1.3 Darth Hater article

[nivalis]

"In 1.3, we will be releasing some new Legacy Perks. These are per-character unlocks, that allow you to better customize your play experience for different characters. They will have a credit cost, but because they are per-character, they will tend to be much lower than the legacy unlocks"

 

there are still full legacy costs that are cheaper, where do they expect us to come up with all these credits on low lvl characters, we will either have to farm credits on mains to fund unlocks on alts that we actually want to play which become useless when they reach max lvl, i think they should add something like increased commendation drops to the exp unlocks to make them still useful endgame, im not saying loads just something like you get 1-3 extra commendations on completion if you have the perk, or extra valor gain etc

 

some of these don't make much sense, legacy speeder unlocks, cool but this completely devalues a purchase of jet boosts which are basically a 30 sec speeder, same with ship mailbox, why buy it when you can pop a mailbox anywhere in the world...the only reason i can think to make things character specific is credit sink, but then half of them become worthless as you'll probably stick to one leveling method you've upgraded on that character or be unable to afford them till endgame, further leveling bonuses decrease in value as you increase in level, i don't think ive ever had anything like 100k prior to lvl 30 + and that was with slicing and having gotten some upgrades with my mains credits

 

x server is tricky, they are right to be wary as taking the wow example: people were ***** > no way to combat this, you just lost out> more people became ***** so they were at least on a level playing field > experience became terrible due to number of people gaming the system etc. so they have to be careful and have systems in place so A. gaming the system is hard/impossible and B. bad behaviour is discouraged, ie people needing everything regardless of if it can even be used by them.

 

personally im fine with a hidden gear check to be sure people can actually clear the content, when it becomes open tho is where the problems start, you get people setting their own requirements higher than the recommended because they want an easy run etc etc

[GalacticKegger]

Wait wait wait. A cross server LFG is still a "significant technological achievement"? Are you serious? So you mean to tell me that a mmo that is 8 years older than swtor is more "technologically advanced"? Christ BW you fail bro. You fail so fracking hard right now.

Woah woah woah there Cochise ... not quite. WoW's x-server LFG didn't happen until Patch 3.3.0: Fall of the Lich King in December of 2009. So it's more like 2½ years, though it probably feels like 8. I suppose it would be somewhat quicker for developers to implement other game's features if those other game's developers donated their code.

 

Now there's a thought ... One unified MMO engine! Shared libraries where nothing is proprietary! Parallel and real-time collaborative multi-house software development! That'll fix everything! (unless Microsoft is driving it of course.)

Edited May 23, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[WoodChipper]

They completely ignored the question regarding if the vendors would come back

[GalacticKegger]

They completely ignored the question regarding if the vendors would come back

Maybe this will be like most every other MMO where it's a periodic event and quest items will carry over? Edited May 23, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[Mallorik]

Really? You guys really think not having cross server lfg is going to kill the game? Having 124 servers is going to kill the game before lack of cross server lfg. fix the server pop issues then worry about cross server.

 

*WHOOOOOOSH*

 

I think somebody put their stupid hat on this morning.

 

Unfortunately there are people that just dont get this on both sides of the isle.

 

so ill try to clear it up.

 

WE DONT TALK ABOUT SERVER MERGERS BECAUSE WE KNOW THEY ARE COMING BEFORE 1.3

 

I see people who are for x server lfg say that we need x server because servers are too empty

Then theres the anti x server people whos say "we dont need x-server just transfers"

 

Most people who are pro cross server and actualy know what they are talking about do not think a same server tool will work even with server transfers or mergers, because they have been tried serveral times already and have never worked in any mmo and swtor has even more reasons (that i wont go into) that make a same server lfg tool more likely to fail.

Edited May 23, 2012 by Mallorik

[Kubernetic]

Cross server is a bad idea. It will make the in-game community as negative as this thread. They will be offering server transfers so move to the fatman. If this game is so horrible why do people come here and spend so much time complaining in a forum for a game they don't enjoy playing?

 

Dirty little secret. They "hate this game", and "this game is a failure", but the only problem is, they can't find another game to play that they like either.

 

My favorite part is how people keep chiming in and trashing any new updates they're doing to the game with the same ol' "Hey what about Server Transfers?" junk, as if nothing has ever been said about this. Amazing stuff.

[Kubernetic]

Wait wait wait. A cross server LFG is still a "significant technological achievement"? Are you serious? So you mean to tell me that a mmo that is 8 years older than swtor is more "technologically advanced"? Christ BW you fail bro. You fail so fracking hard right now.

 

I'd love to hear about your experience with creating cross-server interactions in games across multiple servers. Do tell! What kind of game was it? How many people were playing it? What were the technical challenges that you ran into while creating your own cross-server technology?

 

Maybe your tips and tricks will be helpful to the SWTOR developers. Who knows? Maybe you can break some of their roadblocks with your expertise.

[Musclemary]

Dirty little secret. They "hate this game", and "this game is a failure", but the only problem is, they can't find another game to play that they like either.

