Star Wars: The Old Republic

I don't remember if anyones made a post about this and i couldn't find one so, basically if you don't know its a MMORPG of star wars (obv)

I'm a tester and i'm dling it now i'll update this once i've actually played it :p

Anyone that signed up for beta testing before November 11th was given access to a beta testing weekend
I think its this weekend, possibly more
Its too late to sign up now if you arent in it already

I actually thought you could play it right now with the way you can dl it, but when mine finished i was unable to click Play because it was grayed out
Which annoyed me

So i played on the weekend beta, got to level 19 with a sith inquisitor (sith sorcerer after level 10)
Its pretty good

The gameplay is almost exactly the same as WoW, the combat plays exactly like WoW, the skill trees work like WoW's,and you train skills like WoW

But it's alot more then WoW

It has a full story, that is actually interesting
The characters are fully voice acted, so they feel more like characters with a life and problems instead of quest dumpsters
Some of the side quests are actually useful for things other then grinding exp, i had a few that made the main quest a bit easier
However, because everything is voice acted you have to hear every minor unimportant detail that the side quest characters say, at first it really isnt a problem, but by level 15, 200 side quests later, you just start saying "I dont care about how you feel, just give me my objective
Its a good thing i was playing an evil sith where i could pick dialog option that said stop wasting my time and get to the point (or just torture them with my lightning), if i was playing a good character i think i would be annoyed by the side quest givers talking so much
You can skip though the dialog, but it just doesnt feel right to skip it

The quests themselves are all pretty logical in why your doing what your doing, theres none of that "Kill X number of Y because NPC86 tells you to kill x number of y" crap
Well there is, but its as a bonus that you will accomplish as you do your quest by just going to the objective
Most of the time you do things that you would expect your character would be doing as if the game wasnt an MMORPG, it never really felt like i was grinding for exp, even at level 19, it felt like i was playing a story, like a singleplayer/co-op game

Grouping with people is required for certain side quests, manly Heroic quests
Heroic quests are alot like public quests from games like Warhammer online and champions online, but unlike those you dont just jump in the middle, the quest area isnt instanced but the area the quest is in has enemies that will be too hard for you to kill alone, you technically dont have to group up with people, if you see others doing it you can leech off them without helping them and still complete the quest, but its more beneficial to group up
Whenever i was in the area of a heroic quest by myself i would get group invites without even saying anything, and if i didnt i never had trouble finding someone else in the area by just inviting people at random

Instances in this game are done amazingly well, i hope other games copy this because it is great
The whole map (planet) is seamless, theres no loading and no barriers when you enter instanced areas, all you see is a green wall (or red if you cant go into that instance) and when you walk through it, from your perspective, nothing changes, its like walking into any other room
You can still look outside the instance as if you were still part of the main world
When you see other people walk into it they vanish, this includes group mates, you have to walk through to see them
Because of the way it works you can have a single room, or even something as small as a tent, an instance which allows you to do things that MMORPGs never let you do (like kill important quest NPCs for example), the best thing is that the instance saves for you, so if you change something in it, that change is permanent for you (which is something else MMORPs almost never do)

Crafting is done fairly well, the main problem i have with it is that its more of an annoying nuisance then anything else
You get your first companion around level 9 (its not based on level, its based on how far you are in your class story quest, but youll probably be level 9 or 10)
The companion is like a pet, he/she/it follows you around and can fight with you, it also does all your crafting for you (and it can sell your junk items without you having to go find a vendor and spend 5 mins sifting through your inventory for crap items which is really nice)
You can also equip items to it just like you can equip items to your character, and it participates in quest dialog conversations (if it is with you when you start the conversation), which can open different dialog choices
You can keep questing while your companion gathers materials and crafts for you, but that process takes 3-5 mins for every 1-2 items, and it starts taking longer as you level it up your crafting skills
So if you want to be effective at crafting, you have to stop every 5 mins to tell your companion to do more stuff (you can que up the same action multiple times for crafting items, but not for gathering or missions)
And while he is doing that he isnt fighting with you (eventually, when you get your ship, you get a droid that you can dedicate to crafting)

