https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrazac9yIAU

Am I missing something? These all sound pretty awesome (especially continuation of class stories), but I'd definitely expect new maps, a new game mode, and new ships. I mean, this is a whole year, right?

Maybe it just didn't make it into the announcement. Lets go with that.

Luckily I only heard them talk about first quarter 2015, stuff for Feb-April. Love the continuation of class stories, and the outfit designer could be cool (especially if I can get more pilot suit options) but it is really lacking in basically everything I would hope for and expect over the course of the next year.

No mention at all of GSF

No mention of new PvP maps / other additions

No mention of Super Server / Cross Server

has me decidedly worried this upcoming year. Really hoping they have good things coming because first quarter appears to be several neat things that I don't care about all that much *shrug*

My overall concern with SWTOR is that some egghead will decided to move the license around the moment it stops generating cash hand over pseudopod. Obviously, that would be at a much higher level than we'll hear about unless it actually happens, but that's the biggest threat to the whole game.

Certainly, the roadmap is pretty light on details. But if they knew they were adding a new map to GSF, they would have mentioned that. Man we need a new map so hard. I think that Lost Shipyards TDM being 20% of maps makes balancing Gunships hard-ish, and Kuat Mesas Dom coming up 531% of the time definitely makes bomber balance hard. I would also love to not get chain KMDed or chain Denoned. Denon I like so much because it rewards hyper beacons and beacon counterplay, as well as mobility talents and missiles for the big distances. I feel it's the best designed map when it comes to ship types in general, but it's just such a campaign and it hurts to have it chain pop.

More maps would be sweet, wouldn't he have said that though? I'd actually be legit sad if I thought we were getting nothing in all of 2015, so I just will go ahead and not believe that thing.

While I am excited to see that class story will be continuing and that there will be a new playable race (whenever they can fit Togruta in; predicting 3.2 but we'll see) I too am disappointed that GSF is not receiving any attention.

That said, If we've learned anything from the great GSF crash of 3.0, it's that we can get things fixed if we pilots work together and make a concerted effort to push the devs for attention and a response. Whenever there's a livestream or a cantina tour, we need to try and get someone there to ask GSF questions; can we get tooltip fixes, what happened to the balance changes, are there new maps coming. When the devs make posts about the future of swtor, we need to be there asking about the future of GSF; can we expect a new game type soon, what about new cosmetic items, is the fifth ship type still indefinitely postponed? I say that we need to start pushing (firmly but in a non-confrontational manner) and show that we too deserve attention and a response.

Post Script

As much as I love GSF (and I do love it), I think this forum is a little bit delusional in its expectations. I say this as as a veteran project manager of the gaming industry who has to make hard cuts all the time.

Recent events have shown that GSF is casually butchered by lapses in version control. That means it likely has no regression test process. The dev team for GSF, which used to play it at lunch and analyze telemetry, has likely been scattered to the wind to work on other features or games.

Bugs are only acknowledged and addressed when we shout loud enough (in general forums and /bug reports, not this forum which is unread by BioWare). And then, we likely get maybe one junior dev assigned to unfrak the version control bugs and get GSF back to something resembling its "normal" state.

We are a niche community on a niche game that is fighting to maintain its relevance and revenue in a dying genre. Moreover, our pet feature is the most divorced from the game's central pillar--story driven ground content. We are more eccentric and "off message" than Operations, than Ranked Warzones, than general Warzones.

GSF has enormous headwinds against broader adoption. Unlike Warzones, we have no bolster mechanic. We have no PvE practice areas. GSF is a wondrous, amazing, but super-intimidating masterpiece duct-taped onto a theme-park choose-your-own-adventure story that 90% of players barely manage to muddle through.

With SoR, BioWare announced they were returning to their core strength--story based ground content. They discovered with the x12 experiment, and SoR itself, that story content is what moves the needle on getting people back to the game.

We should not expect any new GSF content ... perhaps ever. We should not expect any major component or ship redesigns ... ever. At best, we can hope for a slight tweak of the numbers, as Verain proposed in his other thread. The changes to GSF have to be so minor and safe that an intern can do them by tweaking some XML and data files.

