Laut Dulfy: Ranked Warzones comms removed from daily/weekly (and permanently from the game)
Zum Nachlesen: http://dulfy.net/2015/05/28/swtor-upcoming-pvp-changes-from-bad-feeling-podcast-interview/ (zuletzt aufgerufen um 18:20 Uhr ^^)

Wozu dann überhaupt noch T1-PVP-Gear kaufen, wenn man den Ranked Gear mit den gleichen normalen PVP-Marken kaufen kann? Oder irrt Dulfy (wäre leider nicht das erste Mal, immerhin kündigte sie die zwei "major updates" für 2015 anfangs als "expansions" an)?

Aufklärung durch: http://www.xamxamsays.com/?p=1659

Dark Reaver Gear will now cost Warzone Commendations and yes you will still need the Exhumed shells.

Michse nun verstehen.Man muss sich immer noch T1 Gear holen, um T2 zu verdienen und damit lässt sich T1 nicht einfach ganz überspringen.

News von Reddit und aus dem neuesten Bad Feeling Podcast: https://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/comments/37l0oa/bad_feeling_podcast_episode_66_our_interview_with/

Bulletpoints:
+ PVP-Gear wird billiger (Tier 1 um 33% günstiger, Tier 2 um 81% günstiger)
+ 2018 Kompetenz werden Ranked-Voraussetzung
+ Ranked-Token mit welchen man Ranked Belohnungen kaufen kann
+ Marken-Transfer wird legalisiert!

Da immer noch die Rede von Exhumed und Dark Reaver Gear ist dürfte es wohl doch keinen Gearwechsel in 3.3 geben. Verdammt...

Auf dem PTS waren sie schon einmal: http://imgur.com/a/T2XPt

Heute mit Bildern!

Darth Bane mit Orbalisken-Rüstung im Kampf: http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20131101121433/jedipedia/de/images/e/e4/Duel_auf_Tython.jpg


Laut Wookieepedia war Darth Bane nicht der einzige Träger einer Orbalisken-Rüstung, auch Freedon Nadd soll eine solche besessen haben. Der Schwachpunkt der Orbalisken liegt darin, dass sie durch Machtblitze entfernt werden können. Stirbt ein Orbalisk allerdings, sondert er in seinem Todeskampf noch ein tödliches Gift ab, dass auch Bane fast zum Verhängnis wurde.

Darth Bane war jedoch (in der alten Star Wars-Lore) nicht der einzige Träger einer "biologisch abbaubaren" Ganzköperrüstung, die ihn zu zerstören drohte. Auch Darth Krayt war seinerzeit von einem Parasiten befallen, der ihm von den Yuuzhan Vong eingepflanzt worden war. Anders als Bane war Krayt jedoch von Korallen überwuchert und suchte in den Holocronen früherer Sith-Lords (Bane, Nihilus und Andeddu) nach einer Lösung für sein Problem.



Krayt und seine Holocrone



Krayt auf seinem Thron


Was Sith mit Style betrifft waren Krayts Sith-Kultisten ganz vorne mit dabei und ich würde mir von "Star Wars Legacy I" inspirierte Rüstungen auch für SWTOR wünschen.


Darth Wyyrlok III. - die rechte Hand Darth Krayts


Für weitere Informationen:
http://jedipedia.wikia.com/wiki/Orbalisk
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Orbalisk

Unglaublich wen man eigentlich alles für ungeeignete Namensgebung melden dürfte. Ob die Meldungen allerdings überhaupt wahrgenommen werden steht auf einem anderen Blatt.

You may not use names containing titles or ranks within them, e.g. General Supertrooper, Captain Tim, Darth Timmy, Knight Wakey.

Lordskwàlker

You may not use names that refer to drugs or that are drug related.

Weedsmokah

You may not use names that contain an inappropriate phrase, sentence or any fragment of a sentence or Leet speak, e.g. uberhaxer, xxspeederxx, lolface, rofl, Noobwhacker, TimmyF**k, kock, fuk.

XxxSaschaxxx

You may not use misspellings or alternative spellings of names that violate any of the above rules, e.g. Hamsolo, Yooda, DorthVader.

Vàdér

You may not use gibberish names when creating character, e.g. ajsdu, rifndsw, qweszs.

Klöäü

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Disrupt the flow of chat with vulgar language, abusiveness, hitting the return key repeatedly or inputting large images so the screen goes by too fast to read, use of excessive shouting [all caps] in an attempt to disturb other users, “spamming” or flooding [posting repetitive text].

Das würde also nicht nur für Flamer und Trolle gelten, sondern auch jene die den Handelschat mit megalangen Postings vollspammen.

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Exploit any bug in the Service to gain unfair advantage in the game and/or communicate the existence of any such bug (either directly or through the public posting) to any other user of the Service.

