Official Q&A Thread for June 22nd Blog Post

[Dafpants]

Post server transfers, It has become more common to see characters with special letters in their name (á, í, ú .etc) Has there been thought for implementing a 'ctrl' / 'alt' modifier when typing to create these letter (ie. typing alt+i = í) to support non-numpad laptop users?

You can do this yourself by using the International U.S. English keyboard.

[Antissa]

I have asked this question in almost every Q&A and I think this is very important so I will try again.

 

Will Bioware ever change the items that to many seem quite useless. Craftable items from Tier 1 Operations that are BOP are considered quite useless. You cannot even make these items bound with legacy to alts or companions. Legacy items and birthright items are only useful for a short levelrange. Plans to make this items at least moddable or even scaleable with level?

[Demonmaker]

Simple short question, Will you be updating the CE vendor in 1.3?

[-Stark-]

Hello and welcome to the official Q&A thread for questions to be answered for the June 22nd, 2012 Q&A blog post.

 

As a reminder, we’ll be starting up a weekly Q&A blog series in which we will select questions from the community and post answers to them every Friday. We’ll have the next set of answers next week on June 22nd, 2012, but before that, we need your questions!

 

Please use this thread to ask your question (one per community member, so make it count!). On Monday at 2PM CDT (8PM BST/9PM CEST/5AM AEST), we will close this thread, select the questions, and get answers to them for Friday’s blog post.

 

In order to increase the chances of having your specific question answered and to help us keep the thread manageable, here are some guidelines on asking questions:

 

1. Keep your question relatively short. Background details are welcome, but don’t go overboard.
   
2. Please actually ask a question. We want to hear constructive feedback elsewhere in the Forums.
   
3. Use common sense – we cannot answer everything, especially on far-reaching content.
   
4. This should go without saying, but be respectful.
   
5. Limit yourself to one question in this thread, please. You can always ask another question next week!
   
6. And finally, as a reminder, this is not a discussion thread. Do not comment about what somebody else has posted.
   

 

As development plans are always subject to change, questions about future features will often get vague answers which can be repetitive and sometimes annoying. With that in mind, the development team is more interested in questions about current in-game features or systems, or questions about why development decisions were made. You’re still welcome to ask questions about future features and we’ll continue to answer them where appropriate – just expect the occasional ‘soon.’

 

Any other posts apart from questions in the thread will be removed.

 

With that being said, please ask away!

 

Good day, here is my question:

 

You are opening free character transfer between origin and distination servers, defined server population. Thank you for this, we all waiting for this and we got it But, do you plan to open xfer to european servers, to the server at will? For example, I have few xfered characters from server Soresu to The Harbinger, and my latency on this server 300 and more, but on european servers my latency 78, and I have few friends playing on eu servers. For better game and etc, we want to transfer our characters to The Red Eclipse server (for example).

 

US to EU server transfer would be better for some players

Edited June 18, 2012 by -Stark-

[Sauska]

Would it be possible to organize schematics according to a tree structure, i.e. expandable tiers? At this moment, it's quite hard to see which items still need RE-ing.

[Akyio]

Do you think that alternative leveling options are still very minimal ? 1.3 brings a tool to customize our exp gain with warzones, space missions etc. While it is still very minimal compared to traditional solo-ing through planets + questing. Especially when we are talking about credits.. A hardcore warzones player will never get that 1kk+ credits by the time he/she reaches level 50, also the gear is very difficult in that case, there is just not much gear available, only at 20 and 40. So you have to rely on little credits gained from warzones and GTN expensive prices.

Do you have any plans for that ? Credits for PvPer in general are really really terrible if they don't craft/gather etc.

And unfortunately credits become VERY important eventually with the PvP war hero gear and augmented slots that cost a lot of credits.

Edited June 18, 2012 by Akyio

[Pytviper]

I love doing the space mission, I find them a fun way to break up questing and PvP. After level 25 they are pointless to do for 2 reasons. Daily space mission are green and yet the space mission itself is grey. It doesn’t matter if its level 14 space mission or level 49 space mission everything you kill yields the same experience. Why is there a secondary bonus mission that unlocks at a higher level; the mission grey the dailies grey why would I want to run it just for this new bonus mission? That mission should be part of it from the start. I finish the main mission and bonus mission and still have 1 min left to go afk; with this second bonus give me something to do during this wasted min. Yes I know you guys have big plans for space mission. These are simple fixes that will make it more enjoyable till we get the new “big plans”.

