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.

CRR HoloScan

Each week we will spotlight a member of the SWTOR community and get him or her to answer ten slightly off-the-beaten-path questions. Feel free to answer the questions yourself in the Comments section!

This week we highlight, David Bass, Senior Community Coordinator for BioWare.  We find that David never found where in the World Carmen Santiago was, loves peanut butter, and finished Portal 2.

Comments and more after the jump…

Q: What was your first video game obsession?

A: When I was little, my dad and I would hop on the computer every night to play Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (the 5.25” floppy disk version). Back then, the game came with this giant almanac you had to use to look up answers, and I loved the challenge. I’m not sure we ever actually caught her, sadly.

A: Anything with peanut butter in it. The Girl Scouts came to the office a couple weeks ago, and I bought 5 boxes of peanut butter cookies from them, and our whole team ate three boxes within a couple days. I have serious problems.

A: Laundry. And while I waited for laundry, I checked into almost every MMO I have characters on… I’ve recently gotten on this binge where I want to play ALL the MMOs at the same time.

A: Ooh, this is a great question. I need to rephrase it to “What video game have you not finished yet that you know you should,” because I play almost every game but I rarely finish them. The answer, in this case, is Dragon Age Origins and DAII. I’m about 2/3 of the way through DAII, and after that I’d like to go back to DA Origins, but I’m just not very good at them.

A: The most recent game I actually finished was Portal 2, and by finished I mean “played it through 6 times.” Whenever I’m feeling down or stressed, it’s the best possible game to improve my mood. Not just because I know I can beat it, but because it’s hilarious every time.

A: Way too many, right now. I look forward to How I Met Your Mother and Parks and Recreation each week. HIMYM because its stories tend to be extremely parallel to my own life (though I hate laugh tracks SO MUCH), and Parks and Rec because it really came into its own as being funnier and more unique than The Office.

A: I’m not sure when the last time I actually listened to music was… I’ve been stuck on podcasts for about two years now. Mostly I listen to the Rooster Teeth podcast and Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me each week.

A: I bite my nails like nobody’s business. It used to be stress-related, but then I started working in the industry, so now I’m always stressed

A: Ooh. I’m ashamed to admit I don’t remember the first time I saw Star Wars. I do remember that I hadn’t ever seen Empire and RotJ until a few years ago, and I never really knew what it was that held me back. I did see the entire prequel trilogy in theaters, though I didn’t dress up and wait outside, sadly. My Star Wars obsession really came into its own once I started reading the Expanded Universe novels (especially the Zahn books).

A: My first character in SWTOR will be a Trooper, because I love the feeling of assembling a squad to take down a powerful threat.

A: There is too much profanity contained within my catchphrase to put here.

We want to thank David Bass for being such a great sport by answering our questions.   David is an awesome community coordinator.   He is the point of contact for fansites and guilds.

Photo by TorWars.com