Star Wars Galaxies: An in-depth fan-fest report

Hi folks,

Just got back from fanfest. I had a blast, I met some nice people (omg! I ate dinner at a table with 3 jedi! and of course I have a bounty hunter on that server... muahahahaha), met a few familiar "in game" faces, as well as some I knew from these forums (wohoo!).

I attended all the sessions I could, which were mainly Q&A sessions with various members of the SWG development team. I just wanted to dump a lot of this info down asap while it's still relatively fresh in my mind (and in my notes).

First off, the sessions started off in the morning with real high level questions for the various project leads (i.e. the decision-makers) in a massive ballroom, then smaller breakout sessions happened throughout the rest of the day, with more targeted questions. These sessions were run by some of the developers who were mainly responsible for implementing the content being discussed. The developers we heard from the most were Green Marine (GM) who seems to have written numerous professions (Bounty Hunter, Smuggler, Tailor, and Chef to name a few) and who is presently working on JTL, Keldarin (K) who did the BE revamp and who seems to be working on the combat revamp, and one other fellow (doh! didn't get his name) that did the current combat system.

I found these guys (from here on out referred to collectively as "the devs") to be real intelligent, very dedicated folks who obviously take all this stuff a lot more seriously than we do (which I and others often tend to forget). And they all were real open to discussing pretty much all aspects of the game, aside of course from the "when is X going to go into the live version of the game" /chuckle.

Ok, a real quick disclaimer about this stuff. Remember, this came from discussions with individual developers for the most part and represents their take on things. This is not represent some kind of company-wide policy statement by SOE. Also, since the ink isn't dry, or even begun on a lot of this stuff, nor do we even know if the person giving these answers will be the person implementing it, we need to take all this stuff with a big heaping spoon of salt.

Combat Revamp
=================
A huge topic of discussion as you can imagine. I don't consider myself a primarily combat-oriented guy, and I chose to attend mainly the crafting sessions (in such times as they happened at the same time with combat ones), so I'll let others report on this for the most part. But here were a few of the eye openers as far as I was concerned:

Combat abilities are going down across the board. They feel that combat abilities in general have escalated out of control, and also there are a lot of balance issues. Heavy nerfage on speed in particular, and probably damage too. Also one of the things repeated over and over was how armor was too overpowered, so armor protection is coming way down. Oh, and all this is retroactive, so don't bother stockpiling "pre-nerf" items. And then of course as part of this, the combat professions individually will be balanced. Changes to weapon certs, specials, types of damage done, skill mods, skill mod stacking, skill tapes yadda yadda. Pretty much all that is being affected. One thing though, according to K, pets are expected to come out of this pretty much (if not entirely) exempt from the nerfs. Therefore, expect pets to make a "comeback" of sorts.


Jedi Revamp
============
I have no interest in Jedi other than doing away with the holo-grinders, so I'll let others talk about this. The *only* part of this that interests me is that there will now be "force sensitive crafters"

/ugh

Yes, that's right, crafters that are force sensitive will be able to craft better than you (experimentation ability was mentioned).

The Economy

=====================
One of the surprising things to me was how much into tracking and discussing the economy as a whole these guys are. GM in particular had a lot to say about it. According to him, the goal in the short term is to suck a lot of money out of the economy. Due to cheats/dupes/exploits there has been a lot of artificially created money in the economy, and now it is being drained out by money sinks which are "turned way up". According to him, money is now flowing out of the economy faster than it is flowing in. This will most likely change once they feel that a certain level has been reached (no specifics on that).

They also want to add "fun money sinks" into the game, the first of which will be some card games (including Paazak!) which has already been (mostly?) implemented and will have a very compelling GUI (unlike whatever existing card game(s) there are... I don't even know about em, lol, must really suck). They are approaching this with a bit of trepidation however because of the current unpopularity of the existing game(s?).

Some people requested that they make some of this economic data accessible to players and they claimed that this would be a relatively easy task once they decide what is appropriate to share and what the display mechanism will be since they already collect all this data.

There was also some discussion about how the end to holo-grinding would affect the economy and some concerns and speculation on that.

