Surprise! Unscrupulous Folks Target SWTOR Devotees

Folks.  As the old adage goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  Allison Berryman dropped by the forums today to kindly remind us not to fall for beta scams:

It has come to our attention that there are multiple individuals and sites claiming to sell testing accounts, “beta keys,” or other offers of access to our Game Testing Program. All of these offers are false. BioWare is not issuing invites to Game Testing via any method other than those we outline here on SWTOR.com.

We must caution you that these offers are often scams designed to steal your money, credit card information, or identity. While we understand that you are eager to participate in Game Testing, your security is extremely important, and attempting to participate in these offers could put you in very real danger. 

Furthermore, the sale of accounts with access to the Game Testing Program is strictly prohibited by the Game Testing Agreement. We closely monitor the activities of all accounts involved in the Game Testing Program, and are quick to notice accounts that change hands. In the event that an account in the Game Testing Program does change ownership, we immediately take action to the fullest extent possible, including permanently banning the account from the Service.

When we send out invites to the Game Testing Program, the first step is receiving an e-mail from no-reply@bioware.swtor.com. After you receive this e-mail, you will also be able to see the invitation and further instructions at www.swtor.com/tester (if you are logged in to your account). You may encounter e-mail scams that indicate you have been invited to the Game Testing Program - please make sure to thoroughly examine the e-mail and don't click any links unless you are sure it is authentic (make sure to expand the information about the sender, and check for spelling errors or other tricks that scammers often use). If you receive an e-mail and are in doubt or are concerned about its validity, please forward your concerns to bwacommunitysupport@bioware.com. 

If you discover a scam pretending to offer access to the Game Testing Program, please forward all relevant information to us at bwacommunitysupport@bioware.com. Your security and the security of your fellow community members is important to us, and we appreciate your help. 

It goes without saying, but don't fall victim to scams like these!

NEWSFLASH: BioWare is Listening!

Ahem.

Georg Zoeller hard at work?

So, as if there was ever any real question as to whether or not BioWare is actually listening to us, Georg was kind enough once again to sprinkle Zoeller Dust™ all over the forums.

I hadn't really planned on touching on this after Georg's first post two days ago, because it seemed to go without saying.  However, after Georg went and wrote himself not one, but two, novella-length forum posts about the subject, the natural thing to do seemed to be to chronicle his decent into madness!

And finally on an unrelated note, Alexander Freed drops by the forums to chat a bit about the Imperial Agent.

More after the jump to lightspeed!

Ib'tuur Jatne Tuur Ash'ad Kyr'amur...?

It really goes with the territory, doesn't it?  When you follow a game this far out, you inevitably think Class X is really going to be the class for you. Then one day, a developer diary is released, or some tidbit of information is put out, and everything changes.

By now, many of you have had the chance to watch the Bounty Hunter.  A Kubaz scoundrel, the burnination of Tusken Raiders and a variety of Bounty Hunter approved gadgets...  All of which are great, but... the kicker to me was this snippet from today's IGN PC interview:

The quicker picker-upper?

IGN: As development continues, would you be able to provide any details as to how the Bounty Hunter's changed? How have his primary skills evolved and what tend to be the most effective skills once a large amount has been unlocked?

Zoeller: Here are some examples of recent changes to the class: the introduction of the Bodyguard skillset which adds a healing and support role to the class [and] the addition of talent choices to create synergy between blasters and tech attacks. There aren't really 'most effective' skills for any class, as what is effective varies between encounters, different builds and whether or not you are in a group or not. 

They just went and added heals to one of the most iconic classes in the game...   Did this revelation change anyone's mind, as far as their class of choice for launch?  I previously had settled on the Sith Inquisitor more or less, to be specced heavily into healing, but now this totally changes it for me.  As a kid, Boba Fett was my absolute favorite character (and action figure, for that matter), but I had originally decided against the Bounty Hunter in SWTOR as I hadn't planned on tanking.  Now, they're pretty much the jack of all trades.  What will their healing be like?  Kolto Bombs perhaps?  The Imperial Agent already uses Kolto Darts, will we see something similar using Kolto?

Nothing is set in stone (although, some people are set in Carbonite), so this too is subject to change, but...

