Community News

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Dev Tracker blog. Each week, we’re going to be collecting the most important developer responses that show up in our Dev Tracker and collating them into this digest.

Be sure to also check out the News and Community Blog sections of our website for all of the latest updates!

Let’s get started:

On Monday last week, Principal Lead Systems Designer Damion Schubert jumped in on a discussion about need vs. greed in SWTOR, revealing that there will be changes to the current system in the future:

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.

Principal Lead Combat Designer Georg Zoeller was all over the forums last week, which is good, since he was able to reveal several bits of information.

First, he clarified that the fix for operative medical therapy was coming in Patch 1.1.4 and also just why developer posts sometimes show up as backdated, even though they are new.

He then discussed several upcoming PVP changes:

Patch 1.2, among many other PvP changes, will remove the reliance on daily quests for your gear progression (and therefore increasing the value of the commendations you get for playing a match to the end) and implement penalties for quitters.

He also managed to role-play a little bit and confirm that the next major content patch will have additional schematic drops.

He also hopped into the Trooper Forum to reveal:

We have a new set of animations in the development pipeline that will even the timing between the class abilities, yes. As for timing, at the latest these new animations will roll out with the next major content patch, 1.2.

Finally, he wrote about why certain patch notes only appear once they go live (instead of on the PTS) and the changes in 1.2 regarding endgame orange gear:

From patch 1.2, any orange (custom) appearance in the game will be viable for endgame purposes. Of course there'll be new outfits as well - so these changes together should lead to a very significant amount of variation in endgame, for all classes.

Associate Online Community Manager Joveth Gonzalez informed people about Patch 1.1.3a and that it wouldn’t require a new download since it was client-side. He also clarified that battlemaster commendations were dropping as intended and confirmed that servers would be located in Australia for the Asia Pacific launch. He also had this to say in regards to the Asia Pacific launch:

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 servers.

Finally, he made sure that people were aware of tomorrow’s maintenance and posted threads for Friday’s Q&A discussion and the next Q&A.

Live Community Coordinator Amber Green closed the loop on a companion bug and posted the patch notes for 1.1.4 in the Public Test Server Forum. She also confirmed that we have unbound the “” key in 1.1.4 and that players will no longer be flagged for PVP unintentionally with indirect targeting.

Assistant Community Production Coordinator Courtney Woods posted a thread in General Discussion letting people know about the upcoming Asia Pacific launch. She also posted about the latest Quick Start Guide here.

And last but not least, Sr. Community Coordinator David Bass posted an update about the upcoming Guild Summit, letting people know that invites had been sent out.