ChazDoit
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Posts posted by ChazDoit
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Same issue here, hope they fix it.
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Why I say that?
Just a few examples from SoR prelude / expansion:
- (s)he seemingly isn't capable to force choke enemy through a glass,
- (s)he isn't capable to sink a small two-people submersible,
- (s)he isn't even capable to move a mine another direction,
- fishy force-sensitive security chief of some underwater laboratory is a demanding rival,
- middle-aged Mandalorian couple is more than an equal opponent,
etc. etc.
Neither did all the other DC members, by the way, by the end of the SoR prelude you kill a rogue DC member, I'd say they're not big deal.
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People have a fascination with earlier great empires.
Just look at the Romans and their Greek obsession, or the medieval Europeans and their obsession with classical Rome.
Due to technological advancement in the real world, these things are largely cultural, but in a galaxy with a relative technological plateau, where old tech often is even greater than modern, it isn't hard to believe such things would be HIGHLY desirable.
I like the "ancient great empires" trope in fantasy or sci fantasy, but like all good things it can get old really fast if it's overused.
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This is not a thread, is a series of videos released by Bioware settin all the background story for SWTOR, they touch into KOTOR, a little bit of KOTOR 2 by mentioning the Mandalorian wars, they also cover stories that happened in comics like the Exar Kun and Naga Sadow stuff.
All the videos are compiled into a single video
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Sounds like a case low-grade trolling more than harassment. I only heard of one case of harassment when one person costantly stalked a friend of mine and wouldnt stop, even if my friend would make new alts to try to avoid this it was still happening.
The worst part is that Customer Service did nothing about this, and the big guilds looked the other way instead of shunning the stalker, all of this ended up driving my friend away from the game.
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I do have a clue you just don't read well apparently. I am talking about not going anywhere because of SILENCE on their part.
People left at launch (I was among them) because the game was launched buggy as heck with almost NO elder game. So when people got to 50 there was nothing left to do.
BW even acknowledged this themselves.
http://www.pcgamer.com/bioware-gdc-panel-star-wars-the-old-republic/
http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/29/gdc-2013-james-ohlen-on-how-f2p-saved-swtor/
last I checked I was responding to issues regarding communication and not the design issues the game had at launch.
So after losing like 80-90% of the subscribers they had at launch, the winning strategy is to treat the remaining bunch of loyal customers as pariahs? uh... ok
The blur trailer shows they're trying to do some marketing to brig new players in, but existing players will be always more important, because they're actually getting money from the existing players for once, but also because existing players will do marketing for them for free, try to bring in friends and family, which is very valuable when you consider the larger gaming community see swtor as a joke/failed MMO.
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Why has their not been a lot of communication of late? Simple marketing psychology. They know we will sit here complaining about the lack of information regarding the expac. We won't go anywhere, we'll just sit here and beotch about it.
You have no clue what you're talking about don't you? Swtor lost millions of subscribers shortly after launch, me included. People won't go anywhere? In what universe did that happen besides the one in your imagination.
I came back after a very long break because of the x12 Exp bonus and because I found a good deal on amazon, also I upgraded my computer and wanted to see how swtor runs now. Im sticking around until KotFE is released but after that I'll be taking another break from the game, probably come back in january or whenever they decide to start releasing more episodes.
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Beats going to the library...yawn.
"Spoken like a true idiot" - Overseer Harkun
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Here's the problem with BW style communication.
Eric: We'll have more information for you about the alliance system in the time leading up to Gamescom.
Us: Hey, hasn't Gamescom come and gone? Where was that info?
Now, let's say plans changed. Okay, that happens. You don't have to be a developer to understand that a smart person would come back and say
Eric: Hey guys, we had to change something, so we're not quite ready to talk about that yet. We'll talk about this other feature instead in a couple weeks.
Instead, we got
Eric: Livestream unrelated to anything coming soon!
Do you believe that livestream is coming? I sure don't. And having your customer not believe you is much worse than letting your customer see you screw up.
Yeah, but expecting them to do what they said they were gonna do is just very entitled of us, haven't you read all those articles saying gamers are entitled horrible people? must be true!
Also, you're not a game developer, you don't understand how things work here so you can't complain when they leave you hanging and give no explanation.
