Guild summit fail imho

[cbowsin]

Maybe I am missing something but how does an event fail? I thought events only fail when no one shows up?

 

BW holds an event

People attend

BW shows presentation

People Watch

They all had cake

= Success!

[DieAlteHexe]

Maybe I am missing something but how does an event fail? I thought events only fail when no one shows up?

 

BW holds an event

People attend

BW shows presentation

People Watch

They all had cake

= Success!

 

I think "fail" is now defined more as "I didn't get what I wanted" or "It isn't going as I wish", than the more traditional definition.

[DarthKhaos]

They all had cake

DAMMIT!!! I knew I should of gone.

[Monkeh]

Maybe I am missing something but how does an event fail? I thought events only fail when no one shows up?

 

BW holds an event

People attend

BW shows presentation

People Watch

They all had cake

= Success!

 

the cake was a lie,

 

 

I'm sorry i will now go stand in the corner in shame

[Andryah]

This subject is highly subjected to subjectivity.

 

 

To specify:

 

I was pleased with their presentation(s) and the prospects regarding future contents.

 

Very much agree.

 

OP, I completely disagree with your take on the summit.

[Andryah]

I think "fail" is now defined more as "I didn't get what I wanted" or "It isn't going as I wish", than the more traditional definition.

 

Yep, at least on gaming forums.

[Alkiii]

while i understand the frustration, this point of view is all wrong.

 

you could have talent by the buckets, but if you dont have the financial support and time it will never matter.

 

 

 

 

i realistically have the talent to be a doctor. my IQ and ability to learn is outstanding.

 

however, i do not have the hundreds of thousands of dollars that a decade of schooling would cost between the actual expense + loss of income.

 

talent doesnt really mean that much in the real world.

 

In my line of work, if you don't have talent, you don't get hired.

 

Your point is null and void.

 

I'm an Art Director for a point of purchase advertising firm in the USA. Talent is everything in our line of work.

[DFLuyando]

Thanks for most of the responses. I stand corrected on the sorc/sage blast away/root issue. I now see that this can be accomplished with kinetic collapse. The other issues still stand. I have a merc and a commando and they definitely do NOT work the same. The same goes for Sage/Sorc and shock/project. For those that say I can gear from a republic side vendor for my light armor wearing male toon at social 1, please let me know where that vendor is. The slave outfit by the way for females is still social 2. For those that said Republic side has advantages over Imperial side...please list them...because my guild and I have not been able to find them playing both factions.

 

As for my not quitting today...I have been in the same guild through various games for 7 years and it is how I keep in touch with a lot of my friends. Plus, I am hopeful that things will get fixed and/or even out in time. I am fine if you don't understand why I am still playing my time out.

 

For the guy that said "L2 Interrupt"...thanks...thats cute. Interrupt has a CD...but thanks for coming out. The spells still do not work the same...interrupted or not.

 

I put IMHO because it is my opinion based on my gameplay and what I see as priorities... which I understand will not be the same as everyone else's...not in any way to insult or negate anything said to the contrary of my post.

 

I truly hope things get adjusted and corrected...and that over time the pvp issue evens out. As I said in my OP, I think the legacy stuff is cool and all. That does not mean that I can not be upset and frustrated by going to ilum for some 16 vs 60 or entering WZs against 8 players in mostly BM gear...both of which slow my pvp valor/gear gains to a painfully slow crawl, and then voice that frustration about not hearing the fixes for those issues. I love the game from levels 1-49...even with the couple of imbalances that affect those levels. Different story at lvl 50 for republic pvpers. Maybe it is just my server...but I see a lot of posts from other servers telling a similar story.

 

P.S. The title of this post was for marketing purposes...to get people to read it. Obviously it is "working as intended"

Edited March 6, 2012 by DFLuyando

[Alkiii]

You do realize that Force Armor for the Sage is instant cast and Static Barrier for the Sorcerer is not, right? Static Barrier doesn't go up until the animation is finished. Force Armor goes up as soon as you hit it.