Art's Take:

==========
I'm no economist, but this sounds like a "forced recession" to me, and this has already been felt and discussed in many forums here. It sounds like a net positive for the game though, and I think it's really cool that they are so up on this stuff. They even said that there was some sentiment amoung certain devs to implement some really advanced financial stuff (stock market and the like), but that consensus was this is beyond the scope and perhaps innappropriate for this game unless us players feel strongly about it.

General Crafting Stuff:
================
These are just some random things that didn't really fit into any of my other categories:

Asked about the impact of ratings on tools and crafting stations. They said that there is an impact (mentioned experimentation) but that the impact was very small (much snickering ensured)

Asked about the bird cages that artisans can craft. GM told us that this is actually a very cool, but incomplete implementation. There is, in fact, a bird in the cage, but no "art" for it (yet). The bird listens to things that are said in close proximity to it, and assembles sentences in a semi-random way based on what it hears. We cannot "hear" the bird though, as its speech has been disabled.

Lots: some very strong sentiment against cross server trading of "static" lots. They feel that this has a negative impact to the economy as well as the landscape (people in effect "owning" a lot of land indefinitely). They are busy scheming of ways to put an end to this.

Crafter's missions/adventures: no, not the current ones, but new ones. Very few details, but just that they are under way and should offer non-combatants ways to run missions and explore and interact in new ways.

Tailor
===============
The tailors were included in a session called "basic crafting" (grr I really didn't appreciate the implication there). The session included tailors, architects, droid engineers, and chefs as I recall. Most of the discussion was not specific to tailor, although there were a few tidbits (as for the architect, DE, and chef stuff... ask someone who cares about that, lol)

Necklace bug: very brief discussion about that when it was brought up. Two quotes that I remember having to do with that:
"I hate that bug"
"I don't think anyone is going to quit over it, so it's low priority"

A couple of other little things were brought up also, but this kind of set the tone for it. One other thing mentioned was the imperial cap. One of the devs joked that "just about all things are possible in this game... except adding the imperial cap". He went on to explain that the hair is actually part of the cap, and so with all the different races and hairstyles, it would take a ton of work to add it.

The topic of capes came up (Vader's for example). The devs expressed a strong desire to do this in the game, but again cited technical challenges (running with a cape in particular, and how it should look).

One other interesting tidbit that I picked up on, but I think this was in a different session, was that they claimed that there are lot of of unused "art assets" for various things that they are sitting on, giving them the ability to add lots of new stuff for various crafting professions, well, except for tailor, because they've used what art they have already.

In the session for medics, one doctor expressed a very strong desire to have a "lab coat", but again, this was met with a pretty cold reception from the devs.

One thing they did repeat several times throughout the event was the concern for tailor and architect in particular, having an ability to have a renewable source of revenue since most of what is needed from those two is already made. They expressed the desire to add consumable items to both of these professions (very few details however).

In another session, the topic of crate size came up. The devs that were present stated that they were not in favor, in general of crate size increases because of concerns about monopolies (this was also a concern that we kept hearing over and over). The logic went something like: bigger crate size means easier to make/transport/sell huge quantities of uber highly experimented components (chefs, weaponsmiths, armorsmiths mainly) and to ultimately dominate a market. When asked about tailor components in particular, they had no such objection to raising the crate size and in fact said it would be trivial to do.

Oh, and one more thing. One person brought up a question about adding experimentation to tailoring (this was also not in the tailoring session but a different one). There seemed to be very strong opposition to this idea amongst the dev panel. I reminded them of the reaction from the tailor forum when they removed experimentation in the first place, but this didn't change their strong objection to it.

Art's Take:
==================
Very very very grim for tailors (in my view). I'm very upset about this whole thing. My read on this is: we should expect very few new clothing items or any fixes any time soon, and I can only imagine what they intend for the cosumable products (more components? or perhaps just selling us out with the dye pack that everyone seems to want?). I should emphasize though, that I didn't hear any discussion in particular about dye packs and such.

