BioWare: Errors and the Future

[Lotius]

TL;DR? Cry more.

 

I have unsubscribed as of the 14th of May. While not uncommon, I did want Bioware to be fully aware of why I decided to leave, why others are leaving, and get as many opinions how on things are being done wrong in the hopes they can correct their errors and still make a fun MMO of The Old Republic. The following are my grievances for where SW:TOR fails heavily, with solutions occassionally offered, and where I feel Bioware's management should be focusing. Take heed and listen, Bioware:

 

Lack of populated servers:

 

First and foremost, the primary reason I am unsubbing is the lack of a semi-decent playerbase on my server. There are too many servers. At launch this server (Iron Citadel) had a queue to log in. Now, the current population has quite often been perhaps 30 at prime time (5pm-10pm) on the fleet. The consequences of a small server population are many. PvP queues are long and frustrating. You end up fighting the same groups of people again and again. If one side is significantly better than the other you have virtually no chance of queue'ing up against a different team where your faction may stand a chance. Endgame PvE content is extremely difficult to find groups for. There are no buyers on the GTN for things you find or craft, and on the flip side there is nobody selling anything worth buying. The server economy grinds to a complete halt. There are several solutions to this problem. The first, quickest and most obvious would be a large clustering/merging of servers. The second would be cross-realm PvP/Flashpoint queue'ing. The last, and best, would be both. The availability of server transfers would help as well, but is far less important than the first two, and I foresee issues arising with character transfers and the way the Legacy system currently works.

 

The Rated WarZone debacle:

 

Being a heavy PvPer pulling Rated Warzones from 1.2 was a huge blow to my confidence in the developers, but I stayed. Initially the accusation was that Bioware misled its playerbase by saying Rated WZ would be available until the last minute. I dismissed this attitude in general as I understand the need to cut features that are not prepared. That patch dropped over a month ago, and still we have very little communication on when Rated Warzones will finally be coming out. Clearly, if over a full month can go by and we still have virtually no word on when it will be ready it is very logical to assume Bioware knew long in advance that Rated WZ wasn't close to being ready for the 1.2 patch and thus I am likely to now agree Bioware misled its customers. If this is not the case Bioware needs to lay it bare to the remaining playerbase exactly what wasn't ready and why.

 

Cross-Realm systems and twisted priorities:

 

Although server mergers could tide players over for a while, ultimately a cross-realm PvP/Flashpoint system would need to be implemented. It is important that this is implemented before things like Rated WZ are put in place. If you are working on Rated WZ and plan to implement them before a cross-realm queue'ing system (or the large server merger) you are focusing on the wrong things first. If you're the developers you should be stressing this hardest to your managers. If you're managers and you disagree, you should consider quitting your job. Giving your players access to other players should be your top priority.

 

These are the Big Three in my opinion. They should be the top things your team is focusing on before more content is added, Legacy features enhanced, UI customization, etc etc is implemented.

 

Now on to some of the smaller stuff that adds fuel to the fire:

 

Discouraging Community:

 

There are several things BioWare does 100% wrong in this regard. One of the first things BioWare does with sickening frequency is the locking or deletion of forum threads. The forums are the place where players typically go to talk to other players, gloat about PvP matches, try to recruit for their guilds, discuss things they dislike about the game, or just babble on. All of these things help encourage the players to interact with eachother, get to know eachother, and thus build the community as a whole. In addition to this the forum setup is atrocious. Forums are clustered together with multiple servers, and near launch you'd have to scroll through multiple pages trying to pick out threads from your server. It isn't so much of a problem now, but that's because nobody goes to them and their silly, horrible setup anymore. Besides why go to them when your thread would likely be locked or deleted anyway? This practice has been so bad by BioWare that a thread was posted on our server forums about how bad it was. Many other players agreed they disliked seeing the community being severed in this way until.. the thread was locked and deleted by BioWare. Irony, or just sad? You decide.

 

Next, there is no Looking for Group system in place. Instead of providing an easy way for players to assemble for groups one is forced to stand around in Fleet spamming obnoxious messages and hope enough other players are available to respond/see the message. As stated above, if you're working on a Looking for Group system before you implement server mergers or some type of cross-realm system you are absolutely working on the wrong problem first. Please hire new management or tell your bosses why they are wrong. This makes grouping for Flashpoints irritating, and cuts the sense of community that easily grouping with other players brings.

 

Next, Ranked WarZones will additionally help enhance community and bring players (especially hardcore players) together.

