Weekly Dev Q&A for Fridays

[Lantyssa]

When people knew about bugs for six months prior to release because of beta, does it count?

Though I have to agree to some extent.  I hate bugs, I do expect them fixed ASAP, but people are getting a little unrealistic with their expectations.  Especially for convenience features.

[ajax34i]

We cultivate the mindset that EA is completely inept AND greedy and the conclusion is that this is how they must be talked to, to have a chance to get anything done.  I remember when CCP was in the hot seat as far as public perception of their talent level.

[Nevermore]

I remember when CCP was in the hot seat as far as public perception of their talent level.

Was?

[Sky]

Some stuff from a Gabe interview. http://toroz.com.au/2012/03/interview-biowares-gabe-amatangelo-on-pvp-server-transfers/

Gear/Warzone/Commendation Changes

Lesser end-game commendations (Champion, Centurion, etc.) will not be exchangable.
There will be two levels of warzones. Regular and Ranked warzones.
Regular warzones will give out regular WZ commendations, and Ranked warzones will give out ranked WZ commendations.
New intro PVP set for new level 50 players to fill gap in gear.
There will be some "fun" uses for commendations you dont need anymore.

Ranked PVP

Phase one will be server specific.
Phase two (coming in the future) will have cross-server queuing.

General/UI Changes

Combat log coming soon.
DPS meters/Parsers will be done by 3rd party addons via combat log.
Free/Paid Server transfers are being worked on but no date provided. They want to make sure the process is perfect before releasing this.

Cross-Server Queuing

Coming in phase two of pvp changes (later than 1.2)
Priority is on playing with people from your own server.
As soon as you start choosing certain things (which warzone, ranked, etc.). It becomes more difficult for you to get a WZ with server players so you go into the cross-server queue.

[Sky]

1 - Will we be able to change our Legacy name in the future?

From the dev tracker:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=3060969#edit3060969[

We're definitely working on this (it's a much requested feature) but we have not made any statements regarding when this will be available.
Georg "Observer" Zoeller
Principal Lead Combat Designer

[Ingmar]

Combat log coming soon.

[Nebu]

I see absolutely nothing good coming from having a combat log in game.  

Classes/players will be kicked from pugs or not invited at all.  People will flock to the numerically superior classes.  Elitist assholes will now be able to throw numbers around while being elitist assholes.  

 

[Sky]

And before anyone gets too excited, he clarified '3rd party add-ons' as out-of-game solutions; not in-game 3rd party add-ons.

For the record, I am in agreement with Nebu. For the slight bit of benefit of tweaking builds (since there's not much to tweak in TOR), there's a lot of downside.

[Paelos]

Maybe with a threatmeter they can figure out why JKs suck at tanking.

[Ingmar]

Nebu, you're such a ray of sunshine.  

I look forward to actually knowing what my abilities do, personally.

[Nebu]

Maybe with a threatmeter they can figure out why JKs suck at tanking.

JK's don't suck.  The threat system is what sucks.

[Fordel]

Ranked warzones should be grand on our server, where we can usually only support one WZ at a time for 20 of 24 hours a day. 

[Sjofn]

I look forward to actually knowing what my abilities do, personally.

It'll be glorious. We're such elitists.

[01101010]

Nebu, you're such a ray of sunshine.  

I look forward to actually knowing what my abilities do, personally.

Looking forward to the weeping and gnashing of teeth.

[Sjofn]

Honestly I find not knowing what my abilities do (like ... I have no idea how much damage my sage's bubble actually absorbs) infuriating. I also loathe dying to something and having no idea what ACTUALLY killed me because I can't check the log. And I never really ran into the elitist shit Nebu claims will happen the instant a combat log exists.


EDIT: And yes, I have done a metric fuckton of PUGs in WoW, the place people claim it happens most. It has never happened to me. And I haven't seen it happen very often to other people. There were lots of times it COULD'VE happened, but didn't, because we were still "winning" the instance, so who gives a fuck.

[Ingmar]

The self-bubble from blade storm on guardians is another one where its just like, welp, it absorbs some damage. No, you don't need to know how much.

There's just so much stuff that is down to guesswork without a log and parses. Want to know whether you should get that power/accuracy mod or the crit/alacrity one? Too bad, you have to guess. Etc.

[Nebu]

Nebu, you're such a ray of sunshine.  

I look forward to actually knowing what my abilities do, personally.

What dps meters will do is exclude people.  You need to be class A, with spec B, and gear C to join our group.  Guilds will begin asking people to reroll if their class is underperforming to get a group spot.  If those things don't matter (to you) then there's no reason to even have a dps meter.  You can already get good approximations from the champion mobs in Correlia.  

