Coming up.

[old.Tohtori]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/vid...-Star-Wars-The-Old-Republic-Coming-Up-Trailer

Nice additions, especially the UI.

 

[rynnor]

Nothing to fix the faction imbalances though - pvp league eh - that will be easy on Rep side - tough on the Sith

 

[Ceixah]

Every game always has an underdog

luckily daoc had 3 realms to get a bit more balance, why oh why don't other games learn

 

[Keitanz]

YAY MORE ABILITIESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

 

[Ctuchik]

Don't care what they add, they fixed ability delay this morning so i'm perfectly happy now.

 

[rynnor]

Don't care what they add, they fixed ability delay this morning so i'm perfectly happy now.

I havent logged on yet - is it that noticeable?

Cool!

 

[Ctuchik]

I havent logged on yet - is it that noticeable?

Oh god yes!

That said, it's not fixed for everyone, some still have delay in other circumstances but they are working on it. They are most likely gonna stomp the rest of it in the coming week or two.

 

[rynnor]

There still seems to be a memory leak though - after 2-3 hours it grinds to a halt (sooner if you zone a lot) - its the main bug that effects me now.

 

[Turamber]

Looking forward to the legacy system being fully implemented, particularly as I'm an alt aholic in this game. UI changes are nice but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE no mods. That shit made WoW a joke, don't need it here too.

I should find out how to enter the new flashpoint, level 50 stuff is pretty dead for Republic on my server unless you're in a big guild.

 

[Ctuchik]

I want graphical UI mods personally.

 

[Krazeh]

UI changes are nice but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE no mods. That shit made WoW a joke, don't need it here too.

No, they really didn't and yes SWToR does need mods.

 

[Turamber]

Mods that auto cleanse, cast heal spells, taunt the enemy? Why bother playing a game, just let the computer do it all for you. So completely lame.

 

[Krazeh]

Mods that auto cleanse, cast heal spells, taunt the enemy? Why bother playing a game, just let the computer do it all for you. So completely lame.

Amd exactly which mods currently let you do any of that in WoW? Or have been able to do that since Blizzard made major changes to the API when they released Burning Crusade?

 

[Turamber]

Amd exactly which mods currently let you do any of that in WoW? Or have been able to do that since Blizzard made major changes to the API when they released Burning Crusade?

I haven't played WoW since the first expansion, grew very tired of the computer playing itself at a computer game.

 

[Ctuchik]

Amd exactly which mods currently let you do any of that in WoW? Or have been able to do that since Blizzard made major changes to the API when they released Burning Crusade?

No mods can "autocast" any more, but there are mods out there that tells you WHEN you need to cast a certain spell, which isn't that far away from the game playing for you as you need to pay fuck all attention yourself other then to look for the bigass warning text that tells you when to cast what spell.

Not to mention the castsequence macros, that's Blizzards fault and they tried to make it unpopular but they still do a good enough job most of the time.

Anyway, mods should be allowed in SWTOR, but ONLY to change how the UI look. All other mods that add more info then the default game provides should be unavailable.

I'm not even a big fan of recount type mods because knowing how much dps you do is pretty pointless. If the boss you fight dies, enough DPS were done, if it didn't then it's probably down to the entire group/raid and not just a select few players. Who came up at the top has fuck all importance when the boss is dead. /edit: i could maybe accept a mod that tracks a groups or raids COMBINED dps, but no individual player.

That said, DPS meter mods can be slightly useful when comparing "mirror classes" to spot balance issues, but even then it's unreliable because of the dice rolls and net lag and what have you.

So yeah, i'd like to change how my UI look, but i'd hate to see mods that add functions the base game does not provide because those only make people lazy.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Gearscore! Woot! /sarcasm

UI mods, fine.
GAme mechanic mods, no thanks.
Elitist comparison mods? Hell no.

 

[Krazeh]

No mods can "autocast" any more, but there are mods out there that tells you WHEN you need to cast a certain spell, which isn't that far away from the game playing for you as you need to pay fuck all attention yourself other then to look for the bigass warning text that tells you when to cast what spell.

What exactly are we talking here? Mods which display which spell you should cast next based on a priority list you have chosen or something else?

Not to mention the castsequence macros, that's Blizzards fault and they tried to make it unpopular but they still do a good enough job most of the time.

Given that a castsequence macro doesn't do anything that you couldn't do anyway by simply pressing a sequence of buttons one after the other I don't have a problem with them. If someone wants to hit 1 repeatedly rather than 1,2,3 etc then that's their choice.

Anyway, mods should be allowed in SWTOR, but ONLY to change how the UI look. All other mods that add more info then the default game provides should be unavailable.

Which mods give you more info than the default game provides? What can I run in WoW that will tell me things that people not running it couldn't find out from the default UI?

