Archive
Photo of the Day: Beating up Jawas
Yes, my guild on Imp side is called Jawa Punchers.
Yes, it is offensive to Jawas everywhere.
Yes, half of the guildies were drunk when we picked it (I was just tired).
And yes, you are jealous and waiting for the time when you can rename your guild.
Enjoy this picture of ChipChops making his guild proud!
Click to enlarge
Game Math and Redefining “Happy”
From http://xkcd.com/138/
Games are math.
Whether you play a logic game like Sudoku, an MMO like Star Wars: The Old Republic or Lord of the Rings Online, or CityVille on Facebook, you are using math to solve problems designed by developers.
I have mentioned before that I consider combat in MMOs to be like a problem of rates. All combat can be broken down into percents, coefficients, and factors. In the simplest terms, if ratedamage(me) * mitigation(you) > ratehealing(you), then I kill you.
Things like buffs, heals, shields, and debuffs all swing the rates one direction or another. The experienced raid leader looks at the field of battle and sees the rates shifting and swelling, and makes decisions based upon them. In PvP, this is also added to the issue of seeing when points are being captured, where the Huttball is, etc. Everything about the game becomes math, whether we realize it or not.
So two things today. One is a really neat article I found on Massively that has James Ohlen talking about some PvP formulae and their ramifications, as well as his approach to healer Sage/Sorcerer nerfs. The second thing I found was a website run by former Dev of Star Wars Galaxies and Ultima Online, Raph Koster. He shows his understanding of game theory and math in numerous articles, presentations, and Powerpoint slides. Read more…
Some Love for PvP and Gunslingers/Snipers in Patch 1.2.1
Hello fellow slingers-of-guns and other, not-as-cool-people! (just kidding…but it’s true)
The patch that went live today, Patch 1.2.1, has some nice bonuses for Gunslingers and Snipers in general, but also for Sharpshooter/Marksmanship specced ones. The love comes in the form of 5% damage boosts to a bunch of our main heavy-hitters: Charged Burst, Aimed Shot, Speed Shot, Quickdraw, and Trickshot.
While I don’t personally love Sharpshooter for PvP purposes, as the primarily energy damage-based spec is mitigated a lot by armor at endgame PvP, the other boosts are universal to the Gunslinger and will be nice to have.
Some other universal boosts in this patch are the PvP commendations required for Warzone consumables have been reduced from 20/item to 10/item, back to where they were pre-1.2. This is a great change, as I had basically given up using them on my alts in most situations. On my main, I had used all my Mercenary commendations before the patch on purchasing Medpacs, and I had stockpiled about 90 of them. This store had dwindled down to 30 or so.
For Commandos, Havok Rounds now correctly boosts your healing on Kolto Bomb. Apparently, based on lack of patch notes on Mercenaries, we can safely assume it was only affecting us (/sarcasm on “wow, a bug only affecting the Republic side, that’s new!” /sarcasm off).
Sentinels now correctly have a lowered global cooldown on Cyclone Slash when they have popped Zen in Ataru Form. Again, no mention of Marauders.
Helmets now unify colors correctly. I looked at that and said, “Ohhhh, that’s why my Commando’s helmet stayed blue with a green chest.”
And finally, the item I am super-excited about. “Corrected an issue that prevented players from adding offline players to their friends list.” Hallelujah! From the very beginning this has annoyed me. The whole point of a friends list is to know when someone comes online. How would I know they are online to add them to my friends list, if they aren’t in my friends list?
Now if we can just get a /readycheck, we’ll be in good shape…
What do you think about these changes? Anything you were hoping that would be added fairly soon that still is missing in the game?
Quick updates – April 16th
For all of you Gunslingers and Snipers out there, the Gunslinger/Sniper Advanced Class Guide has been updated for Update 1.2. Also, I have updated several builds:
Dirty Fighting PvP DoTs and Bleeds
I may go back and update more builds, or I may make new ones, but that is all I have had time to fix so far. The DPS Commando is next on my list though.
Good luck and have fun!
Patch 1.2 – What it means for Gunslingers
Hello, my fellow Gunslingers! Wanting to know what Patch 1.2 will do for the Gunslinger class? Well, look no farther, the following are the changes coming and my thoughts.
Read more…
Rhekk
Geldarion
Torvox
The Fanatical Swordsman 