Brosephiine's Guide to Being Patient with Game Devs

[Brosephiine]

Hello and welcome! I've seen a lot of posts here regarding different opinions as to how this game is doing and how well Bioware has launched this game. This thread is NOT about complaining or arguing. I've participated in a few discussion threads on this topic already throughout the Community forum and General Discussion. As I have some knowledge of the gaming industry, I thought I'd take the time to correct a few common misconceptions.

 

I am consistently updating this thread, so please feel free to stick around and chat! I am open to discussing any aspect of the game, but please, I am no theorycrafter. I will refrain from participating in those conversations, though they're also welcome here.

 

 

What This Topic Is

This topic is about correcting misconceptions about the game development process and politely discussing opinions on matters of game content, bugs, and patches and what the community feels is the appropriate steps for fixing or bettering said matters.

 

What This Topic Isn't

This is NOT the place to post rude or inflammatory comments. If you'd like to get yourself in trouble or make others feel bad, please do so elsewhere. Likewise, this is not the place to post your opinions as fact or to verbally abuse or harass others if their opinion doesn't match your own.

 

Contents:

• Game Development Process & How It Affects An MMO Launch
  
• Playtesting Games Pre-Launch & Why It Isn't Perfect
  
• Bug Fixes, Patches, & Why They Take So Long
  
• Straight From The Devs
  
• Problems With Upgrading Space Combat
  
• Questions & Answers
  
• Thread Highlights
  

 

Please feel free to suggest any topics for me to cover, or correct any information I may have gotten wrong. Be warned, I will double check information to ensure it is correct, so don't get angry if I counter your advice! I'm friendly, I promise. :]

 

 

Links to Useful/Interesting Topics:

If you have or know of a topic that's relevant to the community and its interests, please feel free to link me so I can post it here!

 

• The Suggestion Compilation Thread
  
• Community Values Project
  
• Official Q&A Thread
  
• Community Q&A Blog/thread
  
• Dev Tracker
  
• Female Flirt Options
  
• Same Gender Flirt Prompts
  
• TORhead
  
• SWTOR Help Center
  
• Torwars: Online Magazine
  
• SWTOR Radio Show: Nar Shaddaa Lounge
  
• Brosephiine's Art Hub
  
• Socially Dead Blog
  

Edited April 29, 2012 by Brosephiine

[Brosephiine]

Game Development Process & How it Affects an MMO Launch

The first thing you should know about game development is that it is NOT all fun and games. Well, it's all games, but not much fun. ;D It is a lot of hard work and takes a lot of time and money.

 

The process starts with an idea. This idea must be sold, possibly literally. But what I really mean is that this idea must be good enough that a company Like Blizzard or EA will want to spend money to see it made into a game. This entire idea, this kernel of brilliance that will someday hopefully transform into the creator's dream... Must be shown in a single sentence that is catchy enough to be remembered. One. Sentence. I'm serious, this is not a joke.

 

From there, all kinds of things start happening. Budgets must be planned, different departments start to get involved (art, storylining, programming, etc.) and each one wants to change this game. Each person in this department has some kind of great idea that'll make this game even better and they'll try to change the game to feature this new idea. This goes on for a long time. However, deadlines will come and go and as they do, more and more of these awesome ideas will be thrown along the sidelines because there's simply not enough time or money to develop them further. Not only that, but the more complicated a game gets, the less fun it becomes for the average player.

 

This can affect an MMO launch for multiple reasons. Information leaks, whether intentional or not, can affect what the gaming community expects from the game before it is released. Promises of certain features may seem viable at first until suddenly a problem arises that could shut down the entire program and more money needs to be funneled in there, leaving less funding for those features. Come launch time, this could make for an unhappy gaming community, but such things are inevitable.* However, once the game is up and running and funds come in from us lovely subscribers, those features are suddenly far more doable. :]

 

*As a side note, I don't actually know if this is what happened with SWTOR, but it is a possibility.

 

 

 

Playtesting Games Pre-Launch and Why It Isn't Perfect

Gaming companies take testing very seriously. Each time something is changed in the game, the game must be tested again to ensure there are no new complications. If the testing reveals more complications, then it must be fixed and tested all over again. This is literally a never ending process. As long as an MMO is functioning, this process is taking place.

