So yesterday Bioware held a SWTOR guild summit, with panels, news about upcoming patches, livestreams, etc. swtor-life has a good summary of bulletpointed news items.
I’m just going to pick a few.
Story Mode for Ops
Taking a tip from WoW’s raid finder, or possibly from the ME3 story mode, the plan is to rename normal Ops modes to ‘story mode’ with the explicit aim of letting casual players experience the galactic storylines (presumably making them easy enough to favour PUG raids.) I think they are making a distinction between galactic storylines and class/personal storylines, so you won’t miss any of your class story if you don’t raid.
Legacy System
If you want to set up an actual family tree between your characters, you will be able to do so. I assume this will include some non-blood relations such as ‘mother in law’ or ‘slave of’ so that your Chiss Bounty Hunter can have some sort of connection with your Pureblood Sith Inquisitor without implying that they sleep together. (Actually, given the companion romances, I’m not sure if they’ll let you specify romantic relationships between your alts anyway. What would Quinn say?)
Some of the stuff you’ll be able to unlock for your alts sounds fairly fun though:
- Reach level 50 with a species in order to unlock it with all other characters.
- Can Unlock Heroic Ability (i.e. Force Choke) among all other characters one you finish your story. (I could have a Jedi with force choke???)
- Repair droid on you ship, can repair gear, but old items, sell items to improve crafting abilities on ship droids. Mailboxes on the ship
- GTN terminals available on ships, very high up on the legacy system
- Can trade items between anyone in your legacy, including those in the opposite faction
- Multi-Spec system will be tied to Legacy system, not coming at beginning of 1.2 but it is on the way.
- Will be able to place vocal restraining bolt on your droid.
Poor droid, I think a LOT of people will use that 🙂 One thing this will mean is that people will be strongly motivated not to create alts on lots of different servers as the legacy bonuses will only apply to alts on the same server.
- Most rewards can be purchased as opposed to unlocked via normal means. Some things will not be able to be purchased when 1.2 first releases, but will be able to purchase down the road.
Aaaaand heads up for what sounds like an upcoming cash shop.
Some Crafting and Economy Stuff
- Most popular Crafting skill is Artifice, followed by BioChem
Biochem I can understand, it’s rather useful having endless potions/ stims, but Artificing? It’s not bad per se, but the only reason I can think why it would be the most popular is that lots of people are playing force users and find it cool to be able to craft their own crystals/ lightsabers.
- 57% Empire vs 43% Republic across all servers, PvP servers much more Empire heavy
- Sith Inquisitor is the most popular class, Smuggler is the least popular
- Reusable BioChem items will be phased out in the future
Noooo. not my reusable Biochem stuffs! ;/ Wish they could just make them less powerful than the non-reusable ones. Oh well, I suppose prices on the stims that doesn’t disappear when you die will go through the roof.
- Reverse engineering rate for better items has been improved in 1.2
- Tooltip will let you know if you can learn a new schematic from reverse engineered items, chances of receiving the same recipe twice will be reduced
Those are both good changes
Random Stuff
Why does random stuff always get labelled as ‘roleplay’ I wonder
- Male slave outfits incoming. (Well, that’s it for Quinn then.)
- Animal mounts on the list for things to be added (Tauntauns, obviously.)
- Will be able to add comments to friends in 1.2, hopefully will be able to write up a character bio for all your toons (OK, this legitimately is a RP improvement.)
Guild Stuff
- In game guild calender coming, able to set events and show them to non guild members
- Guild banks 100% confirmed to be in 1.2
- Guild progression in the works, large project with no details released yet
- Tax system is also on the way
I’m not so hot on the taxes, personally. What is it a guild is going to buy exactly that individual players can’t?
More Random Stuff (but apparently this isn’t RP)
- Dual/Multi spec coming in two parts/ Part one will let you switch through skill trees, part two will let you completely switch gear as well.
- More story coming this year (this YEAR … that could be December, just saying.) Same Gender Romance options coming with Story updates
- Cross server/ cross faction communication possible down the line, no real details released yet (will be good because the Legacy system is encouraging players to play both factions.)
- Cooler outfits coming for Republic faction, particularly at endgame
- Quests for epic weapons, armor, and other items coming. May even require having characters on both factions to unlock
As far as patch 1.2 goes, there’s a longer article about it on ign.com which includes some (ominous?) rumblings about class balance:
Class changes in 1.2 include new abilities for the Warrior and the Knight, a nerf for the Bounty Hunter, and more. Every class will receive changes, and all skill tree points refunded so you can look over the trees again before deciding how to rebuild your class.
Any of the new stuff particularly grab any of you?
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