SW: The Old Republic Part 4

[Spider]

I have none of those issues. PvP and ops are mostly lag-free (the occasional hicup in Ancient Hypergates exist, but it's rare), the game is fairly stable (apart from thee nd-of-flashpoint roulette) for me and my guild excepting those that run the game on sub-par computers. And I've found nothing to be wrong with the CM the few times I do use it (though it's typically once a month when I get my stipend, so I suppose it could be worse for those who actively need it).

 

There are bugs definitely, but in my experience it's nowhere near as bad as Hassat makes it out to be. Your mileage may vary.

[Hassat Hunter]

Concerning Lag; Do you play on Red Eclipse too or elsewhere?

[Raithe]

I play on Shadowlands, and I've had a subscription from the release of the game.... and I have to admit, I don't have those issues. Lag only crops up  now and again, and rarely for any serious length of time.  Occasionally I'll get caught on a transfer screen when I've been bouncing around a lot of planets and I'll have to restart the game, but that's not a repeat, every day occurence.

 

The only people I know who have been regularly suffering something is windows 8 users, who for some reason, a batch of them seem to get sudden disconnects and game crashes.

[Hassat Hunter]

I use windows 7.

 

And the game does like to pick me... during the big Red Eclipse crash, 3 hours before the reset I was doing a flashpoint. Guess which of the 4 was the only one having to do the 40-minute re-logging? (I shouldn't have bothered, since everything I did past that point got wiped clean, thanks BW, but that's another story).

 

But revenge is sweet, since Zbyl got it too a few times yesterday .

And I still frequently do group content and people drop out and return a while later with 'game crashed' to know it's not just limited...

[Hassat Hunter]

As expected, Ilum exploded after 1.7's release. 10 full instances? Server has trouble.

 

Overall dailies are fun. PvP still sucks. Not noticing you are flagged than getting gangbanged solo by 8 imperials isn't fun.

Aside from that, it's something new.

 

Some quirks though... to limit traffic on the heroic there are 5 points to do it. Good you say? Well, they planted 2 damn inside the PVP zone. And trust me, the Heroic is hard enough without having to worry about PvP groups killing you. So in reality, only 3 are in use, and one of them also has severe imperial raid parties hanging about.

Final result; it really only has 2 nodes, where constantly about 3+ groups battle for the spawns and useable items... :/

 

Also funny was we got a group to do the heroic, got 1/3, then our healer vanished. Returned a while later... "Guess they didn't fix the crashes"... After that went flawless though, excluding the lag.

 

And last annoying bug/quirk; In the north was a quest marker. You would think you have to go around there. There was a champion opponent there. Okay. Tried attacking it, insta-kill. Worst of it was that unlike other types of such defense you did need to pay repair costs. 5000 credits to waste due to a stupid marker being too high up. And the damn turret (why is it there anyway) being bugged.

Also seems repair costs gone up... might have to do with them fixing enchantments being in selling (and repair?) prices.

 

End of report of the first 2 hours with 1.7

[Spider]

To get rid of pvp flag, toggle it on manually, then off again and hang out in the imperial base for 5 mins. No more getting jumped when doing the heroic.

 

I thought it was pretty easy though, me and a friend did it the two of us, but we're kinda overgeared for it I suppose.

 

The champion and turret you encountered was probably the imperial base?

 

I thought the event was pretty fun. We had a group in the pvp zone and while it took a while to get those quests done, it was still great fun. Since it's free for all, you're never really safe, but neither is the group attacking you. So kinda exciting. But I wouldn't go in without a group of 4 I don't think.

 

We also got a group together to down the two ops bosses you can do without having access to the ship. They were cool. Not too complicated mechanics, but they packed a punch.

 

Today was a bit of a laggy day. Ilum wasn't so bad, but section x and fleet were horrid. Section X had gotten better, but today it was back to it's old self again.

 

And yes, I'm on the Red Eclipse, but mostly imperial side (I have characters on republic side as well, but my guild is imperial).

