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

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C&P'd from Dulfy's blog, taken from the swtor guild summit in Austin.

What is next?
Friends of Star Wars program: Launching tomorrow (march 6), allow you to invite 3 of your friends to play the game for free for a whole week!

Game update 1.2: Legacy Video: http://youtu.be/jtnLMcWdARY

edit: transcript of the presentation/Q&A by Dulfy(http://dulfy.net/2012/03/05/swtor-gu...live-blogging/)

Spoiler: show

New Warzone: Novare Coast (planet Denova)
New Operation: Explosive Conflict (planet Denova)
New Flashpoint: The Lost island
Expanded Legacy system: New legacy abilities, new races unlocked race 1 race 2
Advanced UI customization: the dev team put in a lot of hrs into this.
Improved character textures
Appearance customization
Adding useable to the mission tracker so you don’t have to find them in your inventory
Warzone rankings (group and solo performance) and new ranked pvp gear tiers
In –game events: limited time events, created by a dedicated team to make the SWTOR universe more dynamic. Can’t give out a lot of details right now – want to be more of a surprise.
New Corellia Daily missions
New mini-pets
Guild banks: This is something guilds have being asking for since launch – shared bank for guild members to use. Can unlock upto 7 tabs for guild use but it will be very expensive to unlock it all.
New gear republic empire
New vehicles
Extractable tier 2 mods
New lightsaber colors
Ship droids gain affection
New crafting schematic
Craftable augments
Legacy item drops
New roleplay emotes

2:00pm-Operations/Flashpoints Discussion
38% of level 50 players have played in an operation
We know there are lots of bugs – particularly in Eternity Vault
With game testing and feedback things go a lot smoother – i..e KP launch much bettr
looting system in normal needs improvements – we wanted to make it pug friendly so you don’t have to yield to masterloot – we will deviate from this a bit in the next update. another thing we want to do is allow you to trade destined loot
existing operations are pretty easy – we want hardmodes and nightmare be more challenging than they are right now
amoring debuffs from players stacking together – not suppose to – something we will address in the future hard and nightmare give same loot – we know that.
Explosive conflict: harder than current operations. needs a whole new level of coordinate rather than more gear and more stats. We want to focus on coordination and execution.
Takes place on Denova, it will be tier 2 raid (KP and EV are tier 1 raids)
Nightmare mode will be a more serious channelnge
Nightmare mode of explosive conflict not launched with 1.2
changing normal mode to story diffculty mode to reflect the diffculty.
story mode of new raid is not too gear dependent
orange gear viability – in 1.2 you can extract all the mods and set bonuses.
can reverse engineer operation gear for appearances
Nightmare mode for Explosive conflict will have a different gear tier than hardmode
future of operations: bug fiixng is the highest priorty
fight the boss not the game – more ingame animations to give you clue on boss abilities
Flashpoints: they are enjoyable but we need better endgame progression via flashpoints. We want to smmoth the curve to operations.
Difficult to find group: we are addressing that
Lost Island – finish the story started in patch 1.1
Group finder: introduced in game-update 1.3 – also for heroic quests and flashpoints. single server only. community is very important.
Q& A
Q: trash drop credits on operations to help pay repair bill? also what initiatives to allow high level players to help lower level players (reverse mentoring system)..A: with 1.2 we don’t anticipate changes to the repair costs. We need to bring additional sinks in place if we want to change the repair costs. No ETA on reverse mentoring system
Q: will we see separate lockouts for hardmodes and nightmare with 1.2. A: no, hardmodes and nightmares are progression raids while story mode is more for socializing.
Q: 16m and 8m A: we want them to have a relative diffculty, we will lower some of the stats on 16m bosses to counter the coordination issue of 16m. More loot in 16m, more bonus loots (mounts, recipes) but same tier of loot. 16m and 8m will have the same content for now.
Q: Timestamp achivement for boss kills to help foster competition? A: yes that is something we very much do. We love achievements. We want to reward server first kils things etc. These are long term plans, not something in the immediate horizon.
Q: not big difference between columi and rakata, bigger gear disparity in the new raid content? A: yes there will be more of a disparity – our earlier goal is to not inflate the stats too much. Tionese to columi has a big jump but the jump from columi to rakata is more something of a prestigous jump. New tier for pve and pvp coming, it will have more stats that makes sense (i.e. less accuracy). we are opening augments acorss all gear pieces that supports – so there is a separate system you can use to customize your character. With 1.1.5 we have lightsaber crystals with expertise on it. There is limited pvp crafting. There will be more disparity between pvp and pve gear.
Q: threat meters, dps meters – are they coming? what is bioware’s stance? A: we want reliance on in-game visual cues but that is not we say we won’t give you dps and threat meters. We will have them in but just not in 1.2. We you to have control over what other see about your character – we went for the middle ground – in 1.2 you will be able to use a simple input in the chat system to see what defeated you. we also have a very detailed combat log you can write to your disk – someone enterprising can use it for their guild to see their performance but it will be out of game (3rd party).
Q: is craftable gear comparable to endgame pvp/pve gear? A: yes but we wil deter it to another panel.
Q: space missions – interesting but any plans to implant them into flashpoints/operations? A: we have a secret project for space missions in the works right now – can’t give you more details.
Q: enrage mechanics – is that soemthing we will see across the board? It limits the standard build you can take and have guaranteed success. A: intention is that in 8 man you have 2 tanks but that didn’t work out too well. with 1.2 you going need a lot more coordinate and tank –trading you will need 2 tanks for 1.2 raid content.
Q: lucas style of fighting? players split to do stuff – like 2 guys fighting a sith, 2 guys do something else? A: ancient pylons is soemthing we have tried but it is definitely something we are interested in looking into.
Q: 16m intended to be harder than 8m? A: the idea is to keep the diffculty level betwene the two as close as possible – we will make 16m bosses a bit easier to compensate for the raid coordinattion in 16m.
Q: as an ops leader are we going to get more tools to shift people around in ops groups? A: On the UI panel there is more discussion but yes we want to have more options.
Q: ready check system for flashpoints and operations? A: we don’t have a ready check? I am going back to the office and get that in.
Q: are we going to implent hardmdoes for flashpoints that currently do not have them? A; yes eventually we will be. can’t say when exactly.
Q: you can reverse eng ops gear – can you get schematics from that? A: yes, we will talk about it later. Q: flashpoints – another diffculty added to flashpoints A: not in the near future. we will keep adding new flashpoints and the flashpoints are going to get harder.
Q: Dynamic style operations? i.e. more open world A: yes in 1.2 we will have open world bosses.

