Posted by Zlatto | 6 Comments

Zlatto’s Bazaar: Looking For 1M DPS… with Crew Skill X!

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…

I swear the info coming out about the game has me spinning around like a Stim-pickled SW:TOR kid.  As I sort through all the of the press articles and wait impatiently upon the Fan Site Summit to happen, I figured I would circle back to an item I read recently that really caught my eye.

From a recent article on MMORPG’s Michael Bitton (potential spoilers – beware!)

The Hammer is one of the new Flashpoints that appears to be more focused on gameplay and puzzles than the cinematic flair present in the previously revealed Black Talon and Esseles. Some bits of group dialogue precede the actual Flashpoint, but once you arrive, it plays more like a typical dungeon run. However, what really stood out about the Hammer was the way Crew Skills were used throughout the experience. Players proficient enough in certain Crew Skills could, for example, re-activate a mining drill in order to break through a wall, circumventing a good deal of the Flashpoint’s trash mobs and allowing the group to beeline for the first boss. Later on, an elevator could be sliced, though no one in the group had high enough Slicing to figure out what that would have entailed.

What I get out of that is, that in some cases, players could be leveraging their Crew Skills within the Operations or Flashpoints for value beyond just gathering resources. 

Posted by Zlatto | 18 Comments

Zlatto’s Bazaar: Habits Of A Successful Merchant Player

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…

“Wealth is power. With wealth many things are possible.”
George Clason (little know fact – he was part Toydarian)

So who doesn’t want to be that player?  The player that never worries about credits, gets to taxi wherever and whenever  he wants and has tricked out their starship with all the best armament from around the galaxy.  When you see that player, its humanoid nature to wonder why not me?  Well, lets talk about why it’s not you, and what you should be planning to change in your gaming ways to be that player in Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Identifying The Change

“Worst of all has got to be the need for some individuals to constantly want to their upgrade gear. They want the best of the best, and no one will stop them. If there’s an epic item on the AH, they want to be the first with it. That’s a pretty huge issue for leveling characters, because (especially at first) there’s a need to differentiate from the pack. This might plague certain people.” – Momus

Now, I would trust this player with my credits only if he kept them in my line of sight the whole time, and I had my blaster out and charged.  But his opinions about economics and MMOs should be required reading for any gamer wanting to make an impact on their server. Momus’s brand of merchant madness can be read over in his column Blaster, Beggars & Credits right here at Ask A Jedi.

Posted by Lethality | 7 Comments

Massively: TOR Crafting Preview

Our buddy Larry Everett, author of Hyperspace Beacon over at Massively, is every bit as big of a Star Wars and MMO geek as anyone. I always enjoy reading his thoughts, and this week especially since he recounts his recent beta experience with crafting in Star Wars: The Old Republic, a subject near and dear to my heart and one which the community is desperate to learn more about!

Larry gives a pretty thorough overview of all of the Crew Skills, and puts together a nice list of harvesting and crafting pairings:

I promised a breakdown of materials and Crew Skills, so here it is to the best of my knowledge. I could not run all the Crew Skills myself, but I did speak to other beta testers who had.

• Armormech uses materials from Scavenging, Investigation, and Underworld Trading.
• Armstech uses materials from Scavenging and Treasure Hunting.
• Artifice uses materials from Archaeology, Treasure Hunting, and Underworld Trading.
• Biochem uses materials from Bioanalysis and Underworld Trading
• Cybertech uses materials from Scavenging, Slicing, Treasure Hunting, and Underworld Trading.
• Synthweaving uses materials from Archaeology, Diplomacy, Investigation, and Underworld Trading.

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.

Posted by Zlatto | 11 Comments

Zlatto’s Bazaar: Crew Skills Configurations

Like the chisel-jawed Bounty Hunter above, my mind is on crafting. Not just the same old general stuff, but the specifics.