OotiniCast Episode 106
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In the news this week, we cover the introduction of in-game purchasing of Cartel Coins, the details of the Character Name Renewal program, and some revelations about how the Ranked Leaderboards will work.
1. Introduction
2. Tip of the week
Congratulations to this week’s winner, Mike!
Strike Force Tauntaun
Mike’s impressive reputations
Please send your tips to ootinicast@gmail.com by next Wednesday for a chance to win a Tawnfaun code, courtesy of BioWare, and an OotiniCast-provided Cartel Market pack from the latest shipment.
3. Holofeed
- The Rising Hero Bundle, mentioned in last week’s show, had to be removed from the Cartel Market. It will return in Game Update 2.4.3 on 12 November.
- During a very short maintenance on Tuesday, the in-game purchase of Cartel Coins was made available. You need to enable the feature on the official site, nominating a credit card (not PayPal) to be used. However, you must have purchased Cartel Coins on the site previously using a credit card; if you haven’t done so, you’ll have to buy at least the minimum amount as an initial transaction. Subscribers do get the one-time 50% discount from their first (and only their first) purchase of Cartel Coins, though only one bundle can be chosen (it’s not possible to obtain more than one and get the discount).
- The “Character Name Renewal” program will start on 12 November. BioWare has elaborated on exactly which names are at risk, and how to hang onto your characters’ names if you are not subscribed.
- The Gree will be back in December! It was announced in Bruce Maclean’s holiday update, but we may have forgotten to mention it.
- Some information about the mechanics of PvP Season 1 appeared in the SWTOR Help Center on the official site.
4. Community
BennyKrak of the SnX guild is organising open world PvP mini-events on The Harbinger. For more information, see his post on the official forums.
The Vy’aalators are looking for more raiders! They run on Monday evening (US time), starting at 5:30pm Pacific. If you’re interested, please post in this thread on our forums.
5. Force Feedback
We discuss tweets from @ForceChuckle, @FerrousTerran, @GregCarter78, @TheTurg, @Adam_Schumpert, @AckaanTalgala, @fnord3125 (Brian Peters), @Strongshocker (Chaz Lobo), @AlexDGeslin, @GTeeg (Gaddock Teeg of the Unnamed SWTOR Podcast), @EmpireDivider (Moff Chong) and @nicknightmoves (Andrew Bailey), emails from Kalf, Josh (Oofalong), Green Armadillo, Oxi-jin and Grim, and a comment from The Malgadar.
Terg’s pumpkin carving triumph!
From @AlexDGeslin: accept or decline? Hmmm…
From @GeorgeTakei, via @Strongshocker: It’s a (mouse) trap!
Josh’s (a.k.a. Oofalong) post on the official forums arguing against the change to Bloodthirst/Inspiration can be found here.
Green Armadillo, author of the Player Versus Developer blog, reviewed the fictional game found in Neal Stephenson’s Reamde: A Novel.
Green Armadillo has also documented his experiences with the Friends of Star Wars: The Old Republic promotion:
Account Status Before Experiment
Preferred Account, last subscription time lapsed in June (I used a 2-month time card to qualify for the discount on RotHC), no authenticator attached, ineligible to add a mobile authenticator due to non-subscriber status.Upon activating referral (more on this in a minute)
Account status upgraded to subscriber, in-game non-subscriber restrictions lifted, account page shows seven days game time. Account eligible to add a mobile authenticator. All characters on my account – yes including a newly created one – now receive a bundle containing four unlocks which are bound to character and vendor for 0 credits. These are a crew skill slot unlock (preferred have two normally), title display unlock, unify colors unlock, and an inventory unlock (I have 60 base from account-wide unlocks, so my new level 1 immediately got the 100K credit bump to 70 slots with this item).Upon subscribing
Game time from the subscription added onto the free time (i.e. I did not forfeit the free time for entering payment info early, which happens in some other MMO’s). Immediately received both a monthly stipend and the 100 CC supplement for having a mobile authenticator – not sure if this works the other way around, so I recommend you do what I did and add the mobile authenticator if you intend to use one between activating your invite and re-subscribing. I am not yet ready to use the free character transfer that is supposedly included (want to finish a current character first before copying my legacy), but I got all the way to the “start transfer” button without any indication of what, if anything, I would be charged.Technical issues
I received the referral in an email and clicked on it in Firefox, only to be taken to a “site down for maintenance” page on SWTOR.com when SWTOR.com was clearly up. Next I pasted the link into Internet Explorer, and was taken to a generic signup page for completely new players. I clicked on the “already have an account” button and logged in, but nothing unusual happened here. THEN I pasted the referral link into the IE browser bar with the login session to SWTOR.com still active and was sent to the referral page, which had a one-time banner at the top of the screen saying that I had been successfully referred by my friend.
