this is really a bit of an odd game to judge in multiplayer. Strangely, I find Starfighter Assault modes in the Battlefront games more enjoyable and more "seat of your pants". Probably because I was pretty good at it - almost always on the "podium" at the end of a match. I am kind of struggling to get the motivation to play this game as, despite the apparent depth in terms of eventual loadouts and tactics that are available to you, it currently doesn't feel that deep.

Yeah, the game does feel kind of shallow. I'm not really sure how to describe it, though. I feel that the game is just awkward to play in general and I look at a lot of the different ship parts and wonder why I would ever want to use them.

 

The biggest (but not only) problem that I have with Starfighter Assault is that they should have just renamed the mode to "Spawn Camping" because that's all that happens. The worst is the map where you attack/defend the Resurgent-class Star Destroyer. You literally spawn right on top of it in the middle of the fight and get killed immediately upon spawning. That whole game is a mess with some of the worst level design I have ever seen, though, so that much is expected.

1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

Then the other stuff you are tasked to do, you must do it, no deviation, or the game just blows you to bits in single player.

Multiplayer Fleet Battles mode is basically the same way. Can't go anywhere outside a limited range or you get insta-killed.

[Tanooki]

56 minutes ago, Steven Pendleton said:

Yeah, the game does feel kind of shallow. I'm not really sure how to describe it, though. I feel that the game is just awkward to play in general and I look at a lot of the different ship parts and wonder why I would ever want to use them.

 

The biggest (but not only) problem that I have with Starfighter Assault is that they should have just renamed the mode to "Spawn Camping" because that's all that happens. The worst is the map where you attack/defend the Resurgent-class Star Destroyer. You literally spawn right on top of it in the middle of the fight and get killed immediately upon spawning. That whole game is a mess with some of the worst level design I have ever seen, though, so that much is expected.

Multiplayer Fleet Battles mode is basically the same way. Can't go anywhere outside a limited range or you get insta-killed.

I would agree with that.  It takes the good parts of the games I mentioned of the 90s, but then sucks the depth of them out entirely, then puts a bunch of poorly excuted more modern fluff like the parts, coupled with the forced moments that stop the game until you get it right and it's just a put off.

[Steven Pendleton]

So I've been experiencing error code 327 and not been able to play the game online on occasion, and it happened last night. Has anyone found a solution for this error code? I also got some other error code, but I forget what it was. 721 or something like that. Either way, I couldn't play the game because of these error codes and one of my friends wasn't able to find a game at all. He just sat there waiting forever before giving up.

 

At this point, I think this game's online community will die very fast. Hopefully I am wrong, but we'll see.

Edited November 12, 2020 by Steven Pendleton

[Steven Pendleton]

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/star-wars-squadrons-getting-new-content-after-all/1100-6484582/

 

Yay, B-wing and TIE Defender~ I wonder how they will balance the TIE Defender.

[Unbeliever]

I've been playing Squadrons on and off now since it's release and I have to say, it's a pretty fun game overall. I prefer to fly in the A-Wing for the Republic, but it depends on what my team is made up of for ships. Most times I switch to support due to no one else wanting to BE support. I don't mind playing the assist role where needed, but the A-Wing is my favorite ship, followed closely by the Y-Wing. It will be interesting to see how they integrate the two new ships into the scheme of things. I never much preferred flying around in the B-Wing, but maybe this will change my mind once I climb into the cockpit and give it a go.

[Steven Pendleton]

So I forgot and remembered that the TIE Defender and B-wing are in the game now, so today I played the game again for the first time in a while.

 

B-wing looks totally irrelevant. TIE Defender is worse than I expected; tiny hull HP, moderate shield, and its speed and maneuverability are quite literally almost exactly the same as the U-wing and TIE Reaper. I knew they couldn't put the old broken TIE Defender in the game since that would be unfair to the Republic and give absolutely no reason to fly literally anything else as Empire, but seeing its stats be so bad was saddening.

 

TIE Defender has extremely fast recharge on everything, though, and its unique APS thingy is very good. I think the TIE Defender can be very powerful despite its overall poor stats when used correctly, but it will take a lot of practice, good power management, and the APS.