So steht's geschrieben, auch das Ausplaudern eines Exploits oder nützlichen Bugs ist "strafbar". Was Exploits ausmacht wird nur als unfairer Vorteil umschrieben und was fair ist bleibt ganz BioWares Moralvorstellungen überlassen. Generell sind Bugs, die einem Gear, PVP-Rating oder Ops-Erfolge bescheren eher als Exploits einzustufen als Crafting-Bugs oder zu ertragreiche Farmgebiete. Credits erfarmen ist nicht verboten, Credits verkaufen hingegen schon, wofür auch ein Abschnitt der ToS gilt.

Siehe: http://www.swtornetwork.com/news/interview-with-bioware-stats-and-game-design-decisions/

Ein Interview mit Alex Tremblay, Manager of Analytics at BioWare Austin

Persönliche Highlights aus dem Interview

On the infographic that was released a while back, the most popular color crystal was stated to be the Advanced Black-Yellow Fortitude Crystal. If you wanted to go that step further, could you find out the most popular color crystal used by players at the level cap in the last 30 days?

It’s the Advanced Purple Outline Hawkeye Crystal, though it’s only used by 3.08296% (not repeating, of course) of the aforementioned population. Took about 55 seconds to figure this out.

(Wohlgemerkt er nennt den Hawkeye Kristall, also die Variante mit +41 Angriffskraft, was noch wenig über die beliebteste Farbe der +41 Ausdauer Kristalle oder +41 Kompetenz Kristalle aussagt)


Can you share a few examples of situations where engagement stats have influenced, or been the determining factor, in a game design decision?

Engagement is a major function of my team. We’ve clearly learned that things like accessibility and rewards are major motivators of participation. We’re always trying to build a clearer picture of what our players need in order to have a more positive experience playing SWTOR.

12x XP is a great recent example. Through analysis of the Rise of the Hutt Cartel expansion, we came to the realization that returning players found their old characters hard to engage with (too much stuff in your inventory, unfamiliar abilities, changed skill trees, etc.). We worked with designers to implement a solution that addressed this issue as well as gave us an opportunity to experiment with something that could well have been risky.

Another recent example relates to tactical Flashpoints. Our regular monitoring of PvE content turned up a substantial discrepancy in usage between the Czerka and other tactical Flashpoints. Working with design and QA, we developed a hypothesis as to the cause, tested and verified it’s veracity, and ultimately increased the reward per time spent to align them more closely with similar content. It allowed us to give players a broader range of experiences in the game to reduce content fatigue and add enjoyment to the gameplay experience.

(Die Helden 2-Quest auf CZ-198 stammt also aus der Erkenntnis, dass die Czerka-FPs viel zu oft gelaufen wurden)


Was the recent decision to ‘double down’ on story content driven by stats, community feedback, or is just the fact that it’s a BioWare game and that’s what you want the focus to be? Or was it a combination of the three?

All of the above. It’s the type of content that engages the broadest portion of our community and tends to be the stickiest, most engaging experience for players. Finding a way to increase the cadence of our story content generation is also an important focus.

(Das ist nicht die Antwort die ihr sucht ~ Aber wenigstens ist man sich bewusst, dass man den richtigen Rhythmus für den Story-Content finden muss, das zu lange warten treibt ja auch Spieler wieder weg)


Progression fuels a lot of player activity, however certain aspects of the game have gone long periods of time without offering much to incentivise players to participate in them. Examples include:
•Galactic Starfighter – There haven’t been many updates since it launched nearly a year ago, and players that have maxed out their ships have nothing to aim for.
•Hard Mode Flashpoints – There isn’t much ongoing incentive to run hard modes, especially if they are added further on in an expansion as players will have no need for the commendations. (Teo suggested timed modes and challenge modes – with unique rewards, this would be fantastic)
•Events – the same three events come back fairly frequently without any changes; once players have maxed out their reputations, they only need to take part again if they need an additional item (e.g. an extra legacy off-hand from the Gree event).

There is a concern that when you review player engagement for areas as the game such as these, you may draw the wrong conclusion – that players aren’t interested in the content, when in fact they may just be lacking a reason to participate.

What would you say to players to allay their concerns?

We completely understand that there are areas in the game that have had less attention than others, and also understand that this can limit the motivation to engage with particular types of content. With unlimited resources, there are clearly things that we love to do more of, but at the end of the day, there is a limit to what we can do with the bandwidth we have based on serving the majority of active players. Want more GSF? Great, but then something else needs to be cut from our production plan. A Flashpoint would be cool, but would it be cooler, more engaging, and ultimately better for both the player and BioWare than the alternative? Maybe.

It gets even harder than that; our staff, like any staff, has specialized talents. Some features require many more designers (think story content or Operations). Others are super engineering heavy (Strongholds, Galactic Starfighter, etc). Sometimes we WANT to do something, but based on resource allocation, or player feedback, it’s not possible without torpedoing lots of other things that we want to (or need to) do more or which matter more to players. And that’s what lead designer and producers and development directors do– figure out what content we’re going to create based on what we want to see in the game, what the numbers indicate will engage as many people as possible, what players clamor for, and what we have the appropriate resource mix to build.

