SWTOR

[Sjofn]

That's pretty much my thought on it. I will play SWTOR as long as I'm having fun with it, and the elite raider mentality hasn't filtered down through use of mods and meters to the regular populace. Reason being, the regular populace has no idea how to correctly use those metrics, and they couldn't play at the level of the people who can use them, so they make everyone else's life miserable.

That's just ... not true. "How u push button better" is not actually beyond the grasp of "the regular populace." Again, Slap in the Face is like ... so not an elite raiding guild. It does not have an elite raiding mentality. But those tools are useful, and they helped us suck less.


I also have done an obscene amount of PUGs, and not once have I seen someone get bitched at for their shitty DPS, even when it would be entirely justified. I believe it happens, but I do not believe it happens with the frequency people claim. I would've surely seen it by now.

[Lantyssa]

No, I'll continue being a game nomad, trying to find something that amuses me. In my case, fanboying over GW2 knowing my guild probably won't play it heavily as I cry myself to sleep.

I'll be there, kildy.

[tmp]

Platformer shit: do not want.

You scrubs just can't be arsed to grind for proper gear the encounters were designed for.

[Ratman_tf]

Platformer shit: do not want.

Someone should try to emulate Tomb of Horrors in a MMOG dungeon.

[Ingmar]

I think it has already happened on a spiritual level... assuming you mean 'make an unfun, arbitrary character grinder.' 

[luckton]

The site keeps going up and down, so here's a cut and paste of the article regarding pre-launch guilds just posted.

Last Chance to Finalize Your Guild

http://www.swtor.com/news/news-article/20111123

A few weeks ago we announced that Phase 3 of our Pre-Launch Guild Program had begun. Phase 3: Deployment allows guild members to see whether or not their guild qualifies for transfer into the game. As we approach Early Game Access for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™, we want to remind all of you in guilds that the Pre-Launch Guild Program will end on December 2nd, 11:59PM CST so that guilds can be assigned to servers for Early Game Access.

This is your last chance to:

-Make any changes to your guild
-Ensure your guild meets requirements for deployment into the game
-Designate your guild’s Allies and Adversaries
-Review and accept pending guild applications

So how do you ensure that your guild makes it into the game for launch? It’s simple! All you have to do is make sure at least four members of your guild have pre-ordered the game and redeemed their Pre-Order Code at our Code Redemption Center. Once you’ve done that, you can check your guild’s page within the Guild HQ to see if you have met all of the pre-designated conditions.

If your guild does not yet qualify for transfer to the game, you still have time. Visit our Pre-Order page, secure your copy of Star Wars: The Old Republic, and redeem your Pre-Order Code to help ensure that your guild makes the cut for launch!

To learn more about guilds in The Old Republic, check out the Guilds Game System page for details and visit the Guilds FAQ for answers to commonly asked questions.

*Customers who pre-order Star Wars: The Old Republic will be able to play the game before the official launch. “Early Game Access” is the period of time before the official game launch when pre-order customers may access the game. Early Game Access may be up to 5 days. The length of your Early Game Access depends on the date and order in which you redeemed your Pre-Order Code at the Code Redemption Center. See Pre-Order FAQ for more details.

**We will make reasonable efforts to ensure that qualifying guilds are imported into a server that meets your specified preferences, but we cannot make any guarantees given the anticipated volume of guilds (among other factors). All server placements therefore remain in our sole discretion. We also cannot take responsibility for technical errors or glitches that prevent your guild from importing into the game as planned. See Terms of Service for more details.

[Sobelius]

Platformer shit: do not want.

Someone should try to emulate Tomb of Horrors in a MMOG dungeon.

