Posted by Cormeister | 11 Comments

Yellow Posts: High Rez Update, LFG System, Crew Skills, And The GTN

Hopefully this week will be much more informative than the last, especially since the devs have been crazy active on the forums this week. By now, you’ve probably heard about the “high resolution texture problem” in SWTOR. Basically, high resolution textures are only available for in-conversation cutscenes and when you are playing out in the game normally the texture quality is lowered. One of the responses that Stephen Reid, Senior Online Community Coordinator, posted in the official thread actually states in which update we will see more graphics options: 1.2.

…The first major changes will be in our next major Game Update, which will have the version number of 1.2. Those changes will bring greater visual fidelity to your character and those around you, but will still allow for good performance in situations where a lot of characters are on-screen at once. In other words, for those screenshots of your character in their best gear, you should see a marked improvement…

The game has been officially out for less than a month and we are getting our first major content patch. Hopefully, it will only take about another month to see these changes implemented!

Responding to a post by Obi-Wun, Damion Schubert, Principal Lead Systems Designer, talks a little bit about BioWare’s plans for a “looking for group” tool. What it boils down to is that, at this moment in time, most players are still confined to a few areas in the game, the fleet, mid-to-low-level planets, etc…and an official tool to automatically find groups for flashpoints and heroic quests is not needed currently. However, Mr. Schubert and the whole BioWare staff are quite aware that as players continue to reach the end game and more content becomes available a true LFG tool will become necessary. Given that, they are going to be implementing a true LFG tool soon™:

Improving our LFG system is high on the list of features that Systems Design wants to add to the game. We want this to be good not just for helping people find Flashpoints and Operations to run, but also other multiplayer content like heroic missions. A key emphasis will be on advertising for specific role needs (healer, tank, DPS). This feature is currently in the design stage, and once this feature has moved beyond this to a development stage and has a firm ETA, I’ll be coming back to you guys to give more details.

Read More

Posted by Momus | 8 Comments

Blasters, Beggars & Credits: Missions, Gathering and Crafting!

Some players do it for glory. Some do it for infamy. Some like to accumulate the most points, or explore the far reaches of the worlds they inhabit. This, however, is not a column for those people. This is a column for those people who, quietly or not, enjoy making money so that their digital avatar can sleep on large piles of cash.

Today is a day where we talk about relative value. I will actually use some basic math, so if that turns you off, let me get you hot and bothered in another way: some people do not think things through when pricing their sales on the GTN.

Some of that has to do with not understanding how things work. In the interest of promoting a healthy server economy, let me show you something us robber barons have known for some time.

Underworld Trading produces, without a doubt, the highest demand items on the GTN. The reason? Three professions (Cybertech, Armormech, and Synthweaving) pull from its materials, and all three use the Underworld Trading metals. So the metals are used by three of the six main professions, and it serves all the crafted armor and the crafted armoring and mods to everyone.

That’s a lot of people it’s going to need to go to. Unsurprisingly, the material demand is quite high. There are two metals in particular, the artifact-quality of the 300 and 340 level, that you should pay attention to – these are Promethium and Mandalorian Iron.

Read More

Posted by Cormeister | 3 Comments

Yellow Posts: Speeder, Armor, And High Level Planets

Forum poster benefit was baffled as to why the cost to purchase the level two speeder upgrade (210,000 credits) is so high for what appears to be a small speed increase (only 10% more speed). However, he did not realize that you get one additional benefit for your money: your chance to be knocked off of your speeder by a mob is significantly reduced. This is what responder Nicely noticed and Georg Zoeller, Principal Lead Combat Designer, confirmed:

Originally Posted by Nicely
I don’t know if this counts for anything, but I’ve noticed that I can take more damage before I am knocked off with the higher level mounts.

Georg Zoeller
That is correct.

