Hassat Hunter

What's the problem?

The final boss of Serious Sam 3: BFE is getting on my nerves. Died dozens of times before finding the jetpack. Died several more dozens of times after. No clue what to do. All damage I do is regenerated immediately. Time to look up the guides, died enough times already trying to find out myself what to do...

I don't much either. But if PvP balance or whatnot ruins my PvE experience, yeah, I'm going to be upset. True. It did take several forum posts I had to let someone else make though, and about 2 ingame tickets from other people who are subs. Once I finally managed to get them, sure, but why is that barrier so high? I agree Alanschu. I do get BioWare some cash, albeit indirectly by buying operation passes and other such unlocks from the GTN which are useless to subs. So I only assume they buy them to pawn them off to us (same with people posting event unlocks on the GTN for the Gree Event, smart thinking) and get credits, but it's still money for BioWare.

All DLC's do is make me get the Gold Pack later (waiting for Skyrim and Sleeping Dragon and Borderlands 2 now). Or skip the DLC altogether if none is made (ME2, ME3). If impatient people want to pay, more power to them. I'll be laughing and playing their game a year later with all the content for like 1/10th the price they paid for it

Had to leave, so my previous reply was shorter than I wanted... I've payed for TOR about the same as I do the avarage title on Steam, so I am not entirely "freeriding." Still many see me as freeloader for playing f2p. Well, so be it. It's said the $15 per month is for patches and new content and generally 'support'... but there have been many many times I wished they would just stopped with trying to add stuff. Especially since each patch makes the game worse and worse. Lag, crashes, GTN issues, repair costs. Everything's up for grabs for making worse with any patch. Tuesday is more a day of dread than "joy, content/patch"... It's not a secret I think the future for TOR is bleak. It's a rather nice game, but the development team is doing their best to run what they got into the ground. Should I feel guilty playing the good stuff free? Even if that was made by people probably now fired or doing other stuff. Should I pay $15 a month to support the de-construction of the game and general slopiness. When I know the current devs are running the game into the ground, would it make sense to add more money to it to make the crash that much harder, or just quitely (and free) await the crashday and then just basically shrug it off since I didn't put that much investment in it. If I had more money it would be simple (although, I probably upped my PE investment instead of spending here still XD), but I don't. I am just treating it like every other game I own. I paid it once, I have it in my possession, I play it to the max. then probably forget, and maybe return later if good enough. Am I that evil to use the same principle here instead of paying for my game each and every month again. My first Deus Ex playthrough must have lasted a year, starting and stopping. Would have become expensive. Of course that has no servers and stuff. On the other hand, I really don't care for that I'm supposed to pay for, I would pay far more than I do now for an SP KOTOR3 instead. Another theory of the schizophreny of TOR-development is the X-pack. First free. Then paid. With the promise that it lead you to lvl 55. Now the patchnotes seem to imply it's possible for all. With the rebalance everywhere and changes it would be weird to lock people to lvl 50 (especially how PvP works then). Of course, as usual, no-one from the development team clears this conflict of information up. It's very frustrating. Of course, since I don't pay for it, and have a huge backlog of games I don't care that much for it (yes people, this is caring not much. Dread the day I do care about something a lot. I think it once costed me my moderation job in the past). I'll just see. If 2.0 ruins the game, that's it. I really don't want to invest cash (time's no issue ) in something that's so unpredictable if it ever lands properly. EDIT: Don't think I mentioned it, but BioWare finally fixed my Artifact unlock issue. That was nice.

