Pre-release thread discussion

[Sjofn]

You guys must have missed the Mud era... damage back then was all in words.  It was ALL CAPS when you did the big damage.  

You EVISCERATE the hill giant!  

My MUD of choice gave the damage too.  Plus it put that shit in color with some badass ASCII around it.  My thief was a rainbow death machine.

We didn't have the ASCII but it would give us numbers, yeah. I think. Now I'm not sure! I know I knew my health and mana at all times, obviously, and had to specifically look at whatever I was killing to see if it was "badly hurt" or whatever, but I can't remember if it gave numbers for my damage. I know you just had to Know what was a good weapon or armor, though. Which was dumb, looking back.

I miss Ancient Anguish a teeny bit, even though I am positive I couldn't tolerate playing it today. It's where I first tanked for anyone. <sniff> Of course, the healers (the CLERICS) tanked because it was a billion times easier to do it that way. The other three people in your party (the "bashers") were basically your health potion mules.  


EDIT: Haha, I totally logged in (I remembered my password :O) and nope, no damage numbers (beyond seeing your own health drop). And I could still find my guild headquarters, how exciting! And I still have a mail from Ingmar. It was back when he still found me novel. <sniffle>

[Nebu]

That'll be a buck fitty for the trip down memory lane.  

[Sjofn]

What terrifies me is a) there were people who remembered me logged in, even though I haven't logged in for five or six years, b) they were actually excited to see me, and c) that I remembered how to get to my old guildhall in the middle of fucking nowhere.

[Nevermore]

Hiding information just means hiding shitty game balance to me these days. That's what DaoC taught me again and again. Never mind the god damned doublefrost math, their own fucking tooltips of 'high/med/low damage' did not actually match up to anything in the games reality.

Yes, this. DAOC is what soured me entirely on non-fully-documented mechanics.

Yes, but look what happened when they TOLD you that you couldn't have Evade I. 

[Zetor]

My MUD (Pandora's Box, running modded ROM/Merc) also showed damage numbers, but it was turned off by default... of course one of the first things everyone did was turn it on. You also had various text effects to go with the damage, so it ran the gamut from 'maims' to 'MUTILATES' to '*** OBLITERATES ***' to '>>> ANNIHILATES <<<' to '<<< ERADICATES >>> topping off with 'does UNSPEAKABLE things to'. Yes, I still remember this.

Random aside related to the current 'UI ezmode' talk: In the aforementioned MUD basically everyone had the ability to walk through doors ('pass door' ability iirc), and it was completely normal to walk through doors in zones as if they hadn't existed. If you could NOT walk through a particular door because it had the no_pass flag, everyone assumed it to be locked (with the key mob somewhere nearby, of course).
I made a huge zone in that MUD that had an optional 'challenge' section consisting of 6 sequential rooms with some puzzles/fights in them. The third room was called 'Test of Wisdom' and its only exit was a closed (not locked) door that had the no_pass flag. It also had very extensive descriptions of various items in the rooms (like key templates, a locksmith's table, books about locksmithing, etc) that were all red herrings and lead nowhere. I received many angry tells from people trying to get past that door... I'm sure there's a moral in here somewhere, other than me being a jackass.

[Wolf]

I swear the mod/UI discussion is exactly the same, as the one in the old thread about page 80 or something. Same people, same arguments 

Apparently one of the top top WoW guilds - germans For the Horde (top 10 world since BC) is moving over to play SWTOR. Just throwing a random tidbit out there.

[Numtini]

Ugh, you definitely lost me at threat meters. Playing DPS is brain dead enough. Figuring out how to throttle your DPS is the only part of a DPS that can't be played by a macro program and a roll of quarters. Threat meters are the start of an entire world of playing the UI rather than playing the game.

I'm a healer. Click casting is great. Making the information obvious is great. The UI being programmed to show me exactly when the min/max HPS and mana efficiency makes casting a group heal better than single heals and then showing me the target(s) for the group heal anchor--that's the UI playing the game not me.

If you want to make it easier to find tanks, go back to EQ/2s 6 person groups or DAOC's 8 person groups. Contemplate SWTOR's design: there will be one tank and one healer for every 2 DPS. 

