Episode 30 - Hutt on Hutt

kenzosan · **Posted:** 26 Jan 2011, 21:14

Braio wrote:

We know that the non-humanoid species aren't reasonable to ask of Bioware, but how bout those that are. Here's a small list of some that we've seen in videos or screenshots in the past but whether they are NPC or Companion characters is yet to be known.
- Mon Calamari
- Chagrain
- Kel Dor
- Togruta
- Nautolan

in the words of daniel erickson

Quote:

Hey folks,
No, I'm not going to confirm or deny whether there are still playable species you haven't seen yet. I will, however, clarify a couple points to help facilitate this healthy discussion:

--First, anything you've seen of the character creation process is not from an official release. Why do we know this? Because we don't show things until they are done and character creation is not final. We have never released a single screenshot, video or anything else on the character creation process. Not one part of the UI or the system that's been seen will be in the shipped game. Our artists are, as we speak, doing some amazing things on this front. First you have to establish the tech and the pipelines, then you can expand.

--Second, adding a new player race is exponentially more complicated than adding a new NPC. Even for a fairly common alien NPC--let's use Duros as an example--we might create less than half a dozen heads that are full, solid state objects. In other words they are one complete piece with no way to change them. We would never give players three or four head options with no variety to say "Look, we have Duros!" We'd have armies of identical Duros running around.

Instead, we would need to pull the heads apart, make hundreds more variations (eyes, skin tone, facial features and shape, etc) and give players the ability to mix them all up (and the tech to support it). Then we would have to go through and solve any technical issues with all of the armor and helmets in the game. You might not think it, but the Twi'lek lekku are a nightmare - collars, backpacks, helmets and a dozen other things you might not expect to be a problem suddenly are when you have a couple of head tentacles bouncing around everywhere.

For a cinematic game with plenty of close ups, this stuff matters far more than if we were always fifteen feet away from the characters. I'm not saying this changes the debate about what should be in or out but hopefully that answers the question of "I see a BLANK standing right there! Why can't I play it?"

Hope that helps!

Daniel

simply put, it take alot more programming to put a playable race in then a bunch of npcs of that race.

Braio · **Posted:** 26 Jan 2011, 22:26

I think you missed my point, or perhaps i didn't word it right or at all but, We've all read that article and its been talked about before, i was simply speculating possibilities from what can be seen in videos, it has nothing to do with the character creation process or what it takes to program them. Its pure speculation having seen them working with in the game that they could be a possible.

kenzosan · **Posted:** 26 Jan 2011, 23:18

Braio wrote:

I think you missed my point, or perhaps i didn't word it right or at all but, We've all read that article and its been talked about before, i was simply speculating possibilities from what can be seen in videos, it has nothing to do with the character creation process or what it takes to program them. Its pure speculation having seen them working with in the game that they could be a possible.

haha, i think you miss understood as well. admittedly i thought you were saying something else. as well, i was only reposting daniel ericksons forum post because it was relevant to playable races. anyway, i do agree that there are many races and we could really spend pages (as proven on the official forums) about them.

what i feel daniel erickson had said still applies. if they have not officially announced any playable races for a class then its not in the game, as of yet (the great failsafe), programming takes longer for pc's then it does for npc's. what i gather from his post is: if its not announced and you see a pic, its an npc.

DarthBelan · **Joined:** 11 Jan 2011, 13:38 **Posts:** 22

Great show, guys. You're really getting me pumped for this game. "Does size matter?" Cracked me up. One suggestion, though, could you compare TOR to something other than WoW? My WoW experience spans all of 30 minutes. When you compare the size of explorable content in TOR to an area in WoW, I have no way of envisioning it. Now, if you compare it to land in LOTRO, I can get a good feel for the size.

Keep up the good work!! :mrgreen:

Deleo1580 · **Posted:** 01 Feb 2011, 21:00

I cannot thank you enough for getting me all caught up on TOR. I haven't been following until recently and now I am two of your podcasts away from being up to date on everything. Cannot wait for the game.

Keep up the great work!

Here's praying for a March 21st date of release,

[EDIT: Done listening now.]
[EDIT: Never been a forums guy, but now I am hooked. God help you all. I have found a way to be heard without having to yell.]

Terminus · **Joined:** 03 Feb 2011, 18:10 **Posts:** 1

Hi folks, new to the show and a first time poster here.

I just wanted to comment that Zach (Zack? Zak? the gentleman whose voice sounds like mine when I haven't slept for a couple of days

) is greatly overestimating the quality of the data gathered during open betas. While far from an expert, I've participated in close to a dozen MMO betas at this point, and have read quite a few developer logs and retrospectives.

