Darth Hater

BioWare is hard at work addressing issues and gathering feedback in this week’s DevTracker Highlights. Principal Lead Combat Designer Georg Zoeller covers tactics for higher-level combat, character responsiveness issues, character level progress, how moddable items work, vehicle damage ceilings, and the illusive magenta crystal. Assistant Designer Chris Schmidt asks for feedback concerning the final class mission for the Jedi Knight. Senior Online Community Manager Stephen Reid breaks down the procedure for addressing bug fixes and game issues. Associate Online Community Manager Joveth Gonzalez clarifies the rumor entailing players being banned for not taking advantage of special dance zones. Hit the jump to dig in and see all the highlights.

Georg Zoeller gives a few pointers for taking on higher-level enemies.

Georg Zoeller

We're looking at this.

A few general notes on challenging fights.

One of the most important aspects of higher level fights against elites is to counter their special abilities. You are required to use your interrupting abilities (e.g. Distraction on the Imperial Agent) in these fights to prevent these enemies from gaining the upper hand. In the short term, stuns and ballistic attacks/knockback will also help, but your interrupt abilities have the added benefit of preventing the target from using their special abilities.

Make sure your companion is properly equipped and that their signature abilities are enabled. For example, if you rely on your companion to take the brunt of the beating in a fight, make sure their 'defensive stance' is activated. Turn off their area of effect abilities when you're fighting single enemies - they are not efficient for these fights. You can enable/disable abilities by opening your companion panel (~ by default) and right clicking the ability. The green indicator on an ability tells you if a companion will consider the ability for use in their AI rotation.

Do not underestimate the benefit of stims and relics as short term efforts to turn the tide. Same goes for your 20 minute 'heroic moment' ability (the one that only works with your companion and triggers the music).

This sounds obvious, but make sure that your skill points (k) are distributed and that you've trained primary your abilities to level.

Finally, if all else fails, gaining additional equipment, levels or bringing a friend along to help with a challenging fight can be used to overcome temporary blocks. However, be advised that if you run into constantly very challenging fights, it is a good indication that your equipment might need updating.

All these notes aside, we are looking at difficulty issues constantly. If we find a trend that indicate a certain fight is broken or a specific advanced class has issues, we will act accordingly. If you want to provide additional insights, such as your character's spec, your approach to combat, your companion or a particular fight you would like us to look at, please feel free to do so in this thread.

regards
Georg

Georg Zoeller acknowledges the issue of character abilities conflicting with character animations and that the team is actively investigation possible solutions.

Georg Zoeller

This issue is under active investigation.

The complication is that there are actually a number of different issues with very different causes and potential resolutions lumped together in this thread.

All we can say for now is 'we are actively working on the topic of character responsiveness'.

Georg Zoeller gives a gauge of what level the general population is.

IAmYourGod

High level planets have max 6 players, no one is doing world pvp in Illum. People don't talk in chat, and i takes around 3 hours to find a group to flashpoints. What is this, a single player game that i need to pay monthly fee for? No thanks.

Now that i'm 50 and i've finished the story i guess... that was it.

Georg Zoeller

The overwhelming majority of players are in the sub level 30 range of the game at this point, taking their time.

Rushing to level 50 comes with a price, and that is that it's pretty lonely at the top for a while.

Georg Zoeller explains that moddable items are dependent upon the armoring, barrel, and hilt slots in each item.

nezroy

Can anyone confirm how orange gear gets its armor value?

From what I can tell it appears to be derived not just from the armor rating but also from the intrinsic armor "class" of the gear. For instance, since the Elegant Dress is a "light" armor class (requires light armor proficiency to use), it seems that for any given armor rating you mod it to, the armor value is the same as what you would see on a light armor chest piece of equal rating. This is substantially less than the armor you see at the same rating on a medium or heavy piece.

I just want to make sure this is accurate, since it seems to unfortunately limit the custom armor options for a heavy armor using class -- no tanking in an Elegant Dress for me I guess

Georg Zoeller

Orange Armor gets it's armor value from the 'armoring' mod you slot in. If you exchange it for something better, the armor value increases along with the stats.

It's always the first mod in the list that determines the intrinsic properties of the orange items (e.g. armoring on armor, barrel on guns, etc.)

Hope that helps.

Georg Zoeller notes that upgrading your speeder not only increases speed, but how much damage you can take before being knocked off.

NicelyI don't know if this counts for anything, but I've noticed that I can take more damage before I am knocked off with the higher level mounts.

Georg ZoellerThat is correct.

Chris Schmidt requests information from those having trouble taking on the final class story of Jedi Knight by themselves.

Chris Schmidt

Hey folks!

If you are unable to solo this fight, please give us a bit more information as requested below:

1) Did you save your companion?

2) What is your advanced class and tree spec?

This fight is designed to be soloable by fully utilizing your interrupts. You should not need to use any LOS tricks, etc, but we will take a look at exactly which circumstances are making this fight undefeatable for some players.

Thanks for your help!

Stephen Reid discusses the process behind bug fixes and the priority they are given.

belialle belialle I am fine with them fixing small quality of life issues while they iron out the bugs....but I have NEVER seen ANYONE ask for the ability to emote from a mount....not even once. There are so many other little quality of life things that have come up over and over again on the forums (server forums, chat bubbles, mouseovers, UI fixes, the ability to sit in chairs, etc). So it's weird to me that emoting from mounts is one of the first QoL priorities.

Stephen Reid

Unfortunately, not every part of a game's development is an equal sized task, and we must prioritize fixes as best we can.

To speak to your example, while you may have never seen someone ask for emoting from a mount, it may still have been asked for (either in threads you've not seen, or in bug reports, for example). It's also possible this was a fix that was being worked on before launch, and has only just now made it into the game, or that fixing this bug clears the way for other bugs to be fixed, or that adding it allows other features to be implemented. And sometimes, it's just something we wanted to fix.

While we cannot acknowledge every single post and every single request made on these Forums, we're reading and passing on the desires to the development team. Every major request that's been made by players since launch is being discussed and prioritized. That doesn't mean every feature requested will make it into the game - we'd end up developing a very schizophrenic game if we did that. However many requested features will ultimately end up in the game.

While I'd suggest everyone does check the Dev Tracker from time to time, you should also keep an eye on our new Community Blog, which has already hosted a post from James Ohlen about some future features, and will have more insights as we go forward into additions to the game.

The team is hard at work on improving and where required fixing the game. Not every fix is easy and not every feature can be added overnight, but we'll continue to work to make the game even better.

Joveth Gonzalez clears up confusion about any supposed e-mail bannings and special dance zones.

Joveth Gonzalez

Just wanted to let you know that this email is a fake. There are no such things as "special dance zones”.

Nobody puts our players in a corner.

Everybody is free to get down.

We are NOT banning players for the use of emotes.

Georg Zoeller acknowledges that the magenta crystal does exist in game, but doesn’t give any hints on where it might be.

Georg Zoeller

The Magenta Crystal does in fact exist, but it is not acquired through Reverse Engineering. At the present time, it could be classified as one of the rarest items in the game.

While I am not going to give any more information on how, where or from whom it may be acquired, I want to debunk the idea that you have to reverse engineer endgame gear to get it so people don't do stuff they regret.