Star Wars Galaxies: Q & A's: August 11th

Here are some answers to questions I've found in other posts:

This is my first MMORPG, and knew the game will be buggy at first. But I was suprise how many negative posts are here. Nerf this, exploit that etc. Is this typical of all on-line games, or more so in SWG?
WayZero, we're about par for the course for a recently released MMO. If you really look at the posts on all of the SWG forums, you'll see that it isn't 90% negative. This particular forum does have a lot of negativity though. Since we encourage people to give us constructive criticism about what they liked and don't like, you are bound to see some negativity. The moderators as well as the community leaders are working to make it a better place though. I think we are seeing less ranting and flaming than a couple weeks ago and I hope to encourage that downward trend. We are doing this is by:

A) Fixing the problems (you'll see a lot more evidence of that tomorrow)
B) Communicating with you (with posts like this one. Also we're getting closer to hiring an assistant community manager)
C) Encouraging community leaders (Rating system and Correspondent program)
D) Giving fair warnings to help people who rant to be more constructive and appropriate in their posts
E) Bannings for those who don't eventually take our warnings to heart (You can tell us what you don't like, all we ask is you be civil and constructive about it)

Getting this to be a healthy and fun community will take more work on the devs part and also on the community's part, but I think that is the direction we are headed.

Player Cities = More Professions = More Skill Points?
heliosrex, there are no plans to increase the learning capacity. We want to give you the flexibility of trying different professions, but we also want to encourage people to have specializes roles. There is a trade off for certain hybrid professions like Bounty Hunters, where if you want to be the best (Master) then you may not be able to specialize in other areas as well. Now, we will need to do something for the Space Expansion, but we have not cemented our ideas yet. It may involved a separate "space skills" learning capacity.

Baz Nitch exploit?
Lots of questions have come up about exploits. Basically, when we find out about an exploit, we need to verify it first hand. After doing so, we determine how detrimental it is to the game and look for ways of doing a fix. The fixes sometimes take a little while as we have to research what is causing the bug in the first place. While all of this is happening behind the scenes, the CSRs may be tasked to warn exploiters not to take advantage of the bug (this is spelled out in the Terms of Service that players agree to before playing). We are not going to go on the forums and announce what all of the exploits are. Essentially, if you feel that you are doing something you probably shouldn't, then don't. We'll get it fixed as quickly as we can. Excessively exploiting bugs could get your account banned.

Some PVP questions from Caijal:
a 75% reduction in damage during PvP combat seems straight-forward enough. If I hit another player for what should have been 400 damage, I'll only do 100, right? Yes

Well, what about the other types of damage?

Has PCPet on PCPet damage been reduced by 75%? No

Has PCPet on Player damage been reduced 75%? No

Has Player on PCPet damage been reduced 75%? No

How does Armor Rating figure into the new equation, is the AR Damage Bonus calculated before or after the 75% reduction? (In other words will difference in AR play a big role?) After.

We didn't alter pets because the creatures are already in line with player abilities. The majority of high level PVP moves from players will out damage pets (even with the reduction) and all damaging moves towards the pet are still at the original damage numbers.

Remember, if you have the time and inclination, it would help if you jump on Test Center today to load test the new changes before they go live tomorrow.

Kevin "Q-3PO" O'Hara

SWG Community Relations Manager