2:45pm-Player vs. Player Discussion medal system- not balanced across classes right now.
no speciifc queues for warzones
Novare coast: majority control objective – 3 point objective. You need least 2out of 3 to do damage to fortification.
character warzone ratings for both solo and group player
new warzone dailies – based on medal system as opposed to wins.
we didn’t finish all the medals – we are introducing a lot more medals for objectives, catching a ball, scoring in huttbal, be the first to plant a bomb
18 new medals
we want to discourage medal farming – medal rewards are capped. We are doubling the amount of medals but cap it at ~8. If you finish a warzone fast, you can get a bunch of subsequent medals.
we are introducing more rewards per medal
vote to kick: players can vote inactive players out of the warzone.
efforts to combat AFK – needs minimal player contribution to get medals – if you just sit around you not going to get much.
New tier of pvp gear – war hero.
greater stats differences from pve gear. more leaning on expertise and leaning on other stats that are more pvp focused
new lightsaber colors
new pvp crafting – adding expertise crystals.
Future of warzones: existing warzones will allow for same faction vs faction – training mode scenarios. Timeline – 1.2-1.3
cross server warzone queuing – we will have incentives for grouping with people of the same server – this allows for a lot more compeition. will include ability to choose a speciifc warzone.
tournament system – get qualitication for 1st, 2nd places etc.
ranked warzone: full 8 people group allowed. timeline is TBD.
persistening groups across warzones so you don’t have to reform them between warzones – something to be added in the future
Open world pvp: we know they are less popular than warzones. 3x more warzone players than ilum players. going back to the drawing board for Ilum – more details later this year.
we got a bit too ambitious with ilum – we had some techanical diffcultiies. we are going back to just open world pvp without much incentives. redesign ilum to be more fun and engaging – if it is the right time and right place it is going to be fun – we want to make timed objectives.
removing ilum pvp quests
warhero gear from ranked warzone commendations. more focused on expertise and not as viable in pve.
less randomess from rewards for pvp progresssion.
with ranked warzones we can tier our pvp content and therefore able to tier our pvp gear . minor changes to Outlaw den – we want players to get there quick. we will be introducing some quick trael. leaving it as a pvp sandbox.
Additional pvp concerns: we are addressingt them
we are aware of speed hacking/exploiting – we want to control them before we get to season 1 of ranked warzones.
Q &A
Q: any plans for just pugs in normal warzones right now so you don’t have to worry about getting steam-rolled by premades. A: we do have some things in place right now to prevent pre-mades.
Q: with changes to pvp gear – wil you also change the diminshing returns on PVP gear. A: yes.
Q: ilum performance issues – issues with Herro engine? A: some of the engine issues don’t show until you go live – a lot of optimization issues with environment (turrets, walkers) in the area.
Q: changes to ilum to prevent trading – the new deathmatch system is just not as good. any plans to returns to returns to objectives based system? A: we had issues with objectives permanently locked to a faction. We weren’t able to do much before the game went live and as such there were trading were going on. we had to change it to kiling for the meantime but it is not our long –term goal. It will be objective focus – something for the long term.
Q: pre-forming guilds before game was launched, we had allies and adversies, any plans to utilize them or bounty offered on players? A: this is something the pvp team would love to see but we don’t have any definite timeline. we will talk more about allies and adversies once we get to the guild stuff.
Q: with pre-formed 8 mans, can we challenge other guilds to a 8vs8 match in a warzone? A: it is something we have implanted – warzone challenges. Not going to be in 1.2 but in the future definitely.
Q: we have a few guildies are battlemaster – are you going to make ti less grindy to obtain higher level pvp gear? A:right now if you are valor 60, and trying to get BM gear the only way is done via quests – this leads to bad behaviours as you need to win to get quests. takes away the incentive to perform in warzones. in 1.2 the ranked warzone commendations will be used to purchase war hero gear (no valor or other other requirmentt) . warzone rating will allow you to get a different color version of the warhero gear.
Q: I run 24 vs 24 pvp matches in outlaw dens. how I am suppose to maintain my large pvp guild if you give us only 8 man content? A: large warzone battles is something we want to do in the future but 8 man content is just what we have right now. 8 is a good number in ranked warzones – eveeryone has a part. We do like to have players get together and have massive battles – this is what ilum and outlaw’s den were intended for. we will have more content for larger pvp battles in the future.
Q: current valor system will go away with ranked warzones? need a clarification. what about guild vs guild pvp? A: guild vs guild pvp will be initially 8 vs 8 premades and open world pvp in the future. Valor is a recognition of your experience rather than your specific gear progresssion.
Q: tab targeting improvements? clickable nameplates? A: yes we want to do them, larger boxes to click on, class based labels etc but not for 1.2
Q: as a rper I don’t like watching someone running circles around me in pvp: any plans to move away from runnign around circles? any plans to be able to face the target you are on? A: auto-facing in pvp – definitely two camps on that. auto-facing we feel diminishing some game mechanics like positioning etc. we are planning to improve pvp animations but auto-facing is not something we want to have. if you have auto-facing it just becomes who has a better command of their rotation.
Q: will obtain a set of Bis pvp gear will be acheieved only throguh pvp or you need pve/craftign as well? The bis will come from only ranked warzones. However, you can use use mods from war hero gear to put in critted orange gear. So there is a path to even better gear after war-hero via crafting
Q: right now defense/shield/absorb is strong in pve but nearly useless in pvp- any plans to make those stats more useful in pve? A: as a tank you are vulneable to force/tech attacks but if you don’t use defense stats are you going to be vulnerable to high dps classes like sentinels/snipers. with 1.2 there will be some under the hood adjustment to all stats so all theorycrafting will have to be done.
Q: any plans to add more than just quests/dailies for pvp? ranked warzones: ranked warzone commendations.
Q: dynamic events – are there any focus on dynamic pvp events? A: we don’t want give away any of the dynamic event info – we want it to be a surprise. We don’t want you to be able to predict them.
Q: can we talk about just running around killing people? A: its fun – we want to give you a drop list when you kill random players – some kind of commendations maybe.

