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Ardarell_Solo

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Ardarell_Solo last won the day on November 12 2023

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  1. Hey there, just a quick thumbsup for the new German voice actor for Consular origin story. I noticed the change in the last patch, but it became way more evident with this one that has much more lines delivered by player characters. It used to annoy me a lot, how immature and eager the old German consular sounded, especially in comparison to the brilliant German voice acting on Knight origin story. Knights used to sound so calm and composed in comparison, I always gave my Shadow and Sage characters the Knight origin story, since that is possible. The new German voice acting is still not on par with Knight's voice acting but much, much better. So thanks for that change and kudos to the new voice actor :-)
  2. Analysts say it's because it's the only MMO with consistently voiced cinematics for hundreds of hours of vanilla content on eight classes with male/female performers and still lots of it in its expansions that also include "space barbie" changes you make to your character. That USP makes for a constant influx of new players, makes existing players create alts and also makes it rewarding to revisit characters you made at times. That "stickiness" is what you aim for in a business context and you can see how most of SWTOR's decisions point in that direction. This is relevant to the ongoing PvP discussion as well insofar as it shows the nature of the players this applies to: they're not the competitive/minmaxer type. The usual forum bewilderment how discussions there differ from what's ultimately done in the game shows that, too: Forum users tend to be more involved in and critical about what happens in the game than the majority of players that form the game's backbone from a business point of view. That explains why changes made often will and must differ from the "consensus" on the forums. Internal surveys e.g. of sticky gameplay vs. abandoned gameplay are simply much more relevant. If they weren't, "game would have shut down years ago." Which is still not saying the Star Wars IP doesn't help. But ask Ron Howard and Alden Ehrenreich if the Star Wars IP alone saves you from failing if you don't get the basics right. πŸ™‚
  3. You don't last as long as SWTOR already did if you chose to use the same content for customer surveys and internal evaluations of user behaviour that business decisions are based on.
  4. I strongly assume devs have used more detailed and specific numbers than that to base their business decisions on in the last 10 years.
  5. That kind of comment is exactly what I meant when I said "tend to underestimate" πŸ™‚
  6. The amount of dev resources that go into scripting boss fights will be about the same as balancing (!!) PvP. It's an area that players and devs (of new games with that focus) alike tend to underestimate the most. You gave the reason yourself: Fighting each other is the content. But if your subjective (!) impression is, that you don't stand a fair chance, reactions tend to be much more salty than when something doesn't work quite right in PvE. That's also why it's not exactly a rewarding area to work in as a dev. The question though is if it's a reasonable allocation of resources. I'm pretty sure the way PvP has been handled in SWTOR in the last 10 years didn't fall from the sky πŸ™‚
  7. Because it shifts development resources to the areas of the game that are most played. Anything done there will have a much greater effect on how satisfied the majority of players are with the game on average.
  8. No, because OP-1 is group content reward and chapters are solo play. It's pretty neat they still let solo content drop group rewards, but it has to be less then. SWTOR is already very much tailored to solo players, but for the aspects of the game that are still centered around group play to remain relevant at all, there needs to be a reward advantage for playing in a group. Otherwise the game loses any incentive to do group play whatsoever in the long term.
  9. That's one of a variety of possible sales strategies. Imo DNA of SWTOR doesn't work with hardcore PvP audience in general, so I'd tailor PvP around players who dig SWTOR DNA in the first place, because that's the players you got now, and design PvP so it enhances their experience. The amount of work you'd need to put in to satisfy or hardcore PvPers (or NIM raiders as well for that matter) just doesn't pay off, because the target group is so much smaller than the amount of people already playing what SWTOR offers these days. A solid business plan will focus on securing their sticking to the product.