You get a ship around level 15 (again, when you get the ship is based on your class story progress)
There is ship combat, but it isnt that good
I had really high expectations for it when i was going into it, and was disappointed by what it was
You have very limited control of the ship during the combat, it basically flies itself
In one mission, just to test it, i didnt do anything, i started the mission and sat back and watched and it successfully completed itself for me

Spoiler:

It was only the first space mission, where you just have to escort another ship, but still, you should at least have to do something on that one
The ship also has equipable items like your character and your companion
Even though i was disappointing by the ship combat it is nice to have it to have something to do to take a break from questing normally

The ship itself is cool though
It has storage in it
You can walk around in it
Your companions hang out in it
You can travel to planets with it
The traveling is done really well, you sit in the captains chair, pick a destination and see out through the front window as the ship flies, you actually see the jump and when you arrive from inside the ship

PvP is pretty standard, you have 2 sides and both sides have objectives to complete
Mostly defending a point or attacking/capturing a point
I have no complaints with it
I would have liked to see huge warezones
There is contested space though, but i dont think those areas change ownership or anything. they are just open PvP areas

Overall i had fun with it and liked the story
Im not going to buy it when it comes out though
The gameplay doesnt have a lasting appeal to me, it plays like WoW, companions are really the only new gameplay feature, and even that is just a slightly more advanced pet, so while i do enjoy the story i dont really want to do all the combat between the story bits unless that combat is part of the story, like bosses

But if you like starwars story and dont mind MMO combat systems then you will probably like this game



TLDR: I put the parts you should read in bold for those that are too lazy to read it all

I forgot to write about flashpoint missions and how dialog works in a group


Flashpoint missions are group missions, like heroic quests, but more story driven
Heroic quests have little to no story where as Flashpoint missions are self contained side stories
These must be done with a group, you cant even start it without at least 1 other person
They seem to be the most interesting side quests story wise

Dialog in groups works by letting everyone pick their dialog choice, then a random number is generated for each person and whoever has the highest number wins and his character gets to say what he picked
If someone picks a light side choice when you picked a dark side choice you still get points for the side that you picked (dark side in this example) even if the opposite side's (light side in this example) choice was the highest random number (the same is true for companion affection)
But the story of the mission is effected by those choices, so someone in your party could screw you by picking a choice that makes the mission much harder
I never grouped with people outside of heroic or flashpoint quests, but i think it works the same way even if you were doing the main story quest with someone
I like this system more then just giving the party leader control of all dialog as it makes it feel like your an actual group with differing opinions as the conversation goes on
I wish they expanded on this and had player characters interact with each other a bit during the dialog when players picked opposing/same dialog choices consistently

this game is free-to-play now and me and pat are gonna try it sometime soon if anyone else wants to join

What server are you on seren


And Ill eventually make a post about the game at some point comparing what i remember from beta to what i experience now

Pat1487 wrote:

I wish they expanded on this and had player characters interact with each other a bit during the dialog when players picked opposing/same dialog choices consistently

I am hoping they ended up adding this, but i doubt they would

Beregon Station (or something like that)

Begeren Colony is the name

I made a human jedi knight
His name is Arthourio
Im level 4

I made up a backstory for the character as i was making him, since for some reason seren picked an RP server
I might post it later, but it seems like there was no need to make a story because people dont RP as much as ive seen, only a few people were RPing, most werent even though its an RP server
Back when i played Dark Age of Camelot i played on an RP server for a bit, and there everyone RPed, people took it so seriously that they would report others to the GMs for not RPing

yeah that's the one
my username is YrthOfHed, can't remember my characters name its something pretentious though.
actually i got curious so i just checked, its "Magnuus"
note the double u
aww yisssss double u

I'm a lvl 8 jedi consular

come play with us people!

