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Delay anything non-story to 7.1/7.2


NicoleMay

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Weapons in outfitter isn't going to be a thing until 7.1, combat balancing is a nightmare, no more slottable gear. At this point most people are asking "Well, what is going to be in 7.0?" And the answer is sadly story content and a bunch of bugs.

 

Given all the bugs, delays, and clear indication that the dev team is overpromising and underdelivering, I think the wisest option would be to release the story content only in 7.0. Give us 318 slottable gear. And then they can actually take in the PTS feedback and release everything else in 7.1/7.2.

 

Lets face it, LOTS just isn't ready in it's current state. The devs need far more time to listen and adjust to PTS feedback. The PTS was supposed to be down in early January. There's a reason they kept it up longer and are pushing it harder on social media platforms.

 

Come up with a reasonable deadline for the other stuff, then add like 3 months to it. Then I think it would release in a good spot.

 

For now? The only thing I'm excited about with 7.0 is combat styles, loadouts, and story. Everything else screams that it won't be truly ready until 7.1/7.2. And I'd rather delay combat styles and loadouts to ensure all the bugs are ironed out and gearing is done properly.

Edited by NicoleMay
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Agreed. I would much rather play some new story bits with the game as it is now, than be a guinea pig live testing it with nerfs and other vast system changes while they take another month or three or six to iron things out into a palatable state. Uninstalling the game sounds much more appealing than that. I could always use the space anyway.
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Couldn't agree more. The criticisms about the size of the update are going to come regardless, you might as well not pile on criticisms about crappy balance, missing abilities, and "I paid XYZ for this tulak hord saber and can't even use it!" to go with it.
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This is not fair to the player base. This is outright disgusting. Bioware, with Ea can't put together competent group of people to fix issues in 3 months time?

 

Give me a break. Weapon outfiter should not be that complicated. The whole excitement has gone down the trash for me. I am not hyped at all. With this news came sour taste for the 7.0. We will get nothing new to keep us playing

 

My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.

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Weapon outfiter should not be that complicated.

Probably not, but equally probably there was a specific design decision about weapons, made back in 2010 or so, that had consequences in other design decisions, meaning that the impact of the original decision is baked into half the codebase, and every single trace of it has to be found and changed.

 

Before you say it, no, it isn't reasonable to criticise a lack of foresight - why would they design it in 2010 with the assumption that four or so years later they'd want to be able to do a weapon outfitter system?

 

EDIT: "four or so years" because that corresponds to the approximate launch window for Outfit Designer.

Edited by SteveTheCynic
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Probably not, but equally probably there was a specific design decision about weapons, made back in 2010 or so, that had consequences in other design decisions, meaning that the impact of the original decision is baked into half the codebase, and every single trace of it has to be found and changed.

 

Before you say it, no, it isn't reasonable to criticise a lack of foresight - why would they design it in 2010 with the assumption that four or so years later they'd want to be able to do a weapon outfitter system?

I agree to a point, but building scalable infrastructure is for lack of a better way to put it a huge deal in programming, as I'm sure you know (you are a programmer, right? Or am I remembering wrong?). Meaning, a lot of time and thought gets put into how to make design patterns work they can be built upon and changed in the future without major issues. And though I imagine you are probably wanting to say: yes, but that's the ideal. It is, but also, this game is infamously bad at having some of the worst infrastructure in video games by their own admission. Not that they are saying they're the worst, but that they admit certain parts of it are really bad. And if it's that bad, that they are willing to admit how bad it is, this team that tends to act like things are doing pretty ok when delays and bugs are running laps around them, it must be really really bad.

 

I tend to agree with Mike Acton circa 2014 when he talks about data oriented design and criticizes design patterns that build bloated stuff that doesn't get used. Trying to do flexible obsessively library bringing in the whole kitchen sink for a small task infrastructure can definitely go too far. But this game would seem to have gone in the complete opposite direction, to where there is no planning for the future at all. And Acton criticizes bloat because of how it hurts performance and optimization, which is something this game doesn't even succeed it, so it's not as though it stripped out bloat for that.

 

I don't see what there is to defend here. If it's so bad that weapon designer is too hard to deliver even with a delay, then don't say it's going to happen in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I don't blame the programmers for that all, management if anybody. But like, come on, why defend them here.

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Honestly they would have to redo the gearing for weapons because people are going to complain they have to use ugly weapons for 2+ months basically while we wait for 7.1. Meaning 7.0 weapon mods out so we can at least deal with that til 7.1 comes out. There is already a lot of people that probably will not play until 7.1 comes out maybe later since weapons in outfitter was huge. I would almost assume at this point weapons in outfitter may actually end up being scrapped altogether and not happen at all. That will anger some people but I do think that has a strong possibility of actually happening as they have tried weapons in outfitter before when they launched outfitter, they tried again in kotet and failed and then tried for onslaught and the virus actually haulted everything after Onslaught release.

 

I would not say delay everything not story but there are those things they seem to keep having issues with. As for class balancing when have they ever actually got class balancing correct in any form they either nerf and bust classes or overpower something into the point its almost unstoppable. There is no middle ground when it comes to bioware rebalancing classes well technically its that way with most MMOs from all companies they all have class balancing issues and to say they dont is the most absurd thing ever. They are having issues with loadouts not actually working correctly yet that could be delayed til 7.1 well it was a mess in the PTS may or may not be in their version as they tend basically do PTS's of like base or shell features so we really do not know what state that is currently in. But Loadouts will probably make it in at this point just because they do not want UI issues of something not implemented yet and worry about bug fixes and what not later. Combat styles and Pruning i do think will make 7.0 as that was the big marketing point of LotS regardless if it is buggy or bad for classes I am certain it will be in 7.0. The raid is already pushed back for 7.1 so there is that.

