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Class Representatives Update!


EricMusco

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Hey everyone,

 

As many of you are no doubt aware, we implemented the Class Representatives system a few weeks ago. The goal if this system was simple: introduce a dialog around each class based on what the community feels their top 3 issues are at the time.

 

So far the reps have been doing a great job and you all have been providing invaluable feedback to the team. However, today I come with some good and bad news. First, the bad!

 

Once we have returned the Shadow and Mercenary top 3 which were submitted last week, we will be putting it on hold. I know the first question that comes to mind is, why? This is pretty simple actually. All 8 set of class mirrors have submitted a top 3 to us once after this most recent round.

 

With that being said, we have not yet made any actual class changes since the initiative began (barring the BH/Trooper changes). Because of this, the second set of top 3 will not really be as impactful since it will likely be a revisit of the same 3 issues that were presented before. Because of that, I am going to put the Class Reps on hold until we start making some class changes again.

 

This leads us to the good news, right? I know the next question you will ask, based on what I just typed is "when are we getting class changes then?" I have that answer too! You will begin to see class changes in Game Update 2.5. After 2.5 hits, we will reintroduce the Class Reps and allow those reps to once again begin a dialog with the developers on what issues still remain with their classes.

 

I will also rework the schedule to insure that only classes who received changes at that point are in the front of the schedule. I want to be clear that it is possible that not all classes will see changes in 2.5, but there are definitely some class changes coming. I also want to set the expectation that you shouldn't expect crazy big changes like you saw with 2.0. but it will be a new set of changes. Also, if you don't receive changes in 2.5 don't fret as we will be continually touching class balance.

 

Last but not least, one thing I want to do is to make sure that you are all informed on both the decisions we are making and why we are making them. To that end, as we get closer to the launch of 2.5 we will be publishing some class change blogs similar to what we did around 2.0. This way you can all be as informed as possible! We will definitely make an effort to stay active in the class forums and keep you all apprised of any updates, as well as making sure we are continuing to pass feedback on the dev team.

 

I think that about wraps it up. If you have any questions I will stick around in the thread to try to answer them. Hopefully all of my ramblings make sense.

 

-eric

 

tldr - Class Rep initiative is on hiatus after the Assassin/Merc answers until our next set of class changes come in 2.5.

 

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This is a terrible decision.

 

First sages and sorcerers deserve better answers than they currently have, and the mirror class answers would have been a fine opportunity for you to provide them.

 

Additionally, I believe the communities are capable of coming up with questions that are not repetitive (except where they need to be. See: sorcerers).

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Makes sense. When do we expect to get answers from last Fridays round of questions?

 

Similar to the last round, they will come sometime next week. Still not positive the exact day but I will let you know once I know! I wouldn't expect them until Monday or Tuesday though (potentially later, but def next week).

 

-eric

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Unfortunate decision, but understandable. I know that some classes (shadows being a great example) have a boatload of issues that were vying for inclusion in the limited set of three questions. A lot of these issues got tabled with the assumption that they could be raised in the mirror AC question set. We are of course well aware that class changes come and they will have a significant effect on the sorts of questions we want to ask, but we have no guarantee that these issues (some of which are very pressing) would be addressed. In the worst case, the class changes don't address important things that we couldn't ask about, and the delay in the class rep system means we have to wait that much longer to bring the issue to the combat team's attention.

 

Additionally, there is another outstanding issue: one class is receiving class changes in 2.4 (vanguards/powertechs), and their AC archetype class questions were asked just a few hours before those changes were announced. In other words, class changes have been made, but there has been no opportunity to ask about those changes. The very situation that you're trying to avoid by delaying the class rep schedule is in fact already occurring.

 

I don't have a better solution for you. I see the rationale behind the delay. I'm just pointing out that not everything is sunshine and daisies.

Edited by KeyboardNinja
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So...What happened to making class changes for minor patch updates opposed to waiting for major updates? Quite frankly, that seemed like a much better route to go and a great way to make sure necessary tweaks are made to keep a class feeling viable or keeping a class from being over powered for too long.

 

Right now, I'd say we are waiting for too long to see class changes being made. I'm also damn sure people don't want to wait an extra two months for more classes to be made viable in arenas. Especially in the case of healers where every team will be bringing in an operative healer. Mercs/mandos and sorc/sages just won't be welcome on any ranked arena team.

