Quick Newbie Notes on Raiding in SWTOR

Written by Liore January 24, 2012 // 3 Comments

While I still dawdle around in my leveling, a number of my guildies have powered on through to 50 with the bulk of them hitting the magic number some time last weekend. (As I say snottily to anyone who points out my being merely level 41, “Look, guilds don’t run themselves.” In truth I just really like hopping around my spaceship, crafting and chatting.) On Sunday evening we had 8 level-capped folks online and looking for action, which means it was time to try out an Operation, otherwise known as a raid. I was not able to attend, obviously, but I did listen to them on Mumble and chat about their experiences after, so below is a brief summary of their findings.

How hard is normal mode raiding? We had 8 Cats in Eternity Vault, ranging from two weeks to two days of level-capped gear farming. About half of the folks had raided together before in WoW, and only 7 were on Mumble due to technical difficulties. I think 5 members of the group were different flavors of Inquisitor, which is a little suboptimal. The group killed the first boss and had about 4 attempts on the second one in two hours on Sunday. In another two hours on Monday, they killed the second and third bosses and got in a few attempts on the fourth one. My non-participant conclusion is that degree of difficulty in normal modes is just about perfect for a group of new 50s. Not too easy, not too hard, and a little practice went a long way.

How fun is normal mode raiding? Again, keep in mind that I’ve had limited feedback, but it was generally quite positive. The second boss in particular seemed to be a big hit with people. Listening to the fights, I heard references to mechanics that I was very familiar with from WoW raiding, such as waves of adds at certain health percentages, tank switches, and having to move around to avoid lava. My impression is that boss fights in SWTOR are not hugely different from boss fights in WoW or RIFT, which is pretty much what I expected. There DID seem to be a lot of trash that was a pain to clear, and it was respawned the next day even after their boss was dead.

How buggy is normal mode raiding? Kinda buggy! Occasionally when someone reset a boss by leashing it or using their Vanish-like ability, it would be completely bugged out on the next pull. (Not using mechanics, using them at unusual intervals.) The best bug was, I believe, caused by simply zoning in to Eternity Vault when often at least one raid member would just instantly drop dead. This was amusing at first for the team but quickly drove them crazy with repair bills and just losing time to people running back in.

How profitable is normal mode raiding? My take is VERY. First, the loot system is kind of confusing at first but cool in application. Every member of the team gets a container of some sort when a raid boss dies. Inside that container can be a token for a class-appropriate piece of gear, or commendations which you can eventually use to purchase gear. It kind of sounded like Christmas on Mumble every time a boss died as people opened their “presents”. Technically, I think, this isn’t a whole lot different than when a boss died in WoW and only dropped 2 pieces of gear, but the random bag idea seemed to be more fun for everyone.

The gear itself made my jaw drop. As a relatively new level 50 character, the upgrades are huge. Our slightly undergeared offtank said he literally gained 1000 hit points from upgrading his hat from a boss drop. That may have been a slightly exuberant exaggeration, but everyone was pretty awed by the upgrades.

I reserve my final opinion until I can see it all first hand, of course, but the initial impression is that normal mode raids are right on target!

01.24.2012 // 3 Comments // Continue Reading »

Enough With the Casual Homophobia in Gaming!

Written by Liore January 19, 2012 // 17 Comments

I had a really facinating discussion on Google+ earlier this week about the use of casual homophobic slurs in gaming and why it should be actively discouraged. It made me think about this blog, and how I am hugely into the “politics” side of gaming but I rarely bring it up here. In retrospect, it seems dishonest of me to believe in something related to gaming so passionately and yet not ever mention it.

So, enough. For an inaugural political-ish post, let’s debunk some popular defenses of casual homophobic slurs in gaming.

No one cares if I use it.

I do. My friends do. Lots of people do, in fact, but they may not have the self-esteem and motivation to say anything to you. This to me is the most obvious argument against hurling slurs around. Isn’t life crappy enough? Do you actually intend to bully people, or are you just not thinking about it? Because you are. I cannot stress that enough: whether you choose to believe it or not, someone is hearing you and someone is hurt. It alienates people of all orientations. It drives them away from games. Smooth move, ex-lax.

For me, when I hear someone use “gay” as a perjorative I don’t actually think that you’re homophobic, although you might be. What I think is that you sound like an ignorant hick. I imagine you as someone who is poorly educated and possibly who has a loving relationship with a farm animal. Everything you say to me from that moment on for the rest of your life will be tinged by my image of you as one of the hillbillies in Deliverance. Maybe you’ll never see me again, but if you keep making that impression on those who cross your path.. one day it’s gonna catch up to you, Jethro.

I met a gay dude at a party once and he said “gay” derogitavely!

Cool story bro. Believe it or not, gay people can be homophobic too. But beyond that… the minute you become a member of the LGBT community, this might be a valid argument. Until then, shut it.

Gay means (kindling, happy, annoying), not gay like people.

As a wordsmith and writer, I think this excuse makes me the most sad. Yes, language grows and changes over time. Your intentions aside, however, it’s safe to say that lots of people still use “gay” as an insult to mean “gross like a gay man”. I’ve heard that plenty of times before (oh, trade chat) and I am hardly looking out for it. Given that, let’s look at the word’s usage:

Homophobic Dude: “That fucking gay rogue stunlocked me until I died!”
You, subverting the vocabulary system: “That fucking gay rogue stunlocked me until I died!”

