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Cantina Tour SWTOR

SWTOR Gamescom Cantina Tour Q&A

A selection of the Gamescom Cantina Q&A gathered from around the web. Updated August 9 with new Q&A

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New Q&As

The following Q&A were obtained from Bureau of Research on Progenitor

From lead designer :

  • GSF : was a guildmate of mine asking it at first and indeed we talked with him later. He said that we will see new things in a year. No news for now, too much work for KOTFE
  • New statistics : primary stats will be removed ( strength etc ) and a new stats will take place to represent the main stats for every class, called "mastery". Didn’t asked about the secondary stats unfortunately. Moreover, they are going to adjust all the stats mechanics and stats forms gear.
  • All class are going to receive new skill and stats. I think he intended more likely ROTHC than SOR ( he smiled at me nodding)
  • Nightmare operations will NEVER exist anymore. Only story and hard, forever. (Note: this refers to ToS/Ravagers and any upcoming new operations after the release of KotFE)
  • All the gear from companion that will die or disappear for long time will return automatically in your inventory.
  • Old planets will have no changes from KOTFE. It would be too much work.

Story SPOILERS from lead writer

Spoiler Inside Show

From Not Dripeas

  • Q: As the Combat Team is one of the many that report everything to you, do you have any Information on the Madness Sorc | Balance Sage’s ‘broken’ Wrath Proc and the overall Force Management.
    • A: I think we fixed that one with 3.3 (Wrath), but if it wasn’t patched I’ll definitely take care of it. So if it’ll be patched with the coming Patch you’ll know it’s because of you.

From CheaterLL

  • #1 – Training Dummy Decorations are still WIP. No ETA.
  • #2 – PVP Nexu Mount was not given out randomly, but to those players that performed best in Ranked PVP AND/OR UNRANKED PVP.
  • #3 – It’s a Bug that not all decorations can be donated to the guild (i.e. Trophy – Lance Squadron Command Unit) Looking into it.

James Ohlen talks to Christiane Imdahl

James Ohlen talks to host Christiane Imdahl recorded by Jerba

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2M61lqA-r8&w=448&h=252&hd=1]

Transcript of the video from Jerba

Christiane: Nice to have you here on stage. How are you doing? What do you say to our crowd?

James Ohlen: It’s great to be here at Gamescom! Love Star Wars!

Christiane: It’s amazing, it’s amazing. So many people are really into it, it’s fantastic here. So we would like to know a bit more about SWTOR. So maybe we could start with that you could tell me why the Gameplay is Evolving. Like you’re going back to the Roots of BioWare. Why is that?

James Ohlen: Well, I think the roots of BioWare is Storytelling, and SWTOR has always put Storytelling at the forefront. The dream of SWTOR was to create the endless BioWare Story set in the Star Wars Universe. And it’s something that we’ve always been aiming to do. And over the years, we’ve, as a team, we’ve been coming together, we’ve been developing the tools, and we’ve really been focussing ourselves. Last year, we revealed an Expansion called Shadow of Revan which was much more Story-focused but this year, we wanted to take it to the next level, and KotFE is the best storytelling that we’ve ever done in SWTOR. It really is a loveletter to fans of KotOR and Mass Effect; people who love that style of gameplay in The Old Republic universe.

Christiane: So what does it really mean for the gameplay? So what’s so special about it?

James Ohlen: Well, BioWare Storytelling, that’s the, that’s what makes it different. And when I talk about BioWare Storytelling, I think I would define it as Cinematic Storytelling, Storytelling where you’re the Hero in an Epic Saga Struggling against a Great Evil. Storytelling where you get to make Choices, and those Choices Impact how the Story unfolds. Also, great Characters, Companion Characters, just Characters who you love. If you think about Star Wars and BioWare, it’s all about having great companions. In Star Wars, you have, you know, Chewbacca and Artoo, C-3PO and Han Solo. And in BioWare games, you always have, you know, a collected bunch of Companion Characters that adventure with the main Hero.

Christiane: So there’s also Episodic Storytelling. What does it mean, episodic?

James Ohlen: So, we want to release KotFE with nine chapters, and then after that, about a monthly cadence, we want to release a new chapter like every month, so chapter 10, 11, 12, and our inspiration for that, that kind of Storytelling, is, it came from a lot of different sources. And one of them is Star Wars itself. So Star Wars was an episodic movie series, you know. When George Lucas first was thinking of it, he wanted to do a 12-episode series; he was going to do 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9; then he decided to end it at Return of the Jedi, and now it’s resurrected again with Episode 7. But he was also inspired by the serials from the 40s and 50s: Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. So there’s always been– Star Wars has always been about that serialized Storytelling format. And from a more modern perspective, you know, we look at the great shows that can be told on HBO and Netflix, and you can tell some amazing stories when you do that kind of Episodic Storytelling.

Christiane: What is your favorite Star Wars character then?

James Ohlen: My favorite Star Wars character? Well, it’s kind of an obvious one. My favorite Star Wars movie is Empire Strikes Back, and the hero of that movie in my mind was Darth Vader. So, I’ve always loved Darth Vader as a character. He’s very iconic; I love the image of him, I love him as a villain. He, in my mind, is the greatest villain of the 20th century. So, love that guy, although I really him because he is a villain, but I love the concept of him.

Christiane: Yeah, he’s a great character. So I heard that the game will start at level 60, so what’s for players that have never played the game before?

James Ohlen: So, with KotFE we wanted to make sure that people who were returning to the game, or people who had never tried out the game, were able to jump right in. So– But at the same time, we don’t want our existing fans to feel like they’re being left out. So, the Story revolves around the Outlander, who is a Veteran of the wars from the main game, and if you are a person who has already been playing the game, you have a veteran of the wars because you have your main character. And several years passed, and that character becomes the Outlander. But if you are a new player, you can create a brand-new Outlander; choose whether it’s going to be male or female, the appearance, what class they are going to be, and then that Outlander becomes your main character in the game. So you can jump right in as an old fan but you can also jump in as a totally new player.

Christiane: So great choice for all players, that’s fantastic. So it’s free for subscribers, that’s amazing. Why is that?

James Ohlen: You know, that wasn’t entirely altruistic reasons. Obviously, we’re a business. But the main reason we wanted to do that, the game, it comes to our inspiration, right? Like, when you look at a TV series, an episodic series, you want the audience to be enjoying the most recent episode together. And we felt that if we had another kind of scheme, where you had to pay for episodes, that we might divide the audience. We want them to all be able to subscribe, and then just play through all the content, and get to the latest episode, and talk about it, with a friend. So that’s one of the major reasons why we decided to go free with subscription.

Christiane: That sounds just fantastic. Thank you very much for all the information, about Star Wars: The Old Republic.

August 7 Q&A

Audio of the August 7 Q&A provided by Nolifecrew

New August 7 Q&A from Aries_CZ

  • How long will Season 2 of KotFE be?
    • Not willing to answer, it might, and it might not
  • New stuff for Starfighter?
    • Backus loves GSF.Not everything about KotFE has been announced. Would love to do a lot of stuff with GSF. Come to talk later when head of Marketing is not around
  • Different class content?
    • One story, but with differences based on classes, some classes may run into something other will not
  • Will KOTFE bring graphical update?
    • All new content has better graphics, not improving engine
  • New PvP maps?
    • Point of 3.3 was to fix population of PvP. Constantly prototyping new WZs internally. Nothing to announce on timing, but always working on new stuff. Same goes for Ops and FPs
  • More Seeker and Macrobinocular stuff?
    • Story would be spoiler. Original quests were tied to Dread Master. More stuff "might" happen
  • Guild transfers?
    • Working on a stuff that might make it easier for guilds to move (not losing ship, decos, etc)
  • Cross server?
    • Not ignoring the issue, something awesome in the works
  • DX12/x64 version of client
    • Have discussed it, no decision so far. Goal is to allow more people to play regardless of hardware
  • Where are Republic characters in trailers
    • Musco killed them all, because Charles likes them 🙂 There is a lot more of the expansions that hasn’t been shown yet. Nobody is better than Ky Zyken 🙂
  • Will there be 50-55 modes for Operations
    • We are in for a treat. Level-syncing, whatever level operation opened at, it will sync you to minumum level it originally existed. Or maybe boost people to highest level player? Not sure…
    • Some flashpoints are important to the story, and have been given SOLO modes
  • More Strongholds?
    • Come talk to us later
  • More OPS?
    • Not this year, because shitload of work
  • Will Operation gear tiers be removed?
    • Enitre game reitemized, changed almost every quest
  • Will bonus bosses in Ops scaled?
    • If Operation is scaled, so will the bosses
  • Does /bug report location?
    • Yes
  • When will mercs get a PvP boost?
    • Changes are coming

From Klaussec

  • New Fleet where the Imps / Pubs actually can talk and interact.
    • Yes, similar to Ziost but imagine it being the "new" hub of the expansion. It is close to the size of the current fleets, main level
  • What happens to companion armor currently equipped if we may lose some of them in the expansion
    • Don’t worry we will tell everyone beforehand what to do
  • What about GSF?
    • Will reveal soon
  • What about lvl 50 space missions?
    • He smiled and then said, "Don’t worry, we have something up sleeve for that

From AlrikFassbauer on the forums

  • I asked Eric about the male Togruta, and it’s unlikely that there will be a change – that’s how it sounded to me.
  • In a small group we talked to one of the designers (sorry I forgot his name) about Grimtooth, the Rancor of Makeb. The conclusion there is, that if there is an Legacy achievement, then it must be doable, and therefore he will look into it.
  • We also talked to him about the "Sharp Dresser" title or how it is called. He said he would at least look into it as well.
  • If you arrive in the new expansion, there will be a double warning that you cannot go back and finish any of your quests which are still open ! Especially class quests !

From Kiandra

  • We stood up in a group and talked to Ben Scott. Not sure whether this was mentioned before, but he was asked whether the collection will get a search function. His answer was that he is not allowed to answer this now, but there will be changes. He hinted to the collection when getting asked for more cargo bay spaces.
  • In addition he said that you will be asked twice before starting the KotFE quest. Every unfinished class story, companion story and the other storylike quest lines (like Rishi/Yavin, Ziost) will disappear and cannot be finished anymore. Nevertheless he confirmed that you will still have access to all planets you could visit before as well as the fleet. The known planets will look as they ever did.

August 6 Q&A

From jedipedia twitter

  • No new fleet planned but there is a central hub you can travel to during the expansion
  • There are big changes to crafting coming which they will explain later in a blog post.
    • To add to that, someone mentioned that apparently they are planning to make gathering nodes adaptive, give you mats based on your crew skill level and the planet you are on (source)
  • Very early designs for SWTOR had a free roam space where you can drive your ship around and AT-AT walkers you could drive.

From Gamona.de

  • Companions are being changed so you choose them based on their story aspect (i.e. who you like) rather than what they can do abilities wise. More details on this later.
  • Nico Okarr is only available as a sub reward right now, not sure if it will be on cartel market later.  (Eric Musco confirmed that you can either sub by July 31 or August 10 to get it, not sure if referrals 7 day sub work or not).
  • Base game has been modified to reduce the time it takes to reach 1-60 (150-200 hrs) to the time it takes to finish KOTOR for example.

From RA_Rashia (General QA)

Watch the video for full experience as I skipped/paraphrased some of the answers.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQE8BxPxGl4&w=448&h=252&hd=1]

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybgrsxexl68&w=448&h=252&hd=1]

  • Q: Will Colicoid War Games and Directive 7 get upscaled to level 65?
    • Have to talk to George Smith, they are meant to be on the list of FPs to be upscaled.
  • Q: Has the core vision of the game changed?
    • Originally we had a concept of the galaxy being low tech and sort of post-apocalyptic but ultimately we decided it wasn’t feeling iconic star wars. The core vision of the game is a story driven exciting adventure you can share with your friends.
    • Where we are now is what we should have been. With SOR we raised the bar with storytelling. Choices/dialogues got better but Fallen Empire will blow it away.
    • Free flight space – getting on a ship and fly anywhere you wanted to, AT-ST/AT-ATs you could actually drive around were originally on the list of things to do. This was the old wall of crazy we originally had.
  • Q: What about choices that matter globally or world changing?
    • This is not a single player game so it is hard to do these things. It is something we have struggled with for 7 years. With Fallen Empire you will see decisions you made with companions and events that will have ramifications far down the road. It is hard with our technology to do world changing events.
  • Q: With restructuring of the companions, what does it mean for crafting?
    • No comment at this time. There are some big changes coming with crafting that I am not going to get into it as that is something we will announce later on. Companions play into that so you can expect some changes.
  • Q: No new operations, how do you see that going in the future?
    • We are scaling all the FPs/OPs to max level. Some story important flashpoints turned into solo mode. Our goal is to make all flashpoints/operations relevant no matter the level. So even when we add in more levels later, they will always be relevant. By doing this rescaling now, we are paving the road to add future ops/flashpoints.
  • Q:  Do you have any insider trading info to give out for someone who is trying to max/max crafting for Fallen Empire right now?
    • We are restructuring all of the crafting. Low level players can get useable mats from high level nodes and vice versa. You not going to hurt yourself no mater what you do.
  • Q: Chat bubbles/hood toggle?
    • There is a performance issue with chat bubbles and we are working to solve that as it is something we really want. It is not a promise though. Once we get around the performance issue we will make a big announcement about it.
  • Q: Melee feels worthless in current operations
    • It was completely unintentional that bosses were getting really melee unfriendly. I went to the QA and said when you test bosses you have a group full of melee and a group full of ranged. If the full melee group can’t beat the boss we will go back to the drawing board. We now have a way to test this so melee classes are not constantly feeling screwed. The Ziost operation boss is very ranged unfriendly for example because we felt sorry for the melee.
    • From a design perspective, it is very easy to fall into the trap to make it punishing for melees, we are not trying to do it intentionally.
  • Q: Fleet
    • No significant change to fleet in Fallen Empire but that doesn’t mean you will always be on the fleet. There is another location that will have supplemental activities. 

From RA_Rashia (Q&A with the Voice Actor)

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK01LFoHQPU&w=448&h=252&hd=1]

If you went to the Gamescom cantina and have more Q&A feel free to let me know in the comments and I will add them in.

By Dulfy

MMO guide writer and blogger. Currently playing and covering SWTOR, GW2, and TSW.

541 replies on “SWTOR Gamescom Cantina Tour Q&A”

“Companions are being changed so you choose them based on their story aspect”

This almost sounds like maybe you can access any companion rather than have them part of class stories? Seems like that would be a huge undertaking though, since some of them are pretty tightly woven into class plots such as Jaesa for example…

That’s not how I read it. If anything, I got the impression that there will be some way to change a companion’s role (dps, tank, heals) to fit your character so that you can pick whatever companion you prefer (for dialogue or whatever) rather than based upon which companion’s fixed role fits mechanically with your character’s role.

