I think I'm lost here

I mean... I see great news, and I read some negative comments that doesn't really fit the subject, why is that?

i love this game.....that is alll

agree <3

To kind of help the Community Team along with regards to usage of the word 'soon'.

I offer you more choices via Sapience from the LOTRO forums.

Soon

Many more options to use there.

Also, to people in here who are asking for specifics: You will never get them. I have been in LOTRO since open beta. You think you see 'soon' a lot here? HAHAHAHA

If BW was to offer even the hint of a specific and something happened to delay the feature, they would never hear the end of it. I know it gets frustrating. But you have to accept this is the way things are done. Who knows, maybe they can egg an actual dev to get post happy.

Oh yeah: it would be cool to know if classes have specific devs. How is that handled? I would like to know what kind of structure there is. Not to hold it against anyone. It's more of a curiosity thing.

Though I'm glad to see posts on the dev tracker again, I can't help but notice that we almost never get actual dev posts anymore. Georg for example used to be one of the most vocal devs, but hasn't been heard from at all since April. Was he silenced? Was he a part of the layoffs? Why do we only get posts from the community team?

Most of us enjoy talking to the community rep on the forums.On other game forums they will talk to

the developers and come back to the players on subjects the players wanna know about.Same thing here

will work just fine.

agree <3

me :sy_lightsaber:

Regarding the patch notes: we do know they are of great interest to our players, but we typically release them alongside updates on the PTS and live servers. Previously, weekly updates were available on PTS (so players on live servers would get the notes "early"), but we are now using PTS only for larger game updates.

Is there a reason for this change?

If PTS is used for all patches I appreciate there is a small cost in rolling out the patch to an additional server before live and a delay while waiting for PTS reports but we've seen a large number of the 1.2.x patches (including the latest) where either a significant bug was introduced or a patch note clearly doesn't work on a full scale server. Using PTS would not guarantee it not happening again but it would reduce the risk of it happening.

Also using PTS regularly gives a greater chance of building a community on test which will be more effective for testing when the major patches come along as well as getting more efficient testing for smaller patches. There is a significant free resource available from players who are willing to spend their playtime on test and report bugs they find there, but currently the resource isn't being used.

This is very great! Thankyou for introducing yourselves and making yourself part of the community more. I am optimistic about everything you have to offer and already you look better than the last set of people who barely told us anything or held anything together. Just the fact that you are on the forums responding to people's posts shows you are human

If I could I would send you all fruit baskets with lightsabers and scented candles that smell like cinammon

If you can answer, how close do you work with the development of the game? Are you in the same offices, down the hall, a few floors apart or working at a secret location? Do you attend production meetings? If so, how often do they occur (generally)? What does it take for you to bring a 'hot topic' to the developers (not like a server crash, more like the sound issue since 1.2)? What does a 'typical' day go like for you?

^ This!

If I could I would send you all fruit baskets with lightsabers and scented candles that smell like cinammon

What I would do to see the UPS guy's face...

wow i am shocked the community team as actually be answering and talking to peeps on this thread

more that anyone have done in .. hmm.... forever!

hope this be the begin of a new dawn for BW team!

I was excited to see the original update post today, but I feel so uplifted seeing the DevTracker full of new posts!

 

I think a lot of people are disheartened without some connection to the game-makers; if we don't hear any news, we have no idea what's going on. "Maybe everything is going according to plan, or maybe everyone on the team got fired ( ) including the person who updates the website and we'll never know!" Being able to talk to you guys about problems or things we enjoy about the game is really nice for the community, and I hope we hear from you often!

i agree with omyspy 100% here. it is very disheartening to log onto swtor site and not see any dev's talking and seeing a week come around and them skipping a week of updates with no explanation, and now for the past few weeks seeing my server die out to 22 people at peek hrs of the day. i feel like we got hit by a npc (zombie) apocalypse, and im the guy who just woke up from a coma.

but now coming home from work and seeing the dev tracker filling up to unprecedented post, and not just by one dev but several is very encouraging, and giving us faith that there is hope for tomorrow.

grats to all the community team members, your off to a great start!

Hello everyone,

 

Please discuss the Community Team General Update Blog in this thread.

A great step forward in the right direction. You told us something about the people involved with the game and what they played (I didn't even know they played this game before...). I hope a bond can be formed between the Team and the Community.

Edit: I have also noticed that your posts have more personality to them as of today when I viewed the Dev Tracker. I like this a lot and approve, personality is what makes us human afterall.

Wow.(Not referenced to). Great community threads. I love the changes. Most importantly as a very old woman playing this game I think all of you have done an outstanding job and my Saber/Blaster rifle will remain sheathed. Till I meet you in pvp that is.

