Official Q&A Thread for April 20th, 2012 Q&A Blog Post

[Elear]

Will using other faction races have any impact on conversations?

 

For example, Chiss Smuggler.

 

During one class quest, he tries to pretend as not-so-blue chiss pilot. What if he is blue?

Or republic quest on Hoth, where your character says something like 'blue guy called?', and that don't really fit if player is also chiss.

[Baarabas]

Is BioWare activley looking at Advanced Classes with low populations, such as PT Advanced Prototype and Merc Pyro, to address what is causing the player base to avoid these classes in overall gameplay (PvE and PvP) in favor of other more efficient Advanced Classes (Madness Sorc, Arsenals Merc)? Edited April 7, 2012 by Baarabas

[Reasons]

Currently the game's performance doesn't seem to run smooth, certain zones seem to take a bit of time to load, plus the game client alone uses way too many resources. Are there any plans to sort out these issues to give us a better and smoother performance?

[Flying-Brian]

There seems to be a lot of backpedaling in dev posts about what current in game custom (orange) items can either be reverse engineered for schematics, or will have schematics available from crew skill missions with patch 1.2. With the newest bit of information (from 4/6) being that only the new tier 2 (1.2) pve and pvp sets will be able to be reserve engineered for a schematic.

 

Since custom (orange) items are available from different sources, could we please get confirmation on schematics for these type of items?

 

1. Social Gear

2. Quest Rewards (unique, 1 time)

3. Quest Rewards (repeatable)

4. World Drops

5. Flashpoints (random drops and boss drops)

6. Vendor (credits)

7. Vendor (commendations)

8. Boots and Gloves

 

Also with the schematics that are being made available for purchase from the pvp vendor (the Battle Master and War Hero sets), are there plans to offer other complete sets of schematics from vendors?

[DarthPierce]

Is it intended that the shield and absorb rating on Xalek (Inquisitor companion) cannot be improved via gear? He is the only tank hampered in this way as far as I know.

 

Numbers follow:

 

Xalek's Shield generator absorption is 20% regardless of gear

Tooltip even says "Absorption rating (240) +0.00%"

In contrast Khem Val gets a 10.59% increase for having an absorption rating of 106 (going from 20 to 30.59%

 

Shield rating itself Khem for example is at 33.31% from a base of 5% + 20% from skills and an additional 8.31% from his shield rating of 144.

Meanwhile, Xalek is at a flat 25% (5% base 20% skill) regardless of his gear's shield rating.

 

Khem has a 29.94% damage reduction from his heavy armor while Xalek has only 24.05% from light armor (including the skill to buff it by 42%)

 

So with roughly equal gear (mostly Tier 2) Khem has ~24.5% (29.94/24.05) more damage reduction, 33.2% (33.31/25) better chance to shield an attack, and 53% (30.59/20) more absorption of the shielded attack.

 

The only thing in Xalek's favor is 1200 more health (only ~6.5%) He's statistically vastly inferior as a tank.

[Fallensbane]

So Star Wars has all this advanced technology. Can we put it to use and get some optional 'wigs' for Rattataki?

[veevito]

Are there any plans to allow for reverse engineering of any armor piece in game (white, green blue etc..) to obtain an orange schematic of it so as to further facilitate the appearance customization that the orange gear system was intended for?

[mcburly]

when can we start seeing faction based raids and flashpoints???

 

Even if they are mirrored like esseles/black talon. Im sith and I want to fight some epic jedi/republic enemies.

 

hutts/random aliens/droids are not epic enough IMO.

[JediElf]

Is there an ETA we can get on same gender romances with companions? Or a statement of whether or not we are still going to have it post launch? <snip>

 

Is there any chance in the future to allow players to take more than one companion into a flashpoint? For instance- Myself/Vette/Pierce/Quinn all go into a flashpoint?

 

I respectfully second, these two questions asked by mrfuzbear.

Edited April 7, 2012 by JediElf

[Nichos_Ketra]

With the ever increasing demand for more character slots, why is adding additional per-server character slots such a low priority? Making players have to wait a year or more (or even just a few months beyond 1.2) for added character slots is torture for players such as myself, who do not wish to be forced to play on more than one server in order to make all of their characters. Especially if said characters are all supposed to be part of the same legacy. This becomes even more painful with the knowledge that more playable species/classes may be added to the game later on down the road, such as Cathar, Bothans, and Falleen.

[mattgyver]

Will future worlds be designed with open pathing between zones and dynamic mob spawns?