[Hassat Hunter]

Part 2;

 

My authorisation I mentioned before? I noticed it changed. It now says it's for the player char, not the account. Aargh. And worst is... it STILL DOESN'T work.

 

They also made changes to the GTN. "any" doesn't work anymore, you need "cheap or higher"... that it's the same exact thing makes no difference. They added a 3-char limit for search. So finding mod 7? Fat chance, can't search for 7 anymore, good luck finding 7 between pages of other mods.

 

They added new legacy unlocks. Ship teleport. Also 3 to make it from 18-1 hour. They are already pre-unlocked though. Wonder if BioWare is going to turn that back...

 

The "gree" pvp event on Ilum is horrible. Apparently the want people to contest in the middle. But all it leads to it's 12 enemies being bored waiting for respawn there. And sometimes you do get a group of 4 thinking it's fun to kill single people around. So much joy. I'll never do that daily ever again.

 

Also got a big ops group of about 10 people for the Heroic. So much hectic fighting. And somehow half the people never got stuff to update properly, making us fight way more than we really had to, and much trouble shooting was needed.

 

Aside that the usual with lag, players getting kicked and crashing.

 

It started with fun, but when the evening went on, I logged out being utterly annoyed. Mostly noticing my item change and the gtn. *sigh*

To get rid of pvp flag, toggle it on manually, then off again and hang out in the imperial base for 5 mins. No more getting jumped when doing the heroic.

Still takes 5 minutes though. Suppose it's the forced badroom break I didn't need though?

Also, I still don't get why if you're toggled for PVP you first toggle it on? It's already on, let it immediately toggle it off.

The champion and turret you encountered was probably the imperial base?

Not really, the imperial base seems to be to the east. This was all the way in the north, no Imperial in sight. Except for this droid. It's where in the orignal Ilum the base was. And it has the quest-marker dead over it. Edited February 13, 2013 by Hassat Hunter

[Spider]

 

 

Also got a big ops group of about 10 people for the Heroic. So much hectic fighting. And somehow half the people never got stuff to update properly, making us fight way more than we really had to, and much trouble shooting was needed.

 

Ops group don't work too well for regular quests. An ops group is essentially a grouping of groups. So objectives only update for members of your subgroup (ie, you activate an objective, you and three others get the quest updated, you aggro an enemy only the same people will get the kill). Loot drops are shared though, so any quest that requires mobs to drop loot works fine in an ops group.

[Hassat Hunter]

Hmmm, that could explain a lot. Though the people activating the console stated they didn't even get it updated.

 

Anyway, anyone else notices heavily increased repair costs? I did. Less than 3000 for wipe before, now over 5000 for wipe. Almost double.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=596970

 

Let's hope they hear our dissatisfaction and change it back. I can only dread how much repair costs if I actually had items worth mentioning 0_o

 

EDIT:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5847876#edit5847876

Heh, saw it coming... also plenty of people complaing about the GTN changes. Good to see I am not alone...

Edited February 13, 2013 by Hassat Hunter

[alanschu]

WOW had a similar issue with Raid groups.  Most quests couldn't be completed/progressed while in a raid group.

[Malcador]

Well, don't think it was an 'issue', just designed it that way. I guess it could make things a bit too easy to run through an area with 39 others (not that questing is all that difficult). Was funny to be frustrated by a lack of drops and then go 'Oh..right..raid'.

Edited February 13, 2013 by Malcador

[Spider]

Yeah, the repair costs have gone up. A wipe used to cost me about 8k, now it's up to 15k or so. Hopefully that's what they're fixing with the patch tomorrow. And they'll fix the gtn snafu as well, but not tomorrow.

[Hassat Hunter]

If they only fix the legacy ship unlock and nothing of importance, I am going to be pissed.

 

Shame they can't patch out **** griefers.

 

Found something even worse than the gree thing in the PVP... the bonus of the Gree Destroyer. A guild was just hanging out and killing each spawn (there is 1. And it has an insane respawn time. Whoever made this was obviously drunk and/or insane). You need 1. I personally saw them kill 4+. Why? Just to annoy others.

