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Community Q&A – May 11th, 2012 Blog Discussion


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We actually addressed server issues in a previous Q&A and will have more information on character transfers very soon.

 

"Very soon", "We're working on it", "Not right now, but perhaps in a future patch".....

 

Give me a break... it's always somethiing like that or complete and utter silience.

 

The weak vague responses from you guys were old a year before launch.

 

The poster was asking for a timeline response. Is it really that difficult to give one?

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Weekly Q&A is a must. With relevant answers to the questions being asked, rather than merely cherry picking the softball question. The communication in terms of certain areas of the game has been fairly abysmal. PvP questions about Huttball and not TTK or open world, for instance? Laughable.

 

The transparency we are getting is hardly transparent at all and it sends the wrong message.

Edited by AlyxDinas
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Interesting, some questions:

 

To what extent did you act as the healer (particularly on the sage)? Even if you weren't heal spec'd on those toons capable of healing, did you find yourself tossing out heals on strong+ mobs? Were you a tank spec on any of those toons (I'm thinking of the Jugger in particular)?

Leveled Sage mostly as a healer. Switched to dps occasionally for fun. Merc was dps pretty much the whole time till I dinged 50. Juggernaut has only been a tank. Guardian was tank till I got scourge. While dps, i didn't really toss out heals. Would just let the companion die if it came to that and pop cooldowns to burn the enemy down.

 

Your pattern definitely seems to be start out with DPS companion & then switch to a tank companion in the 35-40 range.

Nah. I switched to Nadia on my sage and kept her till 50. Switched to Skadge only cause I think he's awesome. Was mever a matter of necessity except early on with Qyzen/Khem when you had no choice.

 

I agree that a tank is a potential option over a healer, but I think the vast majority will choose a healer & many will feel locked into it.. To my mind it's a question of faster-kills-higher-risk (tank) or slower-kills-guaranteed-survival (healer).

That may be, but you are not forced to take a healer, everything is doable without just fine. I mainly picked what companion I liked the most.

 

I don't regard DPS companions as a serious option for anyone except a heal/tank-capable toon or someone in a group. They simply don't do high enough DPS against anything challenging (level 30+, mobs at level or higher) to account for the lessened survivability, in my experience.

That's not entirely true. Melee dps have the bladeward ability which makes them able to tank for 15 seconds but yes, if you're dps specced rolling with a dps comp is just a bad idea. If you're healing specced, melee dps comp is the best choice, if tank then ranged.

 

As a Deception Assassin I've been going with Khem all the way because that's what I've got used to + my character & Khem have similar interests (feeding him jedi). As Deception I like being able to use maul, so I stun to break up damage & rely on superior DPS + force cloak to get me out of trouble. That said, I definitely encountered fights pre-Hoth that I could have done if I had a healer but couldn't do without one.

I leveled my assassin as a tank but that was because back then, at lauch, the damage an assassin could do in tank spec was insane so it wouldn't really be applicable anymore.

 

If I didn't have force cloak on my Assassin, I probably would've used a healer to stop that once-in-a-while death though - I intensely dislike dying & try to keep it to once every 10 levels at most.

 

On my other characters I've always used a healer for safety (plus they make great OT's), or else have been duoing the solo content with a friend.

 

Death happens, sometimes you pull multiple gold mobs, sometimes you piack the wrong target order, sometimes another players ganks you.

 

Is a healer safer? Yes, most definitely. Is it faster? No. It comes down to a matter of choice. It's in no way forced though. Some fights, like the infamous sel-makor for example, is harder with a healer. If a fight lasts so long that you or your tank runs out of hp then yes, a healer is the way to go but I've only encountered a few of those in all my characters.

 

My personal efficiency partnering is like this:

 

Melee dps > healer comp. Ranged dps > melee tank comp. Tank > ranged dps comp. Healer > melee dps comp.

 

Ranged tanks are just bad all around. Don't know why really, they just do less damage and soak less in my experience. However, I'd say that you can use whatever companion you want for 90% of the fights on either faction. Some just require a certain companion due to mechanics but on those, the gear of the comp doesn't matter really.

 

dps/dps combo requires that you use your cds and pick the right targets. It's doable, but too much of a hassle really. I leveled my Sentinel to 37 with Kira without too much trouble, unless I got lazy.

