Specific server forums is something we will very likely revisit in the future. No promises, but we definitely hear feedback regarding them.

Ok thanks for the prompt reply, server forums have always been very good in my previous games and the amount of trash talking isn't that bad if controlled properly.

This doesn't mean that there won't ever be exclusive info on press sites, but we will always work to make sure that players can get important game information and news, no matter where you choose to look.

Can't you post links to these exclusive interviews? The press site still gets hits; we still have to go there to get the info. Otherwise, users just copy paste it into a forum post and the site gets less hits. Also:

We are committed to working with the community and we will continue to do so through Game Update 1.3, Character Transfers, and beyond.

Shouldn't that be, "through Character Transfers, Game Update 1.3, and beyond" or is that not an ordered list?

Finally, I like your idea about matching community team members to specific game elements and their respective developers. I look forward to seeing more activity in the forums from you guys in the future. Forward!

two cents?

 

its a bit late to revamp the community interaction system. it is nice and all, and going forward im sure the minor amount of people who care to be involved with this community will love the lap dog interactions.

 

but this is yet another thing that should have been implemented since beta, its a great thing no doubt but i personally have watched significant numbers of forum folks abandon this outlet for greener and less whiny pastures.

"Better late than never."

Thanks for the updates guys and looking forward to good interaction.

That said I haven't really posted my requests any where but I do have some feedback for the teams. This very Apple'esqe method of "we can't talk about it right now" doesn't really work. I don't understand why Bioware wouldn't want to shout to the world all the things they are planning for the year. The secrets don't serve any purpose. It's not like another MMO is going to introduce new Star Wars elements because they ripped off your idea. My goodness I play this because it's Star Wars. There is nothing that any of your competitors could steal from your announcements that would convince me to switch to them if I KNEW you were going to put it in SWTOR.

It should be communicated all the way to the top that getting folks, like me, excited in the upcoming features and giving us things to look forward to is likely going to travel at light speed when you talk player retention. Being mysterious in this venue doesn't serve any useful purpose, and doesn't serve to keep anyone interested.

BTW a notable exception would be the surprise events in game, like the plague event. I would want that to be a surprise. But features? Tell us! Get us excited about the future! Let us know what is on the drawing board. If nothing else you can solicit feedback before you waste massive development cycles building something nobody is going to like.

This is fantastic! What a great post to read, and I'm thrilled to meet you all.

I can't wait to see what you guys have in store for us, and for the boards!

Welcome one, and all!

Welcome to the new team members (if there are any). Hopefully this will improve communication between the players and developers, which is badly needed.

I like the idea of representatives for various playstyles and aspects. It's sounds similar to the Galactic Senate Program back in SWG that I used to be part of, albeit unlike in SWG, the positions are handled by Bioware employees instead of players. As long as all aspects and playstyles of the game are represented well, this should improve things considerably.

I already wonder who will be specialized on Roleplay and the social aspect of the game. Whoever it is can start off by getting the developers to implement chat bubbles ASAP, followed by other things roleplayers need and want.

Specific server forums is something we will very likely revisit in the future. No promises, but we definitely hear feedback regarding them.

Knew you'd show up. Glad you're here

I don't understand why Bioware wouldn't want to shout to the world all the things they are planning for the year.

If they hint at a potential feature and then need to withdraw it later, it will save them many many headaches due to angry player posts as opposed to not mentioning it at all.

If they hint at a potential feature and then need to withdraw it later, it will save them many many headaches due to angry player posts as opposed to not mentioning it at all.

Agreed. However you wouldn't hint something unless you were dead set on making it happen. I'm not talking random blue sky ideas here. I'm talking about things that are already in the development pipeline.

One thing I have noticed lacking in community management is feedback on open issues. I am not talking the "when are we going to get it" type feedback, and I am not even talking the big issues.

As an example, a majority of the quest bugs and such that get logged don't ever make it into the known issues list on the forums. It seems the only way something gets on the known issues list is if someone posted something in the forums (not via bug report) and it spawned a multi-page threadnaught. Or if you were lucky enough to catch the eye of particular devs/etc.

Bug reports that are almost identical to ones that have been on the list (bonus missions going away after main mission tasks complete, etc) have been logged, sent to development, and nothing, no feedback nothing in the known issues list until several patches later it shows up in the patch notes.

There needs to be some better and more reliable way to get a list of known issues to us the players so we can avoid the problems and therefore have a better experience.

There are a lot of people on threads complaining "there is no community", "they don't talk to us", "they don't hear us", on and on. And here they are, telling them more about themselves, putting names (and maybe faces) to many community related aspects of this game, and posting with us, interacting, having fun! I made a thread asking for a forum and blog post just like this one and I am personally ECSTATIC about this.

Nobody asked for names or faces. I can tell you right now that it doesn't matter how much we personally get to know them, that simple fact alone isn't going to improve the game.

I didn't say I wasn't excited or that I know what is going to fix the game and how, I simply said that you're acting like this is the saving grace of the game, as if all problems are going to fade away into myth and memory simply because you know Joveth on a first name basis now. They aren't going away simply because of a few introductions that weren't requested or required, you just seem to be gushing all over this announcement when nothing productive has come from it yet, just give it a few weeks and see where it takes us.

Am I hoping for the best? Sure am. Do I expect this to be the catalyst of big changes? No, not at all. You're the one assuming that I have extreme expectations and want release dates, yet you can't reign in your own hopes for a minute and realize that as of now, this has done nothing for the game.

