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Announcing The Old Republic Guild Summit


CourtneyWoods

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I do have a few real questions about the event.

 

Who will be picking the topics of discussion. Will this be truly open form of commutation or will the topics be set?

 

How will time be divided between each guild master who gets to attend? As well as the public members viewing in?

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Hey... what a fantastic opportunity for many to speak to the developers and perhaps influence the game we so love!?

 

Understandably, they cannot invite everyone... perhaps members should or could simply start posting relevant questions they would like to see answered instead of cluttering the chat pages with insults and negative comments.

 

 

Let's start with this...

 

The Guild Management User Interface

is only accessible to the GuildMaster...

I truly believe an option for this aspect of Guild Management can better assist the Guild and the GuildMaster if given the ability to allow selected members, at the GuildMasters discretion, to allow chosen Officers access to this panel that one can assist and lighten the load and burden on the GM, especially in the event of Guildmasters absences.

 

This would truly allow the functionality of a "Co-Guildmaster" at the Guildmasters prudence.

 

i'm sure there are so many more aspects that could be discussed and presented here for better game performance.

 

could you, SWOTR member, please post them in summary?

I'd really love to hear your direct, civil articulate advice and suggestions!

 

 

.

Edited by AchillestheGreat
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Have you listened to yourself!? Stephen said it like it is. Grow up, stop crying foul on everything they do. Are you asking Bioware to fly every player to the show to ask their questions!? This is great news and everyone should realize this is great steps to take. It will only benefit all of us.

 

Yeah, he has gotten to the point to tell you that your type isn't welcome here. Because your negative, unconstructive, you don't help the community and you think your "entitled" to something others have.

 

I work customer service and on rare occasions we do let someone know whats up, cause in the end the company doesn't want that "type" of person anyways as it's just not worth it.

 

There's plenty of other games out there and I don't see many inviting players to meet up and talk.

 

You are a example of why they are selective. I would never want someone like you talking for me.

 

First off, you need to read the previous posts on this thread. Your assumptions about what I expect are ignorant at best. If they wanted to benefit "all of us", they wouldn't hold this for a select group of people from our entire community. Your mindset is twisted by your overwhelming fanboyism and personal opinions.

 

As for the meeting itself, I never said the meeting was a bad thing, in fact the VERY first post I made clarified that I find this kind of meeting cool for those who enjoy such things. Even more so when it is neccessary. However, this gathering is 'unneccessary'. The forums, open media pages, beta feedback, etc. provide enough information from the entire population of the game to be able to cover most related subjects without showing favortism. I don't care how they sugar coat it, its an unneccessary PR stunt thats favoriting a select group of people. Period.

 

In regards to "my type" being here, clearly you once again have not been reading the previous posts. If you honestly believe that I'm the only person complaining, your oblivious. You also have a twisted view about what "my type" is. You have no idea what good communication is because your too biased toward the game, company, or staff to no any better. Do I feel entitled to general information? Yes, I do and you should too. I pay my money every month and its worth the same amount of respect as everyone elses.

 

The fact of the matter is, regardless of how they phrase it, they chose a select few to come to this, and then opened it up to a few leaders/officers who want to "pay their own way". Its even more insulting that the people who want to come have to go through an application process before being allowed to spend money to join. How many people do not participate in guilds? How many people cannot come because of finaces? How many people live outside of the US? Entitlement here means nothing more than equality in the way that information should always be provided. So once again, yes, I feel entitled.

 

In regards to where you work, I could care less. Though, to throw this back into your face, I worked for customer support for multiple industries for years and I know how things function. Standard curtosies do not involve cutting out a majority of your population, clients, etc. just to address specific problems, questions or concerns. If you honestly think thats good management, then I feel sorry for you.

 

As for "people like me" being the reason why they're deciding to be selective, you don't know me outside of this post, and yet your suddenly an expert on who I am, what I like or dislike, and how I act. Your arrogance is astounding, and when it comes down to it, I find that for someone who works in customer support, your far from being the shade of gray thats typically neccessary to handle relations with other people. You may not choose me to go, but I wouldn't want to represent someone like you anyways. My views are not so linear.

