posted by
Aconite
April 11, 2022
As we approach our 1.0 Milestone, which includes the release of Jedi, we’re excited to share more details of how the profession will play a role in the galaxy, including some details about how the unlock process will work as a whole as well as answer some frequently asked questions about the Jedi system.
Our guiding creed for the process to become a Jedi is consistent with the original ideology we shared before:
"The journey to becoming a Jedi in the era of the Galactic Empire poses unique challenges as a thriving Force Sensitive community to take in a youngling for training is nonexistent. Consequently, the process of becoming a Jedi will be a demanding, stimulating, and individualized experience for every inhabitant of the Star Wars Galaxy. Discovery of The Force will require exploration throughout the ground and space on group and solo adventures. Everything encountered along the way, from artifacts and horticulture to creatures and conclaves, will play a role in your saga."
We’re pleased to share unlocking Jedi will take place over 6 phases, featuring unique unlock mechanics, completely new and custom storylines and content, as well as original functionality and utility for the profession as a whole. While we’re keeping the majority of our unlock phases secret, we’re excited to share details of the first phase of the unlock process: The Inciting Incident.
To the benighted, it appears to be pure luck or a near miss, but to the enlightened, it is the crux juncture signifying the first spark of discovery for a latent power that has always existed deep within. This specific moment of discovery, different for every being, is precipitated when you need it most and denotes the start of a new journey towards the force.
"One of the challenges posed by our timeline during the era of the Galactic Civil War is that there are not any forms of order and structure to discovering force sensitive younglings, making it likely many would go into their adulthood without knowing they were force sensitive. Where moments in their life were more likely to be seen as a lucky guess or correct decision, they were really indicative of force sensitivity. It isn’t until some moment in time that demands they call upon powers they didn’t even know they had, such as Rey finding the Lightsaber (discovery) or Grogu and The Mudhorn (danger), triggers an epiphany that there is more to them than they know.
How this translates to the game more specifically is that each character will have a unique moment that will act as their inciting incident. There are more than 50 possible base incident types when, if triggered, you’ll call upon the force for help (for example, finding a special object, being close to death, healing someone, dodging a missile in space, or lucky experimentation with crafting) that could be your inciting incident multiplied by other confounding variables which make thousands of unique possibilities for what the inciting incident for each character you have might be. Once you encounter your inciting incident, you’ll move forward to the procuring proclivity phase.
We’ve previously noted that certain aspects of character progression already achieved by players, such as meeting certain accomplishments will be retroactively credited towards a character’s unlock journey. This remains the case, however, the inciting incident will be a unique start to the unlock journey that will only be available to trigger once 1.0 is released. Players will have an in-game means to track their progress towards unlock which we’ll share more about in a future Developer Diary."
There are components of the unlock process that will be unique to the extent that it is possible only 1 in 5000 players will experience exactly the same event sequence. Other components will be exactly the same for everyone. The biggest places of variance will be in the inciting incident and subsequent phases, as well as your larger storyline path based on your choices towards the light or dark side of the force, which we expand on a bit more later.How will you limit the population of Jedi so that the server does not become overrun with Jedi which isn’t fictionally realistic or fun?There are three primary mechanisms that limit the population of Jedi:
A Jedi can become “visible” if they engage in factional PvP or if they are observed by NPCs in the world doing anything that would raise suspicion about their force sensitivity, such as using force powers or wielding a lightsaber. Depending on the friendliness of the area and the about of visibility you have, the NPCs may take a variety of actions, such as attacking you, creating a bounty against you, adding a Temporary Enemy Flag against you, or even calling Lord Vador’s Inquisitors to capture or kill you.Visibility will decay over time while a Jedi is online and is either behaving incognito while in front of others or who has reclused away from municipalities until rumors of their presence have dissipated.
Jedi will have a variety of abilities to evade detection and reduce their visibility should they be in danger. Nevertheless, highly skilled Bounty Hunters will also have tools and resources to track down a structure where a Jedi may be hiding and, with the help of other professions, may break into or draw the Jedi out of such places.
A Temporary Enemy Flag (“TEF”) is a relationship between a player and one or more players/entities that makes them attackable in Player versus Player (PvP) combat. For example, player bounties create a temporary enemy flag between the Bounty Hunter and the Target Player.A player may advance through the Force Sensitive and Jedi Padawan profession trees before any changes to TEF logic will apply. However, once a player elects to become a Jedi Knight, they will move from temporary to permanent enemy flagging (PEF), which means they will always be overt and attackable in a Player versus Player context, regardless of if they have triggered any temporary flagging logic.
When a Jedi becomes a Jedi Knight, they will elect a faction, and their corresponding factional identity (Rebel or Imperial) will control who they become flagged as an enemy to (that of the opposing faction).
Jedi will have a number of lives assigned to them. For example, a Jedi Knight may have five lives. Once the Jedi Knight has died five times, they will become a Force Ghost and unable to engage in combat or any other character mechanics, limiting their in-game engagement to only social interactions with others.Force Ghosts, while online, will enter a global queue to request to return to a normal Jedi status. To exit the queue, they must satisfy two conditions: (1) a global cooldown period which changes based on the playtime and rank of the Jedi, as well as (2) a global limitation on the number of Jedi who can be alive and active in the galaxy at once. We do not intend to publish the Jedi live-to-death ratios at this time as we will likely adjust them over time based on our observations of these metrics once the system is live.This is part 1 of 3 of our Jedi Developer Diaries. We can’t wait to share more with you soon. If you have other questions you want to be answered, be sure to share them in Discord in the new #jedi-questions channel. We’ll select questions from those included there to answer in our next Developer Diary.
May The Force Be With You,
The SWG Restoration Development Team
