Modding an item binds it to you, and since there’s no bind to account type of deal, the character who mods it would be stuck with it. Mods also have level requirements on them so I don’t see a way you could twink a lowbie character this way.
I just finished Chapter 1 with my Mercenary (wanted to get that done before the beta testing ends today) and I have to say, though I didn’t think much of the BH storyline when I started the character, it’s grown on me and I am really enjoying it.
Since I finished Chapter 1 I unlocked the Legacy feature, so I had to choose a last name (you get a modal dialog when you go to your ship where you have to choose a last name - not sure if you can cancel out of it or not). So after thinking a minute or two I chose a name that fit my Bounty Hunter. And then 30 seconds later I realized since this applies to all my characters on the server, that’ll be the last name my Force using characters will have… so I’m instantly in the camp that applying your legacy last name to all the characters on the server is a horrible idea.
Aceris
3703
EQ raiding was perfectly straightforward with the default UI. The only information a given healer needed was the health of the people in their group and maybe one or two tanks.
WoW raiding was completely different. As a druid I need to know the health levels of all 10 people in the raid, which of my hots are on them, and how long those hots have left. The entire healing style is dependent on these short duration buffs - even the direct healing spells either require or gain benefits if a hot is present on the target. One hot effect stacks and should not be allwed to drop off, another doesn’t stack and generally should not be overwritten. The default UI does not give you the information you need in an easy to consume form.
Because I am casting a healing spell every second click to heal is hugely beneficial, rather than having to click and press a number key - I am still making the decision, selecting different spells based on which of ctrl or alt I have held down when I click one of my four mouse-buttons. This frees up the other four fingers on my left hand for movement, which again is essential for the encounter design.
I wouldn’t say click-to-heal is essential - it is a considerably better interface. However, the information about which hots are on who is something I absolutely need to play my druid effectively, and something I never managed to get the default ui to give me in comprehensible form.
If TOR is going to go with a “WoW” style healing system then they need to bear in mind that that system is balanced on the assumption that people will be using such mods.
This. I can understand them excluding some stuff (like automatically identifying clustering), but mouseover casting (ala healbot/clique) and colour changes for debuffs? Needed for the model.
Teiman
3705
Raiding is a subgame a small group of people play in some MMOS. You guys talk like whole games need to be optimized for Raiding.
Considering how much emphasis developers tend to put on raiding…
Aceris
3707
I can see how it looks like that - but actually a good raid healing ui is just a good healing ui with more bars :). When I optimised my WoW ui for raiding I found it was vastly better for single group content (which i agree is way more important) too. This made that content more fun because I was playing the game rather than fighting the UI.
Maybe ToR healing is different and the default UI is fine. That’s not my point. My point is there are people saying that you don’t need a mod to heal effectively in WoW, and I am saying that, from my perspective as someone who has played WoW in the last year, these people are wrong. (The fact they largely don’t have a clue what these mods actually do would tend to support my argument).
Derbain
3708
I’ve played WoW off and on since release, including within the last year. I always play healers (mostly priest and druid healing, but I’ve also dabbled in shaman and paladin). When I do play, I’m typically involved in whatever the current tier of raiding content is. I’ve always used the default UI and have never used a mod.
You may find that you cannot heal effectively without the use of mods, but don’t assume that nobody can.
Yes yes yes, congratulations, you are “That Guy,” the hardcore raider who swears (s)he raided all of the content in a hardcore guild without using any mods and by clicking his actions instead of using keybindings.
But for real people, the vast majority of raiding guilds through most of wow’s lifetime would not let you raid with them at all unless you had some basic mods*. Wow raid frames were also terrible through most, if not all, of wow’s lifetime.
I will agree you don’t need decursive or healbot though. My personal favorite as a long time holy paladin and sometimes druid/priest was using a good raid bar to display the raid in one place as one unit, organized by classes (and removing grouping by group since 90% of the time i don’t care about their group), color coded by status effect and then use mouse over macros to do various actions. Paladin heals were pretty fast and through most of wow’s life paladins were the steady healer so i always wanted to be casting something (on someone who needed it, if any, obviously).
*Particularly the boss mods. These also gave a report of people who did not have them so it would be very easy for the leader to simply do a check, see you don’t have it and then boot you out of the raid, unless you were the only healer in the guild suppose. Speaking of this, i don’t even think you could ready check in wow until much later in its life if i remember right. I seem to remember this being a function of mods for a LONG time.
Razgon
3710
I had ready checks in Molten Core when I played and never really used mods, nor for healing (Druid=
Great, and guess what? Most MMO’s have a severe healer shortage. You’re very much the exception.
Moreover, keeping track of what’s going on with HoT stacking and so on…some people can do it in their heads, but that’s far rarer still.
The shortage of healers has nothing to do with the UI but the simple fact that Healing is not fun. I like to play healers but developers need to change the way this work as it is dull as hell to look at hitbars.
