Team Bioware - The Definitive Issues That You're Not Addressing or Responding To

[Dwizzle]

This is a very well constructed post and hit on a lot of good points. One thing i wil say is that i know what BW will say and why they wont touch on this is that it would lead to a total game overhaul. Very well thought out but i highly doubt they would redo the game. Although, they really do need to address the forums issue and the burying of all the threads that are important or duplicates. GOOD JOB!

[Phinion]

Most of the points are vaild. You really want to level faster? Only takes a couple weeks to get to 50 as it is. maybe a month for a casual player. Come one they are called alts for a reason.

[Verdan]

So get this, speaking to Section VIII, that we all see something different positionally to each client and server.

 

Last night we're doing EV Hard Mode, and this person that's very reliable kept dying. We chalked it up to a bad night, but when I inspected her, she had Green implants and earpiece, and 2 others that I thought, "she shouldn't be geared with that stuff in HM Ops." I mean "Green"? Inspected her 3 times to be sure what she needed, was otherwise Columi and Rakata, thought it odd.

 

The next day, we craft/buy her Columi earpiece and implants, and she gets them and says, WTH, I already have that. We inspect her, and sure enough, she does. Which makes sense.

 

So WTH that we saw gear on her that wasn't really there when we inspected her 3 times personally.

 

This game is so unstable, it boggles the mind.

 

Further, because she kept oddly dying, I wonder if the game saw what we saw, the erroneous green gear, and applied those stats to her.

 

Finally, to the other Section, we don't have an Item/Gear Forum, so there's no place to post this bug without it getting immediately buried in the TOR FORUM landfills. Nonsense.

Edited June 10, 2012 by Verdan

[Verdan]

I've had enough, this game is not fun. Here's the latest, all with zero satisfaction from Bioware:

 

- Our guild moves from Sorensu, and in its entirety, all of our player names are taken. These are our names from Early access forward, well thought, wanted, and unique. The only way it could have happened is if we were griefed (which in a thread on the subject, someone said they had it happen to them and admitted, and another said they were tempted to do it to someone else but stopped short), OR if Bioware's policy allowed tons of players to create tons of avatars on EVERY server in North America to reserve tons of names for inactive level 1 accounts. Basically either griefed or a subject of further lack of insight and leadership by Bioware and their policies. In submitting an inquiry to Bioware to at least look at the names we had - whether it was griefing by someone who just joined the server from ours - or if they're taken by a ton of level 1's from players who have level 1's on a zillion servers. They wouldn't look at it, and responded with a form letter. That's service? From the consequences of their misleadership?

 

- Bioware, to the chagrin of a kazillion players, made us suffer their sacred cow of ABSOLUTE bifurcation of factions - "THOU SHALT NOT COHABITATE, TALK, or TRADE", and so a kazillion of us created avatars of the other factions on other servers, as it served NO purpose to have them on the same server taking up slots. Then, as I predicted and to the misery of arguments among various guilds facing this sacred cow, Bioware starts backtracking on their bifurcation, and now makes it DESIRABLE for avatars of different factions to be on the same server, via Legacy perks and other potential interactions like GTN. They also announce that content is going to be designed such that we're going to want our avatars of the other faction available to complete multi-faction story lines. So, all of us who acted on their sacred cow policies of bifurcation now found ourselves with our toons of different factions split on different servers, and sure enough, the restricted server transfers from these two servers go to two different servers, so we cannot reunite our avatars from different factions. Again, the situation that BIOWARE PUT US IN is not their concern, and they turn a deaf ear to players suffering from their leadership and policies.

 

- We're forced to move to these Destination servers, and make no mistake, any lip service to "choice" is only that, propaganda. Our server was killed within 24 hours, no more wz's, no more of anything, it died. So we land in this server where crafting node and quest mob respawn rates are grossly inadequate, and we're standing their waiting with other players for the next respawns. It's rediculous. It's like trying to play golf in Los Angeles, where every course plays 5-somes, you're standing at every tee for 20+ minutes, and its a 6-hour round of golf.

