f13.net

BTW, did anti-clown make it into release?

No mention of fixing tumult, damnit i need my bad ass darth maul back kick.

http://www.swtor.com/blog/why-unify-color-chest-piece-gone-and-whats-next

You have to look like a idiot for a while longer because our player base is dumb as a bag of rocks.

By the way, newly opened Public Test Server forum has the patch notes for their next patch (http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=71457).

What's wrong with tumult?

I keep expecting them to nerf slicing. It's so obviously broken and inflationary.

I dunno, maybe it's a negligible amount of money at endgame.

As far as i can tell it never lights up so i can never use it.

Once you hit 50, money just starts piling up. All your quest XP is directly converted into Credits and you don't really have shit to spend it on anymore outside of vanity items.

XP=creds is crazy.

As far as i can tell it never lights up so i can never use it.

Is that one of those 'strong or lower' only ones? Those seem kind of useless for anything but PVP really.

I only had a chance to use it once before I left for the holidays.  You do realize you can only use it on incapacitated targets, right?  So I stealthed in, Space Sapped the LT guy and I was able to Tumult him since Sap (Mind Maze I think it's called?) is an incapacitate.  Don't know if the stun also counts and I don't have the knockdown yet.  But as far as I can tell from my one try it's working as it should.

Does "scheduled maintenance" get scheduled anywhere?

I'm thinking particularly of "scheduled maintenance" that, for instance, wipes out an entire public holiday.  :oh_i_see:

If you lost sound last patch like I did, here's how to fix it.
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=13697

Heh, look at you posting a link in downtime *which apparently requires the entire SWTOR web prescence to go down because idk they are running it from game servers or whatever*.

Almost anywhere in the world that takes a civilised approach to public holidays (ie. doesn't lose them to weekends) has today off for boxing day. Have fun working Americans!

Americans don't celebrate boxing day.  Every place I've worked that isn't a 24x7 operation takes the Monday after or Friday before off when a holiday falls on a weekend.

I am thankful for the node fix. That was bugging the shit out of me. Now if they can just fix the map icon toggles, for me it seems nothing but venders seem to work.

Sith Inquisitor

General
The Darth title is now properly granted to Sith Inquisitors.

The Guild interface now properly displays the guild member list when it is sorted.
The "Show Sith Corruption" option no longer toggles off when transitioning between areas.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=958025#edit958025

Corrected an issue that caused poor performance on some machines in indoor areas with shadows enabled.

Conspicuously missing: Corso will now no longer retoggle Harpoon back on every time you turn your back on him.

is there an mmo-champ type site for tor? I spent about 5 minutes looking for the notes from today on their site and gave up.

you could have said darthhater. Stickies happen to other people. anywho - notes (http://www.darthhater.com/articles/swtor-news/19843-patch-notes-1-0-2-1-4-11).

That was the 30th.

I was asking about today's downtime, I had assumed there was a patch. Seems like no.

is there an mmo-champ type site for tor? I spent about 5 minutes looking for the notes from today on their site and gave up.

So it's the correct patch notes. Shut up luckton I'm pretending to work, I can't figure all that stuff out, you could've just said you posted them above instead of making me work for it. Also you made me open reddit in another tab and I really have to get stuff done. I hate you.

So it's the correct patch notes. Shut up luckton I'm pretending to work, I can't figure all that stuff out, you could've just said you posted them above instead of making me work for it. Also you made me open reddit in another tab and I really have to get stuff done. I hate you.

I'll just stop posting for today.

Plus how do you know I don't have spyware removed on a daily basis? I have an IT drone, I might make him remove stuff out of spite and tell him it's luckton's fault.  :oh_i_see:

That's it?  Hmmphf

So, essentially, the two things that I am guessing are being patched tonight are;

A way to get an infinite amount of credits by exploiting selling stacks to vendors (As fast as 1million credits/30 seconds)
A way to get an infinite number of Commendations (Get 24, buy epic box, sell epic to vendor/AH it)

I'm wondering, assuming some people have known about these exploits since release, if there's really any hope for SWTOR's economy?

Those exploits have almost zero impact on my gameplay enjoyment.  They don't interfere with my ability to enjoy heroic flashpoints.  They don't piss me off when I get chain cc'ed in pvp because pvp immunity is broken.  They don't affect the fact that Ilum, the open pvp area, has virtually no real pvp in it. 

I don't play the auction house.  I don't care about what pve gear another player has.  It really just shows me who likes to cheat their way to victory.

LMAO... PvP in an MMO...  :rofl:

Force Leap: This ability no longer functions on Portable Holo Dancers.

Looks like I might be going a solid month at least without being able to run crew skill missions.  :heartbreak:

Those are actually some damned impressive patch notes imo.

Jedi Consular
Project: This ability no longer shakes the screen of onlookers.

Those are actually some damned impressive patch notes imo.

Um, why do you say that?

They look in readily lack lustre to me. They don't fix several of the bugs that have been driving me crazy (no loot in normal flashpoints before 50), they add In some content that isnt really needed at this stage and they don't make any of the 'quality of life' changes that this game so desperately, desperately needs.

I think this patch is hugely underwhelming in pretty much every aspect, and if they want to hang onto subs they need to up their game and recognise some of the real issues the game has.

Um, why do you say that?

They look in readily lack lustre to me. They don't fix several of the bugs that have been driving me crazy (no loot in normal flashpoints before 50), they add In some content that isnt really needed at this stage and they don't make any of the 'quality of life' changes that this game so desperately, desperately needs.

I think this patch is hugely underwhelming in pretty much every aspect, and if they want to hang onto subs they need to up their game and recognise some of the real issues the game has.

Once you remember that half of the team is made up of Mythic devs, and then remember how Mythic was infamous for it's "It's hardcoded and we can't change it until another, newer MMO comes out with the feature and we actually start to loose customers because of it", this really isn't all that surprising, IMO. 

BW on the other hand is basically in the same boat as Blizzard, just a few years removed.  While they can learn all they want from watching how other games have done it (much as Blizzard did when developing WoW), there's only so much they can do before they put there product out there and start cutting their teeth into a genre they've never dealt with before.

General
Anti-aliasing is now available and can be enabled in the preferences menu.

Finally .. hopefully it actually works on AMD cards.

Added the rest of the patch note for you.

The current situation with end game gear and item modifications isn’t final and, in fact, many community members like yourself have correctly guessed at what our plans to correct the current design are.

Since this is a fairly important issue to many players, let me disclose more details about what is currently in the work regarding purple items and mods:

- All partially moddable purple items will be made fully moddable again, allowing the removal of the armoring, hilt and barrel.

- The set bonus of end gear purples (PVP and PVE) will be transferable to custom items.

