SW: The Old Republic Part 4

[Gromnir]

there's "making little attempt to be polite" and then there's just posting to take a smoldering dump in a thread.

 

no doubt you is making a point. is this your attempt to show false dilemma fallacy?

 

...

 

is not a great example o' false dichotomy/dilemma, but is close enough, we s'pose. nevertheless, is always easy to picks out the folks who feels as if we has taken 'pon them a "smoldering dump."

 

*shrug*

 

side-note: am not sure why monkeys and the emotionally damaged is so fixated with scat. we worked at a correctional facility for a while, and residents would frequently be withdrawing from various behavior modifying drugs. too frequent these poor souls would use their "smoldering dump" as a means o' expression. ink for their tortured pen as it were. curious.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps you forgot to say anything relevant 'bout the topic. how... rude. did you like swtor writing as much as hurl? or perhaps you would prefer to play with your smoldering...

[Nepenthe]

Not at all

[Hurlshort]

Gromnir seems really hung up on this on topic deal. Many of us have been talking to each other on this board for years. When you start a conversation with someone, it is going to drift into other areas. There is nothing rude about it. Typically it can either peter out and go back to the original topic, or if it gets really good then we can start a new thread. This little spat hardly deserves a new thread, but the term 'rude' is an odd choice, particularly when it was a rude comment by Gromnir that set it off course. The mods typically let us know if it is getting too heated, which is why I took the time to apologize, so that we could move on.

 

Moving on, I hope they open up the transfers a bit more, I still have a trooper on an East Coast server that I would like to move to my home on the West Coast server.

[Raithe]

Is that the one on Corellian Run that I never see active?

 

Pushed my Bounty Hunter through Act 1 and now he's a "Champion of the Great Hunt". Just got adopted into Mandalore's clan as well today.

Juggling some of the Ilum and Belsavis dailies with my Sith Inquisitor and Smuggler. I'm going to have to build up the credits to get that mailbox on my ship at some point...

[Gromnir]

Gromnir seems really hung up on this on topic deal. Many of us have been talking to each other on this board for years. When you start a conversation with someone, it is going to drift into other areas. There is nothing rude about it. Typically it can either peter out and go back to the original topic, or if it gets really good then we can start a new thread. This little spat hardly deserves a new thread, but the term 'rude' is an odd choice, particularly when it was a rude comment by Gromnir that set it off course. The mods typically let us know if it is getting too heated, which is why I took the time to apologize, so that we could move on.

 

Moving on, I hope they open up the transfers a bit more, I still have a trooper on an East Coast server that I would like to move to my home on the West Coast server.

 

2 points

 

1) posting off-topic has always been the most common source of mod censure

 

perhaps hurl has been too self-absorbed to notice, but mods likes to choose a neutral reason for killing threads and posts-- is not that hurl were being a dink or ignoramus, but simply that he was off-topic. is so much less adversarial to kill a thread or post 'cause of off-topic. really, pay attention and you will notice.

 

2) Gromnir's post were on-topic

 

did we hurt hurl's feelings with the suggestion that you gots questionable taste? who cares? it were hardly a viscous insult we level'd at you, and it clearly failed to go beyond board guidelines. did we somehow crush your will so that you were incapable o' responding w/o staying on topic? your protracted whine could not have included material that kept it on-topic as well?

 

'course this line o' nonsense is, again, fully off-topic and likely to result in censure even if we include relevant material.

 

...

 

if we has a hypothetical thread on this board that includes a review from X that slams the new south park game, and hurl questions the reviewer 'cause the reviewer also slammed fo:nv, and bg2, would anybody be shocked? "clearly the reviewer's taste in games is suspect." would such a rude observation o' the reviewer elicit a moment's notice from even the most sensitive proponents o' miss manner's school o' board etiquette? doubtful. nevertheless, Gromnir's post were like the music o' the pied piper o' hamelin overcoming the willpower o' garden variety... vermin? puhlease. nobody pulled you off-topic-- you ran.

 

as for the dailies... server merger ("transfer"? HA!) has made doing dailies a real pain in the tukus. 58 people in the black hole? hopefully bio makes new instances open a bit sooner as the mega-servers is a bit crowded.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Monte Carlo]

it were hardly a viscous insult we level'd at you

 

Am I the only one loving the idea of a viscous insult? A really gooey, physically tangible slur? Maybe hurling abuse whilst jamming a finger in one nostril and blowing hard through the other?

