SWTOR Info

[chaos5061]

Still no ETA. Update coming in a hour from now.

[dudedafool]

Servers are up.


Mini patch download as well.

[chaos5061]

Servers are up.

[chaos5061]

Patch notes are the same as the test server notes.

[cabby]

Just went down again for 15 minutes.

[chaos5061]

Yeah I missed that. Busy at work. Back up by now though.

[chaos5061]

Don't give up on Slicing just yet. A guy I know says that the credits he gets from nodes yesterday are now giving him 450 credits more.

[chaos5061]

Stephen Reid Reddit Q&A Pt.1

From Bioware:
Q: I'll keep this short, do you have any other details about the upcoming Oceanic servers? Aaaanything at all, physical location, ISP that will be used, if March 1st is actually an accurate date. Thanks heaps.

A: March 1st was an estimated date as we said. No more info than that right now, when we have it, we'll get it to you!

Q: Hi id like to ask if you aware of the fps issue many players even with high end pcs are having ? And if so can we get any update to that ? ( unplayable fps in warzones, cities, or just whenever there are people around ) thx for asnwer http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=82030

A: We're aware and are looking into it - it's not something where we're expecting to find a 'magic bullet' solution as 'FPS issues' can cover a wide range of problems. That said, we're working to improve the client where we can.

Q: Any plan to implement some kind of in-ship customizations?

A great credit sink would be vanity items you could put into your ship and modify. For example, being able to display an armour set on a mannequin, or put a weapons rack up on the wall. I'm already building up quite a collection of nice orange sniper rifles, and it seems like a shame to just dump them in my cargo hold instead of displaying them as the trophies they are.

It would be especially nice to be able to put armour sets on mannequins and right-click to swap your current set with the mannequin set (to go from PvE to PvP gear, for example, or DPS to tank).

It's pretty cool that you can invite other people to see your ship (the Fury is quite a bit different than the Phantom, for example), but it would be nice to be able to personalize things a bit.

A: Ship customization is definitely something that's wanted at some point.

Q: The authenticator can currently only be removed by calling support, at some point in the future, will we be able to remove it from our web account settings and avoid the unnecessary phone call?

A: We're working on that, it's a high priority for the team involved.

Q: Hey, thanks for doing this! What I've got at the moment:

My friend is playing a Dark Side Jedi Knight. Are there any plans to add more Heavy Armor options on the Republic side that would be visually similar to darksider/Sith armor? His specific concern was "it's all so... BROWN!"

Is the team aware of the large number of quests showing up here and there that simply can not be abandoned? my quest log is starting to fill up with Missions that I don't want to do because they are grey now, or the "Stay Frosty" bonus trooper mission that I didn't complete, and can't get rid of!

I'm sure this one doesn't have an answer, but I'm excited to know more about the Legacy system coming down the pipe!

What are the long term development plans to ensure that people stay interested in the game? For my playstyle, that tends to involve end-game content. Apparently we are getting a new high end content patch within a month, is that sort of schedule likely to continue?

A: I haven't heard of too many plans to make JK armor that'll basically make a JK look like a Sith. We do feel that player classes should be able to be identified from their look, to a degree. But never say never...

I've heard of the 'cannot be abandoned' issue, but it always helps us to make a thread in our CS Forums so we can start investigating the scale of the problem. EDIT: Double-checked and it's definitely something that's being tracked towards a resolution.

Long term - yes, we're planning to add more high-level content, among other things. We're not committing to a specific schedule yet though.

Q: What is Bioware's current stance on Advanced Class respeccing? I know you toyed with the idea during testing, I'm just wondering what the "current" thought on it is.

I'd like to respec to a Commando. I can't see myself rolling another Trooper just to do that though, the story is the same after all.

Thanks for doing this AMA.

A: Currently AC respeccing is not 'on the table' - ie, it's not seen as being a feature we'll be adding in soon. It's back at the philosophical discussion stage, AFAIK.