I'm not even a big fan of recount type mods because knowing how much dps you do is pretty pointless. If the boss you fight dies, enough DPS were done, if it didn't then it's probably down to the entire group/raid and not just a select few players. Who came up at the top has fuck all importance when the boss is dead. /edit: i could maybe accept a mod that tracks a groups or raids COMBINED dps, but no individual player.

As a DPS player I find it fairly important to know my individual DPS and how it stacks up against others when looking at self improvement. I also don't agree with the claim that if the boss dies then DPS is fine and noone should care about improvement. Why shouldn't people want to improve on their boss kills or be able to identify if there are people in a raid group who are holding it back due to insufficient DPS? Operations/flashpoints are a group environment and I see no reason why members of the group shouldn't be able to see details of each other's performance.

That said, DPS meter mods can be slightly useful when comparing "mirror classes" to spot balance issues, but even then it's unreliable because of the dice rolls and net lag and what have you.

An 'unreliability' which is solved easily enough by using an appropriately large sample size.

So yeah, i'd like to change how my UI look, but i'd hate to see mods that add functions the base game does not provide because those only make people lazy.

Which mods in particular would you say make people lazy? And what are your views on mods that added functions which are then subsequently added to the base game, like Power Auras for example?

 

[Ctuchik]

What exactly are we talking here? Mods which display which spell you should cast next based on a priority list you have chosen or something else?

No, i'm talking about reactionary spells such as interrupts, or spell deflect type defensive spells and the likes. Stuff you need to pay attention to be able to use.

Given that a castsequence macro doesn't do anything that you couldn't do anyway by simply pressing a sequence of buttons one after the other I don't have a problem with them. If someone wants to hit 1 repeatedly rather than 1,2,3 etc then that's their choice.

Castsequens macros are easier because they take up a lot less room on the action bars, making playing overall a lot easier, especially when you need to be mobile.

Which mods give you more info than the default game provides? What can I run in WoW that will tell me things that people not running it couldn't find out from the default UI?

Been a while since i played WoW so haven't paid attention to added features, but recount is a good example, there's also that tic tac(?) mod that adds all kinds of useful info and anchor it to the mouse pointer. There are a lot more but i haven't played in over a year and can't remember what they are called, and i'm not about to start guessing here.

As a DPS player I find it fairly important to know my individual DPS and how it stacks up against others when looking at self improvement. I also don't agree with the claim that if the boss dies then DPS is fine and noone should care about improvement. Why shouldn't people want to improve on their boss kills or be able to identify if there are people in a raid group who are holding it back due to insufficient DPS? Operations/flashpoints are a group environment and I see no reason why members of the group shouldn't be able to see details of each other's performance.

Improvement comes with playing experience (not character XP) and better gear, you can easily see what rotation works and what doesn't simply by paying attention.

It's also easy to see if a player is good or bad at playing his class, and if you want to get a hint at a players performance, inspect his gear. If they are shoddy green/blues or badly modded oranges then it's probably a safe bet that he will underperform. And even if you have recount you will still waste time finding out that player x or y is bad.

An 'unreliability' which is solved easily enough by using an appropriately large sample size.

Yes i've seen those when people have mashed the same button or rotation 100.000 times and then made a statement, i've also seen the same player do it all over again using the exact same attack or rotation and come up with a different enough result to make it unreliable info for the minmaxers (which are the only people that would really benefit from this).

Which mods in particular would you say make people lazy? And what are your views on mods that added functions which are then subsequently added to the base game, like Power Auras for example?

Mods that makes people lazy would probably include all that makes people not have to pay attention to what the mod(s) are monitoring. Like for example, there are mods that makes sounds when your health or mana is low, there are mods for Warlocks that tells you when SS is about to run out or when someone in the group used his healthstone etc etc.. I even used a pvp mod that told me when a enemy rogue or druid that were close enough used stealth, that one probably isn't working any more though... There are also mods that tells you what spell an enemy is casting that you DON'T have targeted and said mod would pop up a little bar that you could target it with, or it would just pop up all the names of enemies that are inside a certain radius with class and level info.

Those are the kinds of mods i don't like.

But it's mostly all those mods combined that makes people a tad to "comfortable", not any one mod...

 

[Ctuchik]

oh god i suck at quoting...

 

[Krazeh]

No, i'm talking about reactionary spells such as interrupts, or spell deflect type defensive spells and the likes. Stuff you need to pay attention to be able to use.

I'm not aware of any mods that can do this other than by reacting to something that has occured in game. All the mod does is allow you to customise how the information the game is giving you is presented.

Castsequens macros are easier because they take up a lot less room on the action bars, making playing overall a lot easier, especially when you need to be mobile.

