The Shrine

I messed around with the raids in SWTOR and I think raids are kind of at an evolutionary deadend so far as MMORPG is concerned, especially the RPG part. I did the Eternity Vault on Normal and while there's supposed to be two modes above it, the encounters are supposed to be the same just bigger numbers. Basically, MMORPG raids are more like action games. They have more in common with Super Mario than anything that'd normally be called a RPG. All of them invariably gets down to requiring you to move around like crazy dodging 15 kinds of obstacles. And yet it's not really that hard. If you play Diablo 2 with a melee class (Hammerdin is not a melee) at level 25 and force yourself with only a belt of potions and no retreating, Diablo on Normal is probably a lot harder than any raid in any recent MMOROPG. Of course, since you're not limited to one life or even level 25, everyone can beat Diablo on Normal but very few can actually get very hard on the upper tier of raids. Still, a fight like Diablo on Normal involves far more fancy footworks if Diablo has the common mechanism allowed in a MMORPG boss (i.e. heals to 100% when you die, and enrage). So of course then it begs the question, why raid in MMORPG when you can play Diablo 3 or Torchlight 2? It's arguably a harder game, though you can always beat it by the fact that single player games like that don't have boss heal to 100% whenever you die or give you only 3 minutes to kill them.

The last game that had raids that felt like RPGs was EverQuest. Take the simplest raids in EQ, Vox and Nagafen. The dragons do an AE fear, a huge breath attack (that is not avoidable, because 10 years ago there wasn't frontal arc calculations), and they hit hard. The dragon's breath attacks will outdamage your healer even healing at maximum capacity (which is not remotely sustainable) so it's all about killing the dragons before you run out of mana, and if you've good gear to deal with the breath attacks you might survive one more AE than another character which actually is quite significant given how short the fight is. Of course, EQ raids really aren't very challenging, since if you can do X once you can always do it if you only have to be standing still casting a certain sequence. I guess to ensure victory cannot be trivially repeated this is why all the raids involve fancy footworks, except for the most part if you can do fancy footworks once, you can probably do it again unless you were drunk the next time.

It's true I haven't plaeyd too many American RPGs, but I don't remember Baldur's Gate or Might and Magic involve moving around like a madman or instantly dying. I played Dragon Age a bit and again it'd appear the focus of the difficulty is not around action elements, since otherwise it should be called an action game. Of course Japanese RPG which are often turn-based cannot possibly have any movement elements (it'd be trivial). Yet when it comes to MMORPGs, action apparently reigns supreme for a genre that is supposed to be definitely not action-based. But I'm not sure if there's a good way out of this. Part of the problem I think is that game systems are becoming too complicated so that the developers have no idea what the heck is the maximum capacity of a raid, so if you try to design a resource-management encounter, a lot of time you just end up with 'infinite mana' ala WoW and then of course you cannot possibly expect to defeat anybody based on resource management if there is infinite resources. The original EQ had fairly predictable and easy to calculate stuff. Your healers have X mana, which can translate to at most Y HPS. If the boss does more than Y HPS, then at some point you'll run out of mana and die. So a boss can do some really simple mechanics and still be extremely difficult to defeat. And really, isn't that what RPG supposed to be? I thought it's supposed to be about progressing your character (level in single player, gear in multiplayer) until you are strong enough to outlast the boss? I mean if you lose to a boss in a FF game or Dragon Age, your first thing to try would usually be 'get more levels'. But that's never the case in a MMORPG except for the gear-check encounter. If you wipe to something, you usually have to figure out a better way to jump from A to B while dodging C and D.

Random aside, I think frontal AE, especially dragon breath, is the most unrealistic mechanism I've ever seen. Usually these attacks can basically kill anyone except the tank, and you're fighting a being whose intelligence FAR surpasses that of yours, but apparently he hasn't realized that he should use his most devastating attack on all the guys who are behind him who have no chance of surviving? It's one thing aggro itself might be unreasonable simulation of what fantasy reality ought to be, but even if you assume there's this magic mechanism that makes you hate the guy who is usually the hardest guy to kill, it shouldn't be very hard to realize you can still turn around before unleashing a breath attack of doom.

Thoughts on the game itself...

The False Emperor and Foundry are really good story battles, and it's worth finding 3 other guys just to see the False Emperor battle. It'd be better if there was a level 30 version of TFE so you can actually see the ending to the Empire side (and I guess Republic goes through him too, not sure how it even makes sense) solo. The other flashpoints are pretty forgettable but I guess you can't expect much. Honestly I thought Soa (final boss of Eternity Vault) was far less impressive compared to The False Emperor.