I dunno, treek’s always worked pretty well, presumably this means companions will have 2 stances. a tank stance, a heal stance and then not using a stance will be DPS. the stance will change how abilities work. in short, like treek

Doc Lokin or Guss Tuno as a Tank? I dunno. I mean, I don’t know the answer myself but what your suggesting doesn’t seem viable.

Ohhh I didnt read it that way at all. Probably all the companions will get abilities for all 3 roles then and you just click on the appropriate stance ability to change the role. Sort of like Treek…

my gut feeling is the 12x boost is gonna essentially be the norm, and planetary questlines will be optional

That’s what Ben Scott confirmed. The 1-50/1-60 experience will be streamlined. He said something like an overall 8x XP boost compared to regular XP gain. The gear/rewards you will earn will be adjusted to account for this as well.
Planetary/side missions will remain available but be completely optional.

Possibly, I like the idea of it, but I don’t believe bioware has said anything official on that topic. But with still got 2 months of info to come so anything could happen.

Is there more to come or is this it?

EDIT: and lol, 15 hours to get from 1-60? Who are they kidding :’)

Found this: TWO days? Like TWO (2) days?

Is it going to be the same thing both days, or different each day? Just wondering if I should alter my travel plans.We are still locking down the exact schedule for the Cantina, but currently the plan is both Cantinas will be the same. This way it is just a matter of which day works best for you to attend .

-eric

me and my friend were so excited to see this when it came out and talked about it every day. Sadly she passed away 9 days ago, been absolutely devastated and not sure how i feel about the expansion now. she was only around my age (19) either way taken way too early

Talk to the dev team. Maybe send a message or make a forum post. They may be able to give you a “custom companion” or a special daily quest in the game to see her as an npc. Something along those lines to honor her.

Sorry to read this … i really do … i hope you do not leave the game after this, obviously is something that make you and your firned happy and something you both share, keep playing for you, for her …

So do we lose all access to previous pve content when we start kotfe, like can we still do ziost dalies with our old companions?

Of course you will be able to travel to previous planets and do stuff unrelated to the story like dailies. This should not be even a question. But your crew won’t magically change back to the old one. Once you change it, it stays.

Actually, no. It’s been said in relation to the expansion by Mr. Potato on reddit: “By Beginning Knights of the Fallen Empire, you will not be able to complete any unfinished quests from the original class quests, Ziost, Shadow of Revan, and any companion quests. Click CONTINUE to begin Knights of the Fallen Empire. Please confirm you wish to continue, as you will lose acess to unfinished content. There is no turning back once you agree.” To me, that means you won’t be able to go back. Although it does seem to leave out side quests on planets, so I’m open to the idea that we can return.

They already confirmed that you’d still be able to go to previous planets. That new info just says that you can’t first do the expansion and later finish the class quest like you could with 2.0 and 3.0.

be nice in future there would be addition to other planets, like is voss every going 2 make peace with gormaks? Is makeb still a barren wasteland cause I killed some the planet,or oricon all nice and pretty cause I choose the light side choice.

As much as I would love this to happen, the fact that characters choices are all different means this couldn’t happen without some of the player bases choices being ignored, which goes against the story aspect of the game. Voss could be possible, but I think EAware is busy looking to the future rather than fixing the past.

lol I’m thinking back to how I blew up makeb and marr was telling me good job,but be nice if the older planets would have different instances much like ziost

That is something they could do, as proven with Ziost. It’s honestly impossible to tell right now. They very well could revisit planet stories in the future, but in my opinion it won’t be any time soon. The amount of player choices in this game means it’s hard for them to keep everything together, especially with the unified storyline stuff they focus on now. But hey, anything could happen 🙂

This is perfectly possible, I even like the idea. They’ve proved with ziost they can do it, so it would be cool to see if they can apply it to planets that have stories that could affect how they look or are inhabited. It’s an awesome concept, but right now, that’s all it is.

Comprehension, please. I explicitly said about coming back to old planets and doing dailies and other stuff UNRELATED to the story. What Potato mined says that all missions RELATED to the story will be blocked. You will still be able to do dailies, side quests and heroics on the old planets.

Interesting. They are making it seem like all progress is separate from the previous game and expansions. I will give it to EAware, they do put out good expansions, so I don’t think this will be any different. I’m looking forward to it.

“gathering nodes are adaptive” wtf?

How do I farm fo conquest???????

I understand all this handholding BS but how do I get old mats?

Also, wtf happens to maxed affection on previous comps?

Havent you read that crafting is going to change? How big is the chance they will change conquest crafting too? Pretty big I guess.

indeed, they could simplify mats to a single mat type and simply have more mats required for higher level stuff, not sure I’d like that, but it’s certinly a possiable change

Being able to choose my companion’s role is pretty awesome. I hate being
stuck with someone I don’t like just because I need a healer or tank.

And it will also be kind of dumb hearing HK blathering on about murder the whole time he is healing you….

I still love the Ilum PvP concept. I just wish it was executed better… maybe in a 40v40 Warzone or something. It’d be hard to put into the queue though… The PvP playerbase (and the overall playerbase) simply isn’t big enough to support it, at this point, without cross-server PvP.

Still waiting to hear what their “better than cross-server PvP” thing is. XD

I read it as and saw info stating that those were plans for the game in prototype stages that never made it past that, when the game was still being planned.

Dulfy wasn’t actually there, people send her this information. Although, there is another cantina today/tomorrow depending on where you are in the world. Hopefully more info there

Yes, the mic’d Q&A sessions were very short. Many questions were asked in small groups that gathered around the BW team members. Many questions were related to personal irks, peeves, bugs, problems, interests etc. Devs also talked some about their own preferences and experiences in the game, it was a lot of small talk.

If you have a specific question you’d like to be answered, maybe post it on the forums and ask people to put it out there tonight?

as a subscriber I think they should put okarr up on the CM after some time. and I think subscribers who are smart will support this. why? simple, if Okarr is ONLY a sub bonus for a limited time, why on earth would they expand him, give him new dialogue etc, as time goes by in the future? him being on the CM ensures future content is added. that said if he’s added I doubt he’ll be cheap. my guess is he’d be 5400 CC

na i’ll say 2 days after the regular release date or the next day f2p’s and preferred get it. His price should be some where around treek’s price, so 3100. But this is just my opinion. We have already seen that anything once class of ppl get it will soon enough be added to cartel market.

It’s perfectly possible that Nico will end up on the Market, in order to make sustaining a story for him worth it. But in my opinion I don’t believe they will add him in until at least a few months after launch. Their pushing for subscribers with this expansion, and releasing a subscription award after it was said to be exclusive doesn’t help with that, but I’m sure it’s been done before.

Do the companions keep the gear we’ve given them? Some of the Yavin gear looked abominable and I gave some of them customized outfits and I’m curious about how loosing them will effect that.

I believe I read somewhere that either all their armour gets returned to you, or they have it when you find them. Not sure where

um vette where are the 2 helix blasters I gave you and the 198 gear….. WHAT YOU LOST IT,quinn your going out the air lock now 😀

I’m in agreement with Brian, unless they announce exactly how it will work, I’d take any irreplaceable gear off them to be safe

All of you worried that BW is going to have you lose your comp’s gear is ridiculous. They are going to list what you need to do (or not need to do) in a blog before jumping into the expansion.

Think about it for a second. You think they are going to take away gear people might have used CC (real money) to purchase? No ffs

Do you trust them to get this list of things to do right? They break things all the time in patches… and you think they will have this process down so we don’t lose stuff? That’s the issue I have with it. Their track record doesn’t instill any confidence in me.

From what Swtor Miner has found out from data mining the expansion is that companions will no longer be able to equip gear and instead will scale to your characters level and that companions will likely have a costume designer slot to change looks.

I don’t think they will be in the game any time soon. Remember, all that stuff was from when the game was in planning stages, but them talking about it now could mean something. Take it all with a grain of salt

that statement is going to drive me nuts for a while. on one hand, things like strongholds, space pvp, and guild ships were all residents of the wall of crazy, and now, we have them. was this something that was asked by someone, or was this a developer Freudian slip of a taste of things to come. gah, its going to drive alot of people crazy. going to make the rakghoul plague look like womprat fever.

I hope they detail what is going to happen with companions/crafting in time for us to actually prepare for it. Come on Bio, give us the dirt already!

I’m sure they know what they’re doing now, the expansions in 2 and a half months. silence doesn’t mean they dunno what they’re doing, they proably just wanna limit people’s abilities to game the system

Everything’s subject to change, even a week before launch. I do agree they probably know what they are doing, but they are obviously saving different bits of info for different events and times leading up to the expansion

True, but not everything *can* be changed while still getting the thing out the door on time. But yes, everything not released is still subject to change, despite what people have gotten use to thinking.

From what Swtor Miner has found out from data mining the expansion is that companions will no longer be able to equip gear and instead will scale to your characters level.

Judging from previous changes to crafting and the lack of advanced info on it you’re not supposed to prepare for it.

I feel uneasy about getting all the affection I’ve raised in my companions for crafting purposes blown up in the name of a nerf bat. That’s life I guess.

Either way… all that money and time spent grinding the affection was a waste. That’s the frustrating part.

Hmm… I curious about the new crafting/gathering. I love leveling alts and I use 100% adaptive gear, so I craft some modifications (armourings / hilts / barrels) and buy the rest (mods / enhancements) with coms. This means that my high-level crafter is making low-level stuff. I wonder how it will work with this new “adaptive” system.

Well I believe, at least from the information I’ve gathered, that the adaptiveness applies to the gathering objects out in the game world. So it seems that getting the lower level materials may be harder, because to me it sounds like no matter what planet you’re on, it will adapt to your crew skill level. Maybe there will be a way to switch this on and off? Unlikely, but we will see.

“So it seems that getting the lower level materials may be harder”

A simple(?) solution would be that you don’t need low-lvl mats anymore.
Just have the low-lvl items require, e.g., “5 red crystal of *at least* lvl3” instead of “5 red crystal of *exactly* lvl3”.
This way, you could craft items for your new lowbie twinks with materials that you would (nowadays) gather on, say, Yavin.

I understand they want to make all the ops level relevant, but it would be nice to see a difficulty curve, maybe having EV/Karraga’s and EC being at roughly the difficulty we are seeing the 55 ops at now to provide a learning environment for what we call “Scrubs” (Those sneaky deviants that join an ops, have no clue what the mechanics are, but don’t tell anyone, thinking they are special). TFB/SNV and the Dreadstuff should be scaled so it isnt face roll, and stress the importance of rotations and mechanics without being a pug killer but provide challenges to encourage us to improve. It would be nice to see the current lvl appropriate ops kept at their current difficulty with changes based on their comments about being more melee friendly.

I agree and like this system you’ve come up with 😛 endgame is important to keep people subscribed, even with new chapters each month. If this or something similar is how they do it, I’ll be happy. Although it would be cool to see all of the ops at difficulty for 65’s so that we don’t have to do the same two ops all the time to get gear.

Maybe all the ops drop the same tier of gear, but give more comms based on difficulty. Then the starter stuff is still worthwhile, but the rewards are relative to effort and teamwork required.

Or even divide parts up over the whole stretch. So 2 piece is obtained in t1, 4 piece would need T2, and 6 piece would require you are able to clear all content.

Honestly, most endgamers i know (including myself) find comms completely unworthy of any trouble. Personally, i prefer buying a bunch of gloves and chests, and then selling them to vendors for credits 😛
As for the second part, that would make the gearing process 3 times slower, which isn’t exactly a desirable thing to see imo.

Not really focused on the gear, I’d just really like some ops left over to use as training grounds for newer people. Bioware has shown they can be REALLY damn clueless in their balancing, and it would be nice to see a gradual incline not a huge difference from beginning to end, just a notable gradient in the ops line up.

It’s highly doubtful they’d do this. They would have to make a second version (up or down) for many, many chest pieces….and spend time testing and fixing all the clipping issues. Not really a productive use of development resources just to give a small segment of the plater base some minor cosmetic feature.

Pretty much all chestpieces in this game have a version with the hood up and the hood down. They would just have to connect these two versions into one by allowing us to toggle / switch our prefered version.

As for clipping issues, let’s not kid ourselves. They haven’t done that in a long time. I mean, do you recall the Arkanian Consular armor from 2.0? You’d just need to look in a different direction for that helmet to clip all over the place.

It’s what happens at this point. They don’t want to say that they are working on it, but they can’t say they aren’t either. Although I do agree with Vos_L on the technology side, it would be a hard thing to do efficiently, because of how many armour sets are in the game

Take the model that removes the hood for helmets/species heads, make an add on that works like a helmet that goes over the back based on body type, at varying lengths for different robes. Release ’em in cartel packs. Fast, makes em money, everyone wins. Besides, they’ve shown that they already have the models for at least some of the chests from gameplay trailers and cutscenes.

The problem is some armors with hoods on the back don’t have a hood up version. Doing something half assed like you suggest would just create more outrage then no system at all does.

saying it’s half assed before seeing if it can actually be implemented is kinda counter productive, if it works it works. Fallout New vegas couldn’t make vehicles, so the moving train model was actually a rendered Hat that an NPC wore. And we’re not talking about hoods down, if the armor already has a hood down then you could just take the same concept and try it out with a hood, similar to visas’ veil.

You know what? Just release the missing “Covert energy helmet”, that simply turns out the hood as some of the existing head circles, but no visual at all. If someone is fine with the look like that, can use it. Half of the problem is solved.
Those who want to see the hood on the back but and not up on the head still screwed but at least a huge group of people were glad.

The Ziost operation boss is very ranged unfriendly for example because we felt sorry for the melee.

Sure… Because being able to attack while running colors and being able to be in melee range with no consequences is very unfriendly for ranged.

Meele do better dps on the ziost boss than ranged. I normally compete with or beat the mDPS in my ops group with my sage.. I’m way behind on that boss

“you a jerk” i lol’d so hard. like in all caps LOL!!!! with multple O’s LOOOOOL. no but this shit was funny. haha and on point!

CSR confirmed 7 day referral link does NOT count for Nico. People have to sub. That means that if you are on a 7 day referral link right now, you need to be charged when it runs out. If you try to loophole it, you will miss out.

CSR doesn’t have the updated information, generally speaking. That said, it could’ve gotten better. But whether they’re right or not, that is the safest way to go. Expect the worst. Hope for the best, but still expect the worst.

I am not said potato, though I do know a lot of what he does. This certain potato is everything I wish I was 😉

different VA but apparently they are linked… which once again they will need to fill i major plot holes to support that

I’m not worried about how they integrate KotFE’s story into SWTOR and connect it with the current stuff – they’re good at that. But I do worry how they’ll connect Valkorion with Vitiate… It really depends upon the details of the invading faction (and YES I know it’s not playable but it’s still a faction just like the revanites and dread host).

Also I’m really curious how they explain how this invading faction had the manpower to conquer the known galaxy (since isn’t it a single planet? Zakuul? Maybe all the soldiers are those knight guys, and/or maybe they all have the force. Still unsure tho…)

Well spoilers……….so stop now if you dont want to read into it..

