Gamestar Magazine Interview With Gabe Amatangelo About Operations In SWTOR
According to Cebo in his thread on the official forums for Star Wars the Old Republic MMO, Gamestar Magazine had an exclusive interview with Gabe Amatangelo from Bioware regarding “operations” (Bioware’s term for raiding in it’s MMO) . He talked about different sizes of operations, plus he also revealed that there would be adjustable difficulty levels for you and you group.
Each Raid has 2 sizes, for 8 and 16 heros, as well as ajustable [sic] difficulty levels. The quality of the loot is based on the difficulty setting of the instance.” After every bossfight EACH player gets a bag of Rewards”, says Lead designer Gabe Amatangelo. “Inside that Bag you can find class specific Items, or Badges which can be used to buy items. You don’t have to fight for your rewards.
He also then went on to talk about a mysterious “Loot Bag” that each player would receive upon successful completion of the operation. It appears that the quality of loot that is in the bag may be tied to the difficulty of the selected operations as well. Saying “you don’t have to fight for your rewards” lets us know that they are trying to come up with a different solution than the oh so standard rinse repeat we have grown accustomed too.
Big props goes out to Shellcracker on the translation, thanks!
There will be no companion characters in PvP fights ,at least not in the warzones ,where teams of both factions battle each other.The game modes in pvp will be along the lines of classical pvp variants such as capturing and holding control points and Capture the flag. Thus far we have seen four and eight player warzones.Although there are tests for mass pvp fight going on Georg Zoeller didn’t comment on mass pvp fights at that moment.
Furthermore BioWare is working on a warzone where players from the same faction can fight faction each other, but only as a backup solution in case the enemy can’t provide enough players. There will also be open world pvp fights in which each faction can pursue missions objectives.Several planets will offer special pvp assignments, which could be something like capturing enemy buildings or eliminating enemy leaders.According to Zoeller this ensures that pvp oriented players can focus on certain areas and it gives them a bit more structure. The question concerning armed combat vehicles, Georg Zoeller answers with a promising maybe… So, chances are the players might be able to ride into combat in vehicles, maybe not in open world pvp but in Warzones. Apart from this, players will be able to fight against other players during some of their regular quests, similar to Warhammer Online, where some quests lead intro enemy territory making an pvp encounter more likely.
EDITOR UPDATE: NEW INFORMATION
Today via the official forums, Stephen Reid clarifies on the “loot bags” a bit:
‘Loot containers’ (name is still a work in progress!) do indeed exist and are designed to alleviate the frustration some feel around high-level loot drops.
As it’s currently implemented, at the end of a key encounter within an Operation, upon looting a high-level opponent, everyone in the Operations group will get an individual container which has a chance to give you a random piece of loot that’s specific to your class. It could be part of an armor set, a weapon, and so on. If you don’t get loot, you’ll get commendations which can be used to purchase gear.
Please note, this feature is currently in Game Testing and may well be modified before launch.
9 Responses to “Gamestar Magazine Interview With Gabe Amatangelo About Operations In SWTOR”
Molten Core confirmed! 🙂
Ok .. I have to ask. What are your thoughts on how ‘loot bags’ adjust the mechanic of raids? I am of the mindest of a blended solution. maybe Loot bags with badges and rarity of class item with more generic used by multiple classes items out for the group to roll on. How can I mock ppl if they never get to chance to roll a 1 out of 100? When a 100 comes up the stream of HAXOR and Roll-bot surely adds to the overall raid mechanic as a whole.
I think the stuff inside bags will be random, but gives more people an incentive to raid, as they know they will be rewarded something, good or not so good 🙂
As for pvp info, it really is starting to tick me off, pve quests leading into enemy areas? i mean if BW knew pvp would have this kinda impact on pve servers, and they had to have known, why the heck didnt they state that was their plan, i find it utterly sillyness to appease the pvp crowd with fully blown pvp servers, the mixed folks who likes to lvl pve but pvp pops up they can switch instantly if they in the mood, but the pve folks, sorry stay away from those areas and those quests, i mean really?
well as far as the possible things that concern me with this set up one of them is the class centric drops. There have been lots of times that i have done raids and gotten gear that was not for the class I was playing but I instead gave it to my alts.
