Community Q&A – April 27th 2012 Blog Discussion

[Bigdaddygarlic]

And nothing addressed PvP... How out of touch are you? There is a reason why your highest population servers are PVP ones.

 

Thats just what i was thinking.

[Candrimon]

Caizic: In the 1.2 Legacy patch notes there is a section under Items and Economy and General that says "Loot drops from endgame activities, such as Operations and Flashpoints, now take group composition into account." Can someone please clarify what this means/how this works exactly? Thanks in advance!

 

David: Throughout the game, the composition of your group impacts the loot you get from defeating enemies. For the majority of content, the drops are skewed to favor whatever classes are present. This is a bias, but not a guarantee. In leveling Flashpoints, that bias is very strong, and will almost always give loot for the group. However, in endgame Flashpoints, there was no bias – drops were completely random. We’ve added a strong class bias to the loot drops for the endgame Flashpoints. In most cases, this guarantees a drop that can be used by someone in your group. The bias is an “opt-in” system for each character present. That means that you have the same loot playing as a solo Jedi Sentinel or a full group of Jedi Sentinels.

 

Just exactly how do we opt-in for class bias in the loot drops for the endgame Flashpoints, as the last 4 HMFPs I've done (in a group with 2 knights a trooper and a smuggler) have dropped consular gear from the last boss.

[-Dench]

Thank you for answering questions about transfers and low pop.

[HeavensAgent]

Another Q&A full of "yes, we have it planned" instead of any info about the mechanics of the game.

Thank you very much for picking the most useless questions to answer. The lack of any tangible information is your specialty.

"Soon" "we have it planned" "next patch"

This is getting boring.

Um, did you not see the question about crafting crit chances?

[HeavensAgent]

Sooo the listing of "Field Respec" in the Legacy menu (under the "Coming in 1.3 section" )is something other than duel spec? Or should that legacy page be titled something else bioware?

My guess is it's a normal respec that can be used in the field. I could be wrong, though ...

[HeavensAgent]

You have created this mess and now we're supposed to hang around until early summer where you choose where we go or we have to pay to get to a server we choose to re-roll on in the meantime, I'm sorry but not going to happen, without the ability to consolidate my characters and legacies for free I don't see me being patient and understanding any more.

Wait, you really expected something different? It's kind of how almost every title in the industry handles population-based transfers. It's kind of expected.

Edit: Not to mention that we pay a subscription for this game, in essence paying for the development of the transfer feature so why on earth should we be charged for using it.

Thanks, that's a good one; I needed a laugh.

 

Get it through your head: that's not how the real world works. They develop content, and you pay to access what they develop. If you don't like what they develop, you stop paying. In no way are you entitled to anything as a subscriber other than the ability to log into the game and play your characters.

[HeavensAgent]

This seems like a disingenuous answer, as it was in patch 1.2 that most of the set items were converted from having built in stats to having an armoring mod. So in effect, the Armoring mod for columi and rakata gear was created for 1.2. Still not satisfied that we're getting the full story here.

Those modifications were already present before the 1.2 update. They were defined under the old system, they simply could not be removed. The old tech is simply not compatible with the new. It's not too hard to understand, really.

[BlackMink]

I am really happy for the crafting answer this week. That was one of the questions I have had on my 'to ask' list for these weekly Q&As. Great info, thanks.

[JaxBlake]

When will you people begin to address the many questions that the pvp community has?

[DarthZaul]

Scaling social gear will basically make BTL gear redundant cos everyone can just get the social 1 set and not have to grind credits for the BTL set.

No Dual spec in 1.3 made me say OH COME ON!!!!! but I guess the reason is acceptable. This means that the legacy respec is indeed a replacement for dual spec temporarily.

Its good that they are actually managing the server transfers, not just letting people go wherever they want which just does not work.

Edited April 27, 2012 by DarthZaul

[Bozse]

Wait, you really expected something different? It's kind of how almost every title in the industry handles population-based transfers. It's kind of expected.

 

Well it's either sitting around doing nothing until transfers come in as rerolling is impossible without free transfer to consolidate my chars and legacies or simply quit the game, you can see where it's heading with this announcement.

 

Thanks, that's a good one; I needed a laugh.

