You can read the entire Q&A here after the jump, and don’t forget to head over to the offical forum thread for next week’s Q&A and get your question in there!

Chyp: Can we expect to see any animation/damage timing consistency changes between factions?

Georg Zoeller (Principal Lead Combat Designer): Yes. The animation team has been working on a new set of animations for abilities like the Trooper’s Mortar Volley to provide closer matching of animation timings and improved combat responsiveness. We expect to roll these changes out with Game Update 1.2.

Zennis: Has there been any discussion to streamlining the Space Port process? Perhaps allowing speeders in the Space Ports besides the Fleet?

Brian Audette (Senior Designer): We’ve absolutely heard what the fans are saying and have been exploring options to address these issues. While we are still investigating allowing speeder use in Space Ports, we’ve also been looking for other ways to get people from point A to point B with greater haste. One such feature will specifically affect planets that have Orbital Stations instead of Space Ports such as: Tython, Korriban, Hoth, and Belsavis. We’ll be adding an option for players to go directly to their ships from the surface shuttles as opposed to having them run through the Orbital Station to their airlocks. This feature and some additional tweaks will start showing up in Game Update 1.2.

deusBAAL: Will you be providing a LFG tool? What will be its features? How will it be intended to work and when can we expect it to go live?

Daniel Erickson (Lead Writer): We are hard at work on a much more robust LFG functionality that will quickly help put groups together while still offering the flexibility to decide how you group and what sort of people you want to be grouped with. We’ll release more details as we get closer to release.

LthalSavy: Will there be any way to implement a quick travel to your ship?

Georg Zoeller: Not in the short term, but it’s something we’ve been discussing on and off. Currently, given how easily available fleet travel passes are on the Security Vendor, we don’t think adding this is necessary.

IsACoolGuy: Will any new emotes be added to the game? The Jedi/Sith meditation thing that NPCs do looks pretty cool, will emotes of that nature become available to players?

Damion Schubert (Principal Lead Systems Designer): We do have some new emotes planned. Even cooler, we now have tech that allows us to grant emotes as rewards for various game systems. In Game Update 1.2, we have several emotes planned as unlocked rewards of the Legacy System. My favorite is the special dance that is so inspiring that your companion feels the urge to boogie down with you.

TrueDND: Currently, the incentive to choose other Crew Crafting Skills outside of Biochem is minimal due to the fact that, once you reach max level, all gear that is acquired through PvE and PvP is better than all crafted equipment and mods (mostly through the Commendation and token vendors). Is this being looked in to?

Georg Zoeller: Absolutely. With the upcoming Game Update 1.2, we are adding endgame crafting for all professions. This includes augment crafting, the ability to crit-craft custom (orange) gear with augment slots, new endgame schematics, new color crystals, expanded and improved research and reverse engineering and much more (we’re up to 4 pages of crew skill related patch notes in 1.2. alone)

Combined with new features such as the ability to extract base-mods from purple items (including the set bonus) and the improved color matching feature, crafters of all professions will find themselves in a lot of demand once the update hits.

Toxin_Polaris: Do you plan to have mini-games like swoop races or pazaak? And if so what is the priority for this? Can we expect them this year?

Damion Schubert: We love mini-games, especially the ones that speak to the heritage of KOTOR. When would something like pazaak make its way to you? Hard to say – it’s not on our immediate horizon, and we’d most likely do it at a point where we want to make a large splash.

Twaggy: I find it troublesome to compare mods/enhancements/armoring/hilts/crystals that are installed in my armor or lightsaber. Will you be implementing something that lets you see the stats of what you have (like the comparability you can do of the boots – boots or jacket – jacket)?

Georg Zoeller: This is a convenience feature on our list of things to look at once the higher priority UI features and community requests have been addressed. We definitely think it’s a good idea, but where it falls in terms of prioritization makes it impossible to give you an ETA at this point.

TheJestersHat: What is BioWare planning to do about performance issues that people get with Warzone, open world PVP, and general FPS issues?

