It’s here now- the Galactic Starfighter expansion! Well, it’s almost here. It’s still in beta but the NDA for beta testers lifted and now those who tested it are able to talk about it and tell us all what we can expect. With these hands-on reports from those who had early impressions, we can learn a little more about Galactic Starfighter and why it’s awesome.
Massively talks about their hands-on experience with Galactic Starfighter:
Combat in Galactic Starfighter boils down to match-based PvP within a set zone, but everything in that zone is as rail-less as combat gets. The 12v12 matches are set in one of two maps available at launch: the Lost Shipyards and the Kuat Mesas. The shipyards lie in space with large stations that can be captured for points as well as in detailed space terrain full of debris and various sizes of ship-crushing asteroids. By contrast, Kuat Mesas’ battlefield is set closer to the planet among pillars of canyon rock. On both maps, players accumulate points by taking out the opposing team’s fighters and maintaining control over the three structured capture points.
Massively goes on to talk about the dogfights, the ships, customization, crew members and more. The summary?
Galactic Starfighter will launch for subscribing players on December 3rd along with a few titles and cosmetic perks. Preferred status players will gain access to all the content on January 14th; free-to-play players will have access on February 4th. The team says it wants all players to get their hands on the content, boasting that all the playable content will be available for everyone by February 4th.
Galactic Starfighter isn’t going to overwrite our memories of the classics, but it does a fantastic job of making SWTOR a deeper and more genuine Star Wars experience.
And the New Overlords also had some things to say about early impressions:
GS is Fun: Just to kick it off, let me say that GS was certainly quite a bit of fun. I’ll talk next about how this is certainly PvP, but that said, I think the appeal and fun factor will be a bit more broad than typical PvP. There are some extra twists with ship collection, customization and leveling that extend the fun a bit in those directions as well.
GS is PvP: The core of GS is certainly PvP. There is a PvE tutorial space where you can get used to flying a ship around and shooting a couple stationary targets, but all the actual gameplay is based around shooting other people. The couple maps we have seen so far roughly equate to an in-depth version of the Alderan Civil War PvP warzone. Inexperienced players may find some frustration in getting in there and getting blown up quite a bit but the ramp-up isn’t that long in getting used to the controls and the fun of flying a ship around freely softens that ramp-up time.
3D is a whole new dimension: I really appreciate the lack of “up” in the control scheme but it will be a challenge for new players to wrap their head around at first, especially since you are locked into pretty much a 1st person view, close up on the tail of your ship. Rotating 180 degrees in a barrel roll, for example, will have you flying around in effect upside down. Took me a bit to get used to it and once you embrace the 3D space, you’ll gain more control. Think “the enemy gate is down” as a concept and you’ll be a step ahead.
And read on at their website to learn more about control, customization, and strategy. They cover their initial impressions which are overall positive and help us understand more about what it’s all going to be about.
So have you had the chance to try Galactic Starfighter yet? What are you most looking forward to about it?