Also, the crack about "you're not going to quit over this" stung, and is one of the few genuine bad feelings I take away from fanfest. Because in other sessions when similar bugs were discussed about combat professions, there was very often a very different attitude. To give you one example. When one person reported a problem with DOT's not giving proper credit towards damage done a creature in a group combat situation with respect to looting rights, the dev's ears perked up and the note pad came out, and he said he's look at it "right away".

I'd suggest moving the crate size thingy (a very small concession I know) into our top-10 list since it sounds like something they may be able, and motivated to get done very quickly.

The best news for tailors I think comes out of the merchant discussions (see below).

Personally, I'm pretty discouraged and considering dropping tailor, perhaps as early as this week based on what I heard at fanfest.

Bio Engineering
================
The bio engineered stuff was part of a session called "advanced crafting" and we were lumped in with weaponsmiths and armorsmiths. Fortunately, BE's were pretty well represented, and we got some good questions in, particularly since "the man" K, was on the panel answering questions.

Obviously the CL 10 thing came up, actually a couple of different times (we can thank Fishbrains for that, very nice guy btw, but very, um, "intense", lol, I'm just glad he's on my side ). K pretty plainly stated that yes, there are bugs in the calculation, and that he is motivated to fix them, and that yes, they are overpowered and expect nerfage (no discussion of specifics, this is nothing new). When asked specifically about the "invalid pet checks" he seemed to me to be kind of confused by the topic, and made a statement to the effect of "no pets should ever be created that are invalid". Makes me wonder if perhaps he was not the one to put in such a check.

Displaying the CL during experimentation:
He responded that this is not something he can do. He didn't have an objection to it, but that this was a client-server communication and performance issue. The CL calculation is very complex and all the number crunching happens on the server, and the crafting Ui happens on the client, so according to him there isn't an opportunity to add such interaction into the experimentation phase.

Dna storage: He acknowledged this as being a unique problem to BE's and stated his desire to create a storage mechanism to solve this problem. He mentioned though that because of the uniqueness of it, this was challenging and probably wouldn't be something done soon.

Controlling pet size: he said it was possible (to implement) but didn't sound too convinced of it's importance.

Secret Research Data: there is no secret research data in the game, but they added that into the schematic so they could add it later. They did mention though that when added, it will likely be quite powerful.

BE Skill Tapes: K said definitely. I guess the skill tapes are getting somewhat of an overhaul as there are a lot of them that have values that should not be in the game (mostly certain combat ones) according to K.

flying mounts: actually asked in the CH session as I recall and the response was:
/giggle
"maybe in 4-5 years"

After the session I cornerd K and talked with him briefly before he was mobbed by all the "can you add streaming mp3's to SWG dude?" type of nonesense. I asked him about the availability of fish, and he acknowledged that this was a problem and stated that "we need to find a way to get more fish into the game" and that they were surprised and dissappointed that there were not more fisherman in the game. I also asked him about non-missions spawns (and I also asked this in the ranger session, see below). He acknowledged this as also being a problem that he would like to see addressed. I also asked about the special vs effective resists on creates and how it affects our crafting, and he admitted that it had (is?) responsible for some "inconsistencies" in the crafting process and gave me a really brief explanation that made little sense to me, but I had no time to follow up, so I let it go.

Art's Take:
================
I think the future looks relatively bright for BE's, if for no other reason than we're likely to see a resurgance of pets in the game as tanks after all the combat nerfs. Also, I feel the dna-storage thing was a pretty major concession and I was surprised by it, because he had stated to other crafting professions very clearly that they already felt people were storing too much stuff in general and that it was having a detrimental impact on the game.

No surprise on the CL 10 stuff, which is why I didn't push it. The bit about not displaying the CL on experimentation was a disappointment though. I recomment removing it from our top 10 though since, at least to me, it's a dead issue now.

Ranger
=================
The session was shared with CH and Scouts. There were a half dozen rangers there or so, and they totally dominated the proceedings, lol. Right off the bat, GM was pretty apologetic about the state of Ranger. He definitely is aware of its deficiencies and stated that Ranger is an "incomplete implementation" and that he got taken off that project before he was done with it. He, and other devs, experssed concern about Ranger's ability to earn credits right now. He also stated that he doesn't generally post, nor read the ranger (or any other) forum, except for the correspondents forum. When asked about the outdoorsman proposal, he said he had no knowledge of it.