 

PvP forums on BioWare is also filled with hints how to best cause grief, annoy people waiting for gree pylon and general tips just to make other people's more miserable.

I guess some people are happy with the patch. But I can assume more are leaving fed up by those bastards.

[Hassat Hunter]

1.7.0a Patch Notes

2.14.2013

General

 

If a player that is abusing the chat system in the game is reported frequently by various players, they will be completely unable to post in chat for 12 hours.

Players who have not logged in since Game Update 1.4 will no longer be kicked to character select under rare circumstances.

 

Legacy

 

Removed the character level requirement for Improved Priority Transport: Personal Starship. This Legacy Global Unlock still has a Legacy Level requirement.

Corrected an issue that would automatically unlock all levels of Improved Priority Transport: Personal Starship.

Of all the issues... they fix THIS? Seriously...

 

They are quick to patch out stuff that profits us. But actual fixes to them breaking the game or messing up in our neglectance... forget it.

This isn't worthy of emergency patching. The GTN and repair is.

 

This has to be a stupid joke...

I hate it when I'm right...

Edited February 14, 2013 by Hassat Hunter

[Hassat Hunter]

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...

[alanschu]

 

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.

 

It's more a symptom of the infrastructure regarding Hero Engine.  In the end it wasn't the greatest engine to go with because of how distributed their shard system is and how challenging it is to merge the multiple different shards into something coherent that actually resembles the live shards

 

I agree that stuff like that shouldn't go into the wild, but one of my best friends was on the project (QA for small games group/QA) and they ran into a multitude of challenges with how the engine deals with large teams.

[Guest Slinky]

It is usual, been like that since the release. Most times the patches have broke as much they have fixed.

 

My favorite is still the one that made the third boss in explosive conflict "more responsive", which broke the fight completety. From the very start I wondered did they test their pathces at all.

[Raithe]

Saw the public test server was back up, they've added a bunch of tweaks including the "level cap of 55" and such in advance of the expansion.

 

Although now I no longer have 9,000 odd cartel coins.. or the damn expanded bay that I picked up last time I was playing on there..   C'est la vie.

[Hassat Hunter]

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.

[Hurlshort]

I believe Bioware Austin handles all the TOR stuff, so I doubt Alanschu, who works in Edmonton and is involved in DA3, would have any more insight than most of us here.  

[Malcador]

PvP without stuns might be fun. See WoW for the other end of things (or so it feels like)

[alanschu]

I believe Bioware Austin handles all the TOR stuff, so I doubt Alanschu, who works in Edmonton and is involved in DA3, would have any more insight than most of us here.  

 

This.

[Hassat Hunter]

@ 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...

[Spider]

They're removing a set of fairly marginal abilities in an expansion that also adds new clickables to each class. I really don't think that's a very big issue.

 

To clarify to those who don't know the abilities mentioned, they're removing abilities that can only be used on stunned opponents and deal a fair amount of damage (though not super much). The can only be used on strong mobs (grey stars) or weaker, and not players. So basically they're abilities that work against opposition you already have very little problem with.

 

I think removing abilities that gets used this rarely is a good thing as it prevents ability clutter (there are people in this thread who have complained that they have too many abilities for example) and the slight benefit they bring is fairly insignificant.

 

Not sure what class you're playing, but you'll get new toys to play with regardless (and pretty much all new abilities are pretty sweet).

 

Edit: Also, most dps classes (and tank classes for that matter) are dependent on combos of some sort. mercenaries want to apply heat signatures to have their heatseeker missile hit harder (and they want unload to have it's cooldown reset, and railshot to hit for more), marauders are heavily dependent on different internal combos in all skill trees, and same goes for both assassin and sorcerers as well.

 

So it really has nothing do with acquiring combos being too hard, just that some combos offer such marginal actual value that it's just not worth it.

Edited February 25, 2013 by Spider

[Hassat Hunter]

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.