 

It is what it is ... I still kill a ton of people with the delay in Project. Why? Because killing people doesn't come down to using one button. Well, unless you're a Bounty Hunter spamming Tracer Missile. lol

[solidkjames]

I agree they mostly did a good job yesterday and some of the sections were amazing.

 

One thing that boggled my mind was the comment that the UI changes were mostly done by one person who volunteered his time on weekends as he felt it was important to get into 1.2. There were other examples where I question their priorities but that's one I remember best.

 

There were other times that the presenter looked entirely clueless about the section they were presenting and the admissions of things like "We don't have a /roll in the game?" didn't do much to add confidence. They showed many times their lack of knowledge of what was wanted in an MMO and I really hope the guild leaders gave them direct honest feedback after the cameras were off. No doubt many of them were nervous to call them out yesterday and there weren't any tough questions.

I am really excited about the stuff they are releasing in 1.2 and can't wait to see how the game looks in June. Like many others I've subscribed for 6 months and will make my decision then as whether to resubscribe. I think people misunderstand the OP as I'm upset at Bioware for the state the game was released and curse them as I play many times but desperately hope they get their act together as I really want to play in this world.

 

Which goes to show you, take away peoples anonymity on the internet and they act civil. The forums could use that same philosophy. If you held people accountable for what they typed they wouldn't troll these forums and we could have constructive civil conversations with the dev teams.

 

Instead we get people like the OP who just run off at the mouth like a 3 year old b/c he didn't get what he wanted. If after all that was announced yesterday, you can honestly sit here and say the devs are not listening and trying to ruin this game then you are not only stupid but do not deserve to be apart of a MMO community.

Edited March 6, 2012 by solidkjames

[DieAlteHexe]

Which goes to show you, take away peoples anonymity on the internet and they act civil. The forums could use that same philosophy. If you held people accountable for what they typed they wouldn't troll these forums and we could have constructive civil conversations with the dev teams.

 

Instead we get people like the OP who just run off at the mouth like a 3 year old b/c he didn't get what he wanted. If after all that was announced yesterday, you can honestly sit here and say the devs are not listening and trying to ruin this game then you are not only stupid but do not deserve to be apart of a MMO community.

 

A bit brusque but yes. When I first was on the 'Net, I think we all were a bit charmed by the ability to talk to folk from all around the world and behaved. That, however, didn't last very long (see USENET ).

 

Generally, and I don't mean this to start a war, but I find the thought that hopping online and behaving like a complete prat is horribly juvenile. Sadly, it has become rampant which irritates me because there is still that "magic" that could be, being able to communicate freely with people from...well, just about everywhere now. I guess I still retain the awe that inspired and wish that we could stop behaving so badly and start really communicating.

 

I also wish I was still 20 and maybe this time 'round...a redhead?

[DFLuyando]

Instead we get people like the OP who just run off at the mouth like a 3 year old b/c he didn't get what he wanted. If after all that was announced yesterday, you can honestly sit here and say the devs are not listening and trying to ruin this game then you are not only stupid but do not deserve to be apart of a MMO community.

 

Because you didn't read a post you like you resort to insults. Yeah...that shows that you are much better suited to express yourself in a forum than I am. Also...where did I mention the devs were "trying to ruin this game"?

[NDiggy]

While I don't think the summit was a failure, far from it, 1.2 really looks impressive. I do think the OP is correct in his assessment that BW is either unable or unwilling to address faction imbalance. The OP focused on the PvP ramifications of faction imbalance, but it also affects other aspects of the game as well on the PvE side of things like the in game economy and the ability to find groups or guilds to even do content with.

 

When asked about faction imbalance this was all they had to say yesterday:

 

Damion: We think the Legacy system will help a bit and that was one of its goals. Most of our designs are resilient enough to deal with some imbalance on some servers. We can try and entice people to play certain sides or factions, but at the end of the day its each player's fantasy and up to them.

 

Georg: We allow players to play both factions on a single server, so we are hoping Legacy will help a bit with that. That's all we have planned short term. Further down the line, optional character transfers is a possibility.