 

- The wz's are insanely poorly executed on our new server stacked against the Reps. I don't know what it is with this game (such as not having voice chat so we can communicate with our Pug teammates as other MMO's provide), but the kills at the end for one daily set after another look like this, and the outcomes to the objectives line up in kind:

 

Imp 23

Imp 28

Imp 21

Imp 38

Imp 25

Imp 22

Imp 28

Imp 25

Rep 5

Rep 2

Rep 3

Rep 0

Rep 4

Rep 3

Rep 2

Rep 5

 

This is supposed to be enjoyable? No, Bioware, it's not.

 

- The game is turning into an enormous and never-ending grind. We can't get to War Hero gear without endless days of endless wz's, particularly when they're mostly losses. At the same time we're supposed to grind endless days of dailies on Correlia and Ilum, etc. At the same time we're supposed to do Flashpoints and Ops. We have to do all of that endlessly to grind gear progression.

 

AND THEN TO ADD INSULT TO INJURY AS THEY MAKE US GRIND THE ENDLESS GRIND, THE TELL US THAT ALL OF OUR GEAR WILL SOON BE POINTLESS BY ANNOUNCING A LEVEL CAP INCREASE ALREADY.

 

Bioware, this is not a career. This is an MMO. We should be able to enjoy endgame without it being a career and putting in 80 hours a week to get geared up for wz's and get geared up for tough endgame. Who are you designing this for that you think we have 80 hours a week, and for what payoff? To lose it all and start another grind to level 60?

 

You guys have lost the plot. My family is done. My next step from posting this is to cancel 4 accounts. Watch me, and validate it, because here it comes...

Edited June 20, 2012 by Verdan

[RendakFel]

OP: Very well structured, let´s hope BW takes a look at this!

 

/signed

[MajikMyst]

So you want Bioware to help us sell our guilds for the purpose of recruiting, but I didn't see anything mentioned in the way of functionality..

 

Guilds need calanders.. To schedule Ops and other events..

 

We need a simply ready check to make sure everyone in group is accounted for and well.. Ready..

 

We need a guild log of when a person joined and when someone leaves..

 

We don't need voice chat in this game.. Try ventrilo or teamspeak or something..

 

I commend your effort on your post.. I just didn't see much that I actually agreed with.. Sorry..

[TheBigUnit]

I've had enough, this game is not fun. Here's the latest, all with zero satisfaction from Bioware:

 

 

Unfortunately I agree with you here. It really is a tragedy of Darth Vader proportions what Bioware has turned into after being acquired by EA. They used to value player feedback and deliver deep, quality games.

 

Now with their EA overlords, they almost completely ignore any constructive player feedback, and treat their player base as just one big cash machine.

 

After seeing what they've done with Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 3 and now this game, I'm done with Bioware unless they throw their evil EA overlords into a Death Star reactor, which won't be happening any time soon.

[Verdan]

So you want Bioware to help us sell our guilds for the purpose of recruiting, but I didn't see anything mentioned in the way of functionality..

 

Guilds need calanders.. To schedule Ops and other events..

 

We need a simply ready check to make sure everyone in group is accounted for and well.. Ready..

 

We need a guild log of when a person joined and when someone leaves..

 

We don't need voice chat in this game.. Try ventrilo or teamspeak or something..

 

I commend your effort on your post.. I just didn't see much that I actually agreed with.. Sorry..

 

I'm actually surprised by the consensus of support regarding the thread's material. Don't see that very often. It's clear by responses that some took the time to read and consider. Now to your reply.

 

Of all the material, you seem to zoom in on Voice and Guilds.

 

Voice is an easy one. While you didn't offer any rationale regarding why it isn't needed, clearly 2 decades of team based gaming evolution going back to CounterStrike and Quake among others, and any knowledge of squad or teamwork, would speak (pardon the pun) to the need for voice coms for a team to be effective in group content. Given that 100% of current (and future non-ranked) war zones and ____% of current and future warzones, Flashpoints, and ops are non-guild Pugs, voice chat is absolutely needed to enable teamwork. It's a no brainer.

 

Regarding Guilds, I did offer the example of Yelp, or similarly TripAdvisor, where in-game guild member's association with a guild can be linked to the MMO website, and utilize a rating/feedback system. I didn't get specific because there's an infinit number of ways, policies, and objectives that the developer and community can take to build the solution, and it doesn't need to be solved on the forums. Only stating the need, and the impact to players from the lack of addressing the need.

