It’s Friday and that means it is weekly Q&A time from the developers over at BioWare. They only released answers to 8 of the community member’s questions this week but with them going over the limit every week up till now it is hard to complain about something like that, especially considering as we should get a bunch of new info this week from the Guild Summit.

We get a little insight this week into the chances we will get mailboxes and GTN hubs in our ships and it looks like these options, or ones similar to them, will be included as unlockable features within the legacy system. Snuck into the end of this answer was the hint that BioWare will be talking more about legacy features in the near future, something everyone is looking forward to. BioWare also talk about neutral alignment gear, server maintenance times, and crfated gear v.s. endgame gear in patch 1.2.

See all of this week’s questions and answers after the jump. Continue Reading »

It’s Friday and that means it is time for one of my favorite new things BioWare is doing these days, Community Q&A. They managed to go over 10 questions again this week, another trend I would like to see continued, and answered a range of questions from implementing a LFG tool, improving end game usefulness of crafting skills, and even touched briefly on the chance the players will be able to customize their current ships or get new ones. (Hint: Don’t expect it anytime soon.)

You can find all the questions answered this week after the jump. If you have a question you would like to ask the development team post it over at the official forums in this weeks Official Q&A Thread. Continue Reading »

BioWare recently released patch notes for update 1.1.2, which is currently live on the Public Test Server. It includes the usual plethora of ability, mission, and companion fixes as well as some tweeks to the Biochem skill.

Biochem users will now be able to give/sell Energized and Exotech stims and adrenals to other players as they are no longer bound to the user nor do they require skill in Biochem to use. There seem to be two big reasons why this change was made. First of all it removes the pressure on players to take Biochem in order to optimize their performance, particularly at endgame. Second it opens up more options for Biochem players to make credits by selling these stims and adrenals on the Global Trade Network. Biochem also will be getting another nerf as the effectiveness of Biochem exclusive Rakata stimpacks have been reduced to be equal to Energized stimpacks. In fact Bioware announced that they intend to reduce, over a series of patches, the effectiveness of situational consumables on endgame combat resolution. The end goal being to make the outcome of endgame combat be based more on player skill and less on what items they have on hand.

BioChem is just the first of the crafting skills to see tweaks in order to make all the skills more applicable to end game content. Major changes are currently on schedule for the next major content patch, such as extractable basemods (armoring, barrel, etc.) from purple items, critical crafting successes on orange outfits, more bind-on-equip schematic drops for artifice and other professions, increased relevance of augments, better reverse engineering chance, and other improvements.  PvP is also going to see some changes in the future, with the power difference granted by PvP gear being reduced to make it easier for new level 50 players to compete in PvP.

You can read the developer post about the crafting changes here, and the full 1.1.2 patch notes after the jump. Continue Reading »

Crafting for reals, I am serious!

Finally SWTOR is released and operating, the NDA is not a problem anymore, and I have had time to experience and digest the crafting system in SWTOR. It has been a long drawn out time of waiting for this game and to find out if I will be pleased or not based on what they have created as their crafting system and dubbed “crew skills”.

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Like in other games, once you hit a certain level of crafting in SWTOR, you’ll go to your nearest Crew Skill Trainer and learn a number of new recipes.  In this regard, crafting in SWTOR hasn’t broken any new ground, but BioWare has an ace up their sleeve in this department.  Crafting has undergone a number of iterations throughout Beta, but one aspect that has crafters excited is the ability to reverse engineer our goods. There have been changes made to this mechanic as well, to expand its role in how crafters will approach their trades.

Do we have your attention yet?  Excellent.  Now here comes the fun part.

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Dumbing Down!

As a person who is still not in beta testing at this time I have the freedom to speak my mind and theorize on certain in game mechanics in SWTOR because legitimately I do not know for sure what some of them truly are like.  I have not as yet been infiltrated and absorbed by beta testing knowledge so I am still pure in my speculations and ramblings.

Take crew skills and crafting in SWTOR for instance, they have released a lot of general information in the past from mainly one dev diary and a lot of fansite interviews and some various Q&A’s found on the internet at different sites.

There is information out there, but it is just so up in the air right now what with all the rumors and hub bub I have been hearing floating around about how they are changing so many things about the crafting system at this time.

