Weekly Devs Q&A

[voyak]

2012, May the 4th be with You

DarthZaul: Other than the planned Hutt takeover of all GTNs (which will make them all neutral), do you have further plans to improve the economy? Below level 49 it is almost nonexistent. The crafting changes in 1.2 were supposed to improve it but instead they just gave people more incentive to RE everything they make instead of put it on the GTN. I had to make enough characters with different crew skills to create a self-sufficient Legacy economy, making all my own armor, mods, and stims/medpacks because there are none available to buy.
Damion Schubert (Principal Lead Systems Designer): It sounds like there is a legitimate hole in the economy that someone who has a whole bunch of crew skills could be taking advantage of (hint hint). In all seriousness, a key part of selling your wares in any MMO is understanding supply and demand. In most MMOs, the economy flattens out because all the crafters take the 500 pairs of boots that they craft and plop them on the auction house, which drives the supply wildly way above demand, which pushes the prices down to be below the cost of materials and makes it so that selling stuff isn't economically worthwhile - which kind of destroys the 'I'm a successful shop owner' vibe that aspiring crafters are hoping for. A huge part of the reverse-engineering feature is that it encourages players to remove these excess goods from the economy, which hopefully will bring supply and demand closer to what they actually should be, and should create more space in the GTN without lots of competition. That being said, we can always do better, and I'm sure this will be something we will tweak further in the future.

Dzkiller: I’ve been looking for purple-colored crystals for my Lightsaber for a while now. I want to know where and how we can get it because I'm tired of walking around with a red Lightsaber for my Sith Sorcerer while the Character Progression video for the Inquisitor showed a Sorcerer with a purple Lightsaber.
Damion: We really wanted purple Lightsabers to not be trivial for anyone to get -- some things, a player should have to work for a little.  That being said, this seems like an excellent opportunity to use some of the awesome fansite resources on the internet.  The truth is out there!

Giand-Amazone: I´m a guild leader, and as a guild leader I want to be able to send out mails to my whole guild. Right now this is only possible by sending out mails one by one to all of my members, which is very tedious. Will there be an option to send out mails to the whole guild at once?
Damion: We have plans - it was one of the more requested features to come out of the Guild Summit, and we took feedback from the guild leaders very seriously.  So it’s in the works, but we have no ETA at this time.  When the feature comes, expect it to have constraints on the amount that it can be used to prevent it being used to spam and to keep data storage under control.  In the meantime, the MOTD (Message of the Day) remains the best way to communicate to players, and the guilds I run with use it to direct players to their own website.

Lorroc: Are there any plans to introduce a mentoring system in SWTOR? In some other MMOs, this mentoring system lowers the stats and armor of high level characters and grays out abilities that they didn't have during lower levels so that they can help their lower level friends.
Damion: I'm a big fan of ‘down leveling,’ and I've been pushing to add something like this for a long, LONG time.  Plus, you just can't ignore the master/apprentice relationship as being a core part of the Star Wars experience.  So yeah, this is coming -- someday.  And, as always, it will have a couple of unique twists that I think people will enjoy.

AbsoluteGrndZero: When we get adaptable social armor, will current social armor be changed, or will we be forced to rebuy social armor that is currently sitting in our bank unused on medium-heavy characters?
David Hunt (Systems Designer): Existing gear will be updated to use the adaptive gear weight. This will go live at the same time as augment tables, meaning the social gear you own now will be viable combat gear regardless of your primary armor weight.

DarkElvis: In the Q&A for April 27, you addressed a question about loot drops taking classes into account and how you added the bias into the endgame Flashpoints. Is there any way for this bias to check not just the base class but the advanced class as well? I would say this most affects Sith Warriors and Jedi Knights, who wear different classes of armor depending on their AC choice. Example: our normal Flashpoint group is a Powertech, Sniper, Marauder, and Sorcerer. It seems any time Sith Warrior gear drops, it's heavy armor, so only a Juggernaut could use it. Our Marauder has actually gotten very little gear from the endgame Flashpoints because of this. So is there any way for it to bias to Advanced Class, mainly to benefit Sith Warriors / Jedi Knights? Thanks in advance!
David: The bias actually uses base class or advanced class as appropriate. For example:
Medium Strength Armor = Marauder / Sentinel
Heavy Strength Armor = Juggernaut / Guardian
Strength DPS trinkets = Sith Warrior / Jedi Knight
Strength Tank trinkets = Juggernaut / Guardian
Offhand only Lightsabers = Marauder / Sentinel
This could be due to a bug in the endgame Flashpoints drops that should have been fixed in patch 1.2.2. If you keep seeing this issue, please send a bug report with as many details as possible. Which bosses you killed, what items dropped, and what your group composition was: these would be the most useful data points. There’s some room for this to occur due to randomness, but it should be limited in endgame content.

Nyjin: Greetings, Ware of Bio! In a Dev Tracker for upcoming crew skill changes in 1.2, it was mentioned that new schematics were going to be put into the game in order to allow for more customization. These schematics were supposed to be of lower-level armor and be obtained through Underworld Trading and Investigation missions. So far, nobody on the forums, myself, or my server have seen any new schematics. Can we get a confirmation on whether or not these made it into the game?
David: We’ve been gradually adding more customization-related schematics to various places in the game. Most of these have been for Custom (orange) armor, but some of them have also been for color crystals. Underworld Trading provides several sets of orange armor â€" you have a chance to get one of these when you have a mission success. Those schematics already cover a substantial portion of the low level appearances we have available now, but we’re looking for places where we can put more. For the specific 1.2 schematics, the investigation schematics are for new Armstech weapons. There’s an empty orange version of every weapon type except for the Lightsabers. In both cases, there’s a level 20 version (“Custom-built”) and a level 50 version (“Elegant Modified”). Treasure Hunting has the Lightsaber versions of these schematics for use in Artificing.
There’s a major update to Underworld Trading schematics in 1.3 â€" it’s possible that the upcoming crew skill change was actually referring to that, the gradual introduction of more orange armor sets or other steps being taken to opening up more armor to be viable in 1.2 and 1.3. We’ve added a whole bunch of orange waist and wrist schematics to Underworld Trading in 1.3 We’ve wanted to open this up to players for awhile, especially because some outfits really need the belt in order to look right.

DannerSwa: What was the reason why "Unify" was strictly linked to chest and not designed to let the player choose which slot to unify to? I may like the color scheme of the gloves over the chest but would still like keep the current chest model. Was this an oversight, conscious design decision, or just too complicated to implement?
Daniel Erickson (Lead Game Designer): Conscious design decision. The chest piece is by far the hardest to get in each outfit and the primary acquisition driver. It also “owns” the outfit’s color palette. It’s important to remember that “unify to chest style” does not solely mean “match color.” The design is to give good looking outfits that match the design and color layout of the set the chest piece came fromâ€"not to pick one color and make a monotone eyesore.

jalapena: Does BioWare think that item and money sharing between characters at least on the same faction is a bit cumbersome? My question really stems from my frustration of always having to email myself money and items. Here is an annoying scenario that drives this question. I log in to character A and start a companion to craft or go on a mission for materials for character B. I log over to character B to play while the mission or crafting takes place, it would be nice if the item just showed up in my 'account bank' and can get it without logging in and out three times to get the said resources to my second character. I think email might be a comfortable and familiar way, but with a game that clearly encourages alternate characters, maybe a new way of sharing resources like money and materials is needed.
Daniel: No argument here. The first steps towards this goal were loosening up the rules on moving items and credits between Legacy characters. Our long term goal is to make more of the progression systems Legacy-wide.

Blackholeskipper: Any chance of seeing alternating skins for PvP Warzones in a future update? For example, if you're playing the Alderaan map, maybe it could show a summer setting or a night time setting instead of the original. This wouldn't affect the gameplay or balance at all since it's just a re-skin.
Daniel: Definite possibility. First we want to finish introducing some core Warzone gameplay types then we’ll look at refreshing some of the older Warzones.

cycao: I was wondering if there is any plan to implement dueling on the fleet. I feel if you remove the restriction on dueling on the fleet it will be a nice way to pass the time.
Daniel: This is a popular request and one we’re actively looking into. Right now we’re making sure performance will stay solid if the fleet breaks out in a duel-fest so it may be restricted to a certain area when/if it comes.

McGrizzly: Any plans to expand Legacy to be across servers (i.e. tied to your account not the server you are on)?
Daniel: This is something the Legacy team would love to do. It’s a huge amount of infrastructure work, however, so it won’t be coming soon.

Llloralei: You know all those color crystals that some specs get that they end up not using? How about using them for speeder slots for an underbody glow or a body trim color on your speeder?!
Daniel: Sold, it goes on the list!