Things just got a whole lot more interesting.  Can't wait to see if anything else is revealed during tomorrow's Friday update, and with PAX coming up next week, who knows what's in store...  I'll have to make sure to stop by MandalorianGirl's neck of the woods and see what she thinks about things.

If you haven't yet seen the video, check it out!

Dr. Strangezoeller: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love the Lack of Auto-attacks

Darth Zoeller was once again up to his usual shenanigans today, stopping by the forums to chime in on the forum post and poll regarding the lack of auto-attacks in SWTOR:

Georg states:

I think it is worth noting in this context that the game is relatively forgiving about the timing of your button presses / clicks, and therefore this particular concern about not having auto attack should be a non issue.

To ensure equal ability activation timing (and therefore DPS potential) between players with high and low latency, the game will, during the execution of an ability, allow you to 'queue up' the next activation (within a reasonable time window).

This ensures that your character is able to seamlessly move from one attack to the next without the player losing precious milliseconds by not exactly hitting the end of the previous ability/attack (something that would, in the end, force the player to spam buttons/clicks).

Naturally, moving/jumping etc will abort such queued up attacks/ability activations at any time.

Our testers have consistently lauded the absence of auto-attack as positive so far..

And when asked what he had meant about "queuing," Georg clarifies:

This is really a technical feature, not a gameplay mechanic. Basically, instead of requiring you to precisely mash a button to time the end of a cooldown of a previous ability, we give you a (small) window in which the game accepts button/click input while your previous ability is still executing. 

It actually removes the need to closely watch the cooldown bar/UI as you can instead time your button presses with what action you see your character perform on screen (e.g. I'm close to the end of my previous attack, I can now hit the next attack and it will seamlessly execute - I don't have to wait until my character has fully finished his current move). Again, more fluid, more action-y, less vulnerable to latency.

Personally, I enjoyed the combat in Age of Conan, for example.  One of the issues would be folks simply macroing all of their attacks out, but George stated that he could "see a number of solutions" this this problem.  How many of them involved Force Choking players into submission?  The two most important factors for this to be successful to me at least, are that the system must feel "fluid" (i.e., attacks flow into one another and don't feel jarring) and it should not penalize those who for whatever reason, have a higher-than-average latency.  Here's hoping we get a few peeks at combat in more detail next week during the PAX festivities!

Musco over at TOROcast has summarized this topic in a great blog post entitled "Attacking Is No Longer Automatic."  I definitely suggesting stopping by there and reading his thoughts on the matter.  Musco has actually played the game, and he seems satisfied with the combat system so far.

A Rose by Any Other Name...

Community strongman Georg has been busy once more, doling out information left and right.  Today, he had a few choice quotes regarding how character names will be handled in SWTOR:

Will we see multiple Darth Vaders running about?

As you probably already have guessed, well known names from the extended Star Wars universe will not be available to players, so you don't have to worry about running into Darth Vader.

And what about hyphen/apostrophe-usage in our names?

Yes to hyphens.

Yes to apostrophes.

No comment - yet - on titles or surnames and the like...

... I'm sure we'll talk about such things at some time in the future though

There we have it.  Does this change anyone's prospective names?  Are you planning on including any hyphens or apostrophes now?

"Sell All Grays" Part 2: Electric Boogaloo

Georg Zoeller was back in full effect on the forums, continuing to respond to the discussion regarding Companions being able to sell off lower quality items.

Georg said:

We're really looking more at this as the movie equivalent of a menial task. 

If it doesn't matter to the story at hand, movies rarely show people doing the boring tasks of their daily routine (brewing the coffee before drinking it, searching for the remote in the couch before turning on the TV) in real time. Why? Because they focus on the heroic, interesting stuff, they focus where the action is.

Same for us - we want to you focused where the entertainment is, not held up simulating repetitive tasks for the sake of simulation.

Now, don't get me wrong - a certain amount of simulation is often helpful to ease the player into the world and make them feel at home ("Hey, I know how this works - it's just like ....!") - but we are definitely focusing a lot more on the not-so-standard, action, romance or story heavy elements of your experience.

In this specific case - your companion is a vital part of your character. Without her (or maybe a group member instead), your combat effectiveness and options are reduced, your downtime lengthens and, well, you are without a companion. 