[Merusk]

You guys must have missed the Mud era... damage back then was all in words.  It was ALL CAPS when you did the big damage. 

You EVISCERATE the hill giant!   

My MUD of choice gave the damage too.  Plus it put that shit in color with some badass ASCII around it.  My thief was a rainbow death machine.

Ditto on both of those.

[Wolf]

See the thing is threat and threat meters are something that's largely irrelevent and has been throughout most of wotlk and cata. Yes, threat mattered for a tiny bit in the first tier of cataclysm, but that's long gone. Even then, it only mattered for the first 30seconds of the fight anyway. You're under the impression you have to throttle your DPS as a damage dealer and that's not the case ever. You go all out all the time, always. How do I know? It's knowledge acumulated via a threat addon. Without something calculating exact threat and exact tps, you will never know if you are the problem, or your tank isn't that good. Or on the tank side they don't know if they're doing good and when they can hold off on their threat generating buttons and start pressing their utility buttons. It's information that I can use - as a tank more than as dps. It's information that helps me make informed decisions about what to press next. The absense of a threat meter is in my way, the existence of one is in not in yours. What was the argument again?

Oh and you're under the impression that healers in top guilds are min/maxers. Yes they still have to respect gameplay mechanics, but healing is more of a feel thing as much at the highest level as it is on the lowest. It's a decision making process at all times, what heal do I press and on whom. On the other hand when you have literally tens of thousands of healers that are used to mouse-over healing, why not have it in the game? It doesn't affect you if it's there, it does affect them if it's not. What was the argument again?

And that's the whole thing, the existence of addons doesn't affect your gameplay. Someone (Paelos probably) said that raids in wow are designed so you have a raid addon, and that's not true. Maybe you need DBM or BigWigs because you get panicy and you don't notice the more subtle clues the default UI gives you. That doesn't make them not there.

[Numtini]

And that's the whole thing, the existence of addons doesn't affect your gameplay. Someone (Paelos probably) said that raids in wow are designed so you have a raid addon, and that's not true.

I am firmly convinced based on the differences between EQ2 and WoW raiding that add ons affect the design process. How could they not? WoW raiding is full of gimmicks like the dances because they can't make it so gameplay is the determinant because most people's gameplay is 100% due to add ons.

[kildorn]

The dance is from really really early in the raid scene. It was a gimmick not because "lol you have addons", but a laugh of a fight where something other than your combat skill would determine the outcome. Consider it an RP fight.

I can't think of any boss that was designed with addons in mind. I can think of a few that caused addons to be created (MC's decursing, a few bosses that did X on Y timer with no real callouts spawned DBM and it's ilk). Decursive was fixed up by making the base raid UI show debuffs you could cleanse better, and DBM became kind of useless as the devs decided bosses that do X on Y timer should do a /yell or something to let players know.

In pretty much every raid required addon that I can think of, they were player responses to really shitty encounter design. Hell, Omen was raid required only in the sense that certain fights required someone to be #2 or #3 on threat to eat some ability, so it was no longer enough to just let the tank win threat.

And no, Recount is not a raid required addon. :P


SO ANYWAY: ABOUT THAT HEAD START TOMORROW!

[amiable]

And that's the whole thing, the existence of addons doesn't affect your gameplay. Someone (Paelos probably) said that raids in wow are designed so you have a raid addon, and that's not true.

I am firmly convinced based on the differences between EQ2 and WoW raiding that add ons affect the design process. How could they not? WoW raiding is full of gimmicks like the dances because they can't make it so gameplay is the determinant because most people's gameplay is 100% due to add ons.

Pretty much this.  LOTRO dungeon design was very gameplay specific, something that would have been trivialized witht he addition of addons.  I think it really was to their credit as LOTRO dungeons were incredibly fun but doable by a large part f the player base, while still being relatively challenging.

[Mrbloodworth]

No dungeon finder because it stops the sense of exploration?

Dungeon finders detach dungeons from a sense of location in the world. Its no longer the fabled dungeon in area XYZ under the mountain surrounded by citizens with stories of its legend, its a drop down option.

[Wolf]

or it's that gameplay option in my DIKU that allows me to gear my paladin's healing off-spec over a weekend without tying down 4 of my friends to essentially boosting my ass all weekend long.