You probably skipped a few of my posts in this thread. Especially the ones mentioning how horrid the pylon quest is. I've done it a few times though. Becomes more bearable if you get 4 people with orbs, then just trigger all 4 in a row, done. And when there are no grievers. Which is a matter of pure luck :/ One requiring several rep already (which was limited if you avoided pvp), and one that generally so many people wandered around killing any of them in one of the 3 camps was still a trial taking longer than the pvp quests. The gree elite + follow up agreed on though. Also helped by there being a lot more of than the others, and actually requiring 1 instead of 20. Cut by 50% for non-subs. And yeah, enough for weekly cap, if you did it each day. I'm really not that fond of doing it daily, so rather take those 2 pvp along and do it only, say, thrice a week instead, max. Can't speak about op-boss (again, f2p. I rather spend my credits on the weekly for actual ops). And I am sure many subs too also don't do the ops regularly since finding 8/16 people can be hard, and the results ultra-random depending on who joins... Add repair costs being insanely high since 1.7. The problem arising you could *still* be ganked and grieved doing the PvE pylons. Especially in the first few days that was used extensively, it did die down a bit after that. Then again, so did the PvP zone die down, making it even more easy in comparisson... Impressive. Still, it would require you to play for 2 weeks each day. Something most of us I think have no time for. So to still get enough rep than we do need the pvp cut. It's like the repair costs. Hardcore players saying "don't whine, you can just do dailies 2 hours to get it back"... but do you really want to do so if you play 6 hours per week. Spend 33% of it on dailies? I wouldn't think so. Uhuh. And what incentive does BW thinks we have to sub if we're forced to pvp when not wanting. I would think more would give up than going "well, I will pay $15 now to not pvp". Paying to not pvp is a bad way to promote subscription. No, you still need to toggle it on (amazing, eh) then off for the 5 min to start. And hanging around for that time while I rather want to go out and questing for, what, playing the game? I really don't need *that* many forced snack/toilet stops, thank you very much... They're healing NPC enemies. As such, the PvP system sees no problem with it at all. And... that's the problem.

Thanks. Always nice to hear such words, and that people can see how good KOTOR2 really was now thanks to our work. 40% probably a bit too high a number though.

Checking back my screenshots, I must have been. But if I entered those bases each and everytime with pvp on without me realising, it should show how much of a plague the thing is. (No-one attacked us though) MUCH too easy to catch, MUCH too hard to get rid off Also, I can't check if the person revived is flagged or not. How should I know? Replace "reviving" with 'healing' and you apparently have another one of the Imperials favorite grieving-moves of the moment. Namely healing the Gree Core Defender. Without flag. And nothing you can do against it. Welcome to Ilum, the worst designed event ever. Good thing it goes today. As for the often called "you can avoid Ilum PvP" and "you were never forced"; 1) PvE goals were twice as long (20 items instead of 15, more spread out too). 2) PvE goals give green rep, PvP blue rep, giving 3x as much rep. 3) You can complete the PvE heroic in the PvP sector in the time it costs to take down 1 champion in the PvE section. So sure, you could avoid PvP... if you want to do 6x as much work. Sure it's not 'forcing', just a super-big nudge if you want anything out of this event. Not all of us have 6 characters to run through PvE over-and-over-and-over...

Hmmm, my gamemag (PC Gameplay) also had a "developers hell" on Aliens: Crucible now. Some things I didn't know, but I assume most of you would... Yeah, it's a shame to see Colonial Marines instead of this :/

Because the general consensus seems that BioWare removed them merely because "they're useless in pvp"... nevermind they can be useful in PvE. And it has nothing to do with it's PvE-functionality. If that is infact true, and it may be seeing more changed are based for PvP-balance only, that's a good signal it goes entirely the wrong way (IMO) with TOR. Ilum was bad enough, I hate to see 2.0 top it as worst patch ever... Lastly, doing a wz from time to time is pretty different from wanting to do PvP all the time. If people want that, they could use the PVP-server. Why again is it forced down our throats when it's perfectly possibly to full go for at the side with the warzones? I even noticed they sneaked in one of the latest patches (as it's not in any changelog) how entering an enemy base triggers the PvP-flag. I remember good times chilling out with Imperials on Hoth about 2 months ago. Tried now, got that flag on my pants. Good thing the entire base was deserted though... Still left me with the "joy" of removing that damn infection (5 min standing still + unknown travel time going out-of-the-way from what you're doing). Also another fun anecdote. Was doing Ilum event. Someone died on the heroic, his team fled. So I figured I would be nice and revive him. BAM. PvP flag. Tell me... why the heck is that an act of PvP? Seriously?

Like I said on another forum... removing a powerful ability lvls 30-50 and replacing it with one you only get at lvl 51 isn't much compensation. Removing a power just to wave "but... you can get another power instead... 20 levels later!" seems... well... fill out the blank. Singular, yes. But imagine instead of 1 strong opponent 2 of them around an elite. Wouldn't taking the strong down faster help against the elite too? Yes it would. And this would help. Getting something else 20 levels later? Isn't going to help you 20 levels. I would also disagree. With PVP messing up PVE abilities all the dang time I wouldn't object to, say, specific pve and pvp abilities. It's not hard to change the quickbar 1 to another. Have one PvE layout, one PvP, switch with a button. It's a lot better to remove powers and severly nerfing others pve'ers use just to please the pvp group. Because really, is that the pre-dominant type of gamer that plays TOR? I would say no. Also, the more choice you have to pick what skills to use the better. For the same reason there are also 3 skill-trees. What point is there to force people to use one singular path just because someone arbitrarily states it's best, then removes all other options of play? It's like the whole Objective-XP thread, people fearing other people's playstyle and just want one that prefers them rather than allow all. As stated, no-one is forcing the ability on your quickbar. Is that a reason to take it out? By that design toss out toys and pets too. Hey look, those are *really* useless. People still (want to) use them.