I have been clinging to the hope that the "balance pass" which was mentioned half a year ago, in which they acknowledged that certain components and combos were too bursty, is still on a backlog somewhere, somewhen, and that it has not been marked "Cut".

I have been clinging to the hope that the "better than cross server" thing is still going to happen for Warzones, and that when it does, we can scream loud enough for BioWare to make it apply to GSF too.

Then, and only then, if those two things both happen, does the GSF population have a chance of growing large enough to warrant real new content like a map or ship.

Our only solace to be had from the producer's letter is that GSF was treated with the same general crappiness as Warzones. At least we can then maintain the delusion that PvP content in general is not the focus of BioWare's "message" at the moment, and thus there may yet be some secret GSF content in the backlog.

But I'd rather face the likely reality and come to terms with it, rather than cling to unreasonable delusions.

As much as I love GSF (and I do love it), I think this forum is a little bit delusional in its expectations.

A little cheerleading isn't that bad of a thing.

Recent events have shown that GSF is casually butchered by lapses in version control. That means it likely has no regression test process.

Oh, they must have an automated test, but I doubt very much they have test procedures for all of everything. I'm sure they saw that the game could launch, that sort of thing. Unless they got a crash or something I doubt they would see something like "this talent point fails".

The dev team for GSF, which used to play it at lunch and analyze telemetry, has likely been scattered to the wind to work on other features or games.

Assuredly, but that also means that some of them will be put back and retasked with GSF at some point. I concur with the "we did not have devs for six months" theory, but I'm not sure I concur with "we have no devs currently".

We are a niche community on a niche game that is fighting to maintain its relevance and revenue in a dying genre.

I was actually having a really good discussion about whether MMOs are dying with my ex. Her main point is that MMOs have reached a peak amount of saturation for their game type, as all of the barriers to entry were removed over the last few years, resulting in a kind of "peak MMO". I find that compelling, but I also think that we'll see MMOs simply side-squish in a clever direction. Top tier MMOs have begun adding minigames (such as the WoW pet battles and garrisons) in addition to established tiers of play, and also top tier MMOs have added whole subgames (such as GSF). I think the MMO as a synonym for "game that copies WoW" is a big issue. WoW should sort of be considered its own genre at this point, and I think we'll see MMOs that incorporate elements from mobile games and classic games instead of the endgame mostly being "raid or die", with a strange and unsupported pvp gear grind as a kind of side quest.

So while I think that MMOs are a "dying genre", I think that this is more a result of the players becoming immunized about the "less fun, more addiction" model of gameplay that has been jammed down our throat, more a representation of bait ("play the game solo to level up and become powerful!") and switch ("...and then commit to a schedule of repetitive play or be left in the dust!"). I think that whatever emerges from this will also be an MMO, but it will have to focus more on fun and story than on addicting the playerbase and starting a treadmill.

We should not expect any new GSF content ... perhaps ever.

I think that's far too negative a tack to take. The game can't be so profoundly lacking in players that it isn't worth some new stuff. We constantly see people in the game, and the whole thing was designed to be easy and cheap to modify.

The changes to GSF have to be so minor and safe that an intern can do them by tweaking some XML and data files.

Well, I think our bugfixes are mostly that easy, and we don't have them. I think if we get devs, even a little bit, we'll get some actual balance passes. But yea, I did focus on easy ones for this reason- I wanted the community to discuss small tweaks that would make the game broader and better. I was very disappointed when so many of the responses were not that at all. A dev would find good info in there, but would have to blaze past a lot of off topic stuff.

I have been clinging to the hope that the "balance pass" which was mentioned half a year ago, in which they acknowledged that certain components and combos were too bursty, is still on a backlog somewhere, somewhen, and that it has not been marked "Cut".

As do I. Honestly, if there's no changes for GSF, I'll be really sad. I just don't believe it would be abandoned for another year. I just don't get why it wouldn't be on their roadmap.

I have been clinging to the hope that the "better than cross server" thing is still going to happen for Warzones

They backpedaled on that so hard that they broke the wheels on their stupid hipster fixies.

Nothing is better than cross server or mega server. Nothing would help this game more. If warzones get it, GSF will to- it clearly uses the same logic. And man, that would be super. The fact that they aren't all over this intensely needed action tells me that they may not have the ability or funding to EVER do it, however.

