I am going to have to disagree with you. I know people who actually enjoy KoTFE and KoTET so that is a matter of opinion. Now let's not get into how long who has been around the longest as that solves nothing considering both of us have probably been here since before launch.

I'll have to chim in here. I'll preface this by saying that I don't want this to escalate into a "I'm here since XY". I've been around since pre-launch, sometimes silently, sometimes registered. I've been playing since early access and probably have 10,000+ hours logged between my 20 characters. We would never reach a satisfying ground by arguing around that in circles.

What I will point out, however, is that your reason for disagreeing is weak. I'm not saying that you have a "wrong" opinion, but I am going to question your argument for holding that opinion.

I'm mostly an English major, so argumentation and writing is key to my education and my future vocational activities. My minors are in economics and American history, which means the former requires me to work with statistics beyond just what I, subjectively, or a few others want to think. And therein lies the problem.

You state that you have to disagree because "some people like the KotFE and KotET story" and that "a taste for whether a story is satisfactory or not is subjective." I agree, but these things do not factor in how much the story was disliked by people to begin with. I can see this argument as reasonable when we're talking about games that have a "critical" reception. Mass Effect: Andromeda is a good example. It's a "love it or hate it" game, so to speak. There are people who love it, people who hate it, people who think it was alright, people who think it was weak but not terrible. The entire spectrum is pretty much there, and it's often spoken about and mentioned on the Mass Effect subreddit.

For KotFE and KotET, it's not that simple. While there were people who genuinely liked the KotET story, and I know a few who do, the criticism and unappealing attitude far outweighs the positive and acclaimed reactions for it. I'm on The Progenitor - EU, which means I probably have quite a few friends who like playing story due to the roleplaying nature of the environment. There are more people wherever I am online (Fleet, my guilds, my friends) that dislike KotET than there are people who genuinely enjoy it. The reception of that story is "luke-warm" to be precise. It's something you do once, but it doesn't stick. Let me ask you a genuine question here: When was the last time you heard someone say the sentence: "I can't wait to replay KotET again!"? Everyone within my guilds is constantly playing alts for the class stories. Many of my friends will occassionally go "I think I should replay the XY class story again." Nobody during the past six months has said the same about KotET. I've never heard it. That doesn't mean it won't exist. Some might do it.

A wall of text for a minor point: Arguing that the game or the story isn't missmanaged because some people like it is a terrible argument. I'll be ripped to shreds for this, but to heck with it, I'm German. I can do it: There are probably some people who loved and genuinely liked the Third Reich. At no point, however, was the Third Reich a good idea. Zilch. Never.

This is a hyperbolic example to illustrate the point: When looking at feedback like the kind that KotET and RNG gearing received, the issue is quite apparent. If for every single person who liked it, nine people dislike it or are completely indifferent to a new story in a story-driven Star Wars game, something is off. Of course, we might all be wrong. People might we running KotET in droves behind the scenes, doing it all day. I don't know. But the overwhelming majority of people who voice their concerns simply don't like it.

And don't come with that age old "but people who like it won't write it! They'll play the game!" Lots of people who dislike the changes and direction don't write it too. They can't be a*sed to do it for whatever reason. And that's fine, I totally get it! But using the silent majority as a shield isn't always helpful or warranted.

As far as the community no one can claim they know the community 100%.

No, we can't. Nobody can. But when you look at Twitter, reddit, this forum, the ingame general and PvP chats and all other available media, and the genuine image that's painted is that people hate or dislike something, then it's not really all that favourable for the receiving end of that criticism to play the "but there are tons of people who are silent and probably like the changes!" card.

If so many people liked the changes ever since 4.0, we wouldn't be looking at more empty servers and longer queue times. There were tons of posts on every medium that disregarded the KotET story, and there were even more posts genuinely telling why RNG gearing is a bad idea.

Well considering my guild is still here how about them for starters and of course to you they don't count.