[DarthRik]

My question is about Resolve, do you plan to fix it anytime soon, with the amount of CC and knockbacks with a snare in pvp resolve seems a waste of time, also if you dont want/ or see a need to fix Resolve, could you atleast drop the cool down on your unleash (trinket) to say 1 minute 30 seconds or that it gets reset every time you die?

 

On CC and knockbacks, is there any plans to give Mara/Sent a good CC or knockback, at the moment we are the only pure 100% dps class (all three trees) that have no real CC or a knockback of anytype, as a Mara my only real CC is force choke that i have to stand still for 3 sec and use it, i cant CC my target and hit them, like most other class's can.

Edited June 18, 2012 by DarthRik

[Glaurion]

How does short-duration damage buffs works on delayed attack skills? E.g.: I use my Rakata Attack Adrenal, which buffs my Power stat for 15 seconds. When its almost over, lets say 3 seconds to expire, I use Stick Grenade (tropper skill), which takes 6 seconds to explode. The output damage will takes in concern my buffed Power from the time I have used the skill or the regular stats from the time the grenade explodes? Edited June 18, 2012 by Glaurion

[Warrgames]

Are there plans to release extra character slots before the release of Cathar and new companion HK-51? I created 8 character at launch before there was cross faction mailing and before the news of needing a character of each faction for HK-51. Right now I have to delete a character in order to get the new companion.

[Pargon]

I'm curious about the development cycle for something like an armor set. While you may not be able to answer the question "when will be be seeing the newer, more Star Warsy equipment," could you elaborate on the process you guys go through when designing and implementing that equipment?

[SawneyRath]

My questions is about Chat Bubbles. I've heard rumors the cause of the "lag" created by Chat Bubbles was found and taken care of. If this is true, why do we not have them yet?

 

Has something new come up that prevents them?

[AefaFreesky]

What's the reasoning behind putting class restrictions on the orange legacy gear that can be bought at legacy level 10 and 20, while at the same time having it bound to legacy so I can freely trade it among my characters?

 

It seems somewhat counter intuitive that the gear is bound to legacy but I can't give my main's old gear to my companion (or my alt's companion) due to the class restrictions.

 

I can come up with the following reasons:

* to give classes a unique look, that no one else can have not even companions

* to prevent accidental purchase of an item that doesn't suit you (armor class)

* to encourage people to play through the same class story again just with a different advanced class (!)

* to force people to pay for 2-4 times mod extraction cost if they want to give it to a companion (= credit sink)

* orange legacy was primarily introduced to give players easy access to a full set of orange armor (gloves, feet, bracers and belt in particular) and the "bound to legacy" is just because we could (showcase the technology, no reason why not)

 

Could you please elaborate? And would you perhaps in the future consider allowing companions to use the sets?

 

Could you elaborate on the reasoning behind this, because

[Pbuddah]

I recently transferred to an active server from a rather dead one; thank you by the way. Because of this, I have again taken an active role in the game. Me being old and slow I really try to set my key binds to require as few multiple key strokes for an action as possible. I.E. 1-9 and shift 1-9 is really all I can really use effectively. Are there any plans or is it possible to, since I have multiple UI's, to have a different set of key bindings for each different UI? This would allow for PVP key bindings, an operation set, and a set for solo playing. To perform all three effectively really requires different abilities. On the same theme are there any plans for allowing multiple talent trees?

[Avrid]

As a big Star Wars fan and Lego fan, I was wondering how much input you folks at BioWare had with the 2 swtor lego sets that are coming out this year. as well as if we will see the other 3 player ships, and compaion mini figs in the future?

[OmegaJinjo]

1.3 looks like it's bringing some very nice quality of life changes. It might still be early to ask, but it can't hurt, is there any info on 1.4 that you could give us a peek at? Since 1.3 is quality of life, we can only imagine 1.4 will be a good dose of new content.

