SWTOR PvP Tears

I don't think it can be argued one way or the other by anyone except the most diehard that PvP in SWTOR is absolutely broken. There are many issues that can point out why, but I think the biggest of all, for the level 50s anyways, is the Expertise stat. This is an archaic square peg in a round hole solution to item bloat that just shows that many developers are not really actually wanting to fix the issue as much as burry it in a stat and pretend it will go away on its own.

Why do I say this? Because now that SWTOR is bracketed off, just like in WAR, the 10 to 49 PvP game is actually fun. The PvP feels balanced and challenging. However, like in WAR, the top bracket is so gear dependant because of one stat that if you aren't geared for it, it's an uphill slog just to get that way. It's just despicably and badly set up. And this isn't even getting into the discussion of how bad Ilum was set up or the fact that anyone with half a brain could see how PvP was going to turn out before the 1.1.0 patch or how open world PvP would turn out with the 1.1.0 patch. There's no way that one could actually believe that BioWare was this dense, but realistically, the only way to call this is sheer and utter incompetence.

Now I know many will undoubtedly think I am being unfair and harsh in my assessment, but I am not. This is not forgivable anymore. This is 2012, mistakes like these in an established industry of MMOs are no longer and should no longer be forgiven. In the early heyday of UO, Anarchy Online, Dark Age of Camelot and maybe even the first year of World of Warcraft, things like this could be understood and forgiven because MMOs, for the most part, were still testing the waters for many things and certain things had yet to be established, but it's been now over 15 years since MMOs have gone mainstream, and MMOs have had longer than that behind the scenes. Many people don't even have cars half that old.

Many of the developers in SWTOR have had experience on previous titles as far back as Ultima Online in fact, some were developers on WAR, and many other MMO titles out there. Little known fact for many people, the development industry is constantly shifting, developers move games and companies regularly. If they were to be likened to anything, it was a publicly traded stock. I know in my tenure over at UO I saw no less than 4 completely new UO teams before I quit and I know WoW and DAoC have undergone similar situations.

However, back on track to me these mistakes with SWTOR are just not excusable anymore. This is 2012, Ilum should not have been launched how it was, they had a solid model for open world PvP to look on with WAR, the Exerptise stat was unnecessary and should have never been added, it just added bloat onto the game all because they wanted to appease PvPers too lazy to play the game any other way, and to appease PvErs who wanted to not let their egos be interrupted b the fact that PvP gear might be able to rival what they can get in dungeons. Realistically, if we were to fix this issue, they would have statted the gear appropriately for PvP and PvE, since one set of stats isn't good for one particular game play area versus the other. After all, my level 50 shadow would prefer more crit and surge for PvP but more Power and Accuracy for PvE. This whole expertise thing was just plain unneeded and tells me the devs would rather try to fit a square peg into a round hole instead of working in a real solution to this.

It's sad to me that myself and many others pretty unanimously agree that the pre 50 game is the most fun for PvP because of no expertise stat. Outside of a few fringe cases, the game feels balanced. But once expertise is thrown into the mix, you end up with basically a cluster fuck of stupid and incompetence as the developers would undoubtedly spend more time trying to balance the crap out and the end result, much like Blizzard, PvP is only accessible to the people with the gear, while the people without it are up a creek.

And that's another issue with this whole system; The PvP loot in general. Now, intelligent people would say if you put the work in you should be rewarded for your effort. SWTOR says hell no, not only do you have to work for it, you need to rely on a RNG mechanic for your loot. I know, personally, my luck hasn't been the greatest. It took me over 30 bags before I finally got my first piece of set armor for PvP, with either a lot of air in those bags or repeat copies of those (pre 1.1) useless relics. On the other hand, others were getting near full sets within a few bags. I know some people had it worse than me, while many others have reported having their complete set within opening a few bags. This was clearly not thought out, basically.

The sad part, I did the Eternity Vault Operation and within completing that run I had my full armor set plus extra accessories in one run. That's many levels of messed up.

Now, onto Ilum, I think people have said as much as they could. I agree with most of them to. The planet needs to be shut down, period. It's job has failed. The instances on the planet can be moved out to the stations, for whatever reason, but the rest of the planet needs to be just shut down until a real solution is given or the entire PvP area just blocked off. This area just needs to be shut down, it's purpose has failed and there is no reason to even bother with it outside of those that like easy mode, and quite frankly there are people that play that way, hence all the QQ and tears over operatives.

Anyways, on that note, SWTOR's PvP is just bad at 50. PvE is ok and the game provides entertainment there and probably will for some time. PvP, on the other hand, will need some drastic work and fast to salvage it. Things that should be done, Expertise get removed, gear redone to be more PvP centric instead of just PvE gear with expertise on it and a lowering of endurance and the main stat and Ilum should be made into a PvP lake with conquerable objectives and keep like game play with siege weaponry. That would go a hell of a lot further.