Im lvl 10 now
I picked jedi guardian as my advanced class

Before level 10 theres very little restrictions on the game the only major 1 is that you dont get sprint which isnt really a big deal
But at level 10 a bunch of restrictions get thrown on you

You start receiving reduced exp for completing missions and killing mobs, i think its a 20% reduction to all exp gains,
The thing is though that they say "Free-to-play players receive reduced exp" when they couldve said "Subscribers get bonus exp" both ways are basically saying the same thing, but the 2nd way of saying it wouldnt have annoyed me
So im going to think of it as subscribers get 20% more exp rather than f2p players getting 20% less (although i will never consider getting an exp booster because of it)

Before level 10 you can use as many medical droids as you want
But after level 10 f2p players get 5 medical droid uses and thats it, if you want more you have to buy them from the cash shop

Also your companion can only learn 1 skill
The way it said it i thought you could only learn 1 crafting skill (but learn gathering skills unrestricted), cause it says something like f2p players can only have 1 crafting skill, it meant 1 skill total and since i picked synthweaving first i cant gather mats to actually craft anything until i get another companion that will have to learn the gathering skill, which means i will have to wait until i have that other companion until i can gather anything
So when you pick your crafting skill make sure you pick the gathering skill for the crafting skill you want first that way you can get mats prepared for when you have a companion that can actually craft
I think i can drop synthweaving and get the gathering i need for synthweaving, but im not sure if f2p players can do that

And a restriction that was there before lvl 10 but that doesnt restrict you until after level 10 is that you only have 2 quickbars
Which means you can only have 24 skills at any 1 time
24 is a lot, but i dont really want them all on 2 bars, it wouldve been nice to spread those 24 out across at least 3 bars, i like having lesser used stuff on the 3rd bar, stuff like 1hr buffs, or call mount, or return to town, as well as items
I have a feeling this will become a problem at later levels, the build im planning to go with uses active 16 skills so it might be ok for me



Overall, since you can play every mission even the side ones, the restrictions arent that bad
The reduced exp 1 is the 1 i hate the most, 20% slower leveling means your going to fall behind the level reqs of missions/areas pretty quickly
Worst case is it might get to the point where you cant go to the next area, but theres no missions left for you at your current area so youll have no choice but to grind on mobs till you level enough to move on to the next area, hopefully that doesnt happen though

Normally that kind of reduced exp thing would make me quit the game but this game is so fun that im willing to overlook it and pretend that subscribers get 20% more rather then f2p get 20% less, as long as it doesnt get to that worst case

i actually hate how they say it that way. like instead of making subscribers feel appreciated because they are paying, the dev's choose to make the f2p people feel worthless and inferior.

i didn't realize the penelties became significantly worse thats really obnoxious

Me and seren are level 12/11 now

I found out that you can buy some cash shop stuff from the auction house, i put the exp boosters the game gave me as quest rewards up on there at 10k a piece since that was around the price others put them up for (was lower actually)
If they sell then in theory you can get the exp boosters again through questing on an alt and get a bunch of money fairly quickly by using the auction house to send your main character the money (by having your main put a crappy item up for sale at however much money the alt has and then buying that item with the alt), deleting the alt and repeating the process

And if you asked "why not just trade the money to your main" well f2p people cant trade or send mail but you can use the auction house which means you can sort of bypass the trade restriction
If i put something up for 1 credit and you buy it right after i put it up it would be like a trade
Its ghetto as hell and someone could steal the item if they happen to search the auction house at the right time, but its better than not being able to trade at all
A safer way to do it might be to put the item you want to trade up for 5k (or 10k or w/e), have the other person put an item up for 5k and then buy each others item
This method only works with people you trust and between your own characters though
I wish i knew about it earlier because me and seren made the mistake of taking the wrong items (i took medium armor which seren couldve used and that ive already replaced with equivalent heavy armor that i got as a reward from the last heroic mission we did [although i did take the mods out of the medium armor and threw 1 into that heavy armor to make it slightly better so it wasnt a complete waste], and seren took a lightsaber he cant use but that is much better than mine and i could use it) since we thought we could trade at the time

We cant do the auction house thing now because the item binds to your character after a certain amount of time, an hour or 2, which is a really weird way of having the item bind to a character, usually it binds on equip or on pick up, i dont think ive ever seen bind on countdown before
Also seren, you can take the mods out of that orange lightsaber you cant use and put them into your double-bladed lightsaber if you havent already, they are probably better than the mods you have with the starting saber, that way the item wont be a total waste



