Rifleman Archive
Thread: News from the front! Bowcasters, Rifle skills, Conversions, Respec, etc.
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LecheHombre
Thu Apr 28, 2005 9:12 am
#1
To all those that haven't logged in to live yet:
I logged in to find that all of my bowcasters, which I assumed were going to be turned into CDEF-equivalent recon 'casters, are now assault bowcasters. I put an anti-decay kit on a nice loot bowcaster a while back, and I'm now very pleased that I did. It converted to have better stats than any of my *many* T21's, including 2 pre-nerfs from way back.
Cover and conceal are good but not perfect. The warm-up fizzles out on them for me quite easily, I think because the server hasn't resolved that I am not in motion. If I wait a good 10 seconds+ after going prone or stopping moving, I have a pretty good chance of getting them to go through. Conceal shot doesn't instantly draw melee mobs to your position any more. I tried it on some huurtons on dantooine, and every time I used it, the target would run about 10 meters in my direction, and then wander around a bit randomly. If you take your time, you can get a decent string of shots in before it wanders on top of you. Or, if you have ranger or SL for terrain neg. greater that 50, you could crawl between shots and have good results, I presume.
My weapon conversions went roughly as expected (other than the bowcasters). I suppose that folks with legendary weapons won't be too pleased, but I think that this will be far better for the game on the long run. Existing speed and damage slices both resulted in good final products.
My respec experience went smoothly. I went from Master Rifle / Master CH / SL 3010 to Master Rifle / Master CH / BH 0400. I have since used existing rifle xp I had banked to get BH 0403. Once I hit BH 0404, I think I'll probably respec that to BH 0440. Tips: use the drop all button to go to 0 in everything, and then take skills from the bottom up one at a time to make sure you aren't using elite respec points on novice stuff. Make *sure* that you have as many as possible of your respec points used up as possible before you hit the OK button. If you drop to no skills, hit OK, and then try to respec in 12 hours, only your existing skills (nothing) will be converted, not what you had before you started in the beginning. If by some accident you remove all your skills (not likely as long as you know what you are doing), I'd recommend submitting a ticket, and performing various rain dances, praying, and/or sacrificing small animals.
Food, pet, and other conversions: Most of my foods were geared towards mind regen/substats (brandy, canape, ahrisa). These generally provide a mind pool regen increase now, with a shorter duration than previously. My ~45 minute brandy turned into 9 minute brandy. The thing is that combat actions now take action pool, so these will be generally less useful unless you are also a CM or Doc. I believe ahrisa provided a regen boost to both action and mind, and gave a health boost, but I could be getting it confused.
For any CH's, upon calling any BE pets you have, you will most likely get the choice to adjust the creature's level or stats. If you choose level and the creature has light armor or any sort of out of the ordinary boosted resists, your pet will most likely become an unusable CL~200 monster. It'd be really nice if you could see the results of both conversions before you decide, but at this point you have to pick one and you are stuck with it. I'd recommend waiting or doing all stat adjustments.
I'm not sure what happened to pet stims. They don't list a power now, and don't seem to work, but they are all still in inventory.
I never had novice medic, so I don't know what happened to actual stims.
Overall, I'm quite pleased with how things went. I was really worried that they were pushing it out far too early when they made the announcement, but they kicked a lot of the glaring stuff out on TC before it went live today. There certainly are still bugs and things to be balanced, but I think that the system as a whole is better now that it was in the old system. Not to sound overly critical, but I think that most of the drastic cries of "I HATE THE CU!!11! THE SKY IS FALLING!!1!!1 THIS SUXXORS, I'M QUITTING!" are generally from people who are ticked off that you can no longer get buffs, put on armor, head to dathomir, aggro as many rancors as possible, put on a looping area attack macro, and walk away from the PC for 10 minutes to come back and find that they qualify for their next uber-level. If you are a level-headed fan of the old system, then I'm sorry, but generally I've heard a whole lot of tantrums without a level of justification to support it.
Hope everybody that gets on is pleased with the changes, as I have been!
I logged in to find that all of my bowcasters, which I assumed were going to be turned into CDEF-equivalent recon 'casters, are now assault bowcasters. I put an anti-decay kit on a nice loot bowcaster a while back, and I'm now very pleased that I did. It converted to have better stats than any of my *many* T21's, including 2 pre-nerfs from way back.
Cover and conceal are good but not perfect. The warm-up fizzles out on them for me quite easily, I think because the server hasn't resolved that I am not in motion. If I wait a good 10 seconds+ after going prone or stopping moving, I have a pretty good chance of getting them to go through. Conceal shot doesn't instantly draw melee mobs to your position any more. I tried it on some huurtons on dantooine, and every time I used it, the target would run about 10 meters in my direction, and then wander around a bit randomly. If you take your time, you can get a decent string of shots in before it wanders on top of you. Or, if you have ranger or SL for terrain neg. greater that 50, you could crawl between shots and have good results, I presume.
