First Thoughts on Combat Upgrade

[Boda]

Well after continually trying to connect I finally managed to get onto TC5. The first thing that hits you smack in the face is the new look toolbar and how colorful it is! :shock:
http://www.zen65230.zen.co.uk/CU/Toolbar.jpg

The blue frogs are there as usual but most of the options (including the character builder) have been disabled, guess the devs want some feedback on progression of the lower level professions. Currently there are no elite profession trainers so none of the new weapons can be used at the moment :sadblue:

I wasn

[Richard]

rofl... i want my jedi on TC5 !! :D

[Jedel]

Nice :D A bunch of us will be hunting out of Eisley tonight if anybody wants to hook up with us.

[Eilyra]

I got pwned by a dwarf nuna too.

me chibi and shao had a run round south of coro this morning and got tripled by a crazed durni.

The particle effect on overcharge shot is well cool... No screenies yet though. Didn't think of that. I'll try lto remember ater on, if I can log in cos of the server cap

[Eilyra]

oh, and my name on the CU server is Eilyrak.
the k to make it not sound so girly, cos he's a male twilek.

[Shao]

Don't judge the CU until you have a few boxes and get a better weapon. The difference between brawler xx1x using a wood chopping axe and brawler xx2x using a 2 handed axe is huge. I literally doubled my damage output. At one point Chibs and I were hitting a lair for almost 300 points of damage per attack. While that doesn't sound very impressive it is when we were only doing 30 points at the beginning.

Grouping makes things much easier. If you're the type that likes to solo the beginning will be tough for you, but it does get easier. The xp system has also changed for better and worse. In a group everyone gets full xp per kill. So no need to worry about not getting any xp because others out damage you. I had a bad experience solo. I was fighting a rock mite and took off about 80% of his health when he incapped me (griefer :P). Then someone came in and finished it off and i got no xp. In the old system i would of at least got some xp for the damage i did.

Overall I'm digging the new system. Give Shao a shout if you're on or if I can get back in :P .

[Jedel]

Remember theres a Farstar chat channel. :wink:

[Boda]

One thing im sure many people will complain about is the glare effect that occurs each time you hop on or off a vehicle...

Thankfully not a feature of the game but a bug. The glare is supposed to occur when applying bacta, but for some stupid reason i get it when I hope on or off a mount :roll:

[Fulgrima]

I logged on last night and didnt see the glare at all mabye im jsut lucky. One thing i didnt like was not being able to just leave town and start killing as i would get owned. In moenia and theed anyhow i had to take missions before i stood a chance.

Not a major problem but not very well explained, i was amazed at the amount of people just openly bitching about the whole thing. Still quite funny.

[Vanray]

some idiot was AFK spamming in bestine that it was a disgrace etc, & ther this is SWG and not EQ2 well Duh!

[Fulgrima]

yea i saw that fool, their will be lots of people that arnt gonna like this it appears to be a very radical change but still absolutely essential.

[Rycher]

/sigh

guess I'll need some re-educating when I get back.

Looks good, though.

Good report Boda. Nice round up Shao

[Boda]

New rifles not looking overly impressive on the damage side of things (considering pistols now do 700 Damage)apart from the Massassi Ink rifle :shock: Has anyone checked the stats on a T21 now? OMG !!! Imagine one of these babies with a high damage slice and made with decent Krayt tissues :D
http://www.zen65230.zen.co.uk/CU/T21.jpg

And the rest:
http://www.zen65230.zen.co.uk/CU/BeamRifle.jpg
http://www.zen65230.zen.co.uk/CU/HeavyAcid.jpg
http://www.zen65230.zen.co.uk/CU/Proton.jpg
http://www.zen65230.zen.co.uk/CU/ExplosiveShellSniper.jpg
http://www.zen65230.zen.co.uk/CU/LD-1Rifle.jpg
http://www.zen65230.zen.co.uk/CU/MassassiInk.jpg

Pistols are looking SICK capable of 700 damage ! WTF ! Can anyone hear the word Nerf being whispered? Don't know if any of these will be Bounty Hunter Specific, couldn't see the cert in either the BH or Pistoleer skill tree for any of these blasters.

http://www.zen65230.zen.co.uk/CU/JawaIon.jpg
http://www.zen65230.zen.co.uk/CU/Flare.jpg
http://www.zen65230.zen.co.uk/CU/DeathHammer.jpg
http://www.zen65230.zen.co.uk/CU/Renegade.jpg
http://www.zen65230.zen.co.uk/CU/Intimidator.jpg
http://www.zen65230.zen.co.uk/CU/AllianceDisrupter.jpg

[Jedel]

I dont think BH got any new pistols, we get the Czerka carbine though.

The Deathhammer and Renegade are smiggler pistols, the Intimidator is SL and I think the Alliance Distruptor is CM (I could be wrong on that though)

Sadly the beautiful E5 Carbine is also SL, I so very much want that Carbine.

I think all the weapons have just been rebalanced in the patch yesterday, and I'd expect further balancing over the course of beta, so these are nowhere near final.

[Rycher]

Can we still get into test centre for the CU, or has it finished.

As I've just got back, I'd like to try it out & I already have a TC toon (can I use him?)

Just need to reinstall TC, which shouldn't take long

[Jedel]

TC is very unstable at the moment, I've not been able to log on for 2 days now. They should patch it soon.

[Shao]

Can we still get into test centre for the CU, or has it finished.

As I've just got back, I'd like to try it out & I already have a TC toon (can I use him?)

