SWTOR

[Fordel]

Well that's the beauty of raid parsers, they go through the logs for you and you just get handy charts and tables!


No one here is actually going through the combat logs by hand.

[Miasma]

There were 2 people in particular, both clerics who had outstanding heals but sucked at moving or performing any other task.

Just throwing this out there, but could that have been a side effect of having 45 UI windows active on screen at a time? I've seen Raiding screenshots posted for WoW where 90% of the screen real estate was filled with UI.

Someone posted earlier about how if you didn't have all the Raid UI Add-ons, you wouldn't know exactly when the Boss was about to trigger his Omegablast, and you wouldn't know when to shift watchamwahoos. To me it almost seems like playing Donkey Kong with addons running to time all Mario's jumps for you based on where the barrels were, because the player can't be expected to do that by hand! That might be inefficient!

It's too bad. The general idea of raids seems cool, doing complex scripted events with a group of buddies, but if they have to be balanced to players who are using addons that would be called blatant cheating in any other type of game environment, then I don't see the point. Balance the game to the UI of the game.

Just because there are thousands of add ons doesn't mean you actually have to run them.  The very best UIs, the ones that most people want to emulate, are always nice and clean with as little clutter as possible.  You really don't "need" very many add ons to raid.

[Paelos]

The longer we go on about raiding the more I'm reminded why WoW is losing subs.

[Morfiend]

I posted a formal review over on SWTOR.com, and it got to 3 pages long before the billion NDA lifting threads blew all other discussion off of the first pages of the forum.

I am most disappointed with two things right now...........

1. The absolute lack of guild features in a modern mmo release
2. The state of the PVP content (or lack of it!)

Anyway I copied my review over here because the SWTOR forums are constantly down due to high volume messages.

Just out of interest who is this review aimed at? Seems like it was written for someone who had almost no interaction with the game, but at the same time, didnt mention some of the very basic stuff. I felt sort of like most of it was telling us stuff we already knew, but also didnt mention anything about advanced classes, or the story.

I'm not ragging on it or you, I am just curious as like I said, it feels odd in the type of information included.

[Bunk]

The longer we go on about raiding the more I'm reminded why WoW is losing subs.

I felt I hadn't contributed enough to the grind for 400.

[Sky]

I thought that's all we were doing at this point. I don't expect raiders to do anything but whine about lack of raid tools, after all.

 

[murdoc]

They have a combat log of some sort as you get medals in PvP based on how you play your class. I think it's a fantastic system and at the end of BG it's nice to see who did more of the things that their class is capable of. I don't see why they wouldn't be able to have the same sort of system for raids.

I like the fact there's no addons. I hate the fact I can't resize my default UI.

[kildorn]

The longer we go on about raiding the more I'm reminded why WoW is losing subs.

You can sub a lot of the UI commentary from raiding into battleground PVP. The UI additions make some stupidly hard parts of pvp (where it's player versus interface, nothing more) a lot nicer.

A raid frame that auto adjusts to only show me injured players within healing range so I actually have a screen to look at for combat? Awesome. Beats the pants off of a raid frame that shows me everyone at any range in the same light so I have no idea who I could heal right now, as well as taking up half my screen.

Though I vaguely remember the default raid UI now showing range. I'm sure it shows debuff types finally. But it's more UI alterations that make it into the main branch, because they're quality of life improvements.

I came to fight fozzles, not the interface.

[kildorn]

They have a combat log of some sort as you get medals in PvP based on how you play your class. I think it's a fantastic system and at the end of BG it's nice to see who did more of the things that their class is capable of. I don't see why they wouldn't be able to have the same sort of system for raids.

Is "dicked around in the midfield all game" a medal?

[Montague]

I'm in the anti-mods camp but from past experience in WoW I'm for combat log parsing. True story - I'm in a casual Kharazan group that's trying to  get to Moroes and we can't get past the zombie zerg on the steps. The tank keeps dying, our healers are chain casting heals but nothing's working. We finally do a log parse and find out our main healer is spamming Prayer of Healing while cybering with the off tank, who's auto-attacking. I'm all for casual raiding and eliminating elitism, but when your time is at a premium tools like this are essential because morons like these two ARE out there, and in fact I expect to see a lot more them in SWTOR than WOW.

[murdoc]

Is "dicked around in the midfield all game" a medal?

That and 'killed self by standing in fire' will get you voted MVP.

[Fordel]

I'm in the anti-mods camp but from past experience in WoW I'm for combat log parsing. True story - I'm in a casual Kharazan group that's trying to  get to Moroes and we can't get past the zombie zerg on the steps. The tank keeps dying, our healers are chain casting heals but nothing's working. We finally do a log parse and find out our main healer is spamming Prayer of Healing while cybering with the off tank, who's auto-attacking. I'm all for casual raiding and eliminating elitism, but when your time is at a premium tools like this are essential because morons like these two ARE out there, and in fact I expect to see a lot more them in SWTOR than WOW.

