DeadMeat: Hi. This is DeadMeat, SOE Producer for SWG. Glad to be here tonight.
jneri: Hey everyone im Jake from LucasArts, thanks for coming and good evening to all....
Vapor: Hello everyone, this is David Jones, I am an Associate Producer with SOE
Blixtev: Howdy everyone, Lead Designer Blixtev here, glad you could all come out to chat with us about the upcoming Chapter!
Loche: Hi everyone, I am Jesse "Loche" Benjamin, a designer for SWG.
Shadowbrak: Good evening everyone. I?m Travis Hicks, systems designer on Star Wars: Galaxies.
Neif: Hey everybody, it's Tim from LEC! Fresh from our SWG booth in Germany..
GreyPawn: Hey there, this is Joe "GreyPawn" Pishgar, Community Manager 'round these parts.
fiasco: Hi, I'm Michael. I'm a designer on Galaxies.
Vaelore: Currently there is a bug that has been around for quite some time where if our health is low and we attempt to heal it will misfire or fire with cooldown and action drain but the action will not fire. Now this is a concern to all professions as it affects every profession but for medic it is only worst by 4 times. As we have 3 heals and stasis (which the system reads as a heal).
Blixtev: So there are multiple possible causes to something like this. More than likely the heal failed because something was targetted that the healing system doesn't like. I'll try and spend some time looking into making sure the healing system doesn't charge your action when the heal fails due to targetting mismatches.
Ohika: What is the ETA on Chapter 7?
DeadMeat: We are hoping that C7 will be on the Test Center before the end of September. It's looking great, but I am sure it will need some time on the TC's. To fill the gap, we have decided to release the imperial themepark revamp early. You should be seeing that on test before the end of the week.
Vaelore: With the new collections system comin with chapter 7. Many Devolpers have been hinting about how the collections system will give us up to the possibility of 5,000 items inside the house. A veteran reward is currently out now that is a 200 item storage increase which is a NO TRADE deed. How do you propose to reward veterans? Do you plan on changing this paticular veteran reward?
Loche: The 5k is a theoretical limit, the 200 for vets will be just as valuable as before, since you will have 200 more than anyone else.
Ohika: What are some of the accomplishment system's rewards?
Loche: We will be adding the meditate animation back, as well as the belt pouch container. Just to name a couple.
IronChickenPro: Will there be any guild related Collections in Chapter 7 that might give guild specific rewards (ie guild bank, PA Hall decorations, etc)?
Loche: There are no guild specific collections, yet...
Ohika: What mobs are included in the herioc mobs?
Shadowbrak: Currently we slated for completion Axkva Min, the Tusken King, IG-88s Arena and the Marauder Stronghold.
Iheamylap: Does the Team plan on allowing Hanse time during this chapter to work on Smugglers like he has said he wants to do?
DeadMeat: Hanse is home right now with the new baby Hanse for a couple of weeks. We may shake loose some time when he gets back to look at smugglers as well as some of the other profs.
Vaelore: Chapter 7 is bringing the new Aurllian Village. This village we have been told will have 5 instances with mini-boss's similar to the HK-47 Instance. More then likely there will be weapon loot drop's included in these mini-boss's and boss's. How do you propose to reward crafters then for there weapons? Will crafers be able to compete with even half of the lootable weapons on the market?
Blixtev: I haven't seen too many weapon rewards as part of the Heroics, however the weapons we are planning will be schematics with potential enchancements. I would really like to see crafted weapons have a place in the market.
Aucka-TC-WIDOW: Will the Heroic Encounters in Chapter 7 include any factional-related content, such as stories, items, or characters?
Blixtev: Right now we are laying the base ground work for implementing Heroics encounter that everyone can enjoy. As soon as we streamline the development process on creating Heroics I'd like to see some specialized factional style encounters for the various factions.
ArkonPhoenix: Will we ever see a 3 war system in game, consisting of GCW, Underground and Force?
Vapor: We do not currently have this on the schedule... but I would never rule anything out.
ArkonPhoenix: Will jewelry ever be craftable with Sockets?
Loche: You will see some nice stated jewelry soon, although new crafted jewelry with sockets is further out on the horizon.
