Darth Hater

Daniel Erickson
Hey Folks,

Our target when it comes to humor levels has always been squarely aimed at the films, especially Episodes IV and V. Star Wars is not a comedy but it is often funny and that humor comes through character. KOTOR and Dragon Age are both good examples of that approach. And like both of those games you can greatly change the humor level or general adventure tone by which companions you take. Running around with C-3PO or Lando is going to always be funnier than adventuring with Obi-Wan or Leia.

As Destrucshot points out, humor levels are different across class stories as well. The Smuggler is the closest to being action-comedy, the Agent is closer to Mass Effect's more serious tone with only the occasional lighter moment, and the others cover the spectrum between. Hopefully the variety of class stories and companions will give people a chance to find not just the gameplay build but the world tone and humor level that works for them.

Malren, no worries. Fourth wall breakers, out of context jokes and pop culture references are strictly policed. Star Wars needs to feel as timeless as possible.

Hope that helps!

Daniel

Daniel Erickson
Hey Folks,

Hall Hood is the Jedi Knight's class writer. Drew did some work on the Jedi Knight when Hall was slammed with other responsibilities but Hall is the primary. Drew's work on the project has been as more of a jack of all trades, helping out wherever he can and graciously bringing his wisdom and years of experience to everything from character design to training of new writers. If there's any specific place Drew owns, it would be the legacy of KOTOR and how those questions get answered in game. Which means much of what he does is spoiler-riffic so you won't get to hear about most of it before you see it in game. And honestly, you're going to want to be surprised.

As far as writers per class, each class has a single writer that owns it but these have occasionally changed over time. Each Chapter of a class story is huge and a few times we have made changes. For example, in my early, naive days on the project we thought that I would have time to fully own a class and so the first couple of Bounty Hunter worlds are my work. As the sheer scope of the game became clear we learned it would not be possible for me to watch over all of the content and own a class as well and the talented Randy Begel has handled Bounty Hunter duties since then.

Hope that helps!
Daniel

Kyle Garner
I accept that it's fairly subjective, but I still think story doesn't hold the same repetitive value for most peeps.

And honestly even BioWare is trying to add variety to the story experience by giving 8 story classes, not just 1 that they expect you to repeat an explore the "forks" available.

I'm definitely not one of the story haters... I love a good story, but I really only love it once... once I know it, it's time to move forward. If there's _more_ story to experience, then that's awesome. Otherwise the gameplay itself really has to stand up.

Have to agree... fun is a variety of things to different people. Some like the fast and furious clashing of lightsabers and mowing thru mobs, and others prefer the deep background experiences. Some like exploration, seeing how the planet is the way it is, while others like going toe to toe with other players. After seeing how something turned out once, I'm usually off to the next new thing too (Oops, amend that, I played Mass Effect 1 & 2 twice to see hero Shepard vs anti-hero Shepard).

That being said, we believe story makes combat even more 'meaty', and we also believe you'd notice if the story wasn't there or was of poor quality, whether you've seen it 2 or 200 times. It feels nice to have that story option, and to get to space out a constant stream of action and exploration with a little entertaining break or mystery (especially when it's about you and your exploits). But at the same time, we're not about railroading a player to go thru every story to get to where they want to go... there's more than one way to skin a Gundark (yes, I'm being deliberately vague here).

And I shouldn't forget our multiplayer conversations, which are their own brand of fun where you're putting down your two cents, and your toon gets the witty remark instead of your friend.

Sure there's the option to burn through the game, but I'm also going to enjoy watching a guild's digitally recorded cinema adventure/movie of their infamous Bounty Hunters / Jedi Masters and how they got from 1st to max level from their website. Kinda makes me wonder if people are going to dub their own VO to their characters exploits and create their own full length machinima adventures.

Having story support the gameplay is the best option of course, and that's what we're going for. Cool pew pew scenes that foreshadow a future destination give someone a better sense of where they're going, and hopefully lead people to look at our cool art instead of the minimap. Sometimes a hint or two showing where the mobs are going to ambush you from, instead of seeing your health bar drop before turning to face some support troopers... yeah, that is kinda nice. There are all sorts of Easter Eggs in the cutscenes too, where a player may recognize an observer in one scene that they get ambushed by later. And of course it's especially satisfying standing victorious over some smoking NPC's corpse who's been throwing insults at you for five quests...

We've been building the game for a while, and I know you've been discussing it - but to keep this rolling, can you guys think of other satisfying ways the story/scenes can support gameplay?

