January 2011

Galactic Civil War

The Rebels have managed to maintain control of the scoring but the Imperials are gaining ground. It was good to see the increased war effort over the holidays. Also, now that the holiday event has come to an end, the invasions have returned to Dearic, Talus. The war is back in full swing.

I'm glad to report that I can finally start discussion of GCW2 in this note. It's still early but let the discussions begin

Galactic Civil War 2

In our first GCW update early last year, Forces Under Siege, we set out with many goals with the understanding that the conflict is a fundamental aspect of our game. We wanted to involve all the professions. We wanted to have a regional, planetary, and galaxy wide scoring system. And, we wanted to have everyone feel like a war was happening around them. Through the course of the year, we continued to add to the GCW by developing regional defender, leaderboards, and perks and penalties. In the end, we felt like we met our goals and gave players engaging content that is a fundamental part of the conflict in Star Wars Galaxies.

For GCW2, we have also set some high level goals. First, we want to bring the war to space by introducing compelling GCW space content. Should space activity tie into the ground invasions? Should there be a separate GCW scenario in space? We also want to get player cities more involved in the war. Do we bring the conflict to player cities like invasions did for the NPC cities? Lastly, we want to address many of the issues that have come up with the GCW as its implemented now; issues like the balance between GCW point gains in PvP vs. PvE activities and the types of perks and penalties. We want to keep everyone involved in a fair and balanced war. These topics and more are what we want to discuss with you.

We are currently working on the high level design concepts. Once they are complete, we will be working with the Galactic Senate to incorporate their feedback. Then we'll open the discussions to everyone. Stay tuned for more info as the work begins on this very exciting and important aspect of our game.

Wookiee Life Day

It was a lot of fun seeing the decorations around the galaxy. We saw more decorations for this event than we did for the Galactic Moon Festival. In fact, we saw a 19% increase in the amount of decorations over the GMF. We'll see how the other events compare. So far Life Day is the big winner.

Just like I did for GMF, here are the decoration statistics for all the planets and servers. I didn't get a chance to grab screen shots for my note this time around but feel free to post screens of your decorations if you want to show off your work.

Top 25 Most Decorated Server and Planet:

Starsider Lok
Europe-Chimaera Talus
Starsider Talus
Europe-FarStar Naboo
Europe-FarStar Lok
Starsider Dantooine
Starsider Rori
Starsider Naboo
Starsider Endor
Chilastra Naboo
Starsider Tatooine
Europe-FarStar Dantooine
Europe-Chimaera Corellia
TestCenter Naboo
Europe-FarStar Tatooine
Flurry Talus
Europe-Chimaera Rori
Bria Rori
Bloodfin Talus
Flurry Dantooine
Chilastra Dantooine
Europe-Chimaera Dantooine
Chilastra Lok
Radiant Rori
Bria Dantooine

Top Decorated Planet for Each Server:

Ahazi Naboo
Bloodfin Talus
Bria Rori
Chilastra Naboo
Eclipse Naboo
Europe-Chimaera Talus
Europe-FarStar Naboo
Flurry Talus
Gorath Naboo
Radiant Rori
Shadowfire Naboo
Starsider Lok
Sunrunner Naboo
TCPrime Lok
TestCenter Naboo

Most Decorated Planets for All Servers (~percentage of total props):

Talus 19.4%
Naboo 18.9%
Lok 17.8%
Dantooine 14.1%
Tatooine 11.0%
Rori 9.6%
Corellia 6.5%
Endor 2.6%
Dathomir 0.1%

Most Used Decorations (~percentage of total props):

A decorated Wookiee Life Day Tree 13%
Life Day Tree 11%
Wookiee Life Day Presents 11%
Wookiee Life Day Bunting 9%
Stage 3%
Wookiee Life Day Wroshyr Tree 3%
Wookiee Life Day Mini Tree 3%
Wookiee Life Day Incense Burner 2%
Streetlamp Small Style 01 2%
Wookiee Life Day Banner Style 1 2%
Wookiee Life Day Banner Style 3 2%
Wookiee Life Day Banner Style 2 2%
Wall: Imperial Style 1 2%
Gate: Tatooine Style 1%
AT-ST 1%
AT-AT 1%
Imperial Banner 1%
Arch 1%
Wall: Naboo Style Short 1%
Tiki Torch 1%

Ewok Festival of Love

The Ewok Festival of Love is coming up. It will be running starting around February 10th and ending in about 4 weeks from then around March 10th. In general, you can count on all the various game events lasting for about 4 weeks. Since we have the decoration system, 4 weeks is a good amount of time to enjoy the event and the decorations without feeling like it's dragging out or ending too quickly.

