Dead Men Walking

BioWare  has been busy. The 1.2 update to Star Wars: The Old Republic, scheduled  to go live sometime in early April, will contain quite a bit of  content, from a new player verus player Warzone and player versus  environment dungeons to guild features and class rebalancing significant  enough to refund all skill tree points. Game Director at BioWare James  Ohlen provided plenty of detail about what is changing and why.

"We  want to give our players their money's worth," said Ohlen. "They're  paying fifteen dollars a month, so we have the whole team essentially  devoted to pumping out new content and new systems on regular occasions.  They've been crunching even past launch. We've had a lot longer  [quality assurance] soak time this time. We want to make sure there's no  bugs, such as the one that occurred in Ilum for our [patch 1.1]. We  don't want that to happen again, we want the positives to be focused  on."

Two dungeon areas will be introduced  in 1.2, a new Operation, called Explosive Conflict, and a new  Flashpoint, called Lost Island, which is linked to the Kaon Under Siege  dungeon added in content patch 1.1. The Explosive Conflict Operation  will be set on the planet of Denova, and will feature fights against  large monsters and mechanical walkers. Ohlen didn't want to give away  too many details about how the fights will actually work, but did hint  that the experience will be much different from the end game content  seen so far. "It's got more of a wartime feel, which is what Denova is  all about. You have heavy war machines, you have a camp that you're  invading." In the Operation your goal is to assault an arms factory, an  especially dangerous mission due to the volatile baradium strewn all  over the area, which will blow up if you're not careful.

If you've been playing the game since launch in late 2011, those Legacy levels will finally be good for something  after 1.2. Specifically, they'll let you set up a family tree, where  you can arrange your characters and earn bonuses. Getting to level 50  will unlock that character's race for all classes you create thereafter,  bypassing the regular class and race restrictions. "If you were to play  a character to level 50 with all the races, you could create any class  of any race," said Ohlen. "We know that not many people are going to do  that because it's kind of crazy, so we also gave the option for players  to purchase some of the unlocks." Ohlen said the race purchases will be  made only with in-game currency.

Other Legacy unlocks will not be available until you've leveled a class  to 50, however. Such is the case with unlocking new skills. Do you wish  your Bounty Hunter could shoot Force lightning? After 1.2, if you relate  the Bounty Hunter to a level 50 Inquisitor, it'll be possible, though  with some significant limitations.

A Bounty Hunter won't suddenly turn into a Force-wielding super user.  Every class has a heroic moment ability which requires the presence of a  companion to activate. Only by using these heroic moment abilities will  you be able to access the cross-class Legacy abilities. That  essentially means you can only use the abilities out in the questing  world; they're locked out when you're in a full group or in a PvP  Warzone. "It's a balancing mechanism. We wanted to make the abilities  powerful and useful but we know that some players are going to  eventually have all seven others on one character. We had to be  cognizant of that when we were creating them so we don't give the player  seven super-powerful abilities he can use in rapid succession."

In the future, it may be possible for players to fuse their Legacy  systems and marry others, but that's far from final. At least for 1.2,  only your characters can be slotted in the Legacy family trees.

Over the next months it seems as though the focus of player versus player combat is going to be adjusted  quite a bit, as BioWare is on the verge of changing the reward  structure. Soon there will no longer be any daily or weekly quests to  visit Ilum, the end-game open PvP area. Ilum will still exist as a  destination for those interested in open PvP, but it won't be a place to  earn commendations for end game PvP armor. "We're keeping Ilum as-is.  But I think almost all of our problems that occur in open world PvP are  because of the fact that the rewards there, the behavior was less about  having fun in that area and more about exploiting to get the rewards  faster. We know there is a big contingent of players who are fans of  open world PvP and we have a lot of experience, especially on the Mythic  team, of working on it. We're going to have more announcements on what  we're following up with to give those fans what they're looking for."  After 1.2, all end game rewards will be handed out through Warzone  participation, which includes Huttball, Void Star, Alderaan Civil War  and, after update 1.2, Novare Coast.

Novare Coast will be a capture point setup similar to Alderaan Civil  War, featuring turrets your team needs to capture and hold in order to  secure victory. BioWare has been listening to player feedback since  launch and is aware some end game PvP Warzone participants are tired of  getting thrown into Huttball most of the time, and, aside from adding  Novare Coast, will be taking additional steps to lower the frequency of  Huttball matches.