Ahem: looooooooool

[tmp]

We finally do a log parse and find out our main healer is spamming Prayer of Healing while cybering with the off tank, who's auto-attacking.

The parsers have become quite more sophisticated than i'd give them credit for

[kildorn]

I don't care for chasing off idiots with combat logs. Sure, I may snicker in private about them, but whatever. I care about combat logs to know what I can do better, when I did well, and generally what the fuck just happened. I was a big fan of an older mod that on mouseover of a dead person in the raid frames would show the last 15 seconds of their lives in terms of incoming damage/healing/debuffs. So you could see things like "got a ton of heals, got two shot with an instant attack" or "Ingmar went down the stairs to fight an add, and for some reason we all decided to heal Sjofn instead and he still hasn't forgiven us"

[luckton]

I'm in the anti-mods camp but from past experience in WoW I'm for combat log parsing. True story - I'm in a casual Kharazan group that's trying to  get to Moroes and we can't get past the zombie zerg on the steps. The tank keeps dying, our healers are chain casting heals but nothing's working. We finally do a log parse and find out our main healer is spamming Prayer of Healing while cybering with the off tank, who's auto-attacking. I'm all for casual raiding and eliminating elitism, but when your time is at a premium tools like this are essential because morons like these two ARE out there, and in fact I expect to see a lot more them in SWTOR than WOW.

 

[Paelos]

The cybering while on Moroes story wins this page. Kudos.

[Simond]

It's also something everyone sort of "knows" at this point.  I'm not terribly interested in reading about the story and what not aside from "It is any good?".

But I am knee deep in mechanics stuff because that's something that they haven't talked about.

Also, waylander's a GM so that's an important perspective to hear from.

I found this in the SA SWTOR thread: http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=14239

Now, I know I said I’d have a Shogun 2 post for you guys today, but on Friday, Bioware finally stopped actively trying to prevent people from talking about their latest game and dropped the Old Republic’s NDA. Given I’ve been waiting to do a post on this game for what seems like forever, you’ll have to forgive me putting off Shogun 2 for a little while longer.

Back around mid-August, I received a welcome surprise in my inbox – a beta invite to the Old Republic. Ever since then, I’ve been itching to tell people about my experiences with the game. Some of you may also remember how I played it back at PAX 2010 and raised some concerns about the budget and direction for the game. I’ve long been waiting to see if I would have to eat those words. And I think just about everyone has been waiting to see if what is probably the most hyped MMO – perhaps, the most hyped videogame – in history will actually live up to all it promises.

So why don’t we get down right to that? Does BioWare’s first MMO live up to its enormous hype?

Is Star Wars: The Old Repubic any good?

And if I were to put all of my thoughts and experiences about the game into a single-word answer to that question, it would really just have to be:

No.

On the surface, that answer seems absurd, doesn’t it? I mean, it’s BioWare! Sure, I may have been a rather vocal critic of their last few titles, but that doesn’t mean they can’t make a good game anymore. And it’s Star Wars! Probably the most well-recognized fiction franchise in human history! Just think about the money that LucasArts and EA could – and did – throw into a project like this. How could it possibly be bad?!

Well, that’s not an easy question to answer. While I would never say the Old Republic is a good game, I don’t think I’d qualify it as a bad game either. It’s certainly not an obviously bad game – the game does good things, but they don’t seem to come together to form a coherent, interesting whole. MMOs are such complex creatures, and it can be difficult to get to the heart of why you don’t like one on a whole. But I think one of the most important elements to understanding my answer lies with the very core of the game’s design.

Put simply, Star Wars: The Old Republic is a game with an overarching design that seems to be very confused with itself. On the one hand, you have many of the elements that go into any given BioWare game you can name from the past nine years. Cinematic cutscenes, voiced dialogue, interesting side characters, clever humor. Everything you’d expect from a BioWare game. On the other hand, you have a cheap World of Warcraft knockoff with clunky combat, utterly dull encounters, very little customization, few community features, and pitifully little player-choice – even for a linear themepark game. While I’m convinced that there are ways that you could skilfully and seamlessly blend traditional MMO mechanics with BioWare’s signiature storytelling style, the way the two come together in this game is anything but.

The full article is an interesting read.

[kildorn]

Yes, cybering story wins. That needs a medal as well.  

[sam, an eggplant]

Whether you guys find raiding distasteful or not is immaterial; the SWTOR endgame is raiding, and people expect to have similar tools to the market leader.

[luckton]

Whether you guys find raiding distasteful or not is immaterial; the SWTOR endgame is raiding, and people expect to have similar tools to the market leader.

