PVP has suffered a lot in the game since launch.  If not for the bugs and exploits that it has this would be a much more vocal issue.  Bioware simply cannot keep the game the way it is and expect people to accept that their entire team will fall apart whenever they get three-capped in civil war. An even better example being in Hutt-Ball.  Hutt-ball is by-and-large where I’ve seen this the most.  There is that magical number of two when players start dropping like flies.  Just about any match where we’ve gone down by two points the team will quickly begin to fall apart and the timer begins to countdown.  It gets even more infuriating when the same player is on my team in the next match only to do the same thing.  Not having a penalty for leaving a warzone is another feature that is not in the game which I would lump into the category of “unacceptable.”

I’m not sure what their reasoning was for the lack of this was, but I can’t imagine any scenario where their rational makes sense.  The community has even come up with some pretty interesting ideas that don’t even involve the standard lockout timer that is most common in other games.  The suggestion that I thought was most interesting was to have them go into their own queue system with other people who have quit early.  For the next X minutes or hours they can only group up with other players who have done the same as them.  If that doesn’t sound like a fitting punishment they would also get a fraction of the commendations, XP valor that the rest of the people would.  Now I’m not saying this is the way to go, but at least it is a better idea than what is around right now.

With win-trading and all that other nonsense that is currently rampant on most servers this is one issue that we shouldn’t have to put up with.  It is a silly problem to have to deal with and there is no reason why this shouldn’t have been a day one feature in the game.  Gamers are essentially like water.  They will most always take the path of the least resistance and I can see why leaving early instead of receiving a hearty hutt-ball beat down would be the better option in many players eyes.  Hopefully they make this problem go away–and fast.

Subscribe to my blog to get updates straight to your phone or RSS reader. You can also find me on twitter: @dollada06

The one way that I have made more credits in the game outside of leveling-purpose questing is by doing my space mission dailies. Daily quest are pretty much a major source of income for max level players in any MMO. Obviously daily quest, based off their name, can be completed each and every day. Basically would pick up the same quest day after day and complete for credits. Star Wars the Old Republic also has other quest that can only be completed once a week and obviously those are going to do view much more credits than a daily quest will.

The most common place that you can retrieve daily quest are at the mission terminals in one of the faction fleets depending on which faction you play. Most of the daily quests are going to vary in difficulty. Most of them at level 50 are pretty easy, but some actually become a little bit more difficult. The key to doing the daily quest and getting a decent amount of credits off of them is to make sure that you do them each and every day. When you’re doing five requests a day a give you anywhere between 3K and 5K credits for completing them it begins to add up over time in a big way.

The types of dailies that exist pretty much pertain to the two types of gameplay that exist in Star Wars Old Republic. Is going to be PDE and PVP dailies. The PDE dailies are obviously going to make you run through some type of quest or flashpoint to complete them. There likely to be the most time-consuming ones, but also can yield the most reward. The PVP daily on the other hand is often times as easy as winning one war zone for the day. The frustrating part is that there is currently a bug that exist in war zones where people are getting credit for winning a war zone match. This is a known issue and as far as I know Bioware has figured out the root of the problem and is currently fixing it as I type this. The issue happens when the host of the war zone match decides to leave midway is through the match. This throw something out of whack to the point where everyone else playing doesn’t get credit for finishing the war zone.

Doing dailies is going to be a great way to obtain a modest amount of wealth over a duration of a week or even longer than that. When you’re at 50 and you’re not getting a steady income from leveling this is going to be one of the best ways to get credits.

There are a few other ways that I know of right now that work really well to build yourself a nice nest egg of credits. I’ll be posting them over the next couple weeks as well, but like I said it’s not going to be something that is scheduled for every Monday or anything like that. There a lot of interesting things that I’m excited to write about in Star Wars Old Republic and I try to keep it fresh every day on my blog. I want people to to come to my blog expecting it to be a credit making blog or anything like that. I want them to be able to come here and read new and interesting content every day that isn’t covering one specific niche topic in the game.  I hope you’ve enjoyed this quick topic on making credits!

