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

[Kuishen]

SO I'm not gonna read 92 pages. Is this game going to be worth getting when it comes out in Dec? Need to give some people ideas for Christmas gifts, thinking the NQ edition might be one. From what I see I can roll single player with NPCs and do fine. Is the content there?

If you like WoW clones with a /somewhat/ better story. Then yes.

[Insanecyclone]

Weekend beta invites rolling out today/this week.

[Zerocool]

Some new PvP details and new PvP Q&A:

Q&A

Spoiler: show

During the first day of the Fan Site Summit, Gabe Amatangelo answered questions about Ilum's Open World PvP zone, Voidstar, Flashpoints, and Operations. We include a transcript below in the order of the questions asked; there are some repeated questions with expanded answers as well as follow-ups out of immediate order.

Is there a size limit for guild vs. guild, could you theoretically be in a party of, a couple hundred if you have a big guild against a couple hundred, if you're all in parties?

Gabe Amatangelo: No. Right now, it is the Operations group limit which is going to be 24. We're going back and forth on that, but it's 24 right now.

In the open world zones, how are you doing population balance? For example, one side is really outnumbered than the other.

So that's why the mechanics is what it is. We went through and tested a bunch of different mechanics. It's five captures so you have to keep all five. If you're 100 vs 20, that 20 is going to get in somewhere. You have to spread out to keep them off, and the sort of war effort buff that you get. You get stacks and it gradually increases. How much you get for killing and how much you can get out of Warzones happens from defending at a place that you have and you can keep stacking it when you take new ones. So if there is a group of 20 vs. 100, they're sitting at one, they're keeping one, and if that whole 100 decides, hey, they're at the northern assault, they all start moving there, you guys can move elsewhere, so keep it spread out. But obviously we want to keep killing players because that's where the Valor is coming from.


Can you tell us anything more about Warzone sizes besides what we already saw?

It's always going to be 8v8.

For all warzones?

The three warzones we have right now, 8v8.

Warzones are only pulling from your own server correct?

Currently yes, they only pull from your own server.

In Voidstar, you're doing the attack and defend, what happens if the defenders keep them off, do you go to a round two, or do you just...

It goes to a round two, once the time's up. And it gauges how far your progress was, and then it compares the progress. If someone made it to room 2 and you only made it to room 1, obviously the other team wins cause they got all the way through there. If they got through the barrier of room 2 versus planting the bomb in room 2, it gauges the progress.

Is there a cap on players in Ilum?

No. Well, there is a limit, but I don't imagine people are going to hit it.

So you could essentially have hundreds on each side -- is that an accurate estimate?

I can't say any numbers, but it's going to be lots, yes.

As far Ilum goes, did you say it was going to be persistent like constant?

It's constant. It's not a timer. It's always going on. The timer is when you destroy the other vehicles, and your vehicles are able to fly in, it's five minutes before your vehicles are vulnerable to attack, that's the only timer. But other than that, if you want to wake up at 3 AM and take it from the Empire, who seems to be dominating it, and you're Republic, by all means you can do that.

One of the challenges of open world PvP is two factions -- what if one is not populated versus the other? Is there any sort of incentive or anything, any mechanics built in to help balance two faction populations.

That is the challenge with open-world PvP, and as soon as you start introducing systems, then it stops becoming open-world PvP to an extent. So what we decided to lean on, and of course we'll be moderating and we might adjust stuff afterwards, but we we're leaning on right now is the mechanics. And like I was saying is that there is five different objectives and you've got to keep all five to have control. If they're 100, they've got them all and they spread like 20 to each objective, and there's only 20 of you, then you're greatly outnumbered.

You can go have a fight at one of those objectives and you can have, theoretically, a fair fight at one of those objectives. As soon as they all start to shift over there, they're leaving some other place so you can go for that point, one of the other assaults, or another base or something to that effect. Now the war activity you have throughout, you keep stacking these war effort buffs, the war buffs enhance how much Valor you get from kills but it also enhances how much Valor you get in a bonus at the end of Warzones as well. So if you're there at 4 AM, and no one is in there, you're like, "Ah, I'm going to go in and take a couple objectives and then run some Warzones." It's like you can build up that buff regardless, so you have a purpose to go there whether there's people there or not.

Does it change the alignment of the planet, like when you go on to Ilum does it say, hey it's now Sith and everyone on there is flagged, or if it's Republic...?

It doesn't change the alignment for the planet. It doesn't affect the PvE. The thing that it affects is that the players who control it do have -- I hovered over it briefly -- an icon (indicating) that they have an additional bonus.

Did I hear you say Operations can be 24?

Operation groups can be 24, but it's 16 in the larger mode of the Operation content, if you follow what I'm saying.

So you're not talking about like Eternity Vault?

The content is 8 and 16.

Pre-mades... we still can't go in with a full group of 8 to the Warzones?

Correct.

And you were talking about maybe later you may allow that. What kind of queues are you looking for that?

Once you start doing the 8... There's a certain amount of people who want to participate in those teams, so I would say at that point we'd be looking at cross-servering if we're going 8v8. Within the community, everyone participating including the people who queue solo, the people who queue with a couple buddies. Then you have things like Huttball where it could be the same vs. same, so you're going to keep having pops. You have a tight knit community within PvP there, so thats what we're striving for with that. But once we start exploring those other things, like the 8v8, the tournaments, that kind of stuff, that's when we'll start looking into just getting people in warzones.

