Brekkee - The topic of discussion is New Features for Publish 28. This includes Armor Enhancements, Armor Loot Drops, PvP Enhancements, Bounty Hunter System, Item Changes and Entertainer Additions.
Brekkee - Please send your questions to [QT]Elm OR [QT]Cale - to do so type /query NICK and type in the window that pops up. Questions sent to me or the developers will not make it into the lineup. Full logs of the chat will be up on http://swg.stratics.com shortly after the chat.
Brekkee - We'll start with a brief introduction from the developers, now would be a good time to send those questions.
Rogue_5 - Hi. My name is Grant "Rogue_5" McDaniel, and I am the SOE Producer for Star Wars Galaxies.
Lord_Pall - Hi, I'm Dan "Lord_Pall" Rubenfield, Lead Designer on Star Wars Galaxies.
TH - I'm Thunderheart, your Community Relations Manager!
Vapor - Hello everyone, my name is David “Vapor” Jones and I am the Live Associate Producer
jfreeman - Hi, I'm Jeff Freeman, Lead Gameplay Designer.
jfreeman - And late!
Brekkee - *Eromi-TC* Armored clothing is something this game has desperately needed since it's initial launch. Now that it's about to become a reality, can we expect to see armored, iconic faction uniforms available from recruiters or as faction quest rewards?
Lord_Pall - Currently armored clothing is limited to Jedi, but we are investigating expanding this for just this purpose. I’d love to see people fighting in factional uniforms as well as armor, but this is currently not the case.
Brekkee - *Genildor* Will Bounty Hunters be able to track players with Bounty Hunter Terminals along with Bounty Check?
jfreeman - Bounty Hunters won’t use the bounty hunting terminal and tracking droids, etc. to track down players. Instead we’ll be working this system into the existing /bountyCheck ability – so that it basically works on players the same way that it works on NPCs.
Brekkee - *VinDawwg* Since we will be able to go from Combatant to Special Forces in the field with Pub 28, has there been any thought of putting more recruiters in the galaxy OR giving mayors the option of putting recruiters in their cities?
Vapor - *VinDawwg* We will add more, and we plan on investigating adding them to player cities
Brekkee - *Ohron* Are there any plans to bring back item decay, or Battle Fatigue upon death or extensive item use?
Lord_Pall - We will not be bringing back item decay or battle fatigue.
Brekkee - *NXKS* What is happening in the way of armor loot drops? Will Stats actually be good? And will those include stat mods?
Lord_Pall - Stats will have a very wide range, significantly wider and more varied than the current armor. For the short term goals, there will not be stat mods or additional effects, but this is in the longer term plan.
Brekkee - Please make sure you are sending those questions to [QT]Elm or [QT]Cale Questions sent to myself or the developers will not make it into the line up.
Brekkee - *SirRafaelBH* As a bounty hunter from the beginning, I'd love to hear any details about the new bounty hunter systems?
jfreeman - This is a fairly straightforward system - when a player kills another player, the defeated player will get the option of putting a bounty of any amount on his killers head. A bounty hunter's /bountyCheck ability will work as it does on NPCs: when used on that player, the BH will see the bounty amount and can elect to attempt to collect it. If he kills the targeted player then he'll get the bounty reward.
Brekkee - *Anosa* Is there any new armor coming in pub 28?
Rogue_5 - There won’t be any new armor being added to publish 28.
Brekkee - *Memento* Is one of the forthcoming armor enhancement a widening of armor certifications, and does it include faction armors ?
Lord_Pall - The new system will not use any of the current certifications. We’re investigating changes regarding the factional armor as well. The goal is to soften up the requirements and give players a much wider choice of armor to wear.
Brekkee - *chebyo* Hi my first question is: What is the ETA of Publish 28, and will it definitly include all the changes proposed in Rogue5's post today?
Rogue_5 - I would like to get Publish 28 out to the Test Center servers in mid March. When it goes to the live servers will depend on when we believe it is ready. We want to make sure it is a high quality release.
Rogue_5 - We are working on the changes that I posted today. We will be playing all of them extensively before anything is definitely going to the live servers.
Rogue_5 - We are actively polling the community about one feature specifically, the PvP death penalty.
Brekkee - *RednaXel* hi, when a bounty hunter kills his mark will his mark be able to post a bounty on the bounty hunter that killed him?
Lord_Pall - Yes they will. It's a vicious cycle.
Lord_Pall -
Brekkee - *LgEnder* With the Publish 28 Entertainer changes, what will a Master Entertainer's CL be?
jfreeman - Mastering the entertainer profession will make you level 90.
Brekkee - *Limbonik* Yes/No: Will the upcoming expansion focus on the Galactic Civil War and if so why charge subscribers for returning one of the original core-systems back to them?
Rogue_5 - I can’t give you a yes or no answer at this time. We are not yet ready to discuss our expansion plans.
Brekkee - *Revan44* Can we expect to see self-armor coloring back in the game like composite was pre-cu?