SteppeMerc: I was wondering if you would be able to go into how the writers and devs decided which class got what companion, and when in the game. What went behind your thinking, and what sort of inspiration did you draw on? For instance, I assume that the inclusion of a Wookiee companion for a Smuggler was obvious, but how did you decide the others? For instance how did you decide that a Jedi Knight would get a force using follower before the Sith Warrior, etc? Thanks!
Alexander Freed (Lead Writer): Companions (and their distribution) was one of the very first subjects writing tackled on the game--we had a pool of "Star Wars companion concepts" written up before we'd even finalized our list of classes! As you mention, some of the choices were obvious--we wanted a Wookiee, and it was an easy choice to give him to the Smuggler. Some of the ideas, on the other hand, never did quite fit in--the idea for a Killik companion was dismissed, but became the later inspiration for Vector.
After the easy ones were out of the way, we looked at each individual class story and tried to introduce companions that would provide insight into or contrast the main storyline at the right time. Vette provides a lighter counterpart to the dark Sith Warrior story, but Quinn follows quickly to push the notion of the Sith Warrior as a military leader. Yuun is great fun, but he's a little too weird to throw at the Trooper right away--the Trooper had to be grounded in the world first before Yuun could really make an impact.

LordAshuman: Would you be able to explain the thought process behind the recent damage boost to Snipers/Gunslingers and buff/nerf prioritization in general? (Not complaining about balance, just wanting to know why them over other classes that could possible use tweaks.)
Austin Peckenpaugh (Senior Designer): The damage boosts to Snipers and Gunslingers that you're referring to was actually a targeted weapon damage boost. We found an error in the assumptions we use for the mathematical interactions between weapon damage and defense chances. Without going into the boring specifics, we found that weapon damage (especially in abilities with high costs, high cooldowns, or high activation times) could be somewhat underappreciated. When we change our assumptions and come up with a new model like in this situation, we have two diametrically opposed goals: 1) to propagate all necessary changes to the game so that it's using our most recent math, which opposes the second goal 2) maintaining balance without blindly following our math. We altered the abilities that would pick up a significant enough change to be worth making without having a negative effect on the balance of the game. The list you're referring to is the result.
Class change prioritization is a bigger topic. Without getting too long-winded on the subject, what we're aiming to do with any class change is get a class or spec as close to target as we can. These "targets" are objective math-based goals that apply identically to all like-roles. By that I mean that all DPS specs have the same target because they are all the same role: damage dealing. Tank roles have their own targets, and healing roles have their own targets. When someone is off target (too high or too low), we try to find non-invasive ways of bringing them closer to target. We don't try to bring classes closer to target because we're mean - we do it because the global game math assumes everyone hits their target. When someone doesn't hit their target, it has an adverse effect on the game at large. And since rebalancing the entire game to accommodate an outlying spec is completely infeasible, we address the outlying performers with class changes, individually, as appropriate. It's an ongoing experience that we'll never be done with, so prioritization is based on what we feel is the most egregious in any given patch. How we identify outliers and how we determine which is the most egregious is... another bigger topic.

Lorrimar: With Game Update 1.2, Artifice patterns were added for +41 stat color crystals for blue & red off the daily vendor as well as blue & yellow off the PvP vendor. Many people are wondering what happened to the green and orange crystal patterns. Rumor is that the orange patterns are a random drop from high level mobs & chests, but I have yet to read or hear anything about anyone locating a pattern for the +41 stat green color crystals. Can you confirm that the orange patterns are now high level world drops & can it be confirmed that the green color patterns are in the game somewhere?
Patrick Malott (Systems Designer): Currently, there are no PvE green Lightsaber crystal schematics that provide +41 stat color crystals. Orange Lightsaber crystal schematics for +41 PvE stats drop off Primal Destroyer â€" the Rancor world boss on Belsavis. There are currently no PvP orange Lightsaber crystal schematics that provide +41 stat color crystals. The PvP green Lightsaber crystal is on the PvP items vendor for 500 Warzone commendations. It is not sold as a schematic. Players buy the crystal directly.

alricka: What's the system behind the Gathering and the Missions crew skills? What I mean is this - how does the system decide what item I get? Is it random or is it dependable on something? For example, why some Underworld Trading Gift missions get me military gear while others get me courting items? What I want to know is what's the logic behind it? Does it matter what the mission's description says, does it matter which companion I send along with their affection and proficiency etc.
Patrick: When running a specific mission, like for companion gifts, it is random on what the mission returns as a reward. Rarer rewards tend to return less often than more common rewards. Critical mission success usually bumps up the quality of the item returned. Companions with higher affection and specific companion trait critical bonuses increase critical mission success.

[voyak]

2012, May 11th:

*WARNING: slight spoilers ahead for the Sith Warrior storyline*

Warning: Potential Spoiler
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nakomaru: You have mentioned DPS, healing and tanking "targets" as objective methods of balancing the roles in the game. Are there hybrid targets (e.g. healing & dps spec) as well? It seems some hybrid specs are viable on certain classes and out of the question on others. I suppose this has to do with objectively balancing lower tier skills across the classes.
Austin Peckenpaugh (Senior Designer): Yes and no. In your example of a healer and DPS hybrid, by and large, whatever damage you sacrifice you should pick up in healing. For example, if you gave up 10% damage, we'd expect you to pick up 10% healing. Sometimes that's the case, but sometimes you lose or pick up synergies that move you above or below an even shift. Because "hybrid" in our skill trees means "virtually any combination of points," it's certainly not the case that we have targets for every combination. However, we do have expectations, and we're happy with hybrid builds so long as they don't radically stray from our expectations.

Freeborne: Alacrity as a stat seems to be encouraged in "Energy Based' classes (Troopers/Smugglers) through our talent trees. However, Alacrity seems to be a terrible secondary stat for us. The faster we use abilities, the faster we lose our energy - and the less energy we have, the less energy we regenerate. Are there any plans to review Alacrity, or at least its place in some class talent trees?
Austin: I agree. We're exploring ways of improving Alacrity that we hope to get working for a future Game Update. As much as I'd like to, I can't provide details on this plan yet. It's possible that we'll address passive Alacrity boosts in the skill trees, but those changes need to be solid and work for the long haul; it would be unacceptable to have a ‘temporary’ skill in place that we planned on removing at a later date.

Deewe: With the locked companion specs, some of us feel like being forced to use specific companions versus choosing them for their personality and look. Is there in the works any kind of feature mitigating this issue (hint: companions kits)?
Daniel Erickson (Lead Game Designer): Companions in BioWare games have always been fully developed characters with their own backgrounds and skills. While you can change between a couple different approaches with each, we do not presently have plans to make Companion Characters interchangeable.

RKLimes: I recall a developer post indicating the results of transferring a character with a Legacy from one server onto another where a Legacy also exists, the highest level legacy would simple be applied rather than added. Since higher Legacy level does not necessarily equal greatest number of Legacy unlocks, will any and all unlocks be granted from either Legacies, or only those of the highest?
Daniel: Legacies will be merged in the most advantageous possible way for the player. They’re your rewards, you earned them, we don’t want to prevent you from moving them wherever you like. So any unlocks gained by the character you’re moving will come with that character, even if the Legacy they are moving into is a lower level.

Rickety: I'm currently the Division Captain for The Old Republic within The Older Gamers community. I am responsible for multiple guilds spanning all three regions. Several of our guilds have issues with the current guild limit of five hundred Characters. Are there any plans to increase this limit or alternatively, to introduce an in game 'Guild Alliance' system?
Damion Schubert (Principal Lead Systems Designer): We've definitely talked about an ‘Alliance’ system, and even thrown around a basic design. This feature is lower in priority than some other guild needs, though, that were identified at the Guild Summit.

Gidoru: Currently in Huttball, certain classes have huge advantages, to the point where, without them, you have a considerably lesser chance of winning. The classes I speak of are namely Sages, Guardians, and their Imperial counterparts that are able to leap and pull across the map granting great mobility. Any chance of changes that prevent the ball carrier from using abilities like leap or being pulled?
Gabe Amatangelo (PvP & Endgame Designer): It is something we considered early in development of the map. However, we aimed to ensure every class had a role as opposed to effectively turning classes off when they carry the ball. Granted, some of those roles are not as obvious or have a steeper learning curve than simply getting the ball over the line (i.e. controlling the middle, cover defense, controlling hazard lines, etc.). The team composition win ratios suggest those roles are playing out for the most part. For example, teams with all Sages and Guardians do not even appear in the top 100 win ratios and the composition with the highest win ratios include a fairly even distribution of Advanced Classes. That, of course, is not an absolute conclusion, especially considering full team compositions rely on matchmaking. We’ll pay close attention to the variance in composition win ratio considering rating when full team queuing is enabled.

ZeusThunder: Why were the vendors removed from Warzones? They seemed to be harmless and the community didn't appear to mind them.
Gabe: A number of players would queue up for a quick vendor/repair and leave the match to go back to whatever else they were doing. This impacted enough matches that the cons started to outweigh the pros. We plan on getting tech to disable the sell and repair functions on a vendor, at which time we’ll be able to justify turning them back on for those players who want to purchase consumables mid-match, etc.