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Hey... what a fantastic opportunity for many to speak to the developers and perhaps influence the game we so love!?

 

Understandably, they cannot invite everyone... <snip>

 

I agree, this gathering is a good way to speak to the devs directly but is unneccesary in regards to influencing the game. If the Devs have yet to be influenced by the forums, beta feedback, media pages (such as facebook and twitter), etc. then there is a problem and lacking of basic respect for the community.

 

Yes, they cannot invite everyone in person, which is why I strongly feel that they should hold a Q&A online, or possibly open this gathering up to everyone via live video and chat.

 

I don't know about you, but I'd rather speak for myself than have people I don't know represent me just because I was not chosen for whatever reason.

 

As you have seen, not everyone sees eye to eye, and you'll notice I've just clashed with someone who clearly has different views and opinions as myself. Dose that me either of us should be excluded because we disagree? No, and thats where the problem lies.

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When you say "Guild," do you mean in game or out of game? And what type of questions are you going to ask? I know I tried to start a guild with my own philosophies, but it didn't turn out right. All in all I would like to recomend Sarah Lynne Bowman, author of The Functions of Role-Playing Games & an adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, Richland College, Ashford University, and Brookhaven College, to be part of the discussion for new scenarios and/or character creation advise as mentioned in chapter 6 of her book. Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm not realy disguntled about my "Guild" situation. I just think RPGs has goten a very bad rap.
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Two questions

 

1. Is there any possibility to join or follow it via stream over internet? Coming from Europe to America isn't cheap. I would be very interested in joining, giving ideas / feedback or at least listen to it - so it would be very nice, if BW would create a stream broadcast with chat option for guild-leaders to join remotely to the summit.

 

2. Would it be too much to ask, if BW could organize similar event in europe for EU-guildleaders? I don't mean to complain, but it has been a bit like EU is the 2nd rate citizen when talking about SWTOR things (downtimes f.ex).

 

- Finuc -

Guildmaster of XIV Legion

Basilisk Droid (EU), PvP, Empire

Recruiting

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I didn't really want to get involved in such a hopeless thread, but...

 

Oh wait... here's the list that I'd discuss with them, though in person, or on a different forum post, or electronic mail, in much more detail...

 

This is exactly the sort of feedback which they are organizing a summit to avoid. This is because it is useless to them as a game developer. Here's your list, cut down to the parts that matter:

 

1. Spend millions more on the game and don't release it for another 5 years

2. Spend millions more on the game and don't release it for another 5 years

3. Spend millions more on the game and don't release it for another 5 years

...

13. Something they already have or are working on

14. Something they already have or are working on

15. Something they already have or are working on

 

Hopefully this makes it clear why this kind of "feedback" is unhelpful - they would love to have an unlimited budget and solve all the hard unsolved problems in games development so they can turn out features in next to no time, but that won't happen and they need feedback which relates to things that are possible for a game development studio with budgets and schedules.

 

What they need, first and foremost, is a clear understanding of which issues to prioritize and how players would react to their ideas. This thread and many others like it are a clear demonstration of why they cannot get that on the forums - it's just 50 pages of people saying things that come down to "I think you should spend more money on everything, it is all the top priority". Some useful feedback might be buried in there somewhere, but it's impossible to have a conversation about it because of all the noise.

 

It's not at all difficult to see the reasoning behind the way they're doing this: relatively few unreasonable people remain guild leaders for long, and if you set up a discussion containing only reasonable people then they can actually talk to each other and make some progress in understanding the issues, especially if they have a little guidance to keep them on-topic. Preventing random people from attending is important if they want to avoid an expensive repeat of the forums.

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We'll be happy to answer further questions about the summit itself, but back and forth arguments have no place here.

 

Wauw... you don't want to hear a client's opinions anymore, just because another client has said the same ? You don't want to know what we are thinking?