Oxi-jin recommends Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One: A Novel
6. Outro
Thanks to Oni (@Freakin_Ninja) and Redna (@R3DN4) for joining us this week.
Information about our guilds on The Harbinger, Ootini Knights (Republic) and Ootini Rage (Empire), can be found here.
You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! You can subscribe to us on iTunes and Zune, and listen to us on Stitcher and Radio4Gamers.
Hi giantgina here :-)….In response to Oni’s/Redna’s discussion about tank usefulness in arenas…….I play ranked in the Advanced Prototype tree (Powertech) and I gear out in full dps. I always run Ion Cylinder (the tank cyl)…..this allows me to be *much* tougher (about a +40% to armor) as well as receiving the AOE damage reduction effects from the AP tree. Of course this means I have a guard (coming from the cylinder) and can use it on a marauder or sorc dps if “another” tank is present to keep their guard up on our healer. For the record, in my experience, a solid tank is very useful in ranked even with my offtank functionality. P.S.- I still do crazy dps in this cylinder as it mainly only gimps my heat management. Good luck in ranked guys.
Great to hear from you, Ben. 🙂
I LOVE Chill’s Star Wars themed Intros. Always makes me laugh.
Me too. They are so clever.
First off thanks for taking the time during the podcast to comment and discuss my perspectives on the changes to Bloodthirst/Inspiration. I am disappointed my rationale did not find more traction, and I feel my thesis was simplified too much. To be fair, I may not have explained it well in my post of the forums, and even if I did trying to distill it down to a few moments would be very difficult.
To be clear, my argument is the planned changes to the buff are being implemented in a less than ideal manner. Before I expand on this, the current reality is that Marauders/Sentinels currently offer some of the best DPS and survivability in the game. As long as these two aspects do not change, they will always be a desirable choice for Operations groups.
There are two connected, but also independent, aspects to my argument, and my argument applies mostly to groups clearing the hardest content.
The first centers on raid utility, and how no other Adv Class is affected by the presence of the same AC. I am specifically ignoring the class’s ability to fulfill its role – DPS, heal or tank – and focusing on utility. (I think this is fair as BW aims for balanced class performance, and over time class changes will shift the landscape from what we know today.) I define utility as things the AC can do outside of their stated role. There are two specific examples to think about regarding six of the other ACs. The first is that a DPS spec’ed healing class can revive a fallen group member. This allows the healers to remain exclusively focused on healing. This is incredibly useful if the fallen group member is a tank as it allows the two healers to focus exclusively on keeping him up. There are only a few fights where the DPS check is so tight that this tactic becomes undesirable. The next example is the ability for a DPS spec’ed tanking class to taunt the boss/adds. Even though they aren’t in tank stance nor have a shield, these characters can tank the boss for several GCDs by using all of their defensive CDs. The extra taunts can also help in fights with tank swaps and/or where repositioning is required. In progression raiding both of these are valuable utility to have. Obviously the aim is to not have need of them, but they are nice to have as options. I would expand on specific examples of this, but this post will be too long already.
The second aspect relates to group size. As Chill stated during the podcast, in 8m content a single Marauder/Sentinel is all that is needed. As I said in my post I concur with this thinking. There should not be additional benefit for having more than one Marauder/Sentinel. (Still, it is interesting that this is the only AC discriminated in this way, but I digress that was my first point in the argument.) The issue becomes when you look at 16m or 24m content. In larger group content, having a second Marauder/Sentinel offers no utility benefit. Thus, assuming equal damage output it would always be preferable to have only one Marauder/Sentinel. Thus, the change is being done without regard to group size.
To sum up, I believe Operations Group should benefit from the presence of a variety of ACs. I appreciate at the moment some view it necessary to stack Marauders/Sentinels in order to capitalize on multiple Bloodthirsts/Inspirations. Thus, it makes sense to change this. My issue is the intended changes invite more problems and create unnecessary complications. I believe the best alternative would be to maintain the group-wide benefit only and introduce the 5m debuff. This means at most each group would benefit from a single Marauder/Sentinel.
Ootinicast Quote of the Week 106: ‘Oh well there’s Oni we obviously have to kill him; if we let him run roughshod then it’ll be all over for us’. -Mister Oni’s thoughts on why he’s constantly dying in PVP.
That’s TOTALLY what they’re saying man. It’s all part of a grand conspiracy to keep your Elo Rating down; we can’t have you hoarding all the Elo points after all.
BTW I can not wait to get my full O’Brien PVP set.
Hey red, concerning your friends issue with the right key/spinning snag: that has happened to me every single week at least once since the game launched, where my camera/screen spins right over and over and over. I know it is some key combination I press, and I suspect it involves maybe the windows key/alt key. Bioware has no clue (or they didn’t the last two bug reports I have submitted). I also suspect it has nothing to do with ones rig/video card, as it is happening on my brand new god machine. PLEASE if you all find a solution mention it in your podcast.
As always love the show!