Yes, let's add more product and feature-creep to a game that's now 5+ years in development 

I'm sorry, but I gotta give credit to BW for at least sticking to their stated objectives of releasing a mainstream MMO with a strong story-based mechanic and giving their all to capture the Star Wars experience.  I feel that they've met that goal, they've spent time now polishing everything up and making sure everything in right now is as bug free, seamless and ready as possible.  As has been stated many times before in many threads on this forum, first impressions are everything, and having a strong initial outing with a character that keeps them enthralled in the game as much as possible will help do that.  Hopefully, it will help blind them to what you see as shortcomings of 'what a modern MMO should have' long enough for them to start development of patches, content and addressing your concerns in post-release.

Now shut up and give me my Imperial Agent already 

[Sky]

Whether you peons like it or not, the alpha gameplay is what you all wish you could do. So they better cater to us or fail miserably.

[Paelos]

Whether you guys find raiding distasteful or not is immaterial; the SWTOR endgame is raiding, and people expect to have similar tools to the market leader.

Don't you need to be a cartoon supervillain to say shit like this?

[sam, an eggplant]

Don't be a playa hata!

[caladein]

Whether you guys find raiding distasteful or not is immaterial; the SWTOR endgame is raiding, and people expect to have similar tools to the market leader.

Don't you need to be a cartoon supervillain to say shit like this?

He's right though, if you're going to offer raiding (or anything), it should be reasonably well supported.  And as a developer, you don't get to decide what that means.

An unmovable interface with no combat logging or macros is fine for KOTOR3 co-op, but it's not for launching a Diku in 2011.

[Paelos]

And as a developer, you don't get to decide what that means.

Are you high or just insane?

[Simond]

"As a developer who wants to make a successful diku-derivative MMO etc".
Better?

[caladein]

And as a developer, you don't get to decide what that means.

Are you high or just insane?

Neither?  The expectations that players have about what a title "should" have/be are out of the developer's control for the most part.

I generally like to take games on their own terms, but just from every discussion surrounding appearance tabs (to take one example), that's not what most people do.

[sam, an eggplant]

I don't much care about certain things. I couldn't give a shit about the appearance tab. I never noticed the clownsuit effect, when that cartoon came out I went "Oh hey, yeah." I very much enjoy the metagame of customizing my UI with tons of addons, but it's no biggie, for the most part. Thing is, there are certain features I simply cannot live without.

No click-to-heal means that healing is out of the question. Like 9/11. Nevar again.

Missing LFD means that I won't be doing many flashpoints. Lvl47 ranger LFG frenzied plzzzz NEVAR again.

There are a couple more, but you get the idea. I've become accustomed to these conveniences and I simply will not participate if they are not present. Life is too short to sit in a LFG channel for hours. Fuck that shit right up the ass.

[Fordel]

I've never clicked to heal either.

[sam, an eggplant]

You don't know what you're missing, man. I usually don't play a healer in these games, even on my alts, so it's no great loss for me. But when I did try it, it made an enormous difference.

Again, I expect Bioware will add most of this stuff to SWTOR post-release. I just hope they do it by the time the bell curve hits max level, because without them, SWTOR remains a great single-player KOTOR while leveling, but isn't much of a MMO.

[Evildrider]

Meh I like click to heal better than WoW with addons.  It's definitely a more boring endeavor when all you do is /stare@healbot.

[Murgos]

Neither?  The expectations that players have about what a title "should" have/be are out of the developer's control for the most part.

Bioware has been pretty solid on metrics and surveys.  I'm pretty sure they have a good idea of what their weak areas are and what they 'should have' to meet most reasonable expectations.

I'll say this though, the raid tools you think are essential probably aren't.

[Paelos]

Neither?  The expectations that players have about what a title "should" have/be are out of the developer's control for the most part.

I think you are confusing the expectations that you (or high level raiders) have with the majority of the players. I believe the majority of people do not give a shit about parses or "improving" how they play a game to a min/max standard. Especially in a game that's about story and voice-overs.

[Fordel]

Neither?  The expectations that players have about what a title "should" have/be are out of the developer's control for the most part.

I think you are confusing the expectations that you (or high level raiders) have with the majority of the players. I believe the majority of people do not give a shit about parses or "improving" how they play a game to a min/max standard. Especially in a game that's about story and voice-overs.

But they do care why Fordel is doing twice their DPS in gear two tiers behind. 

[Evildrider]

Neither?  The expectations that players have about what a title "should" have/be are out of the developer's control for the most part.

Bioware has been pretty solid on metrics and surveys.  I'm pretty sure they have a good idea of what their weak areas are and what they 'should have' to meet most reasonable expectations.

I'll say this though, the raid tools you think are essential probably aren't.

I didn't even have any addons while playing WoW til I got to LK and that's because the raid I was in made me.  You don't need all that crap to raid all it does is make it "derpable".