 

I fail to see how the Legacy system is going to address this, but I may be missing something. I have a level 50 Sith Assassin that I leveled as an insurance policy against this very occurrence. Yes, while I leveled him I was somewhat active on the Empire side, but once I hit 50 I only log into him once a week maybe and then only to send my companions out on gathering missions. That contributes nothing to the Empire side of my server (not that they need it).

 

Meanwhile, the Republic side of my server is a ghost town. Finding groups is next to impossible outside of brow beating guildies into going, and the GTN is empty. Our economy is non-existant. Need some low level mats to craft gear for a guild mate? No problem I'll just go to the GTN real quick...oh wait I can't because there is nothing on there. Legacy won't fix that problem, neither will a dungeon finder tool, or cross server WZs. If BW is unwilling or unable to address faction imbalance, they should simply make all the GTNs cross faction.

 

The OP is correct about the differences in PvP. For whatever reason, the Empire simply has a huge lead over the Republic in the Valor arms race. I wasn't 50 yet when the 1.1 Ilum fiasco went live, but apparently a lot of Empire players got Valor rank 60 very quickly and very easily. Even without that type of advantage, statistically speaking, on a server where Republic is outnumbered 3 or 4 to 1, there will be 3-4 times more Battlemasters on the Empire side verses Republic. And make no mistake, having even one Battlemaster in a WZ has a huge impact on the outcome. Even with mostly Champion level gear with some Centurion and PvE pieces mixed in, at 550 Expertise I get shredded on my Commando by any Imp wearing Battlemaster gear. Cross server WZs may alleviate this somewhat, but when the problem is so widespread amongst servers it will still be an issue.

 

Nothing said or introduced at the guild summit addressed any of these issues and BW doesn't seem to even consider it a major issue. That is what is deflating from my perspective. Anecdotally, this is one of the reasons I quit playing WoW as my PvP server went from about 60/40 in favor of Alliance during Vanilla, to 20/80 in favor of Horde by Cataclysm. Most of the larger guilds abandoned ship and left the rest of us stuck on a server with no economy and no large guilds to run content with. Blizzard made no effort to solve this problem either, other than allowing me the pleasure of paying them $20 per character to transfer to another server.

 

The cat is out of the bag. Imps now outnumber Pubs on most servers, and by a large margin on many servers and there is no way to quickly fix that problem now that the game has launched. I don't expect BW to force anyone to play a certain faction, but I did expect them to take this issue more seriously. There are many passive methods they could use to encourage people to play Republic and help balance populations over the long term, and there are several active solutions they could have taken in the short term to help alleviate the issues that having imbalanced populations creates. BW did none of this and seemed to just brush off the question. That is likely what upset the OP, just as it upset myself and I'm sure others who are facing this situation.

[JansanRuno]

What does the "h" stand for in imho?

 

"Hater" I think. That's what I guessed but I'm not sure.

[Yeren]

My quick observation is that the OP posted an opinion.

 

Server imbalance. On the Ebon Hawk I don't know what the server population is really like (I'm think more Imperial), but for some reason the Republic own our warzones from about 5pm to 11pm central. Sure we get an occasional win (and hopefully DOT's nerf in 1.1.5 helps even it up) but all in all if I waited to do my daily warzone WINS at that time .... It takes me several HOURS. Not 1 ... not 2 .... but 4,5, or 6.

 

Part of it is the half premade stuff ... part of it is bad pvp ... part of it is newer to pvp. But add all that up compared to the lack of it on the Republic side (I run into the same people over and over in warzones) and you have an imbalance on the opposite side benefitting the lower population side (all if my speculations are true).

 

I'm not for cross server action .... it lowers accountability and ruins the community. But I'd be okay with some sort of server merge with lower pop servers.

 

I'm just saying that I'm not seeing the same 'downside' of low server population in the pvp realm. As for FP and OP .... I'm sure that a low population sucks.

 

So much for quick

[Yeren]

"Hater" I think. That's what I guessed but I'm not sure.

 

imho

 

i - in

m - my

h - humble/honest (usually honest)

o - opinion

[DarthKhaos]

I do think the OP is correct in his assessment that BW is either unable or unwilling to address faction imbalance.

