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Topic: Weekly Dev Q&A for Fridays (Read 71823 times)
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caladein
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3174
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Unless you're just skilling up, then you want to do the orange ones as I think you get more skill points per combine?
Yes, Orange gives two skill-ups per craft. As for the crew skill criticals, I'm pretty sure we knew the affection/bonus stuff. It being orange vs. everything else for critical rates is new though.
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"Point being, they can't make everyone happy, so I hope they pick me." - Ingmar"OH MY GOD WE'RE SURROUNDED SEND FOR BACKUP DIG IN DEFENSIVE POSITIONS MAN YOUR NECKBEARDS" - tgr
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Phred
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2025
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Haven't seen this posted so... Star Wars: The Old Republic : Erickson Denies Declining Sub Numbers Posted Apr 24, 2012 by Suzie Ford BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic Lead Designer Daniel Erickson has denied recent claims that the number of subscribers to SWTOR are in decline. Last week, financial analyst Cowen & Company projected that SWTOR's subscriber base would likely be reduced by the end of fiscal March 2013. Erickson, however, says that this is not true.
However, BioWare lead writer Daniel Erickson has now denied that sub numbers are already dropping, although he told PC Gamer that server merging may occur due to light server populations.
"Nothing is off the table when it comes to making sure our communities are strong and active on each server," he explained. He said that BioWare is currently doing "anything and everything" to increase concurrent user numbers.
In other news he also insisted that black was white and up was down.
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Lantyssa
Terracotta Army
Posts: 20848
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With a little statistical manipulation I'm sure he's correct.
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Hahahaha! I'm really good at this!
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Nebu
Terracotta Army
Posts: 17613
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If they keep giving everyone a free month, then I'm sure that subscription numbers will remain stable. I logged on last night for the first time in weeks and it was a ghost town on my server.
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"Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other."
- Mark Twain
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Minvaren
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1676
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New week, new Q&A. Some highlights: - all GTN nodes going neutral (1.3?) - Mentoring "is coming" - look for new Orange armor pieces from Treasure Hunting - Legacy cross-servers? Eventually...
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"There are many things of which a wise man might wish to remain ignorant." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Fordel
Terracotta Army
Posts: 8306
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I think what annoys me about the GTN statement, is if they want more lowbie items on the markets, just put the GTN terminals back on all the planets. In Beta, there were GTN terminals on each planet, so it was really easy to just take a speeder back, dump all your shitty greens and blues, then go back to questing. Right now it takes half a dozen loading screens or you mail it all to a auction alt... or option number three, vendor that shit
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and the gate is like I TOO AM CAPABLE OF SPEECH
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Kageru
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4549
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The "We need server merges!" threads never disappoint. Images of people standing alone in the fleet area or a /who list showing 40-70 people on the entire faction. I can't decide whether it's incompetence, hubris or desperation that they believe they can take their time on server merges.
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Is a man not entitled to the hurf of his durf? - Simond
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Phred
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2025
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I think what annoys me about the GTN statement, is if they want more lowbie items on the markets, just put the GTN terminals back on all the planets. In Beta, there were GTN terminals on each planet, so it was really easy to just take a speeder back, dump all your shitty greens and blues, then go back to questing. Right now it takes half a dozen loading screens or you mail it all to a auction alt... or option number three, vendor that shit Plus people need to buy that shit which in my experience rarely happened. Maybe it's a catch 22. People dont find low level items on the market so they stop bothering to look. If that's the case I think that boat has sailed.
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caladein
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3174
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The "We need server merges!" threads never disappoint. Images of people standing alone in the fleet area or a /who list showing 40-70 people on the entire faction. I can't decide whether it's incompetence, hubris or desperation that they believe they can take their time on server merges.
I'm being perfectly serious when I say this: having a planet to myself in the middle of the night is a feature.
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"Point being, they can't make everyone happy, so I hope they pick me." - Ingmar"OH MY GOD WE'RE SURROUNDED SEND FOR BACKUP DIG IN DEFENSIVE POSITIONS MAN YOUR NECKBEARDS" - tgr
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Spiff
Terracotta Army
Posts: 282
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Last time I logged onto my server (one of the ones that didn't die) it was full of people rerolling apparently, so perhaps they see the lack of server merging/changing as a good way of re-using content .