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Right now, I'd say we are waiting for too long to see class changes being made. I'm also damn sure people don't want to wait an extra two months for more classes to be made viable in arenas. Especially in the case of healers where every team will be bringing in an operative healer. Mercs/mandos and sorc/sages just won't be welcome on any ranked arena team.

 

Heal to Full in our future as Sage/Sorc. Sorry this is really not a great approach to "WAIT" for several months and just "HOPE" they are going to fix things. The "Tweak as you go" model might be more in order IMHO.

 

I didn't see a "Date" on 2.5 which means it's most likely going to fall into the DEC/JAN time frame.

 

eric - what rough MONTH do you see 2.5 potentially landing?

 

I'm not excited about the Combat teams already "no problem, L2p/H2F" commentary. Based on that I really think they don't see a problem, which means Sage/Sorc community will most likely STILL NOT see any changes in 2.5.

 

So why hang around? I mean if the class is pretty much not going to see any changes its 1.2 happening all over again when Sage/Sorc's got nerfed and nothing with 2.4 carried into 2.5 w/o any real balancing.

Edited by dscount
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I feel like you have gone and kicked me in the balls while i can understand part of the mentality that has reasoned this action, I feel like there are still more answers to be had with a lot of the classes as Keyboardninja said earlier some classes have some glaring issues that needed more than three questions for, that was why the community reps where discussing with each other and planning out their 3 questions to coincide with each other and not conflict and get the same 2 questions.
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Yup! Heal to Full in our future as Sage/Sorc. Sorry this is really not a great approach to "WAIT" for several months and just "HOPE" they are going to fix things. The "Tweak as you go" model might be more in order IMHO.

 

I didn't see a "Date" on 2.5 which means it's most likely going to fall into the DEC/JAN time frame.

 

Balance changes aren't so much planned on the scale of months, it's closer to geological eras.

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This is a terrible decision.

 

First sages and sorcerers deserve better answers than they currently have, and the mirror class answers would have been a fine opportunity for you to provide them.

 

Additionally, I believe the communities are capable of coming up with questions that are not repetitive (except where they need to be. See: sorcerers).

 

 

First Sages and Sorcs need to ask better questions.

 

They Asked

 

  • Why can't we have more defensive cooldowns on top of our own heals?
  • Why are we shut down so easily?
  • Force Cost is crappy

 

To which the dev's gave straight answers.

 

Sorc's have heals and should use them, not doing so is your own death warrant. You have Unnatural Preservation, which has a 30 sec cooldown and no force cost and on my Sorc who's 66's and 69's can crit for 10k quite often.

 

Every class can be shut down in one regard or another. How you combat that shutting down is up to you and your skill, not an issue that should be catered to make your life easy.

 

Force Cost is a resource, learn to manage it better. If a fight goes on for 10 minutes, sure the strain will get to you as it does a Mercenary's Heat, Sniper/Operative's Energy and even Rage generation can come into play in the later parts of a fight. Again, how you manage yourself and plan ahead, is skill, not an issue.

Edited by Luckygunslinger
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Eric, Could you comment on why class balance changes take so long to do? From my understanding bioware austin has a full time combat team that is in charge of the class balance. So long after the rothc has come out and some classes/specs are not useful in many different styles of game play. This kind of issue has a really negative toll on a large part of the community and being that bioware is still offering a subscription plan that is a service , should it be not made a greater priority to ensure that every single person playing this game has a fair chance about being competitive and have just as much of a chance to have fun on what they want play rather then being pigeon holed into playing specific classes cause they are the only ones that can do the job.

 

 

With that being said I've played games that take their community very serious on issues like this and things like class balance are touched either weekly or bi-weekly at latest. The game that comes to mind has a dev team that is also much smaller then the one at bioware austin and they also have allot more to consider when doing these changes. From what you guys have said in the past all dps classes in swtor should be within 5% of each other, while this may be true for a couple some are off by 20% or even greater.

 

 

Could you elaborate on what the combat team actually does? Could we get some details in the process you guys use to balance classes?

