Star Wars The Old Republic Roll Call

[celedhring]

Haven't finished a Jedi Knight, but my understanding is that it's fairly standard fare, story wise. I enjoyed my Sith Warrior a lot when the game was new. I've played Agent, Smuggler and Inquisitor into the 40s, and I thought the Agent story was best of those. Trooper seems very cool, too (and you can have the voice of FemShep from Mass Effect if you play as female ).

I grouped with a female trooper and I'm definitely rolling one as my second character. Love me a FemShep.

[Syt]

Regarding the vendors: it's better now - it used to be that each planet gave out its own commendations. So to get commendation gear from Tatooine you had to collect Tatooine commendations. Now you only have to worry about basic commendations anymore in PvE.

The SP space battles are (more or less) fun rail shooters. I've never tried the PvP battles.  When doing flashpoints, check with your group mates if they mind not skipping the dialogue cut scenes. Many players who have gone through some stuff multiple times prefer skipping through the scenes, but many are fine to slow down if you say you haven't seen them before. In general if you ask people for pointers during a flashpoint they'll be happy to help.

[celedhring]

Played my first Flashpoint yesterday, the one where the Sith attack the ship while you're travelling to Coruscant. The PUG I was with was very courteous and walked me through a few things - gotta say that so far whenever I've grouped it has been more pleasant than the average WoW PUG was.

[celedhring]

The story is getting much better now that I have leveled a bit. There's some creepy nefarious Sith lords going around, and even the companions seem to have decent storylines a la Bioware which you can unlock. You even have a ship which you can use to fly around while carrying your companions - the quintessential Bioware sci-fi RPG trope

I can see myself rolling several other characters just to see their stories. They are not as compelling as a proper KOTOR or Mass Effect game, of course, but they dance circles around WoW's plotlines.

I am: hooked

[celedhring]

Been playing these weeks. So far I'm liking the story a lot, and it's starting to tie in with KOTOR 1 and 2. But I'm feeling a bit of grind fatigue as I level up my character. Luckily, there's an expansion coming out and they seem to focus more on story and less on traditional MMO grinds, they are even cutting down drastically the time needed to level up a character. I will probably take this chance to level alts and see all their stories.

[Barrister]

Been playing these weeks. So far I'm liking the story a lot, and it's starting to tie in with KOTOR 1 and 2. But I'm feeling a bit of grind fatigue as I level up my character. Luckily, there's an expansion coming out and they seem to focus more on story and less on traditional MMO grinds, they are even cutting down drastically the time needed to level up a character. I will probably take this chance to level alts and see all their stories.

The problem I had is it just gets grindier and grindier as you go.  I'd still like to finish off a character story arc to see where it goes, but I haven't made it past the mid-30s.

The trouble with increasing the XP you get is that when the first game first came out levelling was pretty balanced.  You'd go through the planets in order, and you'd see all of the planets content mixed in with your class quests.

Now, if you do all the planets story missions you're going to massively over-level.  But if you only do your class quests then you've jumping past all this other content.

[celedhring]

Well, the way I see it I only need to do all the planet content once, and then I can see all the other character arcs without repeating the grind, using the XP boosts. Well, I'll probably need to run a character through the imperial side of the planets, too.

The Jedi Knight story - the one I'm playing - got massively better past level 30, and ties in nicely with KOTOR 1 and 2.

[Syt]

Saw an Italian tourist couple on the subway yesterday, late 30s, maybe early 40s. Looked very hipster-ish and fashionable ... except for the guy's tattoo of the Jedi Order on his forearm.

[celedhring]

I have that in a t-shirt and I'm late 30s 

[Syt]

cel, have you tried the new solo content yet?

[Syt]

Logged in with my Level 45 Agent yesterday.

Whoa. They completely changed the companion system. Gear is now only cosmetic, and their skills level up with you. Also, you can assign any role to any companion (Heal, DPS, Tank), so if you liked a DPS companion but used someone else you liked less because you needed a tank, you can now switch things around. And it encourages you to switch companions around more often, because you don't have to gear them all up all the time.

And almost all my companions were set to have pretty much all their conversations now (possibly because of how it converted my current standing with them?).

Skills: instead of each character having a skill focus (Jedi = Strength, Smuggler = Cunning etc.) those skills have all been replaced with Mastery. This probably gives you more flexibility with gear, and likely makes it easier to find something you can actually use (as opposed to finding gear you can use, but boosting the wrong stat).

If you ever used the in game store, you will notice that pretty much all gear packs are gone (never used them, but occasionally bought an item from such packs from the auction house), replaced with what I presume is themed for the new expansion.

As a subscriber you can create a Level 60 character to dive right into the new content (haven't done that yet).

Heroics are now weekly instead of daily?

And if you visit locations which are below your level, you get nerfed in stats (so I was level 12 or 14 when I visited Hutta), though you keep your skills.

Lots of big changes.

Details on companion changes: http://www.swtor.com/info/news/blog/20151020-0

The new expansion: http://www.starwarstheoldrepublic.com/fallen-empire/characters

Full patch notes: http://www.swtor.com/patchnotes

[Syt]

They've also revamped the crafting system. And you can solo a number of flashpoints. They're really committed to changing the whole game experience.

And on heroics:

Nearly all Heroic Missions have been adjusted to be completed by groups of 2+. This means that most former [Heroic 4] missions have had their difficulties reduced. Barring a few exceptions, Heroic Missions no longer need to be turned in at an NPC or Mission Dropbox. On completion of the final step of a Heroic Mission, the completion dialog will appear immediately.

The first step of each Heroic Mission gives you a Heroic Transport item. Using this item (from your Mission Items inventory or the icon next to the task in the tracker) will transport you to a safe location near the site of the mission.

While Heroic Missions may still be acquired from NPCs in the field, you will also find a new Weekly Heroic Mission Terminal just outside of the spaceports of all planets up through Makeb. Accessing this terminal will allow you to easily acquire all the Heroic Missions for that planet. In addition, both the Republic and Imperial Fleets have a Weekly Heroic Mission Terminal that offers Heroic Missions for all planets.

They're cutting out even more time sinks, and do their best to get you to the actual content. Which is huge, considering how much of the game at release was spent traveling and generally wasting time.

Side quests are now "exploration quests" that are not marked on the map by default and won't contribute (much) to your leveling up. I guess my recommendation to new players would remain when first playing a side (Republic or Empire) to do the planet story arcs at least once. Some of them are not too bad.

[celedhring]

I haven't done the new chapters yet, I'm still leveling my main 

But I like the changes a lot, you can do just story missions - which is where the game shines - instead of grinding standalone boring missions on every planet. Companions are a beast now, too.

I'm definitely checking out all other classes' stories with these changes, since most timesinks are being removed. It seems to me Bioware are making a bet on turning this into a single player RPG that happens to be played online. They will be delivering new story chapters every month (if you're subscribed)

[Syt]

In business lingo I think we could say they return to their core competencies.

[Solmyr]

Sounds like a lot of excellent improvements, I should really find the time to play this again. Still have a bunch of class stories to do.