How long would it take to maybe go through one Operation if you have a successful run?

Three hours.

How do people transition from Flashpoints to Operations if they haven't operated a raid?

They've got a pathway. For example, Black Talon and Essles, they (adds) keep coming in, but two people can handle it. And there's this one guy in Black Talon... he basically drops a plasma probe that keeps pulsing out. But immediately after he drops that on you, he elbows you to knock you out of it. It's like, dude you don't want to stand in a void zone, get away from the fire. So we kind of do baby steps with the mechanics to try get people familiar.

But in terms of a new approach to enrage timers, is there anything in particular you want to show off?

Actually in the normal mode flashpoints there's not enrage timers, we're not doing enrage timers there because thats more of an advanced feature. It's definately in hard mode Flashpoints and definately in the Operations. But in the normal modes of flashpoints as you're leveling up, no enrage timers there.

http://darthhater.com/2011/11/08/fan...amatangelo-qa/

Ilum open objective PvP details

Spoiler: show

If there is one that is going to be hard to explain completely, it is Ilum. There is a lot that is still shrouded in mystery but it is a lot clearer than it was yesterday thanks to the presentation. Gabe started by showing off some of the capture points players can control, such as turrets that you can click to use. These turrets have a decreasing channel time that periodically fires a large bolt of energy down range. Turrets can also be destroyed by the other team, so players defending while using them should take note of this.

As the presentation progressed, Gabe displayed the several objective areas players will need to take as they continue to the opposing faction's base on the other end of the zone. Both sides will collide in the middle of the map where the objectives are for players to complete along the way. Each objective area has its own unique style of objective to capture. To progress the map, players have to take out the opposing side's walkers with a rocket launcher. The rocket launcher has quite a lengthy amount of time to lock on before the rocket actually launches at the targeted walker. During this time, a red light surrounds the player who attempts to use the rocket launcher and looks similar to the way the color loot system works today. This allows the opposing faction to easily find the person they need to target on a chaotic battlefield.

Once the rocket hits the targeted walker, it destroys it in one hit. Throughout the map, there are areas that you can use to avoid the walkers all together or use to flank the opposing faction. These areas are primarily valleys that surround some of the major objective points in the middle of the map. Once one of the sides takes down the opposing side's walkers, transport ships will drop walkers to progress the battle.

There are also several other non-controllable turrets that players can destroy in the same manner as the walkers. When the bigger turrets are destroyed, a swarm of bombers bombard the opposing faction's base. As the factions progress the objectives, quests count down the time in which they have to complete the battle before the objectives re-spawn. Players will have to make use of the momentum they gain when capturing the objectives because it appears that it can quickly turn in favor of the other faction. Gabe did mention during the Q&A that there is a limit to the amount of people that can be in this zone, but it is not one that they expect the area to reach. How the zone limit interacts with balance and server populations is a big, unanswered question.

There is still much to learn, but from what we saw, it looks like Ilum is progressing well. The only thing we could possibly nitpick about is that it felt a little sterile, but what they showed was really really early, so we're sure BioWare will have it polished before launch.

http://darthhater.com/2011/11/08/fan...ilum-pvp-demo/

[vrumpt]

well fuck me. got a weekend beta invite. go figure its the same weekend Skyrim comes out. god fucking dammit.

now i have to choose.

[Zerocool]

Fucking Bioware. Got an Email that said "Prepare for deployment" and thought it was a beta invite and got excited. Was just a stupid guild deployment thing though.

[Guyverarmor]

VRUMPT I can totally take that invite off your hands

[Zetanio]

Gimme that invite....

[vrumpt]

I've decided to choose both. Gonna just not eat or sleep, they aren't as important.

[Zetanio]

Good choice sir. I respect your commitment.

[Guyverarmor]

I've decided to choose both. Gonna just not eat or sleep, they aren't as important.

I salute you good sir.

[Zerocool]

Just got invited as well. Didn't get an email but saw my invite on http://www.swtor.com/tester

[Agito]

I have just the worst luck ever on this stuff haha. I'll take a beta invite off of someones hands if they get any extras or just don't want it.

[Zerocool]

Apparently they'll still be sending out invites up until tomorrow some time.

[Zetanio]

I'm waiting with baited breath. I need a goddamn invite.

[Maksudyst]

Got an invite for beta for this weekend.. yay. lol. Been waiting for this shit forever.

[Zetanio]

I'm unsubscribing from this thread due to rage.

[Purrrfect]

So I had originally preordered, then decided I wasn't gonna play and cancelled. Recently was watching the clone wars toon eps and said fuck it, repreordered. Only this time it wouldn't let me apply the new preorder code to my account b/c it still had my old one. And my old code was for digital deluxe and the new one is standard. Wonder if can just not say anything and wind up getting the deluxe things for free lol.

[vrumpt]

the early access code is just for early access. you'll still need to submit a game copy code at some point to register it and whatnot, which is where any rewards come from. At some point you'll have to register a game copy to continue to login shortly after launch, think if you cancelled for good you could still play through early access up until that point if you had a code registered before. They just do this for people who are getting collectors/regular (physical copy) edition who won't have the retail code when early access hits a few days before launch.

[Ohemgee]

When can we pay this bitch in full? Digital deluxe edition needs to be paid off

[Guyverarmor]

Beta invite confirmed bitches ! Too bad I have to work OT this weekend and going to zoo with my son ( still fine with the zoo part, not the work part )... Guess I am not sleeping Friday night !