I Can Haz Day/Night?
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Roxanne is sick this week, but we have JJ from TOROcast to fill the third seat and make sure we never go under an hour! We’re feeling feisty this week and we have several lively debates on everything from how much you need to know about the game before the game, whether companions should be money-making machines, and whether day/night cycles are necessary in MMOs.
FACT OR FICTION: Can you pick out the confirmed fact from the tall tales? This week’s host challenge involves the beta testing invites.
FROM THE NEWSNET & BEYOND: Roundup of the most important announcements and news.
- Fri Update 7/1: Bounty Hunter Character Progression video. Carla thinks it’s weird that the Bounty Hunter doesn’t look like Boba Fett. Kathy thinks it’s weird that the Bounty Hunter looks like a pill bug.
- Fri Up 7/8: Damion Schubert’s Dev Blog on maps, maps, maps.
- Supreme Court decision on the sale of violent video games. A win for the gaming industry.
- SDCC July 21-24. Stephen Reid gets accused of parsing words…by using words. David Bass talks about drawing for extended playtime at the off-site location for SWTOR, ME3, Dragon Age 2 DLC. Sign up for drawing on July 12.
- Dev Tracker: Georg says server first achievements highly unlikely.
- Dev Tracker: Damion says you won’t be able to use your companions as money making machines by sending them out to gather constantly here and here.
- Dev Tracker: Stephen Reid says BioWare has heard the community’s ridicule of the speeders and to stay tuned.
- WoW’s F2P trial. WoW’s Lead Designer Tom Chilton tells PC Gamer that “at some point, it may not make sense for us to have a subscription fee.”
- Welcome to Adam, Mark, Jason, Noah, and Chris, our new staff writers. Check out their new articles and opinion pieces on our site.
- Happy Birthday CRR! We’re giving away 10 copies of The Lost Suns #1, all signed by Alexander Freed. Two ways to win: enter our bumpers contest and/or random drawing of new positive iTunes reviews. Details here.
Quick Mentions
- Dev Tracker: Georg on convenience of joining convos vis Holocron here and here
- Dev Tracker: Daniel Erickson on d/cs and the Esc button during convos
- Stephen Reid says they still haven’t decided about RPPvP servers. And it’s actually not a trivial decision.
SITH OR JEDI? We find out which path we walk in real life with The Test of the Bad Haircut
COMMUNITY BUZZ
- Shagon Kabuto asks about using the “wrong” color Lightsaber.
- Decon Jax asks about recent beta fever.
- The Day/Night cycle Throwdown
- HereticZero defends Roxanne’s gaming honor.
Thanks from Corellian Run Radio
- Thanks to JJ for being a guest on our show.
- Thanks to Honey Dijon, Dimbo56, and Chris McFee for writing a positive review on iTunes.
- Thanks to Scotty for lending his voice talents for this week’s guard rail spot.
I actually sort of like the idea of crew skills being a credit faucet. I’ve been playing around with Planetary Interaction a lot in EVE Online lately (and yeah, I caught JJ’s dig about the game), and that’s pretty much exactly what it is. There’s an initial set-up cost and some very minor maintenance expenses, but ultimately, you turn it on and it generates income for you with minimal intervention outside of ferrying your goods to the market every other day or so. You can’t make a lot of money this way, but you can make money, and players who take the time to do it right can make more money than a casual player. Like many systems in EVE Online, the learning curve is kind of ridiculous, but you can use it at some basic level and probably make enough to cover the cost of your ammunition, for example.
I don’t know…it makes sense to me. It reduces some of the money grind for players who have stuck with the game. The longer you play, the more money you accrue. If you prefer to spend your time doing something like PvP, for example, you don’t have to go do a lot of PvE to earn credits to repair your equipment or purchase stim packs. You just turn on the credit faucet and it takes care of your needs.
Great podcast. Thanks for talking about my article and me, and double thanks for pronouncing my last name correctly, Kathy =D.
Another reason for not having a day/night cycle: Nar Shaddaa. When it’s daytime, Nar Shaddaa does not feel the same way. The casinos, neon lights, etc… they’re awesome because it’s nighttime. I want to be able to visit Nar Shaddaa whenever I want, and I want it to feel like Nar Shaddaa every time.
That’s just one example. The quests and areas need the right feel to them, and whether its day or night is integral to the feel.
And I love the new logo; great job, Roxanne!
The new Corellian Run icon looks nice, although I must admit that I prefer the old planet in the background, but all the peripherals and the new text looks better. Plus, your video bumper is simply epic, and the planet is the main reason that looks so good. Didn’t Roxanne design that one as well? That was super cool 🙂
I agree that people really need to give Stephen Reid a break. If you just look at some of the comments he says, then some of the crazy, purposefully troll conclusions people draw from those words, you can’t help but feel sorry for the guy. It’s simply impossible for him to win. The more he talks, the more people try to goad him into a response. That’s a shame to me because he is the reason why we have people like David Bass and the reason Georg and Damion post on the forums more. I’m sure everyone remembers what interaction was like before he signed up with both the fan sites and the forum community.
I would have liked a day night cycle, but if the game wasn’t designed with it in mind and instead we are going to get beautifully created sky boxes that help create the mood the developers are going for at that area of the planet, I’m okay with that. I would actually have preferred a dynamic weather system more than a day night cycle because that is something that I do tend to notice a lot and it can throw me out of the game sometimes. Especially if it’s always raining when I go to one specific area of a map or always snowing my brain can’t help but start to kick in those pesky facts about how weather effects things like geography and quality of life in an area. That does tend to bother me in games with persistent worlds.
I can’t wait to hear about some different personal mounts as well. The one is pretty lame. Hopefully, they will have some cooler models in the future. I also can’t wait to find out more about the last question mark on the holonet. Maybe it will be world pvp stuff. We still haven’t heard much about that.
Good show. Although JJ did sound pretty tired 🙂
Ooh, one more thing. The Sith or Jedi challenge. For me this one depends totally on whether I’m talking to a guy or a gal. If a guy gets a new haircut and it looks bad, I’ll joke about his haircut all day. He won’t hear the end of it, but if it’s a lady, who in general take great care and pride into choosing a new hair style, I’ll generally be very supportive of their decision.
One thing is for certain, not noticing at all is like suicide. It’s like admitting you’re not paying attention to her, and not saying anything about the haircut is almost the same thing as saying it looks bad or at least that’s what she is thinking. So, in general I find it’s a good idea to be supportive of her new choice of look, then find out what motivated her to get it because she most likely wants to talk about it if it’s really different.
Personally, other people’s hair isn’t really that important to me, but I know it can be important to them. So I give guys a hard time and girls the opportunity to talk about it. Every girl wants to feel pretty, who am I to take that away from them?
I like the old News Net Bumper better. The Bounty Hunter in Kotor was Calo Nord. Really liked the conversation about crafting. Would like some money making options with the crew skills system. But I can see why Bioware is doing what they are doing with it. Still, a low profit margin on a few things might be better. That way you can always keep your companions doing something and feel like their useful and helping you progress. But if you keep the profit margin really low then that limits the inflationary impact on the economy. Especially if it ties up a lot of your money which it does. If your 5 companions can only make you 500 credits every 24 hours then people will be less likely to farm this and inflate the economy the longer they play the game. Why not let people that want to pay Bioware a subscription fee in order to collect their 500 credits every day do it. That will keep the servers on longer for all of us.
Oh, and I would tell the girl the truth. (And suffer the consequences. +3 out of 26)