Hey everyone, with FTP (Free to Play) rolling around the corner, I was recently offered the chance to have a written interview with the SWTOR developers about the upcoming FTP patch that is arriving on Nov 15! While I do have a lot of questions that I like to ask the devs, I figured that my readers would also like this opportunity to get some question of theirs answered as well. Here is your chance!
Please use the comment section below to submit any questions that you would like me to ask in the interview. This is done to help me keep track of all the questions and also for other readers to see what has already being asked.
Time frame
- Questions will be submitted to Bioware by Monday, Nov 12 so get your questions in as fast as possible
Questions
- Make sure it is FTP related, this interview is specifically for FTP
- Make sure the answer doesn’t already exist somewhere else
- Make sure that it is something the developers can answer – there are a lot of corporate restrictions on what they can and cannot answer
- I will be selecting questions from the pool to submit along with my own questions. Not all questions will be answered.
Questions list (Ordered by oldest-recent)
Every couple hrs I will go over the comment section and pull the questions from there so you can easily see what questions are already asked by other readers.If your question is already asked by someone else and listed here , just press the up arrow on that person’s comment.
- It seems that this f2p is very generic like other MMO’s that support a f2p option. What does SWTOR f2p offer to the MMO community that other f2p models don’t? What is planned that can be shared, that will improve on this model?
- A 1 month subscription gives you 500 Cartel Coins. How many Cartel Coins do you get for a 3 month subscription and how many for a 6 month subscription? Also, do the latter give you the 3 months and 6 months worth of coins all at once?
- Some people on the forums have suggested saving the Cartel Coins they get as subscribers to buy future expansion content. Will there be any future content that subscribers will have to pay for (ie, an "expansion")? If so, will this content be purchasable with Cartel Coins?
- Some people on the forums have suggested saving the Cartel Coins they get as subscribers to buy future expansion content. Will there be any future content that subscribers will have to pay for (ie, an "expansion")? If so, will this content be purchasable with Cartel Coins?
- When a player who starts as Free wants to become a subscriber, do they need to purchase the game (standard or Deluxe, with its free month), before then purchasing a 1/3/6 month subscription or applying game time? Or is the purchase of the game now redundant, and they can go straight to the subscription?
- Will character transfers be available through cartel coins soon? Thanks
- how will friend referral for the kurtob speeder complete? they still can buy the "standard version" 14.99 and get 1 month sub? do they need to also become subscriber after that in the system to complete the referrer’s speeder award?
- Appearance change has been confirmed for the feature can they specify on that if its a in-game barbershop with credits or cartel coins where they just let recreate your character .
- Also will the Purple color crystal be able to be used at a lower lvl since some crystal’s will have the 41+ stats on them now at a lower lvl.
- Is there a chance that more items (like the armor sets shown on the TOR Launcher) will make it for Cartel Shop launch apart from those that are on PTS?
- How often can the players expect new items to be available on the Cartel Market?
- Can we be assured that sales of statted gear on par with raid gear will not happen?
- With an expected influx in new players with F2P, are there any plans to ever implement any game-integrated voice chat among players in the same group? TeamSpeak and Ventrilo are fine for those already in a guild, terrible for those just trying things out or PUGging out of their guild.
- Why are former subscribers forced to pay $15 for a months subscription (before Dec.20) to receive their "free" Cartel Coins for prior months subscribed?
- What is the future of server transfers? Will there finally be an option via cartel coins or otherwise? Some of us just want all our characters on the same server can we finally make this possible?
- Will more raids be added to group finder soon and thus the F2P group finder pass?
- With the addition of armor sets that anyone can wear, we are going to see sorcerers and assassins in heavy armor, guardians and juggernauts in robes, etc. What does Bioware plan to do to make sure everyone keeps their sense of identity? Will higher level armor sets remain unique and unobtainable via cash shop? (Just the skins, I know you wont sell the raid gear!)
- How often will we see new items on the Cartel Shop? Can we expect to see weekly updates?
- Will there be a way to buy more legacy gear or weapons from the Cartel Market or even change some of the items sold to legacy with more Cartel coins?
- Can you tell us about the research and decision making process into which specific colors and which outfits to offer? I am interested to know how the original choices were made and how future decisions will be made.
- Legacy perks – I suppose the question is this – for those of us who did dedicate that amount of time and effort would it be possible to get refunded those credits if we already have those perqs, or possibly get refunded those credits via Cartel Coins?
- When/if will chat bubbles be implemented? F2P players will have their own preconceived notions of what to expect from an MMO.
- Are there any plans on expanding equipment appearance? As mentioned before about preconceptions, Appearances Tabs are industry standard and TOR is still lacking in this department.
- Any plans for guild capital ships?
- What plans are there for future non-combat mechanics, such as housing (ship or planet-side), large-scale mining and crafting, and mini-games (racing, betting, fishing)?
- With the influx of new players coming , the inevitable will happen and we can expect to start seeing rmt (gold or coin farmers/sellers). Aside from the obvious gm banning, are we going to get a report function and is our chat ban list going to be expanded?
- Are there plans to allow the credit cap for preferred to be lifted with a purchase from the cartel market? (mainly because this would be bought thus everyone with it would be preferred)
- Are there any plans to add new items to the social, CE and Security Key vendors or will all new vanity gear simply be on the Cartel Market?
- 2P Players get 2 character slots and subscribers get 12. Does this mean that when this limit goes into effect, any extra characters above the 12 on the server that were consolidated there due to server merges will become unavailable to subscribers? When will the character tokens be available on the cartel market? Will these tokens apply across the board whether the account is F2P or a subscriber? i.e., after applying one of the tokens, as F2P they will have 3 available characters, as a subscriber they would have 13. Will Preferred Status players have a larger number of available character slots than the 2 for F2P?
- Is there any information on whether or not faction and/or AC changes are being considered for purchase in the near future?
- whats happening with dual spec and ready check?
- If they have plans on releasing legendary weapons/armor sets and if they will have special abilitys/quest lines or just different color skins.
- Are cartel coin unlocks such as species account bound or server bound?
- What is your plan for the APAC servers if/when F2P doesn’t fix their population?
- Any plans for new playable species to be made available within the shop, including and beyond Cathar? If so, will these species be governed by the legacy system, as well?
- Will they have discounts for a full month of ~ Ops/flashpoints/space missions ~ like buy 3 get 4 the week free????? I think that would b great incentive .
- Is there a dedicated team working on Cartel Market items?
- What kind of items do you plan on adding in the near future?
- What long term goals do you have for Cartel Market content?
- Will we see more of the partial sets available at the Light Side and Dark Side vendors?
- I’d like to know if we still can expect new story this year as promised or the introduction of F2P is demanding most of BW’s resources and new story elements are delayed because of that?
- What were the biggest difficulties and challenges in designing Nightmare Mode Explosive Conflict? How is it different than Nightmare Mode Eternity Vault and Karagga’s Palace?