I've no idea how anyone would be able to get more than one character to Battlemaster rank since it literally takes forever, though since Battlemaster gear is not a significant upgrade over Champion you can probably get away with valor rank 40-50ish for new characters, and just put in some random raid stuff (which is actually really easy to get). Aside from Operatives being overpowered, the game's balance in PvP is pretty good. Ranged classes dominate Huttball too much but that's hardly a surprise in a map that features 3 levels of elevation. Commandoes are perhaps a bit too hard to kill for the average player, which is why the class gets my vote for the strongest non-broken (Operatives) class in the game. They pretty much have and can do everything, and you can beat them but you better not make any mistakes. On top of that, you can get pretty close to the class's max potential by spamming one spell (Grav Rounds) on the offense.

May be broken in PvP but my DPS operative seems balanced enough for PvE. They also have the only chapter two storyline I've encountered so far that isn't a giant snoozefest (story-wise) and I've hit chapter two with every class out of the eight except for bounty hunters and troopers.

I've been slowly leveling my bounty hunter through his twenties but my twenty-six commando is probably going to get deleted in favor of a vanguard at some point. I've found that I basically just spam grav round when compared to other classes who have more some flavor in the fights. Sure I could build him differently but the other commando talent trees don't interest me.

Got my legacy level to twenty-six today. Hoping that means something sooner rather than later.

It's amazing how fast a developer can react to fix things when they break and how slow they are to balance other things in MMOs.

Stealthing in PvE doesn't do you any good in solo since the moment you vanish, the enemy heals to 100% thus negating any damage you already done. Players, of course, don't get such a luxury. Also, 7K on a 4-man boss with 200K HP in first 3 seconds is pretty much meaningless, but is quite deadly against a player who may have as few as 12K HP. Even against a well geared character with 16K HP, losing 7K off the bat hurts, especially if the character is already wounded since this can bring him low enough to get killed by Execute-type attacks.

Speaking of which, 1.1 is a colossal fail. If the valor gains in Ilum are not rolled back, Blizzard should send some money to whoever came up with the patch because that will most likely help WoW get a ton of subs back. You might as well just have everyone start as a Battlemaster and a full set of Battlemaster gear (best PvP gear in the game) if those who exploited the valor gains are not rolled back. I think the backlash is going ot be from the guys who are NOT Battlemasters. I got one and I think it's dumb people are exploiting this, but technically this doesn't hurt me since I already got nearly full BM gear. It's the guys who missed the exploit that will now be hugely disadvantaged against the newly BMs that came out today due to the exploit and they're right to feel that it is unfair. Anyone under Champion level gear pretty much has no chance to defeat a Battlemaster outside of extreme imbalances. On my server there might be only 5 Battlemasters (I am one of them) on the Empire side prior to today, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are 50 Battlemasters after today. I mean sure BM is just a grind, but it's the best gear in the game. Even Rakata (best PvE gear), which some parts don't even seem obtainable (need to beat Nightmare mode), doesn't come close to BM each piece is like +20 primary stats -1% PvP bonus (+damage, -damage taken, +heal), so you'll have an extra 300 primary stats in full Rakata, but a guy in full BM will do +12% damage to you and take -12% from you. That's not even comparable. It's questionable whether full Rakata can even defeat a character in full Champion gear, and now suddenly everyone has BM gear if they were on during the 6-8 hour timeframe where the exploit is active.

To get an idea of how dumb this is, they disabled all the Taxis on Ilum because people are exploiting it, and then people just WALKED to the area to do it. Sure it takes you like 10 minutes to walk there without using the Taxis, but that isn't going to stop people from exploiting. For some reason, it didn't occur to anyone that you should maybe shut down the zone if people are willing to walk 10 minutes in snow uphill both ways to exploit.

Concentrating on the endgame that the vast majority of the players haven't even reached yet would be an even bigger error on their part. People who rush to the cap and then spend all their time PVPing and raiding are not the people who keep MMORPGs at healthy populations this early after release.

Are you aware of what's happening? It's basically the same as if Rakata gear (highest PvE gear) dropped off trash mobs in your starter planet since the only thing that makes Battlemaster (best PvP gear) hard to obtain is that it took a very long time to grind to valor rank 60, which some people did it in one day today. I mean yeah technically having a couple hundred guys with the best gear in the game for doing nothing is only like 2% of your population, but you'll never live with that kind of scrunity in a modern MMORPG.