Don't forget that a game dev was harassed, that means we're just not worthy of getting updates anymore, because we're all guilty of what one person did, and we can't really blame Bioware if they don't want to engage with us anymore.
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So what? Absolutely different. They are structured in such a way where development milestones need to be reported to what are effectively the shareholders. Edit: To phrase it better, the people contributing have done so at a risk. The people who play games from established studios are doing so from a service provider that has already taken on that risk for them.
Backers are in no way shareholders, not even close. To compare them seriously is to demonstrate no understanding of crowdfunding. Studios have no obligation of to be so transparent and open unless that was promised as part of the backer rewards or was promised as a stretch goal.
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I must Say, that I would not be surprised if games in the future have no official forums. I was hoping swtor would get rid of them after beta. I believe they are much better served having fan sites run forums and just have one way communication after beta.
Us gamers are mean selfish and demanding to a fault.
Self loathing gamers are just curious little things (I guess all those articles saying gamers are horrible terrible people from sites like kotaku and polygon have taken their toll on some) Also they already tried a game without official forum, it was called warhammer online, guess how well that went.
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James Ohlen is the Game Director of SWTOR, Jesse Sky is the Creative Director of SWTOR. Ohlen might also hold the position of Creative Director for BW Austin as a whole, not certain about that.
I thought that was the same thing... Im so confused
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I happen to think BW could be doing a better job at communication, overall, but it's just not true to say that they have stopped doing their job to communicate. On June 17th, two days after the announcement of KotFE they had given some general plans on what info they would be releasing, here's how it played out:
Next week they have scheduled a live-stream with a full playthrough of one of the KotFE chapters and a Q&A session.
They have also organized several gaming press interviews with news sites and reviewers, including but not limited to James Ohlen's interview with MMORPG.com last week, a new
that, a demo and interview with gaming press including Ashe/Lady Insanity from mid-July, a DevBlog by Jesse Sky a week before that, a slew of promotional images on their twitter account, etc.Again, I'm not saying they're doing an amazing job here, I'm certainly not saying there isn't room for improvement, but claiming that they have stopped communicating is seriously overstating the issue.
Im mostly challenging the point that some people have brought up, that because of that unfortunate incident, Bioware is justified in either shuting down communication or keeping it at a minimum.
Also, Im very confused about something, is Jesse Sky the creative director, or is it James Olhen?
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What other companies? I'm kind of serious here... not counting the Kickstarter type ones; they have to release information differently because of the difference in funding. So, the phrase, "Other companies more transparent" is kind of getting tired and old because it keeps getting repeated as truth, and I have nothing that says it is true...
People have been pointing out on this thread and others that they know more of the Legion expansion than KotFE and the only attempt at a response is "Bu-But Blizzard was not so communicative before"
Also, some other companies that are very open have crowdfunded games "But they have a different funding" so what? Many of these companies are developing MMOs too, different funding or not, they'll be competing on the same genre.
"But a dev was cyber-harassed!" Ok, that's bad and a serious issue, but is it really ok for them to stop doing their job to communicate because of that? it all seems to be people making excuses for Bioware, it's like they want to be treated like pariahs instead of customers.
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If you really think it's been tight-lipped because they think "We're too good to talk to you", then you are part of the problem, not the discussion or the solution...
That's what others here are making it sound and I'm responding to them, who knows what the real reason is for the lack of communication, the bottom line is that other companies are much more open.
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its a lose lose lose lose situation so they choose the least damaging, less communication.
With many studios going with open development, open communication and transparency, we'll see if Bioware shutting the door down on their customer face and saying "we're too good to talk to you" is the least damaging path.
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Stuff like Gamergate with Zoe Quinn and the recent incident with Walter Palmer and Cecil the lion show that it doesn't take much for people to find where you live through online documentation. Once you get to that level (the SWTOR combat team dev had his personal accounts and his family's personal accounts, which weren't linked to his account here at all, found and that's where the threats were sent) it's not something you should be looking at like "Oh, it's just the internet." Not when somebody's family is in play in today's age where your address can be found in an instant. Not everybody is going to make good on those threats, absolutely, but the same can be said for real life threats. The fact is, it only takes one person to be the exception to that and things take a big turn for the worse.
