Star Wars Galaxies: Top Ten Questions and Answers About the Image Designer Mini-Publish

Concern #1 - Player City ID Tents
a) Why was the decision made to limit the ID tents to five NPC cities, only on the three main planets?
b) Are there plans to make ID tents available for crafting by Architects and placing by Master Image Designers in player cities?
c) If so, when could we expect to see them in the game?

Runesabre

The tents are currently limited to a small number of static locations in order to help ease the new changes into SWG in a way that the general playerbase would not have to spend a lot of time finding an Image Designer for their services. The tents provide a common place that all players will quickly learn to go to for their Image Design needs and reduce the frustration of tracking down a Image Designer. I wanted a enough locations to avoid creating a complete bottleneck for Image Design services but few enough to not spread the existing Image Designer population too thin.

I do have future plans of allowing the Image Designer tent be placeable in player cities but I do not have a timeframe for when to expect that feature.

Concern #2 - Cosmetic/Body Timers
Both Image Designers and customers feel that the current timers for cosmetic and body changes, 2 and 5 minutes, are unbearably long.

a) Why were such long timers chosen?
b) Are timer reductions being considered?

Runesabre

The timers exist to ensure advancing as an Image Designer is not considered a trivial accomplishment and couldn't easily be macroed in any way to gain a significant advancement advantage. Mastering any profession in SWG should be an accomplishment that should be make the player feel like they have put in some effort and been successful and those who master their respective professions should feel proud of their accomplishments.

Players really working towards accomplishing a cool, unique look shouldn't notice the timers since the timers start counting down as soon as the Image Design session begins and the changes should be able to be activated immediately when you are finally pleased with your results. We are considering timer reduction perks for Master Image Designers.

Concern #3 - Stat Migration Timer
Both Image Designers and customers feel that the current timer for Stat Migration is torturously unbearably long (10 minutes). We are assuming that the long timer was put in place to limit how quickly stats can be migrated. We can however conceive of ways in which being able to migrate stats that often could lead to various game-play issues. A way to kill both birds with one stone would be to have the Stat Migration timer happen after the ID session, allowing the customer to be stat migrated only so often.

a) What is the reason behind the 10-minute timer?
b) Is 10 minutes between stat migrations seen as enough time to avoid abuse?
c) Could an enforced delay be put in place between initiating stat migration sessions on a player, regardless of which ID does it, removing the need for the ID to keep the UI active?

Runesabre

There were several design proposals on the table on how to handle Stat Migration. We knew we needed to limit how often Stats could be migrated because we didn't want people changing their stats instantly whenever and whereever they wanted. The question was how much limitation was needed. The most extreme proposal being considered at the time was allowing Stat Migration to happen only once a week for an individual player. We decided to settle for a 10min timer.

The timer occurs like it does now (wait 10 min before the stat migration changes activate) because the impetus of giving Image Designers stat migration was to provide Image Designers a game function that was not purely cosmetic. At the same time, I didn't want Image Designers to be treated like vending machines where players would stop by, pay their credits, get their stat migrations and then leave in the blink of an eye. The Image Designer is a social, face-to-face service provider style of profession and I wanted to preserve that environment going forward. Finally, while it wasn't a major rationale, I felt the residual gain with the 10 min timer is players will perhaps decide to check out other things that the Image Designer could do for them and hopefully stimulate more business and interaction for the Image Designers.

We've fixed a number of exploits and abuses with the stat migration timers and range. If you know of other exploits or abuses, please don't hesitate to let Kwee or myself know so I can have those issues evaluated and addressed.

Concern #4 - No Timers for Master ID's
Master Image Designers no longer have to get experience and have few perks for their final skill-box.

a) Why were Master Image Designers given timers for cosmetic and body changes?
b) Could these please be removed?

Runesabre

The original design was going to limit Stat Migration to Master Image Designers as a perk for mastering the profession. We decided to give Stat Migration to Novice Image Designers (for reasons I will explain in an upcoming question) and really just do to time constraints, we never really revisisted a perk for the Master Image Designer. I'm working with my designers as we speak to evaluate giving a time reduction perk to Master Image Designers.

