f13.net

Combat balance.  What problems do you have with it?  Two bullet points max, 15 words or less each point.

Go.

You preparing an executive summary or something? :)

Only one bitch:

Gunslinger: Cover System: not enough world objects to fully mitigate. So, relegated to using the portable cover system that only mitigates 20%. Plus it makes you stationary, but that is less a bitch and more just a "yea duh you knew that at level 2 chucklehead" issue.

I can't cut people in half with my lightsaber :oh_i_see:

Gunslinger:

I am too fucking squishy for the shit they expect me to kill in my class quests with just Corso "the Derp" Riggs as a companion. It feels like they've balanced it for scoundrels. Who can heal. But I fucking can't.


Consular:

Nothing.  :heart: :heart: Unless bitching about companions counts, in which case "they take too long to give you all of them."

Jedi Guardian: buttons that don't work AT ALL on gold+ mobs are stupid. That's basically it.

Nerf sages.

Most NPC's die, so I'm happy.

At level 40 my sniper got a healer companion and everything got better.  I'm guessing it's the same on the Republic side.

Probably, but it's fucking stupid to make me wait that long for a damn healer companion (as the smuggler gets theirs really late too).

Use evasion often.  I find that, the ae stun, and knockbacks help a ton as well. Detaunt seems worthless though as the tank companion is terrible.

Mostly not having that problem at 31, except for the Tatooine class quest againt the mob dude and sith chicks. Two Elites and I'd get her down to like 2% but consistently die. I kept thinking i had to solo it but it turns out you can bring anyone else with you as long as it's not a Smuggerl.

I agree we're pretty squishy, but not overly so. Between distract, evade, that smoke screen, the aggro dump, the various screens, well-timed AOE stuns, the grenade (a 1.5s stun too), the PBAOE pushback, and finding occasional use for damn-forgot-to-turn-it-off-again Harpoon (which is a roughly 1s stun too), it feels about right. I'm mostly Sharpshooter right now though, and have no idea what I'd be in a group. Opinion of one :)

You could even bring another smuggler if the right interface option is set.

Level and gear imbalance. There is a truly huge difference between a level 40 and a level 50 with pvp gear. At this point most matches are won by which team has the most 50s with pvp gear. Its really not fun.

Side note. This is going to be fixed soon as they separate out the level 50s from everyone else.

Too many buttons. Simplify, man!

Don't you dare take away my buttons.  It justifies the purchase of a 10 button mouse!

Fix animation disparity between Imperial and Republic class equivalents. See: Dirty Kick, Full Auto, Mortar Volley, Project

Make the classes actually equal. 90s cooldown Smuggler flashbang vs. 60s cooldown IA flashbang? 15% vs 30% crit healing? Come on.

Consular/Shadow:

fucking game thinking Tumult can't be applied to a stunned target like, 90% of the time.
the "instant" Force Wave actually executing at the end of 2+ sec long animation.

CC needs a bit of a toning down, or my CC break needs to be on a much faster cooldown.  And knockbacks/stuns are just stupid overpowered in huttball.

Force Leap is stupid overpowered in huttball. Knockbacks/pulls are bad, but they've got shit on the ball carrier being able to just zip ahead to your newly spawned incoming players across multiple levels of the terrain.

Actually, yeah, let's go with the "fuck me, too many buttons" thing too. It's not bad on my (healing) sage, but the other classes I'm playing I can tell are going to get really annoying eventually.

My Powertech has the same issue; I suspect all classes do.  It's a damn big issue.  Combined with the 'too many buttons' bitch, how about they just make all abilities affect all mobs, but trim some out.

I wouldn't have a problem with it, really, if it was the usual spate of things that don't work on bosses, like stuns, etc. But I can stun a gold but then not use a pure damage ability on them? Wat?

Too many buttons and i am getting an eye twitch from fucking having to stare at my buff/button bar to see what lights up.  Having a priority system for combat without even the most basic macro or UI mod system is what is going to finish this game for me if it doesn't get fixed soon.  I play an assassin and a BH and both guys rely on procs/short term buffs/random abilities coming of cooldown during combat. 