If my group can beat an encounter and have fun doing it, that's all the information I need.  I don't want to know who the weakest link is.  It doesn't do anyone any good and generates an atmosphere of resentment.  It's bad enough that players are already being berated for wanting to listen to the cutscenes in flashpoints.  

[Ingmar]

What's important to me is maximizing my own performance, and the combat log is the one basic tool I really need in order to be able to do that.

Have you ever actually been berated for listening to a scene or is that forum hearsay? I'm not PUGging, so I haven't seen it myself but I'm curious just how widespread it is.

[Sjofn]

You need to play with people who aren't assholes, Nebu. Like I've said before, what you describe simply does not happen on the scale you seem to think it does. If it did, I surely would've run headlong into it, multiple times, in WoW PUGs. Which I have done a fucking shitton of. I am pretty sure no one here will claim WoW PUGs are a bastion of patience and understanding, either. Yet we'd have people doing absolutely abysmal DPS in a heroic, and no one cared, so long as we were getting through the instance.

When my guildmates are "winning" an instance, we are happy. When we are not winning an instance, we do look to see how to maybe improve, and you need information to do that. We don't berate people, we don't make them respec to something "better," or any of that nonsense. We raided with people with shitty specs and sub-optimal raid composition all the fucking time in WotLK (Priests? Warlocks? What are those?). But for the people who WANTED to improve how they played, instead of possibly being the boat anchor, those tools were a huge help, and not having them sucks.

[Nebu]

What's important to me is maximizing my own performance, and the combat log is the one basic tool I really need in order to be able to do that.

Have you ever actually been berated for listening to a scene or is that forum hearsay? I'm not PUGging, so I haven't seen it myself but I'm curious just how widespread it is.

1) You don't need a combat log to figure that out.  A combat log just makes it easier.  

2) I listen to my guildmates complain about it in vent every time they pickup someone that wants to watch the cutscenes.  I don't join pugs.  I play these games to run instances and do pvp with people I enjoy playing with.  If I didn't know anyone in game, I doubt I'd ever even run an instance.  The only instances I ever saw in WoW were the few I saw with Rasix or could do solo when they went gray.  

I can tell you that I watched dps meters bring out the worst in people in Rift.  They are the perfect tool for pointing out the weakest link in a party.  That's the kind of information that nothing good ever comes from.  

[ajax34i]

Honestly, Nebu, you may be right about the tendency to use meters to exclude people, but with how hard it is to FIND people (on even the more populated servers), I think anyone looking to exclude anyone would only make their own life harder.

Judging by WoW, guilds recruit x tanks, y healers, and z DPS, and then they're struggling to minimize drama in order to keep them.   In my experience meters were used to try to win the fight against the current boss, rather than wiping yet again.  I haven't seen a lot of "druids are better than priests" though I suppose there were some cases.  However, the developers nerfed and buffed classes or abilities so frequently that any guild would gimp itself if they excluded a particular class. 

[Ingmar]

OK, I'll rephrase, you need a combat log unless you're an insane person who wants to do all the math to figure out, say, the power coefficient for a particular power by hand.

[ajax34i]

So it sounds like they're going to implement a "save combat text to hard drive" option and let us use excel or offline parsers to do what we wish with the information, rather than allowing in-game meters, am I understanding that right?

[Ingmar]

Yeah that's what it sounds like. Which is enough really. (Although I wouldn't cry if there was a way in-game to do the 'last 20 seconds of life what did I die from?' thing that Recount lets you do.)

[Sky]

OK, I'll rephrase, you need a combat log unless you're an insane person who wants to do all the math to figure out, say, the power coefficient for a particular power by hand.

You want the numbers. You do not need the numbers.

[Rasix]

Fuck you, I want the numbers.

[Ingmar]

OK, I'll rephrase, you need a combat log unless you're an insane person who wants to do all the math to figure out, say, the power coefficient for a particular power by hand.

You want the numbers. You do not need the numbers.

  Don't make this a stupid semantics thing.

[Sjofn]

Fuck you, I want the numbers.

Fuck yeah! Be elite with me, Rasix!

[Rasix]

That Death Knight is only pulling down 800 DPS.  Fuck him.

[Sjofn]

I'm totally going to inspect him to see why he is so terrible!

[Sky]

Don't make this a stupid semantics thing.

I wasn't. I don't care about a 1% difference in tertiary stats or how much my bubble is shielding. Not knowing doesn't make the game any less fun for me.

I get that you guys want the numbers, and I understand why. You're the one saying "you" (Nebu, me) need them or "you" (Nebu, me) have to do power coefficients (whatever that is) by hand, as if there isn't any other option out there.

