CulannHS
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Posts posted by CulannHS
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Tbh, if you don't believe in going out of your way to put a blaster bolt into people that have earned it, the Smuggler story may not be for you.
Quoted for truth.
Kill 'em when they deserve it. My Smuggler, now a Gunslinger, left a long trail of bodies behind her on the way to 50, and she's still light 6. And with regards to Syreena, I killed her *** off the first chance I got. Didn't like her from the get go, and never looked back.
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Between me and my wife, we pretty much have all of the Republic side characters covered. And out of all of the storylines on the Republic side, the Smuggler is by far the best IMHO.
Because of the asinine way Skavak treats you and acts during Act I, by the time you get to the point you can, you're just SCREAMING to put a blaster in his mouth and blow him away. And just as a added bonus, you leave his corpse in a black hole more or less. Props for the irony and location to BW there.
And with the way the Smuggler storyline ends, it's pretty epic, with a lot of "Hmm....wow..didn't see that coming!" moments in it.
Very fun story, and there's a chance at the very end to get a poster-moment screenshot of you and your complete crew standing side by side if you're quick. Very cool. Thanks BW.
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You're not likely to have any significant legacy levels if you just play characters in the 20 to 30 range. You only unlock legacy levels once you finish chapter 1 ( ~ level 30) with a character in the first place.
While I'm not sure of your intent here..my wife and I play dual Gunslingers. We mission together, quite literally do everything together ingame. Our legacy levels were identical for a while at something like legacy level 14. Then, on the side I made a Trooper and levelled her to 26.
My legacy level jumped 2 whole levels ahead of hers soley because of that alt. With that in mind, I'm not sure if you'd call it "significant" or not, but the fact is that it was a breeze levelling the Trooper simply because I had handed off orange gear, crafted weapons, custom armorings, mods and enhancements to that Trooper from my main.
And let me make this clear, since there's some confusion about it:
The system allows you to unlock things EITHER via achieving the unlock condition (e.g. reaching chapter 2 in a specific class, reaching a specific PvP rank, etc) OR by paying credits. It is not both.
The credit option exists so players can enjoy content that they know they would never unlock in regular play (e.g. 'I'd love a pureblood Smuggler, but no way I'll level a Sith Warrior just for that').
Some things (like legacy class abilities) cannot be purchased with credits while other things can only be purchased (not unlocked) but are gated by legacy level (e.g. the GTN for your ship requires you to have a high legacy level before you can purchase it).[/color]
With this in mind, isn't there a concern at BW that this will devalue the legacy system and give players a definitive reason to patronize credit sellers so they can get the legacy options available for credits without applying the necessary time/effort intentionally expected to acquire such things?
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You're a bit slow..and sorry to burst your petty little bubble but...
CT was nerfed before Biochem was.
Additionally..grenades have a 5 minute cooldown.
Guess you'll just have to live with it.
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LOL
This...
Seriously, who does any kind of hard group content (that would require commands) without one these days..!!
Who does hard group content without a mic or voicechat these days?
Completely deaf guilds. And yes, they exist. There was one in Rift, also one in WoW.
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...Honestly, I'm shocked by how vehemently people oppose what I consider to be an integral part of MMOs...
Well..I come from a EQ1 / Anarchy Online background, and we were the top guild on our server in EQ1, with more server firsts than I could list in a day of recollection, and we never, not once, used a parser/DPS meter.
Didn't need 'em. And even in AO, doing Mercs or any of the other bosses right up to the Beast, didn't require a parser. It DID require a person to use their brains and study what they had, what they could improve, and guess what ?
People did so. Passionately.
The passion is gone now...a remnant of a bygone era where people used their brains to improve, rather than relying on statistics, math and figures to "optimize" DPS.
It's a tragedy really...people no longer rely on intuition and logic as they once used to. Now it's Recount, parsers, "L2P Noob" and more grief and headache than any person should ever bear.
