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.

 

Okay here is one...

 

I really hate the current structure of the "Weekly/Monthly Q&A" type things. It feels like the Devs pick the "Easy" questions from them and just ignore the "Hard" and meaningful ones. When we ask questions about gameplay, inevitably the Dev team will respond with something like, "And yes! We will have emotes on speeders soon!"

 

I'd want, when the community does something like this, for harder and more significant questions to be asked. It just seems like all the questions that ever get asked are kind of "puff ball" and don't focus on real issues.

The fact that supposed "fixes" often make it to the live server when in fact things are not fixed at all suggests you all might be better served putting even "minor" patches on the PTS. You all would look a lot more competent if patches were tested on a test server where players can point out the things you didn't actually fix ahead of the patch going live, instead of the numerous times where you all have to take it on the chin and once again admit you missed something in testing or a "fix" didn't actually fix what it was supposed to or the patch broke something else along the way.

 

I hate to say it, but BioWare's "Quality Assurance" for SWTOR has become a running joke in our guild. There are players that will test your game for free - in fact they'll pay you to do it with their subscription - instead we all feel like testers every single time a new patch hits the live servers.

 

Great post. And I agree the Q/A team is atrocious. It is indeed amazing how many broken things go live, players rage about it, only to find out testers pointed this out but the team had to make "the deadline". Bad business, and pretty much why so many have left this game lol.

It is unfortunate that there is so much vitriol in this thread, & I hope it doesn't seem like I'm adding to it, but I can't help but feel like some of the respectful anger/complaints are nothing but warranted. On many servers it feels like the game is in complete free-fall with nary a safety net in sight. While I think it is great that we are all of a sudden getting some Community Management it would appear to me that much of that vitriol is stemming from the idea/feeling that if you cannot get the Server Merges off the ground lile..two weeks ago.. that you won't have much of a community left to manage, & you can't honestly say that is not a valid concern. Edited May 31, 2012 by Kellour
spelling

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.

 

As someone who does both every week I disagree strongly. If not for Jarg and Sorno we could 14 man KP nightmare in 40 minutes or so. We've killed the first boss in KP nightmare with 13, about 30 seconds ahead of enrage. EC story mode is MUCH harder, and we struggle to his enrage timers on the first two fights even with 16 of the same people that blow them away on KP nightmare.

 

As such I have no problem bringing ungeared people to nightmare KP. They die. We don't rez them. We still win and get loot. In EC, everything is tuned so tight that a single death is a wipe a lot of times, so you can't come if you don't have the best gear already.

 

It's hard to compare the difficulty of the two zones 8 man, as going from 16 man to 8 man both zones have a difficultly level so low I can't tell the difference. We have 7 maned KP nightmare though, and never tied EC with less then 8 people, so I don't know.

 

And sorry about the condescending tone, this is the internet after all, hard not to come off that way.

Edited May 31, 2012 by lexiekaboom

So, not sure if this belongs here but was wondering what was being done about some of the extremly low server populations. Heard some talk/gossip about possibly merging some of them. Is this true?

Having this happen might help some. At least for the time being till a larger player base is formed. I know I am having a heck of a time finding a large player base on any server. (Trust me I am making my rounds), that has more than me at fleet or at the most 10 players. though I have found some that have gotten up to 25. and that was a standard not light server. From Eastern servers to the Asian servers I have gone. I do hope you folks are looking into merging some and or closeing some till you do indeed get a larger player base.

This is a nice initiative and contrary to some forum members belief, yes I do care about things like that. I'm looking forward to the next Community Team General Updates.

One of the biggest failures in WZ's, is not all players showing up in the Ops raid frame. With rateds coming soon, this will be a much bigger issue with players. How far has the team got in fixing this issue; and will rateds still be pushed live if this is not fixed?

Hopefully this will answer the question: one of our biggest priorities has always been to be advocates for the community and their concerns to the developers directly. A great deal of what we do involves communicating the community's feedback. On the other side, we always work to bring information to the community, and that can mean everything from blogs about new features to communicating information when we have unexpected issues or extended maintenance. Like I've mentioned, we can't always share information right away, but it's always our goal to get information to the players about things that are important to you.

 

Thanks for the response! I'm excited with you guys! Keep up the good work.

Hi there! *wave* It's great to see that you guys are making yourselves available to us. I look forward to reading what you have to say around the forums and on your blogs. This is a great improvement and I'm excited to see where this game is going!

Like I've mentioned, we can't always share information right away, but it's always our goal to get information to the players about things that are important to you.

 

 

I've been here a few years... as intentional and clear as your goals maybe. The resoloution of those is quite low. As a member of the community, whatever side I may fall, I sense spin in that answer. I'm working to being a millionaire... you see my predicament??

What we need now as a community is not not pie in the sky rainbows and wishful thinking but some solidity from the devs via the community reps about real matters and issues. It's been a low point to date, issues are fine... issues that are ignored and sidestepped aren't.