Our only solace to be had from the producer's letter is that GSF was treated with the same general crappiness as Warzones.

I dunno, he at least discussed new pvp seasons. That implies that they will be making new gear, balancing passes at pvp, etc. If they had announced a new GSF map or mode, that would all by itself be amazing. It's possible, VERY possible, that they have GSF stuff planned but no exact knowledge of WHICH GSF elements they will push forward on... but I still would have expected a shoutout in some way except "...we did GSF in 2014, but in 2015 we totally won't!"

Seriously though, they can't have abandoned GSF so hard that they have 0 plans for it in all of 2015.

That logic is hilarious (not anyone here, the dev's mind you)

Dev's: The playerbase of GSF does not warrant additional development

Players: I don't play GSF due to lack of development

Kind of a vicious circle heh. IMO if they continue to ignore GSF it will die within 1 year and become "space on rails v2.0" IE something they wasted development resources on and then abandoned. If however they did some small things with continual development (new maps, ships, possibly a game mode, and especially cross server) then it would continue to draw players, earn cash, and perhaps rebound into a favored part of SWTOR.

I think their choice is between no effort which makes GSF a waste of their time or a minimal to moderate investment in which case the games value increases many fold. I know which is the smarter path but do the project managers and whip drivers?

Eh, GSF is vastly too awesome to be like the space rails game. Even if they dropped it now, I've had oodles of fun in it. The space rails game was a favorite of mine too, because it felt like every day I logged in I had this ship that I could go do stuff in. I was waiting for the free-flight version, of course.

Eventually they really sunk the Starfox-like version. First they removed almost all the rewards, because it was possible to bot it. Given that you can bot a ludicrous number of top tier games (Pacman, Super Mario, Metroid) that is not, IMO a reason to strip the rewards, but likely a solid one to make enough changes that botting it is poor. Second they added a painfully hard tier that had very little wiggle room in how you completed it, and combined that with turning the components into cartel market purchases instead of engineering components (and tuned the content such that nothing was challenging except the new content with the cartel components, and that the new components were almost mandatory for the new runs).

Finally, there's no tuning or changing the ship meaningfully, so the replay value is very low compared to what it should or could be.

Space on rails offers no options. GSF offers a ton. It will never be a failure like Starfox-lite became.

I love GSF but if you think ANY more updates are coming, you need to take a deep breath and learn to accept reality.

GSF is in "maintenance mode". SWTOR (the entire game) is obviously a fully supported product but Bioware took a long hard look at ROI, fan interest and their own skill set and decided the GSF portion is going to maintenance mode only.

Accept it and move on. Hey, I'm not happy about it either but its time to get over it.

Well, I know it sounds delusional, to want for updates and more content for GSF when we've had no attention but I would much rather be vocal about my desire that they continue to add things rather than just roll over and do nothing at all.

My options of things I can do to even try and sway the devs at Bioware are pretty limited. I mean, if this is all we're ever going to get out of GSF then I might as well quit flying now. Sure, I could start a whole new character and work on mastering another hanger, but I'm still flying the same five maps, still playing the same two game modes, picking one of the same twelve classes. I've been doing that for the last six months; played it to exhaustion. I'm getting bored with it. Even if they were to make balance tweaks to it, I'm willing to bet that I'd still be bored with it.

I want GSF to succeed. I love flying and dogfighting and the thrill of a close victory or an intense battle. But for me to keep an interest in GSF, I need new content. A map, a component, a game type, a ship, rewards, something; I just need new content. So in my opinion, it's better to keep pushing on the devs for action rather than just to give up and not try to persuade the devs at all. And for that reason, I will continue to push the devs wherever and whenever I can to look at GSF and add to it.

I love GSF but if you think ANY more updates are coming, you need to take a deep breath and learn to accept reality.

Says you? Screw that noise.

GSF is in "maintenance mode". SWTOR (the entire game) is obviously a fully developed product but Bioware took a long hard look at ROI, fan interest and their own skill set and decided the GSF portion is going to maintenance mode only.

 

Accept it and move on. Hey, I'm not happy about it either but its time to get over it.

