Shaith
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Posts posted by Shaith
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Most female toons are guys anyway. It's all about which backside you'd rather stare at
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While you may have finished chapter 1, there's still a long road ahead - you're better off to start over tbh.
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It would really help, seriously. There are 1-2 extremely active servers both for PVP and PVE - re-rolling there will make a huge difference in your gaming experience.
I'd go with Jedi Covenant for PvE, and Fatman for PvP. You'll be amazed at the difference having a zone full of people makes when you're trying to get groups and FP's going.
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I'd like you two to research, design, and bugfix server transfers, taking every variable into consideration. Also communicate with the PR department and make sure you're within budget.
Now, give your bosses and the players a specific date on when this will be finished. Keep in mind that players latch onto target dates with iron jaws and don't let go of them.
Also keep in mind that you're not the only ones working on this project, and a number of things may go wrong at any given time with any number of departments on a daily basis in terms of progress of any one specific technicality that may or may not need to be completed before other departments can proceed.
Do you see how specific target dates are impossible, or at the very least how the date would need to be changed on a near-constant basis? And how much of a waste of time recalculating all of that every day would be?
I agree that I love target dates as much as the next forum poster, and I agree that they need to communicate more, but what you're asking for simply isn't realistic.
Actually, it's completely realistic and well within expectations. It's called project management. There's even software out there to let you plug in your project goals, milestones, checkpoints, and do-or-die dates, and can even handle skewing your dates further out in the future or closer to the present based on task completion.
The issue here isn't an inability to provide projected dates; it's refusal to do so.
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My Force Vision tells me 1.3 to go live around 15th June.
Server transfers just a bit before that, and mergers to higher pops after.
You might want to get your ForceEyes checked then... 1.3 hasn't hit PTS yet, and likely won't for "a few weeks"
I'm betting it's more like August.
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Something is seriously wrong with your method. There is way more than 2005 people on Fatman alone.
Where's your data to support this claim?
Let's say all the servers had the same population. Let's use your 2005 from Fatman. So what is there 170 servers? so 2005 x 170 = 340850. So you are saying there is less than 340K subs right now. BS
No, that isn't what she's saying at all.
The act of having an active subscription does not imply that you will be constantly or even consistently logged-in utilizing said subscription. A great many players have other obligations that place demands on their time - things such as work, school, family, art, creating spreadsheets, sleeping, trolling around in their parents' basement, or even baseless whining on forums - all of these activities are typically done to the exclusion of logging in to play this game.
What she's saying is that based on the data available, there is an average number of players on each given server. That average is based on estimates. So what she's saying is that there are an estimated average number of players online on each of the servers and provides you with a breakdown.
Where are the other almost 1 Million subs?
Let's make this easy.
*** SPOILER ALERT: HYPOTHETICAL FIGURES AHEAD ***
At noon today, 1500 people will be logged into Fatman.
At 11:59 PM today, 2000 OTHER people (read: completely different) people will be logged into Fatman.
If you AVERAGE those two data points, you'd come up with 1750 people logged into Fatman.
But were there only 1750 subscriptions? No. In fact, there were 3500 subscribers logged in.
That make sense?
Let's use the 1.3 million sub number. (I know it's probably less now but I don't have a better number).
So the average server has about 7647 subs on it. That's not counting the multiple characters or subs on multiple accounts. That easy math I did proves, you don't know what hell you are doing. Not even one of your calculated server totals is any where near my average calculation. Your numbers are complete crap.
Actually, you're entirely and utterly incorrect. Your "easy math" proves only that your calculator works but completely and utterly fails to support your conclusions. At no point was it ever stated that the numbers Paige provided were 100% accurate head counts - they're estimates based on observation, data from Torstatus, and a little guesswork regarding certain functionality used on the SWTOR status pages. It was also never stated that the numbers she quoted were the number of players who played in a single day.
Had she come out and said "2005 on Fatman for 24-May-2012 for the entire 24-hour period" your math would hold up. But your interpretation doesn't align with her statement that, based on the reports from Torstatus, an AVERAGE of 2005 players was online. That's not the highest it went, it's not the lowest it went.
Armed with that average and the averages across all servers, she produced a number. That's the total number of players in a given day, on average. Now, stick with me here, this gets a little tricky:
Not everybody plays every single hour of every single day!