HoboWithAStick: What is the reasoning behind letting some classes have moddable offhand items but not others? I find this to be a little unfair to those of us who mod absolutely every piece of gear possible to obtain the best results.
David Hunt (Systems Designer): It’s due to arcane technical details. There’s no direct design reason, although there are some awkward situations and implementation details to address. We’ve been talking about options for how to fix the inequality between offhand items recently, and we’re about to start R&D on a potential fix.

Paladinnight: I am wondering why the decision was made to allow PvP crafters the ability to buy the schematics for the PvP orange gear, versus obtaining the schematics similar to PvE players which are forced to play the reverse engineering game in the hopes of obtaining a schematic. This decision has resulted in an economy that the only crafted orange boots and gloves require the buyer to PvP. Could we possibly get schematic boxes purchasable via credits (or Black Hole commendations) added to the vendors? If this is not possible, can we at least be allowed to reverse engineer the Black Hole gear instead of only Campaign gear?
David: In either PvE or PvP, you need to consume a certain amount of that content to gain the appearance associated with the highest level gear. PvE and PvP will never have identical distribution mechanisms because of their inherently different progression. The PvP boxes were necessary to ensure that PvE gear wasn’t the best PvP gear due to the augment slot gap. In Game Update 1.2, this means there’s the inequality you mentioned for obtaining orange boots and gloves. There are ~75 new orange PvE hand and feet schematics in Game Update 1.3 (each). We can’t make schematic boxes for Campaign items, because it would conflict with the reverse engineered versions of those items.
I’d like to allow any gear to reverse engineer for discoveries, but there’s a limit to how many recipes players can acquire. We’re looking at ways to improve that and apply systems more universally, but it’s not currently possible. Only Campaign can be reverse engineered because if we make both a Campaign and Black Hole a reverse engineering recipe, they will be the same result with different names but they will both count against the upper limits.

Wookieluva: In a previous Q&A it was stated that there will be a way to add augment slots to existing items! I like the idea but was wondering about how it is planned to put it in. Would it be by adding a crafted item to the armor? Or would it be put in by some long-winded quest? Or both?
David: Adding an augment to an item through the augment table will require an augment kit and credits. The kits can be traded and are created by crafters. Reverse engineering crafted items will give you the materials required to create augment kits. You can also see other previously answered questions and my answers in regards to this topic here.

[voyak]

This time covering 1.3 update:

2012, May 25th:

llesna: Can you  please tell us why the upcoming Legacy  additions for Game Update 1.3 are  character-specific rather than  Legacy-wide?  Daniel Erickson (Lead  Game Designer): Legacy Perks  have a different purpose than global unlocks  and are specifically  designed to enable players to customize each individual  character.  Since you may not care about Space XP or running the Bonus Series  missions  on one character it is important that you’re not paying a  premium that is  calculated at the expense of 8 or more characters all  gaining this benefit.  This also means the Legacy Perks will, as a rule,  be more affordable than the  global unlocks.
   
  Ixum: Daniel  Erickson said  in his interview that there will be no new gear sets in Game  Update  1.3. Does this mean there will not be any new orange gear as well?
  Daniel: Although  there are no new gear sets, the  addition of Adaptive Gear opens up a range of  new options for  characters, especially those wearing medium and heavy armor.  Now any of  the social gear sets can be used by any class and they will   automatically change stats to be the correct armor level. With the  addition of  the Augment Tables, players can additionally take that  social gear and get  Augment slots added that will make it competitive  with any gear in the gameâ€"once  the right mods and augments are  gathered, of course.
   
  Mindspore:  Any update on Ranked Warzones in 1.3?
  Daniel: Ranked  Warzones is on track for 1.3. All  the heavy lifting (ratings, group persistence  exiting warzones, etc) is  done and right now we are working through some  emergent conflicts with  Group Finder and the process of queuing for multiple  activities at  once with multiple temporary groups.
   
  Mallorik: What is  your philosophy on cross  server LFG tools? Are we getting a same server tool  just to hold us  over while you work on cross server tech or is this just a test  to see  if a same server tool will do the job?
  Daniel: Although we’re certainly willing to  entertain  the idea of cross-server LFG tools if the need arises, it’s a  last resort for  us. We firmly believe for cooperative play it is  important to have a community  and social responsibility that you simply  can’t have with players appearing and  disappearing from your reality.  Instead we are pushing hard on servers that are  massive compared to the  ones we launched with. Early tests show we’ll be able  to raise the  peak concurrent user cap above what it was at launch. Combining  that  with server transfers to enable players to move to these new servers and   fill them to the brim, we should see some fantastic, vibrant  communities  develop where Group Finder will always be able to find  someone for your  content.  
   
  CompassRose: Many players are concerned about   the upcoming character transfer feature. One question frequently being  voiced  in the forums is that of retaining their legacy surname. Is  there a mechanic in  the transfer feature that will notify a player if  the destination server they  choose already has their surname locked by  another player?
  Daniel: We’re not quite (almost!) ready to talk  about  the specifics but rest assured we are doing everything we can to  make the  process as easy and low-impact to the greatest majority of  players as possible.  We should have better specifics soon.
   
  BlazingShadow: Will  we see the return of our favorite droid HK in some form?
  Daniel: The great  thing about droids is that they can be rebuilt. Of course, HK-47 wasn’t the  only HK model ever built…
   
  Asturias:  Are you guys looking to let  players  incorporate a Bio for each character so others can read it. I  always loved how  some MMOs had this option for others to read a quick  Bio of my character that I  created and I could read theirs.
  Daniel: Unfortunately  because of our intricate  mission systems we are carrying a massive amount of  variables for each  character already so we are forced to be a bit stingy with  things like  customizable text. That said, we’re already researching solutions  for  making this content lighter to drag around with each character and I’d  love  to see it. Nothing soon, though.
   
  Ximix: Are there any  plans to revisit  ability animation issues between mirror classes? For example,  several  "instant" Sage abilities actually have 1-2 second activations  while  Sorcerer abilities activate and deal damage instantly. Just like the   Commando vs Bounty Hunter animations, in PvP these discrepancies can be   huge.  
  Austin Peckenpaugh  (Senior Designer): Whenever you  use an "instant" ability, the  server receives and process that action  without any animation dependency (read:  instantly), but the impact VFX  and flytext are synced to the attack animation  on your client. This is  done to make the game look good and give attacks a  sense of weight and  impact without affecting timing or balance.
  There are some notable exceptions to this that are real  delays and  real discrepancies that we're aware of and are addressing. In the  case  of Shock and Project, there is a real delay (on the server) before  Project  deals its damage, and that's something we're fixing in 1.3. The  other real  delays that we're aware of are in Smash and Force Sweep,  but we don't yet have  a fix for those.
  If you believe additional abilities have delays or are not  mirrored,  you'd have to point them out specifically. With the exception of the   abilities I've already mentioned, so far our investigations have shown  that the  discrepancies being reported are the intentional ones that  make the game look  good and feel right and, to reiterate, do not impact  timing or balance.
   
  gabarooni: As a long  time tank (nearly 10  years), I’ve come to the conclusion that holding Aggro is not  fun.  Tanks already have to watch their survivability, cooldowns, position  mobs,  watch their groups position and health, and fight the mobsâ€"all of  which I enjoy.  Are there any plans in Game Update 1.3 to increase  threat generation for tanks?  Especially for Guardians and Juggernauts?
  Austin: Actually,  yes. We'll have more detailed  information for you soon, but you can expect some  improvements in  threat generation, AOE threat, and quality of life.
   
  Hargan: Will the Commando  Gunnery spec be  rebalanced after the changes in Game Update 1.2 so that we are  back on  par with the DPS output of similarly geared Sages/Gunslingers/Sentinels   in Operations?
  Austin: I think  I'll confirm a lot of suspicions  with this answer, but the bugfix that  addressed Demolition Round  scaling had a large enough impact on Gunnery DPS  that it surprised us,  too. Although Gunnery and Arsenal had been hitting our  targets, it  became harder to do so than we were comfortable with. Another way  to  say that is that the "low end" of our test results was hit too   frequently by too many people. The changes you're going to see are  mostly in  resource management and usability, which will make it easier  for you to deliver  the considerable damage you already wield. We'll  have more detailed information  for you soon.
   
