Posted by Sa Chi | 13 Comments

All The Galaxy’s A Stage: The Brady Bunch Legacy

All The Galaxy’s A Stage is a regular column at Ask A Jedi with some lofty, creative goals.  On one hand, we will be discussing and exploring meaningful topics to support the role-play experience and community.  On the other hand, we also want to introduce the casual Role-Player to the writing-acting experience that can add so much more to an MMORPG like Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Share your perspectives and experience as we co-create magical story in that galaxy far, far away!

As a Role-Player I enjoy the idea of a surname for my characters.  It is fair to say that over the past thirty years most of my characters have had surnames.

But I will say this.  As a rule of thumb I’ve never made a habit of giving all my characters the same last name for my characters.  Come to think of it I’ve never done this once.

I’d also heard that BioWare are Role-Players.  I’d like to think that any Role-Player worth their salts has not given all their characters the same last name.  It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to assume that RPers like Daniel Erickson have followed this normal convention.

That is unless you’re playing in a campaign to act out your Jackson or Brady Bunch fantasy.

Can you see where this is going yet?

For those of you that don’t know, the Legacy system is a feature that kicks in once you’ve completed the first chapter of your first character’s story in-game.  At that point you get to give your character a surname.  Having been confronted with no option for a surname at creation most Role-Players would be forgiven their excitement at learning this.  I too was excited when I encountered this during game testing – until I read the fine print.

The thing is, you get one UNIQUE surname per account.  Or is it server?  it doesn’t matter.  Either scenario is *word left on the editing floor*.

Since inception this column has been generally warm toward BioWare game design choices.  In my opinion this is one of the most disappointing design choices for Role-Players that has been made in TOR. I cannot for the life of me believe that a Role-Player made this choice.  Perhaps the design team wanted to pay tribute to the Brady Bunch?

I tried to consider technological constraints.  Perhaps technology makes this difficult?  And then I realized that other games have given us unique surnames.  So it is not an impossible thing to do.  It must be a design choice.  But why, BioWare, why?

A unique name per server (or account) means I get to play alts, but can forget surnames for any characters that are not married (to my other characters?) or are siblings of my main.

I am curious to see if other RPers are in agreement with me.  It’s probably too late to change, but I would like to get some numbers rating dissatisfaction on this feature.  If you really care about this topic please let your friends know about this poll and convince them to come and vote.  BioWare staff do read these columns and, if they can see past how much I’ve just mocked their decision makers, perhaps they’ll consider changing this some day.  Stranger things have happened…

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Posted by Lethality | 13 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: What Do You Think About Datacrons?

No day would be complete without the breakfast of Jedi: Blue Milk & Cereal.  Every morning, the team at Ask A Jedi will get Force-induced thoughts coursing through your head with delicious issues from around the galaxy! Join in the discussion below to make your voice heard!

Back in April during the UK Press Event held at gamerbase in London, one of the players discovered something called a Datacron while playing Star Wars: The Old Republic. Since this was the first time anyone had seen this kind of thing, it was quickly followed up with some further detail by Daniel Erickson on the forums.

Not long after, Principle Lead Systesm Designer Damion Schubert published a developer’s blog on the Codex, with a special section on these Datacrons. Here he explained that these were put in to encourage and reward the explorer. What was interesting, however, was that he confirmed the reward not only consisted of a Codex entry, but also a small but permanent boost to one of your character’s stats.

Needless to say, there was some excitement surrounding the potential Datacrons represented, but the reward caused some controversy. Why would exploration reward you with stats which would ostensibly make you better in combat? It seemed these Datacrons would now be a requirement for those that which to maximize their character’s combat output.

Personally, I’m an explorer, so I like the idea of Datacrons, but don’t think there should be a combat stat boost associated with finding them. BioWare explained that in TOR, you can get rewards from space combat to be better at space combat and get rewards from PvP to be better at PvP. So getting combat rewards from exploration wavers from that position somewhat. Not to mention, based on what we know, they feel a little “gamey.” If they’re really out there in plain sight, it feels more like a spinning gold coin to collect than a rare artifact capable of teaching you about the galaxy.

But what do you guys think? Do you like the Datacron system? Do you think stats are an appropriate reward for finding them?

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Posted by ReDDoT | 16 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Will You Miss Day/Night Cycles In TOR?

No day would be complete without the breakfast of Jedi: Blue Milk & Cereal.  Every morning, the team at Ask A Jedi will get Force-induced thoughts coursing through your head with delicious issues from around the galaxy! Join in the discussion below to make your voice heard!

In many ways, an MMO strives to simulate the real world. To a lot of folks, immersion is one of the most important factors in their enjoyment of the game. If something breaks that immersion, the game can become less and less appealing to a player. There are many aspects and layers to this immersion, but without a doubt one of the biggest contributors is the atmosphere of the game. The mood of the environment can be heavily influenced by the lighting in the game, and in many games over the years, developers have used a day and night cycle to help create that atmosphere. However, in Star Wars: The Old Republic, we already know that the day and night cycles will not be present:

Will a Day/Night cycle be in the game?
Daniel Erickson: No. It was a technical decision. Scenes look better if lighting is consistent.
James Ohlen: multiple worlds present in game with different # of suns/moons, so it became too difficult to make it work.

Keep in mind, this does not mean we will not see day and night in-game – in fact the developers have confirmed we will. All it means is that we will not see them dynamically changing at the same location/planet. The SW:TOR community has an ongoing thread about this matter, as well as a poll, that’s currently sitting at approximately 34% of people being unsatisfied with such a design decision.

Personally, I’m not a huge fan of this, but I can definitely see BioWare’s stance. Given that the story element of the game is so important, they need to be able to more tightly control the way a player experiences it.  Anyway, time will show if BioWare made a good decision in this area of the game.

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