Damion Schubert: We have an internal strike team that is fully devoted to ensuring that the game runs better and faster, especially on low end machines, and we consider this team’s work to be a crucial internal initiative. You should see evidence of this work as soon as Patch 1.1.5, when we will be introducing a new ‘very low’ setting to shader quality, which should drastically increase the number of mid-to-low machines the game can run well on, especially in Warzones and Operations.

Frung: Have you considered adding a “companion” loot roll option?

Damion Schubert: We’ve discussed it and have a design for it – when we do this, we will make it so you can only roll ‘need’ on items that your advanced class is meant to use in one of its specs. I do not currently have an ETA on this feature.

Belthazaar: I like my ships but, I was wondering if or when we will be able to purchase, make, or steal a new and different ship beyond the one that we currently get from our class quest?

Damion Schubert: Unfortunately, the nature of our ships as central story areas for all of our class content, and all of the associated triggers and cinematics that must therefore be done on the ships, means that giving players new ship models, particularly interiors, is very, very hard for us. We will probably look at addressing this instead by providing a greater sense of ship customization at some point well in the future. But it’s someplace we definitely want to go!

Thanks for all of your questions, and thanks to the team for answering them. If you’d like to put forward a question for next week’s Q&A, please visit this Forum thread!

Today, BioWare rolled out a brand new build of Star Wars: The Old Republic to the Public Test Server. Patch 1.1.5 is now available for players to test and the notes are available below, or here.

Items of note are the addition of a /roll command as well as a fix to the Master Looter function. Also interesting is the reduction in price of several speeder models “until patch 1.2″. Hmm.

No word on character copy yet, which is truly required for the PTS to be of any real value (at least to players.)

Anyway, you can get more details from the official Test Center including instructions on how to participate. And don’t forget to head over to the official Public Test Server forums to give BioWare your feedback when you do!

Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ — 1.1.5 Patch Notes

Because development is ongoing during testing, it should be noted that all changes and updates listed in the patch notes should be considered incomplete and are subject to change or removal before release to the live servers. The Public Test Server patch notes will be provided in English. The final release notes will be provided in English, French, and German when the content is moved to live servers.

General

• Players can now use the command /roll or /random to generate a random number between 1 and 100. This command will also accept a range (example: /roll 20-40) or a die value (example: 2d6).

Classes and Combat

Sith Warrior

• The French version of the “Darth” title is now correct.

Flashpoints and Operations

Operations

General

• Bosses in Operations now drop the correct amount of loot when the group is using the Master Looter loot distribution setting.

Eternity Vault

• The “Duel of the Fates” and “Penalty of Destiny” effects are now properly removed when the Infernal Council encounter resets.

Items

General

• New high-level black-yellow color crystals can now be purchased from the Pre-Order Vendors on the Imperial and Republic Fleets.
• Several high end speeder models have been temporarily reduced in price until Game Update 1.2.
• A vendor that sells a variety of previously unavailable endgame crystals has been added temporarily to the Imperial and Republic Fleets until Game Update 1.2.
• The Portable Holo Dancer once again displays the correct visual effect.
• Dark/Light requirements present on some color crystals have been removed.

Missions and NPCs

Missions

Republic

• Chaos and Harmony: Corrected an issue that caused Children of the Emperor to disappear and reappear during the final boss fight, making the encounter more difficult that intended.

PvP

World PvP

Ilum

• To improve Ilum performance, the two large defense turrets outside each base on the Western Shelf no longer fire lasers into the air.

UI

General

• The Shader Complexity preference now supports a “Very Low” option.

First, let me say – from a spelling perspective, yes of course I know there is an “I” in guild. The title comes from the famous expression of, “No “I” in team” – we’ll overlook the fact that there is in fact a “me” there.   Ahem.

Last week, we talked about the Guild Summit and what kinds of questions you’d maybe be interested in learning more about. While I got a lot of feedback about the game as a whole – which likely will not be addressed at the Summit, as it is specifically and solely about and for guilds – I’ll definitely keep my ears open for news on any of the topics our readers asked about, as well as doing my best to cover the event as a whole.