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That would require advanced 'tech'.

 

My jaw dropped at the two responses about tech.

 

Removing the repair button on warzone droids would somehow require advanced tech?

 

For certain classes to have augmentable offhands while others already can would require advanced tech?

 

Stunning and sad.

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Jesus Christ, is it your goal to always pick the most irrelevant questions? This is such failure on so many levels. I thought ME3's ending got BioWare into PR mode, even though you are a separate development team.

 

We want to know when server merges are coming and which servers are included in it. We want to know when rated Warzones are coming. We want to know when more highend content is coming. What we don't want to know is WHY VENDORS WERE REMOVED FROM WARZONES. What we don't also want to know is IF WE'RE GONNA GET COMPANION CUSTOMIZATION KITS.

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Maybe in 2 weeks, you guys can come up with some real answers on the game's abysmal performance problems. Especially when it comes to PvP/warzones. Are you ever going to answer these questions with something other than "we're looking into it"? Or are you going to keep taking the coward's way out and pretend the questions aren't being asked over and over on the forums?

 

I was getting mad after 1.2.0a about my performance issues for a game which always ran good, on my machine.

Not exceptional but good. No lags in WZs, and also in other areas.

 

Till 1.2.0a up till 1.2.3 my performance was getting worse by the patch. It was a bigger disappointment considering on the day of 1.2 the game ran very smooth indeed with 200 persons on fleet. Something unthinkable till that day, with 100 plus. The ten day prior to the fix of 1.2.3a were annoying to the maximum.

Comes the patch of last Thursday in 1.2.3a and performance is up a notch, with everything in high end full capacity. Needless to say I am relieved.

I still have minor sound issues which come after about 2 hours of play, and some voicing disappearing, music coming in and out, but lagging has again vanished.

 

Saying all this I still think BW should take performance up a notch and also a custom care center to help PC improve there machine.

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Great Q&A, Thank you.

 

I actually got some questions; about what you've wrote about the light/dark side companion gain, I'm curious why not include this for other characters in the future, as for say Doc have "moral issues", Theran aswell and might even some other companions would have a great unique twist to the story of the class story, I would honestly see myself as a good guy while I argue with Doc as he is Dark side, well the Options for this would be great.

 

I realy wanna know what you are intending to do with Space Missions, I think it's one of the biggest gems you got in this game at the moment but it's not used in a way that would be considerd groundbreaking, it's like a lump of coal at the moment; me and my friends have put down some huge work into making up ideas for it, What we need of course is PvP space missions, Queued and with a mission; We do know that Space Missions are linjear as for say you can't control the way you are flying, But what if you make a sandbox stage, The stage that comes in mind is the Bomb run quests, those are the tiniest and It would be awesome to say the least if you could have a 10vs10 fight, where one side Bomb the base first run and other way around the other, making it a mission for both. The abilities you can buy and missile's would be a nice twist to this, if you just calibrate that you can't hurt someone with missiles when they are shielded for balance making blaster bolts useful. I got alot of ideas for this Space mission thing and I'm curious what you have in mind in the future Bioware? Can we get any glimps on it please :)?

 

Huge thanks! :))

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Bland.

 

Could someone please start doing a search of the Bioware offices for large green pods. Sort of man sized.

 

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Edited by Woetoo
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I have yet to not be disapointed. It seems like all they do is look for the stupidest questions or most bland ones and do everything they can to avoid the questions the "majority" of people want answered.

 

Here answer this one

How is swtor going to compete with gw2 open world pvp rvrvr? repeating 4 warzones over and over isnt going to do it. This games pvp is going lose 95% or more if Gw2 were to launch tomorrow.

Edited by hargrave
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I don't quite get how Daniel could mistake question about skill set (and therefore role) with one about personality.

 

Personalities are fine. What everyone is worked up over is the fact that majority of classes rely mostly on healer companion and many people find their healer companion not really likeable (or just plain hated as it is with Quinn in numerous cases).

 

Companion kits mentioned in the question are not about putting Quinn's personality into Jaesa's body. They are about putting Quinn's skillset on Jaesa's ability bar. Myself I'm very much into immersing myself as much as possible hence I like to stroll around with my apprentice (not to mention the eye candy) but seeing how I'm better off with healer when it comes to, say, heroic quests, the point is moot cause unless I manage to find a group (which tends to get time-consuming these days) I'm virtually forced to utilize "my lord" boy scout whom I loathe since the moment I met him on Balmorra.

