Darth Hater - Crafting and Warzone Details Revealed

PVP WARZONES

Earlier this year at E3, we learned SWTOR will incorporate Warzones as just one of the forms of player versus player combat, and a brief mention the planet Alderaan would feature a Warzone without any significant details. Yesterday, we learned that Alderaan's Warzone will be an 8 vs. 8, objective-based PvP with a goal of controlling planetary defenses, and provides rewards in the form of tokens and XP. Although we asked, we don't yet know if there will be any group size scaling for Warzones.


Player respawns appear to be instant in its current form, as players spawn in a drop ship high above the battlefield. These drop ships are safe areas that house vehicles that then take players to the planet's surface to continue the fight. There are also turrets that continually bombard your ship that you can re-aim once they are under your control.

"There is this mechanic of two drop ships. Your objective as a team is to go down and control anti-aircraft artillery pieces that you literally see turn and fire on the other ships," explained BioWare's Blaine Christine. Once a team controls these defenses, they direct a massive cannon at the other faction's capital ship, and the first team to destroy the other team's ship is the victor. "You are destroying the ship which is inherently kind of a timer, because once that destruction occurs, the match is over," continued Christine. "The winner is the winner, and the loser is the loser based on whose ship is still alive."

We also learned that each Warzone will be governed by different mechanics and objectives. The developers teased the next Warzone will take place on a derelict starship and its mechanics will be completely different from Alderaan's. "If you say what kind of scenarios could happen on a derelict starship, you can kind of formulate scenarios to see what we mean," Christine hinted. "It is going to be a different experience; you'll have different objectives, different things going on, and different mechanics. Still immersive -- but different."

BioWare's PvP designer Gabe Amatangelo said they wanted Warzones to fit in with the story element of the game. When they looked at PvP, they decided that banners, flags and points were "too game-y."

"I think that the biggest thing is we have to look at where these pieces fit into the story, because we still want them to tie to the story," Christine replied when asked about the challenge developing unique Warzones that made sense to the planet's background. "We sort of looked at it like what is the action that is occurring at that point in time... whatever level the player is at, so it is partially based on the player's level and what abilities they have. We also considered what events are occurring within context on that particular planet, and how it would make sense to fit in those mechanics and/or area that you would be fighting over."

CRAFTING

The developers also presented an overview of The Old Republic's crafting system. BioWare announced they will use a Crew Skill crafting system, very similar to the one we speculated on in a recent podcast. Using their ship as a base of operations, players will be able to send their companions on crafting tasks, and particular companions excelling at specific duties.


This Crew Skill system will be divided into three majors groups: Gathering, Crafting, and Missions. We were given two examples for each major group: Gathering will be comprised of jobs like Bio Analysis and Slicing, Crafting includes Artificer and Bio Chem, and lastly Missions will involve activities such as Diplomacy and Treasure Hunting.

Companions utilizing Diplomacy can spread influence and change morality alignment points, while those seeking Treasure may find rare items based on a random number generator. The Bio Analysis example illustrated a logical dependence of gathered material to create a crafted item; using the skill on a dead creature produces components for use in creating stimpaks as a crafted item in Biochem. They also mentioned in passing that crafting would be a key part of their yet unannounced Auction House system.

In addition to the stimpak example, the presenters stated other crafted items include weapons, and when asked if this provided for creation of weapon modifications, Christine couldn't provide details but commented "it is a very robust system, and there are still some details that we haven't revealed yet which I know players are going to be excited about. I will just say there are some mechanics to it that will allow players who are more involved in crafting to really get deeply involved in crafting and be appropriately rewarded for it."


As mentioned above, specific companions will be better at certain mission types. For example, Vette, a pirate and companion to the Sith Warrior, will excel at Treasure Hunting. Your companions can also be given missions on the fly, and even while players are away from their ship. All of these crafting activities can be queued up and can continue when players are offline. We did see a screenshot of two companions on one ship performing crafting duties at the same time. However, it should be noted that we don't yet know if they are working on the same activity or separate ones.

"Only passive companions would assist in crafting," explained Christine. "Pretty much all your active companion can do while out adventuring with you crafting-related is gathering activities. Even though I can send them out on missions and gather items, when they are adventuring with me and I see a gathering node in the world, I can right click on that. Rather than my character going over to that node and performing that gathering action, you'll see what you saw in our screenshot today that the companion character performs that action."

Finally, these reveals appear to keep with BioWare's promise of maintaining an epic feeling throughout Star Wars: The Old Republic. They described Warzones as reminiscent of key events from the movies, where you are able to hear the captain of the capital ships relay messages and objectives, and the demonstration video echoed these statements. Also, the revealed crafting system Damion Schubert hinted at a few weeks ago allows player crafting without "Darth Vader picking flowers on the side of the road." BioWare and LucasArts saved some great reveals for this European event and we now have a good chunk of substantial information to digest... but, as always, our appetites hunger for more.