Community Team General Update: May 31st, 2012

[pieteral]

For me a community team management has to add value to the player base and facilitate communication between what lives at the player base and the development team.

 

To give the example of the sound issue were a forum user complain about this issue. The community management answer is to my belief not adding value to the problem raised by the player. It is just providing a neutral answer to close the question.

 

About the sound issue reported all over this forums:

The issue (or issues) did not exist pre v1.2 so this is an regression bug. We are not talking about enhancement requests but about bugs being reported by users and bugs that did not exist prior to v1.2.

 

The majority of users on my server are having this issue and all since v1.2. Everyday people are restarting client on my server to have another hour of playtime without sound issue.

 

Tickets we made get closed. This also is a very annoying procedure from Bioware. In a support environment tickets get closed when the issues are resolved. For Bioware the ticket get closed when somebody has processed the case.

- How we users can eventually know the issue is resolved or not?

- Are we expected to do the Q&A for every patch to check it is solved or not?

- How do we know that when something is mentioned in the release notes as solved it related to my reported issue?

 

You want to improve interaction with community:

1) Don't close cases of bugs if they are not resolved

2) Put bugs that are known issues and not resolved in the Known issues list no matter how long this list will be.

2) Put timeline were possible on issues when they are planned to be resolved.

 

Community manager what do you think about the above suggestions? Do you think it is fair? Do you think you can help us with the above?

Edited June 4, 2012 by pieteral

[JohanGill]

I like the feel of trying to connect to the community ,

But a lot of effort could be saved by actually doing this rather than talking about it .

 

One in game customer service LIVE response to a player having difficulties ,would actually make me feel interacted with and possibly helped .

 

I have been contacted twice live regarding a problem, I guess YMMV.

[Kthx]

It's amazing that they didn't plan this ahead of time. Almost all MMO's have transfers available now.

 

At lauch?

 

There is a difference between:

 

1. "Almost ALL MMOs planned ahead for transfers and had them available at launch."

 

2. "Almost all MMOs introduced server transfers some time after launch."

 

SWTOR will have server transfers in ~6 months after launch. How does that compare with "almost all MMOs"?

[IasonEvan]

I am in a small but very active guild so the game never feels dead to me. Are the smaller servers not making guilds for everyone who is still active? Are the smaller servers down to 10 people per server? Part of me doesn't understand as my guild mates(friends in RL) were playing this more as a multiplayer sequel to KOTOR and it has delivered in spades on that front. Fill me in on why people on smaller servers can;t just make a big guild. Thanks.

[Roalmo]

I am in a small but very active guild so the game never feels dead to me. Are the smaller servers not making guilds for everyone who is still active? Are the smaller servers down to 10 people per server? Part of me doesn't understand as my guild mates(friends in RL) were playing this more as a multiplayer sequel to KOTOR and it has delivered in spades on that front. Fill me in on why people on smaller servers can;t just make a big guild. Thanks.

 

Balmorra- population 1=me

Fleet population 1=me

Coruscant population 1=me

back to fleet population 2!!!!

back to Balmorra population amazing!!! =4 ---hey we can form a guild! or not...down to 3 now....

 

thank you for your suggestion..... but large guild looks like.. well not likely.

[Illyean]

great, thanks for the introduction, now if you could be so good as to go and find out answers to the burning issues the playing and paying community are faced with and get some positive and definitive information posted, no one has any time left for vague, ambiguous, contradictory or downright incorrect stories about how something is being worked on and there may be more news soon.

[oredith]

Fill me in on why people on smaller servers can;t just make a big guild. Thanks.

big guilds = big politics.

 

it may work for some, but not others. some guilds (like mine) resist structure. we do not recruit, because not everyone would fit in, but we have our own niche group of people who like that type of thing.

[Blondesolid]

All I know is that if it's not out by the time my sub is about to run out, I'm not going to renew, and will be time to move on. No hate, no threats, just sayin Paying to do dailies and a couple ques a week just seems insane to me.

[overunitee]

I have been contacted twice live regarding a problem, I guess YMMV.

 

I myself have been contacted once since January LIVE .

 

Did you note if you were contacted during the invite a friend period which is when they advertised they would provide this quality of service temporarily during the course of the event ,presumably to make people trying the game believe this is the level of support you get once they purchase and subscribe to the game .

