This post will cover the Roleplay, Guild Features, User Interface, and the “and the rest” presentations from yesterday’s livestream of the Star Wars: The Old Republic GuildSummit.

 

I hope the GuildSummit is a precursor to getting a BioCon to show off TOR, ME, DA, C&C, and anything else BioWare might be working on…

Due to length..panel discussions are after the jump..

Roleplaying Discussion

Current State

World needs more features

Some of the newly announced Legacy unlocks will be a big help for RP’ing.

Possible Future stuff:

Chat bubbles (in for Beta..weird problem caused them to be massive performance hit, so took out)

Character re-customization

More Orange gear!  “Wear what you want, where you want”

Spawning Tech improvements (the ‘filler’ NPCs that appear in areas, but aren’t clickable/mouseoverable)

All future chairs will be interactive (more places to sit!)

Daniel Erickson stressed this is one of the areas they are really looking for feedback from the attendees, so they jumped right into Q&A

Q&A – RolePlaying

• Q:  Animal mounts? (dewback, tauntaun, etc)
• A:  On the list, no ETA
• Q:  Clothing not restriced by armor type (i.e heavy armor users can use it & get their bonus, as can light armor users).
• Q:  Male slave outfit?
• A:  It’s coming
• Q:  Ability to re-use phased class areas?
• A:  No, triggers are complicated..will work on adding more cool areas instead.
• Q:  Stricter name policy enforcement? (Dude of the Bro legacy)
• A:  No, Star Wars universe has some funky names, report obscene.. fair rules really hard to due (what person X thinks is bad, person Y might not).  Adding more ways to control how much of player nameplates you see.
• Q:  Ambient animations for NPCs could help.  Guilds want to be able to create squads or other groups within guild
• A:  What could a squad do, that they can’t currently do with custom chat channels?
• Q:  Copy/Paste for chat logs?  Include characters in your Legacy as non-blood related?
• A:  Yes, you can add them as allies, adversaries, step children, etc.. (Think the answer to copy/paste was a yes as well).
• Q:  Add other players to legacy?
• A:  Yes, but it’s not going to be soon
• Q:  Emotes with one-liners voiced over from cutscenes?
• A:  More emotes will include dialogue.
• Q:  Companion characters with you on taxis, ability to name your companion?
• A:  Companions originally intended to appear in taxis.. appearance of some of them made it impractical… no renaming companions.
• Q:  Can ignore turn off the ignored player’s name plate?
• A:  Good suggestion
• Q:  Remove companions from story?
• A:  In beta..killing companions was fun…being without a companion to fill a certain role… not fun.  Not going to go back down that road.
• Q:  Character bio page?
• A: Not technically feasible right now
• Q:  Two person mounts?
• A:  Yes, but not soon.

Guild Features

Damion Schubert led this discussion

Guilds are important

Guild UI is functional, but lacking… team working to improve/expand guild functionality.

Guild banks coming in 1.2 up to 7 tabs with escalating costs.  Detailed controls for guild leaders, with logging in case CSRs need to follow up…

Each rank can have different withdrawal capabilities, repair from guild bank.. and a ledger to show how much people are taking out.

most guild features coming post 1.2 (calendar, guild emblems, guild advertising for recruiting)

Guild progression is in the works (guild capital ships)

Another section where feedback is requested of the attendees, so Q&A time!

Q&A – Guilds

• Q:  Guild mail system (newsletter, mass mail)
• A:  Working on something like that, maybe as part of the calendar..back end resource intensive
• Q:  What UI Improvements are coming?
• A:  scrolling + bug fixes for 1.2..more later
• Q:  Taxation system?
• A:  Being designed for post guild bank implementation, no ETA
• Q:  Offline inviting like there was pre-launch?
• A:  Maybe, not on immediate list of plans
• Q:  Guild repairs count against the daily allowance?
• A:  Yes, respecs too
• Q:  Guild log showing invites, kicks, etc?
• A:  Yes, no ETA
• Q:  Feature to show if players are already in a group?
• A:  Good idea

User Interface Presentation

This was another panel I was looking forward too.. the default TOR UI, compared to some other games’ defaults… is actually pretty good so I wanted to see what kind of stuff BioWare has whipped up.

Stephen Reid said more information on the UI changes will be on the website in the coming weeks.

Not everything shown during the presentation will make it into the 1.2 patch, but they wanted to show off what they’re working on.