Yes, they count. As much as the next player. But the fact remains that you can't just put ten players up as a defense and say: "They count for me! The rest is irrelevant! They are still around! They liked it!" In the grand scheme of things, your guild is probably very unimportant. If thirty big guilds leave, and your guild stays, is the game well? Or has it been missmanaged? Because if the total amount of guilds and active servers/players decreases, but only a few players stay, then the game has been missmanaged. You might still enjoy it. And you're well within your right to argue that your guild matters most to you. It does to everyone. But they're not a good, objective gauge of whether the game is missmanaged.

I don't know who the Influencers are. I genuinely don't. I've been around for years, and this is the first time I'm hearing about this. But if these Influencers saw the RNG box changes and thought they were a good idea, something might be off. I'm not insulting them. I am genuinely just saying: If you saw these changes and thought people would like them, you made a big mistake. It happens. However, it was apparent people wouldn't. There were so many good analogies, explanations, posts and reasosn this was a bad idea, all posted on these media I mentioned earlier, yet it went through. If that was green-lit by the Influencers as a "good idea", then gods beware. It was a bad idea. It was horrible missmanaged. It's human. It happens and it's completely alright. It doesn't invalidate the countless changes Bioware made to the system either. They are greatly appreciated and were necessary. But as credit is due where credit is due, so is criticism: The RNG gearing was a bad idea par excellence. It was missmanaged.

That's my opinion though. I don't claim to hold the entire and undisprovable truth. However, this is all we can do on this forum. Argue based on our opinion.

I like that KOTOR TSL and SWOTOR are thousands of years before 'canon' thus far! Today they can't figure out how the Ancient Egyptians stood Obelisks with no support. There were thousands in Egypt 4000 yrs ago.

Anyway where exactly are we supposed to give feedback ?

Well, i have mentioned it enough times elsewhere about Galactic Command, i was wondering if it would be removed from the game or have the paywall removed from it's path so pref's and f2p'ers can join in on it.

i have long awaited an answer from someone in bioware to answer what will happen with this highly destructive system that was brought in the end of last year.

but as far as feedback is concerned, short term feedback i have seen in the past, a prelude to content launching, but after this, communication grinds to a halt for months before it starts up once more, again a prelude to content coming. what would be nice is to be a lot moe communicative between content releases so the players don't feel as if the game is on its way out of its own party.

Who are these "people" you are speaking for, certainly not me.

I like the story line and if they progress it a lot more down the 3rd force aspect idea then I will like it even more.

One of those "people" already responded to you.

Another made a thread here that was on page 1 all last week and is still getting enough attention to currently be on page 2, filled with people who agree.

And if you were around when I mentioned the mass exodus, you would have seen the myriad of posts leaving over story direction in the forums and reddit too.

So before you get snarky, realize you already are barking up the wrong tree, as the evidence of discontent with the story is out there and VERY easy to find.

That being said, consider this - you like the story. Not going to get mad at you for that, different strokes and all that.

But if you are that easy to please, what would it hurt if they changed or removed the story and replaced it with something that actually meshes better with the story pre-KOTFE? Are you going to be upset? Would you quit over it? Somehow I don't think you would. And that's not necessarily a knock on you - just that you seem to be very easy to please with regards to story, and apparently tone and consistency don't matter to you.

Now what if they somehow changed the story to make it fit better, but kept the Zakuul setting, and it brought back a lot of people who left over the story? Would you be mad? Or happy that the game is getting some players back?

Personally, I think they can "salvage" Zakuul and the assets invested by changing the story entirely.

Imagine if instead of the current story, the new KOTFE opens with the Republic and the Sith Empire escalating a Superweapons arms race that is devastating worlds (leaving the galaxy much in the same shape as it was for the Zakuul invasion, except that isn't happening now).

During a Superweapon skirmish, your character's ship gets damaged, and you "sacrifice" yourself to save your companions. It appears you died to your allies. However, post battle, after the ships have left, a mysterious merchant ship finds you among the wreckage, barely alive, and brings you on board.

You awake later from statis after an unknown amount of time in the presence of "Koth"- the merchant who rescued you. From him, you find out that you are on a planet called Zakuul in the Unknown regions, his home.

From there, you find out Zakuul is ruled by a royal family of Valkorion, Senya, Arcann, and Vaylin. Zakuul is on the brink of civil war due to the heavy hands of Valkorion (who now is his own character, and NOT the sith emperor, vitiate) Arcann, and Vaylin. However, Senya is looked at by the people as having a good heart, and often tempers the anger of the others. But that could lead to her exile should the other royal family members tire of her - maybe even has a connection to Koth...

