Community Q&A: March 2nd 2012

[Adderdin]

Rtwozero - Any plans to implement region by region maintenance times?

Blaine Christine (Sr. Producer, Live Services):

(…)We understand that this is especially concerning to players in the European and newly opened Asia/Pacific server regions. (…)

 

 

What other regions are there? Oh yes US… Which brings us to: everyone gets shafted cos they are afraid of the rage that americans would start when they would be treated the same way they treat the rest of the world. Make a month of maintance between 9 AM and 6 PM during day time in any of the US time zones. Unless you dont have the balls.

[longgrassgrows]

1. Yes, it can wait. At least, it can for me. For others, its more pressing.

 

2. Romance is of differing importance to different people. I don't PvP as much (especially with all those blasted Battlemasters), so to me, PvP fixes are of little import. That doesn't mean I think Bioware is foolish trying to fix PvP.

 

3. I'm a gay guy, playing a wide variety of characters of differing genders and sexualities. Why does that matter?

 

you are a homosexual that refers to himself as a "gay guy"...sorry if i am not convinced

 

i dont care about SGRA...whether they are in the game or not...what is am saying(and not specifically to you) is to wait your damn turn...there are other, more pressing matters to attend to in the game than SGRA...it will happen when it happens, however it does not seems like it is happening any time soon, so again, wait your turn

[Nepumuk]

 

ThtreLady - Can we get character achievement announcements in the guild chat channels? I.E. Krysari is now level 39, etc? I'd love to be able to congratulate my fellow guildies, but I have no way of seeing when they level up or kill something spectacular.

Damion Schubert: This is a good idea - cheap but effective features like this are, as a designer, among my favorites. I'll bring this to the Guild Team, but no telling when they will prioritize it compared to the other guild love they are working on.

 

 

I don't think it is good idea announce minor things like every single level. In various MMOs a lot of guildies were regularly annoyed by such kind of spam of insignificant achievements, e.g.: "ding level 3", or "10 fish!", "woot you clicked a button!!".

 

At least there should be 3 options to turn it off or tune it down:

1. Let me turn off any announcements from other players. So I can decide whether I want to see announcements from other players or not.
   
2. Let me turn off any announcements I would trigger. So nobody would see any announcements from me. This is very important for such quiet situations when I am just minding my own business for a while and don't want to interact with people. Everyone needs some alone time sometimes and it's quite irritating to blare automated messages into guild chat during that time.
   
3. Let the guild leader/officers turn off any or all announcement categories. So you could fine tune as a guild what kind of messages you see in guild chat. E.g. turn off level dings completely except for level 50, but leave messages on for defeating world and operation bosses.
   

[Imorea]

so not being able to split maintennace downtime as it is only one server. why then not rotate downtime between the 3 areas off peak times. US one week Europe week after and then Asia Pacific rinse and repeat.

 

not a great fix i know but what it does is make it fair. And not give any specific zone more gametime for their money at more conveinant times

[MustrumRidcully]

What other regions are there? Oh yes US… Which brings us to: everyone gets shafted cos they are afraid of the rage that americans would start when they would be treated the same way they treat the rest of the world. Make a month of maintance between 9 AM and 6 PM during day time in any of the US time zones. Unless you dont have the balls.

 

Everyone gets shafted, except the majority of people playing during peak times.

 

Sounds fine to me. Why should I as German get preferential treatment and get a downtime that affects me less if a larger group of people would be affected more? Doesn't sound logical to me.

[longgrassgrows]

I don't think it is good idea announce minor things like every single level. In various MMOs a lot of guildies were regularly annoyed by such kind of spam of insignificant achievements, e.g.: "ding level 3", or "10 fish!", "woot you clicked a button!!".

 

At least there should be 3 options to turn it off or tune it down:

1. Let me turn off any announcements from other players. So I can decide whether I want to see announcements from other players or not.
   
2. Let me turn off any announcements I would trigger. So nobody would see any announcements from me. This is very important for such quiet situations when I am just minding my own business for a while and don't want to interact with people. Everyone needs some alone time sometimes and it's quite irritating to blare automated messages into guild chat during that time.
   
3. Let the guild leader/officers turn off any or all announcement categories. So you could fine tune as a guild what kind of messages you see in guild chat. E.g. turn off level dings completely except for level 50, but leave messages on for defeating world and operation bosses.
   

 

those are pretty much a given

 

or at least #1 and #2 are

Edited March 3, 2012 by longgrassgrows

[kalimarr]

why is SGRA so important? because its a BW staple story feature in DA and ME. and of course because same gender romances are so prevalent in SW... oh wait.

[Dire-Wolf]

The amount of homophobia in this thread disgusts me.

[Urkanan]

Blaine Christine (Sr. Producer, Live Services): At this time there are no plans to implement separate maintenance times by region. Star Wars: The Old Republic is a global service with no restrictions on a player’s server choice.