 

Get it through your head: that's not how the real world works. They develop content, and you pay to access what they develop. If you don't like what they develop, you stop paying. In no way are you entitled to anything as a subscriber other than the ability to log into the game and play your characters.

 

Rift has free transfers, to be fair WoW is probably the only subscription based game that reliably gets away with charging for transfers. but I know, with people like you standing ready with wallet in hand expecting to pay for something that should be free, the rest of us gets shafted.

[jousif]

Early summer for the transfer feature?

 

People are already quiting one by one and if nothing is done very soon, you wont find people in your servers to use this feature to begin with. Its been around 1-2 weeks since the new patch and the activity in my server is worse day by day. My guild was one of the most active pvp guilds in the servers but these days we hardly run a single premade for few games. In peek hours you see 3-4 people online max (mostly are disappointed with the ranked wz but thats a different matter).

 

Guild war 2 beta started today and even thought its for 2-3 days only, it already affected the activity in my guild and the server. We couldnt run a single premade today because you hardly see people online. This is a simple sample of how the people think/want/need in this game. If theres no people online to play the (limited) content in this game, they will quit faster than you think.

 

Also diablo 3 is being released after 2 weeks and most likely it gonna affect the activity of this game. We are taking about May here. Do you think people gonna stay and wait till June/July for the transfer feature? I dont think so (at least for me).

 

Most the people in my server (and probably most the servers too) are pvp players. These people need 3 things to keep them in the game for a little longer:

 

1) Active servers (by adding the transfer feature or merging some servers).

2) Cross servers warzone's matchmaking.

3) Ranked Warzones with 8 man queue.

 

I know people already talked about this tons of time but you really need to work faster on these features before you lose half the remaining players base. We wont stay here for another 1-3 months in ghost servers with limited content to play.

[plokolplok]

Thanks, this week's Q&A was very good, a lot of important issues were addressed - LFG, dual spec, and server pop and server transfer issues. But the PvP combat hot issue still remains unaddressed.

From what I see, according to a number of threads on the Class discussion forum, the changes they made were to address some balancing in the PvE Endgame (raiding/ops), but it somehow had a negative effect on PvP Combat. And if I recall correctly, I think I saw a yellow post that the numbers are now closer to what the devs intended for Endgame Ops, but IRDK if those numbers also reflect what they wanted to happen on PvP. IDK.

Anyway, again, GJ BW, and we do hope you go through the PvP issues next week .

[bbauman]

when are you going to stop answering the most fanboi'ish questions and actually address the issues that is causing your game to die and give the community hope?

 

is BW really deluded enough to think people are really concerned about their companions armor being color coated? seriously? did this even warrant attention from someone? ***?

 

why not answer when rated warzones are coming out? a hard date for a change and not your jargon about how you missed the date. tell us how you are holding your dev team accountable and why some of the changes that should have been in at launch arent in. your "free" month was a virtual admission that you were having people pay to be in your beta and now servers are virtually empty. right now at 820pm est time my fleet has 66 people on it and you still wont admit you have an issue.

 

Also - you had people BEGGING for reasons why classes were nerfed and altered in ways and you gave the absolute most generic, non descript answer you possible could. Imp agents for example have no been nerfed 3 times since launch, in huge ways. by your own admission that class makes up less than 3% of the global population yet you continue to destroy any viability of it. the forums for IA have been BEGGING for someone to explain why you have made these changes yet they are completely ignored.

 

I dont understand why you are doing the things you are doing. I have 3 different lv 50 characters, i love this game but every time i read someone about what you are doing and someone asks a question it goes completely unanswered. but you know when you did answer something right quick? when analysts reported your user base is going to be cut by 40% within a 9 month period, that got your team to post a press release the SAME DAY.

 

rather than deny what most people are accepting as truth you continue to push the same fluff to your community. you are driving the very game you are pushing in to the ground

[Sammm]

It's the first time I read a SWTOR Community Q&A and I really appreciated it. But it's the last time I read the discussion, some of you are so depressing and negative. I really don't need it after a hard day of work!

[Mithros]

Sooo the listing of "Field Respec" in the Legacy menu (under the "Coming in 1.3 section" )is something other than duel spec? Or should that legacy page be titled something else bioware?

 

I am thinking that it is just the ability to respec sans skill mentor.