“But what about the Cartel Market?!? You update that all the time”. Yes, we do but it takes a very few development resources to create content for the CM. Are we greedy? Nope, not really, and hopefully that should be evident when you compare our approach to monetization as compared to other titles (we try to sell things that people want, not that they need to have to be competitive). This all just makes us a business; a business that needs to remain successful and profitable for us to continue to build new experiences for those playing the games. And we have a lot of skin in the game; after all, this game is our careers and livelihoods.

(So sehen die Statistiker also den Umstand, dass man nicht alles gleichzeitig tun kann)


With the introduction of ranked 4v4 and PvP seasons, “yolo” ranked has become fairly successful. From player feedback, it seems this success is mostly reward-driven (e.g. seasonal rewards). However, grouped ranked PvP remains unpopular, with the group ranked population too low for spontaneous pops. Players need to have a know-how in the PvP community to try and get a match going. This is a threshold making grouped ranked less accessible to a larger public and it seems arenas having 4v4 instead of 8v8 has not solved anything here.

Do you agree with this assessment? Are there any plans or do you have any ideas on how to address this issue?

Your assessment that ranked PvP is a relatively unpopular part of the game is very accurate. To your point, solo ranked is more favored. Though the removal of 8v8’s was an unpopular decision, it has led to dramatically higher participation in ranked PvP; but it’s not where we want it to be, and there are certainly things that we can explore doing.

Larger server populations that produced better, more competitive feeling matches would be a start. Simplified PvP gear progression that allowed players to compete on skill rather than time-sunk could increase volumes. Improved guild features that supported stronger communities of PvP players could also help. There are two main question categories that we have to answer:
1.What are our goals? (What do we want Ranked PvP to look like, who should it appeal to, and generally, what is it that we want to accomplish) and
2.How likely are we to achieve them? (How do we balance the likelihood of improving the situation, what are the realistic upsides in terms of breadth and depth of engagement and how do these priorities tie into our other development considerations).

(Da klingt ein Spoiler durch! Oder nicht? Ich hoffe doch. Größere Server und eine Lösung für die Gear-Problematik. Größere Server... hmm.)


Are you able to share any new, fun stats? For example, how many times has Revan been defeated in the main story and/or Operation since the expansion launched, what’s the fastest Huttball victory, or is there anything else you feel like sharing?

Well, personally, all data is fun to me so long as it tells me something that I didn’t know before. Learning is the key. But here’s something that, to me, is more important than an epic last second Revan kill or a totally righteous Huttball score.

BioWare Austin Developers spent over 62,000 hours creating Shadow or Revan. Since the launch of SWTOR, current BioWare employees have logged 78,000 hours of playtime on their personal accounts, outside of the office, on their personal time. We have an employee who’s logged over 6000 hours of game time by themselves, and several employees who, since the beginning of this year, are in the 98th + percentile of total game time played (and MMOs attract some seriously hardcore gamers). If I were presenting to Bruce or Jeff in a meeting, this is the point where’d I’d pull up the summary slide:
•We love this game. A lot.
•Making SWTOR the best game it can be has been a part of our lives for the better part of a decade and we want it to be part of our lives for another one
•While not all of our decisions have been perfect, they’ve all been made with the same goal in mind: Create fun for as many people possible in the richest and most engaging fictional world ever created.

(6000 Stunden sind 250 Tage und ich bin beeindruckt. Wenn man mit ähnlich hohen Spielstunden zu den obersten 2% der Spielerschaft gehört bin ich vielleicht sogar dabei, derzeit liege ich sicher zwischen 100 und 200 Tagen, habe aber bekanntlich schon einmal 55er gelöscht und müsste noch alle 60er überprüfen.)

Vor 3.0 fanden die Dataminer auch bereits vage Hinweise auf den kommenden Content. Es waren planetenspezifische Sounds die 2014 schon vorab auf einigen Content hinwiesen und nun gibt es auch mögliche Hinweise auf 4.0 oder das nächste große Story-Update 2015.

More environmental audio sounds for locations labled as "4_0", the new sounds are labeled for the areas Dreamscape and Zakuul City.

Eine unbekannte Stadt und eine Traumlandschaft, was könnte das bedeuten? Meine Vermutung hinsichtlich des Traums würde zu Voss passen bzw. Vitiates von Sel-Makor geerbten Eigenschaften als Machtentität. Man kann den ehemaligen Imperator nicht in der physischen Welt bezwingen, doch vielleicht in einer seltsamen Geisterwelt? Zakuul City ist in der Lore noch nie aufgetaucht, doch sollte die Stadt auf Nathema liegen ist das auch kein Wunder. Würde Onderon ins Bild passen? Onderons Hauptstadt nennt sich Iziz, was wegen der ähnlichen Aussprache wie Isis aus gewissen Gründen problematisch sein könnte. Man könnte auch eine andere Stadt auf Onderon oder Dxun erschaffen und die Handlung dort geschehen lassen.