Bugs And Technical Difficulties Pwn My Raiding Experience

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

After croaking last time due to distraction over bad names, I resolved to be a good, competent DPS this time.  We were doing 10-stack Dreadtooth, and that is srs bzns.

I was early for the raid because, dammit, I was prepared.  Then I managed to step on my surge protector and my PC shut off and I had to reboot.  The computer was seriously pissed off and gave all sorts of admonishments that I should turn off windows PROPERLY.  Yes, I know, shut up, just load or I’ll be late!

On the first pull, half my buttons on my naga stopped working.  Numbers 7 through 12, just dead.  Well there goes a significant portion of my rotation.  And, of course, I croaked.  The buttons came back online, as they always do, for the second attempt.  I have no earthly clue what makes them come back.  Usually they come back after a combination of reloading the game, reloading the naga software, jamming the buttons repeatedly, and swearing.

Second try, on which we downed him, the boss literally disappeared for me.  I had him targeted but was unable to hit him with any ability.  So I hit my bloodthirst for the group and after that just sat there as decoration.

I find it difficult to mentally bounce back from frustration like that, and I know that my raiding performance suffered for it in TFB.  It’s just such a DOWNER to have shit go all wrong.

Nothing I could do about the disappearing bug.  Shit happens.  However, I can fix the naga problem by, um, buying the new naga!  The 7-12 keys have pooped out on me enough times in the last few months that I can legitimately say that the naga has failed me for the last time.  The new naga has a redesigned thumbpad which will hopefully fix this annoying issue.  The nostromo is still working beautifully.

Hall Of Shame: Bad Names

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

In an effort to point out all the ridiculous people out there that lack common sense, I have expanded the hall of shame to include bad names.  Enjoy!

terriblenames

These two were in our pug.  Could NOT stop laughing.  In fact, I croaked trying to get screenies.  I’m a moron.

Appearance Designer Sale! (There Go My Cartel Coins)

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

Straight from Musco:

Hey folks,

Over the next ten days, starting tomorrow, we are going to be offering a 50% off sale within the Appearance Designer! Here are the details:

Start: 11 AM CDT Friday, September 13th
End: 11 AM CDT Monday, September 23rd
The Sale: All Appearance Designer changes and Appearance options will be 50% off. Note that subscribers will get this discount in addition to their normal subscriber discount!

-eric

Um, GO GET IT!  Even if you don’t want to get a change now, you might want to pick up the unlocks that you think you might use later (I did).  If you’ve been hankerin for a species change, this is the week!

Please don’t turn yourself into Barbie.  There are enough of those.  Kthx.

Second Bounty Hunter Week

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

I haven’t done ANYTHING for the second Bounty Hunter week.  I’m so lazy!  And I probably won’t.

My world-event participation reasoning, after the initial “see all the content” pass, goes something like this:

1) Is there a pretty outfit involved?  If Yes, go to 2.

2) Will it take an unreasonably long time to get said outfit? If no, go to 3

3) No, really, just how hot is this outfit?  If “rly hot” ok, fine, grind the event.

I have already received my bounty hunter armor which is “rly hot”.  It was also available at “newcomer” [edit: oops, not friend] level which I consider to be a reasonable but not excessive amount of work to get.

Screw the hat, it looks so badass with a scanner.
Screw the hat, it looks so badass with a scanner.

If it had been a few rep tiers up, I probably would not have bothered, because the armor was for an alt and not my main.  Having said that, I’m still completely done getting what I want from the bounty hunter guys, so I see no need to repeatedly planet-hop after I’ve already seen all the event content once.

So now, I’ll just sit back and wait until the next “rly hot” armor is introduced in some way.  Any day now…

The Fleet Always Provides Fodder For The Hall Of Shame

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

Added these over the last few weeks:

impbottoms

New Must-Have Legacy Stuff

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

Guys, this stuff just got added in the latest patch.  Totally unexpected and awesome.  How I’m going to scrape together the credits and/or cartel coins, I have no idea, but I will find a way.

That way will probably involve dailies for the cash to buy things on the cash side.   I was going to use the 50% first-time-in-game-subscriber-cartel-coin-buyer-discount to buy a BIG PACK, and then use cartel coins on the unlocks that I could, but that was delayed.

Quick Travel Time Reduction.  With a 25 minute base, 3 ranks of reduction, each rank at 5 minutes, we’re looking at 10 minute quick travel.  This would save me a lot of time, especially in areas where the taxis don’t quite meet up with each other (such as North Belsavis).

This is my top pick and I got it last night.  Each rank can be bought with credits or cartel coins.  The amount of credits increases (100, 200, 300) by rank, but the amount of cartel coins remains the same (75 each rank).  I decided to do a combo and bought the first rank with 100k credits and the remaining 2 ranks with cartel (75×2=150cc).

Fleet Pass Time Reduction (to zero).  Lemme see if I have this right.  Subscribers have a 9 hour cooldown now.  There are 3 ranks of time reduction unlocks at 3 hours each.  So it’s a fleet pass available on no cooldown.   For whatever reason, this can only be purchased with credits and not cartel coins, so start running those dailies.

