500 cartel coins randomly got assigned to my account today, apparently. A token of EA’s appreciation, the email said. For a second, of course, I thought they had somehow figured out how to hit my credit card for more subscription time somehow, so naturally I logged in to see what’s what. I guess things turned out on the “why though” side of things, predictably. Bioware has never listened to feedback, never bothered to treat their existing player base or their existing achievements inside the game, with any sort of respect. Lucas, the company behind both SWG, and SWTOR was always happy to trade the audience they did have, for the audience they THOUGHT they SHOULD have. That hubris has brought both games down, sadly, with Bioware being subjected to the same sorts of tone deaf “expansions” that were supposed to appeal to the latter. So many of the same patterns, both Sony and Bioware both being successful studios prior to getting involved with Lucas, only to become shells (or even go completely out of business in Sony’s case) after. We don’t have a lot of visibility to just how much of a hand Lucas exerts here, but it is apparent their involvement is still a component of decision making. Anyway, the game, sadly, is in a pitiful shape, riddled with bugs that should never have made a live product. Maybe after this week’s patch, it will at least be playable, and the dev’s intentions may be more clear. I’m not sticking around for the ~year it’s going to take to fix this stuff into something resembling fun again. I’ve already been through multiple cycles of that, first with SWG, and now with SWTOR. I do hope that EA figures out how to prop this property up that long, and this team survives Lucas Arts. The folks over at Sony, weren’t as lucky. See y’all in a year-ish, hopefully… Edit: While thinking about the bait and switch that was “Trials of Obi-Wan”, in SWG, they gave us all refunds of the $ we spent on the expansion. I guess the cartel coins are supposed to be some sort of “mea culpa”. Up to the last minute, Sony was trying to get Lucas to avoid the NGE fiasco, as ToOW was going to be more like the typical SWG expansion prior. I really wish we’d have gotten a chance to play the version Sony had intended. Funny (or sad) how many parallels between the two games can be drawn. If only Lucas could stop itself from expecting WoW numbers from SciFi. If only both of these teams had a free hand in these games. Bioware made KOTOR, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age while Sony had the Everquest franchise and Planetside, among others. It’s quite clear these teams had talent. History just repeats. If some other company does decide to take on a Star Wars themed MMO in the future, I’d make sure that Lucas is kept far, far away from the controls and decision making.

The title says it all. The location of the profession icon, and it’s size (which is considerably larger now) should be moved back. In its current spot, above rather than to the side, is pretty much all you see until you’re within ~10m of the player target. I cannot make out anyone’s flair anymore, nor their names or titles, because this profession icon takes away all focus. Also, why did the game font change? Hopefully, moving that icon back in proportion and position is a sooner, versus later patch? Maybe give folks a toggle for new versus old location of profession flair, and game font?

All the old interface needed, was a new tab that offered ‘loadouts’ instead of the outfit designer. They could have gone wild, and added a third tab for character appearance too. They could have literally copy/pasted the project code, form layout, and connected the database to the new locations, had it done in a week. You have to wonder, who decided it was a priority to move the buttons for the inventory, disassembly tool, etc from the left side of the inventory window to a much less obvious space above the inventory blocks, in the same inventory window. They created a job number, and assigned dev hours, to move buttons from the upper left, to the left top. Uhh… Like, who ever sat around and said “gee those buttons off to the left, really must be moved, immediately’? I just … don’t get their priorities, why they chose to ignore their own source material (KOTOR, KOTOR II, and SWTOR itself) in favor of (poorly) implementing features that other games that are not remotely related, have. Whomever asked for login awards? A ‘galactic season’? Again, why, and who was this for? That stuff didn’t move the story forward, nor did it help ‘reduce complexity’, which always seems to be the fallback answer for pruning stuff that makes SWTOR worth playing, that makes it unique. I just … don’t get it.

Expect Summertime, probably July or August, and y’all shouldn’t be disappointed. Having said that, 7.1 is going to need to be more like 7.5, and everyone who is still playing at that time absolutely loving it, or this game simply won’t gave enough of a following to continue. We tried to say as much, on the PTS back in December. Anyone can read it, how combat choices were actually not choices, how combat felt slower how the interface was ugly, but all that made it live anyway. Oh well.

