[*]QA - Our Quality Assurance team actually spends a large amount of time combing the forums for issues. Both bugs and feedback which they help in documenting and passing on to the dev team. We are in process on getting a "general" QA account that they can use to communicate with all of you more regularly, especially about bug status.

 

 

-eric

The important thing is to not only have someone combing the forums for issues, but let the players know someone has combed the forums for information. Otherwise it just seems like no one from BW bothered reading anything the players wrote.

Acknowledgement of issues in a reasonable amount of time after people bring them up on the forums would alleviate so much angst here.

Regarding ranked WZs and the cheating going on there for ELO, I simply used it as an example of lots of very angry people reacting to one problem that is going on in the game and all of their feedback concerning that situation seemingly being ignored.

There are many players in the PVP section that have written at great length on the issues they are encountering in Ranked WZs, and their frustration is at a point some are quitting due to them feeling like you guys don't care. The discussions have ranged from how to stop the cheating, to changing the ELO system, and many other ideas on how to improve Ranked WZs. I just feel like it's a lost opportunity for BW to not interact with these players with all the knowledge and experience some of those players have in ranked WZs when they are offering ideas on how to improve ranked WZs and stop the cheating yet no one seems to be reading anything they write.

This was just one example of a problem seemingly being ignored due to zero response from anyone at BW.

If you guys share your reasoning with the players for changes to the game (like locked in mods) or why you think the present ELO system works for ranked WZs when it's so easily cheated (and has been for years), even if the players don't like the answers they are given that's better than not getting any answers at all.

Thanks Eric for responding to my post, and in all honesty I hope that changes are made where people are able to communicate with you or other members of your Community Management Team via the forums. I am a firm believer in it's never too late for change. Here's to hoping you are being genuine when you say you really are looking for ways to improve the communication with the players and making it happen.

As Eric repeated ad nauseam during his streams leading up to 5.0 - Perception is reality.

 

It's another marketing approach to a product problem. This video explains this approach and why it results in the situation we're in now quite well - https://youtu.be/xjvgpumG2mg

 

You can see this occurring all over the gaming landscape at the moment. Have a look at what's going on with Blizzard.

I had a full career in the airline business. I'm quite aware of Perception is reality. In fact a former President of United Airlines said exactly that many years ago.

FedEx and UPS each lose over 5 times the packages, documents etc than the USPS. Which one is better? Why FedEx or UPS of course.

America's Favorite airline is a low cost carrier. It's air fares are exactly the same as everyone else after the initial introduction to a route.

I could go on but you get the point.

MMO's (BW, Activision NCSOFT etc) aren't immune as you pointed out.

Question:

Will we or wont we get significant romance content with existing LIs in story going forwards?

This is something that keeps coming up with story players over and over again, yet we never get an answer or response beyond 'we would like to' that doesn't tell us if you guys are going to or not. Or are we just going to be stuck with scraps here or there while new romances are focused?

Why is this something we can never get a decent response to when its important to so many players, enough that it keeps coming up on the forums time and again.

It would also be nice to know if the feedback and general opinions expressed on the forums are being acknowledged.

I appreciate this is detrimental to the cause but a couple of years back a yellow post asking for feedback would have been 30 pages by now. Now we are on 6 pages, mostly the same people that are pretty tired of the 'we value your feedback' style posts.

Is the game thought to be in a good place? Is it felt the direction of the last year has been a good one? Is the lack of subscribers, players, forum goers a concern?

I get we will never get numbers, but no one here is blind and we kind of hope the people calling the shots aren't either. As others have mentioned gone from 200 to 6 servers. Has anything been done to find why people quit, are the walls of text you no doubt get when people cancel read, reviewed and acted on? Or is everything blamed on a 7 year old engine, poor graphics, game design that has gone too far into bloat and coding no one understand? Are there simply no resources to the game outside of Matt and the CM team?

Why do we not see paid expansions? I'm sure many people would pay for a decent amount of content. Where as it seems the last story update was free, while locking gear progression (oh that lovely gear grind) behind a subscription. Is there any update on that gear grind. I saw someone offering to sell a 258 saber for 240 million. Maybe someone will buy it but since it seems 6.0 will turn it into junk that seems a waste of money, though it would be nice to know if thats a worthwhile investment. As it stands it most certainly isn't unless your a serious PvPer and want the gear between now and 6.0. Otherwise what possible content is there that you need it for, a Colicode queen on vet that is more about mechanic and your group than anything a little extra dps for 240 million.