No to combat logs. And I'll reiterate what I said before:
If it comes to a point where people are asking for combat logs for Ops and etc, as a programmer I'm going to write a app in Visual C where a person can input their class, level, and desired DPS and have the app modify a existing log to show the DPS the person input. I'll upload it and the source code, libraries, the works somewhere public so that any individual can freely download it.
Want to see my DPS rating? Sure thing...just let me run the app on this log and send it on to you. (chuckle)
Have fun with a "worldoflogs" site. That will be amusing, to say the least.
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No to combat logs. Simple as that.
As a aside, since I'm a programmer and I'm pretty much vehemently against these types of things by principle anyway...
I may just write a app in Visual C that takes a user's combat log, asks for their class and level, the location of the combat log, and edits it to a user's inputted DPS level.
I'll post the app with source code on a site where it's freely downloadable, and leave it at that.
So..if a "siteoflogs" shows up, well anyone who wants can be top dog DPS with a few clicks of a mouse button.
That way if your guild leader is nagging hell out of a guild about DPS, anyone who is tired of hearing the guild leader scream, "The tank must NOT die!" can set their DPS to match whoever else's or whatever they like.
Did I mention I'm vehemently against combat logs?
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OP's post is complaint and whine-ridden, rambling, nonsensical and ultimately a waste of bandwidth.
Mods, can we get this thread closed please? The facetious nature of this thread has gone on quite long enough.
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I'm going to play Devil's Advocate here..
My level 50 Smuggler, which is my primary character, has 400 Cybertech, 400 Underworld Trading, and 400 Scavenging. Additionally I have a alt which has 400 in Artificing, and around 370+ in Archaeology and Treasure Hunting.
For me, it's all about the orange pieces, cause I can craft my own mods, armorings and enhancements for all my pieces. Right now, my Smuggler has 2 orange guns, and the only orange armor piece lacking is a belt. With that said, all of the upgrades across all pieces of armor are currently purple, including barrels for the blasters.
I've found that the orange armor is easy to maintain..moreso than looking for a piece of armor to suit your stat needs specifically.
With all of this said, the real issue is in the materials, obviously. I'm a rabid scavenger, and any time I'm doing dailies on Ilum or Belsavis, the max amount I can send out are out doing Underworld Trading for Metals or Scavenging for Compounds.
With regards to the greens and blues and their lack of apparent value in the market, I'm slightly inclined to agree with the OP. It would be nice if there were a reason to seek out greens or blues for some reason.
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In retrospect..this sounds vaguely familiar..it's hard to recall tho cause I dumped Qyzen as my official bulkhead scrubber when I got Tharan Cedrax.
Of course, I play a Shadow tank which would explain that, but in regards to Qyzen specifically...that does sound vaguely familiar.
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I lol'd.
Okay okay..I admit it. So did I. Hard.
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actually its a perfectly valid analogy. you want something that doesnt currently support crafting (killing things) to support crafting (not killing things). also, you should really learn what a strawman argument actually is. it was stated that they should be boe, i stated no and why, to which you replied "i dont want to so i shouldnt have to". that isnt a rebuttal to any point i made.
No it's not even close to valid. Sorry, but that analogy is still a complete failure. And please show me verbatim, where I stated I don't want to so I shouldn't have to. And after you fail to do so, please note that you need to stop putting words in my mouth. If I feel like saying something, I'll do so, please and thank you.
What I DID say was that people should not be forced into something they don't want to do. And there are quite a few reasons why a person may not want to. Outside of the arbitrary dislike of FPs/Ops/HMs, there's also the driving issue that some people may simply not have the gear to pull their weight in a HM/Op. And gaspity-gasp some people know that, and do not want to put themselves in a position where people can potentially berate them for not doing their share of the teamwork involved. Alternatively, it can be because a person simply doesn't want to fail their team. Do some checking..ask around how many real, dedicated healers are impacted when they let a member of their team die. That's the very selfsame concept I'm attempting to describe to you now.