Spectrum: Will we ever see instances where we will fight Darth Vader or help Han Solo ?
Neif: Hey Spectrum, while we'd love to have you battling Darth Vader or fighting alongside Han Solo, those guys are unfortunately best left to the events team and theme parks. Our community team does some great events featuring some of these characters! That said, we do have some rather "iconic" encounters coming up for the heroic encounters feature.
Klaangck: Will we be seeing nre Lightsaber hilts and crystals as loot drops from heroic Encounters?
Blixtev: There is always the possibility of seeing these =) We are making some even more exciting rewards as well.
Retiarius: What is being done to cripple the ability of credit farmers and credit spammers to damage the game?
DeadMeat: We take this problem very seriously,and we will be detailing some new systems to combat these scum very soon.
Gwiz: What are thoughts or possibility if increasing number of items allowed per structure and reduce number of structures allowed .. to reduce the clutter of too many structures?
Loche: We are giving away, as part of collection rewards, increases to housing item limits. The theoretical cap is 5k. The rewards will be in chunks of 100.
Endra: Chapter 6 introduced the Beast Master system. Are there any planned refinements to the system in the forseeable future? (please say you're reducing the randomness of the enzyme refinement process!)
Shadowbrak: Currently the difficulty class of a creature increases the maximum possible extraction for a Hydrolase Enzyme. The planned change is to apply the bonus to the minimum possible value and allow all class of creatures to produce max level Hydros.
Brischla: will more BM DNA be added? Will Randomness in BM refinement be adjusted? If not, what affects randomness other than equipment quality?
Loche: We are going to be giving away new DNA as rewards in collections. And to quote Shadowbrak, Currently the difficulty class of a creature increases the maximum possible extraction for a Hydrolase Enzyme. The planned change is to apply the bonus to the minimum possible value and allow all class of creatures to produce max level Hydros.? And your expertise comes into play for your refinement.
Mawie: What changes can we expect to happen to Droid Engineer with Chapter 7 and beyond?
jneri: Beyond chapter 7 we are looking at putting in some work on Space and yes Droid Commander looms in the distance but we aren't totally dialed in on what you should expect with the system. Definitely expect it to be hot once it drops =)
Houlden: What direction is SOE and SWG taking to improve or encourage groups with chapter 7? Will there be larger group sizes again? or better group xp, etc?
Blixtev: The first step in encouraging groups is to create a place for them to gather, which hopefully the new Township of Aurilia will accomplish. The town will have many reasons to draw players to the area which we hope will have players grouping up even more. Long term we may see the concept of the meta group which is multiple groups of 8 linked together.
Jak: Will we ever see things like Speederbikes with weapons on them, vehicular combat?
DeadMeat: There are a number of technical hurdles with good vehicular combat. We don't have anything scheduled at this point but we certainly would love to see this in the game someday.
Cebot: How will loot from heroic instances be allocated to group members?
Vapor: We currently have in development for the Heroic Encounter system some alternatives to corpse looting. I don?t have any firm details for release just yet, but I would keep an eye on the forums in the near future.
Heightch: Are there any plans to implement new melee animations in the near future? I understand that the old animations are too long, but anything is better than the *poke* *poke* *slash* *slash* animations that we have in-game now.
DeadMeat: We are currently focusing on client performance and particle scaling, but I have a keen interest in improving the animations in the game. Hopefully we will be able to schedule that effort in the near future.
Darklava: with the village of Aurilia will the jedi be able to get anything from it?
fiasco: Aurilia has grown to embrace all professions including Jedi.
iosifrad: will be the Heroic mobs difficult? I mean, will we need to use tactics or they will just be mobs with lots of health and so?
Shadowbrak: Well, nobody has posted the correct method to keep Aurek and Besh from exploding yet. And the heroics are a few steps above them. And yes, they will have health too.
Iheamylap: Will the lack of melee weapons in the General Weapon set, from GCW rankings, be addressed this chapter?
Blixtev: We are not looking to visit the GCW rewards at all Chapter 7, the Chapter is so loaded with new features we can't squeeze anymore into it. Having seen our new beta collection journal full of all the old badges plus the new ones we are all starting to get really excited making this content for you.