As the story progresses, your main goal is to find a way to contact either the Republic or Sith (whatever side you are on), all while getting caught up in this civil war. Oh yeah, that merchant, Koth? He ends up being the leader of the civil war on the side of the people, and snuck back to Zakuul after already being exiled to a different part of the galaxy, which is where he found you (he was looking for scraps after the battle to use to arm his people).

Along the way, when you finally get an SOS out (but don't hear back), you start coming across companions coming to Zakuul who got your message, who fill you in on the state of the galaxy - both Sith Empire and Republic are a wreck after superweapon-palooza and are in no shape to pick you up. Also the Emperor has been silent since Ziost. So then, your journey becomes trying to settle the civil war on Zakuul, picking a side (why not? Let the player side with the Royal family if they want and turn on Koth and Senya), and using either side to try to find a way back home.

See? It can be done. Even reusing most of the assets from KOTFE and also giving a VALID reason why your player is stuck around zakuul without compromising the story that came before it.

You want to tell me you'd be unhappy if they changed the story to that?

Look at the Server Merge discussion thread Currently at over 1000 posts and not a dickie-bird from the community manager who kicked it off.

There's threads in the PvP section and the GSF and the crewskills sections that were started by the developers, and have never been re-visited even after years have gone by.

That answer your Question, OP?

Wellll...I was just going to sit back and read all the discourse, but both Eric and Charles committed me to posting tonight about feedback, so with it getting late here in Texas, I figured OK, stop reading and start typing.

 

Since Eric already explained where we get feedback and essentially how we use it, let me provide some perspective about what I look for and what's important to me.

 

• Specific ideas about gameplay improvements

• Ideas on how we can enhance existing game features

• Conversations about Gearing, Class Balance

• Details about likes and dislikes about an area or type of content

• How we can improve communication and provide better insight

• Kudos for the team when we do something right

• Constructive criticism when we don't do things right. Note I tend to read everything, while disregarding rants or dumping on the dev team as I don't find it helpful

• Virtually all of the comments in our discussion threads

 

You get the idea...truth be told, I don't have time to read everything, but I also get messages from a variety of people using social media, email, LinkedIn, forums, and PMs. With the exception of PMs I try to to personally respond back to every one of them in a timely matter (sometimes right away). PMs - honestly, I have so many I can't possibly answer them. What I've decided to do with those is simply read and pass them along to someone on my team to review and decide how to handle. You won't get direct response, but the details will be communicated to the team, and hopefully, you'll notice something you've suggested has been implemented.

 

I like how Xo-Lara put it about minor changes can get added in quickly, but major changes need to be worked into our pipeline. Yep, that's exactly right!

 

From all the messages I have received and reading many posts here on the forums, it's quite apparent the change in communication has been greatly appreciated. Internally, there's also an increased willingness to provide you with better insight about how and why we made a decision and to ask your opinions. Personally, I like seeing this happen and look forward to fostering even more communication.

 

So, what does any of that have to do with "How does our feedback work"? Everything. Specifically, I leverage all the feedback you provide, I personalize it by blending it into how I play the game, then I communicate it to the Dev Team, and I follow up to see how best to respond, determine the priority of the request, add it to the backlog, or adjust the schedule to incorporate the change into the game. But, we all know talk is cheap and until there's action behind our words, skepticism remains. I'm OK with that!

 

--Keith-

Keith,

First of all, the SWTOR community appreciates to no end the increased communication by you and the rest of the team. Your efforts in this has been fantastic, and please keep it up! Thank you!

To address some of your specific bullet points from my perspective:

• Ideas on how we can enhance existing game features

• Make several of the QoL features Legacy as opposed to character specific. Or reduce the cost of them. Specifically the CXP, tier 4 and 5 speeder mounts, and cargo/legacy holds.
  

• Keep the new Operations coming!!

• Conversations about Gearing, Class Balance

• I would like to see the final Class Balance list of changes for 5.3 before offering an opinion.

