Role-Player Bounties
It was recently confirmed that BioWare would NOT be implementing player-based bounties in Star Wars: The Old Repbulic. That is to say, players won't be able to put hits out on other players, allowing Bounty Hunters—if not all classes—to hunt them down and kill them to collect the prize. Well, if people are bummed about no game-supported player bounties, they can always turn to their own devices via the roleplaying community.


As people can't help but compare SWTOR to the previous Star Wars MMO game, Star Wars Galaxies, a game which did have player bounties, fans have been asking for a player-bounty system in SWTOR since it was announced. Various player bounty systems have been suggested by the community, but SWTOR has one problem that SWG lacked, faction-exclusive classes. Unlike in SWG where bounty hunters could be either faction or even neutral, in SWTOR the Bounty Hunter class is restricted to the Sith Empire. One of my earlier articles dealt with the difficulties that this raised for the prospect of player bounties.

BioWare seems to agree that any sort of player bounty system is problematic as they recently announced that they will not be in the game, at least not at launch:

    Rhudaur: "Can I put a bounty on other player characters, that is the big question???"

    Stephen Reid, Senior Community Manager: "As Georg is not in the office right now, I'll answer on his behalf (and with his words) - the answer is no, not at launch.

    "As always with an MMORPG, things may change in the future, but player bounties are not planned for the launch of The Old Republic."

    {[Confirmed] NPC Bounties & NO PLAYER BOUNTIES!!}


So what now? Knowing there won't be even so much as a voluntary bounty hunting mini-game, what are people to do who really wanted player bounties? Well, MMOs are community enterprises, so if the developers don't provide something then perhaps the community can instead! Of course, nothing community-run is perfect, and I have my doubts that SWTOR will be player-driven in any significant way so tools for such a program would be limited, but one shouldn't underestimate the force of organized players cooperating together. A player bounty program can be implemented through roleplaying.


On Roleplaying

Now, many players hear the word "roleplaying" and immediately think of stereotypes such as the ultra-dorky LARPers portrayed in the film Role Models, the D&D roleplaying nerds in the popular bit by the Dead Ale Wives, or ridiculous bedroom-style roleplay. All of these are overstated to begin with—roleplaying is simply collaborative storytelling—but they also ignore what else is included in the umbrella of roleplay, which is anything that immerses you in the premise of the game. These are "roleplaying games" after all. Every time you're excited about a cut-scene, every time you read the quest text, every time you get seriously pissed at Ganon for taking the princess, every time you take notice of the world around you beyond your current list of objectives, you are roleplaying.

And this doesn't always have to be narrative-based. You don't have to be thinking or acting "in character" to be roleplaying. The desire to customize the look of your in-game avatar is a form of roleplaying. Vying for supremacy on the auction house is a form of roleplaying. So is messing about with in-game /emotes and the like. Heck, Samm—probably the least likely to identify himself as a roleplayer within the TOROcast crew—proved that, in one way at least, he is our biggest roleplayer in that he despised the Crew Skills method of crafting because it wasn't actually his character standing at the work bench doing the crafting. Nothing had functionally changed, and it's not like Samm was acting out building each piece of gear in-character in every other MMO he played, but it still mattered to him that he couldn't "be" the crafter.

So, when I say "roleplaying," don't think that I'm saying you have to go to the extremes of acting out bounty hunting in-character. I'm not expecting anyone to go around spouting lovingly crafted dialogue before a fight. You could do that of course—and really, what else are you gonna do on an RP-PvP server?—but it's not necessary. I'm simply saying you'll have to organize a bit to make a part of the in-game setting come alive. It will take cooperation, effort, and some suspension of disbelief, but it can be done.


Player-Made Player Bounties

It would take a few things to get this type of system off the ground. It would take a group of cross-guild—and preferably cross-faction—organizers working together, it would take a cash-pool of in-game credits to gather incentives for participation, it would take established parameters for how/when to post a bounty, and it would take established parameters for how to decide that a bounty is completed. Also, those victory parameters might vary for those who actively participate in the player bounty program and those who don't, as well as by players of opposing faction and those of the same faction, who might have to resolve bounties by use of the /duel command, which wouldn't be too far outside of what we saw in the movies.