So this would require what seems to be missing from a lot of MMOs -- variety of interaction. Tomb of Horrors would be cool, but  you can't, for example, take a piece of junk from your inventory and "test" to see what happens when you
Variety of action in most MMOs:
- click on an object in the world
- click a UI button to make your toon attack/heal/buff/debuff/stun/mezz/slow/root/etc a targeted enemy or ally
- move your toon onto something, or through something, to trigger an event or location change
- perform an emote at a specific location to advance a quest objective

Skyrim changed their lockpicking mini-game UI.
Neocron had an electronic lock-picking system/mini-game.
Vanguard had the "Diplomacy" card game.

Maybe more things like this (mini-games or some different kinds of environment interaction mechanisms)?

[Wolf]

That's pretty much my thought on it. I will play SWTOR as long as I'm having fun with it, and the elite raider mentality hasn't filtered down through use of mods and meters to the regular populace. Reason being, the regular populace has no idea how to correctly use those metrics, and they couldn't play at the level of the people who can use them, so they make everyone else's life miserable.

I also have done an obscene amount of PUGs, and not once have I seen someone get bitched at for their shitty DPS, even when it would be entirely justified. I believe it happens, but I do not believe it happens with the frequency people claim. I would've surely seen it by now.

It hasn't happened to you because you play at a decent level, have an understanding of how trash pulls and boss fights work, and carry your group - so you don't wipe (and that has nothing to do with gear before someone plays that particular card). Once wipes start to happen, if there isn't someone to take control and explain why wipes are happening and what should be done, tards bust out the recount. It's all about investing the time to learn to play your character(s) and understand dungeon and raid encounters. And that has a lot to do with decent gui and available information.

[kildorn]

That's pretty much my thought on it. I will play SWTOR as long as I'm having fun with it, and the elite raider mentality hasn't filtered down through use of mods and meters to the regular populace. Reason being, the regular populace has no idea how to correctly use those metrics, and they couldn't play at the level of the people who can use them, so they make everyone else's life miserable.

I also have done an obscene amount of PUGs, and not once have I seen someone get bitched at for their shitty DPS, even when it would be entirely justified. I believe it happens, but I do not believe it happens with the frequency people claim. I would've surely seen it by now.

It hasn't happened to you because you play at a decent level, have an understanding of how trash pulls and boss fights work, and carry your group - so you don't wipe (and that has nothing to do with gear before someone plays that particular card). Once wipes start to happen, if there isn't someone to take control and explain why wipes are happening and what should be done, tards bust out the recount. It's all about investing the time to learn to play your character(s) and understand dungeon and raid encounters. And that has a lot to do with decent gui and available information.

It's luck. I've had far more good pug experiences than bad. Happily carrying someone who is running at 20% the DPS they should be and whatnot. I've rarely run into L2PLAY NUBS from anyone, and only twice run into the "and we hit the last boss, kick the healer and get our friend in the group without a word" crap. It's just that the bad times tend to leave lasting impressions on people, while the hundreds of times things have just worked out are expected behavior.

I pug a lot. I stopped doing so as much on Cata's release just because PUG heroics became painfully stupid, but I still rarely saw the DPS chart bullshit. If anything what I saw a lot more of was "tank has less than N hitpoints, kick them" before the first pull. That requires no mods or performance analysis at all to do, and is a lot of why I say that douchebags will be douchebags. It's not recount that causes dickish behavior, and a lack of recount doesn't suddenly make everyone pleasant and patient people.

Smugglers look like a ton of fun, by the by. Though I'm laughing at the whole "this weapon is only used for special attacks" thing. You see, I only bust out my shotgun occasionally!

[Ingmar]

The only time I ever see Recount come up in PUGs is when someone starts saying "OMG CAN SOMEONE LINK THE RECOUNT?" (Invariably, the person asking for this is in last place on dps.) I've never seen it used as a bludgeon.

Now, what I *have* seen used many times to crap on people is GearScore (though not recently - at its height it got pretty annoying though). Possibly people are getting their memories of shitty experiences using WoW addons confused?

[kildorn]

Gearscore was such crap. And having it integrated into LFD just lead to yet more amazing bullshit.