OMG! Really?! Say it isn't SO!
'Fraid so, Sparky. You could have different sets of people each and every day who combined give you those totals per day, but each of those had to have their own account (in most cases...let's not drag accounts used by siblings and what-not into this as it simply overcomplicates things and I wouldn't want your head to explode...yet).
In order to give an estimated number of total subscribers when you don't have access to the actual back-end data and metrics, you have to make some assumptions. One of the biggest assumptions of course is whether the base data, the total daily average, is in fact a viable figure. Then you need a reasonable ratio to factor that by.
What she's offered is reasonable, though I personally believe it to be a bit high. Remember, when they were doing those subscriber numbers, they were doing it for last quarter, and "active subscribers" included the weekend trial folks - most of whom are likely NOT now actively subscribing.
To her credit, she's also provided access to all of her data, given information regarding how certain elements were determined, how she came up with the ratio figures used to convert average daily players into total subscribers (not to prove number of subscribers but to further substantiate the average daily player figures themselves), and invited everyone to have a go at it if they have other ideas about how the data should be represented.
I think it's a fair effort, she's done a reasonable job of supporting her theories, the basis for her calculations is sound, and it's ultimately provided folks with some useful information. For those waiting for character transfers, it gives them an idea of which servers to look for in the transfer list. For those unwilling to wait any longer for character transfers who want to re-roll and go to it, it gives them an idea of which servers have the highest average populations so they know where to go to start over.
Now, if you think you can provide more accurate figures, by all means, be our guest. If all you've got is "your numbers are crap", and can't provide facts to support your statement, then you're welcome to go hang out over there in the corner.
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Everyone calls Swtor an "MMO" but what does mmo mean?
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It would bother me immensely, and is counter-productive to what this game is about. So wear out your spacebar or ask for a option where you can cut off Voice Options.
think you can to an extent - isn't there already an auto-skip movies toggle?
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I don't think I would mind if the side quests and world quests were scaled back to being the classic wall of text to read rather than a full-blown cut-scene. I love the class stories and what VO does for them, but if it helped with development resources, I would not mind seeing the side and world quests scaled off of full VO.
Hate this idea. The voiceovers and interactive FMV are two things that really make this game stand apart from every other MMO out there.
Go big or go home
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Jawas.
Togruta would be entertaining, but gun to my head, bring on the Jawas!
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I need someone to walk me through how to work this game on a macbook.... please
you've basically got 3 options. All of them require a copy of Windows.
1) Bootcamp
See the apple forums for details. This is the only option that uses the hardware natively and doesn't involve the use of virtualization - which carries a performance hit.
The downside for all of these is they all require a chunk of your HDD to install not only the Windows operating system, but the game itself, so this chunk is pretty substantial.
2) VMWare Fusion
You can get full setup instructions from within Fusion
3) Parallels
Same story - get full setup instructions within Parallels.
There may be other virtualization options available to you.
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http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=456264
Post there about it - but they're aware of the issue.
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If they put rated warzones on hold in order to finish the LFG tool, then I'm okay with that.
Frankly, with all the QQ'ing going on about rated warzones and the instant slew of posts from people screaming UNSUB!! UNSUB!! , they could put rated warzones on hold in order to finish the boot polisher legacy perk that you summon once every 3 days to make your feet look spiffy and I'd be okay with it.
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Are there currently any plans to increase the quantity and quality of communications between development, customer service, and the userbase?
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In another thread a week or two ago I did some testing with regards to the load times. Here were my results:
System specs:
- Windows 7 64-bit
- Intel i7 @ 3.2GHz
- 16GB of DDR3 RAM running @ 2000MHz
- 4x120GB SSD drives running in RAID-0
- 2xATI 4870x2 in SLI
Loading Times: (used the space bar to skip all cut scenes of the ship flying down)
- Imperial Fleet: 14 seconds
- My Ship: 8 seconds
- Alderaan: 55 seconds
- Balmorra: 32 seconds
- Corellia: 58 seconds
- Voss (because my alt is there): 35 seconds
I consider some of these loading times to be annoying at the very least. I couldn't imagine what they're like for people who don't have a beast of a system to run this game.