Concern #5 - ID's Cannot Migrate Their Own Stats
Other than the three Entertainer professions, all other professions benefit from every single one of their abilities.

a) Why was the decision made to not allow Image Designers to migrate their own stats?
b) What is the difference between Image Designers, Dancers, and Musicians (who will now all have an ability they cannot use on themselves) and other professions who get the full benefit of all of the skills they worked hard for?

Runesabre

In order to preserve the market for Image Design services as well as create a valuable service that even Novice Image Designers could provide to all players and profit from while they are learning their profession, it was imperative that Image Designers could not stat migrate themselves. Allowing Image Designers to migrate their own stats would immediately give all players seeking stat migration a means to perform the task themselves and avoid bothering with the services of those players playing the Image Designer profession. Considering you only need Novice Image Designer to migrate your stats, the demand for Image Designer services would have been greatly reduced from the get-go as many players would decide to augment their characters to migrate their own stats and the whole point of giving a game function such as stat migration to Image Designers would become largely moot.

As Lead Designer, it is one of my most important goals to stimulate and encourage player interaction and set the stage for players to form lasting relationships and dependencies with each other. Player interaction is what MMOs are all about. Self-sufficiency is my greatest nemesis in striving for this goal and it is human nature to try to become as self-sufficient as possible. In my 6 years as an MMO developer I've seen the extremes players will go to in trying to avoid interacting with other players. In many cases, it is these same self-sufficient players that later quit because they got bored with the game. If you ask any veteran gamer of an MMO as to why they still play their chosen game after many months (or even years!) invariably the answer is "because of the people I know in the game and play with". I made a design decision to disallow Image Designers from migrating their own stats to preserve the social environment of this game and ensure the Image Designer profession can't be reduced in value and damage the appeal of the profession much like AFK macroing has done to Dancers and Musicians.

Concern #6 - ID = Only Way to Migrate Stats
There is of course much player concern over Image Designers now being the only way to migrate stats (from both players and Image Designers).

a) Why was this decision made?
b) Would you consider slowing down the current method of doing stat migration (a frequently voiced suggestion) to increase incentive to visit an ID instead of removing it completely?

Runesabre

It has been my goal since taking over as Lead Designer to ensure all professions in SWG provide a vital game function suited for their profession and play style. While I agree the Image Designer profession is an incredibly unique and creative profession, I felt it needed more tie-in with game mechanics so the general playerbase would view the Image Designer as an important profession in the SWG universe like I personally do and not merely a novelty profession that could easily be ignored if one should choose to.

At the same time, I didn't want to turn the Image Designer into yet another class that buffs or crafts items and certainly wasn't going to suddenly force Image Designers to be a necessary group member for PvE or PvP activities. The game mechanic I was looking for needed to be something befitting an Image Designer. I originally was planning on turning them into the Decorator of the Universe and give them the ability to create and place interesting house decorations, paint droids and vehicles and other interior and exterior decoration type functions. It didn't feel right so that idea was scrapped. After thinking a while about it, Stat Migration fit the bill perfectly. Image Designers are all about personal modifications and stat migration fit right into that. It was also something that most players don't do on a frequent basis but still most players probably eventually alter their stats at some point, so it was a great game mechanic to tie the Image Designer into and create a broad market and demand for the Image Designer profession.

Stat Migration was given soley as a function of the Image Designer for much the same reasons as I gave to answer #5; to ensure the goal of the new changes are met and not circumvented from the start by players simply migrating their own stats to avoid having to interact with another player.

