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Updated Advanced Classes Information

Published by under news on Apr. 08. 2011.

I am waiting for one more week before I pronounce it as official, but it seems that Bioware is starting their pre-release information flood. Friday updates are becoming more informational and we’re starting to see mid-week updates as well. Coupled with the events season it promises to be an information filled summer for SWTOR fans. What this Friday update talks about specifically is how the design of advanced classes changed since they were first talked about and what Bioware based those changes on. There is a detailed rundown of all the advanced classes in their current state, given by Georg Zoeller, Principal Lead Combat Designer. We now fully see 3 healing and 3 tanking builds present. Very interesting thing to see is the choice they made with the Jedi Consular and Sith Inquisitor. These classes can spec so they can be healers or tanks (tanking abilities have been added in the meantime; since the last AC info was released). Since both these classes were basically cloth users I wonder how they made them tanks. High evasion plus heals to get aggro? I don’t see them as paladins either. I must admit I am curious to see how this works out.

What I have a feeling Bioware did is incorporate your classic trinity roles into the most commonly used classes; Jedi Knight and Consular and Sith Warrior and Inquisitor (or as you’d call them – force users). The other classes are getting non standard trinity options or what some would call soft trinity classes. So we get a ranged tank, healing rogue and a healing “hunter” (ranged rogue). Just the prospect of discovering how these “new” roles function is exciting for me.

Friday update also goes over the decision making process through showing two images created through metrics Bioware gets from test servers and game testers. The images show a three-dimensional map with all the spots gamers died at and a smaller two-dimensional map showing where people thread the most and what places are fatal for their adventure. That image alone helped Bioware determine that Smugglers were having problems in the areas of their primary class story and were able to tweak the difficulty. I must add that the 3D image looks like what is known among game programmers as representation of geodata. Geodata is map data of X, Y and Z coordinates of the game level that determines what players and other level stuff (foliage, buildings, NPCs, etc.) stand on and can’t “fall through”.

Kathy from Corellian Run Radio compiled a nice list of things we’ve learned from this developer blog so go ahead and check it out.

5 responses so far

5 Responses to “Updated Advanced Classes Information”

  1. swtorcrafteron 09 Apr 2011 at 12:35 pm

    I really love the looks of the metrics tools they are using. I wish i could see what they have availiable to use when looking at the stats of the game and the testers. Amazing!

  2. BorukBHon 09 Apr 2011 at 6:11 pm

    Yeah I loved the metrics tool as well. I would love to go to Bioware and spend a day just getting to go through data on that thing alone!

    I am also liking that the Bounty Hunter healing role is combined with the DPS side. Should make leveling as a healing a little better.

  3. Adaramon 10 Apr 2011 at 2:10 pm

    I want to play with their metrics tools! Maybe they can release those as a game add on!

  4. Swtorcrafteron 10 Apr 2011 at 3:16 pm

    Hey Adaram nice to see you!

    That would be awesome! You know how they released the character creator for dragon age before the game released, imagine if they released the metrics tools like that for us to play with, that would be really neato!

  5. […] fall firmly into the category of players who were greatly intrigued by Friday’s Dev. Update, as much for what it didn’t say for what it did.  We learned that the Sith Inquisitor will […]