Austin-Peckenpaugh
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Hyperspace Beacon: SWTOR's stunlocked
How many times have you booted up Star Wars: The Old Republic to have a little fun in PvP only to be frustrated by certain mechanics? How many times have you been playing the Alderaan warzone, or worse, the Ancient Hypergate warzone, and you are about to cap the node but are suddenly impeded because your character has fallen asleep? Of course, you know there's an Assassin or Shadow there using Mind Trap or Mind Maze. Your first instinct is to set yourself free using your stun break, but it occurs to you that if you use your stun break, then the opponent is just going to use that ability again, and then you won't have any way to break free. However, if you don't break free, then he will cap the node you're supposed to be guarding. It looks to me as if your enemy just hit his I-win button. If it isn't already obvious, today I'd like to talk about stuns and other movement-impairing effects in SWTOR. Although it'd be really easy to write these abilities off as broken, I believe that there are some misunderstandings about the resolve system and a couple of simple fixes would make the system more palatable to the average player.
Hyperspace Beacon: Six reasons to return for SWTOR update 1.4
I've been playing MMOs for many years, and in that time, I've realized that the big thing they all have in common is that they get better with age. Unlike most single-player games, MMOs are in a constant state of flux. Besides the social interaction, the fact that I can leave a game for a couple of months then come back to find things have changed makes this gaming genre more interesting to me than your average RPG or FPS. Oftentimes, it's fun to come back to a game that I liked but maybe wasn't sticky enough to play all the time just to see what has changed, and maybe I'd like it more the next time around. That's kind of what happened to me with Star Wars Galaxies. When the game launched, I thought it was great to explore the Star Wars universe I'd grown up with as a kid, but I couldn't latch on to the game because of the bugs and other minor issues. It wasn't until about six months after launch that I was actually able to grasp the game and play it long enough to find out why people were so smitten. Perhaps Star Wars: The Old Republic will be the same kind of game. When it launched nine months ago, there were bugs, though not as big as SWG's bugs, mind you. The content needed a little tweaking. And certain systems like the Galactic Trade Network did not function well. But now with update 1.4 coming tomorrow and free-to-play on the horizon, it might be a good time to invite your friends to come back or even come back yourself. Let's examine some of the reasons to do so.
BioWare dev blog talks SWTOR's 1.4 balance changes
BioWare senior designer Austin Peckenpaugh has a tough job. Star Wars: The Old Republic's class gameplay balance is basically his responsibility, and as such he's penned a new dev blog intended to keep players in the loop on the upcoming changes in game update 1.4. The patch looks to be an extensive one in terms of gameplay tweaks, and Peckenpaugh has plenty to say on crowd control and resolve changes, ability adjustments, and changes to SWTOR's stealth gameplay. Read all about it at the official SWTOR website.
SWTOR devs answer community's PvP-related questions
The Star Wars: The Old Republic community team was understandably late getting to the Community Q&A last Friday, but it certainly delivered today. As usual for the SWTOR players, PvP topped the list of concerns. For one, why don't cooldowns reset after death in a warzone? BioWare's new favorite son, Senior Designer Austin Peckenpaugh, explained, "The decision of 'going all out' should be a strategic and tactical one rather than a no-brainer that you squeeze in before each death." To a seasoned player, that makes sense; you don't want what we old-school PvPers call "suicide bombers." Number-crunching theorycrafters deduced that some classes are better off carrying PvP relics than PvE relics. A new voice spoke up to answer this concern. "In the long run our intent is to make sure PvP gear is never competitive in end-game PvE situations," replied Senior Game Balance Designer Jason Attard. But for now, he explained that, "in theory the active abilities on the PvE relics do not provide quite as much sustained damage-per-second as a passive relic at the same item level." Take that as you will. The BioWare community team has consistently been able to snag the appropriate designers to answer the top player questions. If you have a burning question that you'd like to have answered this week, stop by the official SWTOR forums.
SWTOR upgrades classes and starts merging servers [Update]
As previously reported, update 1.3 for Star Wars: The Old Republic adds new systems and promises to fix some old ones. Senior Designer Austin Peckenpaugh blogged on the official SWTOR site, explaining some of the class changes that just dropped onto the Public Test Server this morning. The most notable and requested change grants all tank stances 100% threat generation. "We've received a lot of feedback from tanks regarding how easy or difficult it is to hold threat on various encounters," Peckenpaugh explains. Then he clarifies by saying that single-target taunting will generally remain unchanged, but because of "smart" AOEs that avoid crowd-controlled enemies, AOE-threat generation should improve significantly. Secondly, BioWare is well aware of the population issues on a large portion of servers. That is why on June 12th, the team will begin the free character transfer service. In a soft server merge system similar to the one implemented by Star Wars Galaxies, BioWare will open up specific servers as origin servers and others as destination servers. To help BioWare maintain a bit of control over the situation, the transfer precess will be "gradual and staged," according the developer blog post. The specific details regarding which servers will be affected have not be released yet, but rest assured that Massively will let you in on the latest details when they become available. [Update: Community Manager Joveth Gonzalez gave more detail on the official forums about how the origin and destination servers will work: "In order to ensure an optimal playing experience for every server, we'll be offering direct transfers from one origin server to a pre-selected destination server."]
