Darth Hater

Daniel Erickson
Hey folks,

We've always kept the end of the timeline a little vague since some origin stories start a little earlier than others, have more time pass during their stories, etc.

The window for the game start is about 10-12 years after the treaty of Coruscant. Most player characters weren't old enough to be adults during the last war but many of the people you'll interact with were. This is the next generation, watching the Treaty of Coruscant tear at the edges and wondering how long until the seemingly inevitable war to end it all begins.

Hope that helps!

Daniel

Daniel Erickson
Either way, before Daniel's post up there, it had always been more then 3 Years after and less then 10 Years after. Now it is 10 - 12 years after the Treaty

That's why we've always kept it a bit vague. The truth is that player characters don't start exactly in lockstep as far as the timeline goes. There are likely origins that start before the ten year cutoff but a decade or so is a good frame of reference.

Maybe "Not so long ago and not so far away"?

Hope that helps!

Daniel

Georg Zoeller
I'm petty sure you can solo all of them.

They have plans for you to be able to make choice if you are alone and then if you have a group. So you can do them by yourself.

I think then changed based on whether you are along or in a group.

I'm pretty sure you can't solo them all...

That's because I have a looping video of Darth Vader explaining the price of failure as a screensaver along with the words: "Failure ... a player in the Game Testing Program soloing a Flashpoint".

We might or might not ease that definition for the introductory Flashpoint - that's certainly possible if testing tells us it is needed - but once you're past the opening period of the game, Flashpoints sit squarely in full group difficulty territory.

Don't worry - there's plenty of exciting content for the solo player, too.

Georg Zoeller
You can brandish your weapon to impress the enemy at any time. You may also put it away to flirt with that lovely lady at the space port customs office at any time.

Georg Zoeller
For the average planet, I'd say that 85+% of space is located in open, non phased areas.

That's average of course. Origin planets, with their focus on introducing the player to the story and their character, generally have a higher density of phased space, while vast open planets like Hoth or Tatooine have less in relation to their huge size.

Georg Zoeller
During Game Testing, we've been watching closely which class players decide to play at various times - such as:

• The first time they create a character


• 2 hours after that (player time, not real time)


• 6 hours after that


• 12 hours after that


• 24 hours after that


• 2 days after that

... and so on.

Imbalances are bad for business (especially for PvP), so we have a vested interest in achieving faction parity. We're interested enough that we've even looked at the impact of new content information being released on those numbers.

That said, while testing we also discovered this: which faction people choose generally does not change based on what's the current 'hot topic' on the forums. In fact, people are surprisingly resilient even against heavyweight marketing like trailers.

It's almost as if people's favorite Star Wars fantasy is a much more powerful driver on what they want to play than day to day Forum chatter.

And, to give you some peace of mind - in Game Testing so far, it seems like the supporters of Empire and Republic are very evenly matched, at least within the statistical margin of error at this point.

That won't rule out imbalance developing due to other external factors (e.g. large guilds settling on a server, regional differences, etc) but, again, we are aware of such things and will do our best to minimize imbalances in the actual game.

Short version: There are things that can affect faction balance, but the cycle of news releases to our community does not seem to be a significant factor at all. If it was, well, I don't think the community would take it all that well if we started delaying availability of information because of this.

Georg Zoeller
Well I mean is it built in such a way that Shadows can modify project in a certain way that Sages cannot? (which is what I assume from the way you worded it) Or is it that there are multiple ways to modify project but all Consulars regardless of which AC they pick have access to them?

Just staying high level here (since we continue to heavily modify skills as part of balancing, and I don't want to get anyones hope up - or down)...

As explained on the Advanced Classes page, each AC has three skill trees - two unique to the Advanced Class and one shared between all Advanced Classes for the same base class.

30m range upgrade mentioned in this thread could be on an a skill tree that is unique to the Sage, since the Shadow isn't much about ranged combat.

Other skills that modify Project could be on the skill tree unique to the Shadow or on the shared skill tree so both Advanced Classes could get access to them.

Daniel Erickson
Hey Folks,

First of all, let me say that I love this thread. It always makes me smile to see people really digging into the setting and thinking about how it works together. Star Wars has a fascinating universe that is almost fairy tale simple on the surface and endlessly complex underneath. There is room for exceptions to every rule and variations on every theme. But in the interest of time, I'll keep this post to the general. The rule, not the exception.

Sith are evil.