But They datamined some audio files where Marr and the player are on the eternal throne speaking with Valkorian and Marr basically confirms its Vitiate Darth Marr”A new name, a name face, these are not enough to hide from us”

Player class, in this case Sith Inquisitor “The Sith Emperor, your presence is unmistakable”

then i will post the same concern i did to the link to vitiate and valkorian and previous behavior and now

while the story it self might go in a good direction i cant stand these major plot holes.

SPOILERS!!! Jedi Knight Spoilers on Belsavis

“the Emperor sent the high-ranking Executor Krannus and his death cult to the recently discovered Republic prison world of Belsavis. Knowing that the fanatically loyal cult would gladly sacrifice their lives for him, the Emperor orchestrated an Imperial attack to serve as a distraction[68] so that Krannus could detonate the planet’s power core; the resulting explosion would ripple through hyperspace and consume all of the neighboring system”

It was already known 300 years or more that the Emperor wanted to consume the galaxy (s)

The above post suggest as such and would result as such. Star system is another word for galaxy, Neighboring system simply means neighboring galaxy which is easy enough to understand.

“A star system or stellar system is a small number of stars that orbit each other,[1] bound by gravitational attraction. A large number of stars bound by gravitation is generally called a star cluster or galaxy,”

The above leaked Soundbite files suggest the Emperor started his new empire on Zakuul decades ago and to note that he said Zakuul was his sole focus everything else was a means to an end. Zakuul is the Empire he loves and yadayaydayaa. meaning this is the Empire he will fight for and rule. He specifically mentioned he will rule!

if this is the case, really is the case that all other actions are in conflict. the reason why i noted the Jedi mission is the fact that if he succeeded that his “Sole Focus” Empire would had fallen as well as multiple neighboring systems would be dead as well..

To me it seems more that BW wants to break down previous events just to make Vitiate major plan fit in. Like i said i dont mind him scheming all long and what not, but not at the expense to break the lore up or even ignore certain things that just can’t coexist with what he states now

just to state, im a lore freak and i greatly hate it when people want to make stories on top of stories and they just colaps because they dont work together or tie in, its more as brute force.

one of topic example would be X-men movies where Proff X said to wolverine, when we first found you, you had a bullet in your head. In the movie of wolverine you see him getting shot in the head with a special crafted bullet just for him no-less but at the end his body pushes the bullet out. Then another scene from another X-men movie where the cops shoot wolverine but he needed rogue to save his life because…. bullets, regular bullets were killing him.

Like i said i don’t mind stories, but they need to be tied in with one another and not overruling previous events in a way that breaks the lore

Like i said before, the story can be good but plot-holes like these need to be addressed and filled in.

His attitude went from and i joked about this as in, I Kill you, i kill you, i’ll fucking kill you…..join me

anyhow guess we will have to wait and see for official confirmation and if its true how they will plan out to back the story up for said mentions

This faction most likely is based in a neighboring (conquered galaxy). This would give them plenty of manpower. According to player speculation, the Rishi Maze is rather likely.
Also, the Zakuul Knights seem to be force sensitive (Small Spoiler: During the Outlander’s rescue from carbonite, a pair of Knights are immune to a mind trick if the Outlander tries to use one. They react as if you are odd or stupid for trying it, suggesting that Knights are force sensitive).

Koth doesnt seem to be an knight guard unless i missed something, For Senya you might have a point. guess we will see how things play out.

Koth Vortena – The Exiled Officer: “I grew up on Zakuul, served in the military. I know its potential for greatness, but all I see is the bleak reality of what it’s become.

Someone has to stand up to tyranny, right here and now. To make it clear that we reject this twisted vision for the galaxy. Someone has to own up to their destiny and fight.”
______________________________________________________

Senya – The Vengeful Enforcer: “I have served with honor. I have upheld the law and pursued offenders to the far corners of the galaxy. And I have lost everyone I ever held close.

The worst among us now rule over us. Their laws will never bring justice to the monsters who betray our ideals and murder our children. But I will.”

Also, her character model (from a certain video we’ve both scene 😉 ) shows her wearing white (or unfinished) Zakuul Knight armor without the helmet, implying she was one at some point.

I think you are still right about the majority of the Knights, according to Thexan’s insight from the recent story blog post “Brothers.”

Really? Cool on Hesker part. Will need to do a bit of diggim nut whatever happend to him?

Wookieepedia said he was defeated on Corellia, but I recall working with him on Ilum. I’m confused about this.

Sounds conflicting. Or do they kwam defeated when we went back to Correlia Black hole area. Or simply defeated And not dead

Wookieepedia makes it sound like the Battle of Corellia. I recall my Sage defeated some other Guard at the end of the Battle of Axial Park, followed by Darths Hadra, Acharon, and Decimus as the final Republic story boss of Corellia. I don’t recall seeing Hesker.

Maybe you could check YouTube & let me know because I g2g.

She is listed on the character section of the KOTFE page on SWTOR’s website.
As for her appearance, a YouTube video posted by a certain datamining potato 😉 that has leaked audio dialogue shows some new character models.

You don’t have to be Force Sensitive to resit a mind trick; See Jabba the Hutt and even the Bounty Hunter story arc

Some species are immune to it, but it seems like Zakuul is pretty much humans. I’ve only heard of force sensitive humans resisting it.

If the person has strong enough will compared to the Jedi/ Sith they can. I believe that SIS agents etc are trained to resist

Zakuul Knights are force sensitive. Confirmed by some heavily spoiler filled audio found by a certain datamining potato 😉

I’m aware. Some previous material had specifically hinted at it, but not confirmed it. But now it has been confirmed.

I’ve been following this for a while and there seem to be some concerns and misconceptions amongst the fan base, so I’ll address that before I throw in on this new info:

First, this is a story driven MMORPG. In effect, this entire game is KOTOR 3; whether we like it or not, this is the next in the KOTOR series until KOTOR 3 (as a single player stand-alone) is made. See WoW and Legacy of Kain for concerns about timeline to the originals.

Second, let’s be honest with ourselves- as much as we support this game, it doesn’t inhale revenue like WoW or other established MMOs do. Part of it is the story driven (and inherently single player) aspect of it, and part of it is a genuine lack of parent company funding. You know those cartel coins that give you a chance at vanity items? There’s a reason they’re emphasized more than operation drops.

So, what does that mean for this expansion? Think of it as a restructuring; breaking down to rebuild.

Pragmatically, we aren’t actually losing anything, but we aren’t gaining new ops either- not how other game’s expansions are. Well, not yet- because the developers of this game need to analyze how this game is played and what its strengths are. So, it CAN look very lackluster.

Operations are difficult (regardless of level) without guild mates. Since most raiding guilds are elitist by nature, many casual players are left without the story aspects of many ops. So why throw new ops at everyone when many people just don’t have the interest or knowledge?

Patch 3.3? Same deal. The rare few who are committed enough to pvp. It wrecks casual players because of how difficult even just base pvp gear was to earn. Are there people who deserve accolades for being prolific enough to earn full ranked pvp gear? Certainly, but there’s a reason those same people pug and spam gen chat for others to que ranked,

So ultimately, is this expansion a disappointment? Really, it shouldn’t be for anyone who can see long (of even medium) term. Immediately, they’re focusing on the most utilized component of this game- single player storymode. That’s the short term. For pvpers, they’ve already started breathing life into that mess (though have a long way to go). And ops folks, if you really want more people interested in ops and willing to try it with a raid group, and if you want competent people to pug, at the very least you’ll have people somewhat familiar with it, rather than frosh who get dropped every time because they don’t have people to teach them.

So, rather than whine because a game with a fraction of the funding it deserves is trying to salvage itself, look at the big picture, take a breath, and holdout for the benefits this expansion is setting a precedent for. If you’ve been around this long and honestly can’t handle the time it needs to grow from here on, you probably weren’t as invested in it as you thought you were (invested here being entirely irrelevant from dollars spent on the game).

Stop making sense, you’ll draw criticism for it from many corners here.

Awesome name, too. Feel like that’s what Marr would name his canine sidekick.

I do genuinely want to kiss you for that comment. I anticipated the day that another human being would have the same thoughts on this like me. You see, if a developer had posted something at least rudimentarily similar, quite some people could have been made patient. Or so I conjecture. I can only bearly estimate how many people futilely reinforce things like: “No new OPS? BioShits going down. Unsubbing today. I’m important and you can’t survive without me.” “PvPers still the scum of this game? Fuck BioFail. Dunno what I installed this game for anway.” “I am absolutely satisfied with this game but still claim it’s shit so my mates won’t harass me. Subscription ends in 3 days. GG.”

I agree with you and applaud you for the maturity and logic you presented in your delivery. Personally, I’m a bit biased since I don’t PvP and rarely do OPs. I’m in this game for story. While I prefer class stories, I’m still excited about this expansion.

Story-driven..Yep. The same story for all at KotFE. At this moment I dont belive that different classes will have many differences based on there way, decisions, etc. BW didnt give us any story for about 3 years just the same factions story style: Makeb, daily zones and then SoR. But after SoR many players hoped that SWTOR will have more CLASS stories not just ONE storyline for all. And more comments devs tell us about KotFE more doubts players have. “We can’t do phasing but will be something…But we cant tell you about it yet”. And what’s now?

“This is not a single player game so it is hard to do these things. It is something we have struggled with for 7 years. With Fallen Empire you will see decisions you made with companions and events that will have ramifications far down the road. It is hard with our technology to do world changing events.”

Lol? They told about storys and single game since KotFE was announced. Now they told us that it’s not single game and they can’t do anything with decisions that could affect the world around? What was reason to talk about “something secret”? What reason to use “single/MMO” termins? They do it when they need it. “Ye, we dont forget about MMO’s content but now we want to give our players THE STORY”. “Guys, It’s MMO as first, we cant make phasing and we give you only one story for all”.

The fact is that BW’s marketing department sucks as hell. They dont know what must be told and what shouldnt. Plus they have Bruce Maclein that looks like a missing kid in the big world. And ofc Eric and his colleagues that cant do their job at forum and Eric that talk too much and too fast at twitch but almost all that he is talking about is pointless.

I’m at SWTOR since it was launched. I’m a subcriber. I really love SW Universe and original SWTOR. But last two years were really hard for the game. I hope that all will be change and we will see new step at the SWTOR’s life and story. But it’s not right to accuse people about criticism, negative comments etc. BW deserve it. And people have a full authority to do this.

Who cares about PvP anymore? And no new PvE in the last 2 years…I guess I imagined all those new ops we had then?

You will be surprised like BW but people care about PvP.

And i wrote almost no PvE, not nothing at all.

If you at all serious want to tell me that PvE was enough – i dont have anything to say. Typical SWTOR blind fans answer. ‘We interpret that people write to us at way that we need’. 3rd year of the game – 2ops from SoR and 6 tactial flashpoints(2 of them were from SoR too and were most boring fl from SWTOR just like CZ’s fl.) + Rishi(that smaller than even primary planets) and Yavin(planet that a bit more than Oricon). This year – only Ziost as PvE content + Monolith. Old Fls that was scaled to new lvl are just old fls that was scaled to new lvl. Nothing more. Someone want to cry very loud that it’s a new content like old fls and ops at KotFE, – okay. But it changes nothing.

“Typical SWTOR blind fans answer. ‘We interpret that people write to us at way that we need’.”

Sigh. Stop trying to sound smart — you’re not. If you think “almost no PvE” is 2 ops and several tactical and hardmode flashpoints, three new daily areas and an instanced world boss, I feel sorry for you. You will never find a game which satisfies you, if you aren’t satisfied with getting that much content in a single year.

I’m curious as to your progression, since PvE is soooo boring for you. Are you 11/11 HM Ops + Monolith? I highly doubt it. That’s the only progression status which would warrant complaining about PvE content being boring.

PS: And yes, I mentioned Daily Areas, because you strike me as the idiot who would waste his time in them. They still qualify as PvE Content, however.

except people pressing for more PVP stuff have never outlined what they want. more Warzones aren’t gonna do much, if the current ones bore you, it’s ultimatly the PVP in the game that bores you. PVP gets it’s regular season stuff each season, so that can’t be an issue for you, PVP is getting new gear to go with the level cap raise presumably so…. basicly… what exactly do people want when they ask for new PVP stuff?

I would love Bioware to shut down all this no new op talk with a very simple fact: How many of the player base actually even do Ops and how many are geared accordingly? Just as it proved how small the end game pvp scene was when Bioware said only 2% of the player base has the best pvp gear, I would guess that those who do ops are vastly in the minority compared to other groups like those that do fp’s, group for heroics etc.

I could be wrong but would be interesting. The fact Bioware is focusing on story more then anything might prove me right.

Uh I hope they have a custumization for Lana to use her old model. This one is ick. Five years fucked her up bad.

At least they improved her skin tone, eye bags, and her hair. She actually looks strong rather than sickly here. I think that the bulkier armor and bad angles/lighting are what’s making her look odd in the trailer. Overall, I’m reserving my judgment until I can have her as a companion and actually inspect her.

Nice… We got a few more pieces of the KotFE puzzle. Their “big unannounced content” could very well be an open space sim. That’s popped up quite a bit recently. I don’t have the exact source (maybe that fan podcast on Dulfy a bit ago) but I think it was stated that it’s… Similar to GSF? On the same scale as GSF? It was something to do with GSF. I really haven’t asked for one, as others have, but it would still be a great addition to the game.

A chapter title called “Taking Flight” has me intrigued about this as well. Why bother mentioning the free roam space bit at all in the interview?

That wierded me out so much. I beta tested on weekends, devoured every developer video I could find, and watched the game come alive, and honestly, barely a word about riding ATAT walkers and free flying ships…now suddenly its brought back up? Maybe he just put his foot in his mouth and called fire without any smoke, but maybe…just maybe, something neat is coming.

No… no … no. Get this out of your head right now. They don’t have enough people to do this… it will NOT happen.

It doesn’t take manpower. It takes a breakthrough, or an engine upgrade. Usually both. Then it just takes a bit of dedicated time. It does not require an army of Devs to complete. That said, they do have more employees than they used to (they canceled Shadow Realms to focus their efforts on this game).

You mean something like speech bubbles? I’m sorry, I know a lot of people want them, but I really don’t see the benefit.

Do I want them to succeed at implementing them? Sure, why not. Make some players happy, call it a day, etc. At this point, they might as well. But in the grand scheme of the game speech bubbles are pretty pointless.

yeah, not sure why they like speech bubbles but same. i mean we probably will have option to turn it on and off (I hope) but imagine the cluster fuck of hundreds bubbles popping up basically impairing your view. Yeah sure Ops wont have much chat bubbles except in between boss fights or unless you are fighting bosses now on lowers ops which people constantly talk through specially if its a PUG.

But fleets, central hubs. But i figure its more an RP thing and since we got strongholds people RP in there but to each there own.

I stutter when I use vehicles in Fleet. I shudder to imagine how a layer of cloud coverings (speech bubbles) would do to the already horrendous lag I already present.