 

I read your signature and would like to ask .Do you not question the reason the game was expanded to lots of other countries so quickly after launch while knowing full well the game had lots of issues,knowing ilum got erased ,rank warzones not implemented, fps ,disconnects ,sound, class quests you can't finish, nodes you cant farm etc etc .?

Then shortly after lay off what is possibly 50% of the SWTOR staff including the main face of community representation Steven Reid ,there will never be published how many sub contracters got binned ,I didn't agree with mexican cutomer services but its likely they all went too .

 

Can I suggest one senario .

Internally they could see mass unsubbing and from the exit polls concluded they needed to sell the maximum boxes possible as they could see that lots of players were not renewing subscription .So the maximum financial gain would be from box sales and possible to a lesser extent the first paid month .

 

Do you think getting players to resub with the promise of ranked warzones then pulling it out at the last possible moment was a calculated move to squeeze another months subs or as reported a decision that it was not quite ready ,given that nearly 2 months later they say they have just got the main part of it finished and in a couple of weeks more they will start testing it .

Is it possible that it takes 3 months to implement a feature that was not quite ready .?

 

I personally do not believe its anything t do with the creative team but I do feel strongly that the bankers behind the scenes played a major role .

 

Could this treatment of EA customers be anything to do with the award for worst company of 2011 or why the shares dropped from 60p to 16p .

I will let you think about this for yourself .

If you feel like proving any of the above to be incorrect then use google and post your finding .

[JeramieCrowe]

I have been contacted twice live regarding a problem, I guess YMMV.

 

I've been contacted live three times, one of them just yesterday.

[Simil]

You're definitely entitled to your own opinion, and obviously game updates are incredibly important to all of us, but please note that we are the community team and not the development team. This blog post was meant to address the community team and new changes. We'll have more information for you regarding the game itself when we are able to share.

 

Since he is a paying customer, you are entitled to his own opinion too.

[Simil]

And what happened to that fella that was reprimanded for "advertising" pvp on tattooine?

[theladyems]

 

Tickets we made get closed. This also is a very annoying procedure from Bioware. In a support environment tickets get closed when the issues are resolved. For Bioware the ticket get closed when somebody has processed the case.

- How we users can eventually know the issue is resolved or not?

- Are we expected to do the Q&A for every patch to check it is solved or not?

- How do we know that when something is mentioned in the release notes as solved it related to my reported issue?

 

You want to improve interaction with community:

1) Don't close cases of bugs if they are not resolved

2) Put bugs that are known issues and not resolved in the Known issues list no matter how long this list will be.

2) Put timeline were possible on issues when they are planned to be resolved.

 

Community manager what do you think about the above suggestions? Do you think it is fair? Do you think you can help us with the above?

 

This please. Communication is KEY to helping facilitate an enjoyable playing experience. I still have no idea if the one in-game ticket I put in was actually resolved, or just looked at and then closed, since the issue was a matter of waiting a few hours. I really really miss customer service where folks interacted with the players, and weren't some unnamed force. That way feedback was almost assured, and the playerbase was much more satisfied.

 

I really want this game to succeed. I have loved it since I first logged in, and am having a hard time with the lack of communication. (Among the obvious server pop issues) Hopefully you guys are here to fix that, huh? =) Best of luck, looking forward to your impact on the community.

Also, as a side note: Please stop re-posting the class trailer videos on the Facebook page. It's a pretty poor advertising tactic. Maybe limit it to recent things, such as the weekly Dev Q&A, or links to third party interviews (I haven't seen these, if they're already being posted). That way there's traffic to the site, and no re-hash that seems to only frustrate the player base that follows the FB feed.

[chuixupu]

Since he is a paying customer, you are entitled to his own opinion too.

 

[inigo Montoya ]"You keep using that word....I do not think it means what you think it means." [/inigo Montoya]

[Swaggz]

i'd like to point out that I too am waiting for all the features of 1.3, But I am patient enough to just wait for it an have trust in Bioware for doing the job they are paid to do thoroughly and correctly. All this hubub about times an dates, Life is like a stream of water Take a stone (Metaphorically a time frame) an throw it in, most of the time it skips an bounces(changes) so just be patient an go with the flow man

 

We're all waiting for the features of 1.3, but as for "doing the job they are paid to do thoroughly and correctly", well, I don't think I'm going to hold my breath on that one. I thought that same as you, then 1.2 came out, and we all saw the cluster that was that patch.