And yeah, whoever went "linkz the recountz!" was always in last on the dps charts, and always by a large margin. Thankfully they usually asked in tells what they could do differently in my experience.

[Paelos]

My problem with recount isn't as a bludgeon. My problem is the dps staring at it, ignoring regular raid commands, and then complaining outside of fights when they get replaced on rosters. Or sending tells in raids, or people bitching about other people to me.

You see, people are rarely up front about their shitting on other people in front of them. They do it behind their backs to the raid leader (ie - me). And it's ALWAYS about what they see on the recount. This phenomenon did not exist until it became the norm. We ran successful casual raids all through vanilla and most of TBC. By the time Wrath came along, every single person was using it from top down and it changed the face of mid-tier raiding for the worse, imo.

I don't mind it when it's used for what it should be. I would be a hell of a lot happier if you could restrict it in groups to just the raid leader getting the information though. It would solve a lot of my issues with people sniping at each other.

[kildorn]

I lead raids for a bit back in vanilla. There was PM'd drama non stop before meters ever became common. "So and so healed X instead of Y, they should be docked points!" "My frostbolt deals N more damage than Frank's, I should be the class lead!"

Heck, I had those PMs back in DAOC days doing MLs. It's just a down side to running the shitshow. I hope slap isn't that bad about whining to Ingmar, but I'm sure we've all privately bitched about X or Y raid member when frustrated. I know I get bitchy as fuck after the 15th wipe to the same simple thing. And it's never meter related, it's "we wiped because people didn't pay attention!", including myself.

Though I'll agree with you on DPS tunnel vision. I tend to leave my meter UI off, and only look at it after boss encounters. But I've see people who actually think the number mid fight is really useful, and stare at it. Probably the same people who actually look at their damage numbers over the mob's head during a boss fight.

[Paelos]

Yes, but before meters I could just tell them to STFU and do their job. Now, I get spreadsheets telling me why I am wrong for having this person involved.

[luckton]

GearScore at first failed because it just counted ANYTHING as contributing to your score.  This means a Rogue that was wearing all epic Intellect cloth was more valuable than the same Rogue wearing uncommon Agility leather.  The program has gotten smarter, but the initial damage was done; people didn't like being degraded to a number.

For my part, I did use a gear evaluating tool called Elitist Group (developed by the people of the same Jerkish name), a tool that didn't just assign you number based on the quality of gear, but actually checked your whole loadout for appropriate gear selections.  It was a better way of handling things, and allowed me to give quick and appropriate feedback to a fellow if I found them failing.

Integrating the ilvl gear system into the LFG tool was necessary.  You won't be able to convince me otherwise.  I'm sorry you don't feel that one needs to cut their teeth on regular dungeons so they can gear up and be able to contribute to future harder encounters as the game is balanced.  

[kildorn]

I don't think it failed in LFD because people in greens should be able to pug heroics.

I think it failed because people in SHIT GEAR could game the system via ilvls being a poor determination of the quality of one's equipment.

Excuse me while I take my blue top 10 tanking trinket off and equip a shitty dps epic so the game thinks I can tank. <-- THAT is why it was poor.

edit: at least at the start of Cata, it was frequent for people to zone into a pug and then magically their HP and mana would swing by a few thousand as they put their real gear on. Abusing PVP crafted items was pretty much expected, and only actually worked for Druids.

[koro]

Has anyone considered that the devs haven't put combat logs into the game because of immersion?

Or, you can go with the real answer, which is "combat logs were in the game but removed because they could not get them to work properly".

[Numtini]

The problem with LFD and gearscore predated cata and was that groups required that you be not adequately geared, but massively overgeared so you could run them without breaks or cc or planning and based that overgearing on the score. Ditto for PUG raids. That was a case of gearscore making idiots worse than they already were.

