Well, the 15th only firmed up as the extent of early access last month or so, before that it was “more than a weekend, less than two weeks.”
My wild guess is that the bulk of the people who got into this beta were the ones who had characters on those servers. Or at least, having a character on them was a guarantee.
Just a guess, though.
Dejin
3683
Just as an FYI for anyone still wanting to get more beta time in, looks like there are no more beta tests coming up. All beta testing ends Sunday night at midnight Austin time.
Just as a piece of information, tonight on the Cosmic Turbine server, on the planet Alderaan, here are all 51 Empire people on the planet (equivalent Republic classes in []):
12 Sorcerers [Jedi Sage]
10 Mercenaries [Commando]
9 Marauders [Jedi Sentinel]
5 Assassins [Jedi Shadow]
5 Operatives [Scoundrel]
4 Snipers [Gunslinger]
3 Powertechs [Vanguard]
3 Juggernauts [Jedi Knight]
Granted it’s beta, people play classes to try them out, etc, etc, but this is a level 28+ planet, so the people here didn’t just roll one of these today.
I think this breakdown is going to be pretty close to what we see when the game goes live, though I’m actually a little shocked there are so many Marauders. Yes they have recently been buffed but I hear over and over how melee is at such a disadvantage in the game. And while it’s interesting to note there have been frequent complaints on the SWTOR message boards about a lack of healers, there are 27 potential healers there and only 11 potential tanks. I usually roll a healer or a character who can heal but maybe I’ll change it up and roll a tanky class - I tried Powertech last build and really enjoyed it (though to be honest, it has a ton of awesomeness from the base Bounty Hunter class).
To be fair, lots of people won’t be willing to play healers with the frankly primitive interface on offer. I’m not.
They played them in wow for years with worse.
I don’t understand the complaints about the UI in regards to healing. I’ve been healers in mmo’s over the years and resizable, movable health bars seems great to me. Certainly a step above the way it was in EQ, doac, and so on…
Is it the lack of single click healing?
Something like clique is a nice way to heal that doesn’t detract from game complexity. Things like healbot and decursive and encounters that “require” either can go straight to hell.
I cant think of any fights that ‘require’ healbot, I prefer to use it because it makes my job as a healer easier, but its not required for anything.
People like you who think that interfaces shouldn’t be as easy as possible to use and should hide information from the players can also go straight to hell.
Decursive and healbot take a simplified player input and turn it into an appropriate action. How disliking that amounts to “hiding information” I don’t know, but yes, I do think that a “do the appropriate action now” button is too “easy to use.” Also take it easy on the personalization, tiger.
To me, one of the biggest shortfalls in TOR’s UI is the lack of mouseover healing. Call me spoiled, lazy, whatever, but I am so far beyond the “click on this frame, click on this heal” model of healing. Seeing how the focus frame works in TOR is good, but TOR not having mouseover macros feels like stepping back to 2000. Can healing be done the way TOR forces you to? Sure. Will it be enjoyable? Not terribly. Not as much as it could be.
I never used clique or healbot in Wow so I’m not asking for them, what I’m asking for is much more basic.
Dejin
3693
I started an Imperial Agent this weekend, mostly because the server with my Sith Inquisitor had a 30 minute queue. The Imperial Agent story was definitely a nice change of pace.
I do rather question some of their lightside/darkside point allocations though. If I threaten a local bully if he doesn’t play nicer with one of the local natives that earns me darkside points? What?!! I could see it if I killed the guy, but just threatening a bully really doesn’t seem like a darkside action to me.
No, they don’t do what you’ve described, and your description sounds like you haven’t played the game in years. Decursive tells you if there’s something you can cure on a specific player, which the default UI hides behind mouseover tooltips. It then lets you click on one button to cure it on that player with your single curing spell rather than having to click on the player then pres a hotkey. There’s a button for every player so this removes only one keypress. Healbot lets you cast specific healing spells by clicking on healthbars rather than having to fight with targeting. It’s not capable of casting spells based on what spells are already active on your target. It’s capable of being set up to cast a curing spell on a debuffed target when you click, but that’s a stupid thing to do because of the high mana cost of cure spells.
I think you might not have a great understanding of how those mods work anymore. The “click on a player and the mod figures out which of your heal spells to cast” style mods were broken by Blizzard in 2006. You still use mouseovers to heal, but you have to be making the decision about what spell to cast, the mod just allows you to do it without first targeting someone and then hitting the heal. The idea being that the challenge in healing shouldn’t be targeting someone, it should be making the right decisions about what spells to use and who to use them on.
In the case of removing negative effects, well, I don’t know. I think even the standard WoW raid frames will only color code someone’s bar if they have an effect on them that you are able to cleanse. Otherwise you’d have to be able to look at a list of icons for 25 people at a time, figure out which ones you can remove and then do it (while still healing the rest of the raid and avoiding whatever damage you can), which probably wouldn’t happen before you’re all dead. So decursive/healbot will color code players you can help and allow you to assign a key binding to cleanse. Uh, that’s bad I guess? The game does punish cleanse spamming by charging you for mana regardless of whether an effect was cleanses.
On the basis of Decursive’s current description it’s still beyond “superior information presentation” and into “making the task too easy.” I realize the game and the metagame have basically grown up around that level of debuff removal so that it’s really a good idea to use it.
I guess healbot is just a suite of normal healing addons now? Sorry if I was raging against “old Healbot” but for me the brand name meant water-drinking-bird-level automation. I assumed if it’d gotten popular again it was because they un-broke the stupid part.
Weird, here I was under the firm impression the 20th was the planned early start date in Germany. Maybe I missed something. Thanks for clearing this up, carry on.
For a couple of weeks, Europe was going to come out a few days after the US (23rd? 25th? I don’t remember). But they rapidly changed that and it’s been known for a while now that the US and European dates are the same; hence release on the 20th and early access from the 15th onwards (depending on what batch you are in).
Wendelius
Ryslin
3700
someone wanted more info on the crafting changes…
they have sorta added in a color of armor , orange
so you have green->blue/orange->purple
Green has no mods
Blue is better stats/armor no mods (unless you get a crafting crit, this might make it orange but I was unable to get one)
Orange has -no- stats, blank gear at lvl 6 with slots that work for that piece (armor/enhance/mod is a common armor selection) You can take this piece of gear til you start getting purples.
Purples have a locked mod in them already, you will get fewer mod slots, but the overall stats will be higher than the orange. This is a technicality. Was having a very pleasant discussion on Cosmic about this. One person unmoded a high level purple item, and it still shows as having mods on it. The orange similar gear had no mods. We do know that the mods themselves upgrade your item.
I suppose this is a sideways method of letting you have a “look” for your character without them having to make a UI for appearance.
Important things- there are generally no crystals in anything but lightsabers unless the item is blue or higher. Course with an orange item you are putting in your own crystal anyway.
Is this the release crafting? I really don’t know. They have a bit more time to change it if they wish.
Negative- you can get pvp orange armor , mod it out from the auction house and be set for leveling. Yay for built in twinking?
Positive- There is a wide variety of modable items, visually this might be wonderful.