It appears that if the drops for equipment are tied to the class you are playing this kind of option wont be possible to do anymore, I don’t like the sound of that.
Not really sure what levels of gear are BOP or BOA or if it even is at all, but that could make it moot anyway if they go the route of BOA everything good that’s not a standard type of resource or component.
I hope also that the badges are not BOA or BOA so that I can give them to my other characters if I have a item on a particular toon i am wanting.
Thanks for reading guys!
loot bags sound great – but i rather prefer loot bags & “choose one items out of three”.
so, are crafting lootables in those bags? do i get random crafting stuff in my bag?!
all raid items mustn’t be BOA – they should all be BOP, which they will be if they come out of a bag (just guess) and all other items in raids gathered should be BOA and everyone should be able to roll on it.
BOA items on raid bosses suck, if you’re a crafter!
if you want BOA, go find a crafter of your choise or do it yourself – and maybe give it your alts, what you maybe won’t do before hitting lvl 50 (legacy system – oh yeah!)
stuff used in crafting should be “sellable” though!
just my opinion though – played on RP firiona vie server on EQ long enough… (98% items don’t had any BOP or even BOA on them and rarely lvl suggestions or even requirements – limit was one player per account, nice if you can afford two ^^)
about pvp:
sounds great!
sorry, but a pure PvE star wars universe is quite, erm… “hi, I’m Sith Warrior XXX. Do you want to do that zone Boss together Mr. Jedi!”
Never said i wanted a coop server i’ll be happy killing the npc’s on the other side, i do not, however, want to deal with pvp, it never held my interest not in fps rts or mmo’s, I just want to play the game, and being on a server where it sounds like it is BW sanctioned to attack and kill of quest hubs, is not my idea of fun.
As for lootbags, i think an interview said that bosses would also drop items, it will probably
be a combo of that+bags with random stuff, which again imo is pure win, as for getting an item you cant use, several games has the feature that you can trade items that dropped with the same people that were present for a limited time, outside of that i think a bind to account lock is fine, that said, i also don’t think they would make any crafting stuff in the bags, if there are any, no trade.
PS. on the pvp thing, i can accept that the mixed server type they call pve atm, will be hugely popular, but what would be so wrong also throwing a bone to the people that has 0 need for pvp ever, that is what annoyes me the most, i would not ever demand that they remove pvp servers or the flagging optional servers.
“As for lootbags, i think an interview said that bosses would also drop items, it will probably
be a combo of that+bags with random stuff, which again imo is pure win”
agreed!
“a bind to account lock is fine”
agreed!
“PS. on the pvp thing, i can accept that the mixed server type they call pve atm, will be hugely popular, but what would be so wrong also throwing a bone to the people that has 0 need for pvp ever, that is what annoyes me the most, i would not ever demand that they remove pvp servers or the flagging optional servers.”
will be okay, but sith & jedi mustn’t group together – otherwise the whole quest/story-line will be fxxxed up.
@gloobonious yeah, coop doesnt sound nor feel right, if it had to have a name besides pve, co-existance ? 🙂
I think bw reached the right threshold in jedi-sith relations by allowing /say to be understood but no shared chat channels.
Loot bags for everyone is a good idea, because at least you can get some tokens or something useful for downing a boss. Surely there will be some crafting mats, BoE green items or something in that bag of value, even if it’s not the ideal gear you wanted this time. Low-value reward > no reward.
I wonder whether they’ll drop higher higher-value loot based on performance in the Op or purely random roles when you open the bag? I honestly hope it’s just random, or if it is performance based we’ll have the option to give or trade bags with another player in the group for a few minutes after the drop. Some of my buddies just can’t help but over-achieve and get all the gold and purple bags. 😉