 

My favorite part is how people keep chiming in and trashing any new updates they're doing to the game with the same ol' "Hey what about Server Transfers?" junk, as if nothing has ever been said about this. Amazing stuff.

 

There are some people who are no doubt classic trolls. There are also whiners who no matter whatever BW does, will not be happy. However, there are some people that genuinally love the game and see it's huge potential and just want that to be realised

[GalacticKegger]

Dirty little secret. They "hate this game", and "this game is a failure", but the only problem is, they can't find another game to play that they like either.

 

My favorite part is how people keep chiming in and trashing any new updates they're doing to the game with the same ol' "Hey what about Server Transfers?" junk, as if nothing has ever been said about this. Amazing stuff.

Hehe. Once character transfers do get here they'll probably go into brain lock from having so many server choices and start flaming Bioware for not making their minds up for them. Oh wait, that would be server merges. I'm not sure even they know what they want.

[Mallorik]

I'd love to hear about your experience with creating cross-server interactions in games across multiple servers. Do tell! What kind of game was it? How many people were playing it? What were the technical challenges that you ran into while creating your own cross-server technology?

 

Maybe your tips and tricks will be helpful to the SWTOR developers. Who knows? Maybe you can break some of their roadblocks with your expertise.

 

Yeah! its not like a tiny game company with a fraction of the money that bioware sunk into swtor made a great cross sevrer tool 6 months after release...oops.

 

Maybe bioware will be faster when they admit they actualy need it.

[turjake]

"At the launch of this feature (Game Update 1.3), we will not be doing cross-server flashpoints. There are a couple of reasons – first off, it’s a significant technical achievement, and we felt that pursuing it would not allow us to get the feature to you guys as quickly as it needs to happen. Secondly, most of the design team thinks that it’s not necessarily good for the community. When the odds are very low that you will never group with another player again, there is very little social pressure to not be a complete jerk to that person, which is not a particularly positive game experience. We may revisit this decision in the future if our metrics show that flashpoint queues are not firing enough, but in general, queue firing should be more about distribution of key roles (tank, healer, DPS) than about overall population."-------Damion Schubert, Lead Systems Designer

 

Argh, so first they will gather some data for 3 months, then they will notice that the empty servers are too empty for this to work and they will start planning the cross server version. So maybe in a 6 months you may see that stupid tool, and by then the empty servers will be at the point of no resurrection.

 

If they want to protect people from other players, they should have developed a single player game instead. It is impossible to totally protect players from badly behaving idiots and this so called community doesnt have the tools to effectively deal with them anyway.

[Mallorik]

Hehe. Once character transfers do get here they'll probably go into brain lock from having so many server choices and start flaming Bioware for not making their minds up for them. Oh wait, that would be server merges. I'm not sure even they know what they want.

 

Or heres a novel idea, we will be able to actualy play the game again. when that happens....

[GalacticKegger]

Yeah! its not like a tiny game company with a fraction of the money that bioware sunk into swtor made a great cross sevrer tool 6 months after release...oops.

 

Maybe bioware will be faster when they admit they actualy need it.

I remember a 600lb. gorilla developer that supposedly invented the thing and it took them 5½ years after release to implement it. Want is such a four letter word. Edited May 23, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[Mallorik]

I remember a 600lb. gorilla developer that supposedly invented the thing and it took them 5½ years after release to implement it.

 

And you think wow thought it up at release and it took them 5 1/2 years to implement it? lol

 

So you remember wow? i remember Rift. they both have something swtor doesnt have, devs that know a modern mmo needs a x server lfg tool.

Edited May 23, 2012 by Mallorik

[GalacticKegger]

And you think wow thought it up at release and it took them 5 1/2 years to implement it? lol

 

So you remember wow? i remember Rift. they both have something swtor doesnt have, devs that know a modern mmo needs a x server lfg tool.

Had you read previous pages you would find that I am not against a x-server LFG tool. What I am debating against is the "magic wand" theory of software development that assumes any feature imaginable can appear overnight simply because someone else already has it.

 

[edit] WoW's x-server LFG tool didn't come out until the LK patch. That's what benchmarked my 5½ year reference.

Edited May 23, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[Sonicxsped]

Cross server is a bad idea. It will make the in-game community as negative as this thread. They will be offering server transfers so move to the fatman. If this game is so horrible why do people come here and spend so much time complaining in a forum for a game they don't enjoy playing?

 

I wonder about this too. Haters gonna hate though.

[Mallorik]

Had you read previous pages you would find that I am not against a x-server LFG tool. What I am debating against is the "magic wand" theory of software development that assumes any feature imaginable can appear overnight because someone else already has it.

 

I dont assume that they can make it appear because someone already has it, its just worrysome that a small compnay with a fraction of biowares money can do it faster than bioware can and a year earlier.

[Elgarr]

Secondly, most of the design team thinks that it’s not necessarily good for the community.

 

Lol and that's why swtor is in its Tortanic shape at the moment and they are having to lay people off.

 

Why are they listening to the same idiots who created1.2 and set the ships course directly for that huge iceberg.

