BioWare General Manager Discusses ANTHEM and SWTOR Future

[Corvinius]

Good day, Kestrels!

A few days ago Casey Hudson gave some "State of Bioware" statement.

I will put in the gist of it seen through Vulkk's eyes.

As it his own view of course this is a opinion you may share or not.

Saying that here is the part containing information to SWTOR.

I will put the full link under the post for anyone interested in the other themes also (including some "huge thing" Bioware works on).

Have fun and here comes the SWTOR part of the article!

Greetings

Corvinius

"...SWTOR IS NOT GOING ANYWHERE

SWTOR’s been around for almost eight years now and it’s still going strong with regular updates. Although fewer and more stretched in time, the new content patches continue to fuel the game. Right now we are about to get a new digital expansion – Onslaught, which will bring the Republic vs Empire conflict back in the main storyline.

I was in our Austin studio recently, where I was able to check out the update our SWTOR team is working on. Star Wars: The Old Republic Onslaught is coming this fall, and delivers an adventure spanning several new areas including two new planets, a return to Corellia, plus a new and updated itemization system. I love seeing the team’s enthusiasm and passion for SWTOR, where nearly 8 years after the initial launch, they are demonstrating their long-term commitment to the game with an ambitious update. – Casey Hudson, general manager at BioWare

Onslaught was first set to release in September. The official release date was recently announced and the expansion was pushed to October 22 – a month later.

BioWare needs more time to properly test and adapt the brand new gearing system they are introducing with game update 6.0 – the Spoils of War.

I, for one, am very very scared of what this system might do to the game. In several private conversations and in my Patreon Discord I shared some of my thoughts, but I have tried my best to keep them as such – private – for now.

There is so much that we have not yet seen implemented on the Public Test Server. There’s also a ton of tweaks that are being made on weekly or even daily basis, based on feedback.

There is no doubt in my mind that BioWare is listening to player feedback: “Although the underlying system of Spoils of War is there, it is clear that there needs to be a mechanism to work towards getting the exact item(s) you want. Our intention is that this type of system would need to be supplementary, but the current solutions we have in place are not enough.”

The problem is they are listening on our feedback after they ignored us (well, me, I can’t really speak for everyone) when we warned them this kind of a huge overhaul of the most important system in the game in such a short time will likely result in a giant disaster.

Do you remember the initial implementation of Galactic Command in 5.0? It’s been a few years now, I’ll understand if you don’t. Let me remind (or tell) you of what Keith Kanneg – SWTOR’s Producer – called the Galactic Command in its original form “kinda crap”. I quoted him by memory, but if you dig well enough you will likely find my coverage of that live stream where he said it. I don’t want to go so far back now.

The Spoils of War system introduces nearly 20 (that’s not a typo!) new tiers of gear sets. Community manager Eric Musco attempted to calm the masses down bu stating that the new system will attempt to allow us to gear up to the highest tier faster than the previous systems, but even if that is true, Spoils of War and its insane RNG will drag us through the tweaking stages for ages.

The latest patch to the PTS (we are in the middle of Phase 2 right now, by the way) introduces a few new interesting changes, which I will not state in full here. Let me just highlight some lines from Musco’s recent forum post:

You are now more likely to receive a side-grade or upgrade from Renown Crates and the Tech Fragment vendor.
Increase the number of loot drops received.
Players should see an increase in Tech Fragments earned overall.
Increased the chances of receiving mods from loot drops.
Increased the overall quantity of mods that drop.
Higher chance to get rare, moddable gear.
Random mods can now be purchased from the random Tech Fragment vendor.
Players will notice a larger quantity of loot at higher difficulties.
Personal loot now has a higher chance to drop for your current character.
Group loot will now take the current group composition into account.
Added completion rewards for winning an Unranked Warzone and playing Solo/Group Ranked.
Increased the Renown and Tech Fragments earned from completing a Warzone.

Onslaught’s release date is way too close for the Spoils of War to be ready to ship without bugs. I am afraid that even if there are no issues at launch (there will be!), the studio will have to spend several months tweaking the system to make it what is should be. Veteran players, does this sound familiar to you? It sure does.

There is little new content to support the Spoils of War with. We will once again be forced to farm our new gear from the same old instances and group content. Don’t get me wrong, I still love some of the Flashpoints and most of the raids in the game. They have already seen way too many revamps, new tiers of gear and rebalancing in their life span.

I would have loved to see the old gearing system from before 5.0 make a return and the developers spending more time creating new group content instead of the Spoils of War.

How do you feel about SWTOR’s upcoming expansion? are you excited for the brand new gearing system or are you troubled by the studio’s decision to rush it with 6.0? ..."


Full Article:

https://vulkk.com/2019/09/07/bioware-ge ... or-future/