SWTOR Summer Roadmap

[TUXs]

Until Anthem finishes up in 2019, they aren't really going to have the team to work on major updates, presumably.

After Anthem is released, one of two things will happen...those Devs will go right to work on an Anthem expansion, or, and more likely imo, Anthem will fail and Bioware will be closed and folded into other EA offices. Either way, Anthem's launch has no positive benefit on SWTORs future.

[devilkat]

So lets see:

• Old content credit sink from May 22 - June 30.
  
• Some game updates to Galactic Command, Conquest system and guilds but no new playable content till "early July which has the possibility to be pushed back given the wording use - "early"
  
• "Early" July and we get a much need PVP update with 2 new areas, cross faction and a PVP related SH.
  

 

However this:

 

 

really concerns me given the amount of time (5 + months...?) that there is nothing new added to the rest of the game. Thats a lot of time you are asking for players to continue to run old content. The focus of only PVP through the summer is a bit of a shock even though it does need some love but still an odd choice given the size of pvp vs pve.

 

and no 6.0 this year given how that reads. Thats a disappointment and what looks like a rather slow content year. I guess 2018 is like 2017.

 

Meh. Given that most of their resources are being pumped into Anthem, I'll take what I can get. Group play has taken the back seat for a while now. I'm willing to wait and give them time to put out something really good. Hopefully a planet or two with side quests along with a main story, not just flash points. I would like to add that for QoL improvements, please, for the love of all that is good and holy, STAAWWWP the auto play on the chapters! That makes my QoL go down.

[HKtheindomitable]

Awesome stuff! I am glad the PvP side is getting a lot of love. I think I'll be giving it a go again!

 

Personally, I think that a year break between the Fallen Empire story and the other parts of it to focus on PvP and other group stuff would have made things go over a little better. I'm mostly a story and PvE player, but I would have so been okay with that. And I think that a lot of others would have been okay with that too.

 

If another large story is done like that, which I would totally love, throw in a year in between to do that. Then the next year for the next expansion.

[Neoforcer]

Who would queue sync 4 heals and 4 tanks? That sounds like aids where you cant kill anything.

 

Happens a lot it an issue on SF with the pubs there is on group of 8 player on a discord doing it every night. Just a slug match that goes no where. It is the only way this group of 8 can win is to draw the fight out to un kill able fight. It a tatic of who ever gets the node first wins.

Edited May 17, 2018 by Neoforcer

[JLazarillo]

After Anthem is released, one of two things will happen...those Devs will go right to work on an Anthem expansion, or, and more likely imo, Anthem will fail and Bioware will be closed and folded into other EA offices. Either way, Anthem's launch has no positive benefit on SWTORs future.

That may very well be as well, but it doesn't change that its development is why we're not liable to see anything major before it releases, either.

[Rion_Starkiller]

Phew. Sounds like Lord Ptach is going to be busy this summer.

 

I'm guessing some people wont be happy that the SH is related to PvP.

I love PvP, so I'm quite thrilled.

Wasn't expecting a roadmap however! Thanks for the update and I'm quite excited about this fall.

 

I love this pvp SH idea! Can you imagine guild pvp strongholds? You can have guilds laying out challenges to other players to come fight their guild. You can have home turf advantage, or go "conquer" someone else's stronghold.

 

Totally excited for this.

 

Heh...

 

Studio jumped out from behind a rock on this. No teasers about a Roadmap coming, yada yada... just BOOM.. here's the summer Roadmap! Looks a little on the skinny side though.. but maybe more details later will address this.

 

I was thinking the same thing... totally shocked (in a good way) by the BAM! roadmap versus the old roadmap to the roadmap method.

 

Fingers crossed they can live up to this.

Edited May 17, 2018 by Rion_Starkiller

[AlienEyeTX]

After Anthem is released, one of two things will happen...those Devs will go right to work on an Anthem expansion, or, and more likely imo, Anthem will fail and Bioware will be closed and folded into other EA offices. Either way, Anthem's launch has no positive benefit on SWTORs future.

 

Once Anthem launches, you can bet they will begin work on an expansion for it. However, it will likely need fewer dev resources than the base game.

