Community News

02.13.2012

Dev Tracker Summary: February 6th, 2012 – February 12th, 2012

Hello, and welcome to the inaugural edition of our weekly Dev Tracker summary posts! Each week, we’re going to be collecting the most important developer responses that show up in our Dev Tracker and collating them into this digest. Let us know how we’re doing by following the forum link at the bottom of this blog post, and to read the full version of any response, check out the Dev Tracker.

Let’s get started:

On Tuesday, Associate Online Community Manager Joveth Gonzalez assured players that the Ilum valor issues and the new ability cooldown UI that were introduced with Patch 1.1.2 were both being investigated. A poll for the new global cooldown UI was posted and the status on Ilum valor issues was updated, which involved a new patch deployment (1.1.2a).

Systems Designer Patrick Malott clarified an issue regarding the current state of reverse engineering:

“The reverse engineering return rate is not currently working as intended. In an upcoming patch, we are improving the reverse engineering rates – especially for the higher-level items. We are also looking into the issue where a player receives "You already know that schematic" instead of learning a new research variation.”

Sr. Community Coordinator Allison Berryman talked about improving the visibility of final, live patch notes for the Dev Tracker:

“Thanks for the feedback on patch notes! We can definitely work to make sure it's very clear when we post the public test versions of the notes by calling it out more obviously in that post, and we'll work on making sure that the forums know when the final live notes are available (yes, as others have mentioned, they are available in the launcher and on the website, but we can make sure a post gets into the Dev Tracker, too, for those who prefer that outlet).”

Sr. Online Community Manager Stephen Reid popped into the global cooldown UI poll thread:

“Changes are definitely going to be made to the UI in response to initial feedback we received after the patch was deployed. (Very little feedback was received on the PTS Forum before the patch was deployed to the live servers, otherwise changes may have been made before the patch's deployment.)”

Later on, he closed the poll with the following comments on UI and the use of the Public Test Server:

“Possibly more than any part of the game, UI is a very subjective topic, so we understand the varied opinions expressed here. The long-term aim for The Old Republic is to give players flexibility in their UI choices and the changes coming for Game Update 1.2 will allow for more of that.

I wanted to also address concerns about the Public Test Server. We're working towards enabling character transfers so you can move your own character across and test new patches. Other ideas to allow the testing of high-level content have been explored, but ultimately character transfer is what we want to allow for everyone.”

In response to questions about user interface ‘add-ons’, Stephen responded with:

“Add-ons are still under discussion, but there's no current timeline for when that functionality might be implemented. While add-ons would give a lot more potential options (assuming a robust add-on community), there will still always be many people who want to use the game's default UI (new players, for example!). Therefore it's important for us to ensure the UI that we have works well, hence our ongoing development and expansion of UI options.”

Finally, Stephen posted about the final UI resolution, which included changes coming up in Patch 1.1.4:

“Since late Tuesday the development team has worked on some new code to allow you to select from a variety of new options for the global cooldown. I saw a preview of the changes today and while I know everyone's UI choices are individual, I think most people will like the options presented to them. They're very flexible, and the 'flashing' most have described is now able to be turned off, along with many other optional choices. The team has spent today cleaning up and finalizing the code, and after that it'll go into our QA process.

As this code change has come in 'hot' it was unfortunately too late for us to add it to the build being readied for next week's planned patch (1.1.3, which is now available on the Public Test Server - here are the notes). We also want to ensure it's got some solid QA testing on it, as it's a change that will be seen by everyone playing the game. With all that in mind, we're currently expecting the changes to be rolled out with patch 1.1.4, which is tentatively scheduled for deployment in the week beginning Monday 20th. As always, the patch should be on the Public Test Server before that, and when it's available, we encourage everyone to try it out and see the changes made.

Before all that, as we know many of you are interested to see the changes, we're going to give you a sneak preview of those options when the code is finalized and ready to show off.”

That ‘sneak preview’ is now available in this blog entry.

Finally, Live Community Coordinator Amber Green posted up the patch notes for patch 1.1.3, which went live on the Public Test Server.

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