[Screenshot] Failure At Jumping Becoming A Problem
Making the Default Interface Behave: Unit Frames
Step 1: Show party frames as raid frames. Oh, excuse me, I mean “Operations Frames.” At least that way it looks more grid-like, and your own frame also shows.
Step 2: Right click on the little “people” button on the top of your “operation frames” to bring down the “unlock” menu.
Step 3: Move that sucker wherever you want. Then you can right click on the little people again to get a menu to lock it back down.
Hopefully this will help you this weekend. Happy beta-ing!
Edit: A while after posting this, I ran into a very complete video on the topic that includes instructions on resizing the actual health bars (make them bigger vertically or horizontally). Here it is!
My Fashion Sense Gets Awesomer
This be my bounty hunter. Look, an awesome facial tattoo! And uh… wtf? Is that a pocket in my armor for a flask? Cause, you know, I need one.
General Chat Is The Same In Every Game
As heard in General chat:
“When do I get my companion, Mako? … so I can make-o out with her, heh.”
/facepalm
The Uncoordinated Agent
I am not a Super Mario star. For those of you coming from Murloc Parliament, you know full well that I can’t jump on or off anything with any sort of accuracy.
Imagine my distaste when I quest required me to do TWO! jumps off a pipe onto another pipe, and if I failed, I had to go all the way to the beginning of this long pipe bridge.
I tried twice. I fell in the gross stinky water. Then I dropped the quest.
Seriously, jumping is bullshit. Dammit, this is an MMO, not a, uh… FPS? Portal? Whatever.
I am just going to accept that I can’t jump worth a crap, and I will drop all associated quests and thumb my nose at any missed rewards (which might be just as ravishingly awesome as my aforementioned Skunk-In-Bra outfit). And hope that I don’t hit a situation where my failure at jumping brings my progression to a grinding halt.
(To those of you participating in beta this weekend, HAPPY BETA-ING!)
[Poll] How Should Spoilers Be Hidden?
This hasn’t come up yet, because I haven’t posted any spoilers, but it WILL happen! And I want to make sure it is APPROPRIATELY HIDDEN for you guys.
For a very short spoiler, I will simply black it out, like so, and you will have to highlight over it. This low tech method will black out the offending spoiler, and it will also be blacked out in mobile theme and in feeds. (A “reveal spoiler” button will not really do much in a feed or mobile theme.)
For a long spoiler, I will put SPOILER in the title, followed by a warning at the start of the article…
On the SITE, I will simply cut off the article so it only displays the SPOILER WARNING portion of the article on the front page of the blog, and you can choose whether to click through or not.
For a long spoiler in the FEED, that is what I need help on.
Option 1: I truncate the feed for spoiler articles only. It will be a pain in the ass to click through if you are behind a firewall, but there is little danger of accidentally seeing something you don’t want to.
Option 2: I don’t truncate the feed for spoiler articles, since truncated feeds are annoying. I will put up “SPOILER” in the title and a big SPOILER WARNING at the beginning of the article, but you will be responsible for averting your eyes and moving on to the next article in your feed reader.
There’s a poll embedded here, so you will have to click through (yuck). HALP.
[poll id=”2″]Edit: If you are interested in what I consider a SPOILER, see the Spoiler Policy, under construction. TL;DR a spoiler is a revelation about the story, not about mechanics.
The Higher Level Gear I Get, The Awesomer I Look
I call this outfit “Skunk Wearing A Bra.”
Silly Things From Beta: Character Creation
YES, I KNOW I AM LAME. I know that it’s stupid to spend the first night in regular-beta goggling at the character creation screen.
But holy crap, guys… there is a lot of stuff I didn’t realize before. A twi’lek is not necessarily a twi’lek. Available features for a character species can change by faction or class. SERIOUSLY.
So, let’s have a disclaimer here that I’m not the most thorough tester and things are liable to change…
Cyborgs
- Each class has its own cybernetics. Seriously. It’s not just per faction, it’s by class.
- The smuggler ones are still old and “clunky.” Hopefully they get an overhaul like some of the others that look incredibly swanky. Because right now I’m so wishing I could be an imperial agent.
- Male and female of the same class appear to get the same cybernetics.
- Male facial hair is “attached” to cybernetic options. Which I hate but I suppose that not all beards go with all implants.