Overall GM stated that Rangers, in his view, were all about PVE, but that he regretted their "super scout" status right now and felt that it is important that Rangers have some uniqueness. But most times when people brought things up that had to do with Rangers in PVP, he pretty plainly said weren't part of his vision.

Camps: He was in favor of adding things to camp that would aid a Ranger's ability to hunt. In particular hunting blinds were mentioned, as a way for a Ranger to stay concealed for a bit longer.

Traps: He stated that he had already done work in this area, on some traps that were "static" and would, well trap, lol. So Ranger drops said traps, and checks back later, and they may have animals in them that are caught. That sort of thing.

The question of traps in pvp came up a couple of times (may have been outside of the ranger session, don't remember) and GM stated pretty clearly that he felt that traps against humanoids, if implemented, should belong to bounty hunters, not rangers. When asked about trapping pets in pvp however, he responded favorably to that.

Forage: GM said that forage was intended to encourage Rangers to visit far away places and search for cool things that were location-specific, and would be highly desirable components for things used by crafters. He said that the "no room in inventory" bug was a silly manifestation of this incomplete implementation of forage. Apparently he never got a chance to actually create the foraged items, so there is a table in the game currently with one "placeholder" item in it - a wedding cake! lol. So when you get that message you are, in fact, pulling a wedding cake out of the ground and trying to fit it into your pack, lol.

GM stated that he is in favor of some type of weapon or weapon enhancement for rangers. A new gun, or a scope, or powerup, or something along those lines.

Tracking: They desscribed some technical difficulties having to do with server boundaries and such as to why we have problems with area track. Didn't sound like he had a clue how to fix it, so get used to it for a while.

Stealth: This was brought up, but I don't even remember whether it was in respect to rangers or not. But again, no real objection to it other than technical difficulties that they currently didn't know how to overcome (sorry Fred).

As far as the whole Scout/Ranger balance thingy, at one point a question was asked (don't even recall what it was about) about "whether scout would get X", and the response was "if added, it would be added to Ranger, as scout is a pretty complete class right now".

One of the few questions that I asked (hey, I'm shy) was about creature spanws, or lack thereof. It was explained that each (server? region? planet?) has a cap of 1000 creatures, and that in general the presence of each person on the (server? region? planet?) would cause 1 spawn. However, missions spawns, and creatures in dungeons count against this number, so this is what we're running into. So if I understand this right (and it's possible I don't), it means that:
few people on a planet = few spawns. Lots of people running missions and dungeons on the planet = few spawns. They did acknowledge this as a problem though and hopefully we'll see some type of resolution to it.

As far as "when", it was stated pretty clearly that "Rangers will be getting lots of love, but not until after lightspeed, jedi, smuggler, and squad leader" (as I recall).


Art's Take:
====================
Sounds to me like Ranger will be a *very* happening class probably towards the end of this year (but of course who knows exactly). I think all rangers should also hope that GM gets a chance to do this revamp as he seems to have a lot of passion for it, and tons of good ideas (plus he has a good track record with this latest chef revamp).

For me, it was also good just to hear that all the fears about them being completely oblivious to the obvious (and ridiculous imho) shortcomings of ranger were not accurate.

One final thing. In one of the sessions, one thing that was discussed as being an important addition to the game in the combat rebalance is resists to things like poison and disease being introduced as attributes. K stated that this was always intended but that it had not yet been implemented, but would be as part of this rebalance (this is most frequently discussed with respect to CM's and pvp). It was suggested that doctors for example might be given a high amount of resistance to such things. My personal (and somewhat selfish) hope is that perhaps Rangers be given a slice of this pie as well, although I have to emphasize that this was not specifically discussed. We'll see.

Creature Handlers
===================
Helooooo? Anyone out there? There were actually quite a few creature handlers
at fanfest but they were quiet as a mouse (or a durni?). They even had to be prodded to ask questions, lol. But I think they came out of this pretty well.

High End Baby Spawns: in a word, "yes", I think it was K that said that he felt that BE's had kinda stolen a lot of CH's fun and so some of that he would like to see restored.

