thx for this topic.

 

as it would appear that the main stream of players in this game are making new alts over and over again i'll adress this point.

(as it is the way i play too - i have 1 lvl 50 - 5 lvl 40 - and a few lowbies on the way)

i don't play "endgame content" cause i find it an insult to my "intelligence" but i understand ppl doing it

(like endgame PvP) (which i loved a long time ago when i was young and naive)

 

so - leveling alts:

 

what i found game breaking is the actual poverty or inconsistencies of the game's options while leveling

(as you need to level up in order to play endgame)

 

ie: Dark side or Light Side levels have absolutely no importance whatsoever in your gameplay (besides the titles earned)

no real alien race on character creation (existed in Jedy Academy)

 

why can't a Jedi Sage Dark Lv5 use Lightnings ? (or a LS Sith use Light side powers) (TSL)

 

why do we have to gain social points over and over again ? (like kegacy SP could be earned for all toons)

why is the gear so ugly ?

why are the drops so low on Elite Bosses? (map bosses not Heroics) (like green gear or credits)

 

why are Legacy Perks so useless and expensive ?

 

why do NON force users show Dark side Facial consequences ?

 

why do Skill Tree have 3 branches ? ( as you can only have 2 roles)

 

why do i have skills than have a restrictive condition before i can use them?

(like this skill gives a powerful 3000 hit but only on a dead target IF i use it standing on 1 foot and singing a song)

(and has to be used within 1 sec)

 

there are way too many skills too btw.

 

why can't my toon simply climb a rock when it can Force jump ? (Jedy Academy)

(datacron chase which in most cases i never do due to the preposterous places where they are located)

 

why is my healer getting more aggro than the tank ?

 

why can't my low level tank get AoE aggro ? (to protect the healer)

 

why create Tanks with Light armor ? (seriously ...) or the class armor restrictions in general.

 

Important point - your game is basically NOT a real mmorpg - you can solo 1 to 50 without actually needing to group with anyone - i did it so a lot of ppl can do it too - how can you "create" an active online community when Online aspect is non essential (due to instances and class questing)

(which will be an enormous problem with f2p if there are hundreds of ppl running the same area - as the respawn time is way too long in low level zones)

 

mainly - why can't i find in your game most of the options that other games provide ? (even older games)

 

(vanity items shops for ingame currency - gear customization - appearance customization - vanity gear tab

(go check AoC or DCUo) and so on...

 

besides those points i think i also have to had that - 1.4 was really a top on how NOT to do things.

seriously ? a game breaking patch that gave me (and a lot of other ppl it would seem) an entire month of lousy gameplay without any excuses - messages or whatsoever from your company - and that is NOT fixed atm btw - even Korean Grinders have a better PR and reaction time on this one.

(and they compensate ppl - even with fluffy crap)

 

all this to come to the personal conclusion that even if your IP is magic - the treatment you gave it is way below subpar for the cost of making it - for the subscription cost and for what your competition actually provides their customers with. You were given a magical name you created a shallow and empty shell of a game.

(with a lousy engine?)

(which is why ppl left btw) (when a product loses over 60% of its customers there is definitely a problem somewhere)

(over the rainbow?)

 

as F2P will not provide a better game experience to players i don't see how things could improve on a short term basis ( as most mmorpgers don't live on long terms expectations)

with the exception of maybe providing you with more instant cash for a while.

 

by definition Gaming should be a fun experience giving you good feelings regarding the time spent on the said game. Online gaming should also provide the opportunity to share this fun with other ppl - this is not the case atm.

 

Henry Ford stated a long time ago that customers could have their car any color they wanted as long as they wanted Black.

this way of seeing thing worked at the time i am not sure it still works nowadays

cheers and good luck.

Edited November 7, 2012 by vichkaya

im not a hardcore gamer in some peoples eyes (i play for about 2 to 3 hours a day maximum)

But i will say this game desperately needs new content. Im not talking cartel shop content

like clothing and customisations here im talking actual new things to do in game like new warzones

new raids and flashpoints. Maybe some new questlines and questing character unlocks. People

are leaving the guild im in to play other games because they have done everything there is to do in game.