Legacy Presentation in the very early days of swtor – we had a family tree of all the main characters to try show the whole story. This is something we have developed as a labor of love. it touches eveything we have in the game but we had to pull it back at launch – too risky for launch it will have to wait. The wait is almost over!
currently, the legacy system is just a pretty bar – it makes us look stupid but we didn’t want to make people mad if they level all these alts and we then tell them they have a legacy system,
Family tree: decide if they are your allies, kids, wifes/husbands – its super cool roleplaying.
legacy species/class unlocks
reach level 50 with a species, you can unlock it on all classes on both factions – i.e. you “father” can be a sith and you can be a jedi.
reach level 50 with a human race – gain presence stat on all your characters.
Cyborgs – indiviidual classes have their own individual cyborg attachments – you can now unlock all of them and be a uber cyborg.
complete chapter 2 – unlock class emotes – unlock current classes buff for all other legacy characters (i.e. get sith warrior buffs for bounty hunter alt)
complete chapter 3 – unlock heroic abilities for all your legacy chars – these new heroic abilities will require companions to use like the heroic moment abilities you have right now. It will also use your heroic moment ability.
example of heroic ability: force choke from sith warrior on all your alts if you complete sith warrior to chap 3.
completing a companion character – reach max affection with any one type (i.e. healer) of companion char – shorter cooldown on heroic abilities – unlock a small stat boost. addiitonal presence buff for max affections with additional companions of the same type.
alignement abilities: reach level 50 and gain dark/light or neutral alignemnt – unlock active abilites for all legacy chars – not all rewards are combat.
valor rank unlocks – unarmed duels – unarmed combat moves can be unlocked with valor system
social rank unlocks – dance with your companions, new emotes (RP packages – big package of RP emotes).
most legacy rewards can be purchased or unlocked – people with millions of credits can buy these rather than “unlock” them – some of the rewards are not initially purchaseable but will be allowed in another patch
we want to reward people who just play 1 char – hence the purchase route
cooldown reducitons for emergency fleet pass/quick travel
Jetpack – short duration sprint – we moved to sprint to level 1. Jetpack for BHs, rocket boots for everyone else.
items for your ship – training dummies (operation, warzone dummies, healing dummies), repair droid (buy, repair, and sell upgrades for your ship droids that improves specific crafting abilities), mailboxes, auction houses (neutral GTN terminal but very very high up the legacy system – we want fleet to be populated it requires a lot of legacy level and a lot of credits).
Legacy weapons and armor – you will get drops that are bound to your legacy system – bind on legacy – can’t trade with others. These do not scale.
legacy appearences – orange gear only unlocked with legacy stuff.
Customizing your alt experience: if you just want to pvp with an alt, you can purchase a pvp xp buff for this alt. if you like to purchase speeder earlier, you can buy something for a specific alt.
HUGE REWARDS ASSOCIATED WITH THE LEGACY SYSTEM. 1.2 and 1.3 are huge legacy patches.
Q: can I transfer an alt from a different server? A: yes when character servers come, which is not in the immediate future – these alts will melt together and you will get higher of the two legacy
Q: can I share legacy with other players? A: it is a one of our dev’s biggest pet project – we do not have a plan where we know how to make that yet but we have a lot of hopes for it.
Q: can you use force choke on the republic side? A: yes
Q: can you change the race of a previous alt? A: no you need to make a new alt.
Q: any plans to allow characters to use weapons not intended for their class? more like cosmetic weapons A: we will adress that in heroic abilites – iconic abilites but not permanent weapon change. This migth be a possibilty in future legacy development.
Q: I want barbershop, can I get them with legacy? unlock more cosmetic slots? A: that is something in the works but somethig you won’t be able to see for a while.
Q: Alt: those buffs from other classes, are those self only or apply to all groups? Does that mean we don’t need to bring a specififc class for ops/warzones? A; yes.
Q: Shared bank between your alts? Legacy bank is on the table – its behind guild bank. we are pro-legacy bank. In 1.2 we will allow you to send cross-faction mails.
Q: more character slots? A; no plans at the moment but suggestion is noted.
Q: class quests are unique but stuff like plantary quests are not can we bypass them? A: yes we will give you specific bufs that rewards for doing specific activies
Q: wil buffs from different factions stack? i.e. will sith warrior and jedi knight stack? A; they won’t stack but you can use them cross faction.
Q: endgame flashpoint/operation loots being bind to legacy? A: No current plans – there is an inherent flexibility with able to extract mods/crafting. We will one huge quest that unlock for all your chars if you complete it.
Q: dual spec? A: more than dual spec, multi-spec is coming. it is tied to the legacy system. not coming with 1.2 – at first allow you to save different specs but in later patches you can save gear layouts. Q: name/legacy system? A: we don’t have the system in place right now, maybe something in the works soon.
Q: maximum legacy level? A: get out more! the cap is 50 right now;
Q: any plan to give some sort of crafting advantage through the legacy system? A: we love it but balancing issues? we want craffting to be more boe and less bop. not in 1.2 but with 1.2 the shop droids have specific cores you can purchase from the repair droid that improve specific crafting skills. You can also purchase somethig that mute the droid (clap from the audience)
Q: can you put your companiosn into your family tree? A: not right now.
Q: cosmetic ship upgrades from legacy? A: yes cosmetic ship upgrades but may not be tied to legacy. Its quite aways down the road.
Q: how can an agent use a force ability? A: force using potential goes strong in your family line – we were all over that.
Q: how will heroic moment abiliites affect open world pvp where companiosn can be used? A: right now you can do it and that is all I can say about that. Open world pvp is the wild west – anything is possible. objective based areas like ilum do not allow companions. Maybe you can solo your flashpoints with companions using heroic abilities.
happy with legacy system? people are very happy.