Concern #7 - Exp Gain Too Slow
The ID community is very concerned about the current rate of gaining exp. At the very bare bones minimum it would currently take someone roughly 60 hours to master, and that's under ideal conditions (willing friend to click at perfect intervals for at least 60 hours). Those of us who are casual players and did not make use of mind-altering substances or buffs under the old system know from experience that the ID exp grind is a mind-numbingly-boring carpal-tunnel's-inducing nightmare. We wanted our profession's exp gain to be non-trivial, but not torturous. 60 hours or more might be reasonable if the process of getting the exp were fun, but sadly it is not.

a) What is considered a minimum amount of hours a profession should take a casual player to master?
b) How many hours a week is a casual player assumed to play?
c) Is the exp system under consideration for major tweaking?

Runesabre

I will be evaluating the xp gains over the next few days as the system settles and players have a chance to work with the changes on their own server.

Concern #8 - Outstanding Bugs
A big concern of the community is whether bugs will continue to be fixed at a rapid pace following the Mini-publish. The ID profession has been plagued with what to us are game breaking bugs and there has been much concern at seeing the most nasty bugs rampant on Test Center. The ones brought up the most often are the hair color bug (new hair colors cannot be seen unless customer zones/re-logs), the hairstyle color bug (hair defaults to a certain color after a hairstyle change), and the "so-and-so is already in the process of an Image Design" bug (not able to ID until the server resets), though of course all bugs are of concern to the community.

a) For how long will bug squashing resources be able to be devoted to fixing bugs accompanying the ID mini-publish?
b) Will the elimination of the most ID-game-breaking bugs be a top priority as part of the ID enhancement package?

Runesabre

We are monitoring the service for any critical issues that crop up now that the Image Designer changes are live. Please report all issues you find in the "In Testing" forum so our QA can get the bugs into the system to the developers.

The developers did a lot of fixing for the "already in the process of an Image Design" bug. There may be some cases still left where the bug will crop up but should only be temporary. At the very least, relogging should resolve the issue should you happen to get into that state. If you know how to reliably cause this bug to happen, please post a report with detailed steps on how to reproduce it in the "In Testing" forum.

Unforunately, the default hair color bug is a nasty problem that reaches deep into the bowels of the server architecture. It's a general problem that is certainly most noticeable to Image Designers but affects other areas of the game as well. We spent some time analyzing the core issues causing this problem but have not been successful yet in coming up with a solution.

Concern #9 - User Interface
The interface is absolutely stunning and knocks out several of our wish list items and issues in one fell swoop. Nevertheless three UI requests have cropped up again and again: The ability to resize the UI so that it covers less of the screen (we can't see our chat window unless we scrunch it up against the side and have no hope of seeing anything going on around us); Better visibility of the bigger color palettes (perhaps by allowing us to select one at a time when two are displayed at the same time, or by adding a scroll bar); and Replacing the numbers on our sliders as well as adding numbers to the palettes (Numbers being added to our sliders was one of the few modifications made to the profession these past long months since launch).

a) Could these UI perks be added (particularly the slider numbers which were already there)?
b) How soon might we expect to see UI modifications if so?

Runesabre

I really don't have any good answers for this question. UI programming is something I don't have direct scheduling control over. Many development tasks, both for Live and Space, require UI programming and all of those tasks have to be prioritized against each other.

Concern #10 - New Art Content
Getting new color palettes and holo-emotes of course has brought on floods of questions about whether and when the most requested art content might be added. Extended color palettes were one of the top five wish list items for new art content (as voted on by ID'ers). The remaining four are: new hairstyles, tattoos (and scars), hip/rump sliders for female characters, and 3D facial hair (for all male species, but most often requested by Bothans).

a) Are any of these under consideration for the future?
b) How soon might we see any of these features?

Runesabre

I have talked a lot with the Art Director about about new hairstyles, tattoos and scars, hip/rump slider and facial hair. I don't have very high hopes for the hip/rump slider for female characters. That change requires a re-export of every female model and most likley many many wearable changes that would result in a very large patch download and take literally months to accomplish.

I do, however, foresee a future of tattooed, scruffy looking characters with some new hairstyles in the future; it's really a matter of when I can get the art and development time authorized to put it on the schedule. All of these features are very art resource intensive additions to the game as well as time consuming for the artists to create which is a bad combination these days in terms of development prioritization and scheduling.