In summary, yes, quite a definite rebuttal, and no words in my mouth please,
crit crafted rakata belt/bracers, and crit crafted rakata relics would like to have a word. for sorcs/sages also you have crit crafted implants and earpieces that are better than the rakata vendor pieces. also, base crafted pieces for the most part are columni level. come 1.2 both crit crafted guns/lightsabers will be bis (for sorcs/sages lightsabers almost are currently, they are just below rakata). i guess thats all "entry" level though because it isnt bis?
See there you go again...making wild asusmptions. In that one quote you use the word "crit" 4 times...crit crafted this, crift crafted that, crit crit crit crit. Who said anything about crit crafted anything? I surely didn't. Are you attempting to put words in my mouth again? Entry level gear is things like oh I dunno, the Armstech blaster pistol called "Gamble" or "Two-Fingers Revenge". Are you realling going to tell me those are better than what you get from tokens/commendations as a result of doing HMs/Ops? Mind you, we're talking non-crit, just so you don't get confused.
it does though, much like frozen orbs. right now there are many people that have received all of them they need, they will pass since they have no value. making them boe they now have value so at worst everyone will greed, much more likely need. every single time you run a flashpoint it comes down to that base 25% instead of have a pretty good chance of having better odds. also, out of curiosity which "wow mentality" are you referencing?
Well for every person who has "all they need" there's a equal amount who have tried and lost the roll as well. Doesn't mean squat. Moving on, those people who don't have the gear to pull their weight in HMs/Ops could at least BUY the BCAs instead of having to resort to being carried, which many will obviously refuse to do.
WoW mentality..you seriously don't know? Seriously? /facepalm. It's the obsession with "best in slot" for everything. And it's beyond those people who min/max...there's nothing wrong with that in my opinion..but when you obsess over min/maxing to a point you surpass it...well...I saw that kind of mentality in largest degree in WoW.
oh, lol. the only thing that you can be talking about are minor cats, which had a chance of dropping from any elite. you usually received more from doing t1/t2 dungeons (more elites there) but i know the majority of my early ones were from farming mathos rep. also, not only were they never bop, but they also never cost anywhere close to a "weeks" worth of badges, unless you were only running 2 heroics a week. also the majority of "high end" items didnt even really require them. there were titans signets for warriors and to a lesser extent rogues, and a mh weapon rune that was arguably worth it till they fixed spotters order. they werent anything close to frozen orbs nor was there a "massive amount" of feedback other than a better way of getting rid of them. its the very reason why they gave apoth the ability to break them and made them required for virtually everything with the crafting update i believe in 1.4.
Sounds good..but so do politicians. Having been in Rift since beta, then I'm going to assume you came into Rift late. Insofar as crafted gear goes, literally everything a rogue would wear required one, including a bow/gun if you chose to use one. When I left Rift, my primary character was a Marksman/Saboteur/Ranger, and quite literally every article I wore required them in order to craft the high end pieces.
you havent proven or rebutted a single point in this post. you simply repeated "your wrong" a bunch of times and stated "incontrovertible facts" that are in fact wrong. which i have shown with examples.
Oh I have, you just evade, dodge and duck better than Atom. Sticking your head in the sand to the reality of the situation won't make it go away. As I said before, the BCAs need to be changed from BoP to BoE. Doing so would give alot of people the chance to actually step up and become part of that segment of the community doing HMs/Ops.
That is of course, unless you are of the mind that you don't want more people doing HMs/Ops....
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im a pacifist. i dont want to have to kill things. i only want to play through my class story, so can i just get an auto skip feature so thats all i have to play?
Doesn't fly, sorry. Base mechanics (currently) of a MMO are built around killing things for XP to advance. Poor analogy, and complete failure as a rebuttal. That's strike one. And let's face it, this swing was wild.
strawman aside, that is not how the game is designed. perhaps you are in the wrong place.