As the proud owner of an authenticator, I already have 1 hour cooldown fleet passes in my inventory, but zero still trumps one hour, especially when you don’t have the annoyance of remembering to buy new passes when you use them up.  And then get stranded somewhere with no pass.  Not that this has ever happened to me.

I will definitely be getting this perk but, since it’s not an emergency and I can live with the 1-hour passes for a little longer, I have time to make sure I’m financially stable before investing credits in this.  It is also embarrassing to run out of repair money mid-raid.  Not that this has happened to me either…

Guild Bank On Personal Starship.  I already have the rest of the starship junk on my ship, but I’ve always parked on the fleet specifically because of the guild bank.  Well no more.  So long, fleet losers, I’ll see your lag and load times in hell.

Given that I’m no longer GM of anything and no longer paw through the gbank on a daily basis, this one can wait a while until I manage to casually gather the cash or find myself rolling in cartel coins.

Did I miss anything?  What are you excited about for this patch?

Looking For BSOCK In All The Right Places

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

After being thoroughly disappointed with the empire-side boytoys, my assassin met Andronikos Revel, pirate of mystery.  Rawr.

revelcloseup

But she wasn’t ready to settle down on a moisture vaporator farm and pop out horned offspring quite yet.  On the very next planet, an eligible suitor appeared!

***OBLIGATORY SPOILER WARNING***

Sith Problems

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

You know that a sith is trying to kill you if…

He/she wants to meet you in a tomb, a temple, or the ruins of a temple or tomb.

He/she wants to meet you in his/her office.

He/she wants to meet you just about anywhere, actually.

He/she is in competition with you for anything.

He/she is helpful in giving you information, advice, or items.

He/she is your master or another apprentice of your master.

He/she is your apprentice.

He/she is a Lord/Darth who is an enemy or ally of your master, or that darth/lord’s apprentice.

He/she comes into contact with you in any way.  It’s just a matter of time.

I Paid Credits For This Hat

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

So I invested in a Mira’s headband for my assassin.  I like the way it sits a bit higher above the eyebrow area than most circlets or headbands.

good headband

Things were going well until I got on my speeder.  Is that a visor?  A beak?

headbandonspeeder2

headbandonspeeder1

But, hey, I’m not on my speeder ALL the time, right? I can live with that.

Then I log out to the load screen and it’s doing a lovely job of forehead clipping.

headband clipping

I discovered shortly thereafter that it forehead clips in-game whenever her head is turned. That, ladies and gents, is a deal-breaker.

And the search for the perfect hat continues.

Setting Goals And Priorities For Game Events

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

I love world events, but I am not a fan of the pressure to complete all the things in a limited timeframe.  At times like this, though, I remind myself that I’m an adult and I can simply choose NOT to participate in whatever I don’t want to participate in.  Neiner neiner.

Most WoW events were on an annual calendar, so even though the event would come back, it was on such a long timeframe, continuation seemed impractical.  Knowing full well that I haven’t a prayer of finishing most WoW events, I didn’t do more than dabble in them.1

But SWTOR events are different and better, in my opinion.  Or at least, after a few hiccups, they’re becoming better.

  • Events are Recurring: with the exception of the first two (goddammit), they’ve figured out that people like the ability to continue an event, rather than starting all over from scratch.
  • Events recur often enough.  Once a month or once every couple of months is just about right.  If you miss it because you’re on vacation, you’re not going to be shit out of luck for another YEAR.
  • Rewards are linked to rep that carries over from previous events AND is legacy-wide.  No more doing brewfest on each damn alt.  You know what i’m talking about.
  • Rewards are available at all times.  You don’t need to spend all your tokens now or lose them.  The vendor will still be there even after the event ends.  Shit happens, and sometimes you INTEND to buy something but life happens and you can’t.

I really enjoyed doing the bounties. I chose to do them without really reading a guide and just picking planets as the mood struck me.  I purposely didn’t “grind” or try to pokemon catch them all this time around.  There will be time for polishing off any stragglers that I haven’t finished later on when the event comes back.  See?  My attitude is already improved by the fact that I know it WILL come back and about WHEN that will happen.

So as not to drive myself totally nutto with this event, I set my goal for this week as “newcomer” status for the armor.

Screw the hat, it looks so badass with a scanner.
Screw the hat, it looks so badass with a scanner.

This worked out pretty well.  I spent some days doing a lot of bounties, some days doing a few bounties, and easily made my goal by mid-week.  It was great to then let myself off the hook for the rest of the event.  Any bounties I did after that would be “gravy”.2

Next BH week, my goal is to get to friend status for that awesome-looking pistol-blaster.  Nothing says “I am overcompensating for the size of my nonexistent e-dong” like a comically oversized blaster in each hand.

  1. Which is too bad.  I really liked pissing out horde fires during midsummer festival, but I knew I didn’t have a prayer of getting to them all before the end of the event. ↩
  2. That worked out rather well since I ended up getting the plague and couldn’t play anyway. No “gravy” bounties occurred. ↩