  Brutalos:  What class balances can we expect from Game Update 1.3 and will it undo some of  the changes done in 1.2?
  Austin: Game Update 1.2 brought damage dealing  and  healing roles closer to target than they had previously been. If for you   and your class that meant a reduction in performance, that can be a  hard thing  for me to justify to you. I think it's fair to  say that  some of those changes were made by reducing usability instead of just   reducing numbers, and it's these usability issues that we want to  correct and negative  changes to usability that we don't want to repeat  in the future. Like I said  before, we'll have more detailed information  for you soon, but if I had to  identify a motif for class changes in  future updates, it'd be "improved  usability."
    Supaaq: I am  extremely excited to see a  Group Finder being added to SWTOR in Game Update  1.3. I would say of  all the features I wish the game could have ASAP, that  definitely tops  my list. What else can you tell us about the specific  implementation of  this most welcome improvement? Will it automatically teleport  group  members to the entrance when the group forms?
  Damion Schubert  (Principal Lead Systems Designer):    We are very, very close to releasing the full design of the feature in   an imminent blog post written by yours truly.   That being said,  highlights do include that it can be used for  flashpoints, heroic  flashpoints, ops and planetary content.  For the instanced combat, it  will give you a  free teleport to the content location once all group  members agree to the  group.
   
  Gangawolf: I am  curious about the cost of  repairing gear, particularly in the end-game. When I  die, I find that  the cost to repair my Bounty Hunter's gear is just under half  what if  costs my Jedi Consular (and they are similarly geared in terms of level   of gear). Likewise, my Smuggler falls somewhere in between the two.  Again, not  a scientific sampling, but it seems like heavy armor sets  are cheaper to repair  than medium armor sets which in turn are cheaper  than light armor sets. Why  wouldn't repair costs be the same across the  board for similar level gear?
  Jason Attard (Senior  Game Balance Designer): Repair  costs are tied to the percentage of durability  your items have lost  (in addition to item level and quality). Currently heavy  armor has a  higher durability score than medium or light armor, so it degrades  more  slowly in combat and it is thus cheaper to repair over time. This was  put  in place fairly early in development to give tanks a bit of a break  on their  repair costs (back before we had lightly-armored  Shadow/Assassin tanks). With  the introduction of Adaptive Armor in Game  Update 1.3 this design decision is  definitely getting dated, so  there’s a good chance we will normalize the  durability of all armor  types in a future update.
   
  tkinnunzero: In Game Update  1.3, can you  briefly summarize what is the endgame Operation gear progression,  i.e.  what is the path a fresh level 50 is intended to be following that will   see him/her eventually conquer the highest difficulties and end up  fully decked  in Best-in-Slot gear in every slot?
  Jason: We expect  a fresh level 50 character to  start with a mixture of high level Premium and  Prototype gear from  missions, crafting and planetary commendations. For players  interested  in Group PvE end-game content the first step would be to use Group   Finder to go through the Normal Mode Flashpoints until you acquire a  full set  of Prototype gear, probably mixed with several  Artifact/Tionese items or mods.  Next up would be hard mode Flashpoints  (starting with tier 1 then moving on to  the harder tier 2 Rakghoul  Flashpoints) and story-mode Operations (starting  with Eternity Vault  then moving on to Karraga’s Palace) where you pick up your   Columi/Energized gear. Finally you’d get into story mode Explosive  Conflict to  pick up your Rakata gear, and use the Black Hole  commendations to start picking  up Black Hole gear. To progress past  this point you’ll need a guild at your  back capable of doing Hard Mode  and Nightmare Mode Operations. Starting into  hard modes immediately  after story mode Eternity Vault will let your  dramatically accelerate  your Columi and Rakata gearing, and Hard Mode Explosive  Conflict lets  you rapidly pick up Black Hole gear and is the only  way to pick up the top-of-the-line Campaign gear set.
  Once you have good gear that you feel you’re going to hold  on to for  a while you can improve it by adding Augments through crafting and   Item Modification Tables. You can also optimize it by extracting mods  from  duplicate pieces of Operation gear to get the perfect balance of  stats for your  character build. Crafting also has a role to play,  especially if your guild has  a lot of extra Operation gear they can  reverse engineer. It allows you to  augment your gear more quickly and  cheaply, customize the look of your gear,  and help gear up your new  guild-mates with powerful crafted mods and items.
  If you enjoy solo content playing the daily mission hubs on  Ilum,  Belsavis and Corellia can help rack up the credits and accelerate your   early end-game gear progression. The Galactic Trade Network provides   opportunities to buy powerful mods and items with all those credits,  while  providing a decent income for the end-game crafters.
  Our plan for future Operation game updates is to have Group  Finder  players to progress from Story mode to Story mode, while Operation   guilds move into Hard Mode of the new operation (possibly dropping back  into  Story Mode to learn fight mechanics or gear up new players) then  progress into  Nightmare Mode. We intend to introduce Hard Mode and  Nightmare Mode in the same  update (Nightmare Explosive Conflict was  delayed to allow us get some exciting  new Nightmare Mode tech into the  game which we should have more details on  soon). We’re also planning on  having Hard Mode Flashpoint rewards continue to  progress as we  introduce new tiers of content, allowing new players to skip  past some  of the earlier Operations (if their guild has already completed them   and doesn’t wish to go back, for example).

[voyak]

updated my OP with link to the official archives

[voyak]

2012, June 1st


Lymain: You announced that Ranked Warzones are still on track for Game Update 1.3 in the May 25th Q&A. Is the plan still to implement this feature incrementally, starting with only pre-made teams of eight? Will queues be cross-server initially? Or will cross-server queues be implemented at some point after the first stage of Ranked Warzones makes it live?
Daniel Erickson (Lead Game Designer): That is correct. First implementation (pre-season) will be pre-made teams of eight and will not be cross-server.

JimG: For the new augment slots for Game Update 1.3, will the tier of augment slot raise the level required to equip the gear? For example, if I have a level 11 piece of orange gear and add the highest tier augment slot to it, can I still equip it at level 11 assuming I don't put an augment in it that exceeds my level?
Daniel: You can still equip the item so long as you don’t put mods that exceed your level into the augment slot. In addition, the high tier augment slot can use any augment of a lower tier as well so you can steadily upgrade with level-appropriate augments without having to worry about upgrading the slot itself since you put the highest tier slot on to start.

Dzeiger: With the changes to make social gear "adaptive" and augmentable and thus more desirable, are there any plans to revise the social points system? For example, making it per-Legacy rather than per-character, and/or expanding options for social point gathering at endgame that doesn't involve endless Esseles and Black Talon runs.
Daniel: Yes, the social point system will be getting a major revamp in the future and many of our systems will be going Legacy-wide, though whether social is one of them is still under discussion. In the meantime, Game Update 1.3 will bring social points to all Flashpoint and Operation boss kills, meaning far more social points just for being social and playing with friends.

Iracaelestis: Currently, crafting missions have a chance to drop schematics from the opposite faction. Given the uselessness of these schematics for the crafting player’s faction, combined with a cumbersome and intentionally difficult means of trading with the opposite faction that's not being used, what is the justification for this and are there any planned changes for the future?
Daniel: They are an intended part of the system and are there to cause cross-faction interaction which will soon be much easier as we finish out the last few steps and the Hutts formally take over all of the GTN terminals in the galaxy.

Anastre: The Legacy system currently allows you to create ties with perks and unlocks using your own characters on the same server. The thought crossed my mind that it would be cool if you could add the characters of another player to a 'joined' Legacy. This way, you could gain Legacy levels a bit faster if you work together. It also gives you a reason to befriend other players. Did this idea cross the mind of the developers?
Daniel: It definitely has. People want to marry other players officially, build family groups, share histories and last names, and much more and it’s all in the queue for the future of Legacy.

LKaras: What will you be doing to keep guilds and server communities together once server transfer is implemented?
Joveth Gonzalez (Online Community Manager): Once server transfers are implemented, we will re-evaluate our server group forums and make any changes that are necessary. We also have Community Coordinator Eric Musco as the liaison to guilds and he has a lot of good ideas on how to work with them. Finally, we’re going to begin to highlight server community events on the Community Blog section of our site to make sure that they get proper attention. Rest assured that guilds and server communities are part of our overall focus within the community team.

Tuk-Teufti : Endgame crafted items are bind on pick up. It’s alright when they come from a drop, but when they come from crafting the system feels limited. What’s the point of crafting armor you can’t sell? Biochem seems once again the way to go for PvP players, along with a little of Cybertech for grenades. Are you going to give other crew skills exclusive features to rival Biochem?
David Hunt (Systems Designer): While the initial endgame schematics were all bound, that hasn’t carried over to some of the newer endgame crafted items. In Game Update 1.2, there are many reverse engineering schematics that are not bound. In general, we’re opening the restrictions on some of these kinds of distribution channels. There are some changes in Game Update 1.3 that impact the interactions between Biochem and PvP, and you can expect more general changes to level out crafting skill viability in future game updates.