Hardly anyone signs up for the open beta to report bugs and help "fix" the game. Most folks sign up to try out the game, whether it's to play with the character generator or get as far ahead as possible to have an "advantage" in the final release. An equal mass of people sign up so they have something to complain about on the forums, like how their level 2 Sith Warrior is gimp and how level 3 Counselor CC is unbalanced. At the end of the day, open betas simply don't last long enough to gather any meaningful data about bugs/balance/etc., much less implement solutions for them. Most of that happens in closed beta, and going by leaked material over the last few months, they seem to be doing just fine.

Open betas, on the other hand, are purely there to stress test the hell out of the servers. As the other host (sorry, didn't catch the name) succinctly put it, it's more about "what happens when a million people log in at once". I would be shocked if they have an open beta that last more than a couple of weeks (WoW's ran from Nov 10 to 24th), and wouldn't be very surprised if they didn't have one at all. From everything we've seen so far, Bioware is not following the standard MMO development playbook.

Anyway, thanks for the great show! I hope the rest are just as good.

Zach · **Joined:** 01 Jul 2009, 09:45 **Posts:** 528

Terminus wrote:

Hi folks, new to the show and a first time poster here.

I just wanted to comment that Zach (Zack? Zak? the gentleman whose voice sounds like mine when I haven't slept for a couple of days

) is greatly overestimating the quality of the data gathered during open betas. While far from an expert, I've participated in close to a dozen MMO betas at this point, and have read quite a few developer logs and retrospectives.

Hardly anyone signs up for the open beta to report bugs and help "fix" the game. Most folks sign up to try out the game, whether it's to play with the character generator or get as far ahead as possible to have an "advantage" in the final release. An equal mass of people sign up so they have something to complain about on the forums, like how their level 2 Sith Warrior is gimp and how level 3 Counselor CC is unbalanced. At the end of the day, open betas simply don't last long enough to gather any meaningful data about bugs/balance/etc., much less implement solutions for them. Most of that happens in closed beta, and going by leaked material over the last few months, they seem to be doing just fine.

Open betas, on the other hand, are purely there to stress test the hell out of the servers. As the other host (sorry, didn't catch the name) succinctly put it, it's more about "what happens when a million people log in at once". I would be shocked if they have an open beta that last more than a couple of weeks (WoW's ran from Nov 10 to 24th), and wouldn't be very surprised if they didn't have one at all. From everything we've seen so far, Bioware is not following the standard MMO development playbook.

Anyway, thanks for the great show! I hope the rest are just as good.

Hello and welcome to the forums.

You do bring up a good point about open betas. Maybe closed Betas is more what I am thinking of. I honestly can't say I know too much about betas and how they work. I probably should have did a better job at just stating that was what I was guessing. I find the whole term "game testing" weird because they said it isn't beta. However does this mean its the same step as closed beta?

vinnypop · **Joined:** 10 Jan 2011, 21:27 **Posts:** 226

Zach wrote:

Hello and welcome to the forums.

You do bring up a good point about open betas. Maybe closed Betas is more what I am thinking of. I honestly can't say I know too much about betas and how they work. I probably should have did a better job at just stating that was what I was guessing. I find the whole term "game testing" weird because they said it isn't beta. However does this mean its the same step as closed beta?

Game testing is weird don't feel bad though there isn't really any standards about when your in a given testing phase. how ever Bioware isn't following the game testing that most other games have been using, if you want a good example of what they are doing look at Tiron's "Rift" they are doing very closely monitored and controlled testing.the thought is that by doing test like this you can collect better data in all aspects. The general misconception is that more is better, and while in general this is true, its a balancing act, too many players then your just wasting company money on people who are just trying to play the game early, to few and you don't get results. testing needs player feed back, they are hoping that when your game crashes you send them a message, detailing what happened or that you report the money exploit or when you fall through the terrain.
However they also have to look at how stuff appears in the press, if a bunch of game testers come out and say this game is buggy as hell, even though some people can look at that and say "oh well that is a beta, thats what its for", there are just as many who wont and will pass judgments on the game based on stuff that could no longer be true. one other thing i would like to point out, with the whole "we don't tell you till its 100% done and set in carbonite" rule, there is a strong possibility that they could forgo "open" beta. Especially as "open" betas are mostly controlled by the marketing department. and really MMO's are worked on even after discs are printed, stuff can still change.
I just got in to the Rift beta and ill let you guys know how it worked out, obviously within NDA standards. i think Swtor is using the same approach.

vinnypop · **Joined:** 10 Jan 2011, 21:27 **Posts:** 226

I didn't think I would be the next to post on this site, its been a slow week end. wonder what I missed.

Any way i got to play some of that rift beta, and I've got mixed feelings about the game, but the beta seemed very in tune, and the game ran surprisingly sooth and had a good layer of polish much better then Earthrise, which i played in beta for a bit and it was not polished at all.

so I can say the testing format has defiantly provided results and it gives me hope for SWTOR. I know a lot of people are getting worried. I share a lot of those concerns, but this has helped me to see that what they are doing can work.

Episode 30 - Hutt on Hutt

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