Posted by Reedyn | 16 Comments

Halls Of Healing: Leveling As A Healer

Each week or thereabouts here at Ask A Jedi, we’ll meditate on the finer points of the healer’s role in Star Wars: The Old Republic. No matter where your allegiance lies, you’re sure to find guidance here in the Halls Of Healing!

I was lucky enough to be able to get into the game on the first day of Early Access and experience the wonderful process that is leveling in Star Wars: The Old Republic. If there is something to say about doing Missions (known as Questing for you ancient cavemen) it is that they can be hard. Yes, you can pretty much forget going up and soloing bosses designed to be taken down with a group, and sometimes you can fail multiple times just doing your normal Class Missions. These type of Missions makes me remember the days back in World of Warcraft with the rare Class quests. They were totally do-able, but sometimes required multiple attempts before you actually learned how to beat it.

Now, where does healing come into all of this? Leveling as a healer has historically been tedious. You usually do much less damage than your tank or damage-dealing counterparts and things just take much longer to accomplish. This holds true for TOR as well – you will have less damage output than the other roles and since some NPCs are actually designed around you nuking them down quickly, making things much more difficult as a healer.

However, there are aspects to leveling that will actually make things easier as a healer. One of them is that NPCs tend to do a lot of damage, especially when you get to the higher levels. The tanks and damage dealers will take more damage and will have to pause longer between fights to regenerate their health and resources – you won’t need to do this as much as a healer.

The other major part is the Companion system. Companions make this game very different in the leveling process from any other MMO I’ve played. Due to the way you can choose and customize your Companion to complement your role and skills, you can mitigate the impact of having reduced damage output. Where damage dealers and tanks might choose a healing Companion you can choose an all out damage dealing Companion or a tanking Companion.

Now, down to what this article really is about: how can you make your leveling in TOR easier and more enjoyable as a healer? Read on for some pro-tips!

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Posted by Lethality | 18 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: How Do You Feel About Companions?

No day would be complete without the breakfast of Jedi: Blue Milk & Cereal.  Every morning, the team at Ask A Jedi will get Force-induced thoughts coursing through your head with delicious issues from around the galaxy! Join in the discussion below to make your voice heard!

Since the very first day that Star Wars: The Old Republic was announced (way back on October 21, 2008, if you’re keeping track,) companions have been advertised as key innovation and a big part of gameplay. Given BioWare’s track record, it made perfect sense that they’d try and bring their master’s storytelling touch to the MMO genre, and companions are a big part of it.

For one thing, it helped allow players feel more immersed in their own Star Wars story. As is often cited, what is Han Solo without Chewbacca? Lando Calrissian without Lobot? Companions of course provided BioWare with another platform for telling the story, and making you feel that much more emotionally invested in your own character through the ones you met and came to know.

But it’s not all guns n’ roses. Some players don’t like the idea that a “pet” is being forced upon them. And while it’s hard to call sentient companions pets due to their story and conversations, there’s no denying that the powers and control BioWare has given them makes them play that way.

At one time, they weren’t supposed to take up group slots. Now they do. In fact, ioWare has gone back and forth on their contribution to combat, and have landed on pretty powerful characters. You can fully customize their gear, yet they aren’t available to you in endgame Operations or Warzones. It’s an interesting choice given the amount of time players may spend with customizing and optimizing them as part of their play style.

Anyway, there are many angles on this discussion but we want to keep it simple. Do you like the idea of companions in an MMO, especially ones who are nearly as powerful as characters? And why or why not? Discuss!

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Posted by Zlatto | 16 Comments

Zlatto’s Bazaar: You Want Me To Get This?

Zlatto’s Bazaar is the one-third Wall Street, one-third criminal empire and one-half gossip rag. You need to keep up on the Bazaar if for no other reason than to keep an eye on your competitors. Don’t be a Ho-tah and visit often.  Your comments are encouraged, especially if they make me credits…

Ok, before I get into my bi-monthly rant, I feel the need to share something that is on my mind and quite possibly on the mind of 95% of the player base. Is it just me, or is the shot below the most frinking depressing image you can see on a daily basis?

 

Back To Bazaar Business!