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Kageru
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4549
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The "We need server merges!" threads never disappoint. Images of people standing alone in the fleet area or a /who list showing 40-70 people on the entire faction. I can't decide whether it's incompetence, hubris or desperation that they believe they can take their time on server merges.
I'm being perfectly serious when I say this: having a planet to myself in the middle of the night is a feature. Yes. I would assume a large amount of the remaining population are playing it as a single player (maybe duo) game. Which means the grouping potential for those who want the multi-player experience is even worse than the numbers indicate.
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Is a man not entitled to the hurf of his durf? - Simond
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Fordel
Terracotta Army
Posts: 8306
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I think what annoys me about the GTN statement, is if they want more lowbie items on the markets, just put the GTN terminals back on all the planets. In Beta, there were GTN terminals on each planet, so it was really easy to just take a speeder back, dump all your shitty greens and blues, then go back to questing. Right now it takes half a dozen loading screens or you mail it all to a auction alt... or option number three, vendor that shit Plus people need to buy that shit which in my experience rarely happened. Maybe it's a catch 22. People dont find low level items on the market so they stop bothering to look. If that's the case I think that boat has sailed. Yea, there's definitely a bit of that. In Beta, you could count on buying a whole suit of green/blues every planet if you wanted too. So it was worth it for everyone to just list their crap, even for the default GTN asking price per item (which was still more then vendor value).
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and the gate is like I TOO AM CAPABLE OF SPEECH
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Nevermore
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4740
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This isn't part of the weekly Q&A, but there's a podcast up with some info on 1.3. Some highlights: - It's the LFG patch.
- The LFG tool sounds pretty much the same as WoW's LFG and will cover flashpoints, operations and world content.
- You can choose specific content or just random flashpoints, with 'a cookie' being thrown to the random flashpoints as a reward.
- They didn't say one way or the other if it's cross server.
- This patch will be out faster than 1.2, but will be lighter on content so they can focus on a few key areas.
- The other major feature is the next leg of Legacy, which we've already had the preview for.
- Sounds like they're re-purposing the old item modification tables to allow you to add augment slots to armor.
- Social armor will be turned into 'Adaptive Gear', which will become whatever armor type your AC uses when you wear it.
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Over and out.
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Ingmar
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Posts: 19280
Auto Assault Affectionado
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My recollection is that the initial version of LFG was going to be same-server with cross-server getting added later, but I could have dreamed it.
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The Transcendent One: AH... THE ROGUE CONSTRUCT. Nordom: Sense of closure: imminent.
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Nevermore
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4740
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The other thing I'm curious about is if you pick world content and you get a group, will the tool take you to where the content is or do you still have to hoof it there yourself?
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Over and out.
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Zetor
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3269
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Yea, I was about to ask this (LFD is relevant to my interests and my 'check out WOW... again' sub has just ended; it'd need to be x-server though as my server was kind of dead when I left in Jan). I do know some of the outworld heroics start in the world and then shift into an instance. Have they updated them so the heroics port everyone into the instance and start there, or does everyone still need to (e.g.) travel to levelling_planet_x, go through the various docking zones, take a flight path or port (if the 'hearthstone' is up) and do the quest normally?
* yeah, I realize that if you're doing them while levelling you're already on the same planet at least... but on my server I was frequently the only person on a levelling planet, which doesn't fill me with too much confidence about LFGing for levelling heroics.
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koro
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2307
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The other thing I'm curious about is if you pick world content and you get a group, will the tool take you to where the content is or do you still have to hoof it there yourself? If it's the former, I will feel so vindicated after all the arguments I had on the beta forums with people who were so staunchly against anything LFG-related, especially if it auto-ported.
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bhodi
Moderator
Posts: 6817
No lie.
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No Ranked Warzones, no 8 Man PVP Queuing? Maybe no deserter debuff or any pvp issues being addressed? Oh well! I really wanted to like this game, but it's just been disappoint.
