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DmdShiva

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Everything posted by DmdShiva

  1. In the companion mission for Khem Val on Hoth to recover Tulak Hord's bones, ZashKhem says that the Inquisitor can take anything they want from the storehouse... but it's empty. Like so many other tombs, caverns, ruins, and whatnot that you go into as an instance to recover one particular thing, it would cut back on the feeling that the instance was purely a set piece showcasing only the one mission goal if there were some randomly scattered things to open -- some of which would be empty, most of the rest having a "you find [random thing], which could be worth something to the right person, but is worthless to you now and too much trouble to haul out", and a few with contents like the small loot boxes you find around the worlds (a small crafting bag, some junk, and a random white/green/blue item).
  2. The problem for conquest itself wasn't that you could hit your personal conquest goal on a bunch of different alts in a week, but that you could produce hundreds of thousands of points past your personal conquest goal on a bunch of different alts in a week. Time you put into spreading your conquest earnings out among several characters is the same, as far as earning points toward conquering a planet goes, as earning all those points on one character. Except for crafting war supplies -- earning 100,000 conquest points on one character is the same as earning 100,000 conquest points total over five alts. During a crafting week, though, you could stack up as much crafting as eight companions could grind out, then move to the next character. Unfortunately, because the time and/or credits spent to acquire the mats for these crafts happens with no way for the devs to readily measure it with the log tools they have, the devs are unable to see how much time or credits go into the preparation; all they see is 'log in, kick off crafting, log out, repeat', and that scheduling crafting weeks every other week for two months wasn't able to drain the resources of people who'd built up materials reserves over a long period of time or could afford to buy mats from people who weren't crafting. Where the difference between earning all your conquest points on one character and spreading them out among several alts lies is in the rewards; clearly, being able to reach personal conquest on five characters earns you a better reward than earning all those points on one character. And that's where Bioware has fallen down in this revamp; they were so fixated on the 'many alts earning hundreds of thousands of conquest points' issue that they gutted the 'reaching personal conquest goal on several alts' target of the players; by making it impossible for each alt to run hogwild with completing conquest goals, they handicapped the guilds with fewer legacies -- and making the Medium and Large invasion goals a geometrically higher cost for a linearly higher reward, they encouraged the large guilds to participate in the Small invasion targets, handicapping the small guilds even further.
  3. Ahh, the "You're not having fun the way we want you to have fun, so we're going to force you to have fun our way, even if you don't like doing that, because we're sure that you'll enjoy doing something you don't like once we force you into doing it enough" premise. Let's say you knew someone who thought that getting smacked upside the head with a 2x4 was the greatest thing in the world, and to make sure that you got to enjoy that, too, every time you saw him, he'd smack you upside the head with a 2x4. How long do you think it would take you to stop having anything to do with him?
  4. That's not true; I found it to be quite rewarding -- I got both of the world boss goals without a problem. That I got them while running the CZ-198 dailies, each one for defeating a basic mob was a problem, and points up how broken the system is. But it can be both broken and rewarding -- the latter just not the way Bioware intended.
  5. Ilum: Rampage. 1000 conquest points, x2 or x3 if invading Ilum, with a 150% bonus for maxed strongholds. That's 3500 to 4500 conquest points. Now, with a maxed stronghold bonus, it's 825 points. Repeatable once per day, that's four or five _days_ you have to dedicate toward getting the same points you could have earned from the one-and-done version it was before. But you can run it on other alts, too... and take away time more 'profitably' spent grinding your first character to get to their personal conquest goal. Or look at the 'random flashpoint, must be eligible for daily reward' goal. 1000 points, another 1000 for Battle of Ilum at any difficulty, another 1000 for the five veteran flashpoint goal. 150% stronghold bonus, 15-30 minutes per flashpoint, and that's 15,000 conquest points for four characters in two hours, with an additional 2500 (and the Ilum invasion bonus for another 1000) for one character. One war supply at 2000 base for another 5000, an invasion force for another 2000 base/5000 end, and you've got personal conquest on two characters, with plenty of time during the week to run out 5000 points for each of the other two characters -- another daily flashpoint for each of them is half of that, and you've got the rampage for one character and any of the base personnel, commanders, operations, GSF, and PvP goals for the fourth -- and you still have time to work on leveling a character or two. But now Bioware's made it more 'challenging', which seems to mean 'grind your tuchis off and you can get it on one character, good luck getting it on two; forget three or four unless you don't have a life', with new ways to throw the time and effort you put into gathering mats for war supplies and invasion forces down a rathole -- seriously, destroying war supplies for a little extra conquest points, after they jacked the cost of making them into the sky and disenfranchised the low-skill characters in the process? And the guild invasion rewards -- you get a base return for invading a 'small' planet, one and a half times the reward for meeting a goal three times as high, or twice the reward for meeting a goal five times as high. And being in the top ten while doing it. Most conquest guilds don't pick their targets on the basis of the reward, they do it because their guild members need the planet to complete their conquest. If a large guild needs the planet selected as a 'small' invasion, they'll do it, and the small guilds now competing against a large guild are SoL.
