There’s a bunch of stuff like that in the game, like recovering umpteen million Sith artifacts of unimaginable value and then just turning them over to any old turd for a set of green boots.
Skorin
5742
One thing that I’ve found in tanking on both my Juggernaut and Powertech (though Powertech at least has a couple extra AoE options), is that it’s okay to ignore the ‘normal’ mobs, since they don’t do much damage at all and melt when a dps so much as looks at them. Gold+ need to be tanked at all times, Silver should get tanked at all times but if one slips through it’s not the end of the world. Once you get another AoE and an AoE taunt, it becomes much easier to control whole groups. For the first few flashpoints, though, I had to get used to just not being able to grab every normal mob.
Reldan
5743
Yeah, you’re basically roleplaying a complete chump in would seem.
At least the Imperial Agent plot makes more sense in that regard, since you actually work for Imperial Intelligence, they support you throughout all the missions, and so you’re doing things for them rather than freelancing (and it’s implied that leaving the service or disobeying direct orders are not healthy options). The only real complaint I have is that at least a quarter of the dark side options basically require you to go full retard, since apparently the dark side requires that you to have no tact and be a completely homicidal maniac at all times. I’m pretty sure that under this system, Emperor Palpatine would either rate as neutral or possibly Light I.
I did find the idea that I was sent to a desert to murder terrorists and “sand people” to be a bit quirky.
Saw a guy runnin’ around the other day whose guild name was “Black Bantha Party”. I chuckled.
The guild I’m in went with “Swedish Invasion” and we’ve all named ourselves after articles of Ikea furniture. It works.
Right, right.
Except -
Taunt is always down, since it’s on a 15s cooldown and I had to taunt something or other at the start of the fight. So, once that guy goes running past me to the healer, there’s nothing I can do for another 12-14s until Taunt comes back up. No ability I have generates sufficient aggro to pull a mob off, well, anyone.
I’ve had decent luck tanking with my BH at 21. Flamethrower is a good attention getter. I also run with friends and not a pug so it’s a little easier to bitch out the DPS who shoots before I get there.
My Sith Assassin at 18 I have a hell of a time with. Even with Dark Charge up, his armor is about 1000 less than the BH. I’m not sure how much difference it makes, but the BH has one or two extra pieces of orange gear with the armor mods.
It’s too bad. I like the idea of a double-bladed lightsaber tank, but until I find a way to get his armor up he’s just too squishy.
IGJoe
5747
Is the lower armor mitigated by higher avoidance? I’ve been tanking as a Jedi Guardian but have been intrigued by the idea of tanking as a Shadow instead.
Reldan
5748
So a guy earlier today was asking in the Trade channel if anyone could craft him 2 blue Guardian Mod 12’s. I msg’d him since I can make those, and he offered 4k apiece for them. I explained that the mats to make those are worth more than that and he told me that he wasn’t asking for my “editorial” and to either make him the items for his price or shut up.
I’m not sure. That’s a good question. Hell, who knows how much the three levels affects things, too.
balut
5750
That guy was swwtoring as on the internet when you were just a sperm in your daddy’s balls.
Well, now you know what he thought of your counteroffer. You did make a counteroffer, didn’t you?
Ultrazen
5752
Why do any weapon or armor crafters make anything but the lowest possible orange they can? Orange stuff is just a shell, the item level is all from the stuff that’s plugged in, so why waste the money/resources crafting higher level items?
I’ve been using the same items since my teens, and only upgrading the mods in them. My gear is as good or better than anything I’ve seen, either crafted or rewarded…I don’t get it?
I find crafting past the first tier of oranges to be an incredible waste of money. The mats you spend trying to skill up higher tiers of crafting is an astronomical price. You’d probably be sitting on 500-1mil K creds if you just sold those mats.
I was doing cy tech for a while, as I thought it would be nice to keep up on my own mods. After about tier 10 or so, I realized that selling the mats I was using would net me about 100k + per day. At that point I just started buying my mods for laughable amounts like 2-3k each, and selling my mats.
Crafting in this game is beyond fubar. The only worthwhile proff line as far as I can figure is Bio, as it actually does produce something you can’t get from another source cheaper.
Am I missing something here?
-
Well, BioWare’s point about orange pieces was that you could keep something that had a look you liked and use it all the way as you level. So strictly speaking, you’re right. However, different Orange gear has different looks. So people trying to achieve a certain look would want a different Orange piece than the first you can make. I also think there may be some inherent limits on orange gear. For instance, you can find an orange chestpiece that when empty says “Armor 6, Minimum level 15.” You can find another orange chest piece that says “Armor 25, Minimum level 30.” I wonder (but am not sure) if you put identical armor in those two pieces, if the pieces would be identical or not. I do not know. I do know for a fact that putting the same armor in two different types of orange armor (for example: Chest and Gloves) does NOT yield the same amount of armor on the piece (but I don’t know if that’s because gloves inherently give less protection than chests or not).
-
I’m doing Cybertech, to make my own mods and armor, and I find it pretty fun. Buying all the mods I would need is almost never an option, as most of the time the mods I want aren’t on the GTN (plenty of +strength mods but very few +aim). You can purchase mods with commendations, but then you’re spending your commendations on mods instead of anything else (and I usually have to purchase Enhancements with my commendations).
