Episode 136 - All the King’s Men

Episode 136 - "All the King’s Men" of the Darth Hater Podcast is now live. Check the bottom of the post for the stream and download links. Podcast notes after the jump.

Download

Intro
Justin Lowe – Sado – @zirak
Pete Trerice – Misenus – @petetrerice
Cameron Wright – Infamous – @camwright
Brandon Watts – Valyrius – @DrWatticus
Steve Orr – Jaspor – @JasporDH

Feature
A recounting of the fallen

Segments
DarthHaterDB Updated to 1.4
- New HK-51 Items, Quests, Bonuses

BioWare Updates Community on Reported Issues
- Missed on last week’s cast due to newness of the patch

Community Cantina Tour
- Lack of convention coverage
- One per each coast

Patch Notes: 1.4.0b 10/2/12

Dev Posts
Allison Berryman: “I asked Damion Schubert to give us a little more information about Cartel Coins. He let me know that Cartel Coins will be accessible by all characters on one account, but that they won’t be directly transferable between accounts. However, there will be some transferable items available for purchase on the Cartel Market.”

Allison Berryman: “Hi everyone, we asked Rob Hinkle (Senior PvP Designer) to shed some more light on why this change was made. As many of you suspected, we implemented this change to reduce the frequency with which players abandon Warzone matches mid-fight. We found that Group Finder queues popping were a major cause of players leaving, and wanted to mitigate this negative impact on Warzones.”

Communuity Question
VegaT88: since makeb is going to bring us extra character levels im gonna bet the house that makeb will come out after free to play goes live. it is my theory that once a free to play player makes it to max level at 50 they will have makeb go live and the reason for this is that it will do 2 things to a free player.

1) it will entice them to pay for the makeb content to continue leveling or

2) get the free player to sub. ( i think that’s what they want in the first place)

so in conclusion it is only my theory that we will see makeb “After” free to play.

what do you guys think?

Comments

  • VegaT88's avatar
    Gamorrean Thug
    • Posts: 47
    #7 VegaT88 Posted 10/8/2012 10:12:44 AM

    another great podcast guys.. thanks for the feedback on the question. and i would have to agree with all of ya.  also i have to ask..

    it seems every time we saw a server merge or the character transfers we saw and nice spike in pop on the server. but with time at least i have seen the numbers drop looking at it at prime time on the fleet.

    now we just had 1.4 with some new content. and yes, some performance issues, but bugs tend to happen after a patch ....nothing new there.

    but this is what i don't get. bioware is consolidating  the over all population on to selected servers. and thats great but every time they do the numbers drop a little more over time. what the H%$& is going on ? lol

  • joeymagz's avatar
    Gamorrean Thug
    • Posts: 50
    #5 joeymagz Posted 10/6/2012 7:55:14 PM

    I really liked the whole portion on the PTS, especially the idea about allowing f2p players to experience the full content on the PTS. I really think that would be a solid way to get more people to really test the content. Great idea!

     

  • Valyrius's avatar
    Gamorrean Thug
    • Posts: 41
    #6 Valyrius Posted 10/7/2012 2:22:43 PM

    The idea about the f2p players on the PTS came up pretty suddenly, and I'm sure there would be some details that would need to be hammered out... but it would hopefully provide more testers and also give them a chance to sample some of the new content and hopefully buy it or subscribe.  Thanks for the compliment!

    -Valyrius Dasea | Operative | The Bastion

    https://twitter.com/DrWatticus
    http://epochgaming.wordpress.com/

  • batmap's avatar
    Nerf Herder
    • Posts: 7
    #3 batmap Posted 10/6/2012 5:19:49 PM

    PTS testing by players can not happen realistically until you can pick any random live-server player, copy that to PTS and play the new content. Otherwise, Bioware seems to be stuck with the same limited group of players that will give a biased viewpoint. And even if all the original player-testers remain as active subscribers.

    Does BW have any method for cleansing inactive characters? Lets say, any inactive character on the PTS for more than three months is removed. If space is the problem, wouldn't that help alleviate the space issue? Did they increase the size of the PTS with all the server consolidations they made?

    I was not on the PTS with my main character, but prior to release of 1.4 patch I could have tested content in full campaign gear. I went to start the PTS and found a brand-new character was required i.e. no copying characters. I would think a happy medium can be found. Wipe all characters after each new patch and copy one character per account that apply to PTS.

  • theunwarshed's avatar
    Dark Lord
    • Posts: 490
    #8 theunwarshed Posted 10/8/2012 5:17:23 PM

    that don't even need to mess with copying live characters over to pts.  all they really need to do is allow players to create max level toons on pts and put in free vendors with the appropriate level gear in order to test all of the content.  that way, any1 can essentially recreate their live character on the pts.  AoC did this years ago, i really don't understand BW's inability/unwillingness to do this very simple thing.  it really leads me to believe that they just don't care after so much time with a joke of a pts in place. 

  • adamwankenobi's avatar
    Spice Runner
    • Posts: 150
    #2 adamwankenobi Posted 10/5/2012 7:18:55 PM

    Thanks for the podcast fellas!

  • Akerfeldt's avatar
    Spice Runner
    • Posts: 132
    #1 Akerfeldt Posted 10/5/2012 4:59:02 PM

    Daniel, the Doctors, Georg, Rich Vogel, Stephen Reid. How soon before James Ohlen and Gabe leave too? So hard to be positive about this game's future.

  • joeymagz's avatar
    Gamorrean Thug
    • Posts: 50
    #4 joeymagz Posted 10/6/2012 7:45:59 PM

    To be completely honest, all of those people were part of the games' rough start. I mean, it was Daniel Erickson that thought that no one wanted group finders or combat logs, Georg is responsible for the gross overuse of credit sinks in the game, Stephen Reid I liked, but the Doctors... The only thing I can say about them retiring is good and it's about time. Their ideas were outdated and nothing fresh was coming from the company with them still there. It really is time for some new age ideas from Bioware.

  • batmap's avatar
    Nerf Herder
    • Posts: 7
    #9 batmap Posted 10/23/2012 3:36:20 AM

    I couldn't agree more. Do these Doctors and others that left even play the game? At least they should be aware what a player expects from an MMO, but reading about these expectations and knowing them first-hand is a world of difference. Not knowing or even ignoring these expectations is the fastest way to have players un-sub.

    Could just be they were between a rock and a hard place... everyone knows Swtor was rushed to market by EA, so jumping ship is probably not the worst option.

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