SW: The Old Republic Part 5

[Spider]

I am talking about Quinn's betrayal. He sells you out to your main enemy (or has been working for him all along) and afterwards the only option the Emperor's Wrath has is to forgive him one way or another and let him back on your ship.

[Hassat Hunter]

Oh yeah, that. That was kinda stupid too yeah.

Fortunately that was more a 'run-of-the-moment' stupidity (as in, wtf? then it's gone) rather than have a huge lead-up to dissapointment BH's Tatooine turns out to be.

[Raithe]

I have to admit, it's always kind of nice to see new content and a potential new companion.. but I'm still having a wtf over there being an Ewok companion.

They're going to have to come up with one hell of a good story reason to make any potential scrap of sense.

 

I mean, 5000 years before they were a primitive tribal society using basic wood & stone tools, there's an ewok capable of handling blasters and star wars sci-fi equipment roaming the stars?

 

I can understand the theory that if you were able to go back 5,000 years to some early Egyptian and grabbed him, you could potentially educate him in modern tech because it's not like he's stupid. But if you went to the people 5,000 years before the stone age, it would be a touch more complicated...

[Guest Slinky]

It might be thousands of years before the movies, but I sure cant see any proggress happening during that time. If people are flying around with same kind of speeders and trying to shoot each other with as inaccurate weapons as before, I cant see why ewoks couldnt been as stupid for ages before the movies. Hell, we still have socities in our "modern civil world" that would fit right in stone ages.

 

 

*COUGH*middle east*COUGH*

 

[entrerix]

ewok gets stolen as a baby and made into a slave on a ship, he shows aptitude for tech stuff and turns out to be a natural shot with a blaster by the age of 7.  by 17 he shows mastery of several technical areas, and is an insightful combatant.  at the age of 21 he negotiates his release from slavery in exchange for a period as an indentured bounty hunter

 

10 years later he buys his freedom

 

boom.  story that makes "enough" sense for a video game.  it took me 30 seconds to make up.  why the *** does anyone have a problem with an ewok bounty hunter in star wars, the universe where a race of aquatic jamaican rabbit lizards have giant armies that can go toe-to-toe with annihilator robot armies...

Edited July 9, 2013 by entrerix

[Gorth]

Story doesn't make sense. I believe 'he' is a 'she'

 

I think that one is going to be an easy decision... I'll invite that companion with as much enthusiasm as if had been a Gungan. If nothing else, because the first encounter with them rammed home the message that the Star Wars movie franchise of which I had been a fan up until the 3rd movie was truly dead. Bad enough that it started out looking like an episode of the Muppet Show (no offense intended to Muppets anywhere, I love the Muppet Show), but the sheer stupidity of Ewoks and them fighting Imperial Stormtroopers just pushed the movie over the edge into too much sillyness.

[Hassat Hunter]

Well, got Makeb.

 

The idea already existed to get a sub+makeb some while ago (since only 2 euro's more expensive, and alot of extra benefits compared to paying 20 for it seperate), so I put a lot of money in my escrow (since 2.1) but instead of using the escrow deductions I bought then (for 50k instead of 200k they go for now, wish now I stocked up more) I save them for potential future content and just use my millions now to buy as much as I can for cheaper subscriber rates (and of course ship GTN *hugs*).

That idea became even better finding a box for half the regular month cost in a store, making it even less expensive than getting Makeb seperate. So in all good faith I bought.

Only to learn, you can't really do that, the code in the box rejected since I already had a box-month before. Fearing that the Makeb-launch we planned amongst the 3 of us now got ruined since I needed to contact support, and they aren't used to being fast.

To my surprise though, support resolved it quickly for me, giving me my 30 days (though I still lack the 500cc so I have to reply on that later if it's not added in the coming days) so the evening went along... and, we finished Makeb that same evening.

This compared to another ticket I send support about a cheater with a youtube link, and days later I got "we investigate it", but the vid still shows 0 views. How do they know who the cheater is, and what he did if not watching the vid? :/

 

Anyways, opinions on Makeb;

Cutscenes and plot where kind of cool. The environment looked good though. A bit too many groups of foes, but as stealth classers we just run past most of them. Going to be more annoying for my Vanguard or Sith Maurader I think, but we'll see later. Now on the quest for first lvl 55 and the staged weekly.

[Gorth]

Don't feel too bad about subscribing for a while, we wont tell anyone

 

Heck, I've got two subscriptions at the moment. Buying the expansion for my "alt" account (I run a completely separate accounts, one for home one for on the road, traveling with my laptop, just in case my laptop gets lost, compromised or otherwise). Didn't intend to subscribe on that one as it already had all the "unlocks", but it was less than $5 to get a month complimentary with expansion. I'll let that one "lapse" again though, as it really is just an alternative to Windows Spider Solitaire when passing time in hotel rooms.