No, you won't be able select specifically which Warzone to join after 1.2 goes live. Instead, Void Star will be changed so that Republic can fight Republic and Empire can fight Empire,  a team format shared by Huttball and Novare Coast. "That means that  Void Star will fire more often when you're on a server where it's a  faction imbalance…There's going to be less of a Huttball bias. We plan  to move Alderaan into that group as well, but it won't be ready for 1.2.  We're very conscious of the fact that we have servers with a faction  imbalance and we have to deal with that."

A ranking system is being implemented into PvP Warzones  to improve matchmaking and let you compare your performance to others.  "We can avoid matches where you're going up against a team of players  who have a win-loss ratio that' s much higher than yours. We're going to  continue to expand up on the PvP ranking in future updates as well.  This one we're kind of calling the pre-season, because it's just the  beginning of our ranking system. We intend to add to it significantly."

There's certainly a lot of attention given to the end game at BioWare  right now, which makes sense given the number of the population at the  level cap. "We have a lot of players at level fifty. I can't give exact  numbers, but we have more players at level fifty than most MMOs have  subscribers. Our first group of players who started when we first  launched, they were very much our hardest core players. They went  through the leveling content really fast. Other players have been going  through the leveling content a little bit slower. I get reports every  week on the player population distribution from levels one to fifty and  it's a pretty good spread."

A new tier of armor will be made available in  1.2 for both PvP and PvE end game sets, and the crafting system will be  enhanced as well. "We drive the artists bonkers with the  amount of items they have to create. It looks really good." It'll be a  higher tier than is currently available at the vendors. End game  crafting is also receiving some attention, as BioWare will add in more  level 50 options for those who didn't pick up Biochem as a crew skill.  "We wanted to make it so Biochem wasn't the only viable elder game  crafting skill. We've done a lot of changes there that'll make the  crafting system a lot stronger."

Class changes in 1.2 include new abilities for the Warrior and the Knight, a nerf for the Bounty Hunter,  and more. Every class will receive changes, and all skill tree points  refunded so you can look over the trees again before deciding how to  rebuild your class. "Some players will be excited, some might not.  That's always the case when there's tweaks to classes."

Other frequently requested features, such as Guild Banks and a moddable user interface  will be included in 1.2 as well. "You have to purchase the ability to  use Guild Banks in the first place. Then that gives you one shelf. To  purchase extra shelves, that costs extra credits. As you purchase more  shelves they become more expensive." Settings will be available to  control guild members' access to the bank's shelves, and higher-ups will  be able to track who is removing what and when. "In terms of all of our  features, it was probably one of the most expensive features we built  because it involves a lot of underlying code because you're sharing  items between multiple characters."

There's still a lot of discussion within BioWare about what to do with  guilds next, including the possible inclusion of guild capital ships.  "We want to put in some guild features, like the aforementioned capital  ships, that players have never seen before in an MMO." Ohlen wasn't able  provide more detail about how capital ships might work.

For the interface, it sounds as though nearly every element of it will  be modifiable in some way. "You're going to be able to take a lot of the  [graphical user interface] elements and move them around onscreen and  place them where you want to place them. You're also going to be able to  change the size. If you're so used to the World of Warcraft interface  that you want to move everything so it's identical to that, you can do  that."

Many less dramatic changes will be implemented as well. BioWare has been busy tracking down numerous bugs and smoothing out the leveling process,  and in 1.2 will be implementing a better search functionality in the  Galactic Trade Network, The Old Republic's auction house. Unfortunately  the ability to bid on items still won't be included, but Ohlen promised  searching will be a lot easier.

Specifics about class changes and crafting will be revealed in the  coming weeks. Are you still playing The Old Republic? Do you like the  sound of update 1.2 so far?

QuoteTim Simmons[/B][/FONT][/COLOR]
Cantinas are wonderful, big empty spaces - any plans to have the abilities to make music and dance (I don't mean entertainer classes per se, more a reason to "hang around" them - small buffs of something)... ?
Damion
We have some ideas, but nothing planned for the immediate future.

Paul Holding
Are there going to be more world bosses added? They're one of the best parts of the game
Damion
We will probably add these sporadically throughout the life of the game.  I can tell you there's at least one new one in 1.2.