And what can BioWare do about players choosing to play a class that they want to? They have put things in place to encourage people playing both factions but ultimately it comes down to the players. What? A PvP buff? Not gonna make people join the opposite faction. XP gain? All that will do is shorten the time those people spend on their opposing faction alt getting it to 50 then forgetting about it if they don't want to play it.

 

They stated overall the difference between factions is less than 10% which means on some servers Republic outnumber Empire. Server merge? Well it's not going to happen until they can work out doing it right if that is even if that is their intent.

 

Bottom line BioWare cannot do anything about that.

[NDiggy]

And what can BioWare do about players choosing to play a class that they want to? They have put things in place to encourage people playing both factions but ultimately it comes down to the players. What? A PvP buff? Not gonna make people join the opposite faction. XP gain? All that will do is shorten the time those people spend on their opposing faction alt getting it to 50 then forgetting about it if they don't want to play it.

 

They stated overall the difference between factions is less than 10% which means on some servers Republic outnumber Empire. Server merge? Well it's not going to happen until they can work out doing it right if that is even if that is their intent.

 

Bottom line BioWare cannot do anything about that.

 

That is completely untrue. There are a lot things BW could do to passively push players toward playing Republic. You see this in other games all the time be it a cool new race to play, cooler looking gear, or even a pvp mechanic that is slightly better than the other faction's counterpart. Honestly, that's just off the top of my head based on what I've seen in other games. Basic psychology is an easy tool to use to encourage people to passively make the choice you want them to make without taking player choice out of the equation.

 

Also, based on the guild summit, faction balance overall is sitting at 57% Empire and 42% Republic, which is a bit more than 10%. Also, citing overall population balance ignores the very real problem faced by servers where the population imbalance is significantly worse. Who cares if population balance is 50/50 if its only because on half the servers 100% of the population is for one faction and on the other half of the servers it is 100% for the other faction. Overall population numbers can be misleading. Most PvP servers have populations that heavily favor Imperials. It is rare to find one in favor of the Republic.

 

As I said there are also things they can do in the short term to mitigate the effects of a small population such as cross faction GTNS. I also stated that most of us whose factions are ghost towns would be happy if BW just acknowledged the problem and laid out a roadmap to at least try and bring some balance to the populations. Instead BW basically swept the problem under the rug like it wasn't a big issue.

 

No where in my post did I suggest a server merge. So I'm not going to respond to that.

[Kindara]

You can't force people to play Republic, on our server everyone has alts on both sides so sometimes its super unbalanced in favor of one side and sometimes its decently balanced. As for the whoel battlemaster thing what would that prove? Nothing because you still can't force republic players to play pvp and you can't force empire to play republic.

 

They're atleast opening up more of the warzones to be mixed like Huttball but for rankings I believe its enforced which side your on. I missed a bit of that part.

 

I mean what do you suggest the devs do? Offer 1 million credits to a number of players to swap sides? The cookie dangle to get players to swap sides doesn't work. Warhammer tried it adn guess what..didn't work. People play what they want to play. I play bothsides, most of my friends do but I know alot of people don't or they're merely concentrating on one or two toons at a time.

Edited March 6, 2012 by Kindara

[Slothrop]

Just a couple things I wanted to correct based on my own experience in game:

 

In the beginning I heard the head of gaming in Austin say that never before has any company rolled out a patch so large for free, but they are doing it because they want you to feel like the game is worth what you are paying for it. That tells me flat out that they currently know that the masses do NOT feel like the game is worth continuing to pay for.

 

Or, instead of being reactionary, they are putting out a very large content patch because they've set a goal for themselves to knock our socks off with content and remove any doubt we have that the game is worth our money. Neither you or I know their motivation, and we can choose how we see it and I certainly dont' know how "the masses" feel, and I'm guessing you don't either.

 

On Nar Shadaa, Imperials can ride on "requisitioned" bikes that spawn...getting them to/from quest objectives faster. Republics do not have anything like this available.

 

If you test the speed on these, I think you will find that they are not actually faster than sprinting. Cooler? Yes. Faster? No.