• Regarding gearing, please set each NiM Operation boss to drop a specific gear token. (248)
  

• Details about likes and dislikes about an area or type of content

• The only comment I can make on this topic is the terrible gameplay that occurs with KOTFE and KOTET. Skytrooper after Skytrooper. Scripted mobs. The "mash one button" mobs, the ad after ad after ad scenarios on KOTET. Generally stating, the waste of my time in those chapters sort of thing.
  

• How we can improve communication and provide better insight

• Just keep up what you're doing!!! It's a breath of fresh air! Keep it up!
  

• Kudos for the team when we do something right

• Again, communications and being engaged with us.
  

• You fixed the loot drops for HM OPs!! Thank you! Now fix NiM!

To Musco's comment about wanting the "why?". Well what it is now is sort of ridiculous (specifically regarding my comments).

Hey folks,

 

 

 

Let’s start by talking about my role as Community Manager. Understanding and using player feedback is a critical part of my job. I participate in a fair amount of business, design, and leadership meetings and my role is to act as a litmus test for the players. Will players like the changes, not like the changes, where will the challenges be, how do we message it, will it impact all players or only a subset, and more. I help ensure the decision makers (such as Keith and Charles) understand the impact their decisions will have on the playerbase.

 

 

 

-eric

I like that you are saying your listening to your player base but I do have to ask the question that if you are listening what happened with the Mercenaries and Commando's that had the decrease in their dps when no one was really complaining about that but it appears to be that they were complaining mainly about the Defensive cooldowns that the Mercenaries and Commandos had.? just a quick question as how one complaint ended up with a completely different result to what the people were not happy about.

Maybe not directly, but so it's clear:

 

"wow, look, the overwhelming feedback says we are going in the wrong direction, should we turn around or just ignore it?".

 

That's not easy to answer, as it really depends on the actual topic and the timing of it. Perhaps an example would help illustrate - Operation Boss fight - let's say it was a couple months from release and we placed it on PTS and the feedback said it wasn't fun, fight was too easy (or too hard), they didn't like the mechanics, or something similar. We absolutely review the feedback, reach out to the players, openly discuss what's up, what is causing them pain, and we make adjustments. Anyone who has participated in Tyth or the Aivela and Esne fights can probably back me up, but they are under NDA!

 

Where along the journey is the point of no return. Is it before the bus starts moving, before the bus approaches the corner, before the cliff, as you drive go off the cliff or when you crash?

Timing is everything, but sometimes it will depend on implementation and whether we can truly do an about face or simply have to go forward and plan/prepare for changes along the way. Galactic Command is a perfect example. It was so integral to everything with Knights of the Eternal Throne (KOTET), that we were not in a position to make the changes everyone requested. We had to go forward or delay KOTET an unknown number of months. That wasn't possible, and as a result, we have made GC changes with every patch since that time.

 

Even though it's not perfect, it is no longer the primary means of gearing up, but the changes we implemented allow every level 70 character to obtain BiS gear without doing Operations. I disagree with the notion we should rip it out now, but I do agree we can still improve upon it and will continue to do so.

 

Do you ever swerve, turn or put the brakes on?

That happens all the time, but you may never notice. I can tell you this though, and I know it's not fair because you don't know what was planned, but the end of the year changes are very different today than they were just a few weeks ago. We did that based on various internal discussions, feedback from sources Musco listed, determining what was a priority, and the impact to schedule based on what we could/wanted to deliver.

 

Does that help?

 

---Keith

So you read and replied to the post directly under mine and once again ignore me completely.

Let me jog your memory since it seems so short.

Keith

I have to take exception to this part.

I was told by your Customer Service when I called to contact one of you via the forums.

No one responded.

 

You can't have your CS use this as a legitimate answer if there is no response at your end.

And too add to this

I have no idea if you passed along my message or not but I can tell you it was NOT dealt with, I wasn't expecting the earth, just an answer, I had already resigned myself to getting the wrong one.

Now I care more about the fact I could NOT follow CS advice because you or yours would not engage than I did about the original issue, that is not to say I do not care about it because I do, the snub has annoyed me far more however.

