SW: The Old Republic Part 5

[Hassat Hunter]

So... 6 contracts... 5 duplicate guys.

 

Hopefully today brings change, since I really hate killing the same henchman over and over :/

[Spider]

There are a few different henchmen. I think it's random in some way which is on which planet when you get a mission. I know I've had two different henchmen on Alderaan, both on imperial side and less than an hour apart.

 

But the Kingpin contracts are more fun that way.

 

I don't quite understand their rewards design on this event though. Since it's all reputation driven, once you've maxed out your reputation you won't need to do these ever again, regardless if they add additional rewards. At least with the ilum event you had to get more coms if you wanted the newer rewards they added.

 

Anyway, the most fun I've had with this event so far was figuring out how to get to the sniper. Though there should have been a  cutscene or something when reaching him, not just the achievement.

[ShadySands]

Treek is awesome.

 

It doesn't get much better than a healing tank

[Raithe]

So how long is the contracts thing running? I'm not likely to be up and running again for most of the next week... So do I have to grit my teeth and wait for it's next turn up ala the Gree? Or is it going to be running a lengthy time?

[ShadySands]

I've heard Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday all as possibilities for the event to end but it is supposed to turn up every month so I wouldn't worry about it

[Spider]

It's called bounty contract week, so my guess is that it'll end on wednesday's reset (since that's when it started)

[Gorth]

Ran into an "amusing" bug over the weekend... Actually, it was quite frustrating, but it was so outrageous that you couldn't help laugh at it.

 

I don't really bother with PVP anymore, but having had this 2 out of 3 victories in my quest log for the longest time, I couldn't get myself to abandon it, so I queued up for a warzone and it popped shortly after, great.

 

Battle went well. It's the one where you have to defend/attack doors leading to a reactor. Starting out as defender, we kept the republic scum from even opening a single door before the 6 minutes were over and switching sides. Great, we only needed to breach a single door for a win.

 

In less than 60 seconds, breached the first door and the game ended. Everybody was cheering and all was good... until the status board came up and declared us losers as a reward for winning. Suddenly everyone was WTF? WTH? and **** & ****, oh and **** this!!!

 

Yeah, still need that third win. Sometimes you just feel the game is rigged

 

...

 

On a completely unrelated note and just because I got a spare tauntaun, I decided to create a girly marauder (I don't really do girly characters that often). I would have preferred a dinosaur for her, but lacking that, a tauntaun will have to do. Also equipped her so she is dual wielding gamorrean war axes. Maybe I should get her a chainmail bikini. She already has the flaming red her, but sadly, the name "Sonia" was already taken.

[Gorth]

One of my characters seems to have inherited a guild...

 

Hadn't logged on with the guy for a few weeks and when checking out things yesterday, I noticed I was "Guild Leader" and the real guild owner no longer a member. Was sort of what the heck moment. Maybe somebody got unsubscribed or something? There was a website reference on splash message, maybe I should try and see if I can dig up an email address and ask what to do with it. It's only a tiny guild but still, somebody went through the effort of actually creating it.

[Raithe]

It's one of those automatic things. If a guild leader hasn't logged in for.. I think it's 60 days? the position will automatically fall to the next senior in the guild.

[Gromnir]

as strange as it may sound, Gromnir actual has a handful o' swtor "toons." am not an mmo guy, but we joined with a friend... a friend who quit 6 months later 'cause his wife wanted to play guild wars. d'oh. we does some pvp and has end-game characters, but doing regular raids for us is tougher because we is a solo player. we were in a guild for a short time and the drama were too... just too whatever. our heals sage is a known quantity on our server, so we is always getting invites, but just can't bring our self to do another guild.am thinking the only way we joins a guild is if it is a small group o' folks we knows quite well.

 

is a busted game in many ways, but we still plays. 

 

go figure.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Gorth]

Doesn't sound so strange Gromnir. Would be strange if there was a popular rpg that you didn't at least check out (not the same as investing time in playing, I know)
 

we were in a guild for a short time and the drama were too... just too whatever. our heals sage is a known quantity on our server, so we is always getting invites, but just can't bring our self to do another guild.

I wonder what server that is?

 

My main character actually ended up in a "fun" guild. It could be a time zone thing of course, only a handful of guild people logged on as the same as I, but they are so bizarre and surreal, it's hard not to smile.