Monthly or Quarterly Ask Me Anything with any part of the SWTOR team.

This is an excellent suggestion, and something most other businesses I interact with do.

As a story/solo player I'd like to echo the comments some others here have made. We've seen progressively less and less story content since 2017. We cannot repeat the story portions of the content that is released. Players said they didn't want to lose more companions and yet 5.10 set the table for that.

It feels as though there isn't going to be a place for players like me going forward, as the game's updates have shifted so drastically toward group content and begun to close off progression options for solo players. If this is the way things are going to go from now on and solo players are going to continue to be squeezed out, I'd rather know now. If all we can expect in future as story players is an hour of content or so every year and minimal interaction with companions and LIs, I'd rather know now, too.

If you're planning on making this a game that is about nothing but Ops and PvP, and grouping is going to become compulsory to progress, just do us a favor and tell us so we can move on.

As a story/solo player I'd like to echo the comments some others here have made. We've seen progressively less and less story content since 2017. We cannot repeat the story portions of the content that is released. Players said they didn't want to lose more companions and yet 5.10 set the table for that.

 

It feels as though there isn't going to be a place for players like me going forward, as the game's updates have shifted so drastically toward group content and begun to close off progression options for solo players. If this is the way things are going to go from now on and solo players are going to continue to be squeezed out, I'd rather know now. If all we can expect in future as story players is an hour of content or so every year and minimal interaction with companions and LIs, I'd rather know now, too.

 

If you're planning on making this a game that is about nothing but Ops and PvP, and grouping is going to become compulsory to progress, just do us a favor and tell us so we can move on.

Yes to this.

I'm a mature-aged gamer and have played MMORPGs for the last two decades beginning with Ultima Online and playing a host of other games as well. I've been a raider - some raids lasting all day with upwards of 70 participants. I've done the group and duo thing. I've been the leader of a couple of guilds. I've been a roleplayer, and even for a short time a pvper (although it really wasn't my thing).

Now I just play solo at my own speed.

If I wanted to group and raid and do high end content I'd be still in a raiding guild on WoW, but I moved past that. In fact I took a significant break from MMORPGs because I was bored of the endless grind, running endlessly in the mouse-wheel. What drew me back was SWTOR and its stories, its companions, the romances embedded within each storyline. I liked how my characters could actively shape their galaxy through the stories and the choices they made. That's what made this game unique - I'm not even a hard-core SW nut (I'm more into B5), but as a storyteller and writer, well, I loved the stories. So if I were to offer a tad more advice, well it would be that the stories are the core and strength of this game and everything should revolve around good story-telling.

Oh and one last thing (I promise), what you did with SoR was great, I loved how a soloist could, with the help of NPCs, take down a boss mob like Revan. We need more of those kind of endgame encounters so that even soloists can be included in every storyline.

As many others in this thread have suggest the biggest problem in regards to how the SWTOR team takes its feedback is that sometimes feedback is given only to fall into deaf ears, if you have a reason whatever reason it may be for doing X when the community is very against it please give it, and perhaps even consider reverting your decision in case the community is heavily against it.

Another problem is while communication has been better under Keith than under Ben, I believe that the SWTOR forums themselves could benefit from a more active Community Manager Team. What I mean by this are posts where you'll let you know you're at least listening to us, and perhaps explain the reasoning behind X or Y so that the community will calm down. I understand perhaps you're not allowed to divulge all information the community may inquire but threads asking important questions about the future with enough traction should be answered.

Something else I'd like to suggest is, when possible, for the Developers themselves to have a more active presence on the forums. I assume they would be able to explain more about what is going on and it would be interesting to engage with them more often, I love it when Charles makes a post to explain the story or clears up something that was left ambiguous. Or when Keith talks about his own vision for the game, what he wants going forward, ETC. Small things like these will show the Developer Team still takes a look at the Forums and is willing to engage with the community, which will put a lot of concern about the apathy of the Team in regards to the game and its community.

Another suggestion Mr musco... try posting this stuff at the start of the week, instead of when you running out the door for the weekend. So no further responses until the following week (if we are lucky).

My hypothesis on this is that they think we'll forget our issues with them over the weekend.

The important thing is to not only have someone combing the forums for issues, but let the players know someone has combed the forums for information. Otherwise it just seems like no one from BW bothered reading anything the players wrote.

