95% of the time LS/DS choices make sense in the story/canonical context, and even when they’re a bit odd (dickish LS, morally defensible DS move) there’s usually a logic to it. It’s a long game with separate LS/DS counts - for munchkin purposes, they’re subtracted from one another for a net score, but in RP terms you can look at both and get a rough sense of how many goodish/badish things you’ve done.
I’ve “done what made sense in the story” with the result that all of my characters took both LS and DS choices. As an example, my markedly light-sided Imperial Agent took two major DS choices (100+ points each and innocent-ish deaths) because doing otherwise would’ve meant, in RP terms, grossly jeopardizing the mission so as to not do something seriously distasteful. I liked that those choices were forced and conflicted, in a story-intelligible way, and that, in net terms, they offset five or six quotidian 20-50 point LS bumps for “Oh, fine, I’ll try to rescue the prisoners” and “this is your first and only warning.”
To me it’d be tragic munchkinism to pick whatever you think will get you the +18 Vorpal Lightsaber of Pure Evil for raiding. For one thing a few 50 or 100 point decisions don’t stop one from drifting 4000-5000 points into LS or DS if one is intentionally playing a good or evil character in the first 20-30 levels: there’s no need to minmax.
And for another, is it some unprecedented tragedy getting a nice drop you can’t use? Is that a new thing in MMOs? For every +18 DS item you miss out on there’ll be a +18 LS item and +18 social rank item (limited to people who group a lot) It’s also almost certain there’ll be a +18 PVP item and “grey item,” at least at middling/high levels where “greyness” would actually reflect the same number of decisions as a LS/DS rank would.
Teiman
3482
My theory is that the people that care for RP, consistency, and these things will have a “interesting problem”. But will be a minority, most people will not even know something else than min-maxing exist.
And they have probably 5 ways to get palatte-swapped vorpal daggers of good/evil/neutrality/sociability/PVP leetness. Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others.
The Bounty Hunter is a decent but unexciting healer. I specced about half and half into the Bodyguard and into the Arsenal trees because it didn’t feel to me that I could spec full healing and do the content (since your first companion, Mako, is essentially a healer). The Bounty Hunter gets a small slow-ish heal that can be improved through talent points, a slow bigger heal that I think can also be improved, a fun, very small free heal that requires you to shoot your companions with your gun (this I never get tired of, and it’s fun as hell to run into a lower area and shoot all the friendlies… many of them start panicing, thinking they’re getting attacked from behind. It’s a hoot), and one of the lower specialized abilities is the 11-points in the healing tree Kolto missile that does AOE healing. BH healing seems more focused on raising your critical chance so it appears BioWare wants you to live (or die… get it!) based on your crit chance.
Bounty Hunter’s main resource is heat. As you use abilities, you build up heat. The higher the heat, the slower your heat dissipates. If your heat gets too high, you can’t use many of your abilities. You do get a 2 minute cooldown abilitiy to vent most of your heat, and you can also put talent points into reducing the heat signature of many of your abilities.
BHs get the standard 60 second CC (just one though… Sorcerers and Sages get 2? Figures!). They get a self-only shield on a 2 minute cooldown, and a knockback or two. They do not get any kind of interrupt (unlike most, if not all, of the other classes).
BH healing is considered the weakest of the three healing classes. One oft-repeated knock against BH healing is that if you get behind it’s very difficult to catch up. There’s no gigantic emergency heal (until you get to the 31 point healing tree ability). Note that this is all secondhand information, and looking at the talent tree I’d say it looks like BHs get a lot of healing tools. But I think the biggest disadvantage is the lack of multiple ways to dissipate heat. I’ve also heard the AOE heal is pretty hit or miss, as it’s placed on a location not a player, so if you throw it out and everyone moves…you blew it!
BH might be a weaker healer, but they make up for it by being an awesomely incredible DPS. I got my guy up to 28, to the end of Tatooine, and had a blast. Even though the mobs start getting tougher around then, I still feel like I can dish it out.
Are screenshots broken? I took three and they are saved in the TOR screenshots folder but all three are blank (and suspiciously small for 1920x1200 jpgs).
I’ve only played a Jedi consular up to level 3 (just arrived at the temple) and the voice acting definitely adds to the experience. Also getting to see your character as dialog plays out helps in feeling more invested. And my character isn’t a Gordon Freeman-like mute, hooray!
Otherwise so far it feels very…nice. Nice UI, nice graphics, nice effects but nothing outstanding. I do like getting a good variety of abilities early on instead of the more typical auto-attack plus one power that has a cooldown just long enough to be annoying.
I’m completely ambivalent about whether I want to keep playing.
This happens in every MMO, and is one of the reasons why I have a chat tab that excludes General chat that I use for my primary unless I’m looking for a group.
Yeah, one of the first things I did was disable the General chat. It’s a grand old MMO tradition.
Screenshots were broken for me too, any time there was a moment I wanted to capture I had to Alt + Print Screen and paste it into MS Paint. :(
I’ve heard some less-than-positive comments about the Jedi Consular storyline, but it’s keeping me interested so far and I really enjoy how the class plays. Can’t wait to dive into Bounty Hunter again too, once retail hits.
Durns
3489
Is this a standard thing with newer mmos? The only ones i’ve played (everquest and eve), if you don’t listen to zone chat, you’re dead.
I can’t imagine any reason to pay attention to General chat in most MMOs with the possible exception of you’re playing on a PVP server and there’s no dedicated PVP channel. Too much noise, usually, and the easiest way to filter it is just to shut it out completely.
Durns
3491
But what about dangerous creatures moving around that you need to be aware of, or the community interaction? Feel free to call me an old man, I stopped mmoing before wow came out.
idrisz
3492
the general chat is bad in zones like Kass, but on Tatooine/Alderaan/Taris, the general chat was very good and informative. I guess only have 8 - 30 people on chat really helped.
I got stuck with my class quest in Alderaan because quest marker was missing for one of the steps, someone who finished the quest, flew/ran all the way out to where I was, and show me where is the next step and help me complete it.
garin
3493
Powerful roaming creatures isn’t a feature that’s survived into modern MMOs (and neither have trains).
Community “interaction” is exactly the reason you turn the chat off.
idrisz
3494
Powerful roaming creatures isn’t a feature that’s survived into modern MMOs (and neither have trains).
well, not exactly roaming, but in the desert on tatooine, I found a big bone I can click on with tons of Jawa corpse all around it.
I click on it and some huge monster popped out of sand and attacked me.
Dejin
3495
I thought there were “World Bosses” roaming about in SWTOR. I haven’t gotten that far though – haven’t made it off of Coruscant.
Skorin
3496
There’s a world boss on Coruscant, in the Old Market or whatever it’s called. I got in a full raid to try to take it down and it splatted us like we were bugs. I think we got it to 98%.
I turned off general chat really early on because there are just too many people who have been in the beta for a while and can’t wait to spoil every story detail for you. I can only assume that’s going to get worse after launch unless you’re one of those guys who gets to level 50 by the first weekend.
Also, FFS, WoW players don’t even talk about WoW as much as TOR general chat does. Give it a rest, you clowns. You know what they say in WoW about TOR? Nothing.
Accepted the last of the apps just now
Andrew
3499
Is this your first non-WoW MMO? ;) Many people playing other MMOs love to talk about how awesome they are because they aren’t WoW players. It is a bit odd.
There are; but the world boss in Coruscant for example, while not isolated, is up a ramp you have no reason to go up if you don’t intend to challenge him.