A lot of the folks that this change may have appealed to, have already left. If it wasn’t correct on launch day, and those folks have finished the story, they’ll never even know of this. Too little, too late. The amount of feedback, NOW, would have been useful back a few weeks ago. What would have been really useful though, would have been not to release a broken, incomplete patch. I’m gone in another ~10 days, because I’ve already been through a few of these fiascos. I’m not paying for another extended flailing about period, and watching the game population halve itself, again. There’s -so much- stuff on the PTS forums, that everyone can read that players warned of the impending calamity. The devs ignored it. Just … not … gonna … do it … again. I can’t.

I don’t give a damn about galactic seasons, nor login rewards. While galactic seasons was over, I entirely forgot about the login thing, until the email dump of rewards I didn’t care about. They keep focusing on stuff other games have, rather than looking at the game they do write for, and making it better. I play SWTOR, because it’s SWTOR, not because it has a poor mockery of a feature that some other, more popular mmo has. That’s really the crux of it though. We keep getting features of other games, grafted into our game, without a thought of how those features complicate (or even ruin) OUR gameplay. If I wanted to get a login reward, I’d login to Guild Wars, that’s got a proper system. I’m assuming most of these (broken) features are stolen from Final Fantasy, or WoW, both of which probably have far superior versions of these systems that don’t feel grafted, shoehorned, or even axed in. To upend ‘play your way’ and make conquest grind-y again, I can only guess one of these other games did that, too. SWTOR is about story, has always been. The player classes, the choices we make, should have an effect on our characters. Maybe if y’all devs need reference material, fire up KOTOR, and KOTOR II then let your imaginations fill in what a persistent version of that, replete with players filling in for merchants, side quest sources (like player bounties, for instance), love interests, etc. That, is what we want. Stop looking at other MMO’s that have -nothing- to do with ours, and trying to break this game, to implement those games. So frustrating.

Keith, You were expecting to accomplish, what with this message? It feels like you’re blaming -us- for not seeing -your- vision. Have you done a thing at all to share that glorious vision? Not even this message bothers to share it, either. This, feels like Star Wars once again blaming the fans, for the issues of the franchise. Uhh, no. Y’all did this. Y’all -knew- what you were releasing. We -gave- you feedback. We -told- you the changes weren’t wanted. We -said- no one was asking for these changes. You zoom in on the single feature that possibly might have been mentioned in passing, that may have been sort of nice, not necessary, but nice, item loadouts as if it’s justification for ALL of the things you taken away, wrecked, and dismembered? Really? What you wrote, is PR doublespeak, offers no substance, no vision, and blames your players for not liking nor sharing your vision. Sad. Really, utterly disappointing. I look forward to trashing y’all on Twitch, every stream, and warning everyone away from this game. I’ll use my voice, no matter how small, to ensure no one wastes their time here. That’s my dev letter. Enjoy. PS Y’all want us to help YOU fix YOUR game, now, and we’re supposed to be excited by the opportunity? We already did that. You ignored us. My name is not Charlie Brown, sorry, not sorry.

Wow, we made it to the “we’re listening to your feedback” phase in record time. It usually takes a month from not-well-received publish to this message. It must be, bad. That’s good for the players though. Maybe someone at EA will finally take Bioware out back. I do have to admit, 6 was actually reasonably well received. We have definitely been through some stinkers though. This 7 one, was just so unnecessary. You have to wonder why they did this to themselves. All 6 needed, was a method to buy mods, enhancements, etc directly. Then, add in some new amps, armor sets to keep it fresh, move the story along, and we’d have been perfectly happy. I just don’t get it.

Why would two well known streamers participate in a scam? Further, even if it were a scam, 100 million these days is pocket change. Do you have a point, other than interrupting? Prum, good luck with the program! Its nice to see you organizing events once again. I hope its a success and it helps to get players interested in PvP. No better incentive than a pile of credits!

