SW: The Old Republic - Episode VII (J.J. Strikes Back)

[ShadySands]

Finally heard back about my main character missing the ship droids but was told there is nothing they can do at this time and that it will hopefully be resolved with a future patch

 

I guess that will teach me to stop playing early access and wait a couple patches for any new content

 

Also looks like a lotta nerfs coming down the pipe for Assassins which is what I've been playing a lot lately

Edited December 6, 2015 by ShadySands

[Calax]

Played a little bit for the first time since my free month, if only because I was looking for a co-op game to play with my sister. I've heard in the past that the Jedi Consular story was the dullest of the lot, and oh boy, it seems all the reports were correct. Still on Coruscant, mind you, but I really can't get into character at all when compared to my smuggler way back when.

 

Still, it's kind of fun to troll by picking irrational dialogue options during group conversations and I think that's been the saving grace of the game this time around. If I was playing solo I think I'd have already quit again though, mechanically it still feels as clunky as ever - indeed moreso because now I have to settle for near-200ms latency to US servers, as compared to ~10ms when they hosted some in Sydney.

Just from memory, the Sith Inquisitor story is even more boring. The Consular story takes time to pick up speed, but the Inquisitor story starts out awesome, and proceeds to become "you have the sniffles, go to planet to fix it and OH HAY YOU HAVE MORE POWER!"

 

Admittedly I just reactivated my account after watching SFdebris go through the Agent story, so I'm not sure about the post 60 content yet (Just been doing the Revan content got me from 55 to 61, and I just hit Yavin IV... which is supposed to be little more than ashes I think...)

[Humanoid]

Moar powar sounds better than basically having the Consular basically just Googling WebMD. But yes, I'll be pleased when this part of the arc concludes (up to the final section of Coruscant, it's a slow slog).

[Calax]

Moar powar sounds better than basically having the Consular basically just Googling WebMD. But yes, I'll be pleased when this part of the arc concludes (up to the final section of Coruscant, it's a slow slog).

Basically take the Consular prologue and act 1, and that's act 2/3 for the Inquisitor. Just with a touch more backstabbing.

[Gorth]

The two most disappointing chapter 3's for me were Knight and Warrior (for different reasons). Took me half a dozen tries to make it past chapter 1 of the consular story and it was the one I finished last (although I did find it got better towards the end). Never going to roll a female consular again though, just can't stand the completely flat, unengaged voice reciting text from a piece of paper (mentioned it before, I think Hayden Christensen is Oscar material compared to the "acting" of the female consular VO). Like something you would hear from somebody memorizing their lines before getting the context and no directing help.

 

Played around a bit with the free level 60 token, but just couldn't settle on a character. It feels "wrong" somehow starting on the expansion without having a past. Hard to explain really.

[213374U]

Also looks like a lotta nerfs coming down the pipe for Assassins which is what I've been playing a lot lately

 

Not just for Assassins.

 

There was a 1v1 tournament this weekend on TRE; while there was room for some of that crazy PT/VG burst everyone is talking about (ouch), the winner was once again a stealther, and not an Assassin, either. Link if anyone is interested.

 

Of course with the devs being average from what I hear and Musco not even playing the game anymore, the odds of a serious effort to balance the game for both PVE and PVP are low.

[majestic]

Well, not that Bioware  cold balance for crap if their life depended on it but 1 vs. 1 balance can't possibly be a healthy goal for any MMO. Look where 2 on 2 bracket has lead WoW.

Edited December 7, 2015 by majestic

[ShadySands]

Official patch notes here

[ShadySands]

Gree event blah

 

The only fun I have during the Gree event is teasing the douchebags who camp the quest turn in in the PVP area. I try to draw them away so others can complete the quest

[Gorth]

I did the gree event until maxed out in reputation and having collected 200+ grey helixes (the fringe benefit of a lot of level 55's back then, could run 16 man Xenoanalyst like 5-6 times a day, SM and HM). Never got around to spend them all.

 

Rarely ever participated in the pvp, except for a few times where friends persuaded me to join them. A pub guild I was once a member of once showed up with 20 man, 5 groups of 4 and camped in the middle, killing anything that got close and didn't have the guild tag. I guess it was fun for 30 minutes...

[Spider]

Yeah, that's just trolling. It could have been fun if another guild showed up in similar numbers though.

[majestic]

The best times I had with the Gree event were in a group with two other operatives and an assassin. We'd wait in stealth and would burst down unsuspecting targets for transgressions like having stupid names or glowing brightly. Ah, the wonderful taste of screams and flames.  Dropping out of stealth behind a group and shooting into another and then use the stealth cooldown was pretty fun as well. More than once two groups who patiently waited ended up killing each other. Especially when coordinated with someone else.

[Humanoid]

So Origin have a sale right now, and the Outlander Pack, which consists of 60 days subscription, 1050 bonus cartel coins, and some useless pet I don't care about is 33% off, comes to about $20USD (and ironically regional pricing makes it about a dollar cheaper in Australia). In itself not a bad deal, but Origin Mexico is where the deals are at, and it's $13.32 there. So I bought it, it's just a product key to redeem on the SWTOR website, and it works fine.

