The fine people over at Inquisitor’s Roadhouse had a chance to ask some questions of Systems Designers David Hunt and Patrick Malott about the upcoming changes to Crew Skills in patch 1.3. Here’s a quick quote, but make sure you read the full interview so you can get prepared for all the upcoming changes.

Q: Can you share with us your thoughts on gear itemization and how that was actually playing out in game versus what you intended that lead to this change?

A: Although the details weren’t decided until recently, all the post-launch itemization systems in SWTOR have been things I’ve wanted for months. Especially with 1.2, I wanted something like augment tables but we didn’t manage to get a system in to go along with the changes to open up mods in the endgame. It sucks when you have an expansive stat customization system and then we throw out caveats like, “Oh, it only works on this small subset of items.” The more freedom and consistency, the better. Player feedback to Public Test for 1.2 indicated to us that there would be strong support for a system that opened up more viable gear, and we felt that augment tables aligned with both our goals and the needs of the playerbase. That feedback helps us get it expedited to try to get it ready ASAP. It might have been cool to get this out between Public Test 1.2 and live 1.2, but the scope of the system meant it would need much more time to do it right.

Along with the feedback we’ve received, the way itemization has played out on live has encouraged us that embracing the full mod route is the right decision. While it may not be apparent, many of the complaints players have had about itemization are concerns we share and are working on addressing. While item mods existed in beta for quite a while, some of the fundamental tech pieces didn’t exist until shortly before launch. Internally, mods make our items inordinately more data-complex and intensive than the items in the average item heavy game, and those complexities are compounded by a live environment.

Source: Patch 1.3 Crew Skills Changes: Q&A with SWTOR Systems Designers David Hunt and Patrick Malott

FORCE Junkies is once again looking to expand our talented team. We’re looking for passionate SWTOR players who want to volunteer and talk about the game, give their opinion, and make sure everyone on the internet knows that they are the expert! We’re looking for the following positions to be filled:

• Bloggers
• Class Specialists
• Guide Writers
• Editorial Writers
• Community Beat Writers
• News Writers

If you are interested, please send a 200-500 word sample to Draegan@Rerollz.com along with any questions you might have.

OR

Fill out the form here: http://www.forcejunkies.com/write-for-junkies-nation-and-become-a-staff-writer/

This week’s Q&A has no central topic, instead it goes over many different questions regarding mechanics, balance, PVP, crafting and more. Here’s just one example:

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.

Read the whole Q&A here on SWTOR’s official website.

Today we see the launch of Bioware’s official SWTOR podcast.

Hello everyone! My name is Eric Musco and I, along with Brooks Guthrie are happy to bring you episode one of the official Star Wars: The Old Republic podcast, “Rocket Boots”.

In this episode, we sit down with Daniel Erickson and Damion Schubert to talk about what we saw in Game Update 1.2 and what we can expect as we look forward to Game Update 1.3. Also, David Bass stops by to tell us about how things went at PAX East and some of our convention plans for the rest of the year. If you have any questions or comments about the show, feel free to let us know.

Thanks for listening!

For the full podcast, continue reading and check it out!

This week we Bioware put together a collection of some of very creative community members’ work.

In celebration of “May the 4th be with you” we’ve decided to create a special Fan Friday. For Star Wars™ Day, we are highlighting some of the most creative and talented members of our community by showcasing them in our Community Blog!

This week we have a community member spotlight, new forum emoticons, and to begin with, some amazing fan art.

Follow the link above and look at all the amazing artwork and other interesting things created by the community. The image above was done by RanvirBorealas.

Originally posted by StephenReid (Source)

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Hello everyone! James Ohlen, Game Director for Star Wars: The Old Republic, is looking for your feedback on the game’s development once again. This week he’s looking out to the stars… and the planets of the Star Wars universe.

James takes feedback directly via his Twitter account (@JamesOhlen), but if you’re not on Twitter, his question is below and you can give your feedback here which will be passed on to him.

As always, we ask you to limit your feedback to the question at hand and keep your feedback constructive as well as on-topic!

Here is James’ question for this week:

"What planet in the Star Wars universe do you want to see in Star Wars: The Old Republic that is not currently in the game?"

You can name any planet you like, but remember, planets in The Old Republic can be fully explorable (like Coruscant, Tatooine, Hoth etc) and/or destinations that are seen as part of a Flashpoint or Operation (like Taral V, Denova, Kaon, etc).

As a reminder, you can follow James on Twitter @JamesOhlen. You can also follow our main account @SWTOR.

Originally posted by APeckenpaugh (Source)

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Originally Posted by Phasewalker
As of late I’ve been reading a lot of post on the forums on how the Devs. just wrecked Merc Bounty Hunters and to all those non believers out there its true. I ran some testing on the Arsenal spec’ed dps using the operation lvl testing dummy on the Imperial fleet here are the numbers as proof

Hi Phasewalker. I wanted to drop in to tell you that these abilities aren’t broken. Considering your small sample size, your numbers are actually quite accurate.

I’ll go step by step as to why that’s the case, but if you’re a TLDR kind of reader: operation training dummies have armor that gives them 35% kinetic and energy DR.

We’re back with a selection of answers to your community questions! Please note in some cases we’ve combined multiple questions into one, and we have edited some questions for clarity.

As a reminder, we previously suggested a shift in focus in your questions. As development plans are always subject to change, questions about future features will often get vague answers which can be repetitive and sometimes annoying. With that in mind, the development team is more interested in questions about current in-game features or systems, or questions about why development decisions were made. You’re still welcome to ask questions about future features and we’ll continue to answer them where appropriate – just expect the occasional ‘soon.’