 

Seems to me that listening to customers is key here... even if someones says the exact same thing that 100 other people said, I think that you should at least let him speak his mind, so that you know how many people agree...

 

It's an odd attitude, telling people not to speak their mind anymore.

 

Especially when you are, well, organising a summit to make people speak their mind!

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This is exactly the sort of feedback which they are organizing a summit to avoid. This is because it is useless to them as a game developer.

 

The studio invested $2-300 million dollars and six years worth of time. Nothing I suggested is impossible by any means, nor is any of it actually being worked on to the level that it's been demanded by the player base.

 

I'm sorry, I will simply not accept mediocrity and continue to pay for IOU's for much longer. Nor will apparantly hundreds of thousands of others who have chosen *not* to subscribe to the game that they actually purchased. The feedback that I and others have provided to them is highly accomplishable with appropriate management and resource coordination. I'm sorry that you apparantly think so little of BWA's skill set and ability to actually accomplish what I and others have actually challenged them to do. Your dismissive attitude is detrimental to truly improving the game, and is *exactly* the kind of noise intended to shout down others and stifle their participation. Shame on you.

Edited by DTuloJr
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The feedback that I and others have provided to them is highly accomplishable with appropriate management and resource coordination.

 

Missed the point. Your feedback is nothing more than:

 

The studio invested $2-300 million dollars and six years worth of time

 

"...now do that again."

 

They're looking for something more useful than "spend more time and money on everything".

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The studio invested $2-300 million dollars and six years worth of time. Nothing I suggested is impossible by any means, nor is any of it actually being worked on to the level that it's been demanded by the player base.

 

I'm sorry, I will simply not accept mediocrity and continue to pay for IOU's for much longer. Nor will apparantly hundreds of thousands of others who have chosen *not* to subscribe to the game that they actually purchased. The feedback that I and others have provided to them is highly accomplishable with appropriate management and resource coordination. I'm sorry that you apparantly think so little of BWA's skill set and ability to actually accomplish what I and others have actually challenged them to do. Your dismissive attitude is detrimental to truly improving the game, and is *exactly* the kind of noise intended to shout down others and stifle their participation. Shame on you.

 

I bolded and underlined the part of your post I would like explained, also by the sound of your rhetoric your assuming you have been invited or will be attending the summit.

 

Firstly let me tell you I enjoy a game that does not force players to group, also unlike Cataclysm where super sized guilds were enforced I prefer to play alone or with a few firends. There are many players like me, will you be supporting their needs in this game? or are you just out to encourage a greater amount of complexity & difficulty?

 

The rest of your paragrapgh is just yada yada yada, insult, insult, yada.

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Has anyone summarized the ideas put forth to involve the rest of the community at some level in this summit? I've seen:

 

1) Webcast (informational only)

2) Live webchat sessions

3) Surveys (could be during the summit and after)

4) Player elected parliament to be established (this would be after the summit, of course)

 

What other things could they do to involve the individuals of the community in this summit?

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As some of you have been asking about our criteria for the selection of guilds who we've already invited to the Guild Summit, here's some insight.

 

Guilds were selected with the ultimate aim of ensuring we had a broad representative mixture of guild sizes, playstyles and geographical locations at the summit (with the assumption that no-one might turn up of their own accord). We have guilds from all types of playstyles, large guilds (2,000+ members), small guilds (20 members) and guilds from across North America and Europe. (Note: many guilds are multi-national; our invites were for guild leaders, who were mostly located in NA/EU.) Guilds were also selected because of their constructive and critical feedback during testing of The Old Republic, both pre-launch and post-launch.

 

Beyond that, we won't be commenting further on our selection criteria. We've invited a large number of guild leaders, but naturally we could not invite everyone - hence our decision to allow interested guild leaders to attend if they chose to. Further dissection of the selection criteria will only lead to speculation and argument. I can assure you that no guild leader is being invited to Austin because they are 'friends with a developer' or anything similar.