In the feedback and comments from that entry though, a very interesting – and sometimes passionate – debate ensued about what a guild actually is, what it should provide to its members, what its members should provide to it, and all those issues related to those things. It got me to thinking about this topic, and what guild membership really means to people. So this week, let’s look at what a guild actually is, and how that matches up to what players think it ought to be?

This is every guild, right?

The Basics

On the most basic level, a guild is a social network and a chat line. In fact, in TOR as the guild system currently stands, one could argue that’s actually all it is. (More will be coming though, or so I hear!) There is no leveling system, guild bank, experience boost, special gear, even a device or logo to visually link members of the same organization. Now – there are ways that guilds can provide these things in game, but they do so by finding creative ways to implement them. For instance, a lot of guilds will provide assistance on flashpoint runs or helping to gear lower-level members; not quite the same as a true experience boost, but something that can definitely be helpful – especially when compared to the mixed bag of looking in general for a group. Other guilds implement primitive “guild banks” by rolling a low level alt and having that character store items for the guild members to request or contribute. In our guild’s case, we have a “guild bank” toon that the guild leader controls, and where we maintain a list of his current inventory through our forums. Nowhere near as easy to use as a true in-game guild bank, but better than nothing. However, all of these features require the assistance and cooperation of the players. They are not provided by the game mechanic itself.

The Advanced

Other gaming systems provide a lot more benefits to guild members than just the basics of a social network and community. Many games include features such as guild housing, which is typically some sort of instanced area available only to guild members, or guild banks, where members can store, donate, or retrieve useful goods and access can be controlled by rank. In other systems, there are guild quests, where guilds get extra perqs or rewards for completing them – this can be extra experience or money awarded to members, or to the guild itself, or tokens used to buy guild rewards. Finally, some systems have a guild leveling system, where members gain special advantages and benefits to their character from the guild’s leveling system. These can include benefits to individual members such as a shorter quick travel cooldown, higher rates of return on gathering professions, extra experience leveling, or unique gearing or vanity items that they can purchase for their characters.

What’s Good For The Guild…

Herein lies the rub: last week, I wrote specifically about the way in which a combination of a guild leveling system and a guild finder tool really devastated a lot of guilds. That led to a lengthy discussion among readers about whether these features – which do seem to advantage the individual player over the guild itself – are good for the game or bad for the game overall. It brought up some very interesting points worth considering in further depth. So, let’s take a look at some of these:

Guild Finders Are Good: The up side to these tools is obvious – for players that do not care to participate in server forums, official forums, or other out-of-game guild search tools, this makes finding a guild very easy. Just open up the guild finder tool, enter in some details, and poof! You may have hundreds of guilds to search through and find one that works, all without ever having to leave the actual game window.

Guild Finders Are Bad: The down side to these may be a little less obvious – and for that matter, may only be a down side to guild leaders and members really looking for other committed participants. By making it so easy to find guilds, it becomes a lot easier to leave a guild and keep hopping until you find one that makes you happy. This may be a good thing for the individual player, but it can be devastating for guilds. The frequent turnover can hinder Operations progress as groups struggle to fill slots, hurt morale for the members that stay, or just prevent people from really getting to know each other if it seems like people don’t stick around very long.

Guild Leveling Is Good: The best argument in favor of these are that they – and presumably the rewards they provide players – give players more options, which is always a win. Who would ever say that having to wait longer for a quick travel or taking less damage from dying is a bad thing, right? Players like presents, and like that sense of accomplishment that comes from unlocking something challenging; offering additional incentives through a guild leveling system just adds to that feeling and theoretically offers solo players or non-guilded people a reason to consider joining a guild.