Even if you'd need to reroll, having been through the story once (and I've been through Ord Mantell a few times myself!) you'll go through a lot faster. Experiment with different moral choices, I enjoy it myself.

Q: I would love to hear more about the legacy system as others have pointed out. I feel that ever since you guys mentioned "character creation options" as a feature of the system, I am not encouraged to create my characters now. Instead I just have a bunch of placeholder names and I'm patiently waiting the implementation of the legacy system. However, if the system is underwhelming or I just don't like the options - I really will feel a bit cheated. Why? Because I could have been enjoying my many alts now as opposed to holding out for advanced options.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, will it be possible to give us more information on exactly what we can get out of the legacy system? We do not need it implemented ASAP, but it would be nice to know if I can roll my Imperial Agent now or I should wait for that awesome customization at a future date. As the system stands now, it is not encouraging people to create alts - it's doing to opposite. This should change instantly once we know something - anything, about the system.

A: Without revealing more details I do want to point out one thing: don't assume that there's another, 'secret' character creation system that we're going to allow for those who have unlocked their Legacy.

The Legacy System will allow you to have more options at character creation, but it's not like "Oh, you unlocked your Legacy? You now have 50 more beard types available to you!"

Personally, I'd say go ahead and play your IA. Unless you have a beard fetish. (Joke...)

Q: If you can generalize, how much new content is intended to be patched instead of an "expansion pack." ?

What are the expectations of a successful "year 1" for bioware and swtor? Goals you want to meet?

The in-game ticket system has been quite slow on getting responses, is this because of the overwhelming number of tickets being submitted? A lot of the times I see the ticket is closed without ever hearing a response other then, "It is being forwarded."

I have read, but never confirmed that bioware wants to keep everything server specific. I find this a wonderful idea, can you share some depth on this?

Also, do you plan on having any type of ranking system in the future for player vs player combat / warfronts / arena's?

A: We have a lot of content intended for interim patches before any future potential expansions.

Expectations for me are just to stay alive.

In-game tickets - we do get a very high volume, if you're talking about bugs, those do get passed to our QA team to look at and to triage.

I'm not sure what your 'server specific' thing means... sorry 'bout that.

Ranking is something that's been discussed on the PvP team.

Q: Why have the server maintenance and web site maintenance at the same time? People go on the site for info. Actually the client usually points to the forums while there is maintenance going on, though the site doesn't work.

A: Well, we made the decision that we didn't want to have two maintenance periods per week (if required) so decided to bundle them together. The two aren't joined at the hip, however; we will have maintenance periods in future where we'll just have the game in maintenance mode and not the webservers.

Q: I'd like to report a bug: Sometimes during briefings characters appear 6 inches tall.

I'd also like to make a request: Never fix the aforementioned bug.

A: We might disappoint you on that. Point taken, though.

Q: Hi Stephen

I am wondering if there are any updates as to how same gender relationships will be implemented within the game. Will players be able to romance existing companions, or will new companions be added? Is there a time frame for this feature?

A: Sorry, I've got no updates on that right now.

Q: Will you make pvp brackets? People are starting to get geared, low levels get rolled to the extent that queueing isn't fun anymore. Any chance for a high level bracket?

A: That's something I'll be getting Gabe Amatangelo to talk more on, but we're definitely looking at that.

Q: First off, the game has been great. I think the single-player story telling has captured me more than any other feature.

That being said, one of the most distracting and weakest points of the game so far has been the User Interface. It lacks a number of basic features one would expect from an MMO in 2011/2012. Mainly UI scale, wasted screen space (tracking quests has more space devoted to it than almost any other element), lack of customization, etc.

I am under the firm belief that any MMO that comes after the behemoth of WoW will have to provide people who have accepted genre due to WoW the same set of customization options as they have come to expect (That is an awkward sentence). Is there any information you can provide regarding the user interface in terms of making it more user friendly or with more customization options?

Thanks for your (you and the rest of the team) work and putting out a great game with what has been a super enjoyable first week!

A: UI customization is coming for sure.