 

Acknowledgement of issues in a reasonable amount of time after people bring them up on the forums would alleviate so much angst here.

This. So much this. Having a dev post saying "we are aware of problem X and we're still working on it" would go such a long way.

There could be a sticky post with lists of issues and progress toward fixing them, and it could be updated every week. Example:

Issue: Vette stops and sings Bohemian Rhapsody instead of fighting.

Logged: (date)

Progress toward fix: 50%

How hard would it have been for you to walk down the hall, give Charles a Wedgie and establish it was Darth Undaroos Friday, and ask the devs....

 

Is the mods/ enh slot gearing issue a bug or intended?

 

No offense Eric, but I'm with Casirabit on this one. I'm known to be a snarky queen, she is not. She's just a princess. But when the nicest, most mature individual on the forum is calling you out for the boy who cried wolf....to quote Jar Jar Binks...."youssa gotta problem."

 

I'm not being facetious: After this (the slot gearing issue) happened, my husband (who doesn't post and only plays a little since he is interested in shooters) said...."Does he even read the PTS or play the game?"

 

I didn't have a good answer.

 

Dasty

Thanks Dasty.

This thread = damage control, nothing more. That's Eric's job to deal with us. And he has.

Get the plebs to engage and post essays of things they want to see changed and things they want to see done, and get their hopes up that this time will be different.

It won't be. There have been things that blow up in the forums over the years and it's always the same, we get mad, they throw us a bone 'and get us involved' as a means to keep us busy and placated and feeling like we're being proactive in solving the issue.

Sorry, my carrot has been ganked one too many times and I'm not buying what they're selling anymore on this forum. There is always the promise, 'oh but you misunderstand--we appreciate you guys, here have a thread and discuss all the things you want...'

Nothing is done. And their communications fade away to nothing after the outrage dies.

The only time I felt listened to was in the PTS server when I asked for an apartment on Rishi and the ramp off the main dock heading to the beach. That's it.

Edit: This has the hallmarks of an abusive relationship. We get abused or hurt in some way, then it's 'hey baby, I'm sorry, what can we do to make it up to you...'

And for a while, things are quiet and good and then the next punch in the gut. I've no more patience for roses and chocolates.

I'm reminded of an episode of Seinfeld when Jerry made a rental car reservation, then showed up at the airport to be told they didn't have a car for him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T2GmGSNvaM

You know how to gather feedback. You get it all the time...in-game, in the forums, Reddit, Twitter, PTS...all of which you listed. It's not about how you gather the feedback. You don't need or want feedback on how to gather feedback It's about what you do (or in almost all cases, don't do) with that feedback once you have it. If players are pointing out a glaring bug on the PTS, for the love of all that's holy, fix it before the content gets released. If the vast majority of players are complaining about the new gearing system (and they are...and you know this, because you can read), do something to improve it. When you see post after sarcastic post in this thread alone from players who fully believe that none of their comments will mean anything, it's because that's what you almost always do with feedback. Nothing. It would be very nice to have you comment on specific problems that are being addressed, even if you don't know a specific timeline on a solution. But it would be much, much better if the solution ever actually came forth.

If it makes you feel any better, I came to SWTOR from another MMO that followed this exact same pattern. I have a feeling from reading other forums that this is standard operating procedure for the gaming industry. Be brave...break the pattern. Take the massive amount of feedback you get from your players, and do your best to implement it. If your team is looking into it and doesn't know exactly when a fix will be ready, tell us. If there are some things that just can't be changed, tell us, and tell us why. Honesty goes a long bloody way in building trust.

This thread = damage control, nothing more. That's Eric's job to deal with us. And he has.

 

Get the plebs to engage and post essays of things they want to see changed and things they want to see done, and get their hopes up that this time will be different.

 

It won't be. There have been things that blow up in the forums over the years and it's always the same, we get mad, they throw us a bone 'and get us involved' as a means to keep us busy and placated and feeling like we're being proactive in solving the issue.

 

Sorry, my carrot has been ganked one too many times and I'm not buying what they're selling anymore on this forum. There is always the promise, 'oh but you misunderstand--we appreciate you guys, here have a thread and discuss all the things you want...'

 

Nothing is done. And their communications fade away to nothing after the outrage dies.

