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DarthElation

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Everything posted by DarthElation

  1. It makes no sense from a DESIGN perspective. If the game was designed in a way where you could do this 'grind' type of leveling anywhere, then sure- it would make sense. This type of leveling isn't old either(this is how you do it in EQ). I would even prefer this type of leveling if the entire galaxy was converted to allow grind leveling this way. But unfortunately, it's not. This game has a leveling system more similar to WoW, and as such, you detract from that system by exploiting areas that were not designed for this sort of gameplay. And btw. Grind leveling is much more fun when the mobs are actually hard. They are a joke in this game.
  2. I never did this, as I always interpreted this as essentially skipping the leveling process by mass killing things in 1 spot? If that's the case... How can anyone possibly think this is good for the integrity of the game world? BioWare did a great thing here. People need to utilize the in game systems: WZ's, FP's, & missions to level to allow quicker queue times and a chance for players to actually socialize and group. You guys outta wipe out everything that players exploit. Stuff like this makes new players lose faith and doesn't help bring people to the game. And we don't need an explanation. Just do it, ignore these other people that don't have half a sense as to how bad something like this is in the grand scheme of things.
  3. So the dude tries something for the first time then quits in a pvp setting? I get it if this was a PVE setting...If the guy doesn’t care to learn or question then should we care to help and keep these people around? Most people that try any new pvp for the first time get their *** kicked. But your friend must be so good that it’s the game’s fault and not his.
  4. Could be many reasons for that. How many concurrent players do nim ops v.s. current totals? How many players are capable of doing nim ops vs people that aren’t? For players that stay subscribing vs people that don’t- what % of both groups are actual raiders? For people that play the game hardcore v.s. people that don’t- what % are raiders from each group? What’s the % of people that run NIM content vs those that haven’t run NIM content that want to? Are nim ops player numbers the way they are because content has been so stale? And if so, how do these numbers compare to games that are as content stale vs those that aren’t? Do games with the highest hardcore raider counts also have the largest of populations? Do games with low raider populations also have low overall server populations? What about just the current raider % populations in a game like WoW. How much money & development time went into raid development v.s. other areas of the game? How does this data compare to how other mmo’s prioritize content development? What about an MMO gameplay structure with no raids. How do those server populations fare compared to SWTOR? I work with metrics every day and you have to consider everything. Rarely something “is” or “isn’t” behind the “justification” of a blanket statement. In reality swtor is very hard to compare to other games because the game is so different from others. Most of it’s development focus ‘overall’ went into the story & voice acting which isn’t common for others in the industry. Metrics are more of a guidepost.
  5. Passive aggressiveness aside you mustn't have read everything I wrote. Can't say I blame you, it's a wall of text that needs a TLDR. That being said- I'm not saying things have to be one way or another. Just saying there needs to be balance. And yes there should be more incentive for players to engage in social interaction. This is how people connect and play together. People that play together are typically more motivated to keep doing so. Right now there isn't a lot of incentive for me to engage with other players while leveling and the game isn't challenging enough from a solo standpoint for me to forego group content all together.