@ Malcador; Probably. But that's not what it's about, since you couldn't use those attacks in PvP anyway. From what I know 2.0 still has stun applenty to annoy you in PvP. @ alanschu; It just seems such a stupid move to hollow out an already not too shallow system. Just having us do power after power after power without thinking about it. Instead of trying to acquire combo's (stun+power). Apparently that's too hard to do for some people (oddly enough) but having a 1-2 be very more damaging if executed right is just that more interesting than spamming the same so-called "rotation" each and every fight. So what if we can't use in PvP or elites, they keep thrash combat fresher. Congrats, you just made dailies even MORE dull. I didn't think it possible... I still can't phantom the reason why...

So, since we have a BW employee here (Alanschu); Can you give us an insight what the hell is wrong with the TOR team and why they removed the so called "stun abilities" in 2.0. They give blank in their own forums. The most logical assumption would be to please pvp-players (over the backs of pve... AGAIN) or they don't play their own game/are incompetant (like, AGAIN). Both not really a good prospect to look forward to. Then again, they might actually have a good reason. One which no-one managed to see yet.

W2 really lacked monsters compared to W1. It would be nice if instead of like, 2 types per chapter, more of them appear.

About the Bio-discussion, I liked ME1 and 3 (2? Not so much), and DA1. TOR's decent, but the support and patching and general lack of any direction is making me super-hesitant to put down money on it. It does feel they're just trying to scrape quick bucks with the CC-market and then leave. If you feel they're gonna drop the game, it's a little hard to give cash, let stand suggest anyone else they should do so. Having a gigantic amount of bugs, but focus on the one that profits players, hot-fix it in 2 days TWICE (cause it broke) and it still doesn't work? That tells me BioWare in development of TOR is out to 1) get us 2) is super-incompetant. Each single patch seems to improve on this feeling that both are at play. Dragon Age 3? It really depends on the game. DA:O like, yes. DA2 like, no. Different aga... I'll just have to see if it's any good. I don't dislike BioWare, but like any studio, I am not going to buy crap if they publish it, I rather play good games. Having said that, playing TOR. Trying to get most out of the Gree event before it locks down. Grieving in the pvp area seems to have died down completely. And I can't say I am too regretful of that, good riddance.

It's not that bad. Do suggest shelling out the $5 (or one month sub at $15) to get a permanent upgrade to preferred status, as the 4 extra slots, additional money and storage, ability to trade and mail items and such will help considerable in increasing your enjoyment. And at the current state of the game, I can't advise *anyone* to sub... BioWare is dropping the ball too often and the game is just too damn buggy for that...

Hmmmmm, mixed. Obviously pretty unfinished, all the popup, area load issues, placeholder dialogue/sfx, AI issues, and the weak explosions (or that hilariously bad animation with the queen...) should make that pretty obvious. All the movie showed pretty much was combat. Which didn't look too exiting to be thruthfully. But then again, very early footage. Would have helped make me decide more if more RPG stuff was shown :/

"Open world" NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo And while yeah, TW2 has branching plotlines I never been able to get through act I again to actually pick the alternative. Just got too annoyed and bored in the jungle and gave up, haven't returned again, even with the Enhancement cut or DLC. Maybe I should... one day. But for now, plenty of other games. I do think TW1 was better.

Oh yes, it is. That's what we indeed call... an "objective"... it's not at all different from your challenges. Though it speaks for itself if people misunderstand that that's why there is so much objection.

You still don't get objectives aren't exclusively part of quests, do you?

Looks like they're about to roll out their second emergency patch. Hopefully it sucks less than the first. It's also a real callsign of really bad testing that a single patch needs so much lapping up. And of the older TOR-players know if they ever had 2 emergency patches so soon after a patch? I'm rather new, so maybe this is usual though...

