Roadmap

Why do we need a roadmap in the first place?

So we don’t get lost along the way. I guess they could update the tech and move to GPS and then there’d be no need for a roadmap

You're too nice sometimes, Lhance. To quote our dear friend:

My assumption has been that they are so extradordinarily out of touch with players desires that they think people play explicitly FOR pointless stupid grindfests, in conjunction with a combination of gross incompetence, low manning, and the simple fact that every one thing they touch breaks ten others.

Seriously, they'll unbind the enhancement on the new gear and suddenly you won't be able to progress story or some such nonsense. They can't seem to fix one problem without creating 15 others, so they add gear contrary to all logic.

There has been no level cap increase or difficulty changes. Apparently Mr. Kanneg wanted a new MM op, so despite the stated fact that they purposefully scaled gods to be "like MM", they added it. Then nade the patently stupid claim that the new gear was necessary to complete the new op. News flash - you either had a group capable of completing the new op, or you still don't. The new gear helped all of 0.0005% of the player base, pissing off many more, and probably the majority just doesn't care.

But what do i know. Pointless grindfests are apparently what swtor players enjoy according to Mr. Musco et al. And thus, detracting from the pointlessness of the grind runs players off, right? The more random, pointless, and boring the grind, the more people it attracts! See Musco, I'm on to you. The more stupidly pointless the excuse for content is, the better!

To enlighten the playerbase, Olag.

Not that getting the "Companions and Contacts" window straightened out isn't important, but it feels more important to get Companions functioning properly again. Things like companions not following combat and staying out of range (and then warping to catch up when you finish combat) should really be fixed before focusing on UI display issues.

Is there any word about fixing Companion AI bugs that were introduced in 5.10 in 5.10.1? Thanks.

No offence? but this is an MMO, I love doing ops but I also enjoy the solo content, but id rather see a smaller story, and 2 new ops in an update anyday, if you wanna have a solo experience, play a single player game, not an mmo

They did make a statement. On Twitter. And it wasn't hard to deduce the release date for 5.10.1 once they updated the in-game events page. Double rewards start on the 19th. Recent trends have had double reward events coming one week after updates/patches. Ergo, 5.10.1 was coming the 12th.


Oh, but wait, I'm sure someone is going to come back and say they don't use Twitter so how are they supposed to know this. The great thing is you don't have to use Twitter, you don't even need a Twitter account, to check SWTOR's Twitter feed. Here, I'll even give you the link: https://twitter.com/swtor (yes, it will ask you to log in, just ignore that). Just bookmark that and you'll be able to get these notices about updates/patches, downtime updates that can't get posted to the forums when the forums are down (hint: they post to Twitter about server status and the servers being back up after a downtime before they post to the forums), and many other notices that frequently only get posted to Twitter or that will appear on their Twitter feed before they appear on the forums.

Make sure to treat him nicely, one of my Warrior's killed the last person who kept him from them. In all seriousness I expect I lost him because the game either default to choices as if I'd skipped Iokath, or just dark choices in general (i.e killed him.) Just annoying because they both still have Elara so clearly the game recognizes them doing Iokath. Just apparently, not in the way they actually did it.

This is MMORPG not just MMO. The One that where RPG part has always been larger and better made than in other big MMORPG's. Story is where Bioware thrives. They are really really good at it and compared to other MMORPG's the story is the one that gives SWTOR it's cutting edge. I play many MMORPG's and if SWTOR would not have it's story and storycontent i doubt i would be spending any time here. They have also said in several streams that story is what people play the most. I would be ready to bet some credits that if they would go with more OPS less story route number of players would start to decline even from the numbers they are now. Serving the lowest percentage of players while leaving the rest without things to do is not very good busines model (just look how it worked with the Wildstar).

That being said i want to stress i am not sayng having OPS is not important too. I am all for giving content to all different kind of playstyles and preferences. All i am saying that i would never ever recommend them to minimize on delivering content on the exact part of the game that makes them shine compared to others.

And btw, solo experience in MMORPG and single player game are completely different things, serve completely different needs and are in no way always appealing to same audience.

I used to have that same sentiment, but my perspective has changed. I think due to lack of resources, primarily developers on the game has resulted in the present form of SWTOR.