I came close to this on several occasions.
Tip: Walk down the stairs to the vendors to avoid sudden death 😉

As the resident voice of rp, meh to speech bubbles. Its a crutch, and with the way cantina RP works, the whole bloody bar would just have a massive illegible cloud over it with little bits of “I’m Ralcom Meynolds” and “Wanna go back to my ship” and “…thats when the killin stopped, and I realised what I had become…” sticking out at the edges like limbs in a cartoon cat fight.

If they really wanted better rp, there are a lot less lag inducing things to add to the game. Vertical sliders for stronghold furniture? Using more of the dead space in places like the Promenade. Custom dye vendor? Haircuts and makeup/tattoos for credits? 1:200 drop rate SH creature statues (that’d get people back to the old planets). How about some more standard furniture pieces? I have a dread seed, a holocron big enough to live in, twilek dancers and a rancor….but no holotelevision, nowhere to cook, and I use a security camera placed strategically near some office dividers to trick house guests into thinking I shower….
If speech bubbles are overworking their programmers, maybe just bang out a bunch of the easy stuff for now?

(T-shift vendor, ffs…aurabesh slogans, make them look like band T’s..put hutts and blastechs and shit on em, an intern could bang out some skins instead of going for sandwiches next thursday)

A crutch? Eh? Speech bubbles are a huge benefit to RPers. Moving from SWG to SWTOR, the lack of bubbles was the most unplesant and immediately jarring thing I noticed :O

That said, I agree with the rest of your post 😛

The biggest benefit I see from them, is the Vaiken erp mistells will become temporary halo’s of shame. Seriously pervs, back to your ships first…

Speech bubbles are extremely useful when you have a tunnel visioning dps not obeying mechanics and need them to stop being dumb. just type something and jump in front of their camera

The /kick command is extremely useful when you have a tunnel visioning dps not obeying mechanics and need them to stop being dumb.

Alternatively, if you need to post something on their screen just use ops announcement.

Everyone in the raid should have Lieutenant, unless it’s a pug (in which case, just kick the loser), or a guild run (and if they don’t, your team really isn’t as cohesive as it should be, if it can’t trust it’s own members).

Good call on SH furniture. But seriously. You really worried about showering? Everytime I wanna take a shower, I just go to Tython or Makeb and (try to) take a shower there.
git on muh lvl skrub

I remember having speech bubbles in COH, and it was really handy to just have something you wanted to say to people nearby pop up by your head like that, instead of splitting your attention up to the chat window.

Other than that though, yeah, it’s not a critical addition, but the RP people will love it. All the same, I won’t complain if they get it to work.

Personally there are many things wrong with this game if you read forums. While I think it’s ok and pvp needs alot of work wasting time with speech bubbles won’t make that many people happy. How many pvpers have left since they stopped focus on new pvp stuff and have not improved it or added to it.

No new ops until AFTER expansion launches has some people (not me) unhappy. Adding speech bubbles won’t solve these problems. In fact t could have negative effect if the spend alot of time and resources finding a way to implement them and not using that time on pvp or ops.

There are many things wrong with any game if you just go by their forums. 90% of all forum posts for games ask for changes because someone doesn’t like something. The people that enjoy the content are to busy playing to post messages usually. Devs always read the forums with a grain of salt. Most spend the day combing through all the garbage to find halfway decent posts that can approach a problem with a decent solution.
The Ops team and the UI team are two different groups on a game this size. Currently the Ops team is working on upgrading the old operations. The UI team is working on chat bubbles and other social features.

Yes I agree to an extent. But still before wasting resources on unimportant things like chat bubbles it would be best to put those resources into areas they can fix or to provide things thay keep people subbing or playing. Stuff like chat bubbles won’t bring people back.

Yes various aspects of the game are developed and decided by various teams but the one thing they have all got to go by is funding. If you funding is limited to x amount per expansion or per patch what would be better way to increase revenue? Stupid chat bubbles or introducing new ops fps and what not.

I’m not saying they shouldn’t bring minor things like these but do it after more important things are addressed.

Personally I love this game most of time. When amount of bad teams or extreme amounts of cc are not driving me into madness lol but as with every mmo there are always more important things to focus on before minor things like chat bubbles.

Just my opinion ofc

in fairness Roleplayers proably make up a greater percentage of the player base then the hard core PVP set

Trying to make melee as viable as ranged again… Good. I’m… disturbed that they weren’t aware of the problem, but it’s better late than never.

…especially since 5 of the 8 Advanced Classes are mDPS.

Read what he said, he said 5/8.
Melee dps: PT, Jugg, Mara, Op, Sin (and their pub counterparts)
Ranged dps: Sorc, Merc, Sniper
5/8 or 10/16 if you want to get super technical.

As curious as I am to see how crafting/gathering will change especially with how they seem to be hinting biochem won’t be as required come end game (perhaps they will stick with the current method of letting anyone use end game artifact stims but not make them reuseable – which is fine except they should make them reuseable for biochem crafters imo), I did have to laugh with Bioware saying “Where we are now is what we should have been. With SOR we raised the bar with storytelling.”

Surely they are kidding themselves right? There was no bar raised whatsoever. SOR was so generic and boring compared to some of the original class stories that to say KOTFE will put SOR to shame isn’t much of a challenge.

Still I am glad I did all my companions properly with treating some well but others bad and changing it on other playhroughs so looking forward to see if Bioware are legit in how they will change the story depending on how they were/are treated.

The “bar” fell and hit the designer on the head, if anything. Now he has braindamage and can’t write any good storie.

I’ve noticed how several people want Lana’s old appearance as a companion customization for her. Then it hit me: we can still dress her up in her SOR armor since we got it in the Shadow Packs. This means it might actually have a use for those of us who want that nostalgic look for her 🙂

If she still looks like she has a never ending cold I’m putting a mask on her.
If she has a robotic arm, I’m dumping her.

Looks like they fixed her face 🙂

Being the first one here to point out her hand, I just want to acknowledge that it could just as easily be a mechanical armored glove rather than her actual hand. Also, as

I’ve previously stated in reply to others, robot hands don’t get tired, if you know what I mean 😉

“It was completely unintentional that bosses were getting really melee unfriendly”

Yea, right. That’s a giant load of B.S. if I ever heard one. ‘Oh sorry about those abilities that specifically target anyone within melee range, that was an accident.’

Because that’s they way a business operates. Screw over a good percentage of the population and twist your evil mustache and laugh. Does it read as stupid when I put it this way to you?

yeah I tend to belive that it was done more because they wanted to add some complex mechanics and they didn’t realize it, given the all melee team my guess is their test team just so happens to be ranged heavy. I’ve seen a lotta hints suggesting the favored dev class is the sorc

I would agree with the Sorc comment, only they nerfed the crap out of it’s AOE AND it’s single target damage, bringing in down to just OK. Also, they were ready to nerf the healing sorc into the ground until the public outcry was finally headed. So perhaps they were just truely incompetent when it comes to both class balance and Boss mechanics.

If anything they have shown that they are willing to bend over backward to appease the PVP crowd at the expense of everything PvE.

Yes, that’s the business BW operates. As to whether they laugh while designing abilities specifically to do more damage to melee classes, I’m not sure, you’ll have to ask BW about that. My guess is its just incompetence rather than evil intent.

whats the name of the guy who voice acted for valkorian?

Oh also how old do you got to be to goto a cantina tour?

His name is Darin DePaul and he is seriously awesome. 😀

To quote the swtor blog: “* This is an adult event – please be prepared to show ID. Children may attend if accompanied by an adult.”

I asked if they where gonna fix the bug with the revan statue and they were going to fix that. The bug is that you now can only buy the make tier 1 gear and not the SoR tier 1 gear.

They were going to look into the strongholds as an idea to place something and that you would be able to hide that certain object. So that it still would count for the stronghold bonus.

What they are doing with fp and ops is good for new players, but at the same time all old players are unhappy. What should we do with old ops? I did it many times and don’t want to go back to them. It’s like farming fp for achivments – boooooooring

I didn’t know you spoke for every Old Player of Swtor. Since when did you become the Voice of the Voiceless?

Myself, I am looking forward to the scaling up, as well as the additional Solo versions for Flashpoints. And as I wasn’t around to experience the retail Ops at launch, so to be able to play them at the capped level will be quite an experience.

Although fuck Explosive Conflict. That would be extremely painful.

Um…No. Most of my guild is hyped that old stuff is relevant again (except for EC NiM in relevant gear…ugh. Wipes will return in force).

Agreed. I put my time in on them. It’s like eating a piece of gum that is already chewed. Give me something new… not something that I did 2-3 years ago. Its there to give people a flse sense of “newness” and people are biting… I don’t know why.

Thank you for telling me that I’m unhappy. I was apparently unaware of that before, and was looking forward to old content being relevant again. I will update my opinion accordingly. Oh, wait, no I won’t, because I decide how I feel, not you.

I’m vaguely in favour of speech bubbles, and I don’t role-play except in my own head (despite playing on an RP server), I know I’d use them in combat to randomly call out battle-cries (Death to the Salad-Eaters!!!)

Who exactly is the strong dev in the videos with dark (black?) shirt and bright pants that answers questions so wonderfully?

“With SOR we raised the bar with storytelling”

Really? Can’t say I liked the lore-bending Voldemort plot surrounding a fan favourite who should have been left well alone. That said, looks like chat bubbles might actually happen one day after all, which is fantastic 😀

Maybe you don’t like that specific arc but the story telling as such in SWTOR is well above any MMO I’ve played. Tried GW2? I had to turn off the sound because the voice acting was terribad and the storylines are complete standard fantasy garbage. Just one example but there aren’t many MMOs that come even close to SWTOR in that respect. Doesn’t mean SWTOR stories are perfect but the difference with other MMO games is clear.

All well and good, up until ‘arc’. The rest of your post beyond that word has nothing to do with what I said -_o

Free flight space – getting on a ship and fly anywhere you wanted to, AT-ST/AT-ATs you could actually drive around were originally on the list of things to do. This was the old wall of crazy we originally had.
I don’t know but i would like to have that feature and see other players roaming in space traveling to coruscant etc… maybe even add a feature to change the hull textures and dyes to make the ship stand more out from everyone elses ship.

Here’s a serious question.
If this game is not single player, why do you punish people who try to do main quest lines in groups?
IMO, after you’ve finished the quest line once, you should be able to group with up to 3 other people and just accept the conversation choices as rolled, like you do in fps. Otherwise it feels like you’re trying to make a single player experience. IDGAF if the story doesn’t work out exactly as I might choose by myself when it ends up taking 1/2 the time because everyone is helping out. LET US BE MULTIPLAYER IN QUESTS!

Honestly I’ve been thinking about this a while, The answer is simpler than you think. They wanted to have the story adaption of a single player game, say Megaton becoming a crater in Fallout 3 however it all comes back to this is an MMO, with the exception of making seperate world instances for every possible story outcome, which mind you would result in almost nobody being around to do anything then they get extremely limited.

Their solution, make the entire story instanced where all the specific changes are reflectedd in your own phase.

Although I do admit the Ziost story not allowing co-op is kinda stupid

I do like the single player aspect of the class-specific stories, but they left that behind before Makeb, and it has yet to return. If they gave us 8 different concurrent stories, then I’d be all for the individual experience/you having sole input into what happens. But Makeb, Rishi, Yavin, Ziost, and for the forseeable future, the entire quest line has been the same problem being solved the same way. If they can let people progress the forged alliances quest in a group, there’s no reason not to let this one also progress. It is literally the same story.

Because most likely they are making all the quest instanced making it so only the instanced player can choose.

And that’s directly in conflict with the word “multiplayer”. I don’t see why you should be forced to do all the instanced parts solo when you’ve already taken a character through and have opted to waive any story-telling specifics you might choose if you roll badly. If anything, it would make the game have more of an element of RPG where your character isn’t convincing enough within the group, and you don’t get to make the choice yourself. I’d love that.

Because that’s how the story mode is being developed for the expansion and you either take it or don’t play at all its not like BW cares.

I have a question, are you going to put the HK FP parts in all modes of the FPs they’re in?

That way, we’d not have to group up once more, to get them.

You won’t anyways as all the the FP that have the parts can be done in story mode which is solo with the GSI droid.

But the parts don’t exist in story mode, only hard-mode. Which hopefully we’ll still be able to enter severely over level to do, as opposed to it automatically matching levels.

No you don’t get it story mode will have the parts because they are all being redesigned to be higher level now hence why they give you the gsi Droid.

They haven’t said that story mode will have them though. So you don’t actually know that – You’re assuming.

Do you know, for sure, if all Maelstrom/Foundry/False Emperor modes get the two HK parts?

Be that as it may, do all versions of those FPs have the parts now, or are they adding them to all versions come 4.0?

If it was changed now you would have seen it on the patch notes over the months so it won’t be changed till 4.0 but most people won’t bother because you get HK 55 which has better abilities then HK 51.

Doing the quest to get HK-51 is fun, regardless of the fact you get HK-55 later, hence it is important for me to know for certain whether I’ll need to group up or not for any FPs to get the parts.

People asked Ben Scott about Grim Tooth on Makeb, what the plans are with him since he’s part of the champions achievement but there doesn’t seem to be a legit way to get to him. He said he wasn’t aware of the problem but it sounds like a bug if he’s part of the achievement but not accessible. He promised to check it out.

In that second one they answered a different question than what they were asked. Or at least that’s how it sounds to me.

“Versions of ops built for group sizes other than 8 or 16?”
should not be answered with

“No, we have no plans to dynamically scale the op differently on the fly based on how many people enter it.”

The question asks if we could see new options added for 4m or 12m or 20m or whatever else alongside the existing options for 8m or 16m.
The response seems to have heard the question as asking for the op to say “Hey, you’ve brought a group of X players? Let’s just plug X into this formula here and all of your enemies will be balanced against your group size!” eliminating the existing 8/16 options and replacing them with a single fully dynamic option.

I think it could be easily misunderstood unless the question actually stated numbers for other fixed group sizes than 8 or 16. Either way, I think it’s clear that they have no plans to accommodate other group sizes in any way.

Yeah, I forgot to acknowledge that the answer probably would have been similar either way. The odds are pretty slim that it would have changed the answer that much if the question had been understood properly. The miscommunication in that exchange just kind of stuck out at me.

Also, it looks like collections will get an overhaul that includes non-CM items/armor.

The question was if there are any plans to increase personal cargo space or legacy storage. The person who asked this said their cargo space and legacy storage is getting cluttered with all the different armor sets they earned in all the different missions and Ben hinted at Collections getting an overhaul that may solve that particular issue.

A few things I am interested in knowing…

1.) Since there is a time jump, will you be locked out of daily areas like Yavin, Ziost, etc.?

2) They stated that your character’s significant other will be aware of any hanky panky you engaged in with Theron or Lana. Will that mean a auto fail with that romance line with your original squeeze? I was curious to see the romantic line with the two but would not have done it if I knew they would retroactively apply a consequence to it.

