Elfindreams
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"You" isn't "We." And I stated in a reply that I wasn't specifically addressing cross-faction stuff, just the whole "Well it took WoW X number of years to implement Y."
But to address the cross-faction stuff, it wasn't exactly an NSA secret that something like that was wanted by the playerbase and Blizzard would make an attempt at it. Of course, this boils down to getting cheap and choosing an engine that severely limits options for future expansion.
Seriously, Star Trek Online's crappy engine can handle guild banks and guild space stations. You'd figure that Bioware would at least have chosen an engine that can handle basic guild options.
I assumed "we" were talking about it when you said "But to reference your example".... maybe that means something different than I assumed.
The choice of engine is far more complex than people make it... as an engine is basically what you make out of it. The engine isn't keeping them from implementing guild features. In fact on this point you are spot on. That that are not investing the development time to do the guild options now is surprising (although nothing I know of has said they aren't developing it even as we speak).
My point was that people assume that game X came out with feature Y after several years of development, it should take game Z not time to do it.
Even if they observed the "clamor" for cross-realm in the WOW forums under the normal self-contradicting noise in game forums four years before it was even implemented by WOW; even if they were able to determine that it would translate to a need in their game, it would have taken them more development time than they had.
Resources are finite. Comparing a game that has had 6-7 years of development with one that has had probably over twice that amount of time (announced in 2001, so probably a year of coding before that) is folly because most of that time is actually spent designing and coding. It isn't wasted time waiting for the playerbase to come up with an idea. With the amount of time they had they wouldn't have been able to implement some of the stuff that was "standard" in WOW. They had to make decisions on what features to focus on and which ones to consider adding later. All games do.
If they had tried to put everything in they would have had to delay at least two+ years... and name one franchise ever that has survived a delay of two years to their announced release date and not been a laughing stock for it.
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Again, wasn't talking about cross-server stuff.
Yes but we were. The line you quoted was specifically referencing cross-realm. You even referenced "But to cite your example, still not an excuse." where my example was cross-realm.
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While that is true, not many people were willing to pay $15 a month or an experience that they could get while playing KOTOR I or II. Not to mention the free mods that add stuff to those games.
Fluff like voice overs only gets you but so far. At some point, you need to have a game in there somewhere with what is considered to be industry standard features.
Cross-Realm isn't "industry standard"... it is starting to get there but at the release time of SWTOR only one other game had it and had only had it for a year. That isn't "industry standard", that is expecting the game designers to have a staff of psychics to try and gleen what features are going to be emergent in four+ years.
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Look at that certain mining/crafting game. It was developed by an Indie company, created rather recently, and is impossible to argue that it's not hugely successful. Reason being, they brought innovation to the table. If your not thinking ahead of the curve in technology, your getting left behind.
That doesn't change the simple fact that you have a given number of manhours that you can put into development based on staffing level and other factors. The feature you are talking about would have added years of development time they didn't have. Now an MMO created and started coding after the invention of cross-realm not considering it in its initial database design, that would be a travesty... but this had already been being coded and designed for 4 years before anyone else did cross-realm.... to add it at that time would have been a monumental mistake.
And SWTOR has innovated (name one other fully voiced, story driven MMO), they just didn't predict this particular feature coming out of nowhere. That doesn't make it a bad game in any sense of the word.
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I agree with everything else you said but this. Sure, it took WoW a few years to get cross realm grouping, but that is from a 2004 release.
There gets to a point where "this is an MMO, it takes time" is no longer an excuse. MMOs have been out long enough that certain features have just become the norm. What has taken one MMO 6 years to implement is expected to be common features in any subsequent games. I'm certain that after SWTOR, companies well be looking at making sure any solo experience has a well presented story to go along with it. It will be hard for gamers to accept anything else other than a good story and decent story after SWTOR (and possibly TSW).
If a dev is hellbent on playing it safe by not reinventing the wheel, they need to be darn sure that the wheel they are copying has the same amount of lug nuts.
Do you have any conceptualization of the level of complexity that a cross-shard system requires? The database interdependence, replication and inevitable race conditions alone are enough to give a database programmer nightmares. That isn't even mentioning the protocol/network/server design necessary to make it usable.
People see a feature in an MMO and assume, well that must have been easy to code. It can take years just to work out the kinks in a system like WOW implemented. Heck, WOW hasn't finished working out the kinks in the system it implemented. And it isn't like they share code.... so the SWTOR folks would have to do it all again from scratch.
Remember that SWTOR was announced 2008, which means it had probably already been being coded for around a year or so before that. Cross-Realm grouping entered into WOW (and the rest of the world's nomenclature) in 2011. By that time the server model and database model were locked in because to change them would be to change the entire game and set the release back several years.
