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EA Redwood Shore press event Q&A

ImpacthoundImpacthound Member UncommonPosts: 367
in Star Wars: The Old Republic

Pretty thorough interview with some decent, hard questions. It's hosted on several sites, this is just the first one I saw from a poster on the official thread: http://hopecastgamers.com/2014/11/24/shadows-revan-developer-qa-swtorista/

Too long to copy & paste the entire thing, but definitely copy/paste any specific sections you want to discuss. My personal favorites:

 

Legacy Friends/Ignore

Heather: I heard privacy issues are the reason legacy wide friends/ignore can’t be implemented. Can we make it work?

Michael: I don’t want someone to friend me one one character and be able to talk to me on another.

Heather: Can we make ignore happen, but friends not?

Dev: Anything you talk about account-wide anything, it’s always been a privacy issue. We had that one time where you whispered one character and it would go to another of their person’s – that was a huge privacy issue.

in contrast to:

 

Costumes

Swtorista: Someone at one of the cantinas was speaking to Gaddock Teeg of the Unnamed SWTOR Podcast and with a little bit of alcohol involve happened to mention a costume system.  Is that anything you can talk about?

Dev: [intakes of breathe, partially mocking] Who did that!?!

Dev: [Bruce] That was not me. [laughter]

Heather: That was in New York.

Dev: Bruce!

Swtorista: [grinning and doing finger pistols at Bruce. Devs seem well aware of this leak already, much joking]

Dev: We are taking a look into that.

Swtorista: And have you look at the GW2 costume system? Becaue I feel they are one of the ones doing it very well.

Dev: [Bruce, very enthusiastic] They have an oustanding costume system. We’re a whole studio full of serious MMO gamers. Every game we go “OHHHHHHHHHHH I want that!”

How can they be aware of their competitors and think privacy is an issue with an account-wide friends list? How is it a privacy issue when battle.net lets you friend per character by account, your choice, with hiding and ignore options? Battle.net even works between games. GW2 friends both ways, Wildstar did too before moving into megaservers. Sony games have had chat across games for years and years. And older games have had similar friend options, going as far back as City of Heroes with global chat handles and cross-server chat handles and channels.

Comments

  • ImpacthoundImpacthound Member UncommonPosts: 367

    I was impressed that they answered this issue(sort of) and gave hard statistics on F2P players and PVP in this question, I always consider it a good thing when developers are willing to share that info and discuss its implications seriously with the fanbase:

     

    Better than cross-server qing

    Heather: Can you talk about now the thing you were talking about with queue issues?

    Dev: Still working on it. We are talking about what to talk about. Something was promised a couple weeks ago, but no promises other than that. We’ll try before the end of the year to announce something. At the very least we can give a date. To be clear, what you’re going to get is not “here’s what we’re gunna do”. What you’re gunna get is “we know there’s a problem, we know htere is a concern from player’s about this” and we are actively working on a solution. We’re not trying to be coy – but we want to be able to explain it in full detail. It’s a highly technical issue.

    Swtorista: Are you aware the most commonly guessed solution is to allow F2P to qeue? For everything? Ranked?

    Dev: We looked at those numbers, and it would be trivial. For example F2P players can do 5 warzones a week – the amount of players hitting that restriction are less than 2%, around 1.4% of players who have that restriction. And that’s from the pool of F2P players that play warzones at all. It would not even make a difference. We have better solutions – we’re working on it.

  • gervaise1gervaise1 Member EpicPosts: 6,919

    It is good that stuff is still being done but I think the big take away is:

    • don't expect a great deal
    • be surprised when something happens.
    Sure next year will be a big year. As was this year and last year. Every year is a big year even the final year. Reading through the Q&A though it is clear that the team is limited in what it can do.
     
    • talking about what to talk about;
    • they can't say yet what their plans for next year
    • some - seemingly trivial things - are mentioned as taking a lot of resource
    EA are probably waiting to see what happens with Revan and a host of other recent / new releases such as WoD, DA:I, Destiny DLC etc. etc. before re-assessing how much SWTOR will make next year. That will dictate how big the team is next year which in turn will dictate what they can commit to. That is just the way it is.
     
    And of course next year sees the release SW Battlefront. Not only will EA assume that some SWTOR players will leave to move on to SW Battlefront there is a strong reason to want players to move namely Frostbite. The game engine that the game is being built on - which also powers BF4 and DA:I. And it looks like SW Battlefront could be a mix of both - solo missions, co-op type missions, vehicles .... and it looks stunning. At some point EA will retire SWTOR just to close down the engine imo. 
     
