Community Q&A – April 27th 2012 Blog Discussion

[Aiysis]

No, that's not it.

 

As we said, we'll have more details to share closer to launch. Between Group Finder and a Character Transfer Service, our plans are designed to allow more players to play together more often.

A single-server group finder will be completely useless for me if I'm still stuck on the server I'm on now. The server is that dead. Need server transfers first and/or cross-server group finder to be able to participate in any multiplayer content.

[Styxx]

Lovarboy: Will we get dual spec with Game Update 1.3?

 

Daniel: Unfortunately, no. Game Update 1.3 is being kept a bit leaner to get the Group Finder and the next stage of Legacy in the game as fast as possible. After that we’ll be returning to some bigger updates and we’re hoping dual spec makes it for the next one.

 

Is this all you folks can think of? LFG and forcing alts through Legacy?

 

Those new races.. this year... we have to level them, supposedly, from 1 to 50, acting as yet another alt time sink...

 

WHEN will we see ANY other idea than forcing alts and bringing this in line with the "mainstream", after refusing to do it in the first place?

[Bozse]

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.

 

Just allow transfer of the full legacy, all characters, and have a 6 month lockout, problem solved.

[HeavensAgent]

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?

No one's claiming extractable Armorings are new. It's Armorings that contain set bonuses that are new. Additionally, Tionese/Columi/Rakata equipment, even if purchased after 1.2, are not supposed to boast transferable set bonuses.

 

The functionality will appear on "... all armorings that were created for 1.2 or later ..."

 

The equipment sets that existed before the update were not created for 1.2, they existed before it. As such, they are not supposed to feature the transfer mechanic. At all. Regardless of the date they are obtained.

[Masakari_]

People will abuse the transfer system if it's just completely free. It's just the reality of human nature. Even with a 30-day transfer "cooldown", they will move all over the place to the "fad" server and further complicate things.

 

They have the correct idea - implement free transfers that aim to fill more empty servers, and paid transfers for anyone who wants to.

 

The free transfers, if done like WoW and logically, would allow people from 3 or 4 servers to transfer to a single one, "filling" that one up. Of course, they might as well merge servers instead of doing this, but some players might then ***** about not merging into the server they wanted.

 

The timeline does seem too far off. If it's something like late June (start of Summer), they have been sleeping on it for sure. Transfers should be their highest priority, and should have been ready for early May.

Edited April 28, 2012 by Masakari_

[Aiysis]

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.

Actually WOW offers free transfers sometimes to fix population issues. I cancelled my subscription due to the low population issues and I will not resub + pay a transfer fee to come back.

[AlyxDinas]

Lack of sufficient PvP related answers disheartens me.

[Darth-Malice]

Can you elaborate "In most cases" in terms of percent chance relating to hardmode loot drops please? Because the last dozen hard-modes I've done almost nothing has dropped for anyone in my group at all. Seems just as random as it was pre 1.2 Edited April 28, 2012 by Darth-Malice

[Bozse]

Actually WOW offers free transfers sometimes to fix population issues. I cancelled my subscription due to the low population issues and I will not resub + pay a transfer fee to come back.

 

They don't have a legacy to account for when re-rolling though.

 

Did the same after this Q&A, unless I see any change on this I doubt I'll re-sub.

[Geawiel]

There is talk of new species being added within the year Horrah!

 

But what is the criteria of the new species, without going into specifics are we going to see more grey, green and blue humans or more interesting Species added? With the legacy system before we knew it was just going to be cross faction species brought in there were high hopes 1.2 would see new species. This was sadly dashed when the truth was out that pureblood Sith Troopers was the order of the day. Will the new species be equally disappointing or are the art team going to be let lose on the creatures we saw in Jabbas palace?

 

I'd love to know this also but, I don't expect to see anything until it's either out or close to. I personally would love to play as a Trandoshan, Cathar, Ewok, Wookie, Jawa, Rodian and probably a few more I'm not remembering.

 

For next weeks question, on my part, will there be the ability to change EXISTING character's looks when some of this new content rolls out? A free one time change would be great but, I'd even be willing to either pay in game for a change token. I'd also be willing to pay say 5$ to change my char one time. I'm sure everyone else would be thinking along my lines as well.

[LifeOfMessiah]

Actually WOW offers free transfers sometimes to fix population issues. I cancelled my subscription due to the low population issues and I will not resub + pay a transfer fee to come back.

