DevTracker Highlights For The Week of November 22, 2010

With this week's Friday Update being a Fan Friday you might think this would be a dull week for the DevTracker. Well, you would be wrong if you guessed that. This week's DevTracker Highlights include a wealth of information on crew skills, implants, character customization, forum improvements, and more. Hit the jump for the Highlights in full detail.
Highlights


Web Designer for BioWare on SWTOR, Alyssa Gobelle, drops a hint on a new feature coming soon to the Official Forum:

Alyssa Gobelle
I agree! This would be a nice feature to have and is already in the 'queue' to be addressed in a future iteration of the forums.


Principal Lead Systems Designer, Georg Zoeller, comments on BioWare's approach to a long standing problem in MMOs -- Wife Aggro:

Georg Zoeller
In a group conversation, there is a short timer that ticks down as every group member makes their choice. The conversation moves forward when the timer runs out or everyone has made their choice, whichever happens first.

In a solo conversation, there is no time pressure. We may ship with some kind of limiter (e.g. when you go AFK, we may cancel the conversation), but reasonably you should have the time to deal with a short external interruption while the system waits for you.


Lead System Designer, Damion Schubert, gives more details on the Mission and Crafting systems:

Damion Schubert
Missions have... highly variable rewards. We're still defining exactly what that means in terms of balance, but that's a key part of the difference between missions and crafting - no gathering lots of rare resources, but no certainty either. The most extreme examples you can think of, while fun to contemplate (i.e. companions getting captured and requiring rescue), are at least not in v 1.0 of the system.

Crafting will not have out-and-out critical crafting failures. It really sucks, from a social point of view, to give someone all your crafting resources and have them all be destroyed by a bad roll, and really makes it hard for up-and-coming crafters to get any business at all.


Damion Schubert gives BioWare's take on Death in SWTOR:

Damion Schubert
We intentionally keep it vague. You don't 'die'. You 'are defeated'. Other group members can revive you, but only out of combat. If no one is around, you wake up at a med center near town. Some classes can revive you in combat.

Explicitly calling it death is hard to reconcile with the fiction. On the flip side, saying that all the bad guys just knock you unconscious makes them seem seem a lot more trivial. And doing a classic 'you go unconscious unless someone lands a deathblow' in other PVP games brings back the whole 'rezzing isn't realistic' issue, and just moves it after the deathblow. Ultimately, we did what worked best with the flow of the game we wanted to make.

That being said, no matter what we name it, people will probably say 'I died' if you ask them what happened to them.


Community Manager, Stephen Reid, offers clarity on a misunderstanding on BioWare's Austin Studio:

Stephen Reid
Originally Posted by ProfessorWalsh
After the merger the company BioWare created BioWare Mythic which is making this game. The people in charge of BioWare Mythic are Mythic employees not BioWare ones. This was why when the Dr's BioWare were talked to they said, "We know those guys" as the Dr's are not in charge over there.

This is also why BioWare is not BioWare working with Mythic.

The company is actually named: BioWare Mythic now.


In the interests of clarity, let's clear this up.

BioWare Austin, where Star Wars: The Old Republic is being developed, was founded in 2006 the official press release is here. There are now five studios in total in the BioWare group; Edmonton, Austin, Montreal, Galway (Ireland) and Fairfax (AKA Mythic). You can apply to work at all five locations on the main BioWare site.

All studios in the group are under the overall brand of BioWare', which is run by Dr. Ray Muzyka. BioWare itself is part of the EA Games label.


Damion Schubert explains how the hangar system works in SWTOR:

Damion Schubert
On most planets, there are hangars for each class, with an elevator leading to each one. The phase door is at the elevator entrance, meaning there might be a stream of other troopers heading to your elevator, but your hangar is your own.


Lead Writer Daniel Erickson offers new details on the way implants work and clarifies what community members are seeing on player characters:

Daniel Erickson
Hey folks,

Just to clear up any confusion. Implants in SWTOR, much like in KOTOR, are not visible and can be changed out. They are a way to give more loot and stat options to characters without covering them in random art pieces. Except for the flavor name given to them, they function the same as rings or amulets might in a fantasy game.

They are not the same as the visible cybernetics you're occasionally seeing on player characters. Being a cyborg is different and a very specific choice that, as posters have pointed out, is not undertaken lightly nor commonly done in the SW universe.

Hope that helps!

Daniel


In the last highlight of the week, Damion Schubert clears up a bit of confusion over crew skills:

Damion Schubert
Howdy!

To confirm, your character/crew has three skills total, of which only one of them can be a crafting skill. Your companions can only use one of those three skills. Thus, if your character has the Armormech crew skills, your companions can only craft Armormech items (i.e. mostly armor). That being said, you can have up to five companions all crafting armor simultaneously, assuming you have the resources and space to do so.