Subscribe to my blog to get updates straight to your phone or RSS reader. You can also find me on twitter: @dollada06

The thing about service tickets with any game, again most noteably MMO’s, is that that number reflects the stability of your game.  While 5% doesn’t seem like a large percentage there still remains the fact that 85,000 people are at that moment probably not having a very good time.  The big issue that comes up at this point isn’t even the 5% (Which i’ve pulled out of thin air) or that 85,000 people aren’t enjoying themselves.  It’s the excessive wait time that these people, these paying people, have had to put up with.  Initially I was an apologist for Bioware, I wanted to make sure people knew that same line of crap I just fed you a paragraph ago.  That there was a large quantity of tickets and it was going to take a long time to cycle through them all.  I can say with absolute honesty that i’ve let that mentality fade away at this point.  Biowares customer service is still great…to those who actually are getting helped.  To those stuck in MMO limbo, or heaven forbid have to call their customer support line, I feel for you.  I really do!

Here we are almost two months removed from the release of the game and there are people who have tickets in Bioware’s support system for upwards of two full weeks.  I can still understand that people aren’t going to be helped in a timely fashion; however, as a customer you’ve still got to let people know that their ticket is still at the very least being considered.  It would take someone just minutes to write a script saying “Hey we apologize for this unreasonable delay, we are currently about 2 days out from getting to your ticket.”   Something to that extent isn’t unreasonable from a customers standpoint.  Say what you want about quantity of tickets or order of importance, but people who are stuck in limbo for two weeks deserve to know whats going on whether it is a genuine letter or a scripted message from a “helper-droid.”

The last part of this whole issue is the players, as much as it is unpleasant to hear.  There are numerous threads of players who are raging saying they’ve filled out 12 tickets for the same issue.  Or threatening to fill out a ticket everyday until their issue is personally dealt with.  This is also a cause for some of the delay.  While it isn’t the root cause of the delay it is a contribution to it.  I wont insult you with math anymore but just imagine the impact of 100 people deciding to go this rout and fill out 10 tickets for one issue.  That 85,000 number starts to rise in a hurry!

The bottom line is that beyond a few players who act like children about their tickets Bioware is still doing a very poor job at this point of keeping people who need help informed.  They are really leaving too many people in a state of unknown for too long of a duration.  Fix it Bioware!

Subscribe to my blog to get updates straight to your phone or RSS reader. You can also find me on twitter: @dollada06

Huttball in SWTOR (c) BiowareSo what is wrong with PvP in SWTOR?

There are a number of things that are wrong, beginning with just the bugs that exist.  The one I run into most commonly is that beautiful Bounty Hunter bug where they can stand on their ledge and pull you over the “end zone.”  This seems dumb because they are being pulled into the very zone where they are trying to get to; however, the game client registers this as a bug or a hack and instantly kills the player that was pulled.  This results in a lot of 6-0 losses for teams that are up against a Bounty Hunter or two.  Its really a major bug and I would imagine it to be fixed rather quickly.

The second and perhaps most frustrating is the faction imbalance that exists on many servers.  This is pretty common on almost all MMO’s but in this circumstance it really hurts because the game is setup in a unique way.  Huttball isn’t really a warzone.  It is meant to be more of a sporting match, thus when the game is setup it isn’t faction specific.  Think of it as interleague play in Major League Baseball.  Everyone on the AL wants the AL to win the World Series, but they will still play members of the opposite league when they play the National League.  So when there is an imbalance on the server there is a priority on playing Huttball since Empire players can play each other or vice verse.  What we are all finding now is that PvP pretty much means we are playing Huttball.  I along with many other players have had our fill on Huttball for the time being and would love to play some Civil War or whatever the hell that other one is–sorry I forgot the name.

Chiss in SWTOR (c) BiowareSo what is wrong with Character Creation in SWTOR?

In terms of MMO’s and the standards that they hold there really isn’t anything that touches SWTOR.  The biggest gripe that I have against the Character creation is that the most notable races from the Star Wars universe aren’t a part of it.  Character models and customization are, in my opinion, second to noone.  That fact that some of the more interesting races were left out certainly disapoints me, but I do have high hopes for the future!

The second thing that bugs me are some of the races that were chosen to be used at release.  Or to be used at all really.  The Chiss class is the ugliest thing i’ve ever seen.   The good thing is that I haven’t seen it in game.  No seriously, I don’t recall a ever seeing a single player rockin’ the Chiss race.  It’s just so damn ugly!  On top of that the movies really dont show us the Chiss more than a brief few seconds.  I am really only picking on the Chiss here because they are the worst offender, but without question there were many better choices they could have gone with for races in SWTOR.  At least at the games launch.

Overwhelmingly the PvP problem is much much more serious than the character customization, but there has been a small outry over character creation as well.  What can I say–some players will just never be happy.  When PvP gets some love and they allow me to choose what Warzone I want to play I will be completely content until they put out another patch.  In all honesty, as I mentioned at the beginning, none of these are really deal-breakers for me anyway.  Each character has its own unique story to play and when I run out of things to do on my inquisitor its off to the Bounty Hunter for this guy anyway!