Murshawursha: What was the logic behind choosing which Crew Skills get to craft Augment Kits? In Game Update 1.2 and before, if a player wanted, for example, an augmented Lightsaber, they HAD to buy it from an Artifice. Post-Game Update 1.3, if a player wants an augmented Lightsaber, they choose a Lightsaber that they already own (probably acquired through raiding or questing), and buy an Augment Kit from an Armstech, Armormech, or Synthweaver. This effectively cuts out the Artificer completely out of the market for augmented Lightsabers. Why was it done this way, rather than simply allowing Artificers to make Augment Kits that could only be applied to Lightsabers or Relics, Synthweavers to make Augment Kits that can only be used on force armor, Cybertech on earpieces, etc?
David: There are two primary reasons that Augment Kits are limited to Armstech, Armormech and Synthweaving: 1) They are the augment crafters, and Augment Kits extend that service. 2) Prior to crafted augments, they did not have a substantial input into the item mod game and we want to open that up to more players.
We did not want to have lots different Augment Kits, because that would make finding the right item and kit combination substantially more difficult. Augment tables are intended to make it relatively simple to get any item to the same power cap, and lots of kit variation introduces the possibility that it would be hard to get some items to hit the same potential. While this is how augment tables work now, all Crew Skills will continue to evolve based on player feedback and game data.

Insomniel: Is it possible to make tiny adjustments to crafting dialog? Namely, could you save schematics filter settings per character or even per account - I like my schematics sorted by level and it is rather irritating to sort them this way almost every time I open the dialog after changing locations or relogging. It would also be nice to start with collapsed schematics trees .
Damion Schubert (Principal Lead Systems Designer):  This is a good idea.  I will pass it on to the GUI team.

Monkgryphon: Can you break down the Random Flashpoint daily and explain how it will work and what sort of rewards it will grant?
Damion: With the Group Finder, we will be adding the concept of a Random Flashpoint. If you do the Random Flashpoint with a Group Finder assembled group, you will earn a reward. Currently, this reward is in the form of level-appropriate commendations which may be exchanged for equipment at a vendor. At level 50, there are there are separate daily rewards for normal and hard mode Flashpoints, as well as story mode Operations. These rewards escalate with the difficulty of the content.

Ashivauto: There are quite a few threads on wanting open world PvP and a lot of good ideas on open world PvP content. My question is: are there any plans to implement something that would encourage open world PvP such as faction points for factional items, or planetary control. Maybe even rewards or commendations for open world kills?
Gabe Amantangelo (PvP & Endgame Designer): Yes.  We have open world PvP content and incentive systems in the works.  We will update you as soon as we can.  They will likely come in parts, as opposed to all at once.  For example, a proper incentive system for defeating players in open world PvP may come in first.

Lord_Franklin: This may be a bit off-topic, but oh well: I have recently been wondering what actually happens during that 4 hour or so window once a week when you take the servers down for maintenance. What's happening typically on your side when I'm sitting there refreshing the server status page?
Blaine Christine (Sr. Producer, Live Services): Many things happen in that precious four hour window and it varies from week to week.  Typically, we have a patch deployment for the game along with possible web, network, infrastructure, hardware, and/or platform maintenance, just to name a few possibilities.  Taking the game patch as an individual item, the full process takes several hours, beginning with that lovely in-game message that you all get fifteen minutes prior to the actual kick from the game.  At the T-15 mark, we start in-game messaging and put the servers in Maintenance Mode so that no one else can enter the game.  At 2:00 AM CDT, we kick everyone out and start the shutdown process for all of the servers which takes another ~15 minutes.  Then there are several steps to the actual deployment of the patch which can take an hour or more, depending on complexity.  After the deploy, we have to start the servers back up and have CS perform spot checks of the servers while they are in Maintenance Mode (so they still appear offline to the players).  In some cases, we may detect issues with the spot checks that need to be resolved or at least double-checked before we open to the public.  After all of that, we finally open the gates again and notify all of you via the Forums and Launcher that the game is once again ready for play.
We certainly strive very hard to ensure that we condense this process down as much as possible to reduce the impact on playtime for you, our customers.  Most of the time, we manage to get the game back up earlier than we projected, but occasionally an unforeseen issue with the maintenance causes us to go over the projected timing.  As we get closer to the end of the maintenance, there is a lot of hectic activity if things aren’t going well, because everyone here takes their responsibility seriously and wants to ensure the best possible experience for all of you.  If we go over time, it constitutes a hair on fire emergency that requires all hands on deck to resolve as quickly as possible.

[voyak]

2012, June 8th:

Stubacca: Will the new Group Finder only work for solo players to find random group members, or will two or three friends that are already grouped together manually be able to still play together and fill the open spots in the group with random group members with it?
Damion Schubert (Principal Lead Systems Designer):  The Group Finder has absolutely been designed to allow 2- or 3-person groups to find the missing players to complete that group. It also has functionality allowing players to easily backfill a group if, for example, you start running a Flashpoint and lose a player.

Elperzon: Will we ever be given the chance to 'forget' schematics we know? For example, I can make the base item, the 3 upgraded version (crit, power, def), and some of their upgraded versions (alacrity, surge, etc). That makes for a ton of schematics for a single item. I would love to be able to forget the base item schematic if I have the upgraded version I like/want.
Damion: This is, in fact, something that we've thought about and might implement at some point. However, it's mostly a nice cleanup thing and is behind other priorities at the moment.

Goldenstar: Daniel Erickson mentioned in the last Q&A that social points will now be awarded for boss kills in HM FPs/OPs. What about PvPers? Are there any plans to add methods of acquiring social points to PvP?
Damion: At this time, players won’t be able to gain social points by participating in PvP. In the future, it’s possible that we’ll evaluate more ways to earn social points and how that system compares to other reward systems in the game.

CiKaidom: You mentioned “pre-made teams” in your answer to Lymain (link), but what did you mean exactly? Are you saying that to increase our ranking we’ll need to always be with the same group of 8, or will we be allowed to change one or more players? Is this ranking common to all team warzones fought or is it specific to a team, and changes whenever one or more members of this team change?
Rob Hinkle (Senior PvP Designer): Our apologies for the lack of clarity. A “pre-made team” in the context of Ranked Warzones simply means any full 8-man operation. You do not need to always queue with the same group of 8, just a full group of 8. Each individual player keeps his own ranking, and when a team is formed and queued we generate the team value based on all of the rankings of the members of that specific team.

Ghoppa: Can Force/tech attacks (for example a Scoundrel’s Back Blast) actually ever miss (excluding any special abilities players have)? Do Accuracy and Defense play any role with these attacks, or does Accuracy/Defense only affect melee/ranged attacks? Can Force/tech attacks be shielded?
Austin Peckenpaugh (Senior Designer): Yes, but the flytext you'll see is "Resist" instead of "Miss." Typically, Force/tech Accuracy is higher than melee/ranged Accuracy and melee/ranged Defense is higher than Force/tech Defense, but Accuracy and Defense work the same with all attack types. Currently Force/tech attacks cannot be shielded.
Alxandria: Can we get a detailed breakdown of the affect of Presence on our companions? I'm specifically targeting info that would explain if the bonuses are weighted or static.
Jason Attard (Senior Game Designer): Your companion gets a fixed amount of damage, healing, and health per point of Presence on your character, and that amount does not change as you level up. This is the exact same sort of scaling done for Endurance and Power. In fact, putting 100 points of Presence on your main character is equivalent to putting 50 points of Endurance and ~85 points of Power on your companion, so if you’re playing solo or 2-player content where you have your companion out it’s mathematically the most effective thing you can do. This is offset by the fact that it’s split between offense and defense (making your companion less role-specialized) and that you’re sacrificing your personal effectiveness to increase the effectiveness of an AI.
As for how it scales as you level up, characters get lots of Endurance and Power on their gear, but typically don’t get much Presence. This means that, early on, Presence tends to be a bigger proportion of your overall stat budget (and thus plays a bigger role in your companion’s effectiveness) than it does in the late game. In theory, you could make Presence more important by seeking it out for your gear, but in practice we found most players prefer to increase the power of their own character instead, so we made Presence have more of a niche role, and balanced the PvE game assuming players do not itemize towards it at all.
Shintorg: Can you explain the reasoning behind making the BIS consumables, Exotech Stims and Adrendals, drop so rarely and seemingly only on Hard Mod EV&KP? Why isn't there a way to purchase these? Why don’t they drop in Explosive Conflict? Or off bosses?
David Hunt (Systems Designer): These schematics are split between the Black Hole and Daily Commendation vendors in Game Update 1.3. This isn’t in the version of Game Update 1.3 that’s currently on the public test server, but it will make it into Game Update 1.3 before it reaches live servers.

