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Meet the Developers: Jonathan Crow


CourtneyWoods

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Hello. I have a question you say you watch trends and help the developers focus on areas of player interest do you spend much time on the forums, do you ever look at the suggestion page and if you do what do you think the top 5 places of improvement are for the forum going crowd?
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Hello. I have a question you say you watch trends and help the developers focus on areas of player interest do you spend much time on the forums, do you ever look at the suggestion page and if you do what do you think the top 5 places of improvement are for the forum going crowd?

 

Much more interesting in that line of thought is:

 

How much of the forum requests match the interests as being seen by ingame play metrics?

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Jon, if I may call you Jon. If not.....Hello Jonathan. I'd LOVE to be apart of your guys MTG crew! I got a sweet Blue-Black field and Graveyard Lock down Mill deck! So far I've decked all my friends decks even with a" Progenitus" in their deck's. I won't reveal my combo but I'd Love to hear more about you an your friends love of MTG.

 

an PS My first toon was an IA and people who aren't playing them need to cause they are missing out on an AMAZING story!

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This is why we can't have nice things.

 

They do the dev interviews, they give us insight in a particular field of work. But just because some kid isn't satisfied, the moaning about it being no dev feedback instantly starts again.

 

And then some of those same people are still surprised why BioWare interaction with the community is so low. To the rest of us, the level of communication truly isn't a surprise anymore. If I were in their shoes I'd want nothing to do with people who post that kind of crap quoted either.

 

They ****ed up, this game had enormous potential. It's good that they're trying to improve but they have a long way to go. I'd just like to see them say "yeah we ****ed up, our bad"

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What do the top two lines (the pink and the grey one) of the posted graph rapresent?

Is one used for the time spent in space combat missions and the other for the time spent on the personal starship?

I'm curious as well about this. It appears the pink area is about 3% and has not fluctuated, which leads me to believe that it represents an area that doesn't have an incentive to spend time in, like the player's personal ship. The grey area does fluctuate and is on a slow decline, so it would make sense if this represents space combat. However, space combat is part of dailies, so most likely is included there.

 

Thank you for sharing one of your charts. I would love to see more of these.

 

P.S. Home brewing is an great hobby , the results of which being fresh and delicious beer to enjoy while you make the next batch. "Relax, don't worry, have a home brew." - Charlie Papazian

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Do you have any statistics on the tank/healer/dps ratio in swtor ? Also, do dps tend to use lfg tool less than tanks and healers ? Maybe it´s just me but i rarely use lfg on a dps char.

 

When deciding on 4man groups did you (development as a whole) look into statistics of similar games with tank/healer/dps setup and balanced the groupsize on how many players usually play each type of class, or did you just decide on a 4man group to make it different from that other mmo ? (leading question i know)

 

After you have answered the questions feel you can answer, is there any chance you´ll get back later to this thread and maybe do some followup answers. Maybe check in on your thread every 14 days and just say hi if there´s no questions.

 

Also i would love if the other development who we´ve met would follow their threads and maybe come with followup answers ever 14days or so. I know you can only answer for yourself, but having a bit of feedback from development is much apreciated.

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I find it interesting that more time is spent on fleet or in Ops, FP's, and WZ. (and not much on planetary time - i.e. time spent "in the story" of the War between the Sith and the Republic) - that means there are a lot of lvl 50's that are running around without something to do - or they are running the FP's, etc. over and over for a few commendations and getting bored like me. How many times do we have to keep running the same Ops, etc. before we just quit from bordom. The game is about the storyline and without expanding and changing the storyline it just gets too boring. So I run an ops 4 or 5 times just to get some minor upgrades and to beat the op? --- after that there is no more challenge or purpose! And you think I'm going to create more than 2 or 3 characters just to run them through the same missions over and over again? All the new level 50 ops, etc., are nothing more than bait to keep the die-hards hanging on for another month or two, another piece of gear so they can brag to their friends, etc..