Guild Leveling Is Bad: Now, I’m speaking as a guild leader here – so take what I say with a grain of salt. However, having some real life friends that are serial soloists and really don’t care to engage in the social experiment of guilds at all, I dislike the idea of creating a system where players are passively punished for not joining a guild. If you don’t want to be in a guild, you shouldn’t have to be – and when it comes down to getting increased gathers from being in a guild versus solo, well, that really pushes even people who dislike guilds into joining one, if only for the benefits. If you don’t enjoy the grand social experiment of a guild, it’s better to continue flying solo; being forced to join something a player doesn’t really enjoy is bad for both the player and the guild they join.

A Better Way

It seemed liked a lot of people agreed that having some sort of guild perq is helpful for guilds and players. However, it’s the form of that perq that takes careful effort and thought. As a few people suggested, guild perqs should be something that doesn’t create incentives for a player to join and participate, then leave or go inactive once they have the item/perq in question (for instance, heirloom gear). Rather, they should provide things that help both guild and player – so for instance, providing a rally point or guild summon that enables you to bring the guild, or guild members in an Ops group, to a specific place en masse is a great feature that benefits both guild and player.

"Dibs on his boots."

The Real Question

The real question here ultimately boils down to, “What is a guild”? A lot of the responses seemed to break down along one of two lines. One is the “A guild is there to serve the player”, and the other is the “A guild is there to be served by its players”. The answer to that question seemed to shape a lot of commenter perspectives on the merits or flaws of all the other guild incentive systems. For those that believe a guild is there simply to serve its members, then all of the issues raised with guild leveling systems, member inactivity, problems with perqs, and all of the concerns raised shouldn’t matter. The guild is there to meet player needs, and they do so through levels and providing the player with goods. For the other school of thought, the reverse is true – members contribute time, effort, and energy into a team project and shouldn’t expect to gain personal profit outside of the ability to participate in team activities and reap the rewards from that. (In many games, guilds provide the best opportunities for advanced raiding and the rewards from that because of the coordination element.)

If you compare these ideas to real life, it’s a fairly interesting dichotomy. Some people view guilds like a team sport – along with all of the, “No I in team” philosophy and emphasis on being part of the group rather than more special than the others. If you’ve ever been in a team sport, or for that matter in the military (because drill sergeants love to emphasize your very particular lack of “being special”), then you’re already familiar with this mindset – love it or hate it. There’s a reason it is there though, and not just to beat up on individual self-confidence. Creating the idea of being part of a greater entity creates a lot of loyalty and devotion to your other members in the team/unit/squad/etc – even the ones you don’t like. Without that, there’s a good chance you might leave that jerk in your squad behind when you duck for cover in combat, or refuse to block a tackle for your quarterback if you think he’s an idiot. Part of the whole team concept (and in many cases, shared team misery) is to really develop and instill that idea of being in a group, all parts and pieces of the same organization – and specifically, fostering that willingness to help each other, even when you don’t necessarily like the other in question. If you’ve ever been in one of the teamwork guilds that does advanced operations or PvP, you’re probably familiar with this too – you take on tasks you might be ambivalent about or not happy about, in order to better the group and help attain the group’s success. In games like TOR, this might mean sitting out on a raid so someone else can go, or respeccing to a role that wasn’t your first choice because it’s what your guild currently needs. (In our case, see “tanks”.)

However, not everyone is comfortable with the idea of being just another spoke in the wheel. There’s a fairly significant perspective in the gaming community – and one that seems to be growing – that says if a player is already paying their subscription fee in the first place, why should they have to fulfill these teamwork requirements and not get more that directly benefits them? In this mindset, guilds are there in the game as just another way of providing more features, options, and services to members, rather than the other way around. Especially in a game context where Operations or raids have become pick-up-group friendly and this content is no longer exclusive to guilds only, more and more players are expecting more from their guilds than just a place to raid. Even moreso, they’re willing to give less to get the same gains that for them, they can earn in a pick up group without all of the additional work or baggage. So in this viewpoint, team isn’t good enough – guilds need to earn members and provide for them, not just take what the members can give for the team’s effort.

What do you think? What should guilds provide, when it comes down to it? Are they social entities to provide friends and folks to talk to or hang out with while playing? Should they be providing specific, in-game benefits to members? What is reasonable for a guild to expect from its members? Tell us what you think a guild out to be and provide!

