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Meet the Developers: Jesse Sky


CourtneyWoods

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Hey Jesse,

 

With an Art History degree, how did you get into the role of a gaming developer? Do you have an additional qualification which enabled you to get into that position or was it purely from interest?

 

I would like to see an answer for this as well.

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As someone who plays in Flashpoints and doesn't skip the cinematics do you skip the trash mobs?

 

As it stands at the moment there is no bonus for killing the majority of the trash we encounter. Even the bonus boss often drops low tier rewards for that flashpoint that nobody wants while the trash mobs themselves drop nothing. While at the same time (more so in Ops) the trash mobs are not balanced to be able to be waded through without some pre work or crowd control or concentrated fire. This makes the effort in killing them far out weigh the rewards gained. And then there is the almost unlimited supply of them.

 

Take EC where every 3 feet there are another group of Trandoshian or droids. To the point that it takes a lot of time to clear through them all that can put casual players off playing the ops and to a lesser extent flashpoints. And encourages experienced players to find ways to skip as much as they possibly can.

 

So is skipping trash mobs something you agree with and go along in groups?

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2) Any update on plans to convert the non-HM flashpoints to HM versions? I know alot of forum goers want that

 

I would love an answer to this. Some of those pre-50 flashpoints were a blast!

 

Another question: Have you tried the hybrid tank spec? What do you think? (as you can see from my sig I play a guardian tank too)

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I want a Guardian tank 1v1 with Jesse Sky :0

 

I clashed with the opposing team's tank in a rated match once. Thanks to low damage and high mitigation, the heals from focused defense, and each popping a medpack, the fight lasted for about 1:30 (i popped focused defense twice!) before I gave up, stunned him, and ran to help my team at mid.

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Nice to meet you mr. Sky and very nice blog post! Good to see you on the Republic side too! For the Republic!

You're hanging out with Doc because maybe you think he is not your favorite companion, but your brain is saying otherwise and the truth! Nobody can resist the charm of Doc!

 

Love it! I hope we will see more blog posts from other BW devs.

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I’m the annoying guy who never spacebars through that cinematic

I'm the guy who doesn't do Flashpoints anymore, because I seem to be one of the very very few people who don't want to spacebar. I've even been kicked from a group because I said I wanted to see the story. Which means I haven't even seen many of the game's Flashpoints, compounding the "I don't want to spacebar" problem.

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I notice you talk about choices in flash points where your dark jedi confounds the party by his evil ways. Outside of one notable flashpoint I can not think of any choices that make the slightest difference and then are completely forgotten once the flashpoint is over.

 

Will we start to see Voss Mysytics in Kass City? Will we see the choice we make at the begining of EC ever play a role in later content, a certain someone you kill returns but a loyal imperial officer that I demand to be released never makes another appearance? He doesn't even appear at the end cinematic. So far the only choice I seem to have that is a choice is if I skip some trash mobs or fight through them for no reward or purpose.

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would very hard FP´s ever be considered. I´m thinking nightmare mode. Maybe make the lowlv FP tier2 hard mode and then the next step could be to make nightmare mode of tier1 hard modes. Next step after that, nightmare mode of tier2 hard modes.
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Hello everyone! Here are answers to some of the questions you had for Jesse! Thanks for participating in our first Meet the Developers feature - you can expect to see more of these in the future!

 

 

Q: With an Art History degree, how did you get into the role of a gaming developer? Do you have an additional qualification which enabled you to get into that position or was it purely from interest?

 

Jesse: When we interview a design candidate, college degrees are footnotes compared to your gaming pedigree, especially published games, mods, and independent projects that you've worked on. Looking around the studio, I can tell you that I work with many of the most talented people I've ever met, but I'd be hard-pressed to remember what they studied in college. I can, however, tell you what games they worked on, and which games vacuum up their free time. Knowledge, passion, and professionalism usually shine through pretty clearly during conversation, and everyone has a unique story about how they broke into the industry.

 

In my case, I was selected for an interview after winning a module-building contest for Neverwinter Nights, and I happened to have thousands of hours logged in MMOs going back to the 90s. That got me a junior design position. I've been playing and building games since before I can remember – it's about the only consistent hobby I've had, since my interests range pretty widely. Game scripting is what got me into web development, game artwork is what got me into art history, and I even worked in a high-energy physics lab after being inspired by a certain crowbar-wielding physicist. If you're interested in game design, a degree can help you, but your qualifications are only really proven once you're in the door. Every development project is a learning experience, so the real test is how willing you are to learn and grow.

 

 

Q: Have you been surprised by the shortcuts and tricks and such that allow groups to skip large amounts of trash and/or bosses? Is skipping trash mobs something you agree with and go along in groups?

 

Jesse: In my experience, skipping trash carries a risk of making wipe recovery a lot more painful, so I don't really have a strong opinion about whether we should take strict measures to prevent it. It only really annoys me when groups go to ridiculous lengths to avoid a few seconds of combat, because at some point it becomes self-defeating. When I see a group doing that, I just start pulling encounters to save us the headache.

 

My preference would be to provide more incentives to engage trash. For example, in Terror From Beyond, all the trash has a chance of dropping Artifact-quality crafting mats, and one specific encounter drops a hefty amount of credits. So that's the sort of thing we're looking to do more often, but philosophically we've also gravitated toward tighter play-spaces and less trash overall.

 

 

Q: Are you ever worried that by constantly trying to challenge the top tier of players with Operations and Nightmare Mode that you are excluding the more casual players from some of the content you feel most proud of?

 

Jesse: I don't think the two things are at odds, but I can understand the frustration. Obviously we have story mode, but I'm not yet happy with where it fits into our itemization scheme. There are incentives, but they're not immediately obvious. As we move forward, we're going to be doing a lot of work toward expanding and clarifying our endgame so that the progression feels more logical. We're planning a lot of improvements to go along with the level cap increase, both for casual players and the top tier guilds. That includes more diversity in the content and the rewards offered by the endgame.

 

 

Q: Any update on plans to convert the non-HM Flashpoints to HM versions? Will there be more Tier 2 Flashpoints?

 

Jesse: We will be creating Hard Modes for all of the Flashpoints that do not have Hard Modes yet. That's something that I'm personally very excited about. As for Tier 2, the Group Finder categories will be reconfigured with the level cap increase so as not to split the Flashpoint queue into two populations. I think the challenge posed by Lost Island has offered a lot of entertainment, but it's also a PUG-killer that doesn't fit into a random mix very well. The newer Hard Modes will be balanced for a more consistent experience, both in terms of difficulty and length, and that should help keep queue times in check.

Edited by AllisonBerryman
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The way i read it, we will never have more hard mode FP and that realy disapointing. Could you possibly make nightmare mode FP for the more hardcore player and then keep them outside groupfinder. The old FP are boring even in hard mode. Very few of them have any mechanic that realy needs to be followed. I know it´s partly because people outgear FP so heavily, but i would love a harder level of FP for the guilds and a friendlier level for groupfinder.

 

For me OP´s just arent as much fun as FP´s mainly because me and my friends talk alot. and 8 people chatting on TS that´s just a bit much. Then someone needs to step in and be a boogieman to get some discipline on TS. It´s usually not a problem, but i like the small size groups. Less TS discipline is needed.

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