 

The only time I felt listened to was in the PTS server when I asked for an apartment on Rishi and the ramp off the main dock heading to the beach. That's it.

Luna, you've made me wish I hadn't spent so much time on my post. You are correct; the only time I felt listened to (not counting beta 8 years ago) was when I gave PTS feedback with screen shots about adding an apartment area to the cliff on Rishi and making the entire stronghold more stronghold-decorator friendly. They listened AND acted and as a result I changed my mind about buying it. Now I love that stronghold (and I see many people running around in my stronghold taking a look so I must have done something right). Just about everything else has been ignored.

Are the so-called "influencers" all Raiders/Ranked PvPers like the Devs? I'm betting they are and if that's the case those of us who are in it for the story are doomed If they are not careful they will find 1000s turning to Barrens chat, falling to death in Undercity, getting eaten by Sons of Arugal and the trauma of Mankrik's wife for entertainment later this year & there will be just raiders/ranked pvpers and tumbleweed left in swtor

Luna, you've made me wish I hadn't spent so much time on my post. You are correct; the only time I felt listened to (not counting beta 8 years ago) was when I gave PTS feedback with screen shots about adding an apartment area to the cliff on Rishi and making the entire stronghold more stronghold-decorator friendly. They listened AND acted and as a result I changed my mind about buying it. Now I love that stronghold (and I see many people running around in my stronghold taking a look so I must have done something right). Just about everything else has been ignored.

Are the so-called "influencers" all Raiders/Ranked PvPers like the Devs? I'm betting they are and if that's the case those of us who are in it for the story are doomed If they are not careful they will find 1000s turning to Barrens chat, falling to death in Undercity, getting eaten by Sons of Arugal and the trauma of Mankrik's wife for entertainment later this year & there will be just raiders/ranked pvpers and tumbleweed left in swtor

I'm sorry, SC Sarova. Your post was well thought out and organized and every point you brought up on it has impacted all of us here in one way or another in varying degrees. There were other long, good, posts too. It made me sad and angry to see you and the others take the time to put out all these suggestions when I know they're just going to sluff it off and after everything dies down again, which it will, they'll let it all slide again.

The last time I bought into the 'things will be different now' crap was when Keith took over. I was genuinely excited that we'd finally be heard, but again it faded away, and to a worse level than before.

I feel sad for the countless hours I've tried to do my part in helping other people, uniting fans, posting informative and interesting and helpful things, stories, decoration screenshots to inspire people to decorate...I feel like it was all a huge waste of time, because I AM A PLEB. I am not a star-bellied sneetch whispering in the dev's ears. Hell, I was shocked to learn that other posters I admired like Dulfy and SWTORISTA who have done so much to inspire and inform, aren't even one of this shadow cabal known as 'The Influencers.'

I do feel like these influencers are more for aspects of the game that don't appeal to me; I feel like they are the ones who wanted to kill Quinn and start the ball rolling on all the companion killing and get us all at each others throats, when nothing we wanted mattered. No Scourge yet, despite being asked for, since, like forever. Those are two things important to me. I'm upset that the Quinn customizations and decorations have been broken since IOKATH and that it has ruined SW's stories that like him. They don't even have a commemorative decoration for Quinn. Freaking GAULT has a statue, but not Quinn? Oh come the eff on. Gault doesn't have a 500K+ strong thread and a legion of loyal fans. Anyway, I digress.

I'm hanging around like a fool, waiting for more GOOD story not stuff like KOTFEET which I can't even stand to run through a 7th time for my BH. I'm waiting for Scourge to come back, to be a romance and a good one, not just one cruddy cut scene where he's been emasculated beyond recognition because they think that's what romance is, or does????? Pfft. I'm hanging around for more strongholds, improvements in that system for decorators.

Meh...pardon me, I'm rambling, because I apparently still care on some level. It's just too bad that I don't BELIEVE FOR ONE MOMENT that the devs here do.

Luna, you've made me wish I hadn't spent so much time on my post. You are correct; the only time I felt listened to (not counting beta 8 years ago) was when I gave PTS feedback with screen shots about adding an apartment area to the cliff on Rishi and making the entire stronghold more stronghold-decorator friendly. They listened AND acted and as a result I changed my mind about buying it. Now I love that stronghold (and I see many people running around in my stronghold taking a look so I must have done something right). Just about everything else has been ignored.