 

No word on server xfer's, no initial patch notes for us to read over (others to drool over), bugs still in game that haven't been fixed since 1.2 or before, and not even an open character copy system in place for the PTS. There are some days that I honestly think that EA/BW don't really care that they are bleeding subs and that only a handful of servers actually have decent numbers at primetime. They may say they do, but they don't really know how to show it or even make the attempt to show it.

[RobNightfall]

This is a good idea, but considering how long it took and how many complaints were required for you to finally do something I'm going to call it a day late and a dollar short.

[JohanGill]

I myself have been contacted once since January LIVE .

 

Did you note if you were contacted during the invite a friend period which is when they advertised they would provide this quality of service temporarily during the course of the event ,presumably to make people trying the game believe this is the level of support you get once they purchase and subscribe to the game .

 

Didn't note when, sorry.

 

I read your signature and would like to ask .Do you not question the reason the game was expanded to lots of other countries so quickly after launch while knowing full well the game had lots of issues,knowing ilum got erased ,rank warzones not implemented, fps ,disconnects ,sound, class quests you can't finish, nodes you cant farm etc etc .?

 

Not everybody had so many issues with playing. Most things important to me works most of the time. My main concern right now is that a larger population on my server would make teaming up and PVPing easier, and the world would be more "alive". It will be interesting to see the new server structure. Certainly, they wouldn't be able to sell to a million of you (or would they?), but we are all different.

 

Anyway, to answer the question why they expanded: easy, to earn more

 

Then shortly after lay off what is possibly 50% of the SWTOR staff including the main face of community representation Steven Reid ,there will never be published how many sub contracters got binned ,I didn't agree with mexican cutomer services but its likely they all went too .

 

I've been looking around to estimate the layoff size, but I can't find any good data. Where did you get your figures?

 

Can I suggest one senario .

Internally they could see mass unsubbing and from the exit polls concluded they needed to sell the maximum boxes possible as they could see that lots of players were not renewing subscription .So the maximum financial gain would be from box sales and possible to a lesser extent the first paid month .

 

I don't believe so, as it does not seem to be how EA thinks about this business. They see the big earnings in the subs, and their efforts are directed at maintaining subs. At least, that is what I gathered by reading their financial reports.

 

Do you think getting players to resub with the promise of ranked warzones then pulling it out at the last possible moment was a calculated move to squeeze another months subs or as reported a decision that it was not quite ready ,given that nearly 2 months later they say they have just got the main part of it finished and in a couple of weeks more they will start testing it .

Is it possible that it takes 3 months to implement a feature that was not quite ready .?

 

My personal guess is that the design did not work. If the design does not work, things can take time to get right. Also, since the ranked warzones coming in 1.3 are for premade teams, a sufficient server population is needed to make the idea work well, and we all know that too has taken its time, becoming available along with 1.3.

Edited June 5, 2012 by JohanGill

[FeelFlow]

Good luck guys

 

Will you also make sure to update us all re. important announcements on Facebook and Twitter, too?

 

Sadly, I can see my time visiting these forums coming to an end soon as the community is simply far too negative

[overunitee]

Joined: Dec 2011

Yesterday , 07:51 PM | #417

REPORT POST QUOTE

Quote: Originally Posted by overunitee

I myself have been contacted once since January LIVE .

 

Did you note if you were contacted during the invite a friend period which is when they advertised they would provide this quality of service temporarily during the course of the event ,presumably to make people trying the game believe this is the level of support you get once they purchase and subscribe to the game .

Didn't note when, sorry.

No problem ,I was just wondering

 

Quote: Originally Posted by overunitee

I read your signature and would like to ask .Do you not question the reason the game was expanded to lots of other countries so quickly after launch while knowing full well the game had lots of issues,knowing ilum got erased ,rank warzones not implemented, fps ,disconnects ,sound, class quests you can't finish, nodes you cant farm etc etc .?

Not everybody had so many issues with playing. Most things important to me works most of the time. My main concern right now is that a larger population on my server would make teaming up and PVPing easier, and the world would be more "alive". It will be interesting to see the new server structure. Certainly, they wouldn't be able to sell to a million of you (or would they?), but we are all different.

 

Anyway, to answer the question why they expanded: easy, to earn more

I understand this ,but I cannot understand why a company with intelligent business minded people ,would expose the game to a larger market knowing that the game at the time had some major issues ,One at the time being ilum ,would you agree ? and secondly the performance issue that I suspect the majority of players see to this day on the main hub of fleet ,Obviously I cannot speak for everyone but can you honestly say you do not see a significant drop in performance travelling around fleet ,I had a 250 member guild with 450 characters and all that I asked even some with i7 cpu confirmed they suffered .Forget any other issue ,why would you not fix just this one point before expanding your exposure ?

