Dear mr. Schubert,

 

I've spent several months ingame already since launch (playtime) and it really pains me to see what is happening to the PvP community at the moment. At a stage in SWTOR where there's returning players with RoTHC, I feel BW as a company is doing little to retain it's PvP playerbase.

 

My disappointment with the lack of PvP updates is twofold, firstly we were always being teased by the fact new PvP content was in development and that we could expect a PvP update soon after 2.0. With the current roadmap for SWTOR, there is only a vague notion of a PvP update coming in 2.4 (which should be launching somewhere in October). Come to find out later that development on new PvP features has only just now begun taking place (which disappointed me a great deal), and hearing that the team working on these updates is severely lacking in scope and budget. If features like cross server queuing, which have been requested by the community for over a year - and was hinted at at the start of pre-season 1 - are not able to be obtained by the team working on the updates, I fear the investment on BW's part just isn't there.

 

Secondly I feel it is wrong to leave the community hanging on what exactly is going to be worked on PvP-wise for 2.4, cause quite frankly it is severely disappointing to hear that not only is it going to take another 4 months of development time, but the fact that you are not communicating on the features you are planning on working on is quite discomforting to hear. Because that means, indirectly, if you start working on features YOU, as a game developer feel the game needs, might be different than what the community wants. In the sense that if you don't give us the planned features you're working on, ahead of time, we can't give you feedback (as in, the PvP community) in order to give more insight and help improve the systems/content that will be worked on.

 

In short, if you involve the community more in the development process (in a controlled and well implemented manner) I feel you will put the community at ease on one hand, but also give the PvP community something tangible to dangle in front of us. Because right now a lot of good players are leaving the game because they feel like they are not part of the SWTOR community as a whole, because they have yet to receive an update to their much loved game, in the form of content and additional systems (season 1 PvP, tournaments, etc. etc.) in almost a year.

 

I know the development team has taken a beating with the layoff's, but if I look at GW2, which came out AFTER SWTOR’s launch, and it's features (and the pace at which they are released), and how transparent and open they are about it, I just feel BW is missing out on a lot of potential to compete with other MMO's in this regard, and SWTOR will fall to the wayside in the end. Maybe the cost of the IP is not worth it in the end for EA to invest more into the game I love.

 

I am writing this to you because I care about this game, and I want it to thrive, but I fear the lack of resources and development team that is still left behind SWTOR, are far from sufficient to give the game it's much needed push to be successful in the end.

 

Kind regards,

A saddened player

 

TL;DR: We need more transparency on what is coming for PvP (in order for the community to give it's feedback), and I hope the budget is still there to make SWTOR successful.

Edited June 8, 2013 by Winguardian

BUMP this is spot on

Anyone else ready for preseason 2 yahoooooo

Well said Wing, glad to see you again mang. <3

/totally signed

/putsontinfoilhat

 

I am certain of two things regarding the future of SWTOR PvP. Firstly, whatever they release in 2.4 will be very good for casuals and PvErs, mainly because that's the bulk of the population remaining in this game, and everything they have done recently for "PvPers" has actually been a bigger boon for the PvE crowd (Gree Event Ilum/Bolster) in every way. The PvP crowd may/may not like what comes down the pipe, but since our numbers have diminished so significantly over the past year, it doesn't really matter anymore, especially to BW.

 

Secondly, whatever BW does introduce and implement for PvP will be either broken, bugged or easily exploitable. Sorry, but there hasn't been a major PvP content update that I can think of that didn't contain gamebreaking bugs or exploits. The quality control for PvP never improved, despite the promises of Jeff Hickman last year that they would.

 

Point being, not only is the current state of PvP bad, but the future isn't bright either.

 

/removestinfoilhat

Edited June 7, 2013 by DarthOvertone

/Signed

 

Great post OP.

Winguardian for PoF president!

/signed

I hope they'll listen! Edited June 7, 2013 by GNWP

I agree in large part. That said, I want to add something for Mr. Schubert and any other developers who may see this which may be taken as a slap in the face to the OP and to a lot of players in general (I hope not, but I can see it being taken that way and its by no means intended in that way), but which I think would be of great help to them:

 

Developers, if you are trying to think about this issue reasonably as you go about planning and communicating, stop. Step back and realize that the majority of players are simply not going to be reasonable about this kind of thing. They are going to be emotional, they are going to be entitled, and they are going to look for reasons to see failure.

 

Part of this is the way that the game had some problems in its early stages. Part of it is the way that, until more recently, the communication in this game was not as forthcoming as it is in other games. Part of it is simply that MMO players are just somewhat generally unreasonable when it comes to their games.