Keep up the good work.

Many thanks.

You're not being ignored! This is actually a good thought. One idea that we have brewing is to gather all of the week's news articles in a single sticky and post them in General Discussion. Of course, we also have the Q&A Archive that collects all of the questions and answers from our weekly Q&A blog here.

 

Actually let me see who has the bandwidth to get started on this project from our team...

 

...also rainbow jebus?

I'd just like to say... the fact you responded makes me so happy.

The company you work for gave me baldurs gate, without which... my younger years might have been fatal. lol.

Seriously.

Thank you.

It means more then my pixelated words can express.

We definitely want to participate with you all and keep you as updated as possible. As a really avid gamer myself, I know what it's like to have to wait for information and to be frustrated when there isn't anything new, but unfortunately sometimes we're just not able to give more details until everything is 100% ready. We do know that reminding people about the information we HAVE given is important, so do be on the lookout for posts from us that direct people to the information we've already posted, as well as other posts and blogs! Thanks for your feedback

Well, I for one appreciate the effort to connect with us better. There's always going to be the contrarian crowd who only want to be smarmy and such, but they are the vocal minority. We appreciate what you are trying to do and there are still plenty of us who love the game and are looking forward to it getting better as soon as possible.

I can understand a lot of the frustration, especially with server populations being the way they are. Hopefully once we start to make it where we can all play together easier, the forums will be a lot less gloom and doom.

I can already see in this thread that communication is happening. I'm definitely glad to see it. It's a start in the right direction.

Now here's my question. How forthcoming are you allowed to be with the community? Are you able to acknowledge problems and/or mistakes or are you forced to not denounce the company in any way? I'm trying to word this carefully, because if i don't, it kinda answers itself if you don't answer at all..hehe. I guess what I'm asking is are you here to represent Bioware or to represent us?

I complain alot on these forums. So i feel it is due to give you credit for this thread aswell as the community blog. Its nice to finally have someone/somones that speak and have an open dialogue with the playerbase. I also thin it will make the forum postings much more precise, friendly and better all around (even myself gets carried away and angry alot) since you will respond to questions if asked properly. You obviously have work to do and cannot answer all of them and im sure there are alot of repeats, answered, unanswerable or even ones that marketing wants to bethe first to debut, etc. I feel that if one category is visited and spoken with the players about every day or so is going to make the community much more strong and dedicated to the game. Especially now when each major area of the game has its own little team for i hope we can see those teams in the foums specific to what they do more often.

Again thanks for the open door policy today and hopefully for the game entire future.

Great... but we dont care who you are and what your roles in bioware are.

 

If you have no information regarding the future of this game, the patch notes, a short list of "things that are going live within next 30 days" or "things that will be going live within next 60 days", the entire introduction is exactly as this post - worthless.

Wow thats the most rude welcoming message ever.

Dam Im seeing new lows on the internetzz everyday

Nice to meet you all

Could you please pass on my thanks for one of my questions being answered in the last Q&A?

Although the answer wasn't ideally what I was hoping for (as per the legacy suggestion post link in my signature), I was really pleased as punch (or some other soft drink) to have a question of mine answered thoroughly.

Kind regards

llesna

THIS! This is what I want to see: a connection between the people playing and the devs. We need to tell you what we want so that this game grows! We need more players. I want a 13 million player base in SWTOR. If you guys keep this level of communication up then that's what's going to be the first step in getting there Thanks guys!

p.s. I want manaan and a playable selkath race

Regarding the patch notes: we do know they are of great interest to our players, but we typically release them alongside updates on the PTS and live servers. Previously, weekly updates were available on PTS (so players on live servers would get the notes "early"), but we are now using PTS only for larger game updates. We plan to continue releasing notes alongside updates (the 1.3 notes will be available when 1.3 is available on PTS), but won't likely release notes earlier than that - they change frequently up until release, and releasing them early would make them prone to inaccuracies. We also work to provide blogs alongside changes to features to help explain, from the developer's point of view, why those changes were made, and we'll continue doing that as well!

The fact that supposed "fixes" often make it to the live server when in fact things are not fixed at all suggests you all might be better served putting even "minor" patches on the PTS. You all would look a lot more competent if patches were tested on a test server where players can point out the things you didn't actually fix ahead of the patch going live, instead of the numerous times where you all have to take it on the chin and once again admit you missed something in testing or a "fix" didn't actually fix what it was supposed to or the patch broke something else along the way.

I hate to say it, but BioWare's "Quality Assurance" for SWTOR has become a running joke in our guild. There are players that will test your game for free - in fact they'll pay you to do it with their subscription - instead we all feel like testers every single time a new patch hits the live servers.