Organizers
The easiest way to get this type of program going is to recruit the major guilds on the server to join whole-cloth, with the guild leaders sponsoring the program. With BioWare's fancy new guild-portal allowing you to designate other guilds as allies or rivals—during their "alignment" phase—getting like-minded guilds on the same server like this is more feasible. Of course, the organizational needs will go far beyond simply agreeing to participate. Designated players will need to be available in shifts around peak hours to accept bounties and pay out rewards. Somebody will have to advertise active bounties on the forums and in-game. Also, if there's any sort of "membership fee" for bounty hunters, this will need to be managed and collected as well, maintaining a list of freeloaders who haven't paid and maybe putting a fat bounty on them if they don't cough it up. Setting up and running this type of program would be a daunting task and would require a group of dedicated players cooperating cross-faction.

Incentives
One might be tempted to think that the bounty itself is enough incentive. That somebody could post on the forums "I'll pay 500 credits to anyone who kills 'Jamar Darkman' and takes a screenshot," and the incentive is the 500 credits and that's all that is needed. Well, that might work for a bounty or two, but there's no guarantee that the credits will actually get paid out or that Jamar's buddy won't simply get him to pose for a screenshot. Remember that you're trying to set up a server-wide program with some amount of respectability. There are a number of ways you might need to add incentives to get people to participate in the ways you want. You want to convince players it's worth:

    * —handing credits over to a neutral 3rd party for safekeeping until the bounty is complete.
    * —trusting said neutral 3rd party to judge when a bounty has been completed successfully.
    * —dedicating time to chasing bounties, which can be very difficult with no in-game mechanism for locating players with bounties on their heads.
    * —fighting bounty hunters fairly, not avoiding them, zerging them, or refusing to fight them if you're not flagged for PvP.


These are major barriers to a successful player-run bounty system. The small change a lowbie is able to put toward a bounty isn't going to be worth the efforts of most bounty hunters, but if closing one more bounty brings them closer to a sweet in-game prize handed out by the program, then suddenly there's a reason for chasing any and all bounties. You might never see the point in /dueling a bounty hunter who walks up to and demands satisfaction, but if you know there's a chance to gain points in the program for successfully defeating a bounty hunter, suddenly there's a reason to participate even if you're the one getting chased. Rewards could be forwarded by sponsoring guilds, bought from the auction house with program member fees, or bought from a tax skimmed off of the amount of each bounty.

And of course, once the program gets rolling and there's some buzz around it, bragging rights become a meaningful incentive as well. If done right, players will be wanting to post bounties on themselves as a challenge to other hunters and to compete for program incentives.



Posting a Bounty
The forum-based example is one way to handle things, but it would suffer from time-lag concerns where you wouldn't know when somebody is logged in, logged off, or where somebody is there to turn the money over to a neutral party for the bounty. A better way would be to have a particular group of individuals who are on enough during peak hours who can meet up with you to collect a bounty fee, and then post that bounty on an official, central thread or by blasting it out on an official in-game channel. This lets the organizer to hear your story why the bounty is being placed to make sure you're not just trying to grief someone or game the system. He can then monitor the bounty's progress—possibly in communication with counterparts on the other faction if cross-faction communication is restricted—while it's ongoing, making updates on it until the bounty is concluded.

This make major hunts into a sort of in-game event that advertises the program even as you're completing a bounty. It also puts some structure on the program that keeps program management in trusted hands. In fact, true program events can also be held where the program designates a "VIP target" or group of targets that bounty hunters have to compete against each other to track down and kill. Sort of organizing their own "great hunt" for a prize of bragging rights, crafted loot, and credits. As mentioned above, this system could also be used as a challenge, where a player or group of players offers a cash prize through the program if anyone is able to take them down. By keeping organizers on-hand for the hunts, they end up being a lot more managed and personal instead of devolving into snippy, meaningless flamewars on the forums. The official SWTOR forums have enough of those.