 

I second this. I WILL NOT resub if it means still paying to transfer to a reasonable server so that I can enjoy the game.

[Ntranced]

I second this. I WILL NOT resub if it means still paying to transfer to a reasonable server so that I can enjoy the game.

 

What they will likely do is the same thing as Warhammer did. For the moment we can ignore all the busy servers but instead of using their names lets label the busy servers A through E (guessing there are 5 busy servers in USA). These servers ARE NOT an option for free transfers.

 

Instead server F (mid pop server or similar level) will be chosen as the DESTINATION server for very low population servers O through Z. So all the characters on the lowest pop 12 servers will be able to FREE transfer to server F. Server F should then, in theory, become as busy as servers A through E.

 

Rinse repeat with server G, which is a destination server for another 10 or so low pop servers and so on.

 

End result - who knows. The problem with destination servers is you end up with a crapshoot. Sometimes it works (when people can find nothing wrong with the server chosen as the destination, i.e. they don't have something against its location, name or general population) and others times people just say "oh to hell with server F, its got a crap population/economy/ping/name and I'm unsubbing/waiting for paid transfer to go to Fatman/rerolling somewhere else" etc.

[Overtone]

Just merge the low pop servers ffs.

[Oscibi]

£200 that in the next q&a nothing about pvp. But alot about questions that have been answered.

[Smoldy]

Thank you Bioware for being transparent about future plans. If only our government was so open about their dealings

[Zargs]

Its funny to see so many ppl naging about no answers to PvP.

How many of you that are naging did submit a question about PvP? If you did not the plz just go away.

 

I like the Q&A's. Fun and boring from time to time. But we ALL dont know what BW have in plans for us. So if you dont like to wait then dont play the game.

Edited April 28, 2012 by Zargs

[Sickith]

Guys you need to learn to have patience - the game is not even 5months old.

 

They cannot GIVE exact dates ie Feature X will be released on X date - they can only give rough dates or soon - WoW is the same. Why? Because it then gives a deadline, if the deadline is not meet then the community will result in more complaints, simple as that.

 

For the PVP community.

All your questions, are when are we getting ranked warzones, when are we getting some world pvp back, when are we getting more warzones.... when when when - they cannot give you an answer BECAUSE they DO NOT KNOW themselves - its ready WHEN ITS READY! CHILL!.

 

Here is some timescales for you folks.

 

In WoW - At release there was NO battlegrounds at launch - it was 8 MONTHS AFTER! and they only had 3, for 2 years! They released 1/2 new battleground(s) in each expansion (Eye of the storm - TBC, Strand + Isle of Conquest - WOLK, Twin Peaks + Battle of Gilneas - Cata) - Even ranked battlegrounds did not get released until near the end of Cata. Lets be honest all the world pvp in WoW was rubbish - no one played it - Players make there own world pvp and this is more fun! Why can you not do this on SWTOR! (Make a post on the forums X date WORLD PVP! spam in imp and rep fleets and bam goto the choosen planet and fight = world pvp - you see the problem is that people do not JUST want to fight - they want to win, a way to complete an objective so that one side is the winner - why cant the it just be if all the ops faction is all dead the remaining side wins). The problem is that some players will abuse the system to ensure they win, because they can only cheat to win! They cba to play the game the way it was intended (Battle of Ilum) The problem with ilum was the server imbalances the faction with the most players won, simple as that - so BW limited it but then ya acted like raged dogs and wouldn't even let the ops faction out of the base - you guys ruined it NOT BW! You say that is rubbish because there is no one to fight, what do you expect after the way people acted.

 

Now SWTOR is 5 months old, you had 3 warzones to begin with, and in a PATCH you got a new warzone, YES in a PATCH not an EXPANSION! and most likely get another before/if 2.0 hits.

 

Don't get me wrong guys, i love PVP just as much as you, only difference is i have patience!

 

You see people come from WoW or other games that as had a longer development time and they expect all these features to be here in a new game ready for them to use - i'm sorry to say this, it does not work that way - BW cant just pay X to a company like blizzard and go "Hey can we buy your LFG tool or your ranked battlegrounds" - It has to be built for there own system! Building something takes time has to be programmed and as to be tested, credits due tho they are working hard to try and keep us lot happy - if i was them and seen all the whining would of just pack my bags and left. Then no of you guys would have anything to play.