We (well, me at least) would like these updates at least every other month if not once a month - there are still MANY issues that need to be addressed here.

 

I think that would be a good interval for this article going forward

I have played swtor since day one and i wonted to add this the problems i have with the game is not the content or, the lack of but the bugs i would say the you guys need to slow down stop trying to keep up with other mmos like (world of warcraft) your better then them just relax and fix the problems at hand like ( the hacks) people are using them and creating problems within your game i think its time to start banning people like that (for pvps ) we wont to see more pvp thats not in war zones make it worth while to fight and take over there base (server size) im on the smallest servers out there its bad at one time we might have 100 people on the fleet i think it might be time to get rid of the only rp pvp server you have left . but keep up the hard work guys your great and the games great

 

 

from agent Drasona

Dear Mr. Hickman,

 

How is it you can ruin so many games as executive producer? How long do you think it will take Disney to pull the plug?

 

Thanks,

 

Crabbits

Wow, Wow wow, i didn't know Jeff Hickman was heading up SWTOR.

 

I take issue with the following points..

 

1. Our game is awesome. People love it and want to play it.

 

2. The subscription requirement was driving away huge numbers of people who do not want to commit to paying monthly.

 

Reminds me of some state of the game addresses from Warhammer Online. Tralalala our game is awesome (fingers in ears) while the house of cards came crashing down.. Your state of the game address doesnt cut it and doesnt even begin to outline a roadmap for the game. I remember blindly consuming this drivel when I was a loyal, loyal fan of WAR for a long long time, having faith in the mighty MYTHIC to pull things back. Here's what I just read..

 

STATE OF THE GAME ADDRESS

 

Hi I'm Jeff I worked on warhammer, here is my funky tat!! Im in charge of SWTOR now and everyone thinks its an awsome game! BTW we're going free to play because its that awesome, nobody wanted to pay a sub. We let some staff go but thats life! 1.4 introduced lots of bugs, didnt you guys know making MMO's is srs bizness and really hard! All those things we said were coming i the past, like the new funky space game, and world PVP.. well, we've got a new producer now so I wont evenmention any of those things.. but rest assured we're working hard!!! See you at the next server merge!

 

Sorry if im being pessimistic but, i've BEEN HERE.. SEEN IT.. WORN THE T SHIRT. It's all very predictable.

 

Another point id like to make is that THE MINUTE WAR started to go downhill, with developers leaving, they nolonger had the resources to commit to any sort of game updates. We got the venimous horde, which basically used existing models in the game.. but in terms of creating or evolving game systems.. it all stopped. I really hope we are not at that point in this game.. if so, I swear i'll never touch another BIOWARE/EA game again. I'm already done with Mythic.. i'm saddened to see Mr Hickman here and wonder who on earth put him here. Is it because of his experience with damage limitation?

 

In short, I was hopeful for the future of the game BEFORE I saw this SOTG address.. Now im devastated.

 

Why, read it from the horses mouth..

 

http://www.gamerevolution.com/manifesto/ea-artist-soon-to-be-laid-off-burns-ea-management-2803

Edited November 7, 2012 by tarkkonis

Thank you for the update. To ask a couple of questions:

 

1. When can we expect to see more Chapters of our Class Stories?

 

2. When can we expect to be able to play Cathar?

 

Thank you!

 

Also when will we be able to play Nautolan and Togruta?

 

Why is your CS department so bad? It takes days/wweks to get an ingame support topic read and then 5/10 times they don't read the request, send a random predefined reply and close the request!

I always criticized BW's PR because of lack of warnings about major changes, in particular about server merges or panic 1.4 release on days of MoP launch - it looked like BW had no clue til the very last moment if the update is ready for deployment or not.

 

I am very happy to see this message and see it as step in right direction.

 

In this cycle I would like to hear in future about how the PTS feedback is collected. Lack of character copy feature, terrrible Error From Beyond bug collection and voices on forum raise suspicion that testers do not feedback being fixated on World First kills after patches go live.

Dear Mr. Hickman,

 

could you please outline in next months state of the game where the game is heading in the next 6-12 months and when to expect the space simulator update?

 

thanks,

LR

 

 

Day/Night cycles! For god sake BioWare, please acknowledge this!