  10. Came back for the new FP and daily area (which is really done well this time, kudos to the devs!) and played both on Vigilance Guardian, which I had chosen as my secondary combat style for my Sentinel Main (it has now actually become my main specc, for the reasons I stated in opening post). Either way I just HAD to do another test on Watchman - and it still bores the hell outta me. Force Melt being the top priority as the blandest dot ability imaginable and infinite Slash spamfest. I've tried so many other speccs in this and numerous other games and I'm all the more bewildered how one of the most elegant and fun to play speccs for years of SWTOR could deteriorate to the pinnacle of boredom as of now. A suggestion regarding Force Fracture: That rotation is pretty repetitive too, admittedly Force Fracture is a more interesting ability than Slash though (functionality, animation and sound). Force Fracture build just lacks a tactical item that boosts it like the Spiteful Saber tactical does to become viable and maybe stops the repetitiveness. Something like this: "Force Fracture has a 25% chance to reset the cooldown on Blade Barrage or give you the Mind Sear proc (you could make it so it alternates between the two effects). Both blade Barrage and Twin Saber Throw apply the the double amount of additional Elemental damage that Force Fracture does regardless if dots are ticking on your target or not." That way the rotation would become less repetitive and with a proc you would use Blade Barrage and Twin Saber Throw not only in the last two GCDs before Force Melt becomes available and the dot isn't ticking anymore but with proc you'd actually use them rotationally. That'd be fun to play and could get the build a bit closer to Slashfest dps wise :-) And I still think Spiteful Saber shouldn't be allowed to be the max dps tactical item. It's just mindunmbing to play (except you like cowbells ;-) ...
  11. No offense, but I'm not looking for insight on how to play the specc πŸ™‚ I've known Watchman rotations inside out in all forms from 1.0 on and had top Watchman/Anni and partially top overall dps parses in several expansions and have also written a few guides on the specc (including Dotsmash, when that was a thing). Character name is El'ethon, if you care to know or are looking for reference. Not saying this to show off, but to undermine that I do know just how boring exactly the current rotation is in comparison. Let's take a look at the spec's current top parse as of today by Keetsune: https://parsely.io/parser/view/731139/0 If you look at ability usage you see Slash listed in top position with 111 Usages out of 242 abilities, meaning 46% of actual abilities used is the base class' blandest filler ability. (Not counting off GCD stuff here, except for Overload/Deadly Saber which actually is a rotational ability, unlike say Adrenal or Valoruous Call/Zen. Even if you chose to count everything you press, it'd still be 111 out of 280ish which it still roughly 40% even counting pocket Sarlacc πŸ˜‰ ) You have 5 Slashes in a row at 14:49:31.545, 14:50:17.351, 14:50:51.783, 14:51:25.533, 14:51:59.817, 14:52:33.822 6 Slashes in a row at 14:49:41.616 and several instances of 5 or 6 Slashes that have just one Merciless Slash among them. What's probably even worse is that Slash also does the most damage (not even counting the burns it ticks, just its own damage) with a whopping 21.8%. Saying that all the nice things you learn as Watchman like Merciless, Cauterize, Force Melt, Overload Saber are just sidekicks to your main ability Slash that every Knight knows from the very beginning. And this is for a specc that had rotations that used to keep you on the edge of your seat several times in 4 GCD cycles (yes Merciless/Annihilate once had just 6secs cooldown when fully stacked - meaning you could use that awesome signature ability with its satisfying animation and sound much more often instead of spamming boring ole Slash). The rotational interplay was absolutely entertaining and the payoff if you got things right was enormous - both dps wise and regarding what it felt like to perform it. At the same time specc was still doing more than ok if you couldn't manage to get the necessary procs consistently, which again was absolutely achievable with dedicated training. I'd also say that when you had learned how to do that by heart, your muscle memory allowed you to watch your surroundings excellently. Which also has to do with the fact that 4 GCD rotations have a unique internal rhythm to them compared to the pure priority system we have now. But how did all that come to be? We have had this Slash spamfest ever since Merciless CD was lengthened and we got Watchman Vital Shot (also know as Force Melt/Rend) as our "spectacular" new ability when other specs