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Yellow Posts: Playing Favorites

With the fan site summit getting underway this week, as well as having a major holiday one would expect developer posts to be slow.  Lucky for us, this was not the case over the week.

Damion Schubert had a somewhat lengthy post addressing a few key points about grouping and how conversations will work:

We’ve put a lot of time and effort into making sure that group play and playing with a partner is important.  To answer some of the individual questions: 
1. No, Republic and Imperial players cannot meaningfully group or play with each other.  For the most part, they have entirely different content and progression paths through their planets.
 
2. If you’re on the same side, once you leave your Origin World, your class stories will tend to take you to roughly the same planets, areas and quest hubs at the same time (even if you are not the same class).  This has proven pretty vital to keeping groups together and happy.  There are quest areas that the class stories do not drive you towards, where play is more freeform.
 
3. Most of the key moments of a class story happen in a class phase.  You can enter the class phases of party members (to, for example, help out with combat events).  Many players choose to, but many also choose not to, instead choosing to craft, farm xp, or do their own class quest if it happens to be nearby.
 
4. There are moments where the class quests send you to largely divergent locations (for example, a Jedi might be sent back to Tython to report in to the council, whereas another class is sent to an abandoned asteroid facility).  These tend to be relatively obvious and relatively synchronized with each other.  In most of my own playthroughs, the group typically chooses to do these events on their own time.
 
This is, obviously, an area of great importance to us, and one we continue to iterate on, but it is one area of the game where we’ve made a lot of progress, design-wise.  It’s quite fun, right now, to play the game with a steady group.

 

This should relieve some fears that if grouped together, one person would not have any of their class quests or have any real quests to do.  From what Damion said, if you group and do those quests you will arrive and leave planets around the same time.

Damion also gave us some insight in response to a question about which faction the developers will be playing:

Having worked in the industry for many years, I can tell you the answer is “whichever one you’re not playing — whatever that is.”

Wiser words have never been spoken.

With the next issue of PC Gamer hitting store shelves in Europe, a few lucky subscribers had a copy early and tried to translate the articles and interviews.  Translation is always tricky and Georg Zoeller was on the case when it came to a bad translation.

I think the translation makes it sound like I’m avoiding something there, which isn’t the case. First, we fully understand why dual spec is a popular topic.  Currently, we do not see the need to allow for dual spec at release. It’s something that we’ll definitely monitor over time, but we do think there is enough flexibility in the class system to keep people occupied well past launch.

Not a big shock here, knowing that you cannot change your advanced class (as of right now), it would only make scene that one cannot dual spec.  I do not see a dual spec coming to TOR, since it can really change the dynamic of the class on a dime.  While this may work for groups that are short on a certain class type, it may not bode well for the game in the long run and hardly changes any class shortages.

The big news for the community was not the Friday update on Drew Karpyshyn’s book, but on the closure of the Off-Topic and Visitor Wall sections of the forums.  With only a post saying each section would no longer be available after April 22, some members were very upset.

Stephen Reid jokingly responded to Soulgazer who was asking if the update would contain any explanation as to why each area was closed:

Posted by Lethality | 5 Comments

Friday Update: Advanced Class Palooza!

In what can only be described as the most awesome Friday Update ever, forum super hero Georg Zoeller takes on a new developer blog that provides some very meaty information on the workings of Star Wars: The Old Republic Advanced Classes:

Choosing an Advanced Class is very important in The Old Republic, as within your Advanced Class, your character will reach their full potential. Your Advanced Class choice dramatically alters the gameplay experience of your base class by providing access to two exclusive skill trees per Advanced Class, with a third being shared between both Advanced Classes.

For the first time, the combat roles of the Advanced Classes are being discussed in an official capacity:

Bounty Hunter Advanced Classes

• Mercenary (Roles: Mid – Long Range Damage Dealing, Healing)
• PowerTech (Roles: Short – Mid Range Damage Dealing, Tanking)

Imperial Agent Advanced Classes

• Sniper (Roles: Mid – Long Range Damage Dealing)
• Operative (Roles: Close – Mid Range Damage Dealing, Healing)

Jedi Knight Advanced Classes

• Jedi Sentinel (Roles: Close Range Damage Dealing. Wields dual Lightsabers)
• Jedi Guardian (Roles: Close Range Damage Dealing, Tanking. Wields a single Lightsaber)

Jedi Consular Advanced Classes

• Jedi Shadow (Roles: Close – Mid Range Damage Dealing, Tanking)
• Jedi Sage (Roles: Mid-Long Range Damage Dealing, Healing)

Smuggler Advanced Classes

• Gunslinger (Roles: Mid – Long Range Damage Dealing, wields dual pistols)
• Scoundrel (Roles: Close – Mid Range Damage Dealing, Healing, wields scatter gun)

Sith Inquisitor Advanced Classes

• Sith Assassin (Roles: Close – Mid Range Damage Dealing, Tanking)
• Sith Sorcerer (Roles: Mid-Long Range Damage Dealing, Healing)

Sith Warrior Advanced Classes

• Sith Marauder (Roles: Close Range Damage Dealing. Wields dual Lightsabers)
• Sith Juggernaut (Roles: Close Range Damage Dealing, Tanking. Wields a single Lightsaber)

Trooper Advanced Classes

• Vanguard (Roles: Close – Mid Range Damage Dealing, Ranged Tanking)
• Commando (Roles: Mid – Long Range Damage Dealing, Healing)

Georg also spends some time elaborating on how, when choosing abilities from your Advanced Class tree, your base tree abilities can be modified:

Imagine a Sith Warrior character, with the Juggernaut Advanced Class. As part of the tanking and control themed ‘Immortal’ skill tree, he may choose to learn Force Grip. This upgrades the base class ability Force Choke from being a channeled ability, requiring several seconds to activate, to being an instantly used ability.