Due to lack of workers, they are forced to put out little content compared to other MMOs of similar size (just compare them).

Also because they let go the original developers probably 6+ years ago, they don't have enough that are able to navigate through the old code and properly work in the new code on top of the old without creating bugs. Whenever they pull something out, it seems to drag out tons of bugs with it.

You couple this all with mandating content and deadlines and this is what we got. They have to have a certain amount of product out, and due to a total lack of resources they simply are incapable of doing it at the same quality as the original chapters.

If you notice long time vets tend to be the less forgiving of the game, because we compare newer content with the old, which simply will never stand up to it.

If you ask newer players, most of them are enthralled with the game and see none of the problems only because they have not gone over every inch of the original chapters a hundred times and are far less reliant on the new content to keep them engaged.

I won't say the newer devs are incompetent, I honestly don't know if it's 1-2 of them only on SWTOR, and I also don't know if they are shoehorned into doing certain changes to the game which most of us see as dumb. Like a gear grind that involves one Ops, and a rearranging of the gearing system after it had just been rearranged 2 years before. Surely most game developers would prefer to put their time into other things, but who knows except BW?

I understand now thanks to Jeff Nyman AKA Kryptonomic on these boards why the new stories don't really mesh well with the old chapters, they were old shelved pieces of stories that were not really meant to be tacked on to the first chapters in the manner that they were. They were incomplete.

Obviously to satiate the "story-mode" players, BW felt inclined to put out something for that niche so voila! You got what had been sitting on the shelves for years... Partially written stories that were not really meant to be added to the old stories the way they were.

I assume they simply had no writers available to do the masterful job that was done on the original chapters, and due to a lack of resources (again) they did the cheapest thing which was to use old material. Even if it was not really completed or made for what they were using it for.

To me this sounds like a BW issue, not an EA one. BW determines what work is done and what they spend their resources on. From how Kryptonomic made it sound EA gave BW a fairly decent leash to do their own thing, which I guess in some cases can be a bad thing, not a good thing if the studio manages it's affairs poorly which if this is all on point seems to be the case.

I am just trying to explain what I got from Jeff Nyman's pieces written about SWTOR on these forums and on his blog so some may not be exactly correct but this is all I got from his writings. He ought to write a book, I think it would find a small base of people who'd be interested in knowing what he knows especially about this game and how it began and eventually how it will end.

My perspective changed when I read Nyman's pieces. It actually made me feel a tad bit of pity for this game, and even for the devs left to try to work on it especially later on.

I even am starting to see that Eric has nothing to do with this stuff, and he is left with the daunting task of trying to remain positive when all of this is going on behind the scenes. Imagine how hard that would be? He has to balance between reporting things in a positive light to the players, yet at the same time try to relay the hundreds, literally hundreds of bugs and game problems from the players back to his directors who then decide what gets fixed and when. Perhaps a lot of Eric's silence is because he isn't given any information to tell? Who knows what the communication dynamic is there.

As we are seeing now, the more these new devs try to do, the more problems they end up having just because of the unfamiliar labyrynth of old code they seem to have to navigate through. Every little added change they do to the old stuff renders more problems and more bugs. I honestly wonder why they bother creating new gearing systems and such why not just leave the older coded stuff in instead of recreating the wheel which seems to inevitably breed a host of new bugs?

This makes me really doubt the new devs are doing all of this on their own accord, someone directs them and tells them what they want done and then the devs are tasked to have it done by a certain period of time. I believe these newer devs are placed in an impossible situation, and it's poor direction at the behest of BW directors making these devs do unnecessary work that then creates the plethora of problems they are encountering. Someone has coordinated the devs to do gear system change after gear system change ripping out old established non-bugged code only to shove in new gearing systems with new code that comes with tons of bugs which they don't know how to fix.

The game holds a special place in my heart, it always will. That being said I will always think about the potential lost more than anything. I believe they really squandered a once in a lifetime opportunity to have the best game on the planet paired with the most iconic and interesting sci-fi IP ever created. All my opinion of course. For anyone that managed to read this book, kudos. I didn't plan to write a novel today it just happened.