RP Feeling Pointless in SWTOR

So, here we are at the end of the year, been occupying myself with trying to get a guild under control and playing SWTOR. I think that much is probably very obvious to those who actually care, but there are some things I still think about when it concerns the gaming world. Today, I am going to talk about role-play in TOR, or actually, the lack there of because of the simple fact that BioWare has basically written your character for you removing any sense of self in that regard.

RP is something I was hoping to get back into but just frankly, there is a very huge wall that's in the way in SWTOR. Of course, this has been around for a while, with games being more like WoW in all sense, but it's most evident in SWTOR because, well, your character has a predetermined voice, predetermined lines and the choices, though have different flavors of them, ultimately have the same ending regardless of what actual choice you make in the entire conversation.

Now, I know there are going to be people that tell me "No, it's not true, your choice has meaning and impact" the real answer is, no it really doesn't. Any game altering choice comes towards the end when the NPC in question or item has lost its usefulness regardless of which direction you got. So if you gave an item away or kept it, or killed an NPC or kept them alive, the final answer has little bearing on the ending outcome.  Let me give two examples of this;

On the Esseles, you come across a situation that you can either go power down conduits or kill engineers. The power down conduits results in about 2 extra minutes in a circle that over all doesn't really add enough time to matter, while killing the crew just lets you access the elevator faster. The end result is the exact same regardless of choice there.

Same instance, this time at the end you are given a choice to either leave the Ambassador behind or keep her with you. Regardless of if you do or don't or you tell her of the plot against her, the ending is the exact same with a few differences in words spoken. The final result is this entire "Choice" system is a disguised choice as it really doesn't exist and in the end it's just arbitrary padding for the alignment system, and given how little that actually impacts, I would wager that the alignment system will be the first victim come expansion time as it provides no actual benefits or incentives and actually just arbitrarily restricts items that shouldn't be restricted. And the first situation above has absolutely no bearing on whether you escape or not because those engineers never, ever are mentioned again after that cut scene.

So, let's get back on the whole role-play thing.  Now, people tend to mistake a choice wheel as actual RP in games, hence BioWare often being labeled as some sort of guru in the RP gaming world. However, this is actually not the case. This is an interactive menu system, more akin to a choose your own adventure novel, or in this case with SWTOR, an interactive movie. While this isn't a bad system in itself, as far as role-play is concerned it puts a huge damper on the field for those people that actually enjoy to create and play the character they imagine.

Let me explain this. Most RPers tend to imagine their character. Now while there are many people who have an imagination as deep as a tea spoon, hence all the Darth Maul's, Yugiohs, and Naruto clones that wander around (let's not even get into super heroes in super hero MMOs) many more players actually spend time coming up with an idea, a concept and a personality for their character. They even spend time trying to think up habits, likes, dislikes and what they might even sound like. However, the conundrum created with SWTOR is a large part of that is actually taken away because the voice, the words and the personality is actually taken out of the players hand and put in a wheel that, even though you might pick a choice that sounds close to what you were imagining in your head, the actual words spoken by the character don't even sound remotely close to how you interpreted the response.

I've talked to many RPers about this, and many of them find that this actually kills the mood for RP for them. It's bad enough most MMOs these days do not support sandbox elements to help make a nice and viable RP atmosphere, but now they are pushing to actually removing the things we RPers spend time actually trying to create with our character. This, to me, is a huge step in the wrong direction.

Now, I want to make it clear I am enjoying SWTOR. I can see myself playing after the initial month. Though I will be honest there are many nagging QOL issues creeping up that are just pissing me off that should be ironed out now. Things like the UI, to the latency in PvP are part of those issues, but that's just a start for me, and I am sure there are many others. Things seem to be working well but as far as the RP, even being on an RP server, that just doesn't seem viable because right now I keep trying, but every time I get into a cut scene the whole mood is ruined because of a predetermined script.

Randomness with TOR

Alright, it appears I missed an entire month. Not surprising as I ended up staring at a few things that interested me. Also not surprising I still haven't written a review about DCUO, but what is there really to say about it? The game hasn't changed from its beta perspective and other than a few things here and there is still too easy, and pretty much is a mockery of that vaunted choice they claim to have in their system. Despite that I do try to log in occasionally to play with friends who insist on it. Free is free, after all, though Sony's practices are very suspect.

Other than that I've been playing things like Terraria, Minecraft and even had two weekends in The Old Republic. So, I kept getting distracted, a lot. This blog won't be so much of a review as me just sitting here shaking my head and how far the human gene pool has gone down the tubes these days. But first, I know people want to know what I think of The Old Republic, so I will sum it up quickly.