For this year's EFoL, we will have a decoration wand and we've also added some event specific storyteller props. I know you cannot get enough of that chocolate fountain =). For this year, we have a new badge and some fun new rewards plus a couple of variations of some of the classic rewards from the event. And there will be a new storyteller vendor as well. You can probably guess what he or she will be.

When we run events like Wookiee Life Day and Ewok Festival of Love, remember that you pick up your publish gift from the event. It's not automatically added to your inventory on log in. You still get a gift; it's just part of the events when they are running.

Love is in the air

Officer Update And More

On public test right now is the initial set of changes for the Officer update. If you haven't had a chance to check them out yet, be sure and read the public notes in Development Discussion and hop onto a TC and check out the changes for yourself.

We have a lot of changes coming for Officer and some very good reasons to make these needed changes. One cool thing we're doing is allowing Officers to wear Mandalorian armor. This has been a long standing request of the Officers and, back in the day, the Squad Leader profession used to be able to wear this armor type. The update also makes carbines a viable weapon choice for Officers by including them in their expertise. This was a top request and we wanted to give Officers more options so adding carbines made sense. There is a new melee special ability that will help Officers who specialize in melee combat. We added this to give Officers another way to be more proficient in melee combat. Also, the Officer Reinforcement and Supply Drop have both been improved. Officer troopers are now stronger and slightly higher level. They will also have an appearance that reflects the faction of the Officer. These changes were needed to improve abilities that were weak or unused and to streamline abilities that were unnecessarily cumbersome. Finally, we now allow Officers to use the Supply Drop ability inside cities because not allowing it was a source of frustration for the players. Plus, we couldn't think of any reason why it shouldn't be allowed.

One side effect of the Officer update, which will be going to public test today, is that we changed how damage reduction bonuses are applied. This change effects all combat professions. Previously, most damage reduction bonuses were calculated at the same time as weapon damage bonuses but before other bonuses were applied. This resulted in damage not being reduced by the amount that was expected. Now, damage reduction is calculated after all the damage is determined. This was needed because, as part of this update, Officers received a bonus value change on their Rally Point ability. This lead to a discussion about what that ability did and what other reduction bonuses do as well. So we decided to go ahead and fix it up so it makes more sense and is more consistent across the board.

And more is on the way. We'll keep you updated in the Development Discussions.

Development Discussion

Hjal's Officer sporting a new look

How Bazaar?

In SWG, players do goods transactions using a Vendor or Bazaar. Internally, we call this system that allows you to buy and sell goods in the game, the "Commodities System." Most of you probably agree this makes cents. Recently, some players experienced what they called "ghost items." Basically these were items that they purchased, were charged credits, but never received. To prevent this situation from happening again, in Update 19.4 we changed the way items are purchased. Instead of removing the credits from a player first and then retrieving the item, the opposite happens. Now if the item is not available, players will not be charge credits.

We'll continue to look for ways to prevent these issues but I wanted to make sure everyone understood why we made this change.

Upcoming Veteran Rewards

Don't worry. We haven't forgotten about our vets. We are working on the next set of veteran rewards and you can expect to see them in the game soon. Instead of more house plants, we're going for some functionality on the next few rewards. I will only provide a hint though. One will have something to do with profession respecs and the other will be resource related. And they will be tradable in case none of those ideas interests you. We are planning to continue to do vet rewards going forward so keep your suggestions coming on what new rewards you would like to see.

The Galactic Senate

The time has come for Galactic Senate nominations. I wanted to mention that this time, those players chosen as the Galactic Senators will be put under an NDA. The interesting thing to note is that in almost all my prior PMs with senators, they have always asked if it's ok to tell players what I tell them. And my answer has always been yes. Now I can say no =). Actually, this is a great opportunity to get Senators even more involved. Like I mentioned, GCW2 discussions will start with the Senators. This is a big plus and the development team will look for ways to get even more out of the Galactic Senate.

Accepting Nominations for The Galactic Senate

Facebook

We are really getting close to the next Facebook milestone of 10K fans. We have a few surprises planned to help us get over this hump. Going forward, we will be using Facebook more often by providing more information about updates, the game itself, and the community. We also have some fun features and activities planned for fans.

Get ready for the upcoming Ewok Festival of Love and be on the look out for GCW2 discussions on the forums!

- Teesquared & Team