Star Wars: The Old Republic II: Hutts don't have feet!

[snoopy13a]

Which class?

Smuggler (gunslinger) I finished up the class storyline tonight.

I also have a level 35 jedi sage that I haven't played in 15 months or so.

[Leon]

Im Stuck on my Knight.

I hate Voss

Worse is i know that my Trooper who is the next highest is going to be there soon enough.

[mistformsquirrl]

I hate Voss

I see I'm not alone in that lol; that whole planet just drove me nuts.

[Tylorious]

how far from alderaan is voss, im not excited about going there after hearing all of you speak so lowly of it. also i am SOOO excited about hoth!

[Squark]

Voss is polarizing. Some people love it, some people hate it. Part of the problem I think is that's about where fatigue starts to set in and you really start wanting to rush through things.

[snoopy13a]

how far from alderaan is voss, im not excited about going there after hearing all of you speak so lowly of it. also i am SOOO excited about hoth!

Alderaan --> Balmorra --> Quesh (which is a "half"-planet) --> Hoth --> Belsalvis --> Voss --> Corellia

There will also be minor detours for class missions.

If you use XP bonuses, do bonus serieses, and perhaps throw in space or PvP, then you could probably skip all of the Voss quests (except for class quests) if you really wanted too.

[mistformsquirrl]

My dislike for Voss is basically 4-fold...

1) While Star Wars is definitely 'Sci-Fantasy' - Voss feels like it goes heavy on the Fantasy tropes to a truly absurd degree. Maybe that's just me, but a lot of that planet (especially the Shadowlands (If I remember the name right) area) feels like I've walked out of Star Wars and into a high fantasy novel.

Now I like high fantasy... but errm... I'm in a Star Wars game for a reason after all.

2) The Voss themselves annoy me. I'm not even sure what it is about them, they just get on my nerves on some level. Something about their personality just grates on me.

3) I was playing a Trooper when I did Voss. As a Jedi I can see it potentially being more OK actually; but the planet is absolutely steeped in The Force; and when you're playing a Trooper a lot of the missions make you feel really out of place. Or at least they did to me.

4) Fatigue, as Squark noted. By the time I got to Voss I was starting to get bored - combat was taking longer than I wanted it too and had long lost it's thrill, and the story didn't feel very interesting at that point either. Voss is also when the inability of a Commando to use all their abilities while wielding a Rifle started to get on my nerves to the nth degree... so that was a thing too.

----

It's not that it's horrible beyond words or anything, it's hardly unbearable, but it's definitely (imo) a low point.

That said I quite enjoyed Corellia afterward, and Hoth is a blast imo* - so Voss was kind of an irritating time tax to me.

That's just me of course, I don't blame anyone for feeling differently.

*With the singular exception that at times all that white does get a bit depressing. But then again it's Hoth, it's kind of to be expected.

[Sith_Happens]

Voss is polarizing. Some people love it, some people hate it. Part of the problem I think is that's about where fatigue starts to set in and you really start wanting to rush through things.

For the Inquisitor class story I thought Voss was one of the high points. The planet story was basically a back-and-forth between "Shouldn't this be part of my class story rather than something that Bounty Hunters do too?" and "Explain to me again why the Republic and Empire are both trying to win over these jerkwads when the Gormak built a turbolaser IN A CAVE, WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS?"

[Kish]

I love Voss.

I highly dislike Corellia, but my least favorite planet, is Taris on the Imperial side and Balmorra on the Republic side. It's funny how that works out.

[One Step Two]

I think they missed a few good oppertunities in SWTOR by not diverging the planets a little more. At endgame, Voss is more for the Force users and Corellia is for the Tech users. They would be fighting a significant part of the war on two different fronts in wildly different ways.

On my Knight, I found Voss and it's mysticism fascinating, because it tied into my characters story as being a Jedi.

And while on Corellia, it was damn fun to be there, I felt a little out of place, because that was definetly the place to be as a trooper.

But then I've always been of the opinion they shouldnt have forced you to visit every single planet on every single playtrough for every single class.

[snoopy13a]

For the Inquisitor class story I thought Voss was one of the high points. The planet story was basically a back-and-forth between "Shouldn't this be part of my class story rather than something that Bounty Hunters do too?" and "Explain to me again why the Republic and Empire are both trying to win over these jerkwads when the Gormak built a turbolaser IN A CAVE, WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS?"