Okay that's it for now. I have to go do a couple of things and I 'll come back and post more. -chaos5061

[chaos5061]

Stephen Reid Reddit Q&A Pt.2

Q: Firstly, as a Brit how can you spell in an American fashion!!?!?!?! Outrage, I shall inform the Monarchy now.

But seriously, do you think that alternative specs will be allowed at some stage in the future? Also, legacy system, any further insight you are willing to share with us at this point in time?

Great twitter feed by the way!

A: Spelling 'American style' makes things easier when you're mostly dealing with Americans. That said I can change my colours on the fly when required.

Dual specs could well come at some point in the future - it's been discussed for sure. Legacy System... will be cool?

Q: Thanks for taking the time to do this. Everyone at BioWare's done a great job with this launch. There are several things that I'm curious about regarding the development and the future of the game. Any of this you could talk about would be awesome!

On the dev team, are there 'experts' in certain areas like racial cultural differences, Mandalorian lore, galactic history, the Chiss Ascendancy, lightsaber combat, ship design etc?

How and why were the included playable races ultimately chosen? Why highlight 'obscure' races like the Rattataki and Chiss? Were there reasons besides storylines that some races are class restricted, like no Twi'lek Troopers? And why no playable Mon Cals, Ithorians, or Trandoshans when we have Twi'leks?

It seems like the game world is filled with little details and hidden gems. It's common to come around a corner and find an interesting scene like a droid interacting with his master, or an NPC conversation. Was there a single team responsible for this or did people just make suggestions as they thought of stuff they wanted to see?

How many writers were there for the class storylines? How much did they work together? It must have been interesting to write those stories with the constraints that they all regularly converge on certain planets and events.

What's the deal with body type 4 Chiss? Aren't they supposed to be physically and metabolically superior to humans? And for that matter aren't they all supposed to have black hair, not blue?

How much has been intentionally 'left open' for future additions and expansions? New planets, operations, warzones, and flashpoints are the obvious thing, and I'm sure it's widely expected that the level cap will rise. How about new races? The class system seems to cover all character and playstyle archetypes pretty well, do you see the game still rocking 8 classes / 16 ACs in future years? When new planets are added, will some content be put in that overlaps in level with current content, with the class storylines modified to allow that? Like, will all new planets be level 50+, or will there be a new Imperial planet for levels 16-20 to complement Balmorra, with say the Agent's storyline altering slightly. Maybe from, "Go to Balmorra and Nar Shadda to dismantle those terrorist cells to damage the terror network," to, "Dismantle on of the two terrorist cells on Balmorra and Manaan, then one of the two cells on Nar Shadda and Bespin, to damage the terror network."

Do workbenches have a future in the game or have they been replaced by ctrl+rightclick, leaving the remaining workbenches only for tutorial purposes?

Thanks again for anything you can answer!

A: That's a lot of questions... many of which better suited for our writing team. I should get Daniel to come on here. Maybe in the future! I'll take a vague stab at a couple:

Experts... not really, that I'm aware of. Many of the writers are experts but we don't have a 'Lightsaber guy' (well except Brad who makes them..).

The writing team was solely responsible for what we call 'ambient dialogue'.

Class storylines - most class storylines were written by one or two writers, as I understand it. The development went on for a decent period of time, so in many cases some parts were written by one writer, some by others. That said, we can generally point to one writer as having written the 'bulk' of a class.

Q: What is your european strategy? Will you keep putting maintenence on day / primetime for europe?

Thats essentially a days worth of access gone per week.

A: The unfortunate reality of maintenance windows is that someone, somewhere, is always going to be affected.

Our European prime-time - which is when we have our highest PCUs across all servers - has actually not been impacted by our current maintenance windows. It's later in the evening, not during the day.

That said, this week we did overrun, and we know that many EU players were on holiday too, so that wasn't good. We're taking steps to address that.

Q: The Old Republic Website seems something like a Frankesntein, sewed together from different themes. On the one hand you have the old theme, which is seen on the main page and the holonet. On the other hand, the game systems pages, which are much newer, look crisper and better designed. Are there any plan on updating the website, bringing it out of the design it had three years ago into a more modern design? And is increased website interactivity (posting as your character on the forums instead of a screen name, Armory features, etc.) anywhere on the horizon?