Economy/Crew skills discussion
our economy is doing very well despite the hard to use GTN
Crew skill distribution: biochem is not the most used skill – archeology and scavenging skill are most skilled. most popular crafting skill is artifiace followed by biochem. Underworld trading dominates missiion skills
weath distribution for level 50 chars – 84% of level 50s have less than 1 M credits. . chart ends at 10 million – less than 1% have 10 million.
with patch 1.1.5 we introduced some content for rich people – encourage them to let go of their credits.
majority of credits spent – ability training, drops off around feb as more and more people are 50. Other sink now take over.
Quest reward – biggest source of income – this is the way to get credits.
selling content to vendors helps as well
relative wealth: the actual inflation rate we have right now is around 12% – it is not too bad. People are saving up in anticipation of new stuff like legacy.
Faction selection distribution – 57 empire to 42 republic across all servers. More empire players on pvp servers. gender selection: 70% male, 30% yup.
most popular class: sith inq, smuggler/IA are very low numbers ever since alpha testing. Short of making the class really OP there isn’t much we can do. It can get a bit lightning heavy in warzones.
Leveling curve: time to level – very smooth curve. there is no big gaps or gaps around 40 or something. Our target time for 50 – we nailed that in terms of game hrs played (can’t tell you how much that is). Real time to level 50- you guys blew that as you guys play too much! we have seen some insane playhrs in early access (some even to superhuman levels).
Top 25 products based by sales volume: desh, top end crafters are making a killing - rakata, rank 25 enhancments/mods. exploits: we will fix ilum chest looting in 1.2 if you show up with a lot of credits we will track your activity.
we don’t see a lot of kill-stealing in our games but this kind of behaviours is seen with chests
we have a team of 30 people to get rid of people that spam – they get banned as soon they show up. we can track all credit transfers.
see a spammer, report it, fastest way to get them banned.
Crew skills: crew missions is the #2 moneysink. Not every crewskill is viable for endgame – only biochem currently is.
Reverse eng for a better overall – better rates and more items – we made it a lot more useful.
You can craft operation gear with critical augments.
EVERY CREW SKILL IS BEING GIVEN AN ENDGAME USE
augment crafting – sythweaving, armmech, – augments
slicing – currently the source eof augments will be source of augment mats.
cybertech speeders become boe.
changed prices on speeders – you are now paying less for tier 3 speeder training but cool looking mounts – expect to pay more. cybertech grenades – shorter cooldowns.
artifice – new color crystals – pvp craft – schematics/mats can be obtained from pvping.
5 page of patch notes for crew skill – a blog released soon
Crafting – avg craft is richer, looks better and better geared than a non-crafter. we expect this to really take off with patch 1.2
Q: expensive to remove 25 mods – if you can make those mods, shouldn’t it be cheaper for you? A: not for 1.2, we will look into it.
Q: I pvp, my gear never breaks, add repair cost to pvp? A: maybe – riot in the audience. Yes we are aware of pvp and pvp gear repair costs. Net income between pvp and pves are about the same
Q: is there a design intent to give crew skills a social purpose? like allow crew skills able to change colors A: with 1.1.5 – lightsaber colors – al colors are available with the same stats. we are adding a large number of orange gears to the game – you will be able to get from crafters and only available from crafters? crafters – best source of customized appearances in 1.2
Q: I can cheat the system by leveling synthweaving first and make rakata gear and then switch to biochem A: reuseable stims wil be phased out over time
Q: Exotech stims – the epic materieals are very hard to get and produce – any plans to change that? A: bioanalyis is very low and there are a lot more biochems – so there is a huge inflation on bioanalysis materials.
Q: cybertech healer – can I get kolto grenade? A: maybe
Q: contract system? request to have something made A: is it possible to have a system like this? A: yes it is on the wall of crazy, not immediate concern but its in the works. probably some day.
Q: some clothing options look slightly different color on different classes? A: some items look different between republic and empire – this is an intentional feature to persrve some faciton identity. in terms of color – what you said is not something we have seen, can you send us a screenshots?
Q: crafting gear better than endgame pvp/pve? A: yes it is better but it is more work since you have to extract mods from engame gear and get a critted orange gear made.
Q: phasing out reuseable stims – how far is it to make every crew skill to be viable in game? RE chance at end-game level, is it worth the risk? A: 1.2 will have a tooltip that can tell you if you can RE something and get something out of it. We also increase the gains from RE
Q: any plans for longer crew skills missions – 16 hr missions for epic stuff A: we like the idea too – incenative to log on at least once a day.
Q: any plans to add crafting daily to give people option to get high level mats? A: new resource nodes on new content and also on existing high level areas to help you out.
Q: possible to send two companiosn to send on the same misson to reduce the time: A: not possible right now. With 1.2 expensive missions you brought from GTN are no longer failable.