This.

Oddly enough, I'm not too bothered by the lack of macros. Granted, my only experience using macros was to grind crafting in SWG and skill up in UO.

My main gripe with the buttons is that sometimes the UI can lag and instead of clicking a button, I am suddenly dragging it, which really sucks when you're trying to salvage a combat that has suddenly gone south.

Where I know I'm going to want macros is for setting up specific targeting for powers, etc.

* The buttons.  Dear gods, the buttons.

* No permanent Lelek.

Is Lelek your captive Jawa? Did you ever successfully smuggle the little bastard off of Tatooine?

No ability to firmly toggle off companion abilities, like forever.  Looking at you and your damn harpoon-spamming-every-single-NPC Corso!

Skill responsiveness is terrible, esp in pvp. If I hit a button (especially my interrupt or CC breaker), I want the ability to go off, not 'appear to go off but no', or 'go off much later' or 'go off after arbitrarily_long_animation_01 finishes'.

Also, what Nonentity said. Mirrors Are Hard?  :awesome_for_real:

My biggest bitch would be that the pure dps classes don't bring enough dps to the table to offset their lack of crowd control/heal/tank utility IMO.

- Animation / Response Issues.   Faction imbalance due to animations is just  :uhrr:.   Syncing often causes me to throw people the wrong way.  Interrupts don't work blah blah.
- Some classes have blatantly extremely poor damage compared to the top performers.

Oh! I thought of another!

The ground target AE marker thing is WAY TINIER than its actual area, AND IT DRIVES ME CRAZY.

Yes.  Log-out or leaving the planet causes her to leave my company. :cry:

You should be able to. Expand your companions quickslot and all their abilities should show up to toggle on or off.

It works perfectly on my Inquisitor for turning off AoEs and such, but Doc on my Sentinel will never remember to turn off Carbonite Stream no matter how many times I tell him to stop doing it.

Does he never stop, or does he only stop until the next time you zone or he's summoned after disappearing?   Guard is this way when applied to companions. Hop off a speeder?  Recast guard.  Went into an instance? Recast guard.   

There's something goofy on companions and persistent buffs/ toggles.

As you say, it works until he's unsummoned or you go through a loading screen.

1) With a Sith Juggernaut, This.

2) Class instance quests seemingly balanced for a tank Spec, highly frustrating as a DPS.

At 42, with well leveled custom gear, I am starting to feel like the weakest Sith in the galaxy within class story quests.

Lightsaber tanks are really sucky it seems. Starting to hate my Guardian.

They randomly decide to turn the toggle back on.  :awesome_for_real:

Yes but several of the companions have an issue where they'll toggle it back on.

At what level? As with most tanks, your lvl appropriate gear could be a factor.

It seems to be related to summoning, but only in some cases. On Corso, Harpoon Shot will not remember the "I turned this goddamned thing off" state. So every time I leave my vehicle and Corso reappears, I need to turn it off. Which I always forget to do. Meanwhile, his AOEs stay off or on just fine.

My friend just hit 50 with the Jugg and is having a rough time of it in Ilum. A silver and normal with him and Quinn and a medpack take him down to 20% health. A silver alone with all cooldowns up kills him.

The mobs on Ilum are definitely tougher. I didn't quite have that level of trouble (as a guardian tank, so should be the same roughly) but it was a noticeable notch up from Corellia.

Yeah Ilum quest are harder and I really hate it that some see through stealth + some quest seems to have a big baf radius, so you need to clean up around the main target first....


Do the belsavis one first. Do the solo one and you can buy with 8 marks a 126dps hilt/barrel. If you have stealth you can solo the heroic quest but I guess as a Juggernaut this is not a option. However I know only the republic quest, maybe the empire side has different ones.....


I hope someday the fix the bugs with disappearing act. So many times you stay in combat after a vanish thanks to your companion + ability delay in pvp is %$$&$......