A: Yes and... maybe!

Q: It's been a bit unclear on what the future of space combat in SWTOR is. Do you think it is at all likely that we will be seeing an additional, more "open" form of space combat (more similar to the old Tie Fighter games) at some point in SWTOR, or do you anticipate space combat remaining on rails for the next couple of years?

A: I can't really comment on timelines for future development. We want to improve and expand space combat over time, but do understand that taking the space game 'off rails' is not a simple change.

In addition - and I think Georg said this best - we have to all remember that many of those games that we all remember fondly were basically 'best in class'. As a developer, BioWare doesn't have a history of making free-form space combat games; so for us to learn how to do that up to the standards previously set by others, while at the same time trying to make the best MMO we can (while maintaining the standard of quality BioWare is known for in storytelling) is a fairly Herculean task. I mean, I know we're good, but we're not superhuman.

TLR - changes to space combat will happen over time, we're sure, but don't expect a whole new game to suddenly appear in a matter of months.

Q: The camera doesn't have an option to disable the auto-follow function, making gameplay a little awkward at times. (To clarify, the function tells the camera to face the direction your character is moving when you release the left click button)

Is this something that is intended or can we look forward to a fix for this in the future?

A: No insight on that beyond what you already know, but we (Community team) are aware that it's a request/concern, and we'll raise it as such.

Q: Is community management entirely managed by you and your team or is Lucasarts involved in some capacity?

A: We work closely with LucasArts as our partner, so we talk a lot. On-the-ground decisions, day to day, are generally made by us, but they have a voice in many discussions.

Q: Hi Stephen,

I was wondering if you could shed some light on neutral gear - the status of it, and what discussions have been had about it. I had been following the game for awhile and months beforehand it had been pretty much confirmed, then no sight of it. I know you likely can't go into specifics, but what happened to it and if it is coming back - ETA?

Thanks!

A: As I understand it neutral gear was harder to implement than first thought, and was unfortunately moved out of the launch window. It's not 'dead', and James Ohlen brings it up as something he's a fan of quite often, so.. chances are pretty good it'll make it in someday.

Q: Thank you for taking the time to do this AMA! Dealing with an MMO community isn't an easy job, so thanks for all the work you do!

What will it take for us to get offical server forums? I know the offical responce about lack of moderation and wanting the community to handle it, but Allison Berryman stated on her interview with massively that they are listening to feedback and it's possible the official stance may change. What do we need to do as a community to make that happen?

Do you know if the Devs currently feel Huttball is balanced? It seems the classes themselves are balanced on paper and in general, but the unique terrain and goals of Huttball seem to favor classes with stronger knockback, movement control, and ranged attacks, which are obviously not balanced amoung the classes.

Any updates on improvements to the LFG system, or an ETA on when we might see them?

Any updates on this 'secret' improvement to Space combat or any hints you might want to 'accidently' drop?

What upcoming feature are you most excited about that you are allowed to talk about?

Thanks again.

A: 1) Send a stack of unmarked bills to...

We were talking about this just today; it's still under discussion. From our perspective there's no easy solution but we have ideas.

2) I haven't asked specifically but if the devs felt that Huttball was unbalanced I'm sure they'd look at that as an issue; I haven't heard much on that, but they still look at metrics very carefully.

3) No updates on that.

4) No (although see another answer above). I don't 'accidentally' drop hints.

5) Legacy System. Well, I'm allowed to say I'm excited about it...

Q: Will there be the ability to raise/lower hoods on Jedi Robes via a command? We've seen many different robe variations but very few without a hood down. I'd very much like to have the choice. Thank you!

A: We know this is wanted, but it's more work than you might expect. It may come in the future.

[chaos5061]

Stephen Reid Reddit Q&A Pt.3

Q: How much of a priority is the Mod API to bioware? I feel if they could release something the community could fix a good bit of the UI and other issues with the game currently.