- Some item modifications will be restricted to a certain item type. For example, some item modifications will only fit on helmets, while other will only fit on chests, etc.

As usual, the caveats about unfinished work apply, but this should give you and the community a very good idea of our intentions. We are serious about making custom gear an entirely valid alternative to end game gear and we support the players’ ability to customize their appearance all the way to (and including) end game.

Interesting that they're looking at making armoring and barrels on purples removable again.  Hooray for not catering to the exclusive raid scene.  Who cares if you can farm the first few mobs to kit-out.  If folks aren't interested in going further it's a design fail from a story or encounter standpoint; not a customer fail.

Ed: I think he meant purple-color (like red, green, blue) not quality.

You're talking about two different dev teams.

Trion is made up of devs that have worked on various MMOs since the genre's inception into the industry.  They've all been around the block once or twice (in a few cases several times), and they have a pretty good idea of what to expect and what the community expects from a MMO and a dev team these days.

BW on the other hand is basically in the same boat as Blizzard, just a few years removed.  While they can learn all they want from watching how other games have done it (much as Blizzard did when developing WoW), there's only so much they can do before they put there product out there and start cutting their teeth into a genre they've never dealt with before.

Once you remember that half of the team is made up of Mythic devs, and then remember how Mythic was infamous for it's "It's hardcoded and we can't change it until another, newer MMO comes out with the feature and we actually start to loose customers because of it", this really isn't all that surprising, IMO. 

Very interesting thread (http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=162079) about how the second swtor.exe process could be assets DRM, and causing the game responsiveness issues that have been observed thus far.

Mostly filled with incorrect info, or a very bad use of terms.

I can tell you right now why the High sized textures are used only in cut scenes.  They are not needed in normal game play ( Personal opinion not withstanding ), and the memory overhead ( Considering many are layered, composite images made in the buffer for customization reasons ) the overhead is not worth it. Except in the case of cut scenes, where non-participating assets are removed from he scene, and closeups are common. With future optimizations, this may change to be optional.

Its one of the oldest guidelines in the book for 3d asset management and creation. You put the detail where its needed, and you remove it where its not noticed. I personally thought it was a very smart move. MMO's are not FPS, while FPS are using more and more streaming textures and pageing. The shear variety of things that can POSSIBLY be on the screen in a MMO has always required a hefty asset management system.

It's more "why does this game run like shit and loads for an eternity on my rig that runs battlefield 3 and skyrim maxed out?", than "where are the high quality textures?". Is there even a remote chance that any of this is possible or is it just :tinfoil: and the optimization is shit? :)

You mean how one is with a simpler design but takes you 350,000km and back, while the other is state of the art engineering and goes up 250km and then down 250km. I can live with that metaphor :)

TLDR; Smart asset use.

Yes, but one can't do 1/100's of the tasks as the other.

I'm 99% sure its a design choice. Despite what reason they may publicly state.

Its one of the oldest guidelines in the book for 3d asset management and creation. You put the detail where its needed, and you remove it where its not noticed. I personally thought it was a very smart move.

As far as your noticeable down sampling, that can be so many factors. It can simply be your machines capabilities, or where you are and whats going on. 10m isn't a good metric, as its pixel height that normally does it, combined with how much stuff is in view or being sent to the render.

Hey everyone, thanks for bearing with us as we investigated the concerns raised here.

After investigation, it seems that the confusion here is a combination of a UI issue that's been resolved and a feature that's working as intended, but the reason why it's 'working as intended' needs explanation.

First, the UI issue. The preferences menu as it is seen on the Public Test Server for version 1.1 of the game is correct - there are only supposed to be two texture choices, 'Low' and 'High'. This replaces the original three-choice preference of Low/Medium/High because in reality, there was never supposed to be a 'Medium' choice - that was a bug.

Here's where we need to explain. As many of you have noted, your character in the game world is rendered using lower resolution textures than inside of cinematic conversation scenes. This was a deliberate decision by the development team. To understand why this was done, I have to briefly talk about MMOs and their engines.

In comparison to single player games and other genres of multiplayer online games, MMOs have much higher variability in the number of characters that can be potentially rendered on-screen at the same time. In MMOs, even though most of the time you'll see a relatively small number of characters on screen, there are certain situations in which many more characters will be seen. Some examples of these situations include popular gathering places in-game (in our case, the two fleets), Operations with large teams, and Warzones. In those scenarios the client (and your PC) has to work hard to show off a lot of characters on-screen.

During development and testing of The Old Republic, our priorities were to ensure the game looked great and performed well. In testing, we discovered that using our 'maximum resolution' textures on in-game characters during normal gameplay could cause severe performance issues, even on powerful PCs. There were a variety of possible options to help improve performance, but one that was explored and ultimately implemented used what is known as a 'texture atlas'.

To understand that I've got to get technical for a minute. When a character in the game is 'seen' by another character - ie, gets close to your field of view - the client has to 'draw' that character for you to see. As the character is 'drawn' for you there are a number of what are known as 'draw calls' where the client pulls information from the repository it has on your hard disk, including textures, and then renders the character. Every draw call that is made is a demand on your PC, so keeping that number of draw calls low per character is important. With our 'maximum resolution' textures a large number of draw calls are made per character, but that wasn't practical for normal gameplay, especially when a large number of characters were in one place; the number of draw calls made on your client would multiply very quickly. The solution was to 'texture atlas' - essentially to put a number of smaller textures together into one larger texture. This reduces the number of draw calls dramatically and allows the client to render characters quicker, which improves performance dramatically.

When it comes to cinematic scenes, however, characters are rendered using the higher number of draw calls and maximum resolution textures. This is because in those scenes, we have control over exactly how many characters are rendered and can ensure that the game performs well. The transition between 'atlas textured' characters (out of cinematics) and 'maximum resolution' textures (in cinematics) is mostly hidden by the transition between those two states (when the screen goes black), but obviously it's clear if you pay close attention.

In summary; yes, we had a small UI bug that unfortunately caused confusion over how the game is intended to work. The textures you're seeing in the course of normal gameplay are optimized for that mode of play. The textures you're seeing during cinematics are also optimized for that mode of play. They are higher resolution, but that's because we're able to control cinematic scenes to ensure good performance in a way we can't during normal gameplay.

We understand the passion and desire for people to see the same textures you see in our cinematic scenes in the main game. Because of the performance issues that would cause for the client, that's not an immediate and easy fix; we need to ensure we're making choices that the majority of our players will be able to benefit from. Having 'atlassed textures' helps performance overall, and that's a very important goal for us.

With that said, we've heard your feedback here loud and clear. The development team is exploring options to improve the fidelity of the game, particularly for those of you with high-spec PCs. It will be a significant piece of development work and it won't be an overnight change, but we're listening and we're committed to reacting to your feedback.

