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A Note From the Dev Team


EricMusco

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Hey folks,

 

I know the recent announcement is going to take some time for everyone to process. We are right there with you! I've traveled the world with Charles, he attended my wedding, he is a dear friend, and will be sorely missed. Still, I want to take this opportunity to introduce, or even re-introduce some of the names you read about today as you will certainly hear from some, if not all of us, more regularly going forward.

 

I suspect if you are here in the forums that I am no stranger to you. I started in these very forums as a fan myself over 10 years ago, moved onto the Community Team, became CM, moved into Production, and now I am typing this message to you as Lead Producer. SWTOR continues to be a wild ride for me, one that I have been thrilled to take with all of you. In this role, leading the efforts of the Design team, you should definitely expect to see and hear more from me about what we are doing, when we are doing it, and why.

 

All that said, I am not the one bringing the creative prowess to the table. For that, you need to look no further than the other incredibly talented folks that are leading up our Design teams...

 

-eric

Edited by JackieKo
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Hello! I’m Ashley Ruhl and I am now the Narrative Director for SWTOR. I met many of you during this past Star Wars Celebration and I had fantastic conversations with you all about how cinematic storytelling works in the game. I’ve been a part of SWTOR several times over the years, including at the game’s launch, during KOTFE/KOTET, and finally rejoining the SWTOR team for Echoes of Oblivion and beyond, as well as leading the cinematic team on Legacy of the Sith. SWTOR is incredibly special to me, as is this talented team that brings the game to life.

 

Working with Charles has been one of the highlights of my career. He has led the SWTOR team with courage and compassion, as well as being an incredible storyteller in the Star Wars universe and delivering countless memorable moments for SWTOR fans. I think I speak for the team when I say that we will all deeply miss Charles (and his magnificent beard). These are definitely some big shoes to fill, but I believe that we have been set up for success with many opportunities ahead of us, and I’m honored to carry the torch forward. I’m so excited for the future of SWTOR and can’t wait to share it with all of you!

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Hi all. It’s been a while!. I’m George and I’m the Gameplay Design Director. I’ve been working on SWTOR for almost a decade now, first as part of the team that built many of the Operations, now working with the teams in charge of player combat and systems. SWTOR has been a big part of my life for these last 10+ years, and I’m excited to be able to be a part of its future going forward.

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Hi everyone, I’m Alan Copeland, UX Director for SWTOR and I’ve been working on AAA games for nearly two decades, working on SWTOR specifically since early 2020. My team and I are working hard to make SWTOR more accessible, approachable and understandable for both new users and seasoned veterans of our game. We know that our players have a lot of love for SWTOR, and we keep that sentiment in mind to make the game the best that it can be.
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Hey, everyone! I’ve posted here before, but it’s been awhile, so allow me to reintroduce myself. My name is Caitlin Sullivan Kelly, and I’m now the Lead Writer for Star Wars: the Old Republic. Some of you may remember me sharing my short story, “Quite a Story to Tell,” but I also had the pleasure of writing–among many other things–the Imperial Manaan story for Legacy of the Sith, both versions of the Secrets of the Enclave flashpoint, the All Worlds Ultimate Swoop Rally event, and some major scenes in Echoes of Oblivion. Before I was a Game Writer, I was a Narrative Specialist, and my contributions to the narrative team go as far back as 2014, when I started providing feedback for the expansion’s story during the development of Shadow of Revan. In every Star Wars: the Old Republic update since then, my primary responsibility has been working with writing, design, art, and cinematics to ensure our story content adheres to a particular standard of quality.

 

I’ve learned so much from working so closely with Charles over the years; he’s been an amazing supporter, mentor, and friend. While it’ll be very hard to see him go, I’ve also learned a lot from working with Ashley, and I’m so excited to continue supporting her in her new role. We both recognize our team’s talent for collaboration and creativity, as well as the passion for the amazing stories we tell: the twists and turns, the characters and relationships, the settings and the lore. I love this game, this team, and this community, and I look forward to continuing our storytelling journey together!