RP discussion Legacy features: RP emotes, family tree, social unlocks, alignment unlocks
Chat bubbles – we had a performance issue so we had to remove it previously.
more orange gear with viability at end-game – wear what you want, whereever you want
dynamic events: NOT TALKING ABOUT IT – serverwide limited time events
improving spawning techs – npcs that you can’t click on – they will increase or decrease depending on your system – we will populated the more empty areas.
more ambient creartures
legacy: how does it affect roleplayers? What you like to see?
Q/A & suggestions from audience
Q:: Beast mounts? – A: on the list
Q: clothing restricted by class A: in the future all cosmetic gear will work for all types and we wll get a ton of it.
Q: custom-emotes cross-faction
Q: type 4 sith, he want an equivalent male slave outfit. A: its coming
Q: re-enter class quest areas to RP A: no, but we will give you some RP space in the future.
Q: people with un-RP legacy names – dude, bro legacy, any chance for tighter RP naming policies? A: more ways to adjust what you see in other people’s nameplates. Can’t really restrict naming rules.
Q: more variety of ambient content in populated areas.
Q: Squad inside a guild system – like a guild inside a guild for people that don’t want to leave their old guild? A: why can’t you do it with private chat channels?
Q: cut/paste chat lines to allow RP off the game.
Q: legacy system- not blood related? A: yes people in your legacy can be allies etc, does not have to be in a family.
Q: attach other players to your legacy? A: it is coming but it is tricky- something in the future.
Q: companion ride along with taxis – ride shotgun – we had something implanted before, but M1-4x came along.
Q: name a companion for RP purposes.
Suggestion: ignore turn off their nameplates too. A: we love it – good solution to people with weird legacy names.
Q: I don’t like a companion, can I kick him/her out? A: No, we originally allow you to kill companions – people abused it and kill off all their companions and got mad.
suggestion: biography sheet in character window to help with role-playing. A: you carry a huge amount of data – companions, quests etc we are trying to reduce it but you can comment on your friend list with 1.2
Q/suggestion: will we see a possibiluty of a 2 seater mount? A: we would love to but it is way down the road. You will ride a tauntaun mount first.

