SWTOR Developer Tracker
Welcome to our super-fast, search-able and sortable Developer Tracker for Bioware's Star Wars The Old Republic. It is a collection of posts made by the developers and other Bioware employes on the
official SWTOR forums.
There is
an existing feature on the official forums, but we didn't like its functionality, so we improved upon it.
Our developer tracker lets you search by keywords in our little search box. You can sort by each of the columns (Developer name, Forum or date) in both ascending and descending order.
Best of all it is powered by javascript and all your actions should be instant. We hope you enjoy it and we'll try and expand on the current functionality in the future.
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| Dev. Name |
Forum |
Thread |
Date |
Post |
Permalink |
| Georg Zoeller |
General Discussion |
Datacrons the farming begins |
1302240720 |
Just to clarify a few things here, to avoid unnecessary panic attacks.
We put a lot of focus in SWTOR on making your character's journey mean something.
We're trying to eliminate grinding as much as possible, make your character's story matter and give you meaningful things to do on your way through the game.
We're also not shying away from rewarding or encouraging certain activities. The primary example, of course, being story. It's very hard to ignore, definitely not something we consider optional. It's hard to convey to people just how much impact it has on our game, but if you look at the feedback from all our recent events, people usually walk away surprised by just how powerful of an impact the feature has.
Exploration is another example. Exploration is an optional activity, but it is encouraged. If you choose to play just along the critical path, you can beat the game, have a good time, but you will find it is not necessarily the path of least resistance either:
Without exploring the world and stumbling on unique treasures, hidden quests, codex entries, the occasional world boss or encampment of rebels, you will be missing out not only on equipment rewards, XP, chances to further affection with your companion or build your alignment... but also you will deprive yourself of some very interesting stories
Datacrons are an exploration reward.
Yes, their effects are permanent, however they are also predetermined (there are X datacrons with exactly these effects, not randomized) so we can ensure they are balanced and luck has nothing to do with their effect. Their locations are fixed, not randomized and they don't 'spawn', meaning they will always be there for your character when you get to the location.
We're not talking about people having to find the 99 hidden flowers on each planet or something like that; the number of datacrons is small, scaling with the size of the planet. Think single digits. Not the kind of thing you would usually associate with grinding.
Do they matter? In the grand scheme of things, sure, they'll matter. How much? That depends what type of player you are. If you are in pursuit of the most optimized character ever, you will probably want to pick them up, but most people will probably do just fine with finding just a handful of them.
If you are not an explorer - no big deal - datacrons always stay accessible to you, so you can't lock yourself out of them and you can come back and pick them up later in the game when you have your comfy personal transport to get around in.
In short - we think it's a feature that adds to the game, that rewards going off the beaten path and discovering the wonders we put all over the worlds. |
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