Guild Summit: Day One Summary

Day one of the Guild Summit was all about Game Update 1.2 and the future of the Old Republic. The majority of the event was live streamed over the internet so those who did not have a chance to attend in person got to see and hear all of the great information coming out of the Summit.

Game Update 1.2 is the first major content patch for SWTOR and it’s bringing some amazing features. In fact four hours of day two are reserved for play testing 1.2. Additionally day two will feature a panel from the marketing group, and a panel on quality of life features for the game.

Overall those in attendance were pleased and excited about what was presented. Is everything getting fixed in added in Game Update 1.2? No. Game Update 1.2 is definitely a game changer, and there are more features in the pipline for 1.3 and 1.4. This game is continuing to grow and grow.

Here are some of the key highlights that came out of each panel.

Operations and Flashpoints

• 38% of level 50 players have done an Operations.
• Bugs in Eternity Vault were extremely frustrating to players, and fixing bugs in Operations is a high priority.
• Karagga’s Palace was much smoother, and the had guilds help play test the Operation.
• Looting system in normal mode Operations needs improvements and will see changes to a more traditional loot system in 1.2.
• Current Operations difficulty is considered to be too easy. In Game Update 1.2 there will still be three difficulty modes – Story Mode (puggable), Hard Mode and Nightmare mode.
• There will be different loot for all three modes. Hard modes will have different mechanics than Story Mode. Nightmare will become more Nightmarish.
• New Operation in 1.2 – Explosive Conflict. Will be harder than the current Operations.
• Orange gear will become viable in end-game. Players can strip out the mods and set bonuses for Tier gear and apply it to orange gear.
• Looking for better end-game testing from guilds for 1.2
• New Flashpoint in 1.2 Lost Island. Continues the Kaon storyline.
• Two more Operations are in development.

Player vs. Player

Warzones

• Extremely popular 50%.
• Medal system not balanced.
• Faction Imbalance.
• New Warzone Novare Cost.
• Includes same faction gameplay.
• Majority control type objective. Allows for major comebacks.
• Ranked PvP coming in 1.2.
• Ratings for solo and group play.
• ELO rating system.
• New Warzone dailies.
• Winning and losing both award medals.
• Removing incentives to quit early.
• Introducing a lot more medals. 18 new ones.
• Medal for scoring in Huttball.
• Discouraging farming of medals. More medals for winning faster. (applause)
• Medal rewards capped.
• Vote to Kick (applause).
• Players can vote inactive players
• Will be filled by someone in the queue.
• Measures to prevent abuse.
• Efforts to combat AFKs
• Warzone requires min. contribution to get medals (1.2)
• New Tier of PvP gear – War Hero
• Greater stat differences from PvE gear.
• New Lightsaber colors.
• New PvP crafting
• Adding Expertise Crystals
• Existing Warzones will eventually allow same faction vs. same faction.
• New map and voice over changes to accommodate same faction matches.
• Will help reduce Huttball getting selected all the time.
• Cross-server Warzone queuing (1.3 or 1.4)
• Will include the ability to queue for specific Warzone.
• 8-person team queuing.
• Stay grouped when you leave Warzone. No ETA but it will happen.

Open World PvP

• Less popular then WZ
• Illum has problems
• Outlaw’s Den seeing some great emergent gaming.
• Going back the drawing board w/Illum (applaue).
• Current design too ambitious.
• Redesiging it to be more engaging and fun.
• Removing Illum PvP quests.
• Bag system will be deprecated in 1.2
• Rewards being moved to WZ for now.
• Adding new ware hero tier gear to WZ (expertise)
• Less randomness in PvP rewards.
• Minor changes to Outlaw’s Den
• Ability to travel their quickly
• Keeping it a PvP Sandbox
• Minor class imbalances
• Speed Hacking/Exploiting
• Working on detection and prevention