 

A good example: the OP mentions as an example for SWTOR to follow GW2, a game which was originally heralded by PvPers as the next great PvP MMO and which, months after its release, has an incredibly weak PvP community. It's a game which every PvPer I have spoken to without exception regards as having terrible PvP compared to SWTOR's. It's cited as an example of a game with countless PvP features and transparency to be modeled after, in spite of the fact that the GW2 PvP community was even angrier than I've ever seen TOR's over lack of features at launch, promised features either not being released or being broken for weeks or months, and a steadfastly consistent habit of the promises being made about future PvP updates simply not being followed through on. I spent 6 months playing that game and reading the official and unofficial forums daily, and my overall experience was that even before the enormous improvements to customer relations the TOR developers made a bit back, they were still ahead of the GW2 team.

 

Now I am sure that the TOR employees are aware of this, given that they likely follow what's going on in other games. My point is this: when working on the game and communicating with your playerbase, don't say to yourselves things like, "they'll understand that this bug is taking a bit to fix because it's very complex." They won't understand. Personally, I see 2.0 as an enormous PvP update - all of the combat changes were nearly exclusively for PvP, after all - and you may look at it that way, too. You can't. Do you think it's reasonable to hold off information on patch 2.4 until its details are more set in stone? Your average player doesn't, and if you want to keep them happy, promote a better community, and most importantly, retain them, you need to realize that.

 

In short, try to put on the glasses of the average player when you look at how you handle things. Don't think reasonable about things, think emotionally. Don't think in terms of what you know is possible, think in terms of what you know that they want. Etc. Once more, no offense intended to any player, most of whom I respect tremendously. In the end, though, I think this is simply the reality of an MMO and its community, on which the folks at BW need to try to come to terms with.

I get that a lot of players don't play this game for pvp like me, but why not make pvp more appealing for people to try at least. PVP feels almost abandoned, and great pvpers I know are letting their sub run because they feel abandoned as well.

Signed.

 

I love this game, deep down. I stick with it and keep coming back after I burn out and quit because at it's core, it has the best PvP an MMO has seen since Age of Conan patch 1.4, and before that, DaoC pre-Trials of Atlantis. PvP is my main focus, but I also enjoy the class stories and the PvE I do. I stick with it despite the bugs, and the terrible engine/performance. I get 20-40 FPS on average in WZ's, whereas in GW2 I get 45+ in huge zerg v zerg battles with a lot more people and effects going on around me, and better graphics. I don't play GW2 as much as I play TOR though, because GW2 has pretty meh PvP.

 

As it stands right now though, TOR is heading down that same path GW2 is at, and that really disappoints me. I don't want to see that happen. ESO and Wildstar are just around the corner. I've played the former, it's terrible, the combat is very keyboard-turner friendly and it doesn't feel like an Elder Scrolls game. I don't care for the cartoony graphics of the latter.. It looks more fantasy than it does Sci-Fi, and NCSoft ruins everything they touch. At the rate you guys are chasing off PvP'ers though, I may not have a choice but to go play one when the time comes.

Edited June 7, 2013 by Stncold

I myself don't even play pvp anymore, I just don't find it fun. It saddens me the pvp community in this game has to go 8-10 months before updates. I hope someone comments.

/SIGNED nice post also the reply following it.

 

I cancelled my sub because of no cross server que RWZ this week. Never cancelled it before, even last year I went a holiday for 2 weeks and I kept it ongoing.

i myself used to pvp for days on end, but it just gets tiring now and there's not much fun anymore. now i casual every once in a while. I mean you can only play the same game/ map so many times. Huttball or alderaan, are two of my absolute favorite pvp games. but they would be even better if there was some other maps you can play them on but that's just me and my little rant. i totally agree with OP though. Stop with the teasing and get with the content. PVE is nice and all but that's just half the game, don't forget about the other half of the audience.

@ PvP Developer:

 

Because he's the hero SWTOR gameplay deserves, but not the one it needs right now per Metrics guy. So, we'll rage at Eric Munco, because he can take it. Because he's not our hero. He's a silent guardian. A watchful protector. A Combat Guy!!

@ PvP Developer:

 

Because he's the hero SWTOR gameplay deserves, but not the one it needs right now per Metrics guy. So, we'll rage at Eric Munco, because he can take it. Because he's not our hero. He's a silent guardian. A watchful protector. A Combat Guy!!

 

Yes I feel for the guy aswell.. he's doing the best he can with what little resources he has.

 

Btw mad props to Eric Musco though he's been doing a stellar job and I hope we can grow further as a community with him at the helm!

quite constructive.

 

This is the way nice people tell you how your stuff is sucking.

swtor is lacking competive pvp if we cant have open world pvp let use have arena 4v4 plz

People ought to stop with the forum threads directed to a specific BW person. They generally frown upon personally directed threads, but in case people haven't figured it out by now, they probably aren't going to respond directly to those threads either or it would just encourage more of the same. So you're making your thread less likely of getting a response by doing that.