Completing a Bounty
Faction and PvP-restrictions complicate any sort of bounty completion parameters, but these can be handled relatively easily by a small group of cooperating cross-faction players. For example, if a bounty is paid for by an Imperial Player and collected by a Republic "bounty hunter," it might not be possible to transfer credits cross-faction. In this case, counterpart organizers on the other faction would have to pay out that bounty amount to the victorious player out of their own coffers and the fee would simply be saved by the Imperial side so they can reciprocate on similar situations in the future. Additionally, incentives for successfully evading—or even being willing to fight and lose to—bounty hunters when you have a bounty on your head can encourage players to be willing to duel bounty hunters when not flagged for PvP. Having to /duel a mark before fighting him might stretch the suspension of disbelief a bit, but the end result can still be achieved as long as the populace is willing to cooperate.

It's those who want nothing to do with the program where things get difficult. The easiest way to handle players who don't want to participate or even set out to actively sabotage this type of system is to ignore them. To blacklist them from any Bounty Program events—or even from any events/raids by member guilds—and ban them from receiving any future rewards, at least until they pay into the program and start accepting challenges. However, a more creative way to handle this is to offer a bigger reward on them for non-standard victory parameters.


For example, on a PvP server, the Imperial player "Muscosaurus" has been on a rash of ganking Republic lowbies and talking a lot of trash. A bounty gets placed on his head, but he obviously doesn't want anything to do with a fair fight so he refuses to get involved by facing down bounty hunters from his own faction. Well, as soon as this is established the bounty program leader decides ol' Muscosaurus needs to be taught a lesson and puts down new victory parameters with different bounty rewards for each.

    * Imperial Hunters:
          o Screenshot of a victory in a /duel = Original bounty
          o Screenshot of kill-by-kiting mobs onto Muscosaurus = Original bounty x3
          o Shadowing and fingering location of Muscosaurus for cross-faction hunters = Smaller reward
          o Escorting cross-faction bounty hunters to Muscosaurus = Smaller reward
          o etc.
    * Republic Hunters:
          o Cross faction gank = Original bounty with multipliers for location (x6 for in cross-faction capitol)
          o Successful corpse camp = Original bounty x3
          o Successful corpse camp resulting in Muscosaurus logging off = Original bounty x6
          o Screenshot of domination in a Warzone = Original bounty x3
          o etc.


Suddenly the extra cash that the program has laying around can be used to turn a negative player into another event with a bit more challenge. Granted, some of these conditions might be considered griefing by BioWare whereas simply shunning the non-participator would be more acceptable, but my point is that there are options so that at least a player doesn't feel like they can only post bounties on those who voluntarily participate. In fact, placing bounties on those who aren't currently participating could be the best recruitment tool you have as they can learn about the program first-hand and possibly earn some incentives.


I don't see why BioWare wouldn't be willing to tolerate such a program as long as it wasn't being used for scamming or griefing. Unless it was being used to harass or outright ostracize players instead of providing a fun in-game activity, I wouldn't expect the mods to move against it. Of course if BioWare was really serious about player bounties they could implement their own system rather than trusting the populace to run it for them. It wouldn't be hard for BioWare to make a simple voluntary bounty system that functions similarly to /duel where you basically just bet the other player a sum and remain attackable to each other until somebody is defeated. However, until BioWare implements something, the option is still there if players are motivated enough on a given server. It might be worth attempting. I'd certainly love to see it.

What are your thoughts on the lack of pvp bounties being confirmed by BioWare? Was that a feature you were really hoping for? What do you think about any sort of player-run voluntary bounty program? Is it feasible? Would it be fun? Comment below or discuss here!

I know this column has covered a lot of lore in its nine months -- wow, nine months! I can't believe it's been that long. We have discussed the Empires of the past and future, the Jedi's rise and fall, and the lore behind each of the eight classes. Cultures have been examined and specific characters have been spotlighted in this column. But how important is all this backstory to Star Wars: The Old Republic? Is my bad-ass bounty hunter even going to care what a gray Jedi is? He sure isn't going to give a bantha's butt about the color of the Jedi's lightsaber.

I know you're going to tell me, "But Larry, you're a roleplayer. You know how important lore is!" I do; it is important. But how much lore is too much? Even as a roleplayer, I have found that sometimes knowing too much can be detrimental to the roleplay experience. On top of that, how horrible is it, especially as a new roleplayer, to have someone tell you that you can't wear black as an Imperial officer unless you're a member of the Stormtrooper Corps. Crap! Now I have redo everything!