 

I can confirm that the 1050 coins are in addition to the normal monthly subscriber grant, since that aspect was a little ambiguous. Given 60 days + 1050 coins purchased manually through the SWTOR site would normally come to $40, it's literally one-third of the normal price. Can only be used once per account, of course.

 

EDIT: Needed to use a VPN of course. I used Hola which is a free VPN, and in terms of any security concerns, you can turn the VPN off once you get to the checkout stage where it asks you for your password and it will still go through.

Edited December 21, 2015 by Humanoid

[kirottu]

You sneaky bastardo.

[213374U]

Nice find.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

So Origin have a sale right now, and the Outlander Pack, which consists of 60 days subscription, 1050 bonus cartel coins, and some useless pet I don't care about is 33% off, comes to about $20USD (and ironically regional pricing makes it about a dollar cheaper in Australia). In itself not a bad deal, but Origin Mexico is where the deals are at, and it's $13.32 there. So I bought it, it's just a product key to redeem on the SWTOR website, and it works fine.

 

I can confirm that the 1050 coins are in addition to the normal monthly subscriber grant, since that aspect was a little ambiguous. Given 60 days + 1050 coins purchased manually through the SWTOR site would normally come to $40, it's literally one-third of the normal price. Can only be used once per account, of course.

 

EDIT: Needed to use a VPN of course. I used Hola which is a free VPN, and in terms of any security concerns, you can turn the VPN off once you get to the checkout stage where it asks you for your password and it will still go through.

Thanks for the heads up. Did it take a long time to process the order for you?

[Humanoid]

I placed two orders separately because I went to buy a subscription for my co-op partner too. One transaction I paid by Paypal and it completed instantly, with the product key shown on checkout. The other I paid with credit card, I got an "order pending" email and it took 51 hours to clear and I finally got the product key via email. They said to allow 24-48 hours in the initial email so they missed that window even, so that was a little annoying.

 

For the credit card transaction I also bought a Sims expansion at the same time so I don't know if that would have affected it, or whether it was purely because of the payment method.

Edited December 22, 2015 by Humanoid

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I did cc this morning and it still is pending, so I'm thinking it's the payment method.

[Gorth]

I didn't bother with the proxy stuff, the deal was still a good deal. You effectively get the cartel coins for free if you were going to add 60 days of sub to your account anyway. Since I was logged into origin (which happens once in a blue moon), I also grabbed a copy of Dragon Age Inquisition Game of the Year bundle at 50% off. Not sure if I'm ever going to play it, but I guess 50% is probably as far as EA is willing to discount for relatively new titles.

[213374U]

We have identified the issues that caused the Bounty Contract Week to not activate as expected. Due to the nature of the issues and the impending holiday, we will not be fixing the event and it will return as scheduled in January.

 

 

[Hurlshort]

Is there something wrong with them waiting until after the holiday to activate the event?

 

I like my games, but I don't expect people to give up time with family over the holidays so I can hunt down bounties.   

[213374U]

Other than, you know, this being the second event in a row that they botch? I don't particularly care about the event itself, mind. But the level of unprofessionalism and contempt towards customers they've been displaying lately is... mindboggling.

 

Maybe it's because you don't work in the service industry, but usually when you deliver a broken product, you either fix it, offer a refund, or if neither alternative is an option, you compensate the customer otherwise.

 

Really, the event is just the proverbial straw. Have you heard about the NiM loot "fix"? The myriad issues with class missions disappearing and preventing progress? Rollbacks causing CC losses which they can't refund because reasons? Missing companions? That's just off the top of my head.

 

Apparently, at Bioware Austin, holidays begin on october. Man, I wish I worked there.

[ShadySands]

^Yeah, lately I'm not inclined to let much slide either

 

My main character is missing two companions and all they said was maybe it will get fixed in the future. I understand mechanically they aren't necessary but I don't play the game because I love the mechanics, story and companions are the main draws of the game for me

[Gromnir]

am admitting that by the time we get a response to a customer support ticket, we has near forgotten we sent the ticket.  weeks-often many weeks- pass and we be accustomed to the broken whatever such that when the predictable non-response to our ticket arrives, we is initially surprised before our "oh yeah, now Gromnir remembers..." reaction.

 

haven't yet learned to stop sending tickets is, we suspect, our genuine problem.  definition o' insanity and all that?  keep performing same action and expecting different results, at least in a newtonian universe, is insane.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited December 22, 2015 by Gromnir

[majestic]

It's pretty amazing that the game works at all, considering the basis it is built upon. The Hero engine is an immense turd. Back when SWTOR launched the guys who made it claimed it was Bioware's engineers that messed it up when finishing the engine in-house, but now, four years later, the unmodified Hero Engine is still... a turd.

 

Not to mention that IF is in financial dire straits.

 

Not that this is supposed to excuse Bioware's blundering about, they do seem to have a massive problem with version control. A while back when I still played each new content patch reintroduced the same bugs to the upgraded version of certain relics. Without fail. Content patch -> same bugs come back -> fix three weeks later.

 

I'm still waiting for my "The Red Blade" codex entry that I never got on my operative that I play since launch (well not so much recently, obviously). I kind of have given up on it.