Derbain
3713
I’m not sure this is a result of poor UIs, but rather a result of fundamentally lackluster whack-a-mole style healing mechanics.
Judging by the responses, I must have come off sounding a little more aggressive in my initial response than I intended. All I wanted to say was that use of mods is not mandatory for healing in WoW. I’m sure I’d probably be a more efficient healer if I used them myself. I just don’t feel compelled to because I find the default UI adequate for the task at hand.
Plus, I’ve never once shown up for a raid and said, “Hold on a sec, the patch screwed up my mods.”
SWTORS Equivalent of The Barrens, Pre Cata
Reached Nar Shadda (20+ area) and so far I am sure I’ve spent around 40% of the time here just walking and taking taxis back and forth and back and forth.
Going here without being level 25 and having a speeder is the biggest mistake you can make early in the game.
Bioware helpfully put recall points all over the map. unfortunatelly, the cooldown to use that ability is 30 minutes, so it is in essence nearly useless.
I’m perfectly happy to heal in WoW (or was before I got bored with it entirely), but not in other MMO’s because healbot makes it something I can do AND pay attention to other things (like not standing in the fire).
Plus without healbot, my HoT’s fall off and I don’t get those emergency heals off, and…
I’m really not alone. (And WITH healbot, I’m a perfectly competent raid healer)
There’s some annoying backtracking - which would’ve been more annoying if I hadn’t been playing a stealth char - but I wasn’t sure how much of it was them expecting me to be a bit better organized with my questing. I did show up at Tattooine at 24 which is supposedly a terrible mistake and didn’t really bother me.
Re: healing, I do think clear visual feedback on status ailments, HoTs etc are important. Moreso than mouseover / clique-style healing, which I’d welcome but not insist upon. (Frame-selection+hotkey is adequate for me - I sometimes wonder if the frame selection haters are doing frame selection + click hotbar ability, which would be twice as awkward.)
As I noted before, for those who haven’t healed yet much, it appears (at least from the Scoundrel’s case) that renewing a HoT renews the whole stack - so you can stack two slow-release medpacks, and as long as you renew every 18 seconds that 2-stack is premanent. The downside is that the little HoT icon was small enough that I was renewing every 12-15 seconds out of paranoia - if you could resize the companion’s bars like a group’s, I didn’t notice it.
I’m thinking of three areas on NS:
areas
The area where you destroy speeder bikes, the red light district, and shadowtown. If you wind up having to backtrack from the most remote areas to the transport gird because your hearth is cooling down, or go back to them, etc, it’s tedious even with stealth. Without, blech.
That was my experience with Tattooine too, I said “supposedly” because of all of the people I saw complaining in various forums about Tattooine being pedestrian-unfriendly even to do 24-5.
I don’t think it adjusts the buff icons though, so if you’re trying to scope out the HoT indicator you may be out of luck.
Boo. I find a tiny particoloured box a poor indicator of time remaining. Partly it’s that, as a scoundrel, you’re playing DPS rogue part of the time. “Have I been DPSiing for 13 seconds, or 16 seconds?”
Ryslin
3719
items-
The mods do have levels on them, but I am just slightly annoyed that there will be little to no market for the actual armor crafters. It takes an annoying amount of time to crank out one purple level item. Getting a crit blue craft is functionally impossible low level without taking exactly what your first companion can do. The fact one can hit level 10, choose cybermech for their proff and craft their own mods to put in their pvp gear is both a great thing (whoo cheap gear) and a bad thing (economy what?)
I was enjoying taking a green random blaster , putting a crit 4 gem in it and having a much easier time. I cannot say this is simplifying the crafting system as the whole reverse engineer for your schematics is alive and well.
…
Healing mods, and healing. The game is rather straight forward with how debuffs and so on appear, at least at this point. You get hit in a hold you can use your 2min to get out of it, I can pop a small heal on you and see the um … force throbbing on you. The feedback is there if you look at the players instead of their green boxes.
All healers will be expected to pony up some dps. For a scoundrel that is the only way to get off that great heal , they can still heal you without the damage buff but it isn’t nearly as fast/strong.
Since we are busy DPSing with our forcebubbles and laser heal beams the responsibility for your heal isn’t entirely on us. You have a smuggler/operative healing you and jedi jump into combat out of their cover range, that is your fault. Most the mechanics I am seeing in party require a bit more consideration of the other players around you. We shall see how long it lasts.
Teiman
3720
Thats how MMO’s work. Slowing down players, wasting his time. So have a lot of stuff that are pure timewastes. And huge temples and huge cities, so theres a lot of walking around. You don’t have that shit on most singleplayer RPG’s.
At least AION put wings on players, so moving around was fun and pretty. Also most MMO’s lets players use mount, so can go anywhere a 60% faster. Still have to walk unnecesary long corridors.