No, you shouldn't be entitled to screwing up. You don't get XP for half the kills. You don't get XP for half the sneaking either. You don't pick half the dialogue options of the diplomat and then be a total **** and expect your diplomat-XP reward. Extreme hand-holding, a plentititude of cookie-giving and fearing to just hold people responsible for their actions and petting them with silk gloves are trademarks of modern games designed for the lowest commiditor. We're going back to old-games style here. No rewards for incompetance. No dying and getting XP/money in the profit, not fumbling about like an idiot still getting you rewarded. There are plenty of games, especially MMORPG's who will fit you if you really need extreme cookie-receiving. You STILL don't realise "quest XP" (aka Objective XP) isn't given for full quests, do you? Example; The Guild of Extreme Murderous Killing wants you to slaughter 4 camps of bandits. Each is an individual objective. You kill 2 camps (2 objectives). So you still have XP. If you back out murdering the 3rd (and no "there was a little girl bandit so I didn't want to kill them no more" bs, please), no, you wont get XP from that camp. It doesn't matter you killed half, none-for-you. Give me a good reason why you would? And you can't even blame you left half-way without anything, you got XP from 2 camps. Just not this 3rd camp, nor the fourth, nor the overall achievement of the mission. Same goes for, say, the Infinite Dungeon. It's, what, 15 levels now? If you get a reward each level nothing stops you from doing all in a row, mix and match overall levels, in the end, at the start. Nothing requires you to do all. So no, it doesn't hamper choice. But yes, you do get no XP if you stand infront of the dungeon level exit and you know using it grants XP and then leaving and never return. I seriously don't suggest developers accomidate such gameplay though. Since only idiots would do that. You only get your cookie for actually doing something. Not doing nothing but still expecting to get rewards. If you just randomly do missions and objectives you'll still get rewards, so your gamestyle is still totally supported. Except if you stop infront of EVERY little objective then search another that you *just* not complete. And say seriously, who-ever is going to play like that. Only people who actually have played the game before and do this for a challenge. Hey another choice! But hey, **** that and just add kill-XP, right? Who wants to have the choice to play stealthy or diplomatic? You just need your playstyle supported, damn those of others. I don't want that... I want as much players playing as they want as they can. And if mr. Combat somehow doesn't do combat, it's not the gamemechanics that should be evaluated, but mr. Combat's willingness to do combat. Maybe one of the other styles suits him better. Ones that are ACTUALLY supported now... unlike the old RPG's like Baldur's Gate II... Obviously not, since oterwise, we wouldn't have this discussion. It works fine if you barely allow non-combat choices. But the developers of PE decide they want to give the player more liberty, more choices. And that includes updating the way the system grants XP. I understand the fears of those combat-lovers that due to integration of proper gameplay of others their suffers, but really, with objective-XP, it doesn't. Take a look at IWD2 (From BG2). Since traps no longer gave XP everyone avoided them right? WRONG. After all, it's a little hard to avoid something strewn over the entire width of the room. Same with stealth. Like traps, the oh-so-black and white "combat is useless, everyone will stealth" will simply not happen. It's not that easy. Another one... Mages never scribbled spells, since they no longer gave XP... WRONG. Last one, people no longer opened doors and locks since they gave no XP... WRONG. There is no additional reward needed in the form of XP to make chests and doors unlocking good. Just like people who want combat, a clear map or just easy passage would need XP just to do it. There will be loot in the chest/combat. If you want it, you take it. It's its own reward, no XP needed. If you want to enter a temple, then walk out, combat is your only option. Stealth will need to stealth in, stealth out. Heck, some people might even fight hard fights or gimp themselves hard just for fun, even without reward. The Ring of Kangaxx is awesome, but would people fight and kill him even if he dropped nothing and gave no XP just to prove they could. Surely. It's an entirely optional encounter too, so the whole 'go halway and then give up' wouldn't really work, since you're already at the end of the path anyway. How can Challenge based XP be better than Objective XP if it's a different name for the same thing. It's like saying "Mountain Lion is better than Puma or Cougar"... what?

New issue. If you have BBCCode Mode off (so you see quote as text not as box) now, when clicking bold, or I or U it simply doesn't work anymore, no [ b ] or [ i ] tags are added, simply nothing...

That would be great. Actually a part of randomnisation I would agree with

Except the core design of PE, like enemy groups varying on difficult automatically clash with kill-XP. Hard isn't so hard if you get 50% or more bonus XP leaving the easy players behind. And if it's a non-issue for you, why is leaving XP to the end an issue for only that reason? Or is leaving, then returning later and only then getting the reward an issue? You wont level up frequent. If you leave to get stronger, it's mostly just the gear, not levels. So it makes no difference at all in the grand scheme of things. Except giving the devs less leeway to make things their way, make non-combat paths less viable, and generally make balancing more difficult...