 

I'm sick of these non immersive static worlds that feel like movie set pieces!

 

^ and QFT

Edited November 7, 2012 by Lord_Ravenhurst

How has Jeff Hickman still got a job?

 

I mean seriously, he's a terrible producer. He oversaw some of the worst years of DAoC. He oversaw the massive mis-handling of WAR. He's now overseeing the mismanagement of TOR. He may be great at organising people (something needed to be a successful live services manager) but he has no clue about MMO design. As executive producer he will have a lot of power to decide what features stay or go, what the devs spend their time doing and he's just not the right person for the job.

 

Regarding the specific announcement:

 

1) Our game is great

 

I think the ~1.3million players who quit the game in the first 6 months after release would massively disagree with you.

 

2) Our subscription was a barrier to entry meme

 

Whilst I'm sure there are *some* people who actually can't afford the subscription fee and that adopting a hybrid payment model is a good thing, the *reason* many people said this is because your game is not worth £8.99 a month! This game lacks too many features and is poorly designed and so it is not worth spending £8.99 a month to play it, especially when there are better games out there for the same price.

 

3) Our release schedule was too slow

 

Again, get some fecking brains and analyse the *reason* behind this statement. The *reason* people are complaining about your release schedule is because the content you do release is usually low quality and too quick to complete. You design content for a single player game, not a multiplayer game, and thus it takes virtually no time at all to complete. We are bored. I don't care if you release content every 6 weeks or every 6 months, it is the time to consume that is important.

 

You need better designers, not more content of the same low quality. Please realise that your player base will consume content faster than you can design it. That means you need to give us the tools to make our own content (sandbox elements) or strong reasons to repeat all content. At the moment we have neither, so we're getting bored and quitting.

 

Please sort it out Jeff, or just quit and let someone who is qualified for the job take over.

 

 

*awaits infraction points for insulting Jeff again *

Everyone from the game promised NEW CONTENT EVERY 4-6 WEEKS!! It has been over 7 since the last patch where is our new content???? Where are all the stuff you promised since the begining of summer???

Free to Play, HK-51, New level cap, the planet Makeb etc just to name a few!!! Get a move on people u are losing paying customers!!!!

It would be nice to see a 6 month or longer description of the future content updates that Bioware is working on for SWTOR. Not asking for exact dates but since you said you would like to release content updates about every 6 weeks, I'm pretty sure that you are probably on 6-8 month development cycle and can give players at least a preview or idea of what is coming in the next 3-4 content updates. My thinking on this is that it would get players excited about the game and upcoming content updates.

 

Currently right now people are waiting for the F2P option that was suppose to be out in the fall which is almost over with (Winter starts 21 Dec 2012). You talk about new characters and content, but give players no idea which or what is coming next or even when. As some players will say "Throw us a couple of bones", "give us some details about when content is coming and what that content is.

Hello everyone,

 

Please discuss the Star Wars: The Old Republic – State of the Game blog in this thread!

 

Will there be new races in the game. Or ned home planets?

your game is not worth £8.99 a month! This game lacks too many features and is poorly designed and so it is not worth spending £8.99 a month to play it, especially when there are better games out there for the same price.

 

by this analogy, not a single PS3 or XBOX game is worth paying 50 euros for.

The hours of fun I already had for that 12 euro per month outweighs the 50 euros i'd have to pay per game after i finish it in 10ish hours (or even less)

Wow, Wow wow, i didn't know Jeff Hickman was heading up SWTOR.

 

I take issue with the following points..

 

1. Our game is awesome. People love it and want to play it.

 

2. The subscription requirement was driving away huge numbers of people who do not want to commit to paying monthly.

 

Reminds me of some state of the game addresses from Warhammer Online. Tralalala our game is awesome (fingers in ears) while the house of cards came crashing down.. Your state of the game address doesnt cut it and doesnt even begin to outline a roadmap for the game. I remember blindly consuming this drivel when I was a loyal, loyal fan of WAR for a long long time, having faith in the mighty MYTHIC to pull things back. Here's what I just read..