For people expecting TOR to be a revolutionary game, stop daydreaming. The game is pretty much WoW in every shape, form and fashion. People telling you it's not need to pull their heads out of their ass's. To misquote Yahtzee, TOR is average, boiler plate, run of the mill. It's a competent MMO with its only remarkable feature being how far it's stuck up its own ass. It passes no boundaries and pushes no envelopes. An envelope would move faster in front of a glacier.

Now people will probably mistake what I mean there, but I did enjoy TOR. I am not gaga over TOR, but I will say, the artwork is beautiful (anyone who claims the art or graphics are bad needs to stop bashing their head against the keyboard or actually turn their monitors on because you are batshit stupid if you believe anything of that nature and have actually played the game) and the talky bits, when they aren't standard MMO tripe do add something. But in the fashion of revolution, TOR has done nothing of the sort. Outside of the talky wheel non-sense you could transplant WoW or even EQ into the model and everything would translate almost flawlessly.

In fact, like Blizzard when WoW released, I am stupefied how game developers keep making the cardinal sins they do when it concerns their UI interface and taking out basic key features that have been standard since the second generation of MMOs. As of this writing, I absolutely hate that UI in TOR, and I will definitely be modding that up the moment we are allowed to.

In short, people that talk up TOR as if it is the second coming or think TOR is not WoW, EQ or any other previous MMO with a new skin, are deluded in a way that just need to get over it. TOR will undoubtedly pull large numbers immediately, but retention will probably not be its strong suit. People are leaving WoW now, and I doubt people are going to find TOR offering anything they don't already do in their previous titles, especially since BioWare have made it clear they are going to "follow Blizzard" which means they are most likely not going to do much to deviate themselves from the standard WoW design and formula. Just expect longer than normal update periods since they will have to record voices and crap for any type of update that includes new quests. And to close this off, again, while I know a few people will assume that I loathe TOR, they just need to get over it that TOR has not done anything remarkable or special in the genre. The game is good, I enjoy it, and may for even a few months, but it's not an MMO, more than just a theme park game with massively player options. MMOs, to me, are sandbox games, and a game like that has not been developed in years. And people that claim that TOR has sandbox features are so deluded they need to take their heads out of whatever drug induced fantasy they are in and come to realize MMOs haven't had sandbox features in a long, long time.

Post VIP CoH POV

I've seen some bullshit dick moves when it comes to the F2P marketing scheme lately, but so far I've never seen someone use and abuse specific taglines as badly as City of Heroes has done. I had no intention of paying more than 1 month sub to the game because, quite frankly, that game isn't worth $15 a month. I had no intention of logging in to maybe fool around every now and then and chat with friends, and collect badges because that's what I do, but I can't even enjoy that much anymore.

Now that my VIP status has expired, I expected to lose access to Praetoria, alignment, and my incarnate stuff as advertised and keep everything I owned prior to the F2P update, as the document even claimed. But nope, that's plain bullshit. First thing I notice, well not notice it's more of get a big box covering my screen once I was out of VIP, my character slots have been locked and I can only unlock 6 of them. 6 of the 12 slots I owned on just one server. They want me to pay to unlock the rest I earned and paid for years ago. I even lost access to several powers and emotes I had received throughout the tenure of my stay in City of Villains before I quit. That chafed me the wrong way to but that wasn't enough to make me rage against the wall and I expected it no less.

No, the straw that's really broke the camel's back for me and files the City of Heroes NCSoft F2P as one giant con job and uber dickery move that people who continue to play it bend over gratefully for is the fact that enhancements I earned over 3 years ago have been locked out. I have entire sets of enhancements from back when the invention system first hit the scene in City of Heroes but they are no longer working. It was a shock to me because I didn't know this fact that my entire build became invalid with a clean sweep change. This is like earning your gear in another MMO and being told you can't use your gear until you pay more. This is money grubbing uber dickery at its finest, and what's even funnier are the vast number of people who think this is perfectly fine.

No, this is not perfectly fine. This is a lie of epic proportions. I noticed that the actual amount of activity had diminished greatly the past few days and I suspect what I am feeling now is probably the reason why. The F2P bug wore off and the reality of the bullshit that NCSoft is trying to pull has sunk in. The nostalgia trip is over and people are leaving again to see that nothing has changed and they want you to pay for it in the process.

And what really makes me laugh about this is the people who turn around and try to cite Cryptic as being con artists because of how they handle freeform versus archetype. At least they were upfront about it and respected legacy stuff as well. Not to mention Cryptic has bent over backwards at times to actually make their F2P acceptable. And what's even funnier are the people that claim the Archetypes are restrictive, yet these people play a game where you are forced, forever, to be one class, with two power sets with no real change between them. I rag Cryptic a lot but I give them props for actually doing what they say and not coming up with bullshit along the lines of sounding like it's just the spirit that counts.