It isn't about re-inventing the wheel, what you are talking about is scrapping and redesigning the whole car after you are already close to production.
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Nop. It's not. Usually what you are seeing most of the time in these other games are either SWG veterans that did not get SWG 2. People who had WAY too high of expectations for this game even though they saw what they were getting (it's called delusional) and people who just for the sake of hating and bashing a game will hate and bash it no matter what.
This one has always made me wonder... I remember the early days of SWG. The SWG release made SWTOR's release look like perfection. Massive bugs, whole parts of the game missing, constant server crashes, etc. Even when it equalized the game was incomplete. Never mind end game, whole sections of the whole game were missing from SWG. It took them nearly a year to put space into a star wars game. When they did complete things (the Jedi holocron grind that defined AFK and macro grinding to the rest of the industry, the CU, NGE, etc) they ended up doing the wrong thing almost by rote.
Don't get me wrong, lots of people loved the game, and it had its charm, but people need to compare SWTOR with what it is, a MMO entering its third year. They are inevitably comparing it against WOW which is in its what 10th year now?
The examples people point to and say "this is a failure since every MMO should have X" are forgetting how things are in MMOs. It took WOW 7 years before it added cross realm grouping.
Now, does this game have its issues, hells yes... but people need to stop comparing it with rose tinted glasses pointed at the other games.
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http://www.torparse.com/a/594102/5/0/Overview
5/5/36 Lethality Sniper: 3503.8dps
I <3 this new mainhand (78) - Gear almost all 78; reusable stims/adrenals.
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It doesn't really get boosted, it just does extra hits. It's base does 3 total hits, but it also does an extra hit for each dot on each of those hits. So, 9 total and I believe 6 of those can get boosted by WB...just the ones that come due to the bleeds. So the number I quoted is what one of those 9 hits does. Does that make sense? Not sure if I'm getting my line of thinking across very well
Basically your current rotation ensures that you always boost your highest of the three boostable types of damage. Those three being the extra bleed granted damage from cull, corrosive dart, and corrosive grenade ticks. Your rotation does this at the expense of 50-60 extra stacks of WB that may or may not boost the highest option. Using WB on cooldown you'd sometimes get 218(CG), sometimes 225(CD) and sometimes 244(Cull). The question is does the extra 50-60 stacks ultimately beat out the guaranteed boosting of Cull vs the other two?
Interesting... I will have to give it a try... I always thought the damage went up not additional hits... but the log bears out what you say so I will have to play with that.
Thanks!
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Yeah, like I said, I'm not sure of the exact mechanics, it just stuck out.
It would be interesting to see for sure which comes out better. I'm sure somebody has and the rotation is probably based on that. Despite my math/computer science background I like trying things out better than strait theorycrafting...don't spite me, KBN! ... so I'd give it a few goes both ways. Even on just the 500k dummy as a test.
Just thinking it over without digging too terribly deep, your min hits for the three things that are affected by Weakening Blast are: Cull-815, Corrosive Dart-751, Corrosive Grenade-728. So the added dps from WB are 244, 225 and 218 respectfully(min hit 30%). I guess it would come down to whether that 20-30 extra damage that Cull gets from WB vs your bleeds can overcome 50-60 more overall WB stacks. Just off the top of my head I'd say more stacks is probably better, but I'm probably wrong considering most of the guides I've glanced at say to wait on WB until Cull
Never hurts to try it out though.The cull gets boosted by the two dots tho prior to being buffed by the WB.
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There aren't any lethality parses on the overall leader boards so without digging Jaberse's was the only one I could quickly find. He mentioned he doesn't use Speed Shot as much which could explain a lot of that discrepancy. I should have dug a little further to find more to compare to, but alas, I can be lazy at times
*LOL* considering you are taking time out of your day to help me, I wouldn't call it lazy
I wonder how much of it can be attributed to the 2 piece PVP set bonus (which is apparently being nerfed to hell next patch)... If i had the PVP gear I would run a test and compare.
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First thing that jumps out at me between your parse and Jaberse's on Morggan is the APM. He was sitting at 33.71 vs yours at 29.96. Are you queuing your abilities where possible? I'd start working on getting your activation closer together. I know I've noticed on my merc I actually start casting my next ability slightly before it looks like Unload is done and it doesn't clip. I'd start playing with that on your channeled abilities then on instants and short casts, make sure you have your ability queue on. Being almost 4 APM behind is pretty significant. To put it in perspective, Jaberse activated 253 abilities in 7:30 vs your 234 abilities in 7:48. Some of that may be stuff
Ok... I am getting more and more stumped. I do tend to squeeze off the end of casts and pre-cast things for this reason.