 

But, for sake of argument, let's take a stab at it. Suppose the MMO developer offers a list of 20 optional guild charter topics as a guild leadership toolbox, and guild leaders can select a drop down list of characteristics that describe the objectives or themes of each of these 20 dimensions. They can answer all of them, some of them, or none of them, but discerning players will exercise caveat emptor.

 

Example:

 

Charter Objective #12 - How We Make Decisions

A: We are a benevolent dictatorship. Leaders make proactive decisions for quick action and progress.

B: We pass Hot Topics by the community for input before leaders make a decision.

C: We pass all decision points by the community for input before leaders make a decision.

D: We are a democracy and a community, if there's a decision to be made, we discuss it and we vote on it.

E: We are flexible, it is a combination of styles depending on the topic and importance.

 

Optional Comment by Guild Leadership for Objective #12: "xxxxxxxxxxxxx".

 

When all 20 have been optionally selected by leaders, all registered members of that guild can go to the website and rate each of the active and applicable dimensions (up to the 20 total) and rank them on how effective they are being applied, on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is Poorly, 3 is Fairly, 5 is Effectively and Consistently.

 

Each month, the system tallies the ranking from registered members and publishes them next to the Guild Seach Tool listing for that Guild.

 

Objective #3: Guild Meetings

We Don't Need Guild Meetings

Members Reponding: 60%

Avg. Rating: 1.5

6 Months Avg. Ratings: 1.8

 

Objective #12: How We Make Decisions

We are a benevolent dictatorship. Leaders make proactive decisions for quick action and progress.

Members Reponding: 70%

Avg. Rating: 1.4

6 Month's Avg. Rating: 1.1

 

Finally, that players can search for Guilds with certain dimensions of charter and minimum ratings selected.

 

The above makes for more thoughtfulness and tools benefitting guild leaders and players, and a means of sustaining community and leadership effectiveness by aligning intent with feedback in an ongoing feedback loop. It helps players find better fits, more defined fits, with more effective communities - an almost impossible task now.

 

I hope someday some MMO deploys such a valuable tool, it would raise the bar 400% on an MMO's player's satisfaction. Frankly, guild dissatisfaction played a role in my decision to throw in the towel on TOR and cancel my subscriptions yesterday, for the additional reasons posted yesterday in the prior page post. That guild dissatisfaction contributed should not be a surprise to any MMO player who understands these guild soup issues.

 

Finally, after it's up and running, the great Bioware (or other MMO devs) who tout their great ability to crunch stats of behavior and activity, can play back to the community over time some meaningful stats, such as, "those guilds whose members respond more favorably are those whose charters selected the following characteristics," or "those guilds who selected the following charter options reported the least satisfied members".

Edited June 20, 2012 by Verdan

[Benets]

It could be that they are listening but just not informing us that they are working on some of the issues you spoke about.

 

The Warzones do need a good overhaul and perhaps an entire rethink on how to do PVP for SWTOR is needed.

 

We need things like:

 

1. CTF maps, yes more than one.

2. More Huttball maps, in the current Huttball map sorcerers can shine with the pull friendly ability, maybe other maps could allow other classes to shine. This would make it a lot more fun as well, endless Huttball map possibilities exist.

3. Take and Hold (T&H) maps that do not feel dull, flying in on the speeders is a fun idea the first time a player experiences it but it soon gets irritating. 3 capture points in T&H doesn't seem to be enough.

4. Warzones which focus on killing enemy players and no other objective to achieve victory.

5. Speed, running around while stuck in combat is just too slow.

6. PVP designed in a way to encourage the losing side to continue participating.

 

Should have diferent kind of pvp, wz do not seems real, seems like a game, a sport, not a warzone, a fight in a galaxy war, should have more open pvp, but for that it need to be attractive, have means.

 

Ilum should be re-desinged to become a organic full scale battle with importance. I had some ideas long time ago how Ilum should be. -> My ilum Map

 

And it could have open pvp worlds, without law like outlaw den, with bases your guild could dominate. Base sieges, like Lineage 2. And it could have worlds to pvp, whree your faction need to conquer maps, to liberate the maps, with benefit specifi ofr each map, a crystal that only have in that map, a operation, and you cant go there skip and conquer, need to gain each map, alow you to go to next frontier map. Begining with the space port map, imagine you need to first battle for the space port and open a breach in the world.

[Verdan]

Added Section IX, Gear Grinding Does Not Equal Successful Endgame.

