Mar 1, 2012

Posted by in News | 16 Comments

Gabe Amatangelo Interview: Add-ons, Combat Log, Cross-Server, Ranked PvP & More!

The fine folks over at long-time Australian fan site TOROZ have just posted a brand new video interview with Lead End-game Designer Gabe Amatangelo. Apparenlty, Gabe was down under for the launch festivities taking place over the past few days, and took some time to meet with fans and fan sites.

There are definitely some interesting tidbits to come out of this, which are compiled below. I don’t know about you, but these changes look pretty exciting! We’ll keep an eye out for more coverage from the Asia-Pacific launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic. In the mean time, enjoy!

Thanks to TorBoard for the notes compilation!

Gear/Warzone/Commendation Changes

  • Lesser end-game commendations (Champion, Centurion, etc.) will not be exchangable.
  • There will be two levels of warzones. Regular and Ranked warzones.
  • Regular warzones will give out regular WZ commendations, and Ranked warzones will give out ranked WZ commendations.
  • New intro PVP set for new level 50 players to fill gap in gear.
  • There will be some “fun” uses for commendations you dont need anymore.

Ranked PVP

  • Phase one will be server specific.
  • Phase two (coming in the future) will have cross-server queuing.

General/UI Changes

  • Combat log coming soon.
  • DPS meters/Parsers will be done by 3rd party addons via combat log.
  • Free/Paid Server transfers are being worked on but no date provided. They want to make sure the process is perfect before releasing this.

Cross-Server Queuing

  • Coming in phase two of pvp changes (later than 1.2)
  • Priority is on playing with people from your own server.
  • As soon as you start choosing certain things (which warzone, ranked, etc.). It becomes more difficult for you to get a WZ with server players so you go into the cross-server

 

  1. Cool write-up, but please give credit to the outline where it is due. Thanks!

    http://2tb.co/1

  2. NaitoNii says:

    – Finally! The Combat Log. This will help to see where I screwed up during the raid and how to improve.

    – Yippie.. DPS meters. How to kill your game: Add DPS meters. Now you will be booted for not doing enough dps. Enter Elitism as it happened in WoW. “Your DPS sucks!” *Booted from group*

    Yeah, I’m not to thrilled about having it. But there’s a small part of me being hopeful that the SWTOR Community won’t become like WoW’s.

    – Cross-Server queuing isn’t something I’m thrilled about either. But I will hold my opinion until it’s there. The way he explains it sounds like it could actually be a good thing for Serious PvP.

    – “There will be some “fun” uses for commendations you dont need anymore.” << I'm actually looking forward to this. Though I'm also still waiting on more news about the Legacy System.

    • charlie says:

      like everything, there’s always at least 2 ways to look at things. For me, I don’t have the time to wait to fill up groups so cross server is nice. But like you I want priority being on my server.

      As far as meters, like you , I don’t want them to be an eletist tool but I do want to know who isn’t doing what either.

      Like you said though, hopefully it will be handled well

    • Without a dps meter you have no way of knowing whether your own dps sucks or not. You can’t improve if you have no method of judging where you’re at.

  3. You’ll all have to forgive me when I ask this. As I am a “Newbie” to MMO’s, What is the purpose for both the Combat log and DPS meters?

    • morrgans says:

      the combat log, as I know it from EQ2 is a text file, which is essentially the fly text made permanent.

      so something like:
      Imperial sniper hits you with snipershot for 56 points of damage
      tamarr heals you for 76 hits
      your masterstrike hits for 333 hits

      this info can be parsed by 3rd party programs to analyse how much damage per second you made ,received, how and what ability is contributing the most to your damage etc.

      You can also se what is your rotation (as the abilities are named.

      Now BW stated that you do not need a combat log… and I honestly aggree. However for theorycrafting, and generally getting the best of the best of the best rotation for the galactic maximum of dps (damage per second) it is essential.

      The fear goes (as it is empreical proven that people become total cockroaches if they percieve you as being inferior to them)
      that this will result in you getting harrased, kicked out of group, mobbed, made fun off etc. if you do not utilize the proven rotation with teh proven skill distribution and if your dps spread is not inside the allowed 0.02% derivation from the maximum.

      2side to every story.
      Cheers

      • morrgans says:

        I should add though that what other people have said also holds true… if you use a skill all the time but it is contributing not enough dps you can savely skip it. with only the fly text it is difficult at best.
        cheers

  4. This is some great news! I am very excited for the DPS meters and combat logs. I hate not being able to effectively gauge my own performance.

  5. Combat logs show what killed you or lead the team to wipe. DPS meter is just that. A way to gauge how much damage you are doing, and if used properly can assist you in figuring out how to improve your performance. Both are great tools, but the can be abused.

  6. Kryssprollz says:

    Combat logs being accessed by third party programs doesn’t mean there will be DPS meters comparing several player damage outputs… unless those players install the same programs.

    I don’t mind having a PERSONAL dps-meter since it helps improve your own dps.

    And we don’t know yet if combat-log will be about your actions and those affecting you or if it will display your party members’ actions too…

    I seem to recall Bioware said they were against tools comparing players performance.

  7. I WANT ARENA!!!! Like a hutt arena would be pretty amazing.

  8. Combat Logs and DPS Meters for personal, YES.

    Combat Logs and DPS Meters for party/operation, NO.

    lets face it guys, these tools always eventually become a measure for who gets to play and who does not. lets not kid ourselves. I applaud Bioware for sticking to their principles and I hope they keep this community open and fun by not making the logs/meters shared by players in game.

    Keep the focus on fun and actually playing the game, and not on theorycrafting and mathematics.

  9. I agree with “Combat Logs and DPS Meters for personal, YES.”

    But there will be Combat Logs and DPS Meters for party/operation, and the community is going to be responsible for developing them, using the API that BW will provide.

    =/

    We kind of have that already, at the end of any warzone we got to see a table showing kills, DPS, Healing, Protection points, objectives, etc. That is rly important so we can see wich player/class has done more heal, DPS, etc.

  10. Mysterys says:

    No Illum fixes coming? No gear rating “control” when people queue?
    General rule about PVP in this game: if 2+ players in your group have less than 15k hp -> YOU WILL LOSE. <— 95% of the time…
    Still, "healers" outdpsing "tanks" in PVP kinda sucks :(
    Hurray for DPS meter? YUCK… incoming "i am uber" comments everywhere. Good thing I am a tank.
    Oh well!

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