If indeed you had a long term goal ,

 

 

Quote: Originally Posted by overunitee

Then shortly after lay off what is possibly 50% of the SWTOR staff including the main face of community representation Steven Reid ,there will never be published how many sub contracters got binned ,I didn't agree with mexican cutomer services but its likely they all went too .

I've been looking around to estimate the layoff size, but I can't find any good data. Where did you get your figures?

Most of the very loyal fansites that have been in close contact with employees of bioware have reported that from the direct staff employed of 450 that just short of 200 were let go that excludes the sub contractors as far as i understand ,I'am sure if you check out sites like http://www.gamebreaker.tv/video-game-shows/star-wars-the-old-republic-video/the-republic-swtor-show/swtor-doomed-to-fail/

There are 4 that are close enough

Quote: Originally Posted by overunitee

Can I suggest one senario .

Internally they could see mass unsubbing and from the exit polls concluded they needed to sell the maximum boxes possible as they could see that lots of players were not renewing subscription .So the maximum financial gain would be from box sales and possible to a lesser extent the first paid month .

I don't believe so, as it does not seem to be how EA thinks about this business. They see the big earnings in the subs, and their efforts are directed at maintaining subs. At least, that is what I gathered by reading their financial reports.

Why not address the performance on ilum and fleet first ??

 

Quote: Originally Posted by overunitee

Do you think getting players to resub with the promise of ranked warzones then pulling it out at the last possible moment was a calculated move to squeeze another months subs or as reported a decision that it was not quite ready ,given that nearly 2 months later they say they have just got the main part of it finished and in a couple of weeks more they will start testing it .

Is it possible that it takes 3 months to implement a feature that was not quite ready .?

My personal guess is that the design did not work. If the design does not work, things can take time to get right. Also, since the ranked warzones coming in 1.3 are for premade teams, a sufficient server population is needed to make the idea work well, and we all know that too has taken its time, becoming available along with 1.3.

Why do you have to guess ?

Since it was such a big attraction for players to resub why not with the retraction give the customers an explanation ? If there was a legitimate understandable reason I'am sure all those that resubbed would have been more likely to resub in the future when the issue had been resolved ,do you think them players will trust them now??

Don't call me fanboy just because I can read, think and write.

[Val-Jean]

Dear Community Team (I'm imagining you have a secret lair in the middle of an ocean where you game from):

 

I am speaking for a lot of sith inquisitors (perhaps Eric Campbell as well) when I say that we want some coding for skin for Ashara Zavros so that she can wear the Imperial Dancer or Slave Girl outfit. I play with my Bounty Hunter friends who have Mako looking hawt, and then I have Ashara...in a full body suit. I shouldn't have to roll a warrior or bounty hunter to get some next-to-naked time (although I have rolled those as well, but my assassin is my main).

 

Sometimes my girlfriend is on as a gunslinger, and I plan on getting her in the imperial dancer outfit, but it's not the same...

 

Thanks for telling the developers that they are fostering Inquisitor /angst.

Edited June 6, 2012 by Val-Jean
typo

[JohanGill]

Joined: Dec 2011

Yesterday , 07:51 PM | #417

REPORT POST QUOTE

Quote: Originally Posted by overunitee

I myself have been contacted once since January LIVE .

 

Did you note if you were contacted during the invite a friend period which is when they advertised they would provide this quality of service temporarily during the course of the event ,presumably to make people trying the game believe this is the level of support you get once they purchase and subscribe to the game .

Didn't note when, sorry.

No problem ,I was just wondering

 

Quote: Originally Posted by overunitee

I read your signature and would like to ask .Do you not question the reason the game was expanded to lots of other countries so quickly after launch while knowing full well the game had lots of issues,knowing ilum got erased ,rank warzones not implemented, fps ,disconnects ,sound, class quests you can't finish, nodes you cant farm etc etc .?

Not everybody had so many issues with playing. Most things important to me works most of the time. My main concern right now is that a larger population on my server would make teaming up and PVPing easier, and the world would be more "alive". It will be interesting to see the new server structure. Certainly, they wouldn't be able to sell to a million of you (or would they?), but we are all different.