 

Of course, that just means they will shift resources to a new project or just lay people off. I'd say the chances of SWTOR gaining extra dev help are slim and none. EA would have to see a very lucrative reason to devote the staff and money to this game in hopes of bringing in new customers. Can anyone realistically say they can think of what it would take to bring a new audience to this game? Being completely objective, even if there was a great idea, I can't imagine how hard it would be to pitch it, successfully, to the bosses.

[CrazyScruffy]

Everyone complaining that there is no news on 6.0 for this year... what do you think a new storyline is? that would be 6.0. which is coming this year. everyone chill lol. and as always there is always more news to come out as we get closer. and you know they can't give you every detail on everything coming out, since it is subject to change. and if that happened (which it would) you would all riot Edited May 17, 2018 by CrazyScruffy

[kodrac]

Thanks, this was a nice surprise: simply an announcement, instead of an announcement of an announcement; a roadmap, instead of a roadmap for a roadmap.

 

Haha they did learn not to announce a future announcement.

[AriaHinata]

Stop with the cross faction ques. You guys continue to emphasize on things that kill the game and refuse to listen till its too late. Odessen sucks. Yavin 4 sucks. No body likes them. Take the hint. Like when command wasn't a "secondary" gearing system. Cross faction q's will kill pvp.

 

Nobody likes them you really what are you a mind reader i actually enjoy them any way i am looking forward to the new content to come.

[mastersdr]

Everyone complaining that there is no news on 6.0 for this year... what do you think a new storyline is? that would be 6.0. which is coming this year. everyone chill lol. and as always there is always more news to come out as we get closer. and you know they can't give you every detail on everything coming out, since it is subject to change. and if that happened (which it would) you would all riot

 

I took it as the story thats coming this year will be the prelude to 6.0 and coming early next year.

[Lundorff]

Are there any plans for changing the way ELO works in ranked? Perhaps going to a point based system instead? Edited May 17, 2018 by Lundorff

[AriaHinata]

I am looking forward to whats coming keep up the good work and nice road map surprise

[CrazyScruffy]

I took it as the story thats coming this year will be the prelude to 6.0 and coming early next year.

 

yes but you take this roadmap along with their livestreams and interviews, we can safely assume 6.0 is coming this year

[AdornedBlood]

Yeah.. scoundrel rewards in Casino event.. i bet i know one of them.. Paxton Rall? 0,0001 % chance of getting him, am i right? Hopefully i'm wrong. Please tell me i'm wrong.

[Costello]

So to be clear.

 

If your a Story or PvE player and you have already seen a slot machine come back in September?

 

I get that you try and put spin on it and say its about quality of life or under the hood changes. Though as I recall the reason for so little content of any type throughout 2017 was because of these under the hood, quality of life improvements (many of which people didn't seem to like) and it was said that this would allow for a good foundation going forward. However now for the next 6 months or so the only going forward will be some small PvP updates.

[Talon_strikes]

Are there any plans for changing the way ELO works in ranked? Perhaps going to a point based system instead?

They NEED to address this as the past 2 seasons have been the biggest jokes thus far in this game's ranked cycles.

 

The backfilling method broke out into the general ranked populace this season and now the vast majority if not all of the top 3 players have those spots thanks to that cheap exploit. Rating tiers are also massively and artificially inflated because of these blatant and rampant exploits.

 

Not only that but there are a few players who are currently using a certain, hidden exploit to hide characters on the leaderboards that have exploited for inflated top 3 ratings, and will release those characters right before the season ends so they appear on the leaderboards all of a sudden and get credited with the top 3 rewards. This is on top of the already saturated tiers of gold and top 3 players who simply backfilled and wintraded for those spots.

Edited May 17, 2018 by Talon_strikes

[JennyFlynn]

Questions for Keith/Eric;

 

Deliver a new Stronghold with a beach-front view! Now, you ask, what does that have to do with PvP? In fact, quite a bit:

• For the first time, we are introducing a Stronghold designed around PvP which can be tailored toward Player-driven dueling, 4v4, or even 8v8 battles! We know there’s a passionate audience of PvP players who run their own dueling tournaments within their Strongholds, so we want to support that by making some under-the-hood improvements and by tailoring the spaces to support different styles of play.
  