How is Questing LFD going to work? If it doesn't include a TP to bring people together am just going to smile sadly and close the book on this game because they are completely missing the message.
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« Last Edit: May 09, 2012, 04:17:41 PM by bhodi »
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Nevermore
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4740
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I really don't get the obsession some people seem to have over ranked warzones. WoW somehow managed to stumble along for 6 years before putting in rated battlegrounds, and even then they had to practically force people to use the damned things by restructuring the weekly cap on conquest points to get the arena people to use them. Why are ranked warzones so important?
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Over and out.
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bhodi
Moderator
Posts: 6817
No lie.
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Because all the pricing of the PVP gear is assuming that ranked warzone commendations exist, so everything is 3x the price due to a 3:1 token tradein. This might have been fixed, not sure. Honestly the 4 man group max thing is way more of a day-to-day issue than ranked warzones to me; having to tell one guy he has to sit out because there are 5 of you on TS is a bummer.
WoW somehow managed to stumble along for years before putting in LFG and dungeon teleports too (remember when there were no summon stones? When warlocks were gods?) but once they are in it's clear to everyone how much of a quality of life bonus it was. Going back from that is hard.
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« Last Edit: May 09, 2012, 04:36:39 PM by bhodi »
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Sjofn
Terracotta Army
Posts: 8286
Truckasaurus Hands
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Except ranked battlegrounds absolutely blew in WoW.
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God Save the Horn Players
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Nevermore
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4740
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Because all the pricing of the PVP gear is assuming that ranked warzone commendations exist, so everything is 3x the price due to a 3:1 token tradein. This might have been fixed, not sure. Honestly the 4 man group max thing is way more of a day-to-day issue than ranked warzones to me; having to tell one guy he has to sit out because there are 5 of you on TS is a bummer.
WoW somehow managed to stumble along for years before putting in LFG and dungeon teleports too (remember when there were no summon stones? When warlocks were gods?) but once they are in it's clear to everyone how much of a quality of life bonus it was. Going back from that is hard.
Yes, but all those other things you mentioned are quality of life features that benefits everyone. What is it about ranked warzones specifically that makes so many people bring it up? I mean, we're talking about a feature that wasn't even particularly well liked in WoW, at least up to when I finally cancelled at the end of November last year. If it's just the price of the pvp gear, just readjust the price in my opinion. Though it should also be noted that the difference between the Battlemaster set and the War Hero set is really, really small.
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Over and out.
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Fordel
Terracotta Army
Posts: 8306
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The issue there isn't ranked Warzones, it's the retarded endgame PvP itemization and acquisition... again. They have no idea how they want to handle PvP items or how they want people to get them.
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and the gate is like I TOO AM CAPABLE OF SPEECH
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Sky
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Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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Though it should also be noted that the difference between the Battlemaster set and the War Hero set is really, really small.
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bhodi
Moderator
Posts: 6817
No lie.
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Yeah.. um, that isn't true for some things like implants.
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bhodi
Moderator
Posts: 6817
No lie.
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Also, because they fucked up the itemization so badly, I actually tried to plan, hit 50, bought the entire recruit set and 2 pieces of battlemaster, when I hit 50 and joined a game, I was unable to damage anyone. That was kind of a bummer.
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Falconeer
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11124
a polyamorous pansexual genderqueer born and living in the wrong country
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Because all the pricing of the PVP gear is assuming that ranked warzone commendations exist, so everything is 3x the price due to a 3:1 token tradein.
