Community Q&A – May 4th, 2012 Blog Discussion

[Cupelixx]

Seach the internet, especially the Crew Skills forum and you'll find out all you need to know.

 

Meaning what? I have been up and down the crew skills forum and fan/DB sites. The only confirmation is purple expertise crystal schematics being yielded from PvP crafting boxes. If other purple crystal schematics have been confirmed with a source, it's escaped my searching.

[TheCynic]

I'll elaborate a bit further (I haven't been drinking enough to think too much into it. Yet.) on the problems mentioned in the first question regarding the economy.

 

When the game launched, there were plenty of vendors for every planet that virtually gave away mods, armorings, barrels, enhancements and hilts. There were plenty of quests that gave as rewards mods, armorings, barrels, enhancements and hilts. Those vendors and quests are still there with the mods, armorings, barrels, enhancements and hilts. Why is there a (supposed) surplus of materials? Because no one's making mods, armorings, barrels, enhancements and hilts.

 

I'll argue there isn't a vast oversupply of materials, just a vast supply of overpriced materials because no one has an incentive to gather. If the market had enough reason to need the materials demand would go up. Since the economy is depressed, prices would GO DOWN as more people supply goods and the ones who repost again and again would have to lower their obscenely priced materials (Rubat Crystals at 1200 each? Really?) to compete.

 

People generally don't flood the market with 500 boots they made while levelling, at least not in this game. They RE them to get the mats back to level more. In other games they disenchant or whatever to get parts for other tradeskills. Not allowing reverse engineering of orange items just passes the buck to crafters, who by and large aren't making the hideous amounts of profit off augmented items some would think.

 

Suppose the vendors were removed. What would happen? Some small voice would ask in trade, "LF 2 Level 21 Mods!" and trade would begin. A crafter would take up the banner and see, "Hey, there's no one selling this on the GTN!" My cybertech has all the trainer taught mods/armors RE'd to blue, and most to purple.

 

Guess where I get my mods... the commendations vendors. Those materials just stay in my inventory, and the ones I might have needed just stay on the GTN.

 

An economy works or it doesn't. Right now we have an economy hand-held by vendor mothers that isn't going to go anywhere anytime soon. It'll end up in its 30s in a dark room in front of a computer talking about the economy in a video game before you kno... um... I mean it needs to develop on its own.

 

Vendors need to be removed, or at least their inventory reduced to greens, not blues. What should be the crafter's milieu should be made by crafters, not a weapon given to players at level 8 or 9 as they leave a planet. Not a piece of armor looted from the lowest level flashpoint. Not a best in slot item crafted with 100 armstech, armormech, synthweaver or artificer.

 

Hiding things throughout the world (Magenta Lightsaber Schematic/materials) artificially inflates cost and demand. How was the demand and price artificially reduced? By adding a vendor. (So to the person who asked where to find a purple color crystal, just wait, when the price goes up a vendor will show up to sell it.)

 

 

Add to this that orange gear is too easy to obtain, level 10 and you get the LAST weapon you ever need makes all other non orange items of the same slot useless so they cannot even be sold on the GTN.

 

The amount of credits new players make vs have to spend on skills and crew skills means new players cannot make enough money to take part in the economy since there is no market for their goods.

 

Really ALL itemization and Crew Skills need to be looked at and reworked from the GROUND up. Right now if the game is supposed to last more then a year then the current systems will NOT work in the long run at all.

[Sithhelmet]

Actually, level 20 for the last weapon, since that's the lowest augmented one, but, yes, you get the problem exactly.

 

Well, until they add the intended future change of "adding an augment slot" on existing items. Then it will be the level 10 stuff. And I'll be damned if anyone's going to buy crafted things, they'll get the stuff from Boarding Party or Crashimumu that looks 100x better.

Edited May 5, 2012 by Sithhelmet

[JeramieCrowe]

Basically, you're working on everything mentioned. but we still don't have the core features from 1.2 that we were looking forward to. Nobody asked the tough questions like "Are you going to address the server population concerns" or get rid of the ludicrous instancing on planets when the server population is crap? Free transfers for low pop servers at all?