That's not really a much better argument than saying keybinding makes the game easier because you don't have to use the mouse to click on your abilities anymore.

Been a while since i played WoW so haven't paid attention to added features, but recount is a good example, there's also that tic tac(?) mod that adds all kinds of useful info and anchor it to the mouse pointer. There are a lot more but i haven't played in over a year and can't remember what they are called, and i'm not about to start guessing here.

Recount parses the combat log which last I checked everyone had. So it doesn't give you any information that everyone else doesn't already have access to. Same with TipTac, it only provides information that the game is already sending to everyone. It just changes how it's displayed to you.

Improvement comes with playing experience (not character XP) and better gear, you can easily see what rotation works and what doesn't simply by paying attention.

It's also easy to see if a player is good or bad at playing his class, and if you want to get a hint at a players performance, inspect his gear. If they are shoddy green/blues or badly modded oranges then it's probably a safe bet that he will underperform. And even if you have recount you will still waste time finding out that player x or y is bad.

Simply paying attention during a fight isn't going to tell you which rotations work better or by what sort of margin, you need something you can analyse after a fight i.e. a combat log and a parser such as Recount. And all the experience in the world isn't going to do you any good if you incorrectly think that what you're doing is as good as you can because you have no way to verify otherwise. As for seeing how good or bad a player is at their class it's easy if you know what all their ability animations look like and you devote yourself to watching them during the fight, it's not so easy if you don't know the animations and are paying attention to what you're supposed to be doing. Personally i'd prefer to have a combat log and something like Recount to quantify performance rather than basing decisions on whether you think someone performed the correct abilities based on the animations you saw and an inspection of their gear.

Yes i've seen those when people have mashed the same button or rotation 100.000 times and then made a statement, i've also seen the same player do it all over again using the exact same attack or rotation and come up with a different enough result to make it unreliable info for the minmaxers (which are the only people that would really benefit from this).

When I said appropriately large sample size I was talking about results from multiple players. Once you have enough samples then you can remove the RNG factors with a fair degree of certainty and end up with data which is pretty accurate in describing the in-game state of a class or abilities.

Mods that makes people lazy would probably include all that makes people not have to pay attention to what the mod(s) are monitoring. Like for example, there are mods that makes sounds when your health or mana is low, there are mods for Warlocks that tells you when SS is about to run out or when someone in the group used his healthstone etc etc..

To be honest I'd argue that a well designed UI would indicate when you health is low without the need for addons. There's a reason that these addons like these were created and became popular and that's because the default UI, while providing the information, didn't do it very well or efficiently. You should be able to tell the important things with a quick glance at the UI, not have to root around to find out what you need.

 

[Ctuchik]

I'm not aware of any mods that can do this other than by reacting to something that has occured in game. All the mod does is allow you to customise how the information the game is giving you is presented.

Yes exactly, they add functions the base game does not have.

That's not really a much better argument than saying keybinding makes the game easier because you don't have to use the mouse to click on your abilities anymore.

Keybinds does not allow you to use one button to cast everything you have in succession, unless we are talking programmable buttons, which in most MMO's is prohibited.

Recount parses the combat log which last I checked everyone had. So it doesn't give you any information that everyone else doesn't already have access to. Same with TipTac, it only provides information that the game is already sending to everyone. It just changes how it's displayed to you.

But the mod makes it understandable, that's the difference. You can't read the default combat log mid fight and determine how anyone is doing.

Simply paying attention during a fight isn't going to tell you which rotations work better or by what sort of margin, you need something you can analyse after a fight i.e. a combat log and a parser such as Recount. And all the experience in the world isn't going to do you any good if you incorrectly think that what you're doing is as good as you can because you have no way to verify otherwise. As for seeing how good or bad a player is at their class it's easy if you know what all their ability animations look like and you devote yourself to watching them during the fight, it's not so easy if you don't know the animations and are paying attention to what you're supposed to be doing. Personally i'd prefer to have a combat log and something like Recount to quantify performance rather than basing decisions on whether you think someone performed the correct abilities based on the animations you saw and an inspection of their gear.

Ok you have a point there so i yield, but i will keep arguing that if whatever you fight dies, enough DPS has evidently been done.

When I said appropriately large sample size I was talking about results from multiple players. Once you have enough samples then you can remove the RNG factors with a fair degree of certainty and end up with data which is pretty accurate in describing the in-game state of a class or abilities.

But you still won't get a definite answer. As long as there are dice rolls involved, the best you can get is an average.

To be honest I'd argue that a well designed UI would indicate when you health is low without the need for addons. There's a reason that these addons like these were created and became popular and that's because the default UI, while providing the information, didn't do it very well or efficiently. You should be able to tell the important things with a quick glance at the UI, not have to root around to find out what you need.