 

Unfortunately the trade-off is that we have to maintain a single service environment, which leads to global maintenance periods. We are very sensitive to the fact that we are limiting play time once per week with a global scheduled maintenance.

 

(The bolding is mine)

 

This has to be the lamest, most truth-twisting answer I've seen so far and I'm saddened by it.

 

I live in Europe, and maintenance here happens in the morning, wihch is not too bad during school/work months, but means they cut my (available) playtime by nearly 10% on holidays. Ok, I'll live with it.

 

Just PLEASE do not tell me that letting me choose to play on a US server if I so desire is in any way related to when you do maintenance on your EU servers, or viceversa.

 

Either hire the warlocks that make unbinding this two things possibe, or plainly tell us that at this time it is simply cheaper to have only one shift of maintenance, and you are sorry for those of us getting the short end of the stick.

 

I understand that "we are aware you are concerned about this" is much more marketable than the second option, but it just hits the nerve when you try to blame management decissions on Mother Nature.

Edited March 3, 2012 by Urkanan

[Dkzero]

What is all this fuss about gay relationships?? I really hope the devs aren't wasting time on SGRA.

[Aram_Darksun]

What other regions are there? Oh yes US… Which brings us to: everyone gets shafted cos they are afraid of the rage that americans would start when they would be treated the same way they treat the rest of the world. Make a month of maintance between 9 AM and 6 PM during day time in any of the US time zones. Unless you dont have the balls.

 

No they decided to try to inconvenience as few people as possible and as the majority of the players are in the US so that is why they get priority.

 

They are not out to screw you, they are not discriminating it is purely about numbers. All the theories of hate and discrimination are akin to conspiracy theories. It would be political and financial suicide for a company to practice such morality.

 

Unfortunately currently all servers have to be done at the same time which means even on individual servers which may have a majority in another timezone (the Euro servers), they still have to take a back seat to game wide majority in the US timezones.

 

So please get off your high horse. It is unfortunate but unavoidable.

 

Further more frivolous use of the hate crime catch phrase is disgusting as it damages true cases of disrcimination.

 

And if you think I am biased I am East Coast Australia and it could not be worse timing for me.

 

Btw it is a little vindicating that Bioware explained how hard it is to do the servers seperate when I brought that point up a month ago and my intelligence insulted because of my detractor's inability to comprehend that 'work schedule' does not inherently mean 9 - 5.

 

On an unreleated topic, why do so many people believe that forum posters make up a fundamentally inacurate representation of interests? Is it purely because it makes a convenient counter to someone's stance?

 

Not there aren't people who do just claim (from the wrong end) to be speaking for the majority.

Edited March 3, 2012 by Aram_Darksun

[Irishbrewed]

What! Crating gear is the best gear in the game now? So stupid. Work your butt off pvping for your gear only to have it beat by the guy with the most credits and time now.

 

Man why can't you just add certain perks to certin professions..

 

Not just outright make crafting gear the BEST..

 

Just a stupid way to address the terrible crafting system... Not only is it viable, but it's the ultimate OP gear. So once I get my gear set, I then have to worry about trying to obtain the crafted set? This is stupid from a pvp perspective...

 

I'm sorry guys, your game is not going to be saved by this bloated 1.2 patch...

Edited March 3, 2012 by Irishbrewed

[Aram_Darksun]

I don't raid atm but I am dieing to get into it (I have raided for years in other games).

 

I also like crafting, enjoy being able to make stuff.

 

With that in mind I hope I am something akin to objective when I say; The challenge of raiding should net you better rewards.

 

If crafting that item involved similar difficulty (probably also need some form of rare drop or bop to limit it's proliferation) then yes, I could see it being comparable.

 

As a side note, difficulty does not have to scale linearly with number of people. There is no reason a heroic can not be as hard for 4 people as an op is for 8 or more. The partial exception to this is that it is usually harder to coordinate more people, but not enough that it makes a fallacy of the above.

 

Edit: I just though of something, the fact that you would need those mods from the raid gear to put in that crit crafted orange does mean in the end, raiders will still have the best gear.

Edited March 3, 2012 by Aram_Darksun

[Sirsa]

Why is the same sex romance so damn important for lot of players?

[stineo]

If BioWare isn't saying anything about same sex romances, it could be because:

 

1. There is no new information available at this time

2. They're maliciously holding information back to enrage paying customers, because that's totally something a for-profit organization does

 

They already said same sex romance will be in with new companions in future patches/Xpac. Other then that it will be very very difficult to go back and change scripted dialog from the old companions. But that doesn't mean with future patches that the old companions can't fall in love with same sex partners. As they too can get new quest dialog and actual quests to advance thier story.

[Ooshga]

This is interesting.

If the idea is going to be that crit crafted orange gear made by crafters is going to be, for the moment, the best one can get and the best way to mod them said items is to raid and pull the mods out of the raid gear and put them into the crafted items. Then what is the point of having the raid items drop in the first place?