 

As for drama.

 

Lesson #1, stay away from the fleets (please, oh please Bioware, can we have mod stations on our ships???) , if you absolutely have to go there to mod your armour or pick up daily missions (quests and rewards), switch off general chat.

Lesson #2, real life couples are 3 out of 4 times more trouble than they are worth if you end up in pugs. When you vote kick one for being an utter jerk and moron, you effectively lose half your flashpoint group (I've experienced exactly ONE exception to that while playing).

Lesson #3, 'Ignore' is your friend. Use it frequently and use it liberally. Makes for a much better experience. I just wish Bioware would get their butts in gear and solve the problem of it being per toon instead of account wide (if I don't like another real person, I awant all my toons to ignore all his toons).

 

Anyway, my main character is now level 54 and finally got his 5th companion (yeah, I know, that's rather late for his level, but that is what you get for lack of experience and just grinding and grinding etc. in the beginning. Now started to gear up the companions too. Took out 4 world bosses so far together with a lower level sniper guild member (just helping with the gearing up). Hassat was right, a number of those, you can actually "solo" if geared up appropriately.

 

Edit: Scratch that, make it 9 out of 10 instead.

[Gromnir]

our server is jedi covenant. was in ld 50 guild, but like we said, too much drama... and they were too focused on pvp anyway. when server transfer became available, guild died as virtual everybody went to a pvp server. we has done far less pvp since 2.0. am recalling getting jumped by a naked jugg smash monkey who killed us in 2 hits with us at about 90% health. yeah, it were a bug that got fixed, but that and the 40k health assassins in green mod gear and other nonsense made us think that maybe we would take a break from serious pvp for awhile.

 

our biggest swtor gripe is actual customer service. no doubt customer service for other mmos is just as bad, but the canned and useless responses sets our teeth on edge. 

 

 Gromnir runs into bug doing czerka dailies that prevents us from getting weekly despite completing all missions. please give us credit for weekly and fix bug.-- submit ticket under bugs category (mistake)

 

2 days pass

 

blahblahblahblahblablah. bio response is complete unresponsive. is almost as if we got a bot response that scanned ticket for keywords and gave a pre-rendered response. soooo, Gromnir creates another ticket, this time under missions heading

 

2 days pass

 

blahblahblahblahblahblah. translation: you are screwed. this is a known bug that will be addressed in a future patch. please search the boards for more info. please submit a bug report. ty. sincerely, #$%@&%$#

 

...

 

bah. 

 

'bout 1/2 of the very limited number o' tickets we submitted has resulted in a satisfactory resolution, and am estimating that average time to get resolution is 4 days. almost always need to submit a second ticket, so probable more like 1/3 of actual total tickets is ending in satisfied Gromnir. 

 

*grumble*

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Gorth]

Turnaround time for fixes *does* seem quicker where the cartel market is concerned

[Gromnir]

*snort*

 

is no way in hell Gromnir is spending real money on game beyond subscription just for vanity enhancements. we get 500 or 600 free coins per month, and that is more than enough for us. saw some guy complain that he spent $$$$ to get 2 hypercrates and still no lizard mount... were blaming bio and ea. 

 

HA!

 

little too much spirit o' p.t. barnum in the cartel stuff for Gromnir to get involved.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Gorth]

 

I'm guilty of supporting the cartel market. Bought two hypercrates. The lizard would have been nice, but wasn't really the goal. Sold most of the content (except a few armour pieces) on the GTN. Made 5 million in-game credits in 24 hours. That's a *lot* of crafting material (and schematics) I can buy from the market. So yeah, it is a "splurge for convenience" thing acting as a money sink for real life money.

[Gromnir]

if we ever get desperate for credits we will sell our czerka crate o' matic. have been offered upwards o' 25 mil for it. weird.

 

also, am supposing that buying hypercrates to get credits makes no less sense than mindlessly running czerka/bh/section x dailies. nevertheless, the notion o' paying ea real money so we can get swtor creds just seems... dirty.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[ShadySands]

Alternating between my operative and assassin

 

I enjoy healing as the operative a lot but since I'm pretty much always solo I'm finding the assassin more fun to play over all. The problem with that is that I already have 2 other inquisitors so I'm not really interested in going through the story a third time while the operative is the only agent I have that isn't still on Hutta.