At the end of the day other companies keep a much more open communication with their customers, even with all the cyber-harassment that is going on, that is the bar that customers should be using to measure how well Bioware community and marketing team works.
I've seen a lot of online harassment in the past year, I mentioned John Bain aka Totalbiscuit denouncing harassment against himself and his family, most likely because he was involved in the gamergate controversy, or Milo Yiannopoulos, a journalist that according to some articles reacived more than 10 death threats after writing an article about it too.
The worst thing is that I never heard of any of these people sending online threats to be tracked down and made an example, which is pretty depressing how easy they get away with it.
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Not at all. Rather.. player behaviors that result in actual threats and harassment MUST be managed. Otherwise.. the company will end up in federal court for not doing diligence in protecting it's employees. Thus putting it in the legal departments authority to address.
The legal teams approach to such things in most companies is to dampen the trigger events.. such as open and transparent communications in this particular case.
we do not have to like it.. but it is an effective means to thwart the small number of extremists. Please note: I am not defending the approach, only informing others of the realities of the situation in corporate America in the internet age of social media channels. I have no love for corporate legal teams as in my experience they slow everything down. But I understand the reality and the need to comply if you are an employee of the company. And like it or not.. players ARE at fault (albeit a very small number of them that in turn spoil it for the rest of us). Personally I find it very frustrating at how some players treat companies in their style of communications on forums and the internet as a whole. It makes it worse for all of us.
I don't say that companies should not protect their employees, but since other companies are much more communicative with the playerbase Im assuming there are more reasons for the lack of communication other than "keeping people safe... from hate mail"
I don't think Swtor players are such bloodthirsty criminals that a few more yellow posts or dev blogs would have put many lives at risk, you know what I mean?
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The biggest change between the old system, which was divided between what was called G-Canon (the movies and any project Lucas was directly involved in like the Clone Wars show) and C-Canon (the Expanded Universe of novels, games, and comics) was that while Lucas's own projects would treat the EU as a 'parallel universe', the majority of content coming out on a regular basis was C-Canon - which treated other C-Canon works as established parts of the continuity.
Now, under the new Canon vs Legends system, all the new novels, games, comics, etc. are also part of the Canon (what used to be G-Canon) and ignoring, or merely taking inspiration from, the Legends continuity (formerly C-Canon).
When a novel or comic or game came out prior to the changeover, it was definitively set in a universe where the events of SWTOR - the return of the Sith Empire, the Great Galactic War, etc, - were an established part of that universe's history. Now, the novels, comics, and games that come out are free to contradict those events - they only have to remain consistent with the other works of the new Canon.
I really don't give a rats *** if SWTOR is Legends, like you confirmed, according to the creator himself SWTOR never happened to him, or happened in another universe.
What worries me is that Disney might not allow any new Legends content and intend to phase it out, I'd love the Old Republic franchise to continue beyond SWTOR in future years, since there are millions of fans that love this Era, there recently was a poll in the official SW page to pick a character to make a 6 inch statue and Revan won by a landslide, none of the other characters, including Disney's Rebel series even came close to him.
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It only takes a handful of really bad player behaviors to drive information behind the corporate walls.
Let's not forget the relatively recent event where a few people actually stalked and made threats to a Bioware dev for doing nothing more then being transparent about why certain changes to PvP mechanics were made.
A few people can and do wreck things, like more open and transparent commuications, for all the rest of the players. A company has a legal responsibility to take such threats seriously and to avoid them if possible. One effective legal means to avoid such threats is to simply not give the few who are so hateful anything to chew on and puke over. Of course even the lawyers cannot make it that absolute.. but they can and do have direct influence of the "squelch control" on information.
Should I take that as "Yes, they feel contempt for their audience/customers"?
I am aware of the case of cyber-harassment a developer suffered, it was not the first time a Bioware dev was cyber-harassed actually, it has happened in the past to Bioware devs and devs from other studios, even youtubers, basically anyone with a small amount of internet notoriety can't even fart without getting hate mail, or harassment or death threats.
