Star Wars: Squadrons

Oafley Jones

pixelburp wrote: »

That's fine with me too. As venerated as the Xwing games are, those ultra technical flight sims passed me by and just aren't my speed at all. More like homework than escapism so I'd not blink if this game leant more towards arcade thrills.

A button for routing power between shields/weapons and engines. A button for how much of your shields should be fore and aft. A button for what sequence you wanted your laser to fire. That was as technical as those games got.

BlitzKrieg

Oafley Jones wrote: »

A button for routing power between shields/weapons and engines. A button for how much of your shields should be fore and aft. A button for what sequence you wanted your laser to fire. That was as technical as those games got.

pretty much

I'm not looking for DCS level of complex air modeling

At the moment the gameplay trailer has def moved it into the want catagory

I play a lot of flight sims in VR, IL2 battle of stalingrad sits quite highly on my top vr games just for how damn good it feels to play that in VR and this looks to hit the same spot.


But on the *is it Tie Fighter level?* I am seeing 1 hit and 3 misses



It does look like they are replicating the between missions briefings and narrative as gameplay element with the player experiencing them in first person and being able to actively look around. Which is an excellent modern update of the almost point and click adventure like animated segments that held all the inter mission stuff of the original

Thought it looks like with all the gameplay in cockpit that they will do some form of the shield/engine management but it looks massively simplified down to 3 items and possibly a basic shield/engine management. Not fond of the very simplified secondary weapons systems and Not massively fond of the components setup being a bunch of perks that offer brief power ups or unique attacks.

I am also worried about the flight model, it really looks like with EA Motive involved that this is rolling off the star wars battlefront 2 flight model which is based off the battlefield flight model and....well that's not a good flight model.

And I'm worried about the mission structure, a big part of the pacing of the original games was there was a lot of mission variety, the trailer is selling heavily on set pieces and diverse combat areas, while I'm hoping for a mission inspecting cargo for contraband that suddenly goes wrong when the smugglers make a break for it and we have to chase them down.


the structured multiplayer sounds good, with cross play it would be nice to find 4 friends and actually work together on it rather then randoms.

Though if I dont have friends playing it then I imagine trying to play structured multiplayer with randoms could be painful.

Nijmegen

The flight model is a big concern... I find the BF model like flying in treacle compared to something like X-Wing. I really came to love the flight model in I-War back in the day, with preserved momentum, but I suspect modern mass audiences wouldn't touch it.

Mr Crispy

The game will have a "hardcore" mode apparently, where you can turn off the UI and rely solely on the instrument panel in your cockpit. And for added realism, you can disable custom bling, so that your team-mate's purple X-Wing won't break immersion for you.

From PCGamesN.

dreamers75

If they copy Elites flight model this game will be a must buy.

Can see it being more Battlefield flight model tho which isnt bad just merked towards not dominating the sky.

BlitzKrieg

jackfrags is doing his usually shilling for EA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGSkCalsisU

But it does look like it's a much much simpler model of the tie fighter series. Very basic power management pretty much on the level that Oafley Jones said. Maps feel a bit small. The flight model does look a bit different to the battlefield system. There looks to be some more control.


Have my concern about the multiplayer modes.

Mr Crispy

They've just released a CGI short as a promo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2VmOqjV_7Q

Regis779

I already pre-ordered Star Wars Squadrons key since it sounds like the multiplayer will be quite an experience. can't wait to have my own spaceship and see what combat system has in store

wes

Will be interesting to see how this play on VR. I have the Quest and Link cable for my PC, so will be giving that a whirl over the PS VR.

Dr Bob

Played about an hour in VR so far, really fun!
(also seemed to release over in Europe early ...which was nice)

seandotcomm

Just found out earlier that they've added Flightstick support for PS4 now too.
Haven't tried one before but I'd imagine the combination of that and VR is unreal. might have to invest....
Hoping my Amazon copy arrives in the morning

Shlippery

Tried a few dogfights online there, it is hard but fun, feels rewarding when ya get a kill but definitely takes a bit to get the grips of!

seandotcomm

Got my copy in the post this morning. Only played in VR so far. It’s a really cool experience looking around the cockpit and the environments but the limitations in PSVR really show in this game due to how small and as a result, low-res the far away enemy fighters are.