The last resort of the desperate. The infamous "strawman argument" rebuttal. Also a failure because it's not strawman. That's strike two for ya there.
to get an above average level of gear you should have to do above average things. you are asking for freebie mats for items that are bis, or in the case of biochem, a huge credit saver.
Crafted gear (with rare exception) is not going to be as good as gear obtained from raids/HMs. It's entry level so you can participate in those activities. And Biochem isn't the bottom denominator simply because everyone doesn't HAVE Biochem. There are other crew skills that also require this. That's a strike three for ya.
it does though. it makes it harder for those actually running hms/ops for them to acquire (higher demand, same supply) and decreases the overall difficulty of the game itself through making it trivial to gear up. at no time should you be able to ding max level and instantly put on multiple pieces of bis loot. also what are you on about with rift? trion never had a crafting mat tied to either t1/t2 or raids, especially one that was bop.
It doesn't, sorry. It doesn't make it any harder for people running HMs/Ops to acquire their gear. Not only is that facetious, it's patently ridiculous as well. And what you're failing (repeatedly from the looks of it) to realize is that by having those available to crafters, the influx of people who can assist in HMs/Ops would increase simply because entry level gear is more readily available. Remember that next time you're watching general on board the fleet or imperial equivalent and see people griping about a lack of tanks or healers.
And once again, crafted is not BiS. And please, stop with the horrifically poor WoW mentality. It's embarrassing.
As for Rift, the highest levels of crafted gear WERE tied to a mat that you could only acquire by running the heroic version of dungeons (rarely at that) or by doing dailies and blowing a week's worth for -one- of the items needed. If you aren't aware of this then you either A) came into Rift late after they apparently changed it or B) never did any serious crafting in Rift.
Either way, it's moot. Trion did this and it caused a massive amount of feedback because of the selfsame way it was handled as frozen orbs were handled in WoW.
Summarily, in every post where you've attempted to defend BCAs being BoP, you've been shot down, crashed and burned. Every defense you've thrown up has been successfully rebutted by me or another poster here.
The fact remains and it's incontrovertable. BCAs need to be changed from BoP to BoE. Doing so would only benefit the playerbase as a whole.
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It is smart if you want people to participate in end game pve. Either they do it and get their mats, or they don't and they complain. By making them sellable you make it so that people who play the market can now do just that and never have to do any of the end game pve content. Which robs those who do that content a valuable part of the market. Right now the people that do end game pve get special rewards for putting in the effort. Those that don't shouldn't have access to it.
Forcing someone to participate in something they may not want to is not smart. End of story.
Some people may not have the time, or inclination to become involved in ops or HMs to get these things, and for BW to force people to do so is just poor, with no legitimate justification.
Insofar as robbing people who do that content, that's facetious and a extraordinarily poor argument. Unless I'm mistaken...I thought actual gear and credits dropped in ops and HMs. Was I incorrect? Don't the people who run those get shots at looting gear and credits while doing the HMs? (Yeah, that's sarcasm)
Bottom line is that it doesn't hurt anyone. As I said before, Trion tried this and it blew up in their faces. It's a poor design decision and subsequent implementation to begin with. The best approach to making it a little more palatable is to make them BoE.
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Forcing someone to run heroics for even a chance of getting one to make Rakata reusables, and then having to get 2 more if you want the "set", is absurd.
Either make it not BoP so I can buy them, or make a way to obtain it via PvP.
I'm not looking to hear if any diehard carebear tells me that my idea is bad for x reason, because it doesn't pertain to you and you should have no say in it. I'm also not looking to hear "TOR is a story driven PvE game with a PvP minigame" because I don't care and it doesn't matter how you play the game, it matters at least in the business sense that Bioware can accommodate the 2 biggest customers who the game is advertised for, PvEers and PvPers.
There is no reason to limit it to PvE because frankly you should realize not everyone wants to PvE. And don't tell me that whether you agree it should be more available I should do it anyway. I'm not sinking time without a guarantee of getting one, having to form a group and run through the instance in PvP gear and a PvP spec.