RCcarroll: I play characters of a multitude of levels regularly and haven't gotten one Legacy Item drop. Would you mind saying how often these are supposed to drop and on what kind of enemies?
David Hunt: Legacy items do not have a specific drop location. Inheritance can drop from any random loot of level 34 or higher. That usually means killing NPCs at level 34 or above, but it’s possible for an NPC to drop loot slightly above its level. Birthright items drop from level 46+ (Inheritance can still drop from 46-50). It is difficult to state their precise drop rates because most random drop rates vary significantly depending on what you’re killing. Normal bosses throughout the world have a substantially higher chance of dropping these than regular NPCs.
These drops are included in the Artifact quality loot table. As with everything on that table, the best way to find it is through Artifact quality lockboxes anywhere in the level range. Tough bosses that drop random loot are another option. However, I would not recommend purchasing these boxes with the expectation of finding lots of Legacy gear â€" there are tons of competing items in those loot tables.
Whenever dealing with any drop rate that’s low and random from a large selection, the individual experience ends up varying wildly. The overall drop chance for these is increasing in an upcoming update, and we’re looking at other ways to normalize the acquisition rate of these items.

SNOperaghost: Which crafting skills will be able to make which specific types of augment kits?
David White (Systems Designer): Armormech, Synthweaving, & Armstech can all craft Augment Kits. The kits are the same regardless of Crew Skill.

StagehandMERC: Can you talk about efficiency bonuses for Crew Skills? Are they a percent reduction to the time it takes to complete tasks, or is there more to it than that? Also, is there an efficiency bonus granted by companion affection? How does it scale from 0 affection through to full?
David White: The efficiency bonus reduces the amount of time it takes to run Crew Skill missions and crafting. Certain companions have innate bonuses to the efficiency of specific Crew Skills but all companions will become more efficient as your Affection with them goes up. It is possible to get as much as a 15% efficiency bonus when you are at max Affection.

[voyak]

2012, June 15th:


GarrickBlackSun: I understand he is a long way off, but could you please possibly give us any sort of clearer or better insight to the unlocking of HK-51?
Daniel Erickson (Lead Game Designer): The only thing we’re saying today is its going to take a serious amount of work, involves a galaxy-wide mission, introduces some different ways of playing the game and most people will need to have a 50 of one faction and at least a mid-level character from the other faction. Get working on those Legacy characters!

Zoheb: It looks like the LFG Tool will limit the FP's we can queue for to those within our level range. This may handicap those who have skipped a large number of FP's and have effectively outlevelled that FP's range. Will they be able to queue for FP's below their level range and if not, why not?
Antonia Phillips (Development Director): Not at this time. The reason we did not include this option with the launch of the feature is essentially balance. We did not want to penalize some players by matching them with players far above their level. In addition, we want players to feel that they are contributing to content and not being carried through by higher level players. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we won’t implement a version of this option with a future release. We’ve heard the feedback on the forums and we recognize that this is important, just as long as we implement it correctly.

SAtaarcoeny: Is there any chance of you guys making the PvP win/loss stats viewable by everyone?
Rob Hinkle (Senior PvP Designer): We currently do display a player’s rating via inspection and the /who list, as long as that rating is above a particular threshold (currently set to 1200). We really would like to encourage the competitive aspect of Ranked Warzones by allowing players to compare themselves against each other, so this is suggestion is definitely something we will talk about.

Cycao: Can I please get a response on this issue I have for Ranked Warzones and how you will deal with a disconnect? People disconnect from Warzones; it happens and sometimes it’s the game, others it’s a client issue, but it happens. To go down one man in a ranked warzone will be detrimental to the team.
Rob: We are aware that a Warzone team suddenly losing a player is a great disadvantage to that team, and we are investigating ways we can better mitigate that loss to the team.  One of the things that we currently have implemented is that the team that loses a team member will have that factor taken into consideration when the system makes adjustments to ELO ratings at the end of the match.

Skondy: Can one of the Developers give a detailed breakdown on how threat is generated? I have heard that it is generated more by how many times a player can land blows on the boss than by how much damage is dealt. So that a tank can hold aggro better by using his basic attack (rapid shots, saber strike, etc) in combination with his high threat moves, rather than trying to do as much damage as possible to a boss.
Austin Peckenpaugh (Senior Designer): Threat is equal to damage inflicted at a "one damage equals one threat" ratio. Passive threat modifiers then adjust that amount by a percentage, while active threat dumps adjust current threat levels by a percentage. I wouldn't suggest using your basic attack to try and generate high threat.

Elfindreams: What does the "cover fire" keybind do? The keybind, not passive skill and not "take cover" or "take cover in place" - specifically "cover fire". It does not have any function in advanced class cover mechanics that anyone has been able to detect.
Austin: This is actually a Dev function that was never cut from the retail build. You are correct that it serves no function to players. I'll investigate why this option yet remains.

Theworldends: With the implementation of "smart" aoe attacks for tanks, why are there still no smart aoe heals that only target the lowest health group members?
Austin: So far, this hasn't fallen into the category of gameplay we want to change. All AOEs prioritize targets closer to the center of that AOE, so a better aimed Revivification or Kolto Bomb will yield better results. It's not hard to imagine a world with "smart" AOE heals though, so I'll end with saying that it's certainly something we're still considering.

VexedLucifer: How do armor debuffs work? Do they allow for more damage from other players besides the one who put the debuff on the target? If two characters of the same class put an armor debuff on do they both allow for more damage or does only one take effect while calculating damage? For example, would a raid do more damage to a boss if it had 3 unique armor debuffs opposed to no armor debuffs?
Austin: Game Update 1.3 introduces a new system to regulate the stacking of buffs and debuffs, such that only the highest of any same-effect applies. There are some exceptions to this, but by and large (and in the case of armor reduction), only the highest of any same-effect will apply. You will still benefit from the presence of your own debuff (for example, your 5 stacks of Armor Reduction will enable your Guardian Slash to strike nearby enemies), but only the biggest debuff will affect the target's stats. And yes, armor debuffs do benefit all attackers.

Jtsd: Will you release Power/Crit and Defence/Absorption enhancements? Currently the only way to get Crit Rating is to directly swap out Power, which is only slightly behind our Primary Stat in value. The only way to get Absorption is to take a larger amount of Accuracy or Shield Rating.
Jason Attard (Senior Game Designer): We currently have our late-game stats split into two groups: Power, Defense, Crit, and Absorb in one, and Accuracy, Alacrity, Surge, and Shield in the other. Modifications have a stat from the first group, and Enhancements have one stat from each group. This was done to prevent players from stacking a single stat to the exclusion of all others, and to help keep the number of Modifications and Enhancements in the game to a reasonable number. Every time we introduce a new set of gear we refine our item design, and we have considered loosening up the restraints on those stats in various ways, but we do not have an ETA for it yet.

Kingofthebritons: In last weeks’ announcement, we learned that the level cap will be increased later this year. With this change in mind, will any changes be made to the current PvE endgame? For example, will the difficulties for Hard Mode Flashpoints and Operations be increased to match the new level? If not, could you explain why?
Daniel: We’re keeping a tight wrap on details about the level increase later this year until we’ve done far more testing. Right now we have plans and theories but no empirical numbers for what, if any adjustments will need to be made to PvE endgame content.

[voyak]

2012, June 22nd:

Pargon: I'm curious about the development cycle for something like an armor set. Could you elaborate on the process you guys go through when designing and implementing that equipment?
Ryan Dening (Lead Concept Artist) and David Hunt (Systems Designer): This is a very good and timely question as we have recently been refining parts of our approach and inspiration in response to the feedback we have gotten from our players.  The first thing we do when designing a new armor set is to look at which class it's for and what level or tier it is going to be. For instance, if it's for a Bounty Hunter we've established that Bounty Hunters wear heavy armor that should feel custom or at least modified (since he's not a uniformed soldier). Our strongest influences are going to come from characters like Boba Fett, Boushh, Dengar etc.  Level of the gear is going to determine how visually impressive the gear should look and where it fits in the progression. This is the real tricky part because inStar Wars, a lot of the costumes are quite simple or hit one note and we have to extrapolate to create a lot of different, unique looks that feel like they progress from low level to high.
With this as our background we'll start sketching ideas to find and capture a look that is compelling. When the sketch is approved we make a model sheet which is a lot like schematics.  Every piece of a set of gear needs to fit into the wearables system so that they can work with every other set of gear in the game independently.  An outfit will also have different layers like a base (for a Bounty Hunter this would be his base armor) and attachments (the cool stuff like Boba Fett's cape, rocket pack, Wookie braids). From here it goes to the character artists who bring the concept to life as a 3D model.  They start with high poly models and custom sculpt each piece. Then they texture the models and make lower poly meshes that can be imported into the game. It's a long process and takes a lot of hard, skilled work to make an armor set.
Once in the game, designers create a map between all the available art assets and the items that need to be distributed to cover the various roles. We utilize different attachment and color combinations provided by the artists to try to make as many armor sets as possible unique, even if they're similar to others. Those sets are named and distributed along similar content channels, with the goal of giving players gear that makes them naturally look cool as they progress instead of making you look like a clown. The related content bands are setup with the intent of making characters look good in mixed sets of the same band, while still providing variety between them. There are too many combinations to guarantee that you'll find the right items that look cool together, but we work to get you as close as possible so that it's easy for you to complete the last steps.