 

STATE OF THE GAME ADDRESS

 

Hi I'm Jeff I worked on warhammer, here is my funky tat!! Im in charge of SWTOR now and everyone thinks its an awsome game! BTW we're going free to play because its that awesome, nobody wanted to pay a sub. We let some staff go but thats life! 1.4 introduced lots of bugs, didnt you guys know making MMO's is srs bizness and really hard! All those things we said were coming i the past, like the new funky space game, and world PVP.. well, we've got a new producer now so I wont evenmention any of those things.. but rest assured we're working hard!!! See you at the next server merge!

 

Sorry if im being pessimistic but, i've BEEN HERE.. SEEN IT.. WORN THE T SHIRT. It's all very predictable.

 

Another point id like to make is that THE MINUTE WAR started to go downhill, with developers leaving, they nolonger had the resources to commit to any sort of game updates. We got the venimous horde, which basically used existing models in the game.. but in terms of creating or evolving game systems.. it all stopped. I really hope we are not at that point in this game.. if so, I swear i'll never touch another BIOWARE/EA game again. I'm already done with Mythic.. i'm saddened to see Mr Hickman here and wonder who on earth put him here. Is it because of his experience with damage limitation?

 

In short, I was hopeful for the future of the game BEFORE I saw this SOTG address.. Now im devastated.

 

Why, read it from the horses mouth..

 

http://www.gamerevolution.com/manifesto/ea-artist-soon-to-be-laid-off-burns-ea-management-2803

 

Great post, especially the link.

Talking generally about the state of the game, here's my 2 cents:

 

#1 No clear direction/lack of coherence:

 

Imo, one of the biggest problem with SWTOR is the lack of a clear direction for the game, instead of trying to being great at least in some parts of the game, it seems to me it just tries to be ok everywhere.

 

At first, it was hammered that SWTOR was a different MMO focused on story. While it's true for the leveling part, it completely ends when people reach 50. Even more so, there's still no update on stories, Makeb is not in 1.5 and there's time only for another update before the end of the year. So no story is not really a focus for SWTOR.

 

As for PvE endgame, there's some updates but here again, direction is not clear. Too easy at launch, with now different difficulty modes, it's still not clear what are the devs intents. Progression between flashpoints and operations is not clear, gear progression is not clear.

 

About PvP, I don't even know why you made PvP servers when at same time, each planet was build to avoid as much as possible interactions between factions and when there's no system to promote open world PvP.

And Ilum ? I don't think I have to talk much here, it was made, got some fixes then closed. What about it now ?

About warzones, again what is the direction ? Ranked warzones seem a move toward more hardcores PvPers but at same you give them almost no reason to do thoses. Is it really your intent to have people with low experience and gear be farmed by premades of people with Elite War Hero gear and 5k more HP ?

 

I could go on with many other aspects of the game, crafting, codex, art, .... but it serves no purpose, YOU have to choose what direction, what flavor you want for the game and build all the features in coherence with thoses goals because right now, the game is just ok in many directions but doesn't shine anywhere.

 

 

#2 Bugs/Development:

 

Being a developer myself and even if I never worked on a game, I think I got a good grasp at the difficulty to make such a big software. That said, there's still a lof of things I don't understand when I look at the state of the game.

Sure, unexpected things happen and changes sometimes create problems outside of their own scope but still, while we are gettting close to the first anniversary, there's still tons of unresolved problems.

 

As a few examples that exist since launch, here it is:

• Ashara/Kira: still moving around showing their lightsabers.
  
• Weapons: when combat ends, animation goes back to normal but weapons are still unsheathed, most noticeable with lightsabers, characters use normal running animations with lightsabers unsheathed instead of the special animations made for running with weapons unsheathed.
  
• Crew skill trainer window: when you go see your crew skill trainer and check the schematics you can or could learn, depending on the filters and what is/was expanded/collapsed, the window doesn't show anything when it should or schematics are superimposed.
  
• Mail: it costs 5 credits but when you had an item to the mail, it shows 10 credits but it still costs 5 credits.
  
• Crew skills: missing schematics for some class/spec, multiple items or mods with different names but same stats.
  

 

Again I could go on and I understand that thoses bugs don't stop people from playing the game but it just shows you are doing something wrong. It annoys people that still play, it baffles new players that simple things are still not sorted out and it shows people that come back to the game that you haven't handle much since they left.