Love how your HUD is laid out across the cockpit interface. Definately gona take a while to master

BlitzKrieg

Hmm

I had a very frustrating start

So I'm an avid VR flight sim guy, got my x52 pro joysticks, my htv vive etc setup for Il2 vr gameplay. Pretty excited to play Squadrons so I boot it up in VR.

First there is some wierd audio issue, I cant seem to get audio for any of the initial logos etc and the game on initial launch goes through player customisation and then puts you straight into single player campaign's first mission.

No chance to look at any of the keys etc, just plopped in.

Go through initial cutscenes and getting in cockpit, everything seems fine, then it tells me to press button 11. Which throws me for a loop. Impressive that it recognizes the joystick, annoying that I've never kept track of the joystick button numbers (in fact on the x52 the buttons are lettered not numbered) so it's kinda hard in VR to work out what button it is so confusing bit of fiddling to finally get into the game


and the joystick controls are dog****

the flight stick is not reversed so it goes against every other flight and space sim in terms of pulling the joystick back send you pitching down not up and it put the roll to the twist and the yaw to the Y axis. Its more often the reverse of that.

Problem is for some reason during the initial flight you cannot escape to the menu, so I'm stuck bouncing my fighter off every ship we pass struggling with the controls while smacking every key possible to get to the menu. I give up and ctrl alt delete out of the ****er and restart.

Spend time fixing the controls, go back into the tutorial. Things are better, but not brilliant.

I am going to need some time in non vr mode with my joysticks deadzones to get this right because the ships feel very loose in terms of joystick control, I found it very easy to loose control of my tie and my ability to track targets was pretty useless.

I might try it with one of my game controllers instead to see how it goes, otherwise it's a lot of tweaking that I cant do in game to get the joystick to feel right.

Otherwise visually impressive and all my other big complaint is that despite being built from the ground with vr as an option they never learnt one of the most basic vr control methods for handling menus etc, just look at something to select it. It's something a lot of vr titles use when they dont use motion controllers. centre of your view is a basically a locked mouse cursor and if you keep yourself looking at something for 2-3 seconds it's counted as a click.

Much easier then trying to have us use a mouse or buttons while in vr.

BlitzKrieg

2nd impressions

with an xbone controller the game handles a hell of a lot better. Disappointing, it does not look like the game has any in game tweaks for joystick curves which is why it handles like crap on the joystick.

But if you got a controller it'll play much better and its not the most immersion breaking, still fantastic to play in VR, visually great and mostly been fun. It's very much somewhere between rogue squadron and Tie Fighter.

Wizard!

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

2nd impressions

with an xbone controller the game handles a hell of a lot better. Disappointing, it does not look like the game has any in game tweaks for joystick curves which is why it handles like crap on the joystick.

But if you got a controller it'll play much better and its not the most immersion breaking, still fantastic to play in VR, visually great and mostly been fun. It's very much somewhere between rogue squadron and Tie Fighter.

I understand your frustrtation, EA did the same with Battlefield V... They had about 15 minutes of campaign to play, BEFORE you were able to enter the menus and customize anything. The majority of users in Discord and Twitter were cursing the design and the designer, but DICE never changed that, and now, I see they are doing almost the same.


As for the controller scheme, I am lucky, as my stick has number on it and I don't use a VR, so I could see which button to use. Also, I changed to "Invert flight" and switched X-Axis with Y-Axis, to proper flight.


Apart from these, it is really fun and hard at the same time. I spent couple of hours in Practice mode where you can add enemy squadrons and fight alone against them.


I didn't have high expectations from this one, just the revive of our childhood memories, but so far looks ok and the DEVS respond real quick in Reddit bug reports. Hopefully, they will keep the game tidy.

Oafley Jones

This is wonderful. I've heard of issues with Joysticks, hopefully they'll resolve it soon. I've a HOTAS 4 on order, and while there's no issues with the DS4, it just doesn't feel right.

