Devs Q&A 04/27 lot's of informations!

[Deleted]

Phyreblade: Loved the Rakghoul Plague outbreak event and seriously hope you have plans to include similar events in the future. I am sure you can't specify what and when such events might occur in the future but anything you could say on the subject here would be welcome. Thanks for the great work!


Daniel Erickson (Lead Game Designer): We definitely have more surprises coming in the future but we don’t want to have the same format or become predictable. I will say that these surprises will come in a variety of sizes that range from the stealthily rolled-out magenta Lightsaber crystal hunt, to full on server-wide explosions like the Rakghoul Plague.



Trietxan: Is there a plan to make social armor adjustable to armor rating? For example, I would really like to dress my Powertech in the Imperial Trooper armor without losing the heavy armor rating.

Daniel: Yes, adaptable social gear that automatically changes to your character’s gear type is coming in Game Update 1.3.



wyllam: I love the new armor color "unify" feature. Will this option (as well as "hide head armor") ever be available for companions?

Daniel: Definitely in the plans for the future.



WolfJHavok: I don't know if this has been asked before, but could you possibly share the reasoning for only allowing 5 out of 6 companions to be sent out at a time at max level? It feels like a bit of a waste of a companion. Thanks!

Daniel: It was a combination of the maximum amount of economic power we wanted a player to be able to produce per hour, plus never wanting to put players in a situation where they felt like they had to choose between having their maximum missions going or actually adventuring where they needed a companion.



Lovarboy: Will we get dual spec with Game Update 1.3?

Daniel: Unfortunately, no. Game Update 1.3 is being kept a bit leaner to get the Group Finder and the next stage of Legacy in the game as fast as possible. After that we’ll be returning to some bigger updates and we’re hoping dual spec makes it for the next one.



JimG: Is there any sort of ETA on adding completely new playable species into the game such as Togruta, Mon Calamari, Nautolan, etc.?

Daniel: Can’t comment on what species you might see, but you can expect the roster of playable species to expand... this year.



Misiolak: The Datacrons are a nice addition to the game, but getting them for all the characters is simply not fun. Do you plan to include Datacron sharing in the Legacy unlocks?

Daniel: Long term we plan to move many of the game’s reward systems to be Legacy-wide and Datacrons are definitely on the list for consideration.



mr_ruiz: Smuggler/Operative Question: As the only classes without a stance/form of some sort (even all companions have a couple), is there any plan to add something like that to these classes for additional utility? If not, why?

Austin Peckenpaugh (Senior Designer): I'm personally a fan of stances for how they communicate to others and how they help add structure to the already burgeoning character advancement options, but those are developer reasons to love stances. As a player, it's nice to be able to have a sense of someone's spec at a glance by seeing their stance, but for me, the appeal ends there as long as the absence of a stance doesn't mean I'm "missing" something. To answer your question specifically, adding stances to these classes is certainly an option in the future, it just needs to be appropriate and serve a purpose. We don't want to introduce a mechanic for no other reason than to have it.



DarthTexas: Can you give some insight to the numbers behind crafting? What is the baseline crit chance for crafting? How does companion affection affect crit chance? Exactly how much of a boost is +1 or +5 critical chance in crafting? Having the Reverse Engineer % chance is a nice step in removing some of the unknowns in crafting; now we just need the numbers on the creation side to be less ambiguous.

Patrick Malott (Systems Designer): The baseline crit chance for crafting is dependent on the difficulty of the crafting action relative to your current crafting skill level. The difficulty is color coded in the crafting GUI.

Orange Difficulty: 10%

Yellow, Green, and Gray Difficulty: 15%

Companion Affection scales Crew Skill chance up to +5% at maximum affection.

A Companion Trait critical chance bonus of +1 or +5 is a percentage. Example: The Imperial Agent companion character Kaliyo grants a +2 bonus to Underworld Trading Critical. This is +2% bonus.

Using Kaliyo at maximum affection as an example, if she ran a green difficulty Underworld Trading mission for you, she would have a 22% chance to score a mission critical success.



Arymono: When will character transfers be available for everybody?

Dallas Dickinson (Senior Producer, Live Services): We will be rolling out our Character Transfer Service in early summer. First we’ll have some targeted free transfers from/to specific servers, but that will be followed with a broader system where you can either take advantage of free promotional transfers to specific servers or paid transfers to the server of your choice. We know everyone has more questions about character transfer, and we’ll reveal more details closer to the launch date.