Edited May 31, 2012 by Caspian_Rho

Like I've mentioned, we can't always share information right away, but it's always our goal to get information to the players about things that are important to you.

 

This policy of iron-fisted information control, which goes back to before launch, should be re-examined.

 

Given that the lead Community Manager was just fired, clearly somebody has realized the old way of doing things was not effective. So why stick to it? Why double down on it?

 

The idea "we won't give dates or information until we're 100% sure" looks good on paper, but in practice I think it spares you none of the issues that are always cited to justify it.

 

If this development project is like any other, you have specifications and projected completion dates for any feature that will be added or changed in the foreseeable future. Why not communicate those regularly, and keep the community up to date? People are capable of understanding disclaimers ("Projected dates and features are best estimates, not guarantees").

 

Yes, sometimes dates will slip, or features will be cut. I can't see how that would be worse than "It's coming soon." Then weeks later, "It's still coming soon!" and weeks after that "It's really coming really soon!" This type of double-talk, however well intentioned to "protect us", actually projects the opposite of competence to the community who are your customers.

Edited May 31, 2012 by LagunaD

Just want to pop in and say I'm very pleased with this turn of events, the community management has definitely been the weakest link since launch, it's nice to see some normal posts in this thread and less of the robotic PR posts that dominated in the past. Not the least bit surprising to see the personnel changes coming in the QA and PR areas.

 

I will say I don't envy you, it's going to be difficult to build the kind of trust and relationship 6 months into the launch where it hasn't existed up to this point.

This is really great, and I'm glad you guys decided to come out and actually talk to the community like people instead of "robots".

 

Small comments and quips here really help people to recognize you as human beings instead of a faceless company.

 

It is also nice to see you are planning something along the lines of a specific community rep "representing" specific classes.

 

So if any of you want to answer, I have a question, not specifically SWTOR related, but, what games are you playing BESIDES SWTOR. I notice Allison said she was a gamer, what's she playing, or Joveth? etc etc.

 

I really think this is great either way that we might be getting more interaction from you folks. Heck I cant remember the last time any of you really had a conversation with us on the forums since beta except for Joveth..

I know Kung Fu.

 

This quote is now going in my sig! Win, that is all I have to say lol.

 

Oh and thanks for the post Joveth, I'm really glad to see you guys are still alive and listening to us. I for one appreciate the time you put into the post. Haters gonna hate. [insert Meme Image]

"no ranked war zones in 1.2"

 

How good of you to bring this point up again. I think this was the best example of what should NEVER happen. If there would have been an open communication about what the problems actually are, with the implementation of ranked warzones, a lot of people might have understood (but they didn't give a reasonable explanation up to today, as far as I know). I just can't believe they've figured out it wouldn't work hours before the going live? If this takes so long to fix, it must have been an extreme design flaw? If you pull stunts like the ranked warzone one, you should at least get someone to invent a very good lie to sell it to the community (maybe ask some politicians how to do this right).

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

 

Not surprised to see Jedi Knight left out. After all why would anyone choose them? every other class does anything the Jedi does just better and you get to see your hair....

 

BTW, Congrats to all of the changes! A Lot has happened this month! I'm curious if the restructuring of the Community team reflects to the referenced restructuring of the development team as well. Were they done with the same team structure in mind?

Thanks for posting. I have to say I'm really impressed with Bioware's customer service approach and I'm really excited about the new organization. (But I'm geeky that way.)

 

Can I make a suggestion that you throw some pics of folks up somewhere on the site? It does tend to make people feel more human when you can see what they look like.

That's a very good question and the truth is that we're aiming for a future in which we have a closer collaboration between you folks, us (the community team), and the development team. I believe that with the new specialty initiative (the one I mention in the blog post), we'll be getting closer to that. Once the infrastructure is set up, the goal is to be more agile in responding to questions and concerns (from the community team POV). As for the game? Well, we're players too so we all have different opinions on this. I love exploring in our game, so I'd personally love to see new planets down the line.

One think you might want to consider is in game polls, after the login screen.

 

We all know many players never ever comes to the forums, that would be a great way to get real feedback from, you know... players

 

but unfortunately sometimes we're just not able to give more details until everything is 100% ready.

And there we go again.

 

IMHO you'd better just throw away this motto because, seriously, so far you delivered some not really well thought concepts or nor that well polished ones that it's embarrassing.

 

Few examples:

• Non iconic 1.2 gear
  
• Non iconic 1.2 legacy talents
  
• Rackghoul event
  
• Illum
  
• Mandatory legacy names
  

 

Would you have communicated with your player base, before it was too late to tweak these features, you would have had the time to improve them and satisfy your player base... more instead of well, not pleasing them.

 

IMHO as long as you're sticking with your "100% mindset" you'll make less players happy than otherwise.