I have to say the map isn’t 100% user friendly to get into, but once you do, it’s a very powerful feature and a great addition (almost necessary) for a game like TOR.

You can check out other videos in the series, as well as hints at upcoming topics here. Enjoy!

BioWare pushed patch 1.1.4 to the live servers earlier today, and includes some bug fixes as well as some minor improvements. Most notably is the inclusion of yser-selectable preferences for the Global Cooldown interface behavior. The flexibility should be just what players were looking for! But I will also take this opportunity to suggest that if BioWare had allowed an open API for add-ons, the community would have solved this long ago and BioWare could have concentrated on more important things.

These notes, as well as all previous notes are available on BioWare’s official patch notes archive.

1.1.4 Patch Notes — 2/22/2012

General

• The key formerly bound to /bug can now be mapped to any action and no longer opens the /bug window. The command is no longer able to be bound to a quickslot, but player can still type /bug in chat to open a new bug report.

Classes and Combat

General

• Using abilities with indirect targeting (such as area of effect abilities) will no longer cause players to be flagged for PvP if a PvP-flagged player from the opposing faction is within the ability’s range, and the ability will have no effect on the PvP-flagged player.

Imperial Agent

Operative

• Medical Therapy: Kolto Probe and Recuperative nanotech will now properly benefit from this skill.

Bounty Hunter

Powertech

• Carbonize: PvP armor for Combat Tech will no longer prevent this skill from stunning enemies.

Flashpoints and Operations

Operations

Eternity Vault

• Casting Mind Trap will no longer cause Soa to lose threat against his primary target.

Karagga’s Palace

• G4-B3 Heavy Fabricator now has fewer hit points in Normal Mode.

Items

Vendors

• “Show Usable” now properly filters to only show equipable items.

Missions and NPCs

Missions

Republic

• Unlikely Allies: Resetting no longer requires players to abandon and re-acquire the mission in order to complete it.

PvP

Warzones

General

• Fixed a queue interface exploit that allowed players to bring additional players into a warzone. While imbalances can still happen under specific circumstances, the issue can no longer be intentionally triggered by players in this way.

Alderaan Civil War

• The Eastern Turret no longer fires twice under some circumstances when it is captured by the Imperials.

World PvP

Ilum

• The /stuck comman will no longer teleport players to the location where they died.

UI

General

• Added a /version command.
• Added several new preferences for cooldown appearance:
• Show Ready Flash: Toggles a bright flash when an ability finishes cooldown.
• Show Global Cooldown Ready Flash: Toggles a bright flash when an ability finishes global cooldown.
• Cooldown Style: Changes the art style for the cooldown graphic.
• Global Cooldown Style: Changes the art style for the global cooldown graphic.
• Show Cooldown Timer: Toggles cooldown time text on top of the ability icon in the quickbar.

Bug Fixes

• Sorting will now function properly in the Guild Window.
• Items placed in a quickbar are no longer removed when training abilities.
• Using Shift + Right Click to split a stack of usable items will no longer cause the item to be used.
• Some UI settings (such as quickbar lock, chat font size, and minimap zoom) will no longer reset upon area transition.

Miscellaneous Bug Fixes

• Players will no longer experience occasional disconnection when purchasing Crafting Materials from the GTN.

No MMO launch is ever perfect, but we are pleased to report that the launch of Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ on December 20, 2011 was a tremendous success. More than two million copies of the game have been sold, and the servers are full of players logging in to experience their own personal Star Wars™ sagas and to play with friends through the hundreds of hours of massively-multiplayer content.

While it doesn’t contain any new information for veteran players of the game, it’s a neat recap of the game from launch to the present day. According to the video, over 2 million copies of the game have been sold, and over 14,000,000 characters have been created!

There are video vignettes of the live pit at the studio from launch day, and you can see the anticipation of everyone standing around waiting for the flood gates to open!

All in all, worth a watch and especially worth sending to a friend who might be on the fence about giving TOR a try.