I've had a plethora of complaints about the game but I'm not one to cry about things or ragequit, clearly I am still playing. In spite of the fact that my AoE stun doesn't function, all my gear is stacked with useless accuracy, and Surge got nerfed, I still can enjoy the game.
But adding on top the fact that neckbeards who can and want to devote enough time for and enjoy PvE on top of PvP should get a boost in PvP simply because they can get a use out of their Crew Skill, which should inherently be usable by anyone who has it maxed, is downright terrible.
First off let me state for the record:
I DO NOT HAVE BIOCHEM ON ANY CHARACTER!
That said...
I agree with this. Make the damn things BoE already. I've got a 400 Cybertech, 400 Armstech and a 400 Artificer, and I literally cannot make any of their best stuff unless I do ops or HMs. That's a Rift trick that ended up exploding in Trion's faces spectacularly. Worse, if I get one on one of my characters, then I can't give it to another of mine to make something that another may need.
It's not a smart design decision BW. Sorry but it's not and I'm not sure you have any way to rationalize or explain this otherwise. Right now it's just a huge cluster-F that needs resolving by altering BOP to BOE.
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Welcome to the modern mmorpg, where every game copys the combat system from wow....
Guild wars 2 is going to change that tho
Heh...Secret World will have less than GW2. 7 active abilities, 7 passive abilities. And a choice of 588 skills to work with overall that you can pick those 7 active, 7 passive from at any time.
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Seriously to the "get a life" trolls I worked a 16 hour shift today,
2am minimum has been the industry standard for every MMO todate and some of us have limited time to play.
If you don't have a problem with it fine, some of us actually do have lives as opposed to pretending to have one on a message board to belittle the simple request that they don't start maintenance in the middle of many players evening.
I live in Washington state it's 21 degrees tonight and it's raining you go outside in this crap.
Seriously, the get a life trolls have got it right here. You need to really get a life and stop whining about 1 day during a week you can't play your precious SWTOR.
2AM minimum has NOT been industry standard...just what reality are you in? I've played 18 MMOs now, with SWTOR being 19, and that is in no way shape form or fashion accurate whatsoever at all.
Hell even the Alaskan guy who has it start at 11PM for him says it's not so bad. Where does that put you?
Finally, no one gives a damn about your 21 degrees in Washington State. Boo freaking hoo. For the record it was 18 degrees here two nights ago, and the rain from the prior day froze. Do you see me crying about it on a forum? Noooooo..so why do you think that gives you ANY kind of vantage point or credibility?
Sorry but it doesn't. You're complaining about not being able to play a videogame once per week and getting all hissy cause people are telling you to chill out?
Take a step back and look at the situation and ask yourself who's really at fault here.
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1-85 A grind? It takes like 2 weeks... 1-50 in SWTOR? It takes like 2 weeks also... Neither of these are "grinds." Clearly someone never played any MMO that came out before 2009. Anarchy Online ring a bell? Try grinding 1-220 lol. Jesus Christ some people are just too lazy for their own good.
Yeah.
(shudder)
Inferno Missions. Those things could cause a brick to need therapy, or at the least, serious counseling.
220 / AI 30 is pretty much the definition of agony and numbness.
Of course, levelling to 50 with hell levels at 25, 35, 45 and crush levels at 26, 36, 46 weren't exactly a cakewalk either.
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Because they did what the casuals wanted. Blizzard is a bunch of money hungry (bleeps) also so they would take the money.
It was the casuals asking demamding threatening whatever you want to call it to have these things in the game that would make it worse. Blizzard didnt just come out one day and say lefts lift attunements or lets add a 10 man hardmode. That was the casuals wanting to get what others have without having to do the same things (that be playing the game).
Gotta agree with you on this. I am going to point out tho that Blizzard had a choice, and knowing the phenomenon that WoW was, went ahead and did it.