The Sith philosophy is evil and encourages evil in its participants. We can get into endless philosophical discussions about whether anything is actually evil or actually good but if we are speaking from our modern, western view on the concept of evil then the Sith clearly qualify. They are encouraged to put the personal over the group, power over compassion and to judge everything's worthiness to survive on its ability to fight for that survival. Mercy, sympathy, generosity, these are seen as weaknesses. Anger and rage are seen as strengths. These are not people most of us want to work with or have as neighbors.

That does not mean, however, that the Sith see themselves as evil.

In our own world, slavery as something that is inherently evil is something the majority of the world has agreed about only in the most recent centuries. Imperialism, expansion through conquest, the rights of the few to rule the many because of birthright - these are things that our world's cultures have accepted as the natural order for a far larger percentage of history than they have rejected them.

In the Star Wars universe, followers of the Sith philosophy genuinely believe that these things we deem evil, are actually in the best interests of a society. They look at the disorder, corruption and infighting of the Republic and they scoff. "What those people lack," an Imperial thinks, "is strong leadership."

It's important to remember that movements towards freedom normally come during the reign of weak, distracted, or greedy rulers who are not providing for their people. The Sith Empire has had 1000 years under an Emperor who rebuilt them from almost nothing, led them in conquest and glory against their neighbors, returned the Empire to power and then led them in revenge against the Republic. A Republic who had previously attempted to eliminate the Empire's entire existence because of their beliefs. If this was ancient Rome the vast majority of the people would throw the Emperor a victory parade, not ask for representational government.

It's equally important to remember that you don't have to believe in any of this to play on the Empire's side in The Old Republic. You can be the exception to the rule. You are merely making a choice to be someone who was born on that side of the fence. Or, in the case of the Bounty Hunter, someone who tends to work in that part of space. The light side Sith who works tirelessly to make his Empire a better place is a deeply compelling character. The pragmatic Agent who wants nothing more than to protect the millions non-Sith citizens from harm is equally interesting. The Bounty Hunter gets to be his own man and spit right in the face of anyone who he doesn't agree with. Being a good man in a bad place is one of the all time great role-playing options.

So when you roll a character on the Empire side you're going to hear the arguments about why the war is important. You're going to feel the anger of a people who were told they didn't have the right to exist and were chased out of known space. You're going to see the culture that created and maintains their hierarchy and strange form of order. And you're going to make a choice about how much or how little of it your character wants to believe. Then you're going to start making choices. That's when it gets hard.

Hope that helps!

Daniel

Georg Zoeller
Indeed. I agree with this. Having four dozen abilities where most of them do almost the exact same thing is simply obnoxious. I hope Bioware is not going that route.

Ability ranks replace previous version, so if you get Benevolence II, it replaces Benevolence I.

The number of combat abilities a character has to juggle is definitely something we look at closely (e.g. we want to make sure you don't juggle 4 full bars at all times), but we haven't settled exactly on what our maximum comfortable limit is yet.

The majority, but not all, of active abilities definitely come out of the core class, although, as mentioned in this thread before, they can be pretty heavily modified by Advanced Class skill choices.

We've been working on class skills and abilities pretty heavily over the last couple of weeks, so a lot of the stuff that is floating out there from previous demos is no longer valid (and I'm sure we're going to go through this a couple of times before ship based on feedback from our game testers - we're pretty efficient at iterating this kind of stuff).

Georg Zoeller
All those old tooltips are irrelevant, outdated, etc. They don't warrant long discussions here, because most of what you read in there will not be in the game in that form by the time we ship.

We iterate very actively on abilities based on Game Testing feedback and metrics and it is not uncommon for entire skill trees to change or even disappear as we are balancing the game for gameplay, fun, and of course PvP.

We could have long discussions about Benevolence or other abilities, but they might not even be in the game anymore at this point (or not part of the base class anymore). (PS - This is not a subtle hint one way or another.)

Obviously we can't stop people from writing down every technical detail they see at a convention, but honestly, doing something like that at this stage is, in my opinion, just wasting people's time.

Cheers

Georg Zoeller
Turning a thread into a speculation about release dates is pretty much the best way of ensuring the conversation ends.

So the skill build of the next PAX convention will still be raw? I was hoping for some serious info about skill trees on PAX

It is absolutely normal for MMOs to make extensive changes to classes and abilities as a result of testing. That's the entire point of testing with external testers. Plus, we have tools that allow us to rapidly test different ideas - so we're making good use of those tools.