EDIT: Given someone suggested my 2nd generation SSDs aren't fast enough to speed up the load times, I present the following numbers for my RAID-0 setup using Crystal Disk Mark 3.0.1c:
- Sequential: Read - 687.4 MB/s, Write 258.9 MB/s
- Random: Read - 441.9 MB/s, Write 287.7 MB/s
An interesting addendum to these results is that I was watching disk IO while it was loading Corellia. It very rarely spiked above 10MB/s. This tends to agree with my RAM disk tests and my RAM level 2 cache buffer tests (FancyCache). The load times NEVER changed no matter what I did to reduce, eliminate, or buffer disk I/O. So... If someone is telling you it is a HDD bottleneck, it really doesn't seem to be the case.
Interesting - our rigs are similar other than the drive systems. I'm still running spindles rather than SSD's, and have SWTOR installed on a RAID-0 with a pair of 10K Velociraptor 150's, and my load times are pretty close to what yours are.
I've also got it loaded on a laptop and I've noticed that my load times vary more from location/connection and less from hardware.
I tried the ramdisk bit, it actually made almost no difference in load times, and actually made gameplay in-game choppy.
- Windows 7 64-bit
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*** Wall of text incoming ***
Frankly, the game should have gone live with transfers already fully-functional and available, limited folks to one transfer every 7-10 days, and been a part of the service. It's one of the things Rift definitely did correctly.
Used up all your slots, wanting to try something new but stay on your main server? Move an alt over to some other server.
Guild you want to join is on server X, you're on server Y? No problem.
Populations would largely have sorted themselves out. You'd still be looking at doing some merger work just to take down the unused farms, but you'd have time to do it at a leisurely pace.
Instead, you've now got what, 12-14 messages an hour (or more) with users clamoring for mergers/transfers/etc. - and the only thing out of anyone in an official capacity is to quote a Q&A that took place 3, almost 4 weeks ago.
New players buy the game, get into the forums, and they see nothing but thread after thread after thread of complaints, whining, ultimatums, threats...
The way I see it, there are two huge issues here. First: A lack of meaningful communication. When the issue first started you could get away with nebulous statements like "some time in the future". Unfortunately, months later, that's not good enough anymore. We already know it's coming. The issue at hand, however, is WHEN is the projected roll-out date? Grow a pair of Death Stars and lay it out there for people. If that date is approaching and your QA folks find an issue that will push the date back, you get your community reps to IMMEDIATELY push that information out to the players - your customers.
Second, turnaround time. Yes, coding features takes time. Coding anything that impacts the datastore takes even longer since you're working with thousands of tables, hundreds of indexes, voodoo, witchcraft, at least one sacrificial offering of a Twinkie in the microwave during an all-nighter...the list goes on. When you're talking about coding a brand-new feature, a new element to the design, lead times are often expressed in months. When you're talking about fixing a broken element, however, your turnaround time is expressed in "How much longer til you're done?"
In the case of the transfer system, you've already got the base code done - you've got the ability to do it manually, as stated in postings all over the place for the Oceania transfers. Seems like that's about 80% of it right there, and it was done weeks (months?) ago. It shouldn't have taken this long to throw a pretty front-end on it, get it tested, and get it out there. Instead, the best anyone can get from customer service is "it's coming" and "early summer"
Newsflash, campers: While the seasonal calendar may tell you that the 21st of June is the first day of summer, my teenager (a senior in high school) finishes in 5 days. Once schools start letting out, that's your perceived de facto start of summer, both for the school folks AND for the parents. Most colleges are done what, this week if not last week? Summer is already here.
"They're coming" and "Early summer" aren't good enough answers anymore. It's time to
or get off the pot. And for the record: I'm still an active subscriber, play for a couple of hours every evening (real life permitting), and have zero intentions of that changing any time soon because I'm STILL having a blast in this game.
TLDR version: Stop stonewalling and start providing meaningful communication and firm dates.
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The reason they dont have combat logs isnt because they dont have the tech, it seems to be some strange idea that comes from no experience wih mmos, like no cross server lfg, dual specs or macros.
They've got combat logs. Granted, they didn't at launch, but they do have them now and parsing them works quite well.
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MOX works well (other than when it crashes)
I know ACT (Advanced Combat Tracker) now has a plugin for SWTOR as well.
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You know, that would be fine and dandy if it applied to lightsaber "hum" sound effects....
