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Community Q&A Thread Blog Discussion: July 27th, 2012


CourtneyWoods

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Would have really liked to see an answer regarding the "Match to Compaion Chest" feature, plus some of the other questions that people asked regarding armor / vanity issues.

 

Maybe next time. :(

 

Regardless, thans for taking the time to answer a handful of questions.

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I do wonder if even the people who get their questions answered are disapointed with the info we get. I guess its better than nothing and I ask every week cuz I assume that even if my question is not answered hopefully someone has read it.
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I do wonder if even the people who get their questions answered are disapointed with the info we get. I guess its better than nothing and I ask every week cuz I assume that even if my question is not answered hopefully someone has read it.

 

At least its not the monthly "Where is my hood toggle" :D

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I do wonder if even the people who get their questions answered are disapointed with the info we get. I guess its better than nothing and I ask every week cuz I assume that even if my question is not answered hopefully someone has read it.

 

When Cryptic does their "Ask Cryptic" stuff, they answer like 50 questions. However it's done only once a month.

 

I wouldn't want to wait a month between Q & A posts, but it might be nice if we had a few more questions answered. Like 10 or 12. On a wider variety of topics.

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Oh look, another Q & A, another Friday of dodging any forward-looking questions.

 

Face it, ever since the layoffs, the communication come from Bioware/EA has been bantha poodoo.

 

Usually by now, we'd be teased by whats coming next - however, since the reveal for the upcoming year (which happened, by the way, BEFORE the layoffs), we've gotten jack squat in terms of any forward-looking information - at best just some rehashed empty platitudes about maintining the quality of the game with no real substance to back up those statements, or at worst, total silence and the refusal to engage in ANY forward-moving discussion.

 

What makes it suck the most is that this expectation isn't unreasonable - its the expectation Bioware originally set for THEMSELVES. Those of us complaining are merely holding them to THEIR original standards, how other MMO's do it be damned.

 

I think a lot of us would be a lot more patient if they trusted us enough to say "hey, we're reorganizing the office in Bioware, so everything is going to be delayed by 6 months" - we might not like it, but at least it would be honest.

 

But the only conclusion a logical person can come to is they don't give a damn about the game - EA only cares about the stockholders, which is the only group who could take such a statement in a negative light and without understanding.

 

To that end, EA is a bunch of idiots for buying up Bioware and driving a great company into the ground, especially when you let MARKETING call the shots for a dev company - see exit interviews from bioware employees on glassdoor.com to see what I mean.

 

The whole thing is beyond frustrating, and seeing these softball Q & As week after week is just another reminder of it, when prior to the layoffs you would get some forward-looking questions put into the Q&A week in and week out.

 

Ugh, what a mess.

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I also agree that the Q&A and communication for the past month have been poor. It almost feels like that is no longer a care factor.

 

Also you have increase your server stability by 99.97% - but you haven't address the server lag spikes nor the problems a lot of Aussies are currently having to get connected to the Aussie Servers.

Edited by Aus_Jedi
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What is this?

 

3 weeks straight Q&A with no questions or answers about the future of this game at all. The only thing that's been up is a stupid companion that's coming in who knows how long. These aren't even questions worth answering, and the questions that should be answered for 3 weeks have been ignored.

 

I really have to say I cannot see a future for this game at this point if it keeps going like this. I love this game, subbed for 6 months and stayed subbed because I was waiting to see what would happen. I've seen it go through horrendous times and to be honest it's getting way worse. Worthless Q&As and no communication at all is just a start, beta bugs and lag issues are still there and have been there since day 1. Why are you guys answering lore questions when there are 6-7 other pages of questions asking about hood toggles and chat bubbles, or questions about PvP? This is ridiculous, the stuff you answered aren't even good. I don't care about the lore of pillars, just give us some insight on how this game is going to succeed for the next few months.

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I like the fact you answered the DNA question - but overall the Q&A this week is very, very meager. There's still some burning questions about mechanics, about things that have been asked countless of times and haven't been answered (I'd like to know when Miraluka and Twi'Lek will finally be able to wear hats decently. Do you have an art department that's working on that? Seriously, just because I have a veil over my eyes doesn't mean I can't wear a hat :( I'm ready to call you guys lazy and that must hurt).

 

- Have you looked at Class Trees lately?

Not Balancing per se, but there are some odd things in there - purely per example, Scoundrel Scrappers cannot effectively play with Dirty Fighting; it offers them to be in a 10m range, but their only ability for getting the Upper Hand is a Melee (4m) ability.