    So good news that stuff is still happening and as long as we don't expect much we will be surprised when something big comes along.
  • JyiigaJyiiga Member UncommonPosts: 1,187
    Originally posted by Impacthound

    I was impressed that they answered this issue(sort of) and gave hard statistics on F2P players and PVP in this question, I always consider it a good thing when developers are willing to share that info and discuss its implications seriously with the fanbase:

     

    Better than cross-server qing

    Heather: Can you talk about now the thing you were talking about with queue issues?

    Dev: Still working on it. We are talking about what to talk about. Something was promised a couple weeks ago, but no promises other than that. We’ll try before the end of the year to announce something. At the very least we can give a date. To be clear, what you’re going to get is not “here’s what we’re gunna do”. What you’re gunna get is “we know there’s a problem, we know htere is a concern from player’s about this” and we are actively working on a solution. We’re not trying to be coy – but we want to be able to explain it in full detail. It’s a highly technical issue.

    Swtorista: Are you aware the most commonly guessed solution is to allow F2P to qeue? For everything? Ranked?

    Dev: We looked at those numbers, and it would be trivial. For example F2P players can do 5 warzones a week – the amount of players hitting that restriction are less than 2%, around 1.4% of players who have that restriction. And that’s from the pool of F2P players that play warzones at all. It would not even make a difference. We have better solutions – we’re working on it.

    Naturally F2P players do not do flashpoints or warzones... BECAUSE YOU DONT LET THEM. F2P users can never truly progress in PVP because of the strict limitations, so those players just ignore it entirely. If the limitations were tweaked (or lifted) the number of players would increase for said activity.

    I am a paid subscriber and while I agree there needs to be some limitations on F2P... The ones limiting flashpoints, warzones, etc... Need to go away, because they decrease queue times for everyone, including the people giving you 15 dollars a month.

    They could greatly diminish the queue times overnight by doing this.

  • gervaise1gervaise1 Member EpicPosts: 6,919
    Originally posted by Jyiiga
    Originally posted by Impacthound

     

    Swtorista: Are you aware the most commonly guessed solution is to allow F2P to qeue? For everything? Ranked?

    Dev: We looked at those numbers, and it would be trivial. For example F2P players can do 5 warzones a week – the amount of players hitting that restriction are less than 2%, around 1.4% of players who have that restriction. And that’s from the pool of F2P players that play warzones at all. It would not even make a difference. We have better solutions – we’re working on it.

    Naturally F2P players do not do flashpoints or warzones... BECAUSE YOU DONT LET THEM. F2P users can never truly progress in PVP because of the strict limitations, so those players just ignore it entirely. If the limitations were tweaked (or lifted) the number of players would increase for said activity.

    I am a paid subscriber and while I agree there needs to be some limitations on F2P... The ones limiting flashpoints, warzones, etc... Need to go away, because they decrease queue times for everyone, including the people giving you 15 dollars a month.

    They could greatly diminish the queue times overnight by doing this.

    I am sure you are right. Seemed to me though that the devs expected the question and had a "prepared" answer that suggested that wasn't the answer but if so what? They are working on ... what? They have planted some subscriber seeds and are waiting for them to germinate! When this happens - and its not a new problem - the "solution" usually comes down to merging / cross-linking servers. Might help in the US but in the EU were you only have 1 server per server type (so 3x3).

    Maybe they will pull a Carbine and scrap them!

    Edit: Forgot what I had read in the mmorpg.com feature about them getting the Republic and Empire to work together. could this be the solution? There are a few missions were you end up getting / giving help to the other side's npcs but other players ... on RP servers as well ....

  • IncomparableIncomparable Member UncommonPosts: 1,138

    Did they not ask about mini games such as pazaak?

    Whats the future with swoop racing?

    What about incorporating different aspects of the game such as pazaak, 3d space combat, swoop racing into the story/questing

    day/night cycles

    Player made content? Why not allow players to make wz or other content such as FP on their test server and it can make it to the real server.

    Theres so much to ask about, and the snippets don't seem to cover any projects that add to the game.

    Ignore for legacy? Or speak to all legacy? Wth? Really, ppl are wasting their time with these questions which don't make sense for an MMO? If this is our community and this is what the devs enjoy caterging to...

    then I guess I should give up on expecting a BG with more than 16 players or even a BG with 16 (8vs8) but with some raiding mechanics and NPCs

    These Q&A's help to give a picture of what to expect.

    Did anyone get a nice glimpse? I did not click the link... dont know the website... but, the snippets and their previous comments about their future are ambigious and nothing solid on what to expect. Sure Revan is being released... and enough said about that. But we know its really more of the same.