 

At some point the game developers will open up a closed playtest to the public, allowing a controlled group of gamers to come and test the game before providing feedback on how they liked it and what they thought of the functionality. They want to know how they can make the game better overall. This includes functionality, graphics, and gameplay as well.

 

Beta testing allows the company to test the game on a larger scale and fix any problems that may arise with a large group of people playing. However, the game may not be stable enough to support the actual amount of players that will be buying this game at launch, so some bugs, glitches, and crashes may occur during launch. Likewise, once the game is launched millions of people will be logging onto the game and pushing every key combination possible all at the same time. This can cause many problems and reveal many bugs that had since gone unnoticed. This makes a flawless MMO release impossible to achieve. A gaming company can really only hope for the best, but never expect perfection from their launch.

 

 

 

Bug Fixes, Patches, And Why They Take So Long

When an MMO is launched, thousands of people, sometimes millions depending on the hype, begin logging on all at once to try the game out. As stated before, this means that all those sneaky sneaky bugs that were in hiding during testing suddenly come popping out. There's a sudden influx of forum posts about the bugs and in game reports about them. These must be sorted through to see if there's a quick in game way to fix things, in which case a GM will most likely help you out. If there's no quick fix, the bug reports go to QA where they try to reenact these bugs. They do this so they know exactly what is happening (which is why you should always be VERY descriptive when you report a bug.)

 

Once this happens, the steps go to the programmers who then have to figure out what the hell is going wrong. Once they figure it out and fix it (which could take awhile,) they have to test it. And retest it. This is a little easier than before because you can follow the steps laid out to see if you trigger the bug.

 

The downside is that there are SO many of them now. They have to test, fix, and retest every single one which takes some time. And a lot of the time at a game launch, there's no quick patch that they can release without shutting the servers down. So to avoid massive game downtime (which would only piss off the community more) they must wait until they can implement the fixes in a patch.

 

 

Straight From The Devs

LadyNightArrow was kind enough to point me in the direction of a Developer Blog for SWTOR which has some useful information. I'll quote directly from the blog to back up what I've already said, but you can read the entire blog here. I'll try to highlight the points I find most informative and important.

 

"The good news is that we have a large team dedicated to the game, which gives us the flexibility to both fix bugs and develop new content. I want to make it very clear here that the live game service comes first though, and fixing bugs is our team’s first priority. Everything else is secondary."

 

"Let’s begin with exploits – those cases when we determine that a bug in the code can give an unfair advantage to a player. (Remember, not all bugs are exploits!) ...If an exploit is discovered that threatens players’ experience in the game or the in-game economy, we will usually try to create an Emergency Patch to fix that exploit. Before we declare something an emergency though, we have to validate the issue with our internal Quality Assurance, or QA team. They gather data working with our Customer Service, analytics, and development teams to determine the extent of the exploit and the steps needed to reproduce it. Once we have the steps, we work on a plan to fix the issue. Depending how long the issue will take to fix and how risky it is, we will decide if we need to temporarily disable the cause of the exploit in the game."

 

"Fixing bugs in a game as massive as The Old Republic is a little trickier! The PC is a very complicated platform to develop for and getting the game to work flawlessly on every PC ever made is unlikely, but we want to fix as many bugs that affect players as we can." Some bugs – even ones that might look simple – take a long time to deal with and some might not be able to be reproduced (as they may be random occurrences under special circumstances). With that in mind, we use a triage process to prioritize our bug lists. This helps us determine which bugs we fix first based on the bug’s severity (which is how many people it affects).

 

The balancing act of fixing bugs while ensuring we maintain a stable game is always tricky. We have to make sure that when we publish a fix to the live game it doesn’t alter the game code in a way that can make things worse. This is a normal part of complex software development, but it means we have to assess the risk on what we publish to the live game very carefully. The more bugs we fix with each publish, the higher the risk of breaking things, as we’ve changed more game code. That is why we try to limit the number of bugs and types of bugs we address with each patch.

 

 

 

Problems With Upgrading Space Combat

I've seen a lot of people begging for (and demanding) a 3D space environment where the "rails" have been removed. Now, there's a few issues with this request that must be addressed.

