bump for devs, pretty please

How hard is it to put in an effective barrier? Is this an example of (yet again) poor design? Or is it an example of sheer ingenuity on the part of those who discovered the exploit? If the former, BW should look at banning themselves.

So it's business as usual for BW Austin. Bruce MacLean said last year he was frustrated at their self-imposed 10 month silence on things because they didn't want to "spoil the story". And yet they are doing the same this year. I guess they haven't figured out how to be better at communicating or figured out that from a cost/benefit perspective, silence does more harm to your customerbase than silly things like a few minor spoilers here and there.

Geolocation sites like that reflect the location of the ISPs office address/PO Box, not necessarily the actual location of whatever equipment is connected and using that IP address. EA is headquartered in Redwood City and 'owns' that IP- which is connected to a cluster in a Virginia datacenter (near DC specifically). For example my company owns several IP blocks that, according to sites like whatismyipaddress, are in Walnut Creek CA where our offices are but those IPs are connected to equipment in a datacenter in Sacramento. Now, some games like WoW do colocate different time-zoned realms in the same physical location. For example, Doomhammer is a MST realm while Aerie Peak is a PST realm but both are physically located in a New York datacenter.

West coast servers are in California, East coast servers are in Virginia. That's probably how megaservers would look as well eg Bastion/Harb/BC would become the west coast megaserver. They'd get around name collision by appending some tag sort of like WoW does.

I think they are counting it as an operation. Which is hilariously pathetic.

Does BW consider the Ziost boss as keeping their promise that there would not be a repeat of the post-DF/DP 13 month PVE content drought? I hope they are not so desperate and bare-minimum effort (not to mention dishonest) to consider a one off world boss as an operation. Not that waiting until 12 months and 29 days to release the next ops after TOS/Rav is any better.

The main takeaway from this thread: the combat team is politely telling the customer base to "ST-FU" and wait until 4.0 at which time they may/may not see a suitable improvement to the class. The other takeaway is that Eric probably urged them to respond after seeing this thread blowup. They would've otherwise been as mute as always.

There must be a reason for this disparity in utility/mobility? Heads up developers: when everyone talks about more transparency, a good example would be a dev coming in and answering questions like this.

Exactly

"It's just not something we will change in the short term." In other words, wait until 4.0. That's something the playerbase already knows. All marauder changes from 3.0 to now indicate none of the combat team mains or at least understands marauders from a player POV. Their perspective on rotation design comes solely from spreadsheets and metrics. Both perspectives should be balanced with each other. 4.0 annihilation will probably be a throwback to 2.10 - rupture reset, shorter dot duration, and possible removal of Force Gash. Also, was this post written by the combat team, or is it just Eric reiterating and redigesting what the combat team already said + salient points from several user posts in this thread? It's a little disheartening that the combat team can't defend itself and relies on Eric as a buffer.

I loved 2.x carnage. It was fun to master and imho the most enjoyable dps spec of any class in 2.x because it was by far the hardest dps spec in ROTHC. It's still the hardest mara spec in SOR though that doesn't say anything because all the mara specs are easy. The current combat team which is clearly not the same team from 12-24 months ago, is terrible at designing the so called "hard" rotations. Annihilation maras, IO mercs, and the recent screwup with pyro powertechs prove that.

BW, where is the ranged tax? You ask us to blame the ops team for melee-unfriendly raid mechanics, yet you are equally to blame because you failed to implement a ranged tax. The two go hand in hand. It should be: dot melee > dot ranged = burst melee > burst ranged Also, annihilation is not hard. Rage is not hard. Carnage is slightly "harder" than the others, but still not difficult. So your designs on discipline difficulty are out of line as are your damage targets for ranged dps vs melee dps. To step back for a moment: you could have left carnage 2.x as the awesome "hard" spec that you created by mistake, left annihilation 2.x as the easy spec, and made Rage as the moderate spec. You already had all those pieces in place and you really didn't have to spend all this work just to mess up a good thing. Instead, you were stubborn and insisted that carnage had to be the 'easy' spec because "that's what was always intended since 1.x". When chance hands you a good thing , learn to shift gears and adapt, even if the rng in 2.x carnage was too difficult for you to mathematically model. Now that the double-proc bug on the Resurrected Focused Retribution relic has been fixed (again), the high parses for annihilation are no longer accurate as that relic bug was a huge buff for the spec. Will you buff annihilation to compensate? Or is this an unforeseen but acceptable form of class balance roadkill/casualty? Allow Ravage to be channeled while moving.

That bug resurfaced again? Isn't this like the 4th time they've "fixed" it? Bioware, learn to source control

Yep, this is their roundabout, PR sanitized equivalent of saying "just heal to full" and "make them pay", complete with pseudo-metrics. Alex Peckenbaugh was responsible for those ridiculous heal to full memes years ago and he's no longer at BW. Yet I see nothing has really changed with the combat team- they're still out to embarrass themselves. This is their pathetic nerdy attempt to put their foot down and say "we won't budge so just dps to full and blame the operations/flashpoints team".

What they should've done at 3.0 launch is properly introduce a ranged dps tax that goes beyond what they talked about in the November stream. (a) In that stream they said their goal was: dot melee = dot ranged > burst melee > burst ranged (b) Due to the mechanics and uptime challenges that melee must deal with, it should have been more like: dot melee > burst melee = dot ranged > burst ranged So far they have failed at (a), much less even consider (b).

You know why they won't change the annihilation rotation? Because they have a homogenized mathematical model for all dot based specs and don't want to create a new one just for one discipline. That's why anni feels like a ripoff of hatred assassins.

That would imply they still play their own game. If they do, I think it's pretty clear none of them play mara/sent.

So, difficulty-wise it's supposed to be carnage < fury < annihilation? Is this for PVP or PVE? While all the specs are easy, I'd say in reality it's more like carnage > annihilation > fury. Carnage is also the most fun. Make it so that Ravage can be channeled while moving. That would be a great utility/QOL change. It would be great if you devs could talk about the state of the ranged dps tax and how it currently does not exist. Please don't rely solely on metrics/statistics to justify your position as those can easily be tunneled and manipulated to support any claim. What are your thoughts about the playstyle/rotation of annihilation that everyone is complaining about? If you think it's ok, say so and tell everyone that it will not be changing. If you plan to revert it in 4.0, say so. Are your plans for addressing marauders in PVE something like having the ops team work on more melee friendly mechanics, nerf dps outliers so marauders are indirectly buffed, and give marauders utility/mobility enhancements? Then say so.

Arsenal merc and lightning sorc are very easy. At a high end PVE view, carnage marauder is easy at first glance but is actually harder than it seems. It's still harder and more fun than annihilation and rage despite Bioware's best efforts to make it the derp marauder spec in 3.0

Actually I'd prefer that over a stand. A jetpack with its engine on, hovering in place. Or four disconnected Brontes wings, jet-hovering in place.

The jetpack found in the latest cartel pack can be placed in strongholds. Please also make the Wings of the Architect jetpack mount placeable as well.

Yes. See below 1) Most folks throw away their starter gear and years later have second thoughts and may want it back on their main character instead of leveling another (insert class). Or would customer support restore this item? 2) Some folks want to use one class' starter gear look on another. Say, using warrior starting gear on their knight. 3) Can it be dyed via outfit designer?

/bump

I doubt anyone with a brain believed them years back when they reassured players "Shadowrealms will not have an impact on TOR development".