Only 26, so you're probably right. One factor is that I haven't seen a single shield generator drop after the Esseles. A DPS offhand dropped like 8 levels ago so that's good I suppose.

A good way of putting things is this: I spent all my creds on crafting before level 25. Then I started saving up for a speeder. I quested until I had 15k, of which 5k went to repairs.

Just did a quick check on the companions I have access to (Corso, Bowdaar, Risha, Qyzen and Kaliyo) and slots 6 and 9 on all their bars are bugged and will turn back on every time. Additionally, slot 8 on Bowdaar (Wookie Roar) does it too.

Shields, Focus & Generators all drop pretty rarely. However, they can be crafted by artifice so someone in your guild should be able to provide for you.

Companions not remembering when you turn off their abilities almost made me respec out of the gunslinger's AE tree into marksmanship.  Turning off harpoon shot every five minutes is damned obnoxious.

Also second to the way too many abilities problem.  WAR had this problem, but at least it had macros and a UI that was moddable so I could install a conditionals addon.  The game just screams for the ability to let us make macros given how many abilities we get that have requirements to even use them.

Balance wise I think the game's alright.  Without things like parsers it's going to take a little more time to find the dominant builds.  And with 50s screwing over warzones there's no good way to judge in WZs yet.  Storyline wise though it's way out of whack.  Just seems like BioWare spent a lot more time on the Empire side and it's showing.  And of course it seems like Republic got the short end of the stick when it came to combat animations since a lot of them root them in place.

Balance is actually much better than I would have previously known.  Right now, the regular pvp crowd has nearly a full set of champion gear.  I'm finding the top contributors on the server to be very similar in output and consistency once I factor in heals and the like.  I think that a 50-only battleground will be quite fun.  I just hope that the cc issue gets sorted out (re: resolve working, fair distribution among classes, immunities, purges, etc.).

I have to say that I enjoy the pvp much more than I would have originally thought.

What's wrong with resolve? i know i've seen it working plenty of times.

Most of the roots go through resolve, which can be brutal (I have been chain-charged on my vanguard by 2 sith on a fire pit and died, even though I started to walk across the pit with a full white resolve bar).

They also show up fairly often in the treasure hunting mission loot boxes. Blue ones every now and then, even.

Really? I now know one of my Smuggler alt's gathering professions.

Yea, I've been using a purple shield generators for most of my levels thanks to the super expensive comm vendor boxes.

Bodyguard:  The tree has severe problems due to no combat enhancements completing even solo content.  Fights against healing strongs and elites can routinely last 7 minutes even using the dart and jet pack interrupts.  To pure bodyguards the problem is so severe that you can get caught in your class quest and wait more than 5 days being stuck until customer service extricates you.  We have several bodyguard BHs that were stuck unable to finish their class quest, unable to leave, and unable to bring in help due to the progress they made in the story quest.  Additionally I know that personally I am stuck on the Ilum class finale unable to kill the admiral, unable to heal myself because the boss debuffs prevent healing, unable to remove the debuffs using the cure ability.  Essentially the boss negates my whole tree.  

Simply put the solo content is not balanced well for all specs.  The tree needs desperately a buff to its survivability or the ability to debuff.  Personally I am for the latter.

The Ilum quests get much easier when your companion is well geared.  The dailies also pay VERY well. 

The shielding and defense mechanic on tanks only working on 15% on the abilities in pvp. Tree skills that are related to shielding being rendered fairly worthless.

This is pretty normal for tanks in MMO pvp. Not saying it is good, but it is certainly normal. Can't parry a fireball, etc.

Except in Star Wars canon, Jedi routinely parry lightning bolts.  And why exactly wouldn't an energy shield work on... well everything?

Magnetized bullets.

Shieldtechs are fun...until you find something that does elemental/internal. Then you're looking at taking something like 40% more damage 40% of the time. Then stack on the penalty for not having expertise gear (new 50) and pvp is so awesome. If you don't get in right away, you are penalized the entire time you pvp until you finally slog your way to being fully geared. I like a little light pvp, but in both Rift and TOR, I just don't get how people can put up with that steep climb.