What I'd like to discuss today are some essential pieces of lore the average person living in The Old Republic should know, so that I can give existing roleplayers a different perspective on how to handle their characters' knowledge. If you're floating in the middle saying to yourself, "I'm not really a roleplayer, but I do like a game with a good story," keep reading. You and the vast majority of future SWTOR players will definitely get something out of this.

I know there are going to be some roleplayers who are going to disagree with me, but I believe you can know too much about the overarching story. Let's say you have played through Star Wars: The Old Republic as a Sith, and now you are aware that the Sith Emperor is, for instance, Gav Daragon. Is the average Republic soldier going to know who that even is? If you're thinking, "Sure, we would. Gav was the Sith apprentice during the Great Hyperspace War," I will ask you this: "Who was Abraham Lincoln's Vice President during the Civil War?" Don't look it up! I don't know off the top of my head. I would be hard-pressed to find someone who did, except for my uncle -- he's a history nut. The point is, knowing who the Emperor is can change our gameplay.

It's not always a bad thing to have more information than your character knows; it can help you establish your character in the world a little better. Perhaps it will give you more of a vested interest in how he affects the world around him. However, you are missing some of the mystery. Wasn't part of the fun of Mass Effect in not knowing whether saving the Rachni queen will have detrimental effects on the rest of the story or will have lasting impressions on Mass Effect 2 and 3? So what does the average person know in Star Wars: The Old Republic?



Most of what a person would know about the galactic struggle would depend on where he grew up. For instance, if you grew up on Coruscant and are about 30 years old, you would probably remember the Hydian Way blockade, but if your character is younger than that or did not live on or around Coruscant at the time, he may not even know about it.

Mandalorians are a popular culture to play. All Mandalorians would remember or have learned about the rise of the new Mandalore, but I doubt the average Mandalorian would have any clue that this Mandalore was a puppet of the Empire.

I would venture to guess, however, that the Sacking of Coruscant was one of those historic moments when everyone remembers exactly where he was when the event happened. It shocked all of the Republic and solidified the Sith's victory in the galaxy. Everyone is going to know about that -- even people who happened to be herding nerfs in a pasture on Corellia.

Speaking of Corellia, any Corellian or pilot worth his salt would know that this planet has now been cut off from the rest of the galaxy. When a major starport goes off the grid, pilots know about it. This could also be a jump point for your character's story if he happens to be a freighter pilot.



Time and life spans are the huge factor here. Humans, or most of the player species choices, would be approaching their twilight years if they had been born at the start of the Great Wars. And the vast majority of humanoids who fought at the start the war would be elderly. The beginning of this Great War was approximately 60 years ago -- 28 years before the Sacking of Coruscant. However, what we do know would be taught in history books, just as the World Wars are taught to us. Our grandparents would talk about it and history teachers would give us an overview, but details would be a bit sketchy in areas.

If your character is a Jedi, you may have a more complete understanding of galactic history, but it would certainly be skewed to fit the Jedi philosophy. The Sith would be portrayed as the bad guys, and the Jedi would be selfless heroes. In fact, given what happened to the Jedi following the Sacking of Coruscant, I would think that the Jedi would probably show a bitterness toward the Republic in their historical records.

On the flip side, a Sith would most definitely see the Jedi as weak and would perhaps have been taught that Imperial government was proven the rightful ruler, given the Republic in-fighting and how easily the Empire subdued it. Students would also be be taught the efficiency of the Imperial way of life.



Although it will be extremely difficult for me to do this in my position, I recommend learning as little as possible about the history in the game if you want to live in its world. However, I know that is going to be nearly impossible. What I do is have a checklist of events my character is aware of, so if I am approached by another player (or maybe an NPC in SWTOR), I can reference the list and respond accordingly.

Another great way to limit your character's knowledge is to deliberately limit your scope when studying for your character's backstory. For instance, only read about the planet your character is from or only read about your character's species. This way your practical knowledge will match closely with your character's knowledge.

Finally, I have found the best way to prevent your character from becoming an exhaustive encyclopedia of Star Wars lore is to enjoy the moment. React without thinking too much about it. Don't think about about whether it is right or wrong given the history or what the overarching effects will be. Just do it. As Qui-Gon Jinn said, "Remember, concentrate on the moment. Feel, don't think. Use your instincts."