The ability to construct a turbolaser is insignificant compared to the power of the Force.

[GungHo]

Voss is polarizing. Some people love it, some people hate it. Part of the problem I think is that's about where fatigue starts to set in and you really start wanting to rush through things.

I enjoy Voss, but I wish it didn't come at the near end of the game. It might have been better as the kick off to Chapter 2, switching with Balmorra or even Quesh, making it the last hope for a peace that's failing. You're right in that people just want to get through it. They're nearing level 50 at that time and know that they're racing to beat this or destroy that and it's hard to take in the lore, which would otherwise make it the most interesting planets in the game.

The real issue I have with Voss is that it has the Cold War feel when the war has definitely come to a head on Alderaan, Balmorra, Quesh, Hoth and Belsavis. I have no reason to be civil or cooperative with the Imperial faction at that point. They should be obviously ready to go hot at any moment, regardless of not wanting to irritate the Voss. Why do I care about the story behind the Voss/Gornak when the Empire/Republic are right there and are the clear and present danger? Despite whatever resources the Republic or Empire think they can get out of the Voss, war is a forgone conclusion at that point... why send your greatest hope to that diversion instead of having him prosecute the war like he does on Belsavis or Corellia?

But then I've always been of the opinion they shouldnt have forced you to visit every single planet on every single playtrough for every single class.

An alternative path like you have in WoW would have really been nice. However, I understand why they didn't do that. Unfortunately, having every conversation a fully voiced "interactive" cutscene would have made the game come out this year rather than in 2013, and it would have seemed more ancient than it even did in 2011.

[Sith_Happens]

The ability to construct a turbolaser is insignificant compared to the power of the Force.

Funny, that's what Darth Thanaton said.

[NEO|Phyte]

Man, I've got to wonder what the people coming up with these pricings are smoking.

So I'm browsing the GTN a bit, and decide to check what people are selling those "get access to x credits from your escrow" widgets for. The prices are surprisingly decent, so I go check what color crystals are selling for. Spot a white +crit crystal within reach, buy some escrow accesses, buy me the crystal, insert it into my weapon so it enters my collections window, switch to an alt...

600 coins to unlock the thing on all characters.

I suppose part of the reason could be that the white crystals are all special, considering there'd been that brief time way back when where they'd been purchasable, but good lord that is a chunk of coins. The bits of armor I have access to in collections are 60 (single item) and 90 (set of three) coins to unlock, and the weapons range between 60 and 240.
It's not exactly like +41 to a stat is a gamebreaker, especially on the white crystals which are locked to level 50 instead of level 10 like the others.

[Sith_Happens]

Well, nothing says "bling" quite like a nice color crystal, especially the plain white one. So I'd say 600 coins to get one on all your characters ever sounds about right. Then again, I'm a subscriber and don't buy packs so I'm bleeding coins out the ears, which probably affects my perspective quite a bit.

[Jeivar]

Say, I'm curious about a couple of things:

My level 52 Knight is my only character to date. I was wondering if the class storylines intersect at all?

Like, do Empire players get to hear that the Emperor has been slain by some Jedi, or does some of the stuff I run into as a Jedi play a bigger part for other classes.

Also, in spite of myself I think I just might start another character. What's the best way to design a Trooper mostly for soloing?

[Kish]

My level 52 Knight is my only character to date. I was wondering if the class storylines intersect at all?

Yes, they do.

[GungHo]

Say, I'm curious about a couple of things:

My level 52 Knight is my only character to date. I was wondering if the class storylines intersect at all?

Quite a lot.

Depending on how you have done with the affection of certain companions, if you're a 52 Knight, it already has happened with you, though you might not have noticed it.

Knight/Agent:

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Doc's girlfriend, Kaliyo, is the Agent's first companion, and makes a cameo appearance with the Knight.

Knight/Bounty Hunter:

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Doc mentions "some bounty hunter killed Nemro the Hut". The Bounty Hunter PC is that Bounty Hunter (well, Skadge did it).

There are also some more "macro" activities on Taris and Balmorra that, since they aren't taking place "simultaneously", make direct mention of what the Republic/Empire did on Taris/Balmorra to upset the balance.

Also, in spite of myself I think I just might start another character. What's the best way to design a Trooper mostly for soloing?