Not if they are using atlasing, no. Its more likely to do with your view angle, and whats also in the scene.

Both. Atlas is used specifically to lower draw calls. Its near imposable. Its a trade off. One large texture servicing 20 items, while it will take longer to load, is less calls than 20 discrete textures, that may load faster. All down sampling/Miping and pixel smoothing is done after its already loaded. IIRCC.

Atlas is Pre-built. They are akin to what is known as a "sprite sheet" in 8-bit games. Minecraft uses them, for example. That's not a run time thing. I would be amazed if it was.

... as i understand it, these are composites of multiple textures put together to reduce amount of draw calls per character -- e.g. the gloves diffuse texture + upper body diffuse texture + lower body diffuse texture + boots diffuse texture, each scaled down and arranged as part of one image. As a result, i fully expect them to be created at runtime, because textures utilized by individual character will depend on what equipment they're wearing, and that is going to be near infinite amount of combinations. Having pre-built sheets would do very little to help with optimization here -- it'd instead ensure you have your entire texture set loaded at any given time, more likely.

Yes, and my point was what if the call to build the atlas texture is executed more often than it should, either as result of the bug or bad logic govenring caching of the created textures?

Incidentally, this thread made me play with the texture resolution switch and at this point i'm not sure if that setting actually affects anything but the textures for static assets (environments and such)  The atlas textues on the characters appear very much the same in either setting.

GuildWars also cheats a lot, like entire buildings are just flat boxes and shit. Which isn't to say they don't cheat WELL, GuildWars has always looked amazing and run on some really low end machines. It's easy to forget HOW DAMN OLD GuildWars is! It's a pretty pretty fucking game, no doubt.

It's totally cheating! Because it's just backdrop and scenery, not a building I can interact with at all.

The medium to high switch doesn't do anything, they are calling it a bug that there were three settings at all, they are changing it to just be low and high, with high being medium.

That's so easy to say. If you think shuddering is bad now. Turn on full size textures.

Yes, i'm talking about something else, though -- going from "high" to "low" doesn't do anything for quality of character textures outside of cutscenes, it only affects quality of textures of the environments. Which i think is a large part why game looks mediocre -- if going from "low" to "high" actually increased the size of their "atlas textures" assigned to characters, i suspect they could look quite better than they do at the moment.

(unless they're already using something like 2048x2048 textures for these with the current settings... but it really doesn't look like they do)

Don't suppose we can get a mod to rip the last few pages out of this thread and put them in their own thread?

Tl;DR Version:

Our game looks crappy on purpose, WAI.

In TOR I run up to the bank and the texture looks like it's a 16x16 icon stretched across the box.

Yours looks worse than normal. I know that robe model. It does not look like for me.

My load screens are fast, except for Hoth. Hoth is crazy slow to load up.

Did you just ALT + Print screen and paste it in somewhere. Or did you use some in client screenshot key?

I adore the "oops, having a medium was a bug" thing.

Yours looks worse than normal. I know that robe model. It does not look like for me.

I rounded up the development team once more and had another discussion, and wanted to update you with a better timeline and some more precise details on what we're doing right now.

The first major changes will be in our next major Game Update, which will have the version number of 1.2. Those changes will bring greater visual fidelity to your character and those around you, but will still allow for good performance in situations where a lot of characters are on-screen at once. In other words, for those screenshots of your character in their best gear, you should see a marked improvement.

Other potential changes are being discussed right now – as I said, many of which are similar to changes suggested by many of you. As usual, you’ll see these sorts of changes on our Public Test Server before they make it into the live game. Right now we cannot commit to a live date for the 1.2 Game Update, but it will be within Q1 2012.

Tat and Hoth are my bad ones.

Yeah, the pants (or skirts), for whatever reason, seem to be universally asstastic.

This whole "MMOs are so MASSIVE" excuse for low res textures kind of falls flat on its face when you consider that the game is instanced to hell and back, and there's never more than a handful of players in a place.

Are you people this zoomed in on your character at all times?

Are you people this zoomed in on your character at all times?

Oh what inquisitors would do to be complaining about texture quality on a wide selection of pants.

Social item bug? (Have to re-equip to apply stats?) Haven't seen it as I don't wear light armor, just saying it might be an issue.

You know there are social pants on Balmorra, right? You only have to be social II if I remember right.

You know there are social pants on Balmorra, right? You only have to be social II if I remember right.

I haven't seen it since I don't actually wear any of it, but for all the fucking bitching he's done about waaaaah paaaaants, I should think that's a small price to pay.

I do not notice any "popping" during game play. I'm sure others do.

Since I bitched about it, here's a representative pop. There are examples all over, I just happened to be passing through here while thinking about it and saw this one.

That's maybe two steps forward.

I notice this sometimes as well. I notice it alot on worlds with heavy grass. I can actually see the grass appearing in front of me. I think they must have draw distance set low. I seem to remember browsing through the graphics settings but being unable to find a setting for this.

I notice this sometimes as well. I notice it alot on worlds with heavy grass. I can actually see the grass appearing in front of me. I think they must have draw distance set low. I seem to remember browsing through the graphics settings but being unable to find a setting for this.

That's a feature. Grass is also billboards that allays face the camera. I believe its all controlled by the grass slider. Rift also did it. Many engines do.

Recent Dev chat said majority of users not having severe issues.

Well, I do enjoy people screaming "OMG Hero engine worst ever", despite its a world class suite, and most complete MMO platform made to date..  

People enjoying the game tend to not spend time on the forums bitching about the game (except at f13, I guess).

It is being received far better here than their own official forums.  That place is a cesspool, even for official mmo forums.

There are rumors (http://www.swtor.com/community/devtracker.php) that they will nerf Biochem (the medpacs) and Cybertech (the grenades), possibly next patch.

The purple medpacs I made while leveling all have 'requires biochem X on them' already... are the 50s different? 'Cos that's a bit  :why_so_serious:

I expect more options to come along as time goes on. There are a ton of settings disabled.

IE:

Sky, you can't be both bio AND cybertech, there's a cap on one crafting profession per character.

Their devtracker also mentions that they're planning to fix the textures / animation delays in patch 1.2, possibly, though it doesn't mention when that will be.

I'm still toying with the idea of dropping armormech, especially after I hit 50 and craft the recipes I have. Maybe stash a few things for alts.

Then pick up cyber and bio and make myself some grenades and stims to make up for my lower dps and help healing. Then again, why would I care at that point. Maybe once my alts are capped and can run 5 missions each....in 2013.

Not sure how 'requires 400 biochem to use' really helps?

Gating moves from 'must once have had biochem' to 'currently has biochem'. I'm not sure why this is any better.

Isn't having bought blue biochem junk off the market just as effective as having a bound purple?

