Episode 23 Oh Montana of the Darth Hater podcast is now up for stream and download. Check the bottom of the post for the stream and download links. Podcast notes after the jump.
Intro
Justin Lowe - Sado - @realdarthhater
Joshua Ogborn - Sleeper - @dhsleeper
Ben Stiers - Dover - @doverbs
Segments
Fridays Update: Fan Friday
Dissection of Threat of Peace
Community Poll
Community Poll/Questions for this weeks Podcast
Should death have a penalty? (Ex armor/item degradation, exp loss, corpse runs, etc)
Yes (81%, 254 Votes)
No (19%, 61 Votes)
Total Voters: 315
Community Comments
Teek: XP loss was very annoying while grinding my Jedi in SWG, back in the holo-grind days. It also just felt like another mechanic to make me mindlessly grind. While I loved the pvp aspect of being hunted, the penalty seemed too harsh. Corpse runs are okay but invite corpse camping by other enemy players. I think i would be for item degradation and spawning at a med center. A med center debuff would be okay only if a healing smuggler or other could remove it with a skill. I also feel like item degradation could give crafters more to do. PvP should have no penalty, however if you spawn far away at a med center the time taken to get back into the fight might be penalty enough for the rest of the group.
Caliber: There should be a death penalty. Ideally, the penalty would not be overly harsh and would not involve losing items/EXP. Losing a trivial amount of money would be acceptable, but would hardly be much of a punishment by itself. Corpse runs combined with a rez at the med center (as seen in one of the game play videos for the Trooper where the Dev aggros too many mobs) is the best bet. Time isn't something you have to earn and there is an infinite amount of it. It would also extend the time the player plays, albeit very little. As others have mentioned, armor degradation is a must. It provides an additional reason to avoid death and provides a money sink.
Drudenfusz: Without a death penalty the game could be a bit more challenging without annoying casual gamers.
Jerlot: How about minimal death penalty like small item degradation but then also reward players for staying alive. So the more you play with out dying the more xp you get per kill or something like that.
Arcana: Ive personally always enjoyed games more where there was some sort of fear of death. Without that the games always feel less exciting to me. I think most people can agree that corpse runs are annoying and outdated and I personally don't like just cool down death penalties. I'm always somewhere in the middle on what the penalty should be. On the extreme side you have UO style loose all your stuff to the person who killed you and on the other side you have the more modern wow penalty thats not much more than a wait 5 minutes to get all your stats back. Id like to see something that people really don't want to loose without making them spend 30 minutes trying to get their stuff back. I personally feel my favorite, not that anyone likes them, penalty has to do with experience. I think that's something no one wants to loose, but wont put you out of the fight necessarily either. Now of course this leads to other issues if you want the same penalty associated with PvP. Now griefing can become a major issue. I don't think anyone has developed the perfect solution yet, so Id like to see something new. I want fear of death, without feeling like I should just quit the game because I lost all my stuff or 10 hours of work.
Flagg: I'm in favor of a Death Penalty for sure. Without consequence, the goal is meaningless.
Chet: Guild Wars style Death Penalty would be perfect. While in the flashpoint or other sort of quest/mission/explorable area, death should carry a loss of CURRENT progress, but not a permanent loss of PAST progress. This is key. Do not punish past progression, because of a mistake in current gameplay.
PC Talk Recap from Episode 21
Isavetheday: The one thing you guys did not really go into too much detail about was Directx 11. SWTOR is still a year away, and Directx 11 will be even more used because of the new nvidia cards. Since LOTR is soon (or already is, don't play the game) making a Directx 11 version, and the game is much older then SWTOR; I don't see why it would not be worth it for someone wanting to truely enjoy the game to not spend extra for Directx 11. Direxct 11 will give many new features on top of giving better high end performance, so it would make sense that SWTOR would come with a Directx 11 version on release or very soon after. Personally, I think it is stupid to buy the 200 series Nvidia cards right now instead of buying the 5000 ATI series or waiting for the 400 Nvidia series.
Reliant: Wow. Totally enjoyed you guys geekin out on computer specs. A key thing you missed is the importance of identifying bottlenecks. A computer is only as fast as its slowest component. Too many people waste money on high end components that provide no benefit due a bottleneck elsewhere in the system. Also, don't be afraid of open box components. Most electronics fail in the first couple months or after 3 years (and if it does fail, that gives you an excuse to upgrade again).
Boza: As someone who has been in the Mac world for the past 3 years, its good to hear some PC tech speak. I think it would be a great idea to create a thread/topic about specific hardware recommendations for those who are going to be building a computer for TOR, which because of the discussion of Macs from the release of TOR, will include myself. Maybe something like recommendations for minimum-spec, mid-spec, and max-spec with your complete & specific component recommendations. Just a thought I'm sure some (like myself) would really appreciate it.