Are the so-called "influencers" all Raiders/Ranked PvPers like the Devs? I'm betting they are and if that's the case those of us who are in it for the story are doomed If they are not careful they will find 1000s turning to Barrens chat, falling to death in Undercity, getting eaten by Sons of Arugal and the trauma of Mankrik's wife for entertainment later this year & there will be just raiders/ranked pvpers and tumbleweed left in swtor

Sadly seems to be the truth. Been so long now since I've had a good reason to login with so little story in the last updates that I've been considering cancelling my sub. This year instead of spending my xmas money on CCs like I usually would have done its gone else where. Ossus was so short on story I played a few chars through over 3 days and was done with it, and some of that time was spent catching my Docmancing JK up to get her hubby back.

The next update isn't even until march or whatever, or even longer away (I think march was when they would tell us whats in it) and im not expecting much or any story in it. Frankly this dry spell for any significant story amount has gone on way too long now that I am just tired and pretty much done. This is the first day I've even checked the forumd in weeks.

I stopped and cancelled my post because as I was writing it out, it was basically the same thing I wrote and have been writing since the last time we were asked about feedback on our feedback. And, unfortunately, I have to agree with Lunafox. I could spend hours typing out a nice, example-heavy post that will probably just be ignored at worst, or buried under the noise of the rest of these posts. Long post on page 7 or 8 of a 25 page thread is just not gonna be a good use of my time, no matter how well I write it.

But one thing I did want to add here:

To try to calm any tin foil hats spinning up

-eric

Eric, please, please, please could you do more of this. There are so many rumors and speculations out there that are tearing people apart. Some are laughable but the more they go unchecked the more they become "fact" in the eyes of a lot of people.

Keith makes game decisions based on his personal raiding group--I want to scream COME ON :rolleyes: :rolleyes: to people but when no one calls these people on that line and circumstantially what we are presented could actually be twisted to fit that ludicrous narrative, it feeds that conspiracy theory until 9 out of 10 forum posters are stating it like fact. If you or Keith came on and said this is not the case, you're making decisions based on what a survey told you or you crunched numbers and there was some sort of evidence that there really is a market for something, ANYTHING would be better than letting that nonsense slide and giving power to people to keep making things up and make things out to be worse than they are.

SWTOR's staff is two "devs" and an intern and maybe a monkey on a keyboard in a closet while EA has pushed every one else in the city of Austin to Anthem--you guys have never once even tried to lie or say anything real about this. This was pure speculation at the time and it's now full-blown fact because you guys never once have tried to refute it. Hey, if it's true, we have sympathy and empathy for you three (four)--you're doing your best with what you have and we can't really fault you as individuals if this is the case. But it's most certainly NOT true yet you guys let this fester for well over a year now to the point where it's just "common knowledge" that it's the case.

Anthem will do bad things to SWTOR whether it succeeds or fails--Roadmaps and details on future content really go a long way to placate these assertions presented as fact.

There are a lot more examples but now I'm getting into long post time and it's not gonna matter when it gets buried soon anyway.

I'd love for posts in the forums to be less like

Title: Speculation? Speculate on speculation! Unfounded rumor I made up. Speculation!

Body: Speculation, speculation. Yes yes, speculation. Rumor I made up. Speculation. Speculation on a rumor someone else made up. Speculate. Rumor rumor speculation. speculafact.. Specufact. Specfact. Rufactulation. Sfact. fact. Fact. FACT. FACT FACT FACT! Bioware is incompetent because of the FACT of blah blah blah!

Dear Eric,

I had a whole heap of constructive feed back points to make about gathering feed back, but I see just about everything has already been touched on. So I will try not to repeat what others have already eloquently expressed.

And I really do hope you are reading and “understanding” what is being said because I can assure you, this will be the last chance you guys will get (from most of us) to prove you care about communication-feedback and you aren’t just paying lip service to us (as many of us feel you are).

So my feed back :

Perception is everything and so is intent. At the moment you have a problem with perception and your intent is failing and leading to resentment and “tin foil” moments.

Perception

I am seriously glad you are hear to talk, but I have to ask, is this in response to us discussing and shining an unfavourable light or opinion on the influencers program? It seems too much of a coincidence that this thread is made within 24 hours of us involving the influencers (indirectly) by discussing their role in how BioWare decide the direction of the game or how they have better channels of communication with you over regular players. (Wether that’s true or not, that is the perception)

1. This only reinforces the perception that the influencers do have a better communication path and response time from you guys because look how fast you responded to a topic that questioned their value and if they were partly responsible for the path the game has taken.