Nah. Updates to GSF are cheap compared to their game impact. It's reasonable to expect that GSF see bugfixes, balance, and even (gasp) development. But I'm definitely not a fan of the roadmap leaving us off for all of 2015. Still, it's just an overview.

Says you? Screw that noise.

 

 

 

Nah. Updates to GSF are cheap compared to their game impact. It's reasonable to expect that GSF see bugfixes, balance, and even (gasp) development. But I'm definitely not a fan of the roadmap leaving us off for all of 2015. Still, it's just an overview.

I admire your enthusiasm. The lack of development doesn't stop me from playing but the writing has been on the wall for a while. GSF is in bug fix mode. Seriously though, if I saw a small minority of the player base doing something, I'd move development away from it as well. It comes down to ROI.

I hate it but that's real life for ya.

It's purely about the money, which is purely about the player base, which is an enthusiastic minority.

The most common complaint of new players is 'I get rolfstomped by good pilots in mastered ships'. If a way was finally created to address this, people would be more likely to keep playing. Anything that tiers matches increases queue times, so there has to be compromise to begin with at least. But, if the player base can be increased tiered queue times would be brought back in line.

I think the second biggest factor seems to be lack of integration with the main game. This has to be done in a way that doesn't force people to play it, but rewards their character for doing so. I've previously mentioned a vendor on fleet analagous to a reputation vendor that you can use to trade requisition or whatever for ground-game items, coms or creds. That seems to me to be a simple thing to do that would give people a reason to queue and actually play in a match (rather than AFK conquest farm).

If the revenue can be increased with simple, cheap changes, new content becomes all the more likely. At the moment GSF looks like a semi-failed experiment and the rational choice for BW is to maintain the status quo in it while seeking revenue through devoting resources to new content of a more proven type - RotHCs and SoR type expansions, and the class quests that the majority of the player base clamour for.

But. BW won't spend a penny on GSF unless or until it's worth it to them, and realistically the time for that has passed, unfortunately. I remain hopeful, but certainly not expectant.

I admire your enthusiasm. The lack of development doesn't stop me from playing but the writing has been on the wall for a while. GSF is in bug fix mode. Seriously though, if I saw a small minority of the player base doing something, I'd move development away from it as well. It comes down to ROI.

 

I hate it but that's real life for ya.

I think that they missed the boat a bit on GSF integration with strongholds. If there was a real Hangar stronghold where you could walk around and see full sized models of each of your ships, and show them off to others then maybe they could actually make some money selling paint jobs for ships. Basically it would need to be a big empty box with enough parking spots for every ship that can be acquired.

Figuring out how to make more money on GSF, is perhaps the highest priority for GSF development. SWTOR relies heavily on selling access to art assets that players can can show off to other players. GSF is very under-developed in that realm, so as much as I'd prefer game play development, perhaps that's where they should go next with GSF.

Once they've figured out revenue (HINT Sell desirable GSF art gated behind GSF play and CC purchases), then maybe they'll be able to do more gameplay development.

Limited options, most of which are hard to see, and even harder to show off to others, isn't good for selling what amounts to vanity art. GSF needs a better gallery for its art sales. Star Wars is a strong franchise in the sexy starship department, but SWTOR hasn't done well in turning that into revenue.

What good is twilek dancer pinup nose art on a star fighter if you can't invite people to come see it and be appropriately jealous?

Clothes, gear, pets (mynock, space slug), vehicles, wall art, but most importantly a way to display the ships.

That and a better tutorial. If you make money by getting subscriptions for apealing game play, and by per item transactions for art assets, then the off putting new player experience and poor art display options for GSF are what really need work from a business standpoint.

Edit:

Seriously, I do better with display for my greens at farmer's markets, and I'm selling salad, not art. I get the dev team's passion for making great product, but you have to think about how you're going to sell the stuff, even if you don't like marketing. GSF could use some big upgrades there.

Forgive a quote, but I'm reminded of Braveheart with this. "You know what happens if I don't go? ...nothing."

Seriously, customers not being vocal about what they want from a product, particularly an MMO where even nominal attention is paid to what customers are saying, is nothing short of silly. Good lord, I'm not holding my breath for some massive GSF development, but I'm sure not going to stop being vocal about how I love this part of the game and think it's worth their while to at least invest some development time in it, not to mention fixing bugs that are STILL in game after months.

