Star Wars: The Old Republic Random Question/Discussion thread - F2P

[samalis]

They don't even have a waiting list on their call center. Or a greeting. It just tells me they are too fucking busy and hangs up.

Bad Bad Bad.

Yeah, their technical support is retarded. Even their forums are a mess. I think this is worst then SE.

[vrumpt]

http://www.swtor.com/community/showt...=294680&page=1

I thought this poll was really interesting. There's enough votes for it to be pretty representative to what we'll see in game.

http://disdaingaming.com/swtor/the-poll-end-all-polls

^ the same poll results in pie chart form


Its nice to see there's almost going to be a perfect 1:2:1 tank, dps, healer ratio

[Rulke]

Maybe its the game graphics, or perhaps the various sliders, but it was easy for me to choose to be human for this game.

[Elvis]

Its the sliders. Not enough options and some of the options are butt-ugly.

[Purrrfect]

Yeah, I mean it does kind of suck that they won't be telling us when we can start early access ahead of time, but I understand why they aren't. Can you imagine the shit storm if they told people they could get in on a certain day and then something happens like one of the servers breaks or something and they have to move people's early access back a day or two. Some people would commit suicide.

Did they say they specifically weren't telling us when our time begins via email? I was under the impression there is still another email with our individual start times to go out.

[Ohemgee]

I'm still indecisive on what I want to start as.

I know its going to be a male republic character though

[vrumpt]

Did they say they specifically weren't telling us when our time begins via email? I was under the impression there is still another email with our individual start times to go out.

They will no longer go out in advance. In order to better control the flow of early access you'll receive an email saying "you can start right now".

[Ohemgee]

SWTOR.com will go down tomorrow to update the account information on activated accounts and add subscription options too?

[Zerocool]

I'd like to see a player run bounty system that anybody could participate in. You could have like a bounty board and people can put up a mark that they want killed and offer a certain amount of credits to the person who gets a kill on the mark first.

Also on the subject of ideas. I think it would be cool to have rare Historical items that are tied into the lore somehow. Like for example "Naga Sadow's Lightsaber" or something and there would be only 1 of each of these items on the whole server. Have them hidden out in hard to find places and/or have puzzles to get access to them. But they wouldn't be BoP/BoE so that way people could sell them or give them to friends or whatever. Something to keep them in circulation. Probably never see anything like it because too many people would cry, but it would be interesting.

[Zerocool]

Did they say they specifically weren't telling us when our time begins via email? I was under the impression there is still another email with our individual start times to go out.

Yeah, they're only going to send out the email at the exact time they let us in. So we won't know ahead of time. It will be like you get the email on the day and time you get in and then you can log in right then.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showt...=294680&page=1

I thought this poll was really interesting. There's enough votes for it to be pretty representative to what we'll see in game.

http://disdaingaming.com/swtor/the-poll-end-all-polls

^ the same poll results in pie chart form


Its nice to see there's almost going to be a perfect 1:2:1 tank, dps, healer ratio

That poll just goes to show how unappealing their "alien" races are. Still disappointed with those. Hopefully they'll release more diverse races in the future.

Also, new video put up today:

[Zetanio]

Been on hold for 2 hours. YAYYYY

[vrumpt]

Few of our systems seem to have generated as much passion as our 'Unify Color to Chest Piece' system. So, I'd like to shed a bit of light onto exactly what this system is, what happened to it and what is in store for it in the future.

Pretty much from the start of the project, one of our goals was to solve the 'mismatched color' issue that exists in many MMORPGs. This initiative has actually been driven directly by James Ohlen, our Game Director, as this is an issue close to his heart.

Now, it is useful to understand that when artists create a new piece of armor, they always create it as part of a set. A certain pair of pants, for example, is thematically meant to go with a specific chest armor, gloves, boots, bracers and helmet. If the players always put on full sets, they would look very good indeed and the colors from the different pieces would complement each other. Of course, at any given level, players have access to many such sets and wear bits and pieces from multiple sources. Now, in Star Wars: The Old Republic, we have created sets that, in many cases, are quite compatible with each other. You'll notice that, for example, Jedi Knight outfits use a lot of earthy colors that work quite well together regardless of which set they come from. Unfortunately, this is not always true – the Trooper is a good example of a class that does not look its best with mismatched pieces.