This goes a long way in bolstering the idea that Advanced Classes are truly an entirely different class, not just a “spec.”

Some of the more astute followers may also notice hints of a UI revamp in the screenshots provided.

Hop on over to the official site and check out what is an absolute must-read for any TOR follower!

Maybe this will take the spotlight off of the swimming debate. ;)

Posted by Lethality | 12 Comments

PAX East 2011: A Conversation With James Ohlen

Although it is no doubt a busy time for James Ohlen, Game Director for Star Wars™: The Old Republic, he still managed to fit a visit to PAX East into his schedule in order to spend time talking with fans about everyone’s favorite upcoming MMO.

We met James in a secret, undisclosed location deep within the bowels of the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, and he was nice enough to have a conversation with us about the game… some of the topics we covered:

• Guild System
• Guild Progression
• Possibility of Web/Mobile Tools
• Achievements
• Advanced Class Swapping
• Melee vs. Range Combat
• Cover
• Guild Capital Ships
• User Interface & Customization
• Mac Support
• Crew Skills & “Critting” During Crafting
• … and more!

We just wanted to say thanks to James and wish him and the entire BioWare team good luck as they head into the home stretch toward release of The Old Republic later this year!

The general transcript is after the jump, but the listening to the audio is better for capturing the spirit of the conversation and some of the details!

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Friday Update: The Trooper Dossier!

We all know every Friday is like Christmas morning for followers and fans of Star Wars™: The Old Republic™, and today was no different! Joanne Laroche posted:

Always on the front lines of battle against the Empire, Troopers seize every tactical advantage at their disposal to defend the Republic. With combat experience and intense training, Troopers can specialize to increase their battlefield prowess. The Trooper’s Advanced Classes will allow you to customize your Trooper to match your desired playstyle: improve your Trooper’s defensive tactics and capabilities to become a nearly unstoppable Vanguard, or go all-out on offense and become a deadly Commando.

After a special Christmas Eve-Eve update from GameSpot, which revealed the (quite awesome) Trooper class video, this morning we get the rest of the goods: The complete Trooper dossier:

• We get some initial details on the Trooper’s first companion, a Weequay named Tanno Vik, who was added to the Biographies section. Seems to have quite a way with explosives.
• Also added to the Inhabitants page was the official entry for the Zabrak species. The narrative on the page indicates a high level of martial arts training, and the Zabrak animation on the page shows an unarmed punch ability. Interesting.
• The starship that the Trooper will commandeer has also been revealed: The BT-7 Thunderclap. Included in the media for the BT-7 is a walkthru video, as well as some screenshots – including the popular cutaway view so you can see the layout of the inside.
• And no class update would be complete without the proper treatment for the Advanced Classes. In the case of the Trooper, that would be the Vanguard and Commando.

If the class video is any indication the Trooper class will be well-represented in the class mix when The Old Republic launches in Spring of 2011!

Posted by Lethality | 2 Comments

Friday Update: Designing the Advanced Classes System

Today’s official Friday update was a brand new developer blog written by BioWare Principal Lead Systems Designer Georg Zoeller… In the piece, Georg provides some juicy, long-awaited details on the design of the Advanced Class system:

In some cases, this led to integrating ‘traditional’ MMO roles into our existing class structures: The play style generally associated with the ‘healer’ role in MMOs is very popular with many players and we wanted to make sure that we offered that role in our game for our audience. In fact, we are offering two classes that can develop into fully capable healers for each faction via one of their Advanced Classes.

While the blog entry provides a slightly more clear picture of how Advanced Classes play a role, there are still questions left with answers unconfirmed:

• Is your Advanced Class choice permanent? We’ve heard yes and maybe.
• Can you fill more than one combat role with your Advanced class? We’ve heard no.
• What level do you choose your Advanced Class? We’ve heard it’s not level dependent.

In any case, the blog is a must-read for any fan who is closely following TOR, especially those of my Smuggler brethren, because the Smuggler class is used as the example throughout the post!

With “trees” within the Advanced Class such as Scrapper, Sawbones, Sharpshooter and Dirty Fighting, with a shared tree of Luck, the Smuggler class is shaping up to be just what I was hoping.

Smuggler AC Talent Trees

We also hope that this developer blog might signal the beginning of more game systems-related information releases. Long overdue in this author’s opinion.

Click here to read the full blog post, and don’t forget to follow our coverage all next week of the GDC Online conference in Austin, Texas… where you can be sure we might use a few Dirty Tricks to get some more info out of BioWare!