The ability to respec in the 'field', exactly what it is called.

 

Those modifications were already present before the 1.2 update. They were defined under the old system, they simply could not be removed. The old tech is simply not compatible with the new. It's not too hard to understand, really.

 

But what is 'going forward'?

If I buy the Rakata trooper gear tomorrow, is the set bonus transferrable?

What is there in the game to let me know what is and isn't transferrable before I actually buy something with the hopes of transferring said bonuses?

 

I get that it doesn't apply to anything that anyone already owned before the legacy patch, but how much stuff does it apply to after the patch, and how can we tell the difference?

Edited April 28, 2012 by Mithros

[LifeOfMessiah]

Caizic: In the 1.2 Legacy patch notes there is a section under Items and Economy and General that says "Loot drops from endgame activities, such as Operations and Flashpoints, now take group composition into account." Can someone please clarify what this means/how this works exactly? Thanks in advance!

 

David: Throughout the game, the composition of your group impacts the loot you get from defeating enemies. For the majority of content, the drops are skewed to favor whatever classes are present. This is a bias, but not a guarantee. In leveling Flashpoints, that bias is very strong, and will almost always give loot for the group. However, in endgame Flashpoints, there was no bias – drops were completely random. We’ve added a strong class bias to the loot drops for the endgame Flashpoints. In most cases, this guarantees a drop that can be used by someone in your group. The bias is an “opt-in” system for each character present. That means that you have the same loot playing as a solo Jedi Sentinel or a full group of Jedi Sentinels.

 

This is simply not true, as has been discussed in the following thread:

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=4098149

 

Here is what I had to say on the matter

 

I ran 6 Hard Mode Flashpoints this week, 5 in one day, and just completed EV Hard Mode, and out of ALL of that, there was only 1, I repeat, ONE, drop the entire time for Jedi Knight, and it was columi bracers in EV HARD MODE.

 

The rest of the time it was ALL smuggler, consular, and trooper gear. In EV HARD MODE, SEVEN pieces were trooper pieces, SEVEN. all the rest were consular and smuggler, except for the 1 Columi Knight Drop

 

In the 6 hard modes I ran, it was 2 smuggler drops, 2 consular drops, and 2 trooper drops, EVEN THOUGH we didn't have a single consular or trooper in the party at the time.

 

This is ridiculous. Jedi Knights seem to be the hardest to gear up in this game, and it's really frustrating and upsetting.

 

Please fix this garbage loot table.

 

The loot table has YET to take into account the makeup of the group.

[HeavensAgent]

Rift has free transfers, to be fair WoW is probably the only subscription based game that reliably gets away with charging for transfers. but I know, with people like you standing ready with wallet in hand expecting to pay for something that should be free, the rest of us gets shafted.

You might want to reverse that; Rift would be one of the few games that doesn't charge for transfers. At least, not general transfers.

[Tiars]

I have to admit that I stayed around for 1.2 specifically since multispec was implied to be there. I was willing to wait for 1.3 but it will not be there either.

 

At this point I will be letting my game time lapse and return to the game in the future should they implement more interesting things to do. At this point the guild is bleeding characters which has made hard modes and operations impossible for me to do. I have done all the story lines that interested me.

 

So while there are lots of planned things that interest me; it looks like I will be better off waiting till after the release of MoP to give this a try.

[Gangrel]

Rift has free transfers, to be fair WoW is probably the only subscription based game that reliably gets away with charging for transfers. but I know, with people like you standing ready with wallet in hand expecting to pay for something that should be free, the rest of us gets shafted.

 

City of Heroes/Villains also has a paid "character transfer" system in place... and has done for a few years in fact. Granted, since they shifted over the hybrid subscription model (sub/free to play combo), subscribers get a free character transfer each month. But that can also be due to the fact that they also have a Subscriber only server (just the one), which you can transfer your characters to.

 

*shrugs*

 

Sure, WoW might be seen as the "standard" for MMO's, but most other MMO's came up with those idea's first (Dual Speccing was implemented in City of Heroes before WoW, granted by a few months... but still ).

[Tiars]

Rift has free transfers, to be fair WoW is probably the only subscription based game that reliably gets away with charging for transfers. but I know, with people like you standing ready with wallet in hand expecting to pay for something that should be free, the rest of us gets shafted.

