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Open letter to Eric Musco and EA


ParagonAX

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Nope. You didn't get it right. He wrote this thread for one person (and an entire entertainment company for some reason), that person's name is in the title. I said that person isn't going to read it because they are already fixing the problem. Do you want them to stop developing and read all the complaints about bolster on the forums? Nope, you don't. And I didn't say bolster is fine, that would be silly. I said in end game it's fine because top tier gear in ranked is working well enough.

 

The point of thread is not to point out the flaws of the new bolster system. The new bolster is merely the most recent example of a wider scale problem. The OP is making an attempt to have the problem adressed and offer constructive feed back as to how it can be resolved.

 

Yes BW is fixing the current issues with bolster but do you really want them to keep releasing new content and systemswith out first fixing known problems pointed out during testing? Especially potentially devestating ones? I, for one, don't and am sure many others feel the same way.

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The point of thread is not to point out the flaws of the new bolster system. The new bolster is merely the most recent example of a wider scale problem. The OP is making an attempt to have the problem adressed and offer constructive feed back as to how it can be resolved.

 

Yes BW is fixing the current issues with bolster but do you really want them to keep releasing new content and systemswith out first fixing known problems pointed out during testing? Especially potentially devestating ones? I, for one, don't and am sure many others feel the same way.

 

Of course not. That's silly. We all want software without bugs. But if it was that easy there would be a perfect MMO and only software developers (but there are engineers, architects, testers, database programmers, visual artists, IT, IS, security, etc.). Reality is software on this scale has so many if/thens that it would take years to develop perfection. With software of all types you balance a scale on time vs completeness. That's where the judgement lies. People on these forums act like there are "developers" that just sit around and work on one thing together, that's not the case at all.

 

Just trying to show the real side of software development.

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Of course not. That's silly. We all want software without bugs. But if it was that easy there would be a perfect MMO and only software developers (but there are engineers, architects, testers, database programmers, visual artists, IT, IS, security, etc.). Reality is software on this scale has so many if/thens that it would take years to develop perfection. With software of all types you balance a scale on time vs completeness. That's where the judgement lies. People on these forums act like there are "developers" that just sit around and work on one thing together, that's not the case at all.

 

Just trying to show the real side of software development.

 

I don't think anyone is really saying that developing a game is easy. I definitely don't think it is.

 

Thing is, a game taking a lot of hard work actually corresponds with one of the problems this game suffers from. That problem is the unrealistic deadlines. I think at this point it safe to say a lot of the content feels as if it's been rushed. The result of which is usually extra buggy content. Not only that, there's now a lot of pressure on the development team which creates a very stressful environment. It also means shorter to no testing periods and less time for developers to read through feed back. So, now we end up with the customers feeling as if they're being ignored. They now just feel that they are an after though and as if their opinions don't mean anything. The customers now get frustrated and eventually day to hell in this. Basically, rushing content only serves to hurt the game.

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I don't think anyone is really saying that developing a game is easy. I definitely don't think it is.

 

Thing is, a game taking a lot of hard work actually corresponds with one of the problems this game suffers from. That problem is the unrealistic deadlines. I think at this point it safe to say a lot of the content feels as if it's been rushed. The result of which is usually extra buggy content. Not only that, there's now a lot of pressure on the development team which creates a very stressful environment. It also means shorter to no testing periods and less time for developers to read through feed back. So, now we end up with the customers feeling as if they're being ignored. They now just feel that they are an after though and as if their opinions don't mean anything. The customers now get frustrated and eventually day to hell in this. Basically, rushing content only serves to hurt the game.

 

I have a question for you: how many MMOs have you played?

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I will assume that your previous post was a rant toward the MMO gaming industry and not just toward SWTOR and Bioware because what you said is what I see in other games as well.

 

Not really trying to rant and definitely not singling out BW. Just stating the most likely outcome of rushing a game or content for game. It also provided a potential reason as to why it seems as if the devs are ignoring us.

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Basically any kind of bolster system is too hard for bw to pull off.

 

What should happen is...

 

1. Even stats across the board for lowbies. If you want to get a little flashy then have some unlock that you can either get from questing (or the cartel market...BW is listening now!). That would allow you to mess with several of your stats.

 

For example, you could change main, end, crit, surge, alac. To increase one you have to decrease another and have all of them cap around 5% or so just to make it easy on balancing.

 

2. For 55s take away most of the modding for pvp. This isn't needed for pvp. Some pvp gear progression is fine but it should be rather obvious. Leave true min/maxing for pve types. PVP should be about skill more than getting several sets worth of gear and then stomping noobs.

 

They could leave a few pieces moddable for ppl that want some slight boost (maybe weapons and body armor for example). This would also solve a lot of balance issues people wrongly qq about.