Lord_Pall - I've been bugging the artists about extending our hueing options on all of our items.
Lord_Pall - No promises that self hueing will come back, but I'd love to see a much wider variety of colors available, and a much easier and flexible method for players to change the colors of their items.
Brekkee - *warryyr* Will Entertainers be getting combat moves, or only use a default attack? Can their non-aggro status be retained somehow? Can you try to reassure some nervous Entertainers about where you're headed with them? Thank you.
jfreeman - Entertainers are getting some 'basic' combat abilities: not as much of
jfreeman - the flash and sizzle as a combat profession, but they do need at least a ...
jfreeman - few combat specials in order to be able to kill creatures around their
jfreeman - level. The idea here is really just to prevent the entertainers from
jfreeman - being useless the moment that they leave the cantina, and to enable them
jfreeman - to participate in the content and do the quests.
jfreeman - We still want to maintain that entertainers are a social profession,
jfreeman - not a combat profession, with entertaining being their primary play
jfreeman - activity.
Brekkee - *LgEnder* Will the new Armor/Clothing drops include Wookiee and Ithorian specific items?
Lord_Pall - We will be making these loot items using all of our existing armor sets, including the ithorian and wookiee sets.
Lord_Pall - This doesn't mean new artwork, but they will have new stats and be usable by ithorians and wookiees
Brekkee - *LgEnder* Will the No-Trade limitations be removed from the profession specific schematic loot in the Mustafar Instances? (AS schems always puzzled me)
Lord_Pall - These will be changed to be tradeable. No eta, but right now it is overly restrictive.
Brekkee - *Mankind00* Given that many Entertainers play Entertainer since they dislike the combat aspect of games (not all, but some), why was the decission made to give them combat abilities?
jfreeman - The entertainers that don't want to participate in combat still won't
jfreeman - have to - they can keep doing what they're doing and advancing that way.
jfreeman - We did want to give the entertainers who DO want the ability to do
jfreeman - the quests, etc. the ability to do that, and they have to have some
jfreeman - combat abilities to be able to do most of the quests.
Brekkee - *LgEnder* Will the removal of no-drop, no-trade, and bio-link from items be retroactive?
Lord_Pall - It will be retroactive.
Brekkee - *BountyGreg* why not give some sort of tool to go from "on leave" to combatant too? I don't like to see rebs walking by and smile while I search for hours to find a recruiter, and flying thru half the galaxy to do so is far from very "star warsy"
jfreeman - Ok.
Brekkee - *CynicRouge* will commandos be blowing up bases any time soon?
Lord_Pall - Rogue_5 will be posting some information about this shortly.
Lord_Pall - right rogue?
Rogue_5 -
Rogue_5 - Check out our forums in the next week for more information on future publishes.
Brekkee - *Gaius* Yes, I was wondering if scout trooper armor will have a palette option added to it which will let a player choose between the classic white, swamp trooper, and most importantly, storm commando armor colors? Bottom line is I want storm commando armor.
Lord_Pall - No plans at this time, but i love the idea of that. Long term we'll have to examine it.
Brekkee - Please make sure you are sending those questions to [QT]Elm or [QT]Cale Questions sent to myself or the developers will not make it into the line up.
Brekkee - *Waypoc* Will Jedi Bounties be ree-enabled in the future? This was a great part of the game. And if so will it be limited to lvl 90 Jedi?
jfreeman - We want to open bounties to everyone - and neither limit them to just hunting Jedi, nor force Jedi to be hunted just because they are Jedi.
Brekkee - *SirRafaelBH* Will the new player bounty system allow bounty hunters to attack players not usually attackable? (Covert, etc)
jfreeman - If the player has a bounty on them, yes.
Brekkee - *Leviticus_Maximus* Will the proposed Entertainer change permanently remove the non-aggro state for entertainer as well as trainers? Would it be better to keep the non aggro state but have a longer tef?
Lord_Pall - Entertainers will no longer have the non-aggro state. Mobs will attack them as per normal.
Brekkee - *Gassygun* Is there any chance in widening the variety of items flagged as "Unlootable", such as ones equiped?
jfreeman - Absolutely. We'll need a comprehensive plan on what can or cannot be looted.
Brekkee - *Eromi-TC* Do the developers/producers of SWG have any concerns that more players will see the prospect of losing an item in a PvP death as more of a drawback than the possible reward of looting an item for a win? If that's the case, wouldn't more players be turned off PvP than ever before?
Rogue_5 - Sure. I have added a poll to our website asking about the PvP death penalty which will remain on the site for the next week. We want to hear your feedback on it and will base our final design decisions on your feedback.
Brekkee - *Dissonance* The overall design doc for Pub28 worries me. Entertainers aren't looking for combat to be added, but a reason to be entertainers. Why was this path chosen, rather than providing them quests and a 'usefulness' to the community at large?
jfreeman - We have a lot of quests and content out there in the game that
jfreeman - entertainers currently cannot enjoy, so the first thing we want
jfreeman - to do is to enable entertainers to participate in that content.
jfreeman - This doesn't prevent entertainers who ONLY enjoy the social
jfreeman - and entertainment aspects of the profession from doing what
jfreeman - they're doing now. It just provides entertainers with more options.
