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Combat Upgrade is coming to Test Center
Greetings,
The Star Wars Galaxies Combat Upgrade is coming to Test Center! We are very excited about the new combat system and working with you through the open beta testing process to gather all of your feedback.
The goal of the Combat Upgrade is to make the combat game play feel more like Star Wars, play more strategically, move at a faster pace and ultimately a more fun and engaging experience for players of all levels, from the veteran player to the new player jumping in for the first time.
The Combat Upgrade focuses on the entire spectrum of the combat experience, combat-related professions, their special abilities, and all of the weapons and types of armor in the game. Choices players make about each of these elements will be more intuitive and be significantly more impactful in the new system. Individual profession abilities and attributes, terrain and environmental elements will take on more consequence, making combat more engaging and fun.
After evaluating the new, enhanced method of combat, every player will have the opportunity to completely readjust their character's skill points to best match their play style to the new system and skill trees.
The enhanced combat system is only the beginning of the constant evolution of the Star Wars Galaxies experience. Enrichments to non-combat professions and continual new content publishes appealing to every type of player are planned for throughout 2005 and beyond.
What is the Combat Upgrade?
There are seven (7) core articles and a diagram describing the changes made to the combat system:
Combat Upgrade Overview
Core Combat Changes
Health-Action-Mind and the Combat Interface
Armor System
Character Healing and Related Profession Changes
Combat and Artificial Intelligence
Profession Roles Overview
Profession Roles Diagram
[Click here to see the documents in the In Concept Forum]
What to Expect
Testing for the Combat Upgrade will begin first with the novice experience, focusing on the skills and progression paths of the brawler and marksman professions. Following that will be a review of the intermediate level experience. Intermediate is based on a character with at least one master elite profession. High level testing will come once the intermediate testing is complete and that consists of characters with complete profession templates (2 to 2.5 elite professions).
At first, the character builders (blue frogs) will not be available as we focus on the novice experience. When we begin testing intermediate and high level combat experiences, we will make the character builders available and post information regarding how to find them and the focus of the tests.
The Cycle of Feedback
Each day, we will be posting Daily Bug threads and Issues threads. In addition, we will also post daily focus threads. Daily focus threads center on important areas of gameplay where your feedback is particularly important.
In each category, we will be looking at your comments regarding the skills, skill progression, the user interface (HAM, toolbar, targeting, etc.) profession roles, weapon and armor balance and general issues.
Another way we will request your feedback is through a daily poll. Each time you exit the game after playing a combat upgrade game session, we will ask your opinion on the current changes you experienced so we can remain close to our community's perspective as we work through all of the changes with you.
Test Center Prime
Once the Combat Upgrade Testing begins, we will all be playing in a brand new galaxy. The Test Center community's version of the galaxy, which we affectionately refer to as "TC-Prime" will be mothballed for the duration of the Combat Upgrade testing process.
How to Join Test Center
We encourage as many players as possible to join Test Center to get involved in this testing so we can get your comments and feedback. For those of you interested in joining Test Center , here is how to do it:
To use the TC-EP3 Test Center server, open the Launchpad as you normally would do so.
Read and acknowledge the Terms of Service
Enter in your username and password
After the game has completed updating; click the “Test Center” button at the bottom of the launchpad. If you are logging on to Test Center for the first time you will need to follow the prompts to install Test Center.
After the install has completed click the “Test Center” button and it will then launch the Test Center Launchpad . Next you will need to choose the server named TC-EP3Beta and go through the character creation process.
Thank you all for your support and we look forward to your feedback as we progress through testing of this exciting new upgrade to combat for Star Wars Galaxies.
Kurt "Thunderheart" Stangl
Community Relations Manager