Sure, there might be critical problems like CTDs, PC freezes or extreme performance/lag issues but everything has to resolved and old bugs too, especially when they are so easily reproductible.

 

That's where I want to move to development, it seems really strange from the outside. Again, it shows a lack of a clear direction for the future of the game and a lack of coherence between the different parts. Designs of features once presented to us don't seem fully thought and/or taking into account players, how we play or why we use this or that features. Thoses features are released half finished, with bugs after a long wait.

 

Just as an example I will take the ranked warzones. From an abstract point of view, there's not much difference between normal and ranked warzones, you queue (in a group) for warzones, you play the warzone chosen for you, at the end you get rewarded for the win/loss. It's almost exactly the same process as for normal warzones and the little tweaks necessary shouldn't have been much trouble to do. Despite that, it had to be delayed to a further update.

Furthermore, the lack of difference, of incentives lead to the small amount of ranked warzones played. The designs of the normal/ranked should be different, it's a failure to have teams of experienced players in Elite War hero gear with around 20k hp fight against fresh lvl 50 solo players that may not even know about recruit gear.

 

 

Well, I should stop here, while it's nice to see some more communications from Bioware, you lost the trust of some people and without increased efforts towards the clear and defined goal to make a better, well thought, coherent game, not just a more profitable one, I doubt F2P and the months to come will improve things much.

As it has been stated before, story is what is supposed to set this game apart from others of its ilk. What update do you have for us folks looking for Chapters 4, 5, 6, etc. of the class stories? Is this still a priority or is focusing on endgame content like WZ, FP, Ops, etc. the priority? When can we expect to see more story content?

As a professional working in the softwasre industry, I can positively say that if any of our products had such horrible performance issues I would loose my job.

 

I do understand that bugs creep in every now and then. But SWtoR at present has near game-breaking issues (constant lag for example, amongst many others). I love this game and will keep on playing until Christmass at least, but unless at east the really big, obvious technical issues are solved I may not continue to do so.

 

In a nutshell:

 

1. Sort the big technical issues. Fire your developers and hire better ones if need be.

2. Start adding more content.

 

P.S. damage meters would be nice, but this one is just a personal preference.

Hello Jeff.

 

I apologise because i dont have time to read the whole thread and i dont know if this issue has been brought up.

 

I love SWTOR, i plan to play it for years to come but there is one issue i consider completely vital in the game's core that isnt fixed to this day. Many call it combat delay, i dont know the specifics. What i do know is that there is an issue in combat with the GCD's flickering and triggering but no skill triggering when you're spamming your skills in an effort to get the best possible performace DPS/TPS/HPS wise. This is very frustrating as it makes you lose 1.5 seconds of the combat everytime it happens. It chips away your enjoyment of the combat bit by bit and it really needs to be completely fixed. I had hope that the new servers would do that, but it wasnt the case.

 

I do believe the issue is related to lag as it seems to occur more often when theres more people in the servers, and even more common on operations. Please fix the issue as i believe it will plague the game and prevent it to ever achieve a bigger sucess than it already has. Its a core element of the game. Or, at least explain to us what is preventing it from beeing fixed.

 

A second major issue in my opinion are the loading times. They can get atrocious at times. It needs optimisation or at least news that optimisation will come in the future. The loading bar itself does not help the situation as it seems to get stuck on 1/4 for quite a long time and the game loads up when it hits half. Maybe it would ease up the frustration if it had a more realistic fill, but also obviously by reducing the load times altogether since we have to do alot of traveling to get around in the galaxy.

 

Ah... also i have a sugestion. James Ohlen seems to be beeing held in captivity or something. Bring him out, let him speak about the game. He always sounded excited about it, and i always believed he loved the game as we do. He is the link to the original team that remains and we must see that he is on board.

 

Let me add another sugestion that will add many hours of gameplay to the game: An achievement system. It is very important, and while at it add reputation factions aswell. These both help retention of players.

Edited November 7, 2012 by Nemmar

I can tell you myself and most of the community apprecaites the time taken to do this as it's no mystery that we've been finding the communication to be severely lacking compared to most games.