[Gorth]

I've had character dedicated to just trading on the GTN since I started playing "for real" (after the basic f2p).

 

Buying cheap, selling with profits and now I have one of every high priced armour suit (Mira, Thana Vesh, what have you) from the cartel market and a couple of extra million credits in the bank.

 

I wish real world stock markets were that easy

[Hassat Hunter]

Yeah. I got about 10 million too, GTN on my ship. Don't got those fancy armors though, more into pet collecting

Maybe will spend it before going pref though since it all goes in escrow anyway. We'll see.

 

Didn't get the 500cc so contacted support, droid response to call. Forwarded the exact same mail again, and second time I did get a person who helped me and got the 500cc. So support isn't bad... as long as you get a person instead of those auto-replies. Sadly, most seem to get auto-replies.

 

Taken a liking to Seeker hunting, even if the loot is usually crap. Hopefully can play the 2 lvl 55 ops soon too.

 

As for the report, still 0 views on Youtube. Guess a waste of time reporting the cheater, converting it, uploading it to Youtube, sending tickets to BioWare, and for what... naught.

That probably wont happen again...

[Raithe]

Heh, I think the most I've had at any one time is about 700k.

 

I've just never really sat down to make a heavy effort to get the mounds of cash that so many people seem to have.

[Hurlshort]

As for the report, still 0 views on Youtube. Guess a waste of time reporting the cheater, converting it, uploading it to Youtube, sending tickets to BioWare, and for what... naught.

That probably wont happen again...

 

I would assume they have their own policies on dealing with exploiters and cheaters, and a youtube video taken by a player may not be considered admissible evidence.   

[Hassat Hunter]

Then what would be evidence.

A video's a lot better proof that a screenshot. Can't show people doing stuff similtaniously in a screenshot.

 

:/

 

If I could send them a screenshot I would have, but in my experience to prove a cheat, you need a vid.

[Spider]

what was the cheat?

[Hassat Hunter]

4 people doing exactly similar things (jumping, healing, attacking, mounting). 3 of the 4 following one of them. So obviously some kind of trick is used to use all 4 characters in tandem, which in return gives 4x the quest rewards, which isn't allowed.

 

Aka, cheating.

 

EDIT:

If a screenshot it would only show 4 people, so nothing to see. The vid on the other hands shows all 4 doing stuff exactly at the same time, which immediately should ring a bell that something's being used there violating the user agreement.

Edited July 21, 2013 by Hassat Hunter

[Hurlshort]

What I'm saying is they probably have to observe the activity for themselves.  They can't rely on your detective work, no matter how good, when banning other players.  When you report players, they probably make a list of those names, then have a DM to watch the reported players to confirm.  That's just my guess on how the system works.

 

It's how I manage my classroom, after all.  

[Humanoid]

Huh, I didn't know they disallowed multi-boxing (not saying that guy you recorded was me ). I did do it in WoW once upon a time as a leveling measure, admittedly - it's something they're okay with though.

[Gorth]

As for the report, still 0 views on Youtube. Guess a waste of time reporting the cheater, converting it, uploading it to Youtube, sending tickets to BioWare, and for what... naught.

That probably wont happen again...

Did you try the official forums (bug report section). Since you are a subscriber, you should be able to post

 

Yes, "automation" of activities is a violation of the games TOS.

 

As for having too much money, you could "invest" it in high values items and just sell one every now and then if you feel strapped for cash as f2p/preferred. A bit of extra work, but it saves the CC's for the escrow stuff. Since I intend to keep one of my two accounts as subscriber, I simply transferred all my money to my main char on that account, then transferring a bit on a need basis back.

 

Heh, I think the most I've had at any one time is about 700k.

 

I've just never really sat down to make a heavy effort to get the mounds of cash that so many people seem to have.

I don't really bother with it anymore either, as cash is plenty when you reach the higher levels. It was nice for a time though, just being able to constantly sending companions on crew skill missions without worrying about being able to afford it (watch those gathering and mission skills skyrocketing).

 

The other benefit was you got to listen to some truly pathetic whinging from people when you suddenly started flooding the market way underbidding in order to press prices down in general (so I could pick up the item I was really interested in at a lower price, saving sometimes hundreds of thousands of credits when people start panic selling). I'm still smiling from ear to ear thinking about that

 

 

Edit: Since ex-Gorth has reached level 45, I guess the time has come to go looking for a guild, so he can start getting familiar with operations. Those world bosses look like a bit of a handful for a single character

[alanschu]

I didn't realize multiboxing was against the TOS.