2. It highlights how you “only seem” to rush out communication when the smouldering resentment turns into a major firestorm for BioWare PR

This is just one of many examples of the perception problem you have and it underlines one of the biggest problems with your communication because it gives the impression (perception) you don’t care about real game feed back from regular players and only about protecting Biowares image. I’m not saying it’s not important to protect BioWare and swtors public image, it most definitely is.

But when you only do that and don’t have 2 way communication with the player base on a regular basis about ledgitmate concerns and major push back on changes or omission (undocumented) of changes that will be unpopular, you give the wrong perception and I would say it’s even more harmful to Bioware and swtors public image than not putting out PR fires.

Resentment

Ignoring specific topics of major concern and moving onto other topics (that people care less about) gives the perception you knew it would be unpopular and just don’t care to engage because it’s a tough discussion to have when you have to dump bad news that no one wants to hear. An example is the recently locked slot mods and no explanation for this change. This has been asked for and discussed since December and it’s now February. This is how resentment and apathy builds towards you and gives the perception you don’t care or you aren’t doing your job as community manager (or you are working on Anthem instead). Resentment from lack of communication is how “tin foil hats” are made.

There is currently a lot of resentment towards you guys and a vast majority of that is born out no communication. People have had enough of what we perceive as Biowares ivory tower attitude of, “you will play the game the way we want you to. And you will enjoy it because we don’t care about what you want or you find fun, we know best”.

Once again, perception is everything and this is the box you’ve put yourselves in.

Intent

We all understand you have some design goals that we may not be privy to, but you don’t share any of your goals.You rarely if ever ask us what we find fun and when you do, the perception is you ignore us and do what you planned anyway. This gives the wrong impression and your intent is misinterpreted or defined by players who don’t like what you did or feel like they were ignored after they gave you constructive feed back.

If you really want our feed back, that’s awesome, but you need to understand our feed back and seek clarification to interpret it correctly. We see you ask for feed back and we give it, but the majority of the time you do the opposite or do something no one wanted. To us, the perception is you either misinterpreted what was said or you didn’t care to start with (lip service even asking us)

This could easily be avoided with 2-way communication before you make solid plans by clarifying with the players what they want and explain your intent to make sure we are on similar pages and hopefully moving in the same direction and not polar opposites.

Summary on how this has been playing out.

The perception is you guys don’t care about your own game or the players wants, needs or fun. This builds resentment towards BioWare and you in particular because as the community manager, you are supposed to be our contact with the team. This happens because we don’t hear from you or you don’t answer ledgitmate questions and or engage in 2-way discussions.

This is leading to us questioning Biowares intent with swtor and it’s continuation. From an outside perspective, it has been suggested you guys are intentionally ruining your own game to make it close faster (hopefully another tin foil moment). As wild as that sounds, all the bad decisions that seem to have been made (that are driving long term supporters from the game) only reinforce such theories, especially when you DONT communicate your intent.

Eric, we all want this game to thrive and survive. Most of us “still” here and posting are some of the biggest supporters of the game and are highly passionate about it and the community. It’s why we can end up being so hypercritical when you make, what players consider, dumb decisions in development and then don’t communicate with us afterwards when we ask you hard questions.

I know my apathy towards the game is at an all time high and when I see your most ardent forum/game defenders like Casi or Luna express the same apathy, I feel there is no light at the end of the tunnel for this game to ever become as fun as it use to be. It seems to be on an accelerated downward spiral to close down.

What myself and others really find hard to understand, is why do you guys repeat the same old development mistakes, over and over? And the mistakes of old that the past devs learnt from have been largely forgotten. If you don’t learn from past mistakes and fixes, you will continue to drive people away.