I've been playing a build all week, and I know it's tooting our own horn a bit, but its quite awesome. Checking up on crafting is a great 'downtime' activity to do, say, while you're resting, waiting on a groupmate to do one of his quests or while traveling. And the harvesting is wicked fun. Ordering your companion to gather something while you're fighting has just an awesome feel of "I got this".

To answer another question I've seen elsewhere, no, companions will not be crafting lightsabers. Happy Friday, everyone!

Comments

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  • #26 RogueJedi86
    3 new informative dev posts yesterday. One on Qyzen Fess' name pronunciation(Kwy-zen, though Ky-zen is acceptable too), another that confirms that we can cancel companion missions and get them back immediately(though we'll lose the upfront cost and mission progress, and lose no materials when canceling crafting missions), and the third confirms no global chat channels, though each world will the typical 4 or 5 chat channels(general, pvp, combat, etc.).
  • #25 killswitch
    Great update guys.
    cheers
  • #19 Bhel
    I am guessing there will be crafting skills that only the main character can learn, it would make sense to have lightsaber crafting as one at least.
  • #12 abner_ford
    This has nothing to do with anything, but that poster "ProfessorWalsh" was one of the reasons why I stopped going to TOR forums. Dude's annoying.

    Also, as far as the "Companions won't be crafting lightsabers", that is fine to me. They made it clear that crafting your lightsaber is going to be part of your class story and will be handled outside of the "crafting" game. I think it would be bad to have players crafting dozens of the same kind of lightsaber and putting them on an auction house. That's just not very "Star Wars-y", as the saying goes.
  • #17 Stenmark
    "ProfessorWalsh" needs to take his pills regularly or he will be send back to the "university", where all teachers wear white coats.:)
  • #14 GoHann
    Agreed. Hence why I think making changes etc to your saber will be done via a completely different game mechanic then "crafting", like I mentioned below with some kind of "box" where you can change parts etc.

    Wound in the Force::GoHann (lvl 35 Maurader)

  • #16 ArcherAvatar
    Balance = Broken

    If the weapons for half the classes in the game can be crafted, but the weapons for the other half of the classes cannot be crafted then I guarantee you someone is going to be very unhappy...

    And... nevermind... THIS is not something I would care to see "speculation" on... THIS is something that needs to be clarified by the DEV whose comments introduced the confusion... period.
  • #20 Demander
    I think the companions will be able to craft parts for the lightsaber but putting the lightsaber together will be your job... But that's just me looking deep into my speculation hat...
  • #21 agentwred
    Totally how I would do it.
  • #18 abner_ford
    How do you weigh the value of the balance with obtaining the weapons compared to the value of staying true to the fiction? If there is any kind of lightsaber crafting, it would have to bind to the character upon creation. From time to time a character would pick up and use a lightsaber from a defeated opponent in the Star Wars universe. But I don't believe there has ever been a time where some Jedi crafts a bunch of sabers for other Jedi lined up outside his room.
  • #22 agentwred
    No, I'm sure there hasn't been a time like that in the current fiction of the EU, but we haven't seen a time where so many Jedi were fighting against so many Sith. Even the clone wars had only a small amount of Jedi. Lightsabers and their quality is much more important at a time like this. Not saying it should be this way, just saying it might be justifiable.
  • #11 Jaramukhti
    Damion Schubert: "Ordering your companion to gather something while you're fighting has just an awesome feel of "I got this"."

    Oh hell yes...
  • #9 ArcherAvatar
    I really hope that Damion Schubert follows up on that bombshell he dropped "To answer another question I've seen elsewhere, no, companions will not be crafting lightsabers. Happy Friday, everyone!" - D.S.

    That creates more questions than it answered... It would be nice if he would clarify his "clarifying" comments...

    Are companions only able to take one skill - so if you decided the companion with you should do Armormech, then they would not be able to Scavenge while they were out in the world with you? (Assuming both Armormech and Scavenging were two of the three skills you selected for your character's pool.)

    Are lightsabers not part of the crafting system at all? - If so, then are blasters not part of the system as well? No weapons? - Or, is he saying that there are parts of the crafting system that are heroic enough for the characters themselves to be involved in?

    Seriously... clarification REQUIRED please...
  • #24 agentwred
    Yeah, it is a total lightsaber tease what he said, but I'm sure he knows that. Its the D.S. He's an evil man. Didn't you see him laughing at emLeia on the video. Oh to be his apprentice.
  • #23 agentwred
    Yeah, it is a total lightsaber tease what he said, but I'm sure he knows that. Its the D.S. He's an evil man. Didn't you see him laughing at emLeia on the video. Oh to be his apprentice.
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