Implementing companions in the game made it a lot more difficult to get things geared up as well. Not only just to worry about yourself you also have a companion to worry about as well. And beyond that you have upwards of three companion story about at any given time. So a lot of the quest rewards that you get you don’t even end up putting on your own character–it goes to your companion that you use for either tanking or healing or just as a DPS role in general.  to person who hasn’t tried before definitely sounds like they tried to give you a little bit, but once you get into it you get a lot more of the feeling like your companions are more major characters than they are just someone that follows you around with a sword and helps you out in combat.  By and large the combat system is the best part of the game like I had mentioned earlier. There are still a few bugs that exist, but nothing that makes it unplayable by any means. As a Sith inquisitor one of my main dislikes about my companions is Khem Val’s massive size. When he’s following me around his hip boxful often cover-up and PCs entirely so I have to rotate my camera to click on them. It’s really not that big of a deal it’s quite easy to get around, but after a while it starts to get a little irritating.

When using the companion system I pretty much felt like it’s really well thought out and really well put together. Overall I would give it about a grade of B+. I could find myself giving it a if it wasn’t for the few minor issues. If you’re used to playing World of Warcraft and any other MMO the whole companion system and Star Wars the Old Republic is up welcome change of pace from what you’re used to. If you found yourself getting bored of World of Warcraft I would suggest trying Star Wars the Old Republic. There are more than enough reasons to give it a try. 

Subscribe to my blog to get updates straight to your phone or RSS reader. You can also find me on twitter: @dollada06

The following comes directly from Bioware’s website:

This week several user interface changes were made as part of patch 1.1.2, including some that changed the look of the ‘global cooldown’ animations. ‘Global cooldown’ is the delay after an ability is used before other abilities can be used. As the global cooldown can affect many abilities at once, the animation is seen frequently and for some, the changes made were distracting.
Our UI team took this feedback to heart and worked up a solution which gives every player a lot more choices in how cooldown animations are displayed. If you’re happy with the way the game currently looks, you can ignore these changes – but we think some of these preferences will be welcomed by many players.
Currently, these new preferences are scheduled to be added to the game in patch 1.1.4, which should be available for preview on the Public Test Server next week and deploying to the live servers soon afterwards.
Here’s a screenshot of the new portion of the User Interface section of the Preferences menu which deals with cooldown settings, and some details on the options available to you.
Show Ready Flash: This option, when selected, will show the bright flash when an ability finishes cooldown.
Show Global Cooldown Ready Flash: This option, when selected, will show the bright flash when an ability finishes its global cooldown.
Show Cooldown Text: This option, when selected, will show the time remaining on a cooldown as an overlay on the ability icon.
Cooldown/Global Cooldown Style: This option allows you to select from four different art styles for the cooldown and global cooldown graphics. The tooltip for this option explains what the different styles look like (see screen below).

Cooldown Text Size: This option adjusts the font size of the cooldown text that’s used as an overlay on the ability icon.
Show Tenths of a Second: This option adjusts the threshold for when the game starts to show tenths of a second on the cooldown overlay text.
To show a few of these options in action, we created a short video. Here you’ll see the cooldown animations in a combat sequence featuring a Level 30 Smuggler; we’ve filmed two versions of the cooldowns so you can see the differences.


Hopefully you can agree with these new preferences you’ll have a whole lot more flexibility in choosing your cooldown options and can find a style that you prefer. Again, we expect to deploy these changes to the live game in patch 1.1.4, and you’ll be able to preview that patch on the Public Test Server soon. Expect to see many more UI customization options in Game Update 1.2 as well!

Subscribe to my blog to get updates straight to your phone or RSS reader. You can also find me on twitter: @dollada06

Hopefully at some point in the future Bioware has the resources to implement some sort of armory to the game. A special website devoted to all the gear that is in the Star Wars universe. While right now I can understand why it’s not there. In the future when more guilds are doing operations I can certainly see where demand for this would increase.  I’m a strong believer that the World of Warcraft Armory plays a large role in players theory crafting their characters. The recent implementation of transmogrification is another great reason why the Armory exists in World of Warcraft. Maybe not today, but a few months or years down the road I could see were some of the gear that exist today gets buried under an ever-growing amount of content that the game will have. Some of the gear to the game right now will hold a sentimental value to some of the players and being able to find out where that comes from will both allow players to create role-playing type gear sets as well as help Bioware prove that they aren’t forgetting the content that they’ve spent so much hard work on today.