Luca Rio
How big are the expectations for patch 1.2? I mean, as a team, how much are you looking forward to it and how strong do you think it will affect the current gameplay?
Damion
That's a tough question to answer - the game was pretty strong before 1.2 came out.  That being said, this game update is an incredibly large and ambitious update, and has some definite key improvements to the game experience.  I think that in particular Legacy will offer an all-new dynamic for people to play around with, no matter what their play style is.

Chris Scott
What Space Combat and Starship changes can we expect? Will we see customizations and new upgrades?
Damion
The space team has several initiatives moving at once right now - I wish I could speak to them all.  Once these are more concrete, we'll be happy to tell you more about them.

Damiano Vitali
Is there any chance we could have target marks to be key-bindable in 1.2? Many tanks and RL would be pleased.
Damion
That will definitely go on the GUI backlog today.  I don't have an ETA for when this will get to you, as their top priority for 1.2 is being sure that GUI customization is clean and ready to go.

Stefan Viskovic
will we be able to tranfer the already discovered taxi/teleportation nodes through legacy from our mains to our alts?
Damion
Not at this time.

Nathan E-lie Pavely
Will you ever change it so characters aren't always right handed? Where's the love for lefties?
Damion
This is fairly non-trivial for our game, due to the choreographed combat and the in-game cinematics.  Sorry to say, we have no plans for this at this time.

Gabriel Santiago
Will assassins be able to use electrostaves without restricting moves? since carrying a glowing and humming weapon is not stealthy
Damion
I've passed this feedback on to the combat team.

Jeffrey Peck
With what sounds like a continued NERF to biochem reusables in the future, what are the plans to make it competitive with the rest of the crafting skills after they seem to all be getting boosts?
Damion
The balance team has no plans to make Biochem inferior to other classes at the endgame, but instead to bring a level of parity across all crafted items.  We think the changes in 1.2 should bring all the crafting skills to be much closer in line with each other.

Lee Mathe
Will we be able to crit craft exisiting orange schematics already in the game?
Damion
Our lead crafting designer says:  Yes!  All craftable orange (custom) gear can be crit crafted.

Matty Debilde
"About the raid calendar, is there maybe also some consideration about recording loot from events on the calender, assigning it to people and maybe even assigning points to people, as in making it possible to use/create a dkp system ingame?"
Damion
We've talked about this before and may examine it again in the future.  Part of the problem is that guilds use a wide variety of different DKP methods, and there's a wide swath of players who are hostile to any sort of DKP system at all, and who don't want to feel the game is forcing one down their throats.  Any solution we come up with needs to be general enough to take all of these play styles and considerations in mind.

Chris Welbourn
Currently you can preview the appearance of armour for your character and companions. Will it be possible to please view weapons, as well, in this fashion?
Damion
Someday.  No immediate ETA.

Oren Shed
I am not thrilled about creating multiple characters and like to stick to just one, as well as a lot of the other population in the game in sure. With the legacy system, would someone like me be losing out a lot of new skills/abilities now since I dont want to create other toons?
Damion
We are very sensitive to this, and want to be sure that we don't undermine your playstyle.  In particular, we want to be sure that the amount of alt-playing you have to do in order to take part in other activities you might like (warzones, operations) is limited at most.  This is why the unlockable 'Heroic Moment' abilities are limited in their usage, and why players can unlock some of the key buffs in the tree with credits instead of alt-playing.  Also, as is possible now, players can gain legacy levels and experience even when their normal level is at cap.  Yeah, you'll miss out on some cool toys, but for the most part, there will be ways for you to get everything that you need to get.

Rob Levi
Since we are under Legacy system, is there a way our alts can appear in a room either on our ships or the guild ships? It would be awesome to see our characters and maybe even exchange inventory with them on the ship
Damion
No on the 'seeing alts' thing (at this time).  We do have plans for the future to streamline inventory swapping between legacy characters, but for right now, you'll have to use mail.  Note: we are removing the faction limitations on sending mail to yourself to facilitate this.

James Brown
Is there going to be a way to change the appearance of our armor? Seeing the same old armor is getting quite old.
Damion
1.2 will have an increase in the amount of moddable gear, as well as improvements allowing for moddable gear to be used at the endgame.  Between that and the new color unify system going in, players should have a remarkable amount of freedom in customizing the look of their character's gearset.

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