Maybe not directly, but so it's clear:

 

"wow, look, the overwhelming feedback says we are going in the wrong direction, should we turn around or just ignore it?".

 

That's not easy to answer, as it really depends on the actual topic and the timing of it. Perhaps an example would help illustrate - Operation Boss fight - let's say it was a couple months from release and we placed it on PTS and the feedback said it wasn't fun, fight was too easy (or too hard), they didn't like the mechanics, or something similar. We absolutely review the feedback, reach out to the players, openly discuss what's up, what is causing them pain, and we make adjustments. Anyone who has participated in Tyth or the Aivela and Esne fights can probably back me up, but they are under NDA!

 

Where along the journey is the point of no return. Is it before the bus starts moving, before the bus approaches the corner, before the cliff, as you drive go off the cliff or when you crash?

Timing is everything, but sometimes it will depend on implementation and whether we can truly do an about face or simply have to go forward and plan/prepare for changes along the way. Galactic Command is a perfect example. It was so integral to everything with Knights of the Eternal Throne (KOTET), that we were not in a position to make the changes everyone requested. We had to go forward or delay KOTET an unknown number of months. That wasn't possible, and as a result, we have made GC changes with every patch since that time.

 

Even though it's not perfect, it is no longer the primary means of gearing up, but the changes we implemented allow every level 70 character to obtain BiS gear without doing Operations. I disagree with the notion we should rip it out now, but I do agree we can still improve upon it and will continue to do so.

 

Do you ever swerve, turn or put the brakes on?

That happens all the time, but you may never notice. I can tell you this though, and I know it's not fair because you don't know what was planned, but the end of the year changes are very different today than they were just a few weeks ago. We did that based on various internal discussions, feedback from sources Musco listed, determining what was a priority, and the impact to schedule based on what we could/wanted to deliver.

 

Does that help?

 

---Keith

Yes, Keith, it does and I really appreciate the direct answers 😊

One of those "people" already responded to you.

 

Another made a thread here that was on page 1 all last week and is still getting enough attention to currently be on page 2, filled with people who agree.

I saw the thread, I read the title, the rest wasn't worth my time.

And if you were around when I mentioned the mass exodus, you would have seen the myriad of posts leaving over story direction in the forums and reddit too.

I was,

I did.

I don't care what someone else thought or what is posted here within this minuscule fragment of the player base who post

So before you get snarky, realize you already are barking up the wrong tree, as the evidence of discontent with the story is out there and VERY easy to find.

And I have seen posts with people that like it as I do also.

That being said, consider this - you like the story. Not going to get mad at you for that, different strokes and all that.

 

But if you are that easy to please, what would it hurt if they changed or removed the story and replaced it with something that actually meshes better with the story pre-KOTFE? Are you going to be upset? Would you quit over it? Somehow I don't think you would. And that's not necessarily a knock on you - just that you seem to be very easy to please with regards to story, and apparently tone and consistency don't matter to you.

This I take great offence too, you don't know me and I guarantee you I am NOT easy to please.

I like the stories, could they be better yes of course, I envision a great path for them but I would be surprised if I saw it

Now what if they somehow changed the story to make it fit better, but kept the Zakuul setting, and it brought back a lot of people who left over the story? Would you be mad? Or happy that the game is getting some players back?

I don't care about players, I am a solo'er it makes no difference to me how many are playing or what they are doing.

Personally, I think they can "salvage" Zakuul and the assets invested by changing the story entirely.

 

Imagine if instead of the current story, the new KOTFE opens with the Republic and the Sith Empire escalating a Superweapons arms race that is devastating worlds (leaving the galaxy much in the same shape as it was for the Zakuul invasion, except that isn't happening now).

 

During a Superweapon skirmish, your character's ship gets damaged, and you "sacrifice" yourself to save your companions. It appears you died to your allies. However, post battle, after the ships have left, a mysterious merchant ship finds you among the wreckage, barely alive, and brings you on board.

 

You awake later from statis after an unknown amount of time in the presence of "Koth"- the merchant who rescued you. From him, you find out that you are on a planet called Zakuul in the Unknown regions, his home.