A prime example is pvp gearing changes you made for 3.3. And I quote directly from your official community news at the time

Here is an official excerpt from the swtor community news on 01/06/2015.

http://www.swtor.com/blog/pvp-economy-and-ranked-rewards-restructure-game-update-3.3

PvP Gear Cost

We think that getting a full set of PvP gear is too much of a grind. This is so much the case that only about 2% of PvP players have a full Dark Reaver set. Having at least Exhumed gear is a barrier to entry to being successful in PvP for the majority of players, so we looked to reduce the time and cost of getting there. We have reduced the entry PvP gear costs by roughly a third, and a full set (not min/maxed) will now cost about 4075 Warzone Commendations. For the Dark Reaver/Ranked set we didn’t reduce the price as much, but Ranked Warzone Comms will no longer be used to buy them; pieces will now be purchased with Warzone Comms and the previous tier gear piece. (Ranked Warzone Comms have been removed from the game, but we’ll touch on that more in the Ranked Reward changes found below.) A full Ranked Gear set will now cost about 16,525 Warzone Comms, much less than the current price of around 29,000 Ranked Comms. The exact prices are still being finalized, but this is the spirit and intent of the changes to PvP gear prices that you'll be seeing. In addition, the character cap for Warzone Comms will be raised to 200,000 and the Daily/Weekly Missions will have increased Credit rewards. These changes will make it easier and faster to gear up and get to a competitive level in PvP. Our hope is that the reduced grind makes for a more enjoyable Warzone experience.

You guys understood this in 2015. You understood we wanted to have fun playing pvp in your game. You understood that reduced grind was more enjoyable. Why did you go and do the exact opposite in 5.0 and then double down with 5.10 (after spending all that time trying to fix the mistakes of 5.0). This is an example of the many mistakes you make, then fix and then make again. Why does this keep happening?

It gives the impression or perception of diconnection with the player base and at the very extreme, the perception of incompetence (even if that’s not the intent or reason). How else are we supposed to interpret your intent when there is no 2-way communication from you.

Let me finish by saying, I’m only posting so hypercritical because you guys need to hear the hard truths of how a bunch of us feel before it’s too late to fix things. None of us dislike you personally and we all love the game. We only want to HELP YOU to make the game better and that will only happen if you partner with the community more and close the disconnect with proper 2-way dialogue and exchange of information and ideas.

Fundamentally, you have a perception problem and only you can fix it.

Luna, you've made me wish I hadn't spent so much time on my post. You are correct; the only time I felt listened to (not counting beta 8 years ago) was when I gave PTS feedback with screen shots about adding an apartment area to the cliff on Rishi and making the entire stronghold more stronghold-decorator friendly. They listened AND acted and as a result I changed my mind about buying it. Now I love that stronghold (and I see many people running around in my stronghold taking a look so I must have done something right). Just about everything else has been ignored.

Are the so-called "influencers" all Raiders/Ranked PvPers like the Devs? I'm betting they are and if that's the case those of us who are in it for the story are doomed If they are not careful they will find 1000s turning to Barrens chat, falling to death in Undercity, getting eaten by Sons of Arugal and the trauma of Mankrik's wife for entertainment later this year & there will be just raiders/ranked pvpers and tumbleweed left in swtor

Count me among those that will be dwelling in the Undercity. SWTOR isn't a game about players anymore. It's a game of metrics and user hours spent doing what and all of that garbage that business people think will allow them to make a great game. I came back for a few months, ran some alts through the class stories and when my sub runs out I'll disappear until either the class stories will feel fresh again or WoW Classic comes out and I'll likely be gone for a long time. I was going to make a joke about the possibility of a SWTOR Classic, but the sad truth is that I don't think enough people would care.

To quote a recently unsubscribed friend:

"I would wager the vast number of credits i have in my now un-subscribed account that most, if not all, of the concerns brought up in the post go - in true bioware fashion - completely ignored."

He is right. Just like with the straw that broke the camel's back on not giving me the lightsaber i earned by killing world bosses, the issues will be totally ignored.

Why else would Musco post right at closing time on friday? I do wonder Musco, what a community manager at bioware does. Its obviously not managing this community.

I"m going to keep this simple.

Every year or two the CM team says they are going to improve communications with players and then they fall silent shortly after. You'll have to forgive us if we remain skeptical about how genuine you are being.

I doubt you need more ways to gather feedback. What needs real work is paying attention to the feed back you are already getting and responding to it. That's on you, not us.

1. When a controversial change is made, explain why. I mean really explain it, don't be vague. Negative changes are easier to swallow when we understand why they had to be made.

For example, we never got a real explanation on why conquest was gutted. The stated goals didn't match the changes made whatsoever. We are still waiting for "monitoring of the situation" to yield a way to make alt play viable in conquest again.

2. Patch notes need to be accurate. If you make a mistake, add something in, or something gets dropped out, make an addendum so players know about the changes. We rely on those notes to know what was intended and what is a bug.