 

SWTOR is a cool game (and story) for level 1 - 50 ------- then it completely fails!

 

Suggestion:

There should be a different "multi-path" story for each advance class - that way everyone will stay interested in the story and have multiple possiblities for their characters even if they play the same character type multiple times - = endless hours of play, no bordom, more players, and more money for your company... A game's success depends on a good story and once you reach lvl 50 in SWTOR there is no more story....

I support this wholeheartedly. Story is the reason I play SWTOR.
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Hello everyone,

 

Please discuss the Meet the Developers: Jonathan Crow blog in this thread!

 

If you have any questions for Jonathan, please ask them here. In the near future, we'll have some answers from him for you!

 

Hi Jonathan,

 

When you say your watching the game what do you mean? Tell us how often you watch 50 pvp and if you feel things are 'working as intended'. Do you pvp at all? Do you have any toons that you play? If so, what class?

 

Also can you ask your development team nicely to please hurry up and give mercs/commandos a buff.

 

Can you please make an extra effort to 'watch' the pvp more closely and please explain to us why your development team can't balance pvp?

 

Also can you please address why instead of fixing the most popular aspect of your game you instead choose to pump out pointless flashy cosmetics and overpriced addons?

 

If you could answer these questions that'd be swell but if not it's no big deal. I'm sure I'm not the only paying customer being ignored by Bioware by this point.

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According to the chart most time is spent on fleet??

 

Whoa there really should be some minigames and a PvP arena there.

 

I'm sure they are working super hard to make this game more fun. I'm positive they will get right on that right after they are done adding more pointless flashy cosmetics and and overpriced addons to make a little more money before the game totally tanks.

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Updates about new content and the like please. Maybe this developer stuff would have been useful a year ago when you had a million players. Not so much now.

 

Couldn't agree with you more. I pay to play the game......not read about some random developers hobbies, likes and dislikes.

 

I have an idea. How about instead of introducing us to someone you'll eventually end up firing you guys spend more time behind the computer working on fixing the game we gave you money to play.

 

It's very hard not to be rude anymore when they keep pumping out crap that has little to do with the actual game. Sure they have ideas for the future but if they don't focus on fixing the current problems in game the future won't matter b/c there won't be enough subscribers left to do anything.

 

Maybe I'm wrong........just not sure what to think anymore. I've pretty much lost my faith in game companies such as Bioware.

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Hey everyone! Jonathan has sent us answers to some of the questions you've asked in the thread. Take a look:

 

 

Q: Has the boss vs. player death ratio in EC changed much since 1.5 was released?

 

Jonathan: It has changed a little bit since 1.5. In general it seems to have worsened a little, but that's mainly because most level 50 players are busy playing around in Sector X and doing the HK-51 missions, which makes getting a full group harder. We all know that PUGs tend to not perform as well in Operations when compared to well-organized groups who have been farming the Operation for a while. All in all though, the general trend for Explosive Conflict and Terror From Beyond is a gradual decrease of the player death to boss kill ratio, which is what we monitor closely to make sure the Operations remain both challenging and rewarding.

 

 

Q: According to the chart, the most time is spent on Fleet?

 

Jonathan: The Fleets are central areas to our game; they are where players often go to as they wait for Warzones or Flashpoint groups to be formed. They're where players go to trade things on the GTN, do some crafting, and also a place where a lot of players like to socialize. All in all, there are many reasons for players spending time on the fleet. We are always looking for ways to minimize time spent on them, though.

 

 

Q: I saw you said you analyzed PvE operations statistics, so I'm guessing you might also dabble in the numbers surrounding PvP. If you could possibly expose some of those numbers to the community, there would surely be some great discussions here on the forums from those numbers.