Guilds
We think guilds are very important to us and we have a roadmap for improving the guild experience.
Guild UI is functional but could use more features.
Guilds want tools to make coordinate easiers and ways to show off their epeen.
Guild banks: they work and they are awesome. Upto 7 tabs you can buy, each tab goes up in price. Guild leaders can allow access to certain tabs or demand authenicators for certain tabs,
Guild bank is the hardest feature for 1.2
Guild bank: you can repair using guild funds.
Post 1.2 stuff
guild calender, guild emblems – show off your guild on your armor. it’s a toggle on/off and show on certain hotspots.
Guild advertising – make it easies for players to find & join your guild.
guild progression is in the world – very large project – not something you will see soon guild capital ships design exists
no timeline for these features
Q: guild mail/newsletter system – work in conjunction with guild calender system? A: we are hoping guild calender will solve that but it involves a lot of storage space and can involve spam potentially
Q: what kind of guild UI improvements do you have? A: fix moiuse scroll in guild UI and allow you to invite people to groups from guild UI.
Q: look at guild list and check people’s crafting skills A: happening sometime after patch 1.2
Q: plan for a tax system? A: that is in category of well – duh moments. ya I just realized we didn’t have it – we will get it in now that we have a guild bank. no ETA.
Q: Off-game approval of guild members like we had it pre-launch? A: maybe, but its a lot of work – too much stuff to do.
Q: allowances by rank – does repair take away from guild allowances? A: yes, and you can also respec from guild funds
Q: any plan for logs to see ginvites and gkicks A: yes, no ETA
Q: Guild rivals A: we talked about it earlier in the pvp section
Q: invite people from guild list? A: its done in 1.2
Q:able to see if someone is grouped in guild chat and change colors if the group is already full? A: interesting idea, I will write it down.