 

Umm..probably because that was asked and answered last week...

[Yakito]

"Soon", "We're looking into that", "Definitely going to be implemented at some point".

/yawn.

 

 

At least you answered a few MEANINGFUL questions, but I guess it's still easier to answer the vague ones and slap "soon/possibly" on everything, right? Makes you look like you're actually doing something.

[BlackMink]

Interesting read, and a lot of questions answered. Nothing really mind blowing though. I am glad to see that they have been at least choosing some better questions lately.

 

On the subject of the GTN problems, I will be perfectly honest I never use it anymore. If I am going to post anything for sale on the GTN it's going to be a purple item. Be that crafted or dropped or whatever. The problem is that when I do infact post some nice purple items, (usually at the default price) they don't sell. So then they get sold to a merchant, because I don't want to put up with the hassle of re-posting it every two days. Pretty soon I will be able to buy my ship GTN and then maybe I will use it more often. There is also the fact that purple crafting materials (like mandalorian iron) can be a huge pain in the butt to actually obtain. I have a good stack of it currently, but I would rather save it for my own future use than to burn it up making purple items that other people probably won't even buy. If you want me to sell more stuff on the GTN, make it a LOT easier to obtain the purple materials. As for actually buying stuff, there isn't much I want off the GTN. Between my four level 50 characters, I am largely self supplied in terms of the stuff I am most likely to buy off the GTN.

 

Overall, with the way SWTOR is designed, the GTN is just a poor source of getting stuff. From 1-50 generalized questing is plenty rewarding enough in terms of blue and green stuff. If you take up crafting that will fill in the gaps very nicely. And then even if that wasn't enough to keep you and your companion nicely equipped, there are commendation merchants too. So why in 1-50 would I bother with the GTN? The only thing I would consider buying off the GTN in the leveling phase of the game would be grade 2, 4 and 6 ship parts. And even that doesn't matter anymore because I have my own cybertech.

 

At level 50, the name of the game changes in terms of items. Now you are almost completely working with items that are non-tradable. You are working on grinding dailys for rakata earpieces, implants and relics. Of those, only the implants can be traded. You start working on hard flashpoints and raids in order to obtain columi and rakata items, none are tradable. Crafting has some level 50 items, but they are either inferior to the previously mentioned stuff, they are non-tradable, and / or they require hard to obtain end-game crafting materials to even make in the first place.

 

Overall, the GTN is just a failed source of stuff. With the way the game works as a whole, you can ignore the GTN entirely and never miss it. If you want your Auction house to be important, you need to make some major changes to the rest of the game. You can start by calling it an auction house, instead of being snobs and trying to re-name the 'wheel'. Second, get rid of all the commendation merchants throughout the game. Third, cut WAY down on the items obtained as quest rewards or random drops.

 

Do you realize how WOW does it? In solo play, every item you obtain is roughly 10 levels below your actual level. When you are 15, you will see level 5ish items dropping from enemies, or rewarded from quests. What you do is sell those on the AH and purchase items other people have posted, which are actually your level. So you find level 5 items, sell them, and buy a level 14 item instead. This likewise makes crafted stuff more desirable. For group play (dungeons), you get items much closer to your level AND they are generally blues. A far better reward than the stuff you obtain from soloing.

 

I hope this makes sense. All solo play needs to produce very poor equipment results, in order to make buying items off the GTN, or doing dungeon runs, more desirable.

Edited May 5, 2012 by BlackMink

[Jundi]

I was almost surprised to see no pvp questions answered. Almost.

 

Same. Like no one asked about cross-server pvp, Rated WZs, or character transfers. Bogus.

[Sithhelmet]

Character transfer? Like off Whitebeam Run? It's like "The Fatman!" of emptiness!