To solve this we created an option called 'Unify color to chest piece', which we also called 'Color Match'. Once turned on, the option automatically matched the color of any equipped piece of armor to the color scheme of the chest piece. This option was very popular with our testers and did solve the color clash problem, but not without introducing some issues.

While we have a policy not to give details on a system in progress, I do want to talk a little about the worst design issue we encountered with this system. As implemented, Color Match had a subtle but ultimately perverse effect: from the moment it was turned on, the player would perceive far less diversity in their loot. In some cases, to be honest, there are only so many differences we can create between two pairs of boots apart from their color scheme. Take away their color differences - thanks to the Color Match system - and you are left with a game that feels a bit less rewarding; where, sometimes, putting on your exciting new gear barely changes the appearance of the character. Depending on your personal preferences and your play style, this may or may not seem like much... but an MMO is a complex system of challenges and rewards and, as designers, we must stay vigilant in that regard.

So, anyway, the good news is that we are not only committed to solving the color clashing problem, we want to actually improve on the Color Matching system players experienced during Game Testing.

The bad news is... well, this won't be in for launch. The system we are currently working on isn't quite done yet and has many dependencies. After taking a hard look, we decided it would be preferable to keep Color Matching turned off for launch rather than try to do a potentially messy post-launch conversion. If anything, the live changes we made during testing to other systems (like the cover system or the item modification system) have shown us how confusing switching things under people's noses can be.

This wasn't exactly an easy decision – we know how popular the feature is and how eager and vocal the community has been for its return. So, I humbly ask for your patience. The feature (or, to be exact, something I consider a better version of the feature) will return. The next time you find a particularly bad combination of armor pieces, take some screenshots - and hopefully in a few months (as always, no deadline is guaranteed), you’ll be able to tell new players "Back in my day, we had to wear those orange pants with purple boots! Uphill! Both ways! In the snow!"

As always, I’m very interested in hearing from you... I have (so far) managed to read every single post on the Item Modification system and will hopefully be able to post a follow up clarifying many of the concerns and questions that you have.

TL;DR color match won't be in at launch


Understandable but disappointing. Hopefully they can find a way to get this working with the limitations he described.

[Zetanio]

After all that waiting.

"I can't help you with that on the phone. Send an email."

I sent an email

"Oh, well we'll get back to you."

Click

[Ohemgee]

Rift used a wardrobe option which wasn't a bad idea

[Rulke]

After all that waiting.

"I can't help you with that on the phone. Send an email."

I sent an email

"Oh, well we'll get back to you."

Click

What are you trying to get help with?

[Zetanio]

I was fucking retarded and didn't know that you were supposed to redeem your code immediately upon preordering.

I figured, you know, that they might know that I preordered with me having to put in a little code.

So when everyone was like "OMFG I'M SO HAPPY I REDEEMED 10 MINUTES AFTER COMIC CON" I got a little worried.

Sho nuff. My preorder date is now 12/8/11. So I have a buncha emails out to them and hopefully they fix my complete fucking mess.

The reason I called is because the first email response told me to call them. The second one said they would look into it. The third one said to call them.

Bad customer service. I know I'm retarded but at least gimme a straight answer.

[Rulke]

^ Dang dude, that is weak sauce. I am honestly a little surprised that pre-order codes don't have that sort of data attached with them (like the generator that spits them out keeps track of the relative time etc.) I had a psw problem but after 30min wait it was easily solved via phone.

If they are unable to do anything (which would also be weak sauce) I guess the worst case scenario is you get early access a few days after the 13th. Sucks but don't let it ruin your day too much.

[Zetanio]

I'm not all that pissed, my only issue is that I'm leaving for an extended work trip into a family trip so I'll be gone from the 20th until early-mid January. I was hoping to max my early access so I could leave in a decent state.

Whatever. I sent them a pic (That they requested) of my pending order with the CDKey and transaction in it.

[Ohemgee]

James Ohlen [[removed]] interview:

[[removed]]

[Grey Jorildyn]

Dude. They're fucking busy!

Customers!? Who has time for those...