While I understand that they must change things as a result of feedback from the testers and actual time people have spent kicking the tires and such, the things I am hearing are worrying me to no end.

Why you ask?

Well OK, you twisted my arm.

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Have you just about dried up and blown away from the lack of information released on crew skills in Star Wars the Old Republic MMO?

I feel your pain and that is why I come to you today to preach the word and let you know to have faith, information is coming!

Monday the 19th TORWARS one of my favorite fansites focusing around SWTOR released an interview they had with my hero on the SWTOR developer team, Lead System Designer Damion Schubert.

In this interview Damion had some nice nuggets of information for us such as this when asked about what system he can’t wait to see players mess with,

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Sitting here last night playing the beta of the Neverwinter heroes facebook game, I happened to do my nightly stroll across the swtor.com web page on crew skills before I went to bed, just to check on my pretties you understand, when I saw that the rest of the blanks had been filled in.  I have been waiting for this day and still it took me by surprise.

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Crafting. Yes crafting. The all elusive, god forbid, sucks to level, identical item, farm your ass off, kill a ni-hao slinging bot for a node, shoot your best friend in the face for a plot on dantooine… crafting.  I will admit it. I was a crafter.  Yes. the man you look at today, whom rated a whopping 4 in the wow arena system, the lord of murder, Flagg, the god of pvp carnage and utter destruction was a crafter.  All jokes aside, In SWG. I loved that shit.  LOVED it.  Lived for it. Hell, I’ll admit it. I sold gold (credits) to websites, that resold my gold.  I sold so much of it, i lived on it for 2 years….. no joke.  2200.00 a month. It was heaven.  Then it all changed… wait…what the fuck am i babbling on about now…. Oh the glory days. Back to it then… Crafting.

I really want to get back to it. I want an inquisitor for leveling (my full video on ustream thingy) but for gods sake, I want to grind and level a jedi knight crafter.  A “Force Architect”(@flagg20011-2099). if you will. The crystal making , lightsaber wielding mofo.   The man with the plan.  Or whatever.

The thing is, after reading a few 1/2 assed reviews on the crafting, then reading one post beta guy.. Shit, I cant wait.  He ranted and raved about it, being a crafter from swg himself. Good god that’s tough optimism  to try to break. He went on about how engaging it was, how wonderful it was to craft sex droids, how exciting it was to kill jawas and use their soul to fuel his deadly machine based one demons from….oh wait, wrong game.  The point is he loved it. And I’ll be honest here. I know a lot of people who talk out of school and said the same. The crafting system is fun as hell, unique, and phenomenal.

You know how hard it is to find a game with good engaging crafting? How utterly mindbogglingly hard?  Impossible is the proper term. It’s so bad it almost seems as if these days most companies throw it in as some sore-ass abused after-though of some overworked department full of burnouts.  Not so here, I hope.  How do you guys feel?  This week is my monthly questionnaire, first (and most likely only month) to do this before Derek and Serge shut me down like cancer in a radiation lab.

Q:  Are you excited about crafting?  If so, give 3 reasons.  If not, Post a link to a picture of a cool jawa.

Q: Have you ever thought about drawing or animating a sexy alien chick. Even after a drug fueled binge of “heavy metal” and peyote? if not, please tell us your favorite color, and a 300 word essay on what makes that color whup monkey-ass.

Q: Is time travel possible.  Seriously. I want to know.

Q:Do you play “World of Tanks” and when you kill a tank do you yell ” You underestimate the power of the dark side!”  IF not, explain why you like 90210 in less than 7 words.

Q: Ever get in an argument over your Halloween costume…after you turned 20?

Q: Is the only reason you like Harrison Ford at all:  A: HAN SOLO  /  B: INDIANA JONES   ?

Q: Is there a way to travel faster than light? Think, tachyon…

Q: Do you love swtor?

I eagerly await your ramblings!

/Flagg/

P.S. Notice the sarcasm and fucking lack of fucking cussing i did in the fucking article.  Wo-fucking-rd to your mothers uncle.

/Flagg/

Love you all. Seriously….

/Flagg.

So do you want a Light or Darkside blaster?

From a recent article on Darth Hater by Raiden entitled “Morality Gear”  and a conversation with my friend Zlatto from AskAJedi   I am perplexed by this question.

Just what does morality gear restrictions mean to the crafter in SWTOR?

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