I'm quite enjoying my lightside journey, to be honest. I get much more of an impression of my character appearing to comply with her master's commands (adding snark and backhanded comments at every opportunity :9) while setting dominoes in motion that will allow her to overthrow him eventually. That's actually...VERY sith-like when you think about it.

Yeah, and you're just oozing fuzzy warmth, yourself. Show us where on the doll the SWG playerbase touched you. Also, it is not required for this game to be a "spiritual successor to SWG" for it to have a housing system that isn't embarrassingly outdated. Your logic works like a pretzel.

SWG or not, this style of housing customization is a decade old or more. No free placement, no scale, no rotational axes, no color control, no lighting control (hell, no light from supposed light sources!). Mentioning the subscription numbers of other games doesn't remove the fact that this system is quite restrictive when compared to its modern day peers (or even ancestors!). Does that mean it isn't "fun" by some people's definition? No, of course not. But subjective feelings and irrelevant statistical comparisons don't change the basic fact: this system is not as feature-rich as other contemporary offerings. You may now proceed to absurdly exaggerate my position as "OMG DOOOOOM!" so it can be dismissed from consideration in your mind. CARRY ON!

Sadly, then it just turns into "biggest zerg guild wins."

Can the cleanup start with this pointless necro?

The model you linked is one of several that share the same wire-frame with different textures. You could say it has a "contoured grip", but it is most certainly NOT the curved-hilt model (which has an entirely different wire-frame).

There's a number of words to describe what you propose. Market rigging Price fixing Collusion Oligopoly Yes, it's "good" for the few in the "club" together, but generally bad for everyone else. Another example of how an absolutely "free market" ends up not so free.

Might be more than a bit late on this, but I have some experience with RPing medics in sci-fi settings :9. I usually start off by sending a private message to the patient asking them to describe their injuries. It's usually easiest to break these down into 2 categories: surface injuries and internal/organ damage. With Star Wars weaponry, unless it is a slug-thrower, the majority of the injury will probably be burn damage. You can show off a decent range of options to deal with various injuries: nanites to repair an organ, slug extractors, de-ionizer, laser scalpel, etc. Spend a bit of time detailing the cleaning, disinfecting and dressing of the wounds since infection is actually one of the biggest killers (especially with the skin compromised from the burns), this also allows for follow-up RP opportunities. Then again, sometimes you slap a bacta-lined bandage on them, stick them with a cocktail of stimulants and anti-biotics and tell them "get back in their soldier!" :9

I think a big part of the issue revolves around what is or is not changing about the endgame. Will the current FPs/Ops be re-tuned/recycled or are they starting all over with only 1 of each being relevant to the new cap? Will there be new progression tiers to replace the current sets? I can see a lot of anxiety around the idea of farming through the same (rebalanced) dungeons again for a whole new progression sequence (burnout). If they have to start all over with 1 FP and 1 Op until 1.4, 1.5, etc or they keep the current gear sets as they are now, you run into the lack of depth issue (boredom). I just don't see how raising the level cap accomplishes anything more than simply adding in the new planet purely for story purposes would have. Right or wrong, a level cap raise produces certain expectations in the community as well as taking a great deal of developer attention to a whole new round of class balance concerns (usually dominating at least one major patch cycle) which can eat up time that would otherwise be devoted to further new content development.

If they raise the level cap, on of two outcomes is likely. Either they are ditching the previous end-game content and starting all over (with 1 FP and 1 Op) or they will have to devote more development resources to re-tuning the current ones to present the intended challenge to the players. Another issue is gear balancing. Either they are invalidating the previous gains and presenting whole new sets to progress through or they will maintain the current sets. Either result is likely to alienate a segment of the players, so I just can't help but see this entire decision as lose-lose.

He wasn't saying SWG had 400k players, he was saying that 4-500k players found TOR disappointing.

Gamasutra is a major game industry publication and that blurb matches the press release Blizzard made at the time. Funny how you still refuse to provide any support for your claims while sticking your fingers in your ears and refusing to acknowledge one that is provided. You just want to believe whatever reinforces your pre-determined narrative, regardless of evidence to the contrary. http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/company/press/pressreleases.html?id=2443799 Just in case it didn't sink in: World of Warcraft now hosts more than 2 million subscribers in Europe, more than 2.5 million in North America, and approximately 5.5 million in Asia. It is one thing to be uninformed and make a mistake, quite another entirely to steadfastly refuse to become informed.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17062

Actually WoW was at or just over 2 million subs by June 2005 when it initially launched in China. Again, you really need to familiarize yourself with the actual facts instead of making things up to suit your narrative.

