Laurreth
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Posts posted by Laurreth
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We just put Game Update 1.6 on PTS, and we're still working to resolve various issues from 1.5 last week, so we're going as fast as we can!
I was totally expecting a 12-16h maintenance today, to the point that not having any announcement actually worried me
Don't let the temporary understaffing get you down, just had two weeks of that myself.
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I'm sorry, but I have to call this a total dodge. We already have multiplayer conversations, and have had from the very beginning so that is clearly not what Mr. Hood was talking about in the interview.
If you try to read it a bit more optimistically, however, it could just mean that some future content (let's call it Makeb for the moment) might get a more intermingled, coinciding overall story arc in the form of a planetary/bonus quest line that doesn't intervene with class stories. That would be cool.
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Will races beyond the human, cyborg and Zabrak be available for purchase from the market?
Yes.
For those of us who are subscribers and have the option to choose characters to hold onto when we change into the FTP version; can we select characters that are races other than the Human, Cyborg and Zabrak? For example, say I want to keep my Pureblood when I shift to FTP. Can I?IIRC, you will not lose access to "non-f2p" characters. From a jumble of things that have been said and a somewhat badly maintained FAQ, I think it works like this (and please correct me if I'm wrong):
If you let your subscription lapse, your account falls back to "preferred" status. You can still log in and play all your characters with all "unlocks" that you have bought for credits (cargo and inventory space, etc., and you will still be able to wear purple gear that's already bound to a character), but your credits above the cap (500k) go to escrow and remain unavailable until you subscribe again. However, your character slot limit drops down to 2, and unless you delete characters or buy enough slots, you will not be able to create new characters.
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What I'm interested is the prices of CC in euros. If its just normal rates, thats fine.
I'm worried about a scenario where Europeans get screwed by some system that doesn't care about the rates, like 1$ = 1€ as some other games have used..
If you read this post and then compare it to the German version, you'll see that the minimum requirements for preferred status are a minimum purchase of either USD 4.99 or EUR 4.00, so at least in some places they appear to respect currency conversions. There's still hope.
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Hey, thanks for listening and relaxing the bonus coin conditions! Hopefully everything goes well and we can all enjoy this game for some time to come.
Cheers all around
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The Cartel Market button is really annoying. Thankfully, it can be shrunk and darkened in the UI customization.
I'd like to... uh... N-th that motion. It should be part of the normal menu, at most in a slightly different shade of blue. I already find the blinking help/service button annoying (try ignoring it after it has been active for a month due to some stuck tickets), and that cartel market thing is just out of place.
Next episode: custom armour. "When you buy access to months of operations and warzones, you can make those really good." Sarcasm aside: they're actually a nice thing to mention, since they give f2p players an option at a decent look with planet commendations, and without buying the colour unification unlock.
All in all, I feel appropriately marketed to
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The restrictions seem to be about making the game so frustrating to get to level 50 without purchasing additional perks that I wonder if people who found 15 bucks a month too much of a commitment will just quit in annoyance than dig into their pocket.
I don't see a problem with getting to level 50. Sure, you don't get to wear purple and won't see too many flashpoints (although, thinking back, I wouldn't have hit that limit too often either), but that really isn't an issue if you're just going through PvE. If you're a good little postman and do a moderate amount of sidequests, you outlevel your area most of the time. You also get moddable equipment early and easily enough to build viable gear with planet commendations.
You can also always team up with other people to do that stuff. This is, after all, trying to be a multiplayer experience.
Things get a bit worse once you hit 50 and finished the "single-player content", since content and gear tend to subtly change towards unavailable and unwearable, unless you start paying in some way. At this point it is worth repeating though that you've just had a damn long storyline for Free*.
* The definition of "Free" may depend on your country or region.
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PVP:
SW: WZ available but only 3 per week (also not clear if per character or per account)
That was already bumped up to 5 on the PTS. Seeing how you have to buy the weekly passes per character (which I still think is a bad idea), I'd venture a guess and say that the limit applies per character as well.
RIGHT, BIOWARE?
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So basically everyone that ever had an account will be Preffered Status and anyone who ONLY pays the minimum of ~$5 US. FOREVER? It is not stipulated. If one only has to pay for a slightly degraded subscription for a one time fee of ~$5 US. Why would they ever subscribe?
The preferred status is still pretty restricted if you look at the big picture, so no cow for you.
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Do you think that the new "untold story" contents [in Episode VII] will positively affect your work? What are your thoughts on the new episode?
Extending that question, it would also be interesting to know how creative control is split between Bioware and Lucasfilm, and if (or how) that is expected to change; but it's probably way too early to ask that.