  6. Rather than doing this, have the tier difference when you send your companions out determine the level of reward you get. Send a companion out on a tier 1 mission for tier 1 rewards, or a tier 5 mission for tier 5 rewards, or a tier 10 mission for tier 10 rewards, and you get the basic return result. Send a companion out on a tier 2 mission for tier 1 rewards, and you get a higher return if successful. Each mission tier up past the tier of the rewards returns more mats. If you've got a Scavenging skill of 600, and you send a companion out with all of that skill behind them looking for Desh, they're going to be better at it than sending a companion out for Desh with a Scavenging skill of 10.
  7. "Complete a random flashpoint through Group Finder; must be eligible for the daily reward", IIRC for 1,000 points base, plus the occasional one-and-done per legacy "Complete flashpoint XXX in any mode" for another 1,000 points. One random flashpoint per day for five days -- "worked on throughout the week" -- got you the conquest reward for completing the five-veteran-flashpoints mission. In the revamped conquest, 'Complete Battle of Ilum on any difficulty mode" awards -- with a full stronghold bonus -- 325 points. But it's repeatable... which, for six days at max stronghold bonus, earns you less than you would have earned doing the daily random FP, the veteran-flashpoints mission, and the one-and-done Battle of Ilum under the old setup. Yes, we can work on it throughout the week... but we don't even come close to earning what we used to... and the personal conquest goal is the same. So the crafting 150 characters who used to be able to craft war supplies and invasion forces, earning conquest points on their own, get relegated to making intermediate components and feeding them to the characters who can make the grade 8 and 9 intermediate components that are needed for every type of war supply, making them less able to participate in conquest by taking away one of their sources of conquest points. If crafting is making up too much of conquest, change the rewards from a 'once per item' for war supplies to a set of tiered 'once per character' goals -- 'craft one war supply', 'craft five war supplies', 'craft 10 war supplies', 'craft 25 war supplies', etc. This allows both tuning the reward value for each tier of reward and varying the number of tiers available for a particular week -- a week might only have the 'craft one war supply' objective, like most of the weeks under the previous conquest setup, or could have the first three goals, or might be a full-blown crafting week, with goals up to, say, 500 war supplies. A laudable goal... but taking away many of the choices of activity we used to have, and degrading the 'reward' for the ones that remain to a point where they're not worth the time to complete them, should have been seen from the beginning as a poor choice. Let's see... Base reward for 'small' invasions... 'medium' invasions have roughly three times the cost for one and a half times the reward... and 'large' invasions have roughly five times the cost for twice the rewards. Unless you're gating the more 'desirable' planets behind assigning them as 'large' invasions, there is zero incentive to invade anything other than a 'small' planet on the basis of the rewards you get. Someone at Bioware wrote the spiel for the vendor selling roast Gorak on Asylum... did no one see that you were doing the same thing with conquest rewards?