DrakeAssaShin: What is being done to address low population servers?

Dallas: The Character Transfer Service, as mentioned above, will be offering free transfers from/to specific servers. This should allow the most motivated players to get onto a higher population server.



Alxandria: What was the design reasoning behind choice of mods/stat combination on commendation vendors during the leveling process? Most of what is available seems to favor +Endurance across the board with very few options for those who want to maximize their primary stat during the leveling process. Usually if someone wants a barrel, armoring or hilt that favors something other than Endurance, we must settle with a lower item score, if it's available all.

David Hunt (Systems Designer): The mods you can purchase from commendation vendors are not intended to be optimal. They are cheap and probably too easy to acquire. If you want to optimize, you need to find a crafter.



Caizic: In the 1.2 Legacy patch notes there is a section under Items and Economy and General that says "Loot drops from endgame activities, such as Operations and Flashpoints, now take group composition into account." Can someone please clarify what this means/how this works exactly? Thanks in advance!

David: Throughout the game, the composition of your group impacts the loot you get from defeating enemies. For the majority of content, the drops are skewed to favor whatever classes are present. This is a bias, but not a guarantee. In leveling Flashpoints, that bias is very strong, and will almost always give loot for the group. However, in endgame Flashpoints, there was no bias – drops were completely random. We’ve added a strong class bias to the loot drops for the endgame Flashpoints. In most cases, this guarantees a drop that can be used by someone in your group. The bias is an “opt-in” system for each character present. That means that you have the same loot playing as a solo Jedi Sentinel or a full group of Jedi Sentinels.



Raific: Could you please clarify and expand on the following patch note for Game Update 1.2:

Players can now remove Armoring modifications that have set bonuses from items and transfer those set bonuses to Custom (orange) items. These modifications can only be transferred to an item that is equipped in the same slot. This does not apply to all items with a set bonus, only those where the set bonus is attached to the Armoring modification.
I believe many people where under the impression that we would be able to pull set bonuses from most gear, not almost none. It seems like only the top tier set bonus can be relocated at this time. Any chance this will be expanded or lower tier? If not, what is the reason?

David: We’re sorry if the note confused anyone. You can pull set bonuses from all new items with set bonuses going forward. There are not any current plans to expand this to old items. The tech that allows us to distribute set bonuses as part of the armoring is new, and there are limitations to how much we can change items that players already possess. That means we can have the set bonus on all armorings that were created for 1.2 or later, but that old armor still has the set bonus on the shell item.



Zannis: Any chance on allowing companions to show in the Operation frame? As a healer, I do a lot of questing with a friend, and I'm unable to replace Party Frames with the Operations Frame since we can't see our party member's companions with this option turned on.

Damion Schubert (Principal Lead Systems Designer): Funny, we were just talking about this the other day. I'm working on the design now, but have no ETA of when this will get to you.



Capthxc: Any plans to improve your achievement system and/or codex? Right now achievements don’t seem to serve any purpose.

Damion: We have big plans. Too big to share prematurely.


Amazing new stuff! By far my favorite Q&A. Can I please ask for a sticky folder where all the Q&A would be in?

[Redblade]

Dallas Dickinson (Senior Producer, Live Services): We will be rolling out our Character Transfer Service in early summer. First we’ll have some targeted free transfers from/to specific servers, but that will be followed with a broader system where you can either take advantage of free promotional transfers to specific servers or paid transfers to the server of your choice. We know everyone has more questions about character transfer, and we’ll reveal more details closer to the launch date.

True and utter bullshit, they have created this mess and now we're supposed to hang around until early summer where they choose where we go or we have to pay to get to a server we choose to re-roll on in the meantime.

[Deleted]

True and utter bullshit, they have created this mess and now we're supposed to hang around until early summer where they choose where we go or we have to pay to get to a server we choose to re-roll on in the meantime.

I have rolled in a server that is dead right and I had to reroll to enjoy the game. But dude, summer is only a month away, it's not long. Remember that 1.2 was introduced a couple of weeks before, no reason to get so mad

[Redblade]

I have rolled in a server that is dead right and I had to reroll to enjoy the game. But dude, summer is only a month away, it's not long. Remember that 1.2 was introduced a couple of weeks before, no reason to get so mad

I have 3 legacies, the point being that I can't reroll and later move my lvl 37 legacy to what ever server I reroll on for free, and I'm not paying for their mistakes, nor am I sitting around doing nothing until early summer.