(I have a toon there- my guild was looking for another server for the other side, one picked that one. A week later we asked why. "Because absolutely no one else was there to compete with mobs!")

Edited May 5, 2012 by Sithhelmet

[Darkrite]

Quote from Community Q&A 05/04/12

"Austin Peckenpaugh (Senior Designer): ....

 

'Class change prioritization is a bigger topic. Without getting too long-winded on the subject, what we're aiming to do with any class change is get a class or spec as close to target as we can. These "targets" are objective math-based goals that apply identically to all like-roles. By that I mean that all DPS specs have the same target because they are all the same role: damage dealing. Tank roles have their own targets, and healing roles have their own targets. When someone is off target (too high or too low), we try to find non-invasive ways of bringing them closer to target. We don't try to bring classes closer to target because we're mean - we do it because the global game math assumes everyone hits their target. When someone doesn't hit their target, it has an adverse effect on the game at large. And since rebalancing the entire game to accommodate an outlying spec is completely infeasible, we address the outlying performers with class changes, individually, as appropriate. It's an ongoing experience that we'll never be done with, so prioritization is based on what we feel is the most egregious in any given patch. How we identify outliers and how we determine which is the most egregious is... another bigger topic."

 

I deeply appreciate the insightful look into how the prioritization process works. Now my concern is in regard to this statement, "These "targets" are objective math-based goals that apply identically to all like-roles.".

 

While I understand the 'like-role' concept is effective in many cases, I think that not only the outgoing numbers need to be addressed, but often times I see little in the way of defensive skills and abilities being considered in these class changes. Example: On my scoundrel, what I consider to be my 'main', I have experienced several 'nerfs'. My experience are that some of these were definitely needed for the outgoing damage per second.

 

We had incredible burst damage, and stun capability well above and beyond the defensive capabilities of most classes. Overall, the class is very balanced now for outgoing damage, as far as I can tell, within the dirty fighting and scrapper spec. Quite a few would disagree, but I find that the rotation is quite simple for both specs and still has a very high amount of damage both PvE and PvP wise.

 

However, along with taking the class down for Scoundrel/Operative, we were given little in the way of defensive capabilities. Before going onto a tangent about the lacking defensive abilities, I would ask simply, why does it appear that more isn't being addressed on these issues of defense? Most of them have been brought up on the PvP forums, such as Force Wave and other AoE effects breaking stealth, etc.

 

While I understand these issues can't all be taken into account regarding just PvP, a majority of the concerns stem from them.

 

Lastly, how are these numbers gathered? Are the numbers run on every ability (outgoing) against every possible defensive ability? I feel as though, at times these are numbers just generated against a base target defense, shield, armor. Is the testing extensive enough to gather real data that does give you more than a feeling to go off of? Or does this statement, "prioritization is based on what we feel is the most egregious", mean simply that the numbers give you a base 'feeling' of what the right prioritization should go in? If this is based on feeling from base numbers, I suggest testing to the full extent on every defensive ability vis a vis every offensive ability in question to find the holes in both offense and defense. The problem may be more with the defense of a class, than the offense of another.

Edited May 5, 2012 by Darkrite

[Kada]

This weeks Q&A was just a huge slap in the face... BW stop giving us these half *** answers. Step up to the plate! More pvp content, fix the GTN, fix crafting, and who gives a crap about character transfers how about some server merges/cross server qing Edited May 5, 2012 by Kada

[Drudenfusz]

I liked Llloralei's idea too!

[santino]

As far as gear goes, I really think the #1 problem is that Bioware eschewed the 'appearance gear tab' that many other MMOs implement, and tried to do something new with the custom gear. In doing so, they really made several crew skills largely useless, and made it almost a given that, when given the choice in quest rewards, people will always pick the commendations, since the green/blue items themselves won't be of any use.