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I wish. But it won't happen because everything is bundled together. They couldn't even give us the anniversary items on a vendor after all. Plus the story is designed for levels higher than 75 anyway.

 

Also, to be fair, the PTS build is old, so hopefully they will have fixed most of the bugs when it goes live.

 

Not gonna lie though, the only thing I'm looking forward to is the story at this point. Even GS2 looks like a mess with a rep that nobody knows what is for, and plans that don't drop.

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I agree to a point, but building scalable infrastructure is for lack of a better way to put it a huge deal in programming, as I'm sure you know (you are a programmer, right? Or am I remembering wrong?).

You are correct on both points here (scalable infrastructure, and that I'm a programmer).

Meaning, a lot of time and thought gets put into how to make design patterns work they can be built upon and changed in the future without major issues. And though I imagine you are probably wanting to say: yes, but that's the ideal. It is, but also, this game is infamously bad at having some of the worst infrastructure in video games by their own admission. Not that they are saying they're the worst, but that they admit certain parts of it are really bad. And if it's that bad, that they are willing to admit how bad it is, this team that tends to act like things are doing pretty ok when delays and bugs are running laps around them, it must be really really bad.

You're not wrong here.

I tend to agree with Mike Acton circa 2014 when he talks about data oriented design and criticizes design patterns that build bloated stuff that doesn't get used.

Be careful with this term "design patterns" - it refers not to the design itself, but to certain recurring themes in programming and software design that were described in the so-called "Gang of Four" book (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Patterns) and have since become prime material for "cargo cult" programmers everywhere.

Trying to do flexible obsessively library bringing in the whole kitchen sink for a small task infrastructure can definitely go too far.

For an interesting twist on that, look up the "leftpad" debacle.

But this game would seem to have gone in the complete opposite direction, to where there is no planning for the future at all. And Acton criticizes bloat because of how it hurts performance and optimization, which is something this game doesn't even succeed it, so it's not as though it stripped out bloat for that.

The lack of planning is a consequence of a common theme in the videogame industry, of lethally tight deadlines (ref: almost any game you care to mention with the possible exception of Duke Nukem Forever) and fatally ambitious development goals (ref; above all e.g. CP2077). The development team builds what they can and takes every shortcut imaginable in order to miss the deadline by the smallest amount possible, and SWTOR's current state of things shows the consequences.

 

Now, I'm not saying this never happens in other kinds of software, just that games are notorious for it.

I don't see what there is to defend here. If it's so bad that weapon designer is too hard to deliver even with a delay, then don't say it's going to happen in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I don't blame the programmers for that all, management if anybody. But like, come on, why defend them here.

I'm not, as such, defending them. My comment was more an explanation of how it could easily be that a notionally simple thing like Weapon Look Designer could end up being infeasibly complicated to build on top of the existing structure. And that anyone in the position of designing something on those murderous deadlines should be given some slack for those decisions, or at least we should understand *why* and *how* they get made.

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Not sure how possible it would be to just implement the story and nothing else.

 

Why not push the whole thing back?

 

The first expansion, RotHC, came out in April 2013 if I'm remembering correctly. Since the 10th anniversary has already passed, I don't see why a February release is all that important. It would be much better to have a smoother release with all the new systems/features included and working.

 

I sincerely hope the announcement on weapons in outfit designer really is just a delay and not an early indication it's being dropped. That was probably what I was looking forward to most, aside from any new playable content we will see this year.

 

I wonder what's going on at BW with this game. Are they just really understaffed? I thought that was true for years now, and 6.0/Onslaught still launched with 2 open world areas, a FP, and an Op just fine.

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Honestly they would have to redo the gearing for weapons because people are going to complain they have to use ugly weapons for 2+ months basically while we wait for 7.1. Meaning 7.0 weapon mods out so we can at least deal with that til 7.1 comes out. There is already a lot of people that probably will not play until 7.1 comes out maybe later since weapons in outfitter was huge..

 

If that's the entirety of what's keeping people from playing the game, their connection to the game was tenuous to begin with.

Edited by xordevoreaux
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Lets cut the crap. Playing with ugly basic weapons, instead of customizable cartel market or otherwise weapons with crystals/tunings etc. is the most ridiculous thing to ever happen here. Do you really think this will be accepted by the playerbase? Delusions...and more delusions. You will be in for a rude awakening.
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Lets cut the crap. Playing with ugly basic weapons, instead of customizable cartel market or otherwise weapons with crystals/tunings etc. is the most ridiculous thing to ever happen here. Do you really think this will be accepted by the playerbase? Delusions...and more delusions. You will be in for a rude awakening.

 

My cartel market weapon did not magically pop out of my hand, unable to be used, when I transferred a toon to PTS.

Nor did it sit there in my hand with no stats. The toon could still use it.

 

I'm not a min maxer, not a gotta-have-it-to-be-more-uber-than-you PVP player, so if my weapon is less than the rest of my gear by the time 7.1 hits, not the biggest crisis of my life, I'll keep playing the game.

Edited by xordevoreaux
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Lets cut the crap. Playing with ugly basic weapons, instead of customizable cartel market or otherwise weapons with crystals/tunings etc. is the most ridiculous thing to ever happen here. Do you really think this will be accepted by the playerbase? Delusions...and more delusions. You will be in for a rude awakening.

 

Well, it stinks, but considering that 324 weapons *might* be as good as my 306 weapons with augments, I figure that it won't be such a huge deal if I end up keeping my 306 weapon until 7.1 comes out.

 

Of course, if 7.1 doesn't come out until May, I'm not going to be happy.

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