And we need more people to play, we did a flashpoint and got stuck for a bit on 1 boss, so more people would be good
Its free to play: http://www.swtor.com/free and if you like starwars at all you should play it with us
Im a jedi guardian (tank) and seren is a jedi shadow (melee dps) so try to make any class other than those

its also really fun
my holdups with it so far are:

when you die in an area your respawn point is very possibly horribly inconvenient
once you specialize your class at level 10 you can't re-choose. this makes sense though, in swtor it appears like there are 4 classes but reality is more that there are 8 and you have to choose which of those 8 you want at level 10
the f2p limitations aren't bad enough to make me stop but they are bad enough to be annoying (which is obviously their goal).


on the plus side you have:
the transit system is awesome. its hard to explain how a transit system could possibly be awesome, but this one is. its not interactive but its like an awesome mini animation
lightsabers -- everything you can hope for
drops that are interesting and good while not being stupidly rare -- in our instance we got 3 (or it might have been 2) oranges. rarity of things goes (i think) grey, green, blue, orange, purple
almost all objectives have a bonus objective that you complete along the way to the objective. like say its reach point X disable some things and kill guy Y, you might have a bonus objective to kill all his minions along the way. somehow this makes it (a little) less boring just working your way through a place
the skill trees look interesting. ive never been good at handling a lot of skills before but ive also never really played a game like this. so far i like my skills (im basically a rogue)

so yeah
someone else should play with us, it seems like the more the merrier. you dont really have to even be good (mark)

Serenity09 wrote:

its also really fun

Well, the combat itself is pretty standard, its not bad but its nothing new, in my original post about the beta i said the game plays a lot like wow but its more than wow
The story is what makes it really fun, all the combat is framed by the story, even the mini stories of the side quests, and the dialog options are new to mmos but that is also related to the story, so i figure if you dont like starwars you wont be interested in the story, which means you wont like it as much because all your left with is the wow like combat

Serenity09 wrote:

when you die in an area your respawn point is very possibly horribly inconvenient

Yeah, this is mainly a problem in flashpoints, me and seren started like 3 elevator rides away from the room we needed to be in and since it was a boss we kept dieing, and the elevators were spread out pretty far
When you die in the open world you are put back to the last quest hub area you were in, which can be far from your quest area, but you could go somewhere else since you have choices in the open world, unlike in flash points where you have to run back to where you were, but the death penalty is pretty light, you have to walk back and pay a small fee to repair your equipment, so you dont lose exp or anything
The fee is really small, even with 3 orange items the most i ever had to pay is 67 credits, and that was after dieing a bunch of times in the flashpoint

Serenity09 wrote:

once you specialize your class at level 10 you can't re-choose. this makes sense though, in swtor it appears like there are 4 classes but reality is more that there are 8 and you have to choose which of those 8 you want at level 10

It warns you that the choice is final when you go to pick it, but yeah most games that have advanced class picking at later levels let you change what class you are

Serenity09 wrote:

the f2p limitations aren't bad enough to make me stop but they are bad enough to be annoying (which is obviously their goal).

The reduced exp thing is most annoying
But the 2 other annoying things so far are your companions only get 1 crew skill each, which makes crafting really damn hard (the prices for mats in the auction house are pretty expensive so you cant take up the slack by buying the stuff you need to craft)
And you get no bank or any way to store items, 25% of my inventory is full with stuff i have to hold on to and im only level 12 with a single gathering skill, higher levels will cause your invenotry to fill up like crazy with no way to store anything

on the plus side you have:

Serenity09 wrote:

the transit system is awesome. its hard to explain how a transit system could possibly be awesome, but this one is. its not interactive but its like an awesome mini animation

Yeah its the best transit system ive seen, it really shows on coruscant
It works like the flight masters from wow, but it adds a lot by making the area you fly through more dynamic and impressive
My only complaint with it is that there are 2 person speeders but you cant actually ride with someone, bot even your companion gets in the passenger seat (or at least droids dont), but that complaint is really minor
However you can see other players if they are in front or behind you while flying, or if they pass you

Serenity09 wrote:

drops that are interesting and good while not being stupidly rare -- in our instance we got 3 (or it might have been 2) oranges. rarity of things goes (i think) grey, green, blue, orange, purple