UI discussion Only 1/2 of the features present here will come out with 1.2
Retro mode: chat box down bottom left
Edit mode: blue signify that this is a feature on that is not always on, you can move things anywhere you want
You can scale all the UI elements individually.
Red signifiy things not turned on.
Only 4 quickslot bars.
target of target is in 1.2
allow you to have more than two windows open at the same – especially useful for crew skill misisons
You can save your UI setups and swap it with other people.
Q: Click to cast for healers? % bars for target of target or focus targets? A: % is in target of target, click to cast not in 1.2. You can see your party’s target of target as well.
Q: any simple macros? A: its on the list, no eta. No macros that affect combat directly. We don’t want a higher barrier of entry to combat.
Q: buffs and debuffs – too small right now and I can’t see – are those icons are resizeable individually A: they are not in this build, if you scale your ops frame you can increase the size of the icons.
Q: Powerauras?? Procs off your abilities - icons pop on your screen to let you know A: we want that – we don’t want you stare down at your buttons. In 1.2 a lot of abilities have proper sound cues to help with that.
Q: a way to differenate between my debuffs/dots and someone else’s debuffs/dots A: we want to allow you select what debuffs/buffs you want to show . Yes but long term.
Q: I don’t have enough quickbars for my abilities – can you streamline abilites? A: maybe macros? we need to do more exploration, we need to get another quickbar in term (not in 1.2). Multi=spec will bring spec specific quickslots.
Q: companion bars don’t pop over your bars A: yes, it is considered its own bar now.
Auction house UI change: yes coming with 1.2 you will be a lot happier, can’t tell you details. its 80% less stupid to post and buy stuff from the GTN.
Q: a way to save keybind profiles? A: not part of 1.2, its on the roadmap.
Q: API to develop mods? A: its in planning stage, its very complicated, we want to ensure its fair and balanced. its something we will work on, its a lot of work.
Q: is there going to be a stealth bar for stealth using classes? A: in the short term no.
Q: can I remove my name and class name from the new UI? A: probably not
Q: any plans on skinning for different colors for visually impaired/color blind people? A: not the priority in the near future.
The Rest
leveling is in good shape – need more story
exit polls – people want more story
GU1.2: new daily mission in Corellia
Unify to chest option is back – it was a beta feature. Gear can be toggled on/off indivdually for appearance. It is not going to be same color – but a color that fits the theme.
Higher resolution textures available. I can has advertising mode? Yes you can.
Dual/mutlispecs – coming in 2 parts – switch between skill trees, 2nd part switch changes to gear loadouts. When do we get more story? This year
Q & A
Q: at level 50, bonus quests only offer you legacy xp – can you turn the old xp you used to get pre-50 into credits or other type of rewards. A: we had it in beta, it will depends on the current economy – we don’t want to generate too much cash.
Q: Galatic guild vs guild warfare coming? A That is something the pvp team wants to do – some sort of massive R vs R
Q: nightmare mode for new ops – additional mechanics and different rewards – hence why it is arriving after 1.2 Hardmorde and nightmare mode will be the way to gear up.
Q: cross server communication? A: that is down the road a bit. Cross faction communication – Damion was against it initially but might be possisble with adversies.
Q: Only guild leader can set ranks, restrict access etc.. can they give permission to someone else? A: long term
Q: BHs/trooper ever get a battle rez? A: NO
Q: Podracing? A: we are excited but we are focusing on the tools you need right now. We have designs for all sort of mini-games
Q: server balance. A: what if we put in a system that encourage people to play the other side? We think that will help. We are hoping the legacy will help with that. No server transfers right now, maybe further down the line. Legacy is too complicated to allow server transfer
Q: cooler outfits for republic chars endgame progression? A: we will take a look at it and try.
Q: Legacy system encourage people to play both factions- you are splitting our guilds who are playing on only one side. A: maybe we need to allow you to create sister guilds on the otherside but legacy will be destructive to the community. In the future – account wide friends.
Q: legacy abilities – these abilites are faction specific – force choke only specific to sith warriors for example and you need to level that rather than a jedi knight.
Q: pvp warzones – some warzones are no 8vs8, can fix that? A: we have incentives in 1.2 to reduce people leaving warzones and some optimization to the matchmaking system
Q: Any updates on same gender romance/ A: its coming with story updates sometime this year. It wil depend on our writers. When we do this, we don’t want just change the dialogue to the other gender. We want new romance arcs etc. Its coming when full story comes. which is this year.
Q: No incentive to go back to older planets – add daily hubs? A: dynamic events team will cover this and likely make some unpopulated .area more populated.
Q: option to turn off environmental effects – smoke/clouds? A: yes we have an entire team dedicated to make swtor run on low-end machines (i.e. laptop) but no macs. 1.1.5 have updated shader setitng for very low spec machines. We are also aware of issues on high-end machines and the work the team is doing on low-end machines will benefit all machines across the board.
Q: epic weapons/armor quests. A: not in 1.2, you may need characters on both faction to play.