Each week or thereabouts here at Ask A Jedi, we’ll meditate on the finer points of the healer’s role in Star Wars: The Old Republic. No matter where your allegiance lies, you’re sure to find guidance here in the Halls Of Healing!

Last week’s patch started some heavy complaints on the official forums and elsewhere in the blogosphere when they announced the nerf to Surge Rating. I was, maybe to your surprise, quite delighted at these changes. Why you may ask? I currently play a Scoundrel, and as you might know Critical Rating and Surge Rating are a very important part of the mechanics due to talents such as Accomplished Sawbones and Prognosis: Critical. So why would I be delighted at these changes? Currently the state of the Scoundrel/Operative healing is quite poor. I’m not talking in terms of numbers or how to be competitive, but how the actual mechanics and toolbox of the class. We are heavily dependant on our critical hits to be able to put out good numbers and if you ask me this is where the fault in the design is. While it is particularly so for Scoundrel/Operative healers the way Critical Strikes is designed in the game, it has a major effect on other healers as well.

A Nerf eating some delicious grass

Balance Of the Force

Something that I’ve always loved about healing is how little impact the theorycrafting and the actual min-maxing has on your performance. Sure, in many situations and especially in high-end Operations you probably want to stick to what your numbers say give you the highest possible output. But the most important factor when healing is the power to be able to adapt to situations, and those situations are something you cannot predict accurately with math and formulas. Yes you can come up with an average but you won’t be able to get a lot more accurate than that. There are many different philosophies when it comes to this… will you for gear towards the worst possible scenario? For example when you don’t get any critical hits at all, or will you gear towards the average scenario? Or something in between? There isn’t any hard data on which you can base this decision on. That is what I love about healing as it allows each player to weigh the various Attributes and formulas based on his or her own feelings, because that’s really what it boils down to, what you feel is best for you.

Some years ago I came across a very fitting saying: Damage is science, Tanking is strategy, but Healing is an art. And it’s something that I’ve taken to heart. We healers are artists when it comes to our restorative skills, be it the Force, medpacs or health scanners!

Playing With Dice

I mentioned previously that I didn’t like the idea of having to rely heavily on critical hits in order to have a sufficient throughput when healing. I have many reasons for this, one of them is the fact that there are already too many random variables in the game that will affect your healing severely, add in some human errors and bad luck and you have a recipe for disaster.

Obviously we want to reduce the number of random variables that affect us in each encounter as much as possible. Some of these variables are influenceable others not. For example if there’s a randomly targeted skill the boss is doing but it requires line of sight, you can control this by having people you don’t want to get hit by moving out of line of sight. Another example is if there’s a targeted AoE, if you have your group spread out evenly you will reduce the amount of targets to be hit to a minimum and therefore reducing the impact of RNG on that fight.

There are numerous of other examples of this, most of them we don’t even think about. But the one that you personally have the most control over though is your attributes and your gear. For example by prioritizing attributes like Power over Critical Rating and Surge Rating you can reduce the randomness of your heals since you know that Power will increase the potency of all your heals and not just some of them whereas Critical Rating and Surge Rating will only improve your critical hits. Right now though in most situations this is just not a possibility since Surge and Crit are too powerful, it’s in most situations more beneficial to stack these even though your throughput will be heavily dependant on luck. I hope that the developers keep pressing in the same direction that they showed last patch, either by reducing the potency of critical hits or by increasing the health pools of the Operation team and through that increase the time in which we can land our heals, making the average healing throughput more important than the worst case scenario reliable throughput.

Reedyn is the chief nerf-herder over at Force Heal, the healing community for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Artwork is done by strawbeki.

Dear Sir,

With much delight we confirm your order for 200 C2-N2 Advanced Spaceship Maintenance Droids. The C2 Droid Corporation is enlightened by your humble request for this superior, Republic technology and is looking forward to replace the inferior R2-V8 units found on these hopelessly outdated spaceships of yours.

regards

The Republic.