[Costello]

Complete selfish Question but anyway:

 

Are there any plans to give Mauraders a better mix of armour and look. As it stands after level 32 they are pretty much into a skirt wearing class but then get the upper body of mechanised armour (often with lights or metal parts). Where as both Inquistiors and Juganauts seem to get hoods and strangely in the case of the heavy armour wearing brothers often what appears to be lighter and more maurader looking armour. Equally there don't appear to be any moddable knee length boots for the maurader forcing us to either go under equiped or wear the ankle boots which can look very strange with some armour choices. There also appears to be no light/dark Sith Warrior Medium armour available from these vendors (an no grey option) with the only option to go down the Imperial agent armour route. So when will we see more variey and a better choice of look rather than all skirts and shoulder pads.

[BlackMink]

Could you please explain SWTOR's threat mechanics?

 

Not long ago I saw a developer explanation of how taunts work, and having an official explanation was very helpful as opposed to assuming you know what it does. But this time around, I would like to know more. I am wondering things like; what exactly do the de-taunt abilities do, and how exactly is threat generated? Is threat directly related point for point to the damage you do, or does each individual ability generate a pre-set amount of threat?

[nhstjean]

So when is update 1.2 coming? I just can't wait.

[Daseti]

With the free server transfers for Asia Pacific players, will players be able to transfer characters from a PvE Server to a PvP Server and vice versa?

[TheSeventhJedi]

New playable races (Togruta, Nautolan, Cathar, etc.,) are surely on the table - my question is, are you thinking about releasing any of them in a major content patch like 1.2 (sometime down the road of course,) or is it more likely we're going to have to wait for an expansion?

[shepardcomander]

When can we expect to see multiplayer space combat in this massively multiplayer Star Wars game?

[ReckonerH]

Any plans for adding extra strategically placed flight paths, similar to the Pilgrim Retreat path on Voss where the two factions land near one another? It might have quite a profound effect on PvP servers.

[veggienomad]

The security key vendor on the Republic fleet has a really cool jacket; it's similar to the other high level Smuggler chest pieces, but without the poofy collar. Is this item actually available for Republic characters, or is this a piece of Imperial Agent armor?

 

Also, I saw this listed in the 1.2 patch notes:

"Special abilities for several classes have been updated to emit light based on their actual weapon color crystal."

How does this apply to a Gunslinger Smuggler? Currently, we only have a handful of abilities in which the color crystal has any visual affect. Should I drop some credits on white color crystals for my blasters before 1.2, or will not enough of our abilities be affected to make that worthwhile?

Edited April 7, 2012 by veggienomad

[wadetho]

is there a time frame for fixing bugged codex entries? i have a couple planets that are almost complete, and I, like many others really want to start "completing" these things.

 

a comprehensive, and mostly complete list can be seen @ http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=104803 & http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=292539

 

thanks!

[Keldain]

Love the stuff for 1.2, think you guys are doing a great job on addressing the issues of the community.

 

Just one thing I would really like an update on, is there any movement on getting an option to toggle hoods on and off? For both my inquisitor and my new love - my Jedi Knight I find it really annoying to have my carefully selected hairstyle hidden all the way to 50 if I don't stick to the same design of chestpiece the whole way.

 

It seems like it would be an easy fix to add a toggle where the "match to chest" toggle would be for everything else, since there are the occasional rare hood-down models already in the game (I know there's probably some kind of horrendously complicated thing that we don't see though). I'd just like to know if it's being worked on and if it's something that's likely to be soon, very soon, or if it's a "big wall of crazy" type of thing.

 

Thanks

[Dire-Wolf]

You've said you won't be making any current companions available for romance by the same gender and that we'd have to wait until new companions are added to experience SGRA (may I suggest Thana Vesh as a future SGRA companion?), which sort of sucks but I'm willing to go along with it. However, to my knowledge you have yet to say anything in regards to same-gender flirts with quest NPCs. So my question is, what's going on with that? Will you be making changes to the current quest NPCs across the game to allow for same gender flirting or will those who want to experience that while questing be forgotten and ignored? Will you add same gender flirts with new NPCs in new quest hubs or is it something you never intend to add?

[Drudenfusz]

Will HK-51 be available with patch 1.2, or when we can expect to get him? Are there anymore companions in development? Edited April 7, 2012 by Drudenfusz

[Chizwick]

Is there going to be a "Last Log-in" time listed on the Guild Roster in the near-future? That would be very helpful when trying to determine who to keep/cut from a roster.

 

Also, as I've been told by my Guildmaster, when members of a guild are allowed to edit member notes, they're allowed to edit everybody's member note. Please restrict the member note editing allowances to just the player's own member note, unless given permission by a Guildmaster/Officer. Disregard this suggestion if my Guildmaster has misinformed me of this issue.

[Senagon]

Will The Npc's in game notice that your the daughter or a with warrior or mother of a bounty hunter?