Winged Mounts: not gonna happen

Vehicles decimating the Mount Market: GM said that in his view, vehicles and mounts should move the same speed, for balance purposes. There was some bickering over this, but at least it was very clear that they understand the impace that vehicles have on the mount market.

Art's Take:
==============
better mounts, better baby spawns are nice, but just the fact that everyone else is getting nerfed *except* CH this time I think is the best news for these fine folks.


Merchants
==============
It was a surprisingly lively discussion. But in general I think it sounded like very good news for most crafters.

Vendor Limits: They said they were still considering this. The quote I believe was "we know that it is very unpopular, and we try not to do things that are very unpopular".

Admin Rights to Vendors: The devs in the panel were opposed to this. They feel that this would compromise the vendor skill set.

Merchant Tree and Skill Points: They said that they feel that merchant tree sucks up to many skill points (note: and I say it just plain sucks, lol) in terms of the benefits you get from it, so they proposed perhaps shrinking down the tree or changed it so that less skill points were expended.

The "give up merchang after placing/registering vendors" exploit: The want to fix this, and the main concern is how to do this in such a way as to not just demolish all the person's items in the vendor without some sort of notice and way to retrieve them.

Relisting items: when asked about this, they seemed favorable to a "relist" button or some such mechanism.

Special order pickups: They acknowledged the need for this, and proposed some type of "targeted" sales mechanisms (per person, or per guild, or whatever).

Vendor Email Spam: some type of "email digest" was suggested and seemed to be looked upon favorably by those devs in attendence.

bazaar revamp?: This was mentioned but no real details. No clue what's up with this.

Art's Take:
==============
The cynic in me has always said that there were no real "merchants" in this game, only those who use merchant to hock their own wares, and it seems the devs agree (because of the reluctance to add an admin ability). Still, how adding vendor admin is detrimental to merchant and the ability to sell/give away schematics is not detrimental to all artisans is beyond me.
/boggle

Still, this is good stuff! Less skill points needed for merchant, perhaps calling off the vendor nerf, and all these other features? wohoo! I hope there is follow through on this stuff.

Smuggler
================
Lots and lots of excitement about this revamp I think, and its apprently the next one of come out (after lightspeed, jedi, combat, etc.). And it sounds great. GM wants to do a spice revamp , and said he sees the role of spices as being the "short, strong buffs" while the doctors are the "weak long lasting ones" . He mentioned that one idea was to do away with the "downer" but to add in wounds inflicted instead. He also mentioned more combat stuff for smugglers (like a justification for the brawling requirements), the ability to place casinos in player cities, special missions, a new and more challenging slicing mechanism (with better control over the slices) and lots more. I'll let others report more on this as I'm a total smuggler noob.

Art's Take
=============
Sounds great, where do I sign up? Good thing I have a smuggler in training. But what does the spice revamp mean to buffers, err, I mean docs? Nerfage? Your guess is as good as mine.

Bounty Hunters
============
The players beat up the devs pretty bad (and rightly so) over the broken BH missions and the Jedi logout/login exploit, but other than the devs describing to us some of the technical challenges of fixing these bugs, there is little to tell here it seems. No fix would seem to be forthcoming.

It was mentioned, I think by GM, that perhaps the BH's could see a reduction in their skill point requirements. He said that at first they had to do it a whole tree at a time, but since then (obviously) they've found ways to do the requirements with more granularity, which could mean removing certain requirements (rifles? camping?).

Also, one perhaps controversial statement that was made was that "no BH should stand a chance against a high level Jedi".

I also heard a couple of different times, it being mentioned by devs that they would consider traps against humanoinds as being something a BH would have in his/her arsenol (thus justifying the trapping pre-req I suppose).

Art's Take
===========
Less skill points required, way cool if they do it, but it won't make much difference so long as the missions and ability to hunt Jedi's are broken.


It was fun, I think in general I came out of it with a very positive impression of SOE and the game's direction, and of those who play it.

Ok, that's all for me. I heard a lot more, but I've reported on the professions that I care about, lol, sorry about that, I'm sure others will report on the others. Also my sprained wrist is starting to throb, time to ice.