 

Many of us asked for appearance gear in beta. Appearance gear (wherein any piece of gear can be put in an appearance tab and override the appearance of the equipped item) results in a much broader range of looks without negatively impacting new gear acquisition (which is, after all, one of the driving forces of any MMO). Instead, we launched with a limited # of custom gear sets, limiting customized appearances AND crippling several crew skills (necessitating the addition of augment recipes for those crew skills in the hopes of making them even moderately useful)

 

Sigh.

[Ultramecha]

I have a suggestion for that I think people would like to see on the Swtor website, is a compilation of all the Community Q&A and Developer Track Summaries in a separate link similar to patch notes, that would provide a one stop place to view every Q&A and Dev Track notes. I'd like to see it set up similar to patch notes example: having Q&A week 1 - present on the right side so that people can easily go back and click through all the weeks and see the questions and answers. That in my opinion would help rid of the people who ask the same questions or complain about questions that they think haven't been answered every week that have been answered in previous Q&A's or Dev Tracks.

 

[Spankyjnco]

Another week of 90% of the questions being pointless and already answered on the forums/somewhere else.

 

I swear.. I think the devs don't randomly choose anything, they pre-screen and pick things that are easy to answer because they are... already answered a million times.

 

Why has there not been ONE contriversal (sp) topic, or request at information not found anywhere.

 

The ONLY thing I have gotten out of all these QA sessions, was that with 10k affection my companions get +10% crit chance on craft/missions. That's it.

[LUCASCASADEIS]

what will do bioware about the players that are using speed hack? because the people don't like the pvp in swtor because ever say taht havent UO, and 1 big problem is the speed hack

[HumanSheild]

nothing for the 4th? No cool in game event. Know your busy fixing those bugs.

 

Loving it by the way.

Be cool to see something in game for the 4th of mAy.

 

"May the 4th be with you"

 

ha ha ha you made a funny...busy fixing.. that is cute.

[CrusherUK]

GTN is broken, why give a response that demonstrates a total lack of listening?

 

To be able to use the GTN at the moment, you need to know what you are looking for before you can find it. The 'search' button is greyed-out until you enter at least 3 characters in the 'find' box.

 

I was looking for droid parts last night and, because I didn't know the names of any droid part, I couldn't search for any.

 

Why is searching for items banned?

 

That's why none of my stuff sells. It's not that people are not posting anything, it's because others can't find anything.

[ebgalbraith]

will you add guild ships? :rak_03:

[Sithhelmet]

GTN is broken, why give a response that demonstrates a total lack of listening?

 

To be able to use the GTN at the moment, you need to know what you are looking for before you can find it. The 'search' button is greyed-out until you enter at least 3 characters in the 'find' box.

 

I was looking for droid parts last night and, because I didn't know the names of any droid part, I couldn't search for any.

 

Why is searching for items banned?

 

That's why none of my stuff sells. It's not that people are not posting anything, it's because others can't find anything.

 

The GTN's not that broken. It is broken, but not THAT much. It's the "Any" settings that are messed up. For droid parts you have to specify on both "subcategory" and "rarity" something other than the default, or "subcategory" and "usable by" to have things show up.

[WNxAbaddon]

Nothing about black robes for maras Fail Q&A

[Kubernetic]

I loved that comment toward the end about companions, and Yuun specifically.

 

He is one weird bug, but he's a great addition to the team. I like the added flavor that his philosophy adds to the story.

[Darlgon]

Please. please.. PLEASE make people who want to duel in fleet hop the elevator to a different level, or heck, even go to another ship. It is annoying to be doing something and some idiot is blasting away (with his blaster) right next to you. It is even more important since you have the cantina area for companion conversations.

[Vespassian]

I enjoyed reading this. I like how one of them said to put old color crystals for speeder under glows. Swag.

[Caspian_Rho]

For so many questions I seen little to no hard answers..... everything answered was a new version, yeah we're not doing that but if we were it's be a while!!!

 

How long before BW get employed for the next general elections to create spin after spin?

Edited May 5, 2012 by Caspian_Rho

[krinaman]

Please no dueling on the fleet. Make a dueling chamber or something with it's own chat channel.