Going purely off of the "core" rotation of
CG > CD > WB > Cull > Takedown > SoS > (1 GCD filler, usually RS) > Cull > Takedown
Optimal APM is 30
So I am thinking my overall core rotation is off if people are doing 4 APM higher without alacrity. What are other lethality snipers or DF gunslingers doing in terms of core rotation?
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Next thing I notice is that you have 25 weakening blasts. In a 7:48 second fight the max you could get in is 31. I'm not super familiar w/ the spec so maybe there's good reason to delay it, but I would think keeping that almost always on CD would be desired
It is my understanding that you should delay WB till Cull to maximize the return since WB returns a % of damage and cull is the larger damage WB is optimal right before a cull instead of "wasting" it on just CD or CG.
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Need some help on lethality.
So I have Thexi up to 3200 dps... but I keep hitting a brick wall. First brick wall was realizing that due to a weird bug a lot of the times I was applying my DOT it was being replaced by the weakened version of it anyway right away (if you try to reapply it right as the previous one goes weak it will be replaced by the weakened version anyway)... so nuking lingering toxins raised my dps 150 or so... and now I am looking for things to do to up that dps level.
Video of a run http://youtu.be/fYglovVEiEk
links to log/etc are in the description of the video.
Aside from one short section where I kinda went off rotation, it seemed pretty clean to me now I just have to figure out ways to squeeze some more in (tried things like throwing in explosive probe but always end up nuking my energy when I do that, etc).
Any thoughts?
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I am sad that Lethality/Dirty Fighting Sniping isn't even on the honorable mentions... not surprised given how they nerfed it but sad... I still hope for the return of this once great spec
In the mean time I am still on my personal quest to break 3k with a full Lethality (5/5/36) my best attempt so far is
2938 on the 1.5m dummy on my ship as measured by torparse:
http://www.torparse.com/a/517488/1/0/Overview
(character Thexi on The Ebon Hawk)
not sure if that rates an honorable mention or not but figured I would post it anyway. I might try again this weekend and who knows maybe finally break that 3k barrier.
EDIT: forgot to link spec http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#400bcZbcZGbbkrMRRMsuR.3 and as for gear, mostly 72s with 78s thrown in.
Thexi finally broke 3k (same gear/build; full lethality sniper)
Parse: http://www.torparse.com/a/541305/1/0/Overview
By time: 3018dps, by TORPARSE's reckoning 3012.4
Probably would have been higher but ran into energy issues right near the end.
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Rotation should be:
Shrap Bomb > Vital Shot > Hemo Blast > Wounding Shots > Quickdraw > Speed Shot > GCD Filler > Wounding Shots > Quickdraw ... repeat
There's no room in Dirty Fighting for Aimed Shot other than the opener. You have 1 GCD between Wounding Shots to be creative, and you can move it around a bit; using Sab Charge, Charged Burst, Flourish Shot, Incendiary Mine (Roll), or Flurry of Bolts... and of course substituting Flyby between Wounding Shots will be a DPS boost as well.
Yea when XS flyby is up substitute the (Speed Shot > GCD Filler) in there with IIRC (XS Flyby > Flury of Bolts > Flury of Bolts; unless you are really lucky with crits the FoBs are needed to get your energy back up after the XS flyby).
The reason you are seeing an increase in misses is that prior to I think 2.0??? (not sure which release) most of our biggest attacks as DF/Lethality were not affected by accuracy at all (they could not miss)... it makes perfect sense that they changed it but the fact that it came at the same time as them nerfing the hell out of crit means it was a bit of a kick in the crotch to pure DF/Lethality Gunslingers/Snipers.
It is especially bad for us since each tick of our DoTs are now affected by accuracy so where a sharpshooter can possibly get away with say a 99.7% accuracy we really have to have over 100/110% at all times.
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Exactly this. Lethality isn't up there now because no one had parsed in it yet! :-)
Call me a rebel with a really pathetic cause
I just love lethality and took a long (several month) break right after they nerfed it (for unrelated reasons) and still haven't fully gotten it out of my thick skull to just let it die and switch fully to MM for pete's sake. -
I am sad that Lethality/Dirty Fighting Sniping isn't even on the honorable mentions... not surprised given how they nerfed it but sad... I still hope for the return of this once great spec
In the mean time I am still on my personal quest to break 3k with a full Lethality (5/5/36) my best attempt so far is
2938 on the 1.5m dummy on my ship as measured by torparse:
http://www.torparse.com/a/517488/1/0/Overview
(character Thexi on The Ebon Hawk)
not sure if that rates an honorable mention or not but figured I would post it anyway. I might try again this weekend and who knows maybe finally break that 3k barrier.