Georg Zoeller
That could easily mean he was saying there are more healing abilities than you think, not more classes with healing abilities than you think. The former seems more likely than the latter.

I was referring to (advanced) classes, not abilities.

Let the speculation begin

Georg Zoeller
Again, that's not my real problem. My issue is that the "100% confirmed or we don't talk about it" policy is either not true or just a cop out at this point.

In game development nothing is ever 100% confirmed - and in a BioWare game, we are very open to changing even major things late in development if they are found to be not fun or not helpful to the overall game experience. We're in the business of shipping polished, fun games.

What we don't do is talk about features that we have not verified as 'yes, this is working and fun' to avoid creating hopes and excitement about things that sound great on paper / initial implementation but cannot withstand full impact with actual players.

It's a bit of a conservative approach for sure, but naturally it will become more open the closer we get to launch. (And really, who is served with getting excited about an awesome feature only to find out that the idea didn't work out?)

And please don't think that the community team is withholding information just for fun - Often, it's as simple as Stephen walking over, asking "Hey, we'd like to do a community spotlight on Feature X, they are really anxious to hear about it" and people like myself going "Well, that's great, but we just made this major improvement to the system and until we have tested it out and verified it is actually working, we don't want to talk about it."

Georg Zoeller
but like i say 100% confirmed we will have 2 healers on each faction, is still true if we end up with 27 healers per faction, it will still be true, they havent promised something that isnt in the game, they have added something that wasnt promised until now, saying we will have 2 somethings, isnt saying we will only have 2 somethings

i would rather that than OP companions, i'm a big fan of companions, but companions replacing players.. not so much

Hey, just a clarification:

Please don't understand my general disclaimer "nothing is certain until the product ships" (which, btw, I have been using frequently when interacting with the community on the BioWare forums since 2003) as something that is contradicting Stephen's words.

This disclaimer is my personal 'fine print' to ensure I have room to wiggle out of tough discussions about changes to someone's favorite feature later...

Actually, it's a bit more complicated:

Nothing in game development is ever 100% certain until a product ships. Period. If everything was 100% certain, we have shipped.

Games are really not built by making a design grand plan, executing it flawlessly without ever walking back and releasing them.

Games, especially the kind of game BioWare has been making for the last 15 years, are made successful by constantly iterating, testing, verifying and polishing. Obviously there is a grand plan in regards to the overall goals, design and feature set, but pretty much everything below that is subject to simple tests such as 'does it work?', 'is it fun?', 'does it scale?', etc.

The entire point of running extensive focus tests and community gameplay testing groups is to gather feedback on the game and incorporate it into the game design. One point of running these forums is to gather feedback on the things we release and, if necessary, act to it. In order to be able to do that, we need the flexibility of changing things - which is what that disclaimer in my blog post was meant to communicate.

Short - The systems we are talking about publicly are in the game and will almost certainly be in the game at launch (and it is our policy to only talk about these features when we are confident they will make it in the game), but many of the details (especially in regards to game balance) are very much guaranteed to change many times till launch.

I hope that clarifies the situation.

Rob Chestney
Hey ProfWalsh! I wanted to jump in here because I think I can help answer some of your questions. I'm in charge of the Creative Services team here at BioWare Austin, so my team and I are responsible for Timelines (along with many other components of the Friday Updates).

I'll also say that you guys are terrific for your passion and interest, so I hope I can at least partly put your mind at ease!

Please note - I cut out some parts of your original post to prevent a total wall of text.

1. Being unable to try the Jedi classes personally, though having been able to play other classes, I'm still wondering why we haven't seen any kind of in-depth run regarding these classes. By in-depth run, I am talking about a Jedi Knight version of the Sith Warrior "kill the Captain" quest. Surely since people have gotten a six hour hands on something like this should be able to be shown as it should be ready.

You're right, an in-depth showcase of a Republic Flashpoint is something we'd love to show off. We'll try to get something together before launch.

You might not have realized but the Jedi Immersion Day mostly focused on the early game experience on Tython. While that's very close to being 'done' there are still a few visual elements that are being polished - so that was why, in part, we didn't release extensive footage after the Immersion Day happened. (And yes, polish happens pretty much all the way to launch day.)

2. In a recent interview it was finally confirmed that the Jedi were worked on first, then the Sith were made, then the Jedi were felt to be "not up to par" and were reworked. This was a huge revelation, but it felt really dishonest because earlier we were lead to believe that the Sith were worked on first. This also feels a little, twitchy, because we were assured (by your predecessor) that there was no problem with the Jedi classes, that it was just an issue of them not being ready to show.