 

3. For 55s Buff everyone up to the same stats in pvp and make these stats about 2-3% below the first tier of 55 pvp armor. This way pvp gives some slight reward but not too much and this is a range that is still purely about skill.

 

4. For 55s have the 2nd tier 2-3% better than the first tier of 55 pvp armor. This again would be noticeable but still reasonable and still more about skill.

 

5. For 55s make the first tier cheaper than it is currently. I know you can get it really fast (I got wh within a few days on all 8 of my 50s) but lets make it even faster. Don't give noobs the gear excuse and make them rage quit.

 

6. For 55s make the 2nd tier of 55 pvp gear decently more expensive than it currently is. This would be your grind. Also, 3% is still pretty big in teamplay pvp. That 3% really can make all the difference and is still very much worth it gear progression wise. Also, I am saying this having 8 chars I will have to gear up so I am not trying to screw the ppl still leveling lol since I am one of them.

 

7. Off topic but there are a buttload of premades now so add premade matching. I want to premade but I refuse to make a good one again until premade matching is implemented. Pugstomping is for drinking and for mediocre losers.

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There is one inherent flaw in your (well constructed) post:

 

BioWare does what BioWare wants to do. Period.

 

Like a great many others here, I've been a gamer for a long time (about 12 years). I've been a beta tester for several games, including SWG, EvE Online, LOTRO, and SWTOR. Customer feedback on MMO forums is often in the form of disgruntled and uniformed whine threads, even during beta and on test servers. However, there is also often genuine and valuable feedback.

 

I've learned one universal truth about SWTOR, and that is that this development team places near zero value on customer feedback.

 

EvE Online developers and community managers post DAILY on their forums, as have devs from many other MMOs. With SWTOR, there is a huge disconnect between what the developer's vision for the game is, and what customers are wanting/willing to pay for. As such, many changes to the game equate to being blindsided by a mugger in a dark alley because the PTS is a pointless exercise in quality control. In short, while I agree with your assessment and can appreciate what you're saying...it falls on deaf ears.

 

It frankly blows my mind that not one, but TWO game developers have managed to screw up the best-selling franchise of all time. I used to be vocal on the beta and PTS forums. After playing beta, pre-ordering the Collector's Edition, and leveling 8 characters to 50, I unsubscribed on the eve of my 1 yr anniversary and sat on the sidelines for the last 4 months. Now, returning to check out 2.0, very little has changed and probably never will.

 

Even the GMs and the NA Developpers of Aion communicate better with the customers and give better feebacks and are even sending the feedbacks of the NA community to the real developping team of Aion (in south Korea). The NA and Korea have different things (small differences but still differences) in the patches based on what the NS costumers like and what the Koreans likes that the NS doesnt really like.

 

in other words, even if I like SWTOR a lot, I might not play a lot with the current bolster. In fact,having a bolster at 55 is garbage imo. I was able to beat a full min/max player in a non augmented BM gear so gear isnt a problem if you are not bad. And why subscribe when I can go in a WZ with my tionese gear and have better stats than a Partisan geared player? I dont need to do a lot of WZ to get the best pvp gear so I dont need to have unlimited acces to it. All I need is +/- 15k credits and I can get the best WZ gear,,,you know this lvl 25 green pve gear.

 

I give my active sub time I have to Bioware (around 1 month and a half) to REMOVE bolster from lvl 55 WZ or seriously lower the stats it give. It should be maximum the EWH gear stats. If nothing happen, I might not resub.

 

PvP is stupid right now. I refused to play an operative because I dont like the play style so I rolled Deception assassin and now I have to play the spec i used to love like the spec I hate (Concealment operative). Deception is the only viable dps and fun dps spec for assassin but it have a boring playstyle now. Tank or hybrid is painfull in Regular WZ because NOBODY attack the ennemy healer even if there is a HUGE star above his head so I do it myself as a dps.

 

Seriously, Nerfed to the ground > playstyle changed.

 

I used to love and defend this game. But now I appreciate the Star War universe and will probably do my daily quests as a f2p if nothing change.

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Even the GMs and the NA Developpers of Aion communicate better with the customers and give better feebacks and are even sending the feedbacks of the NA community to the real developping team of Aion (in south Korea). The NA and Korea have different things (small differences but still differences) in the patches based on what the NS costumers like and what the Koreans likes that the NS doesnt really like.

 

 

You mean they are FINALLY listening to their playerbase after screwing up badly? Remember when they merged servers and the playerbase told them "Hey guys! It may not be a good idea to merge an elyos dominated server with another elyos dominated server!"? Biggest failure in the Aion history and they lost a lot of players because of that.

