Tag Archives: SWTOR

Those Wacky Internet People

Posted by Steve on February 27, 2012 No comments

Playing a MMO gives you the great opportunity to experience a whole different class of individual on the Internet. The douche-bag. Now this isn’t you ordinary garden variety Jersey Shore style of douche-bag. The internet douche-bag is a special breed. This is very similar to Penny Arcades “Greater Internet Fuck-Wad Theory” (“given both anonymity and an audience, an otherwise regular person can become a “total fuckwad,” i.e., a very disagreeable person.”) except in MMO’s you loose the audience and gain the Pokemon “Gotta collect them all” attitude.

In an MMO, it comes down to stats and gear. If you play online for longer than the average player, you can gain access to all sorts of good gear, higher ranks, and stat bonuses. This can be great when playing the game because it gives you an advantage that may take other players a very long time to obtain. There is nothing wrong with this “gear grind”, except when that douche-bag switch gets flipped in your head and you are suddenly leaps and bounds better than anyone who doesn’t have what you have. Apparently, on the Internet, this means that those people are somehow lesser than you.

In a game where it’s every man for himself, I would think that would be more tolerable (but still douchey). In a team based Multi person match, though, it’s the team you are on that needs to win, not just you. It is in every ones best interest to ensure that the team wins. These gear mongers spend all of their time in game just working to get the best gear possible so they can lord it over anyone who hasn’t spent 90% their game time working towards the best gear. People like this don’t care about the story of the game, or another outside of the gear grind.

So here is the fun fact. Once you have all the greatest gear in the game….what then? I am fully aware that I can spend all my time collecting stuff that makes my character better, but I will eventually hit that wall where it’s “Well, I guess I have all the best stuff, now what do I do?” The answer is “The whole rest of the game!!” there are other character stories, lots of exploring, group missions, operations, etc. Plenty of stuff that doesn’t involve berating those who haven’t spent elventybillion hours getting PvP gear.

What spurred this was an encounter I experienced the other day in Star Wars, The Old Republic. If you haven’t experienced the WarZone areas, it’s a PvP arena where the Imperials ad Republic get to fight for certain objectives. The winning team gets extra points that can be used to upgrade gear and stats. The losers still get points, just not as much. On our server, the empire players have been dominating. They just play better, are more organized, and due to their wining, they have some better gear. This is starting to balance out now that the Republic is catching up, but it’s slow. Many times you can join a match and someone will leave the group leaving the balance at 6 players vs 8. When this happens, it’s pretty much a lost match. Most people will play through to the end anyways to get some points.

TLDR: I met an Internet Douche-bag and had an argument. He got his ass handed to him and we lost a match because of him.

This happened to me and I made a comment about it. Only to be yelled at by another player and told to “STFU” because I was under-geared. That somehow my having less than the top tier gear was causing the match to be a loss. (Mind you, I have won quite a fair share of matches, and have pretty good gear). I mentioned to this person that, if we were to play as a team and work towards a win, everyone would be better geared and it’s puppies and kittens for all! (paraphrasing) The slew of arguments that flowed from this person about how “Under-geared n00bs” were ruining WarZones, made me (and several other players) not want to aid him in the rest of the match. (Naked Dance Party time!*)

Sure enough the very next WarZone we were matched up with this player and 3 others from his guild. The warzone we were on was the Alderaan turret capture map. He asked if I was “Planing to throw the match again”, I asked if he was “planning on working as a team?” Myself and one other player went to capture and hold the left hand turret while he and his guild members, along with two others went to the middle turret. On the left, we had a few invaders that were quickly dispatched and we held the left turret. The max geared Internet douche and his team were wiped out repeatedly and never captured a turret.

I didn’t hear anything else from him.

Remember kids, Wil says “Don’t be a dick!”

*Naked Dance Party in a warzone is were everyone strips off their gear and uses the /dance command. It basically means we know it’s a lose.

Testing FRAPS with SWTOR

Posted by Steve on January 30, 2012 No comments

A long time ago (blah blah galaxy) I tried my hand at some Machinima video capture. For those who don’t know, Machinima is using video game footage, re-edited together to make a video. A lot of folks use the medium to make music videos, some people have ran with it and made full series of funny videos (like Red Vs. Blue). Well, a few years back some friends and I tried to make a series called Stupid Hobbitsess. It was made using the Lord Of The Rings Online game. Unfortunately, the videos were pulled from YouTube because of Digital rights for some of the music used. (less than 30 seconds worth). So now, they only exist on my Hard Drive. I may see if I can get them up here somewhere.

Anyways, I used a capture software called FRAPS. It’s one of the popular choices for Video Game capture. Problem is, back in the day, when I ran the capture on my old system, it would lag the game…..a lot. On a while I decided to try and run FRAPS behind The Old Republic and see what the hit would be. I was amazed to find that there was no lag at all. Now, it is an updated system and FRAPS has been updated quite a few times since then so it may be more streamlined. Below is a sample capture of some in game footage. This kind of stirs the creative juices a bit, well see if anything comes from it.

Ninja Edit: Looks like the old Myspace page for Stupid Hobbitsess is still up with the videos. If you dare venture into Myspace land, you can see them here

SWTOR Crew Skills, or “Corso Shakin his Money Maker!”

Posted by Steve on January 23, 2012 1 comment

Next in my line of talking about Star Wars The Old Republic, Crew skills!! Crew skills are TOR’s form of crafting. In other MMO’s they incorporate crafting in the form of “Hunting and Gathering” where your character would come across materials out in the world(s) and use that material to build armor/weapons/stuff back in some special location. In WoW you could find an Anvil somewhere or cooking fire, etc. You would have to stand next to that location and toil away your time watching your character move his arms up and down.

TOR sought to make that a little more enjoyable. For starters, in general game play they give you a companion to aid you in your quests. The companion ties in to your story line and can change the way the story plays out depending on which companion you use (through out the game, you gain more Crew Members). For crafting, the added the ability to send your companion out on a Crew Skill. This is a mission that your crew ventures out on for a set amount of time, and then comes back with materials used for crafting. While your crew is out, you are free to continue questing un-hindered. They still include the random nodes in the world(s) that you can harvest for materials, but this allows you to pull in specific materials for your crafting by sending your companion out to get them.

The actual crafting part works much the same way. You can send your companion out to make up to 5 items at a time and then go about your business. When he/she is done the items will be in your inventory. The best part is that all the materials can sit in your vault. This is a huge step beyond any of the other MMO’s that force you to carry everything you need and tie you to a work area to build things.

Now, the down side. Unfortunately, not all crew skills are created equal. All of the discovery crew skills (the ones that gather materials) cost credits to send your companion out. Essentially you are paying for them to gather instead of you doing it. This is a double edged sword since you get your materials, and your skill increases, but too much and you end up broke. Except for one skill, Slicing.

Slicing used to be overpowered to the point where it was insane to not have it because it was a steady flow of large sums of money. Sadly, they “fixed” that and brought it down to a slow trickle of money. If you have the ability to run slicing missions non stop, it can still turn you a profit, but it takes some time and you have to face the consequences of a loss from time to time. In the long run you will make money.

The below chart is a great display of which crew skills tie together for crafting (Credit goes to http://www.swtorcrewskills.com):