 

Just in case anyone is wondering why I have 3 inquisitors. The first one, a pure blood sith sorc, was my first character and I played him all the way to 50. After the legacy stuff came out I unlocked the chiss race and made a new blue sorc to replace the old red one. 

[Gorth]

Besides my human main guy (my Powertech/tank build), the next in line to reach level 50 is my cyborg trooper

 

The latter (a Commando healer build) is best in a group though (and I also play solo most of the time). I noticed it in particular with the Bounty Hunting event when going solo against the henchmen. He's great at supporting and has some nice area effect weapons, but it's all things that do less damage to more targets rather than taking a single target down fast. Unfortunately, his companions aren't quite geared up yet to do enough damage, so he can just heal those and then let them do the damage.

 

Edit: 3rd in line for reaching "end game" is probably my Chiss sniper at level 38.

 

Edit2: Speaking of bounty hunting, got 2 kingpin contracts (plus 1 kingpin taken down and another that kicked my butt royally, taking the total to 4) and 5 henchmen contracts in my inventory. Not too shabby for a week long event I think

[Gromnir]

Besides my human main guy (my Powertech/tank build), the next in line to reach level 50 is my cyborg trooper

 

The latter (a Commando healer build) is best in a group though (and I also play solo most of the time). I noticed it in particular with the Bounty Hunting event when going solo against the henchmen. He's great at supporting and has some nice area effect weapons, but it's all things that do less damage to more targets rather than taking a single target down fast. Unfortunately, his companions aren't quite geared up yet to do enough damage, so he can just heal those and then let them do the damage.

 

Edit: 3rd in line for reaching "end game" is probably my Chiss sniper at level 38.

 

Edit2: Speaking of bounty hunting, got 2 kingpin contracts (plus 1 kingpin taken down and another that kicked my butt royally, taking the total to 4) and 5 henchmen contracts in my inventory. Not too shabby for a week long event I think

last swtor post from us for awhile. as such we will admit that we did bounty enough that we has enough reputation saved so that in 4 more weeks we will be able to hit legend rep w/o actually doing another bounty mission. dont recall the number o' the blue (630 rep) and green (270 rep) modules we got spread over a number o' toons, but we did math, and we has 'bout 1000 rep points more than needed for legend. sad, no? we simply not wanted to have to do bounty next month.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Inyourprime]

Since I can't post on their forums about my problem, I'd figure I post it here. Areas in Nar Shaddaa will not load.

 

Every time I leave my ship the following happens - I enter the Nar Shaddaa hanger, I take the elevator down to the spaceport, walk around the lower level of the spaceport and.... die. I'm met with people floating in midair. This area will not load. I've tried clean boots, updated my drivers, and even downloaded the game again. Same result.

 

Has anyone ever had this problem?

[Gorth]

Can't say I've ever heard of such a thing

 

Have had very few technical issues (not including in-game bugs, most of which are already listed on the known issues list that google took me to once. The few I've had went away with the "repair" option (and Nar Shaddaa is a frequently visited place for most characters, both early and late in the game).

 

Only known and frequent issue (frequent, as in always happens) is the hyperspace crash on Black Talon and what's its name either boarding party or the the one just after which crashes you to desktop.

 

For some reason, the latter is not on the known issues list.

[Inyourprime]

Guess I'm screwed -- heh, I can't even create a ticket about it either. Another subscriber perk, I suppose. 

[ShadySands]

I've shelved both my operative and assassin for the time being and have been focusing on my shadow. 

 

I forgot how much I hate the male consular voice and I do like the look of the assassin attacks better (lightning vs rocks and pebbles) but at least it's a different story 

[Hassat Hunter]

Lesson #1, stay away from the fleets (please, oh please Bioware, can we have mod stations on our ships???) , if you absolutely have to go there to mod your armour or pick up daily missions (quests and rewards), switch off general chat.

Oh yeah.

How much I wouldn't love for BioWare to take out the fleet completely, and move all parts elsewhere, like the Capitol (Dromund Kaas/Coruscant). Most of it is already there anyway. And some server-wide chat so for LFG's for ops you don't need to be on the fleet (they have a priority shuttle there so you can go from anyplace, but no invites!). Less fleet would lead to a better SWTOR in my opinion. Sadly, BioWare doesn't seem to move into the direction to make the player able to be less fleet-dependant

Took out 4 world bosses so far together with a lower level sniper guild member (just helping with the gearing up). Hassat was right, a number of those, you can actually "solo" if geared up appropriately.