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can we expect better communication and roadmaps in the future to avoid dealing with situations like the 7.0 lack of promised content? like its great, you guys wrote some introduction of who you are and that you had a colleague you liked and learned from, but I rather have actual information about the game I play than information about the people behind the scenes

 

like I dunno if you guys remember this: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E5O-zMiVoAEsc_w?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

picture

Edited by RikuvonDrake
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Hey folks,

 

I know the recent announcement is going to take some time for everyone to process. We are right there with you! I've traveled the world with Charles, he attended my wedding, he is a dear friend, and will be sorely missed. Still, I want to take this opportunity to introduce, or even re-introduce some of the names you read about today as you will certainly hear from some, if not all of us, more regularly going forward.

 

I suspect if you are here in the forums that I am no stranger to you. I started in these very forums as a fan myself over 10 years ago, moved onto the Community Team, became CM, moved into Production, and now I am typing this message to you as Lead Producer. SWTOR continues to be a wild ride for me, one that I have been thrilled to take with all of you. In this role, leading the efforts of the Design team, you should definitely expect to see and hear more from me about what we are doing, when we are doing it, and why.

 

All that said, I am not the one bringing the creative prowess to the table. For that, you need to look no further than the other incredibly talented folks that are leading up our Design teams...

 

-eric

 

Eric, with the greatest respect none of this means squat unless you communicate. You and Keith both promised us a year long celebration Starting in December. You have gave us zero content since LoTS launched 5 months ago, we are 8 months into the celebration and to be blunt its not much of a celebration.

 

Devs are leaving in droves. Jackie can't/won't answer our questions and its taken the creative director leaving for any of you devs to bother talking to us at all. Except you aren't talking to us you have made a token post and now you will vanish again.

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Congrats on the new role Musco! I’ve always appreciated your communication, energy, and enthusiasm. Looking forward to hearing from you more!!

 

P.S. this was a weird way to get an announcement on when 7.1 is coming. Mainly I’ve just been sitting and waiting for months to find out when augments will work again. We’ve had to do some funky stuff to get stats optimized, and there was zero heads up that augs were disabled. Had to find out experimentally. I could go on and on and on about how I think bolster should not be in level 80 pvp at all (go back to pvp gear), which would untangle this overly complicated bolster mess and free up resources for tasks more important than manually entering data into tables…but I digress. You obviously don’t agree. I know it’s all one level sync now and I think being able to play through lower level planets without trivializing it is cool, but specific to pvp I know there is a better way.

 

All that said, I wanted to try and keep this positive. Sorry to see you go Charles and best of luck to you going forward. Musco, I seriously feel you’ve been the best at keeping us informed as much as possible. I know posting on the forums for a game with a player base that is beyond frustrated requires some thick skin. I think you’ve got that and I respect that ability. Cheers

Edited by teclado
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I'm sad to hear that Charles is leaving the team after all this time. While I did not always agree with his writing, it was evident that he had a lot of love for the Star Wars galaxy and for the Old Republic specifically. I hope Bioware can find someone to fill his shoes, too many key people have left the company in the last few years, both for the Austin devision and the main team in Edmonton, an issue that has been part of people's fears about the future of this game in general and the studio entirely.

 

Whatever the future has in store for Charles, I wish him the best.

 

That being said, it still doesn't help matters that this "address" really doesn't address any of this particular game's recent issues with regards to lack of communication, clarification and an overall problem of over-promising and under-delivering. Game Update 7.1 is now releasing August 2nd of 2022. Parts of this update were originally supposed to be included in Game Update 7.0 that was originally scheduled for Christmas of last year. First the new operation and daily area got postponed from 7.0 to 7.1 that was then supposed to come only a little bit after 7.0 after the Christmas break. Then 7.0 got pushed back to February and was observed to still feature the same bugs that had been reported time and time again during the extensive PTS period that taking place well before the Christmas period and into 2022. Now 7.1 will release almost half a year after the final release of 7.1.

 

What is going on here? And what is this "year-long celebration" of the game's 10 year anniversary really going to be about? Because so far, there has been nothing. The "expansion" of Legacy of the Sith does not deserve that classification whatsoever, as it felt more in scale with 6.2's Echoes of Vengeance update. When this update releases, we will be 8 months after what was originally panned to be the start of this celebration. What really can we expect at this point? What meaningful, worthwhile content can we expect for the rest of the year, because I'm really not feeling that there's going to be much at all at this point, at least as far as the timeframe of this year is concerned. If there has been that much of a delay for these two updates, then I shudder to imagine how far everything else that is supposed to build on this foundation got delayed.