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I have no idea why they aren't/haven't been throwing class changes at the wall on the PTS and seeing what sticks. They chose to not really do much with the PTS and I believe that is really hurting the game.

 

In my opinion they should be almost constantly tweaking things on the PTS before sending them live.

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Heal to Full in our future as Sage/Sorc. Sorry this is really not a great approach to "WAIT" for several months and just "HOPE" they are going to fix things. The "Tweak as you go" model might be more in order IMHO.

 

I didn't see a "Date" on 2.5 which means it's most likely going to fall into the DEC/JAN time frame.

 

eric - what rough MONTH do you see 2.5 potentially landing?

 

I'm not excited about the Combat teams already "no problem, L2p/H2F" commentary. Based on that I really think they don't see a problem, which means Sage/Sorc community will most likely STILL NOT see any changes in 2.5.

 

So why hang around? I mean if the class is pretty much not going to see any changes its 1.2 happening all over again when Sage/Sorc's got nerfed and nothing with 2.4 carried into 2.5 w/o any real balancing.

 

The tweak as you go model is just better period due to the fact testing in a closed environment lacks the variables that the live game would have. That also means they need to be watching and possibly even playing the live game to see just how well the changes are working. This will just result in overall better class balancing.

 

It could also help a lot of if the devs where to actually ask us questions opposed to just us asking them questions. It would lead to over all better communication.

 

 

 

Well, when dealing with snipers while playing my merc or even my sorc, I'll just back out of the range pop off heals come back and watch them die. So, it's pretty legit when used against snipers. Plus DPS mercs cleanse does work on their DoTs. It just doesn't work as well against warriors, sins, and DPS operatives.

 

Been thinking that sorcerers and operatives should get something a kin to stances, ammo, and cylinders. Though, they really only need two; One for healing and for DPS. Then all heals should only be usable while in a healing stance. This way, H2F can be considered part of a DPS' survivability and they can tie in defensive abilities to the DPS stances, ammo, and cylinders. And of course, set it up so that one can't change their stance while in combat.

Edited by Dedrayge
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Well thank you Luckygunslinger for your L2P and H2F summary. :rolleyes:

 

We already got that from the devs. You must not play a Sage/Sorc in NiM content.

 

I agree with you for HM content on your points, but when 2.4 Arena hits and for NiM content those same points are out the window.

 

My standard spill on "FIX our REGEN BUG" still stands as well:

Heck I'd love for them to FIX our current FORCE REGEN BUG, but still nothing on this one.

 

Sage/Sorc Showing +2.00% on Alacrity, but missing in force regen

http://i.imgur.com/q10fRue.jpg

 

Merc/OP showing the +2.00% working in both areas. How is this NOT FIXED yet?

http://i.imgur.com/8dz265O.jpg

 

I've been rapidly losing FAITH in BW's ability to make this game functional and balanced. (FYI: I Do NOT PVP).

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I'm just gonna leave my feelings on this right here...

 

 

 

...as for a legitimate complaint...

 

I'd love for them to fix the lag/bug with full auto on my commando. It's rather annoying kicking off a skill for it to work for only the last 0.002 seconds of the ability, thus making that ability more or less useless and messing up my rotation.

Edited by CaptianFordo
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Could you elaborate on what the combat team actually does?

 

They were counting the cartel market income. Now they are going to buff smashers and slingers and play golf or cricket.

 

By the way, I'm wondering what's the UI team been doing? Rodeo I guess.

Edited by Kesphin
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I thought part of this whole class rep thing was to have a dialogue of sorts: you're basically clipping it off right when it started (and let's face it, it took awhile for it to get going in a positive manner). Why would you do that?

 

Also, the three questions you got are hardly the only ones that most classes and specs have, they were just three that the group of people working on the questions boiled them down to... to suggest that there isn't more to be asked, even at this point, doesn't make sense to me at all. Many of the current round of questions were chosen with the understanding that the mirror class could follow up on those questions, clarify them, or ask new questions that the original three didn't cover. And now you're removing that ability. Hopefully you can see how this is an issue.

