Darth Hater

Georg Zoller
In TOR, you indeed have the option to command your faithful (or scornful) companion to make a trip to the nearest market to lighten your backpack and fatten your wallet by selling objects of purely monetary value.

As you command your (possibly hateful or even loving) companion to do so, which they will only agree to if you are not engaged in hostile activities and they are convinced your life is not in immediate danger, they will arrange for quick transport to the closest market and return after a short while (roughly a minute, subject to tuning) with your hard earned money.

It is assumed you trust your (trustworthy) companion in so far as to accept whatever they tell you in regards to the prices they negotiated and will not undermine your (purely professional) working relationship with them with potentially insulting questions about taxes, fees, union dues and other applicable fees.

In other words, yes you can do that.

Georg Zoeller
We like to have the player back in combat quickly, which is why every class has ad ability to quickly restore their health / energy reserves.

Daniel Erickson
So can sith get married? Cause i heard Darth malagus had a wife so i was curious how the ceremony would be.

Hey folks,

Easy to give the official answer. But first let's make sure we're all on the same page. Cultures change over time. They move one way then another, values shift, influxes of new peoples or discoveries change what is considered normal, etc. So if we're strictly talking about TOR then arguments based on things that happened thousands of years earlier or later aren't really applicable except to compare and contrast. Our views on modern marriage are not those of ancient Rome, and I doubt in 3,000 years they will be the same. So let's talk about where Jedi and Sith during the time period of The Old Republic.

For the last two hundred years the Jedi Order has been getting steadily more conservative. The liberalization that was necessary to restock the Jedi's numbers in the century after the events of Knights of the Old Republic II is now looked back on as a necessary evil. In the time that followed there were a number of terrible Dark Jedi who emerged as warlords and worse.

The two factors that showed up the most often in analysis of what caused Jedi to fall were unorthodox training methods and romantic entanglements. Thus in the following centuries training became more orthodox, with a return to the Jedi Order's earlier traditions. Which Masters were allowed to train padawans (and which could train more than one at once) became more restrictive and romance became one of the most guarded against emotional weakness. As the game opens it is possible to get married as a Jedi but it requires a lengthy process of approval including from the Jedi Council itself. A couple must prove beyond a shadow of a doubt they are both able to handle the strain romantic couples can endure. All children of Jedi are taken from them and raised by the Jedi as a whole, the same as other Force users in the Republic.

For the last thousand years the Sith Empire has needed stability and growth more than anything else. That means alliances that prevent power struggles. It means encouraging the creation of more children. Which in turn means marriage and a focus on family.

Where once the individual was judged largely alone, bloodlines are now incredibly socially important. A Sith from a long line of powerful Sith will find his path through the Academy easier, his opportunities increased. A family with no Force-users who suddenly find themselves with a Force-sensitive child will sacrifice everything they have to get them martial training and mental discipline coaches - for if that child passes the Academy and becomes Sith the entire family will rocket to the penultimate social class in Imperial society, side by side with moffs and governors, second only to Sith themselves.

Marriage among the Sith is usually between only two people and is often to forge a political alliance. Marriages of love do happen often among the lower ranked Sith but decrease the closer the Lord is to the top of the pyramid-shaped power structure. Marriages between Sith and non-Sith are rare as the Sith believe it dilutes the chance of a Force-sensitive offspring. It is a common, though unspoken of practice, for Sith parents to kill a non Force-sensitive offspring and deny it ever existed, claiming the baby was stillborn, etc. A Sith with openly non Force-sensitive offspring is believed to be admitting the thinness of the blood in his or her family line.

Adultery is common among the Sith but officially illegal. Divorce is strongly frowned upon but killing one's spouse for adultery or any other provable offense is socially acceptable. The one time you see obligatory divorce is when a member of the Dark Council breaks a couple apart to stop the assimilation of too much power in one place.

Hope that helps!

Daniel Erickson

Georg Zoeller
I'm sure this only pertains while OOC...

Yes. Simply put: Long downtimes = not desired.

There are abilities available for most classes to grant them a 'second wind' in combat, though.

Georg Zoeller
That sounds a little too convenient - ie far too short of time.

Imo, it should take the same time it would take you to do it in real time.

We're really looking more at this as the movie equivalent of a menial task.

If it doesn't matter to the story at hand, movies rarely show people doing the boring tasks of their daily routine (brewing the coffee before drinking it, searching for the remote in the couch before turning on the TV) in real time. Why? Because they focus on the heroic, interesting stuff, they focus where the action is.

