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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 devs dive deep in Jedi design in this week's dispatch
The character type that will likely be played the most in Star Wars: The Old Republic will be the Jedi. BioWare has been conscious of this from the early stages of the game. This is evident in the fact that there are two distinct Jedi classes: the knight and the consular. Yet, the designers have been the most tight-lipped about these two classes. They have said this is because they wish to get it just right before talking about it. But with this week's Fan Friday, things have changed. On the official SWTOR website, a new Developer Dispatch called Designing the Light Side has popped up. In the five-and-a-half-minute video, SWTOR writers, artists, and animators discuss the most important things it takes to create the two light side factions. "We want to give players the opportunity to be the heroic Jedi like Luke Skywalker or the darker, more avenging type of Jedi like his father, Anakin," Hall Hood, a senior writer, explains in the video. On which side of the moral spectrum do you fall? Are you a hero-of-the-ages light sider, or a ends-justifies-the-means gray Jedi? Watch the video after the break and let us know.