You might want to reverse that; Rift would be one of the few games that doesn't charge for transfers. At least, not general transfers.

 

For those that played Star Wars Galaxies, the final mass loss of subscribers started with the free transfers. What happened there was that everyone transferred to the fad Server of the Moment and they the lag drove many of them from the game. I can very easily see this be repeated if SW:TOR were to add free and regular server transfers like SWG did and Rift does.

[Fouroneoh]

Arymono: When will character transfers be available for everybody?

 

Dallas Dickinson (Senior Producer, Live Services): We will be rolling out our Character Transfer Service in early summer. First we’ll have some targeted free transfers from/to specific servers, but that will be followed with a broader system where you can either take advantage of free promotional transfers to specific servers or paid transfers to the server of your choice. We know everyone has more questions about character transfer, and we’ll reveal more details closer to the launch date.

 

 

 

DrakeAssaShin: What is being done to address low population servers?

 

Dallas: The Character Transfer Service, as mentioned above, will be offering free transfers from/to specific servers. This should allow the most motivated players to get onto a higher population server.

 

 

Very disappointing to be honest. I've been waiting and waiting and waiting for more news on a date and only get hit with "later" time and time again, basically sealed the deal on my subscription. 20-30 people on the fleet on weekends, 30+ minute queues for warzones. I bought this game in hopes of an MMO experience and got a single player. I've put too much time into my characters to just drop dead and re-roll, I'd rather give another game a try then re-roll on a populated server.

 

I just can't believe that the "dead" server issue has been around for 2 months at least and nothing has been done. Only to be given the run around of soon, later, summer. Should just make it next year, I doubt most of the people waiting for this want to wait 3 more months.

[BigSkill]

This community Q&A looks like a Joke, they choose the question that they want to answer....

Nothing regarding PvP improvements,or better World PvP.

There is a Big part of player that want world PvP at least on the PvP server, something different than farming wz.

What about the problems regarding the unbalanced classes that you created with the 1.2?

You guys are working on unusefull PvE content only, and the beautiful Leagcy system is comletely insane.... who care that you can share the force choke only during The Heroic moment 1 min every 20 min?

And what about the cost to have the mail box in to the ship, or to pay a LOT to have the dummy inside your ship.... come on guys, other games are coming and you guys prob realize too late.

 

Im a big fan of Star Wars saga, i wait 10 years for another SW game (After Star Wars Galaxies) i really want to play this game, but looks like that you guys are wating to see the subscription drop before to move in the right direction....

 

Right now the changes that you guys done are not enough, and im very frustrated, i love star wars, i love this game and i love PvP, and some of the changes done with 1.2 (for example sorc nerf ) are not the right step to do.

 

For the future plz on the Q&A answer more question, not only the person that want the Han Solo or Luke SKywalker set to show to the friends.....

 

=/

[HeavensAgent]

But what is 'going forward'?

If I buy the Rakata trooper gear tomorrow, is the set bonus transferrable?

What is there in the game to let me know what is and isn't transferrable before I actually buy something with the hopes of transferring said bonuses?

 

I get that it doesn't apply to anything that anyone already owned before the legacy patch, but how much stuff does it apply to after the patch, and how can we tell the difference?

"Going forward" means 1.2+ equipment; sets that were part of the game prior to 1.2 will never boast a transferable set bonus. When you obtain the item has no impact on this.

[XenobiusLT]

I wonder how big is the pile of chickendung they are trying to feed the players here about the "limitations to how much they can change the items already owned"?

I mean, seriously, the whole statement is a cover-up for laziness, IMO.

Let me quote that piece here...

 

The tech that allows us to distribute set bonuses as part of the armoring is new, and there are limitations to how much we can change items that players already possess. That means we can have the set bonus on all armorings that were created for 1.2 or later, but that old armor still has the set bonus on the shell item.

 

1) It's not new. Extractable armoring was an early alpha/beta feature which was deemed "unbalanced" and removed.

2) Not only armorings extracted from previously owned pieces do not carry over set bonuses, the new Tionese/Columi/Rakata gear purchased/exchanged for tokens post 1.2 DOES NOT allow for set bonus extraction. Misinforming much? Or was it too much to update the old set pieces with new item IDs?