Star Wars: The Old Republic will kill WoW - outsourced to Broadsword

[Bliblablubb]

So I finally got around to play KOTFE now for a little while (only reached the asylum), but so far I really like what I am offered. I only noticed playing an MMO because I saw a mudcrab shitlord in the swamp. The companions asigned by the game are better tied into the story than the usual one-liner the old ones occasionally provided. All in all it reminded me more of playing a Mass Effect game, in a good way. Without popamole.
Gameplay is also more beginner friendly now, Lana's AI is competent enough to put one enemy in stasis and not touch him after that. More than the average player is able to do. Abilities affected by class mechanic procs are highlighted now, so even someone thrown into the cold water at lvl60 isn't completley screwed. Not that you could even die if you just press random buttons. Scenario is also a nice and refreshing alternative, a bit like a reboot actually. Equipment provided is good enough to last for the whole rest of the game, even though Pebblez looks like she is wearing a wedding dress.
On top of that cutscenes have improved a lot, not as static as they used to be. If they keep up that level of quality, I will definitly get my buck's worth of Kotor 2.5.

What puzzles me however is the texture quality sometimes. Koth is pretty high res, so he survives a close up in cutscens, while Lana's face is a blurry mess. Same for HK fiddyfive. Am i supposed to get an emotionally engaging romance with my eyes closed here?

Minor Darth Marr spoiler:

Spoiler

After his death he becomes one with force. Rock on bro!

That's mah bro! #MarrBro4evah

 

[JasonNH]

That feeling when you nailed just the look you were going for. I think I was channeling my inner Wild Hunt when dressing up my new insta-level 60 assassin.

 

[SerratedBiz]

Nice skirt.

Spoiler

 

[JasonNH]

An unfortunate requirement to account for the fact that Bioware doesn't believe in leg day.

 

[Echo Mirage]

I'm guessing the sudden disappearance of the Carbonite block from the Imperial fleet means that the bounty missions are a timed event?

 

[JasonNH]

Yes, they're a recurring event that last a week at a time. These are the events coming up for November:

• 11/10 - 11/17
  • Rakghoul Resurgence: Alderaan
  
  
• 11/24 - 11/30
  • Bounty Contract Week

 

[Echo Mirage]

Yes, they're a recurring event that last a week at a time. These are the events coming up for November:

• 11/10 - 11/17
  • Rakghoul Resurgence: Alderaan
  
  
• 11/24 - 11/30
  • Bounty Contract Week

Well...piss. I only managed to do one and got a bounty contract on a "Kingpin" and wanted to pick up some more for the planets I was on my way to.

 

[Mangoose]

Re: Looks

Sad thing is that any coat/open robe/trenchcoat/duster always bunches up to one side and stays that way because of physics. Happens if I do a quick turn while I'm moving, and happens a lot because I mouse turn.

It's even more sad because I wanted my Sith Warrior to wear a trenchcoat.

I had a buttflap on my Agent though, hopefully I can find one of those.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Why is your lightsaber inside a sword with a sword attached to that sword?

 

[Dreaad]

Why is your lightsaber inside a sword with a sword attached to that sword?

 

[Bliblablubb]

That feeling when you nailed just the look you were going for. I think I was channeling my inner Wild Hunt when dressing up my new insta-level 60 assassin.

Wait.. don't tell me THAT is the free outfit a 'sin gets. My consular got a friggn' wedding gown. I want my moneyz back!

Bounty hunting event being over does suck though, when I played a sage a while back I only did class quests and got the extra xp from a bountyhunt. Because for all their OP-ness, even companions cannot hurt an endboss when he is red because of the level difference...
Was funny though, watching them for 5 mins with nothing really happening. Now I know how the mobs felt when I was running old Black Talon at lvl50.

 

[Mangoose]

I'm guessing the sudden disappearance of the Carbonite block from the Imperial fleet means that the bounty missions are a timed event?

Yes, they're a recurring event that last a week at a time. These are the events coming up for November:

• 11/10 - 11/17
  • Rakghoul Resurgence: Alderaan
  
  
• 11/24 - 11/30
  • Bounty Contract Week

Dudes, Bounty Week leveled my characters insanely. I think they buffed XP rewards for a lot of quests or something, because I'm leveling way faster than back during 12x. It's true that Companions are OP now but I haven't gone out of my way to do a bunch of extra quests nor even do any Flashpoints (besides messing around a lot with the Bounty event). I didn't even do the Nar Shadaa planetary quest. My main is now level 41 and I'm entering Alderaan right now lol. Probably gonna hit 65 before I finish the class story

I actually like that though, because this lets me do different quest lines for each alt, so I am not repeating the same quests.

BTW the writing and VA for the Balmora Imp side planetary quests was surprisingly hilarious. NPCs that get more excited at torture and killing than my Sith Warrior, woo.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

 

[Bliblablubb]

BTW the writing and VA for the Balmora Imp side planetary quests was surprisingly hilarious. NPCs that get more excited at torture and killing than I do, woo.

You even get some tail with... the ugly milf shitlord in the end. Balmorra with my 'quisi was the most fun I had actually, so many chances to shock people in conversations.. aah, good times.

Inqusitor AKA "Is there any problem a shock can't solve?"

 

[JasonNH]

Wait.. don't tell me THAT is the free outfit a 'sin gets. My consular got a friggn' wedding gown. I want my moneyz back!

