In this weeks Community Q&A Damion Schubert goes solo, and answers all questions you may have about the “Free to play” model. This will also be the last community Q&A in this format, as BioWare are changing strategy and will instread be focusing on bringing us more frequent and consistent developer responses in the forums instead. Check it out below: ButeoRegalis: Are subscriptions the only way to gain Cartel Coins (CCs) in the future, meaning, aside from the bonus coins we’re getting until the Free-to-Play option goes live? Can you purchase them without a subscription? Damion Schubert (Principal Lead Systems Designer): All players will be able to purchase Cartel Coins by purchasing them on our website and eventually in-game. These coins are used to buy various virtual items from the Cartel Market. Free-to-Play members can also use Cartel Coins to unlock certain game restrictions. Samohnat: Will Cartel Coins be available via…
Question of the Week
Community Q&A: July 27th, 2012
This weeks Questions and answers are up. Nothing really interesting this time. Servers having trouble since 1.3 with chat lag, warzone lags and unscheduled maintenance every three or four days, but the last question makes it sound like server perfomance has actually been improved. So when you’re stuck in the login screen next time or you’re chatting 10 minutes into the future than don’t worry, the server itself is reliable! Check it all out below: Skendra: Question about Legacy! Under Character Perks -> Travel, at 1.2 there was buff for Sprint Speed but locked and now in 1.3 it was changed to Priority Transport. Why? Will Wallace (Senior Designer): There were both internal and external balance concerns about allowing players to purchase upgrades to Sprint speed, especially as it related to advantages in Warzones. We don’t want someone to feel like they have to have an optional purchase to be competitive in PvP….
SWTOR Community Q&A: July 23rd, 2012
Last Fridays Community Q&A were postponed and released yesterday. This time the BioWare devs answers questions about Campaign gear,class balance and other PVP issues. Chimerashot: The way Campaign gear is set up, some DPS classes have the Armoring with more Endurance instead of their main stat. Can we expect this to change /what was the reasoning behind this? David Hunt (Systems Designer): It’s an undesired interaction between the distribution of the mods and the move to set bonuses on the armoring. Future gear provides set mods will use the primary stat over Endurance for all DPS classes. Achyllis: Why don’t cool downs all reset on death in PvP? Austin Peckenpaugh (Senior Designer): Doing this would encourage a couple of things that, so far, we don’t necessarily want to encourage. When you take a position from another player or group of players in a Warzone, holding that position is harder when…
Community Q&A: 7/13/12
BioWare have a new Community Q&A for us, and this time it delves into deception Assassins, Operatives, and the new planet of Makeb. Lik elast week it’s pretty short but indeed a worth a read. Check it out below: Posted by: Community Q&A: July 13th, 2012 Anzel: Credit Sinks appear to be one of the hot topics in the community right now. Are there any chances of severely lowering or possibly removing some of these at this early stage in the game? Damion Schubert (Principal Lead Systems Designer): Now that 1.3 has been out and legacy perks have been in the system for a while now, we will be looking at our credits sinks, particularly the perks, to see how they are performing. It is quite likely we will make some adjustments based on what we’ve learned. BobertCole: Could you elaborate please on what role you see deception Assassins playing? Are they close…
Comunity Q&A July 6th
This week’s Community Q&A is now live and the BioWare Devs discuss New Playable Species, story, Fixes to PVP, and some other stuff (Blizz buff incoming, Yay!). This is one of the shortest Q&A’s so far, but it is definitely still worth a read. Check out out: CelCawdro: If Cathar are successful, what kinds of species can we expect to see? May we see anything beyond the current selection of near-humans? What is the process behind selecting new species and gauging community interest? Daniel Erickson (Lead Game Designer): We’d like to open the selection of future species to the community as a whole with clear positives and negatives provided for each selection. That way we can go a bit further afield in our species selection. Lurtzello: Are the various stories ordered? Meaning, when does the storyline of each Republic planet takes place compared to the Imperial storyline and the storylines of the…
Community Q&A: 6/29/12
As always, BioWare have released this week’s Q&A. This time the devs discuss changes to a tied game of Voidstar, new species and more. Hit the jump for the full Q&A. Posted by: Community Q&A: June 29th, 2012 Lesai: When it comes to planning content and game direction, how much of it is based on the developers’ plan for the game, and how much of it is based on community suggestion and feedback? Daniel Erickson (Lead Game Designer): As we come to the end of our big must-have features (like Group Finder), updates are driven more and more by the community. Expect to see far more of the smaller quality of life requested features (color matching for companions, chat bubbles, etc.) start to get real traction under them in the near future. CelCawdro: What are your long-term plans for implementing playable species? Are Cathar merely the first of semi-regular species additions? Daniel: Like all…
Community Q&A: June 15th, 2012
BioWare posted a new Q&A session yesterday. It’s always nice read as it gives us some insight on what the devs are working on. One of the answers that caught my eye this time, was the fact that you need high level toon of each faction to get the HK-51 companion. Yet another reason to get working on those Legacy characters. I also liked the explanation about stats on mods and enhancements. It’s easier to accept “this isn’t changing”, or “we don’t know when this might change” if they say why they did things a certain way. GarrickBlackSun: I understand he is a long way off, but could you please possibly give us any sort of clearer or better insight to the unlocking of HK-51? Daniel Erickson (Lead Game Designer): The only thing we’re saying today is its going to take a serious amount of work, involves a galaxy-wide mission, introduces some different ways of playing the game…
Official Q&A Thread for June 8th, 2012 Q&A Blog Post
For our Question of the Week, we want to ask you what you would ask BioWare about SWTOR. The official Q&A thread for questions to be answered for the June 8th, 2012 Q&A blog post is up and now is your chance to get your questions in but BioWare has a few guidelines before you post your question. If you want to have a higher chance of getting your question answered, then consider these guidelines. From BioWare: In order to increase the chances of having your specific question answered and to help us keep the thread manageable, here are some guidelines on asking questions: Keep your question relatively short. Background details are welcome, but don’t go overboard. Please actually ask a question. We want to hear constructive feedback elsewhere in the Forums. Use common sense – we cannot answer everything, especially on far-reaching content. This should go without saying, but…
Community Q&A: June 1st, 2012
As always, BioWare had a Community question and answer session this Friday were BioWare developers, and other team members, answers player questions. This week questoins and answers focus mainly on Update 1.3: Allies , ranging from server transfers to Legacy questions etc. Check it out below, or over at the official thread. Hi everyone, We’re back with a selection of answers to your community questions! Please note that in some cases we’ve combined multiple questions into one, and we that have edited some questions for clarity. As a reminder, we previously suggested a shift in focus in your questions. As development plans are always subject to change, questions about future features will often get vague answers which can be repetitive and sometimes annoying. With that in mind, the development team is more interested in questions about current in-game features or systems or questions about why development decisions were made. You’re still welcome to ask questions…
Does SWTOR Suck Or Are the Standards of Measurement Unbalanced?
There is a lot of talk going around about SWTOR being a letdown. We’ve already hashed and rehashed the comparisons to other MMOs, WoW in particular. While some say that SWTOR is just not measuring up, there is one who makes a very valid point: maybe we’re not measuring with the same ruler. I, like many others, have had a pretty critical eye when it comes to SWTOR. We have all earned that when we purchased the game I guess. As consumers we review just about everything we buy. We make purchases on eBay, Amazon or even in-store and we are often asked to give a review of our product. Or at the very least that option is there for us if we so choose. Just like every other game in the last 10 years SWTOR went through the review process from all the big name videogame sites on the net. The…