• As with all Strongholds, you can decorate it anyway you like, but we’re also enhancing Stronghold decorations to support PvP gameplay. This means you can use decorations to hide behind, layout obstacles, which allows the owner of the Stronghold to create a huge variety of custom PvP layouts to use in battles amongst friends.
  

- Will this Stronghold (I assume Rishi?) require active PvP'ing to obtain?

- Can it be used without PvP'ing?

 

I've been wanting a Rishi SH for years now but I am absolutely not a PvP'er in any way. I'd be positively crushed if this ends up being a SH I can't obtain/use because of this PvP connection.

[Shirvington]

Stop with the cross faction ques. You guys continue to emphasize on things that kill the game and refuse to listen till its too late. Odessen sucks. Yavin 4 sucks. No body likes them. Take the hint. Like when command wasn't a "secondary" gearing system. Cross faction q's will kill pvp.

 

Odessen and Yavin 4 suck because of the map designs, not being cross faction. Cross faction will literally improve queue times and encourage more people to play, rather than "kill pvp." Most people don't care who they beat up, they just want to PvP.

[Wimbleton]

Hopefully this PVP Stronghold will also be available to purchase as a guild stronghold.

[AlienEyeTX]

Odessen and Yavin 4 suck because of the map designs, not being cross faction. Cross faction will literally improve queue times and encourage more people to play, rather than "kill pvp." Most people don't care who they beat up, they just want to PvP.

 

I agree with the thinking here. Cross-faction is not bad. At least that may help cut down on all the Imp vs. Imp matches.

 

Though, I do like Yavin 4. It is obviously quite similar to Alderaan, but it's a little different and is still a fun match. Odessen, on the other hand, is the worst map in the game... even worse than the Huttballs!

 

Why are they doing another Huttball and not something inspired by Voidstar? It feels so much better to have objectives that feel like progress.

[HKtheindomitable]

So lets see:

• Old content credit sink from May 22 - June 30.
  
• Some game updates to Galactic Command, Conquest system and guilds but no new playable content till "early July which has the possibility to be pushed back given the wording use - "early"
  
• "Early" July and we get a much need PVP update with 2 new areas, cross faction and a PVP related SH.
  

 

However this:

 

 

really concerns me given the amount of time (5 + months...?) that there is nothing new added to the rest of the game. Thats a lot of time you are asking for players to continue to run old content. The focus of only PVP through the summer is a bit of a shock even though it does need some love but still an odd choice given the size of pvp vs pve.

 

and no 6.0 this year given how that reads. Thats a disappointment and what looks like a rather slow content year. I guess 2018 is like 2017.

 

I'll take that long break. And not just because it's a realistic time-frame, but because I have yet to get all of my toons through all of the story.

[ZionHalcyon]

Heh...

 

Studio jumped out from behind a rock on this. No teasers about a Roadmap coming, yada yada... just BOOM.. here's the summer Roadmap! Looks a little on the skinny side though.. but maybe more details later will address this.

 

Looks like Guilds may finally be getting some love.

 

I'll leave it to the PvPers to comment on the coming PvP love.

 

Yep!

 

For once, they finally got it right. This is how you do an announcement.

[kukumburr]

I'M SO HAPPY ABOUT NEW HUTTBALL MAP!!!!!!!!!

 

More cross-faction is also awesome and hopefully better match making. I'm hesitant about queue control if it's anything more than filtering 8v8 and 4v4. If people are allowed to filter out maps I'm worried that the population isn't big enough to let people actually play less popular maps if they want to (I know it might be unpopular but I actually like playing the Odessen map every once in awhile). BUT NEW HUTTBALL!!!

[ZionHalcyon]

In other news, it does indeed look like 6.0 will be next year as others have speculated.

 

Given the rumors of SWTOR shutting down and all hands on deck with BioWare working on anthem, I will happily take the extra time needed given the smaller development staff currently to get it right.

 

Whatever the story, I just hope they get the tone right and respect our characters this time rather than trying to close all Loose Ends from the vanilla game as quick as possible, which simply feels like a middle finger to the players.

 

The latest flashpoint was a little bit of both but my hope is they will not treat the lingering characters out there as so disposable such as Darth jadus and Watcher X (who even after you kill him still makes an appearance in Act 2, so I am thinking he could still live on with a sort of Ghost in the Shell vibe).