But you do need some kind of level on gear for the dungeon finder. EQ2 didn't have that when their LFD launched and it was a disaster because you had people with completely inadequate gear being put into tanking roles and that sort of thing. (Along with a dozen other complete failures in the tool like assuming all tank capable classes were tanks--no clue if they ever fixed it.)

I never had problems with people using ACT in EQ2 and I loved capabilities like the VCR function for getting better at particular bosses. I think having the parser separate acts as a screening mechanism. If they're the kind of person to scream because of a couple of bad parses if everything is otherwise going well, they're apparently too stupid to set up ACT.

[luckton]

Is anyone having problems logging on to the SWTOR site?  It's asking me for security questions I don't remember setting up 

[Evildrider]

Is anyone having problems logging on to the SWTOR site?  It's asking me for security questions I don't remember setting up 

There's been some stuff going down with the site today.  When it gets fixed, if you haven't, you do need to set up those security questions.

[luckton]

Is anyone having problems logging on to the SWTOR site?  It's asking me for security questions I don't remember setting up 

There's been some stuff going down with the site today.  When it gets fixed, if you haven't, you do need to set up those security questions.

I should have rephrased.  I've setup the questions already, it's asking me a question that I didn't select to be asked.

[Outlawedprod]

Now that the NDA's down I'm looking for some solid info on the important stuff.  Anyone have enough playtime in beta to drop knowledge on what they consider the most IMBA classes and abilities once you get to level cap?

[Mosesandstick]

I've heard tanks and healers outperform other classes at getting invited to groups.

[Numtini]

This secret question stuff is out of hand. I'm locked out of my account and need to call them.

[DraconianOne]

This secret question stuff is out of hand. I'm locked out of my account and need to call them.

From Stephen Reid (@Rockjaw) about 15 mins ago on Twitter:

"For those of you who may be locked out of you accounts due to security question issues; we're working on a solution, no call to CS required"

[Ironwood]

Yes, but before meters I could just tell them to STFU and do their job. Now, I get spreadsheets telling me why I am wrong for having this person involved.

Wait, wait wait.

You're a fucking accountant.  You should LOVE that shit.

I bet your home server is fucking 95% Excel.

[Mrbloodworth]

[Fordel]

Yea the SWTOR site is shitting itself. I can log into the launcher just fine, but not the site itself.

[Modern Angel]

Yes, but before meters I could just tell them to STFU and do their job. Now, I get spreadsheets telling me why I am wrong for having this person involved.

See, it sounds like you had an extremely personal and bad experience with damage meters and how they affected your raid. Which is fine. But there are a lot more people looking at your self-assurance on this going "Whhhaaaa?" and probably a couple more looking at your red-eyed hatred of all raiders for inflicting this wound on you and thinking you might be unhinged. Your experience just isn't the norm, including in Sfojn's casual guild. It certainly wasn't mine when I was doing higher end raiding and it wasn't when I was in a crappy raiding guild.

Basically, I'm sorry you have such shitty acquaintances. :(

[luckton]

10 pages away people!  WE MUST POST MORE THINGS!

[Fordel]

The SWTOR site has unfucked itself, at least for me.

So Luckton, how bout dem healing bullets!

[Lakov_Sanite]

I remember when 300 was a big deal....I'm old.

[luckton]

The SWTOR site has unfucked itself, at least for me.

So Luckton, how bout dem healing bullets!

Aye, I seemed to login fine now.

And yes, healing bullets for Bounty Hunters, healing darts and flying syringes for IA's  

[Fordel]

Troopers get a healing GRENADE.

[Sobelius]

Still waiting for my "official start time" email.

I find the staggered start time thing more than slightly absurd. Color me jaded on the Bioware empire. Do they really need to simulate this? Are they afraid the metal in their hardware gear isn't solid enough? It's not like it's been a dragon's age since the last beta weekend. And it's not like they can't use the evidence in hand and make a highly educated guess/plan for the mass effect of adding new testers.

Howzat for a useless thread bump?