Exar Kun - A legend re-imagined Chapter 9 of Star Wars Galaxies will feature a new heroic encounter, the Temple of Exar Kun. These instances are design to provide high-level challenge for our players. They are instanced, scripted encounters where a group of them faces elite tests, and they allow us to create a custom event per chapter that feels completely unique. For example, we started the heroics system with an IG-88 battle in his droid factory, moved onto a Tusken raid on Mos Entha where players battled a new Tusken King boss, and then took players out to space and into a rogue Star Destroyer. In addition to their uniqueness, these encounters allow us to place some crazy high-end loot for the players that's not available to them anywhere else.
By their nature, collections are something that people like to show off - owning a complete set of anything merits some prestige. To that end, we wanted to give players a chance to show off theirs.
Re-imagining the Exar Kun temple has been a fun and informative process for us. We started with the current fictional canon in the Star Wars universe, as well as the basic temple layout currently in SWG. From there, we worked with Lucas Licensing to further develop the look and feel of the temple. When dealing with established characters and locations in the property, there's always a phase where you're fact-checking against current continuity. We have to make sure our proposed fiction doesn't clash with the established works, including prior movies, games, television, comics, novels... even toys. Fortunately, Lucasfilm keeps a detailed archive composed of decades of established canon - we can cross-reference that to make sure our Exar Kun content fits nicely with the existing timeline.
The heroic encounters were designed from the ground up as extremely challenging events for players. We didn't want them to be cakewalks for seasoned vets, but sought to provide a reasonable learning curve such that each one could be mastered over time. Striking that balance would not have been possible had we not had dedicated tools for tracking and logging player statistics. The designers at Sony Online Entertainment were able to run hundreds of tests using real-world data to gauge accurately the level of difficulty we would need.
This fine-tuning process was done in two stages. First, we used the data to get a ballpark difficulty level. Player and enemy DPS, health levels, combat levels, and all eight classes were taken into account. Second, we depended on feedback that we received from the players trying out the content on our test center to balance the encounter further.
For our recent chapters, we've created these compelling, challenging heroics that reward our top players with new content and loot. Next time though, we'd like to focus on adding some things for a wider range of player levels.
Collecting the stars In addition to the heroic encounters, we've also recently we've added the collections system to SWG. In retrospect, the idea of rewarding the players for touring the galaxy, interacting with objects and fighting various mobs seems like a no-brainer. The initial philosophy revolved around the fact that we have a huge game, with years of content built into the worlds, yet little incentive for players to re-experience content once they've seen it already. We wanted to add value into the galaxy at every corner, and surprise them by rewarding them for exploring and collecting.
That's where the collections system comes in. The engineers at SOE implemented code to track all the unique things each player has done or acquired, and to reward anyone who completes a pre-determined collection. For example, we have a collection for historical weapons throughout the galaxy - the player has to click on a dozen different ones, all hidden in various locations such as Jabba's Palace or the Emperor's Retreat. Other collections provide rewards for killing a certain number of creatures, for looting a number of items, or for visiting certain locations.
By their nature, collections are something that people like to show off - owning a complete set of anything merits some prestige. To that end, we wanted to give players a chance to show off theirs. In addition to rewards like items or attributes, we also created some social ones. For example, we give some of the more experienced collectors in-game titles over their characters; these speak to the respective areas of their collecting expertise. In the last chapter, we added an instant travel starship reward for players who visit every starport in the game. Another we created was the server-first page on www.starwarsgalaxies.com - this is a tribute to the collectors on each server, listing every collection and the first player on each server to complete it. How is that for bragging rights?
Over the course of the last few chapters, we've been expanding and enhancing the collection system. Ultimately, we'd like to make something like the Guinness Book of World Records to keep track of hundreds of unique activities and collections, and to acknowledge the players who achieve these records. We recently added collections in space for our pilot professions, entertainer collections for performing in cantinas galaxy-wide, and most recently, we're taking a look at bounty hunter collections. It's a system that is easily expandable, and in the future, we'll be looking at more unique and unorthodox collections to add to SWG.
integration among heroics, collections, and storyteller helps build a cohesive theme around each chapter. Social, collecting and even veteran players can all experience content that builds on itself and brings everyone together.
Telling your story The storyteller system is the perfect compliment to the social game of Star Wars Galaxies. We started the game with a robust socialization system that was backed by our deep character and housing customization possibilities. We've seen the crazy (and awesome) social events and lifestyles that our players can create for themselves - cantina crawls, holiday parties, custom fish tanks, even weddings - but we wanted to provide support to do these things. Storyteller allowed us to bring out their inner socialites and let them flourish.
We knew the storyteller system was a cool feature when we were conceiving it, but honestly, we never thought it would take off the way it did. Players love the ability to create dramatic events and outdoor venues, but more importantly, the system re-ignited a social aspect to the game that was formerly niche-like. Non-social players were taken in by the creations of storytellers; it's exciting to know that the only place you can view a destroyed sandcrawler being invaded by battledroids is by requesting it from a storyteller.
The positive player reception for the storyteller system has really motivated us to expand on the idea of player-created content. For Chapter 9, we're introducing the blueprint functionality. This will let players create a custom storyteller event and then, using the blueprint tool, wrap it up for reproduction and distribution. The storytellers can thus make names for themselves this way - their storytelling services will be known by the players on their servers, who can would request custom events or purchase some of the tried and true ones. Custom possibilities include giant battle set pieces, social gatherings, theme parks, speeches and rallies, even a simple BBQ.
Just like the collection system and the heroic encounters, the storyteller system is easily expandable by our design team. We're able to add more and more content in every chapter; for example, we're working on releasing some more storyteller tokens for chapter 9, including cultists and props from the Exar Kun heroic encounter. This kind of integration among heroics, collections, and storyteller helps build a cohesive theme around each chapter. Social, collecting and even veteran players can all experience content that builds on itself and brings everyone together.
Tim Temmerman Associate Producer, Star Wars Galaxies LucasArts