 

in other words, even if I like SWTOR a lot, I might not play a lot with the current bolster. In fact,having a bolster at 55 is garbage imo. I was able to beat a full min/max player in a non augmented BM gear so gear isnt a problem if you are not bad. And why subscribe when I can go in a WZ with my tionese gear and have better stats than a Partisan geared player? I dont need to do a lot of WZ to get the best pvp gear so I dont need to have unlimited acces to it. All I need is +/- 15k credits and I can get the best WZ gear,,,you know this lvl 25 green pve gear.

 

This issue is getting fixed on tuesday. Let's hope no other bugs will mess up this patch lol!

 

I give my active sub time I have to Bioware (around 1 month and a half) to REMOVE bolster from lvl 55 WZ or seriously lower the stats it give. It should be maximum the EWH gear stats. If nothing happen, I might not resub.

 

We'll see on tuesday.

 

PvP is stupid right now. I refused to play an operative because I dont like the play style so I rolled Deception assassin and now I have to play the spec i used to love like the spec I hate (Concealment operative). Deception is the only viable dps and fun dps spec for assassin but it have a boring playstyle now. Tank or hybrid is painfull in Regular WZ because NOBODY attack the ennemy healer even if there is a HUGE star above his head so I do it myself as a dps.

 

2.0 nerfed hybrid specs (although I do see some people still playing hybrid), the madness spec is not that good anymore because the deception spec is now more viable for pvp. Madness wasn't that good pre-2.0 for sins anyway. The darkness spec is still a viable spec for pvp. Hopefully BW will make all specs viable for pvp but since even games like WoW struggle to do that, I doubt it will happen but I may be wrong though. Because noobs don't bother attacking the enemy healer doesn't make the madness or the darkness spec painful to play oO I didn't quite understand your reasoning here. Besides, 2.0 didn't magically make people stop attacking the enemy healers. This problem is recurring in pretty much every MMOs with pvp.

 

Anyway, what SWTOR needs in the future is x-realm pvp, server transfers and MAYBE arenas. This has been discussed a lot lately so I will not elaborate on those subjects.

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It should be maximum the EWH gear stats.
I think this would be great; have bolster go to a certain level, but certainly not maximum. I just started PVP again, and right now, there's pretty much no incentive at all for me to grind a PVP set together. I already have the looks that I want from my PVE gear, and with bolster, it's just as good as (or better than) a PVP set. Using bolster to make people competitive is one thing, but it's a bit too much right now. That said, I hope this is just minor tuning of the bolster system to make this happen.
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1. Even stats across the board for lowbies.

 

Sounds reasonable.

 

2. For 55s take away most of the modding for pvp. This isn't needed for pvp. Some pvp gear progression is fine but it should be rather obvious. Leave true min/maxing for pve types. PVP should be about skill more than getting several sets worth of gear and then stomping noobs.

 

This is where your inexperience shows. Different class tree's benefit greatly from different stat allocations.

  • Rage marauders don't need as much Critical rating as Carnage or Annihilation
  • Healing Sorcerers do not need as much critical rating as DPS sorcerers

 

The list can go on for each individual advanced class spec. Remodding is needed for PvP to maximize the effectiveness of class tree's. Loosing 24-41 critical rating in favor of 24-41 power is HUGE. If you think otherwise your inexperience shows.

 

3. For 55s Buff everyone up to the same stats in pvp and make these stats about 2-3% below the first tier of 55 pvp armor. This way pvp gives some slight reward but not too much and this is a range that is still purely about skill

 

Ok. You think like a naive Bioware developer. What about PvE gear that exceeds the top tier 55 PvP gear? The underworld set makes the Conqueror's set look like a joke.

 

4. For 55s have the 2nd tier 2-3% better than the first tier of 55 pvp armor. This again would be noticeable but still reasonable and still more about skill.

 

I agree with this, but better is subjective based on the class tree. A minor 2-3% increase can translate into a 10% increase due to optimizations for particular advanced specs.

 

5. For 55s make the first tier cheaper than it is currently. I know you can get it really fast (I got wh within a few days on all 8 of my 50s) but lets make it even faster. Don't give noobs the gear excuse and make them rage quit.

 

This argument used to hold water. But now with this whole bolster system it's not necessary.

 

6. For 55s make the 2nd tier of 55 pvp gear decently more expensive than it currently is. This would be your grind. Also, 3% is still pretty big in teamplay pvp. That 3% really can make all the difference and is still very much worth it gear progression wise. Also, I am saying this having 8 chars I will have to gear up so I am not trying to screw the ppl still leveling lol since I am one of them.

 

I'm fine with the prices where they are now. Just having Conqueror gear gives no real advantage over someone bolstered or in full Partisian. The benefit comes when you remod your gear to take advantage of secondary stats which maximize the output for your specific advanced class.

 

This takes time and is insanely expensive.

 

Not to mention the time and credits you need to pour into crafting Augmentation Kit MK-9's or your Advanced Augment 28's.

