Wanted to give an update as to where we are with things. Blix and his design team have been hammering away on the Heroics for Chapter 7. It has been a little noisy at the office during this time, as they are all on speaker phone and shouting a lot. The encounters are definitely better every day and I know that players are going to enjoy them a lot. The art is all done and Aurelia looks in great shape. QA has been verifying the collections (there are over 90 so it takes time to get them all checked) but right now that all looks really solid. I still had hopes that we could get the chapter out to test before Friday, but it will probably work out that we wait until the beginning of next week just because I would hate to have things problems over the weekend and not have folks here to deal with it. Most importantly the chapter is feature complete at this point and looking good.
Although not by way of an excuse here, but in order to be absolutely clear on this, Chapter 7 has been going on schedule for the most part. We began this chapter at the beginning of August after the bug bash. I regret now my decision not to characterize that effort as a Chapter, since it took about the same amount of time and certainly added a lot of new stuff to the game, as well as fix a number of outstanding issues. My team is working hard on this effort and is extremely dedicated, talented, and experienced. Forum gadflies who like to characterize them differently are wrong, plain and simple. I know that folks are as anxious to get there hands on the chapter as we are to give it to you, but I will not put it out on test until it is representative of what we feel the final live release will be. Period.
The new Digital Download SKU came out last week, initially exclusive to Direct2Drive. I apologize to our overseas players who have not yet been able to purchase it. We are working closely with LucasArts to get the download available on the UK D2D site as quickly as possible in order to broaden distribution. After the exclusive period is up, we will have other mechanisms available for players to get it as well.
We have begun the specification work on Chapter 8 and we will be reviewing that with the LucasArts team next week. As I stated elsewhere it is our intention to have Chapter 8 live by Christmas. It will be a challenge, but I feel it will be a great present for everyone to have some new space content in their stockings. We will be discussing C8 in more detail in the coming weeks.
Thats all for now...Keep eyes peeled for C7 on Test Center.
DeadMeat
Lorin W. Jameson, SOE Producer, Star Wars Galaxies
are we still getting the slider controls to tone down all the particle effects with chapter 7
for me thats the most important bit - just kidding lol
fed up with them to be totaly honest
A bit of an admission here...This was one of my tasks for C7. When I was digging into how to do it, I found a number of performance issues that I felt were serious enough, with a big enough payoff, that it was worth it to address them first. I was able to get that work done, but not the scaling of the particles. We plan to put the particle scaling out as a patch after C7, but we will need some feedback first on which particles and in which situations you would like to see reduced. There is no scalar formula in the particle system that we could use for a slider (without creating more problems than solving). Instead we will create High, Med, and Low settings for particles and customize particles used based on that.
Could we have High, Medium, Low and OFF for particle effects, perhaps?
Off is somewhat problematic...Bolts, buffs, a lot of combat feedback require particles to some extent. The CS nightmare of folks saying the game is broken because they somehow turned their particles off would be a pain. There are a few gameplay reasons as well.
Nice work, looking forward to this hitting TC and then Live....Can you confirm if the Origins stuff is still cited to go in with CH7? And if so, I guess it will be a one off choice of which one you choose, ie...once you've chosen, you can't change that choice? Could you elaborate a little?
Cheers,
Origins was cut from C7. Too much interface work needed for other systems to get it in. I really love the Origins idea as does Blix so I think we will try and get it into 8, but the feedback has certainly not been universally positive from the community on the Origins idea so we will have to take that temperature again before we do add it.
Btw - What kind of client optimization are we going to see?
Its biggest effect should be seen in larger battles with a lot of particles firing and similar situations where a lot of stuff happens in a single combat frame.
Just wondering if there is any chance of existing players who don't already have an ITV getting one without purchasing software we already have. I joined just after the NGE with a digital download and did not purchase The Starter Kit to get the X-wing/Tie ITV, I played for a about six months then quit for a few due to RL circustances and missed the Anniversary gift. I came back about a year ago and bought the COA and now the new ITV is only available for those who digital download the COA (for $20). I don't really mean to complain, but I was just wondering if there is any hope of obtaining one of these EXTREMELY helpful vehicles without shelling out $20. I have been clone-expressing, but on a low-population server giving up an ent buff is a tough call.
Thanks
There will be an opportunity for folks to get a new ITV in game. This will be linked to some of the new content coming up.
Sorry to bug ya again, but someone mentioned that some professions got a little tweaking for the chapter 7 stuff....We know about the changes to officer....can you give us some info on some of the other changes?
Cheers, Rob
Most of the changes are related to balance issues spotted during play testing the Heroics. These will be helpful in groups where roles will be more important. We are always addressing issues that we spot from the profession communities and I am certain there are a couple of additions that Jedi will like. These will all appear in the patch notes when we go to test.
Was wondering if you guys were putting any class specific roles into the game for PvE. Like tanks being able to have a taunt like ability and hate holding ability to make the heroics possible, because as it stands the whole person who does the most damage gets the hate is really bad since the profs that do the most damage may not be the best choice for the mobs to be beating on.
This is a repost since I really want the answer to this question and I don't want it to get buried.
Yes. There is a new taunt for tanking and holding aggro.