That's probably true, although they've still got moddable gear even in this system, albeit just one set of it. I've a feeling the rest of us will be getting moddable gear a lot sooner than the devs are currently hinting at as that single change will probably bring most of the complaints. Having five sets of green gear to mix and match from, is not remotely the same amount of customization available now. I really don't see that decision being popular, particularly with the currencies being incompatible too. What a mess.

I agree, there's far more players that have NO IDEA what's about to happen, than do know. Of those that do know, they probably didn't play on test center. Its going to be ugly, how many folks show up here on the forum after launch. Regarding the port, they'd need to move the game to a 64-bit application. I haven't seen even a peep regarding such a move.

I don't feel like they ever implemented renown. They had those leftover crates, with a single loot item, all the extra animation to get something that was rarely, if ever useful. How it was, was not really helping anything. Rather than putting vehicles, chance cubes, fluff armor pieces back in, they just trashed the whole thing in 7. To me, that's just typical. Something that required minor adjustments, gets tossed, or replaced. Nothing in their dev schedule is ever incremental. I always thought they'd revisit crafting too, but nope. They priced green, blue, and purple level 11 ingredients the same 200 jawa junk. No matter that 200 purple were significantly harder to get, its all the same to them. I felt it would have made far more sense to make the green stuff level 11 crafting, the blue level 12, and the purple level 13, then fill in the few spaces that were a bit light on items. Make the ingredients cost something like 200 for 11, 80 for 12, and 40 for 13, then crafting would have basically been fixed. I've a feeling when they finally get around to addressing it though, they'll toss it and start over (like always). Its been frustrating to watch them get so close to 'good' so many times, then just ignore or replace those aspects. I've always wondered why they bother with so many vehicle skins when they all behave exactly alike. Imagine if they'd made creatures better at scaling heights, even enabling access to currently walled areas. Or if they made vehicles, particularly light ones, faster than creatures. There'd be a REASON to have various mounts then. It just goes on and on, how many opportunities they've had to improve the MMO part, the immersion, and just totally miss it. Very frustrating to watch.

They'd need a 64-bit version of the application to move to consoles. So far, there's no sign at all of said 64 bit app, so that speculation is extremely doubtful. All of the tools used on this game, the Direct X version, is a decade old. Also, anything they gained by 'streamlining abilities' is lost to a convoluted gearing system. 7.x, will be far more complex to the average player than 6.x ever was. Derp.

You’ll get ~50 credits each from selling them to your Jawa vendor(s). That and a title for the sets you completed. Hrm.

As the date grows closer for 7, I’ve been reviewing not only the sticky thread, but commentary here, on the theorycrafter channel, the various guilds I’m in, getting in arguments, and I’m just not seeing why 7, and in particular it’s gearing system was necessary? What are we gaining from throwing away moddable gear, for unmoddable, cookie cutter gear? Not only the gear though, but the simplification of skill paths/trees/whatever nomenclature we’re slapping on? How does limiting choices in abilities, making a player re-earn skills they’ve already got, make the game better? Why do we need new levels? Wouldn’t the rebalance of the NPC’s have accomplished the same goal, with or without new levels? I’m just mystified at the process as to who thought 7.0 was going to be a good idea. The more I try to understand the decisions, the less sense they are making. Players -have- been asking for a direct purchase method, for instance, to get the gear they want. The RNG aspect of getting an R2 mod, as an example, was maddening. Rather than address that specific request though, we got an entirely new gearing method instead? Oh yeah, there’s RNG involved in that system, too. Umm. The new gear, with its lack of modification (except the augment slot) is most certainly going to go over like a lead brick. I was looking at my Onderonian gear I’ve collected over the months, and trying to imagine it green colored, then being forced to use it. How long it took to dial in the ~5 chars I play regularly, and get them the gold set bonus gear they needed. The specific mods, time and again, that didn’t drop, being lost. I imagined selling that amazing gear to my Jawa vendor, getting 500 credits for the effort. Then, I imagined grinding for green Onderonian, doing pve stuff I would really rather not to try and keep up the weekly grind pace (let’s face it, pvp is never able to keep up with pve regarding gear). Then, I imagined re-purchasing the augment kits for this new, green gear. I logged off right after. I just don’t get it.