Huh. Looks the same to me. Sounds the same to me. What is the difference? IS there a difference? Because I do not see one. What I see and hear are two people using slurs. There is a saying in the social justice community: “Intent is not magic.” I cannot read your mind, and if it looks like a slur and quacks like a slur, it’s a slur. It doesn’t matter what you meant.

(Honestly, I am pretty sceptical of the whole “gay means annoying now” argument anyway. If you meant “annoying”, why didn’t you say it? No, you used a slur because it is a word with a lot of power and you are REALLY angry about that rogue. Stop pretending that you’re just on the forefront of the English language and admit that you chose it specifically to be a showstopper.)

They shouldn’t bring their sexual orientation into the game anyway.

This excuse is really just plain homophobia, but I find it interesting because it’s a jumping off point to examining just how heterosexual most games are. I think sometimes straight folks don’t realize how much of our sexual orientation is in almost every game, even if we’re not jumping up and down and shouting about being straight. How many games have a quest that involves a male and female in a romantic relationship? That’s hetero. There’s our sexual orientation, right there, hanging out, forcing others to acknowledge it.

Remember when 4.3 hit in WoW and we all attended the Space Wedding of Space Thrall to his Space Woman? Talk about rubbing your nose in it! It is almost impossible to play a game that doesn’t feature heterosexuality in some way. Straight folks are pretty good at putting our sexual orientation in everything we do! Let’s stop being so hypocritical with the whole, “But stop flaunting YOUR orientation!” argument.

Get over it, it’s just the internet.

And this is the most frustrating excuse of all. I don’t even really understand it. It tends to go hand in hand with someone saying, “People are too sensitive now,” which I also don’t get. Is sensitivity some kind of non-renewable resource? 150 years from now, will future generations grow up callous and cold because we used up all the raw civility? (Huh. Be right back, writing sci-fi novel…)

There is something particularly unsavory about someone insulting you and then telling you to like it. If you insult me, I’m going to be upset! I’m going to think less of you. I may or may not call you an asshat. If you don’t like that, maybe YOU should get over it.

In short, using casual gay slurs while gaming makes you appear uneducated and cruel. It hurts people around you, whether you see it or not, alienates your fellow gamers, and brings up bad memories and sad feelings.

And if you see someone use a homophobic slur, call them on it! I am bad about this myself on occasion, but making things socially awkward for the slur-er is the best method of enacting change we have.

01.19.2012 // 17 Comments // Continue Reading »

The Case Against Damage Meters

Written by Liore January 12, 2012 // 4 Comments

The more time that elapses between me and my hardcore raiding days, the more of an MMO luddite I become. I mean, I am an internet nerd who loves working with information streams and optimizing processes, and one of the things I liked about WoW in the first place was the openness of data. How much threat do I have? How much dps was I doing in this particular five seconds of the fight? How much damage does my bubble mitigate on average?

As with a cross-server LFD system, though, while I like the idea of a detailed combat log and damage meters I rarely like the implementation. I had a somewhat heated discussion about this on another site and the argument in favor essentially came down to: “But how will I know when other people are being terrible without damage meters?”. What I didn’t see is a good reason why we all need to be policing each other for poor video game performance.

I mean yes, if you are one of the top ten World of Warcraft progression raiding guilds in the world, then statistics and numbers and performance evalutations are definitely tools of your trade. However, the reason why there are fights with such tightly tuned enrage timers, for example, is BECAUSE players have so much information and are able to min-max to such a minute degree. If a group is able to determine the exact DPS per person needed to kill a boss and enforce it by only bringing players who meet that standard, game developers feel obligated to punish groups that are 1% off that mark.

An end-game without damage meters could not have that degree of finesse, and while it’s not very hardcore of me to say it.. I would be okay with that. Maybe I’m getting old and soft, but I would be interested to see large group content where the keys to success are teamwork, practice, and people who enjoy playing their class and know what they’re doing even if they’re wearing a slightly suboptimal hat because it looks pretty. Not that there should be no place for ultimate min-max raiding, it just doesn’t have to be the overwhelming design ethos.

That all being said while I think hardcore raiding has made damage meters seem like a game requirement, I don’t think these folks and their hobby are actually the problem. The problem is that while it’s reasonable in context for a top 5 world raid leader to examine logs and assist/berate people who are 1% off their target numbers, this attitude trickles down to the pug dictator who starts spamming slurs when someone is performing below maximum expectation in a Baradin Hold random. We, the players, generally don’t seem to know when to stop using game data to beat each other over the head.

Fortunately, I think there are plenty of options for a compromise on this issue. I would like to see personal damage meters, and Bioware has expressed some interest recently in adding that exact thing to SWTOR. I like optimizing my characters and improving how I play them, and my data nerd side would enjoy having access to numbers for this purpose. I also like the idea of a scoreboard shown perhaps at the end of a flashpoint, much like that seen at the end of a warzone. Give me aggregate totals at the end of the session, and not just damage output but healing and damage taken and interrupts and dispels. (Heck, give medals when certain goals are reached, like SWTOR PvP.) Finally, I do think SWTOR needs to add some kind of “cause of death” report to indicate to a player why they died, as some of the fights can get pretty chaotic.

I’m not saying that everyone should be forced to play with Willy The Window-Licking Melee Hunter, but there are certainly ways to tell when someone is doing nothing (no movement or casting, or extremely delayed response times) or perhaps is not sure what to do (running the wrong direction, standing in the ranged pack shooting as a melee class). To go back to the original question, without damage meters will you know when someone is doing 15% less DPS than they optimally could be? Nope! Probably not even a little bit.

And I am perfectly comfortable with that in SWTOR.

01.12.2012 // 4 Comments // Continue Reading »

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