Just need to reinstall TC, which shouldn't take long

You can't use your tc toon. It's TCEP3 for the CU and ROTW. You'll have to create a noob and suffer through the low level stuff. shouldn't be to long till they add professions to the frogs...high end testing still needs to happen. there's a farstar chat channel. look for a group makes the low end stuff less painful. frogs give armor, but you can't use any of it. use grenades for combat xp if you go ranged :wink:

[Adabo]

Ahhhhh what have they done?????

Logged onto TC server after waiting for the 3Gb download and what on earth have they done to the game??? It feels so different. It's not the galaxies I know, it's like being a noob outside the game not just in it.

O well, back to trying it I guess.

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[Jedel]

Give it time, and dont judge it yet. Remember everything is liable to change before it goes live. I just wish they would patch the broken lairs, been 4 days now and none of the lairs are attackable.

[Adabo]

Been on the TC all afternoon and I really dont like this. Why oh why have they made SEQ2?

If we wanted our bloody level shown next to the char we would ask for it, and why do we even have them now??? It worked fine without. They have made master marksman completely useless to have, along with most other master professions.

I do however have a few screenies and a VERY amusing one for you all.

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[Adabo]

heres some screenies -

The new character screen-

http://img67.echo.cx/img67/1751/char6pq.jpg

How amusing -

http://img78.echo.cx/img78/8900/screenshot00033ro.jpg

Cybernetics -

http://img172.echo.cx/img172/4326/screenshot00059ic.jpg

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[Jedel]

SWG has always been based on levels to a certain extent, they have just enhanced it now. I have a feeling that its going to be tweeked a lot over the next couple of weeks and what we have now is just the ground work.

I hear they have put in "level certs" for weapons now and you can use equip any weapon that your level meets and use specials from your own skills. Ie. /concealshot with a hammer?

I'll reserve judgement on that until I get a chance to try it myself, but if it plays like that then it will majorly suck.

[Shao]

ranged specials should only work with ranged weapons and same for melee. so no conceal shot with a hammer. also some weapons will remain profession specific. so more than likely no swordsman running around with a t21 (unless they happen to be master rifleman :P ). it does mean that if i wanted to master a ranged prof as a master swordsman i won't have to try to kill rancors with a cdef to get marksman xp.

[Jedel]

Yeah I had 10 minutes to play around with it before the server shut down. The removed every cert from every profession, but one of the devs have already said that a lot of weapons will get their certs back, commando/bh I would imagine plus the master weapons of each professions. Which does not seem that bad after all.

[Shao]

Stay out of the AS forum it's like a war zone in there :shock: . I'm not ready to jump ship yet, but if things don't change Meiling probably won't last long into the CU. Then again i'm not the most dedicated of crafters anyway :P .

[Jedel]

Ahh yes the warzone of the AS forum...guess who was right in the middle of things. /innocent /whistle

[Richard]

hehe *runs to the warzone* /flamecone1 buhahaha burn bitches burn !

[Youso]

There should be cert's (Levels) on armour. That way lower level armoursmith can make some cash rather than just the masters. That's one of the big problems with the current system. everyone just grinds to master as there is on point in makiing anything but composite..

[Jedel]

Thats already in Youso, I've seen people fighting in Tantel, Padded and even Bone armour. The current system allows a lot diversity in armour. The Comp Clone Wars are over.

I'm unsure what the armoursmiths are unhappy about, but the Correspondent told them to PM the devs, so everybody did, and he was 'let go', which kicked off the flames and stuff.

It was armour-geddon. :D

[Youso]

The correspondant got booted?

[Richard]

jup after reading the screenshots and the spam post i recon about 50 pll got bans on that lol

[Shao]

It was armour-geddon. :D

That alone deserves a booting or banning :P .

Yeah the AS coro got "let go" and he didn't get his blow glowie status. A quick breakdown of what has the AS community up in arms.

The resource requirements for most armor was tripled, and the organic resources were increased 5 fold.

They also changed a lot of the resource required to craft armor and added new named resources. Including stuff that does not currently exist on live.

Crafting of faction armor is garbage. It requires as many fp to buy the schematic as it does on live now to buy a suit from the recruiter. As things stand don't expect to see a bunch more factional armor once this goes live. unless you have the fp or cash to buy it.

They reduced experimentation to only one line, the resists. So master AS can't even use their full 10 points of experimentation, never mind 12 point crafters.

The added resources was a burden, but i think most people could have lived with it. The biggest problem most people had was the dumbing down of the crafting. Why would SOE go through the trouble of making a more dynamic fighting sytem, but dumb down a crafting prof. Most of the armorsmiths did not have a problem with the final armor, but with the process used to get there. Weaponsmiths did not see a similar change in their crafting process. I'm going to see what they actually push to live and then try it on live before i make a decision. i'm not really happy about the prospect of losing 70+ million credits worth of AS stuff, but ******** happens.

And for the record while what he did might not have been the most tactful approach Okram got a raw deal.

[Boda]

OMG just downloaded an update for TC and now my controls have gone all retarded. Can i have it set up the old way so when i move my cursor to the edge of the screen the camera pans round in that direction instead of having to hold the mouse button down then move the cursor to rotate the camera angle? I dont have much patience and my mouse will only last a couple more throws into the wall :cry:

[Bang]

Go on keymap and change from Eq2 to SWG? :P

[Bang]

got chase camera on?

[Boda]

Its ok now, during one of the updates the keymap must have been reset to MMORPG Modeless. Ive only just started playing on TC again since they enabled the elite proffs and must say its growing on me even though i am still confused as to what the fek half the icons in the hotbar are supposed to do :P Particularly like the new jingles that have been added when u kill something :)

[Vanray]

seems a lot better now master proffs are on, does make me think however that I would think twice about trying to grind a proff, cause 1,000,000 xp for a master skill box is a fair amount of time,