Can't you post links to these exclusive interviews? The press site still gets hits; we still have to go there to get the info. Otherwise, users just copy paste it into a forum post and the site gets less hits.

This is something that we started doing recently. Essentially, once a thread about exclusive content gets posted by a player, we'll do our best to sticky it in General Discussion to make sure that the news is seen.

Shouldn't that be, "through Character Transfers, Game Update 1.3, and beyond" or is that not an ordered list?

This wasn't ordered in any way.

Finally, I like your idea about matching community team members to specific game elements and their respective developers. I look forward to seeing more activity in the forums from you guys in the future. Forward!

Thanks! We're definitely excited about this.

As community managers would you consider keeping an up to date "In patch X.X..." thread stickied in general?

The reason I ask is because many of the posts on this board are due to confusion over what has and has not been said about the future of the game.

A clear bulleted summery of features, changes, and content with links to all the relevant Q/As, twitter posts, and interviews would be easily maintained if you did a little every few days and would be a fount of information that could be, and this is important, easily accessible for all the forum goers.

Arlee on MMOc, Dulfy, and DH tend to do an okay job of it but having to go to 3rd party sites to get compiled information is a bit demoralizing and many of the community members are unaware of them.

Really love that you guys are making the effort to step into the thunderdome of general forum.

I would still like to know which servers you guys and gals are playing on (and which servers you transferred from if applicable). I think it would help me as a player (or us as a player base) understand how you're dealing with the same problem we're facing. I understand your characters should remain anonymous, and I'm not asking to stalk you. I suppose if you're on a server with 10 people, maybe it would be too easy to narrow down which one is you.

Otherwise, this is a question you can answer. You don't have to ask a dev because this time you actually know the answer, surely there isn't a 'do not disclose' or you don't need permission or anything. The question is directly related to getting to know you better, so it fits into what you're looking for in this topic. I know it's kind of a loaded question, but maybe if you answer a hard question it will let us know you really do want to communicate with us and build a little trust with some of the more skeptical forum user base.

Thank you all for subjecting yourself to the fires of the forums. (/hands out flame retardant outerwear)

I know if you guys don't know the answer to this yet but I have been worried about this since all the stuff happened last week.

Will we get something from Mr. Ohlen or Mr. Erickson about where the game is heading? With the downsized team I'm afraid that the 4th pillar (story) will fall by the wayside ;(. For me and my little group this is the most important part of the game.

Glad to meet you all , it was a great read , hope the community treat you well. Oh and Allison you answered a question that I have been wondering about , Ill send an in game customer report about a really bad bug , it involves not been able to get rid of a companion or log off , so its an important one.

cheers,

Badorb.

.... I can tell you right now that it doesn't matter how much we personally get to know them, that simple fact alone isn't going to improve the game...

... as of now, this has done nothing for the game.

It's improved my mood, which will turn into a better gaming experience and will spread to my guild, which will get them happier. Mood and knowledge heavily influence current and potential players.

"We want answers!"

Well here is a lot:

http://www.swtor.com/blog/weekly-forum-thread-round-may-30th-2012

http://www.swtor.com/blog/community-qa-may-25th-2012-%E2%80%93-special-edition-game-update-1.3

plus archives of other data

"I feel like BW has forgotten about us / We never hear from BW!"

http://www.swtor.com/community/devtracker.php

http://www.swtor.com/blog/community-team-general-update-may-31st-2012

Some people will just never be satisfied with how long the process takes. I'm glad that the game's representatives are taking the time to blog and post on the forums (and especially happy that they're deleting irrelevant and/or rage posts) about what they know and how they're here to listen to our concerns (and post answers where they can).

You're right in that the known issues list on the forums isn't a comprehensive list of all the in-game issues. The goal of that list is primarily to make sure highly-visible issues that impact many players are listed. That doesn't mean that other reports go into a black hole, and we do encourage you to use in-game Customer Service to report bugs. This way, they'll be put into the system for sure. Once a bug is entered (and once it's checked to see if it has already been entered), the time to fix it varies, since we have to prioritize bug fixes based on resources for each specific fix. On the forums, we do try to post when we (on the community team) have passed an issue along, but the in-game CS portal is the best way to report individual bugs.

Oh I understand the length of time to fix/priorities/etc. My problem is that bugs that are practically identical to ones listed on the thread go unannounced on the thread. For specific example there is a mention in the thread right now of a quest that if you do the last step in a quest the bonus mission goes away. I reported a similar bug where in a specific quest the last bonus boss and the computer to activate to finish the quest are equally easy to get to and in the same instance. If you kill the boss then activate the computer you complete the bonus and the quest, you activate the computer and then kill the boss... no bonus. I reported that a month ago. Still not in the known issues list.

If one is visible enough to make the list, shouldn't the other? It just seems that what makes the list is arbitrary and insufficient to keep people from tripping over (and having to report) bugs that you already know about, which wastes our time, supports time and r&d time.

Thank you all for subjecting yourself to the fires of the forums. (/hands out flame retardant outerwear)

 

I know if you guys don't know the answer to this yet but I have been worried about this since all the stuff happened last week.

 

Will we get something from Mr. Ohlen or Mr. Erickson about where the game is heading? With the downsized team I'm afraid that the 4th pillar (story) will fall by the wayside ;(. For me and my little group this is the most important part of the game.

I agree story and forking arcs was one of the major things to make SWTOR unique. I certainly hope it does not fall by the wayside.

I like this thread. It's nice to get to know our Community Team!

And /highfive to Eric! Sith Inquisitor all the way