3). I’ve heard that you will be able to “choose” your companions from both the old and new cast. How will that work? Would be cool if you maxed out a companion affection they could be shared across all toons within that faction.

As you play through the story you will run into your old companions and based on the things you said and done up until that point is if they will join you or not.

Rofl “I was curious to see the romantic line…”

You mean you figured you could cheat on your current companion and then be LOL haven’t talked to that bitch in years.

You cheated bro, deal with it, she is gonna dump your ass or hook up with a brotha while you are in carbonite

No your companions will only be aware of who you try to romance with in the expansion so as soon as the expansion starts and if you try to hook up with either they are going to know about it and bring it up at a later date.

Given how they’re currently phrasing things, it sounds like you are locked out of Class stories and Companion quests once you enter the expansion, but not daily areas or world arcs. So you wouldn’t be able to do the Yavin IV quest chain (because it counts as the class story), but you could do the dailies there, if you’ve unlocked them.

Some Q/A I got done, sorry not true English speaker. I’m not sure which BW employee I talking to

1) New Fleet where the Imps / Pubs actually can talk and interact.
-Yes, similar to Ziost but imagine it being the “new” hub of the expansion. It is close to the size of the current fleets, main level

2) Companion armor currently equipped?
-Don’t worry we will tell everyone beforehand what to do

3) What about GSF?
-Will reveal soon

4) What about lvl 50 space missions?
-He smiled and then said, “Don’t worry, we have something up sleeve for that”

Thx and sorry about english

When you enter the expansion you lose all your companions, which I assume means everything they have equipped.

From what I’ve read/heard, Comps will no longer use gear and will adapt to YOUR level instead. No idea what happens to their current gear tho… I have 10+ Yavin legacy sets and each can be sold for 40k…

That actually sounds like a good idea, I guess. But yeah what happens to the gear? I guess it falls into your bag and your mailbox?

“What about lvl 50 space missions? He smiled and then said, “Don’t worry, we have something up sleeve for that”

:O

Q/A from 7th August, raw otuput from OneNote, will fix it later

How long
will Seaosn 2 of KotFE be?

Not willing to answer, it might, and it might not

New stuff
for Starfighter?

Backus loves GSF.

Not everything about KotFE has been announced

Would love to do a lot of stuff with GSF

Come to talk later when head of Marketing is not around

Differnet
class content?

One story, but with differences based on classes, some classes my
run into something other will not

Will
KOTFE bring graphical update?

All new contnet has better graphics, not improving engine

New PvP
maps?

Point of 3.3 was to fix population of PvP

Constantly prototyping new WZs internally

Nothing to announce on timing, but always working on new stuff

Same goes for Ops and FPs

More
Seeker and Macrobinocular stuff?

Story would be spoiler

Original quests were tied to Dread Masters

More stuff “might” happen

Guild
transfers?

Working on a stuff that might make it easier for guilds to move (not
losing ship, decos, etc)

Cross
server?

Not ignoring the issue, something awesome in the works

DX12/x64
version of client

Have discussed it, no decision so far

Goal is to allow more people to play regardless of hardware

Where are
Republic characters in trailers

Musco killed them all, because Charles likes them 🙂

There is a lot more of the expansions that hasn’t been shown yet

Nobody is better than Ky Zyken 🙂

Will
there be 50-55 modes for Operations

We are in for a treat

Level-syncing, whatever level operation opened at, it will sync you
to minumum level it originally existed

Or maybe boost people to highest level player? Not sure…

Some flashpoints are important to the story, and have been given
SOLO modes

More
Strognholds?

Come talk to us later

More OPS?

Not this year, because shitload of work

Will
Operation gear tiers be removed?

Enitre game reitemized, changed almost every quest

Will
bonus bosses in Ops scaled?

If Operation is scaled, so will the bosses

Does /bug
report location?

Yes

When will
mercs get a PvP boost?

Changes are coming

the answers and “hype” of this expansion is just so disappointing.

i get it, if this is still your game, youre happy that you get to stay sucked into the Story Machine with new stuff… but my god… after not playing this game for about 2 months now (after playing a LOT of both PVP and progression raiding since launch) – coming back to read up on what’s ‘going on’ after playing other games – this just reeks of a low budget game under the umbrella of high budget EA and supposedly “awesome” bioware.

it was already running on fumes during the Dread ops debacle, then bring forth the SoR rush job, and pulling a 180 into trying to be Telltale the episodic star wars MMO.

just too much missing, too slow, disjointed, empty/bankrupt of vision to make a “great” game… same old shitty answers…stringing people along with an underwhelming product.

gg

Weren’t they going to show footage from ch1 aswell this evening, were they? No footage yet or we’ll have to wait for something official/livestream they’re going to do for the next cantina that won’t take place?

That one is planned instead of SDCC Cantina. This event was more about meeting with

Darin de Paul (Valkorion), who really amazing person, and classical Q&A/meet and greet with staff

“If you arrive in the new expansion, there will be a double warning that you cannot go back and finish any of your quests which are still open ! Especially class quests !”

Thank God. No more Ilum and Makeb quests filling up my mission log.

It states that you won’tbe able to finish them. Not that they will automatically be removed from mission log 🙂

Will KOTFE bring graphical update?
*All new content has better graphics, not improving engine

There you go 😀
This engine will die along with game in few years because once some new MMO’s will start to use DX12 effectively you really cant look outdated old graphics long especially if it still has in year 2015 performance issues to even use chat bubble or massive scale open pvp.

Sad but this game will focus story arcs in future and some new ops maybe 1-2 in a year.

The big question will be how many current subscribers will agree to keep throwing in money for mostly story content and fluff that is CM.

Ultima Online is 20 years old and still going, though it did get an engine upgrade a decade or so back.

I’ll alway continue to pay money for this game. Story is what’s Most important to me. I love raiding and 6x out of 10 I love pvp but story is what keeps me interested. Otherwise I’d by on ebay or amazon the discs to swg and play an u later for that.

Story is what keeps game interesting. While no new ops at start of expansion is a shame it’s not end of world. Not like they will do a lotro and not release 1 new raid for 4 years. I myself love EV KP and EC.and cannot wait to replay them. Much more intestine that sv and df and dp.

They shouldn’t have bothered to ask that as they knew the answer was no because improving the game engine would cost a ton of money.

It’s really sad that I can run FF14 at max settings at 60 FPS without the frame rate dropping below 40 during a raid, and yet the second I step into a warzone or operation, I drop to 10 FPS or worse.

It’s an outrage. As far as I am concerned, I pray that Disney put in a “you are ruining the Star Wars name with this shitty product” clause in the 10 year development contract that they BLESSED EA with. I cant believe that they have been allowed to get away with pushing this shit for almost 4 years now. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

Q: No new operations, how do you see that going in the future?
A: We are scaling all the FPs/OPs to max level. Some story important flashpoints turned into solo mode. Our goal is to make all flashpoints/operations relevant no matter the level. So even when we add in more levels later, they will always be relevant. By doing this rescaling now, we are paving the road to add future ops/flashpoints.

See the problem with that is…
A. This is an MMO not a single player game.
B. No raiders will be left when you actually do “add future ops/flashpoints” a year from now.
C. No one cares about flashpoints.

The model they are moving towards is sub for a month, finish new content, come back when we have new stuff in a year…. that’s all well and good except for the fact that those types of players aren’t the ones that keep this game paid for. Once they finish the very little single player content you release, they will unsub and move on to another game. Meanwhile the people that use to keep the game going during those times, the raiders, are all gone because they haven’t had new content for almost a year now and got tired of doing the exact same op over and over and over and over and over…. The New operations aren’t even going to have new mechanics!!! How on earth do you think hardcore raiders will stick around to run stuff they have grinded endlessly for the past 3 years….. I hope they enjoy getting back to Biowares roots of being a solo player loar filled story… because it’s going to kill this game.

While I think you are right to some extent, hardcore raiders are not a large enough number to even worry about. However, raiders in general are a fairly large group and will have a problem with it because old content is old no matter what level you put on it. There has to be new end game group content once story is completed and BW is going about it that is a manner that isn’t interesting at all if you have been playing any end game group content at all for the past couple years. I’m not looking forward to end game and that ultimately is what holds me in the game.

The only thing that kills an mmo, is contracts. This game dies when, and only when, there is another star wars mmo to take its place, and the contract is pulled. Raiders could all quit, pvpers could all go play LoL, roleplayers like myself could all take a hike, but so long as there are enough zealots to stay profitable, this beast remains unkillable until its replacement heralds its birth and its clarion call causes the servers to shudder, spark and finally turn off.
I wish I had a dollar for every “This is going to kill the game” post. I could quit my job.

Must be kind of a “She can’t dump me, I dumped her first!” kind of situation where so many raiders quit the game within a month or 2 of the last 2 ops dropping due to their terrible quality after waiting 14 months between new ops
So now they dont give a crap about raiders it seems.

Other than the absolute addicts who will play regardless. raiders are always the ones most consistently online and playing. I am one of those absolute addicts and the only fun I have anymore is leveling new toons, and the joy of that will soon be rendered null with pay-leveling. I love story as much as the next guy but it gets old really damn fast without something consistent to do with your friends.

I dont like the downscaling for the ops either. So when I play ravagers,with 2000 bonus damage, i will be scaled down to say 1600 for df and 1200 for EC? Sigh.

I understand it is quicker and easier to scale down the player than the scale up the bosses and mechanics, it just feels so WRONG.

We will have new level 65 gear and no new ops to do, and the only content we will be able to fully utilize our shiny new 65 gear in is the story content we’ve already cleared. I would rather 4 man the old ops ROFL stomp style than keep re-rolling them in gear always at a similiar level but whacked hard with a nerf bat.

I would much rather have them develop a template for ops that allows them to be easily upscaled with level increases, but with what the nitwits on the combat team have done to the game over the last year I should probably be afraid of getting what i’d wished for.

I mean the new ops would just be another re-hash of 9 million circles on the ground, massive AOE healing, and exploding things randomly targeting people, sure fire melee killer mech in nearly every fight, and a pug killer boss 2 or 3 fights in.

Old school reliable mechanics like interrupts and cleanses went out the window thanks to the pvp nerf bat to make healers harder to kill in pvp. Thanks PVP for all the lovely circles!

“We are in for a treat. Level-syncing, whatever level operation opened at, it will sync you to minumum level it originally existed. Or maybe boost people to highest level player? Not sure…”

Seems to me that they haven’t ironed out specifics on this yet. But I haven’t heard anything that says gear will be irrelevant in the syncing process. What if for EV/KP, if you have 198 gear you are sync’ed to 140, 192->136, 186->126 (or vice versa, tune the bosses for 192 gear etc.). If that is the case, being in updated gear is still very important.

As far as scaling down, so long as it is relative it doesn’t really matter. Same as when they scaled numbers in 3.0, and how various other games (like WoW) scaled down hp/dps numbers after a bit. 5k dps on a 500k target is the same as 2.5k dps on a 250k target.

If they do make it like ‘everyone entering EV has 18k hp and 1k dps regardless of gear’, that is a problem. But I doubt they would take such a stupid approach, and there is no indication of that either.

Yeah, they were not really going into the specifics of how it will work (or I didn’t hear it), but they said it will work like an inverted bolster for high level people, just not saying how much

EA’s answer to game development: weekly cartel market sales… Just sell new skins and pass it off as new content. So far it seems to be an effective business model. After all re skinning game content is much more cost effective than actually developing a game.

We stood up in a group and talked to Ben Scott. Not sure whether this was mentioned before, but he was asked whether the collection will get a search function. His answer was that he is not allowed to answer this now, but there will be changes. He hinted to the collection when getting asked for more cargo bay spaces.
In addition he said that you will be asked twice before starting the KotFE quest. Every unfinished class story, companion story and the other storylike quest lines (like Rishi/Yavin, Ziost) will disappear and cannot be finished anymore. Nevertheless he confirmed that you will still have access to all planets you could visit before as well as the fleet. The known planets will look as they ever did.

hi!
Any idea if the unfinished class story & the companions you don’t have yet aren’t obtainable when starting the new expansion??
so for example – your class story is stuck at balmorra and you have just 1 companion – you don’t get the rest (4) as soon as you start with KotFE?

He did not specify anything, therefore I cannot tell…but he suggested to use the free level 60 char, to check out the new content first.

Supposedly the warning you get when starting KotFE will detail all the things you will be unable to do/finish when you move forward from that point.

He said yesterday that it’s pretty much going to be a sharp cut-off for any story missions related to class/character/companion/expansion story. So it’s very likely that you won’t be able to go back and do that.

Since it seems that we end up without companions, anyway, having to re-recruit them and all that ME2-jazz, I could imagine that it doesn’t matter if you recruited them originally or not. If there’s one you haven’t recruited yet, the game will probably assume the default story values that also apply to premade level 60 characters and you will still be able to recruit a full crew, just like premade level 60s.

FYI Grmitooth (the rancor in the cage on Makeb) is killable. It’s a bit tricky but you have to climb about halfway up the cage and then log out of the game and back in, and if you do it right you will spawn inside the cage. He doesnt even attack but you can kill him. Accomplished with my operative by starting on the little ledge, rolling across up onto the cage and then rolling up a couple of levels. Logged out and then back in, spawned inside the cage.

The “kill it with fire” (kill 100 makrin while burning) is the one I can’t figure out.

Is there a specific spot or attack? I’ve tried with my pyro specced powertech (on big pond on frinn mesa) and no luck.

Lemme check my achievements at home tonight, I think I have a few kills on it, and it might refresh my noggin.

Maybe you have to kill Makrins which are hostile by nature? Like the ones on the mesa which is mostly a Heroic area and has the Mesa Devourer ‘dinosaurs’ on it. There’s a tunnel with hostile Makrin and a boss (and add) for the Monsters of Makeb achievement. Think it’s Telemur mesa.

I recall doing Grimtooth with my sniper. Not sure if it is possible without sniper/op rolling, but i assume force speed can probably get you far enough as well.

The trick is using /stuck repositioning. If you can get to just the right spot partway up the shield, /stuck will put you inside of the shield instead of outside. [Note: the game often does an auto- /stuck when it senses you are actually stuck, which should be triggering when you hit the shield, and is why many people might say they did it without /stuck, however, the auto- /stuck triggers the cooldown just as typing it would, so you can use the command to watch the timer before you try again]. There is a ledge behind the backside of the shield; you can go on there and roll off of it toward the shield.

I’ve killed him like that but the point is you have to glitch the game to do it. That shouldn’t be the case.

More OPS?
Not this year, because shitload of work
lol, well that is the most blunt confirmation we can get.

which is something they’ve been saying. thing is they’re not providing us with more then bug fixes after 4.0 launches until 2016 anyway so eh no biggy

And imo it is utter bullshit because in any MMO the main focus should be endgame stuff like OPS. They better start working hard and giving end game raiders something with 4.0, or else they will lose a shitload of subscribers. (If they havent already.)

