Exploring SWG heroic encounters pt. 2
The 'Tusken Army' encounter was originally intended to be the 'middle-of-the-road' instance, between IG-88 and Axkva. Instead, players kept losing to the onslaught of raiders because too many citizens would die. "Essentially we'd created the world's most obnoxious escort quest." Still, it was very popular because it allowed players a lot of choice. Even if they didn't have the 'right' classes, having enough players to cover the city sufficiently meant you could successfully complete the encounter. Despite the challenge, it was a very well-received experience.
The map used in the Encounter is actually a streamlined version of Mos Espa, with many elements taken out to ensure NPCs would path well through the area. From a technical perspective, Tusken Army was the most advanced of any of the Encounters. They really pushed their tools to the limit getting the experience together, and it was a great use of the quest manager in a new and unique way. It's something they really like as a tool to aid player understanding of what's going on – they expect to use it more in the future.
Hoth is modeled very closely after the Tusken Army – small teams will be running around taking on encounters individually, rather than 'tank and spank' boss fights. The quest manager will be used in Echo Base much as it's used in the Tusken encounter, to keep players all 'on the same page.'
Many components of the "ISD", or Imperial Star Destroyer, were completed some time ago. It was created at the maximum size of the instance, but the original creator never noted that anywhere. The result is that a lot of their work on the instance to begin with was figuring out why things just weren't working. Camera issues plagued hallway encounters, and so most of the action is restricted to larger rooms. Krix, the first encounter, is the most challenging boss in the Encounter. Once you're past him, the rest of the event is comparatively easy – this was on purpose, but resulted in a lot of frustration when the event first came out. To somewhat placate frustrated players, they added a badge for defeating Krix in a specific circumstance.
Imperial Grenadiers, a mob that participates in the encounter, throw their charges faster as the event goes on. The fewer Grenadiers there are, the lower Krix's health, the faster they throw. The developers joked that "there should be a badge" for defeating Krix with just one Grenadier standing, because they estimate that devoted solider is throwing about ten grenades a second. Questions from the audience touched on various bugs and quirks about the encounter. The team is always open to this information, they stated, and it was obvious someone was taking notes as these issues were raised.
, the most recent and advanced of the Heroic Encounters, was obviously a point of pride for the attending developers. The dev team had a better understanding of what the players could accomplish, and very deliberately created a space where they could showcase several different bosses in evocative lairs. The goal was to create an encounter that 'felt' unbeatable but was still something that could be completed.
New technology was implemented for the Encounter as well, that allowed NPCs to attack players through surrogate objects. This tech comes into play in the final encounter with Kun himself. It was completed more quickly than other encounters as well, due to experience with past encounters and development of Encounter tools.