 

Civil War - Even if Republics cap the first node a few seconds (up to 5 seconds in WZs i have been in) before Imperials cap a node, the Republic ship ALWAYS takes the first tick of damage.

 

I believe this is no longer true and has been fixed.

 

 

I watched the Summit on livestream. I think Bioware brought up many of the 'hot topics' I've seen people complain about. Specifically: Ilum is broke, they addressed that ("We need to go back to the drawing board"). Legacy is currently 'just a bar', they addressed that. There is faction imbalance, they gave hard data on that and said that it has been worse in other games and they aren't sure what to do about it here. They gave hard data on class popularity, the economy, leveling... lots of stuff.

 

Are there still lots of issues to address? Yes.

 

TBH, though, the issues you bring up are... not nearly significant enough for me unsub. They are for you, apparently, so I wish you luck and fun in whatever you decide to do with your time.

[Ozzone]

One thing that boggled my mind was the comment that the UI changes were mostly done by one person who volunteered his time on weekends as he felt it was important to get into 1.2. There were other examples where I question their priorities but that's one I remember best.

 

That one boggled my mind too. If what he said was true, it makes me question where the priorities really lie since 1) he clearly said that "one person" was not tasked to work on the UI and 2) he worked on his own time (nights/weekends) to finish it in time to make the 1.2 patch.

 

On top of that there's this statement from the DarthHater article:

 

Damion Schubert says only about half the changes being shown will make it into 1.2 update, but the UI team was very passionate about the changes and wanted them shown.

 

These two statements open up a world of questions in my mind.

 

1) Exactly how many people are tasked to work on the UI?

 

2) Why did someone have to work on his own time to work on the UI?

 

3) Why is only about half the changes going to make 1.2 (which is still weeks away)?

 

Think about this for a sec. The reason I point these out because we've been hearing over and over about the upcoming changes for the UI. Stuff that the vast majority of players have been asking for over and over. BW never downplayed this at all and even gave the strong impression that UI changes were a major priority. You see, as a developer, that the statements seem to contradict each other. If the UI is such a high priority, why did it take someone, on his own (that we have to assume was his own initiative) to work on the UI during his offtime?

 

While I don't know the exact makeup of staff at BW working on SWTOR, I do know that telling users (us) that a feature is a high priority (UI) and then state that it's being worked on by a developer during his off time and only about half of it will be ready many weeks from now is very discomforting.

 

Go back, when you can see the video of the conference, and watch that part again. It was obvious that most there didn't get it or didn't have time to think about what he said. On top of that, he asked for everyone to applaud that "one person" for doing this.

 

All I know that in my line of work, if I tell the users that a feature is a high priority and someone is working on it during off time, and only half of it will be ready weeks down the road, I will get a lot of stares and I sure won't get applause.

[ferroz]

I have never understood the dual logic of I hate this game and have unsubbed yet I troll the game and the forums while my money runs out complaining about how i would make a better game..

1) if you had the talent to make a better game, you either would have or will and then you will see how hard it really is

No, there are lots of reasons why someone wouldn't. One quick reason: I could be someone who's already doing something that they think benefits society better than making games and prefer sticking to my current career path over getting back into the videogame industry.

[ferroz]

3) Why is only about half the changes going to make 1.2 (which is still weeks away)?

Because there is a process for getting changes made and then approved for deployment, and they know that they don't have time to get more than a certain number of them through that process.

[spicycookie]

One thing i don't like about the OP's comment is his Thread title Guild Summit being a failure.

 

This is kinda selfish considering your only looking into your own selfish need.

 

Calling it a guided PR?

 

Right Bioware is teaching all the guild leaders what to say during that 4 hour break.

 

There was a lot of positives in this summit. It was very informative.

 

Yet you call it a failure? Why not become a Guild Leader and register for the summit and tell them how you really feel then?

 

Don't stand back here calling it a failure when you are only viewing it from one perspective...

Edited March 6, 2012 by spicycookie

[cschoet]

"Too many people miss the silver lining because they're expecting gold."

-Maurice Setter