TL;DR - Don't think of changes to abilities or skill trees as an indicator of anything other than development continuing. In particular, it's not an indicator of 'how long there is to ship'. It doesn't work that way.

Georg Zoeller
You can experience your whole class story entirely solo, as well as many of the world arcs.

There are other, sometimes intersecting stories told in the game which might require a group (or more) of heroes.

It is, after all, an MMO

Georg Zoeller
Flashpoints are designed as group experiences that cannot be soloed at equal level (ie a Level 30 Flashpoint can't be defeated by a solo Level 30 character). That is unlikely to ever change.

Ideally, I'd definitely like to allow players to solo a Flashpoint when they are significantly above the Flashpoint's intended level. As of now, we haven't really looked at that too closely, as we are balancing the intended group experience first.

If we can make it work, I don't see why we wouldn't do it - if a player finds entertainment by soloing a Flashpoint, that's a good thing in my book.

Georg Zoeller
I do have to wonder what has lead to the sudden change of heart though and/or the apparent amount of free time that you now have to post on these forums...

Hehe, that's a lot of tinfoil on your head there :

/waves hand "This is not the conspiracy you are looking for"

The game is at a stage now where we have increased certainty about many aspects of the game, and as such are more comfortable with talking about them. The more features that are publicly revealed (such as Flashpoints), the more topics there are that we can have a dialog with the community about.

If you look at previous BioWare projects and their forums, you'll find that the pattern is pretty familiar and not all that special.

Obviously there is plenty of stuff yet to be revealed, and obviously we keep Community tightly in the loop to avoid interfering with long term plans, our weekly Friday Updates and such things.

You can also blame Stephen for us being more talkative. Since we have hardly the time to troll all the forums, he'll often forward specific threads or posts to developers to see if we can / want to comment or clarify.

Georg Zoeller
Plenty of interesting discussion here.

A few things from our point of view:

• Your Advanced Class choice very much defines how your character plays from the moment you choose it. Their impact is more akin to that of a different class in other MMOs than that of a different 'spec'. A Sith Sorcerer is very, very different from a Sith Assassin.


• As mentioned before, the ability to respec your skills is definitely in the game. At this point, it costs credits but has no other requirements or limitations. The exact cost will be fine tuned, probably until ship, in conjunction with the rest of the economy - so giving precise numbers at this point isn't helpful.


• We haven't made up our mind yet about the availability of an Advanced Class respec. We are evaluating all options (no Advanced Class respec, fixed cost respec, respec cost increasing with level, etc.).


• A lot of thought currently goes into the consequences of Advanced Class respec - if we allow it, it will require players to relearn their entire approach to combat (which they learned over many many hours before) and replace the majority of their equipment, so it's not a thing we would want the player to do lightly, or just out of curiosity.

Ultimately, testing will tell us what we'll go with for launch, but even then - MMOs change, new content is added, player preferences emerge and change, so this is likely one of those topics we will be frequently discussing even after launch to ensure the design matches the expectations of our players and does not introduce unwelcome side effects.

With all this said - thank you very much for your continued feedback and thoughts on the topic. We are actively reading and discussing the topic frequently.

Damion Schubert
No, its not. Economics in games really have no basis. The building block of any model is NEED, not oh I need a new blaster but I need to eat, I need to house myself I need clothes.

I would disagree. The core building blocks for any economic models are supply and demand. Need can create demand, but there are also strong economic forces driving the purchase of iPads and BMWs, neither of which are strictly need-based things.

Furthermore, need-based priorities happen inside of MMO economies all the time. You might need potions to complete a dungeons, or gear with a lot of hit points in order to succeed in PvP scenarios. Social pressures can also be powerful: you might need to get to a certain quality of gear before a raiding guild will take you seriously, or you might need a wedding ring to capture the heart of some lass before her attention wanders off.

But for someone to wander up to the AH, put a blaster part up for 4 million creds and then some dimwit buys it not knowing that in 20-30 minutes someone else will put it up for 100,000 creds because thats around the price most people sell it for is not economics. It's just plain stupidity.

Such fluctuations may be stupidity, they're also not uncommon in the real world - the recent financial crisis, for example, resulted in a lot of people losing their shirts because they overvalued their own homes by massive margins, and then found their home values 'under water' (i.e. under what they paid for it) once the market corrected to the true price. Both prices, fundamentally, were driven by supply and demand. It's just that psychotic group-think resulted in an overabundance of demand before the crash.

I should point out, I'm not trying to engage in a political discussion here.