I have yet to find a default UI that does not do this though, the reason i want to change how my UI look is because i generally find them quite fugly and uninspired.

 

[Anastasia]

What if the boss doesn't die? Just go again and hope for the best? Try something new? Wait a week until someone posts a strategy online that works?

To be honest, your arguments are almost against a UI at all. Maybe the character model could look progressively more knackered as it takes damage. Maybe you could keep track of how much energy / mana you've used in your head. All the pro-mod camp are saying is that any vanilla / generic UI can be improved to feed back the information that matters most to the player in question. What is wrong with a mod to remind the warlock that the timer on SS is nearly up? Or the mod that tells a mage that someone has a magic effect on them? The default UI displays the information, but does it in such a way that players have found it easy to miss. What is the problem with making it more obvious? How does that equate to laziness? I don't follow that at all. Does smearing vaseline over my monitor make me a more dilligent player?

 

[Turamber]

Does smearing vaseline over my monitor make me a more dilligent player?

No it makes you dirty, wasteful and silly. Complaining that you can't play a game because the UI doesn't tell you how to play your class is the ultimate in dumbed down design, WoW's main contribution to the MMOG genre.

 

[Soazak]

No it makes you dirty, wasteful and silly. Complaining that you can't play a game because the UI doesn't tell you how to play your class is the ultimate in dumbed down design, WoW's main contribution to the MMOG genre.

His point was, that addons are not necessarily "dumbed down design, WoW's main contribution to the MMOG genre".

And many of the features we have in today's MMO, would typically be considered an addon in previous MMOs (UO:Assist for example in UO), just because the designer didn't add it doesn't mean it doesn't help the game

Some, like Gearscore or the pre nerf Witchhunt are retarded for obvious reasons, but things like combat logs, damage meters are very useful for some people.

 

[Anastasia]

I didn't say I couldn't play without addons, please don't put words in my mouth. I'm just not agreeing with calling people lazy / dumb because they want a more obvious notification of something than that which is provided by the built-in, one-size-fits-all UI. I play games for fun, not to measure some idea of "worth" against other players.

By the way, the vaseline comment - that wasn't meant to be taken seriously, I love my monitor, it's my window into other worlds, I'd never do anything to hurt it.

 

[Raven]

Nothing wrong with mods. There are several things about the UI I would like to change. The quick bars for example. I want them smaller and more of them.

 

[Ctuchik]

I play games for fun, not to measure some idea of "worth" against other players.

I play for fun to. But if BW goes down Blizzards path when it comes to mods you WILL need loads of mods to even be considered a spot in high end raids or even group instances to some degree. And what exactly is the fun in that?

Not to mention, where is the fun in UPDATING all those mods after a patch when the author is slow doing so? Or finding a replacement for a raid critical mod because the original author stopped playing and don't give permission to someone else to keep it going?

And i never said i was against an UI altogether, i'm against mods that add stuff the default UI does not provide in an equally easy to read way. And i'm against mods that lets you stop thinking about what you are doing. And i'm most certainly against mods that are REQUIRED for ANY reason... I don't care what your personal reason for mods are, because if mods are allowed we will see people demanding this or that mod to be installed before you get invited to a group or raid or even guilds if you are applying to a casual/semi/hardcore raid guild.

Yes, some mods makes it easier in certain situations and i like those to, but WAY more mods makes the game worse! And i don't find the extremely few good mods to be enough of a counterweight to the hundreds of thousand of detrimental mods that will guaranteed pop up and that i will be more or less forced to use if i want to experience this or that content.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Yeah, some mods are fine, but dick measuring tools would only promote elitism and favoritism, and as said, forced mods on people to get in raids.

I agree with Ctuchik that some mdos in wow made people lazy(like healbots etc).

 

[Anastasia]

My initial response was to the lazy / dumb comments that were made. I find that type of elitism just as annoying as those who insist on mods being installed to join a group (never encountered that tbh).

I guess we all have a line that we draw, beyond which a mod becomes a helper / automator. The problem is, and I agree with you both on this, once mods are in it is hard to control what they provide. You can't be a little bit pregnant. Once mods are in they will cross the line for some players. However, if those same mods are included in the default UI that makes it OK? It's not laziness because we're all doing it?

Oh and I totally agree on the pain of keeping mods updated, but still a price I'm willing to pay for grid + clique.

 

[Zede]

Ui Mods yes, big flashy messages telling me "YOUR LOW ON HEALTH NOOB", no no, no. I got to realm rank 10 pre xp boost daoc, was in the No1 top pve guild in the world - and did the entire 5 years or so no mods other than UI. WoW corrupted mmo's and turned people into micromanagement nerds.