[Eillack]

For 1.3 or beyond in that matter, will we see an 'appearance tab' for SW:TOR? The 'unify colors' can only go so far for some players I believe and there are some who want to look a certain way, but want to keep stats or set unlocks from another piece (ex: Full Battlemaster set, but with the appearance of a social armor, etc).

[Mandilio]

Are we now on the "mega-server" architecture you described some weeks back or is that something intended for the future? I don't believe a clear answer was ever given on this.

[opriv]

Are there any plans to add more mini games that we can play solo or with friends? Example- Pazak, Sacbac, holo chess and swoop racing.

[Rayteku]

Are there currently any plans for a legacy friends list?

 

This would go side by side with the normal friends list we have now. For the legacy friends list you can see your friends on the same server regardless of what character they are on. I would think it could be kinda of a cross between Blizzard's Real ID system and Guild Wars friends list. You would have to request the friendship and then the other player would have to accept it for both sides to agree.

 

Thank you for your time,

 

Rayteku

[SWFTW]

Are you planning on adding free server transfers to ANY destination (RP server to PvE server, etc.) in the near future?

[Arkerus]

The new server transfer have improved the game 100%. The game feels so much more alive. Thank you for that. There is a problem though. Its obvious that when I am on the fleet the engine is constantly waiting for characters to pop in. Its not video lag and its not latency lag. My machine is more than capable of handling this game. Everything freezes for a matter of seconds while waiting. Why can't the client continue to process my actions while waiting for the server to report players?

[lordmader]

Can we expect to see a large quantity of new Social gear in 1.3 and future updates, as much fun as sparkle powder is...

[earsrgood]

I think the character transfers have been a great success so far. Very structured and well organised.

 

However.........last night was the first time I have been stuck in a queue since launch. I have been transferred to the Tomb of Freedom Nadd.

 

I am sure there are still far more people yet to transfer to this server and I am now starting to get very concerned about what will happen at the launch of 1.3. Are we going to have to start sitting in long queues again?

[Yokomohoyos]

Hello - Here are some questions regarding future developments.

 

1. Legacy Perks (not Global / Unlocks) - These seem great for leveling and making life easier for alts - since you buy them for a specific character or characters, any idea of the price ranges for the perks that have to be bought for each character?

 

2. Selective Server transfers - The interface to transfer characters looks great, seems like it may be soon when we can see the selective transfers where players select the destination server for their characters. Can you provide an estimate for when we can see this. In my case, this is one of the last items that can cause me to resubscribe.

 

3. Tionese / Columni Gear Mod swapping - since the swapping of mods for the gear prior to patch 1.2 is not really supported, is there any information where one can know whether if in the future, say 1.4 where we can swap modes for all gear that has tier bonuses onto gear of our choice and still keep the bonuses for the tier set? Despite the design of some of the sets, they do not necessarily appeal to everyone and I absolutely love being able to have the possibility to have my characters look like I want them to look and keep the tier bonuses.

 

4. Flying Transports - most MMOs have flying mounts, why does SWTOR not have them yet? Any plans for 1.4 or 1.5 to include flying transports that let you explore the worlds and quest more freely and without the constraints of deliberately elongated paths and winding roads that increase the time to cap purely as a function of travel time?

 

5. Personal Transport vehichle speed - the current speeds are 90, 100, and 110% for the personal vehicles accessible for land travel. How about increasing the movement speed bonuses to larger values 150, 200, and 250 to name a few? Some of the worlds are immense and you can spend tons of time getting from point a to point b. Also, how about allowing transports on more locations, there are many areas that are outdoors and still do not allow you to board a speeder.

 

6. Quick Travel cooldown - the legacy system allows for an ok reduction to the quick travel cooldown, yet, with some of the current limiations of vehicle speed, areas where you can actually mount your personal vehichle, and taxi terminal availability travel time is a significant portion of the time that it takes to play this game. Any thoughts on perhaps increasing the reduction in the cooldown that is available via the legacy system either with a Global Unlock or a Personnal Perk? How about being able to force a QT even if the current one is on CD by spending credits, say 10 to 30 credits per charcter level?

Edited June 18, 2012 by Yokomohoyos
Forgot several question