Community Q&A – Feb 24th 2012 Blog Discussion

Okay, so if they are in the position of damned if they do, damned if they don't, why not give courage to their own convictions and give timescales to stuff and if they are delayed, say why knowing that they are going to get flamed either way, but stand by it.

Would get more respect from me and it is only me I can answer for.

First off, let me say that to people arguing that BioWare should release a product roadmap with deliverable dates, or be more specific on when something should show up in-game:

There are players on the forums who already start accusing BW of dropping the Q&A session because it isn't out by a certain time of day on Friday. They do it every Friday. If you think this would get any less severe on major game updates, I seriously feel like you should re-evaluate your expectations.

I totally understand why they're hazy with actual dates. Programming isn't a science, it's an art. Sometimes things just take a little longer than they were supposed to, and you can run across those situations at 10%, 25%, 50%, 66%, or even 95% of the way through development. When they pop up, you either fix them or yank the upgrade. There is no other option.

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As to this week's answers, once again I feel really impressed with what we're hearing.

OVERALL SYSTEMS

I like that there is a strike team working to improve the speed and handling of the game on lower-end systems. I hope this team is also working to streamline the speed and handling across the game system overall, looking for elements within the engine that impose slowdowns and cleaning them up or changing them to react faster.

By the way, if the overall game improvements are delayed due to trying to rectify the BW-modded Hero engine with the Simutronics Hero engine so they can start updating the entire engine regularly, I'm perfectly fine with that.

Love the idea of the updates to end-game armors and the dyes features that are coming in. Looks like it should also improve crafting across the board.

SPACEPORTS, SHIPS, AND TRAVEL

Streamlines to the spaceports and orbital stations issues are also welcome. One thing I'd like to say is that they should enhance the use of the Fleet Shuttles which are placed on various planets. I think once you visit a planet for the first time by navigating there, you ought to be able to use one of the Fleet Shuttles (like the one in the main Taxi hub on Coruscant between the Senate building and Port) to navigate to various planets.

Instead of just clicking the little terminal next to the shuttle, a pop-up dialogue should appear that lets you choose either from a name list of planets you've been to, or perhaps a galactic map using the same map UI from the ships navigation computer. To balance this they can increase the price for the shuttle trip over using your personal ship.

The one thing I'm most disappointed with is the thought that the ships we have are to be our ships for the entirety of the game. I understand there are a lot more high priority issues to be resolved, and I certainly don't want the process to go overboard as it did with a certain other sci-fi game where you barely had time to enjoy your ship before it was outdated, but I'd love to see more variety in the ships over time.

One thing the Devs and Game Managers should consider is the possibility of just using "costumes" for the ships rather than a completely redesigned ship. I think a great mid-range option would be the chance to change the entire outward appearance of the ship while still leaving the ship's interiors as they are. That should resolve the excessive (and understandable) needs for re-tooling cutscenes inside the ship for various story triggers, since only the exterior shots of landing, launching, hangar appearances and space combat models would need to be altered.

TL;DR

All in all, it looks like this game has a bright future ahead of it. To me, it seems like they have a lot of things going on for only the second month. They genuinely appear ready to do everything necessary to improve this game as fast as possible and add the content users want.

Keep up the great work, BW! Looking forward to the changes...

dont worry 1.2 will solve any problem

this

+1

A thousand times yes. As far as SGRAs go, I understand the desire to know things such as timeframe/which characters will be included, but if they're not saying anything, that means they're not ready!

They have no reason to withold the information, and they've said it's coming... so clearly it's just not ready to be shown yet!

If their answer to the question was simply, "Yes it's still coming, but we have nothing to announce yet." Then we know nothing new, and we've wasted a question. Until they have something to tell us, relax!

In all likelihood, this will be added in along with some major patch that's also introducing new companions in general/additional storyline. Maybe 1.3?

Some small good points in the Q+A, but I also notice the glaring hints that some of the sought after things are not on the immediate list of things to do (e.g. minigames to help keep people amused, ship customisation, being able to buy a different ship, etc, etc).

Also, the notion of making orange gear even MORE flexible and viable within the scope of itemisation is really not helping the problems that are already associated with viability of the crafting professions that have to compete with orange items. In short, unless you can make mods for orange gear, or the profession is Biochem, then you're profession is essentially screwed.


My current fear is that Bioware just appear to be largely content with continuing to follow the notion that throwing more flashpoints, operations and warzones at the game is enough for the immediate future. Whilst forsaking much that would help to actually set this game apart from the pack (in terms of activities that could help keeping players entertained).

Btw, VO is nice for leveling but gets damned annoying the nth time you run through a flashpoint. Could you not have a fourth option on the dialogue called "Let's cut to the chase", and if all in the party choose it then the dialogue skips to the next set of dialogue options?

The fleet passes are not easily available if i cant set up a security key. Please fix this

My problem is not a bug fix but a design idea gone bad.

I am a Scrapper and my mirror class can do 4 actions to my 2 actions in PVE or PVP.

This is clearly unacceptable and is unfair to anyone that plays a Scrapper vs a Operative.

Being tied to long animations is unfair and makes the game bad for those using the Republic.

So again is appears as a favoritism for Imperials as nothing has been said to fix this imbalance.

Hate to bust the bubble of those hating on posters asking about same-gender content, but Community Service reps have been very plain in encouraging us to continue. And we will, until we have received an update.

A lot of other high-volume topics were addressed this week, and that's a good thing. What annoys me far more than people continuing to ask unanswered questions are those who continue to ask questions that have been answered. That is unecessary spam.

Also - People who can't count to one. One question. That's what you get. One.

In all seriousness, I don't understand the answer here. Forum poster asked about companion rolls and got the answer about rolls only for specific ACs, which is completely irrelevant to the question. Am I the only one who read it this way?