  8. Not only that, it majorly nerfed the ability of crafters to participate significantly in conquest crafting. All the war supplies require grade 8 and 9 intermediate components now. Previously, if a character got to skill 150 on their crafting skill, they could craft the low-level intermediate mats and make war supplies from them, earning conquest points. Now, the best they can do is craft the low-end intermediate mats and feed them to other characters, or have other characters feed them the higher-level intermediate components. Rather than make crafting much more painful, if it was necessary to reduce the effect that wide-open crafting had on conquest, stretch out the goals as one-and-done by character: Conquest goal, craft a war supply or invasion force. Next tier of conquest goal, craft five war supplies or invasion forces, giving twice the conquest points that crafting a single one did. Next tier, craft 25, again giving twice the conquest points that the previous one did. You can stretch the list out as far as needed. The point award for each tier can be fiddled to produce the desired use of crafting to contribute to conquest, and a particular conquest week might not have all of them -- a 'standard' week only has the 'make one' goal; a 'light crafting' week might have the 'make one' and 'make five' goals, and a full-on crafting week would have all of them.
  9. I fail to see the difference between the 'repeatable' and 'daily' objectives, unless this is an incomplete description (as is normal for what we get dribbled to us), and the 'daily' objectives can only be done once per day, but can be done each day during the week -- so you can do it five times over five days, but only once per day, like the 'queue for a random flashpoint, must be eligible for the daily reward' objective works per character
  10. It's something going on with the brightness of the light bridges -- if you turn bloom off, the light bridges go back to being translucent, but they're still brighter than they used to be. Turn bloom back on, and they return to being featureless white sheets of energy.
  11. Also, weapons drawn to destroy mission objects do not properly set the "weapon is drawn" flag for the character, resulting in various visual oddities resulting from using 'weapon not drawn' animations while holding their weapons -- for example, instead of running with their assault cannon held across their chest, a Commando will run as if they were empty-handed, pumping their arms, their assault cannon gripped in the right hand by the rear grip and waving it madly up and down.
  12. With the addition that the loose purple mods from the command crates do not appear to be RE-able; I've been getting purple 234 mods of all types -- barrels, hilts, mods, and enhancements -- from tier 1 crates, and all of them have shown 'No Research Available' when I try to RE them.
  13. I've been seeing the Tier 1 crates dropping 234 "[item description] 48" enhancements, armorings, and barrels, and all of them show "No Research Available" when I stick them in legacy gear to pass to the relevant crafters. This appears to be specific to the loose mods.
  14. When I was doing the "Enemies of the Republic" mission on Coruscant with a Gunslinger, I found an unusual bug that I've never noticed before. On the underlevel below the Temple proper -- the level where you have the guarded door that the mercenaries are trapped behind, that you reach by going up ramps from the Jedi Temple speeder point -- anywhere on that floor, if you try to take cover, you get the message "not usable in air". To demonstrate it easily, go to the Jedi Temple speeder or QT point, go up the ramp to the elevator that will take you up to the Jedi Temple proper, and try to enter cover. The game will throw up the pop-up message "Not usable in air." Update: The effect persists on the Jedi Temple level and in the instance for "Enemies of the Republic" as well. Only taking cover in the open, where you get the defense barrier, is affected, however; taking cover behind an object is still functional.
  15. I've been wanting something like this for a long time; having to take the whole set when all you want is one piece, and then destroy each of the others, is a pain. Even something like being able to alt-click on items in your inventory to drag them all at the same time would be an improvement.
  16. As an update to this bug, it causes Collections to misbehave when you use your scroll wheel. I was assembling an outfit for a new character, and was looking for an appropriate set of gloves. I clicked on the 'Show Details' icon for the Revealing Bodysuit set, then used the scroll wheel to scroll down on the pop-up window showing the set to where the gloves were visible. Previewing the gloves, I decided that they were what I was looking for, so I closed the preview window, and clicked on the 'claim' icon on the detail pop-up, which was still showing the Revealing Bodysuit set. What the game delivered to my inventory was a set of the Ceremonial Guard gear, which was in the same position on the array of displayed armor sets, but on the previous tab. When you use the scroll bar inside the preview window, the collections window will also scroll tabs, and if you have a 'Show Details' window open, the 'claim' button in that window will claim, not the armor you'd selected to display the details for and which that window is showing), but the armor in the same position in the Collections window that your use of the scrollbar has taken you to. It's not a game-breaking bug, because you can just go back to the armor you did want and claim that, but when you think you're claiming armor set A and the game gives you armor set B, it's annoying, because now you have to waste time dragging each piece of the unwanted set out of your inventory, then clicking 'yes' on the 'do you want to destroy this item?' popup one at a time.
