...

Your question is irrelevant because the point of the blog isn't to answer your content questions. It served a good purpose to me and many others, as much as that might shock you.

Edited May 31, 2012 by psi_overtake

Would be cool indeed, as long as they don't consider my posts saying Allison is hot is trolling. xD

 

But yeah, I know what you mean.

 

I would support that and it only makes sense. If you aren't a paying customer you can't post here. Troll issues solved.

If you can answer, how close do you work with the development of the game? Are you in the same offices, down the hall, a few floors apart or working at a secret location? Do you attend production meetings? If so, how often do they occur (generally)? What does it take for you to bring a 'hot topic' to the developers (not like a server crash, more like the sound issue since 1.2)? What does a 'typical' day go like for you?

 

 

 

 

 

edit: GREAT idea!!! I hope you guys do this often!

Edited May 31, 2012 by TUXs

Would be cool indeed, as long as they don't consider my posts saying Allison is hot is trolling.

Probably not "trolling", but certainly creepy...

I was excited to see the original update post today, but I feel so uplifted seeing the DevTracker full of new posts!

 

I think a lot of people are disheartened without some connection to the game-makers; if we don't hear any news, we have no idea what's going on. "Maybe everything is going according to plan, or maybe everyone on the team got fired ( ) including the person who updates the website and we'll never know!" Being able to talk to you guys about problems or things we enjoy about the game is really nice for the community, and I hope we hear from you often!

So, after you restructured your team, can you please update us on the timeline for server transfers/merges? Otherwise there will be not much of a community left to manage ...

too little too late, not much community left to manage tbh

 

so many things that should have been there and handled better at the start not at the start of the end

So when can we eagerly await the cancellation of your subscription?

I'd like to say how sorry I feel for these guys...having to deal with one of the worst communities in MMO history is a big task. I honestly with you guys the best of luck though, and good to see the Community Team more. Edited May 31, 2012 by Eillack

Mistakes happen and lessons were definitely learned, and we're going to be more thorough in everything that we do. Since all parties involved have no further issues with each other, I'm going to officially ask that we move beyond this. I'm going to, and I hope that you can as well. There is no reason to discuss this further.

 

I just wanna comment on this - as much as people were upset by what happened, the fact that you have bent over backwards to apologize for the error, and the numerous updates AND explanations, to me, has made a very negative situation, quite positive. This was handled well, in the end, Joveth.

Our guild did this on Tuesday, actually. It took 3-4 attempts, but we finally got it. It's probably harder to do because EC is very placement- and mechanics-driven, and the previous 2 ops aren't so as much. Also, they do give you more BH comms for 16-man

 

No you don't (get more comms).

 

And stop for a second to think what you are saying and what I'm saying. You're response is "we did it". Well, good for you! You are awesome! Hers is your cookie.

 

My argument is not that it's undo-able, it's that you're stupid for doing it. If you're so awesome you could do it in "3 or 4 attempts" then in the same time you could have easily cleared EC and Nightmare KP on 8 man. You DO get more blackhole comms by clearing two zones, which would have taken you much, much, much less time then doing one zone 16 man, even before adding the extra time for the wipes.

 

You get paid less for doing 16 man, regardless of win or lose (in a loot per hour and loot per difficult mater of thinking) is the point. Why do 16 man?

It feels like there's been more communication in this thread today than there has been in the last two weeks. Can we expect a level of communication like this going forward, or will it be reverting back to the level of communication we usually have seen where it's limited to mostly server outages?

 

Is there a community representative independent of the PVP or PVE representative who's goal is to explain the reasoning behind class changes, or is that mostly going to remain limited to developer posts after class changes have already been pushed to live servers?

 

I'm very glad that you brought this up. As a reminder, we on the community team work with the development team, but we're not developers. With that being said, our philosophy has always been that it's best to have them explain any changes or new features that they've been working on.

 

To that end, we have several blogs that are currently either being written or in the process of being approved for posting regarding upcoming changes in Game Update 1.3, and yes, class changes is one of those blog posts.

 

I know you all hate this word, but expect the first of these blog posts to coincide with Game Update 1.3's deployment onto PTS... very soon.

i'm glad to see the more open communication. I hope it develops into a much more BACK AND FORTH dialog between Bioware, and the players (you know, your clients), and not a 1-way-street.

 

on a much more personal level. I don't know if GZ still works at BW, but i'm glad to see that he's not on the list of community members. I personally will never be able to forgive him for deliberately misleading the healers.

Nice to see the team introduce themselves, kind of offended that we have no jedi knights or bounty hunters though :/ those are my mains

 

I play Bounty Hunter also... mostly because I like catching people on fire and using my jet pack.

No you don't (get more comms).

 

And stop for a second to think what you are saying and what I'm saying. You're response is "we did it". Well, good for you! You are awesome! Hers is your cookie.

 

My argument is not that it's undo-able, it's that you're stupid for doing it. If you're so awesome you could do it in "3 or 4 attempts" then in the same time you could have easily cleared EC and Nightmare KP on 8 man. You DO get more blackhole comms by clearing two zones, which would have taken you much, much, much less time then doing one zone 16 man, even before adding the extra time for the wipes.