  6. If everything was free and easy there wouldn’t be anyone here. The best & most populated games had some level of challenge. From the start. This game no longer has that. It did, but a myriad of changes over the years have made that experience too easy. I think the problem here is companion gearing, mission difficulty changes, and auto bolster need some tuning. Or maybe we can get a simple slider to change the difficulty. When players are forced to reach out to other players to progress they will do so. I’ve seen too many games destroyed by this ‘lets make it for everyone mentality’. It’s impossible because it’s unrealistic and unbelievable in the mind’s eye of the player, and most importantly it starts sectioning off different social groups in the game to the point where they don’t interact anymore, killing one of the biggest tenets of an online game.. I saw Ultima Online lose the majority of it’s player base when they decided to add trammel, which effectively added a new continent into their sandbox that disallowed pvp. At the time, this seemed like a good thing. Yay we’re no longer going to get ganked at balrogs or crossroads! Nope. This change ended up pissing off more people than it actually helped. So the pvp people left, and then most of the pve folks left as there was too large a void from everyone else that left. It killed the fear and excitement that so many people didn’t realize they wanted. It’s ok now- people figured this out and guess what servers are the most populated now? The player-driven emulated ones that don’t include trammel. I saw Everquest slowly dwindle down over the years. Everquest started to embrace ‘instancing’ of raid/group content in a persistent world where instancing wasn’t even a thing yet. Everquest was also very immersive as instant travel was impossible and if you wanted to get anywhere quick you had to get a port or buff from a player. Yep- you were forced to socialize to do anything. The community as a result was VERY connected. We still are. The player had to compete against other players for raid, group, and quest content as nothing was instanced. Raids were insane. 72 people or more in a raid with no comms. There hasn’t been an experience to match it after these 20 years. Anywho, now DBG makes timelocked progression servers and they’ve been bringing back old-school mechanics. The most populated of these is a player driven classic eq recreation called project1999. It’s been going so strong for 10 years now and is more populated than it’s ever been. No carebear mechanics. Full contested non-instanced mmo. WoW- Blizzard snagged a few folks from the top EQ guild of Fires of Heaven and gave them design positions for their new mmo. WoW is essentially an EQ clone dumbed down with a solid franchise name behind it and the hype was real in 2004. WoW captured us with it’s balance and smooth functionality, but after 2010 it’s been in decline. They’ve recognized some mistakes- flying everywhere actually requires hefty unlocks now as to not diminish the value/size of the world as much. I haven’t kept up much with wow and any EQ player i’ve met will tell you, there’s not much to remember anyways. Wow hasn’t left memories the same way EQ did 20 years later. The risk vs reward paradigm simply doesn’t compare. EQ2- Around the same time as WoW, EQ2 was released. Graphically amazing, voiced over characters and quest npc’s just like SWTOR, but it ran like ****. I think it still runs bad. People stuck with WoW. (Wow was smooth and ran well even on dialup) SWG- Didn’t play it, but wasn’t surprised at the fallout as SOE was doing a grreat job running EQ1 & 2 into the ground. Pantheon Rise of the Fallen- Developers and community that generally want a new mmo with oldschool-difficult mechanics. Now the mmo industry is at the point where we have to throw money at people to get them to do the right thing. There’s a lot more. Not just mmo’s. If anything can be learned it’s that easier isn’t better. There’s too many variables that must be considered else you risk displacing entire communities who are the ones that keep things alive.
  7. I xferred against my better judgement from SS>SF. More players. Same queue times in pvp and pve.Tons of RPers.
  8. Haha. Mindreader! That’s where I was headed. Oh well.
  9. Yeah I’m not buying this story. We had a massive guild in 1.0 days where no one had problems with content. There was an occasional ask for help killing a boss here or there. After that entire guild collapsed, and subsequently the server, other guilds I’ve joined showed similar behavior. This was consistent over the years, until content became so easy you’d never see that occasional request for help. There definitely was never a majority of people clamoring that content was too hard. If anything it could have been tuned to be more difficult back then to encourage more grouping. This was all back when there were 50 or so servers.. Now with only 2 left in NA. I suppose it could be telling of the current playerbase as all the people actually looking for a challenge are long gone...
  10. Hold up a sec. The solo story content was way more challenging from 1.0 until a few expansions in. You'd have people asking for help from other players to finish certain fights. Initially, the content WAS intended to be difficult/challenging or what have you. The point that's not being grasped here is that content is so easy it's boring, which ultimately isn't going to motivate ANY replay value. Another issue adding to the pile of why the population has been in decline over the years. I've personally had friends quit right off the bat and not give the game a chance due to content being an absolute pushover. It really sets a bad tone. Makes experienced gamers feel like this thing was made for a 6 year old to play.
