I'm in the WoW Beta Test!

[A Black Falcon]

Just like most PC gamers, you have a poor idea of what good controls are.

What a stupid comment, OB1. Think about it for a minuite. Really. First, I do not understand why you think that mouse-click controls are so horrible. This makes no sense. Are you saying that direct controls, which in KotOR means 'holding down the W key', are better than mouse? In KotOR you have three choices. W, holding down BOTH mouse buttons to move forward, or (left) clicking on a person or object you can interact with and having your person automatically move over to that object and open it. Now... I'm not sure exactly what your point is. Are you saying that all of those are bad and that smart people would get it for X-Box and use it on a gamepad? Gamepads have their own advantages sure, but for a game with the purposes of KotOR having digital control instead of analog doesn't mean much. This is not exactly a platformer where precision counts for much of anything, and it's got auto-run (why you'd want to go slower is beyond me), so I can't think of any solid reason why a gamepad would be massively different from keyboard. Holding down both mouse buttons proves this -- that gets you analog movement with the mouse, after all! But this is actually probably worse than keyboard because using the mouse like that for long periods of time isn't too fun and as I said in this game analog or digital isn't much of a difference. This isn't Rayman, after all. Keyboard works just fine in every possible way I can imagine (while I will definitely disagree with you about how far you go when you attack PC controls, at least for some games -- Rayman, Rogue Squadron, BG&E, etc -- I can see where there is a decent point that they are in some way inferior... I don't see that for KotOR.)

Mouse-click movement (like a MMORPG) is obviously very different. Click location, watch people go there. Simple, elegant... and much less tiresome when you are traversing long distances. Think about it. Tatooine. It's got a sizable desert to explore. If you have to cross it it takes quite some time and holding down the button (either keyboard or mouse) while you do that is tiresome. It'd be much more enjoyable if all I had to do was click where I wanted to go to and watch as my people went there... it's not as tedious or tiresome, after all! What is so horrible about wanting this in games like this? You have not presented any arguement against it (as usual, just insults) so I don't know... but I'd really like to hear why you think it is such a bad idea. It seems so obvious to me and it works so well as the alternate movement scheme in MMORPGs (where it is virtually ubiquous) that it seems like asking for it in other third-person RPGs should be an obvious point. Sure, it won't be your main movement form, WASD will. But as I said there are enough uses where it would be nice to see that I am certain that the game would be better off with it in.

In answer to your question ABF (I think I sense someone else here from the context ), yes, you can click to move. As you SEEM to be debating, there are a few times when this is quicker than direct control. Most of the time, I direct controlled, and anyway, direct control makes me actually FEEL like I'm in there if you catch my meaning, but sometimes I'd rather just click on an enemy and let my character move and auto-attack by itself.

Sounds about like what I was saying, DJ... most of the time direct control is better, but once in a while it's nice to be able to click and have the person go there. Sure, it's not a function I use much in games I have played that have both forms of control available (like the alpha of guild wars I think), but I use it just often enough to think it's nice to see it there.

Let's take KotOR. Tatooine (which I just finished; Kashyyk now). Large desert areas. It is quite tedious to have to hold down the run button while you traverse a huge desert area. It'd be much more fun to just click 'move' on the other end of the desert and see my person go there. In BG you have to click on the ground to move, of course, but you can tell your people to go anywhere that has already been explored with a single click. It's only the unknown that you have to retarget each time they get to their new location, but with the game design of the Infinity titles that is generally a good thing because you need to be able to see and react to things up ahead... this is the one problem I can see with implementing this function in a KotOR-style game. What if I click across the screen and auto-run into some encounter that I would have approached differently if I had been directly controlling it? With a 3d viewpoint this can't be avoided unless you have stupid close fog or some kind of mouseclick-move command that only lets you go to places you have revealed on the map or something... it COULD work, but it could also be annoying. But I think they could deal with that problem if they wanted to and it would be a welcome addition to the title.

As I (and you) said, while it isn't a feature that you use very much it's nice to use once in a while (and I think the Tatooine desert is a good example of a place where it would definitely be useful), and KotOR should definitely have fully implemented this function and not restricted it to just when you are clicking on people or objects to interact with.

I suppose I should explain a few more things. First off, you can jump. You aren't barricaded from parts of the world by small knee-high rocks. You can fall off any cliff you want. The only barrier is the ocean. The whole thing is one big world, no load times except when travelling between continents or into instanced zones. (An instanced zone is when you travel into a dungeon and it is seperated from the rest of The World, in that you and your party (and anyone you invite to your instance). In other words, multiple parties can go into the "same" dungeon and fight the black dragon, but it'll be a different dungeon and dragon. This keeps the "line syndrome" from forming where parties are lined up just waiting to fight that boss. Don't worry, most dungeons aren't instanced, so it's not like they are defeating the whole concept of MMORPG with that .)

Jumping... interesting. Not exactly a common function in RPGs! ... okay, more like 'nearly nonexistant'... cool to see though. :) Instanced zones are also great. Definitely better than the alternative, I think.

The whole thing is one big world (excepting continents)? And inside cities as well (as in no load to go from city to countryside around it)?