[GalacticKegger]

I dont assume that they can make it appear because someone already has it, its just worrysome that a small compnay with a fraction of biowares money can do it faster than bioware can and a year earlier.

I'm not so sure it isn't a question of development capabaility as opposed to planning. During beta it was clearly stated that a LFG tool beyond the rudimentary design they already had wasn't a top priority. Pops were big and it was obvious the machine didn't need much help save for ability delay issues. What messed that up was adding 72 new servers at launch because a few impatient and really loud voices spammed it as a need in early access. I wouldn't be surpised if this situation didn't put SR on notice.

 

So here we are today with too many servers. No good deed goes unpunished, and now BW is having to develop in months what other MMOs took years to plan for when they first sat down to storyboard. BW probably already had a conceptual flow diagram of what one would look like for future inclusion. But the game changed almost overnight and they are now forced to adapt ... quickly.

 

If I have any grudge it is with the the mob that screamed for servers because they wanted zero defects, zero wait time, zero inconvenience of any kind for an MMO launch. This is their fault, not ours and not Bioware's - unless one counts listening to the community a fault. Most of them are gone, I'm sure laughing in their rear view mirrors. Such is the state of gaming today I suppose.

Edited May 23, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[wezley]

"We are continuing to make good progress on the Ranked Warzone feature, with refinements based on our internal testing and the feedback we got on PTS last time around. For example, one of the things that we’ve added is the ability to queue for both Normal and Ranked Warzones at the same time, so players who are waiting for a Ranked game can also continue to play in normal games. When a Ranked game has enough players to launch, it will wait until everyone is finished playing their current Normal game, so Warzones don’t randomly empty out as Ranked games are launched."

 

Lol am i the only one that sees this as being silly, the que will wait for everyone to leave a current WZ, while those who wait join another WZ.. seems they just cannot get this RBG stuff right

[Dezzi]

I'm not so sure it's a question of development capabaility as opposed to planning. During beta it was clearly stated that a LFG tool beyond the rudimentary design they already had wasn't a top priority. What messed that up was adding 72 new servers at launch because a few really loud voices spammed it as a need.

 

So here we are with too many servers. No good deed goes unpunished, and now BW is having to develop in months what other MMOs took years to plan for when they first sat down to storyboard. They probably already had a conceptual flow diagram of what one would look like for future inclusion. But the game changed almost overnight and they are adapting.

 

If I have any grudge it is with the the mob that screamed for servers because they wanted zero defects, zero wait time, zero inconvenience of any kind for an MMO launch. This is their fault, not ours and not Bioware's. Most of them are gone, I'm sure laughing in their rear view mirrors. Such is the state of gaming today I suppose.

 

It most certainly is BioWare's fault for "caving" to the mob.

 

There's an expectation of service when you pay for something and since service in an MMO is defined as nothing more than access to the game, queues can--and should--be taken as a lack of service. The players who cried out for more servers were justified in their frustrations, and it would behoove us to remind ourselves that the decision to open up new servers, and the precise number of them, was BioWare's.

 

The problem I have is that based on their own statements, BioWare was well aware of MMO population trends and anticipated the drop-off, but had no working plan ready to deal with the problem. Why? They knowingly opened up too many servers, fully realizing that they had no working design in place for mergers, transfers, or cross-server tools for players. So what is that? Ineptitude? Laziness? Short-sightedness? I hope it's the latter.

 

To recap: BioWare was faced with a population explosion at launch (predicted); with queue times in excess of two hours, players called out for more servers to lighten the load; BioWare's knee-jerk reaction was to open up many new servers despite knowing they had no plan in place to deal with the inevitable and predicted population drop-off; when the drop-off occurred as predicted, BioWare was still somewhere between whiteboard and Q&A on their plan to deal with population declines; finally, despite all of this, BioWare continues to drag its feet (maybe they have no choice) and the game continues to suffer from population woes.

 

I don't see how this is anyone's fault but BioWare's.

[JeramieCrowe]

There's a community? Where is it?

 

There's a good community on The Ebon Hawk, #16 on TORstatus.

[JeramieCrowe]

I don't see how this is anyone's fault but BioWare's.

 

So when something the community wanted goes wrong, shift all of the blame to BioWare. How is this any different than what EA's trying to do?

Edited May 23, 2012 by JeramieCrowe

[GalacticKegger]

It most certainly is BioWare's fault for "caving" to the mob.

What a great thread topic! Where do developers draw that line? Edited May 23, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[wezley]

What a great thread topic! Where do developers draw that line?

 

LOL I think that one is pretty simple.. A developer should no better, they should plan for the future and what will and will not happen.. if they then choose to ignore those things and do something anyway it is there fault.. Think of a developer as a mother whos child picked up something he wanted, the mother knows if its something the child can or cant have and then if its something little they can have a learn from (learn not to do something).. Bioware should listen to some of the smaller things people ask for and try to implement them, but they shouldnt listen to big things which wil quite obviously ruin the game later on, based on there own expectations