[Forsedar]

True and utter bullshit, they have created this mess and now we're supposed to hang around until early summer where they choose where we go or we have to pay to get to a server we choose to re-roll on in the meantime.

You need to understand that a BUNCH of things just came out. They want to make the process as enjoyable as possible. They don't want any unknown events occurring, etc. Just wait another month and you'll have your character transfers. Its just 1 month.

On a positive note: I'm happy to see they're doing something with the achievement system. Too many naysayers on the sever that I have to literally run around in 146 gear to show that we've accomplished something. Blah.

[Redblade]

You need to understand that a BUNCH of things just came out. They want to make the process as enjoyable as possible. They don't want any unknown events occurring, etc. Just wait another month and you'll have your character transfers. Its just 1 month.

You do realize I have been sitting around for a month being patient and understanding right, why do you think I have 3 legacies in the first place, can only accept so much delays and lack of things to do.

[Leonard McCoy]

New races this year. Interesting...

Sucks about dual spec but yay for dungeon finder asap. As for realm transfers their wording is kinda vague. It seems like theyll let you free xfer from a dead server to a higher pop one instead of the crappy blizzard xfers to low pop realms

The Character Transfer Service, as mentioned above, will be offering free transfers from/to specific servers. This should allow the most motivated players to get onto a higher population server.

Question is which servers will be targeted and under what terms. Sooner the better is all I can say I guess.

[Orange Joe]

True and utter bullshit, they have created this mess and now we're supposed to hang around until early summer where they choose where we go or we have to pay to get to a server we choose to re-roll on in the meantime.

lets break what he said down.

First we’ll have some targeted free transfers from/to specific servers

So first things first, getting the servers balanced.

but that will be followed with a broader system where you can either take advantage of free promotional transfers to specific servers or paid transfers to the server of your choice.

After they feel they have them balanced they will keep monitoring them and doing free transfers when needed. Or you can pay and move where you want.



I don't see whats wrong? Are you saying you want to be able to choose a free server change? I don't see why you feel you deserve a free change to any server you want. Not only that but it wouldn't fix anything if they just let everyone move where they want.

[Deleted]

True and utter bullshit, they have created this mess and now we're supposed to hang around until early summer where they choose where we go or we have to pay to get to a server we choose to re-roll on in the meantime.

I have rolled in a server that is dead right and I had to reroll to enjoy the game. But dude, summer is only a month away, it's not long. Remember that 1.2 was introduced a couple of weeks before, no reason to get so mad

[Orange Joe]

You do realize I have been sitting around for a month being patient and understanding right, why do you think I have 3 legacies in the first place, can only accept so much delays and lack of things to do.

Here is a hard concept. Why don't you unsub until they fix what you want?

[Leonard McCoy]

To be honest I really really don't like that they're going the paid server xfer route. Rift does this for it's player base for free and I see no good reason why swtor shouldn't as well. Blizzard can afford to bully it's customers into paying for services like xfer because it has so many god damn people playing the game that if one guy is mad about the server xfer they can afford to lose him. Swtor is not in that same position by any stretch of the imagination. It needs all hands on deck. Hopefully itll be cheaper? It doesn't really bug me on I'm on fatman so I'm good, it's just hard to see them adopt some of the bad policies from that other game and game company.

[Styxz]

Happy to hear about the xfer. Means I'll be able to xfer my damn Sent finally.

Dont get me wrong, I like my mara on Fatman, but that server needs pubs and I much prefer pub than imp (imp is dope but just rather pub).

[Orange Joe]

To be honest I really really don't like that they're going the paid server xfer route. Rift does this for it's player base for free and I see no good reason why swtor shouldn't as well. Blizzard can afford to bully it's customers into paying for services like xfer because it has so many god damn people playing the game that if one guy is mad about the server xfer they can afford to lose him. Swtor is not in that same position by any stretch of the imagination. It needs all hands on deck. Hopefully itll be cheaper? It doesn't really bug me on I'm on fatman so I'm good, it's just hard to see them adopt some of the bad policies from that other game and game company.

They already said they are going the same route as wow. Free changes to their choice of servers or paid to where you want.

[Leonard McCoy]

They already said they are going the same route as wow. Free changes to their choice of servers or paid to where you want.

Doesn't mean I have to like it or agree with it. It's crass and frankly I'd rather see them offer the service FREE and promote it as a leg up on the competition. Hopefully their choice is servers is substantial and not only a handful.