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I just wanted to thank you and everyone involved in the writing for what you've done. While parts may seem rather old-fashioned or cliché, the overall writing is consistent, fits the setting (let's be honest, the entirety of Star Wars is a bit on the cheesy side), and has some really awesome, touching to downright scarring moments.
Reading through this, I came about the "Avengers-like super story" for the first time, which I find disturbing. While it would definitely be cool to have a plot singularity where all class stories intersect and culminate into something cool, I definitely would not like them to remain unified. I do realise that unifying stories that way may be cheaper since it allows more re-use of assets, but it would be cheaper in every meaning of the word. In the end, the multitude of stories is maybe the strongest points the game has.
I have been playing a lot of class story quests together with a friend, and I always found it very interesting how genuinely intriguing things become when you miss parts of their story and re-join at a later point. Taking that away would be a huge loss. Please don't reduce the surprise and enjoyment from doing that or playing a new class, and don't cheapen the quite markable differences between characters that have been established up to this point.
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THIS is what you guys work on all day? Not fixing bugs? Not REDUCING LAG? Just adding pretty colors to grass? Seriously; you should be fired, dude. I don't care one bit that my grass is shiny when the sun's out, I do care that I don't lag to high heaven when the sun's out....
GET YOUR PRIORITIES STRAIGHT.
I think you need to look up how large-scale development works, with different teams and responsibilities and all that.
But of course it would be a great idea to put GFX specialists on net code. Would surely improve things no end
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Is there any chance that someone will sit down and work on the ground textures? Grassy places like Alderaan look pretty sad outside the pop-up grass range, since the textures have really strong tiling. Reducing those regular structures and generally working towards a better blending between those "fallback textures" and the proper grass effect would IMO work wonders for the look of some places.
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Will the bonus cartel coins for current/past subscribers only ever be available to people who have an active subscription on the date of the F2P launch, or will it be sufficient to subscribe after that date?
(edit) damn beaten to the punch, see post immediately above
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tl;dr
Well, clearly you are not my target audience
Also, huttball sucks and cw and novare are the best mapsI don't particularly like Huttball (I turn off voice output for those matches), but for some reason it has become better in the past few months. Also, I'm not saying that I don't like CW, but I'd like it to be better and a bit more biased towards close calls. Dawdling around half the time knowing that you've lost unless the enemy team logs out isn't really that much fun; that's why I regard NC as "CW done right".
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Right now, it seems to me like that warzone is the odd one out. The others, even Huttball, tend to have a fair share of close matches, but it is very rare to see Alderaan end with a small difference; usually, it "ends" around 350:170 after a very one-sided match.
Basically, the warzone favours the first party to capture two positions since it takes relatively long to capture a target, the process is very easy to interrupt, it is all or nothing, and "defenders" can get anywhere very quickly without a timed portal, so a steady stream of defenders can successfully stop a capture attempt even if a very strong force has just been wiped out.
Novare Coast was clearly made with Alderaan in mind, trying to fix the core mechanic, and it worked out great, but it wouldn't be very conducive to variety to just have another Novare
The most basic approach could be to just reduce activation time on the targets by a small amount like one second, and see how it works out. (Involves capture time in the most primitive way, but the easiest things can be good.)
There have been proposals to remove the side speeders, which might help since it would slightly extend the time window between the last defender going down and the first one coming back in. (Involves time to target.)
It might also help to make turrets go back to grey after 4 or 5 seconds of interaction which would give some breathing room, but it would also break the timing of the warzone, having it run longer since there'd be no guaranteed damage output any more. (Involves "all or nothing" characteristic and might lead to half-hour matches.) Changing the targets to an incremental capture mechanic would just duplicate Novare.
It is also very easy to defend both side points, either from the middle target if you have that and one on the side, or from the "labyrinth" beneath the middle if you have both sides, with only a skeleton force (usually tank plus stealth DD) on the sides who can usually put out enough CC to bide their time until reinforcements arrive. Changing that would modify the time to target, but would of course require scenery changes.
I've also played with the thought of modifying the damage output of individual turrets, but quite frankly the dynamics of that scare me
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F2P option = fancy trial period
No one realizes this still....
Except that in every interview anyone from Bioware gave about that topic, they were very up-front about that fact. They never tried to hide it, and it was very clear that it was the course they were going to try. It's not what many people would like to see, but they were never dishonest about it.