Now, not to be overly blunt here, but that doesn't feel right. If the entire class got scrapped and rebuilt because it didn't feel right, that absolutely feels like something was wrong. Why, when BioWare was willing to come clean regarding it later, was such an answer initially given when instead telling us "Okay, we had some problems with the Jedi and had to rework them."

Not sure where you saw that the Jedi were worked on first, but that's not the case. All the class stories were developed simultaneously. There's definitely been focus from different parts of the team on some of the specific stories and environments at different times, but never anything drastically out-of-balance.

To be clear as well, the Jedi classes were never scrapped and rebuilt' in a larger sense. We did re-work their origin world stories at one point, but again, nothing so drastic that it should merit larger concern.

3. This is a personal (and extreme) hang up with me as well, but this next question concerns the timelines. I love, and hate, the timelines. The timelines are on one hand extremely cool, lore is always good... On the other hand the timelines are horrifically one sided.

There are tons of posts (by myself and others) where people have taken these timelines apart. They almost always use extremely favorable terms to praise the Sith, and rarely do so for the Republic. This isn't even a debatable point anymore, with such lines as:

"The Sith consolidate their power" while "The Republic licks its wounds."

The first major victory in the war for the Republic was a Republic fleet taking out a Sith squadron. (The accompanying images also depict a large Republic force defeating a single Sith ship.)

The fact that even in the most Republic oriented timeline it ends with a praising of the brilliance of the Sith Emperor.

... Now, don't get me wrong, I am not saying that the Sith should lose every timeline or that it is impossible to respect one's opponent but the tone used is often completely inappropriate to the role that the speaker, a Jedi Master, should be using.

The Timelines are told from the perspective of Jedi Master Gnost-Dural, who, for the benefit of the Jedi Council is analyzing Sith and Jedi history, looking for insights into the causes of the conflict, and at specific events from the analytical perspective of a historian.

If he sometimes seems sympathetic to the Sith, it's because he's at great pains to acknowledge the successes of the Jedi's enemies. At this point in time for Gnost-Dural, and when the game begins, there is an uneasy truce, but the Sith clearly have the upper hand. The Jedi need an honest assessment of the war, and how the Sith Empire managed to achieve what it did.

I snipped a little of your text here to get to the questions:

A) Is this BioWare's intention? Is it BioWare's marketing strategy to push the Sith Empire over the Republic in marketing hype?

Based on your observations, I can see how you might think it's strategy to push the Sith, but we've never discussed anything like that. If anything, we've discussed how to work the other way and respond to the concerns about 'Sith bias' from the community. If there is any bias at all, though, you can blame the writer (er, me), who coincidently also worked on the Jedi Knight class story. He might even favor the Jedi on a personal level

B) If it is not BioWare's intention, then why is there no counter to it? Why haven't we seen a Sith version of the timeline where a Sith Lord praises the Republic while pointing out every small mistake the Sith made?

This is a great idea, and we've actually spent considerable time talking about something like this. It's on hold right now, but for totally unrelated reasons.

We also have a concern that if we did this, we'd spend a lot of time and effort talking about the same events from a different perspective, but wouldn't actually give you much new information. We know how much you like new information.

C) If it is BioWare's intention, the only quesion I have is simple. Why? Does BioWare feel that there is nothing to hype about the Republic or does BioWare feel that the Republic got enough hype from the movie trilogy despite the fact that this structure of government is completely different, especially among the Jedi ranks, than what was featured in the movies?

I'll answer this with some thoughts as to why we depict the Republic the way we do, and an observation that supports it.

If you go back to the original trilogy, what made the young Jedi, Luke Skywalker, such a sympathetic hero? There are many reasons, but one of the most critical is that he was a lone force of good, an underdog, fighting a dominant dark Empire. The odds were very much against him.

Part of what we want to deliver in the Jedi (and the Republic side) fantasy in The Old Republic is this same sense that you are a hero fighting against impossible odds to take a stand for the principles of the Republic. The historical setting of the game supports this, and I believe that's why you see it reflected in the lore and in the media we produce for the community.

I think it's also important to note that a lot of people in the polls I've seen still want to play Jedi and/or Republic side characters. We want there to be a healthy balance in the game, and right now, it looks like we're at least near the mark. I hope that makes sense.

Last thing, don't worry about asking direct and even critical questions. As much as we want everyone to be excited about the game and happy with what we're putting on the site, if you have concerns, we want to hear them, and we'll always try to respond if we have a good answer.

Thanks!