This is going to be a terrible analogy so my apologies in advance. Please kind of look past the specifics to the concept. What it's like is putting a sedative that causes apathy and suicide in the water because the population is complaining about crime.
The water is medium that it's spread with, just like WoW spread the rampant stupidity, rudeness, and asinine behavoirs we see in so many MMOs OUTSIDE of WoW now. The casuals (read: population) wanted all these nonsensical and foolish things and Blizzard, being the .50 cal equivalent of morons, herp-derped and put them right in without a second thought as to the ramifications to their own game or anything or anyone else.
Hence, why I said it's WoW pretty much. I agree there's other factors but WoW being the phenomenon it is, was the carrier that spread the issues in question so widely.
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A MMO I have been waiting on for the better part of 5-6 years is slated for release in April. It's not for everyone, and the company hasn't got a stellar reputation, but there's more there than meets the eye. Because of that, I'm willing to give them a final chance.
My wife and I spoke about dual subscribing to SWTOR and the new MMO when it releases, but quite honestly unless they do something about server populations for some servers feeling like ghost towns during prime time, I'm going to drop SWTOR like a white hot rock. There's no point in playing on a server where there's less than 10 people on a planet like say Voss during primetime.
I have supported Bioware for a very very long time. I was a absolutely HUGE fan of the original NWN, and the DA series for most part. (didn't care for NWN 2, primarily because the world editor was pretty much a cluaster-F. You guys at BW should have stuck with the original Aurora Toolkit) I've never honestly played the ME line of games but they've always appeared to be interesting and so I've generally accredited Bioware with being a "reliable" developer.
That said, I recognize SWTOR is BW's first MMO, but things are just not good. As Meg once said, "There's something definitely rotten in the state of Camazotz." I'm going to hedge a guess that the rotten is EA. I don't know that, but given EA's horrifically bad track record, it's my guesstimation.
Bioware needs to pretty much pimpslap EA hard enough to break a couple of fingers and send them back to the projects where they belong. Then they need to move with all the aggressiveness of a starving shark swimming in blood-soaked water to address the issues and player concerns. Communication should be tantamount, and should be profuse, regular and verbose.
The tactics of sticking your head in the sand and hoping things won't notice you, or taking exorbitant amounts of time to fix some things aren't working. As Julius Gaius Caesar rightly pointed out, you cannot win a war by turtling up and attempting to hold out against a siege.
So in the short answer, no, not unless several MMO-critical issues like populations both for faction and server are addressed and resolved with extreme prejudice.
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They've responded, per your open-ended criteria, to pretty much every pertinent issue. Already.
Hmm. Can you point out where they've addressed the issues with some servers feeling like ghost towns during the prime times for that server? What about any information on any plans (even if vague) about them addressing population imbalances?
So? Mission accomplished? Time to return to the planet Lovetron with Chocolate Thunder in terms of your view on Bioware. They've done what you asked.
So? If by mission accomplished you mean you took the mission and abandoned it right after, then sure. Right on. Whatever you say.
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Going to have to agree with the OP on this one.
Ebon Hawk shows as standard right now, 12:15 PM EST. However the server feels very much like a ghost town. I was on Voss last night during prime time for the server (It's slated as East Coast) and there were all of 10 people on the entire planet.
I understand some people's frustration when it comes to queues. I've never been a fan of them myself. However there comes a point where finding people to do things on your server becomes a greater frustration than dealing with queues.
I recently brought this up on my server in the Republic fleet (Yeah, I'm a Republic player) which had all of 40 people on it at 11:30AM. One response I got was "A population problem is not my problem." and another I got was something to the effect of moving to another server with more people if lack of population was a problem.
Both of these responses are asinine, as I'm sure many might agree. For one, a population issue is everyone's problem. There's just no way to deny that. Too many and people can't advance missions due to lack of mobs/camping/etc. Too few and people can't get Heroics/FPs/etc done either. There's just got to be a balance there. For the second, sure I could reroll on another server, but I've got a level 50 on Ebon Hawk, two 33s, a 21 and a 26. The 50 has maxed Cybertech and Scavenging and Underworld Trading is over 350 and climbing steadily. Another has Armstech and it's well over 300 also.
