Q&A from Community Cantina in Seattle (31 Aug 2013)

So...we were lied to about the hard/nightmare mode lockouts....nice.

No. You weren't. They never ever said they would be separated.

They said the tech for nightmare was built on hardmode so even though they would like to it would be difficult and not sure when/if it would be done.

You were never lied to. Get over it.

I'm fine with shared stories. As long as it keeps pushing the game forward and allows then to push content faster then I don't really care.

Glad someone asked about Harbinger

90% of people will cheer for anything if you ask it right. It's a crowd effect.

It's extremely common, for people logged in at the fleet. However as a F2P game, they have stats on millions and millions of users who might on a whim play for an hour one Saturday.

Excellent write-up, thanks.

I'm confused here. They don't really want to put in the effort to reward legacy 50 because only a small minority of the player base have reached that far.. yet they take a quick poll of approximately 300 people and it confirms his theory that everyone liked Makeb.

Makeb was an okay story, but if given the option i'd rather experience Makeb from four different perspectives than one four times.

I'm not legacy 50 yet, but i'd much rather have a unique speeder than the ability to buy a time upgrade for a transport ability.

people keep acting like there are no balance changes coming in 2.4, we know that there are changes being made before 2.4 that are currently being tested on pts

the fact they are being conservative about changing up classes and balance is great in my opinion, I strongly believe small incremental changes are way better then major overhauls when it come to balancing and like they said arenas will have their own balance issues compared to warzones and pve, the fact they are aware of this and working on a wait and see basis means that hopefully any arena influenced changes will be changes that are needed and do not drastically effect pve balance like major changes based off blind assumption could potentially create

I say take your time, gather the data, focus on the priorities, and keep the changes small rather then just pander to forum whining and over compensate because whatever class yelled the loudest

From the transcript:

Q: Why not more playable species, like Nautilans?
A: Each species takes tons of time to develop for all the options, moves, and so on. Because Cathar sold well, they are in talks to see what should be next, but he does not know which one will be next.

So i can finally buy the Cathar without feeling blackmailed.


Q: Changes to player ships?
A: Player ship changes are on the wall of crazy. They are looking at perhaps making it so a group of more than four can enter a player’s ship. That said, a player’s ship is one of the hardest parts of the game to change, due to so many quest triggers being on the ship—any change is highly likely to break things. “It makes our worldbuilders cry” when they have to change the ship.


Simple then, inroduce a housing system, with this response ppl can't say "your ship is your house no need for another one"


Q: When will we ever add more class story?
A: (Schubert takes a quick poll; most people liked the Makeb story. This apparently confirmed his suspicions.) From their point of view, the Makeb story was successful. And actually one of the reasons it was successful was because it was NOT a class-based story. Instead of having to come up with multiple reasons why different types of characters would go to Makeb (artifacts, military secrets, etc.) they could focus on making one very good story with slightly different takes for each class. This made Makeb both a better story and more epic (due to not having to do eight full versions of it.) They are looking at taking the basic Makeb model in future and expanding on its emphasis of class differences. How would Luke Skywalker handle this problem vs. Darth Vader? They might go back to the class story model, but it would be hugely ambitious.


Interesting, i really wonder where the heck do they get their metrics, most ppl i talked to say that Makeb was nice, however if i ask if they'll do it with again on a alt most said no. Can't exactly see how is that a sucess.

2 things atracted me to this game, the story and the replayability. Replaying the game on the same side was fun because of the class story, with it i could overcome the boredom of repeating the planet quests. I've done Makeb once on the empire side, i'm definitelly not going throught that again. They'll need over six Makebs to compensate the depht of class stories, and i doubt i'll do them all twice.