I'm interested to see how my Shadow tank develops, though.

Also, in SW canon, Jedi hate those little shieldy bots that seem to be the toughest form of droid.

Four obvious faults that I'm seeing:

1) Inequality among the healing classes.  Sorc/Sage are >>> all

2) Tanks don't get enough tools to be optimal.  They would benefit from shorter cooldowns on taunts and another interrupt.

3) Damage type makes a HUGE difference.

4) PvP and PvE seem to favor ranged classes in an obvious way.  Well-played melee can still do their job equally, but it takes more finesse than ranged.

Yea, without going into it in depth, there are tank problems in pvp. They don't dodge,block, or shield a lot of attacks you would expect to be defensible from other games, like certain melee strikes to the face and the like. As was said, it all depends on damage type, and it really has no rhyme or reason in this game. Classes have varying attack damage types, and once they figure out what can be shielded and what not to use, that 15% goes down as people don't use those skills against you. In pve as a tank you will see your shield go off a lot. Bear in mind this isn't an outright block of all damage, but rather an absorb of a certain percentage, like shield block. Some attacks avoid shielding, armor, and your defenses, and to no surprise are very popular builds. Now, i could even possibly see these being the anti-tank specs, but that isn't the case. The anti-tank classes are the anti-everyone spec, so there is no real drawback to speccing that way.

The alternative is to try and spec dps as a vanguard or other tank. I can only speak for the vanguard, but their dps specs aren't anything to write home about. Your mileage may vary on that, but i found it very lackluster. On a positive note, i think eventually they will figure out the defensive side of tanks aren't working in pvp and will adjust, but i assume they have bigger fish to fry at the moment with the illum disaster and other issues. I'm having some fun on a commando healer/dps alt until then.

I think when and if they get combat logs working we're going to see  a lot of these problems come to the forefront, until then i'm just trying to enjoy the parts of the game that seem to work fine.

I feel like I have plenty of tools for tanking, in fact they're generally better than my tools in WoW were, in particular my area taunt is better and on a shorter cooldown to boot. I already feel like I have a huge number of interrupts also.

What sucks is my threat.

Threat harder.

Totalbiscuit - Interview - Gabe Amantangelo (http://youtu.be/1oLjXIQneuE?hd=1)

Summary please?

Totalbiscuit  :uhrr:

General Impressions about the game:  It's going really well, still working on bugfixes and fine tuning.  Story is a core component and we think we delivered.  Flashpoints are a core part, we released a new flashpoint recently and it's doing really well.

About flashpoints, Hammer Station wasn't as story-oriented as Black Talon, do you plan on revisiting Hammer Station to add story or do you plan on releasing new flashpoints with more story?  The answer is the latter.  Kaon is the first part of a 2-part arc.  Total there are 16 flashpoints, 10 have full story, 6 being lighter, but we've injected RPG mechanics like discovering hidden pathways, levers, etc.  We're aiming for alternating between story and combat flashpoints.

Hard Mode flashpoints, is it difficult to balance the idea of repeatedly running dungeons with the idea of telling a story, does the repetition dilute the story?  Well, it's like spoilers, but there are different choices that can be made so it can unfold differently, to spice it up.  Ultimately it comes down to gameplay, and as long as that is interesting, the story can complement it.  Some of the playerbase is casual and the story can help them through the action as it provides context.

Questing, (there are a lot of WoW comparisons), but the mechanics haven't evolved a lot, but the story provides context.  Yeah and the companions also help, and the different classes are immersed diferently and affect combat differently.  Heroic combat, it's not about attacking the boar for 60 seconds, we try to have multiple enemies and spread the time-to-kill among them to make it feel more heroic.  As far as balancing lightsabers, it's a tough act; no easy solution and people will have to suspend disbelief a bit because lightsabers can't be instant kill.