 

- Some Class Abilities feel/seem 'weird' or even 'broken', any chance of a fix?

o (Scoundrel) Freighter Fly-By puts them in combat immediately when casting, which eliminates the chance of it hitting anything.

o (Scoundrel) Tranquilizer is the only Crowd Control that doesn't give a debuff to the target telling you about the duration - and makes a Scoundrel Sawbones' "Sedatives" feel completely broken.

o (Consular) Why did you think changing the Consular's Project was a better idea than changing the Sorcerer equivalent spell to be 'slower' in animation? I liked flinging my big jar at things, now it's a "thing" and I can't see what happened. Very disappointing.

o (Jedi Knight) Master Strike is still interruptable.

 

- What's the most underused Class right now? Why do you think that is? Will you fix that somehow?

 

- News on emote animations?

Nothing works on a Mount despite what you claimed (I'd like to /flap, please), /sleep and /meditate need an animation and I wouldn't mind it if you made Class Legacy emotions last a lot longer.

 

There's a lot of questions I thought up and I'm pretty sure others have similar or better formulated ones. Looking forward to 1.4 and the next Q&A, peeps.

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So in summary then:

 

1. Question on a legacy perk (which at no time was available for purpose)

2. Story/lore question (I'm sure maybe a handul of people cared about this)

3. Question on an event (that finished weeks and weeks ago, and we already knew the answer)

4. Server migration question (honestly, like that won't be answered somewhere else closer to the time)

5. Server tech question (not an interesting question and an even less interesting answer)

 

Bioware if you actually communicated with us, this is the kind of stuff that would have been answered in normal forum posts. All fluff, avoiding any serious issues. Giving ABSOLUTELY NOTHING OF INTEREST OF IMPORTANCE.

 

The only thing you have to say (and you had so little you had to announce it TWICE, once at E3 and again at Comic Con - oh and lets not forget right after it you laid off the team responsible for the video) is a new companion who matters to a percentage of players who played a previous game. Deep joy over that. I wonder when (granted the answer is "soon", the answer always is) we will see that companion. Considering we have been told it will require at least one 50 what are we expected to do with him anyway? Run our dailies? Honestly, you lot are clueless.

 

This game is finished unless you urgently sack your department leads, sack your producers and anyone else in charge. Get some people in who know how to run an MMO. People with no experience and rejects from the total failure that was WARhammer online just aren't cutting it.

 

I imagine we will see the scale of your failure at the quarterly earnings call.

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Well, it is better than nothing I guess, and I'm sure lore fans will be happy.

 

I may just be expecting too much, but I can't help but remember when there would actually be answers in the Q&A that I found useful/interesting/exciting. :( Clearly the focus has shifted, though, oh well.

 

(oh yeah, and where is my hood toggle? :p )

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Yeah, let's discuss this one:

MayoJar: Lately you have been implementing "Server stability" fixes. Can you explain what exactly that is? I keep visualizing some intern sliding napkin shims under a corner of the server. Is this to fix lag issues, log in times, or transition screen load times?

 

Damion: I can see how this might be confusing to some players - SW:TOR servers, since launch, have enjoyed a reliability of greater than 99%, and since 1.3 went live, we've actually improved that to be greater than 99.97%, which means our servers pretty much never crash. However, Game Update 1.3 introduced a server bug that resulted in some players disconnecting randomly from the game, and the server team worked diligently after 1.3 went live to find this issue and stamp it out. This patch note refers (in vague terms, admittedly) to those fixes.

 

This is a nice way of spinning the truth. The problem isn't that servers crash a lot. The problem is that they stutter with lag spikes that affect everyone in the instance whether that's a pvp wz, an operation raid, or on the fleet. It's just ridiculous.

 

I actually find it deplorable that BW answer's this question and makes it sounds like this games performance has increased. In reality, they may have reduced crashes, but ever since server transfers lag spikes have increased.

 

Overall... just terrible PR there BW.

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Skendra: Question about Legacy! Under Character Perks -> Travel, at 1.2 there was buff for Sprint Speed but locked and now in 1.3 it was changed to Priority Transport. Why?

 

Will Wallace (Senior Designer): There were both internal and external balance concerns about allowing players to purchase upgrades to Sprint speed, especially as it related to advantages in Warzones. We don't want someone to feel like they have to have an optional purchase to be competitive in PvP. The Priority Transport perks were created as a replacement since they are beneficial for all players without upsetting the balance of the game.

Was it that really difficult to disable it in WZ, seriously?