Intro
Justin Lowe - Sado - @realdarthhater
Joshua Ogborn - Sleeper - @dhsleeper
Ben Stiers - Dover - @doverbs
Segments
Fridays Update: Fan Friday
Dissection of Threat of Peace
Community Poll
Community Poll/Questions for this weeks Podcast
Should death have a penalty? (Ex armor/item degradation, exp loss, corpse runs, etc)
Yes (81%, 254 Votes)
No (19%, 61 Votes)
Total Voters: 315
Community Comments
Teek: XP loss was very annoying while grinding my Jedi in SWG, back in the holo-grind days. It also just felt like another mechanic to make me mindlessly grind. While I loved the pvp aspect of being hunted, the penalty seemed too harsh. Corpse runs are okay but invite corpse camping by other enemy players. I think i would be for item degradation and spawning at a med center. A med center debuff would be okay only if a healing smuggler or other could remove it with a skill. I also feel like item degradation could give crafters more to do. PvP should have no penalty, however if you spawn far away at a med center the time taken to get back into the fight might be penalty enough for the rest of the group.
Caliber: There should be a death penalty. Ideally, the penalty would not be overly harsh and would not involve losing items/EXP. Losing a trivial amount of money would be acceptable, but would hardly be much of a punishment by itself. Corpse runs combined with a rez at the med center (as seen in one of the game play videos for the Trooper where the Dev aggros too many mobs) is the best bet. Time isn't something you have to earn and there is an infinite amount of it. It would also extend the time the player plays, albeit very little. As others have mentioned, armor degradation is a must. It provides an additional reason to avoid death and provides a money sink.
Drudenfusz: Without a death penalty the game could be a bit more challenging without annoying casual gamers.
Jerlot: How about minimal death penalty like small item degradation but then also reward players for staying alive. So the more you play with out dying the more xp you get per kill or something like that.
Arcana: Ive personally always enjoyed games more where there was some sort of fear of death. Without that the games always feel less exciting to me. I think most people can agree that corpse runs are annoying and outdated and I personally don't like just cool down death penalties. I'm always somewhere in the middle on what the penalty should be. On the extreme side you have UO style loose all your stuff to the person who killed you and on the other side you have the more modern wow penalty thats not much more than a wait 5 minutes to get all your stats back. Id like to see something that people really don't want to loose without making them spend 30 minutes trying to get their stuff back. I personally feel my favorite, not that anyone likes them, penalty has to do with experience. I think that's something no one wants to loose, but wont put you out of the fight necessarily either. Now of course this leads to other issues if you want the same penalty associated with PvP. Now griefing can become a major issue. I don't think anyone has developed the perfect solution yet, so Id like to see something new. I want fear of death, without feeling like I should just quit the game because I lost all my stuff or 10 hours of work.
Flagg: I'm in favor of a Death Penalty for sure. Without consequence, the goal is meaningless.
Chet: Guild Wars style Death Penalty would be perfect. While in the flashpoint or other sort of quest/mission/explorable area, death should carry a loss of CURRENT progress, but not a permanent loss of PAST progress. This is key. Do not punish past progression, because of a mistake in current gameplay.
PC Talk Recap from Episode 21
Isavetheday: The one thing you guys did not really go into too much detail about was Directx 11. SWTOR is still a year away, and Directx 11 will be even more used because of the new nvidia cards. Since LOTR is soon (or already is, don't play the game) making a Directx 11 version, and the game is much older then SWTOR; I don't see why it would not be worth it for someone wanting to truely enjoy the game to not spend extra for Directx 11. Direxct 11 will give many new features on top of giving better high end performance, so it would make sense that SWTOR would come with a Directx 11 version on release or very soon after. Personally, I think it is stupid to buy the 200 series Nvidia cards right now instead of buying the 5000 ATI series or waiting for the 400 Nvidia series.
Reliant: Wow. Totally enjoyed you guys geekin out on computer specs. A key thing you missed is the importance of identifying bottlenecks. A computer is only as fast as its slowest component. Too many people waste money on high end components that provide no benefit due a bottleneck elsewhere in the system. Also, don't be afraid of open box components. Most electronics fail in the first couple months or after 3 years (and if it does fail, that gives you an excuse to upgrade again).
Boza: As someone who has been in the Mac world for the past 3 years, its good to hear some PC tech speak. I think it would be a great idea to create a thread/topic about specific hardware recommendations for those who are going to be building a computer for TOR, which because of the discussion of Macs from the release of TOR, will include myself. Maybe something like recommendations for minimum-spec, mid-spec, and max-spec with your complete & specific component recommendations. Just a thought I'm sure some (like myself) would really appreciate it.
Comments
Great podcast as usual fellas. Keep up the good work!
Glad you got the ram issue figured out. Thought it might be a bad ram stick.
It seems you guys dont have a single idea of what the death penalty should be there which will suit you most. Personally (I hope its not too bad to start the same descussion that was there at the poll topic :S ) i am prety discouraged by any item degradation and exp loss as it kills the sence of achievement. When you get a quest reward, for example, a helm i would like to believe that its not going to crack in two next time a patrolling DevilRancore catches me from behind.
The other idea you discussed about having a usable ability in case you do not die for some time. I quite enjoyed the sound of it in the begining but it woulld've been quite frustrating to have an ability you worked for 2 hours and that has a single charge. It would be really getting on my nrves on when to use this OP :)
And no penalty at all is just what you said guys. If there is nothing about death you should be afraid of, then what is the purpose of all this game at all. And SW universe. Everybody just settle down you are immortal anyway. but thats just me ofcourse
So again i guess ill stick to the corpse run or resurection sickness from Kolto tank :)
And again thank you guys for another great podcast :)