I don’t foresee this feature being implemented right away and for all the reasons I stated above, but I can certainly see this happening somewhere down the road and I would almost bet on it. Bioware has done an excellent job of listening to its community since the game has launched, for the most part, and if this sort of thing get some traction and enough people bring up the desire for an armory I have a lot of faith that Bioware will listen and implement it.

Subscribe to my blog to get updates straight to your phone or RSS reader. You can also find me on twitter: @dollada06

Huttball in SWTOR (c) BiowareSo what is wrong with PvP in SWTOR?

There are a number of things that are wrong, beginning with just the bugs that exist.  The one I run into most commonly is that beautiful Bounty Hunter bug where they can stand on their ledge and pull you over the “end zone.”  This seems dumb because they are being pulled into the very zone where they are trying to get to; however, the game client registers this as a bug or a hack and instantly kills the player that was pulled.  This results in a lot of 6-0 losses for teams that are up against a Bounty Hunter or two.  Its really a major bug and I would imagine it to be fixed rather quickly.

The second and perhaps most frustrating is the faction imbalance that exists on many servers.  This is pretty common on almost all MMO’s but in this circumstance it really hurts because the game is setup in a unique way.  Huttball isn’t really a warzone.  It is meant to be more of a sporting match, thus when the game is setup it isn’t faction specific.  Think of it as interleague play in Major League Baseball.  Everyone on the AL wants the AL to win the World Series, but they will still play members of the opposite league when they play the National League.  So when there is an imbalance on the server there is a priority on playing Huttball since Empire players can play each other or vice verse.  What we are all finding now is that PvP pretty much means we are playing Huttball.  I along with many other players have had our fill on Huttball for the time being and would love to play some Civil War or whatever the hell that other one is–sorry I forgot the name.

Chiss in SWTOR (c) BiowareSo what is wrong with Character Creation in SWTOR?

In terms of MMO’s and the standards that they hold there really isn’t anything that touches SWTOR.  The biggest gripe that I have against the Character creation is that the most notable races from the Star Wars universe aren’t a part of it.  Character models and customization are, in my opinion, second to noone.  That fact that some of the more interesting races were left out certainly disapoints me, but I do have high hopes for the future!

The second thing that bugs me are some of the races that were chosen to be used at release.  Or to be used at all really.  The Chiss class is the ugliest thing i’ve ever seen.   The good thing is that I haven’t seen it in game.  No seriously, I don’t recall a ever seeing a single player rockin’ the Chiss race.  It’s just so damn ugly!  On top of that the movies really dont show us the Chiss more than a brief few seconds.  I am really only picking on the Chiss here because they are the worst offender, but without question there were many better choices they could have gone with for races in SWTOR.  At least at the games launch.

Overwhelmingly the PvP problem is much much more serious than the character customization, but there has been a small outry over character creation as well.  What can I say–some players will just never be happy.  When PvP gets some love and they allow me to choose what Warzone I want to play I will be completely content until they put out another patch.  In all honesty, as I mentioned at the beginning, none of these are really deal-breakers for me anyway.  Each character has its own unique story to play and when I run out of things to do on my inquisitor its off to the Bounty Hunter for this guy anyway!

Here are the notes in case you’ve yet to see what was fixed/added to SWTOR in patch 1.1.1.

General

• Fixed a bug that could cause the Global Cooldown to appear as if it has been cancelled when it is actually still in effect, resulting in a feeling of unresponsiveness to input.
• Corrected an issue that could cause an ability icon to appear usable but be unresponsive to clicks or keypresses for several seconds.
• Players revived by other players, including by in-combat revival abilities, now revive with 25% of maximum health.




Jedi Knight




Guardian

• Freezing Force: Now correctly lasts 9 seconds (up from 6 seconds).




Jedi Consular




Sage

• Mental Alacrity: Now correctly costs no Force to activate.
• Salvation: No longer heals targets twice on application. It now correctly heals all affected targets once when applied.




Smuggler




Scoundrel

• Flechette Round: Now provides 30% armor penetration while active.
• K.O.: This ability now knocks the target down for 1.5 seconds.
• Shoot First: The damage output of this ability has been decreased by approximately 20% to control burst damage and because it was enabling significantly faster than intended kills in PvP.