 

So yeah, the post-Voss episode aside, Quinn's personality repulses me completely, yet because of him being a healer, there are instances where he is the only logical choice for active companion. By implementing what OP said (i.e. allowing to transfer ABILITIES between companions) that issue would be nonexistant.

Edited by gibmachine
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In regards to the companion rolls, I dont think anyone minds them being restricted in roles, its just some are too restricted

 

Each companion should have 2 roles that change their skill deck imo, they should all be dps and utility because utility is of far more value in most leveling situations, for instance if a companion is tech based ranged dps, they should have a healing mode too or if they are a melee dps they should be able to tank aswell.

 

ATM its very rare for people to use their dps companions and those that do are a dissadvantage to those that use a healer or tank, adding a utility role to the dps companions would make those companions usable rather than just the bench warmers that they currently are

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The reason (as stated in the blog) is so that we don't end up with a Q&A with the same questions asked over and over and the same responses from the devs about features coming soon.

 

Might I suggest a summary post of questions asked and answered "recently", with links to the full questions and answers. I'm sure there will still be a deluge of already answered questions, but it might stem the flood a little.

 

Also, some questions need to be asked again, maybe even answered again - BECAUSE time has passed and people's expectations need to addressed.

 

It's possible to summarise Blizzard's standard responses for the last few years with a derivative phases.

 

 

  • Yes, we know it's cr*p right now, but we're fixing / improving it and it'll be much better soon™. Please keep paying.

 

So if we seem less than happy to hear more of the same from Bioware, please understand we're jaded and both optimistic and pessimistic at the same time. High hopes and low expectations... a customer service nightmare.

 

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Edited by Woetoo
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You. once again, pick questions that have already been answered yet nothing on twi'leks and hoods and if you guys will ever enable twi'leks to wear hoods without the lekku clipping through the back by making the hood force the lekku to be pinned to the chest. It's been asked in every Q/A thread yet *nothing*.

 

Perhaps because it's not that pressing of an issue. There are far more game-breaking issues that should be addressed prior cosmetic ones. Just to name a few (somewhat in order of importance according to the various topics in the forums):

 

Server Transfers - which they already indicated were being worked on and will be available soon. We could probably through the LFG tool in with this as well since both end up being related to the population issue on Light servers.

 

PvP re-vamp and playability issues - again, currently being worked on, but since this is a large portion of an MMO mechanic and the playerbase, I think more information on this part of the game is in order.

 

Additional end game content/sandbox features - While I don't believe the hyperbole of the people who post that there is no end game (there is, and it is similar to that of many other MMOs, including the upcoming Almight GW2), this type of end game obviously does not appeal to everybody, so additional Level 50 content needs to be worked on in order to retain as many subs throughout the first year of the game as possible.

 

Legacy system limitations - a big feature touted before release that sets SWTOR apart from it's competitors. Right now the Legacy system is somewhat weak in the benefits (especially in the cost-reward ratio). Obviously we will be getting further updates to it with each content patch, but the cost of unlocks and the usability of unlocks is really an issue right now (equipment that is only usable for a short period of time, if at all; and race unlocks that can't be used with the character limit per server).

 

The numerous bugs and crash/performance issues - typical for any game, not the least of which for the MMO genre, but nevertheless, a big issue with many people. The PTS was supposed to have weekly patches, which I would have assumed to coincide with the weekly maintenance of the game. Perhaps making the PTS a more viable test bed (character copy and unique rewards - aside from titles - and events to encourage players to use it more regularly) will help root out other potential issues when applying patches to the live game.

 

With all due respect to the devs and in appreciation for their Q&A sessions, I don't think a Q&A for 1.3 at this point is really necessary - why not simply tell us what the game plan is for the content and have a Q&A to address the top 5 pressing issues that are causing people to cancel their subscriptions. I think that would go a long way towards cutting back on some of the rhetoric and venom we see on the forums at this point in time. But it is also

our responsibility as players to ask more poignant questions to address the larger issues in the game. Cosmetic issues and things like SGRA are not the pressing game-breaking issues. They may be important to a small portion of the playerbase, but certainly not enough to need addressing ahead of these many other issues. And just as a qualifier - I think the broken/mission codex entries should be fixed - however, that is not a game-breaking or overwhelming issue so should not be a priority, therefore I don't waste time asking for it.