 

SIde note: the game as been released in other countries across Europe etc this could lead to a good thing, more subs! Thus meaning more funding and more funding = recruiting more staff = rolling out features faster! Yay

 

You guys need to focus on what we have currently got and work on that - the new coming features are an added bonus to your subscription... deal with it!

Edited April 28, 2012 by Sickith

[StrykerOne]

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

 

Maybe nothing has been asked about PvP aside from the usual ranked warzone questions that have already been answered? They don't generally keep answering the same questions over and over until there's new information.

 

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?

 

They answered the single biggest question people have been asking. Server transfers coming early summer. That's big news. Server transfers will be free to targeted servers and paid for any server you want. That's kind of news (it's what most people expected, but at least it's confirmed). They aslo gave exact crit percentages for crafting, which is another big deal since crit crafted gear is now required for best in slot.

 

As far as the ranked warzones go, they will be released when they are ready. That has been said repeatedly. The devs do not yet know when they will be ready, so they quite simply cannot give a firm date. They already tried giving a set date, namely "in 1.2" but it fell through because they had problems and had to pull the ranked WZs. So now they are not going to give a new date until they have a reasonable idea of when they'll actually be able to release them... maybe they'll be in 1.3, maybe in 1.4, maybe in an interim patch. It's not like the ranked WZs are working and the devs are just deciding when to add them to the game... they haven't been able to get the stupid things to work properly and they don't know how long it will take them to do so. Sometimes "Soon" really is the only answer anyone, including Bioware, has.

[Foulbachelorfrog]

Regarding server transfers

 

I hope you will change the way legacy merges happen when you release this. By early summer the legacy on the server I moved to will be the same or higher as the one I stopped playing on a dead server but still want to transfer. I think the two legacy levels should accumulate in some way rather than the larger one simply overwriting the smaller one.

[mr_ruiz]

Answer: Um, what are you talking about? Smugglers/Agents have COVER. That is their stance. Not to mention that Scoundrels/Ops have STEALTH as their stance.

 

Hmmm... The Shadow/Assassin get a stance and stealth, so that makes it alright for a Smuggler/Agent to not have one?

 

As far as Cover, until the most recent patch, it wasn't an action that was even used by us (Scrappers/Sawbones) constantly. At least NOW we can use it to duck when being rooted/slowed to death. There is barely any other use for it. It's nothing that stays active the whole time that gives you specific benefits like a stance/form.

 

Your telling me they're equal, I'm telling you that they're not. .

[Izorii]

The annoncment about new species made my day, I just hope its a good number of species and they are not limited to only a handful of classes (although guess they will still unlock through legacy like the others) wil just need to start getting some credits if I have th buy them in game. To warn the dev team I will probably be asking what species and when every QA till they tell me

[Bocek]

If the free transfers work like, transfers from server a, b and c can only go to server z then I think that is fine. Doing that way is pretty much a merger anyway.

[FeelFlow]

Hi everyone.

 

Great, so the LFG and server transfers are coming around the next patch. Everyone has their issue that they want fixed with the game, but making the servers busy and having a LFG tool for questing and instances whilst levelling will really really help the game.

 

Let's look forward to the patch (and stop with the negativity for a second!) which I'd imagine will be live by June - and remember that Coruscant wasn't built in a day (as the saying doesn't go!).

[ptolmy]

A lot of people will be leaving this game if they are stuck on a low pop server for much longer. Need this implemented asap, the aussies already transferred off, you must be able to do this already...

 

And please, no big patches, keep them lean. It's frustrating waiting weeks and months with no fixes or updates.

[Taoretas]

Thanks for the Q&A was great.

 

I got a question about the Server Transfer service you are going to implenemt, will that make so the realm I'm playing most on get less players as they will move to somewhere else or will you have a kind of "lock" so you can't leave too under populated areas, it seems that Imperial is larger in % then Republic on the server I'm playing as and It's no fun playing PvP with Imperial vs Imperial so frequently, besides we need some balance.

 

Would you add all this into consideration when making the Server Transfer service?

The best thing you could do is to remove some servers and move those people for free to others, I think you where a little bit to generous with servers on release when people where complaining about it, and now it's alot of low populated ones.

 

Thanks again and good luck in the future