 

Unrelated (and yet related) to the class rep issues, you all really need to get moving on balance issues. 2.0 has been out for a LONG time now, but many of the issues it introduced are still here, which the class rep questions only partially note. Development does take awhile, yes, but as more than one person has said, adjustments to class balance issues has been glacial. Now we get to wait until 2.5 which won't be until... December? January? Almost a year after 2.0 hit (and over a year after 2.0 was being tested, if I recall correctly). That's... really slow.

 

Maybe I'll get surprise and 2.5 would be in early November, but that doesn't necessarily match up with past release timelines, and I have seen how the holidays screw with development schedules. MMOs don't do too much new stuff from late November through December.

Edited by Pilgrim_Grey
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First Sages and Sorcs need to ask better questions.

 

They Asked

 

  • Why can't we have more defensive cooldowns on top of our own heals?
  • Why are we shut down so easily?
  • Force Cost is crappy

 

To which the dev's gave straight answers.

 

Sorc's have heals and should use them, not doing so is your own death warrant. You have Unnatural Preservation, which has a 30 sec cooldown and no force cost and on my Sorc who's 66's and 69's can crit for 10k quite often.

 

Every class can be shut down in one regard or another. How you combat that shutting down is up to you and your skill, not an issue that should be catered to make your life easy.

 

Force Cost is a resource, learn to manage it better. If a fight goes on for 10 minutes, sure the strain will get to you as it does a Mercenary's Heat, Sniper/Operative's Energy and even Rage generation can come into play in the later parts of a fight. Again, how you manage yourself and plan ahead, is skill, not an issue.

 

I agree. It was like Sage/Sorcs were children asking for a pony for Christmas and then throwing a temper tantrum when their parents explained why they couldn't have one.

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Hey everyone,

 

As many of you are no doubt aware, we implemented the Class Representatives system a few weeks ago. The goal if this system was simple: introduce a dialog around each class based on what the community feels their top 3 issues are at the time.

 

So far the reps have been doing a great job and you all have been providing invaluable feedback to the team. However, today I come with some good and bad news. First, the bad!

 

Once we have returned the Shadow and Mercenary top 3 which were submitted last week, we will be putting it on hold. I know the first question that comes to mind is, why? This is pretty simple actually. All 8 set of class mirrors have submitted a top 3 to us once after this most recent round.

 

With that being said, we have not yet made any actual class changes since the initiative began (barring the BH/Trooper changes). Because of this, the second set of top 3 will not really be as impactful since it will likely be a revisit of the same 3 issues that were presented before. Because of that, I am going to put the Class Reps on hold until we start making some class changes again.

 

This leads us to the good news, right? I know the next question you will ask, based on what I just typed is "when are we getting class changes then?" I have that answer too! You will begin to see class changes in Game Update 2.5. After 2.5 hits, we will reintroduce the Class Reps and allow those reps to once again begin a dialog with the developers on what issues still remain with their classes.

 

I will also rework the schedule to insure that only classes who received changes at that point are in the front of the schedule. I want to be clear that it is possible that not all classes will see changes in 2.5, but there are definitely some class changes coming. I also want to set the expectation that you shouldn't expect crazy big changes like you saw with 2.0. but it will be a new set of changes. Also, if you don't receive changes in 2.5 don't fret as we will be continually touching class balance.

 

Last but not least, one thing I want to do is to make sure that you are all informed on both the decisions we are making and why we are making them. To that end, as we get closer to the launch of 2.5 we will be publishing some class change blogs similar to what we did around 2.0. This way you can all be as informed as possible! We will definitely make an effort to stay active in the class forums and keep you all apprised of any updates, as well as making sure we are continuing to pass feedback on the dev team.

 

I think that about wraps it up. If you have any questions I will stick around in the thread to try to answer them. Hopefully all of my ramblings make sense.

 

-eric

 

tldr - Class Rep initiative is on hiatus after the Assassin/Merc answers until our next set of class changes come in 2.5.

 

 

Good info.

 

The only thing I would once again mention Mr Musco....take care to not focus on Arena for class balance please. I am sure you are aware of the possible pitfalls of doing so...a never ending balance crusade.

 

So far (other than the instant effect for abilities that ruined animations IMO and the change to force wave/overload instead of just disabling those abilities in PVP and creating new PVP only abilities) the balance changes have been minor overall it seems and the classes have not drastically changed...which I think is a good thing.

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