  11. Agree. Prefer Huttball>Arenas. Would be cool to get the majority's take on this.
  12. I remember when it was first brought around. Many of us disgruntled types recognized that it was a bad thing from the get-go. I'd rather be charged up front for content, not force-fed content and expected to pay for it via RNG in a Casino-like store. If we use the mentality of "Well it keeps the game afloat", then when will it end? I don't even necessarily disagree with you here. I've done it myself. But would it not be more ethical for EA/Bioware to offer a different monetization strategy that actually helps the game grow and become a better place that keeps people logged in and logging back in? Because right now population wise it appears the worst I've seen which implies the status-quo is not good for this game's presence as an MMO. Even though we currently have populated servers- there aren't many more servers that can be merged. This trend can't be good for the game if it continues. How many more years will we have a Galaxy set in The Old Republic if it does? Do you think another version of it will pop up with Disney in command in our lifetime? I think the server mergers and population of the game speaks for itself in this regard. I think largely, the cartel market is responsible for this- EA/Bioware's dependency thereof or maybe the lack of world-content as a result. Some of the best looking stuff the game has to offer is offered in an RNG casino store. Instead of gathering my pals and strategizing how to get some amazing looking thing in the game's world (or in this case, galaxy), I am now faced with an item of similar value or aesthetic appeal- in a store that only accepts $$$. I think this market is devaluing the Galaxy as people no longer need to turn to only it when they have the itch to look the best. This hurts the multiplayer play. All the above being said, there's definitely been some tuning since I last played to the market that makes it less unethical. I'm definitely not up to speed with any current roadmaps or spotlights with EA/Bioware's current plans here. Final thoughts- I think EA/Bioware would see massive success with a pledge system that's similar to Star Citizens. They release a concept and people pledge towards it. At least you know what you're getting. If you think it's a scam you're wrong. That game has now surpassed SWTOR's development costs. Almost entirely funded by people pledging money. Granted, even though it's been in development forever, CIG is delivering on their tech goals and the community as whole is sympathetic as CIG is delivering a breadth and scale that's never been seen before in a video game. They have the most transparent development process ever seen. For SWTOR, this type of thing could go towards revitalizing the player base. Ditch most of the development time allocated towards the cartel market and come up with a separate subscription service or a service that direct charges whoever in the community wants to invest in making this thing better. This game has a serious community behind it who haven't been utilized properly. I know I'm not the only one who would kick out some serious cash for some world-building and revitalization to the player base. Just need a plan.
  13. To put it another way- my character doesn't feel as connected to the differing worlds anymore and everything feels a bit less believable. Think of Cantinas! Cantinas are useless from a social standpoint. People may log out in them, but xp feels quick enough regardless and I find myself not caring about the xp bonus as much as I did back in 1.0. If Cantinas could be used in a way where people are motivated to go to them to form groups or whatever then a Cantina gains value. Instead of giving 0 ***** I give 1 ****. Players benefit from increased social interaction>interaction motivates friendships>friends form groups more often>people have a reason to log in the next day = the galaxy feels a little bigger.
  14. That's exactly what I meant. And my objection is well placed in what I wrote, I point out exactly what you're saying here. ( I realize I don't have to use these tools, but the effect doesn't work unless everyone is utilizing the world similarily) I didn't mention taxis, but think they should stick around. They've been around since day 1 and don't mind them as long as you have to discover them first. The Vanilla planets are large- not star citizen large, but now they feel smaller than they were with how simple travel is now. As I said, planets are moreso platforms for quick travel functionality whilst the large open portions that were once traveled from place>place are largely ignored, effectively making planets feel 'smaller'. Running into people traveling isn't as common, meeting a friend to group with in the wild isn't as common, the chance for me to socially interact with other people in the open isn't as common. Content is too easy in some circumstances- running content with a friend is a pushover although I can't speak to the difficulty of 2 new players with no legacy unlocks grouping together. With how easy content is there's no need for me to socially interact with others to complete said content. Further diminishing the size, scope, and immersive feel of things. Forcing social interaction is a good thing for an MMO and the RPG aspects of any game. This was the point I was attempting to make. In Vanilla I remember traveling down into the depths of Nar Shadaa which almost felt like dungeon crawling in Diablo, but now that type of fun is gone. I'm probably not articulating the thing I am trying to put the spotlight on here. I call it immersion which makes the experience more addicting for me. It's a big part of why people play EQ/UO/OSR after all these years. I think these concepts can be brought back cheaply as no new features are required, but tweaking of current systems and it's one of those things I think people would appreciate v.s. the "convenient" alternatives that ruin the immersive scape. Causing more harm than good in the grand scale of things.