It's working. LFR is working. People are expecting those features. Once again - it's not something you're made to use. If you want to - knock yourself out, discover all the dungeons. Don't force me to waste my limited playtime on getting a group together for what is essentially a mephisto run or 20. WoW had the silly idea to make you go find the entrance of a dungeon before you queue through LFD, they dropped that in under two months.

[kildorn]

I'd love heroic instance concepts rolled into SWTOR, actually. The idea of "play this instance again at level cap", just because it annoys me where there is an awesome dungeon in the leveling path that you will never see again. And once the game gets some age on it, nobody will ever see beyond someone having their level capped friend run their alt through it..

LFD didn't change my life much at level cap (though it made it so I didn't have to hang out in the hell that was trade chat), but it made leveling dungeons actually get done.

[Fabricated]

SWTOR may fare a bit better than WoW did without LFD, at least for a little while because as far as I know all the Flashpoints are started from the fleet rather than some random-ass dungeon entrance squirreled away in a corner of a zone no one goes to like most of Vanilla WoW's 5-mans.

I'd love heroic instance concepts rolled into SWTOR, actually. The idea of "play this instance again at level cap", just because it annoys me where there is an awesome dungeon in the leveling path that you will never see again. And once the game gets some age on it, nobody will ever see beyond someone having their level capped friend run their alt through it..

LFD didn't change my life much at level cap (though it made it so I didn't have to hang out in the hell that was trade chat), but it made leveling dungeons actually get done.

As far as I know "heroic" modes will be available for all flashpoints. I dunno how dramatically different they are however in difficulty or if they have extra bosses/etc.

[Mrbloodworth]

allows me to gear my paladin's healing off-spec over a weekend without tying down 4 of my friends to essentially boosting my ass all weekend long.

I can see how that thinking would be opposed if you view dungeons as a way to power level, or that is your main goal in "playing" the game.  Also, don't confuse the lack of a Dungeon finder, as a lack of a LFG tool. Two different things, and one contains the other.

[Draegan]

SWTOR may fare a bit better than WoW did without LFD, at least for a little while because as far as I know all the Flashpoints are started from the fleet rather than some random-ass dungeon entrance squirreled away in a corner of a zone no one goes to like most of Vanilla WoW's 5-mans.

I'd love heroic instance concepts rolled into SWTOR, actually. The idea of "play this instance again at level cap", just because it annoys me where there is an awesome dungeon in the leveling path that you will never see again. And once the game gets some age on it, nobody will ever see beyond someone having their level capped friend run their alt through it..

LFD didn't change my life much at level cap (though it made it so I didn't have to hang out in the hell that was trade chat), but it made leveling dungeons actually get done.

As far as I know "heroic" modes will be available for all flashpoints. I dunno how dramatically different they are however in difficulty or if they have extra bosses/etc.

Hardmodes, from what I've heard from the devs, have nothing extra in them.  They are just harder for max level peeps.

Regarding the UI discussion: When I was playing a level 50 Sage, there were quite a few procs I had to watch out for.  Things like making a long cast spell instant cast, or cast speed increases.  I can't remember exactly.  The real shitter was that the buff icons were so tiny and at the bottom of the screen, it made playing the game incredibly difficult because I had to stare a small portion of my screen.

This is why you need mods.  I need that shit popping up in front of my eyes in the middle of the screen.  Or at least give me a last graphic that I can react to, but don't make me stare at a small icon at the bottom of my screen.  Ugh.

[Mrbloodworth]

That's not something you need a mod to fix, that can be done in the vanilla GUI. However your example does give you an advantage if you have that mod, and others do not. Same with heal bars, and Effect timers.

[Nebu]

That's not something you need a mod to fix, that can be done in the vanilla GUI. However your example does give you an advantage if you have that mod, and others do not. Same with heal bars, and Effect timers.

This is precisely why I don't like mods.  Those that have them, know where to get them, and know how to maximize their use will have a large advantage.  Give everyone the same UI in game and see who can work the best with it.  It levels the playing field. 