 

Why not just have a chest full of mods? even if they don't have the crit crafted items in the first place they can just place them into what ever gear they have on currently and pull them out later to put into them when they do, it amounts to the same thing.

[stineo]

This is interesting.

If the idea is going to be that crit crafted orange gear made by crafters is going to be, for the moment, the best one can get and the best way to mod them said items is to raid and pull the mods out of the raid gear and put them into the crafted items. Then what is the point of having the raid items drop in the first place?

 

Why not just have a chest full of mods? even if they don't have the crit crafted items in the first place they can just place them into what ever gear they have on currently and pull them out later to put into them when they do, it amounts to the same thing.

 

I would assume some exotic looking orange gear with augment slots dropping in raids too.

[Aram_Darksun]

Why is the same sex romance so damn important for lot of players?

 

I'd like to know that too. I am all for it, undoubtly at least one of my characters would utilize that but I am not sure the question is worth stubbornly asking again and again and being petulant when it isn't answered again and again.

 

This is interesting.

If the idea is going to be that crit crafted orange gear made by crafters is going to be, for the moment, the best one can get and the best way to mod them said items is to raid and pull the mods out of the raid gear and put them into the crafted items. Then what is the point of having the raid items drop in the first place?

 

Why not just have a chest full of mods? even if they don't have the crit crafted items in the first place they can just place them into what ever gear they have on currently and pull them out later to put into them when they do, it amounts to the same thing.

 

The raid gear still offers a different appearance, not something for everyone but if the raid gear has some kind of inherent bonus that can not be transfered than it could compare to crit crafted orange.

 

Maybe raid gear could even have augment slots themselves, I think that would be one of the most ideal ways to handle it.

 

Even if it didn't it doesn't make the item without it's mod worthless simply because it isn't the best.

Edited March 3, 2012 by Aram_Darksun

[Samvan]

only answered 8 questions and ignored yet again.... the biggest question the community has.

 

When are mergers coming if at all.

 

The refuse to even acknowledge the server problems lol.

 

Wrong.

 

The biggest question the community has is when they are gonna give a **** to fix their ****** game engine.

[DesonEQ]

Dnt know why people are begging for same sex romance in game. There is hardly any romance in game at all any way. Do you really want bioware to add 3 or 4 text lines with voice overs.

Maybe they did the straight romances and are asking because they want to avoid the weaknesses of the current options. Most of the romances and flings I've seen--especially for women--are just plain bad. My opinion of course. The fling options for all the females I've seen are cringe worthy except for one in the SI line. Except Vector, I want to space all the male marriage options. My personal hope is that they started the SGRA's and decided on a total rework of the feature. It's nice to be included but, it's not worth it if every option you get feels like a violation. If you're not playing a straight male, celibacy looks like a pretty good option.

 

For anyone who can answer, are the questions put in a pool that staffers can answer later? With only one question askable per week, it feels like a waste resubmitting the same question week after week when I have broader concerns. Having to essentially win the lotto on questions as important as legacy issues, while also considering the long term implications of not having features like sidekicking, makes the Q&A feel like a gimmick more than a community feedback mechanism.

 

It feels like a waste of my time having to rank what I'm going to ask every week because not only do I not know why the previous question wasn't addressed, I also don't know what they do with it so I have to choose between resubmitting the same question over and over each week or picking something new and maybe hitting the jackpot there. Just so I don't feel like I'm wasting my one shot, I go through and read the question thread entirely and try not to submit one that someone else already has as opposed to just asking the question on my mind at the moment.That ends up being 60+ pages a week of eye blurring reading where you see everyone asking the same question dozens of times in hopes of winning through sheer volume.

 

With the current setup and information, it looks like just creating a lot of threads for your questions and desires gives you a better shot at being responded to than doing the Q&A, and with a lot less work. It'd be nice to know if the unanswered questions are being used in some way, and if there's a chance we could see some megapost Q&A compiled of answers acquired in a more casual manner.

[stms]

The only questions I want answered are: are you planing to stop spawn camping in hutball and can we get sabers and vibro blades to block force lighting?

[Stenrik]

When will there be server merges or some other way to deal with ghost town servers?

 

(Yes, it's been asked before, but evidently not enough. Gotta keep hammering away...)

Edited March 3, 2012 by Stenrik

[MajikMyst]

The amount of homophobia in this thread disgusts me.

 

I don't think it is homophobia.. I think it is the ability to discuss what this thread is meant to be about and not what a few would like this thread to be about..

[Godincarnate]

When will we be able to pvp in the fleets? such Reps raiding imps and imps raiding reps

I mean there was that one Trooper that glitched into the imp fleet about a month ago lol

[Delaborga]

well i once fought against revan, and when he puts his mask on his hood removes automaticly, is that a bug, i seemed to have seen ppl who once weared masks and also revan wearing his mask and his hood up?