Imperial Agent




Operative

• Acid Blade: Now provides 30% armor penetration while active.
• Jarring Strike: This ability now knocks the target down for 1.5 seconds.
• Hidden Strike: The damage output of this ability has been decreased by approximately 20% to control burst damage and because it was enabling significantly faster than intended kills in PvP.




Bounty Hunter




Mercenary

• Sweeping Blasters can now be made free with Thermal Sensor Override.




Powertech

• Oil Slick now correctly costs no heat to activate.

Flashpoints




Directive 7

• Bulwark’s Area of Effect cone abilities now properly fire in the direction Bulwark is facing.
• Some of Bulwark’s abilities were incorrectly susceptible to interruption. Bulwark is now immune to interrupts.




The False Emperor

• Fixed a conversation that could cause the cinematic with Arkis Wode to function incorrectly.




The Foundry

• Fixed an issue that could prevent the final fight in this Flashpoint from beginning after the cinematic.
• The final boss can no longer become stuck in an invulnerable state; there was still a small window where this could occur.




The Red Reaper

• Lord Kherus now grants less experience.
• Some of Lord Kherus’s abilities have had their damage values adjusted to be more in line with the level of the Flashpoint.
• Players now enter into melee range with Lord Kherus in order to stop him from throwing crates.




Operations




Eternity Vault

• Players no longer randomly die in this Operation after being in Gharj’s lava.




Karagga’s Palace

• Foreman Crusher’s enrage now includes a movement speed increase, allowing him to catch players who attempt to run.
• Fixed an issue that prevented the Materials Disposal Unit’s main control station from becoming useable again after the Operation Group is defeated by the G4-B3 Heavy Fabricator on 16-man Hard Mode.
• Fixed an issue that prevented the G4-B3 Heavy Fabricator from deploying the correct number of Proximity Pulse Mines and Security Stun Drones during combat.
• The damage from G4-B3 Heavy Fabricator’s sticky pulse grenade will scales appropriately for the selected Operation difficulty level.
• Karagga no longer fires his Unstable Energy twice in a row.
• Taking the shuttle after defeating Karagga no longer transports players to the incorrect hangar.
• Walls that were missing in Karagga’s Palace are now in place.




Bug Fixes




General

• Fixed an issue that prevented some players in Operations Groups from receiving credit for the missions “[WEEKLY] Deadly Operations,” “[WEEKLY] Galactic Operations,” and “Journey to the Belsavis Depths.” The entire Operations Group now receives credit when the objective is completed.

Bug Fixes

• Comparative tooltips for researched items no longer have their stats reversed.

Missions




Imperial

• Declaration of War: The mission will now progress as intended when players interact with their ship’s holoterminal.
• Debriefing: The ship Holoterminal conversation related to this mission is no longer repeatable.
• The Eagle’s Nest: The Assassin’s Fortress mission is now correctly a prerequisite for this mission.
• Number One with a Bullet: Corrected an issue that prevented Bounty Hunters from leaving The Founder.
• The Mandalorian Killer: Thendys Noori no longer continues to heal Kellian Jarro after she has surrendered.
• Reallocation: The final mission conversation will now begin as intended when players interact with their ship’s holoterminal.
• The Voice of Darkness: Fixed an issue that could cause Class Story mission progression to enter an incorrect state.




Republic

• Death Spiral: Fixed an issue that prevented Jedi Knights who completed the Commander Rayfel encounter from using the shuttle back to Belsavis Orbital Station.




NPCs




Bug Fixes

• Kintan Behemoths no longer occasionally walk on top of trees when in combat.

Warzones




• Fixed an issue that could prevent players from receiving mission rewards for completing Warzones.




Voidstar

• Players are no longer able to climb out of the attacking team spawn area in the hangar before the match starts.




World PvP




Ilum

• Additional base turrets now protect the taxi location inside each faction’s base.

General

• Added two daily mission commendations to the high-level space dailies Operation Ascendant Pride (Imperial) and Operation New Eclipse (Republic).

General

• Attempting to loot an item in a group when the Master Looter is off-planet now generates an error message.




Bug Fixes

• The leader of an Operations Group will no longer receive an incorrect message informing them that their companion has been dismissed.

• Special items related to different editions of the game have been re-sent if they were deleted by the mail system prior to being claimed.

Subscribe to my blog to get updates straight to your phone or RSS reader. You can also find me on twitter: @dollada06

Don’t forget you can still enter the T-Mogg contest for a chance to win a Bloat the Bubble Fish loot card from the TCG!!!