EDIT: forgot to link spec http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#400bcZbcZGbbkrMRRMsuR.3 and as for gear, mostly 72s with 78s thrown in.
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Easier fix. If it's so important to the devs to destroy credits, put something cool on a credit-based vendor and charge a ton for it instead of putting EVERYTHING cool on the RMT vendor.
If destroying credits isn't important enough to do that, roll back this change.
Still waiting for them to add stuff to the CE vendor and VIP vendor.
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Easy fix. Make the credit cap 2 million credits per character. That is nearly double the max credits I have ever accumulated at one time adding up all my characters combined and more than enough for any player. There. No more hyperinflation and less people cancelling subs because they can't "afford" to play any more. Having to grind credits as many hours as you raid just to pay for repairs - that is crap.
Interesting idea, would need work tho... for example there are high end mods/armors that regularly go for over 5m. Dread guard level armoring/barrels/purple black crystals/etc.
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I don't calling you anithing, you are elitist, and that's obvious, and no, I'm a fully survival dps command and full 65 vanguard tank, with average of surival of 98% and we get so many n00b healers, dps, and also last night we teach a tank how to deal with Soa, we help and we protect them and teach them how to do it, but with 160, 200k of repairs in 65 armor, that's not going to happend, in only 3 Op the guild lost 3kk and some of the more support players are cancelling and leaving the game, so you are alone, simple fact, the thing is: if bio/ea don't ifx this, next month you going to play with your shadow.
Wait, what? Who? I agree with you about the change being bad, why are you attacking me?
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"Hi. We've read this thread and we understand the community is interested in a response to this issue. We are evaluating our telemetry data and will respond with an answer soon."
They've done that for other issues. They haven't done that for this one yet.
Yea, that is... disappointing.
I understand why it is taking so long to fix but the community management fail is strong in SWTOR these days. Honestly the fact that this thread is still going on is sign of that as well... in a properly managed community they would have gotten on and said... something like you said and then something along the lines of but since this thread appears to be devolving into personal attacks, we are locking it for now.
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Yet somehow they managed to deploy a patch TODAY that attempted to fix something else that they broke TUESDAY...
What else did it break? j/k
The fix they did today in terms of design is relatively easy... i.e. just set everyone's unlocks on that item to none. No side effects since no one would have had a chance to unlock it before and it was a new feature. So less ramifications/testing.
This one it is not as simple as just reversing it as it is (as others have pointed out) actually a fix to something. Rolling it back isn't an option so what do you do... in my previous example I said half all the costs. While that is good on paper and as a spitballed idea, does that actually balance out the economy or is it too far. Hence why something like this takes more time and should have taken more time in the case of this fix. I.E. they should have taken quite a bit more care before doing this fix.,
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Several things have become abundantly clear in this thread...
1) the only people who seem to be for this change are a bunch of ultra-elitists folks from world/server first guilds, and there are only a handful of them who are very vocal
2) those same people are by their own admission trolling because apparently they have nothing better to do
3) these same people also have no potential financial issues by virtue of their playstyle and guild
4) the vast majority of the posters between all the threads on this subject are extremely displeased with the change and there are people voting with their wallets, and those in that displeased majority run the gamut from server/world first progression players who also have no financial issues but see the negative impact, to those more casual players who will have a significant gameplay impact due to this change
5) there are guilds who have suspended raiding (including my own by request of my guildmates, I wanted to continue but was outvoted)
6) BW doesn't seem to care because they refuse to say anything on the subject
Agreed with all points except #6. Keep in mind this patch was released on Tuesday... in software development like this it takes at least a week to scratch one's ***... It doesn't surprise me they don't have a response yet, they are probably still trying to figure out what (if anything) went wrong and figuring out the best way to fix it.
Mechanics discussion aside, I anticipate this will be fixed within a month, but yea... it shouldn't have happened in the first place... that is why they need to test these things /before/ releaseing them. not just QA patch notes, but look at the greater implications.
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Repair costs are in every MMO and are expected. What you proposed there is just rediculous lol.
I was using it as an illustration. The key here is the increase in costs seems to have no function except as a side effect of a code fix. If it were for economics, fine... if it were for any other reason fine... but in this case it was arbitrary and untested.
Never hurts to try it out though.
Imperial Hoth Base Raid
in The Ebon Hawk
Posted
This was seriously a lot of fun, and I regret I didn't remember to record video of it
Thanks for the impromptu kill/die fest 