On to specifics...

- PVP balance affecting PVE, a specific example being the Operative and the changes to that class.  How do you balance between PVP and PVE without one affecting the other?  It's a challenge, the PVP team's involvement with the balance, we have a scoring system for abilities and class balance, but there was a lot to do so some abilities weren't scored properly and we're addressing that now.   As far as PVP affecting PVE, it shouldn't, but there are a lot of variables and we'll monitor and make changes as needed.

- Would Bioware consider changing abilities so they have a different function in PVE vs. PVP?  It's a last resort, we like to keep a consistent ability behavior.  There are a few like Guard and Charge that function differently, but in general it's a last resort.  If it needs to we will but we think we can handle it.

- PVP brackets.  Are you considering adding more brackets?  The match-making system was using a sorting method, but if there were not enough people it expanded the range for adding people.  The L50 bracket was necessary because of itemization, but as far as further brackets, we don't plan on adding further brackets, and will try to refine the match-making logic.  Having regular matches is a desire so we'll try to work on it.

- Empire v. Republic imbalance, how do you plan to address it?  Well, the game is story-centered, and we didn't want limitations on what players could experience, so we didn't limit players.  Not sure what to say about going forward, it's not my area of expertise, but we're looking at the typical options, and I can't say much more than that.  Open-world PVP on Illum is affected, and we want to do a few things about Illum, but it's for the future.  Some servers have balance, but going forward we know we'll have to address it across all.

- UI and modifications / customizations for operations and raiding, the issue keeps coming up, and we've seen before where players rely on addons and it affects the difficulty of creating interesting encounters, so, I'd like to get your opinion on mods and how they affect things.  I personally don't prefer mods, but if there are like threat meters, then you can design encounters that have more threat changing etc.  We do a lot of center-screen messages etc, and I think it's more fun to have it without mods, but that doesn't specifically mean we'll never allow mods, but it's not my department.

- Crafting professions, certain professions become critical, like Biochem.  How do you feel about that?  Well, we brought down the level of those things.  We have the scoring system here too, and we can adjust the crafting skills.  The goal is for endgame for every crafter to have equal advantage at the end-game level.  We'll have to make adjustments to reach that goal.  Armormech for example has more hidden perks, drops in recipes, augments, and can get the top end gear more augmented that someone without it, but we're looking at the professions.

- Endgame play, let's use "raiding", the aim of the playerbase seems to be to get the best gear available, and so how does that mesh with a story MMO, can you convince the players to play without dangling the item upgrading in front of them?  Well I think it's inherent in RPG's, but I don't think they're mutually exclusive, so we'll do content updates to continue story arcs to make them go on for some time, and we'll also continue the carrots with the gear.

Uh, what.

22:43

Maybe they mean 'if you crit on your craft you get an augment slot that doesn't come on any dropped/bought gear'?

I re'd a blue ear piece with cunning/end/power/alacrity and got shield as the purple...

More pvp brackets are not needed, their bolstering system is really quite solid.  The only problem was the geared 50s.

They could probably do with a second bracket for the 50s. PvP is pretty rough for new 50s, and is only going to get (a lot) rougher.

Yeah i'm not questioning the quote; i just wonder what in sweet heavens they could be thinking of when they said that.

edit:

But you can still sell that craft with its augment slot then, so it's not like someone without the skill can't "get the top end gear that's equally augmented", no? ... so, puzzled.

I am pretty sure there are raid drop recipes that make BOP items for armor/synth.

Incidentally, this made me log in and have a look at the purple relic recipes the artificers get that are BoP and, surprise surprise, these now have some actual and pretty hefty attribute bonus on them (and still no dark/light alignment requirement)  So, progress.

That makes me wonder if the armour/synth creafters also get something useful now, indeed.

Proof that Jedi can parry ranged stuns! (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46200385/ns/us_news-weird_news/)  They only beat him because they zerged him.

Jedi or no Jedi, dude needs to give up the smokes. If he's 33, he's fucking ruined his face.