Posted by Lethality | 3 Comments

FSS 2011: PvP Q&A With Gabe Amatangelo

As part of the Group Q&A series during last week’s Fan Site Summit, Gabe Amatangelo (or, Senator Amatangelo as he’s referred to by his colleagues,) took some time after our play session in the Alderaan Civil War Warzone, to answer some questions about what we’d just seen.

Gabe is a really laid-back guy and seemed like exactly who you’d want calling the shots for the design of the PvP game for The Old Republic™.

Some of the topics he covers, thanks to questions from your favorite fan sites, include:

• Pace of combat (no 1-shot kills!)
• PvP balance with PvE
• PvP spec for every class – No class will be left without a PvP spec within 2% effectiveness of any other
• Gear vs. skill
• Matchmaking system – Take players, specs, premades an other factors into consideration
• Bolster system – brings all players within the Warzone to within 20% of each other (including level!)
• Player commendations – give someone you played with in a Warzone props for doing well
• Guard – tank ability to mitigate damage from other players
• Badges – Taking cues from FPS games, rewards for good play – i.e. “Unstoppable!”
• Warzone size – anything bigger than 8v8 coming?
• Turtling – There is none!
• … and more!

Thanks once again to Brooks for handling the audio duties!

Enjoy!

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Posted by Lethality | 2 Comments

FSS 2011: Player Vs. Player In The Old Republic

Day two of the Fan Site Summit started off with a bang, as Gabe Amatangelo, BioWare Lead PvP Designer gave a presentation on player versus player gameplay in Star Wars: The Old Republic. The talk mostly covered Warzones, although some of the features were talked about in the context of working anywhere and everywhere – open world or otherwise.

Below are some of the highlights of the talk, which will most certainly provide some more fodder to fuel the forums:

• Each Advanced Class is absolutely recognized as a full class and as such have the flexibility of 3 skill trees and multiple possible “specs.”
• The difference in PvP gear and PvE gear should only produce about a 10% advantage in PvP – in other words, something that can be overcome by skilled play.
• In Warzones, there will be a “Bolster” ability applied that will bring everyone in the battle to within 20% of each other. So it will be possible to play with friends regardless of level.
• Tanks have a purpose! Through and ability called Guard, they can mitigate the incoming damage by 50% on an ally within 15 meters by redirecting some of it to themselves. This also works in open-world PvP situations, but not on NPCs/PvE content.
• Another ability for tank-specced characters (the name of which is intelligible on my notes) allows for a sort of AoE “taunt” that soaks up damage from allies within a 15 meter radius.
• A Resolve Bar is added to your character’s UI that essentially visualizes diminishing returns. It shows when your character would be immune to further crowd control such as stuns.
• There will be PvP zones on PvE servers, apparently other than Warzones. No more detail was given.
• There are some FPS influences like Badges that provide benefits and foster good play. Think “You’re Unstoppable!”
• Similarly, there were “power-ups” available throughout the zone.
• Valor is essentially a separate PvP experience progression bar (although it seems you get regular experience points from PvP as well.)
• There are many Valor Ranks along the way.
• Valor tokens are received as well, to function as currency where applicable
• Commendation system where you can nominate another player in the Warzone for good play. They’re then rewarded accordingly.
• The scoreboard has more detail due to the expanded effectiveness of multiple roles in the battle

In addition to those highlights, Gabe also revealed a new Warzone: The Voidstar.  The Voidstar is apparently a derelict starship that has technology that both the Empire and Republic would like to get their hands on. It was described as being a conquest-style battle, meaning that one team attacks and one team defends, and then the roles are reversed later in the battle. We saw a few screenshots, and it definitely has a different than the Alderaan Civil War, since it’s on board a massive ship.

Even though we didn’t get to learn anything about open-world PvP, it seems that the vision for the Warzones to integrate with the story as well as provide varied gameplay experiences will pay off. Combined with the style of the PvP combat itself, it has the makings of a pretty epic system… and this is coming from someone who isn’t traditionally a PvPer!

There will undoubtedly be some more in-depth and technical posts from some of the other fan site writers who may be more PvP focused, and we’ll keep a list of those and links to them right here as well.

Other Sites with Updates so far:

Darth Hater

TORWars

Corellian Run Radio

TORTalk

Gamona

MMORPG.com

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Posted by Lethality | 0 Comments

Yellow Posts: Hi! My name is [Master Lord Darth]

A week after the London press event, the pace has finally settled down… and so did the developer posts.

Every once in a while a thread on the official forums will surface with a member wanting the answer to some questions.  Some can be answered, others cannot for certain reasons.  In this weeks case, those questions can still not be answered.  Forum member Dayrun, made a post that highlighted concerns and questions on open beta, system specifications, and when the game will be released.

Georg Zoller came in to straighten up those concerns and answer why some things just cannot be discussed right now.

I don’t think we are avoiding these questions. We do our best to let people know that status of things, but we can’t make announcements until we know we’re ready. 

Answers to these questions are being worked out. For a project like SWTOR, with many parties involved, final answers can take time to sort out. Once everything is decided, we can talk about it. Before then, we don’t, because we don’t want to change things on people. It wouldn’t be fair for us to announce something like the minimum PC spec, have people buy new machines, and then change it on them. We appreciate everyone’s patience so far, and will keep everyone up-to-date on these questions – we know they’re important!
 
The release window is 2011. As more information becomes available, we’ll let everyone know.

 

The philosophy of not announcing certain features until they are complete or ready for public viewing has been consistent throughout development.  This is why we have not seen any official screenshots or video on feature that is very near and dear to many – character creation.  What has been seen on a few occasions is not feature complete; or it may not be an accurate representation of what we will see at release.

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Posted by Lethality | 3 Comments

UK Hands-On Event Q&A

As many of you are aware, BioWare held a special Star Wars: The Old Republic press event earlier this week in London. As a bonus at this event, some lucky fans were able to get their hands on each of the classes for an hour or so of TOR goodness!

After the gameplay sessions, there was a Q&A session hosted by Stephen Reid, Daniel Erickson and Gabe Amatangelo. What was talked about, you ask?

Well, official TOR forum member JonoBradley from Doghouse Gamer has you covered!

He managed to get an audio recording of the 9pm session, and provided a rough transcript of the topics discussed. Here are some highlights:

• British accents for the Empire
• How Daniel plays games all day, and that’s it
• Rest XP confirmed!
• TOR for the Mac?
• Morality/Decisions that affect your character
• Endgame/Rerolling
• And more…

Thanks to JonoBradley for the effort, head over and check it out!

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