Star Wars: The Old Republic

[Remianen]

Yeah, the problem with podcasts is, you have to be a huge fanboy or a huge hater to even do one. Most are a mixed bag and the multi-person ones devolve into a huge PTI sort of shouting match over Skype. The audio is usually crap, the video isn't much better, and it basically looks homebrewed. Kinda like Tom Green's pre-MTV public access show or the like.

I used to watch STOked, back before Jeremy (the entertaining one) went to work for Cryptic on....STO, and it was a lot more polished. If you watched the livestream on Saturday and then watched the actual episode on Tuesday, you saw how much post-production work went into that.

The TOR podcasts are.....par for the course, sadly.

[Purple Cowboy]

Originally Posted by D-Lyrium

Totalbiscuit interviews Gabe Amantangelo, SW:TOR's PVP Overseer Guy

Just sayin'...

I used to really like his WoW podcast BluePlz! as it consistently made me laugh out loud in real life. Haven't listened to anything in ages though.

[Purple Cowboy]

In my quest to listen to and/or unearth all SWTOR podcasts no matter how horrible, I came across Explicitly SWTOR:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/xswtor/...ting-message-1

If you have a half hour of your life to waste you may want to give a listen. I think someone may have beaten me to the spoof podcast concept, or, they are serious and very sad. There is a bit of adult language. The part where he talks about the type of person that chooses certain classes was pretty funny.

[bigtplaystew]

i just got this game. I only played it for a little while yesterday. Then I got to level 9 in one sitting lol.

Amazing.

Is anyone on Mind Trick server by any chance?

[bigtplaystew]

Originally Posted by Purple Cowboy

In my quest to listen to and/or unearth all SWTOR podcasts no matter how horrible, I came across Explicitly SWTOR:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/xswtor/...ting-message-1

If you have a half hour of your life to waste you may want to give a listen. I think someone may have beaten me to the spoof podcast concept, or, they are serious and very sad. There is a bit of adult language. The part where he talks about the type of person that chooses certain classes was pretty funny.

dude i podcasted before. if you ever wanna do a silly podcast i might be your guy. i have skype. typically, i have recorded skype calls in the past and threw them up as podcasts.

[Purple Cowboy]

@bigtplaystew - I've just been finishing up my move from NJ to MD, once I'm all settled in and know what my schedule is going to be like I'll shoot you a note with what I had in mind.

Otherwise, still been playing mostly on Space Slug server on the Republic side with the folks from the Ootinicast in their Robes on Head guild.

Hatfield (Jedi Shadow) is 36 and got his legacy name (Hatfield). If I didn't spend that time leveling my sorcerer to 27 this would likely be close or at my first 50 since he's pretty much taken over as my main. But, also, I've just had to waste some good hours going back to Tatooine & Alderaan to finish quest chains that I couldn't abandon out of my log for some reason. I just respec'ed everything into Kinetic Combat and the only difference I've noticed is that I'm not as effective in PVP. Survivability in PVE hasn't been as noticeable at this level but also I haven't yet had a real boss encounter since I was going back and doing quests under my level. I think for actual leveling I'm going to have to go back to Infiltration or try Balance because I could see some fights taking a lot longer than they should. Anyone have much experience tinkering in those trees?

Had a cool experience on Saturday where a Sith was at a Datacron I needed and he offered to enter into a duel with me and then Force Pull me up to the ledge where the Datacron was! He let me do it, then promptly two-shotted me dead. I thought it was awfully fair because he probably saved me two hours worth of headaches trying to get to the thing. I actually rolled a Sith Warrior (man, for some reason I really love the Sith Warrior/Sith Inquisitor opening storylines on Korriban) and leveled him up to 11 so I could have enough credits to send him a thank you email with credits like the NPCs do.

[Remianen]

For anyone who might have a Sage/Inquisitor healer type alt they're sitting on (what? I can't be the only one!), you might wanna play those toons up. Sage/Inquisitor healing is staring down the barrel of a .30-06 nerf bazooka. Part of the reason is because they're so superior to Merc/Commando/Scoundrel/Operative and the devs are saying that wasn't intended (wtf! Were any of these people on the team in beta?).

Source: http://www.swtor.com/blog/community-qa-feb-17th-2012

Pertinent bit:

RuQu: Can you provide some details on Healer class design philosophy? Commando/Scoundrel AoE does not scale with group size due to player caps. Are they not intended to fill the raid-healer role? Scoundrels can be highly efficient, but have no tools for doing a short burst of healing.

In short, what is the design intention for each of the healers, and is it intended for them to be balanced so that any possible combination is competitive in Operations, or is a certain mix expected?