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Raithe]

I do have to say.. with Jedi Knight / Sith Warrior / Bounty Hunter types, Huttball has grown on me. It seems much more geared for those class types to have fun in, Sith Assassin stealthiness seems to work better on the other warzone maps, but doesn't quite "grip" Huttball that well.

 

And you seem to be getting into pvp matches with people who understand coming up with "cunning plans" during the minute of pre-match intro and actually attempting to coordinate more these days rather then go wildly off on kill frenzies..

[Guest Slinky]

I do have to say.. with Jedi Knight / Sith Warrior / Bounty Hunter types, Huttball has grown on me. It seems much more geared for those class types to have fun in, Sith Assassin stealthiness seems to work better on the other warzone maps, but doesn't quite "grip" Huttball that well.

It's always fun to grab the ball, drop down in the pit and wait till some clueless comes at the edge of the pit providing you a free pass to score area with force charge.

[Hurlshort]

http://www.swtor.com/info/news/press-release/20120731

 

Stolen from TrueNeutral, but I thought it should go here.

 

I'm really not sure what to think about this. F2P is a viable option, but it is pretty shocking that TOR is abandoning the traditional model within the first year of release. I also was expecting a much more limited move here, like making the first act free and the others cost money.

 

Apparently I am in line for a ton of cartel coins, so we'll see how useful those are.

[Malcador]

More tempted to go back and finish off my BH.

[Tale]

More tempted to go back and finish off my BH.

I couldn't get mine past Tattooine on mine. Gault made me wash my hands of the game.

 

This might get me to try Agent, but I have enough of a backlog for games that I'm not already prejudiced against.

[Bokishi]

Free to Play! Should get a nice population boost, also I felt the empty servers weren't worth the subscription fee

[entrerix]

i remember hearing that the game was only good to see the storylines, if so, then i wonder how they will make money if that part is free and the "other stuff" is what costs money?

 

or will they make all their money selling hats/skins/pets?

[Blarghagh]

Free to Play! Should get a nice population boost, also I felt the empty servers weren't worth the subscription fee

 

As far as I know they're downsizing the amount of servers, offering rewards for server transfers and plainly merging some. This is just what I heard though, I've only been playing it for a week on the free trial - but it's hella busy in the starting zones at least.

[Hassat Hunter]

i remember hearing that the game was only good to see the storylines, if so, then i wonder how they will make money if that part is free and the "other stuff" is what costs money?

Because apparently there are a lot of people who love grinding and doing the same endgame area over and over.

Basically, what kept WoW alive despite being hollow and devoid of meaning.

 

Of course, for us RPG-players it's great that the good stuff is free, and they only charge for the boring grindy stuff only MMO-addicts would want to do :D

[Hurlshort]

Seriously, I have a stable of characters in their 30's, so if they only charge for level 50 stuff, I can enjoy it for free easily.

[Fighter]

How does the writing and story compare to other Bioware stuff? Have no real interest in MMOs but for free I might play through the story.

[Raithe]

Well post-merging, there's pretty much a solid 2-300 people on Fleet most evenings, and during the afternoon's there's quite often 40-70 people on planets. - And we're talking UK time zones here, so I imagine if you're in America and using the East Coast servers it would be a bit more significant.

 

Gualt was/is a bit annoying, but I found once past tattooine the BH cleared up some. Alderaan had its ups and downs, but the whole getting adopted into Mandalore's clan, and doing the Blacklist hunting was interesting. My BH is now at 45. Which has him balancing with my Jedi Knight, I don't want to actually run Belsavis with both of them around the same time, so I'm deciding which to concentrate on, and potentially have some poke at other classes at lower levels again. I've got two level 50 characters (Smuggler and Sith Inquisitor), and a Sith Warrior just hitting 31.

 

I've just filled out the last 3 characters on the server with the Imperial Agent, Jedi Consular, and Trooper. Not going to really play them now, but I've got them to poke at later and see what the stories are like.

[Hurlshort]

How does the writing and story compare to other Bioware stuff? Have no real interest in MMOs but for free I might play through the story.

 

The writing is the same. There are highs and lows. I enjoyed many of the story lines tremendously.

 

I never got the Gault complaints. It was bad that you couldn't finish him off, I agree totally, but he literally sits in my ship and I never talk to the guy. He's pretty easy to ignore.

 

Apparently Bioware originally had companions that you could kill or miss out on, but players complained about it. So yeah, can't please everyone.