 

 

 

Republicmeat: When the in-game event of the Rise of the Rakghoul plague was taking place, there was that vendor in Tatooine who you could sell DNA samples to. Will we ever get to sell our remaining DNA samples if we still have some or are they obsolete from now on since the vendor was removed?

 

Rick Burton (World Designer): I'll give the nebulous answer of "It is certainly possible that the DNA samples will be spendable again" with the caveat of "We have no plans at this time to reuse the DNA samples." While this does not help you decide what you should do with your left over DNA samples, it is the most honestly accurate answer to the question. I'll throw in one slightly less vague bit of relevant information. For future events, we have made tweaks to the design based on player feedback that should lower the odds players are unexpectedly stuck with "no longer spendable" event currency.

You really failed at setting this event and you are still clueless about bringing back the vendor?

 

 

LNSSnorkle: We know players that don't migrate by themselves will have their chars automatically moved. The thing is, how can we know where they will end up?

 

Damion Schubert (Principal Lead Systems Designer): Once we do automatic transfers, we will be doing everything possible in order to maintain the basics of the current ruleset as possible - PvE vs PvP, regional choice, language (for Europe); so in many cases, you should have a good idea of which populations you are likely to end up with. Another top concern is trying to help the populations that result have a good factional balance. We will give out a specific list once we are closer to implementation of this plan - watch for more info soon!

You'd better be working fast on paid character transfer.

I know quite a few people that will simply leave the game if they can't transfer to play with their friends.

Not going to re-roll for sure

 

MayoJar: Lately you have been implementing "Server stability" fixes. Can you explain what exactly that is? I keep visualizing some intern sliding napkin shims under a corner of the server. Is this to fix lag issues, log in times, or transition screen load times?

 

Damion: I can see how this might be confusing to some players - SW:TOR servers, since launch, have enjoyed a reliability of greater than 99%, and since 1.3 went live, we've actually improved that to be greater than 99.97%, which means our servers pretty much never crash. However, Game Update 1.3 introduced a server bug that resulted in some players disconnecting randomly from the game, and the server team worked diligently after 1.3 went live to find this issue and stamp it out. This patch note refers (in vague terms, admittedly) to those fixes.

Maybe not crashing but since not so long ago I never experienced lag spikes in WZ and now... gamez freezes, wait, wait, wait, ... and everything that should have occurred in a few secs instantly hits.

Well guess it's my PC and network connection...

Edited by Deewe
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Geez, BioWare, reading all these responses and all the anger you're generating, I have a suggestion for you for next week. It may still make some people angry, but at least it will be refreshingly honest, to the point, and it won't waste anyone's time reading through paragraphs of sleight-of-hand and misdirection. Here it is:

 

"We got nuthin'."

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Maybe everyone would stop being disapointed if they actualy read the guidelines for the Q&A.

 

As development plans are always subject to change, questions about future features will often get vague answers which can be repetitive and sometimes annoying. With that in mind, the development team is more interested in questions about current in-game features or systems, or questions about why development decisions were made. You’re still welcome to ask questions about future features and we’ll continue to answer them where appropriate – just expect the occasional ‘soon.’

 

 

If you expect to see any answers to future content/features your more than likely be disapointed. Take the Q&A for what they have meant it to be not what you want it to be.

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I also wondered why they just couldn't disable the faster sprint in War Zones. I was looking forward to being able to move quicker in areas you couldn't use your mounts - example - Flash Points.

 

If EA shares the results of this game and they have lost heaps of subscribers still I really hope the investors take a hard look to see why the game is unable to keep a player base.

 

Or this could be the same thing that happened to DCUO. They went very quiet. No updates and then f2p is launching. Which you never know this may be what they are actually working on. Which means new updates and content will be very slow coming out and current player base sits in limbo.

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Maybe everyone would stop being disapointed if they actualy read the guidelines for the Q&A.

 

As development plans are always subject to change, questions about future features will often get vague answers which can be repetitive and sometimes annoying. With that in mind, the development team is more interested in questions about current in-game features or systems, or questions about why development decisions were made. You’re still welcome to ask questions about future features and we’ll continue to answer them where appropriate – just expect the occasional ‘soon.’

 

 

If you expect to see any answers to future content/features your more than likely be disapointed. Take the Q&A for what they have meant it to be not what you want it to be.

 

I take it exactly for what it's meant to be. And that is "We don't f****** care any more, and we are not going to answer any questions that people actually care about so stop asking". All they are doing is p****** off the few people that are left. Answer real questions, or drop the Q&A, IMO.

Edited by Cupelixx
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