 

I'd also add that Bioware needs to get off their high horse and abandon arrogance, and start engaging their customers MUCH more, MUCH better. To not respond to major themes and players who take alot of time to state issues on these themes, falls significantly short of good service, leadership, relationship or business development, or communication. While somehow, though, they find time to respond at least 3 times to a thread called "props to Bioware". Truly absurd.

 

Parsecs off from being effective in engaging their player community.

[Verdan]

Made some refinements and updates to present state/issues.

[Verdan]

Added additional Suggestion in Legacy / Surname section - regarding recent sever transfers and related player impacts, diligence, and outcomes.

[Vemtaz]

There are a lot of great points in the original post, but I have to take exception to the "slow leveling alts" thing. That's just ludicrous.

 

Leveling in this game.. main or alts, is painfully easy. It's too easy. Especially if you have higher level characters doing crew skills to support new alts.

 

I've play a lot of MMO's since I started with the original EQ 13 years ago. This is the first game I've ever had a character at max level (50), and I now have FOUR OF THEM!.

 

LEVELING IS TOO FREAKING EASY IN THIS GAME!

[Talon_strikes]

There are a lot of great points in the original post, but I have to take exception to the "slow leveling alts" thing. That's just ludicrous.

 

Leveling in this game.. main or alts, is painfully easy. It's too easy. Especially if you have higher level characters doing crew skills to support new alts.

 

I've play a lot of MMO's since I started with the original EQ 13 years ago. This is the first game I've ever had a character at max level (50), and I now have FOUR OF THEM!.

 

LEVELING IS TOO FREAKING EASY IN THIS GAME!

I couldn't agree more...

[VraelOplo]

I had my name taken. I am still pissed, and frankley - if Bio-Lucas did not get over-zealous and make too many servers - I would still happily have my name.

 

Stupid move.

[Verdan]

I had my name taken. I am still pissed, and frankley - if Bio-Lucas did not get over-zealous and make too many servers - I would still happily have my name.

 

Stupid move.

 

And I'm leveling my other factions alts on a different server I'm stuck on, because now that it matters (Legacy, trade), I can't transfer them or benefit from them to the server where my mains are, and play with my guild.

[Verdan]

Updated some issues to account for update 1.3, which were hardly noticeable to the list.

[TheronFett]

Take heed of this thread, BioWare.

 

Hands down, the OP has constructed the most well thought out and constructive posts on the boards. It addresses the concerns of a broad spectrum of players, even if they are unable to articulate those issues themselves.

 

This should be a sticky.

[The_Duck]

the client / server synch issue is a PITA.

Operations fights have been driving us crazy sometimes because positioning is important (stormcaller/firebrand) and we've had to actually try totally different strategies because 1 player thinks he is in the CORRECT position, but the server doesn't. Also, everyone in the raid sees a totally different location of the player.

 

You summed it up very nicely and described the exact issue our raid was having.

 

I won't even begin talking about how this probably affected the SoA fight that everyone had been complaining about. No wonder the lightning balls were killing people. They thought they were in a safe position and turns out they were not.

[Spectus]

A very well-written post, with lots of food for thought for the devs. Clearly not written for forum trolls with the attention span of a firecracker fuse -- which is just as well. It's written for the DEVS' benefit. Hopefully they will see it and give it the consideration it deserves. Kudos to the OP as well for breaking it up with clear subheadings.

[Verdan]

Thanks for the continued support, folks. Cleaned it up to be more concise. Added a couple notes to existing elements as suggested by PM's. Thanks for the contributions which fit and make sense.

[Verdan]

Bit of an update:

 

Seems more heads are rolling at Bioware again, and one more I can think of who's responsible for where we are today and was prominent in videos touting all that about superior (sacred cows) design. Still, while that's all unfortunate, not my monkey to bear, and given the points of the OP, the arrogance that has led to alot of dissatisfied and defecting subscribers, we're not out of the woods as developer or customer, both. Not by a long shot.

 

- Things as fundamental to MMO's as the surname issues/disconnects in Section II of the OP. How do we miss that one so far off the mark?