Man, if I was the one delivering that cargo, I sure hope the Empire would board my ship so that I would have an excuse drop that shipment….

Ahem…back on topic. User Joaby posted in the official Asia/Pacific region launch thread that he would like to know where exactly the servers for that region will be located. Joveth Gonzalez, Associate Online Community Manager, lets us know that those servers will be placed in Australia.

Hi there Joaby! Just wanted to let you know that the servers will be located in Australia.

In addition, Mr. Gonzalez let us know that the game client will not be region locked so anyone can play on those servers easily (thanks to bahugboto for asking the question):

Hi bahugboto! Thanks for your questions! Yes there will be, in fact, an Asia/Pacific tab under the location selection list and anyone with an active SWTOR account will be able to play on these…

If you didn’t notice, in the upcoming 1.1.4 patch a couple outstanding issues are being addressed. Specifically, using abilities that indirectly target players (like AoE abilities) will no longer damage PvP flagged players if you aren’t PvP flagged. Per Amber Green, Live Community Coordinator:

Hi everyone. Thank you all for your patience and reports. We wanted to post in this thread to let you know that we have made this change with patch 1.1.4, which is now live on Public Test Server! You can read the patch notes here.

I mentioned this a few weeks back, so it’s nice to see this problem finally getting cleared up.

Ms. Green also tells us that the “\” key, which is used to quickly open the bug report submission page, is now re-bindable:

Hi everyone. We wanted to post in this thread to let you know that we have made this change with patch 1.1.4, which is now live on Public Test Server! You can read the patch notes here.

Hallelujah! No more accidental opening of bug reports when typing frantically in PvP or other hectic situations.

Lastly this week is a topic that I am really interested in. Right now, the only options when rolling for dropped equipment in groups are “Need”, “Greed”, or “Pass”. Given TOR’s unique companion system, should I roll “Need” on items that I want to use for my companion or “Greed” since I am not going to use the item on my main character? It’s a dilemma of etiquette since I don’t think an unspoken standard has been set for this situation. I have been in groups where needing on gear for companions was perfectly acceptable and others where players were booted for such behavior.

However, it sounds like BioWare is aware of this confusion and is working to improve the rolling mechanics to make this easier. Damion Schubert, Principle Lead Systems Designer, has some good information for us about Companion needing and greeding:

Need vs. greed isn’t as simple in our game because of companions, as well as Orange Gear and mod extraction. 

We will probably limit the ‘need’ button to only people who match the primary class the gear is meant for, and add a new button in between need and greed for players to choose if they intend the gear for these purposes – this will allow CC users to roll against each other without competing with the guy who wants to sell the gear for credits.

I don’t have a timeline on this for you guys right now, though – certainly not in the next major patch. In the meantime, I strongly recommend that players who care clearly decide the expected need/greed role behaviors (‘no companion need rolling or you’re out!’) when a group is initially formed. In the meantime, I’ll work on getting this feature in the works.

Sadly, this won’t be coming in the 1.2 patch, but at least they are going to start working on it. And please let us know what you think the proper etiquette is in situations like this. “Need” for companion gear, or “Greed”?

Lead Concept Artist Arnie Jorgensen, whom we did an interview with last year at Star Wars Celebration, along with artist Alex Thomas and developer John Watson left BioWare to form their own game studio in Austin, Texas called Stoic. They are working on a game called The Banner Saga that will borrow heavily from their own individual experiences, as well as that of BioWare:

“It will include BioWare-style dialog, exploration of gorgeously painted landscapes, and turn-based strategic combat,” Watson said.

The Banner Saga will be released in 2 phases, the first of which will include multi-player combat. It has an interesting art style and might be something to watch! Head over to Indie Games Magazine for the full story.

And Arnie, if you and your team are reading this, good luck with your project – we will be following closely!

There are designs representing every single class, plus you can also fly the colors of your faction… and even reveal if you lean a little to the dark side ;)

We’ve posted a couple shots below, but head over to the J!NX site to check ‘em all out and maybe even order one for yourself!