Heightch: Any Chance we could see the planet Tanaab made live? Half of the planet is already in the game files, it just hasn't been implemented yet.
DeadMeat: What are you doing snooping in the tre files? Having the terrain and being able to populate it with interesting content is a different matter. We have a lot of other space in the game that we will be focusing on first before adding a new planet.
Cemoa: Hey devs I remember hearing earlier something about "controlling a Tusken Army" as one of the Heroic Encounters. Would any of you care to share a few more details on this possibly? Will it be like Droid Army where some allies spawn and fight for themselves, or will you actually be 'controlling' them via RTS-style?
Shadowbrak: The Tusken Army is your enemy. But you will have allies in this battle whose control will be more akin to a general handing out orders rather than dragging them around as you did in the Koseyet Mining Camp.
willflynne: Anything you might be willing or able to tell Officers about the changes coming for them beyond what Tunso has already outlined?
Blixtev: Tunso has pretty much spilled the beans on everything he changed for Officers recently. This isn't to say we are done with profession tweaks which is an ongoing process. It was great he was able to get a few things done before diving into some of the more specialized reward systems for the Heroic encounters.
Iroziss: We will see again the food and the drink works together in the chapter 7 and beyond?
Loche: We currently have no plans for doing a pass on food and drinks in chapter 7
Anon740: Any more news on the Free character transfer service and will this be happening anytime soon?
DeadMeat: Heh...I am begining to really regret that I mentioned the possibility of free CTS. We are working on enabling the tech we would need to do this, but more importantly we need a real goal as to what we would be looking to accomplish by doing this. It is still a long ways off from a tech perspective so I wouldn't be waiting to transfer in hopes of it happening anytime soon.
Damarin-Shadowfire: any idea's on a new PVP area or idea's on bringing PVP combat out of restuss IE the old TEF system
Vapor: Post chapter 7 we are going to be focusing on space and space content. We are still in the early stages of discussions about space and space PVP has definitely been a common topic of discussion.
TarquinasOwnsAll: Can we get more information on Heroice Encounters? Is there a quest series that lead up to it? What about Axva Min in the Nightsister Stronghold POI on Dathomir will she still be there? What kind of rewards drop high quality combat gear/buffs?
fiasco: Most if not all heroic encounters will have a series of lead-in quests.
Kanatrader: Players miss some new vehicules or ships in game, will be something of that in chapter 7?
fiasco: Axkva Min will no longer be in the stronghold, but will be at her fiercest in her encounter.
DeadMeat: There will definitely be some new ships in Chapter 8 which will focus on space. We have no plans for new ground vehicles in Chapter 7.
Dexbaccathewookiee: Would it be possible to introduce new races through accomplishments? Kinda like an unlock system, similar to Jedi unlock preNGE... but with species?
Blixtev: Anything is possible, however we don't have this one the radar as our next few chapters are VERY feature packed and we would like to deliver them sooon..............
Sentzu: What was ment by the dev statment that jedi robes will be cool to wear again, clothing / armor changes are in the works?
Neif: We've been discussing ways to enhance robes, and we're looking at adding an additional enhancement to make the robes more useful. Can't say anything specific yet, though.
kaitar: Are there plans on customizing armor ingame to include maybe decals, paint kits to color armor, so that professions like commando were you see them from the movie stance look really kick *
GreyPawn: While this would be -incredibly- cool, we don't have any plans in the upcoming chapters to add this.
Blixtev: Thanks for coming out to the chat, hope to see you on Test Center!
Neif: Thanks for coming by guys, see you in game!
Vapor: Thanks for coming tonight, see everyone in game... well, some of you wont see me... until your clone window comes up.
DeadMeat: Been great chatting with you folks tonight. We are very excited about whats coming up and it was great to share some info about our plans...Night all!
Loche: Great questions everyone! Thanks for coming out, see you online!
jneri: Thanks for coming everybody, see you next time!
GreyPawn: See you on the boards, SWGians! Thanks for stopping by!
Shadowbrak: Thanks for coming out everybody. I?m looking forward to someone proving me wrong on Aurek and Besh.