[Kwijiboe]

1.2 targeting "early April"

Gonna laugh when Blizzard sees this and decides to finally announce that Diablo III is coming out in April.

[Dantrag]

The legacy abilities are kind of a joke. You have to use your 20min ability to use your legacy ability...

[Insanecyclone]

I'm interested in the trial thing.

[vrumpt]

the 1.2 patch notes are going to be a god damn novel. my god

[Insanecyclone]

http://www.livestream.com/electronicarts

"We can't afford changing the repair costs"

[samalis]

I'm interested in the trial thing.

I can hook you up with a trial, I don't play the game anymore though, was waiting for them to fix their mess of a game.

[Insanecyclone]

I can hook you up with a trial, I don't play the game anymore though, was waiting for them to fix their mess of a game.

How big is the game via dl? Like 20gb+ because of the voice acting? I dunno then, connection is ass and I'll be doing that all day.

[Kwijiboe]

Around 12 gbs/

[vrumpt]

closer to 16-17. Hard for me to say since I have the PTS installed too and all of those files gets mixed in with the other ones.

[vrumpt]

"GTN: Now 80% less stupid" - Damion Schubert

[tol]

I found it to be a very enjoyable watch, they were frank about a lot of the mind boggling deficiencies in the game. To me, they used very minimal marketing and bs spin in their answers to the hard questions. They had to use the "We can't give you an ETA, but it's on our list" on a fair number of things but they also outlined a veritable boatload of content that is going out in 1.2 and beyond. Overall I thought it was a pretty solid Q&A/discussion about the state of the game.

The friends system is supposed to launching tomorrow along with patch 1.1.5.

[Greedouw]

Not too surprised about the "Delay" with 1.2, but not disappointed either. Can't wait for this! Anyone get a screen cap of that new equipment shown at the end?

[Hitoru]

Why does the gunslinger armor have to look fucking retarded yet again.....
Not that a new tier of gear really matters on my server as no one even owns a single piece of Rakata yet (from the token vendor).
Everything else though leaves me completely excited. Looking forward to Lost Island like crazy as I enjoyed Kaon a lot.

[Kenshiin]

Does anyone know what the requirements are to be able to send out invites. One of my buddies who is playing said that he couldn't invite me until he was a subscriber. Any clue?

[Ambrosia]

Link from SWTOR:


http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=343097


"BioWare and LucasArts are excited to announce the Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ Friends Trial starts tomorrow, March 6th!* For a limited time, players who have an active Star Wars: The Old Republic subscription will be able to invite up to three of their friends to explore the Star Wars™ galaxy.

The Star Wars: The Old Republic Friends Trial is an opportunity for players to invite three (3) of their friends to take part in a 7-day trial of the game. During this trial period, invited players can explore each of the four Origin Worlds, and experience the opening adventures for each class as they start along their epic journey."


Some folks have been having problems but I think the issue got resolved at this link (or will be soon):


http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=344778


and here


http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=344961

[tol]

I read that one of the problems was if you are still in your 30 day free month you can't invite yet. Not sure if there is a plan to fix that but it's what I was reading earlier.

[AzazaelFenrir]

Knowing how much they want to test 1.2 with actual guilds, I am okay with it being pushed back. There was a lot of stuff in the sumit that I liked. Things like once 50 on an alt you can use that classes buff on other toons, stuff like Biometric Alloys becoming harvestable. I think they are making big strides with fixes and content. Combat log and whatever that one dev put in a lot of nights and weekends to get into the build.

[AidenCarby]

Ok but what about Jawas.

[Ohemgee]

level bounty hunter

SPOILERS OMG