Legacy System

• Current State – It’s a bar.
• Family Tree – automatically updated w/characters and you can determine where they fit into your legacy.
• Species unlocks for all future legacy characters.
• Reach level 50 w/a human character – gain presence increase for all existing and new legacy characters.
• Reach level 50 w/a cyborg unlock stuff.
• Complete chapter 2 - Unlock class’s buff for all other legacy characters.
• Complete Chapter 3 - Unlocks current class’s Heroic Ability for all other Legacy characters
• Requires heroic moment to use.
• Unlock Heroic Ability – Force Choke
• User Force Choke as an IA during heroic moment.
• Complete all missions for a companion ‘type’
• Unlock shorter cooldown and longer duration for the heroic moment.
• Unlock a small stat boost.
• Unlock additional presence buff for each companion completed.
• Alignment abilities – Light, Dark, Gray (not in 1.2)
• Unlocks active abilities for all characters
• Valor rank unlocks
• ‘Brawling’ abilities for unarmed duels.
• Social rank unlocks – dance w/your companion
• New emotes and RP packages.
• Most rewards can be purchased. They will be expensive.
• All will be retroactive.
• Coolddown reductions for fleet pass from the system.
• Jetpack – short duration sprint.
• Sprint moved to Level one.
• Items for your ship.
• Training Dummies (applause)
• Operations and Warzone dummies (can’t test healing).
• Repair droid vendor to sell items.
• Vendor sells upgrades for ship droids that can improve their crew skill abilties.
• Mailbox for your ship.
• GTN for your ship (very high up the legacy).

Legacy Items

• Weapons and Armor
• Powerful low-level items found and purchased by high-level characters.
• Bound to legacy – can trade to anyone in your legacy.
• Legacy appearances – unique orange items.

Future of Legacy

• Character specific rewards.
• Buffs to help speed early-game progression.
• Purchasable items/abilities for new characters.

Economy and Crew Skills

• Game economy is doing really well despite the GTN.
• Changes are coming to improve the GTN in 1.2
• Crew Skill distribution – Archaeology  and Scavenging are the two most popular gathering skills.
• Artifice and Biochem are the two most popular crafting professions (in that order).
• 80% of level 50s have less than 400K credits.
• Training abilities were the biggest credit sink, although that’s changing as more people hit 50.
• Crew Skill missions were the number two credit sink.
• Quest rewards remain the largest credit source.
• Players are better able to save money now.
• Faction balance is 57% Empire to 42% Republic across all servers.
• Inquisitors are very popular and Smuggler and Imperial Agents are among the least played classes.
• Developers are extremely pleased with the leveling curve. It’s very smooth. No drop-offs at certain points.
• Repair costs are an issue, but they can’t fix that just yet.
• Working hard to fix exploits such as Ilum chest looting.
• They have good tools to track down bots and remove them from the game.
• Credit spam is minor compared to other MMOs.
• They want all crew skills to be useful in end-game.
• Ability to craft Ops level gear with crit. augments is coming.
• Slicing will become a source of augment materials.
• Cybertech grenades could get a short cooldown.
• Less BoP and more BoE craftable items.
• Repairs costs for PvP could happen. Needs to be implemented carefully.
• Kolto grenade might be considered at some point.
• Longer crew missions could happen at some point.
• New resource nodes coming on Ilum.

Roleplayers

• Legacy system feeds into roleplaying.
• Unlock emotes.
• Family tree.
• Social unlocks.
• Alignment unlocks.
• Character customization a possibility in the future.
• Chat bubbles could comeback. They think they’ve worked out the tech issues with them.
• More orange gear with viability at end-game.
• Improving spawning technology for NPCs and other objects in the general environment.
• More chairs that you can sit in.
• Beast mounts a possibility, but Denis Erikson asked “What would you RP with your new animal friend?”
• Cosmetic gear should work for all classes and not have armor restrictions.
• Custom emotes for cross-faction could be done at some point.
• Naming policies are hard to enforce. Doing what they can.
• They would like to add more RP space to the game.
• Attaching other players to your legacy is not something to expect anytime soon.
• Emotes that say character lines is something they plan to do.
• Companions riding beside you in taxis could happen in the future.

Guild Features

• Guild bank with seven tabs.
• The seventh tab will be very expensive to get.
• Detailed controls for guild leaders.
• Option to require an authenticator to access certain tabs.
• Very good logging for the guild banks.
• Issues with the current guild roster and UI might be fixed in 1.2 (the developers weren’t 100%) sure.
• Guild calendar to set Operations schedules and reminders coming in a future update.
• Guild emblem that can appear on armor and clothing coming in a future update.
• Guild progress and Capital ships still something they want to do, but is still a long way off.

User Interface

The user interface was an online demonstration by Damion Schubert. This was met with tremendous applause by everyone.

• Edit mode for the UI.
• UI Scaling is extremely granular.
• Almost everything can be moved and resized.
• The companion bar will be it’s toolbar and will not cover a players toolbar.
• You can save your UI as an XML file and share it with other players.

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