Just FYI : November is the last official month of "fall". No seriously though, i love that you guys are publicly testing changes and making sure quality beats release time whining. If you rush a patch, the public will only remember the bugs and what was wrong. If you delay something, but release it polished, they wont remember the wait, theyll remember the quality of the patch. Keep it up! Cant wait to play a polished version of HK-51 content!

 

Much love, Thomas.

by this analogy, not a single PS3 or XBOX game is worth paying 50 euros for.

The hours of fun I already had for that 12 euro per month outweighs the 50 euros i'd have to pay per game after i finish it in 10ish hours (or even less)

 

Everybody has their own definition and limits as to what they'll pay.

 

In the MMO market, there is a generally accepted minimum amount of functionality that players expect in a game. Everyone has their own limits, but basically if an MMO doesn't meet a players minimum expectations then they will deem it "not worth paying for".

 

This is why people aren't willing to pay £8.99 for SW:TOR each month: it doesn't stand up to their expectations of what the game should be. Whether those expectations are justified or not is an entirely different matter but the point is that hundreds of thousands of people have judged SW:TOR to be an inferior product in the market place and have taken their money elsewhere.

 

Rather than address the root cause of people leaving (TOR being an inferior product) the management (Jeff Hickman) have decided to lower the cost of the game in order to attract more people. They are essentially putting SW:TOR in the bargin bin in order to squeeze as much money out of it as possible before it gets canned.

 

 

 

(For the record, I also don't think many console games are worth buying for 50 euros. Console games have focused too much on pretty graphics and not enough on actual gameplay since the 360 came out. This has resulted in 100s of very beautiful but ultimately bland console games that fail to hold my attention. I now no longer purchase console games until they are reduced to £20 or less because I don't think they are worth the full price any more.)

Is it still the plan to eventually expand on the class stories, or have that project been dropped?

 

As it has been stated before, story is what is supposed to set this game apart from others of its ilk. What update do you have for us folks looking for Chapters 4, 5, 6, etc. of the class stories? Is this still a priority or is focusing on endgame content like WZ, FP, Ops, etc. the priority? When can we expect to see more story content?

 

^^this.

 

Screw the PVE and PVP you can't do better than wow there anyways, we need some more story!

Edited November 7, 2012 by Inzuher

Is it still the plan to eventually expand on the class stories, or have that project been dropped?

 

Having already spent the best part of $300 million on developing (mostly) the voiceovers, I don't really believe that the game will reccieve that kind of funding to create a fully voiced class voice over expansion in the future.

There are some excellent responses to the state of the game so I won't rehash what's already been said.

 

I've been a subscriber since pre-launch and for most of that time, I really enjoyed the game. I haven't played much in the last couple of months because most of my friends left for the exact same reasons stated above. We had/have a relatively large guild in WoW that raided regularly. When we started playing SW:TOR, we couldn't ever get enough people interested to even attempt the Operations here. I kept telling myself to "give it time" and Bioware will get it right and everyone will come back. About the time when everyone left is when Bioware decided to "clam up" and we had no feedback for many weeks. My hope for the future of the game started to wane then. Soon afterwards, the announcement came that the game would be going F2P. I've been monitoring the sparse communication about F2P and other content and the future looks bleaker and bleaker. The limitations placed on F2P/Preferred players don't encourage subscription, they practically require it in order to achieve a pleasant playing experience. I think most players may give the game a try but when they see how restrictive the game really is, they won't think about purchasing from the cash shop or subscribing, they'll just turn the game off and never look back.

 

The one main content update that is not specifically targeted at raiders or PvP'ers (i.e. HK-51) currently requires players to purchase a part that is only available in a free-for-all PvP area. Really? Players who chose to play on a PvE server chose so because they didn't want to PvP or wanted consensual PvP. I was pretty turned off by the idea of the "Gambling Boxes" and had thought about cancelling my subscription over it but I thought I'd give it the benefit of the doubt and try before making a decision. The issue about the HK-51 vendor is over the line though. The fact that you disregard another's players server preference and gate their content with a playstyle they don't enjoy just to provide content to another segment of the playerbase was really the last straw. If the vendor goes live in a PvP zone then you will have made my decision quite simple for me and I'll not be subscribing anymore.