[EDIT]

I've had a couple of people try to tell me I get what I paid for. OK nimrods, here's the thing. I paid for this crap years ago. And now NCSoft wants me to pay again. Hell, I have a friend who owned and had upgraded their account with Going Rogue and they lost all of that and NCSoft, again, told them to repay for it. No, just no. That's plain bullshit ripoff con job.

Reviewing the City of Heroes Halloween Event

This is actually a nice exterior map, but beneath it is a
rail shooter that is just missing the rails to make the set
complete.

Well, the first game that I am currently playing has released their Halloween event and so far, well, I can't say a whole hell of a lot because there isn't a whole hell of a lot to it. Now, before people come in and take the chance to sit here and tell me how wrong or stupid I am, let me explain this a little bit. First, I want to say I am not ragging on the season; I love Halloween. It is my favorite time of year, and before any neo pagans or whatever try to come in and tell me about the history of the holiday, I will tell you now, yes, I know. In fact I probably know more about it than you neo pagans probably know yourselves since I actually studied up on it over several years because I like this holiday that much.

Now, back on point. Halloween has been a rather staple event in City of Heroes for the past couple of years. However, for the most part it has always been a rather open world thing. Go knock (or click really) on a few doors, get monsters or treats, or beat up a couple of special event Giant Monsters that are just the Croatoa monsters rehashed in the world at large. (Yes, I know Eochai came before Croatoa, but since he is a regular now, I will state it my way). They've added bits here over the years but it was pretty much the same event.

That was until around the time of Issue 10, when the Invasion started. You see, the invasion was cool during that scenario because of limited time badges and a feeling that the timeline was escalating. However, the brains over at NCSoft actually took that to mean we wanted invasions all the time, and now you can't even wiggle an eyebrow without an invasion week or something like it going on. This is something that NCSoft really hasn't grasped, that a limited time event loses its charm when it's constantly repeatable and it loses the value of reward for having participated in it when you know all the rewards you get will be there throughout the year for people to get with even less effort than you had to work for.

Now how I mean this is NCSoft thought that Invasion was so popular they would do something similar for the Halloween that year Invasion came out; A Zombie Apocalypse zone invasion. Same mechanics basically, minus bombing, and pretty much everyone either huddles around for the most zombies possible or they hide under cover (oddly) to avoid zombie spawns or better yet leave that particular zone.

Past this time I had little knowledge of because I actually quit playing City of Heroes around then, but I know, now, the banners were added and how those mechanics work (think zombie apocalypse with predetermined locations and a macguffin that needs to be destroyed to stop the spawning) and when Going Rogue and its tip missions came out, a Halloween tip that you could get that gave you a stupid easy instance you could run through to kill one guy and pick the badge you liked. And if you were bored enough get them all by repeating that step 5 times in total.

This year's Halloween is just all that, plus the addition of a level 29 trial that people get to enter. The trial sounded fun at first and there are some rewards for completing it, however, after having played through it a couple of times it came off rather bland and uninspired to me to be blunt about it.

First it's just a straight corridor map, IE you enter one end exit the other, no real deviation, just follow the hallway type map. There are turns and twists in it, IE the hallway turns and twists, but there aren't any real get off the beaten path moments or changes. The interior is nice and they probably spent some time on putting it together, but it loses its charm when you feel like there should be rails and a car under you at that point.

Second, unless your team is very thick or something, you can pretty much get all the badges this thing has to offer in one go. Hell, the only reason to do this trial a second time is to get both of the unlocks that it offers, and only if you decided that paying for those items in the Paragon store wasn't your cup of tea, which is funny to me since most everyone I did that map with did buy those items in the Paragon store (I didn't personally since none of them fit my theme).

Finally, like mentioned previously, there are no surprises. You are actually told what to do for all the special stuff right out. Instead of figuring any of this out we are basically led around like a terrier with commands to tell us to do it that way. The boss fights are forgettable and uninspired as the first boss is just Adamanstor made into an AV that you can basically laugh at, and the final boss fight is set up and easily tankable by one person while the rest just go off and get zombies for the badge they explain to you how to get in the entire event bar. Leaving no real mystery, it even says kill boss last. The only surprise is you need a costume to get the zombies out faster and defeating the boss wearing a costume gives you one of three badges. It's a fight that tests how thick people are, and trust me I've already ran into some people who were thick enough to replace the Berlin Wall.

In the end, this update to the Halloween event was just a disappointment. I don't expect much since they've only tacked on small bits every year, but with this aping of the trial and such I expected a heck of a lot more. There is a secret in it, but it isn't even worth your time as the fight is pathetic and there isn't even an acknowledgement badge to denote you even found it or anything really. So in short, it's a ride that's missing the rails and car to make it official. It's entertaining the first time through but after that point you should only be doing a second time if you need both of the costume rewards. New comers will probably get overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of things for Halloween, but that's because that's just several years worth of stuff tacked onto the original event. It's a nice effort, but still comes off disappointing to what it should have been.