Wrong. When WoW hit 10 million, the splits were 2 million EU, 2.5 million NA and 5.5 million in Asia. So that's 4.5 million, not 2 million. 55% is not a "vast" majority. So don't accuse others of misrepresenting stats if you're going to do so yourself.

No statistic is meaningful without context. Saying they have 1.3 million subscriptions tells you very little on its own, for example. When compared to previous numbers such as 1.7 million, now you can make some simple observations like "the number of subs has gone down." When you compare it to total box sales you can extrapolate a retention rate. However, the only significance these numbers ultimately have is in terms of revenue. Again, this information is of little value on its own. If you know the expenses, marginal costs and other economics then you can start to make conclusions about profit and ROI. Real metrics that focus on game population "health" are usually not available to the public. These are things like average and peak concurrency (number of players online at the same time), weekly and monthly uniques, session lengths (mean, median and mode along with several ranges). You can also continue this sort of analysis for specific activities like "x% of players engage in y or more warzones per day."

Uh...no. What's really scary is when you realize that these kinds of people vote. Sometimes I think they are the only ones who do :9. (PvP XP * 1.3) + (Space XP * 1.3) + (FP Bosses XP * 1.3) + (all other forms of XP * 1.0) </= (Total XPx1.3) If you do ONLY do PvP, Space and FP bosses, you would have a 30% increase, every other single bit of XP you gain that is unbonused dilutes this increase. You can't just add percentages together. Percentages modify a base value into a new value, then you can compare the total of the base values against the total of the new values. If some forms of XP are boosted by 30%, then 30% is the maximum boost and can only be reached by strictly limiting yourself to those activities.

Post a topic that was discussed 3 months ago: people complain about using the search function. Use the search function: people complain about necroing a thread. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

How were you able to "spam" an ability combo that could only be repeated 20% of the time and otherwise was blocked by a cooldown? There was also weaving in KS/TP, proper timing and use of SCC/SCG which carried the inherent opportunity cost of additional buffs on KM/KB or using the highly resource efficient HS>RS/AMP>MP combo (a maximum of 3 times). Healing now consists of spamming rapid scan and rapid shots (medical probe and hammer shot), an ocassional HS/AMP. KM/KB is pointless if you have a sorc (which, if they are bringing a commando/merc, they just about have to bring a sorc to carry us) and KS/TP is only useful when you have a few extra seconds of max resource. I've seen repeatedly that SCC/SCG has basically become a mini resource boost that you are better off cancelling immediately to start a new stack as using a HS>RS/AMP>MP combo will run you down in resources to the point you will actually do less HPS over the fight. You are better off taking the 2 ammo/16 heat and being able to push a little harder over the next 30 seconds than you are by draining way down and then having to be very conservative in those next 30 seconds. This actually becomes a self-reinforcing problem since using the SCC/SCG advantages means it takes longer to build up the next 30 stack after you've blown your resource pool.

Did you miss that effective HPS without overheal is listed in "bottom line" fashion for most of the reports posted here?

Some people can't coordinate targets with their teammates or figure out how not to stand in fire, so we shouldn't have raiding either, right? The "stupid people might do x, y or z" excuse for not doing something works with literally everything.

Koster was developing a platform for game development that got bought out by Playdom, Gordon joined up with them after leaving Bioware. Both of these guys cut their teeth in MUD development and had major roles in Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies. So yeah, two of what I consider the heaviest hitters in the industry are working for a social apps/games developer now. That should tell you something about the state of the market these days :9.

This is why I miss older luminaries like Raph Koster (and Gordon Walton, who left Bioware a little over a year ago) because they respected that game design was as much art as science. Someone needs to get GZ a copy of "A Theory of Fun" and make him read it. Just popped over to Koster's blog and saw this line on a totally unrelated post: "Remember, a game provides statistically varied opposition within a common framework — if there is no variation, we call it a puzzle, not a game." and another one: "Every inconvenience is a challenge, and games are made of challenges. This means that every inconvenience in your design is potentially someone’s game."

So you want kills handed to you on a silver platter, but I'm the one with the entitlement complex, got it. Yes, they should be killable in a 1v1 fight, provided that the player trying to kill them has more skill. Yet clearly there are still people posting up a storm about how there's 4 DPSers beating on a healer without them dying. I don't think you understand anything at all about PvP if you think having a high valor rank has anything whatsoever to do with a player's skill. Just being honest. /shrug

If DPS is viable on its own, a healer should be viable on their own, too. Apparently to you 2 out of 3 roles should just be fodder for your empty, one-dimensional approach to strategy of "hit them until they die". 2 equally geared players? It's a draw, nobody kills anyone. If you want to win...get better at the game or deal with it. Welcome to life.