Also, I noticed with my level 16 biochem guy that purple packs don't have the additional HoT that blues do, is this the case all the way up?


I can understand why they are reducing the crafted med pack power - although I would probably have increased non-crafted packs somewhat (because they currently aren't very good) so I didn't have to nerf the crafted ones as hard.

From a game design perspective, the "AFK crafting" ability of your pets means that if crafting produced items equivalent to actively running content, then running content would be discouraged ("I have to spend time making a group, then spend time actively controlling my character, then have a chance of getting loot" versus "Send out my minions and go do dailies/huttball/dick around while they gather enough crap for me to get a guaranteed items"). Therefore, from a PvE balance perspective, crafting must always be slightly inferior to equivalent drops (i.e. the L47 vs L50 thing).

From a game design perspective, the "AFK crafting" ability of your pets means that if crafting produced items equivalent to actively running content, then running content would be discouraged ("I have to spend time making a group, then spend time actively controlling my character, then have a chance of getting loot" versus "Send out my minions and go do dailies/huttball/dick around while they gather enough crap for me to get a guaranteed items").

To me the only purpose in crafting should be to make some small subsection of items an order of magnitude easier to get.  Weaponsmiths should be able to get themselves a good weapon while leveling up, a group level weapon solo, and a raid level weapon with a group.  Maybe a few consumables on the side. If it can't do that it's pointless.

Crafting in TOR barely meets one of those requirements from what I've seen.

The commendation shit doesn't require a group.

Yes, but you're actively doing that, rather than sending off your minions and going and doing something else simultaneously.

The change is to fix someone leveling Biochem up to 400 to grab the items and then dropping it in favor of another crew skill. Right now you can theoretically have the crafter-only benefits from two crew skills when you should only be able to benefit from one. I think they should add reusable adrenals that are useable by non-Biochems however. Make them less effective than the biochem-only versions, but at least have them be available. It seems pretty unfeasible to expect people who aren't Biochems to stock up on Adrenals that only last 15 seconds and cost a lot of mats.

The change is to fix someone leveling Biochem up to 400 to grab the items and then dropping it in favor of another crew skill.

Remind me again why *this* is the key problem?

I mean, it seems at bit of a kludge; but if this is really worth doing, isn't it really telling you about a different underlying issue.

Simplest biochem nerf would have been to make purples tradable. Bind on use and 20 charges each if you must.

It's not the problem, but it's the start of the fix.

On the other hand if the 'fix' is because "right now you can theoretically have the crafter-only benefits from two crew skills when you should only be able to benefit from one" ... then it is quite selective way to look at the problem, since it ignores that it's perfectly possible to have the benefits equal to those who trained artifice, armstech etc without even taking up that skill, let alone training it all way up and then dropping.

They are patching 1.1 tomorrow (http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=1595037#edit1595037), 8 hours.

That was quick.  WoW had me used to seeing major patches announced, then taking 3 months to finally make it to the live servers.

Well fuck me, I was really looking forward to it.

Not really surprising, but I wish they would at least rekick the servers if anything.  I seem to get Error 9000 bullshit the longer the servers stay up...after a week or so, it's almost every 5 minutes  :uhrr:

Don't be shocked if this was a business move. They are probably going to release the patch right after the 20th, exactly the 30 day free period after release has run out.

Don't be shocked if this was a business move. They are probably going to release the patch right after the 20th, exactly the 30 day free period after release has run out.

Nah, there really was a shit ton of problems with the patch.

I disagree.  If they did it now, they may retain pvp enthusiasts that are < level 50.  Right now as a sub 50 or a newly made 50, you'll get insta-crushed by premades with stims, adrenals, and battlemaster gear in pvp.  I have full Champ gear and can get killed by the top players in about 6s.

Can you elaborate?

Mostly the new content, bosses unkillable and a lot of stuff just plain didn't work right.

For the sake of the game, the sooner they patch, the better.  There are so many bugs and hacks that need attention, that it's almost criminal to ask a subscription fee.

Yeah, agree with Paelos, not seeing that.

How did they manage to get within 5 (?) hours of patch release with bugs of that magnitude? I call shenanigans.

Do either of you pvp much?

Do either of you pvp much?

PvP – We have an entire team dedicated to adding content and features to player vs. player. We have some of the most experienced PvP developers in the world on this team. So far very few people have seen, or know much about the stunning Open World PVP on Ilum; when you get to the high levels prepare to be blown away! In addition to that high level PVP content, expect new Warzones and new PvP features on a regular basis.

You'd think you'd learn your lesson eventually about racing to max and expecting a fully-formed PVP endgame a month after release, Nebu.  :-P

I expect more options to come along as time goes on. There are a ton of settings disabled.

IE:

And why is BW not sharing TEH SHINAY.

Dammit.

A month after release DAOC was still in the land of max duration AE stuns and like 20 people total were max level! Take off your rose-colored trooper goggles, sir!

Derp, yeah there's that.

And why is BW not sharing TEH SHINAY.

Dammit.

I can't imagine rolling on a pvp server with the kind of people that obsess over mmo.

I guess I'm just frustrated with Bioware.  They really sold their pvp in the pre-release stuff.  The reality is that it's a) bug-ridden, b) unbalanced, c) easily exploitable, and d) their primary selling point, "bolstering" is worthless.

Soon as the 50 bracket goes in it will be great again.

I wonder what the population imbalance is like in reality. The players seem to think its about 70% Empire to 30% Republic. While I don't think its that bad, I could imagine it being like 60/40 on some servers.

Well for artificing, it would be nice if my top level shit was actually for level 50 instead of level 47 or whatever.

I think of it this way. If I can make stuff EQUAL to the commendation shit, at least people could make the decision "do I want to just spend credits, or do I want to farm commendations?"

Antialiasing makes the game look a lot lot better.

Open PvP is a joke. If server imbalances weren't enough to make it unplayable (and they ARE), performances with lots of players on screen are just pathetic (yeah, I turned antialiasing off again). Is anyone having a different experience?

Open PvP is a joke

When is it not?

 

DAOC

When is it not?

 

When is it not?

 

Ok, Antialiasing aside, I am pretty sure they unfucked the textures. The game just looks better. I don't know if they enabled the high-res texture, but my char doesn't look like before the patch. And I just turned off AA.

I'm hoping that shadows are fixed for AMD cards. I would think that with dual 6990s I shouldn't have to turn shadows to low.

Speaking of the patch and PVP.....
 I'm hearing a hotfix is coming since you can get valor 60 killing turrets in Ilum.

Open PvP is a joke

The corpse camping is extra 'fun' since literally the only thing you can do is log out or switch to an alt... there's no "take a durability hit to res in a safe zone" option or any sort of rez immunity.

Is that just the pvp area, or the entire planet?