 

If someone was multiboxing, however, they probably wouldn't even need to look at your video to confirm your report.  Game logs would show it.

[Hassat Hunter]

What's multiboxing?

Considering "Humanoid" talks about it as 'leveling measure' I assume not the same.

 

I suppose that could be. I did mentioned the server and time (albeit no player names). So if they got it through game logs, I suppose that's good (if). Can't really post on the official forums since calling out players, even obvious cheaters or grievers is not allowed. And the names are plain and clear in the vid.

 

Heh, yeah, that's what I pretty much did as preferred player, letting my excess cash stack in my mailbox instead of my inventory. It works very well to get around. Have to get them in 30 days though, so there's a limit to it, but nothing I couldn't work around .

 

Depends on the worldboss. Some like the Nar Shaddaa, Alderaan, Tatooine can easily be soloed by lvl 50 alreaddy. Which is why they're usually dead since someone went 1on1 on them :/.

It doesn't help that a single player can wipe bosses on all instances for himself, and the weekly isn't trying to discourage that. I myself done it once doing 3x NS within 10m all 3 instances bosses dead. And only during one did another republic show up to join the fight (in another an imperial gave me a little help, but can't invite them, so he went home lootless, xp-less and kill-less)...

[Nepenthe]

What's multiboxing?

 

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=multiboxing&l=1

[Hassat Hunter]

Well, it's not that.

If you play multiple accounts similtaniously, it's hardly possible to do everything with all 4 *at the same time*

 

Some kind of script is needed for that, and that's definitely not allowed...

[Humanoid]

Heh, I probably should have clarified. Multiboxing is controlling more than one character simultaneously, that much is obvious, and can be done for whatever reason desired. In my case, it was taking advantage of a bonus where if you 'recruited' a new account, and the recruiter and the recruit were in the same party, experience gain was tripled.

 

Now I did this way back when the level cap was 70, so probably sometime in 2007, and the triple experience only worked until level 60, i.e. the base game level cap. The base game by itself was something like $5, with a free month included, so I figured why not, level up a couple of 60s real quick because I wanted a shaman (which was not an option for the Alliance faction in the base game).

 

The mechanics are easy enough: launch multiple instances of the game executable (fully supported with WoW, not the case with TOR apparently), and use AutoHotKey to send commands to the 'background' window(s). My form of multiboxing was very basic, one command to make the background character follow the foreground character, one to perform the basic attack spell, and one to heal the foreground character. Functionally not very different from a TOR companion in that regard. Commands can be overloaded, which is to say, I had one of my attack keys perform an attack with both characters (which is basically what you were seeing, just on a smaller scale), others, such as the heal one, did nothing on the foreground character.

 

Anyway, the implication of this is yes - in WoW you will see parties of up to five identically set up characters, usually with names like 'Bobone', 'Bobtwo', 'Bobthree', etc, (since there's no need to hide it) all performing the same action at the same time, most commonly in PvP matches. And as long as the player behind them is paying Blizzard their 5x$15 per month, then it's totally fine by them. At any rate, while I'm sure some players bend the rules, I made sure none of what I did was against the terms of service. Using the refer-a-friend system to recruit yourself is fine. Being logged into simultaneous accounts is fine. And the use of AutoHotKey is fine - with the proviso that there is no time-based automation: i.e. you hit a button and the commands sent by AHK need to be singular and immediate.

 

From what I gather, this all makes most of these techniques against TOR's ToS in more than one way, so your report is correct in that regard.

Edited July 22, 2013 by Humanoid

[Spider]

Cheating violations are supposed to be reported with the /bug command in the game, not the forums for the reason hassat mentioned.

 

As for the violation itself, I belive it'd fall in a grey area. Automation of game play is against the rule, as is macroing when you use it to combine abilities into one keypress. But as long as one ability = keypress you can do what you want.

 

Multiboxing itself isn't illegal as far as I know, and when you do multiboxing, I'm assuming you're binding all of your characters to respond to input from one keyboard somehow? (little unsure about the technicality here)

 

So one keypress will be one ability activated, just on multiple characters. Probably falling on the side of being against the ToS, but in a grey area in my mind.

 

Also, a person multiboxing is playing on several accounts, so from Bioware's perspective, that's a pretty good customer 8at least if they're subbing).

[Hassat Hunter]

Ruining economies though, since clearly farming with 4 characters, meaning 4x the daily income in 1/4th the time a "legit" character would accumalate that wealth. With bonus-multiplication in Section X it's then *more* than 4x the regular player.

 

And I didn't repeort it by /bug since I was pref at that time. Maybe should try again now if no action has been taken already (not quite sure, not really venture BH or SX frequently anymore)...