Georg Zoeller: Our stance is that all full healer specs should be viable for all type of content, which is the case, even for 16 man Operations. Our own players have no issues clearing any of the content in the game, on all difficulty levels, with any healer spec. Data from the Live game shows Operations, at all sizes, being successfully run with Commando and Scoundrel healers. It is expected for certain Operations bosses to create challenges for different healer archetypes (e.g. due to mobility requirements), but overall, every healer archetype is capable of successfully healing through any Operations and Flashpoint content in the game (currently and in the future).

With regards to your question about Commando/Scoundrel Area of Effect healing not scaling to group size, please understand that no heal, on any class, scales with group size. The most powerful Area of Effect heals in the game (Salvation/Revivification) affects up to 8 players, but does not scale with group size. These abilities are very costly, have an activation time requirement and require the targets to stand in a localized area for ten seconds to receive the full benefit. We plan on improving the overall Area of Effect healing performance of the Mercenary/Commando in the next major Game Update (1.2) by increasing the number of targets affected by Kolto Missile/Kolto Bomb.

As for Scoundrels having no tools for short burst healing, we don’t agree with that assessment. A scoundrel, for example, is capable of producing rather significant burst healing output by using Upper Hand gained from Underworld Medicine or Kolto Injection to trigger an instant Emergency Medpack or Surgical probe when needed. That said, we certainly think there’s room for improvements (and our upcoming Game Update 1.2 has a sizeable chunk of such improvements). For example, we are shifting the healing created by the Kolto Cloud ability to be front loaded in 1.2 to allow it to act as an emergency Area of Effect healing tool.

Finally, the perception of a specific class being not desirable can also be affected by the desirability of other classes. For example, Sage/Inquisitor healers are currently able to exceed our intended healing performance at times by affecting multiple heals with the same Conveyance/Force Bending buff. Game Update 1.2 will remove the ability to do so.

So Sage and Sorcerors 'exceed our intended healing performance at times' and this was JUST noticed? It's been like that since AT LEAST last August. The beta boards were full of posts where people were pointing out how Sages and Sorcerors would be THE raid healing class for their respective side. Next they'll say that Sentinels and Marauders underperform at their offtanking role (welcome to last freakin' summer, guys!).

[VBigB]

Well I have the worst luck. I only have time to play one character and I settled on a Sith Sorcerer. Oh well...almost lvl 26 so I'm not changing now. When is update 1.2 supposed to come out? It's doubtful I'll hit 50 before then with my limited play time.

[bigtplaystew]

So instead of making the other healers worthwile they are going to take the one effective healing class and nerf them? Ugh.

[Remianen]

Originally Posted by VBigB

Well I have the worst luck. I only have time to play one character and I settled on a Sith Sorcerer. Oh well...almost lvl 26 so I'm not changing now. When is update 1.2 supposed to come out? It's doubtful I'll hit 50 before then with my limited play time.

Given their typical output, I'd say late March at the earliest. Much of 1.1 (Rise of the Rakghouls) was leftover content from beta that couldn't be finished in time for release. So you can't credit them with coming out with "new" content quickly.

Originally Posted by bigtplaystew

So instead of making the other healers worthwile they are going to take the one effective healing class and nerf them? Ugh.

Low hanging fruit. Easier to bust down the outlier than to find out why the others underperform and fix them.

[Purple Cowboy]

Still playing. Ho hum.

[Remianen]

Originally Posted by Purple Cowboy

Still playing. Ho hum.

I play on occasion and I need to check out how the changes affect my characters. But I went inactive long enough for Dashell and Remi to get kicked out of their guild. I can't seem to finish Act 1 with Remi because his next story missions are 3+ levels above him (he's 29, the showdown to get Risha is 32) and I'm not feeling Gunslinger like I thought I would. Then again, I love Dashell (Trooper) since his performance is consistent. I guess it also helps that I'm engaged in his storyline, him being deep into his romance with Elara.

I'm wondering if any of the other classes get their romances early like the Trooper (besides IA. Kaliyo is....well, not the better romance option).

[codey]

Just wondering how the player population has kept up. I'm always wary to start a new MMO because most of them tend to die off after a few months, but I really, really wanted to play this one since I loved both KotOR games.

[VBigB]

Originally Posted by codey

Just wondering how the player population has kept up. I'm always wary to start a new MMO because most of them tend to die off after a few months, but I really, really wanted to play this one since I loved both KotOR games.

They have too many servers and I have heard complaints about ghost town servers. I think at the last earnings call they said they had 1.3 million subs which is down from 1.7.

In anycase I still play on Canderous Ordo which has a healthy population. I have a lvl 50 sorcerer (Heal spec) and a couple of alts. The changes to my class didn't really bother me. I started pvp'ing after patch 1.2 and I really haven't had much problems so I'm not sure why there was so much whining over the changes.

In anycase I am playing less now as I am playing Terra on the side.

[Trell]

I played it during the free weekend they had, I liked it. the server I was on was dead, I only found 2 or 3 other people around the areas I was. just wish I could afford the game and the subscription