Yup, the Tatooine, Alderaan, Quesh (albeit less since no alternative instances to farm) and Nar Shaddaa bosses are usually dead since they're soloable and people just kill them for their stupid goal (note to BioWare; change it to 3 DIFFERENT worldbosses instead of mere 3 to reduce a lot of this sillyness), farming some purple items for the GTN or being a pain-in-the-ass (grieving newbies who plan to get it, keeping it occupied for half an hour since immune even with enrage, you know the type). I generally stopped bothering with world bosses some time ago, they're just not worth it the way they're added to the game. It will only annoy you if you want to kill them for the goal, and I rather have fun than be hugely annoyed. Odd, eh?

our biggest swtor gripe is actual customer service. no doubt customer service for other mmos is just as bad, but the canned and useless responses sets our teeth on edge.

Oh, yeah, hell yeah. Though they were quite good helping me out when I had issues with subscribing for a month, bug reports, not so much. Ingame you generally get the standard response as noticed. Will they read it, I don't know. It took them months to finally note the Taral V issue on the known issues and even more for them to fix it (in 2.3.1 apparently, feel free to search up when I mentioned it on these boards ). And that wasn't a minor issue, but a flashpoint breaking event.

Another funny story is when I recently reported their crafting tweak was broken. A recent patch (2.2?) was supposed to change 401+ biochem items from giving 1 (regular) or 2 (critical) to 3 (normal) or 6 (critical). Instead it was giving 3 on regular and 4 on critical. Reporting this and another issue with the Encrypted Datacubes (the final reward for all 8 is not given if f2p) the response was 'It should not happen' (to the datacubes one)... well, it did. As for the other, they couldn't check it out for me since I was pref, not sub. Now if I was a sub they could check this bug for me. It's a bug! It's not part of just my character, everyone experiences it. :/

Anyway, I still send ample bugreports per mail to support (since can't send ingame tickets), despite knowing it's probably futile, since that's just who I am. I keep trying, hopefully I can make them aware of atleast a few they don't know since tickets dissapear into the void.

 

Atleast the recent patches seem to fix more stuff than just the Cartel Market, so it seems it goes the right way. The earlier mentioned Taral V issue finally got fixed 6 months after they created it (and thus, I reported it). They seemingly made that one Czerka quest less crappy (still haven't checked it, probably still is very laggy). That seems all good.

Also; They devaluaded subs even more again, with more to come 2.4. I wonder what those people are left with in the end.

[Gorth]

Most of the issues I've come across so far are actually listed on the known issues list. Doesn't mean I haven't come across more, but they've been either not noticeable or not "repeatable". Only exception is the hyperspace crash in Black Talon and The Foundry.

 

I haven't tried the Quesh boss, starting out with "Grandfather" on Balmorra and then the first 3 on the Weekly list (Tattooine, Nar Shaddaa and Alderaan).

 

What's the story with the Bormu anyway and the achievement that is even more ridiculous than the Black Sun on Coruscant (at least the latter is acknowledged as a bug)?

 

No way is any sane person going to bother killing 500 Bormu (on a trip through the landscape, you might down 10 or so during a game). Must be some kind of insider joke.

 

Speaking of achievements... I noticed that the Jedi Prisoner has been fixed at some point after my Powertech stopped visiting The Foundry. My sniper just got it yesterday. After two and a half attempt at starting the flashpoint.

 

In the first attempt, our tank was stuck, because the red elevator button had gone missing, he couldn't progress with the rest of us. Had to leave. Then healer disconnected. Game over.

 

Second attempt, tank disconnects right away. Healer gets cold feet and quits group. Other sniper and I becomes stubborn (happens to be the very same sniper that entered the first time together with me). We decided we were cursed or some such, but wouldn't just quit this time (after having waited 2 x 1.5 hours in the queue). Luckily for us, a good couple of players shows up right away* and we finish without breaking a sweat. Sniper power FTW :)'

 

*Right away as in 15 minutes in because of the forced lockout. Once expired they were there. Lockout was in place because of the above mentioned hyperspace bug. When the game crashes, it apparently thinks you left the flashpoint voluntarily. Even starting up the game again, logging in and continuing where you were in the flashpoint.