 

And now the creative director of this game leaves. I don't think that Charles hasn't left some notes on certain story beats behind for whoever will pick up the mantle next, but it just doesn't bode well for this game's future at this point. That is where the team needs to really step up their game to stay in constant communication with us. This has been an issue with the team for years. You guys need to show yourselves to us, on a consistent basis. We need more frequent developer updates, like the game originally used to shortly after launch. I don't expect you to cut together all these nice-looking trailers at this point like you used to, but whatever happened to dev streams? Is everyone really so busy that you can't put together something once every 2 to 4 weeks to talk about? Is the situation so dire that there is next to no communication with your player base unless it involves press releases such as this one, or addressing major bugs, which nowadays seem to be handled by the anonymous "CommunityTeam" account as by this game's actual community manager. Please, show your faces / name tags on the forums more often and engage with us.

 

All I can say to the team in general is this:

 

Bioware Austin Team, please, show us that you care, so that we, your players, also care.

Edited by BenKatarn
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For me, this is a small shot of adrenaline. Bluntly put, I only resubscribed because I wasn't sure the game was going to survive and I wanted to wrap up a couple storylines. This thread gives me more confidence the game will move forward.

 

With that said, on the gameplay / design side, the last 18 months have been a disaster and I voted with my wallet. I used to be a whale but have given SWTOR a whopping $US 75 since December 2020. Your previous game design team (i.e., not the creative side and great work done by Charles and Co.) made it abundantly clear I was not part of the demographic they wanted to target. I think it is pretty clear that didn't work out so well.

 

<<I hate being so humble and right at the same time.>>:rak_03:

 

I could go into detail, but I'll leave it with: I hope SWTOR returns to 'play your way' as opposed to 'play our way' with respect to gearing, artificial time-gating, and content incentivization (here's looking at you Galactic Star Fighter).

 

Overall, while I agree with previous posters that more specifics would be welcome regarding future plans / philosophy, I consider this thread a positive sign.

 

:csw_jabba: <<sips martini in the morning>>

 

Dasty

Edited by Jdast
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can we expect better communication and roadmaps in the future to avoid dealing with situations like the 7.0 lack of promised content?

 

No. This game is so close to maintenance mode. If it wasn't for the Star Wars IP, it would have been dead years ago.

 

They're super desperate to keep people from quitting. Had I not missed my renewal date, I would have been done. But I am stuck until December. I will enjoy the time I have left with my guild and raid team and move on.

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This comes as a big surprise! Thanks and good luck to Charles. Congratulations to everyone else on your various roles.

 

Thanks for the communication. I hope there can be more going forwards. I appreciate that it can be hard sometimes, but that may be precisely when it's most needed.

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Damn.

 

I am sorry to see Charles leaving the SWTOR team. His dedication, passion, and fun personality (not to mention story-telling skills!) will be sorely missed. I hope his next team knows how lucky they are to work with him.

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To be honest I'm not sad because over the last few years the quality of content is poor and you can see more people will go down the same track. Yes Charles was great at the start but as time grew things showed in the cracks within this company and he isn't the only person who should be moving on.

 

This game hasn't been the same for the last 5 odd years they really need to fix what is wrong and stop putting the cartel market at the front of everything else because that's not a content cycle they failed the content cycles that used to be 3 odd months it slowly dropped to 8 months per drip of story.

 

How can they save SWTOR ?

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It is easy to write something on the forums, but entirely something different to see it through. I have been here for quite a while and frankly this is the only time I have considered cancelling. The only reason is not because of you, but because of my guild.

 

I am not one for operations or pvp. I will do flashpoints. I enjoy the story and solo things. I am not a fan of how you changed conquest points (and yes, I can do them on my characters) nor am I a fan of the way you changed the gearing.

 

But all that has been said for the last 6-7 months with no response from you, so I am expecting the same this time around. I would like to be mistaken but you are going to have to do something for that to happen. The sad part of this I was always the one that looked for the bright side here but that is getting harder and harder to find any more in SWTOR with the devs.