I think the second biggest factor seems to be lack of integration with the main game. This has to be done in a way that doesn't force people to play it, but rewards their character for doing so. I've previously mentioned a vendor on fleet analagous to a reputation vendor that you can use to trade requisition or whatever for ground-game items, coms or creds. That seems to me to be a simple thing to do that would give people a reason to queue and actually play in a match (rather than AFK conquest farm).

 

I would like the inverse of this, and your idea is a good start. I want to trade my Basic Comms for ship req so I can build my ship faster. Because I get very, very, very few kills (Only one kill in over 30 matches on my Scout) because I despise the lead indicator (I would rather just lock on an opponent's reticle, close and shoot and leave) my only way to get points if fulfilling objectives. In deathmatches...I assist others and hope for the best.

I used to play non-stop a few weeks ago but I was overmatched constantly by skilled players (absolutely fine) and more complete ships (also fine, but annoying) and now I play maybe once a month. I Warzone almost daily for hours though, Bolster and the ability to turn my WZ Comms into Basic Comms is a massive draw. I will keep playing GSF but it isn't a draw for me at the moment when I can get pve and WZ gear much quicker and more efficiently.

I got a forum warning for posting GSF bugs in one of the bug posts that actually had a gold response. Yes, it was off topic for the bug, but maybe, just maybe, a dev read it.

Maybe.

I hate to say it, but I'm largely in agreement with Nemarus on this. The thing that really kind of did it for me isn't the lack of news out of the roadmap, but the mess that 3.0 created when it came to GSF.

It was obvious with 3.0 that no one bothered testing anything with regards to GSF. A few of the broken components had to actually be looked at in order to tell they were broken, but when some of the more popular components were broken, and absolutely easy to notice problems popped up... I mean, it took me all of 3 games to notice that several components I used on a regular basis were broken, and for one of those games, it was verifying that my component definitions hadn't been reset, and were actually in the right space. Granted, I play a good amount, and know what most of the components SHOULD do at this point, especially in the cases of things that I use a lot, but...

These are things that if there were even a minimal regression test pass should have been noticed. Which led me to believe that they had no testers for GSF with respect to 3.0. So it never made it though any kind of manual testing process. Now granted, that might not mean too much, but just coupled with the shelving of the stealth ship type, and the effective radio silence on the dev front for GSF, leads me to believe that they aren't devoting anything more than the bare minimum of resources to GSF.

I certainly hope that I'm wrong, and that they revisit, but I wouldn't be surprised if the GSF we've got is largely all the GSF we're going to get.

I know a couple of them are out there already in threads, but I do kind of wonder if some of the more active in the community (Verain, Drako, Nem, Pincer, MaximillianPower, SammyG, and many others) could start a private forum thread/reddit thread, etc, and actually pound out an actual list of "suggestions" for balance changes, etc. that might be good that didn't devolve into what so many threads on the forum end up devolving into. I'm sure we'd have disagreements and whatnot, but I just can't help but think that having the relatively organized list of bugs where we did most of the legwork in identifying the problems helped us get those issues resolved in a (largely) timely manner. And that makes me wonder if they might be more receptive to an organized list from some of the ambassadors of the community about potential balance changes, or priorities in terms of what any available GSF resources should be put to. At least in that way, we're meeting them as close to halfway as we possibly can.

I don't know if it's a great idea or not, but it's really the only one I've got that could at least illustrate that there's a dedicated community that wants to see this module grow, and here's a list of possible ways to help that happen. The forums are great for us to kick ideas around and such, but I'd be surprised if they get looked at too much by the devs with regards to GSF at this point.

Anyway, as I said, I largely agree with Nemarus. I work in software, and there are a lot of clues throughout that they've largely dropped support for this product. And if that's the case, then doing something like that would at the very least be our best bet at getting any meaningful information out of BW.

I could be down for a private forum or honestly even an email chain. However, I think it doesn't matter too much. The normal way of communicating- a player makes a thread, other players comment- actually has been working pretty well. We have a serious amount of agreement about certain issues already, a bunch of independent players who main entirely different ships agreeing on a whole huge swaths of pvp balance.