 

BJ

Edited by BJWyler
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Perhaps because it's not that pressing of an issue. There are far more game-breaking issues that should be addressed prior cosmetic ones. Just to name a few (somewhat in order of importance according to the various topics in the forums):

 

Way to miss the point, good job. My point was that they waste time answering questions that:

 

a) Been answered

b) Could be answered with 2 mins of google

c) Could be answered by applying common sense.

 

So why not answer something trivial that they have never addressed in any way.

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Way to miss the point, good job. My point was that they waste time answering questions that:

 

a) Been answered

b) Could be answered with 2 mins of google

c) Could be answered by applying common sense.

 

So why not answer something trivial that they have never addressed in any way.

 

Way to miss my point - just because they already answer other trivial stuff doesn't mean they should keep doing it - or that we should keep asking trivial questions. Perhaps by the community asking more important questions, we might actually get useful answers.

 

BJ

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Way to miss my point - just because they already answer other trivial stuff doesn't mean they should keep doing it - or that we should keep asking trivial questions. Perhaps by the community asking more important questions, we might actually get useful answers.

 

BJ

 

Stop acting dense. People have been asking important questions. BioWare has not deigned to answer them in favor inconsequential ones.

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Paladinnight: I am wondering why the decision was made to allow PvP crafters the ability to buy the schematics for the PvP orange gear, versus obtaining the schematics similar to PvE players which are forced to play the reverse engineering game in the hopes of obtaining a schematic. This decision has resulted in an economy that the only crafted orange boots and gloves require the buyer to PvP. Could we possibly get schematic boxes purchasable via credits (or Black Hole commendations) added to the vendors? If this is not possible, can we at least be allowed to reverse engineer the Black Hole gear instead of only Campaign gear?

 

David: In either PvE or PvP, you need to consume a certain amount of that content to gain the appearance associated with the highest level gear. PvE and PvP will never have identical distribution mechanisms because of their inherently different progression. The PvP boxes were necessary to ensure that PvE gear wasn’t the best PvP gear due to the augment slot gap. In Game Update 1.2, this means there’s the inequality you mentioned for obtaining orange boots and gloves. There are ~75 new orange PvE hand and feet schematics in Game Update 1.3 (each). We can’t make schematic boxes for Campaign items, because it would conflict with the reverse engineered versions of those items.

 

I’d like to allow any gear to reverse engineer for discoveries, but there’s a limit to how many recipes players can acquire. We’re looking at ways to improve that and apply systems more universally, but it’s not currently possible. Only Campaign can be reverse engineered because if we make both a Campaign and Black Hole a reverse engineering recipe, they will be the same result with different names but they will both count against the upper limits.

 

Maybe I'm the only one blissfully unaware of this - could we elaborate a bit more what kind of limit we are talking here? Should I not learn every available (low level) recipe to outfit my other characters so as to leave room for potential "good" or "rare" higher level ones?

Edited by iRouven
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If the limit is so hard to get around, why not just let players delete recipes that they know... Wow, problem solved!

 

I would love this, cant see why you wouldent be allowed to delete some recipes, i mean certain of the ones you buy just to get your crafting skill up you just dont want to have anyways.

 

Would solve ALOT if you could just delete recipes you dont want in your crafting book!

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The reason (as stated in the blog) is so that we don't end up with a Q&A with the same questions asked over and over and the same responses from the devs about features coming soon. We've taken your feedback and we wanted to be able to choose new questions that result in in-depth answers from our developers. This way, we can accumulate questions for two weeks and choose from there.

 

We'll definitely monitor community reaction to this and then decide from there if we want to continue to do weekly or bi-weekly Q&As.

 

There are PLENTY of questions that haven't been answered yet! So much so that 10 questions a week isn't enough. C'mon, JG, surely you know this...

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..... what a joke....

 

several servors are under 150 connected and i read that :eek:

 

that's too much

 

ps : seriously..is it a joke?? :confused:

 

No, it's not a joke. Just because YOU can't personally see where the population is does NOT mean they are not there. :rolleyes:

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