Tank Vanguard or Assault Commando (the middle tree). You get the healer companion at Taris, and then you're set for life.

DPS Vanguards can do a lot of damage, but you still have to get up close to do it, and they can be alarmingly squishy against bosses/elites.

Healing Commandos live a long time, but it takes awhile to burn down enemies. Your DPS companions are never going to be more efficient or smarter than you are when it comes to using abilities effectively. Maybe if their AI knew how to do more than linearly run down their ability list, they'd be better, but they actually had problems with really effective companions (especially tanks) early on in the beta and dialed it back.

[Squark]

Knight/Warrior Intersection

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Technically, you didn't kill the emperor. You gravely inconvenienced him by killing his current voice, but his real body is somewhere out where no one knows. The warrior, being at present the Emperor's only remaining public representative, gets a message from the Emperor's hands explaining the situation.

[Jeivar]

Tank Vanguard or Assault Commando (the middle tree). You get the healer companion at Taris, and then you're set for life.

DPS Vanguards can do a lot of damage, but you still have to get up close to do it, and they can be alarmingly squishy against bosses/elites.

Squishy enough that I should avoid Vanguards? I don't do guilds and I only play with other players in Flashpoints.

Knight/Warrior Intersection

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Technically, you didn't kill the emperor. You gravely inconvenienced him by killing his current voice, but his real body is somewhere out where no one knows. The warrior, being at present the Emperor's only remaining public representative, gets a message from the Emperor's hands explaining the situation.

Well, nuts.

Oh well, another day another DLC.

[Sith_Happens]

Well, nuts.

Oh well, another day another DLC.

It's still a hugely significant victory, considering that

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1. As far as anyone whose title doesn't start with "Emperor's" knows, he really is dead, which is going to do a huge number on Imperial morale and possibly cause a lot of civil unrest.
(Post-Makeb:)

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Especially after Saresh announces the successful assassination live over every available channel.

2. It's implied that the Emperor invested a LOT of energy into that Voice to take you on and it's going to be some time before he can come out of hiding.

3. The ship on his big master plan you stopped has presumably sailed for good.

[Farix]

Bounty Hunter/ Republic

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At the end of the BH storyline you kill/disgrace the current Supreme Chancillor of th Republic, leading to Governor Saresh of Taris getting elected.

[Philistine]

Tanking Vanguards aren't overly squishy - that was referring to DPS Vanguards.

It does seem like playing a tank with a healer comp is a bit less survivable than running as a healer with a tanky comp, though. (Healer comps are even lesss efficient and effective, compared to a PC, than DPS comps are - tank comps aren't much better for that matter, but as a healer you have more ability to salvage a bad situation.) At any rate, I know my healer Commando seems to go through similar content more reliably than my tank BH; and more generally I've also found Sorc (Sage) and Operative (Scoundrel) get through content better than Shadow (Assassin) and Juggernaut (Guardian). Not necessarily faster, but very very reliably.

[GungHo]

My experiences have been the opposite, but I am a sorry-ass healer, so maybe that has something to do with it.

[Philistine]

Or maybe I'm a lousy tank. Discouraging - I enjoy tanking more than I do healing - but certainly possible.

The problem with healer companions in my experience is that they have no judgement or anticipation: they go into every fight the exact same way. If I'm trying to take on a same-level Champion as a tank PC, my healer comp will still start out, as usual, adding light DPS and only switch to healing after I've taken a hit or two; then by the time the comp finishes casting a big heal, I'm already down far enough to want another. If I go into the same fight as a healer behind a tank comp, OTOH, I know to lead off with a HoT before the fight even starts - or at least start a big, slow-cast heal before my comp gets hit for big damage - and generally just be very proactive, even aggressive, with my heals.

The major problem with tank comps isn't that they're more fragile than a PC - they are, but that can be managed. The real problem is that they either fail to round up all the mobs if you've turned their AOE abilities off, or they break your CCs if you leave their AOEs toggled on. (Which actually brings up another point: "more and better CCs" are another advantage healer ACs have over tank ACs generally.) You can try to play aggro-pong with melee mobs, keeping them running back and forth between yourself and your comp to minimize the time they spend actually attacking anyone, but that's unreliable at best (and doesn't work at all on ranged mobs).

[Guancyto]

Bahahaha.