Brekkee - *Jib* Can you give us any hints to what this new 'exclusive' Jedi clothing is going to be like?"
Lord_Pall - It will be existing jedi style clothing with armor stats on it. So an extension of the jedi armor robes that Blixdev worked on earlier.
Brekkee - *Elora_Devout* Question: will entertainers have to respec to get all their combat abilities after pub 28?
Vapor - No, they will get the combat abilities automatically
Brekkee - *Ocker\* If a bounty hunter were to get killed and post a bounty on his killer, would the Bh later be able to collect that bounty? Do you need to be a member of the opposit faction to collect a bounty?
jfreeman - That's a great question. This is the sort of detail we'll need to
jfreeman - resolve when we implement the system. You won't need to be a member
jfreeman - of the opposite faction though. Actually the Bounty Hunter won't
jfreeman - need to be a member of a faction at all.
Brekkee - *kainIII* Currently you are looking for community feedback on how to make this game better and bring the people back. Alot of people have cancelled and are no longer able to provide feedback. Will SOE allow vets to post on the forums and contribute what they think will bring the people back?
TH - Only community members who play the game and take an active role will be able to participate.
Brekkee - *ViggoVickers* Smuggles preNGE were always considered the "sneaky" profession. Now with the NGE, we have the Spy prof, what direction is Smuggler headed?
Lord_Pall - Smugglers will be more smuggly. That's the long-term goal.
Brekkee - *thornos* why the changes to armor now and before crafting fixes go in, who is going to buy armor and/or weapons
Lord_Pall - The overall audience that will want to purchase armor is going to get MUCH wider than it is at the moment. Players will be purchasing more armor, as well as finding the new types of armor.
Brekkee - *Azrel* will there be a cap on the value of player bounties, in the value that could be initially set and the value the bounty could grow too.
jfreeman - Not really. I think we have a technical limit of something like 2 billion, but otherwise we plan on letting the bounty grow and grow
jfreeman - as you kill people and they add to it.
Lord_Pall - so the limit would be 2 billion.
Brekkee - *Ocker\* Because professions are changing, will we be getting any respecs?
Vapor - Hmm... this just sparked a very interesting conversation here... This is something we will consider=)
Brekkee - *Fariq_Asaka* With the changes to Entertainers giving them combat skills will they be as effective as a level 90 combat character or will their skills be limited
jfreeman - The Entertainers have just enough combat prowess to complete quests.
jfreeman - They're not as effective in combat as the combat professions such as
jfreeman - Jedi, Bounty Hunters, Commandos and so on.
Brekkee - *Caddaric* Will the instant travel vehicles ever be available to those who did not purchase the Starter Kit?
Vapor - This was an exclusive item with the starter kit.
Brekkee - *fordaith* In the Pub 28 preview, Rouge_5, you stated in PvP the items exempt would be No-Drop, No-Trade, Biolinked, by no-drop, does this refer to crafted items as well, ie Mando Armor or Crafter BH?
Rogue_5 - We are still evaluating which items this will apply to.
Brekkee - *Katouro* Will entertainers be able to wear any type of armor, and when can we expect to see more information about the entertainer combat tree?
Vapor - Yes, entertainers will be able to wear armor because we are removing the armor certifications. We will post more information about the combat abilities in the coming weeks.
Brekkee - *ISOC|Jaden* With heavy weapons turned back on, why is the Heavy Acid Launcher still disabled?
jfreeman - Not all heavy weapons were re-enabled. We only wanted to enable the ones
jfreeman - that we really had time to finish: new particles, sounds and so on. This
jfreeman - wasn't just a matter of re-enabling disabled weapons, the heavy weapons
jfreeman - system is pretty much all new stuff.
Brekkee - *Eromi-TC* The content released with Trials of Obi-Wan was terrific, easily the best SWG content to date... but how soon can we expect new content of that quality level that revolves around the GCW rather than the fringe ideals of the Star Wars universe (such as Mustafar and Kashyyyk)?
Rogue_5 - Thanks. I appreciate the feedback on Trials of Obi-Wan and I will be sure to pass it along to the team. I can't currently discuss our future pans but we want all of our future releases to reach or exceed that level of quality.
Rogue_5 - plans, not pans
Brekkee - That will wrap it up for tonight. I’d like to thank the folks from Star Wars Galaxies for coming! The log for tonight’s chat will be up shortly on http://swg.stratics.com. Thank you all for joining us! You can
join #StarWars to chat more about the game.
TH - G'night folks!
Rogue_5 - Thanks everyone. Have a good night!
jfreeman - Thanks all, goodnight!
Issele, SWG Stratics Managing Editor
Vapor - Goodnight everyone!
