Monday, March 25, 2024

SOX names, Star Wars names

One aspect that I've always liked about Star Wars was the naming conventions. Luke is a real name, of course, and Skywaylker is not, but its the kind of name that you can believe in, at least. Other names like Han Solo or Leia Organa or Obiwan Kenobi are not real names (at least they weren't; my son once met some kids his age; fraternal twin boy and girl, named Luke and Leia) but even though they weren't real names, they sound like real names, because they're close to real names. I've tried to do something similar quite often by twisting real names, combining them in unusual ways, or... occasionally using a Star Wars name generator.

Speaking of which, here's some stuff I got out of donjon's Star Wars name generator. Although if I went back and generated again, I'd almost certainly get a lot of these same elements regenerated, I still think I want to archive what I generated so I can have it handy.

As an aside, my playing over the weekend was a bunch of unexpected things. Anstal Tane did Balmorra, other than the bonus series. I may actually not do the bonus series, because although I've avoided Heroics with this run of characters, kind of on a whim, I did all of the Heroics on Balmorra with him. That reminded me why I don't do Heroics; some of them were fine, even kind of fun, but some of them were tedious and they swarm you with so many enemies that if you're playing it solo, you have to be quite strategic and/or lucky to not go down a couple of times. On Balmorra, that was in the colicoid area, where you get swarmed by half a dozen pretty hefty colicoids on several occasions, all hitting you at once, and since the Scoundrel doesn't have much in the way of area affect attacks, I was in over my head.

Of course, it's also difficult when there are so many Heroics across so many worlds to remember which ones are the good ones and which ones are the tedious or unlikeable ones. This is why I'd elected earlier to mostly just ignore them entirely, except for the ones on Hutta, Ord Mantell, Tython, Korriban and Coruscant, which I know quite well and grind for XP a lot (some of the ones on Dromund Kaas too). But if I grinded just recently for these Heroics, then I don't need to grind for the Bonus Series. I just played it with Taul Kajak a few weeks ago, so it'd be repetitive (and the bonus series are often tedious) and the Heroics will more than make up for doing the bonus series in terms of gear and XP. The point, I guess, is that I'm playing for fun. I don't need to be too regimented and repetitive; just because missions exist doesn't mean I need to play them all in a certain way; I can play what I want to play. The point is to have fun, after all, isn't it?

I don't always have fun with the Scoundrel, I'll be honest. The fighting style is not my favorite. Although there is a stand back and plink plink plink option (interspersed with a few grenades) this is a slow and tedious way to win. But the alternative is to move around a lot and do melee combat. And frankly, I think the idea of punching big robots, monsters and Sith Lords in the face with your fist is fundamentally pretty silly. When I'm alternating between this character and my powertech Gael Heckett, or my mercenary Vant Galaide, or my gunfighters or snipers, even, I find that those are just much more fun to play from a combat perspective. My Operative and Scoundrels are nice because I can go into stealth mode and just skip large portions of the trash mob BS that isn't very fun in many missions. Except, of course, that Anstal still needs to level up, so I'm fighting most people for the bonus missions, or even just the kill XP.

I have one more scoundrel playing the trooper story that I haven't started yet, and I'm thinking of creating one more operative, probably playing the smuggler or hunter story—not that I need another character doing either of those either—but I won't get around to those for some time, as I've got way too many other characters to do, and I'm not always loving the Scoundrel mechanics. 

I liked my damage over time Operative better. Maybe I just felt like he had more options in combat, and I liked them better because it wasn't just punching enemies in the face. My new scoundrel uses the mirror of that, so I'm hoping to like it better, but my new Operative would be a mirror of the Scoundrel that I currently have. Maybe I won't create him after all.

What else have I played that's a bit unexpected? I've really been enjoying Gael Heckett, my cyborg smuggler using the advanced prototype powertech mechanics. I played all of the Heroics and some of the exploration on Taris with him already, and it's been fun to do that. I've enjoyed that as much as anything I've done in a few weeks, especially since I redid his pre-existing Taris outfit to something totally different, and I like it a lot more now. In fact, it's growing on me even more the more I use it, to the point that like with his Coruscant outfit, I'll be sad to "retire" it when I'm done with the planet. (I won't actually delete it, so if I ever go back to Taris to do anything with him, I can swap it back in. But otherwise, I don't know for sure what I'll do with it, I admit.) It wasn't really my intention to play much of him until I was done with more of my characters that are a bit further along, but I'm enjoying him too much not to. I've also almost finished Tython with Gandalf, who I didn't intend to do much of anything with at all... but who now may enter the rotations at a Fleet/Coruscant level after all. I've played pretty much all of that first planet just this weekend too, so that's a brand new development.

I really liked Haul Romund, who's a mercenary smuggler, also about to land on Taris, but I haven't played him since coming back. I think that's because I have other smugglers still in play and I have another mercenary still in play. He can continue to rest; although I know that when I get back to him, I'll be ready to use him, and he'll be highly anticipated. I like the smuggler story perhaps the best, along with the Hunter, and I like his mechanics a lot too. 

Anyway, long story short, I may well completely change my mind on what I thought I was going to play next. Taul Kajak is effectively done, so I'm going to put him in semi-retirement and probably not play him for anything at all in the next few weeks, and I'd like to get Anstal Tane and Vant Galaide at nearly those same points. After that, I'm not sure who I'm going to play next, but I think Mirabeau Tane and Gael Heckett are the most likely to feature in the near future even more, and when Vant finally does get to semi-retirement, Haul Romund will probably take his place as a current play mercenary. Unfortunately, that does mean that I seem to have multiple ongoing smuggler stories, but like I said above, that tends to be one of my favorite stories, so that's OK.

I do have four force user characters, but I doubt that any of them will be a major part in the short term. I'll finish up Gandalf on Tython, because I'm so close, but then he'll probably hibernate again. Then, maybe since I've already gotten her off the ship and running around doing explorations, I'll do Revecca on Balmorra. Elemer and Phovos can both wait a bit, though.


Garm

Halcorr

Iakar

Kodo

Haro

Ideon

Varlo

Drimarch

Vene

Aldes

Corr

Darand

Jallo

Donnall

Grice

Thalcard

Gavenk

Daivki

Lorn

Aldel

Jissard

Cen

Berand

Brimarch

Braven

Thule

Janrenk

Tane

Honall

Jido

Ianan

Cran

Daymet

Kinall

Celwik

Stamont

Bragant

Tharend

Iacen

Vane

Vikorr

Maxir

Derru

Korra

Porro

No comments:

Post a Comment