[Tale]

He's pretty easy to ignore.

How is that not a cop out? Bioware has no respect for player choice in an RPG. When faced with a choice, the only available option is to take the one that's even against the archetype. Annoying DM pet that forces the player to explicitly abandon their objective to support. It's the most basic of DM offenses.

 

Apparently Bioware originally had companions that you could kill or miss out on, but players complained about it. So yeah, can't please everyone.

It's not binary, chance to kill him and displease this group, make him mandatory and displease this group. It pains me to see things simplified in this manner. There are several other possibilities for how the thing could have been handled that didn't require a companion to die. Make the clone the companion. Have him not the target at all. Have a pop up warning that he could be a companion. Make him actually useful and with a good argument for saving him. Call the hunt off. Anything but what they did.

 

They simply did not care. It's thoughtless and bad RPG design backed up by absolutely forgettable writing. It's cool if you can ignore it, but there's nothing to instead focus on. Nothing to redeem it. The entire story arc is a gameshow running yet a third or fourth interpretation of The Great Hunt (the Wookiees do it, no the Mandalorians do it, no the Jedi do it, no really the Wookiees and Mandalorians do it together for the Bounty Hunters?). Completely ignoring any relationship to the greater faction or setting. You're playing a mercenary in the middle of an intergalactic cold war and you're stuck chasing some irrelevant nobodies and arching a two-bit Mandalorian with a childish grudge.

[Hurlshort]

It's totally a cop out, and I agree they handled it badly. For me, the good moments outweighed the bad moments in the game.

[GhostofAnakin]

Well that was pretty quick, wasn't it? Already free-to-play, and their subscribers down to less than 1 million.

 

Maybe I'll actually give it a try now.

[Calax]

From the sound of it, I'd suggest that the reason the character you were annoyed at wasn't changed was simple, cost. I mean imagine how many hundreds of lines that would require re-recording (which is expensive and takes a while) if they'd chopped him in favor of a last ditch new crew member?

 

So far I've found the inquisitor to have the most interesting tale, the warrior to be second, agent, with Jedi knight being the most boringly drawn out piece of ugh this side of Hoth. Honestly they limited themselves wayyyy to much by saying "act 1? 4 planets. Act 2? 2 planets act 3? Two ish planets!" leads to many act ones being needlessly drawn out for no real reason

[Cantousent]

I'm officially willing to give it a shot now that it's free to play. Is there some sort of incentive to give someone a trial? If so, I'll take one from one of you guys to give it a shot. I probably won't team up as I don't know that I'll keep playing, but I'll create a character and play for a month on your trial membership if it will benefit anyone. If so, give me a holler and let me know.

[Humanoid]

 

source: http://www.swtor.com/free/features

 

 

While I agree F2P is the right move, I think some of these restrictions are nonsensical and will hurt both paying and non-paying customers significantly, along with the bottom line - it's as if they're trying to placate people with currently paid-up subscription blocks with exclusivity to certain features while actually hurting them by doing so.

 

Breaking it down -

 

- Limited character creation: As long as all classes and subclasses are available I guess it's not a big deal, but it seems a petty thing to restrict - essentially making some aesthetic choices exclusive. But then I never cease to be surprised at what some people will pay for pure vanity functionality (WoW's infamous sparkle-pony comes to mind) so eh.

 

- Capped warzone/flashpoint participation per week. This is kind of a big deal. I guess the idea is "if you want to play more, cough up," but I expect the net result is that the paid subscribers end up running out of people to play with when first their "freeloader" friends, then the server community at large (remembering the group-finder tool is server-restricted) hit their weekly quotas, leaving this content a wasteland in the day or three before the timer resets.

 

- Capped space mission participation per week: Okay, this one will probably go totally unnoticed.

 

- No operations: I have a hard time seeing a large enough paid population persisting to maintain and develop operations from now on in - wouldn't be surprised if the move completely kills off this style of gameplay.

 

- Restrictions on fast travel: No details that I can see, but this sounds basically like nagware - try to annoy the users enough with tedium until they either relent and pay up, or quit altogether.

 

- Trade network: I basically didn't use this at all during my month of TOR so not sure what the real impact is. Low limit on selling? No selling at all and purchases only? Could be anything.

 

 

In the end, I think trying to have it both ways like what's proposed there will result in no winners at all. Hopefully some common sense prevails before this muddled up segregation goes live.

Edited August 1, 2012 by Humanoid