Their focus IS endgame content – that’s what an expansion is for the most part. Endgame content doesn’t = Raids, it = Raids + PVP + new stories + quality of life improvements + bug fixes + new single player/small group content + achievements (if that’s your thing) etc…

From what we’ve heard of this expansion so far we’re getting shit loads of most of the rest. Even including Ops to some degree: I’m VERY much looking forward to those old Ops no longer being virtually irrelevant, I have fond memories of them all that I’d like to re-live without feeling as though I’m playing through DK/Coruscant quests on a level 60 toon. New Ops ARE undoubtedly a lot of work, and if we’d have to sacrifice any of the stuff we’ve been told is coming to allow for one, I don’t want it. I’m perfectly happy to wait a while before I see a new one.

I may have used the wrong term, but when we talk about endgame I think about OPs and PvP (and perhaps level 65 FPs). But anyhow, if you are perfectly happy with having singleplayer story content, you may want to play a singleplayer game. SWTOR is a multiplayer game and should focus their content on it. If they didnt want to do this, they should have considered making it a singleplayer (perhaps with Co-op) game instead of a RPGMMO. The way they are doing it now they will lose a lot of their endgame players and with that, a shitload of subscription money.

Great, I replied a shitload of text but apparantly it is not submitted. So I’ll shorten it down: SWTOR is a MMO. They should prioritise multiplayer content above singleplayer content. I don’t think anyone would mind singleplayer content, as long as they keep releasing multiplayer content. The group of raiders and PvPers is probably the biggest group of subscribers. I don’t think they can let this group down like this, and I think this will result in a lot of unsubscriptions.

First they NEED a shitload of subscribers….and that ain’t gonna happen till they fix or rebuild the engine.

Worried about how many friends will leave without new ops, worried for myself because I love exploring old ops solo and duo, being able to take the time to look around etc, farm for old treasure without needing to roll, setting a goal to obtain object X and going after it without watching some random who I’ve never met run off with it because RNG(I’m greedy, but at least self aware). But I am excited for constant story updates. Makes me nervous for the new expansion. I seriously feel for the folks panicing about the new ops, I totally get it. I hope most of you stick it out. If anything, it gives me a chance to explore something else, I’ve always wanted to just sort of check out ESO, no interest in dedicated play, but I’d like to at least see it.

This post put a smile on my face 🙂 I hope your friends stick around, and that you enjoy the expansion

So, what you do is have a friend join group, convert to ops, then have them tab out and close the game from the desktop. You can now go into whatever op you like on your own and explore to your hearts content.

LOL no engine update. I guess topics like “can my BRAND NEW COMPUTER run this game?” is not enough to convince them that updating graphics just isn’t always the best alternative.

Such questions have become all too common on the forums post-3.0 and beyond.

They won’t update the engine for as long as they can because they want the game to be “Accessible to the most amount of people possible.” Updating an engine means raising base requirements, if you want there to be any significant boosts at all. I do wish they would update the engine, but I don’t see it happening any time soon

Updating an engine is almost like doing an entire new game. It would be very time and money consuming.

And Bioware doesn’t have the skill to pull that off.

The KOFTE reboot would be the perfect time for a new engine, because if everything new runs on a working engine, and you can’t do most the old content, they don’t have to transfer old content on a new engine.

Ok, it would be still much work. But the engine is this games biggest problem. The horrible engine is the main reason why most gamers laugh about SWTOR and don’t play it.

Was confirmed again that while they would like to do more pvp and gsf content only 2% of the player base actually play these game types. While 80% play the story content so as a business model that is where they are focusing their efforts. Also spoke to the valkorion voice actor to ask if he had been signed to do the next season. He couldn’t confirm but gave a wink and smile

I do not recall seeing anywhere whatsoever that only 2% play PVP/GSF. Care to provide proof of such a laughable claim?

The only stat pvp wise I saw relating to the player base is that only 2% of the player base has Dark Reaver set (max PVP gear) hence why they decided to lower the cost of acquiring pvp gear so everyone has a chance to be pimped out in Dark Reaver now (http://www.swtor.com/blog/pvp-economy-and-ranked-rewards-restructure-game-update-3.3).

So yeah that source link of yours please? 🙂

“confirmed again” Where exactly is this confirmed? I could say that only 2% of the player base actually plays nightmare mode ops, and because I don’t have a source that must mean I’m right. As somebody said below me, the “2%” stat comes from GROUND PVP gear. That has nothing to do with GSF, at all. Ever. So don’t bash a game type you know nothing about.

someone should have asked about having like a Faction chat or something so everyone playing rebel or imp will see the chat, making it easier to form groups for things such as ops/etc. right now you just have to get lucky enough to find people in certain locations like fleet.

What server are you on? Harbinger and Jedi Covenant both have faction-wide channels for players looking for ops (opschan, endgame, allies, hub, etc.). It isn’t as useful as spamming gen chat on fleet, but many players do watch those channels.

You normally get invited to those channels when other people in pugs with you see you are ready. Doesn’t hurt to ask around on your server though.

I would play more gaf/ wz if they balance it or add class limit per match. Don’t like matches against 7 sorcs/ sages or in gsf against 7-8 gunships. Those dickheads from BW should think about that instead of adding fucking togrutas.

no new class story unless Swtor beats wow in subs,Voss no playable species because it doesn’t fit story. now that fp scale to level rewards also scale to level

You’ll probably have to do some roleplaying… pick which character you want to be frozen in carbonite and then figure out the story of the others… that’s what i’m doing anyway

There arent 8 heroes anymore. there is only 1, the outlander. The expansion is basically a new game/story. Everything before the expansion basically no longer exists, in terms of story of course.

i can solo the seekerdroid heroic, but find 4 people to finish the 2nd microbinoculars heroic is really hard in any server (no one cares about it anymore)

If you arrive in the new expansion, there will be a double warning that you cannot go back and finish any of your quests which are still open ! Especially class quests !
So about this…does that mean those unfinished quests will be stuck in our mission log forever being in the way or will they then also disappear from the mission log? I hope the latter.

They will be wiped from your mission log. No point leaving them there if you can’t do them is there 😛

it just means you cant do them anymore if you get into kotfe better complete them now then letting them sit in your questlog, they wont be removed you just cant do them anymore if you quest in kotfe

“In a small group we talked to one of the designers (sorry I forgot his name) about Grimtooth, the Rancor of Makeb. The conclusion there is, that if there is an Legacy achievement, then it must be doable, and therefore he will look into it.”

It’s been broken since Makeb launched over two years ago. If we’re to believe they play their own game as they say they do, there would be multiple people at BW well aware of that bug for quite some time now. Obviously it’s not anywhere near the top of their bug fix list, if such a thing exists. That said, you’ve always been able to cheese it if you really want the achievement, just do a search. What you could have asked was about the broken achievement for killing Makrins with fire, though that too has been brought up numerous times I’m sure.

Is he the rancor in the large circular cage? There used to be ( not sure if it still exists) a bug where you could jump into the cage and kill him. I’m pretty sure i have the achievement for it

Yes, that’s the rancor in the cage. You can also jump off a nearby cliff and get your companion stuck in there, and your companion will kill him (slowly).

You can kill him too if you have a partner push you back, and you walk on top of the cage and eventually glitch in there. If someone has a pull on top of the cage they can get the person doing the pushback in there too.
(easiest to be only the cliff, jumping, then have a merc or a sniper do their knockback while dueling when the other player reaches the highest point of the jump, that should get the player to the top of the cage). Then have a sorc or a assassin pull the pusher (requiring another duel if you use an assassin)
It’s a bit faster to kill him yourself rather than have a comp do it.

Burning Makrin…

Why don’t they just kick undoable Achievements ot of the Achievement System?

Most of them nobody achieved them. So it’s no problem to remove them.
If they can be done with some tricks, give the few people who done them 5-25 CC for the Achievement and remove it.

It’s easy to handle this, even if they don’t give a f… about old content like this.

I would love for them to remove achievements that can’t be completed because of bugs and then hopefully reintroduce them later when they work. But I would be very surprised to see that addressed.

Do you always get this salty reading a comment section that you feel compelled to poorly attempt to insult people?

after watching blizzard talk about their new expansion and how much they let us see of it and how much they talked about it this it just feels wierd comming back to swtor.
Feels like all they say are “he is not allowed to answer this now” or “cant spoil anything” or “cant talk about it at this time”.

That’s pretty much their only selling point at this moment is the story, so if they spoil it or any of it gets leaked gg lol.

I’d have thought they could have at least told us technical details. People are getting pretty worked up about crafting, and it wouldn’t be spoiling anything for them to just explain the new system.

That they don’t want to say just makes me wonder if they even know yet.

As atari360 said above, we’re just over 2 months away from launch of early access. If they don’t have it at the very least fully planned out and mostly coded by now we’re in for serious trouble. Actually, I expect we’re in for trouble in any case. It will be rushed and unpolished as usual, but at least it won’t come as any surprise, at least not to me. Here’s hoping it somewhat kinda works and doesn’t suck!

Its all marketing, they know exactly what they are doing, but marketing has a cadence for when they release everything to increase the overall sales. My guess is that they want to give us bits at a time.

Worse than EA?
Nope.

Worse than a beta game engine raped by every workaround a unskilled programmer can do?
Nope!

Adding on the Crosserver issue, I poked a little bit around the different Devs and basicly the answer was, that they are currently working on something that is not classic crosserver and not classic server merge and not NPC filling empty slots in queing. On a second issue I can advise people to be patient, they are always tight lipped about actual content since Makeb. KoTFE will be out in about 2 months, so you can basicly expect more details to fly out after gamescom.

But why not tell us? As long as they don’t spoil the story what is the harm in telling us what is going to happen with companions, crafting, dailes areas, etc. With them being so tight lipped about it, it makes me think they still don’t really know much (i.e. if it will work without massive bugs). As much as they are changing in the game it should be tested constantly for a month before making it going live.

Because if you promise players a thing, and you cant deliver, they start calling you Biofail and addressing open letters to you on forum you don’t own saying the game is dying. It sucks, I’d love more info, but, I understand why we are never going to get it ever again.

You misunderstand. It’s not hard to say…. “Companions will no longer do crafting for you” not ” We will tell you about it later” or “Companions will be auto leveled with your charterer they won’t need any gear” not “We will tell you later about it”

It’s not like it’s 8-10 months away… it’s just over 60 days away. They need to test it so it’s not broken and stays broken for weeks after launch (Coritanni and the Ravagers exploit anyone?). One week early for the paid subscribers is NOT enough time to test stuff.

But, if you say “Companions will no longer do crafting” and something goes wrong, and you have to put it off till later, everyone loses their shit because they sold all their companion gifts. And if you say “Companions wont need gear” but the system is choppy, or maybe the math on it doesnt work and they cut it, everyone is going to rage like a lunatic because they sold their companions gear to vendors. So….you dont promise things you cant 100% promise, otherwise Rowdy Roddy Piper will yell at you, cats and dogs will get along, mass hysteria….end of the world stuff.

Testing it as they might, if they promise something and during one of the final tests they discover something that results in an exploit, they’ll have to end up postponing it anyway. And with our so very respectable and patient community (/sarcasm), it’s quite understandable they’d rather just say nothing.

Until stuff is 100% worked out internally, they gain nothing from telling people. And, normally when you tell people what you have planned, you are almost always setting yourself up for failure.

This forcing consequences is nonsense though. A player should be able to get 100% max “Ultimate Hero” status if they work hard enough at it. Like Mass Effect 2’s ending where you could have everyone survive if you worked at it.

Because of players like you we couldn’t have nice things before. So go back to your rainbow world in 3….2….1 GO.

I’m wondering what these crafting changes are? It would be nice to know. Am I wasting my time using my resources to R.E. better schematics at this point? I can see some real practical reasons to be forthcoming about these changes asap, Bioware. And what about companion affection? Is that going to be obsolete in a couple of months also? I would honestly like to know if I’m wasting my time at this point. Wouldn’t you?

I would think at the very least, they’re going to detach companions from questing. Given that they used to be killable in early versions of the beta (and you can see in some class quests very clear points where they could have died), but people didn’t like the permanence of it, and then there was the fact that they’d be at a disadvantage if they could only have 3 companions to craft at level 50 instead of 5.

I certainly hope that’s all it is. I have spent many, many hours,(days,) gathering mats and working on superior schematics to generate in-game currency. I would hate to see it all for not.

I would love to see killable companions (die, Quinn, die!).
But they could not allow that, because it might take an essential companion role out of the mix (in Quinn’s case, your only healer).
So, given that they stated that every companion would be able to fill any role (probably via different stances), this would eliminate a significant obstacle to killable companions.

My guess is they will introduce a crafting terminal. This terminal would have a number of slots available to craft. This number would increase at the same rate as the number of companions that could be sent out. For example, at level 10, I could send out 1 companion, and at level 50, I could send 5.

“Am I wasting my time using my resources to R.E. better schematics at this point?”

Well, yes, because when 4.0 hits anything you can currently RE will be obsolete, regardless of how they change crafting.

It’s not ever obsolete on the gtn, buddy. That is what I am worried about. Crafting is the way I make in-game credits and avoid having to spend real money I the things I want for my toon.

Will KOTFE bring graphical update?
All new content has better graphics, not improving engine

What he really ment to say is we know the engine is bad we not gona improve/optimise ,but we will make things worse

I’m sorry but i disagree. Its 2015. Games should look good and perform well at the same time. This games overall performance is shit. And even on ultra settings, it’s far from the best looking game.

I’m not going to assume you think this way, but many people do want videogames to look like real stuff, just like that newest Call of Duty and so many other games out there. I personally prefer videogames to look like videogames instead of movies, and therefore I like this game’s graphics. My two cents.

They initially designed the game to have a “wide audience,” they will NEVER make the graphics look real as fuck because it would tax so many people’s machines.

Most people would just quit rather than going to buy a new computer for a game they already play. Just think about it.

I am satisfied with the graphics.

I am no where near satisfied with the games optimization and performance.

But the graphics are decent for an MMO. And I’m not so sure about the performance being that bad, I am getting 60-100FPS on my GTX 660 and AMD 6650, a graphics card and CPU which I’ve been using for 1-2 years and I consider to be of mediocre standard.

MANY people have FPS issues in this game, despite good hardware. Especially in WZ’s and Raids. I personally am lucky to get 20 fps in WZ’s, and thats with bitraider uninstalled, and swtorunleashed being used. The weird thing is that it doesn’t matter what graphics settings I use. Ultra or very low, FPS is the same. If I’m alone in my stronghold or alone on a planet (sometimes) i get good FPS, but who wants to be alone while playing a MMO? There are literally thousands of forum posts about bad performance from a wide range of players with a wide range of hardware. Bad engine with sloppy code does not make for a good gaming experience. If you get that many frames in WZ’s and Raids, you are one of the lucky few.