The point being, sure I could reroll and bringi all these characters back up to their current respective levels, gear setups, affection levels for companions, crew skills and related dropped / purple / blue recipes. Sure I could go through all the content again, but that's the crux of it. There's nothing new to achieve on the way that I haven't already completed. Right now, my Smuggler is on Voss, and for every planet up to that point, my Smuggler has completed all Heroics and missions, including bonus series missions. Literally the planets are scoured clean of anything to do.
As I said, I understand some people's stances on queues and the like but things are sinking faster than a lead brick dropped out of high orbit for some servers.
As another poster pointed out early in the thread, Bioware dumped a ton of servers out for people and the result has diluted the population. If you account for attrition, the population has stratified, and in the doing so, become too thin to maintain a robust level on some servers.
I don't always like the thoughts of server mergers..there's the issues with player names, guild names, and the like but Bioware really needs to damn the torpedoes and steam on full ahead to combine servers. Preferably in a fashion where servers with a low Republic or Imperial population are combined with their mirror opposite.
They've already shown they have the metrics to see the populations, so doing the calculations of which servers should be combined shouldn't be difficult.
Name changes and guild name changes are really the issue, along with the associated issues of moving and merging data from two or more separate servers.
Somehow..I think Bioware has the capacity to do such a thing and it leaves me sort of confused as to why they haven't made any advances or delivered any communication about this issue.
No offense to you folks in the office on weekends or those folks working their fingers off for BW, but you guys gotta get your act together. Get some cajones and do something already.
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I'm going to go with a vehement, screaming "NO!" to damage meters as well.
No thank you, no way, no how, no no no and hell no.
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No we can thank the casuals that played WoW. No, really
No..it's pretty clear we can thank WoW as a whole, period.
Will SWTOR be able to compete with upcoming MMOs?
in General Discussion
Posted
Despite the negative reputation of FC, I'm looking very forward to TSW. For the first time in a very LONG time, a MMO will have real puzzles, and require you to think, research both in and OUT of game to solve those puzzles to advance. No classes. No levels. Over 588 skills to build your own character from. A very high degree of character customization. A indepth story that relates to the real world as we know it, not some universe created from whole cloth out of a person's fantasy.
In one of the earliest interviews with Ragnar Tornquist, he stated that the FC team spent years compiling a massive database of all the conspiracy theories and legendary "monsters" (read: Jersey Devil, Bigfoot, Chupacabra, et al.) out there before ever beginning to put in the first line of code or work on TSW.
One of the things that most people just do not realize, and it's a horrific shame, is that the majority of the problems with FC's first two MMOs, were caused by the selfsame person who was originally a co-founder of Funcom. Gaute Godager can be directly linked to most of the troubles associated with Anarchy Online's launch and subsequent problems in it's first year. Likewise, Gaute Godager was Conan's Lead Game Director until his "official statement" of leaving the company for interests in other fields not related to gaming. Given how badly AOC was progressing it's not any real stretch to read between the lines and see that the board at FC asked Godager to leave the company.
And that's pretty much where FC and TSW are now. Ragnar, the other founder of FC, is the one leading the whole project for TSW, and his vision and his connection to the gaming community seems to be spot-on.
The stories in SWTOR were really good, but as so many others have pointed out, once you get to 50 a couple of times..the luster begins to wane significantly. I think my own personal biggest complaint with SWTOR is that it's just excessively linear. You get led from one encounter to the next to the next, etc until suddenly you're 50 and that's the end of it. With that said, I wasn't expecting a sandbox MMO by any stretch, but the linearity of SWTOR is almost a polar opposite. Moderation in the creation of the game would have been a nice thing. As it stands it's almost flat in it's singleminded devotion to lineariry.