We have now opened an official thread for next week’s Q&A, which will stay open until 2pm CDT on May 1st, 2012 (12pm PDT/3pm EDT/8pm BST/9pm CEST/5am AEST). We welcome your questions in that thread and hope you enjoy the answers below.

From Ryan Raplee, Junkies Nation Co-Founder:

I am participating in the American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life because I want to make a meaningful difference in the fight against cancer.

Almost everyone has been touched by cancer, either through their own personal battle or through someone they love.

Every day, the American Cancer Society is helping us stay well by preventing cancer or finding it at its earliest, most treatable stages. They assist families in finding the best resources to help their friend or loved one deal with a diagnosis and their journey to get well. The American Cancer Society is also rallying communities (like ours!) through events like Relay For Life, to fight back and find cures for this disease.

Please join my team or make a donation to help the American Cancer Society create a world with less cancer and more birthdays. Together, we can help make sure that cancer never steals another year of anyone’s life!

Fuck Cancer.

Star Wars: the Old Republic has two trade networks, The Galactic Trade Network (GTN) and The Hutt Trade Network (HTN). The former is a faction specific trading network, while the latter is a cross faction one that connects buyers and sellers throughout the galaxy. While the GTN is easily accessible at the faction Fleet, the HTN requires players to travel to Nar Shaddaa to access it.

Players can unlock an HTN terminal for all their characters’ ship by reaching Legacy Level 25 and paying 5 million credits. This has caused a lot of controversy, and many players on the forums are upset, because the legacy unlock is part of the Hutt Trade Network, which is rarely used. However, in an interview with Mos Eisley Radio, Lead Game Designer, Daniel Erickson revealed that very shortly the Hutts’ will buy out all the GTNs and convert them into neutral trading networks; creating one blanket economy between both factions. He added, “…with the legacy system players play on both sides and it doesn’t make since to artificially separate the economy.” With this change in mind, it stands to reason that the Galactic Market Kiosk for 5 million credits will be a worthwhile investment.

Originally posted by GeorgZoeller (Source)

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Hey guys,

A few additional notes on this topic, fresh from a meeting with Gabe and the PvP team.

(a) Expertise difference between combatants is the single most important factor in time to kill in PvP.

Having zero or little expertise on your gear (e.g. pure PvE gear) is the primary reason for people to experience a sped-up time to death in Game Update 1.2. While it was quite viable pre-1.2 to bring your Rakata or Columi gear without any added expertise into PvP, the increased focus on expertise in the PvP track of gear has made it much harder to compete with that equipment compared to even the entry level Recruit set.

Consequently, the single most effective step you can take to decrease time to death (i.e. increase time to kill of your opponent) is to gear for increased expertise. Coming from PvE, obtaining at least some pieces of Recruit gear is definitely recommended.

Two weeks ago, we asked for your questions and unfortunately, we had to delay posting the answers to the Q&A until today. Please note in some cases we’ve combined multiple questions into one, and we have edited some questions for clarity.

We have now opened an official thread for next week’s Q&A, which will stay open until 2pm CDT on April 24th, 2012 (12pm PDT/3pm EDT/8pm BST/9pm CEST/5am AEST). We welcome your questions in that thread and hope you enjoy the answers below.

If you want to discuss any of the answers given, please use this Forum thread!

Visit the in-game News Terminal, located on Carrick Station or Vaiken Spacedock, to discover the mystery behind the spreading plague and begin the mission to earn a Rakghoul Pet.

Daniel Erickson was recently interviewed by NOWGamer and the topic of server mergers and transfers came up. Here is a small clip of what they discussed. For the full article, follow the link below.

“One of the problems we’re running into right now is kind of a classic MMO problem, which is that our overall population of players has not changed, but our peak concurrent users has changed,” Erickson told NowGamer following last week’s 1.2 Legacy update.

“As the game goes on and people relax a little bit, not playing the game 7-8 hours a day, you see a lot less crowds especially in certain places. Right now we’ve got our character transfer stuff underway on this side. It hasn’t rolled out yet – it will soon, to allow people to move to servers that will be better to their liking, get communities together. Long term we actually have to look at servers as a whole. The nice part about it is we have doubled how many people we can put on each server since launch. The down side is that at launch, because people were upset at the long queues we aired on the side of opening up more space. What that has now done is separated our player-base into a larger group.”

Erickson said that current server merging would have resulted in large queues with the 1.2 update.

Source: SWTOR: BioWare Reponds To Criticism, Server Merges Still Possible

Originally posted by DanielErickson (Source)

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Hey folks,

There’s been a lot of discussion about the changes to the Warzone rewards system in Game Update 1.2 and the type of play style that it encourages. I wanted to help out a bit and point out a major change not all players may have noticed and share some of our plans.

First of all, rest assured we are keeping a close watch on the results of our reward changes to Warzones in 1.2 and we will continue to pull constant metrics to make sure they are going in the right direction as players get used to the new rules.

To refresh everyone’s memories, one of the most important aspects of the new changes is that your team’s performance inside the Warzone has a direct impact on a portion of the rewards you are given at the end of the Warzone. Even if your team is losing, the closer you can make the game the better your rewards will be – so don’t give up hope! Giving up and letting the other team ‘win faster’ is now the worst possible route you can take to rewards.

Secondly, one of the things we have already identified to fix is to reduce the minimum amount of medals a player must receive to gain any reward at all. Currently that value is three (3), and we are going to reduce that to only needing one (1) medal to gain rewards. This should make sure we cover that all important backfill player while still protecting against the freeloaders.

As we move forward, we will continue to meet and discuss other possible changes based on the feedback here on the Forums as well as the data coming in from the live servers. As always, we appreciate your comments and want to hear from you.

UPDATE: Keep reading for a follow up post from Daniel Erickson.