 

7. Off topic but there are a buttload of premades now so add premade matching. I want to premade but I refuse to make a good one again until premade matching is implemented. Pugstomping is for drinking and for mediocre losers.

 

While it sounds like a good idea, I wouldn't trust bioware to get things right. Based off of how the queues behaved when servers were empty, and the current state of PvP, I can claim that:

 

  1. Bioware developers do not understand a thing about "Fair scheduling" or the "starvation problem". When the servers were ghost-towns and you were a solo PUG'ger, and there were 9 players queuing for warzones, if the other 8 were in two premades you would never get placed into a match.
  2. Bioware developers could not be trusted to properly implement an MMR (Match-Making Rating) based system (see current Rated WZ's implementation).

 

 

As it stands, Bioware developers (namely the designers and technical architects) need to go back to school.

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Yeochin you don't know me and you assume a lot in your attacks.

 

I have 8 50s and I do very well on all of them. Several of them are in min/max wh (rage jug and sent are 2 of them so I know about power/str).

 

I fully realize different trees need different things and there are several sets of gear for certain classes. These can have somewhat different stat allocations. However, regardless of gear stat allocations with even stats the different specs would be much easier to balance. Almost every pvp qq about war classes comes from them being min/maxd. If a class has some amount of a stat that is relatively useless but that class is balanced then who cares?

 

Also, if we do it this way then pvp gear can get exp back. Then your pve being better dissapears. Don't call me naive when you are not taking the next logical step yourself.

 

My points 5 and 6 I don't care about too much, however point 6 is there because I would have less modding and so a longer grind would be fine since with less min/maxing the grind would be greatly shortened otherwise and gear progression is important to keep people playing.

 

You seem to assume I don't realize what min/maxing does for certain classes. I do and that is why I made these points. I would say my jug and sent were far far better in min/max wh than when they were in stock wh. I don't want this.

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First, I believe this post is written in a well established manner. I can see why the first few sentences "I am etc." are off-putting to some, but I can also see why you wrote them.

 

I would personally add a following:

 

The way your company handles Q&A on the SWTOR product is simply disastrous. Simple bugs which impact EVERY SINGLE ONE of your customers get published on live.

 

FACTS:

 

1) Achievements, one of taunted features of the expansion

PvP achievements broken (crits do not count as one example), lore achievements broken (Tarantatek on Tython) - here you obviously used in many instances old codex tables DESPITE the fact that it was known that those are broken, achievements not counted despite the fact user has the codex entries (hello Xenoanalyst II) - if I would be betting here, I would say naming convention on your internal codex entries IDs is the culprint here.

 

2) Crafting.

Incorrect times on some missions, mats that are not useful at the moment are being dropped from missions (Archeology), incorrect amounts are coming out from missions (Slicing), RE problems...

 

x) The bolster system.

 

All has been said about this one elsewhere. My opinion: I would bet large sum of money that if you try to keep in its complexity you will NOT completely fix it at least 4 weeks from now.

 

CONCLUSION:

 

The first 2 issues should be easy to fix. Because of that, they cause a great deal of pain to consumer.

 

Since, they should be AT MOST 5 MD of work for any decent Q&A analyst to find they are even more painful.

 

At the same time: You managed to create some new stunning in-game cinematic (Makeb intro). The new quest lines on Makeb are not broken. The new abilities pretty much work (Scamper aside).

 

This leads me to conclusion that your Q&A exists, but you probably did not have enough time/resources to test the whole expansion. I have an understanding for this, but this is HUGE MANAGEMENT ISSUE. Somebody at the top is wholly responsible for that.

 

Someone from the management should take responsibility and either resign or explain exactly HOW he plans to make sure those hickups do not happen again. And frankly not to us, as much as we would care for such explanation, we do not deserve it. The employees in Development and Q&A however do, since they look like they are doing crappy job.

 

LAST NOTE:

 

As a consumer I feel that either

a) You don't have what it takes to run the SWTOR

or

b) You just don't give a damn.

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  • 2 weeks later...
FACTS:

 

1) Achievements, one of taunted features of the expansion

PvP achievements broken (crits do not count as one example),[...]

 

They work, but you have to do the EXACT amount asked by the achievement, and it should be shown on the end scorebord meaning is MUST be your best crit.

 

 

Even though, I think that's not how it should be...

Instead of looking for "hit = 4000", it should be looking for "hit > 3999"... Same for kills, instead of "= 25", put "> 24"

It should be an easy fix, there are just a very few caracters to change...

If they don't do that, it would mean that the game doesn't understand simple mathematic symbols like ">" and "<" (and it would be really surprising), or that they don't want to change achievements (which seem illogic to us players, and I would personally like a clear anouncement stating that it's how they designed it).

Edited by Altheran
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