My weapon conversions went roughly as expected (other than the bowcasters). I suppose that folks with legendary weapons won't be too pleased, but I think that this will be far better for the game on the long run. Existing speed and damage slices both resulted in good final products.
My respec experience went smoothly. I went from Master Rifle / Master CH / SL 3010 to Master Rifle / Master CH / BH 0400. I have since used existing rifle xp I had banked to get BH 0403. Once I hit BH 0404, I think I'll probably respec that to BH 0440. Tips: use the drop all button to go to 0 in everything, and then take skills from the bottom up one at a time to make sure you aren't using elite respec points on novice stuff. Make *sure* that you have as many as possible of your respec points used up as possible before you hit the OK button. If you drop to no skills, hit OK, and then try to respec in 12 hours, only your existing skills (nothing) will be converted, not what you had before you started in the beginning. If by some accident you remove all your skills (not likely as long as you know what you are doing), I'd recommend submitting a ticket, and performing various rain dances, praying, and/or sacrificing small animals.
Food, pet, and other conversions: Most of my foods were geared towards mind regen/substats (brandy, canape, ahrisa). These generally provide a mind pool regen increase now, with a shorter duration than previously. My ~45 minute brandy turned into 9 minute brandy. The thing is that combat actions now take action pool, so these will be generally less useful unless you are also a CM or Doc. I believe ahrisa provided a regen boost to both action and mind, and gave a health boost, but I could be getting it confused.
For any CH's, upon calling any BE pets you have, you will most likely get the choice to adjust the creature's level or stats. If you choose level and the creature has light armor or any sort of out of the ordinary boosted resists, your pet will most likely become an unusable CL~200 monster. It'd be really nice if you could see the results of both conversions before you decide, but at this point you have to pick one and you are stuck with it. I'd recommend waiting or doing all stat adjustments.
I'm not sure what happened to pet stims. They don't list a power now, and don't seem to work, but they are all still in inventory.
I never had novice medic, so I don't know what happened to actual stims.
Overall, I'm quite pleased with how things went. I was really worried that they were pushing it out far too early when they made the announcement, but they kicked a lot of the glaring stuff out on TC before it went live today. There certainly are still bugs and things to be balanced, but I think that the system as a whole is better now that it was in the old system. Not to sound overly critical, but I think that most of the drastic cries of "I HATE THE CU!!11! THE SKY IS FALLING!!1!!1 THIS SUXXORS, I'M QUITTING!" are generally from people who are ticked off that you can no longer get buffs, put on armor, head to dathomir, aggro as many rancors as possible, put on a looping area attack macro, and walk away from the PC for 10 minutes to come back and find that they qualify for their next uber-level. If you are a level-headed fan of the old system, then I'm sorry, but generally I've heard a whole lot of tantrums without a level of justification to support it.
Hope everybody that gets on is pleased with the changes, as I have been!
KundoJet
Thu Apr 28, 2005 9:38 am
#2
LecheHombre wrote:
Not to sound overly critical, but I think that most of the drastic cries of "I HATE THE CU!!11! THE SKY IS FALLING!!1!!1 THIS SUXXORS, I'M QUITTING!" are generally from people who are ticked off that you can no longer get buffs, put on armor, head to dathomir, aggro as many rancors as possible, put on a looping area attack macro, and walk away from the PC for 10 minutes to come back and find that they qualify for their next uber-level. If you are a level-headed fan of the old system, then I'm sorry, but generally I've heard a whole lot of tantrums without a level of justification to support it.
Hope everybody that gets on is pleased with the changes, as I have been!
Very glad things are going well in Live. For the record, while there were certainly whiners who didn't like losing God-mode status, most of the posts I read from actual testers had perfectly legitimate concerns about the combat mechanics, interface, etc., and those individuals - well-reasoned and intelligent - became progressively more anxious during testing when those concerns did not appear to be getting addressed in any of the various patches we saw on TC-Ep3. Fortunately, many of them have been addressed over the last 48 hours (at least to some degree) in the code that has gone to Live, so it sounds like people will be feeling better about it. The biggest problem may have been a lack of communication around issues during the testing process, but even if they weren't answering, it seems clear they were listening.
/kowtow Devs and Community Relations (but don't get cocky - still LOTS to do! lol)
Mujadaddy
Thu Apr 28, 2005 11:29 am
#3
KundoJet wrote:/kowtow Devs and Community Relations (but don't get cocky - still LOTS to do! lol)
Quoted for Enlargement
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