Some people were quite mad, and I do get being disappointed if you specifically took time off to play or something... but then I always say: Don't plan too much of your life around video games! You just know this stuff is never going to work on day one anyway. For me, it just means that I won't be able to play the new content over the long Easter weekend like I'd been hoping to, but instead it will go live just as I have to go back to work on the Tuesday. Bleh.
Anyway, speaking of never planning things around video games, I was totally planning to write about the patch today but now I'm kind of coming up short on that front. To comfort us a little, Bioware posted the preliminary patch notes for 5.2, so let's talk about those a bit. Not the obvious stuff, like the new storyline and operations boss, because most of us already know about those anyway. But even if you didn't, they'll be much more fun to talk about once we've actually seen everything in its full glory. Throwaway one-liners are much more fun to analyse in advance.
Updated Class Story Introductions: The introductory scenes for the original eight class storylines have been significantly updated and improved.
This was a funny thing to see up in the "highlights" section. Someone called this out on the forums too and Eric went on to clarify that they added moving cameras and stuff to these like they have in the more recent content. I find this oddly intriguing. On the one hand I'd rather they spent the time on more content and bug fixes than this sort of thing, but on the other I do love the base game very much and can't fault them for wanting to keep it fresh and interesting to new players. Better than a WoW-style Cataclysm in any case.
The audio that plays when a Group Finder queue is ready has been improved to be more noticeable.
This has the potential to be a great quality of life change, considering how soft that noise has always been. I just hope they haven't replaced it with a loud trumpet or anything like that.
Custom HK-51 appearances will now appear properly during Chapter IX: The Alliance cinematics.
Funny, I was just playing through that chapter on the only character other than my main who has HK-51 and was wondering why his customisation wasn't showing in that scene. Of course now I'd actually have to unlock HK on a third character to actually see the update... or replay the chapter I guess.
All enemies now have a Command Experience value when killed.
This sounds like massive news to me and I'm not sure why everybody isn't talking about it. I mean, unless I'm reading this wrong, it will mean that weak and strong enemies will now also give CXP (though presumably not very much). If so, that would be fantastic. The fact that most mobs you kill don't currently grant any CXP is the one thing that has prevented the system from feeling like a true continuation of regular levelling in my opinion. Can you imagine all those swarms of weak mobs in uprisings actually giving you something? I just hope this doesn't herald another phase of everyone just mindlessly farming mobs until Bioware has to nerf the numbers again.
Defeating the Cartel Warlords in Scum and Villainy in 8-player Nightmare Mode will no longer also grant the Achievement for defeating them on 16-player Nightmare Mode.
This has actually been fixed now, but I like that Vulkk caught the devs struggling with their own new terminology here and still calling master mode nightmare originally (I do this all the time because I like the old names much better).
Completing Uprisings on Story and Veteran difficulty will now grant progress towards the General Uprising Achievements “Initial Uprisings (Story), Initial Uprisings (Veteran), Second Uprisings (Story), and Second Uprisings (Veteran).”
Funny thing is, I actually got one of those achievements the other day already, so they can't have been all bugged... or maybe someone implemented this fix earlier already without telling anyone.
Kolto stations will now respawn when an entire party dies during an Uprising boss encounter.
Yes, thank god! I've only tried my hand at pugging story mode uprisings a little, but this was a major pain in the butt for any group without a healer, because it meant that you basically got one or two attempts at a boss and then it was game over because you'd have no access to heals whatsoever anymore, making the encounter literally impossible for your current group.
Galactic Starfighter Daily and Weekly Missions now award Unassembled Components. Daily Missions award 8 and Weekly Missions award 20.
Woohoo, even more reasons to keep doing that GSF weekly! I kind of get the impression that they waited with this one to see if people kept playing GSF just for the CXP, but then they saw participation numbers drop again and decided to throw that extra incentive in there. I'll take it.
Unlearned Schematics can no longer be equipped in armoring slots.
What is this I don't even...? I'm not sure whether I'm more confused by this having been a thing or by the idea that someone must have actually tried to stick a schematic into an armoring slot to bring the bug to people's attention.
The tireless engineers at Czerka Novelty Labs have released a free software update for the Czerka Crate-O-Matic that incorporates a Zakuulan crate into the device’s repertoire. Czerka has refused to confirm rumors that this same update introduced a bug into the device wherein it may, in very rare cases, disguise a user as a potted plant.
Man, now I really wish our old guild leader hadn't stashed the "guild Crate-O-Matic" away in his personal cargo hold before quitting. Maybe we can talk him into handing it over...
Invisible assassins are no longer hiding in Chapter XV of Knights of the Fallen Empire. Players can no longer be instantly killed by interacting with certain weapon lockers in the Chapter.
But what about those in chapter sixteen?!
Nerf calfs around the galaxy have become strangely hungry as of late…
Mysterious hint about a new event maybe? But what do hungry nerf calfs have to do with anyhing...
For the nerf calfs; I point you to the fact that there's a mysterious hidden 10 Points in the "Pets" category of Achievements that can't be currently accomplished. ;)
ReplyDeleteBut is that new?
DeleteIt's been in the game for a while now, but similarly to the Zenith Achievements from a while back it's broken because the Nerfs aren't in the game properly yet. Three Nerf calf pets and a Nerf portrait - which says it is unlocked via Achievements - can also be found in the Decorations list.
DeleteHeh, Reading Patch Notes with Shintar! I enjoy this much more than just reading them by myself. :)
ReplyDeleteI've actually been pretty bad about reading patch notes since they stopped having them right there on the launcher to read while patching. Usually I just do something else while waiting for the game to patch and then just jump right in. But hey, if you can't actually play the content yet... :P
DeleteI'm notoriously bad with reading patch notes, too. But when they turn up on Going Commando In going to read them, of course! :)
DeleteI imagine all the PvP'ers did a quick search for the word "nerf", and then when the next word wasn't "Merc", got incredibly disappointed!
ReplyDeleteAlso, you brits get Easter Monday off? America is such a heathen country these days they don't give time off for that anymore, I'm so jealous!
Still feels pretty heathen compared to where I come from (Austria), where pretty much every holiday except the national one is based on some Christian celebration.
DeleteYou might be surprised. Yes, we have days off for the two main Christian festivals, but I think you'd find we're much more "heathen" than your own country. These days we're very secular, and there are very few people who take religion seriously. I think in the latest polls there are only six countries in the world less religious than us. Funnily enough, even the religious aren't religious: about half of the people who self-identify as Christians say they don't believe in God.
DeleteAnd we balance out the religious holidays by also celebrating that well-known Commie holiday, May Day, with a day off (though we don't have a parade of tanks).
Well, I'm pretty happy that they're not releasing a patch that they don't consider to be ready. Maybe that's my past in software QA talking, but I'd much rather have a good patch come late than a poorly done patch released on time.
ReplyDeleteIf they'd have delayed ME:A by a couple of weeks, for example, Bioware would not have been in the situation they found themselves in. Then again, even Blizz has had issues with releasing products before it was ready (like Diablo 3), so it's not a perfect world.
Oh, I don't fault them for delaying another week to release a more finished product. But less than 24 hours notice don't make for great expectation management.
DeleteWhat it says to me is that they were expecting some last second fixes to work, and they didn't. (Or the build crashed on integration. That happens more than I'd care to admit, too.)
DeleteOr some automatic system check found a bug that was important enough to not want it to go live and too big to fix within a day.
DeleteWe can only guess.