Posted by Lethality | 14 Comments

Crew Skills Q&A With Damion Schubert

Crew Skills are BioWare’s implementation for harvesting and crafting in Star Wars™: The Old Republic™, but they’re really much more than that. From off-line crafting to diplomacy missions – not to mention companions who can do most of the work for you – this system is unlike any that you’ve seen in other MMORPGs.

Recently, Damion Schubert, Lead Systems Designer for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ was nice enough to take some time for a little Crew Skills Q&A with Ask A Jedi to help expand our understanding of the system!

Ask A Jedi: How and when is the player first introduced to Crew Skills? Is it via narrative, or visiting a trainer at a certain level?

Damion Schubert: The Crew Skills trainers all like to hang out on the capital worlds, where the player can encounter them.  Each trainer will give the player a description of the Crew Skill they teach, along with the benefits they provide, so the player knows which Crew Skills may be most beneficial to their play style.

Ask A Jedi: How are the various Crew Skills Missions obtained? For example, are they auto-populated? Found in the wild? NPC Trainer? All of the above?

Damion Schubert: Most Crew Skills missions are drawn from a random pool for the player to choose from, and that pool refreshes from time to time.  However, some missions are unlocked by rare objects you might find in the world.  These missions are one-off, but tend to offer more substantial rewards.

Ask A Jedi: Artifice is one of the revealed Crafting skills, and is mentioned as the production of Jedi and Sith artifacts. Is this Crafting skill available only to Force users? Are any other Crew Skills limited to certain classes?

Damion Schubert: Nope!  There are no limits in that regard. It is the player’s call as to whether they want to choose a skill that might not be directly beneficial to their character.

Read More

Posted by Lethality | 0 Comments

Narrative And Player Agency – Story & Choices

Each month, BioWare Lead Systems Designer Damion Schubert pens Design Of The Times, a game design-focused column for Game Developer Magazine.

This month’s installment is titled Narrative And Player Agency, where Damion continues where he left off last month, and focuses on what is really at the very heart of what BioWare does best: story, choice, and interactive fiction.

He talks about how much choice is enough, and the potential pitfalls of providing too much (as a developer, and the consumption of it as a player.):

Designers have to account for and predict all of the players likely choices; if you provide a third door to open, there had better be content behind it.

And when choices are stacked on other choices, you’re creating a spider web of content, of which your average player will only see one path.

Each mediocre or lukewarm choice you offer reduces the odds that players will see your best stuff.

While there’s no TOR-specific information, the article gives great insight on where the design mindset of those working on the game is right now. If you’re an aspiring (or working) game designer, or just a fan of BioWare‘s games and their approach, the article is a great read.

The issue should be on newsstands soon, or you can purchase a digital edition right here.

Read More

Posted by Sentinel | 1 Comment

Damion Schubert On The Death Penalty

The death penalty in MMORPGs has always been a hot topic among players. From the legendary corpse runs in EverQuest, to the light-hearted romp through the Azerothian ghost-world in World of Warcraft, death penalties in MMORPGs are all over the map.

Today on the official TOR forums, BioWare Lead Systems Designer Damion Schubert weighed in with his philosophy on the need to balance the severity of the death penalty with fun, and not placing artificial barriers in front of the player, keeping them from doing what they want to do:

Ultimately, we want players to play the freakin’ game. We want them to group. We want them to deck out in their gear. We want them to experiment with builds. We want them to explore the nether regions of all the planets. We want to make really hard stuff for them. And we most assuredly want them to seek out challenges bigger than themselves.

Schubert goes on to say that just because the death penalty may not be harsh, it doesn’t mean the game can’t be challenging:

But I would seperate the idea of ‘challenge’ and ‘punishment’. I would rather our challenges be gated by whether or not you have the skill, the gear, and the teamwork to succeed than whether or not you have the credits and/or time to wait out the forced downtime in between, you know, the fun part.

While he doesn’t offer specifics on how the “death” system will work in TOR, we can garner enough from his post to understand that they want players to play the game, not be punished for doing so.

So what’s your take? Should there be material loss to your character when you die? Or should there be an insta-ressurection button? Maybe something in-between?  Let us know! And you can jump into the discussion on the official forums right here.

Read More

Posted by Lethality | 0 Comments

Damion Schubert: Chat Channels & Mission Cancellation

BioWare Lead Systems Designer Damion Schubert treated TOR followers today with some Thanksgiving Eve goodness in the form of a few forum posts – both of which provide some solid new information.

In a thread entitled No World Chat, Damion responds with a very interesting description of how the chat channels in the game work (and specifically their reach:)

Each planet has chat channels that allows you to communicate with other players on the same planet. Yes, we have different channels for general, pvp, trade, etc. You will be able to turn off the channel, flag another player as a spammer for Customer Support’s review, and ignore problem players.

Disregarding whether or not they are realistic (and the presence of technology makes them much more realistic here than in fantasy games – you only have to look at a CB Radio for an analog), chat is very good for the community. Of particular note, some of our best content areas are the awesome multiplayer fights our worldbuilders have been setting up. If to fight those, you had to go to town and wait for someone else to wander by, life would suck, and this content (which I want to stress, in my opinion, is usually wicked fun) would never get done.
We currently don’t have any global channels that cover the whole game. General rule of thumb in an MMO is that if your chat channel has more than a certain number of participants, it becomes spammy and unusable (something that we’ll be keeping an eye on in our earlier planets).

Considering “planets” as an analog to “zones” in other popular MMOs, this makes a lot of sense, and should side-step the type of player communication problems Warhammer had at the outset.

Damion also provided some insight as to companion options and Crew Skills in a thread entitled Crew Missions: Emergency Recall?!:

Currently, you can recall your companion at any time from a mission. You lose any progress he has made, as well as any upfront costs, but he returns immediately. This may be adjusted as we test further, but it seems to offer a decent balance.

You can also have a companion stop crafting an item at any time. In that case, you lose no materials (but all progress will be lost).

So ultimately, there will be some risk involved if you send a companion off on a crafting task or mission, and decide later that you need him back. The penalty of losing progress on the mission, in addition to the up-front cost, seems to be in line and not too steep.

Read More

Posted by Lethality | 0 Comments

GDC Online: A Conversation with Damion Schubert

The crew over at Darth Hater have posted a nice 3-page conversation with BioWare Principle Lead Systems Designer Damion Schubert.

Fresh off of his talk at GDC Online, Schubert touched on some very interesting topics, not the least of which was the oft-rumored “Legacy System”:

Damion Schubert: We really want to put in systems to encourage replay. The Legacy System, which we hope to get in, will hopefully be in that venue. I am not ready to talk about what exactly it is and how we do that, but we are really betting heavily on the level up game.

There’s all kinds of controversy surrounding this on the official forums, because it would seem to confirm fears that re-rolling is a legitimate and incentivized end-game activity.

Head on over to Darth Hater and give it a read!

Read More