Raalat: The Toxic Scan ability purges two effects. If a target has more than two purgable effects, how is it determined which are purged?
Austin Peckenpaugh (Senior Designer): You can typically expect the oldest effect to be removed first.

Daitenzin: Does the team have any concerns about how the 1.3 changes will affect how Assassins/Shadows will perform as tanks compared to the other tanking options in an Operation situation?
Austin: No, not especially. I know a lot of players feel like this was a PvP fix that glossed over the idea of Operations survivability, but that just isn't the case. In reality, Shadow/Assassin tanks were slightly over-performing prior to Game Update 1.3, but some of that is obfuscated in the current climate of boss encounters. What some players have correctly identified as an issue is that some Operations bosses deal significantly more Force/tech damage than weapon damage, which favors tanks with high mitigation over those with high shield/avoidance.
Therefore, it'd be more accurate to say that I'm more concerned that we're currently overemphasizing armor and health pools (as the most valid channels of survivability) in Operations encounters. This may be the case because bosses aren't using enough weapon damage or because too many tank defenses only work against weapon damage. Not all channels of survivability can be balanced for every boss encounter, which is why tank survivability is measured against a norm, and why we're going to be pushing harder to hit that norm in the future - either through tweaks in boss damage or tweaks to the way shields work.

Fireblazer: Any chance we will be able to get extra character slots for a server in the future. Maybe as part of the legacy system?
Daniel Erickson (Lead Game Designer): There will definitely be more slots appearing in the near future. Stay tuned for details.

RamathRS: The upcoming "Smart" abilities look to be amazing. I am very eager to try these out. However, will these same changes apply to our Companion tanks as well? They each have an AoE ability that generates large amounts of hate on up to 5 targets, coupled with a debuff of some sort. But, it also does damage. I am almost always forced to turn off this key and essential ability to preserve ongoing CC.
Austin: This sounds like a good idea and is plenty plausible. We'll look into it. Thanks.

HeavensAgent: In general how are random loot tables defined, and when an item is awarded how is the loot table it originates from determined? Are they based on planet? Item level? Item quality?
David Hunt: We have a hierarchy of different loot tables for different purposes and functions. Loot falls into three broad categories:
1. Random Loot.When you kill something in the world or open a generic lockbox, loot usually comes from here.
We have a series of four random loot tables representing difficulty rarities.
The first table is where you see all the grey “junk” loot. We have a large list of items, and then each item requires a specific tag. When we give a loot package to a creature, it has properties for what kinds of tags that creature owns. For example, there’s a boss tag, a military tag, republic/imperial tags, a medic tag, a scaled tag, etc. The composition of those tags determine what the creature can drop.
The second through fourth tables are increasing rarity calls. Those rarities roughly translate to quality, but not precisely. For example, the uncommon table is where most of the Premium (green) stuff in the game drops. However, there’s also a bunch of Prototype (blue) items -primarily mods. Those Prototype items almost all require the Boss tag to be present. This means that instead of dropping a static Premium item, a boss has a chance to drop a Prototype mod instead when they call to the table. That chance doesn’t apply to regular mobs because they don’t have the Boss tag.
For all random loot, we have base chances that are globally defined. Note that Standard and Weak creatures have a chance to not drop loot at all, and these calls are only made AFTER it determines that they will drop something. We use random loot for world bosses, but they all have overrides to the global random loot rates. The overrides depend on how many players are expected to fight to kill the boss.
The process for determining the specific item that drops is a simple series of calculations based on requirements. We roll to determine which loot table is used, then we check the level of the NPC and roll to see if it offsets. We then look for that level in the loot table, and if it can’t find anything it will drop 1 level and check again. Once it finds a valid level, it builds a list of all the valid items and their weights. Weight is a relative chance to drop a specific item compared to other items in the table. We bias loot towards classes by having the table split: there’s an unrestricted section and a restricted section. For example, the Level 38 loot entry for Kinetic Resolve D-System has a weight of 125 unrestricted in the Rare table. It has a second entry with a weight of 100 that is restricted to the Sith Sorcerer and Jedi Sage. So the effective item weight is 125 for every group that does not have a Sorcerer or Sage and 225 for any group that does. That is why adding two characters of the same class does not further increase your odds of loot beyond having one of that class present.
Trying to describe specific weight chances gets very complicated very fast. You have to factor in the potential presence of two loot entries, the composition of the classes present, whether there are any additional drops due to what you’re killing, etc.… then we toss in a few additional factors, like Boss-only Prototype drops that have high relative weights. While in the provided example the Kinetic Resolve D-System has a lower class weight than general weight, that’s not representative of the system in general. The weights for any specific item are determined by a moderately complex set of calculations to create relative loot density consistency across hundreds of different loot criteria combinations.
2. Regional Loot.When you kill something in the world and get commendations or medpacs, it comes from here.
Most NPCs opt in to regional loot. Whenever you kill something on a planet that is valid for regional loot, it will make a call to this table in addition to whatever other loot it provides. We generally use this for simple, generic additions that we want to provide for generally participating in the content. That’s why it’s the way we drop commendations and medpacs. However, it can also be used for other purposes, like the “random” loot you get from trash mobs in a flashpoint.
Note that regional loot does not apply to things like lockboxes.
3. Custom Loot. When you kill a boss in a flashpoint and pull from a specific list of items, it comes from here.
This is similar to random loot, but it calls from a much smaller predefined list that’s specific to the NPC. Custom loot uses class restrictions extensively. Sometimes, custom loot is all class restricted and it’s not possible to get an item for classes that aren’t present. Weighting is also much simpler in custom loot packages, but with randomness there’s a high probability that a single pass through a FP/OP will be very slanted. Custom loot is typically split into several subpackages. Each subpackage has a chance to be called and contains a list of items.

[voyak]

2012, June 29th:

Lesai: When it comes to planning content and game direction, how much of it is based on the developers’ plan for the game, and how much of it is based on community suggestion and feedback?
Daniel Erickson (Lead Game Designer): As we come to the end of our big must-have features (like Group Finder), updates are driven more and more by the community. Expect to see far more of the smaller quality of life requested features (color matching for companions, chat bubbles, etc.) start to get real traction under them in the near future.

CelCawdro: What are your long-term plans for implementing playable species? Are Cathar merely the first of semi-regular species additions?
Daniel: Like all of our ongoing content updates, we’ll release Cathar into the wild and see how they perform. If new species are clearly popular we’ll keep them coming!

Nyrdbyrd: People are always disappointed when they lose the tie breaker in a Voidstar match, as though it was incorrectly judged. Any chance you could clarify the tiebreaker rules for us?
Rob Hinkle (Senior PvP Designer): Excellent question!  We've actually gone through a series of adjustments to improve this very system.  As of 1.3, here is how a winner is determined in Voidstar: There are 6 checkpoints inside the Warzone - the 3 sets of blast doors, the bridge in the reactor room, the forcefields in the cargo room, and the datacore itself.  The team that gets the furthest wins the Warzone.  If both teams get to the same checkpoint, then whichever team gets to that point the quickest wins.
When the Warzone figures out that one team has already won the match (since they are the 2nd team on the attack and have exceeded their opponents’ progress, or have gotten to the same spot faster), the match will end immediately instead of playing out the rest of the game to a known ending.
Unrelated to the tiebreaker changes (but also exciting), we've made a change to the Hangar inside Voidstar to help prevent stalemates inside the first room.  We've added a broken fence down a portion of the middle of the room, which obstructs movement but not vision. The intended result is that the defenders have to commit to defend one side or the other, and can't float between both doors quite so easily.

Tomisu: How does Expertise affect healing in PvE environments, like Operations for instance? If all players are flagged for PvP, will the heals they receive get the Expertise bonus? If not, what prevents it?
Austin Peckenpaugh (Senior Designer): Expertise counters the negative effects of "PVP Trauma," the debuff applied when engaging in combat with enemy players. It is not in any way associated with flag status.

Kiper: My question is are you still considering some sort of dual talent option, and if so is there an ETA?
Austin: This is definitely a feature we hope to provide in the future, but we don't have any details to share at this time (including an ETA).

[voyak]

2012, July 6th:

CelCawdro: If Cathar are successful, what kinds of species can we expect to see? May we see anything beyond the current selection of near-humans? What is the process behind selecting new species and gauging community interest?
Daniel Erickson (Lead Game Designer): We’d like to open the selection of future species to the community as a whole with clear positives and negatives provided for each selection. That way we can go a bit further afield in our species selection.