 

Firstly, there's a large amount of people that can't seem to work well in 3D environments. I guarantee there will be more people howling that they don't like the 3D environment, put it back on the rails! For whatever reason (probably because we as people do not exist in these sorts of 3D environments, though that's just a guess on my part) most of us can't handle the 3D environment. Example: Blizzard implemented an entire 3D environment zone (Vashj'ir) and got nothing but complaints for it, along with their Mini Jouster questline.

 

Secondly, to change the space combat the way I see people asking for constantly would be to implement free roam pvp/warzone/group space missions. Now, this would be pretty cool don't get me wrong. But this idea is a brand new game entirely. This would cause the download for the game to skyrocket and make the program bigger, meaning people wouldn't be able to play on older computers. Basically, you're asking Bioware to make this game only available to people with top of the line computers so you can have two full games in one.

 

I agree, space combat could be changed a little bit as well as ship customization (recoloring, or just buying a new ship.) These aren't bad ideas. But completely changing space combat to create an entirely new game just isn't doable.

Edited February 3, 2012 by Brosephiine

[Brosephiine]

Questions & Answers

If you have a question about the process of developing a game, please feel free to ask! I'm not in the industry yet, I know only what I was taught, but I will do my absolute best to answer any questions. If I can't answer myself, I will do my best to find out the answer. This not only satisfies your curiosity, but helps me gain a better understanding of the industry I want to work in.

 

Why did Bioware choose the safe path and forgot the cool factor. The starwars universe is so cool, has so much that could have made this game a joyride.

Sorry I have to cut your post down, but I want to get to a single question and you raised a good one. A lot of the features you listed ARE cool and trust me, they've probably been thought of to some extent by the devs. The problem here is that there's just not enough time and room for it. They had plenty of time to work out all these cool things, but things go wrong and budgets get smaller and smaller...

 

The first rule of game design is this: K.I.S.S. It stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid. (I'm not calling you stupid, that's just what one of my old teacher's called it xD ). I'll even pull from his lesson plan that I've got stored in an old binder close at hand:

 

"Every day is a struggle to avoid "Kitchen Sink-itus." When you design a game, it can take on a life of its own, asking questions and providing parts of answers -- the temptation is to go deeper and deeper with the design in pursuit of those answers. K.I.S.S. is the antidote to such 'feature creep'. It is extremely difficult to do a complex game that is not also an incomprehensible one. Remember, a game, in addition to being a potential source of information, is always a form of communication. If the information in the game cannot be freely and easily communicated, the game does not work. You've got to keep it simple!"

 

Feature creep, by the way, means the game has lots and lots of cool little features -- so much so that the game loses any coherent story and can impact actual gameplay. "Well there's all this stuff to do, what does the game want me to do? Where am I supposed to go?"

 

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler." -Albert Einstein

 

I understand where you're coming from with the movies... There's some features that would be so cool to have. I like the idea of customizing your ship a bit more, or upgrade to a different starship. I'm not fond of the Jedi Consular starship lol, but I LOVE the Smuggler one. However, you can't implement everything. There has to be a cutoff and I think they actually handled the cutoff well, apart from some smaller things like a customize-able UI.

Edited January 30, 2012 by Brosephiine

[Brosephiine]

Highlights

People say amazing things sometimes, so this is where the best posts will go. Be it something insightful or funny, sometimes people deserve some +1 internets for their contribution. :]

 

It's preferable if everyone takes the high ground, but devs aren't paying players to play, players are paying to play something that's very buggy compared to some other recent MMO launches. Sometimes it's a customer's right to complain and report. If nobody complains, will it get better? No, because it won't be a priority to fix.

 

Sometimes a bug is tied to other systems, so fixing one bug could create 3 more issues in previously stable parts of the game. Sometimes multiple issues can cause the same symptom. With the hundreds of thousands of lines of code in a game like this, tracking down and implementing a solid fix can be a HUGE process.

 

I definitely prefer to be part of the solution rather than whine about how this and this sucks. It makes me feel that I've added to the experience, I made the game better, as one of the early players I made sure future players will enjoy the game even more, and let's face it, you enjoy something much more if you feel like you've "owned" it and helped build it.

 

As far as SW:TOR is concerned, BioWare is the producer, EA is the publisher. I could be wrong in saying this, but the publisher has some if not most of the say when a game is put on the market.