Nah, not even close. What you see is about 4 million credits worth of GTN purchases.

 

[Bliblablubb]

Heh, no surprise there. Bioware makes a Sithlord of money with those boxes.
Ooooh and I will never again listen to Mangoose about shopping advice. I bought one outfit pack and got some space suit that looks almost excactly like the free starfighter one. Money well spent indeed.

Also: reengineering drops from KOTFE is buggy of course, Bioware didn't attach schematics or resources to them.

 

[Mangoose]

Heh, no surprise there. Bioware makes a Sithlord of money with those boxes.
Ooooh and I will never again listen to Mangoose about shopping advice. I bought one outfit pack and got some space suit that looks almost excactly like the free starfighter one. Money well spent indeed.

Hey I told you no guarantees.

No refunds.

:p

I don't even know what to buy on the Cartel Market... I wanted Open robes/Dusters but their physics get so fucked up when you do a sharp mouse-turn. The clothing does do a sensible twist to one side, but then it stays that way even when you're running forward. However it works fine for capes... I guess it's because the cape cloth physics are full body whereas the open robes/duster physics are primarily lower body. Sigh. I don't want a damn cape.

Thankfully I don't notice it on my companions, so Malavai Quinn looks like an awesome elite Imperial/Nazi officer with a black trenchcoat and the military cap.

 

[Echo Mirage]

How is the Bounty hunter storyline?

I'm liking both the Sith Warrior and Imperial Agent stories. General chat confirms my suspicions on the inquisitor leaving the Bounty hunter on the Imperial side.

 

[Icewater]

Anyone been playing the new xpac stuff?

 

[Crazed Weevil]

Anyone been playing the new xpac stuff?

Yes

 

[Mangoose]

Switched over to the non-streaming, non-Bitraider version. For the rare hope that it'll make physics issues better because Bitraider won't be middle-manning the whole time. Or at least more FPS in the fleet station. Fucking annoying that I get over 90FPS on a planet but then drop down to ~20FPS on the station, which means I have to turn down graphics so I am not annoyed. Mainly # of characters rendered, and nametags. The first is gay because it makes being on the planet gay. The second is gay because I have to turn on nametags for grouping up and then turn them off again.

Also the scaling nametags by distance option apparently takes a lot of power... But turning off scaling nametags makes nametags HUUUUUGE.

Not to mention, why the fuck isn't there an option to show your energy/force/heat/etc bar right below the over-your-character health bar you can turn on? That's why I moved my character portrait+bars next to my character's head and also minimized it, because I ain't staring at the bottom of the screen when I want to look at my cool damn character and the Jedi I'm slaughtering.

Well, at least turning off shadows is actually a good thing because it took away all the jagged-shadows-on-face shit.

Also the game is shit because it's apparently limited at 2GB and there's no way to fix it, outside of this third party program "SWTOR Unleashed" which creates a RAM Drive. Seemingly it works pretty well, but it also seems like a hassle because you have to re-do it after each patch, and of course I'll run into a bug or two that fucks shit up.

 

[Mangoose]

How is the Bounty hunter storyline?

I'm liking both the Sith Warrior and Imperial Agent stories. General chat confirms my suspicions on the inquisitor leaving the Bounty hunter on the Imperial side.

I've been told it's pretty good but straightforward. Similar to the Warrior, but not as good (choice/branching-story) wise as the Agent.

Female VA is good though, she voiced Azula in Avatar :D

 

[Kem0sabe]

The expansion was such a dissapointment, just a bunch of in engine cutscenes linked by corridors, it felt like a very poor attempt at emulating kotor but without any of the charm.

 

[Crazed Weevil]

Switched over to the non-streaming, non-Bitraider version. For the rare hope that it'll make physics issues better because Bitraider won't be middle-manning the whole time. Or at least more FPS in the fleet station. Fucking annoying that I get over 90FPS on a planet but then drop down to ~20FPS on the station, which means I have to turn down graphics so I am not annoyed. Mainly # of characters rendered, and nametags. The first is gay because it makes being on the planet gay. The second is gay because I have to turn on nametags for grouping up and then turn them off again.

Also the scaling nametags by distance option apparently takes a lot of power... But turning off scaling nametags makes nametags HUUUUUGE.

Not to mention, why the fuck isn't there an option to show your energy/force/heat/etc bar right below the over-your-character health bar you can turn on? That's why I moved my character portrait+bars next to my character's head and also minimized it, because I ain't staring at the bottom of the screen when I want to look at my cool damn character and the Jedi I'm slaughtering.

Well, at least turning off shadows is actually a good thing because it took away all the jagged-shadows-on-face shit.

Also the game is shit because it's apparently limited at 2GB and there's no way to fix it, outside of this third party program "SWTOR Unleashed" which creates a RAM Drive. Seemingly it works pretty well, but it also seems like a hassle because you have to re-do it after each patch, and of course I'll run into a bug or two that fucks shit up.

What graphics card are you running? The only real big performance killers in the engine now are the shadows, which even on the highest setting still look like they are made with lego blocks, and AA, though I believe they have recently moved over to FXAA so it's actually usable now.

 

[Mangoose]

What graphics card are you running? The only real big performance killers in the engine now are the shadows, which even on the highest setting still look like they are made with lego blocks, and AA, though I believe they have recently moved over to FXAA so it's actually usable now.

650 Ti Boost