Lurtzello: Are the various stories ordered? Meaning, when does the storyline of each Republic planet takes place compared to the Imperial storyline and the storylines of the other planets?
Alex Freed (Lead Writer): The short, unsatisfying answer: it depends!
The longer answer: The class stories tend to weave in and out of one another--they all happen (nothing's "out of continuity"), and they all happen roughly at the same time (chapter 3 is chapter 3 for everyone, for example), but there's not a set correspondence that runs all the way through. For example, you couldn't say "the Jedi Knight is always half a planet ahead of the Imperial Agent." But you could say "the Bounty Hunter chapter 3 finale takes place before the Trooper chapter 3 finale."
For the world stories, it's a little more complicated. In some cases, only one of the world stories can happen--the Republic and Empire can't both defeat King Ulgo on Alderaan, or the villain of the False Emperor Flashpoint. For story purposes, we know these characters were defeated... but we don't know by whom.
In other cases, different factions' world stories happen roughly at the same time--aside from the final defeat of Ulgo, the rest of the Alderaan missions can be contemporaneous. Other world stories are, as you suggest, time-separated--Republic Taris takes place significantly before Imperial Taris, and Imperial Balmorra takes place significantly before Republic Balmorra.
For the most part, it's best not to worry too much about ordering individual world events unless they actively reference one another--and if they contradict one another, you can assume that we won't be writing future stories that depend on one faction's participation at the exclusion of the other. (For example, you'll note that the Corellia "Black Hole" storyline reconciles the events of the Imperial and Republic Corellia storylines so that going forward, we know roughly the state Corellia is in!).

caravaggio: The last few major patches have seen significant changes to the Sniper/Gunslinger Marksman/Sharpshooter tree. Can you talk a little bit about how you guys envision the class and what was not working that caused you to decide changes needed to be made? Do you think that 1.3 brought you closer to where you want to be or do you still see areas in the tree that need improvement?
Austin Peckenpaugh (Senior Designer): Marksmanship and Sharpshooter have been a challenge to "get right" to be sure. Apart from cover and cover gameplay in general, Marksmanship and Sharpshooter have had a few specific hurdles for us to overcome. Thematically, these guys are high weapon damage specs, and that means that they can be easily countered (or even shut down) with a cooldown like Deflection. On the other hand, when their target is defenseless, their high weapon damage can actually become a little overwhelming.
These specs are also highly cover-dependent, and it has been a difficult task to communicate to players that in most cases they're better off holding their ground than kiting like a Sorcerer or Sage would. Of course, even that depends on having chosen a good cover spot to begin with. We face the issue of rewarding clean shots from cover while not making extended stays overpowered.
To answer you more directly, our vision for these specs hasn't changed, but I think we're striking much closer to that target than we have in the past. I'm really quite happy with Marksmanship and Sharpshooter in Game Update 1.3. Prior to this update, these skill trees fell apart at the top tiers, so we really wanted to address that and reward the full-spec Marksmanship and Sharpshooter. They now have the tools to stand their ground when they need to, they have better energy management than ever before, and their gameplay is smoother, simpler, and more rewarding. That's not to suggest there aren't issues, but I expect most issues can be addressed with minor tweaks in the future.

Clymene: Are there any plans to buff companion tanks? Currently they are barely any better at survivability than dps companions, especially poor Xalek, and don't hold aggro very well.
Austin: I'll bring up the issue with the rest of the team and see if increased survivability and threat is something we can afford to give them. Without me revisiting our goals for what tank companions should do, off the top of my head, it certainly sounds like they could use some adjustments. Thanks for raising this issue.

Taitsuo: Would you guys consider adding root effects to the Resolve bar? At the moment, 3 well-coordinated Gunslingers could permaroot someone (5secs duration, 15 secs cooldown). With ranked warzones, that could mean a lot…
Austin: Resolve is meant to put a lid on effects that take control away from you, the player. It's meant to limit the effectiveness of chain stuns, sleeps, and knockbacks. However, it is not meant to impact the ranged and melee (kiting and anti-kiting) balance of the game. This was a very deliberate measure taken to separate these two different aspects of control. I won't say that we won't limit the "chainability" of roots in the future, but given the amount of skills and abilities that break and cleanse roots and snares at the moment, it's not something we're very concerned about. Of course, we will be keeping an eye on how ranked warzone teams use the tools they have.

[voyak]

2012, July 13th:

Anzel: Credit Sinks appear to be one of the hot topics in the community right now. Are there any chances of severely lowering or possibly removing some of these at this early stage in the game?
Damion Schubert (Principal Lead Systems Designer): Now that 1.3 has been out and legacy perks have been in the system for a while now, we will be looking at our credits sinks, particularly the perks, to see how they are performing. It is quite likely we will make some adjustments based on what we've learned.

BobertCole: Could you elaborate please on what role you see deception Assassins playing? Are they close to operating in the way that was envisioned?
Austin Peckenpaugh (Senior Designer): First, as to whether or not they're operating close to what we envision, the answer is "depends who the operator is." From the videos, logs, and anecdotes players provide us, it's really very much the answer for all specs - some people "get it" and play it to its potential, and some people don't. Frequently, the ones who "don't" are hitting brick walls because their expectations for what a spec should be like or should be capable of are different than what the spec is designed for.
In the case of Deception Assassins, we see and hear about a lot of players expecting to go toe-to-toe with tough enemies. They expect that since they're a melee spec, they should have the survivability they need to withstand the frontlines. That's true for some melee specs, but that's not what Deception Assassins were designed for. Deception should epitomize "hit-and-run" and "lone wolf" gameplay. Obviously that's less the case in Operations boss encounters, but if this is a question of sustained DPS, the short answer is that they hit within the same 5% "grace window" targeted by every DPS spec in the game.
In solo and PvP environments, Deception is meant to be a high burst, high mobility, shutdown spec. When played properly, they provide some of the highest burst and highest pressure in the game. However, Deception is not a great partner. He can't take hits, his shutdown requires that he set the pace of the fight, and his escapes leave allies open and vulnerable to counterattacks. I say that, but I've seen players dash my expectations and turn Deception into a spectacular teammate. Unfortunately, I've seen many more players try to facetank and fail. Assassins have a great team support role - Darkness; they also have a great well-rounded, high utility role - Madness. We left Deception to take the opportunity to do something fun and very different, but that comes with the risk of missing player expectation. If you like Deception and you want to pull it off, my suggestion is that you pick your fights and plan ahead, but I'd also warn that Deception is a spec of extremes - I would not describe it as "well-rounded."

Coldin: Every class who fights primarily in melee range (Assassins, Warriors, Powertechs) gets some kind of ability they can use to close the distance outside of 30 meters. That is except for Operatives. What's the reasoning behind the Operative's apparent lack of ability to quickly get within range to deal their most powerful attacks?
Austin: In PvP, the short answer is a combination of stealth (including Cloaking Screen), the ability to self-cleanse, and the ability to self-heal. Operatives also benefit from a good deal of control with snares, Sleep Dart, Debilitate, and Flash Bang, with additional roots, snares, and knockdowns available in skill trees. However, those things don't offer much benefit in boss fights that demand a high level of mobility and target switching. The question for us becomes one of how to best introduce a "fix" for a few encounters without dramatically impacting gameplay in other game modes or environments. That's a much longer answer, and something of an ongoing discussion. High mobility fights and encounters with a lot of target switching are proving to be fun ways for our Operations designers to challenge players. So with that theme keeping up, this issue is quickly floating to the top of our priority list.

Sindorin: When you're discussing a new planet, what sort of criteria do you guys lay out for the design process? How do you determine what's in or out, and what sort of backstory or lore goes into it?
Alex Freed (Lead Writer): Any new world needs to feel different from the worlds around it (in game terms, the worlds with level ranges just above or below its own), and it needs to push the overall themes of the story forward. So we might start with basic requirements like "We want to show the Republic going on the offensive," and "We want a wilderness world, since we've done a lot of urbanized planets lately." Defining these basic requirements isn't too difficult--they can usually be determined with an hour or two of group discussion.
After that, it gets more difficult. Figuring out the details of the world (including whether we want a canon planet to fill the role, or if we want to create a new planet altogether) takes much longer, but the basic criteria stay the same: Does the backstory fit the requirements outlined? Does the planet sound fun to play through? Is it practical? (If the art department can't build a planet full of, say, 90-foot-tall giants who use buildings as melee weapons, then that idea isn't practical, no matter what writing may want). Elements that contribute to the overall goals of the planet are retained; elements that don't get put to one side.
Writing, art and world design work together closely during this process, and if all goes well, we get a planet that has a clear purpose while being broad enough to support a wide variety of interesting missions.

Talius-LH: Is there any plan in place for either re-implementing the removed codex entries and titles or removing them entirely from the codex?
Damion: The codex will get a clean-up pass in the not-too-distant future, and at that time, we'll be either removing the entries that are no longer obtainable or re-enabling some those removed entries if it makes sense to do so.