DaoC didn't have open PvP (outside of the dreds, a special server type), their "battlegrounds" were just massive and persistent. If you didn't want to PvP in DaoC, you didn't go into the RvR zones and you were 100% safe from PvP. None of this flagging nonsense.


The Three factions did nothing for PvP population balancing. Three factions has other merits and I enjoyed it, but it is not a tool for population balancing. It was almost never the two weaker sides teaming up against the strongest. It was the 2 strongest kicking the weakest while it was down.

NM, i see (http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/2971/patch11awesome.png) what the problem is.  We have nowhere near that numerical advantage.

Why are you even able to survive the turret? or kill it? Isn't that supposed to be guarding a spawn point?

I don't see why they would have to rollback everything.  All they need to do is rollback valor/PvP gear bought since the patch.  And close Ilum.

The better question is "Why are NPC's giving valor?"

Welp, their game maintenance takes down the forums, so... :why_so_serious:

What do valor levels do for you?  Do you need them to buy gear or something?

Have to be Valor 60 to wear/buy the best pvp gear.  Since effectiveness in pvp = gear in an MMO, this matters A LOT!

For reference, it has taken me until now to reach valor level 51.  I pvp every day that I play and started pvp when I was level 10 on my main character.  People using this exploit are getting to rank 60 in hours.

Precisely why I will never PvP in another MMORPG again.

Precisely why I will never PvP in another MMORPG again.

http://imageshack.us/f/841/screenshot2012011811470.jpg/

 :awesome_for_real:

Lies!

Planetside.

http://imageshack.us/f/841/screenshot2012011811470.jpg/!

Just the pvp area... entire planet would be beyond  :uhrr: and go straight into  :why_so_serious: territory!

Expect a few surprises between these Game Updates, too. You never know when the Republic might strike Dromund Kaas, if a mysterious alien fleet could appear in the Core Worlds… or when the Rakghoul plague of Taris might infect the rest of the Galaxy. Changes are coming, and they’ll affect everyone.

Reposting this pic (http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/9164/ilum1j.jpg) and this vid (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL0kDP_Cexo#t=9s) from the pvp thread.

Turret farming!  http://www.twitch.tv/skrigg

And the servers are still up...why?

Who is getting assraped? Seems like everyone is dead and the Imps are just beating on a turret? Not sure what the hell I am watching other than a dead guy recording a lot of red guys.

The dead guy can't rezz because his whole faction is being spawn camped in a PvP zone so that empire can kill a PvE turret to get maximum PvP points.

There's apparently a whole lot of players who can't rez because there is no other option than the spot that is being zerged. Has valor been disabled yet?

Hey everyone, I just wanted to let you know that we are currently working on an official response to these issues and we will be posting it soon. Please understand that these issues require some time to investigate and we are making sure that we provide you all with the most updated information in our official response.

We understand that some of you may be frustrated, but we ask for your patience on this to give us time to respond with thorough developer input.

Thank you to those of you that have been posting constructively in this thread.

We will have a response shortly.

Antialiasing makes the game look a lot lot better.

A LOT better.

I guess the mouseover for the AA says it isn't implemented yet...

Light armor only I assume.

Yeah I don't think it's the turrets.  It's the fact that there's a huge valor multiplier when you control the zone and you're corpse camping + sending alts to feed people.  Regardless you don't get that many people sitting in one place to count their frame rate unless they're getting something out of it.

Maybe they didn't even need alts. This seems pretty good valor if the kills keep rolling like that.
http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/4026/screenshot2012011823380.jpg

- They seem to have improved the animation delay on Force Sweep; it delivers it stun in 0.5 seconds now rather than 1.  I don't crouch prior to jumping anymore, just a quick jump now, with the stun on landing.

"Encourage" players to not pvp on Ilum lolz.  You don't even need the taxi to get there.
Awful hard to find the cancel sub buton for some reason http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=197768
/tinfoilhat

 :uhrr:

I looked shortly after reading that and the cancel subscription button is found quite easily.

Grats everyone. We're all founders.  http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=198797

I think slicing got a stealth buff.

Can't prove it yet, but I'm noticing a dramatic increase in credits at the top levels.

You only get the medal (which rewards the title) if you re-subscribe for a second month. Which is unusually transparent and desperate (and poorly timed). I wonder what their internal numbers are looking like.

As the only major issue is in l50 pvp, which I suspect a large majority of players haven't touched and don't care about, I expect their numbers are just fine.

I don't doubt there were servers where one side managed to spawn camp the enemy base and get some easy valor

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to be clear and let you all know that we’re definitely aware of individuals who took extreme advantage of this situation and we will be carefully evaluating and taking action as necessary.

rollback

I think slicing got a stealth buff.

Can't prove it yet, but I'm noticing a dramatic increase in credits at the top levels.

I admit it, I'm not really a competitive person, so I probably don't get it why you should be angry because a portion of the playerbase got instantly ahead of you in a game. Probably my fault, ok.

Many many servers had spawn camping nightmares. And "some easy valor" is the understatement of the year. What just happened was, when you get right down to it, unimaginably bad.

Information from my friend: the top PVP guru in his guild, prior to patch 1.1, got to valor 65 and just stopped. It was a stupid grind and worse than any before. They looked at hours. The time it took to complete valor ranks 51-60 were about the same as 1-50. Being at valor 65 before 1.1 is absolute crazytown. Total poopsock territory. It represents an insane amount of time committed to continual PvP from launch onward, so as to allow an understanding of what Valor ranks represent — especially 50-60.

1.1 hit. People were grinding valor ranks flat-out from nothing up to 50+ in a matter of minutes. If your faction controlled all of Ilum you got a multiplier on Valor gained. And with the various spawn exploits you could gain ranks 51-60 in a matter of hours, not weeks. Rumormill / forums have it that there exist max valor rank players now and I would believe it. PVP broke and broke badly.

Worst part is that this was usually a one-sided deal, which (rightfully) aggravates. If my main had been a character of the appropriate imbalance steamroll faction for my server (99% ~EMPIRE ONLY~ SORRY REPUBLIC) and I had been playing today, I would have just been handing myself a free broken PvP ride to valor 60, borne on the corpses of the other faction which is, necessarily, denied this wonderful opportunity and instead get to have their necks stepped on by unescapable spawn camping in a grievous lagpit. And if I wasn't playing while this window was open, oops, too bad for you, that means it was just a benefit for people who were playing during the right window of terrible design.

I can honestly say (and this is divorced from the pit of fury that the forums have to be right now) that this is one of those times in MMO history where a rollback seems like a legitimately needed response, probably unavoidable. That the situation might be so bad that they will be forced to roll back valor. And there exists a chance that their system legitimately can't do that, in which case an entire faction just got dicked on every server, and the other side just got an impossibly huge free ride to valor heaven.