Yes, some of the restrictions are rather harsh (the 3 warzones/week limit is ridiculous, I'd much rather see 2 per day or so, but that might already be a cap that 90% of the players don't even reach), but that's only a numbers game that might well change. As it stands, that "fancy trial period" means you get to play one of the better RPGs, and if you fancy it, you get to participate in all content on an as-needed basis.
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Probably out of luck... this is EA.
That's my fear, and that's why I'm asking. They already made massive changes to the restrictions and made them look like a somewhat acceptable f2p model (some of the restrictions like the number of warzone matches still seem a little too tight though), so I hope it's not beyond them to be a bit lenient on that point.
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I think I'll better ask this in here, on the off chance it gets read by anyone who really knows
The FAQ currently (2012-10-18, 9:50 CEST) states that only players with an active subscription at the start of the F2P option will gain access to their accumulated coins. Does that mean anyone without one at that single point in time is out of luck, or will it be enough to subscribe, even for only one month, at any point after the launch?
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Why would you run into massive inventory issues? It's just credits.
You are aware that those missions right now yield lockboxes which require manual interaction, as well as missions and blueprints, right? Just saying.
Granted, yielding credits instead of the lockboxes would be a good move in itself.
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Wouldn't you run into massive inventory issues that way?
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This is affecting me on my trooper, the major battlefield of bad taste until unification came along, but maybe other classes that don't wear Tupperware are affected as well.
It would be really nice if the red accents on recruit and battlemaster PvP gear would change to the chest piece accent color. They are in an off-red that's not (easily?) found on other pieces of armor with a less... insectoid look, and the red-on-black scheme is a strong matter of taste.
(It wouldn't be so much of an issue if the set bonus on battlemaster gear would carry over with the modifications *hinthint*
, but if color unification would work properly, one could still get the full bonus with more variety.) -
My jug died trying to prevent cap in voidstar, the bomb had not exploded yet. Our team totally had time to diffuse the bomb.
I'm going to correct you right there. The word is "defuse", unless you plan to dissolve the bomb in a lot of solvent of some kind to try and make it harmless.
It's a mistake in the subtitles as well, during a quest on Belsavis on the Republic side...
When you're working for the senator who is experimenting with the inmates.
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Anyway, back on topic. There are also conditions when a Voidstar match could end much sooner than it does now. Assume the attackers in the first round made it all the way through, and in the second round they manage to defend the first door all the time. Then the second round could technically end over a minute sooner than it does now, since it takes around 28 seconds to plant a bomb and have it detonate, plus 8 seconds per barrier, plus time to walk anywhere.
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Am I the only one not excited about this update? For non 50 characters who enjoy the storyline all we are getting is stupid expressions and the chance to tidy up their companion. Earlier in the year we were lead to believe we'd be getting the story update, the cathar and HK-51 and now it appears that these are gonna be drip fed to us.
I see your point, and depending on my general mood, I sometimes feel similarly about the "major" patches here. All in all though, there are a bunch of improvements that should be felt by everyone, like the group finder porting back to where you came from or the CC changes in PvP.
Apart from the operation, it is another convenience patch like 1.3, which was a massive improvement of the game, with many fixes that are not glaringly obvious, but do make for a smoother experience. Major content updates are likely held up by the development of Makeb, which sounds like it should keep most content teams busy, and as was mentioned in a recent interview, development of proper story content is actually really expensive. Bioware is really delivering quality in that "single player" department, and that just takes time, as much as you and I wish to have more stuff now.
(Compare to the development of a warzone: make a compelling mostly symmetrical map, place and script targets, hire Nolan North as the announcer, push to live…)
It would be very interesting to have some kind of "state of the pipeline" in a community blog right now, since a lot of stuff has been announced that's hanging around somewhere
, but if color unification would work properly, one could still get the full bonus with more variety.)
PVP: Vertical Progression should go the way of the Dodo
in Suggestion Box
Posted
I agree, and let me link-spam my take on "bringing up the rear" in this specific case.
The question is if one can stop vertical progression in PvP while keeping it going in PvE though, since at some point, the latter will outperform the former.
Players are magpies though, and most of us intrinsically want new shinies with higher numbers to make us feel like we achieved something. Making new armour purely ceremonial like the event rewards would not do that as much, since the sense of progression would be lost, and it would only really benefit those who liked the looks of new shells.
All in all, I think that Bioware should scale the game with more variety, e.g., new warzones or a new attempt at open PvP for the competitive folks, and some storytelling parts (Kaon under Siege and the recent Theoretika quest come to mind) and tough-as-nails mechanical challenges for PvP-inclined folks. Not escalating gear would have the added benefit of keeping hard stuff hard.