Yes, there's still some noise, but if a dev cared he'd read over that stuff way easier than we do. Pick a class forum, or the pvp forum, and try to find that level of agreement- nowhere close.

So I don't think it's a lack of consensus, or a lack of good phrasing, or a lack of editing, I just think that they were pulled away from GSF. My thinking has been, have some good stuff whenever they come back.

@nyghtrunner - I would be down for a reddit thread or whatever, but I'm largely pessimistic about BW's stance on GSF (as you know). Might help, couldn't hurt.

Personally, I think the most impact I can have is to act as an advocate for GSF wherever I can - whether that's in my guild(s), fleet chat, post-match dialogue with fellow pilots...whatever. And I'm trying to do more of that these days. "Ambassador" is the right word - GSF needs folks like us to dispel misconceptions and extol its virtues. I have no idea if I can ultimately impact BW's roadmap (or lack thereof) this way, but people do seem to appreciate it, and at least on that level I feel like maybe I can make a difference.

Maybe not.

But damned if I won't try.

I could be down for a private forum or honestly even an email chain. However, I think it doesn't matter too much. The normal way of communicating- a player makes a thread, other players comment- actually has been working pretty well. We have a serious amount of agreement about certain issues already, a bunch of independent players who main entirely different ships agreeing on a whole huge swaths of pvp balance.

 

Yes, there's still some noise, but if a dev cared he'd read over that stuff way easier than we do. Pick a class forum, or the pvp forum, and try to find that level of agreement- nowhere close.

 

 

So I don't think it's a lack of consensus, or a lack of good phrasing, or a lack of editing, I just think that they were pulled away from GSF. My thinking has been, have some good stuff whenever they come back.

Last week, I got an e-mail from Tait when she mass-emailed guild leaders. I used that as an opportunity to e-mail her back this in response:

Hi Tait!

 

I run the largest GSF-focused guild (yes, they do exist). And more than that, the GSF community across all servers itself is very close knit--much like a large meta guild. Many of us hop server to server to fly together in scheduled events.

 

We know that the GSF population is smaller than BioWare hoped, but we remain passionate advocates and evangelists for the game.

 

I created a thread on the SWTOR subreddit to discuss GSF, and it quickly took off. It is full of thoughtful opinions and insights from GSF lovers and haters alike. Have a look! It may contain useful information for the devs.

 

You can see that many people want to play GSF, but would like a better tutorial experience, or more connection to ground game rewards (such as cosmetics and decorations).

 

Unfortunately the recent producer letter left us feeling a bit discouraged, as there was no mention of GSF at all. This was very surprising, since Bruce himself spoke of a "multi-phase plan to revitalize GSF" in the Cantina event in New York in October. What happened to that plan?

 

We have pragmatic expectations--we know GSF is not a focus for development right now. But we were hoping to at least get the modest balance pass that was said to be in the works last year. Even a few small numerical tweaks to existing components, such as those listed below, could make the game more accessible.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=7983062&postcount=1

 

Simple changes like these would serve as an olive branch to the GSF community, which has felt extremely slighted due to the recent spat of almost casual regressions introduced into GSF with 3.0+. I am happy these were fixed with relative haste, though it seemed like the issues were not even acknowledged until the GSF community pooled together to spam the general forums. Our own forum seems to be rarely visited by devs anymore.

 

I know we are a small community, and that our pet feature is not in line with SWTOR's renewed focus on story content. And I understand if that is why GSF was not mentioned in the producer's letter. But it would really help us to know exactly what to expect this year, in terms of the balance pass, better connection between GSF and ground game rewards, any "better than cross server" matchmaking solutions, potential new ships or maps, and of course Bruce's "multi-phase plan to revitalize GSF".

 

Thank you for your time!

I view Verain's recent @Devs thread as the closet thing we have to a consensus of a modest list of low-cost, low-risk changes that would improve GSF. I hope that my e-mail, by some chance, will call Dev attention to that post. Note that I linked to the OP only, excluding the replies

I have yet to hear back, though I suspect the entire CS team has been busy with 3.1.1 and Exploit Action.