Oh, man.

So, I finally got my password, and turns out just in time for a double XP weekend. Hooray.

One thing I found as a new Preferred player was the crew skills. Oh, I knew there would only be two of them, but making medpacks wouldn't be out of line, right?

lolz. Turns out that non-subscribers can't queue crafting tasks, and can only use half as many companions for crew skills at once, and their reverse-engineering percentage is halved.

This is documented exactly nowhere (had to find out on the CS forums that it wasn't a bug), and there's no monetary option to fix it. I should be irritated, but at this point I'm just laughing and shaking my head at the incompetence and pettiness of it. If I were a new player unaware of what to expect of crew skills, my impression would not be "oh, I need to subscribe so that crafting medpacks isn't irritating," it would be "wow, crafting in this game is irritating."

And that impression would be encouraged by Bioware's apparently-not-exhaustive-but-looks-like-it list of differences between subscription and f2p. And who would even come up with, "hey you know our relatively convenient crafting system? Let's sabotage it for non-subscribers and not tell anyone! This is a winning plan!"

lol, bio u so bad

[Anteros]

Bahahaha.

Oh, man.

So, I finally got my password, and turns out just in time for a double XP weekend. Hooray.

One thing I found as a new Preferred player was the crew skills. Oh, I knew there would only be two of them, but making medpacks wouldn't be out of line, right?

lolz. Turns out that non-subscribers can't queue crafting tasks, and can only use half as many companions for crew skills at once, and their reverse-engineering percentage is halved.

This is documented exactly nowhere (had to find out on the CS forums that it wasn't a bug), and there's no monetary option to fix it. I should be irritated, but at this point I'm just laughing and shaking my head at the incompetence and pettiness of it. If I were a new player unaware of what to expect of crew skills, my impression would not be "oh, I need to subscribe so that crafting medpacks isn't irritating," it would be "wow, crafting in this game is irritating."

And that impression would be encouraged by Bioware's apparently-not-exhaustive-but-looks-like-it list of differences between subscription and f2p. And who would even come up with, "hey you know our relatively convenient crafting system? Let's sabotage it for non-subscribers and not tell anyone! This is a winning plan!"

lol, bio u so bad

To be fair...you'd probably be much less annoyed with it if you weren't comparing it to the previous system. Crafting 1 thing at a time is fairly common in MMOs.

[Guancyto]

Not really.

Even the MMOs that have you stand there and craft things yourself one at a time support mass production, be it WoW's "queue up fifty potions and get a sandwich" or GW2's "crafting gets faster the more you have queued, so be a little faster about your sandwich" or old CoH's "crafting is completely instantaneous." And ones that have you wait for things to build let you run massive numbers of jobs in parallel, like EVE Online.

I mean, something like Neverwinter doesn't have job queues but their job timers are almost universally measured in hours, and also you can (wait for it) eventually run a large number of jobs in parallel.

I'm long past being annoyed, I'm laughing at how many steps back they're taking their (pretty good) system for no good reason. It seems like an object lesson in "just because you can do something doesn't mean you should."

[snoopy13a]

lolz. Turns out that non-subscribers can't queue crafting tasks, and can only use half as many companions for crew skills at once, and their reverse-engineering percentage is halved.

If there were not advantages to subscribing, then no one would subscribe. The F2P and preferred options are loss-leaders with limitations that are designed to encourage players to either purchase cartel coins or subscribe. Your post states that your free game experience is inferior. Well yes, that's the point.

[Anteros]

Not really.

Even the MMOs that have you stand there and craft things yourself one at a time support mass production, be it WoW's "queue up fifty potions and get a sandwich" or GW2's "crafting gets faster the more you have queued, so be a little faster about your sandwich" or old CoH's "crafting is completely instantaneous." And ones that have you wait for things to build let you run massive numbers of jobs in parallel, like EVE Online.

I mean, something like Neverwinter doesn't have job queues but their job timers are almost universally measured in hours, and also you can (wait for it) eventually run a large number of jobs in parallel.

I'm long past being annoyed, I'm laughing at how many steps back they're taking their (pretty good) system for no good reason. It seems like an object lesson in "just because you can do something doesn't mean you should."

Have they changed WoW? I seem to remember having to craft 1 thing at a time. Granted it's been like 5 or 6 years since I've played so I may be wrong.