 

Theory: What could have happened is the publisher wanted this game out on the market on the launch date, which resulted in a lot of content that should have been in at launch being left out (but will be added later). I get the feeling that if BioWare had more say in the matter, they might have released this at a later date just to make sure there weren't any so-called game-breaking glitches (which I have yet to run into), or very many glitches and certain content was added when it should have been, if that makes sense.

 

My point is, so yeah, a developer can be aware that this issue can happen, but it's hard to locate where the problem lies especially if you're searching on a colossal wall of text, numbers, and symbols that seems to be working but is strangely not.

 

MMO launches are never flawless. Like your post clearly defines: testing only covers so much. Players often forget that an MMO is a working product. When we see an issue, we do not see that issue in its true form. What we see is visual. What they have to deal with is line after line of complex code. The easiest way to compare this is to visit your favorite website, right click on that page, and then click "view page source". The issue you see is that your companion is laying down on the floor and doesn't want to stand up. Unfortunately, the lines of coding related to that companion aren't so easily narrowed down and, if you've ever written an English paper for a few hours or attempted to fix an HTML problem, you'll know that your eyes/mind can easily overlook a problem that might be blatantly easy to fix. These people are working hard, but they're people: mistakes happen, they miss things.

 

With that said, I'm happy to see that some of the people responding in this thread understand another key thing about these games. When they fix A, F breaks. When they fix F, Z breaks. An MMO is nothing more than a constantly evolving set of code meant to reach a state at which it works for a majority of people a majority of the time. It will never work flawlessly for everyone at the same time, because all gamers are running different specs for their machines. My biggest pet peeve is seeing numerous threads dedicated to: "WHY IS MY BEASTLY MACHINE NOT RUNNING THIS 100% PERFECT." They never want to take into consideration that the issue might be user error. They don't want to turn off their torrent, their 50 web pages open, their 3 messenger services, their music program, Vent & TS running at the same time, or the fact they're running the game in windowed mode. A lot of game lag can be attributed to these things, which I think is one of the most complained about circumstances.

Edited February 5, 2012 by Brosephiine

[Leiralei]

Frequent, honest and open, respectful communication on the part of game devs towards the occasionally irrational players (ok more than occasionally) who are reporting bugs and problems in order to help the game, goes a long way to improving my patience with said devs.

 

If the devs fall into the "us vs them" trap, it's game over. Yes devs are human too and occasionally get irrational as well, but they are the ones who have to take the high ground even when their players aren't well-behaved.

 

Not everyone who has criticisms for this game wants to see it fail. There are a lot of valid criticisms right now.

 

Players can hope that their gamble will pay off in a stable game, but only the devs can make that happen, and the goal should be seeing that happen at launch, not at a later patch. So yes, they failed in some ways and they know it. Being human, we're all a little frustrated right now.

 

TLDR:

 

It's preferable if everyone takes the high ground, but devs aren't paying players to play, players are paying to play something that's very buggy compared to some other recent MMO launches. Sometimes it's a customer's right to complain and report. If nobody complains, will it get better? No, because it won't be a priority to fix.

 

REALLY TLDR:

 

Squeaky wheels get oil because that's how you know which ones need oil.

Edited January 22, 2012 by Leiralei

[Brosephiine]

Generally I agree with you. I'm not saying that no one should complain at all. My issue is that so many people seem to have really high expectations. This game is far larger than any game that's come out recently. There's just SO much in it. With the number of people playing and the scale of the game, I'm not surprised it's buggy. I get screen flickers and the occasional load screen, some graphics are buggy, etc. But to accuse the game devs of not doing their best and being bad at their jobs (which I've seen) is just plain not true. This is what they get paid to do and the people who do this painstaking work do it because they love games, not because they love the work. These people get excited for new games, but making the games makes them pull their hair out.

[Brosephiine]

Finally! All done.

[DelopHora]

A very nice topic. Trouble is, those who really should read it will never read it.

 

They will continue starting their topics saying things they don't like and pretend their brilliant ideas to be implemented NOW.

[Brosephiine]

Eh, that's alright. I wanted to get all my points down in one spot so I can quote from here if I need to elsewhere. But I also wanted a place people could come and actually learn a little more about the work it takes to make a large scale MMO. I won't convince everyone, but perhaps some people will learn something or even pose discussions.

 

I love discussions.

