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DragonLadyK

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  • Interests
    Star Trek, Person of Intetest, Stargate, Harry Potter. What can I say, I like optimistic fiction.
  • Occupation
    I make sure my customers get the right product delivered on time.
  1. I am... kind of excited. Because those bits of dialogue like on Balmorra where the NPC startles and says "oh, I though you were an imperial" or when Zenith the Consular that he'll work with ex-Imperials because the Consular is who is asking (the consular who is the only truly reformed Imperial he has ever known) they mean more on a cross-faction toon. If this change also comes with tweaks to the dialogue where characters are from time to time reacting to you as a Jedi who turned Sith and vice-versa, or an imperial agent who is Republic leaning (WHICH IS IN YOUR CLASS STORY) wor whatever -- this could be AMAZING. Those little bits of flavor-changing dialogue for story choices are literally keeping me subscribed and this could be that but MORE. So hopeful.
  2. As a Star Trek fan, on behalf of Data, I judge you harshly. J/K. But seriously, one of the things I like about Star Trek that isn't present in Star Wars in general is the ethical dilemma of what you do with an AI who has achieved sentience. If it can think of itself as a person and articulate abstract concepts like a person, even though it isn't organic, is it a person? Does it have the same rights under law as another alien species? Should it? The main Star Wars canon is very cavalier about those questions, and treated the droids like machines no matter how sentient (R2, 3PO) they behaved. I appreciate that SWTOR is more cognizant of the ethics involved in the way they present LS/DS choices and in having D7 exist in the first place. On a related note, Star Wars canon is also very cavalier about the question of clone rights. Are the clones people or are they not based on how they were conceived? If they are people, then are they slaves? Is using them as canon fodder really something Jedi should be doing? These questions aren't really asked and they should be. Anakin WAS a slave, so the fact he doesn't ask them is, frankly, criminal. SWTOR does a better job, IMO, of asking the question "what value is a mook"? There are multiple points where, especially as a Sith, you can opt to just let the mooks leave and take your problem out on the guy in charge who is actually issuing the orders. I appreciate that.
  3. I loved all the echoes of KOTOR and KOTOR 2 (pun firmly intentional). I love that I recognized parts of the buildings and the gardens. I loved that the trees were bigger. I loved that the droids were the same model. The thing I love about the new content in general is it's like that game with two pictures that are subtly different and you have to spot the differences. Between the classes, alignment, and the sab/loyalist choices playing it on multiple alts is this constant "oh that's different!" with these subtle details. So clever. Also the balance of mobs to boss was much improved. The skytroopers were too much, and it feels a lot more balanced now.
  4. I like this patch schedule where one patch has the new flashpoint and the next is the housekeeping stuff with a bit of dialogue, as opposed to lumping it all together in one patch. Not only is it friendlier to places with slow internet (where I live) by keeping the overall patch size down, but having the lots of talking in one patch and then some talking and the story fp in the next breaks up the talking a bit. In the original stories there are points where the pace drags even though the dialogue is good. Also, the new story director isn't getting paid enough. I don't know what she's paid, but it's not enough. This new content is leagues above KOTET/KOTFE. I love all the little bits of class-specific dialogue everywhere. And Arn's force-blind speech vs. his speech when it's just Aryn last patch? Gold. Love it.
  5. The only changes are custom dialogue options, dialogue you receive, a couple of NPC changes, and the saboteur conquest objective is WAY easier than the loyalist one. THAT BEING SAID: I really liked the changes and make sure to do all four (both loyalists and both saboteurs on both factions) for each new story. When you do them back to back the changes are a lot more entertaining, in my opinion. For making player-choice changes without having to essentially develop four games at once like an RPG -- they're worth the price of admission and I definitely recommend taking the time to have four alts.
  6. I'm going to have to chime in here with my support for the max-medal filter idea. People who lose-farm for conquest are still lose-farming because they still get conquest. The ranked players who like to grief are still griefing because a curb-stomp is the point. It's the middle players -- the casual players who log on for a bit to get their weekly done for the sake of completing the weekly, who maybe aren't the best but put in an old college try -- that I'm not seeing anymore. And as more of them give up and move on to other content (or other games), the toxicity is actually going to get worse, not better. It is easier to be civil when you're still getting SOMETHING for your time. When Hoodie McBiscuits flaffing off is going to mean you make no progress towards your goal, or when you're up against a griefer group and there's nothing to do because you don't have enough middle players to at least make the griefers fight for every inch: people take it out on each other in chat. (Which ALSO serves to dis-incentivize casual players, but the lose-farmers don't care, so again, it's a vicious cycle.) I understand that the coding required would be no one's idea of a good time, but "you get no conquest or progress on your weekly unless you get max medals" and then putting the weeklies back where they were (without changing how medals are earned) would do a much better job of punishing "not putting forth decent effort" without penalizing people for getting put in a bad-batch group.