I already had some doubts with the pvp design in this game, but this kind of cinches it; there needs to be a bit of a shakeup. The system is broken somewhere and/or one or more very important people in very important positions can't handle their jobs!

What you are reading on the forums is all made up.

The main feeling coming from the official forum posters (and others, that Kotaku article, a couple of pvp/SWTOR blogs, etc)

It's like playing the PvE part of the game and find out that every day the mobs are harder and harder to kill until they destroy you every time you enter a dungeon. And then you find out it's like that by design: either you leveled faster than the mobs, which were poopsocking since they are automated, or sorry, now you have to face the hardest PvE ever.  And the only way to get out of that rut is to keep getting killed and stomped by that mobs cause eventually, even through that, you get a little XP which over a few months will get you to the same level cap the mobs reached in the first 10 days after launch.

- Much improved LOD handling; the ground tiles are now blurry beyond where the grass grows, and atmospheric effects get reduced in the distance too (dust haze on Tatooine for example).  

Hi folks,

Just in case you missed it, we added the following to the Known Issues thread earlier today:

• Anti-aliasing is currently disabled for ATI 6900 series graphics cards.
• Holograms will disappear during conversations if players modify their preferences to turn off bloom while anti-aliasing is on.

To give you all some more insight, the ATI issue is due to a severe graphical glitch and we are in discussions with ATI to resolve this. Thank you for your patience.

1) Remove battlemaster gear from the game.

2) Give titles and unique mounts for pvp valor ranks.

3) Make appearance gear (orange) available for players at high pvp rank.

I'd be happy with this.  Alternatively, they could reset everyone's valor to zero and I'd be fine with it.  My main is valor rank 51 and I'd gladly start over to have a level playing field.

How about they simply ban the insignificantly small number of people who exploited and leave the rest of us alone?

I'm not sure you can really call it an 'exploit' so much as players taking advantage of some TERRIBAD implementation.  Implementation compounded by horrible faction balance.

RE: AA Bitching:

How about they simply ban the insignificantly small number of people who exploited and leave the rest of us alone?

ATI.

ATI.

I once had a friend summarize video cards to me this way: ATI makes better hardware, nVidia makes more compatible drivers.

Any truth to that statement?

Naw, I don't buy that. 99% of all games work just fine with AMD cards.

On the pvp performance issue, I wonder how many are expecting to pvp with pve graphics settings. Another thing they need to poach from EQ2: import/export graphics profiles. Go to Ilum, load pvp graphics profile tweaked for pvp performance.

No, the problem doesn't have much to do with settings, nor with our computers. It's on their side. With everything on LOW (everything) the game was giving me 2 frames per second during the post patch Imperial zerg. And my computer handles the game awesomely with all maxed in normal circumstances. The engine is shitty enough to not be able to handle too many characters on screen, that is all. And that's why they are lowering the population caps on Ilum with today's patch.

I'm not aware of many games that can handle customization and high numbers of non-bots.

The pvp clownshoes have pretty much buried everything else, but another issue is that AA doesn't seem to be working on (some or all?) AMD cards. The button does nothing on my 4890. Shadow performance wasn't fixed either, but I'm not sure if that ever was in the patch.

One word: Rift.

 

2) It's a much larger number of players than you think.  When I went to Ilum on my server, the raid frames took 5 minutes to load for a guild member that joined in the fun.  Ilum was so overcrowded with Empire players that the lag caused horrible framerates.  I expect this was the same on other servers as well.  

I agree with Neb about Rift, but they did really shut down all customization at a really close level.

EQ2 did the same thing, the graphics option page for EQ2 was another thing they did amazingly well. You could set where that LoD would pop, how many high detail characters to allow, how many LOW detail characters to allow, etc.

I was there for three hours on my server, i am not disputing the number of players who flocked to Ilum thinking of making massive amounts of valor.  What i am saying is that it wasn't true, the valor simply wasn't there and what was wasn't all that great.  If someone DID shoot up massive amounts of valor levels it had to be done through cross faction exploiting because what people were actually doing was hardly better than warzone farming.  

Many MANY people made valor gains in a few hours that took others a week or two of gameplay to attain. 

You needed to be on a server with a significant number of level 50 Republic players.  These players would be killed, respawn, and killed repeatedly due to a broken mechanic.  The fact that Ilum grants a buff yielding additional valor broke the system even more.  The republic players had nowhere to retreat to.  They just kept respawning and dying until someone posted that they could break the loop by queuing for a WZ and time out. Many MANY people made valor gains in a few hours that took others a week or two of gameplay to attain. 

That's only on sub 50 gear... and it was needed.  You could buy a complete set of pvp gear in a few matches.  With the addition of a sub 50 bracket and lack of expertise on this gear, it's pretty much just cosmetic anyway.

Seems that they've doubled the price of pvp gear.  Fixed?

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=194823

1) I'd be happy if they reset all of their valor to 0 and took their pvp gear.  

2) It's a much larger number of players than you think.  When I went to Ilum on my server, the raid frames took 5 minutes to load for a guild member that joined in the fun.  Ilum was so overcrowded with Empire players that the lag caused horrible framerates.  I expect this was the same on other servers as well.  

There are a LOT of level 50 players on servers that had headstart.  Many of them have been playing alts because the endgame is terrible.  Events like this brought them out of the woodwork in droves.

Yup, you're right about the slicing Paelos, I pulled in a bunch of 4000cr+ tier 6's just before todays downtime hit.

Will keep an eye on the various google docs spreadsheets people are maintaining and see how the various missions play out.

Naw, I don't buy that. 99% of all games work just fine with AMD cards. It's just a convenient excuse for sloppy coding. Doubly so here because the engine doesn't actually have any new technology in it.  

That's only on sub 50 gear... and it was needed.  You could buy a complete set of pvp gear in a few matches.  With the addition of a sub 50 bracket and lack of expertise on this gear, it's pretty much just cosmetic anyway.

So then why was it needed?

People really insist the games should stab them repeatedly in the cock, don't they.

Noone NEEDS the pvp gear for < 50 pvp.  It's just an alternative way to obtain gear/mods.

No, i meant why was the price hike on those "needed". Because the idea that "you can buy them after just few matches ohnoes" produces in me "so fucking what" when that complaint is followed with "it's just cosmetic gear that doesn't do anything special".

I once had a friend summarize video cards to me this way: ATI makes better hardware, nVidia makes more compatible drivers.

Any truth to that statement?

No, i meant why was the price hike on those "needed". Because the idea that "you can buy them after just few matches ohnoes" produces in me "so fucking what" when that complaint is followed with "it's just cosmetic gear that doesn't do anything special".