[Brosephiine]

Hmm. Think I'm gonna stick with blue as a post color. >_>

[Lycanthrop]

I completely agree with you. When ever I see someone post on the forums that they think the game is horrible and that they want there money back I always think to my self "These people don't understand how hard it is for the devs trying to fix these bugs and listen to these ignorant people."

 

I am glad you posted this thread so people can learn that making games isn't a game. Nevertheless, (as stated above) most people still will not read this thread so they can stick to their pointless arguments.

 

TLDR: Awesome thread

Edited January 23, 2012 by Lycanthrop

[CoolJaZ]

We can only hope this remains a congregation of intelligent folks and not get overthrown by the mass of monstrosities that is the ignorants*.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Ignorance is defined by the lack of knowledge, but it can also be reduced to a lesser situation, in which ignorance can be removed from the equation, in which this insult is applicable.

 

 

 

~Sincerely,

A fellow bluetexter.

[Brosephiine]

Thanks guy, it's good to know there's still people out there that understand how hard it is. :] I'm kind of hoping some people will read it and take it in to consideration though.

 

You never know, it might work for one or two people. xD

[CoolJaZ]

And another note for your guide here, basing a dev's ability to do work based on the look of an application, is silly. My GPA used to be a 2.3 in school, and the last one was a 3.8.

 

People room to improve drastically once they find their strength.

 

Maybe GeorgZoeller would be better off doing FP's, or smaller-scale PvP management, or maybe he'll come through like my GPA and make some keyboards white. We never know.

 

P.S. I'm a hardcore PvP'er, if I could work at Bioware and manage PvP, I wouldn't hesitate, because years of beta-testing and providing input in successful games(which totally lengthens my epeen) have made making PvP balance a much less impossible task than most believe it would be.

Edited January 23, 2012 by CoolJaZ

[Brosephiine]

What I really love about the gaming industry is that it's still one of those last industries where a college education isn't actually needed. If you have the skill, they'll want you. Which is part of the reason why I left the Art Institute.

 

They don't care what your grades were or what degree you have. If your work is crap, they won't hire you.

[eGraced]

I have to say, I'm EXTREMELY pleased to see an intelligent post for rational discussion on this issue. Having worked in large scale software development and support (not games, business software) I laugh whenever I see people say "this CAN'T be that hard to implement" or "why isn't this fixed NOW?!?!?!?"

 

Sometimes a bug is tied to other systems, so fixing one bug could create 3 more issues in previously stable parts of the game. Sometimes multiple issues can cause the same symptom. With the hundreds of thousands of lines of code in a game like this, tracking down and implementing a solid fix can be a HUGE process.

 

That being said, having played multiple MMOs from Beta or from Launch, I can say my experience with this game has been far smoother than any other MMO I've played. I've been extremely impressed. And rather than complaining in the forums when I do encounter a bug, I submit a bug report, with a DxDiag and as much information as possible. Remember what your Grandmother said, "If you aren't part of the solution..."

 

TROLL DISCLAIMER: Note in the previous statement I said "my experience." Your experience may vary, but mine is no less valid.

[aihonnen]

Well, i played a few MMORPGs before and i have to say that i can hardly understand the problems some people seem to have with the game.

From what i witnessed, it was a rather smooth release without major problems (with major problems i refer to servers being insanely unstable or offline for hours/days, zonecrashs, etc.). I admit, the game is glitchy - but no more and no less and i expect these problems to be solved in time. The crying people do these days is on a unbelievable high level and i doubt the majority ever witnessed another MMORPG-start in their life. I have to admit the developers had time to lern from mistakes others committed, but even after cloning 80% of the MM-part of this RPG from WoW they had to do serious work to build their own game (which in my eyes, was quite succesfull).

Another point is that (in my opinion) balancing classes in a MMORPG will be never perfect, and how can it, if you have to balance it on 2 completely different levels (PvE and PvP) and for different kinds of players (Hardcore/mediocre/casual), which leads to the impossible task to fullfill the expectations of everyone. While a small nerf on smth can nearly have no impact on PvE, it can throw PvP balance over bord - this leads to long testing periods for changes, because everybody can imagine how much whining will occur if a real problem surfaces, when you look on the mimimi-threads existing now. I guess some people just forgot to wait these days and expect everything (even the most irrelevent crying-subject) to be handled NOW.