  17. If you have the Cartel Market window open to a category that has multiple pages, the mouse scroll wheel will now let you page forward and back through the pages; this is a useful addition to the interface. However, if you are previewing something -- for example, an armor set -- the mouse scroll wheel will zoom your preview window in and out.... and scroll through the pages of the cartel market window at the same time. This will, of course, switch your cartel market window away from the page for the item you're previewing. The mouse scroll wheel should affect only the topmost window.
  18. I'm working from memory, but I seem to remember that the skank tank setup was to take the tanking armorings and mods with DPS enhancements, a shield, and DPS relics and implants. You still want to maximize your Endurance for survivability, but throw DPS improvements on top of that.
  19. With the planetary/daily missions being accessed randomly through the Galactic Command window, many players will just hit GC up again for a new offering if they don't get the planetary mission they want, repeat until they get one they're willing to run. Barring adding a mechanism to let players select which planet they want to run heroics/dailies for, it would be useful to be able to see a list of the planets that a player has already done since the last reset without having to go to the Fleet or Odessen to the heroics terminal to see the list there -- and those terminals only list the heroic missions, not the dailies. If you 've got a number of characters, and you've been cycling through them for crafting and grinding, you may not remember whether you've run a particular set of heroics/dailies, and cycling through the GC window trying to get a particular planet's missions when you've already run them on that character is just a waste of time.
  20. The looting annoyance appears to be tied to mob rank -- if you're in a group, and you defeat a bunch of Regular or Strong mobs, anyone clicking on a lootable body picks up the loot for everyone, but mobs that are Elite or Champion will loot only for the player doing the looting -- everyone else on the team has to loot that body individually. Also, only the first person to loot an Elite or Champion can take advantage of area loot -- they'll loot all the 'reachable' bodies, but everyone else will have to loot each Elite or Champion separately. This can be a significant slowdown in a mission.
  21. As someone else observed, a huge boost in CXP reward for the dailies has resulted in the planets with dailies being populated again; it's clear that the perception of the playerbase that the standard rewards were insufficient for them to bother with, but once they were cranked they did get used again.
  22. You can add that if you transfer to your Manaan stronghold and immediately log out, you get the "You are in an unsafe area" timer on your logout.
  23. When a character travels to the Manaan stronghold, the introductory cinematic plays, no matter how many times the character has already traveled to the stronghold. This continues even after swapping to another character and back.
  24. First, as we saw toward the end of the clip, it's reliant on that specific design of lightsaber; it's not an inherent ability of the Inquisitor. Second, this ability is demonstrated only after the founding of the Inquisitorius, less than two decades BBY, which puts it more than 3000 years after the events of SWTOR, so there would have to be a pretty compelling reason to try to jam it back through thousands of years of history just because you want to be able to fly -- even ignoring how much having one class being able to fly would distort the game and how much of the limited design of the game environment would get displayed once you get outside of the viewpoints the devs designed the worlds to be seen from. I agree with Worldsmasher's amendment; if it were done the way we saw Thanaton doing it, and specced up in game as an effect analogous to the Jump abilities of other classes, not a general-travel flight ability, then it could be managed in a way that doesn't break the game world design.
  25. After watching the City of Heroes devs announce a significant nerf to the Regeneration powerset based on their internal testing showing that a solo Claws/Regen Scrapper could defeat spawns of mobs seven levels higher sized for an 8-person team, then, despite the protests of the entire playerbase claiming that this was flat-out impossible, going ahead and applying the nerf after admitting that they'd found a bug in their internal test server that didn't reduce a player's chance to hit against higher-level mobs that would have reduced the scrapper's hit chances by 90% and claiming that the powerset still needed the nerf, I've stopped believing that game developers bother looking at actual statistics from real gameplay; it's so much easier to set up artificial conditions to test against, where optimally-geared characters using perfect rotations against artificial targets that don't act like actual in-game mobs give them the numbers they use to decide where to hand out the next set of nerfs.
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