#1 – Training Dummy Decorations are still WIP. No ETA.
#2 – PVP Nexu Mount was not given out randomly, but to those players that performed best in Ranked PVP AND/OR UNRANKED PVP.
#3 – It’s a Bug that not all decorations can be donated to the guild (i.e. Trophy – Lance Squadron Command Unit) Looking into it.

even better
DX12/x64 version of client
Have discussed it, no decision so far. Goal is to allow more people to play regardless of hardware

ONly way more people gona be able to play reguadless of hardware is if the address the engine issue to begin with

IKR,

Its like they fail to realize that many people DONT play this game BECAUSE of the shitty engine and its shitty performance.

They are also planning to do a cantina in the UK next year for Star Wars celebration as its being held in London

I hope they start making cool lightsabers again. The ones they’re coming out with now look like they’ve been put together with some scrap parts from a junkyard… The ones from launch were fantastic.

Me too, I am well tired of the increasingly gigantic Cartel sabers. All my saber-wielders except one use the old school sabers: they’re sized correctly, and have a lot more charm to them.

When you’re right, you’re right dude, I agree with everything. Though I would add: enough of those black core crystals, if only we got that same ridiculously wide array of colours with white cores, I’d be the happiest guy ever.

I really wonder why they have these cantina events….overall all we get is cryptic responses to valid questions and or a “cant tell you yet….But soon™”. Its like watching a white house press conference….

It’s worse than that because they invariably get asked the same questions at every event and we get the same non-answers. Cantinas are nice for the couple hundred people that get to go to them, but they’re an incredibly poor use of apparently scarce resources by Bioware. They don’t gin up interest in the game outside of those already playing it and rarely provide any significant insight into upcoming content.

I’d rather they regularly push website updates with useful information (sorry, story blogs, you don’t count) and spend the Cantina budget on internet marketing to get new people playing. But who am I?

tHIS JAmes ohlen guy sucks ass, Fucking main hero against a great evil? My characters are heroes of evil we are the darkside, and they arnt going to support our darkside wants and just be fucking the good guys wins which is why we wont have any darkside choices here! those bastards

Anyone catch James Ohlens bullshit of a backtrack when he realized he’d left out the people who’ve paid him money for god knows how long?

“So, with KotFE we wanted to make sure that people who were returning to the game, or people who had never tried out the game, were able to jump right in. So– But at the same time, we don’t want our existing fans to feel like they’re being left out. So, the Story revolves around the Outlander, who is a Veteran of the wars from the main game,….”

What an absolute fucking joke this expansion has become. The more info that is released the worse it sounds. Not to mention how nuclear the forums go.

I think this just all but confirms they want to try to make a single player RPG with a $15 a month subscription. Granted, you can not sub for 6 months and sub one month to get all the “story” you want, but they are betting on people subbing and forgetting to unsub (i.e. the gym membership analogy).

I think this just all but confirms they want to try to make a single
player RPG with a $15 a month subscription. Granted, you can not sub
for 6 months and sub one month to get all the “story” you want, but they
are betting on people subbing and forgetting to unsub (i.e. the gym
membership analogy).

I miss the days of Friday reveals, patiently waiting and F5ing the homepage to see what new thing they had to show.

I have been here a long time though, things were always better back then 😉

Kind of creepy and sad how they keep trying to cash in on Bioware branding repeating and repeating “bioware storytelling” when all the people who were the heart of the bioware team that made this game and KOTOR are long long gone and have been replaced by EA cash machine cronies.

So now they are abandoning the story arc started by the original developers of this game, the crafting system, companions, and downscaling all the flashpoints and operations so we get our gear nerfed all to hell to play old content as some sort of “challenge”. They’ve already ditched the orginal skill trees and mangled the combat mechanics (goodbye intterupts and cleanses). They might as well abandon the bioware name too because that’s all it is today, just a brand for EA to sell half finished product with.

This new story better be awfully damn good because they are throwing all fo their eggs into that basket. Not liking what I hear so far. But at least is isnt freaking pirates again ugh.

it wont be good, they said its a love letter to ME and kotor players in otherwords they are doing the goodguys win and forcing us all to be goodguys by making no matter if we kneel to the emperor or not we wont be able to join him and be evil with him instead they are doing this fucking good shit jedi sith love fest and its fucking sickening, 90 percent of the game playerbase to be honest bought it because it was one of the only games that had sith options that actually had story to it not just cruel choices on a good side but now they fucked us!

Nice to see someone ‘speaking up’ for 90% of us players.
Now instead of crying that the sky is falling in, how about we wait for more information before saying they have fucked us eh?

7th August
Michael Backus
Q: As the Combat Team is one of the many that report everything to you, do you have any Information on the Madness Sorc | Balance Sage’s ‘broken’ Wrath Proc and the overall Force Management.
A: I think we fixed that one with 3.3 (Wrath), but if it wasn’t patched I’ll definitely take care of it. So if it’ll be patched with the coming Patch you’ll know it’s because of you.

“If you arrive in the new expansion, there will be a double warning that you cannot go back and finish any of your quests which are still open ! Especially class quests !”
does this count toward quest like seeker droid or the mount quests?

So… like everytime no information at all.
“Something awesome is comming. But won’t tell you what it is. Not even a hint!”

Why are they at the Gamescom? They have never been good in promoting this game.
They don’t even try to become better.
Always the same nonsense and avoiding of everything useful they could do.
Just stay at home BioWare! Saves a lot of money.

i know what you mean. teasing about how the original core game would have allowed you to completely control your ship, and also control AT-AT walkers, but they decided not to put it in there for some unknown reason. why even mention something that ground breaking, when they have no intention on putting it in there? its insane.

i guess the real reason is they want to build hype. more hype means more possible returning subscribers.

I’ll mind trick myself that it said something completely different!

Thanks for all the good work here, 1 little thing can’t undo what you do 🙂

Doesn’t it just mean all armour/mods/barrels/hilts will have a single main stat name instead of the current 4? The way I see it it’s only streamlining really.

It also makes it easier for new players to understand.

I can’t remember how many times I’ve seen threads about “noob players using willpower on their Smugger”.

If they are hoping for an influx of new blood then maybe they see it as a chance to avoid past errors.

So? That’s what MMOs have to do in order to stay alive. People don’t stick with MMOs because they become more complicated and the average persion isn’t looking to jump into a super complex MMO either.

Seriously, what does it matter, especially when the game is becoming more and more single player focused.

It’s a change for the better. You don’t like it, so what? It doesn’t negatively impact you in any way.

This game is NOT that complex. You don’t have to do your own dodge. It’s auto-targets. You can be half asleep and play this game.

And I have 2 problems with it. If they make things too easy, then I will not be challenged. And if there is no challenge what is the sense in playing? Also, theoretically you are “supposed” to sub for $15 a month for story content only? Would you pay $15 a month to play Witcher 3? I know, I know, you can sub once every 6 months and get all the content up to that point, but that’s not the way it’s “supposed” to work.

“If they make things too easy, then I will not be challenged. And if there is no challenge what is the sense in playing?”

I agree with you, but do you really want to find your challenge in *gearing* correctly? (Note that I do not say that optimizing your secondary stats for the last few % of DPS should be trivial.)

I actually would pay for The Witcher 3 subscription, because that game is simple amazing, arguable one of the best video game created, ever, and a price I payed for it was 40 (British pounds), for me it was easily worth five times more!…

Actually SWTOR like most MMOs is way more complex than it needs to be. The actual combat mechanics might not be complex, but having things like multiple types of currency, various types of rep, etc, further complicate the game more than they need to.

Removing stats like Strength, Willpower, etc, and replacing them with Mastery isn’t a big deal and actually makes the overall experience better. The only people who will really get worked up about this stuff are high level PVPers and Raiders, two audiences that they’re not trying to appeal to anymore.

Gear in general is such an outdated concept anyways. Why have stats tied to things like clothing or weapons? Why can’t a sword just be a sword with things like how hard you swing it (or stats) being relegated by your character and not what fancy hat they have on?

A lot of MMOs and RPGs are bogged down in traditional elements that are only there because that’s the way it’s always been. Terrible interfaces, several layer deep menus, having to constantly do inventory management, are all things that keep sticking around with lots of RPGs when we should be well past those things at this point.

“Gear in general is such an outdated concept anyways. Why have stats tied to things like clothing or weapons?”

Well, I personally don’t want to see a smuggler wearing a Sith robe just because there’s no difference in stats (and I’m obviously not talking about moddable gear, but the greens you get while leveling). It’s not such an “important” thing you might say, but in my opinion it really breaks the immersion.

You all have it backwards,
MMO’s should be simple and easy to play on the surface if a player wants to play casually and while learning to play, then as the player gets comfortable, they can move into the complexity of the systems. SWTOR has very little complexity as it is.

What is happening as of late is games in general are moving away from complexity in favor of simplicity to attract casuals, in the process they simplify the game to a point that makes it pointless.

Current generations are all about the “now” they don’t want to learn things, don’t want to work for things, they just want to win, now, at all costs, as soon as possible, then move on. The exact opposite of how an MMO should work.

In the case of SWTOR for mainstat, this change does change nothing overall, it’s not like the attributes meant much in general. Now if every stat had a purpose, ie strength helped with stockstrike (trooper), blaster whip(smuggler), lightsabre melee attacks (knights), then willpower helped resist force (all classes) or gave more force points/regen (force users) etc, aim helped all blaster attacks, and cunning..well cunning makes no sense as a stat…anyway, then changing stats would be very bad.

…

This. The stats are already mastery, they just have different names. They are all a general performance boost.

Its not like strength actually increases melee dps, aim increases ranged dps, willpower increases energy and cunning increases critical hits.

This game is too complex for you? LOL. What do you want a WIN buttion?
Most people enjoy a little complexity.

Artificial accomplishment is what sucks people into video games in general (and mmo’s in particular). Reputation, crafting, gear, achievements, difficulty, are what keep people coming back, and those things must be in a constant state of evolution to keep people interested.

Without them people will just get bored and leave. That is the gamble they are making here. This game is going to reduce itself to a couple of hours of new story once a month for new content for the forseeable future. And they are dumbing down the rest of the game. I’m sorry, but if you can’t figure out what stat your toon is supposed to use you should delete the game and grab a box of crayons.

Since we have tons of players that don’t understand that Nico is given in October or simply don’t want to read more than two lines of text, it is logical next step to make gearing more simple 😛

im sorry but if you or a new player has trouble understanding that when you create a new character of a class it gives you a descryption on what type of stat you need and if you dont even wanna read then that is fucking lazy of you and any new player that joins period

you even get GEAR rewarded from class story quest with big hints that strength is for jediknights/sith warriors and aim for troopers/bounty hunters

this change is probably the biggest dumbing down of swtor’s history period

and regarding nico ocarr that is just low IQ players not being able to read properly

Easy tiger, I’m only playing devils advocate!

This was my 1st MMO and I’ve been here since early access, and didn’t have a problem working out that I needed cunning for my smugg. When it came to secondary stats and gearing properly after Ilum, then I used the wealth of knowledge around guildies and the web to progress.
However not everyone is the same and this is after all a game, if a player wants to make things harder for themselves by not following the breadcrumbs that are laid out on the starter worlds then that is up to them. I work on the premise of if you don’t know ask, and if you aren’t prepared ask don’t complain that you don’t know.

I’d say that “the biggest dumbing down of swtor’s history period” is the addition of tactical FPs, where you don’t need to know rotations or kill orders, and in some instances not even stay out of stupid. That however allowed players to play parts of the game they may not have. Why should we dictate how people should play the game? If someone hasn’t learned what they need when coming into endgame, then if they aren’t prepared to listen and learn there is always your ignore list.

So long story short, making a single mainstat isn’t the worst thing to happen in SWTOR, and if it doesn’t affect how you personally gear or play then what is the issue?

so since they added spoilers in the Q&A doesn’t that take one of there only excuses to not give us more info on the expansion? So can we get some new info please 😛

sounds to me more like the devs allegedly simply confirmed that info already out there was indeed accurate

i think the bureau of research are pulling your leg. it just seems like something from an April fools post. it all sounds too fishy. removing primary stats, new stats ans skills, “(he smiled at me nodding)”<——-not at all suspicious, gear from your companions returning to you. there isn't enough room for all the gear that would return to you. the spoilers alone seem to raise alot of red flags.

seriously? were doomed. would have been nice to get the free roam space thing, but its never going to happen.

“there isn’t enough room for all the gear that would return to you.”

As if *that* was a problem. Don’t you think they would technically be able to give every char a free bank slot and fill the stuff in there?
Alternatively, they could send it to us by mail that doesn’t expire (would even make sense RP-wise if they added a farewell letter from the gone companion).

that actually sounds feasible, like how they would return some contents of your bank to you when you copy a toon over to the PTS. would be nice if they give us more storage space, both in the ships locker, and the characters bag.

No mainstat? Fuck why not just add panda’s and a robot to play the game for you.

Hey guys, wanna watch a multiplayer game commit suicide faster than going to Free to Play? Watch and learn come October.

the no mainstat means that rather then a armoring having +10 strength and +10 endurance, it’ll have +10 mastery and +10 endurance. if this is the case, not a bad thing honestly as the number of times I’ve seen newbie JKs with willpower lightsabers is kinda distressing

I can understand that but, in my opinion, knowing which stats you need and which ones you don’t is part of knowing the game’s very basics. If they keep dumbing down everything, we’ll end up running operations along with people who don’t even know a marauder can’t use a shield generator.

The problem is, your main stat was never useful for more than one class to begin with,

Strength is only good for warriors and knights for example. Replacing these with mastery only makes the whole looting better since there are no useless drops.

so mainstats are going away lame i though this was an mmo with alot of RPG element and having different stats is key part of RPG games in general dont these idiots understand this basic game design?

Well, main stats in SWTOR have always been fairly idiotic, especially considering the tech vs melee skills.

E.g.: Strength improves melee skills yet all “melee range” skills for IA/Smuggler/Trooper/BH are Tech skills rather than Melee, even actual Punch skills like the Scoundrels Sucker Punch. As much as logic is rarely a relevant factor in a fantasy game, I do think it’s bad design.

Unlike other games like LotrO (though even they have dumbed it down a lot), the main stats have pretty much zero functionality unless it’s the mainstat for your class, you never find yourself wanting any Cunning/Aim as a Jedi, not even from Datacrons despite being free stats.

oh 1 more thing if that mainstat going away change is happening better call this an mmorp as it wont be a RPG game anymore

yes, by reducing the focus on mindless stats and enhacing the focus on story and player choice, they are CLEARLY removing the RPG elements!

Agreed. The distinctions between primary stats in this game were completely pointless and arbitrary. They added no roleplaying or decision-making elements to the game whatsoever and nothing is lost by streamlining them into a single stat.

I might be complaining if the stat system in this game were more similar to KotoR or even the Neverwinter MMO but this is not the case at all.

Depends on your definition of RPG. There will be one less stat to differentiate between classes but there is a lot going on the story side where you play the role of your character. That’s the other main definition of RPG. So it really just depends on who you talk to.