So while you can “buy” (one way or another) mods for your gear but it’s also quite possible to make your own - in fact, I have never seen armoring mods for sale that are better than the ones I can make (and I only RE until I get a blue, I never have enough of the metals to mass produce blue pieces) - sometimes purchasable armor mods are close, or have more endurance, but never do they have more armor value, which is paramount for me as a Vanguard (I took Slicing instead of Underworld Trading, so I have to procure all my blue UT metals off the GTN or from guildmates, which is why I don’t have a large quantity of these items. Not sure if this was a smart move or not but after I get my speeder at 40 I will probably drop slicing and go to UT to level it up).
Maybe it’d be more lucrative for me to gather and sell all the mats, but I wouldn’t enjoy that half as much.
lordkosc
5754
Seeing as the game really is so single player friendly, it will be interesting to guess what their subscriber retention numbers are 1 month , 6 months , 1 year out.
How long would it take to max out a character and complete the main story?
How long would it take to max out a character and complete the main story?
We’re less than three weeks since servers opened for early access, and I’m already starting to see several level 50s running around. The highest level character in the Tatooine Royal Navy, Senjak, was level 47 as of last night; I imagine he’ll hit 50 sometime this weekend.
I’m not sure how much of the story continues after you reach level 50, but if SWTOR is anything like other MMOs, the main story probably ends shortly after you reach the level cap and then you get into repetitive end-game content (flashpoints, operations, dailies, etc.) that probably won’t have much appeal to people who are only playing for the single-player storylines. For the average player, I’d guess there’s maybe ~1.5-2 months worth of story content before reaching the end-game.
That said, this is the first MMO where I really want to create multiple alts. In 5+ years of playing WoW, I only ever had one character at max level. In SWTOR, I can see myself playing through at least the Smuggler and Jedi Knight stories, and probably the Imperial Agent one too because everyone is talking about how great it is.
Dejin
5756
The number of purple item modifications on the market is really quite limited. So even if you’re using Orange gear you still need to get good mods from somewhere. I’ve sold mid-level Artificing items on the Global Market for good cash – over 8,000 credits per item. Although I’ve gotten lazy and have only been making stuff for Guildmates since probably level 30 or so.
[ul]
[li]Artificing – Creates Hilts which are critical to damage level on lightsabers. They also make Enhancements which are important to any Orange gear (and some Purple gear which allows mods).[/li][li]Armstech – Creates Barrels which are critical to the damage level on guns. So you can either make regular (non-Orange guns) or you make the critical component needed to keep your Orange gun up to level.[/li][li]Cybertech – Creates Armoring Mods which are critical to the Armor value of all clothing. Plus they make all sorts of useful random stuff like earpieces and mods.[/li][li]Biochem you’ve already covered.[/li][/ul]
I think the ones that get hosed are Armormech and Synthweaving. While they can make gear that’s comparable to the best Orange gear for a particular level, they can be completely avoided by picking up Orange gear and then dealing with Armoring and Mods from Cybertech and Enhancements from Artificing.
Personally I think they should have put Armoring on Armormech and Sythweaving even if that meant having duplicate recipes for the two professions.
FWIW I rarely see any Armoring on the Marketplace for Force Users. I have never seen a Purple Armoring that had strength or willpower on it. That means that I have to buy everything using commendations, which means I don’t have the best stuff (since commendations only give blue items).
maxle
5757
This game really needs a LFG tool. Finding a PUG on Hutta or Dromuund Kass was trivially easy, because there were several hundred players spread across two shards. On Alderaan, Nar Shadda, and the desert there’re between twenty and forty players on one shard, and getting a group together is extraordinarily difficult. In WoW we could get a final DPS player instantly. Here we gave up after waiting an hour.
Dejin
5758
My /played is currently over 7 days as of last night (I know, very embarrassing, but the University is shutdown for Winter break). I’m at level 38. I’m not a particular fast player, but I don’t think I’m slow either. Although I have been doing a lot of crafting.
So that’s 168 hours of play to get to level 38. Figure a typical MMO player plays maybe 8 hours a week that’s 21 weeks to get to 38. I know a lot of us play a lot more than that, but I really doubt that reflects the normal population.
So I’m figuring in order to hit max level it will take most non-hardcore players at least 6 months.
Bioware claims to have kept their full SWTOR development team on (instead of sending most of them off to work on other projects). I am doubtful even a large development team can generate content faster than a typical player. But given that they’ve got the tools already in place, maybe they’ll have another 2-3 months worth of story content added by the time the non-hardcore get to 6 months. So maybe they can stretch things out to 8-9 months.
I will be quite curious to see what the 6 month and 12 month populations look like.
FWIW I rarely see any Armoring on the Marketplace for Force Users. I have never seen a Purple Armoring that had strength or willpower on it. That means that I have to buy everything using commendations, which means I don’t have the best stuff (since commendations only give blue items).
Many commendation vendors sell orange items that come pre-loaded with level-appropriate modifications. I’ve also noticed that numerous quests in each zone reward item mods instead of green or blue gear. Between those two sources, I typically only need to spend a few commendation badges in each zone on mods to keep my orange gear up-to-date.
Dejin
5760
That kind of depends on how many Orange items you’ve got though doesn’t it? Right now I think between me and my main companion, I’ve got 5 Orange items. There is no way I can get enough commendations to get 5 Orange items and pull all their components out. Plus pulling components is very expensive (although I suppose it’s probably cheaper than buying the stuff off the market – assuming it was available).
I have noticed an uptick in the number of missions offering mods as rewards. You’re right that is very helpful.