Forum poster nezroy started a thread because he wasn’t sure how the armor rating on orange (i.e. moddable) armor is calculated. In short, it is determind by the armoring mod that you add to the piece of armor. As explained by Georg Zoeller:

Orange Armor gets it’s armor value from the ‘armoring’ mod you slot in. If you exchange it for something better, the armor value increases along with the stats.

It’s always the first mod in the list that determines the intrinsic properties of the orange items (e.g. armoring on armor, barrel on guns, etc.)

Hope that helps.

Read More

Posted by Lethality | 12 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Are You Affected By The ‘Ability Delay’?

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!

The “Ability Delay.” A large majority of players won’t even notice this largely intangible idiosynchrocy.If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can probably just safely vote “There is no such thing!” in the poll below and move along. But if you find yourself trying to figure out why something about combat doesn’t feel quite right, this is for you.

A few days ago, a thread cropped up on the official forums (and subsequently lit them on fire) worked to describe what some players are perceiving as a delay in the responsiveness of abilities in combat in some cases. This, in one way or another, has plagued nearly every single MMO that has come out since World of Warcraft – some worse than others. Say what you will about World of Warcraft, Blizzard built a masterpiece when it comes to combat and responsiveness in an MMO.

The original poster, Xcore, did a good job at explaining and then providing examples (along with other posters doing the same.) So for the first time, we have a snapshot of the issue:

What is Character Responsiveness and Ability Delay? — It is not Latency or FPS lag

It is the feeling of connection between the person behind the keyboard and the Avatar that is being controlled. Basically, the better the Character Responsiveness is, the smoother the Game Plays! You may HATE World of Warcraft and believe it is the worst abomination on the planet… that is fine. HOWEVER, you “must” objectively admit that it is the absolute, smoothest Character Responsiveness in a Western Available MMO ever.

If you are a WoW player, and have played WoW with any amount of skill, competitiveness, you cannot help but cringe when in a Warzone in SW:TOR. It feels unresponsive, frustrating… as if something is wrong with you! but there is nothing you can do about it!

After no less than 2 iterations of the tread with over 400 pages (about 4,000 posts), forum super hero and Principle Lead Combat Designer Georg Zoeller recently chimed in this long-running thread with these words:

This issue is under active investigation.

The complication is that there are actually a number of different issues with very different causes and potential resolutions lumped together in this thread.

All we can say for now is ‘we are actively working on the topic of character responsiveness’.

 So, with that acknowledgement we know that BioWare is aware of the issue and is working on it. The down side is that there is a real issue there, and the fix may not be simple or even possible.

I’m curious, of all the AAJ readers out there, have you experienced this? Does it bother you if so? What are your thoughts about what’s wrong and how to fix it?

Read More

Posted by Cormeister | 5 Comments

Yellow Posts: Community Questions, In-Game Purchasing, Future Content, And Respecing

Forum user Spankyjnco posted a list of eight questions (expanded to ten) about various things in the game that probably a lot of players would like answered from BioWare. Stephen Reid, Senior Online Community Manager, took the time to respond to all of the questions and let us know where they stand on the issues. Here are a couple highlights:

Q: Is there a plan to fix the graphic settings? Right now there is no real difference between medium/high graphics and it’s apparent that we are all stuck with the medium textures. What’s the reasoning for this, and do you guys have a fix planned?

A: It’s a bug, and we are working on rolling out a fix.

Q: A easier way to find groups. Having to spam in /1 is quite annoying to everyone in the zone, let alone those looking for a group. And noobdy seems to use that actual “Flag yourself for group” option because it’s not very successful. I would like to do flashpoints, but I’m not going to waste 30 minutes sitting in the fleet spamming /1 that I am looking for a group. Some kind of way to have a global search/group finder would be nice.

A: We’re aware of this desire, but we actually believe that finding others on the same planet as you encourages social interaction a bit more than a general ‘group finder’. We’re not saying it’ll never, ever happen but again, not high priority right now.

The post is pretty extensive, so I would encourage all of you to check it out for some valuable information.

Read More