 

From there, you find out Zakuul is ruled by a royal family of Valkorion, Senya, Arcann, and Vaylin. Zakuul is on the brink of civil war due to the heavy hands of Valkorion (who now is his own character, and NOT the sith emperor, vitiate) Arcann, and Vaylin. However, Senya is looked at by the people as having a good heart, and often tempers the anger of the others. But that could lead to her exile should the other royal family members tire of her - maybe even has a connection to Koth...

 

As the story progresses, your main goal is to find a way to contact either the Republic or Sith (whatever side you are on), all while getting caught up in this civil war. Oh yeah, that merchant, Koth? He ends up being the leader of the civil war on the side of the people, and snuck back to Zakuul after already being exiled to a different part of the galaxy, which is where he found you (he was looking for scraps after the battle to use to arm his people).

 

Along the way, when you finally get an SOS out (but don't hear back), you start coming across companions coming to Zakuul who got your message, who fill you in on the state of the galaxy - both Sith Empire and Republic are a wreck after superweapon-palooza and are in no shape to pick you up. Also the Emperor has been silent since Ziost. So then, your journey becomes trying to settle the civil war on Zakuul, picking a side (why not? Let the player side with the Royal family if they want and turn on Koth and Senya), and using either side to try to find a way back home.

Has potential but I like the one we have better than this easily

See? It can be done. Even reusing most of the assets from KOTFE and also giving a VALID reason why your player is stuck around zakuul without compromising the story that came before it.

 

You want to tell me you'd be unhappy if they changed the story to that?

I could do the same, spout out my own ideas for the story but that is pointless and a waste of time, I don't care what you think about my ideas just as I don't care about yours, while it has potential the writing isn't even good enough to be amateur level.

So yes if I had to play your story I would be rather unhappy about it.

Thanks for the late night reply, Keith. Maybe no donuts tomorrow for not giving you more time to respond.

It's good to know that these things are getting discussed even if we aren't privy to those discussions. Hopefully you guys can get things turned around soon enough for people to keep up their optimism... or gain it back. If I had a thing to suggest that really needs attention, I'd say it's rewards.

If players feel rewarded for the amount of time/money they invest, they will probably be able to take even old content better. Refreshing old events is a definite good move in that direction and hopefully the rewards for other things will be revisited too.

Keep it up. <-- smilies of encouragement

 

-snip-

I'm mostly an English major, so argumentation and writing is key to my education and my future vocational activities. My minors are in economics and American history, which means the former requires me to work with statistics beyond just what I, subjectively, or a few others want to think. And therein lies the problem.

-snip-

A shame you never learned the concept of 'TLDR' during all of that education.

He must of filed that under the rant or dumping on devs section. And promptly disregarded it.

Which I kinda take offense too.

-why-

Let's see. I pay $15 dollars a month to sub. That is $180 dollars year. For the last 3 years I paid $540 for the worst content ever offered in an MMO period. The whole time coming here and voicing my complaints. Which was promptly ignored.

I don't come here to hear the Devs whine. I pay $180 a year so the devs can listen to me whine. Or. This is always an option. You can put out a game worth playing. Or at least worth my $15 a month. Or continue to disregard our rants or dumping on devs.

I'm so tired of hearing you guys complain about hearing us complain. You know when I didn't have time to complain? Rise of the hutt cartel. I wonder why that was?

A shame you never learned the concept of 'TLDR' during all of that education.

Posts like this make me long for an upvote.

Posts like this make me long for an upvote.

Was a good burn

It bothers me you feel I have singled you out and am purposely ignoring you. But, I suspect that will happen if our interaction causes either of us to feel insulted. So, I'll do my best to answer everyone's questions, but please understand I will miss some along the way.

 

Since I don't quite understand what you were objecting to, I'm going to presume you sent me a PM some time ago and that you didn't get a response. As I stated last week, I had no idea about PMs, and after reviewing a few of them, I realized it was going to take me weeks to read and potentially respond to all of them. After discussion with Musco, we decided, that's not possible and the best way to handle was to pass along the information. I have not gone through every PM, yet.

 

I didn't know that about the PM's and I took it on good faith that when CS told me to "PM a Dev on the forums" to escalate my issue that it was a legitimate means of communication.