  15. Returning player here. I typically check in year after year to see what's up, and I'm finally (after 7 years) happy to see things expanding generally in the right direction. Still very hopeful for this thing after the years as a fan of Star Wars EU, an avid book reader, and someone who's enjoyed MMO's since Ultima Online. Wanted to share some notes: 1. When I returned to the game last year, I tried bringing a friend with me to run content with. He never touched the game before this, and I had to talk him into it. We started our newbs and didn't get very far. It was sort of an embarrassing experience as I was 1 shotting virtually everything with my max datacron unlock account & other unlocks that boost character power too much at lower levels. Needless to say, we didn't stick around very long and my friend ultimately wasn't interested in running the content solo and quit. The content was so easy that it lost virtually all of it's value and meant nothing- including the story in our minds-eye. That being said, I recently rolled a new character and have been running content solo. My newb is so powerful it ruins the fun for new players in my group. Are there plans to address this? Maybe slowly scale up legacy companion & datacron bonuses? If the game was at a 1.0 difficulty state, I feel like I'd have another pal to run things with. 2. Over the years I became a bit salty and jaded towards the whole cartel market thing. Ultimately I view this as an attempt to exploit people's vanity for $$$. This has been apart of the EA business model for many games since the playstation FIFA days. It's truly self serving and adds little to world building which is what keeps people playing. The cartel market has been nothing but a parasite that has sucked actual content development out of this game and most importantly the player base. Glad to see this 'service' tuned down and I hope remarkable appearance gear can be acquired from actual game loops v.s. an RNG casino crate. 3. The starting planets are huge. In the game's early days I remember experiencing a sense of wonder and excitement at getting the chance to eventually explore "that thing over there". Now, I can instantly quick travel, speeder, or teleport/summon to locations of interest...which makes those locations not as interesting. Here's how I see it: There's an intrinsic value associated with a world and all of its assets. There's value in a player being forced to use that world. This can include figuring out how to cross a mountain, the best road to use, what mobs to avoid, the best vendors to use, what missions to start with, geographical landmarks to use as a guide, etc. All of these things add to the immersion. Most of these things are ignored now that I have the option to quick travel around them. These massive beautiful planets aren't nearly as immersive with quick travel the way it is now. The planets are not as compelling to visit & explore as they are just platforms for insta-travel points. The planet content and the music ambience is still great. Glad to see Corellia being used in the next expansion. Would love to see these existing planets get more fleshed out over time. I realize that I don't have to buy the quick travel upgrades. I can run instead of using insta-travel, but that would be non-immersive and unrealistic as well unless all players are forced to do the same. It would be nice to see fellow players inhabiting the same random spaces as me on a planet. Maybe ditch insta-travel and up the speed on personal speeders instead? Personal speeders are a bit slow compared to what we've seen elsewhere in movies and games. There's plenty more good/bad that I could go on about, but I feel strongly towards the above. Many of the older MMO's are starting to double back on their present builds for "progression" or "classic" servers to take advantage of more 'classic' designs. There's nothing wrong with this. Good ideas, concepts, and philosophies stick around and some aren't even appreciated until the passage of time occurs. Take a look at a game like Everquest. It's been around since 1999 and it's seen resurgence over the years as they have put a lot of development time into progression servers. Then take a look at project1999.com- a player made 'classic' Everquest project that has been around for 10 years. Over this 10 year period, the server populations have increased every year(server pop data is transparent for all users). The project was also sanctioned by Daybreak Games- the current owners of the Everquest franchise. Project1999 has been a huge proof of concept for companies like Daybreak and even Blizzard who have now come out with their own 'classic' server progression models. Even Project1999 recently announced the release of a new server.
  16. One thing I wonder to anyone complaining about OP classes is to asses your PVP play style. 1. Is every ability keybound or do you click? 2. Do you turn with the keyboard? 3. Do you set focus targets? Phase-walking barrier-using sorcs have been the least of my troubles as a Jugg or sniper. Yes they are annoying, but you shouldn't have problems getting back to a sorc that has phase walked, or switch/return to target after a sorc barriers. Sorcs are the easiest class to disrupt in combat and (IMO) the class that suffers the most from harassment. Another thing to consider- Killing the enemy doesn't always contribute to map objective success. Scenario 1: 1. You cause sorc to bubble. (This puts them out of the fight for x amount of time) 2. After they bubble, they run off (This puts them out of the fight for x amount of time) 3. Phase walk. (This puts them out of the fight for x amount of time) Scenario 2: You kill sorc, they jump back on the bike and are back in the fight with full hp in 15 seconds. Once a sorc bubble ends, they typically get raped anyways. It puts a huge target on them.
