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Teh Badger Blog [MAY] - Commentary on What's Hot in SWG

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BadgerSmaker

Guest
Welcome to this months "Teh Badger Blog", something new for this forums where you lucky people will bear witness to the stream of consciousness from one of SWGs most contronversial players (or so I am heard).

For my first trick:

NO TRADE Removal

For many years, SWG Developers would whack NO TRADE on an item to make sure players actually ran the content they designed to get the associated rewards/achievement rather then throw up a trade forum post for the rewards and log in to pick them up off their own vendor and then complain about a lack of content.

Now they are systematically undoing this game mechanic because the feedback from players was that it is no "fun".

The list of items for a first pass on No Trade removal includes "Heroic Jewellery", profession specific jewellery sets that make your character quite teh uber.

The jewellery comes from high end PvE content, each time a player completes an instance they are awarded one token for that instance. You need 4 tokens from one instance and two from another for each piece of jewellery and this makes for some compelling reasons to repeat the content.

Now you can just buy the stuff, so how will this effect SWG players? Well it seems like a return to sandbox gaming that SWG was famous for and still retains elements of, the Devs are basically giving players freedom to do whatever the hell they want with their hard fought rewards.

It's somewhat radical, I get the feeling that this would never had happened if Blixtev had still been around as this is not the move of a purist game Developer, but someone seems to have taken a long look at No Trade and then figured "Why exactly do we do this? Why don't we just scrap the whole thing?".


Exar Kun awaits another group farming him for credits.

In SWG most veteran players will have a stockpile of hundreds of millions of credits, there are no real credit sinks and making credits is pretty easy. For new players there is always the option to buy TCG Boosters and sell them for credits in game, but there is still no secure trade for this so it's risky, but not as risky as buying from a credit farmer website who will happily **** your credit card and account if you let them.

It's similar to the time when spendable XP went in during the Combat Upgrade and allowed you to buy Force Sensitive XP. All of a sudden XP can be used for something, except in this situation it is credits that you can now use on all new items. Conversely you can put the time, effort and risk into a system to get rewards and sell them to the highest bidder.

Player response to the change varies from surprised happiness to anger, anger because they feel these sets should be earned (which No Trade ensured), but this is either a purist or kneejerk reaction to change in general.

Players are looking forward to kitting out their Traders and Entertainers with heroic sets, which was almost impossible to do before.

Another system that has had the capitalism treatment is Chronicle Master. High end and very desirable reward items that were previously exclusive to those with the time and inclination to grind endlessly through the chronicles system will be available to loaded players. If you ever wanted to buy a complete set of holograms, you can do that too.


You want it? Buy it.

One thing SoE will not likely do, is make their TCG loot card items tradeable. Although this would be the most welcome and radical more, I doubt the suits in charge of the financial implications of such a change would approve it, they still want players throwing dollars at Booster Packs for a chance at loot.

Jedi Nerfed, LOLZ

In other news, Jedi get nerfed. The patch notes says: "The Block chance and Block Value on the meditation buff 'Visions of the Past' has been changed to 3% Evasion Chance and 30% Evasion Value. "

The meditation buff used to give 3% Block Chance & 450 Block Value... that's right, 450 Block Value. This wasn't a problem when the meditiation buff had a really short duration, Jedi players used their powerful Force Whine ability and got the duration extended and enabled Jedi to block tank like a commando, but now it has been nerfed.

I'm not sure how many Jedi will now stack Evasion, it's a pretty random mod as even with Evasion Value through the roof there is no minimum value, you can still Evade for 1% which is risky in terms of throwing all your stat points into. It may be useful Vs Officers and Commandos, but a Smuggler is just going to turn off Evasion and hit you for full damage.

Jedi just got some nice tweaks to expertise so I doubt this will really be missed.

And there you have it, comments welcome!
 
B

BadgerSmaker

Guest
New items of interest to have No Trade removed:

Technical Readout of a Old Republic One-Handed Lightsaber Hilt
Technical Readout of a Old Republic Two-Handed Lightsaber Hilt

Underworld Sureshot DL44
Underworld Knucklers
Underworld Sureshot DE10
Underworld Blade

Transport Skiff Deed
Light Bending BARC Speeder Deed
Concentrated Bacta Tank
Lair Crystal

Jedi and Smuggler unique content rewards now tradeable as are some old publish and pre-order gifts.

Not sure who would want to buy a Smuggler Underworld Weapon as they all suck stats wise and can't be deconstructed and recrafted as something good. These are billed as community requests but I don't think any Smuggler asked for this, they just want them to be deconstructable.

The Concentrated Bacta Tank publish gift will be a big hit for PvPers as it allows you to heal to full health if out of combat.

The Lair Crystal is a final reward from the Trials of Obi Wan expansion and is rewarded for betraying Obi Wan. The reward for helping Obi was tradeable for a long time, but this doesn't seem to have been intended. At least now the rewards are consistent.
 