 

It should also be noted that none of the criteria detailed above are exact guidelines on the selection of guild leaders who apply to attend the summit, beyond the general idea that we still want to have a mix of playstyles, guild sizes and locations. (Please note, we did not ask for a guild membership number as part of the application process.)

 

The initial aim of this thread was to announce the Guild Summit and to answer any questions regarding it. While I can appreciate people's varying opinions on the summit, turning this thread into a continuous argument about the summit's existence or our potential motives is not productive.

 

Everyone's views have now been clearly stated and noted. We'll be happy to answer further questions about the summit itself, but back and forth arguments have no place here.

 

Wait. I thought there was a hard limit on guilds in the game and that limit was 500 members. Did guilds get a stealth buff?

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Accusations of conspiracy? Really? Whining about how guilds got selected or the amount of notice they gave? Awww boo hoo..... how unfair. Grow up, Bioware owes you nothing. They aren't required by any means or should they explain how and why they do things. Unleess your a board member just play the game and be thankfull they're taking steps like this to better the game for you.

 

Maybe bioware will learn not to publish these types of things on public forums untill it's done. They have the ability to kow who in game are succesfull guild leaders. Perhaps they should have just quietly reached out to them instead of having them apply and announce it on the forums.

Edited by Knellict
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Interesting, so guild leaders have a better handle on the state of the game, more insight into the state of the game, more understanding of what is and is not a good direction for the game than anyone else.

 

Here's a thought BioWare: work on fixing the enormous amounts of bugs in your content.

 

Why not stay on THAT task? I'm pretty sure that if you seriously improve the combat engine, fix the bugs in the hardmode and nightmare ops, fix your Ilum and PvP issues (without nerf'ing crap into the ground, that isn't a fix), and look at ways of improving crafting skills without nerf'ing things into the ground - You'll not only get back the supposed 300k people who didn't sub after the first month, you'll double or triple your user base.

 

People like your game, people want to play your game, but people are pretty sick of the fail that is becoming your game.

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The studio invested $2-300 million dollars and six years worth of time. Nothing I suggested is impossible by any means, nor is any of it actually being worked on to the level that it's been demanded by the player base.

 

I'm sorry, I will simply not accept mediocrity and continue to pay for IOU's for much longer. Nor will apparantly hundreds of thousands of others who have chosen *not* to subscribe to the game that they actually purchased. The feedback that I and others have provided to them is highly accomplishable with appropriate management and resource coordination. I'm sorry that you apparantly think so little of BWA's skill set and ability to actually accomplish what I and others have actually challenged them to do. Your dismissive attitude is detrimental to truly improving the game, and is *exactly* the kind of noise intended to shout down others and stifle their participation. Shame on you.

 

 

You and others demanded? And who exactly are you to be making demands to any one other than perhaps your children? Maybe it's not that your ideas aren't impossible, maybe they are being incorporated but your ideas aren't their highest priority. So you make demands and you want it now.

Edited by Knellict
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Interesting, so guild leaders have a better handle on the state of the game, more insight into the state of the game, more understanding of what is and is not a good direction for the game than anyone else.

 

Here's a thought BioWare: work on fixing the enormous amounts of bugs in your content.

 

Why not stay on THAT task? I'm pretty sure that if you seriously improve the combat engine, fix the bugs in the hardmode and nightmare ops, fix your Ilum and PvP issues (without nerf'ing crap into the ground, that isn't a fix), and look at ways of improving crafting skills without nerf'ing things into the ground - You'll not only get back the supposed 300k people who didn't sub after the first month, you'll double or triple your user base.

 

People like your game, people want to play your game, but people are pretty sick of the fail that is becoming your game.

 

 

You first statement is propably more correct than you think. Many guild leaders are pro gamers and easily can represent the voice of hundreds of thousands of other players as they have constant interaction with them in their guilds. Much of end-game content is accomplished through guilds so if that was something you were working on as a game designer the leaders of those guilds would be a good place to start for feedback. I don't think having a guild summit takes them off task from fixing the items you mentiond. It's probably not the grunts that write the code holding the summit. Bioware is going to have to do a lot more than fix bugs to retain players.