got stuff like Vigilant Thrust πŸ˜‰ There was just too much room in each rotation cycle that had to be filled somehow. Consequently devs have been tampering with filler stuff ever since, imo not very successfully. One of the strongest arguments against shorter rotation cycles, i.e. shorter CD on Merciless/Annihilate, was that the then 2 GCD long Blade Barrage (then called Master Strike) didn't allow to get all the other important abilities in the rotation and play them on cooldown. Mind you, that's no longer a point since we have one GCD Blade Barrage. So today you could easily implement a rotation like this: Merciless Force Melt Cauterize Blade Barrage Merciless Filler/DST Cauterize Filler Merciless Filler Cauterize Force Melt .... You could go back to Merciless/Dispatch-ViciousThrow shortening Cauterize's new default 12sec Cooldown (which would go back to be a 6sec dot that REALLY hurts and not just tickles) by 6 secs on a high percentage and Slash doing it on a mid percentage. In the old days Merciless and Slash completely reset Cauterize's cooldown, meaning you could actually reapply it too early, thus clipping the dot. So you had to memorize the GCD you had Cauterize in last time or actually track the dot on your target. Both was indeed a bit distracting from playing the more difficult mechanics in the game. By designing the proc to instead shorten the remaining Cooldown by exactly 6 secs the earliest time you can reuse Cauterize it is in the exact spot of the 4 GCD rotation you had it in before. That way you also prevent multidotting with Cauterize's hard hitting dot which resulted in potentially too much burst on multiple targets. Nowaday I'd also add a failsafe mechanic that apart from the percentage based chance to proc Cauterize CD reduction by itself gives you stacks: 2 with Merciless/Dispatch-ViciousThrow, 1 with Slash. At 4 Stacks the 6s reduced CD on Cauterize is guaranteed. Every proc, no matter if by ability chance itself or 4 stacks, resets all stacks. In addition Force Melt has a 15 sec Cooldown here and will thus move through your rotation on the filler spots in GCDs 2 and 4, adding more dynamics to the rotation. This is a hybrid form of playstyle: a short rhythmical rotation with clear priorities. It would also give Watchman a bit shorter dots, making target swaps and burst a bit better - which is absolutely needed, since devs also still refuse to dump that stupid Merciless stacks rampup problem with Watchman that is no longer justified by superior overall dps. Even if you don't go for that faster and more entertaining playstyle there must be something more meaningful you can do with all the filler GCDs in the current rotation that come from way to long a Cooldown on Merciless Slash than having players spam Slash - for the love of the Force πŸ™‚
  12. Beats me how any class designer would think "Hey let's set up a specc that has players use the blandest filler ability of its base class three times more than anything else". Slash-fest is not a rotation. And by no means an engaging playstyle. It's a mind numbing exercise in boredom. I mean this is a tab target game with very little positional or situational combat, no active aiming, blocking, parrying or countering. So performing a rotation according to situation is the only engagement left. In comes Watchman doing Slash - Slash - Slash - Slash - Merciless - Melt - DST/BB - Slash - Slash - Slash - Slash - Slash.... How can anyone think that's fun? Even if you let a tactical item like Spiteful Saber pass through QA, you can't ever design everything else to have this come out as the goto choice for highest dps. Should have become a meme playstyle if anything at all. Specc needs some interaction in its rotation that's more than "do I get enough crits to have resources for enough Slashes (and activate my simple off-GCD-dot)". It needs some kind of interaction between the specc's core abilities to be tracked/looked out for. Something that actually gives players a feeling of meaningful interaction with the rotation that makes a difference if done right.
  13. The state of Watchman on live and PTS are a typical consequence when a rotation has been made too long and therefore too filler heavy. Instead of streamlining the core rotation they are now desperately trying to do something with filler abilities in the talent tree system. However, that way you just don't end up with smooth rotation that has a reasonable skill to effectiveness curve.
  14. Same. Which is a pretty big oversight on BWs part, since I'd even spend Cartel Coins on them if they persisted - and I suspect I'm not the only one: Why would anyone spend real money on something you have to reactivate every single time you change location for it to actually work?
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