I may ping her again in a few weeks. Honestly I'm not sure what else we can do though. I am fairly certain that at this point, this forum is a fandom forum for us only. It is not a conduit to the devs. I can only hope Tait takes notice of my e-mail among the many she gets.

I'll let you all know.

As much as I love GSF (and I do love it), I think this forum is a little bit delusional in its expectations. I say this as as a veteran project manager of the gaming industry who has to make hard cuts all the time.

 

Recent events have shown that GSF is casually butchered by lapses in version control. That means it likely has no regression test process. The dev team for GSF, which used to play it at lunch and analyze telemetry, has likely been scattered to the wind to work on other features or games.

 

Bugs are only acknowledged and addressed when we shout loud enough (in general forums and /bug reports, not this forum which is unread by BioWare). And then, we likely get maybe one junior dev assigned to unfrak the version control bugs and get GSF back to something resembling its "normal" state.

 

We are a niche community on a niche game that is fighting to maintain its relevance and revenue in a dying genre. Moreover, our pet feature is the most divorced from the game's central pillar--story driven ground content. We are more eccentric and "off message" than Operations, than Ranked Warzones, than general Warzones.

 

GSF has enormous headwinds against broader adoption. Unlike Warzones, we have no bolster mechanic. We have no PvE practice areas. GSF is a wondrous, amazing, but super-intimidating masterpiece duct-taped onto a theme-park choose-your-own-adventure story that 90% of players barely manage to muddle through.

 

With SoR, BioWare announced they were returning to their core strength--story based ground content. They discovered with the x12 experiment, and SoR itself, that story content is what moves the needle on getting people back to the game.

 

We should not expect any new GSF content ... perhaps ever. We should not expect any major component or ship redesigns ... ever. At best, we can hope for a slight tweak of the numbers, as Verain proposed in his other thread. The changes to GSF have to be so minor and safe that an intern can do them by tweaking some XML and data files.

 

I have been clinging to the hope that the "balance pass" which was mentioned half a year ago, in which they acknowledged that certain components and combos were too bursty, is still on a backlog somewhere, somewhen, and that it has not been marked "Cut".

 

I have been clinging to the hope that the "better than cross server" thing is still going to happen for Warzones, and that when it does, we can scream loud enough for BioWare to make it apply to GSF too.

 

Then, and only then, if those two things both happen, does the GSF population have a chance of growing large enough to warrant real new content like a map or ship.

 

Our only solace to be had from the producer's letter is that GSF was treated with the same general crappiness as Warzones. At least we can then maintain the delusion that PvP content in general is not the focus of BioWare's "message" at the moment, and thus there may yet be some secret GSF content in the backlog.

 

But I'd rather face the likely reality and come to terms with it, rather than cling to unreasonable delusions.

One thing is preplexing me though. Why are they not doing PVE Starfighter-like sections in new expansions/story arc. They have the base already. Games score almost "automatic" review points for gameplay diversity. That's why people want "vehicle" sections even if they suck (Mass Effect 1 anyone). Bioware got the base ready and they could utilize it in story-driven context not only as a practice for GSF but also to diversify gameplay experience of an expansion/new story arcs. They're not adding new Seeker Droid/Macrobinocular missions or dig sites, but at least they used the mechanics in some Rishi/Yavin content which helps make the standard daily/fedex quest a bit more diverse.

Holy crap Nemarus, that's amazing. Thanks man.

I was surprised that the reddit thread did as well as it did, but it certainly was a good thread. I think that a lot of the discussion in here is pretty high signal to noise as well. The potential benefit of a "player council" is that the devs could see, at a glance, the stuff that is just accepted as true by the community, without some guy coming in and screaming about how seeker mine is too powerful or whatever. The cost would be silencing a lot of other voices, a heavy price to pay just to keep a thread or forum clean.

"Why are they not doing PVE Starfighter-like sections in new expansions/story arc. "

Presumably because this is very expensive. If you mean on-rails content (using the space pve engine), then yea, they could do that. I think that the space missions, as cool as they are, were not as easy to design long term- while they had meaningful rewards they were botted, and after they lost those it was a lot of work for a reasonably similar experience. We could see more of that, and that's fine, but I'd want GSF focused things instead personally.