This was and still is a very big deal to me, I do not have need for assistance often except to report spam mail in game and I felt strongly enough about this to actually call CS from outside the country and pay the charges.

Would you like me to resend that PM or is there some other way we can communicate, although I fear this substantial delay has ruined any chance I might have had for a resolution.

Posts like this make me long for an upvote.

I wrote that before making coffee, and seeing I enjoy reading, I usually don't think about adding a TL;DR option to my posts. More so not when I didn't have coffee yet. I usually don't miss them on other people's long posts either. I get why people like condensed material, but I simply don't. That often makes me forget adding something.

I'll keep it in mind for future use though. My point, however, still stands.

Look at the Server Merge discussion thread Currently at over 1000 posts and not a dickie-bird from the community manager who kicked it off.

 

There's threads in the PvP section and the GSF and the crewskills sections that were started by the developers, and have never been re-visited even after years have gone by.

 

That answer your Question, OP?

I too would like some communication around the population / merge discussion.

But to be fair, when Eric started it he did say they have nothing ready to talk about at this time, but would be following it.

Personally I think it should also be deleted and restarted/restructured into an ideas thread and things players would need to make something like that less traumatic for some players. The way it is at the moment I wouldn't blame them for not reading it.

Eric only started that thread after some smart cookie merged about 3-5 server merge threads into one and created a Frankenstein abomination of a thread that made no sense and had most people in the discussion angry about it.

Also this is a new regime, so far communication is good and improving and becoming more frequent.

I too would like some communication around the population / merge discussion.

But to be fair, when Eric started it he did say they have nothing ready to talk about at this time, but would be following it.

Personally I think it should also be deleted and restarted/restructured into an ideas thread and things players would need to make something like that less traumatic for some players. The way it is at the moment I wouldn't blame them for not reading it.

Eric only started that thread after some smart cookie merged about 3-5 server merge threads into one and created a Frankenstein abomination of a thread that made no sense and had most people in the discussion angry about it.

Also this is a new regime, so far communication is good and improving and becoming more frequent.

The problem may have been in the initial merging of the franken-thread, which I'l agree could have been handed better, but in no way should what has come of it just be deleted, or even restarted, UNTIL the devs are ready to pull out their... 'more favorable' posts and ideas can be singled out and chased down.

Even though it's not perfect, it is no longer the primary means of gearing up, but the changes we implemented allow every level 70 character to obtain BiS gear without doing Operations. I disagree with the notion we should rip it out now, but I do agree we can still improve upon it and will continue to do so.

 

---Keith

"no longer the primary means of gearing up"

- hell, one of my 300's has not seen a non-repeat 248 piece in about a month (give or take).

I'll have to chim in here. I'll preface this by saying that I don't want this to escalate into a "I'm here since XY". I've been around since pre-launch, sometimes silently, sometimes registered. I've been playing since early access and probably have 10,000+ hours logged between my 20 characters. We would never reach a satisfying ground by arguing around that in circles.

 

What I will point out, however, is that your reason for disagreeing is weak. I'm not saying that you have a "wrong" opinion, but I am going to question your argument for holding that opinion.

 

I'm mostly an English major, so argumentation and writing is key to my education and my future vocational activities. My minors are in economics and American history, which means the former requires me to work with statistics beyond just what I, subjectively, or a few others want to think. And therein lies the problem.

 

You state that you have to disagree because "some people like the KotFE and KotET story" and that "a taste for whether a story is satisfactory or not is subjective." I agree, but these things do not factor in how much the story was disliked by people to begin with. I can see this argument as reasonable when we're talking about games that have a "critical" reception. Mass Effect: Andromeda is a good example. It's a "love it or hate it" game, so to speak. There are people who love it, people who hate it, people who think it was alright, people who think it was weak but not terrible. The entire spectrum is pretty much there, and it's often spoken about and mentioned on the Mass Effect subreddit.