Edit Mode – allows you to move UI elements around.. different colors for always visible UI elements, and for only sometimes visible elements.

Only 4 quickslot bars still.

UI components scalable

Target of Target coming in 1.2

Map Axis can be flipped

Secondary windows can be anywhere..more than one window can be open.

Exportable as XML so all characters can have the same layout

Some Ops frame customization available too

Q&A – UI

• Q:  Click to cast?
• A:  Coming, may not make 1.2… 1.3 or 1.4 possible
• Q:  Macros?
• A:  Probably, no ETA.. no combat macros as they want combat to be approachable..mouse over healing not a macro.
• Q:  Buffs/DeBuffs re-sizable?
• A:  Not yet, we do want it to be re-sizable in the future..they do scale with the frames currently.
• Q:  More visible reactions of procs?
• A:  We do want to do this in the future
• Q:  Plans for better indicators of who is doing what?
• A:  Working on some polish for that
• Q:  Distinguish things/people in the group you care about?
• A:  Yes
• Q:  Streamline abilities?
• A:  Want to add another bar, more action bar functionality coming with multi-spec.. companion bars don’t overlap your bar anymore.
• Q:  GTN UI changes?
• A:  Yes, 80% less stupid with fewer mandatory fields.. no specifics yet.
• Q:  Character UI settings share?
• A:  Not in 1.2, but soon
• Q: UI API?
• A:  Complicated..need to keep it fair and balanced..no ETA
• Q:  Stealth bar?
• A:  Not many abilities that require stealth, not on the radar
• Q:  Remove player name/class/picture?
• A:  Probably not
• Q:  Different UI colors/color blind mode?
• A:  Working on color blind mode now.

 

“And The Rest”

This segment of the Summit was to talk about anything not already covered..

Daniel Erickson kicks it off…

Need more story — Coming this year.. expected BioWare type story

New Daily quests in 1.2

Color matching is back!  Improved version, toggelable by individual piece..defaults to off so you can see what that piece really looks like.  Not exact matches, but sets up a theme

Even higher quality textures coming for systems that can handle it

Dual spec coming..not in 1.2 – second part will be gear swap too

Q&A

• Q:  Rewards besides XP from quests at 50 (credits..etc..)
• A:  Part of the reason for the Legacy system..so you get XP still, introducing another cash flow has to be considered
• Q:  Huge galactic battle coming in the future?
• A:  PvP team wants to do something like that
• Q:  Nightmare mode mechanics?
• A:  Going to tweak them so it lives up to it’s name, part of why it’s not in 1.2
• Q:  Inter-server communication?
• A:  Cross server architecture not in place yet.. being considered..need to limit trash talking
• Q:  Battle Rez for Bounty Hunters and Troopers?
• A:  Never say never..but… no.
• Q:  Pod racing or swoop racing?
• A:  Focusing on core tools/functionality first.. no ETA
• Q:  Faction balance?
• A:  Legacy system will help encourage people to try the other faction.  Can’t force people to switch..it’s up to the player to play what they want..their story.  Maybe character transfers in the future.
• Q:  Encouraging people to switch, can be bad for guilds, your enticing them to leave their guild.
• A:  Looking at adversary/sister guild relationships.. Legacy shouldn’t negatively impact community.
• Q:  Which Legacy abilities will be chosen?
• A:  Iconic abilities.. Smuggler can kick a boss in the nuts.. Agents want Orbital strike..
• Q:  Change Guild Master title
• A:  Not sure, have to check
• Q:  Uneven sides in WarZones are frustrating, anything being done to address?
• A:  New match making system will help.. incentives not to leave early will help too.
• Q:  Same gender romance update?
• A:  Coming with story update..not going to just change dialogue to try and make it fit.. giving the writers lead time.. originally cut due to budget and time.
• Q:  Daily hubs or other incentive to return to start planets?
• A:  Yes.. have metrics, will put hubs where they want more traffic
• Q:  Performance optimization options?
• A:  Focused on low end machines..that still benefits high end machines.. 1.1.5 has ultra low shader option.. there is a team dedicated just to improving performance.
• Q:  Epic armor/weapons quests?
• A:  Not in 1.2 but in the future.. might impact whole legacy..require characters on both sides to complete.

 

And that’s it.. you probably noticed things like the Q&A varied for each panel.. they went over time, and were trying to make it up where they could, so that they’d end roughly on time.