A: The UI team is going to work on improving the existing UI first before we look at modding it. Modding may happen, but we have no ETA on 'when' that we can share right now.

Q: Can we please get a more functional AH/Galactic Trade Market? having to put in a Main Category PLUS a sub Category PLUS a Search PLUS a name filter, just to find out what things are selling for is one of the most irritating system imaginable. Please consider just a name search for those of us who just want to sell an item.

A: Improvements will come to the GTN in time, definitely.

Q: Stephen,

First and foremost, thank you for all you have done for the SWTOR community. I don't know how you put up with the inane Tweets and abuse that rabid fanboys give you every day, but no matter how much BioWare is paying you, it certainly isn't enough.

Secondly, are there plans to add more vanity pets and non-mechanical mounts to the game?

A: More pets - yes.

Non-mechanical mounts - maybe, it's a technical challenge, I've been told.

Q: Thanks for doing this!

As a guild leader, I'm one who likes to plan ahead as much as possible. Can you tell us what your plans are for guild banks and guild capital ships (actually, would you care to elaborate on your 'secret space project' as well?), as well as when we might see those pop up in a content release?

(also, if you're feeling generous: How regularly should we expect to see content patches?)

You're a badass community manager, thanks for all the awesome work!

A: As those are not 'my plans' I'm not sure I can comment too much.

Guild banks and guild 'housing' (of some type; ships are most popular as people know) are both on the list for future development. As always it's a question of priorities and so on, but they're definitely discussed. I will say that guild banks are higher priority.

The 'secret space project' I can't elaborate on, but we've always said we wanted to continue to expand the space game, and we will.

Content patches will be as regular as something that happens... regularly.

Q: Ability Delay. This has been brought up all over the forums at swtor.com including http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=95738 . Have you guys discussed this internally, and if so, is there an ETA for a fix on this issue?

A: Hey! It has been discussed internally, and we'll talk about it publicly soon. It's not a simple issue so we don't want to issue a quick, off-the-cuff response.

Q: Is BioWare honestly confident they can maintain a MMO (mechanically) and support a robust GUI without community development? I mean, even the ability to not remember window position, resize, filter debuffs, etc feel extremely restricting after playing that-MMO-that-shall-not-be-named. This doesn't even get into things like GRID. I feel that back-ending the GUI on at least some kind of mapping, e.g. XML, and a very restricted API (e.g. no autocasting, etc) would not "harm" the game.

The fact of the matter is there is a difference between making mods too integral and simply presenting data in a different way. Coupled with the mentioned delays in combat, the game honestly begins to feel like a console game with all it says I can't do rather than what I can do.

So, in short, is BioWare's stance on no APIs, no mods firm? I'd appreciate something beyond, "we're considering it." -- more in the vein of their justification.

A: It's not firm as in 'THOU SHALT NOT HAVE THIS' - it's just not top of the priority pile right now. It may happen in future.

Q: Are you going to let australians who have already purchased the game transfer our characters when you release australian servers?

A: As we said in the announcement we're looking at ways to allow players to continue to play their characters on the local servers.

Q: Are there plans to hold Q&As with a representative of the various departments? I would love to have periodic sessions with the crafting, class, pvp, ect developers.

A: We'll see how this one ends up.

Q: Hello Mr. Reid. First of all, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us. I would like to say that i really enjoy the game but i do have a few worries about it. Most of them have been asked by other people on here, so i will refrain from boring you with repeats.

This question would have to do with how the community team communicates with the developers and how issues are brought up.

Does community outcry affect the priorities of your team? I'll give the example of the combat responsiveness issue. Many people are stating this as a major game breaking issue. How does that affect your priorities? Does it jump to the top of the list or is it set aside on the sideline for later since there are still a large portion of people that are enjoying the game/unaware? I guess what i'm asking, respectfully, is how seriously are complaints and suggestions that you spot online from customers taken by the developers and how are these communicated to them?

Thank you

A: Good question!