 

- I've recently been playing another alt, as I'm completely frustrated by endgame (5th Alt), and Section IV topic of companions, affection, and dialogue triggers is still completely a mess. Bounty Hunter, get a companion quest at level 24, while the quest is level 30? I figure that I won't see any more dialogues with Mako until that quest is done, and after days of playing and leveling, none do trigger. So, I go and do the quest well before level 30, and turns out there's no combat, so I get it done. I keep leveling, and getting more and more affection, and have made considerable progress towards capping affection, and nothing is being triggered. I just know that at some point like it happened before on another class, that a level will trigger all the "catch up" on dialogues and they're all going to barf up on me at one time, when I don't need any more affection (so will be wasted), and when the XP award will be minimal. Still broken. Still a big miss on the rare enjoyment from rare dialgues with crew that I'm not getting throughout the leveling experience. Hardly any, then barf em all up at one time, then hardly any more. Broken.

 

These things are all not game-breakers alone, but man oh man, do they all add up.

 

However ...

 

... stepping back, I came to another conclusion. I had originally cancelled 4 subscriptions for myself and the wife and kid - the latter who were playing only to please me - because I was fed up with the arrogance and disconnects plaguing the game. Instead of playing two accounts myself, I kept playing one of them until the time ran out on the cancelled subscription, then was planning to walk away, as I had from SWG, from DDO, from STO, from LOTRO. Goodbye.

 

Then I realized a couple things. I was deceived ... by my own jedi mind tricks ... on myself:

 

1) I remembered how much I wanted to play another SW MMO, and how much fun it is to play one. It may not be worth 2 or 4 accounts, but I think it is worth 1 account while they get their house in order and see where development takes it - we're still in Year 1 of the life of the game.

 

2) I remembered how annoyed I was with waiting for the game and thinking month after long month, "no, it doesn't need to be perfect for me to play it, I want to play it NOW in whatever stage of development its in." ... Well, here I am playing a somewhat broken MMO from many fundamental standpoints, suffering some development leaders' sacred cows and silliness of design decisions, and I do completely the opposite of what I wanted to do, by canceling a game that wasn't ready. Oops, bad on me. So, I decided that for now, I'll continue with one subscription, the other three are cancelled. Let's give them some time to clean up the arrogance, the sacred cows, and start to refine a solid MMO.

 

Let's hope.

Edited July 24, 2012 by Verdan

[Verdan]

Another example of broken client(s)-server sync where everyone sees things in different locations (section VIII of OP):

 

I tried to take a screenshot of this, but apparently screenshot isn't working anymore?!?

 

I killed this mob in normal leveling, explosion makes it go flying as it is defeated. It has a quest item I need to loot from it, so it's got the bold golden beam shooting straight up in the air over the body. I walk up and click on it to loot it. Message on screen says, "Out of range, move closer."

 

I'm right on top of the body!!! I'm sure this has happened to all of you. At this point, I tried taking a screenshot with the "out of range" message flashing while I'm standing right on it, no good.

 

I move all around the body in circle, 5 feet out in every direction, keep trying to loot... "Out of range, move closer,"

 

10 feet out in every direction ... "Out of range, move closer."

 

20 feet out in every direction ... "Out of range, move closer."

 

***?!? I'm saying to myself. I need to loot the quest item from the body!

 

I'm standing there, finally try logging out and back in to see if the perspectives/locations are reset.

 

Log back in, and voila, the body with the golden "loot me" beam is still there, but not even close to where it was when I logged out. It was just about at the very possible edge of "ranged attack" tolerance, lying on top of a boulder. I would never have thought to look that far away. Imagine the impact/chaos of this effect on PvP or raids.

Edited July 26, 2012 by Verdan

[DarthCDiv]

/agree /wrist /thread.

[Talon_strikes]

What's also holding SWTOR back is this frame of mind from the devs:

 

(article on Daniel Erickson on digitaltrends.com)

 

“What we always say is, before the game came out it was our game. As soon as it launched, it became the community’s game,” Erickson added. “The number one request we get with a bullet [in terms of] what people want more of, is story. They just want their story to keep going. They want to see more of The Old Republic, they want to see how the galaxy is developing, and they want to do it with their prime characters.”

 

If they think all they need to do is add more of this story element, players will just burn through the content and return doing dailies again. They'll be extremely bored, tell off BioWare that you're releasing too little content or releasing it at such a slow pace, and possibly unsubscribe.

 

It'll be an endless cycle because BioWare thinks an MMO can survive with a majority of it being a themepark, story-based MMO.