This. A full set of War Hero is about 80k (eighty thousands) Warzone Commendations. Considering you earn an average of 80 per match, you have to play about 1000 warzones in order to get it. As usual the winning faction gets there faster and that makes them even more winning. Sure, dailies speed up the process... by a negligible amount. That is even more infuriating if you think that the whole pvp gear revamp has been made so getting gear was going to be easier for everyone across the board, as a way to level the play field and make it more about player skills than gear grind. That has been the staple of the whole patch 1.2 production process, and it has been killed 2 days before launching it by removing the ranked warzones and not reconfiguring prices or purposes. The difference between War Hero and Battlemaster gear isn't that big on paper but believe me you feel it on the field. You really feel it. This game is gear dependent, and everything adds up. When fights are decided in a matter of seconds and for a few slivers of HP every single number counts. Also, and maybe more important, it's not that a full set of War Hero gear is that domianting over a full set of Battlemaster gear. It's that if you have a full set of War Hero you can sub the mods/enhancements you don't need with Battlemaster ones, for a huge efficiency boost. When you are usin "just" Battlemaster gear or "just" War Hero gear you are not even close to someone that is wisely using a mix of the two. So yeah, the lack of ranked warzones sucks for the way they built itemization, but that aside, the lack of ranked warzones sucks because some love to play ranked/ladder matches. Regardless of how they have been implemented in WoW.
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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So they let you have early access to the ranked warzone gear and everyone bitches about it. Be nice if they just yank all the gear and return the commendations so everyone will shut up about it until the ranked wzs come out. Also, because they fucked up the itemization so badly, I actually tried to plan, hit 50, bought the entire recruit set and 2 pieces of battlemaster, when I hit 50 and joined a game, I was unable to damage anyone. That was kind of a bummer.
This is why I laugh at the entire concept. But thanks for pushing that concept onto fps, it's really improved the genre. I'm assuming that because I don't play fps anymore because they've jacked it up so bad.
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Falconeer
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Posts: 11124
a polyamorous pansexual genderqueer born and living in the wrong country
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Sky, in all honesty no one was asking for more PvP gears. That's why it was a good idea that while keeping tiers in, they were all pretty easy to attain. Having removed open PvP (Ilum) the least the PvP crowd was expecting was some e-Sport stuff. Which were the planned ranked warzones with easy to attain top equip. A la Guild Wars, in a way. So not the best, but good. This is exactly what they were going to deliver up to 2 days before 1.2 launch... when they had to delay ranked warzones and by doing so forced everyone to another huge item grind, worsened by the thinning population (so less games starting therefore less chances to get commendations).
So thanks... I guess... for the early access to gear that on a losing server is almost impossible to get. Easy instead if you are on a winning server, as huttball friendly matches keep starting over and over. That said, War Hero gear is not the problem. The problem is the lack of any of these things:
1) Cross Server queues 2) Server Transfers 3) Server Mergers
The keyword here is SERVERS. Fuck.
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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Or that geared pvp is stupid.
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Falconeer
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11124
a polyamorous pansexual genderqueer born and living in the wrong country
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We pretty much all agree. If you ask me the focus in any PvP game should be on builds, tons of them. Abilities, talents, synergies, and even gear. But same stuff available to everyone from the get go, please. Still, that's not the worst thing here. Their last announced gear revision was decent on paper. If only they implemented it in full...
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Mattemeo
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Posts: 1128
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If you party with the Party Prince you get two complimentary after-dinner mints
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Ingmar
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Posts: 19280
Auto Assault Affectionado
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The Transcendent One: AH... THE ROGUE CONSTRUCT. Nordom: Sense of closure: imminent.
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Sjofn
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Posts: 8286
Truckasaurus Hands
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Although we’re certainly willing to entertain the idea of cross-server LFG tools if the need arises, it’s a last resort for us. We firmly believe for cooperative play it is important to have a community and social responsibility that you simply can’t have with players appearing and disappearing from your reality. Instead we are pushing hard on servers that are massive compared to the ones we launched with. SIGH I mean, whatever on the server mergers that aren't REALLY server mergers oh god don't say they're server merges, but unless they're merging the servers into ONE BIG SERVER, this is the WRONG FUCKING ANSWER.
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God Save the Horn Players
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Minvaren
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1676
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Daniel Erickson (Lead Game Designer): Legacy Perks have a different purpose than global unlocks and are specifically designed to enable players to customize each individual character. Since you may not care about Space XP or running the Bonus Series missions on one character it is important that you’re not paying a premium that is calculated at the expense of 8 or more characters all gaining this benefit. This also means the Legacy Perks will, as a rule, be more affordable than the global unlocks. Did he just say what I think he said?
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"There are many things of which a wise man might wish to remain ignorant." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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