I agree in large part. That said, I want to add something for Mr. Schubert and any other developers who may see this which may be taken as a slap in the face to the OP and to a lot of players in general (I hope not, but I can see it being taken that way and its by no means intended in that way), but which I think would be of great help to them:

 

Developers, if you are trying to think about this issue reasonably as you go about planning and communicating, stop. Step back and realize that the majority of players are simply not going to be reasonable about this kind of thing. They are going to be emotional, they are going to be entitled, and they are going to look for reasons to see failure.

 

Part of this is the way that the game had some problems in its early stages. Part of it is the way that, until more recently, the communication in this game was not as forthcoming as it is in other games. Part of it is simply that MMO players are just somewhat generally unreasonable when it comes to their games.

 

A good example: the OP mentions as an example for SWTOR to follow GW2, a game which was originally heralded by PvPers as the next great PvP MMO and which, months after its release, has an incredibly weak PvP community. It's a game which every PvPer I have spoken to without exception regards as having terrible PvP compared to SWTOR's. It's cited as an example of a game with countless PvP features and transparency to be modeled after, in spite of the fact that the GW2 PvP community was even angrier than I've ever seen TOR's over lack of features at launch, promised features either not being released or being broken for weeks or months, and a steadfastly consistent habit of the promises being made about future PvP updates simply not being followed through on. I spent 6 months playing that game and reading the official and unofficial forums daily, and my overall experience was that even before the enormous improvements to customer relations the TOR developers made a bit back, they were still ahead of the GW2 team.

 

Now I am sure that the TOR employees are aware of this, given that they likely follow what's going on in other games. My point is this: when working on the game and communicating with your playerbase, don't say to yourselves things like, "they'll understand that this bug is taking a bit to fix because it's very complex." They won't understand. Personally, I see 2.0 as an enormous PvP update - all of the combat changes were nearly exclusively for PvP, after all - and you may look at it that way, too. You can't. Do you think it's reasonable to hold off information on patch 2.4 until its details are more set in stone? Your average player doesn't, and if you want to keep them happy, promote a better community, and most importantly, retain them, you need to realize that.

 

In short, try to put on the glasses of the average player when you look at how you handle things. Don't think reasonable about things, think emotionally. Don't think in terms of what you know is possible, think in terms of what you know that they want. Etc. Once more, no offense intended to any player, most of whom I respect tremendously. In the end, though, I think this is simply the reality of an MMO and its community, on which the folks at BW need to try to come to terms with.

 

the most logical post here

the most logical post here

 

True, GW2's PvP was in a terrible state too at launch, but at least they are getting their PvP features slowly but steadily, like specator mode and the likes. Wheither or not you like GW2's PvP is purely personal, as I'm sure there's alot of people that would argue they find GW2's PvP fun.

 

You're right though, maybe I was wrong for mentioning GW2 as an example on how it should go, but I merely made the comparison because it's PvP was very similar to that of SWTOR at launch in it lacking alot of features it desperately needed (and thus losing alot of it's PvPplayerbase) but now actively working on bringing content out to the PvP community in order to bring some of that community back.

 

GW2's developers may have been worse than SWTOR's in the sense that core issues weren't much adressed by them, but they have put up good posts about what's coming and what to expect (so as to realistically guide peoples expectations - something as you pointed out is very hard to do with emotionally guided MMO' players). I feel "Summer of SWTOR" fell short of that cause it only adressed PvE content, not PVP.

 

Again though I do agree with your points and feel like they are absolutely valid.

I still think one of the easiest means for bioware to at least give the PVP community something is by implementing a better daily/weekly system that shares similar themes with the credit and com amounts, as well as creativity for what you have to do, as the PVE ones that currently exist on every other planet.

 

Imagine how cool it'd be if there was a PVP daily quest that involved killing 10 people on some planet (like Makeb). Holy ****, you'd actually have PVP server with world PVP. You might even go as far as adding a weekly that surpassed that number.

 

Imagine how cool it would be if there were objective score totals for a daily PVP quest for warzones so that the call of duty mind sets would be more inspired to actually guard nodes and take objectives.

 

Imagine if they were like, "hey, what would make this game cool for PVP players and then did those easy things." instead of trying to charge us $10 - $20 for random aesthetics.

 

Just because your budget doesn't call for making entire new warzones doesn't mean you can't make some new quests that reward the community with credits, comms, who knows maybe even valor? I'm pretty sure that quest creation is relatively cheap on labor costs.

I think fundamentally what the original poster is trying to say is: BioWare, please tell us what you're trying to fit into 2.4 and give us an idea what we have to look forward to; and use our feedback to guide your planning and prioritization process.

 

Since right now what's happening is that everyone is building it up in their minds what to expect; and if BioWare don't deliver there will be a lot of people leaving the game or simply losing interest.

 

Maybe they don't care, I don't know.... I've posted a few times both here and on Reddit on this topic and there's zero official response apart from a few comments by Bruce which did little to help instill confidence in their PvP team.