 

For KotFE and KotET, it's not that simple. While there were people who genuinely liked the KotET story, and I know a few who do, the criticism and unappealing attitude far outweighs the positive and acclaimed reactions for it. I'm on The Progenitor - EU, which means I probably have quite a few friends who like playing story due to the roleplaying nature of the environment. There are more people wherever I am online (Fleet, my guilds, my friends) that dislike KotET than there are people who genuinely enjoy it. The reception of that story is "luke-warm" to be precise. It's something you do once, but it doesn't stick. Let me ask you a genuine question here: When was the last time you heard someone say the sentence: "I can't wait to replay KotET again!"? Everyone within my guilds is constantly playing alts for the class stories. Many of my friends will occassionally go "I think I should replay the XY class story again." Nobody during the past six months has said the same about KotET. I've never heard it. That doesn't mean it won't exist. Some might do it.

 

A wall of text for a minor point: Arguing that the game or the story isn't missmanaged because some people like it is a terrible argument. I'll be ripped to shreds for this, but to heck with it, I'm German. I can do it: There are probably some people who loved and genuinely liked the Third Reich. At no point, however, was the Third Reich a good idea. Zilch. Never.

 

This is a hyperbolic example to illustrate the point: When looking at feedback like the kind that KotET and RNG gearing received, the issue is quite apparent. If for every single person who liked it, nine people dislike it or are completely indifferent to a new story in a story-driven Star Wars game, something is off. Of course, we might all be wrong. People might we running KotET in droves behind the scenes, doing it all day. I don't know. But the overwhelming majority of people who voice their concerns simply don't like it.

 

And don't come with that age old "but people who like it won't write it! They'll play the game!" Lots of people who dislike the changes and direction don't write it too. They can't be a*sed to do it for whatever reason. And that's fine, I totally get it! But using the silent majority as a shield isn't always helpful or warranted.

 

 

 

No, we can't. Nobody can. But when you look at Twitter, reddit, this forum, the ingame general and PvP chats and all other available media, and the genuine image that's painted is that people hate or dislike something, then it's not really all that favourable for the receiving end of that criticism to play the "but there are tons of people who are silent and probably like the changes!" card.

 

If so many people liked the changes ever since 4.0, we wouldn't be looking at more empty servers and longer queue times. There were tons of posts on every medium that disregarded the KotET story, and there were even more posts genuinely telling why RNG gearing is a bad idea.

 

 

 

Yes, they count. As much as the next player. But the fact remains that you can't just put ten players up as a defense and say: "They count for me! The rest is irrelevant! They are still around! They liked it!" In the grand scheme of things, your guild is probably very unimportant. If thirty big guilds leave, and your guild stays, is the game well? Or has it been missmanaged? Because if the total amount of guilds and active servers/players decreases, but only a few players stay, then the game has been missmanaged. You might still enjoy it. And you're well within your right to argue that your guild matters most to you. It does to everyone. But they're not a good, objective gauge of whether the game is missmanaged.

 

I don't know who the Influencers are. I genuinely don't. I've been around for years, and this is the first time I'm hearing about this. But if these Influencers saw the RNG box changes and thought they were a good idea, something might be off. I'm not insulting them. I am genuinely just saying: If you saw these changes and thought people would like them, you made a big mistake. It happens. However, it was apparent people wouldn't. There were so many good analogies, explanations, posts and reasosn this was a bad idea, all posted on these media I mentioned earlier, yet it went through. If that was green-lit by the Influencers as a "good idea", then gods beware. It was a bad idea. It was horrible missmanaged. It's human. It happens and it's completely alright. It doesn't invalidate the countless changes Bioware made to the system either. They are greatly appreciated and were necessary. But as credit is due where credit is due, so is criticism: The RNG gearing was a bad idea par excellence. It was missmanaged.

 

That's my opinion though. I don't claim to hold the entire and undisprovable truth. However, this is all we can do on this forum. Argue based on our opinion.

Two thumbs up. Upvote. All of that.

I'm so tired of hearing you guys complain about hearing us complain. You know when I didn't have time to complain? Rise of the hutt cartel. I wonder why that was?

He isn't saying that every complaint gets ignored, nor is he complaining or whining about mean people saying mean things.

He's saying that non-constructive complaints aren't that useful as feedback tools, so he tends to pay less attention to them. You wanna deliver feedback with some anger and vitriol, go right ahead, but don't expect the devs to pay extra attention to your posts unless they contain something actually constructive.