We got 3 oranges in 1 flashpoint mission, a lightsaber, a medium armor chest piece, and a shield the rewards for heroic missions are orange, and you can use commendation tokens to buy some oranges
We may have gotten lucky with those oranges, but they were all named after the flashpoint and we got them after killing a boss, so they might not be random
I think oranges are the best item type you can get for a really long time simply because you can mod them, which can upgrade them
Legendaries (purple) are better but i dont think you can get any until at least level 30

Serenity09 wrote:

almost all objectives have a bonus objective that you complete along the way to the objective. like say its reach point X disable some things and kill guy Y, you might have a bonus objective to kill all his minions along the way. somehow this makes it (a little) less boring just working your way through a place

The bonus objectives are stuff that ussually just get completed as you go
But they can get annoying because they start updating with new objectives which may mean backtracking away from you actual quest point
The bonus objectives in this game are like the main quest objective of other games (kill x number of y mobs)
Where as the main quest usually has you doing something else

Serenity09 wrote:

the skill trees look interesting. ive never been good at handling a lot of skills before but ive also never really played a game like this. so far i like my skills (im basically a rogue)

I am bad at using many skills too
I dont like using the 6-0 keys on my keyboard because i have to move my hand too far to reach them (i dont even really like the 5 key but i use it anyway)
Ill rebind those keys to other keys, like q, e, z, x, c, then i take keys from the 2nd quickslot bar and bind those to f, g, r, middlemouse, mouse4, mouse5
If i have more skills then that i dont use them, ill just click them, or ill set up a macro that combines multiple skills into 1 key

Serenity09 wrote:

someone else should play with us, it seems like the more the merrier. you dont really have to even be good (mark)

Yeah... well, being good would help, but w/e, it is more about having fun then owning everything
Just because me and seren are level 12/11 doesnt mean you cant join in, level 1-10 is pretty quick to level, and we would go back and help out if you wanted, or i would at least, but dont rush through dialog just to catch up to us because the story is the best part of the game, your going to end up catching up to us no matter what so take your time and enjoy the story

The game was patched

The important things are:

Quote :

Additional rewards have been added to many missions throughout the game. Players will find new Experience Boost items added to the end of important mission chains and some class missions

Additional rewards have also been added to some Space Missions, including Space Experience Boosts and Weekly Access Passes (useful for Free-to-Play and Preferred Players).

Adjusted reductions to experience gains for Free-to-Play and Preferred players. There will no longer be a flat reduction rate applied at level 10. Instead, experience reductions will begin at level 12 and will gradually increase to the original flat rate at level 20.

Free-to-Play and Preferred Players no longer have a lower cap on the number of Commendations they may accrue compared to Subscribers.

You can sell exp boosts for 10k a piece on the auction house, maybe 15k, i sold the 2 that i got from earlier for 10k each, since its only a 25% boost and it only lasts an hour its pointless to use imo

Being able to get weekly passes from doing missions is cool, but i bet the drop rate on them is really really low

The exp reduction adjustment is good, the full reduction doesnt take effect until level 20 now, and level 12-19 isnt as reduced

The removal of the cap on commendations is great, i was actually starting to get close to the cap


Im probably going to put $5 into this game at some point to get preferred status
I dont know what ill use my coins on yet though, you get 450 coins for $5
You can get a speeder and the skill to ride it with that and have enough left over to get an inventory expansion which leaves you with 1 coin left and seems to be the most efficient way to spend almost all of the 450 coins
But i dont really want the speeder, it feels like cheating being able to ride a speeder at such a low level, if rather just level to 25 and unlock it normally

Other than that though i dont know what else to get, i dont want to get something that only lasts a week or anything that is temporary and i dont want cosmetic stuff, the only thing i can think of that would be useful is the crew skill unlock or 2 inventory space unlocks but that would leave me with coins i cant use

I played a tiny bit earlier, mostly to see the patch and look at the cartel market (real money store)
it was nice getting full experience again. not really noticeable, just nice to not think that you were only getting partial credit just cuz you didnt want to pay $12 a month.
i still dont understand what commendations are or what they do

i think i will spend some money too -- either $5 or $10
this was actually the reason i went on earlier, to figure out what i wanted to get
but the store is really empty... there are a few unlocks, which im considering, that pat mentioned. i think if he gets a speeder i will too since thatd make sense
also some robes which i kinda wanted because they had 3 item slots which makes them upgradeable and keeps em relevant as you level... until i turned in a quest and got some that also had 3 item slots, now im undecided on whether or not ill get em but probably not
there's also packs which contain random items and a few onetime use things (like the exp boost). im considering this very barely...