    MMOs cant just be more of the same when they struggle to attract the potential target market. Of course being SW helps...

    I guess im not the target demographic if more of the same is barely any pvp, more raids/fp, and story every year or so.

    There is so much more they can do that is exclusively SW and not just about being an MMO. Pazaak...

     

    “Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble”

  • DocBrodyDocBrody Member UncommonPosts: 1,926
    Originally posted by Incomparable

    Did they not ask about mini games such as pazaak?

    Whats the future with swoop racing?

    What about incorporating different aspects of the game such as pazaak, 3d space combat, swoop racing into the story/questing

    day/night cycles

    Player made content? Why not allow players to make wz or other content such as FP on their test server and it can make it to the real server.

    There is so much more they can do that is exclusively SW and not just about being an MMO. Pazaak...

     

    swoop and speeder racing, not going to happen.

    I read somewhere they tried some stuff with the engine but it didn´t work out due to lag and latency and they outright said they won´t change/rewrite the engine.

    bummer

     

    I think Pazaak could happen, it´s just a card game FFS, shouldn´t be THAT hard?

     

    Day night cycles, guess they think it´s not worth their time and/or not going well with the story questing, or just another engine limitation they are not trying to lift as day night cycles can´t be sold on the Cartel market.

  • gervaise1gervaise1 Member EpicPosts: 6,919
    Originally posted by DocBrody
    Originally posted by Incomparable

    Did they not ask about mini games such as pazaak?

    Whats the future with swoop racing?

    What about incorporating different aspects of the game such as pazaak, 3d space combat, swoop racing into the story/questing

    day/night cycles

    Player made content? Why not allow players to make wz or other content such as FP on their test server and it can make it to the real server.

    There is so much more they can do that is exclusively SW and not just about being an MMO. Pazaak...

    swoop and speeder racing, not going to happen.

    I read somewhere they tried some stuff with the engine but it didn´t work out due to lag and latency and they outright said they won´t change/rewrite the engine.

    bummer

    I think Pazaak could happen, it´s just a card game FFS, shouldn´t be THAT hard?

    Day night cycles, guess they think it´s not worth their time and/or not going well with the story questing, or just another engine limitation they are not trying to lift as day night cycles can´t be sold on the Cartel market.

    Can't be sold on the cartel market. Excellent. The whole impression I got from the Q&A though was that everything they do has to be justified against an expected cash shop return. Not sure how subscribers factor into that equation. 

    As for swoop racing there are several parts of the SW BF trailer EA released for E3 that suggest it should be possible, even easy, to implement (in the Frostbite engine). Not saying it will be part of the base game but I could see them releasing maybe an add-on, maybe a companion game that adds "some sort of mmo type game play". More DA:I than BF4 sort of thing.

    As for SWTOR: expect nothing then one can be surprised at even the tiniest extra.  

    P.S. The Design Director has also talked about DICE working on speeder bike racing in the forests of Endor - presumably what is shown in the trailer. And if they have - essentially - got racing in their own Frostfire engine I can't see them wanting to spend the money adding that capability into a different engine (that EA don't own).

  • ImpacthoundImpacthound Member UncommonPosts: 367
    Originally posted by DocBrody
    Originally posted by Incomparable

    Did they not ask about mini games such as pazaak?

    Whats the future with swoop racing?

    What about incorporating different aspects of the game such as pazaak, 3d space combat, swoop racing into the story/questing

    day/night cycles

    Player made content? Why not allow players to make wz or other content such as FP on their test server and it can make it to the real server.

    There is so much more they can do that is exclusively SW and not just about being an MMO. Pazaak...

     

    swoop and speeder racing, not going to happen.

    I read somewhere they tried some stuff with the engine but it didn´t work out due to lag and latency and they outright said they won´t change/rewrite the engine.

    bummer

     

    I think Pazaak could happen, it´s just a card game FFS, shouldn´t be THAT hard?

     

    Day night cycles, guess they think it´s not worth their time and/or not going well with the story questing, or just another engine limitation they are not trying to lift as day night cycles can´t be sold on the Cartel market.

    Yeah, they pretty much shot Pazaak down as not being a serious Star Wars fantasy. They didn't address is specifcally, but it's pretty likely that there' no way to monetize it for EA, they don't think it would generate new users or maintain current ones, so it's a waste for them to develop.

    It's the kind of thing that users would have made themselves if addons were allowed(see Peggle for WoW, and how you can 'score battle' other users in a raid group to distribute loot, rofl), but that's another issue entirely.

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