Handing players a full set of blue quality gear and weapons with minimal effort would kill the flashpoints at those levels.

Because that is not exactly accurate, the gear was very good for its level.  Handing players a full set of blue quality gear and weapons with minimal effort would kill the flashpoints at those levels.  Without the pvp stat they were just really good pve pieces.

50+ levels in a few hours is ridiculous, I went from 27 to 30 in a couple hours.  What you are reading on the forums is all made up.

See what you have to look forward to in Star Wars™: The Old Republic™! This new video highlights just some of the new content and game systems coming out over the coming months, including a look at the expanded Legacy system, UI customization, and information on new Warzones and Flashpoints!

? The gear was blue for it's level. Like pretty much anything else. It's not like it was hard to get a blue equivalent item or slot an orange to blue for your level. 3-4 PVP matches for a blue doesn't seem like it would kill flashpoints at all.

Rumormill / forums

Actually no, i leveled up without flashpoints or heroic quests.  Blue gear was few and far between when i didn't buy it, the pvp gear was all major upgrades at the time i got them and very easily attained.

Actually no, i leveled up without flashpoints or heroic quests.  Blue gear was few and far between when i didn't buy it, the pvp gear was all major upgrades at the time i got them and very easily attained.

I did a lot of pvp and tended to out level whatever planet i was on by a fair bit, the commendation armorings i had on my orange gear were on average 5 or so levels below all the time.

Well, with sources that reliable I'm sure everything in your post is 100% true and not exaggerated in any way, shape or form.

Rumormill / forums have it that there exist max valor rank players now and I would believe it.

Please someone who knows more than me about coding and AAA titles. HOW FUCKING HARD it can be to fix the bug that doesn't count won pvp0 matches towards the daily/weekly count? It's infuriating. Things are difficult enough without this stupid game stealing my wins.

This is really fucked up. Dailies are basically timed goals. If I have 2 hours to play in a given day and I invest it to try and win the daily, and somehow I manage and the fucking stupidly coded system takes it away from me, well, it's just a game, and I still feel kind of robbed.

Seriously, how can it be so hard? And how is this not major, considering how difficult it is to win for one side?

I know that was a joke, but it's happened to me on the Imperial side as well. I PVP because (SHOCK) I actually like doing so and not because the daily quest says I have to, so I just queue up again and have another go; this doesn't excuse the bug, but it doesn't inspire the vitriol in me that it does in others.

Please someone who knows more than me about coding and AAA titles. HOW FUCKING HARD it can be to fix the bug that doesn't count won pvp0 matches towards the daily/weekly count? It's infuriating. Things are difficult enough without this stupid game stealing my wins.

This is really fucked up. Dailies are basically timed goals. If I have 2 hours to play in a given day and I invest it to try and win the daily, and somehow I manage and the fucking stupidly coded system takes it away from me, well, it's just a game, and I still feel kind of robbed.

Seriously, how can it be so hard? And how is this not major, considering how difficult it is to win for one side?

Does pvp quest progress get reset if you don't complete it in a day?

It is timed as in I need to win 3 matches in a day in order to get the reasonable and expected amount of commendations. To get them, and have the infamous "chance" against better equipper players, I have to do my dailies. No one is biting my ass, but that's part of my fun at the moment and while it's hard enough to win 3 in 24 hours, certainly doesn't help that sometimes you have to win 5 or more just because of a stupid bug.

PvPers crack me up in a DIKU.

It is timed as in I need to win 3 matches in a day in order to get the reasonable and expected amount of commendations. To get them, and have the infamous "chance" against better equipper players, I have to do my dailies. No one is biting my ass, but that's part of my fun at the moment and while it's hard enough to win 3 in 24 hours, certainly doesn't help that sometimes you have to win 5 or more just because of a stupid bug.

On another note: PLAYERS ALREADY EXPLOITING THE NEW ILUM CHANGES (http://kotaku.com/5877703/star-wars-the-old-republic-factions-learn-to-work-together-to-exploit-the-system)

This is you setting yourself an arbitrary target, not a quest having a timed goal.

If I declare I want to get from level 40-50 in ten days, because that is reasonable, that doesn't make it a game design problem that this 'timed goal' may or may not be achievable by me.

Pve seems so completely and utterly pointless, it's just stupid AI.  None of it is a challenge, black talon at level ten was more fun than any raid.

They are removing the Valor points and/or possibly banning, as can be evidenced by this (funny) moderator post (http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=1898519#edit1898519).

The more I play the more I feel like it's some bizarro version of Rift where everyone has goatee's, the storylines are wonderful and the world is brimming with character and yet the mechanics are flawed in just about every avenue.

I'm starting to feel the same way. Playing this game is making me long for Rift for some reason.

Weren't these problems solved already in a hundred other games, most obviously DAoC?

You don't give out pvp points for killing someone who was already killed in the last few minutes. EA please send me a cheque for my startling insights thx.
 
I thought EA's team in Austin was supposed to be stuffed to the gills with Mythic staff and other MMOG failure veterans?

I thought EA's team in Austin was supposed to be stuffed to the gills with Mythic staff and other MMOG failure veterans?

That's what they say. Yet, trading kills with willing bodies hardly seems like improvement in terms of the AI or that elusive "challenge". Or point, for that matter.

I thought EA's team in Austin was supposed to be stuffed to the gills with Mythic staff and other MMOG failure veterans?

How was DAoC a failure?  I missed that memo. 

It was great as long as you pretended the game ended at level 11.

And it had PLENTY of fail as well.

It was great as long as you pretended the game ended at level 11.

Shaddup and go level your flail.

I see your point, but you are not seeing mine.

They are doing things like that to get an edge in actual pvp matches, obviously they aren't getting their kicks from farming alts.

Prepping for the cross server stuff I imagine.  :ye_gods:

After Game Update 1.1 went live, we discovered that the Open World PvP area on Ilum was not working as our PvP design team intended. As many of you know, large groups of players began capturing the Ilum control points, then 'camping' at the enemy's base. This led to a very frustrating experience for a number of players who were unable to leave their base and fight back against their attackers. It was not a fair gameplay experience. In addition, some players on the attacking side gained more Valor points than designed for the time they spent in PvP.

The amount of Valor granted from these activities was significantly more than intended and we are now carefully investigating players who were on Ilum during this period, and present at some of these 'camping' events. I can reassure you that those who were involved and who gained an unfair advantage over other players inappropriately will be carefully reviewed and action will be taken to restore game balance. This could include Valor adjustments or account actions in accordance with the severity of the issue.