 

Last, there is no modding in the game. One of the great things about That Other MMO (you know which one) was its very vibrant modding community. Millions of players can offer up all kinds of exciting solutions that developers often don't. Collaborative customization to games enables a huge community to flourish as well as enhancing your customers gameplay experience. Mods from That Other MMO allowed players to really get involved with customizing and maximizing their characters performance, which leads in to my next section:

 

Features Sorely Lacking and Bugs:

 

Number one on this list has to be a lack of an in-game combat log. The recent addition (logging to file) was an extremely poor choice. In-game all one gets is a list of killing blows? Additionally, there is no scrolling combat text or anything that lets players clearly see who they are damaging/healing and for how much unless they are staring directly at the character they are damaging or healing. This feature lets players really work on fine-tuning their characters and talents, and exchange information/numbers/ideas etc with eachother (further enchancing community, eeeee!!)

 

Next would be a lack of dual (or more) talent specs. Not much to say here, and I can't imagine it being overly difficult to implement.

 

Something else I've found particularly obnoxious about ToR has been the laggy chat client. This is our main method of communication to other players. Something fairly important in an MMO. In early Ilum this was quite an issue, and I've even recently had problems with it in hot spots of WarZones. I can often type and press enter fast enough to cut entire words, or at least several letters, from the ends of my messages. Why is ToR's chat client so slow? This was also an issue in Ilum when mission objectives were being displayed on screen. If you killed an opponent (or several) each time the mission progress was updating on screen there'd be a huge glitch/pause/lag in the game. How on Earth could BioWare let something as simple as displaying text to the screen glitch their game so badly?

 

Recently other random bugs have popped up I find incredibly irritating. For instance, on the GTN one now has to set the rarity (the default being Any) to something such as "Cheap" or whatever in order for the search button to become available. Why? What suddenly broke that caused this nuisance (for which I had to google a solution).

 

To this day there are still times when names do not show up in the Ops frame for WarZones. Why hasn't such a minor issue been addressed?

 

Recently a bug has appeared where I frequently get stuck in the starting point of a WarZone after a death and I can't move. My character is laying in his "dead" position and unable to do anything until I'm booted from the match.

 

Animations for my character's actions begin playing, but the actual action doesn't take place until I mash the keys/mouse-binds a few times. Why?

 

There are of course plenty of other bugs and minor convenience issues that are of legitimate concern. Having to regroup after each WarZone. Schematic descriptions not telling you which ones you already know. The GTN not remembering the prices of items you just added to it so you don't have to fill in the number manually each time. Lack of easily clickable nameplates on characters. Etc. Etc. These are small things, but all these little conveniences add up to a more enjoyable gaming experience.

 

Many of these problems could be addressed by increased communication from Bioware. Lack of response (save for shutting down forum posts) goes a long way towards creating the animosity that you have created.

 

If you forget every other thing I've written at least remember this. These should be your priorities as of right now without question.

 

#1 Server mergers

#2 Cross-realm queue'ing (although server mergers can help push this priority back for a time)

#3 Ranked WarZones

#4 Dungeon Finder/Looking for Group system

 

I'll say it one last time. If you aren't focused on those things and in that exact order and COMMUNICATE that to your players you will lose a lot more subscribers. I'm talking a lot. And fast. What good are Ranked WZ or a Dungeon Finder when there are so few people on your server to use them?

 

If you disagree you should likely be fired or replaced. Possibly even by me.

 

I'm just sayin'.

 

Goodbye, friends!

 

-Xeph, Iron Citadel

 

P.S. I'm posting this to my server forums, the Community forum, as well as in a private email to BioWare. As the threads will likely be locked by a cheerful moderator I encourage other players to detail their grievances and send them directly to BioWare as well, or comment here as long as its available.

[Mathias_Varr]

I agree whith some of the OPs points, and there are some I disagree with. The one I want to address is his claim that the game lacks a LFG tool. In this he is incorrect. The game launched with one, and it's server global at that.

 

You can tag yourself as Looking for Group, and then set a comment as to what content (Flashpoint, Operation, Heroic, regular questing) you are looking to run. Then anyone who uses /who can see you and the fact you're LFG no matter what planet or instance you are in.

 

The problem with this system (even though it's more flexible than World of Warcrafts Random Dungeon/Raid Finder) is that no one seems to use it. I think that is more on the interface and accessibilty side of things. We're never given a tutorial about how to use it or the /who command, or the two in conjunction. I think with some streamlining and explaination of the system already in place, Bioware can spend less resources and time and give the community what it wants in a unique and flexible form, instead of the way that World of Warcraft did it, which is what I think they're working on giving us.

[Meluna]

Hello there! As there is already have an existing thread dedicated to talking about this topic, we will be closing it. If you'd like to share your thoughts, you'll find the existing discussion here:

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=456294

 

We're going to close this thread and ask that this conversation continue in the existing thread, so we can keep it a little better consolidated. Thank you!