  17. Only play this game to pvp oh well back to p99.
  18. Quit being newbs and start going off damage dealt...Thats what really matters. The only exceptions are bursty fights like the last phase of soa.
  19. Bring back classic Everquest! Oh wait, it's already here. http://www.project1999.org
  20. Ok, I really had to think about what I wanted to write here. MMO's in general are the 'wild west' in the gaming industry, they are the only type of gaming genre that has been around for less than 15 years, but as time goes on, I am starting to believe that older is better. This game is beautiful, aesthetically pleasing to experience. However, I am always going to look back to the times of Ultima Online, and give more credit to the quality of game-play rather than the appearance of the game. Ultima had a very adrenaline pumping pvp system, that would merit the other players gear if you killed them. This game had little bugs (that didn't annoy people), and issues were generally fixed in a timely manner. Next came Everquest, and to experience, had a very challenging and time+player committed PVE system. This game also had little to no major issues, and was designed by many freelance programmers that made their own stuff for free. I believe some were even recruited from a plant nursery were they worked. This game kicked the MMO genre into overdrive, attracting many subscriptions and a lot of the common MMO terminology. IE. Training a group of people, farming a rare spawn, a mob just popped, etc and etc. These developers didn't even expect to hit a diamond mine here, but put their blood and sweat into it because it was just something that they loved to do. Where am I going with this? Hold on, I think I can tie it all together. World of Warcraft is where the next quality game came out, offering a very smooth and playable game, that always seemed to make changes that aligned with the majority of the player base. Blizzard also hired some of its current developers from one of the top guilds in Everquest. That makes sense right? Blizzard also has a heavy stance on releasing something when it is finished. And it will be done when its done. Period. Now what I would like to ask everyone, that has gone through this wall of text, is to remember back to the days of UO or Everquest and think about the experiences you had in those games. Looking back, do you wonder why games aren't like they were back then? Or is the original poster just plagued by nostalgia? Also think about how enjoyable those experiences were. Those games weren't rushed, or incomplete on release. Things back then weren't buggy to the extent of extreme annoyance. Back then getting gear or finishing quests was not ridiculously easy to complete although I felt the rewards gave me a feeling of accomplishment and they even delivered, to that respect. (in reference to Everquest, the first 3 expansions) So where is the disconnect from history? I am a very big Star Wars fan; I beta tested this since last summer, and have been tracking this for a few years prior. I really have the highest hopes for this game, but after burning to 50 very quickly, dealing with the endgame's extreme buggyness; I am starting to harbor negative feelings that I am trying desperately to put into submission. I feel Illum is a disaster (and not even complete), operations have an endless line of bugs that I can not keep track with, those 2 issues I feel being the most major, but I am sure more can speculate on other issues as I just have. Was SWTOR extemporaneously released for players in suspense for a game in long development, or was this process more to generate sales at a specific timeframe (around christmas)? I play with a big group of real-life friends, and as I have with games like Everquest and Ultima Online, we can look back and reminisce on experiences from 10+ years ago. I don't see myself making many memories here where I can look back when chatting with my buddies in the future and say, "Hey bro, you remember when we did that, this one time?" I really feel like that epic feeling is just going away as time goes on with the development process of these games. Being the ever optimistic, I won't give up just yet. The story aspect of this game is very entertaining. I really appreciate Bioware's hard work in previous titles such as, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, and dragon age. I still remember the Baldur's gate series as one of the best RPG's I have played on PC. I really hope SWTOR can be successful as an MMO. I hope the past can be respected in regards to games before this one in hopes that this game doesn't go down a dark path.
  21. I have tried it, and have pulled around 250-300k damage on some matches. In higher end pvp premades it is not as good in comparision to a full lethality or marksman spec. Lethality im really leaning towards now just due to the internal damage and cull having very crazy burst. Interrogation probe, explosive probe, series of shots....Save plasma probe for groups, although it doesn't seem to do that much damage. That rotation there should work out well for you, engineering does have a mixture of elemental (which is like internal damage and ignores armor), and kinetic/energy damage. Spec into the defensive stuff in Engineering, it really makes you tanky when getting ganged up on. This is a real fun spec to entrench/orbital strike/Ballistic shield/plasma probe and chain grenade when a group of people are on top of you
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