We always look at complaints/concerns seriously, and we try to make sure we have a variety of metrics on hand to ensure we know how big an issue something is.

When an issue is first raised, we might look at things like 'How many posts are on this issue' and 'How many views has this attracted per thread'. However, neither of those numbers are an iron-clad guarantee an issue is a big deal for a lot of players (People comment in threads for any number of reasons, and threads get views for any number of other reasons) so then we look at in-game metrics, tickets received by Customer Service and other areas.

We also just look at the plain bottom line - will fixing this make the majority of people playing happier? Will it get more people in the game? There's more to it than that, but essentially there we're dealing with our gut feelings based on our previous experience with the community (and with MMOs in general).

We track all of this on a daily basis and are in constant communication with the Live Production team, who triage issues, assign teams to work on them, escalate as required and so on.

Last but not least there's always the issue of developer priority. Some things may look like minor changes but will actually take a lot of effort. Other things might be very important to a small number of people but are de-prioritized in favor of things that will affect a larger number of the players.

It's a daily balancing act. I think it's important to realize, however, that we do listen, we are reading, and we do want the feedback. We'll definitely come out and say "This is not going in the game" or "This is not going to change" if that's the case.

On the flipside, if an issue is raised we don't guarantee an immediate response because often we need some time to delve into it, figure out how big an issue it is, and then figure out our response. Sometimes that response will just be "We're looking at this" other times it might be an entire dev blog. It varies.

Er, that help?

[chaos5061]

Okay that's all caught up. I'll post more later. He's still answering questions. I'll check back on it in a hour and if new questions have been answered I'll have post up. How long it takes for the post depends on how many questions got answered.

[chaos5061]

Stephen Reid Reddit Q&A More on guld stuff.

Expanding on Guild question:
Guild banks... pretty soon, but my definition of soon is probably different from yours. I'll say before E3 or PAX East, that seems fair.

On the guild housing/ship thing, I've had this conversation a few times with folk in person - the thing is the basic idea seems simple, but the actual reality of doing it can be hugely complex.

For example - and this is entirely me, personally, making stuff up: it's possible guild capital ships could be just open spaces for people to hang out in. Cool, but likely 'not enough' for many people. So then you add on, say, the ability to customize that space. Then maybe you want to move those ships around - maybe put them in orbit over planets, or go fight with other guild capital ships. Woah, did we just add a space combat game? You can see how it easily gets bigger.

The short version: something like guild capital ships sounds super cool and the development team likes the idea. There's a big distance between 'likes the idea' and 'is fully developed and in the game'.

[chaos5061]

Stephen Reid Reddit Q&A GTN and Minigames.

More on GTN:
That's a significant piece of work, so it won't pop up in a weekly, but it's still being looked at closely so I think it's likely to end up higher priority.

Be careful not to try and extract too much from that statement, though. Please!

Minigames:
Q: What do you guys think of in game gambling for credits? Other mmos seem to be heavily against the Idea but it seems gambling has always been pretty prevelent in the star wars universe. Any thoughts of letting us play "sabaac" or "pazaak" against others or a house for credits?

A: Those games are fondly remembered by many team members from KotOR.

Q: It's my feeling that mini-games (distractions) like this (or say; fishing for example) are essential in helping the MMO feel 'alive'. Not sure why this question was glossed over with a response that was irrelevant. Disheartening that it feels like it'll never happen now.

A: If we fondly remember something, that generally means we want to put it in the game at some point.

[chaos5061]

cabby we had that discussion about modable gear here it is from a SWTOR Dev:
Orange Armor gets it's armor value from the 'armoring' mod you slot in. If you exchange it for something better, the armor value increases along with the stats.

It's always the first mod in the list that determines the intrinsic properties of the orange items (e.g. armoring on armor, barrel on guns, etc.)

Hope that helps.

[chaos5061]

Patch Notes 12-30-11

From Bioware:
General

Adjusted the refresh rate for the game client server selection screen.
Made changes to help alleviate issues for players who were getting stuck on the loading screen.