Bioware have just released a promo video for patch 1.3. The video tells us nothing really new but does provide some extra details about the new features. The video has received many dislikes and as I go over the details, you mind understand why. The changes are:
Legacy perks
Group Finder
Character transfer
Scaling social gear
First, have a quick watch of the video (bottom of this post). As you will see the Legacy perks are specific to each individual character, and they don't come cheap.
Looking at the warzone perks, the first one costs 20k and gives you a 2% XP perk to leveling in warzones. Another 30k will add an extra 2%, to the total of 4%. Each level seems to go up by 10k and add an extra 2%. So you'll be able to achieve a maximum of 10% bonus XP after spending approximately 200k. If you want to level another alt in PvP you'll have to spend another 200k. Please keep in mind that this is a guestimate as they only show us the costing of the first two.
Now is it just me or does that seem a little steep for such a pathetic return? 10% is not going to make much difference. I have three characters past act 2 and several others well on their way and I, like a lot of other players, am finding it really hard to have to re-do the standard missions found on most worlds. As it is at this stage, just to complete your class quests you have to level PvP for hours or re-do missions you've done 3 or 4 times already. I've been alternating characters to get the most out of rested XP, but it's still at the painful stage of going through this stuff for the 4th and 5th time for me. Don't get me wrong, I love the class missions and I am thoroughly enjoying every second of the story lines but I'm finding the leveling to be way more time consuming than it was originally in Beta.
Group Finder seriously should have been in the game from the start so although I'm pleased to see it being added, it's an "about time" feature, not a "wow" feature.
Character transfers are definitely going to help the lower populated servers and I hope that Bioware do the right thing and give everybody who has been gimped for months on dead servers the opportunity to move for free.
As for scaling social gear, since my main character is a Jedi Consular I can tell you now, this is broken before it's released. Currently all social gear is light armor but yet my Jedi Conuslar is still stuck in his fuggly rakata gear. As none of the promised armor bonuses transfer to other gear Bioware made a big deal about the customization abilities in patch 1.2. Apart from war hero and black hole gear, no other items in the game mods transfer. So if you're thinking of decking out yourself as a Sandperson, be prepared to loose your bonuses if you're not in the absolute state of the art gear.
I may seem a little bit annoyed about this last point, but it's one of the many options that Beta testers disputed. The change to lock-down epics was made about a month prior to the game being released. I had to do multiple videos to demonstrate the changes on mods as they were released in Beta. The community tried to advise Bioware but they did not listen and five months later we're still paying the price by having Jedis look like punces with wings on our sleeves in order to have our earned set bonuses. Unless the change is made to retro-fit older mods, this will plague the ability for players to customize themselves properly for some time.
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