Darth Hater

Star Wars: The Old Republic News, Interviews, Media & Podcast

Friday Update: Creating Worlds and Advanced Classes

Sean Dahlberg sends word of this week's updates:

Principal Lead Writer Daniel Erickson talks about creating the world of Voss in Star Wars: The Old Republic!

In the latest developer blog, "Creating Worlds," Daniel Erickson goes into detail about the process behind creating Voss. He includes some of his notes collected during the process and expands on the sheer amount of documentation that is generated for each of the worlds created for the game.

In addition to the new developer blog, the Game Systems section of the official website has been launched. The Advanced Class System is the first entry in this new section.

Today we are revealing a new area of the website called Game Systems. This area talks about various features from a gamer's perspective. Our first section in this new area discusses the Advanced Class System.

The Advanced Class System grants you access to unique skills and abilities, and is designed to allow you the flexibility to customize your characters to fit your play style. For example, all Smugglers are lucky, opportunistic swindlers. But, do you want to be the kind of Smuggler that sneaks into the middle of a firefight and quickly blasts away at an opponent from point-blank range? Or do you want to be the kind that keeps to the outskirts of the battle, strategically picking your targets from a distance?

These are just some of the meaningful choices that the Advanced Class System offers you to personalize and advance your character in Star Wars: The Old Republic!

This new section gives a summary of the concept behind the Advanced Classes and emphasizes how important choosing an Advanced Class will be in defining a player's character.

Images and things of note after the jump.
Images

'Juggernaut'


'Marauder'






Items of Note

Advanced Classes
In addition to your Class-specific Skills and Abilities, your chosen Advanced Class will grant you access to role-defining Abilities that represent additional areas of expertise and some may even grant new weapon and armor types. Additionally, each Advanced Class will also have three sets of Skills available to further customize your character.

This quote might indicate that the Advanced Classes will grant new baseline abilities including weapon and armor proficiencies even before the skill sets come into play. For example, double-bladed lightsaber usage for the Sith Warrior may be something that is unlocked upon choosing an Advanced Class, as we see the hilts in the HoloNet but do not see Sith Warriors using them in any marketing so far.

The chart above is not representative of any of the current Advanced Class Skill Sets, nor does it show exactly how many Skills you may potentially access.

Creating Worlds
Most Players will never notice, for instance, that on Korriban statues of non-Sith are always in supplication, literally supporting the Empire on their worn backs. Few people will stop and trace the path of Jedi resettlement of the wilderness on Tython, try to understand exactly where which war stopped in Balmorra or make sense of the twisted politics that have left some parts of Coruscant abandoned and in misery while others bounced back shortly after the invasion.

This highlights the amount of depth that goes into designing the appearance of a world. Many nice touches will be included for players who want to fully experience each world.

The Imperial Agent would be our chance to explore new territory while still introducing Players to a core part of the galaxy.

Many fans voiced confusion about the Imperial Agent's place in comparison to the more obviously iconic classes; this line is BioWare and LucasArts expressing their feelings about departing from traditional archetypes while still staying grounded in the Star Wars universe.

Is it the right type of climate? The right place in the galaxy? Does it have next to nothing written about it? Awesome, it's ours.

BioWare has shown great interest in adding new ideas to the lore behind Star Wars. They essentially created the time period in which the game is set, and are willing to take that opportunity to expand the universe.

The Voss must at all times feel isolated. Voss-Ka is high above the rest of the planet but it's an island in a sea of Gormak. Every other outpost is overrun or threatened.

...we've got a group of people who are, on the surface, extremely powerful. They can see the future.

Gormak--tech geniuses with a very basic tribal cultural system, a love of warfare and competition and an utter hatred for the Voss who they will never understand.

And in come the Voss Commandos. After all, if there aren't very many Voss then every warm body who isn't off having or interpreting visions is going to learn to shoot back.

These four quotes show that even the psychology behind the inhabitants of a world come into play during the design process. The desperate and surrounded feeling of the Voss culture will set the overall mood for the planet.