Currently you could set up a throwaway email account or twitter account in a few minutes and use it to tell a dev or someone else you'll do them harm and I doubt you'll face consequence, that is a very sad state of affairs but that's not excuse for a company to shut down to its customers, I see other studios, small, medium and large that keep their customers engaged and make them feel valued, that's the right way to go about it.
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Years of rampant bashing of EA over anything and everything, including a faux campaign on the internet to skew the annual "worst companies" polls, has it's consequences. Same with frivolous lawsuit threats and attempts.
If I recall correctly Peter Moored said that they won those awards because gamers are homophobes? lol
Talk about not taking ownership of any of your issues.... also talk about feeling deep contempt for your audience and customers.
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This thread is a case in point. Assuming you actually read the article, all you can manage to do is argue with it. That's EXACTLY what he is talking about. All these picky little pedantic points are examples of the diner's telling the cooks how to run a restaurant. It's a no-win situation for them, and given the physical anger directed at devs for pointing these issues out and actually having an opinion about their own profession, including threats against devs and their families, it's no wonder they don't want to talk to players. I don't blame them a bit.
I have no doubt this is how they think, and I don't think this attitued is going to last long without hurting their business. With all this new narrative of video games making people sexist, racist and a revival of the 90s argument that video games breed violent individuals, Im sure many developers see gamers as animals.
But at some point, paying customers are going to be fed up with being treated like potential criminals or pariahs, since the millions of Bioware fans had nothing to do with few cases of cyber-harassment that happened and should not be blamed for the actions of a few.
This "We're too good to communicate with you" attitude is only going to end up hurting their business.
I don't disagree with you that this is an internet issue, my point there was Bioware alone has had several extreme cases of it which makes any lack of communication from them understandable in my eyes. Not a great solution or one I'm happy with, but understandable nonetheless.While cyber-harassment or cyber-threats are bad, I wouldn't say they are extreme since that would be putting them on the same level as being harassed or threatened in real life, on the internet that level of harassment is possible because apparently it's untraceable, I never heard of the people that threatened the life of developers being tracked down and prosecuted.
Seems to me you can just tell someone you're going to harm him on twitter and get away with it, that is a sad state of affairs, but shutting down communication or just say the minimum that you can say seems to be the wrong way to go about it.
Maybe it's because I've followed many crowdfunded games, they seem to be a thousand times more transparent, making your customers feel valued and keeping them engaged seems like good business to me.
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It wasn't just ME3 devs that have been victims of cyber harassment. One of the members of SWTOR's combat team received threats on his and his family's personal accounts over class changes recently, because he came out and explained why they made the changes they did. One of the Dragon Age 2 writers received death threats on her children over that game, ala this: "And it included graphic threats to kill my children on their way out of school to show them that they should have been aborted at birth rather than have to have me as a mother."
I find the lack of information and interaction on the forums disheartening, always have. But I can't place all of the blame on them after seeing how crummy of a place the internet can be. When Bioware alone has so many instances of personal threats and harassment, death threats over the writing in a video game or class changes in an MMO, I can't say I'd be eager to come post on the forums if I was on the Bioware team. I don't think anybody would want to put themselves on that firing line. I'll still hope that we get more information and interaction, of course, but if we don't get it I can recognize that they have valid reasons for it even if it sucks for the rest of us that haven't resorted to the classless behavior that's caused it.
I agree but this is not a Bioware issue, it's an internet issue, I see devs from other companies being the victims of cyber-harassment too John Smedly, formerly from SOE, latrr Daybreak Studios, had people send him pictures of his father's grave, other SOE dev had received pictures of the front door of his house.
I know people that are very small time youtubers and have maybe a few thousands subscribers or twitter followers and they get death threats, I know journalist that as soon as they publish an article they get threats too, also large youtubers, John Bain aka Totalbiscuit, has a big gaming channel and said he's been on therapy for the past year because he keeps getting harassed or sent hateful messages, not necessarily by his viewers, hate has come from game developers, journalists, or random people that have nothing to do with video games.
But even things being as bad as they are, if you're running a business around an online game with a community you should communicate with them as much as possible, a few cases of cyber-harassment are no excuse to shut down communication unless you want to cast blame over all the people that play the game.
we do not have to like it.. but it is an effective means to thwart the small number of extremists.
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