Perhaps, rather than rushing to the forums to decry the application of the nerf bat to your audio, you might consider oh, I dunno, creating a /bug report first, and then, maybe, posting in the suggestion forum that the audio level be increased for the lightsaber hum?
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I just hit level 40 and went to the trainer and found I had 2 new abilities I could buy for 32k each. I only had 185k so that set me back to only 121k, now I want the speeder liscense level 2 but NO, it costs 150K! We are grinding up the XP to get new levels and as a reward we should get these new abilities for free and not have to pay through the nose for them. It is almost impossible to level up crew skills, repair items when needed, buy crafting materials you dont have, buy new gear and ship parts, and still have anything left for novelties. When my first charater hit 25 and I was able to get speeder ability I was shocked to find out it costs 40k, that was almost every penny I had so I was unable to level crew skills or equipment. The price was later dropped to 35k (big freakin deal) but to go from level one 35k to level two 150k, thats just insane. No one in my guild has trained level 2 speeder because its such a ripoff. If you want to put in special items at level 50 so the people that play all the time and have tons of money can buy them thats fine but you are killing the game for the casual player.
1) There's no "e" in "ridiculous"
2) Speeder training 3 nets you a whopping 10% boost. Finger twirl.
3) I trained everything at level 40, don't play the market much, and still had about 650k left over.
IE: You're doing it wrong. Stop trying to "grind" through. Run the quests. Enjoy the stories. Sell the rewards that aren't usable to you or your other party members. If it's green, vendor it. If it's blue or better, give it a go at the GTN if you like; otherwise, sell that too.
Why should they nerf the prices for a minority of players who can't seem to manage their wallets? Did you walk into the grocery store, complain that the price on Hot Pockets was too excessive to allow you to buy those AND an ice cream bar? If you did, did they laugh before or AFTER throwing you out?
Seriously, I just don't get it - people are okay with having to earn the experience, but for some reason having to earn the money is taboo.
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This Game has no class!! SWG was 100 times better!! BRING BACK SWG!!!
No. Nice try though.
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A. Soon
B. It's in the works
C. Near future
D. We're working on it
Take your pick
E. When it's ready.
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1.3 without ranked = PvP population leaving the game. And they said that we will get ranked before the 1.3, can you imagine the rage if they dont do that?.
*wave* don't let the sarlaac bite ya in the arse on the way out the door.
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Ranked WZ: Couldn't care less. Where's the leaderboards for richest guy in the game? Guy with best stats? Guy who has completed most storylines?
Where's the Operations leaderboards showing which guilds killed mobs first?
Where's the Space Flight (ala Star Fox) leaderboards showing which poor slobs have spent the most hours riding the space mission roller coaster?
(And for the record, no, I don't want ANY of them).
8-man queues: oh yay, premades. You've had a bad day, your boss is a complete shmuck, all you wanna do is get out there and flail away at people. You wait 45 minutes, get into a match with 7 other random guys, or better yet, 7 of the 8 people on your team are a premade - their last guy had a link problem and you got his slot - and you spend the next 15 minutes either getting curb stomped, or having your own team tell you over and over that you stole their guy's slot ZOMG **** noob.
Yeah, finger twirl.
1.3 is going to have what the developers put in it. My staying or leaving won't be based on what is or is not in that update. When I quit having fun, I unsubscribe and go find something else to occupy my time. It doesn't require 40 announcements in the forum that I'm not having fun in the game anymore either - it's unsub, uninstall, move on. Why is this so difficult for people to understand and execute these days?
Come on, sing it with me: "Unsub, Uninstall, Move On"
Seriously though, that's just about enough from the entitlement mentality, and the umpteen threads filled with the same ultimatum - "give me my ranked WZ and 8-man queues or ZOMG I'm gonna leave and/or whine some more" - there's like at least 1 new thread every 90 minutes from some QQing little e-peener threatening to take their toys and leave. It's old, it serves no purpose. If you're leaving, leave. If you're staying, stop with the QQing and ultimatums and garbage.
or get off the pot. 
Should Bioware give free time to Oceanic players
in General Discussion
Posted
You aren't guaranteed play time.
You aren't guaranteed the servers will be up when you want them up.
You aren't guaranteed the servers will remain up, period.
Does it suck? Sure.
Do you deserve something special? Other than perhaps them eventually splitting maintenance into regions (don't hold your breath), no.