Love it or hate it, Gathering is a necessary part of the crafting cycle in MMOs, be them sandbox or theme park games.There are many implementations of gathering. One of the most common – which we know TOR has as well –  is node gathering.  Now, the gang at BioWare has also gifted us with companions, and one of their functions is as crafting and gathering minions. In a few of the videos we’ve seen both the character and the trailing companion stop at either an exposed node or a dead creature/droid to harvest. That’s a nice twist where your companion can stop and do the dirty work, while you keep on truckin’.

From a non-combat point of view, what does walking around with a companion actually gain us besides one less crew member crafting or doing missions?
I know having a companion out impacts your combat, but is real-time gathering the only thing they are bringing to the party?

So what do you gain (or lose) by not picking it up yourself?  Do you or your companion have different chances at different results?  Do your companions all have the same skill level as your charactger? If skill level factors into the resources to be found then we could be missing out.  Now, I have no idea on how the nodes resources will be generated.  Is the value in the node determined when it generates in the game world, or does our gathering skill influence what you get out of a node?

Lets walk through my concerns using an imaginary Lava crystal node as we imagine adventuring across Mustafar (which is of course, not one of the launch planets!)  It will have regular Lava Crystals of course, but on rare occasions maybe an “exquisite” Lava Crystal can be mined from the same node. If the gathering system generates all resources in the node outside of any player influence, then the value of the node is set when spawned and the skill level in gathering from the above node is moot, except to determine if it can be gathered.  So having my character with skill Y gather the crystal node will have no impact on the resource gained versus having my companion with skill Y-20 gather it.

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Posted by Shockum | 5 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Will Your Companions Influence Your Decisions?

No day would be complete without the breakfast of Jedi: Blue Milk & Cereal.  Every morning, the team at Ask A Jedi will get Force-induced thoughts coursing through your head with delicious issues from around the galaxy! Join in the discussion below to make your voice heard!

In the past few days, we’ve talked about both morality choices and your companions. Are you going to be the respectful Jedi, or the sadistic Sith? Are you going to use a companion that compliments you, or one that will entertain you?

That brought up an interesting question, and I want to see what you think about it. Will your companion’s personality affect your morality decisions?

BioWare is known for allowing you to gain, or lose, affection with your squad members based on your ultimate decisions. You’ll be able to make your team love you, or hate you.

Just as BioWare is giving us numerous options for companions, their personalities are going to be wildly different too. You might be a Jedi, but you’ll probably have one who likes when you make dark decisions, and then still another that prefers light side choices. There will be ones who are happy if you just go for credits, and those that prefer you to stay in the middle, avoiding the extremes.

Personally, I’m all for just basing my choices on what my character would do (it’s how I voted in Sunday’s BM&C). Preferably, I want my companion to side with my choices to boost their affection.  But what if it doesn’t?

I’ve always liked learning the backstory of various companions that I’m teamed up with. It’s adds some spice to the game, and gives more life to your ragtag crew. Will I miss out on this if they don’t like me? Will I actually make my character’s decisions just so my companion’s DO like me?

But, what about you? Are you going to have all the say in the decisions you make? Or, will your companion’s personality have an effect on how you decide to handle a situation?

 

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Posted by Shockum | 19 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: How Will You Choose Your Companion?

No day would be complete without the breakfast of Jedi: Blue Milk & Cereal.  Every morning, the team at Ask A Jedi will get Force-induced thoughts coursing through your head with delicious issues from around the galaxy! Join in the discussion below to make your voice heard!

If you look back into the history of BioWare, the idea of companions, or your “team,” has been a strong subplot for games like Mass Effect, Dragon Age and of course Knights of The Old Republic.

So it was a safe bet that when Star Wars: The Old Republic was announced, this idea would be integrated into the story here as well. One key difference here in TOR, however, is that we’ll be given the option of picking just one companion to take with us while we explore, and quest, on each planet we land on.

Currently, the official Companions page lists just one companion for each class. But it’s been stated and shown that each class will have a wide variety companions to choose from. However, only one of which we’ll be able to take with us at any given time (and the rest abolished to the crafting station!)

That raises the question: How will you choose your adventuring companion?

If you’re like me, you’ll go with the one for the sheer entertainment value. If you’ve read my articles, you know I’m going Sith Inquisitor. And if you’ve been following TOR at all, you know Inquisitor’s get Khem Val as a companion. He seems dark, loyal, and downright fearsome. I love it.

But what about you? Are you planning to use the companion that compliments you? Maybe like to tank or heal for you? Or, like me, look at the fun and entertainment factor various companions will bring?

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