I played to the next area (the black sun area), i think i did 1 or 2 more side quests that i happened to complete along the way of doing the main story quest, i did 1 main story quest
I handed in all the quests we finished from the last time we played too
It was enough to get me to level 13 but you dont get any new powers at 13 so im not really any more powerful than i was before
I also bought a red color crystal from the auction house (for 45 credits) so my lightsaber is red now
You can get any standard color you want for 45 credits so if you dont like green you can get yellow, blue or red (i didnt see purple)

Commendations are currency which can be used at a commendation vendor, theres 1 infront of the senate tower down a ramp to the left (facing the tower)
They sell a few orange and blue items (the blue pants i want cost 15 commendations, and the orange stuff is 17 commendations) as well as upgrade components (tier 4 blue upgrade stuff is 9 commendations each so they arent cheap), the one on coruscant sells level 13-16 stuff and requires coruscant commendations (so the ones you got from tython are worthless), im pretty sure i saw a double bladed lightsaber that would probably be an upgrade for you
You can get them as quest rewards, which you should do if the items they offer you as alternate reqards are worse than what you currently have
Make sure you spend them at level 13-17 to fill in gaps in your gear or upgrade stuff because they will become worthless as you move on (like the tython commendations)

I would never buy in game items like armor or weapons with real money because i consider it to be cheating, more so than buying something like a speeder (since a speeder doesnt help you fight, it just saves time)
And dont take this as me being against cheating, im just against spending money to cheat
Also i just realized that f2p players cant equip purple items, you have to buy an item in the cash shop to be able to equip them which is BS, it costs 900 coins (which is a little less than $9)

Ive decided to definitely not get a speeder, you unlock the speeder at lvl 25 anyway (you get sprint at 15 or as soon as you spend at least $5, which is good enough until 25) and you can buy adaptive speeders from the auction house for 5k-6k credits (adaptive items will level up, so at level 40 when you get pilot 2 that old speeder will have pilot 2 stats)
I may get the crew skill upgrade for 420 and just have 30 left over forever (i guess i could use it on the valor boost at some point)
I would spend $10 but the math doesnt work out, you always end up with 100-200 extra which is too much to spend on boosts imo (even if you buy all inventory modules, since 6 of those is exactly 1050, you end up with 175 left because you can only get 5 modules)
What i really would want is: the crew skill, an inventory module, and additional cargo space but it costs 1070, which is 30 more then what $10 gets you
The preferred bundle has 2 of those things, but it also has stuff i dont want, like the legacy name display thing and the speeder

So im leaning towards $5 and just getting the crew skill, unless you really want a speeder before level 25, cause if you get 1 i will just so you dont have to walk or wait for me, but i would rather just get it normally at level 25

Quote :

I would never buy in game items like armor or weapons with real money because i consider it to be cheating, more so than buying something like a speeder (since a speeder doesnt help you fight, it just saves time)
And dont take this as me being against cheating, im just against spending money to cheat

i dont really feel the same
i think cheating is stupid when it takes away from a person's enjoyment of the game. ie if i was playing the sc1 campaign and type "poweroverwhelming" at the beginning of every level id enjoy the game far less --> stupid
but for those who hate the gameplay and just like the vids --> not stupid (although i guess their equiv would be "nocowlevel")

when you have to pay to cheat its a bit more complicated but ultimately i still think it depends on whether or not you would actually enjoy having the cheat and whether or not its cost is worth it to you. if both those are true, power to ya, otherwise stupid

it gets even more complicated when its multiplayer. at this point i think paying to cheat to be better than others is obnoxious (how obnoxious depending on how much better etc)
this part is constant in SWTOR cuz the people with subscriptions are basically paying to cheat to get more exp etc etc relative to the f2p players

so when it comes to paying to cheat for a piece of equipment vs a speeder

Spoiler:

i dont really think badly (or worse) of either

Serenity09 wrote:

i dont really feel the same
i think cheating is stupid when it takes away from a person's enjoyment of the game. ie if i was playing the sc1 campaign and type "poweroverwhelming" at the beginning of every level id enjoy the game far less --> stupid
but for those who hate the gameplay and just like the vids --> not stupid (although i guess their equiv would be "nocowlevel")