This is all so they don’t have to balance classes anymore – all gear will become generic. So, everyone rolling on everything.

I don’t see how one of those spoilers is supposed to work. It doesn’t make sense to me for the story they have told so far.

it does once you figure all out. The only thing that might be in conflict is, if they decide that the Emperor never intended to destroy the galaxy, i would say Krannus a npc in the Jedi knight story on Belsavis, that if he succeeded in his plan. Galaxies (yes multiple) would be destroyed. So im hoping they stay with the plan they had in mind for Vitiate otherwise major inconsistent would occur

Just wonder how bad their subs are gonna drop. if this is real.

Toon stats changed.

Armor pieces and sets screwed.

Weapons screwed.

Not counting if the Armor or Weapons came from the Cartel Market bought by real money.

Wonder if BW/EA took lessons from Sony and SWG.

“Guys lets all panic and say the end times are coming before we have any solid information, no context, and before the expansion is even out!”

You also assume that your gear will not be as good as before. Did they say they are nerfing stats, or just changing them?

As i marinate in this i’ll give my $.02…

If ‘mastery’ comes to play crafting will change. I don’t quite see it collapsing crafting in general but will change.

Also if i’m running “hammer station” for the 2000th time i don’t have to yell at the sage that just ‘needed’ the “Aim” gear so he can give it to Qyzen (screw it i’m not tanking anymore)

I remember a shot where it looks like Kira, Doc and T7 take off in the Defender As i main a JK if they take off, this would bug me just a little since those are the 3 I grinded the most with the exception of Treek. In fact Kira is my favorite comp

Oh well let see where the game is headed…some thing may disappoint, some things may excite, and the end of the day I love Star Wars and this is the only game in town, no pun intended…

(and don’t start with Battlefront nonsense…that will get boring in 3 weeks.)

It might get boring in 3 weeks… but they think this easiest system will attract new players because of Episode 7… people will buy Battlefront way before they will pay for an MMO.

Am I the only one that saw “#2 – PVP Nexu Mount was not given out randomly, but to those players that performed best in Ranked PVP AND/OR UNRANKED PVP”? I have no words.

I recieved one with my operative I was using a lot those last weeks, only in unranked, I got a lot of kills with that char, (obviously because.. operative), was playing solo so the win rate must have been 50:50. Maybe they just gave it to people pvping a lot? Dunno.

once again they want to lie about it now… it actually make them look good in acknowledging they made a mistake so they will rectify it by giving the people that suppose to get the new mount as an exclusive will now get something new….

all the sudden it is intended…. shame on you BW.. falling back in old ways with, it was intended…smh

They didnt say it wasnt a mistake. They said it wasnt random. Random would mean that it could have been sent to anyone. Thats not the case. While it was still a glitch, there was “some sort of metric that the software recognized” in order to send out the rewards. The mount was INADVERTENTLY sent to some PvP’ers. NOT it was ACCIDENTALLY sent to some Players. There is a difference.

primary stats will be removed

What will happen with the stats I gained through Datacrons?

Will they all convert to “mastery”?

This is also the question I have. If they all go to mastery it will increase the amount of points going to your mastery drastically. It would then make datacrons a requirement for HM ops more than now. It would be wise then to talk about make datacron unlocks legacy wide. On the upside I think one reason they are doing this is to significantly reduce the amount of gear from the ops and commendation vendors, as well as simplifying crafting considerably. I do feel it takes some fluff away but the advantages of this are clear to me as well.

Is there something that Bioware can do to SWTOR without copying World of Warcraft? Seriously, I left WoW because of this kind of bull…

I still doubt that the two emperors are the same person. My guess is that the phrase quoted is out of context. In all the times I’ve been to the Cantina events and talked to Charles he has never spoiled the story and where things look like they are going. I’m guessing that the full conversation would be something along the lines of talking about potential threads if the two emperors being the same person was the case. It’s similar to when we talked about what could happen if Satele was killed or the potential plot of Theran being able to tap into a latent force power but only through the dark side of the force. Both ideas can lead somewhere but they aren’t fact, just speculation.

They are the same person. There are leaked audio files on YouTube from Chapter 1 of the new expansion where it flat out confirms that they are the same character.

they are the same person, leaked files suggest as much and now this confirmation.. but the only thing to read out of this is he said, “lets say that he’s the emperor” means to me. that he is the emperor but not his true body, he is the emperor as the voice is the emperor the child of the emperor can act as the emperor once the emperor decides to speak through them.

Just like the wrath is the emperors will, this man could easily be an extend of the emperor but the emperor him self is still hiding somewhere.

SPOILER from RISHI and potentially:

Lt Felix Iresso dies ‘you were the best I ever knew, goodbye, jedi’.

I was hoping to be reunited with my original companions and then have a few extra on top of that :(.

I like Lt Felix Iresso – you will be missed.

What I believe accually here, is hes saying good bye to you… cause remember, as far as anyone knows your Dead or MIA… this seems more like a vision of that coming to pass..

For me it looks like if they react to all the QQ of new Players who’re simply too dumb to understand the difference between the Main Stast.
It’ll be a: “You can be dumb as dogpoop and you won’t fail” game.
I’ll give it a try, but if it’s just a Noob prefab Game – then I’m gone.
All in all I’m not happy about all the giant BS BioWare did….

I think they will lose a huge player base – especially the old players:
Now let me barf around my house and I’ll see you in game.

Valkorian for Emperors voice maybe? Vitiate was always a Sith Pureblood. Or maybe he just possessed him.
Also, BRING BACK KEPHESS!

he was always pureblood yes but made me wonder why they change Voice Actor.. was it a decision at their end or did the original voice actor just stopped.. which would seem weird since he just recently did one…or more precise last year

I lived through the CU in SWG and then the dreaded NGE in SWG curious to see how these changes affect the game.

When 2.0 was coming, all I could think about was CU then NGE. I had to drop out shortly after the NGE but like you, this is raising hairs. Although I don’t find SWTOR to be that nigh perfect and beautiful game that SWG was pre-CU.

I don’t see this being anywhere near what the NGE was to SWG. CU? That did change combat a lot and I don’t really see that in swtor with these changes either.

Is there a chance that this can be sorted into “confirmed” and “rumoured” in that anything that can be seen said directly from a Bioware employee is confirmed and anything that was supposedly said by a Bioware employee on a user is rumoured? People seem to be taking this all verbatim yet some of it could be trolling unless I’m missing something?

I find it very suspicious looking and do not think this is true, ( aiming at the mainstat removal ), it’s pretty much basic knowledge of the game.. If it were to be true though, the whole GTN economy will crash. a lot of prices will drop badly, especially mainstat augments. Just don’t see it happening, honestly

i know what you mean. it all just seems fishy as hell. I’m waiting for the 26th for the live stream, i want to hear that from the devs before i make any judgements. it all looks to me rumored stuff, i haven’t found any actual quotes from the devs themselves. if anything, take it all with a grain of salt. a very small grain.

I dont want to believe it is true because it would be so f’n stupid, but sadly because of the amount of work they’d have to put into it, would be really hard to backtrack on.

I grab only the necessary datacron for each toon (IE skip aim and cunning for force user toons) and this would make me have to go back and farm them for most of my 34 level 60’s. Unless they figured out a way to make obtaining datacrons apply legacy wide which is highly unlikely (although would be most welcome).

And crafting would become insanely boring, especially cybertech, forget about making any GTN money off anything once all armorings, mods, barrels, hilts, earpieces, implants, mainstat augments are mastery and 4 listings get combined into 1 for hundreds of items.

Really really disappointed they would do this just because some people have problems with reading comprehension and need the game spoonfed to them.

i heard that basically, they’re changing it so all aim/cunning/willpower/strength will just be called mastery. if that’s the case, then its not really that big of an issue, apart from the datacrons and relics.

That is what he is upset about. It shrinks all the main stat items crafters make from 4 to 1 ratio. And the only reason to really do it is to dumb down the game for people that probably shouldn’t be playing the game.

I think they’sll just rename the stats.
Stregth will be lightsaber mastery, Willpower Force mastery and so on.

yeah, that’s what I’m thinking as well. it wont be as big of a thing as most people are making it out to be. and in a new post, devs are now thinking about legacy wide datacrons. sounds like a step in the right direction.

I would be interested to see how this works at go live. As in what will happen to all the GTN items listed? I would assume that many of the existing schematics will no longer exist meaning the crafted items from those schematics and listed on the GTN also don’t exist? It’s going to be a big mess as I see it. What would have been better is instead of making 1 stat to rule them all they kept the existing stats but never made any of them a main stat per se (no extra bonus based on class) and rejigged them to suit. Basically made more variety in choices with what they had rather than just removing it.

The variety of stats makes it interesting – the dumbing down trend from some other games is one reason I don’t play them anymore.

What they need to do is make the stat/item process more friendly – less logging back and forth between characters, tedious time in researching to get a better version and remove redundant recipes (ie enhancements of which I have seen 5 that are identical – waste of my money buying recipes and confusing when you look at the list).

Clean it up, don’t trash it.

The old enhancements have the same stats because they streamlined the game since launch, and instead of just removing enhancements that became redundant they just left them in the game. It’s not a big deal, considering none of the enhancements at endgame are copies. Just make sure you don’t waste your time learning the high endurance versions of enhancements and you’ll be square.

As for selling augments, you can just sell mastery augments instead of mainstat augments. Not a big deal. The market is already flooded with augs anyway, so condensing all of the mainstat ones down to one type of augment isn’t going to change much.

Having recipes that are redundant and aren’t needed traps a lot of players. In game maintenance terms that is like having a Corvette and not washing and waxing it.

As for all augments etc boiling down to one or a handful of types, that does really narrow the games crafting economy. As a crafter not something I’d want to see.

At this point, I’m at a loss for words.

It sounds like so much is changing that it might almost as well be a whole new game.

But then, since I was already planning on using a free level 60 toon to try out the new expansion, that might be even better.

Color me curious, for sure.

I’ve half-suspected that KotFE was originally going to be SWTOR 2 and they just repackaged and reconfigured it (very early on in its’ development) to be a mega-expansion instead.

There’s always a chance it will be something along the lines of Mastery strength, or mastery willpower, so there are different Mastery stats depending on class, but in any case I’m not holding my breath, I’ve only truly just got the hang of the current stat system after reading endless endgame guides so the Mastery stuff sounds annoying and pointless, if only the devs read Dulfy so they could see our complaints nobody seems to bother in forums

honestly removal of main stat is a non issue its not like we bother
balancing the other stats while simply favoring mainstat.No we ensure
the only stat we have on our gear is our main stat. Moving over to
mastery boils down to simply making crafting less cumberson(needing to
know much less recipes) and a naming issue.

Agreed – Non-issue. Already, 99% of gear either comes from dropped tokens (you choose whichever main stat you want) or commendations (you choose whichever main stat you want). It’s not like a lightning sorc chest drops and no other dps can use it… a chest token drops that is equal to all classes and all specs. Changing it to mastery doesn’t change the end-game loot process in any way. Sure, it will make gearing while leveling far easier, but if you want to whine about leveling becoming easy than there are far more relevant threads to go complain in.

Assuming that set bonuses remain per-class, you won’t be able to legacy share items any more than you currently can (unless you’re really into legacy sharing without set bonus…). Thus, changing it to mastery doesn’t change item-sharing in any way.

The only impact will be crafters and the crafted augs/hilts/barrels on the GTN. In 3.0, many specs prefer secondary stats over primary stats, so those specs wont be affected at all. For the specs that prefer primary stats, yes there will be a consolidation into a single aug which will cause prices to become more steady earlier on (a single person buying 20 of 200 mastery augs has a far less impact on apparent supply/demand than a single person buying 20 of 50 strength augs) leading to a more stable economy. Sure, there will be 4x as many ‘mastery’ augs as there were any single mainstat aug, but there will also be 4x as many people purchasing them. For hilts/barrels, i assume there will still be mastery hilts and mastery barrels, so it only halves the number rather than cutting into 1/4. Currently, some hilts/barrels are easier to RE than others (e.g., strength hilt can be RE’d from offhand saber hilts, but willpower has no offhand hilt) causing drastic imbalances in pricing between various hilts/barrels. Changing it to mastery would help stabilize GTN prices on these hilts/barrels, again leading to a more stable economy.

So Valkorion being the real body/soul/person whatever, he is the real Vitiate huh? I’ll just wait and see, though it would cool to finally talk to this guy face to real face. No more possessed pawns or voices from nowhere. It would be nice to finally close the story on him, he’s not a bad character just wish he had more depth besides, “I’m a big bad force user who want to devour everything to experience everything!!!!” Really hate that about him.

it’s all about your own choice in the matter. also the way bioware does their game is they give you several times to back out of it before it’s actually done, ie: KOTOR when you had a chance to get a new companion or you had to choice to fight her and kill her (which i did).

Origionally a tier of new ops gear provided us with 8 unique armor skins…additional Tiers were reskins of the 8, and then 8 new skins after. Later iterations have been lazier, with 4 skins (heh..4skins.) recolored by faction. Or 8 skins but cobled together with old armor pieces and reskinned. Overall, it is a track record for laziness. Worse is that we get a TON of new armors all the time in cartel packs, so there is really no excuse to cut corners on armor obtainable by ingame actions. Mastery just seems like potential for the ultimate corner cutting. This is the potential for 1 armor in red and blue per tier, and previous corner cutting makes me worried this could actually be a thing….they certainly have an excuse now.

(Hey Beasthunter and that guy who yelled at me, look I am criticizing Bioware!)

There are a few differences that can help rationalize the laziness, maybe. Originally there were 8 unique armor skins per tier, but you were also stuck with those armor skins (set bonus was originally attached to the armor shell). Therefore everyone was forced to use those armor skins, so it was very important that they keep coming out with 8 new skins each tier. Once they made skins a choice by moving set bonus to armoring, and then again when they added 10 million different skins to CM, and then again when they added the costume designer, the dropped skins became increasingly less important.

When is the last time you saw someone running around in dropped gear, aside from someone who just bought an account and doesn’t know whats going on? Sure, part of it is that the dropped gear is usually butt-ugly, but I don’t think increasing (or reducing) the number of ugly dropped skins will change anything. Personally, whatever the new gear looks like, I won’t care as I’ll just be transferring the stats to my current cosmetic gear.

I use the dreadlord sage chest in my paladin costume (aka fancy getup), I use the revanite chest for smugglers (hood down) in 2 outfits I have on several characters. Some of these tiers had interesting parts if not full sets, it would be a shame to lazily slack off the stuff available through ingame actions just because of cartel packs existing…that’d actually be straight up scummy.

As a new player I am kind of excited. I am just starting to learn ops and have none of the set bonus yet or main hand. Really still learning about min/max. Now, I can just relax and play the game, and learn as the changes come. And I can focus on learning the old ops before they are scaled. More people who have to learn new stuff is always good.
Now if they can bring back the guild support,(like making it easier for a new player to find a guild that fits them instead of just the 2 that spam chat all the time,) I will be happy.

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