Hello and welcome to the official Q&A thread for questions to be answered for the August 3rd, 2012 Q&A blog post.

 

As a reminder, we’ll be starting up a weekly Q&A blog series in which we will select questions from the community and post answers to them every Friday. We’ll have the next set of answers next week on August 3rd, 2012, but before that, we need your questions!

 

Please use this thread to ask your question (one per community member, so make it count!). On Tuesday at 2PM CDT (8PM BST/9PM CEST/5AM AEST), we will close this thread, select the questions, and get answers to them for Friday’s blog post.

 

In order to increase the chances of having your specific question answered and to help us keep the thread manageable, here are some guidelines on asking questions:

 

1. Keep your question relatively short. Background details are welcome, but don’t go overboard.
   
2. Please actually ask a question. We want to hear constructive feedback elsewhere in the Forums.
   
3. Use common sense – we cannot answer everything, especially on far-reaching content.
   
4. This should go without saying, but be respectful.
   
5. Limit yourself to one question in this thread, please. You can always ask another question next week!
   
6. And finally, as a reminder, this is not a discussion thread. Do not comment about what somebody else has posted.
   

 

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.’

 

Any other posts apart from questions in the thread will be removed.

 

With that being said, please ask away!

From a long time hardcore raid member in several different games ranging from Everquest, Asheron's Call, Rift, WoW, and now SWTOR, I have a question that is burning on many people's minds.

 

Q. What is the reasoning behind releasing Operations with so few bosses while also making sure that Blackhole commendations were so easily obtained effectively lowering the amount of activity time within said Operation between updates?

Why is the inclusion of new species dependant on people wanting to play Cathar. I want to play a Kel'dor, a Gran, a Mon Cal, a Trandoshan, a Rodian but I have no interest in playing a Cathar. Do I have to make a Cather for you to consider adding one or more of the species I want to play.

 

Doesn't the thread http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=479757&page=59 show people would like more species and what the front runner are?

Edited July 28, 2012 by Izorii

What's being done about warzone performance? Specifically server lag (in which my melee attacks are mysteriously out of range, or characters warp across the map), and the slightly less frustrating feature of being unable to chat in /ops or see all players in the unit raid frames?

I have found that starting a cast and strafing back and forth (to interrupt it) can very reliably (only takes maybe 5 tries ) cause a global cool down in which I am actually locked out from using other abilities. There are also other reports of using non-cast time abilities misfiring and causing GCDs. This is all without any noticeable lag. Is this issue being researched and will it be addressed soon?

Will we be able to purchase other kinds of weapons for our characters where perhaps we will be able to use a rifle as a class that at this time is bound to a pistol?

When will we be seeing more open (paid or not) transfers? And if you can't say when, is it at least soon?

From last week:

 

When might we see the "Companion Match to Chest" feature implemented? Additionally, when might we see a "Hood Up / Hood Down" toggle for robes? Finally, any chance our companions could be given class tags so they could make use of armor that has class tags like TROOPER, SMUGGLER, etc?

Are we going to see any balances or quality of life changes to the healing specs any time soon?

Will we get at option to option to add a friends account/legacy to our friends list, instead of having to invite all their characters manually? and if so when?

When will we be seeing some new content?

A lot of the discussion I tend to see in game and even at panels these days is the player base. I've always wondered what future methods might be employed to increase player volume; what other ideas/methods are stirring over at Bioware? What would be the goals for these new ideas?

 

For example, the new Free Trial to attract new customers, the Legacy System to add replay value.

Edited July 27, 2012 by Chrispag
Clarification

After patch 1.3, I have noticed that the Mercenaries on our Ops teams are having severe issues with heat management. We can afford to lose DPS from our Arsenal Merc as it will be picked up by other DPS'ers on the team, however having our Merc Healer overheating half-way through fights is definitely not helping. After reading the forums, it seems this is a widespread issue. Do you have any plans to fix this?

Is there any possibility in the future of allowing for name changes? At least half of my characters from my destination server had to be changed when they moved. Is there any possibility of taking a name from an inactive account that no longer has a subscription; maybe it could even be done through some kind of paid service. Edited July 27, 2012 by BobbyN
make sentence easier to read

Is there a rough date on when we might see Update 1.4?

Will there be any plans for moddable weapons/off-hands available through Legacy vendors?

What was the purpose of the recent Q&A for all classes and do you have any plans to address the imbalance in PVP where the vast majority of ranked warzone teams are made up of 2/3 DPS classes and one healing class? It would also be nice to know who is in charge of PVP now as we never seem to hear from anyone.

In the future updates, will we ever get to see more social gear introduced? I love the different sets of social gear already available but new sets of social gear would be great to see in the upcoming updates.

Somewhere in the past i've seen you releasing numbers based on what the player base have accomplished such as the total number NPCs killed. Can you name us the top healer, tank and dps from each faction on warzones based strictly on the numbers they have put up so far? Sort them by total score and by total achieved on a single match. I think the player base could use some heroes to look up to.

One of the videos you guys did, for E3 I think it was, it was said there would be a big update for July. What happened to that update?

Can we expect the hood toogle option, companion match to chestpiece, and companion hide headgear in the next major patch?

As it stands, Electrostaves, and to a lesser extent Vibroblades, have little to no value to players. While the jedi and sith both have the proficiencies to use these weapons, lightsabers are generally better and, with case of Electrostaves, can't be use with core abilities. Add to the fact that only one companion (Vector) uses Electrostaves at all, they're just taking up space.

Is there any chance of seeing them get more value, either by letting Jedi/Sith use them effectively, or by merging Electrostaves/Techstaves and Vibroblades/Techblades into single weapon class (ex. Letting electrostaves be able to slot willpower hilts and aim barrels so multiple companions use them) ?

Asked before by me but never answered. Will we ever be able to somehow store the names of Alts for the apposing faction in a friends/alts list for easier auto name filling when doing mails? I've been know to make some names not so easy to type.

Why do you not answer more Q&A questions each week than you do?

When will a mac version come out?