 

You get paid less for doing 16 man, regardless of win or lose (in a loot per hour and loot per difficult mater of thinking) is the point. Why do 16 man?

 

Sorry, I was told that we received more comms for doing a 16-man vs. 2 8-mans. Aside from your hyperbole and your condescending tone, your post has a legitimate concern that I hope gets addressed.

 

Also, 16-man Story Mode EC is easier than 16-man Nightmare Mode KP. Not every level 50 is geared for that, yet.

Edited May 31, 2012 by psi_overtake

very soon.

 

Sorry, but if hear "soon" again from you guys, I might forget myself.

 

What you really should do - if you care about the community - is to give us some fixed dates, and do anything to keep them. They should base on realistic/pessimistic estimates, because if you get things done before them, people will actually be really happy. Many people are angry, because of the very high amount of uncertainty at the moment.

 

Furthermore you should implement an open bug/development tracking system, where people can track the open issues, give further feedback, etc. (maybe even connected to your internal system). This may work much better and efficient than the suggestion and customer service forums, or thousands of individual in-game tickets.

This has been said a number of times but I thought I would add my 2 Cents worth. I often only check the dev tracker on the forums, so seeing so much current info is good. Its a nice thread and a lot of posting about who the Community team are etc. However can we expect more info coming forward. I know a lot of people say its better to have something garanteed than give half answers or work in progress but I dont. I would rather we knew what is in long term, medium term and short term, as well as just have replies to topics to show threads are being read and ideas being seen and checked and considered.

A few questions regarding legacy

 

Will the be an option when you can buy a legacy perk to make previous level 50 characters to companions (of coarse after bolstering them down to what ever level you may be). If so I hope it ties in somehow. For example: You get the perk then after say level 37 one of your companions will notify you, further more your Jedi companion says they feel "A disturbance in the force" when you brought a former Inquistor or Warrior. Another example would be a tank companion says they found "This galactic scum snooping around" when you brought a former Smuggler.

 

Also can you give us a heads up if HK is coming? I really loved the KOTOR series and loved how you brought some of the old music! Also thanks for listening to us. Prep to see a few million more subs later with this work, a few my friends.

Since 1.2 there many bugs related to sound, for instance sometimes (for some people almost always) there is no voice or warning messages in warzones.

 

Oh that small bug. That only happened in a conversation with NPC's for me. I think that problem stopped for about a month ago; guess I got lucky.

I feel like this may have been buried quickly and while I know I am not entitled to an answer because I am not rainbow jebus I would like one :X... Yeah... Spoiled I know.

 

One poster asked something similar and got a "we would sticky something a poster would make" is that a "no" to handling your own compilations?

Expecting us to stay on top of what the collective "you" says is no small feat (and we wouldn't be getting paid to do so).

 

You're not being ignored! This is actually a good thought. One idea that we have brewing is to gather all of the week's news articles in a single sticky and post them in General Discussion. Of course, we also have the Q&A Archive that collects all of the questions and answers from our weekly Q&A blog here.

 

Actually let me see who has the bandwidth to get started on this project from our team...

 

...also rainbow jebus?

Very nice, and grats to Eric Musco. You came along way from hosting the Torocast podcast.

And you sure know how to talk fast,and you understand gaming on a high lvl.

 

But i wish you all the best(even thou you give me warnings and infractions:))

BTW get Allison to dance on the next E3 again,she knows how to party hoaa

 

It's all about the baby Tauntaun 5-second dance party. We should all have a Tauntaun dance-off at 5PM CDT today. Get out of our chairs, turn up the volume for 5-seconds and move like we mean it! Who's with me?

I have a somewhat different take on the events under discussion. These events indicate to me that the Community Managers have no clear metric of "community" to guide them. So, they wing it. By metric, I mean a set of measurable indices by which Bioware can determine if a given action will increase or decrease community cohesion. It is very clear that a host of design and operating decisions for SWTOR have undermined community cohesion. (Its a much broader topic to explain all the ways this occurs both intentionally and unintentionally.) Viewed in this light the Hoth/GM/PvP dispute is a clear illustration that the GMs involved had little or no insight into how their actions would negatively affect community cohesion. Furthermore, by writing it off as merely a mistake warranting an apology, Joveth missed an opportunity to explain to the community why this event is so important. Either he does not understand the importance or he lacks a metric to measure how his actions and those of the GMs in question affect community cohesion. Integrity matters in real life and in communal games. There are validated methods of developing metrics both in real life communities and in virtual communities that might go a long way toward giving Bioware a firm handle on measuring community cohesion and conforming design and operational decisions to increasing the cohesion that is necessary for growth in a communal game. Do a search on "Sense of Community" and "Sense of Virtual Community" for a few papers on the matter. Or email me and I can start you with a reading pack.

Carba

Though I'm glad to see posts on the dev tracker again, I can't help but notice that we almost never get actual dev posts anymore. Georg for example used to be one of the most vocal devs, but hasn't been heard from at all since April. Was he silenced? Was he a part of the layoffs? Why do we only get posts from the community team?