My last point is concering the Endgame contet, which is, what i read, nearly non existent now. Well, i haven't seen it with my own eyes, but what i heard it's glitchy as hell as well. Well, we're on the "patience"-subject again. I guess Bioware, which had no experince in making MMORPGs just hadn't expect that ppl would be 50 in days and raiding stuff like crazy - or they neglected the endgame content to a certain degree in the expectation that they had a month time to fix little problems - or they didn't knew about the problems, which can be also possible. Fact is: there is a (small) part of hardcore raiders which can walk through the existing content like a warm knife goes through butter - but the majority has neither seen, nor will ever see the endgame content. I can only guess why Bioware made it so easy (for raid proven guilds/players) but i guess it's the same reason raid-things in other MMORPGs went easy as pie too - to make it possible that more than 10% of players can see - and succeed - the endgamecontent (btw: the non-existent battle-log and the missing possibility of customise the ui will have it's fair share for making fights not too complex).

My point is: players just have to be patient. the game is out 1 month, and bioware has done things more right than wrong, and is on a good direction to make it even better.

 

TL;DR: Players make the game. if the players are ****** and whine all the time, devs can work their *** of to improve it, it wont succeed; Patience! Developing a mmorpg where the slightiest change may have huge impact on balance (pvm/pvp) and/or other parts of ingame mechanics is not done over night, and forced hotfixes have the bad nature of making things rather worse than better.

 

best regards

 

//edit1: removed some typos (i guess some are still there, i beg for forgiveness)

Edited January 23, 2012 by aihonnen

[Brosephiine]

Ahh! Intelligence lives! Two great posts with valid points. :]

 

I myself have had very few problems other than minor glitches (such as screen flickers, the occasional random load screen, some graphics glitches, and one crash) but the computer I use is high end custom built. I suspect a lot of issues are computer related as well.

[CoolJaZ]

I personally went through many many files and concluded that many game glitches are a combination of system and game(game glitches being screen flicker and the such, not actual gameplay)

 

Some parts are conflicting codes, while others are system incompatibility. I only scratched the surface of this, and would hate to go in-depth. All in all about 10 minutes of codeswatching and cokemachining stuff to conclude that even the highest-end systems will have problems with this game somewhere down the line, due to the game itself and compatibility. Alas, if only everyone had the same hardware(*cough* consoles *cough*)

 

TL;DR

 

Both ends of the spectrum cause game issues.

Edited January 23, 2012 by CoolJaZ

[eGraced]

CoolJaZ, you kind of hit the nail on the head with one part of your statement, that having the same hardware (ie. consoles) makes development easier. I would like to give you a slightly different perspective on this, if I may.

 

PC gaming for a long time was a very niche market, and video gaming in general was dominated by consoles. If you're as old as I am, you'll remember the early 90s glut of side-scrollers and top down adventures.

 

It was only after the PC gaming market started growing, and the gaming industry at large started seeing the innovative gameplay PC games were offering, that the console industry started moving off tried-and-true formulas and design. Case in point, MMOs, 3d worlds and FPS games (ugh) were all pioneered on PC years before they hit consoles.

 

This means that while PC games are harder to develop because of the hardware mix, you likely owe those brave enough to do it for the game styles you enjoy. For me, and a majority of the long-term PC gamers, it has always been worth the bugs for the variety.

 

TL/DR: PC games are harder to develop, but offer more variety and innovation. If occasional bugs bother you, consoles are a more stale, yet stable option for you.

Edited January 23, 2012 by eGraced

[Darthmoriquendi]

So many have an *I want it now* attitude and when it doesn't happen they get upset. Can't expect everything to happen overnight and it will take some time to get all the bugs worked out. Crying about it won't get you anywhere. Nice thread by the way I think bioware has done a great job and I am in for the long haul. I really look forward to whats in store for us in the future and I hope it doesn't all come to quickly. I like to make things last and good things take time.

[commanderXIII]

In all honesty, I think the game would have less bugs if it had been released on consoles. Ok don't beat me right away, let me 'splain... I think plenty of bugs being encountered are mostly related to the machine running the game, not the game itself. (obviously there are also bugs related to the game)

 

If it had been released on a platform that is identical for everyone (ie xbox, playstation etc..) I don't think there would be as many bugs. As it stands, the devs are CATERING to each and everyone with a different machine. Some are running Ferraris and others running VW bugs. Imagine organizing a race with that much variety in cars, even Nascar and Formula1 uses very "similar" if not identical vehicles.