Humans
- Imperial Bounty Hunters can have face paint (tied to cosmetics slider in females)
- Sith Warriors and Republic Troopers can have facial tattoos (tied to cosmetics slider in females)
- Edit: Sith Inquisitors have “slave scars”
Miraluka
- For whatever reason, the females at least have far fewer hairdos than the other human-like-races. But they still have many varieties of the mohawk (?!)
Rattataki
- Edit: Sith Inquisitors have slave scars.
Sith Pureblood
- Edit: Sith Inquisitors have slave scars.
Twi’lek
- Edit: Sith Inquisitors have slave scars.
- Lekku pattern is tied on one slider with cosmetics (for females). I hate that. Thought I’d share.
- Edit: Empire/Republic have different Lekku Markings
Zabrak
- Empire and Republic have different tattoo options.
- Empire has option of red skin. Republic does not.
- Imperial zabraks have red rings around their irises (which looks EVIL).
- Edit: Sith Inquisitors have slave scars.
- All the Republic female tattoos include the chin and remind me of a goatee or 5 o’clock shadow. So sad.
If you want to see a long video overview of character creation, go here! It’s far better than any of MY screenies would be. Oh wait, it turns out I couldn’t properly take screenies and ended up installing fraps. I hope to be less fail soon.
Normal (not limited to weekend) Beta: Making Testing Practicable for the Casual Player
Last weekend, a bunch of my friends got into beta. Their weekend consisted of picking up hot pockets and not leaving the house. My weekend was very different, as you saw. Besides the computer issues, I am still a parent, and I can’t just drop everything and throw myself into testing. I guess I could have skipped WoW raids, but the rest of the weekend was not negotiable.
When giving feedback after the testing weekend, I pointed out that for some players, playtime crammed into a weekend is not possible.
If you think of it, that self-selects the type of player giving feedback. The players who can drop everything do drop everything and test their little pants off. However, these are probably not the casual players that are becoming an increasingly large portion of the market. If you want to get data from casual players, you need a testing schedule that accommodates those players.
I doubt they read my little QQ, but a day after RSVPing for the beta weekend (that all testers were invited to) I did get a second email inviting me to test. Wait, I have already gotten an email about beta weekend… is this a duplicate? Nope, it’s just normal beta.
Oh. Snap.
I will be able to actually participate and be useful! I have a little time after the Little Jedi is asleep. I can play like I normally do, over the course of a week or so, and maybe I’ll notice things that Mr. Power-through over the weekend didn’t see.
I Fail At Beta
The weekend of November 11-13, I beta tested SWTOR. Now that the NDA is up, I can tell what I saw.
I have almost nothing to report. I am super-lame.
Friday:
Downloaded the client and patch.
Went to WoW Raid.
Went to bed.
No, seriously, I didn’t even log in.
Saturday:
I created a character very quickly and ran around. My frame rate was the suck. Ok, no big deal, I’ll just turn down my graphics. Pew pew, this is fun. A little choppy but fun.
I went back into the character creation screen. Hey, why do these two faces look exactly the same? And these two complexion settings. Hey, why do they look different on my husband’s PC? ACK MY VIDEO CARD.
What if I’m picking horrible facial features for my toons and can’t even see it, but everyone else can see it because they don’t have a craptastic video card? THE HORROR.
Ran to Fry’s. Got new video card.
Back home, tried to install the card and discovered my power supply was inadequate.
Swearing occurred.
Found a power supply around the house (don’t ask) that was better than my current one. But was unable to attempt installation myself because OMG THE WIRES, THE FREAKIN WIRES!
Begged neighbor to help and bribed with cookies. Neighbor could help on Sunday, due to being completely occupied with playing the beta at the moment.
Went to Saturday night’s WoW raid. Then bed.
Sunday:
Took Little Jedi to the park. And lunch.
Got home and the husband took the PC over to the neighbor’s house, so he could help us install the power supply and video card.
PC came home. Graphics worked great. Sound didn’t work at all. LOLWUT?
After intense driver reinstallation and testing, discovered that sound worked fine if speakers were connected through the USB port.
Ran to Fry’s minutes before closing to grab an adaptor. Fry’s employees had no flippin clue what I was asking for. Had to bribe Little Jedi with candy in the checkout line.
Fed Little Jedi and put her to bed.
OH RIGHT, and then I got to play the game.
In conclusion:
I have nothing useful to say about much other than character creation and video cards. I hope this upcoming weekend is more productive.