Last year, I was lucky enough to play BioWare's upcoming MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic. Years in the making, and with probably another year more, my hour-long turn as the Sith Inquisitor, a role that sent me running about the planet of Korriban killing giant scorpions and talking to snotty British people, was an enjoyable play session. However, an hour with the game wasn't much to really dive in, so it was with great anticipation that LucasArts, EA, and BioWare invited me back for a long, six hour session with the game.


I and fellow journalists were split between the Jedi Knight and Jedi Consular on their origin planet of Tython. It's a lush green forested planet with some of the oldest Jedi ruins in the galaxy, making it the perfect place for the Jedi to set themselves up. I was lined up with a brand new Jedi Consular, a character treated as a particularly powerful new member of the Jedi Order. Technically a padawon, I wasn't even given a lightsaber. Instead equipped with a crappy training sword (which the farthest I ever upgraded beyond was a vibrosword, with lightsabers made by the player at a later level), I set out to perform the origin world tasks and make myself familiar with The Old Republic.


These early tasks are typical origin world stuff, and even after six hours, I wasn't even close to unlocking all of the Consular's potential, much less delve into its advance classes, the Jedi Sage and Jedi Shadow. All the same, by the time I was level 8, my Consular was well on his way toward telekinetically flinging rocks and performing powerful stat boosts. Unlike the Knight, the Consular focuses much more on what he can do with the Force, not what the Force can do with him. While a Knight will flip out and wail away at enemy characters with their lightsaber attacks, a Consular is much better at flinging rocks, Force pushing, AoE attacks, and stat buffs. Personally, I found the Consular's play style to be very rewarding, although who can tell how they will play compared to the more ranged-focused classes.

Oddly, one interesting take is how every character has their own healing abilities, which can be used indefinitely, such as my Consular's meditate ability. Additionally, every character has a revive ability to instantly bring back their allies. Coupled with the speeders taking players across the map, as well as a quick travel ability with a thirty minute cooldown, players will be able to get back into action pretty quickly should they die.


Once I got a hand of my character, it became time to complete some tasks. Like any other MMO, missions tend to follow traditional paths: go to this place, kill these things, collect these things, talk to these people, etc. The Old Republic doesn't necessarily break this mold, but it does offer interesting takes on these missions. Almost every mission is integrated into the story, and most offer opportunities for conversations with characters. They often end in either positive or snarky commentary from your character, influencing the light/dark dichotomy.

Many of the early missions for my Consular required me to head out and deal with the problematic Flesh Eaters, pink bulky things that have a taste for padawons. My Master Yuon Parr would see that I performed up to my expectations. Additionally, I would be tasked with finding ancient holograms of the original Jedi founders and even collect the hilt of the very first lightsaber. That alone was enthralling, but assisting a nearby colony of pilgrim Twi'leks with Flesh Eater and disease problems, becoming integrated into their religious culture, assisting new padawans, proved to be a whole lot more interesting. My favorite mission required me to snoop on some romantically-inclined padawons. Lie for them, and they'll pass on a rare lightsaber crystal, as well as send you down the path of the dark side. Rat them out, and besides pissing them off, you'll be rewarded with a boost to the light side of goodie-twoshoes. An easy decision to make, I exploited it for all that it was worth, gaining a crystal, lying to a Jedi, and generally acting like a jerk. It felt great, and many of the missions can be performed like this. For an origin world, Tython is surprisingly large, and the Bioware reps were proud to say that these origin worlds are nowhere near as large as later planets.




By the time I finished with my Consular, I hadn't made much of a dent in his light/dark split. While I was a member of a class known for being paragons of virtue, taking my Consular down the dark path led to some interesting conversations. Talking down to others, disregarding their skills, and generally acting like the greatest thing on Tython, being a giant douchebag is great. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to see how far this approach could go, but knowing BioWare, I'm sure I could have pushed my Consular to the border of the Dark Side.