[Synche]

Doesn't mean I have to like it or agree with it. It's crass and frankly I'd rather see them offer the service FREE and promote it as a leg up on the competition. Hopefully their choice is servers is substantial and not only a handful.

I was fairly certain that they would go the paid transfer route ala WoW, but was hoping that it would be free transfers for say.. 30 days, not to specific realms. I don't want to transfer to a specific realm that THEY want to get populated as it is not guaranteed to happen. I would much rather the option to go to a high pop server that is already established so that there isn't a chance that it would die off since the community is already there.

[Forsedar]

Doesn't mean I have to like it or agree with it. It's crass and frankly I'd rather see them offer the service FREE and promote it as a leg up on the competition. Hopefully their choice is servers is substantial and not only a handful.

No. Just, no. Everyone would pick the 'server of the month'. I know if Free Transfers were offered to any server- the vast majority of my server would go to Fatman. That would just destroy the point of the free transfers THEY want to do... which is balance things out before offering paid services. I don't want it to be easy for people to just come and go. That basically ruins a community.

[Leonard McCoy]

I was fairly certain that they would go the paid transfer route ala WoW, but was hoping that it would be free transfers for say.. 30 days, not to specific realms. I don't want to transfer to a specific realm that THEY want to get populated as it is not guaranteed to happen. I would much rather the option to go to a high pop server that is already established so that there isn't a chance that it would die off since the community is already there.

The tricky part is how do you guarantee that one realm will get populated over another? Why did the fatman blow up over naddist rebels? If Bioware takes all the routinely low pop servers and says okay you guys can transfer to one of 2 or 3 servers that SHOULD (not guaranteed) result in those realms seeing a rather large increase in population. As long as the receiving end of the funnel is smaller than the shipping end it should help condense things "naturally". This will however leave servers that were already fairly dead even closer to their death beds..

[Redblade]

I don't see whats wrong? Are you saying you want to be able to choose a free server change? I don't see why you feel you deserve a free change to any server you want. Not only that but it wouldn't fix anything if they just let everyone move where they want.

What's wrong with that is the fact that I have a lvl 38 legacy with 3 level 50's on one server and if I wish to keep them I have no choice in where I can transfer, not only that I cant reroll on a server of my choice now while I wait for a feature they should have both known that they would need and have done by now, not only that if I want to consolidate my legacies and characters that I have made while waiting for them to sort the game I have to pay to use a feature I have been apart of paying to develop through my subscription.

And yes it would fix things if they let people transfer how ever they wanted in combination with announcing the closure of the 16, yes 16, low population PvP English servers and use the 5-6 remaining once only.

Here is a hard concept. Why don't you unsub until they fix what you want?

If I unsub over this it's not to come back at a later date, I'll simply be looking for another game, have been patient waiting for transfers for well over a month now, been positive and quite optimistic about the game and it's direction in general although somewhat annoyed at all the stuff that got pushed back from 1.2, patience and optimism will only go so far though and this might very well be the end of the road unless they make this right.

[Leonard McCoy]

No. Just, no. Everyone would pick the 'server of the month'. I know if Free Transfers were offered to any server- the vast majority of my server would go to Fatman. That would just destroy the point of the free transfers THEY want to do... which is balance things out before offering paid services. I don't want it to be easy for people to just come and go. That basically ruins a community.

It's not easy in Rift. It's a week long cooldown IIRC. If you don't want people xfering to fatman that's fine close off Fatman. Or limit/restrict the amount of people that can xfer to fatman. First come first serve. I don't think paid services are necessarily better either. My intrepetation of his statement is that it's somewhere in between doing both of those things. People will get their free xfers during an initial period so that they can get onto a server and then after that pay. Long term though, (after server consolidation) I don't particularly think they should keep with the pay model. Again it's a nice thing that Trion does for it's community and I don't see why Bioware can't and shouldn't do the same.

[Redblade]

No. Just, no. Everyone would pick the 'server of the month'. I know if Free Transfers were offered to any server- the vast majority of my server would go to Fatman. That would just destroy the point of the free transfers THEY want to do... which is balance things out before offering paid services. I don't want it to be easy for people to just come and go. That basically ruins a community.

Allow you to transfer 1 legacy / 6 months (all characters) after an initial grace period of 14 days to consolidate your current chars and legacies, if everyone goes to one server some will simple move off it, in the end it would balance out unless you have 20 servers when you only need 5 to house your population.