For example, 5.10 patch notes listed a conquest goal that was supposed to be in every conquest but hasn't been in a single one. Did you change your mind? Is it a bug? Were the patch notes wrong? We don't know!

3. Cruise through the bug forum on a weekly basis and acknowledge those reports. If something is a genuine bug, tell us the right people are looking into it. If it's a known bug, but a low priority, tell us you know about it but it's not likely to be fixed in the foreseeable future. If it's not a bug, but working as intended, tell us that so we don't keep reporting it, and tell us why it's intended to be that way. Keep the "known bug" list up to date and make sure the CS reps are familiar with the state of the game.

For example, low level gear used to be dyeable in outfit stamps even though they didn't have dye slots. This was great for players since a ton of lower level gear didn't get dye slots when dyes were introduced to the game. Then that functionality went poof! No comment from Bioware. If it was a long standing bug that finally got fixed, why prioritize fixing a bug that benefits players when so many harmful bugs exist? If it was an unintended change when something else got worked on, acknowledge that and tell us if you are planning on creating a way to give us that functionality back. If it was a deliberate change, explain why, because no one can figure out a rational explanation for why you don't want us to be able to dye low level gear.

TL: DR

We want to understand why changes are made. We want to know which changes are deliberate and which are actual bugs. We want to know you heard us and understand what we are saying. We want to believe that you care about the quality of your game and the satisfaction of your customers.

Hey folks,

 

With all of that out there… how can we improve? I know our feedback loop is by no means perfect, but being able to gather your feedback consistently for each update on PTS has helped us quite a bit in getting direct feedback from you. Share your thoughts!

 

Thanks all.

 

-eric

I don't wanna sound rude, but this is the hard truth.

I've been playing SWTOR since 2014 and time and time again BW showed it's incapability to listen to it's player base.

Before Command system, on PTS, you were told many times that the whole system is a bad idea, result, you guys still went with it and made it a grind fest.

The most recent example of non listening our feedback is with Osuss update, even before the patch, we asked why are mods etc bound to slot, result, zero response and you still went with it , thus pushing your playerbase into enrage mode on forums yet again.

Classes.

It took you guys a year to nerf Mercs, ppl were literally crying on forums for a nerf, year after,

"yeah, we'll nerf 'em a bit", by that time it was kinda pointless, 'cause every player already had at least 1 toon merc fully geared, 'cause why not, everyone played a merc/mando class since it was far superior to other classes.

Tanks...I mean, should I even begin with that thread? Some ppl got beaten by skanks, "LETS NERF EM"

Good luck finding players who still find playing tanks fun. Slight nerf would be ok, but you guys only know extreme hammer nerfs.

Deception sins

I'll quote you on this one, since many of us are still laughing.

"We felt that Deception sins were OP, so we nerfed their dps"

and in doing so you destroyed their burst which was on pair with Fury Mara's/Sentinel's and made their rotation, RNG.

You want feedback?

For a change, ask players who do play certain classes religiously for a long time, what's best and what's not for certain class they play before you destroy that class.

Hatred sins

I've tried sending you a message, suggestions on what could be improved in order to give that spec a bit of a better survivability but it fell on deaf ears, as always. Second attempt was opening a thread with a long wall post, engaging pvpers from my guild to participate and keep it alive in hope that you'll see it and again, it was in vain. So much effort only to get zero result. Over the time, all classes and specs got something added, but Hatred is still in 55 lvl Oricon timeline, stuck in the past.

Whoever made a decision back then to spread dots via lacerate instead of Death Field, had no clue on how that class works, because you can't go with such a weak survivability class into slaughter and expect to spread your dots with spamming Lacerate, try sending Dot Sorc into the same situation, remove heals and phase walk, and let it spread his dots via saber, see how long will that Sorc survive.

I can go on and on but there's no point in it, since this post won't be noticed by anyone in the BW Dev team.

It's always has been "Hey guys" (bye guys) only to return again if there is something that needs to be posted.

Because of this, SWTOR is were it is now, far from what's has been and what it could have been.

Regards,

Fallen

LOL

You look at the state of the game now. Only the story is high quality, even if you could get more out of it. You should concentrate more on the feedback of the players and implement them, do not remain stubborn in the matter.

You want to improve the game? There are enough suggestions and there are many good ones:

http://www.swtor.com/community/forumdisplay.php?f=349