Example: As a Shadow, your enemies' position relative to you is of tactical importance in battle. Without a group member or companion to distract or engage an enemy, it is very hard to get into an advantageous position behind the target during battle to use some of your more devastating opening moves. 

So, to counter your suggestion that this should take more time - we don't see a good reason for that. Making the less interesting parts of MMO game experience (like, eh, selling grays) take a long time at the expense of the interesting parts (like introducing fleshraiders to your lightsaber, shooting first or even dancing with your companion next to the sarlacc pit) is not the design philosophy we're going for.

Hey, Sarlacc dancing is something I can get on board with!  A fair number of people have expressed concerns that many traditionally social interactions are going to be supplanted completed between our Companions and our Ships.  Well fret not, because Georg is on the case!

You are right, players need a reason to return to social hubs from time to time. 

Here are some reasons why 'selling grays' is not that reason in The Old Republic:

- Players have no incentive to interact with other players when selling grays. You're just forcing them to return to a hub. There are better reasons (e.g. trainers, turning in quests, etc.) that reward the player for doing the same thing, which creates a much more positive attitude to begin with.

- It's something you have to do with high frequency and creates implicit dependencies, that we then have to balance. In TOR, whenever you go into combat, you usually fight a substantially larger number of foes than in other MMOs. As a result, your inventory fills up quicker. We obviously can adjust drop rates down to change that, but that also means that if we address drop rates for any other reason, we implicitly change the frequency at which you have to return to town. 

- Frankly - nobody has ever told me "Man, I went to town to sell grays, it was soooo awesome!" 

To address your concerns, here's a small list of reasons for you to return to a social hub in TOR, and as a bonus, how we view each reason from a player perspective:

• Various vendors. Positive: I get to buy stuff.
• Crafting benches. Positive: I get to make stuff.
• Banking access. Positive: I don't pay bills there? 
• Trainers. Positive: I get to learn new stuff.
• Quests / Follow-up quests. Positive: I get rewards.
• Meeting friends (much easier at a known location than randomly in a snowstorm on Hoth). Positive: I meet friends.
• Spaceport access. Neutral.
• Medcenters. Neutral, arguably negative (I failed).
• Speeder Transportation Service. Neutral.
• Your inventory still fills up with items, so it's not like you never have to return to town. Probably Neutral: since I get a lot of credits for the non gray stuff.

Lastly, adding a feature to the game ('companions sell grays') and then balancing it in a way that it becomes undesirable to the player by the meas of penalties ('can't use companion for a long time') would be bad design. When you create a feature for a game, it is either strong, stands on it own and has been designed to account for potential issues, or you don't do it. You don't add it and then try to balance it out with something negative.

Ultimately, it's not like this is a super ground breaking feature. It's just different from what other MMOs do and I can see how that is out of the comfort zone for some. That's fine - every once in a while someone needs to question these kinds of conventions, or we'd still be stuck with 'lose half a level' XP death penalties as the genre standard.

Well, has he soothed your fears sufficiently, if you were worried about this?  

"Sell All Grays"

Georg Zoeller stopped by the main SWTOR forums today, as he has been doing fairly frequently lately, and dropped this tidbit regarding Companions:

In TOR, you indeed have the option to command your faithful (or scornful) companion to make a trip to the nearest market to lighten your backpack and fatten your wallet by selling objects of purely monetary value.

As you command your (possibly hateful or even loving) companion to do so, which they will only agree to if you are not engaged in hostile activities and they are convinced your life is not in immediate danger, they will arrange for quick transport to the closest market and return after a short while (roughly a minute, subject to tuning) with your hard earned money.

It is assumed you trust your (trustworthy) companion in so far as to accept whatever they tell you in regards to the prices they negotiated and will not undermine your (purely professional) working relationship with them with potentially insulting questions about taxes, fees, union dues and other applicable fees.

In other words, yes you can do that.

I can get on board with that.  It's clear that BioWare wants the Companion to be something more than just a mobile DoT effect.  I don't want to read too far into Daniel Erickson's comments regarding "setting up shop," or "opening your own business," but it seems like the Crafting aspect has the possibility of being much deeper than the system in many other MMOs.  I appreciate a player-driven economy, and I do hope to see some sort of option available to throw myself into that role when SWTOR launches.