[Zetor]

You also get an advantage others don't if you're using a G15 keyboard with multi-hotkey macros, some kind of gaming mouse with programmable side buttons, dual monitors so you can keep torhead running for the current questline, random third-party programs (not cheating programs obv.) that parse the combat log and put meters / cooldowns / stats onscreen even if the game doesn't support it normally (look up HeroStats from COH), etc. The difference is, everyone can get a mod.

[Mrbloodworth]

That's outside the game development. You could also argue that someone having more ram is an advantage, and it would be just as retarded. Personality in a PvE game, I could give a shit. There is no competition, but in PvP games I care. I believe there is a reason that most competitive games ( Video or not ) have rules and regulations for competition, from the shorts you have on, to the machine you run the game on.

There is an argument for "fixing" a UI, but most requests and reasons for modding go well beyond simple maintenance and useability. Consider 80% of a MMO "game" is "playing" the GUI.

[Zetor]

Except those 'retarded' advantages are the same advantages provided by some of the most important mods. Have you checked out HeroStats?

edit: just to make it a bit more obvious
G15/mouse: priority-cast macros even if the game doesn't support them normally, bar mods (this one is not as 'important', granted)
second monitor: Quest mods such as TomTom / Lightheaded / Carbonite. Same thing if you're using a levelling guide I guess.
HeroStats (COH UI is not moddable, remember): damage meters (!), buff/debuff timers, rotation helpers, stats, incoming damage parser...

[Sky]

You also get an advantage others don't if you're using a G15 keyboard with multi-hotkey macros, some kind of gaming mouse with programmable side buttons, dual monitors so you can keep torhead running for the current questline, random third-party programs (not cheating programs obv.) that parse the combat log and put meters / cooldowns / stats onscreen even if the game doesn't support it normally (look up HeroStats from COH), etc. The difference is, everyone can get a mod.

You really think putting all that together would be common enough to be an issue?

[Wolf]

allows me to gear my paladin's healing off-spec over a weekend without tying down 4 of my friends to essentially boosting my ass all weekend long.

I can see how that thinking would be opposed if you view dungeons as a way to power level, or that is your main goal in "playing" the game.  Also, don't confuse the lack of a Dungeon finder, as a lack of a LFG tool. Two different things, and one contains the other.

Didn't we already agree that SWTOR is WoW with lightsabres? And they're trying to compete with WoW? It doesn't matter how I play the game, it matters that I have an expectation to be able to play it in a way that is competitive on the market, lfd is now a market standard, people have to learn to live with it. LFG tools with no implemented matchmaking are a joke. Fun fact - did you know that WoW has had an ingame LFG tool for raids since wotlk? I dare you to find me one person that has gotten a PUG together using that tool. Lfr/lfd pull people from the entire battlegroup, not your server only. That's shortening the queue by looking for possible matches out of 50,000 people, instead of 5,000 (yes, made up the numbers dealwithit.gif). Also I did list myself as a healer for the second flashpoint on empire side. For the 3 hours I was listed, I got one whisper - "u tank?". Once again, I have X hours to play. In this time I want to do things that are not browsing a spreadsheet and whispering people if they can go do the dungeon they signed up for now - no not right now just in the middle of a quest, give me 10? I sign on LFD, and do stuff for 3-15mins - crafting, space pew missions, whatever, and when the game has done all the work for me I go do a dungeon with a PUG. You know, 2011 kind of stuff. Kinda like having an internet browser in my phone.

On your mods comment - it can be done via the GUI, but it's not. Blizzard have metrics on mods, and implement functionality based on the mods that are used. The things Draegan is talking about were not in vanilla wow, they got in at a later point because there were enough people using those mods. I prefer to fix my gameplay via fixing the UI, not "enjoy" fighting it. Again, it was said earlier on the topic that there are plenty of ways to limit what the mod can do to the interface. And as was said, my eu150 mechanical keyboard imported from Korea gives me a way bigger advantage than any mod ever could.

[Zetor]

You also get an advantage others don't if you're using a G15 keyboard with multi-hotkey macros, some kind of gaming mouse with programmable side buttons, dual monitors so you can keep torhead running for the current questline, random third-party programs (not cheating programs obv.) that parse the combat log and put meters / cooldowns / stats onscreen even if the game doesn't support it normally (look up HeroStats from COH), etc. The difference is, everyone can get a mod.

You really think putting all that together would be common enough to be an issue?