RainStar

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I really think the No Trade being removed from Heroic sets is a bad idea.

A lot of people fast forward leveling their character as it is and end up not knowing how to play their profession.

Then they get on the forums and whine to have other professions nerfed because they got their butt handed to them while trying to PvE or PvP.

Allowing the jewelry to be traded will add more idiot players to the list who aren't any good when it comes to high level content.

When you do the heroics it helps you learn what works and what doesn't in regard to PvE.
 
B

BadgerSmaker

Guest
There's some truth in that. I can get onto TC and create a toon from scratch with all the high level gear and still suck at the profession if I don't know it.

The thing is, some people prefer to skip the time investment required to obtain the powerful items and just start out with them and learn the profession from there.

For those people, if they have a lot of credits, this will be handy. Also you can now farm heroic jewellery for credits if the mood takes you.

It'll take some getting used to and it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
 
B

BadgerSmaker

Guest
Whoops, Heroic jewellery no longer "No Trade" but now "Unique".

Oh well, they'll get there in the end.

Really enjoying SWG lately, what with Restuss PvP, Heroics, Invasions, Battlefields to keep my combat toons busy and getting a new Engineer up and running I'm having loads of fun.

A few weeks ago I dusted off the old Pistoleer/CM character in my sig who I hadn't played since the NGE, I was just using him as an Officer stim bot for my Smuggler that I created after the NGE had primarily playing in PvP.

The guild I run with on Chimaera, -MI- were in need of a medic, so I respec'd Praecor and set about getting him up to date. Thankfully my guildmates had some stuff they could loan me in the way of statted suits and I've been learning the ways of the Combat Medic.

It's a lot of fun and a lot more involving that just spamming damage at a target till there is no red in it's health bar, watching your groups health and keeping them alive is hectic work and you are an essential part of the team. It's nice to hear people cheer on Ventrillo when I log in because they need a medic. :)

When I played a CM in Pre-CU and the CU I never really cared much about my group mates health, it was all about stacking poisons ftw and would tend to let friends die in favour of killing more of the enemy myself. I've had to break this playstyle... for now. :D

Unfortunately the NGE combat medic abilities are only good in PvP which seems a shame, you can't even stack DoTs beyond Bleed+Posion, even if you spec for CM you are still more of a Doctor. Maybe that will change when the profession comes around for a pass. It's still a lot of fun though, but I need a lot more practice and to get my gear sorted.

I died 1v1 against a spy the other night, it was a long drawn out fight but a combination of my suit not being what I wanted, being unbuffed (although the spy wasnt really buffed, especially after I purged him lots) and a general lack of experience in solo pvp meant I ran out of action and ate dirt.

That's not something that should be happening if I was any good at medic. :)

I've also been trying out the Invasions in anger. I get my Smuggler to slice the terminal then have my Engineer craft tools and hand them out.

At one point last night I was crafting tools and trading them to fellow imperials while filling pylons at the same time and then while the pylon countdown was ticking, alt+tabbing to my smuggler to slice the terminal again. Pretty frantic and we got a lot of vehicles and partrols up, but unlike the Dearic Invasion I'd done in the afternoon the never made it to the General as Rebel players killed them all. :sad2:

Still fun though, got to wipe out all the SF rebel players at the end of the invasion too. More practice at mounting a sizeable offence and using the troops wisely is in order I think.

Dropped of a pack full of +35 power bits with the guilds munitions trader. Need to get my Engineer a new +4 RE Chance weapon and chestplate, and possibly actually finish his luck suit. Main thing really though is to get Praecors suit finished, and this is something I am still designing. I've spoken to some uber medics about their preferred builds and have some ideas now, just need to decide.

Must say that my guild on Chimaera is very cool, experienced players and a good laugh. It's really making the game for me since my return.
 
B

BadgerSmaker

Guest
There was a certain amount of controversy about transfering characters from closed servers recently.

Since the servers were closed and until a few days ago Customer Services were doing these for free, just because they could.

It seems demand for the service got to a point where they couldn't justify it being free in terms of hardware and man hours cost, they have to bring up the closed servers in order to get the character off it which sounds quite a labourious process.

They started enforcing the $50 fee again and this angered some players who expected it to be free.

It's always been chargeable though, but CS were able to waive it.

Really, nothing changed, but now it has been latched onto by SoE haters as the latest thing to trash SoE with. I don't think that is fair, I can think of much better things to blast SoE for, but not this.
 

RainStar

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I can understand SOE implementing the charge for transfers again. They've been giving out free transfers for a long time now. It comes to a point where they have to start charging again as you said, hardware and man hours tend to start adding up and the company is losing money.

The SOE haters like to find anything they can to continue their justification of hating SWG. If that's what they want to spend their time on, so be it.

I'd rather look at all the good stuff going on in the game and there is a lot!
 
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