 

So please prove me wrong this time. I really do not want to be right.

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From the lead announcement:

 

Game Update 7.1, is slated to be released on August 2nd. This update will incorporate a host of new content and fixes, including:

 

New daily mission arcs for Republic and Imperial players on the planet Manaan.

A challenging new Operation for 8-player teams.

Improvements to our Weapons in Outfitter system.

Key revelations about Darth Malgus and the Sith lord whose relics he has been pursuing.

 

I did the daily mission arcs on Test Center. I did them once, and was bored. The rewards/vendors had nothing for me as I'm not interested in decorations.

Operation. Not for me.

Improvements to the outfitter system, is not real content.

Key revelations...as this storyline isn't going to conclude anytime soon, I'll actually wait..because...

 

I unsubscribed, and my paid playtime is over. I'm just a free-to-play preferred now. I might sub again with the Nightlife event, but I can wait for a month or 2, then unsub, then sub a month or 2 later. This will have me spending less money on this game, but make it more value as I'll have to complete any important content in 30 days.

 

However, if every player started to do that, them less money would come to this game. More meaningful content is needed. Lots of ideas on the boards to start with.

 

August 2nd, is 2 weeks from tomorrow. Think about when the last content was put out, the drip is too long for this game.

 

For Charles, good luck in future endeavors, for the rest of the team you have all been with this game for a long time, but you really need to start showing WHY we should stay subbed for this game. Right now, I don't have any reasons.

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Hi everyone,

 

I understand that there is a lot to process right now, but I am posting this to remind everyone to be respectful. My colleagues posted here because there is a desire to communicate with the playerbase, and while we do encourage players to speak their mind, I ask that you remember we are human beings. I and the moderation team will not tolerate posts that are made to target, insult, harass or attack a dev or any player in the forums. Please be mindful of the forum guidelines.

 

Thank you.

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Hi everyone,

 

I understand that there is a lot to process right now, but I am posting this to remind everyone to be respectful. My colleagues posted here because there is a desire to communicate with the playerbase, and while we do encourage players to speak their mind, I ask that you remember we are human beings. I and the moderation team will not tolerate posts that are made to target, insult, harass or attack a dev or any player in the forums. Please be mindful of the forum guidelines.

 

Thank you.

 

I never understand how people take a form of entertainment, and extrapolate that into a reason to verbally/textually? abuse the creators of said entertainment. I mean, you are all doing your job, just as I do, day in and day out. It's not right to make it personal like that. Keep at it, and know that there are those of us out here who appreciate the job that you do, even when we might not agree with all of it.

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As a player who has been here since launch without a break, I'd like to thank Charles for all he has brought to the game. Both in terms of contribution to story and also he has been one of the more communicative devs over the years. He was always good humored in dev streams and its clear, that like most of us, he loves his Star Wars.

 

A shame he never got his Chuck Coins to become a reality among all the currencies we have in the game....maybe there is a credit sink Chuck Commemorative Coin Decoration we could have for our strongholds - naturally his bearded visage should be on one side of the coin!

 

Looking forward to Eric's promise of more communication and glad we have at last a date for 7.1.

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Hi everyone,

 

I understand that there is a lot to process right now, but I am posting this to remind everyone to be respectful. My colleagues posted here because there is a desire to communicate with the playerbase, and while we do encourage players to speak their mind, I ask that you remember we are human beings. I and the moderation team will not tolerate posts that are made to target, insult, harass or attack a dev or any player in the forums. Please be mindful of the forum guidelines.

 

Thank you.

 

I think the fact that this is the response to a announcement that showed the dev team attempting to pat themselves on the back for a job well done despite the promised content in the 10 year anniversary coming 8 months late shouldn't be surprising. This announcement is tactless and has only pissed off the playerbase even more after months of silence about the state of the game.

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i think the fact that this is the response to a announcement that showed the dev team attempting to pat themselves on the back for a job well done despite the promised content in the 10 year anniversary coming 8 months late shouldn't be surprising. This announcement is tactless and has only pissed off the playerbase even more after months of silence about the state of the game.

 

this!

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