It's problematic but it isn't an issue for the majority of the population. It doesn't worry me that much. Exploiters will likely be punished. Shouldn't be that hard to filter people who jumped to the top rank in such a short time. There are already dev posts on the subject of reversing ill-gotten gains.

Actually it is when you get totally destroyed by a Battlemaster that shouldn't have been one if you PvP at all.

It wasn't even broken twenty-four hours. Still failing to see why this is a major issue. I imagine by now exploiters have had their rank points taken away and possibly had their accounts suspended. At the very least they wasted a day of their lives.

No one was rolled back. In fact after the emergency patch, Ilum is still the same as what it was before. You can't camp people at their base so now there is just a blockade at the entrance of the base killing anyone who comes out.

Shrinweck wrote:It wasn't even broken twenty-four hours. Still failing to see why this is a major issue. I imagine by now exploiters have had their rank points taken away and possibly had their accounts suspended. At the very least they wasted a day of their lives.

What "exploiters" entire servers were doing this, I gained 30 Valor ranks effortlessly before I got bored, and no action was taken lol.

They said they were going on a case-by-case basis. Rolling everyone back would be a dick move, especially this long after the fix.

What case by case study? If you gained more than 50K valor you were exploiting, and that's like virtually everyone.

They only have to roll back the Valor level because nobody is going to be able to do 50K valor a day and somehow not be a Battlemaster, and those guy wouldn't care because they're already a BM even though it kind of sucks. Do a one time check to take away any BM gear you may have obtained that you shouldn't be able to use and it's done.

I canceled my account and then was told they rolled people back and resubbed, which turns out to be wrong. The only thing that seems to be salvaging the situation is that since the lag somewhat cut down the ability you still have relatively few BMs compare to what could have happened, and also Republics wised up and stop showing up to the zone. Still it's just a matter of time before people create alts to get killed on purpose (not like people weren't already doing that to flip control points). Again, this is basically throwing out the entire high end PvP game in one day. If they don't got something else to replace it, then you might as well stop playing the game if you're doing it for the PvP. Also, any newcomer will be greatly disadvantaged against undeserved BMs that will easily destroy any new guys effortlessly. Heck, I am only two pieces away from a full set of BM (was BM a week before 1.1) and it's actually getting pretty boring to kill another level 50 in 3 hits. It'd be even worse if I was a ranged class since I'd never die.

I've never seen such terrible faction imbalance lol. Like at least when WoW launched, it was like "The Horde is cool, but the Alliance has nicer cities." So while the Alliance had the bigger faction to start with over time it swung the other way(With help from Blizzard dick riding the Horde @ every blizzcon)

In TOR it's like "The Sith is Cool, this Sith have the cooler cities, quests, heroes, story, the Jedi have uhhh....yeah." Like they should have known nobody would want to play a Republic Jedi, Star Wars is one of those things where the good guys triumph, but you're rooting for the bad guys the entire time because they're just cooler.

It's not so much as population imbalance as opposed to the fact that Ilum PvP does not force both sides to have equal numbers. If Alterac Valley has no limitations on number of people, Alliance would most likely easily roll over Horde too. The Empire is probably slightly better geared than the average Republic, but that difference isn't insurmountable. Fighting 1 on 3, however, is insurmountable.

I like the Republic as a faction more than the Empire. I'd rather do Taris as the Republic five more times than have to suffer through Balmorra and Alderaan on the Imperial side. I also like Coruscant more than Dromund Kaas.

But god dammit I like the story arcs and companions more for the Empire.

I think the Empire is supposed to be more regimented so most of the story is pretty bland since they're just methodically stomping out opposition by shooting or throwing lightning at every opposition. I'll probably check out the Republic story once sooner or later.

Beat Soa and Kragga on normal. This actually seems about right in terms of raiding complexity. I don't like to move around like crazy but at least it's not rocket science where you've to know the 25 abilities that occur in a battle. Again, hard/nightmare is mostly just bigger numbers but the mechanics are still the same. I guess normal in SWTOR is equivalent of the PUG difficulty for WoW, though I do have a full set of Battlemaster gear which is only about 1% worse than the top PvE gear in the game, so maybe stuff seems easier than I should be since I outgear the instance by a lot.