Same for us - we want to you focused where the entertainment is, not held up simulating repetitive tasks for the sake of simulation.

Now, don't get me wrong - a certain amount of simulation is often helpful to ease the player into the world and make them feel at home ("Hey, I know how this works - it's just like ....!") - but we are definitely focusing a lot more on the not-so-standard, action, romance or story heavy elements of your experience.

In this specific case - your companion is a vital part of your character. Without her (or maybe a group member instead), your combat effectiveness and options are reduced, your downtime lengthens and, well, you are without a companion.

Example: As a Shadow, your enemies' position relative to you is of tactical importance in battle. Without a group member or companion to distract or engage an enemy, it is very hard to get into an advantageous position behind the target during battle to use some of your more devastating opening moves.

So, to counter your suggestion that this should take more time - we don't see a good reason for that. Making the less interesting parts of MMO game experience (like, eh, selling grays) take a long time at the expense of the interesting parts (like introducing fleshraiders to your lightsaber, shooting first or even dancing with your companion next to the sarlacc pit) is not the design philosophy we're going for

Georg Zoeller
If I answer this thread, will it go away?

On the question of whether BioWare, as a company, prefers the Empire or the Republic, the answer is:

"We have no feelings, one way or another".

Seriously, there is no business case to be made for preferring one side or the other. There is no valid reason for us to 'prefer' one or the other as a company.

Any perceived appearance of preference towards one side or the other, due to the scheduling of marketing events, the contents of a developer blog or the number of light or dark side t-shirts seen at a random event are purely coincidental. And no animals were hurt in the creation of these t-shirts. Except maybe rancors.

Georg Zoeller
That's all great, but aren't you effectively diminishing the social element by giving players the freedom to not return to a safe zone? The social element is what has made some of the most successful MMOs so memorable. The fact that at one point in time, the player will be pitted against swarms of creatures, and the next, he or she is able to trade and barter, socialize and form groups, guilds, take a breather in a cantina or just enjoy the very essence of what an MMO is, a virtual, living, breathing world full of players.

How will TOR address this social element if one of the chief reasons for returning home, both in the early and elder game, is entirely optional?

You are right, players need a reason to return to social hubs from time to time.

Here are some reasons why 'selling grays' is not that reason in The Old Republic:

- Players have no incentive to interact with other players when selling grays. You're just forcing them to return to a hub. There are better reasons (e.g. trainers, turning in quests, etc.) that reward the player for doing the same thing, which creates a much more positive attitude to begin with.

- It's something you have to do with high frequency and creates implicit dependencies, that we then have to balance. In TOR, whenever you go into combat, you usually fight a substantially larger number of foes than in other MMOs. As a result, your inventory fills up quicker. We obviously can adjust drop rates down to change that, but that also means that if we address drop rates for any other reason, we implicitly change the frequency at which you have to return to town.

- Frankly - nobody has ever told me "Man, I went to town to sell grays, it was soooo awesome!"

To address your concerns, here's a small list of reasons for you to return to a social hub in TOR, and as a bonus, how we view each reason from a player perspective:

• Various vendors. Positive: I get to buy stuff.


• Crafting benches. Positive: I get to make stuff.


• Banking access. Positive: I don't pay bills there?


• Trainers. Positive: I get to learn new stuff.


• Quests / Follow-up quests. Positive: I get rewards.


• Meeting friends (much easier at a known location than randomly in a snowstorm on Hoth). Positive: I meet friends.


• Spaceport access. Neutral.


• Medcenters. Neutral, arguably negative (I failed).


• Speeder Transportation Service. Neutral.


• Your inventory still fills up with items, so it's not like you never have to return to town. Probably Neutral: since I get a lot of credits for the non gray stuff.

Lastly, adding a feature to the game ('companions sell grays') and then balancing it in a way that it becomes undesirable to the player by the meas of penalties ('can't use companion for a long time') would be bad design. When you create a feature for a game, it is either strong, stands on it own and has been designed to account for potential issues, or you don't do it. You don't add it and then try to balance it out with something negative.

Ultimately, it's not like this is a super ground breaking feature. It's just different from what other MMOs do and I can see how that is out of the comfort zone for some. That's fine - every once in a while someone needs to question these kinds of conventions, or we'd still be stuck with 'lose half a level' XP death penalties as the genre standard.

Georg Zoeller
Are ships counted as social hubs then, or are the other crafting benches and credit(?) banks in towns and in other non-ship social hubs?

Some of these elements also exist in ships, but generally travelling to the one spaceport on a planet takes a lot more time and effort than travelling to the closest social hub.