I wouldn't call it an "issue", but HeroStats is pretty omnipresent among COH min-maxers. Even if you aren't supporting mods and want to completely lock down the client, someone will write a (completely legal) app that overlays on your game screen and displays stats / meters / what-have-you.

Hands of the enemy, etc etc.

[Nevermore]

You also get an advantage others don't if you're using a G15 keyboard with multi-hotkey macros, some kind of gaming mouse with programmable side buttons, dual monitors so you can keep torhead running for the current questline, random third-party programs (not cheating programs obv.) that parse the combat log and put meters / cooldowns / stats onscreen even if the game doesn't support it normally (look up HeroStats from COH), etc. The difference is, everyone can get a mod.

You really think putting all that together would be common enough to be an issue?

I wouldn't call it an "issue", but HeroStats is pretty omnipresent among COH min-maxers. Even if you aren't supporting mods and want to completely lock down the client, someone will write a (completely legal) app that overlays on your game screen and displays stats / meters / what-have-you.

Hands of the enemy, etc etc.

CoX also had a combat log which is where HeroStats pulled its data from.  Then the devs just went ahead and put in more stat transparency than I've ever seen in any MMO, which kind of made HeroStats pointless anyway unless you really just had to see your dps over a certain amount of time (which I think is the only thing you couldn't get from the in-game stats, but since this is CoX why anyone would really care is beyond me).

[Numtini]

I've never gotten a raid together with the LF-Raid tool (the old one), but I participated in more than a few raids that were filled out with the system and the LFG chat. And even more, on the order of hundreds, that were filled out by requesting people in the 70, 80, and 90 chats in EQ2 that were the defacto grouping tool.

For me the big problem with all the instant automatic groupings is I can't choose between grouping with Thorvald and WiCk3D0odzer and honestly, just that much was enough to really change my enjoyment of gameplay. I play to play with other people and the name and guild name can tell you an awful lot about people. So being able to review those people is a huge plus. There has to be some way to make finding a group easier and maintain that kind of thing. Just a review screen that lets a group leader decline people and members decline the group.

[Sobelius]

Ugh. Number crunching past enough information to give me a sense of "do this" "not that" bores me. I always assume there is a random element anyway, so an approximation of effect is fine with me. Vague descriptions are fine with me as long as the result matches the language. If you tell me something is "slight" versus "decent" versus "large", I'd better be able to see that based on my experience, whether it's a health bar moving by different degrees, or a noticeable increase/decrease in attack or movement speed, etc.

But I'm pretty sure the scholarly literature shows that power gamers get nerdgazms by being able to tweak out gear and powers to within .003 certainty, thereby ensuring a steady subscriber base of 231,000 per month over a 6 year period. What? You've never heard the phrase "Data makes me moist?"

[amiable]

Didn't we already agree that SWTOR is WoW with lightsabres? And they're trying to compete with WoW? It doesn't matter how I play the game, it matters that I have an expectation to be able to play it in a way that is competitive on the market, lfd is now a market standard, people have to learn to live with it. LFG tools with no implemented matchmaking are a joke.

You are ignoring the fact that, with all of its annoyances, many folks preferred the system before LFG.  I know I did because:

1.  I actually got to know folks on my server, who was reliable, who was terrible, who ninja'd loot.  It made me feel like I was part of a community.  You couldn't just sign up, drop group for any old reason or being a raginf asshole.
2.  It created a greater sense of being part of a dynamic world (even thought travel times were never really longer than 5 minutes).

LFG served one purpose: it allowed shitty DPS soloers to find groups to get gear (albeit with a long lag time), but in the process it destroyed everything that added stickiness to WoW.   It basically stripped away any veneer that there was something to the game other than "acquire electronic foozles as fast as possible."  I think that is part of the reason WoW is now hemorrhaging subs.

[Ginaz]

So someone I know ended up on a server called "Space Slug".

[Nevermore]

That must have been some meeting where they decided on the server name.  I'm assuming much drugs and alcohol was involved.

[01101010]

Should have been space herpes. 

[Ginaz]

I wish Space Slug had been selected for Bat Country.

[Lucas]

Other guilds on Shien:

http://www.swtor.com/guilds/search?shardName%5B%5D=he1067