Playing this on PSVR (Pro) and it's ugly. Lovely crisp cockpits and a sea of blur outside. Still, it's so hard to swap back to the (fairly lovely looking) flat mode. Sitting in an a-wing cockpit and just visually tracking your opponent for a kill is incredibly satisfying. The ability to sit forward in a Tie-fighters claustrophobic bubble cockpit and see out the sides is undoubted advantage.

Edit to say: This is a remarkable clean and focused game from EA. I sense they didn't have much hope for it commercially and hence it's un-encumbered by their usual ****e.

Wizard!

My son is getting a PS5 sometime next year and I got him to try it on my PC.
Although I am using a Joystick, I gave him the gamepad, so he can learn to use it, and be ready later.
But for some reason, it is not recognized as Controller, but 2nd Flightstick and as a result, the mapping between my J and his C are shared... This is a bit ugly, us his Yaw is on the vertical axis and there is no button 12, which is the default to start mission...
Also, he cannot change the throttle, I couldn't find any combination that allows him to...

BlitzKrieg

A common cause seems to be that the game struggles to seperate controllers if more then one are plugged in when on PC. So that might be the issue affecting your gamepad.

Try unplugging the joystick before booting the game?

EDIT: Also after a bit more in the campaign I realise this game feels closer to the freespace games imho then it does the tie figther/x-wing games

Wizard!

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

A common cause seems to be that the game struggles to seperate controllers if more then one are plugged in when on PC. So that might be the issue affecting your gamepad.

Try unplugging the joystick before booting the game?

I would, but we take turns and I am trying to teach him fly...

sticker

Hi sorry if this has been asked before but I have a quest to VR set pre-ordered and I'm wondering what the best hotas flight stick setup is the best version to buy I see a lot of thrustmaster items are currently sold out

JimBurnley

On the fence on getting this, seeing mixed reviews around. Remembered still have EA Access, 10 hours free trial available for this - that'll do me nicely!

Azza

sticker wrote: »

Hi sorry if this has been asked before but I have a quest to VR set pre-ordered and I'm wondering what the best hotas flight stick setup is the best version to buy I see a lot of thrustmaster items are currently sold out

Am afraid you're going to struggle to find any hotas flight sticks at the moment from any manufacturer, from entry level fight sticks to high end premium sticks due to the demand for them caused by the release of Microsoft Flight Simulator.

ERG89

https://twitter.com/shen/status/1314809514126794752?s=19

Canis Lupus

Already refunded for me after a few hours. Devoid of fun and no post launch additional content. If this wasn't Star Wars based it wouldn't even have been a blip on the radar.

johnny_ultimate

Thoroughly enjoying it so far. Limits of PSVR aside, it looks and plays pretty ****ing fantastic in VR. Just getting into the cockpit and seeing the physical scale of an X-Wing is a real treat, but thankfully the actual flight lives up to it too. Fast, clear and just the right mix of arcade fun and more tactical elements. Enjoying it a fair bit more than Fallen Order so far, anyway.

Really does nail the feeling of being in a ship. There's something I can't describe about that feeling which is utterly fantastic. A wholly immersive feeling. I'm getting destroyed in the multiplayer. Watching the kill cam is hilarious. They enemy ship completely stops and kills me like a gun turret. I'm finding it difficult to make sense of the radar.

Mal-Adjusted

So for those who've played it, is this anything at all like X-Wing Alliance?

Wizard!

Mal-Adjusted wrote: »

So for those who've played it, is this anything at all like X-Wing Alliance?

Don't know if it helps, it is in German, but you may get the points
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zjb4sw-YA_8

Oafley Jones

Mal-Adjusted wrote: »

So for those who've played it, is this anything at all like X-Wing Alliance?

In terms of controls it’s almost identical with a couple of new features added, such as drifting. It’ll be instantly familiar to anyone whose played the old games. Add to this the modern multiplayer influences as well eg ship customisation within the ship classes. It doesn’t feel as epic in scope, nor as dynamic as the old games. The “battlefield” doesn’t feel as expansive.

Playing in VR is fairly epic though. Speaking of which, my PS4 HOTAS arrived this morning, which really should add to the experience.