I never said it was stupid or not stupid to cheat
Theres reasons for why you would want to cheat, thats why i said im not against cheating in general

Serenity09 wrote:

when you have to pay to cheat its a bit more complicated but ultimately i still think it depends on whether or not you would actually enjoy having the cheat and whether or not its cost is worth it to you. if both those are true, power to ya, otherwise stupid

Paying to cheat reinforces a terrible business practice
Lets take Dead Space 3 as an example because its perfect for this
In dead space 3 you can buy resources from EAs cash shop with real money, these resources can be used to craft items, powerful items, its paying to cheat
Its taking advantage of those that want to cheat because they already paid $60 for the game

I guess when i said "im against paying for cheats" i meant "im against companies charging for cheats" and if they do ill refuse to buy it
I dont want others buying cheats either because when they do it shows companies they can do stuff like that which could make them and other companies watching them think something like "heres a great money making idea, we can make the game impossible and charge $10 for each piece of a super armor set"

Serenity09 wrote:

it gets even more complicated when its multiplayer. at this point i think paying to cheat to be better than others is obnoxious (how obnoxious depending on how much better etc)
this part is constant in SWTOR cuz the people with subscriptions are basically paying to cheat to get more exp etc etc relative to the f2p players

so when it comes to paying to cheat for a piece of equipment vs a speeder
which are also kinda the same... a speeder makes you move through the game faster through the empty spaces and thus you probably wont take in the scenary/art of that scene as much as if you werent on a speeder while better equip makes you move through enemies faster which makes you appreciate your "fighting technique" less. depending on the person i could easily see someone thinking the speeder was a lot more of a hack than the item

i dont really think badly (or worse) of either

Having a boost to exp and having a speeder (a faster way to travel) does 1 thing, and 1 thing only
It saves time, so your spending real life money to save real life time, and with time saving stuff like that, to me, it comes down to which is more valuable to you, your time or your money, those are both real life things so exchanging 1 for the other isnt cheating
However, there is a side effect to that and that is that your also saving time in game compared to those that didnt spend money, but what advantage are you really getting there, you end up finishing the game sooner and walking less (your going to stop and look at scenery if its interesting no matter what so that was a pretty weak point), but you arent any more powerful than a f2p player is when he eventually gets to the same point, so its not really cheating
The reason i said buying the ability to use a speeder at level 10 "feels like cheating" is because you unlock it at 25 as f2p. which was the level you originally unlocked it at before the game went f2p, so unlocking it at 10 is cheating compared to the way it worked before the game changed over to f2p, not compared to how it works now

As for buying gear, it makes you more powerful than a f2p player would be, it bypasses the need play parts of the game to get resources and/or gear, and depending on the game, it could let people buy stuff that is better than anything that f2p players could ever get
It saves time too, but in a way that gives you an advantage over f2p players, a statistical/numerical advantage, which i dont agree with at all, even if its just a small advantage, because like i said above, it gives the wrong idea on how to do a business model


My example about the super armor might seem ridiculous, but we are slowly getting to that point as more and more $60 games are putting in cash shops or real money auction houses that let you buy in game power

Seren and i havent played this in awhile, i dont know if he has been playing or not but im still level 13
Im probably going to start playing it alone if i dont hear from anyone about wanting to play together

I'm level 10, finished the first part, still trying to figure out what I'm doing

awww yisssssss

the downside is that im not gonna be around at all until the monday after this next one on a big fam vacation bonding thing

Mark what class are you
And ill wait to play i guess

do you guys still play this

yes
but
after this week. do you wanna play too?