We have made the decision not to enact a mass 'rollback' of Valor points for all players in the game, or even on Ilum. This would unfairly penalize some players who may not have been present during this event. Rest assured though, anyone and everyone who is found to have exploited the situation to an unreasonable degree will be investigated and actions taken as needed. Our in-game metrics are able to give us precise details on where players were, what they were doing and what rewards they gained.
We take any sort of situation where one group of players gains an unexpected or unintended advantage over other players very seriously and will act to ensure that all players can have a fair and fun game experience.

Thanks for your patience while we worked to resolve this issue. Our team worked diligently to get a patch ready to address this and other issues, and we're already seeing the results in improved battles on Ilum. As always we welcome your feedback and will continue to improve moving forward!

Jeff Hickman, Executive Producer – Live Services

How was DAoC a failure?  I missed that memo.

Star Wars: The Old Republic - 1.1.1 Patch Notes

Again, first impressions count and when the first class balancing fucks your class because of pvp which you might not even do its going to leave a very bad taste in the mouth.

Without combat logs, all we can do is say "I feel X is over/under powered", and we can't actually back it up. For all we actually know, this brings Ops/Scoundrels in line with the other damage specs. But the forums are indeed on fire with people who feel this goes too far. Personally, meh? Most of the threads FAR overstate the actual functional use of Hidden Strike/Shoot First in pve. The armor pen nerf does indeed hit the pve aspects of the spec, but we have absolutely no data to say how much of an impact it actually is.

Most of the threads FAR overstate

I've talked about this in vent for lengths of time - the only way to balance both PvP & PvE is to have the same skill perform differently against players. I can, however, see why they're not willing to go that way - that'd be insanely confusing for a new player, to the point where it could make them quit the game. I'd love to see a stat on how much time players are spending reading tooltips, but from experiences in real life, I'd wager a guess most people just diagonally skim them, get a basic impression of what the skill does, and go from there. When it doesn't really do what they think it does - it doesn't matter, they'd just press it anyway and convince themselves it's awesome. This is the only possible explanation of some behaviour in pugs.

Problem is it's kinda hard for the AI to pull the shit that players do, nor is it really fun for the player.  Imagine bosses circle-strafing, jumping around casting only instants, stun-locking the healers, respawn-rushing, alpha-striking from stealth, etc.   Also, how many times do you die (on average) in a PVP session?  Imagine that during a flashpoint, with item degradation.

Their burst out of stealth was insanely freaking retarded, i have a tank specced powertech and they routinely killed me before i could do anything.  Their burst most definitely needed a HEAVY nerf, but you have to replace it with sustained dps and probably some extra mobility and survivability.

Anyone played the new patch yet?

Servers came up right as I was about to leave for work.  Logged in and fiddled around Fleet for a few.  Performance does seem better.

As far as the ability delay thing goes, Twitter and forums feeds are producing mixed results, but for the most part it seems they actually did fix the issue.  What remains may be isolated incidents based on particular hardware configs and other unique variables.

AFAIK, they have not fixed all of the factors that can cause it across various situations and hardware. They said as much.

As you guys have noticed (and probably read in the patch notes), one major part of our series of ability delay improvements was patched onto the live servers with the maintenance last night (patch 1.1.0b). We decided that the improvements seen with this fix were significant enough for us to roll this patch out as quickly as possible instead of waiting for the next scheduled patch.

Your feedback from the servers so far indicates that this change has had dramatic, positive impact on combat gameplay.

That said, we're not done improving combat responsiveness!

    As mentioned in my blog a few days ago, there are some additional fixes currently on our public test server as part of patch 1.1.1, which will roll out as soon as we're satisfied with that patch.
    We've heard your mixed feedback regarding the new cooldown animation that was part of patch 1.1, and we have improvements to the readability of that UI coming down the pipe.
    We're looking into improving the accuracy of cast bars. Their behavior should already be significantly improved with today's patch, but we believe there is still room to improve.
    We're also working on improvements to the responsiveness of individual ability animations, including faction specific timing differences and issues where shortening an ability activation time does not properly shorten it's animation.

Again, thank you for your constructive feedback on this issue, it has been vital to us in identifying and resolving this situation.

Regards

Georg

Why haven't I seen anyone talk about the new content, the Rakghoul story?  Has anyone tried it?

For those interested, the new Rakghoul (sp?) instance was pretty fun.  Good atmosphere is all I'll say without spoiling it for others.  The bonus boss is also fun.  

Give it a shot if you have the time.

Why haven't I seen anyone talk about the new content, the Rakghoul story?  Has anyone tried it?

Why haven't I seen anyone talk about the new content, the Rakghoul story?  Has anyone tried it?

Then they seemingly turn into the whomping tree from Harry Potter when they get next to the boss.

Most of the PUGs I have been in, say ~90%, could be equated to a group of 4 male grizzly bears attacking everything down a large hallway until the last thing. Then they seemingly turn into the whomping tree from Harry Potter when they get next to the boss.

presumably it's a biggie and fixes some serious exploits because seriously? On a Saturday?

I once had a friend summarize video cards to me this way: ATI makes better hardware, nVidia makes more compatible drivers.

Any truth to that statement?

More like nVidia pays developers more to test on their cards.

Circling Shadows: Now requires the purchase of the Shadow Technique skill. Shadow Technique must be active in order to trigger the Circling Shadows buff. This skill now also triggers from Spinning Strike.

This completely and utterly destroys my favorite Kinetic hybrid spec.  They seem to be going out of their way to fuck over any Shadow hybrid with those changes.

Force Strike: Now triggers from activating melee attacks that hit a target affected by Force Technique’s Breach effect. This effect now triggers more easily but cannot trigger as frequently.

    General

        If Sprint was active when a player died, it now remains active when the player is revived.
        Abilities on cooldown are now more easily distinguished from abilities that can be used.

    Vendors

        It is no longer possible to purchase items while holding down the Shift, Alt, or Ctrl keys.

And passive.

Assassins and Shadows really don't need being made more difficult.  They need boosts, at least not up to the mid-levels, if not further.

Seems that the recent move in the patch notes is to force people higher in a single tree and discourage hybrid builds.  Shame as that was a fun mini game to min/max abilities.

It's obvious from comments here that the patch note is not specific enough, so we'll get it updated before the patch goes to the live servers. Here are some specifics:

Champion Bags now always contain 15 Centurion Commendations AND 7Champion Commendations. Battlemaster Bags now always contain 15 Champion Commendations. So Centurion gearing up progression for new level 50s is increased significantly and Champion gearing up progression will be steady.

We do still intend on adding more intro level 50 PvP items as well as change how Battlemaster Commendations operate toward the same 'steady' goal. It's just the scope of that change was more than could be done in a weekly patch as it included vendor changes, conversions to existing commendations on players already, etc.

That being said, the current interim 'gearing up' system will change significantly when we introduce Ranked Warzones (aiming for Game Update 1.2). Stay tuned for more details on that.

- Gabe