Maybe it won't be a problem. I've seen it be a problem in other games. Since there's no upside for me, can you understand why I'm wary of it?

[FieryBalrog]

I see absolutely nothing good coming from having a combat log in game.  

Classes/players will be kicked from pugs or not invited at all.  People will flock to the numerically superior classes.  Elitist assholes will now be able to throw numbers around while being elitist assholes.  

 

Yes it will be a paradise without such elitist tools as "how much damage is everyone doing".

There is no way the community will use far sillier and more arbitrary measures like "how much HP does this dude have" and "what classes are sucky and weak according to vague rumors flying around." No sir! 

[Ingmar]

Don't make this a stupid semantics thing.

I wasn't. I don't care about a 1% difference in tertiary stats or how much my bubble is shielding. Not knowing doesn't make the game any less fun for me.

I get that you guys want the numbers, and I understand why. You're the one saying "you" (Nebu, me) need them or "you" (Nebu, me) have to do power coefficients (whatever that is) by hand, as if there isn't any other option out there.

Maybe it won't be a problem. I've seen it be a problem in other games. Since there's no upside for me, can you understand why I'm wary of it?

What exactly is the downside for you though? You already choose not to participate in endgame content. So why would you be wary? It shouldn't have any impact on you at all, other than the indirect benefit you might gain when number-crunchers find stuff that is broken and bring it to EA's attention.  I have the same question for Nebu, really - why do you care what might be happening in theoretical PUGs if you're already deliberately not participating in them?

(On the semantics thing, you quoted my 'need' out of context of the statement I was modifying, that's why I got prickly. I was originally saying "In order to do this, I need this"; I wasn't saying everyone needs it.)

[Sjofn]

Don't make this a stupid semantics thing.

I wasn't. I don't care about a 1% difference in tertiary stats or how much my bubble is shielding. Not knowing doesn't make the game any less fun for me.

I get that you guys want the numbers, and I understand why. You're the one saying "you" (Nebu, me) need them or "you" (Nebu, me) have to do power coefficients (whatever that is) by hand, as if there isn't any other option out there.

Maybe it won't be a problem. I've seen it be a problem in other games. Since there's no upside for me, can you understand why I'm wary of it?

That isn't actually what I was saying. I'm saying "I" want them. I'm saying "you" are overreacting to this imagined horror of people being huge douchebags in PUGs you don't join in the first place, or people being elitists in guilds that are, supposedly, made up of people you like. I am positive the combat log is not going to change Bat Country at all, it's certainly not going to make Slap warp into some log parsing hellhole where we make you guys all respec or reroll or FACE TEH CONSEQUENCES. And if people can, the vast, vast, VAST majority of the time, keep their douchebagness in check in PUGs in WoW (in this regard, anyway), I'm pretty sure SWTOR can manage it too.

Will some people be douchebags? Sure, people always find ways to be douchebags. But the actual impact, assuming you do not play with people who lean towards douchiness in the first place, is not going to be very big.

[FieryBalrog]

I can tell you that I watched dps meters bring out the worst in people in Rift.  They are the perfect tool for pointing out the weakest link in a party.  That's the kind of information that nothing good ever comes from.  

People rarely care about the weakest link in a party unless that weakest link is actively causing a problem (in which case they SHOULD care).

People just don't care enough to get worked up about it. I got my rogue geared up through heroics doing absolutely abysmal DPS for the first several days thanks to my bad gear and complete inability to play a melee DPS. No one said anything, not once. I've run a few hundred cross-server dungeons since the tool came out, and I can count on two hands the number of times DPS meters became an issue. Several of those were cases where a guy was doing autoattack damage, aka putting in less than 0 effort. And in those cases all that happened was people pointing it out in chat.

At the same time the DPS meter has some serious advantages. It helps balance the classes. It helps fix actual problems on raids. Last week on normal Ultraxion we wiped several times because we couldn't meet the enrage, especially if someone died. A hunter in our guild was doing significantly less DPS than we could handle. We had to bench him and get a pubbie who did enough DPS that we could get through the fight. And he knew it wasn't because we hated him or anything; if we could've carried him we would've. In the meantime, he can actually gear up or optimize his rotation or whatever (and the guild officers can help him do it), and get a sense of real progress with his character.

Since enrages are all over the freaking place in TOR, the equivalent situation just leads to endless wiping with no solution in sight. Everyone thinks they are carrying the group and someone else must be fucking up. And right now class balance is a complete mystery box. Better not bring Sentinels on your ops because the scuttlebutt has it that Sentinel DPS blows! True? False? Sorta true? It's MMO mystery theatre!