Comments

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  • GoBeaverGo's avatar
    Nerf Herder
    • Posts: 13
    #51 GoBeaverGo Posted 5/16/2010 9:50:20 PM
    Good looking stuff, I'm just afraid if the system is "once in a lifetime choice", that you can't revert, and then you're stuck with tank spec or something for all time.

    Next podcast should be good stuff, can't wait :P
  • cBselfmonkey's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #54 cBselfmonkey Posted 5/17/2010 3:30:07 AM
    BioWare did say that all AC's (Advanced Classes) had full talent tree to spec into. So I suspect that even if you pick a tanking AC like the Juggernaught there will still be a DPS spec for that class.
  • JediCosmin's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #53 JediCosmin Posted 5/17/2010 3:16:20 AM
    Well that is generally BioWare's style. Every choice matters. Nothing official yet, but i'm guessing that's how it's going to be. If this was Blizzard's case, i would have automatically yelled out: "it's a trick for us to play more characters!" :D
  • Tim Skijwalker's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 189
    #49 Tim Skijwalker Posted 5/16/2010 3:09:23 PM
    NICE DH..keep it coming!
  • Roshido's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #48 Roshido Posted 5/16/2010 1:44:22 PM
    Things are looking better everytime I come back. Even the website guys. You made me also update my profile hehe. Orignal Haters lol. Just wanted to say everything is comming together fine.
  • Sleeper's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 495
    #52 Sleeper Posted 5/16/2010 10:12:14 PM
    Thanks =)
  • permacrete's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 118
    #38 permacrete Posted 5/15/2010 2:51:42 PM
    Daniel Erickson: "All the major systems are in place now..."
    I take that to mean that space travel and combat, in whatever form those are planned to take, are a done deal at this point. Perhaps we'll have a big reveal within the next month or so?
  • r2d2arm's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 440
    #50 r2d2arm Posted 5/16/2010 5:21:02 PM
    I don't believe "space travel" is a major system at this point. They already have transportation options available other than actual space travel in your own ship. Space travel seems to be a more advanced system that would be implemented later in the development process as long as it doesn't interfere with other current systems.
  • Jaswar's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #47 Jaswar Posted 5/16/2010 7:37:35 AM
    Ok Bioware has created the "Smuggler" class based on Han Solo. Now with that in mind how can a Smuggler not have a ship?? It would not make any sense, well to me, to not have the smuggler's "Ship" in the game. It has to be. So based on that assumption Im pretty positive that we will def have spaceships in the game.. theres just to many hints out there not to assume that there would not be ..... also I believe I read awhile back the the smuggler class has his ship stolen ?? so thats prob one of his/her quests to get the ship back ?? and also another BIG HINT is his T-shirt "Chewie is my Co-Pilot" Hmmmm Voss water bottles all over place in alot of videos now we have the Voss in the game ....Bioware has been great at this subconsciously putting things right in front of our faces and then revealing later on ...
  • Loekii's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #45 Loekii Posted 5/15/2010 9:15:27 PM
    I thought they were still iterating about End game stuff? Would this mean they basically have an End Game plan now?
  • Chino's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #35 Chino Posted 5/15/2010 2:15:35 AM
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RRuS4kMn_g "we hope to see everybody online, very soon..." =)
  • ArcherAvatar's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #55 ArcherAvatar Posted 5/17/2010 4:17:12 AM
    that was awesome Chino! Thanx bro!

    the purple lightsaber at the end had me rolling ;-)
  • Chino's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #44 Chino Posted 5/15/2010 3:30:51 PM
    Another thing just look at daniel's shirt "chewie is my co-pilot" another hint to space ships?!
  • Chino's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #43 Chino Posted 5/15/2010 3:29:05 PM
    The UI seems to have changed again, check the video above at 00:20, 00:21.
  • Caliber's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #39 Caliber Posted 5/15/2010 3:04:10 PM
    The artwork behind him is pretty sick.

    The Fatman - PvP - East Coast

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