Like any other MMO, the universe opens up once players leave their starting planet behind. Once most of those early tasks are completed, and players have leveled up a good amount, they can jump on a ship to go to the next area. For those on the light side, this means a trip to Coruscant, where things quickly unravel with an attack upon the traveling vessel, but provides the first opportunity for multiplayer instances. Getting all players to join in is a little buggy at this point, but it's something being worked on ardently by the team. Thankfully, once everyone is together and an instance has started, traditional MMO gameplay takes over, with classes like the Consular providing support and mid-range attacks, while the Jedi Knight tanks, and other classes step up other fairly traditional roles.



The game does branch off from other MMOs in a couple of ways. First of all, the companion characters seem to be more than just pets. There are at least five unique companions to each class, and they will fight alongside players with basic commands dictating how they act. The Consular class, for example, has a large lizard man equivalent to a scaly wookie, but other companions ranged from other humans to R2-D2-esque droid.

Remember, companions are very important to the game. Besides fighting alongside your character, they'll do other menial tasks such as collecting resources, forging items, or going out on diplomatic missions. Even the ones not currently being used on a planet will be based on the player's ship, performing passive duties while the player works on the ground. It's a pretty fantastic way of dealing with many of the classical MMO elements without becoming a drag on the action.



But the companion element of the game is not the only thing unique with The Old Republic. The most fascinating way the game approaches multiplayer has to be the way conversations are had. It plays much like a conversation in Mass Effect, but with numerous people. An NPC will chat away, and every player makes a response. The game applies a random number to each character, and the one with the highest number gets to make the response. I liked to play my Consular like a condescending jerk, and while my fellow journalists stuck to the “straight and narrow,” my hero would use every opportunity to lay down some disdain. With four different voices offering commentary in a conversation, it creates some of the most realistic dialogue I've seen in a game...ever. People can dissent and disagree, while others may be very compliant, and you'll start to become attached to other player characters and their personality quirks players give them. This “group discussion” element is oddly my favorite thing about the game.

PvP wasn't something we were able to play, but there was discussion on how this will play out. Battles will take place in “warzones” with up to 8v8 set-ups, and instead of traditional PvP elements, players will be tasked with attacking or defending points on a map, or in the case of the Alderaan Warzone orient giant guns to take out enemy ships. With experience earned for PvP, as well as tokens earned that can be spent on PvP consumables and equipable items, players can focus solely on PvP should they wish.

As far as planets go, outside of Coruscant and Tython, Bioware was keen on showing off some of the in-game screenshots for future planets players will visit. Planets like Alderaan and Tatooine will provide mostly familiar sights for players accustomed to Star Wars, but they've got wholly different rulers and factions running these planets at this time, so don't expect them to be boring. Even more exciting are areas taking place inside a night club, a flashy and somewhat original place for raids, as well as a derelict world where massive ship ruins dwarf players as they wander about. Clearly, Bioware and co. has spent a long time making sure there are lots to explore in this game. Additionally, each of these worlds are promised to be much larger than the origin planets like Tython, itself a fairly substantial place to explore.




These planets are also incredibly good looking. Even on Tython, different segments of the planet range from the Jedi Temple to the Pilgrim's camp, from the Jedi ruins to the Flesh Eater's region, yet all of them are clearly areas of Tython. Visually, it's one of the most impressive MMOs set for release, with very little in boring stretches of land made up of bland textures. Each area feels like an area, and it's good to see the level design is being paid as much attention as anywhere else. The voice work is probably one area that outshines this all, with every line of dialogue performed by voice actors. Not only that, the lip synch and facial animations are almost as good as BioWare's best console titles, and considering they have the equivalent of eight plot lines (one for each class), it's easy to be impressed with what BioWare has already done.



Coming away from The Old Republic, I'm more than optimistic. It's an incredibly polished game, and even more than that, it's plainly fun. The stories already show a lot of dynamism and charm, and the complexity of the game is already visible. It's a little hard to tell if the combat is going to compete with other successful MMOs, it looks like it does just fine for this early game stuff. End game is impossible to gauge, but it's obvious that BioWare is looking to invest a lot of time in this area of the game, as well as the PvP. Once they make the cooperative elements of the game less buggy, they'll have a title that is already leaps and bounds better than many MMOs on the market, and if they apply the same amount of polish to all areas of the game that they applied to these origin worlds, BioWare, LucasArts, and EA may have the next big MMO on the marketplace.