 

Also, release at a specific date but have it buggy, or release at a later date and have it perfect? Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

 

If they didn't release when they released, a huge amount of people would've complained

 

"OMG THEY'RE POSTPONING RELEASE AGAIN!!"

 

and now that it's been released

 

"OMG IT'S SO BUGGY, THEY SHOULD'VE POSTPONED RELEASE AND WORKED ON IT MORE"

 

Personally, I've had so much fun with the bugs, specially the "exorcist" bug where your companion is laying down on the ground twitching when you're just standing around, but chases after you when you move, only to lie back down when you stop moving. Or the "overkill" bug where your BH shoots a continuous stream of blaster bolts from your knees long after your target is dead and even when your back is turned to them. (makes you wish it was an actual skill in-game) I wish I didn't have to report them

 

I definitely prefer to be part of the solution rather than whine about how this and this sucks. It makes me feel that I've added to the experience, I made the game better, as one of the early players I made sure future players will enjoy the game even more, and let's face it, you enjoy something much more if you feel like you've "owned" it and helped build it.

 

You don't like the game the way it is right now, stop playing it, or wait a few months and start over to see if it's gotten any better.

 

As previously said before.. "If you're not part of the solution.. "

[aihonnen]

Well, i agree that the diversity of possible system setups is one of the major issues producing so many glitches - but i have to disagree concering the "consoles would make things easier"-matter. While consoles would make life easier for the developers, it restricts possibilities in game mechanics: In my Opinion (western) RPGs are a lot slower to play on console than on PC, making console-ports a boringly easy on pc (e.g. Skyrim, Dragonage) - and i highly doubt that matters were different if this game would have been released on PC and somehow i'm glad it was developed (even if only poorly) for this platform.

This said, i have to report another point which differs this mmorpgs from others: The playerbase. I think at least 40% of all players have a singleplayer-background as well as this is their first mmorpg - and so their behavior differs greatly from other mmorpgs. Sometimes i have the feeling that the majority is playing a singleplayergame and avoids contact to other players - it's a really pain to find groups for quests/FPs, even if the zone is brimming (well that is only my experience and may depend on the server i'm playing) - And this is the only big weak point of this game in my eyes. where in other games grouping up for smth is very natural, it somehow feels unnatural here, even to the point that i often have to skip group quests (nobody answers my calls :/ ).

 

TL;DR: i hope the community will grow with the game and it's developers as wel - it's far from perfect in several aspects, but has a lot of potential.

 

cheers

Edited January 23, 2012 by aihonnen

[Runieux]

You planning on getting into the game industry as well?

[Brosephiine]

Personally, I've had so much fun with the bugs, specially the "exorcist" bug where your companion is laying down on the ground twitching when you're just standing around, but chases after you when you move, only to lie back down when you stop moving. Or the "overkill" bug where your BH shoots a continuous stream of blaster bolts from your knees long after your target is dead and even when your back is turned to them. (makes you wish it was an actual skill in-game) I wish I didn't have to report them

 

Ohmygosh I want those bugs. xD Those sound awesome lol.

 

Well, i agree that the diversity of possible system setups is one of the major issues producing so many glitches - but i have to disagree concering the "consoles would make things easier"-matter. While consoles would make life easier for the developers, it restricts possibilities in game mechanics: In my Opinion (western) RPGs are a lot slower to play on console than on PC, making console-ports a boringly easy on pc (e.g. Skyrim, Dragonage) - and i highly doubt that matters were different if this game would have been released on PC and somehow i'm glad it was developed (even if only poorly) for this platform.

 

I don't think it was developed poorly, but I do think that EA has a lot to do with why this game is so glitchy and so many people are unhappy. I've had the pleasure of talking with some people in the game industry who have worked for EA and they always say they hated it, worst experience of their lives.

 

It makes me sad that so many people are blaming the Bioware name when Bioware has done some really amazing games in the past.

 

You planning on getting into the game industry as well?

I am, I'd like to be a 2D concept artist. Gotta take those illustration classes though. It's part of why I left the Art Institute; they only offered classes in 3D Art save for basic anatomy classes.

Edited January 23, 2012 by Brosephiine