 

Jonathan: We pay very close attention to both engagement and balance in PvP. Some things we examine are player kill to death ratios and average rewards gained for every class to make sure that balance is maintained across the board. We also examine hourly Warzone numbers to make sure there are enough players queuing up to minimize the amount of time it takes to get into a Warzone. The mega servers provided a significant influx of PvPers that helped significantly reduce our queue times. We also examine average Warzone length to make sure that every Warzone has a similar ratio of reward to time spent. Balance-wise, kill/death ratios are well-balanced, with all Advanced Classes having kill/death ratios very close to each other. Healers tend to die a little less, but this is mitigated by the fact that they don't kill as much and thus rewards given are quite equitable across all Advanced Classes.

 

 

Q: Have you looked at using an XML database like Mark Logic or BaseX as a repository for unstructured data that will be used in analytics? I've done some "big data" work and have found XML databases to be much more flexible than table based relational databases.

 

Jonathan: We use a tool for parsing sentiment in social media and chat logs that scrapes unstructured data and then creates triples (subject, action, target) that are then associated to various categories (positive, negative, bug, planet, pvp….). This gives us the basis for a structured database that we can use to figure out which topics are being spoken of the most and how people chatting lean, sentiment-wise, towards that given topic. We also have a great community team that spends a lot of time every day examining chatter to see more immediate player reaction. So to answer your question specifically: we haven't looked at an XML database. I might just have to look into it! :)

 

 

Q: What are the most common hotspots for role-play? (Perhaps an analysis of which areas people tend to use the /e command or the say channel would provide a rough estimate of where people tend to role-play).

 

Jonathan: That's an interesting thought. We do have the ability to examine chat and associate it with a given area, but it would be fairly high-level, such as the Fleet, or this planet, or players' starships. I might have to look into that.

 

 

 

Thanks for all your questions!

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"Balance-wise, kill/death ratios are well-balanced, with all Advanced Classes having kill/death ratios very close to each other. Healers tend to die a little less, but this is mitigated by the fact that they don't kill as much and thus rewards given are quite equitable across all Advanced Classes."

 

Calling ******** on this one. Please show me the numbers where Marauders and Sorc DPS are on the same level and balanced in the K:D ratio Or SinTanks vs Merc DPS for that matter at level 50. Where in the world are you pulling these numbers from? The same place that squadrons of operatives are stun locking people to death or that Smash Jugg burst is "fine"? There is a reason that you don't see Merc DPS or Sorc DPS (That aren't bubble-soon-to-be-nerfed-hybrid)

 

How about taking a look at the amount of damage taken in order to kill a player and the amount of time it takes to do so. Reading this just further proved to me that the development team has no g'damn clue what balance is. (and that they're too busy looking at averages and not real time warzones.)

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All in all, there are many reasons for players spending time on the fleet. We are always looking for ways to minimize time spent on them, though.

 

Stop looking - do something!

I would prefer to Dromund Kaas / Coruscant, but not fleet-jail... :rolleyes:

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Hey Johnathan!

 

Got a question for you...do you think the numbers lie?

 

I feel Bioware puts far too much value on 'metrics', not enough on how things actually play. It's far too easy to inflate and distort the numbers to reflect trends you want to see vs trends that are real. Your use of TFB is a perfect illustration of what I mean - you said:

 

"...on September 26, we released Terror From Beyond. The result was a significant spike in the number of level 50 players spending time in Operations, which again was our desired effect."

 

Did you really expect the result to be anything BUT that?! Will you use the same justification to waste more time, money and resources on space missions after 1.6 is released? You don't need fancy graphs or models to realize people want NEW content, and that's always what they migrate towards, despite how they TRULY feel about the content.

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Jonathan: We pay very close attention to both engagement and balance in PvP. Balance-wise, kill/death ratios are well-balanced, with all Advanced Classes having kill/death ratios very close to each other.

Huh..."All Advanced Classes"??? I'm sorry Johnathan, but there's no chance I feel that's even close to accurate. Like I said, I think far too much of what goes on with this game appears to be being determined by logs.

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