  7. Having losses count toward your daily/weekly is not the same thing as a participation trophy in RL sports. Here's why: First, in RL sports, you do not take a bunch of strangers who show up a field, half of whom don't care about winning, assign membership in two teams by random draw, and turn them loose, then take a bunch of other strangers, random draw two teams, turn them loose, and repeat until everyone is ready to go home. Leagues and teams are formed by the members and they can eject people who consistently don't or won't perform. Team members and coaches provide both a social reinforcement after losses (either of the "we learned a lot - we'll train harder and kick their ***" variety or the "you did your best and I'm still proud" variety) AND they provide feedback and additional training for weaker members, allowing them to improve. Unranked warzones don't have any of that social reinforcement, improvement opportunity, or even the ability to /ignore people who will not pay attention to objectives so they can't be part of your team anymore. Secondly, participation trophies are not for the participant. Participation trophies are something you give the kid so the parent has something to put on their wall and prove to the other PTA members they are a good parent. It gets the parents off your back and off the ref's back. The kid will be consistently fine after whichever post-loss motivational speech you give them. The kids are all right. It's the parents who suck. Allowing losses to count as progress toward your daily/weekly IS for the participant. Getting stuck by random draw with a team who won't focus on objectives makes for a loss. By making all losses get you nothing, the player is being punished for something over which he has NO control (since there isn't an /ignore list for pvp). Whereas by letting the loss advance the participant's ultimate goal (quest completion), just not as effectively, you're still getting somewhere when the random draw genie isn't favorable. Losses counting for nothing in the ranked areas is fine. Everyone there wants to win because it's ranked. But in unranked where you've got a good chunk of people who aren't interested in winning getting thrown in with people who DO, it is more damaging than helpful.
  8. The best thing Blizzard ever did and an idea that SWTOR needs to copy is making abilities function differently in pvp vs pve environments. In SWTOR, by the time abilities are balanced well for HM bosses, pvp is jacked; by the time they get the balancing half way banged together for pvp, in pve there's now a mandatory class and the other ones are trash. I get that it's twice as much work and balancing to do, but it would solve a lot of this "x is op/x is finally playable again" headache.
  9. Only if that change only works a pvp environment. This is the first patch in a long time that ops have been viable for HM content as heals. Because there are so many damn cast times and hots to Op healing and so much burst damage + position-changing in HM boss fights, by the time op heals performs as well as the other classes in a PVE environment, it's OP in pvp. They need to bring back pvp gear and the pvp modifier stat. It would make class balancing 100% less headache (and not force pvp players to pve for gear). Personally, I'd rather farm two sets of gear than these random heal-nerf-bats that make the least-nerfed heal class mandatory for pve.
  10. I'm going to use dog training as an illustration. Let's say you let your dog out before work each day. Just before you are ready to leave, you call the dog to come. When he gets to you, Monday thru Friday, you praise+pet and then put him in his crate and go to work. On Saturday, you skip the praise+pet but you put him in the truck and go to dog park. Your dog's recall command is going to be rock solid because you have consistently reinforced the idea that every time he comes SOMETHING good is going to happen. Now let's say you get sloppy and Monday thru Friday you skip the praise+pet and just put him in his crate and go to work, but on Saturdays we get in the truck and go to dog park. Your dog's come command is going to fall apart into "I come when I feel like it" because most of the time he's not getting anything out of it. Players are the same, and so are employees. If they're not getting any reward for what they are doing (even if it's just praise or the feeling of satisfaction of a job well done) they aren't going to be doing it for very much longer. PVP before the changes was primarily three groups of people: 1) people who farm dps numbers in mid (I have never been really clear on what they get out of pvp, arena practice maybe?); 2) people who don't have enough pvp associates for a premade but do understand to focus on objectives; and 3) premades. The skill level of all three groups was varied. You'd have the newbies importing their other mmo habits up to the people where you see their name on your team and know it's gonna be a good match. What I'm seeing with the new changes is that group #2 is dwindling. The people I used to see regularly aren't queing anymore and participation is narrowing down to groups 1 and 3, or more to the point, the premades farming the number farmers for wins. Trying to get the cats herded to focusing on the objectives is a lot more difficult than it used to be. Before, even if you lost you still made progress on your weekly. It wasn't great, but you at least got something for your trouble. It made the match not feel like a waste of time if you got put in with a bunch of number farmers or new people. It kept the new people hooked enough to get better. Now, with that removed, the competitive loners aren't bothering and the newbies are largely falling into the number farmers' bad habits. If the purpose of this change was to make premades mandatory for pvp and/or to narrow participation to premades, well, congratulations, mission accomplished. I don't think SWTOR has a big enough player base to support this change, particularly with how many games both cast a wide net for pvp participation and reinforce both active participation and winning. If, however, the goal was to make the weekly harder so people would pvp more or make people try harder in matches, this was the opposite tactic to take. Upping the value for a win without removing the incentive to participate would have been a better choice -- kept the competitive loners in the q.
  11. I like the last-boss-counting solution over removing kp entirely. All of us should not lose the "quick hat run after main op run" option because some people want to be *****.
  12. Man, y'all are really bringing your A-game with attention to detail in 6.0 content. The little differences in what the refugees say when they get packages, the differing dialogue option for sab/loyalist rejoin/independent, things like Emperor vs. Empress tracking, class titles coming back, and companion quests (VECTOR) -- they are such tiny things but a huge difference. Keep it up. Also, KILLIK CAVE. I am most pleased. (On a side note, I was replaying KOTFE and y'all have a much better grasp on the whole LS/DS thing in general than some other game companies we could name. When the whiners get you down, Devs, remember that you have never done something so stupid as painting burning a city full of civilians to the ground as a "grey" option. You put Kaliyo's plan in DS sphere where it belongs. And Kothe reams you for it, love Kothe for that.)
  13. CUSTOM DIALOGUE FOR YOUR OSSUS CHOICES? You spoil me. Seriously, doing it with no flags, doing the Inflection point quest, and then having the Assassin tracking quest end completely differently was a treat.
  14. Thank you. People approach gearing like they approach accruing savings money, and it's good for the "savers" (small steady additions that accrue over time) to have an option that is fun for us, since "gambling" (high risk that may or may not pay off, but pay off in larger sums if they do) isn't our cuppa. A high price for the vendors is fine. It tends to take the same amount of time either way, I just don't want to rage quit frequently.
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