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Has anyone summarized the ideas put forth to involve the rest of the community at some level in this summit? I've seen:

 

1) Webcast (informational only)

2) Live webchat sessions

3) Surveys (could be during the summit and after)

4) Player elected parliament to be established (this would be after the summit, of course)

 

What other things could they do to involve the individuals of the community in this summit?

 

#4 would be the worst move possible.

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Stephen, I find it interesting that you acknowledge that people were giving constructive feedback before AND after launch, and we also mustn't forget that infamous "Wall of Crazy" which the devs mentioned a few times which apparently contains a wide range of things which both the devs AND players have suggested.

 

You also apparently have metrics, individual constructive feedback on the forums, bug reports, in-game report feedback, etc, etc on a variety of subjects.

 

So, Stephen, the question begs:

What exactly do you hope to accomplish with this summit (in regards to making the game "better") that you didn't either already know, or could find out in a more "convenient" and concise means?

 

By this I mean, please give us an example of how YOU (bioware) think this "summit" will be beneficial to the continued development of this game, in ways that cannot be achieved via a more concise and cost effective means.

 

And please don't give us this "open discussion...blah blah" marketing speech because that isn't giving a straight forward answer. We already have an "open discussion" medium, on these forums.

 

Side note: Words and promises are hollow and worthless until action is taken. So perhaps the effort that is being put into this "summit" would be better spent actually making this product better. Not just talking about it.

Edited by Tarka
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You first statement is propably more correct than you think. Many guild leaders are pro gamers and easily can represent the voice of hundreds of thousands of other players as they have constant interaction with them in their guilds. Much of end-game content is accomplished through guilds so if that was something you were working on as a game designer the leaders of those guilds would be a good place to start for feedback. I don't think having a guild summit takes them off task from fixing the items you mentiond. It's probably not the grunts that write the code holding the summit. Bioware is going to have to do a lot more than fix bugs to retain players.

 

You appear to be inferring that every player who isn't in a guild is a mindless moron who isn't worth listening to. That's a very elitist and presumptuous perspective. Furthermore, you are giving guild leaders way too much credit. They do NOT represent the majority of the playerbase because they will be biased, and have their own agendas which aren't necessarily in line with the concerns of others.

 

I also disagree with your automatic assumption that "much of end game content is accomplished through guilds". You make it sound like a necessity. Which isn't the case. Sure, being in a guild makes it easier to get into raids. But that doesn't hold for other forms of end game content.

 

Besides, too much reliance on things like raids as the main form of end game content is a bad move anyhow. There's lots of end game content that this game could have, which wouldn't necessitate being in a guild.

 

 

In short: If Bioware truely want to get the honest opinions of the community, then they should ask the ENTIRE community using a medium that is concise and convenient for all. Not just "hand pick" particular guild leaders and assume that their views are representative of the majority.

Edited by Tarka
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I also disagree with your automatic assumption that "much of end game content is accomplished through guilds". You make it sound like a necessity. Which isn't the case. Sure, being in a guild makes it easier to get into raids. But that doesn't hold for other forms of end game content.

 

Regardless if you agree or disagree with the summit, the current state of endgame, and how the game works... ignoring that being in a guild makes it easier for all endgame content is just putting a blind eye to the obvious

 

Much end game content is being done by guilds. Raids, Open world PVP and warzones are often done by guilds.

 

How often do you see people, who are not in guilds, at any of these events?

 

 

I understand you don't agree with the summit, but don't down play the value of guilds in an MMO

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You folks are very amusing.

 

So for a guild summit, about guilds and guild functionality and for the purpose of discussing future possiblities for guilds they did something crazy and chose a subset of those folks who had the founded current Star Wars guilds.

 

 

There is some serious entitlement issues certain folks need to work through.

 

 

Personally I think it's a great idea and applaud BioWare for reaching out to the Guilds for their input.

 

Well done BioWare!

 

 

Alodar :)

Edited by Alodar
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