 

Thus far, we’ve been able to address several of the prominent issues like the “jet engine”

If jet engine = speeder engine, since last patch (and maybe the one before too) I don't get jet engines sound at all but when I dismount. So I'm riding a sound cloaked speeder.... disturbing

(Edit: strangely... or not speeder sound seems fixed now. No more cloacking device :/ ^_^ )

 

Now more on this thread and communicating/feedback:

• It's refreshing to read official posts that aren't condescending nor self congratulating nor accusing the player base either. (Edit: wasn't speaking about forum moderators BTW, but some well know devs).
  
• Please no more Guild only summits. They are only one part of your player base. Think casuals and PUGS too.
  
• The Q&A is nice but please don't ask us anymore to post questions on a subject we have no infos at all: ie patch 1.3.
  
• Make sure to have the devs step down in the Q&A topics once up to do follow up on players question ; Ex. in this Q&A:

Deewe: With the locked companion specs, some of us feel like being forced to use specific companions versus choosing them for their personality and look. Is there in the works any kind of feature mitigating this issue (hint: companions kits)?

 

Daniel Erickson (Lead Game Designer): Companions in BioWare games have always been fully developed characters with their own backgrounds and skills. While you can change between a couple different approaches with each, we do not presently have plans to make Companion Characters interchangeable.

It wasn't asked to make companions interchangeable so the question was answered sideways and none dev stepped in to clarify the answer.

 

Also IMHO this player well put post deserved an answer:

I didn't think much of the response to Deewe's question on locked companions.

 

The actual content of the reply was reasonable - you want each companion to be special & stay true to your concept. I can strongly empathise with this... but...

 

I question to what degree your concept actually matters to us as players. Deewe's point that most players feel locked into one companion is quite reasonable. It is possible to do content with other companions, but it's often sub-optimal to the point of being a dangerous hindrance. There are certain companions which we virtually never see in fleet, and I'm betting that if you analyse your data to sort for player spec + companion + time-in-combat-together, you'll see that players are ignoring more than half your companion concepts en masse.

 

This is a player "choice", but a choice between "Works Well" and "Works Badly" is a false choice, and I'm not convinced that conceptual-purity is sufficient justification for forcing that sort of choice.

 

Anyway seems to me you are, finally, on the right track.

See you on the forums guys.

Edited June 1, 2012 by Deewe

So if any of you want to answer, I have a question, not specifically SWTOR related, but, what games are you playing BESIDES SWTOR. I notice Allison said she was a gamer, what's she playing, or Joveth? etc etc.

 

I really think this is great either way that we might be getting more interaction from you folks. Heck I cant remember the last time any of you really had a conversation with us on the forums since beta except for Joveth..

 

When we start publishing more detailed profiles for each community team member, we'll talk about the games that we love. We're all pretty much gamers here on the team, but you may (or not) be surprised at how diverse our tastes are

 

Can I make a suggestion that you throw some pics of folks up somewhere on the site? It does tend to make people feel more human when you can see what they look like.

 

Oh we will. Everyone is going to have a detailed profile published in the upcoming weeks and you'll be able to see what we all look like.

I'm not gonna lie: we're quite the lookers.

At least that's what our moms tell us.

Is there a way you could filter you posts to not appear in the dev tracker?

 

I love what you are trying to do but I like the dev tracker as a simple way to read about what HAS changed or what IS changing. There is a lot of critical information there that should remain accessible at a moments notice.

 

For posts about what MIGHT change or why it ISN'T changing to that filter helps, or even community building, I don't think this is the correct outlet. No offence and again I completely support what you are doing, but I don't want to scroll though 10 posts about who on the team likes what classes when I'm trying to see when my server is going to be back up after a crash. Prehaps your own "community team tracker"?

Joveth is a very odd name by the way.

 

That your real name?

Since 1.2, we have been monitoring the threads about sound issues carefully. However, the problem is not isolated to one or even a few individual bugs. Rather, there have been multiple (sometimes overlapping) problems - some with similar symptoms. Thus far, we’ve been able to address several of the prominent issues like the “jet engine” and other loud noise on the fleet (1.2.0c, 1.2.1 ) and sounds stacking when getting multiple PvP medals (1.2.2), and we haven’t stopped working on fixes for other issues that you’re seeing, such as sound that “crackles” or losing sound gradually and/or randomly.

 

Your reports surrounding issues are always helpful when they’re ongoing and/or complex (and when they’re not!), so please don’t hesitate to add information and details to existing threads if you are seeing problems. Thanks for all of the details and information you’ve already given! o/’’\o

 

To see this in the dev tracker is a breath of fresh air. My grumble side is mad that they got community involvement 5 months too late. My SWTOR lover is yelling cheers.

Joveth is a very odd name by the way.

 

That your real name?

 

Yes it is

Edited May 31, 2012 by JovethGonzalez