 

Anyway, to answer the question why they expanded: easy, to earn more

I understand this ,but I cannot understand why a company with intelligent business minded people ,would expose the game to a larger market knowing that the game at the time had some major issues ,One at the time being ilum ,would you agree ? and secondly the performance issue that I suspect the majority of players see to this day on the main hub of fleet ,Obviously I cannot speak for everyone but can you honestly say you do not see a significant drop in performance travelling around fleet ,I had a 250 member guild with 450 characters and all that I asked even some with i7 cpu confirmed they suffered .Forget any other issue ,why would you not fix just this one point before expanding your exposure ?

If indeed you had a long term goal ,

 

Well, someone made the decision that expanding at that point was worth it. Ill-informed? Good or bad? No answers for you, sorry. I did see some performance drops in fleet at some time, but I didn't consider it a gamebreaker.

 

Quote: Originally Posted by overunitee

Do you think getting players to resub with the promise of ranked warzones then pulling it out at the last possible moment was a calculated move to squeeze another months subs or as reported a decision that it was not quite ready ,given that nearly 2 months later they say they have just got the main part of it finished and in a couple of weeks more they will start testing it .

Is it possible that it takes 3 months to implement a feature that was not quite ready .?

My personal guess is that the design did not work. If the design does not work, things can take time to get right. Also, since the ranked warzones coming in 1.3 are for premade teams, a sufficient server population is needed to make the idea work well, and we all know that too has taken its time, becoming available along with 1.3.

Why do you have to guess ?

Since it was such a big attraction for players to resub why not with the retraction give the customers an explanation ? If there was a legitimate understandable reason I'am sure all those that resubbed would have been more likely to resub in the future when the issue had been resolved ,do you think them players will trust them now??

 

Well, I didn't quite guess as blindly as it may look. They clearly said the ranked warzones weren't fun, which in my book means the design did not work that well in practice.

About trust, I don't understand. If ranked warzones go live, they are live. No need for any special trust, unless one is really paranoid and expects them to remove them for the heck of it.

[AzazaelLoki]

Cross posting here since I am sure all the community reps are ignoring the server thread. (this was as of this morning).

 

 

My gripe in this whole process is the lack of information. In the recent blog post (Community Team General Update: May 31st, 2012) it was stated that:

The aforementioned initiative is intended to improve communication between the fans, the Community Team, and the development team by creating focused specializations

 

Now I am not sure who would be in charge of letting the community know about server merges, but the information is lacking. Yes you are saying when another round is open, but aside from that there is almost no communication.

 

I understand that there is some wiggle room in how many servers are going to be allowed as destination servers, but I am looking at specific quotes from the last few weeks

In some cases, a large number of origin servers will be eligible to move to a single destination server. In others, very few origin servers will be transferring to existing high population destination servers.

I also could have sworn I saw a question if these transfers will be to the new 'mega' servers or the normal servers, and the answer was the normal servers.

 

With all that in mind it sure seems like all the servers are going to get squashed into 3 maybe 4 destination servers. I guess my definition of 'very few' is vastly different than that of the transfer team, since servers like The Fatman and Jedi Covenant have already gotten so many origin servers.

 

Of the original 46 PvE East servers 20 have been moved into two of the most heavily populated PvE servers. Best guess would say there would be at most 5 PvE servers left after the dust settles, realistically probably less. Again this doesn't fit my idea of a 'large number of destinations'.

 

I will admit that my numerical data comes from torstatus, and probably isn't completely accurate. However at this point it seems like Allison meant to say a 'very small number of destination servers will receive a large number of origin servers'.

 

 

I just wish that someone would come out and give some accurate information, even if it is 'we currently plan to have between x and y number destination servers.' Some communication on the matter would be wonderful.

[CrewmanNoSix]

So you and the devs know, there are times when I log in, hook up with my guildies, and there is a task force of us Jedi running across the landscape. Lightsabers out. Bad guys on the horizen... and it's 1977 again and I'm in my backyard sandbox with my action figures and all my friends.

 

Thanks for all your hard work at keeping us kids. Many of us appreciate it immensely.

 

I am one of them!

SW:TOR brings back fond memories of "tromping" through Endor in the summer and "trudging" through Hoth in the winter.. in the Star Wars Galaxy in my backyard..

Thank you, Bioware

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

[Harry_Kirby]

Let's show them how Imperial Intelligence handles things! Pa-Chow!

 

pfft imperial intelligence

just as intelligent as a dead goldfish

want to see real intelligence meet the commandos of ashen squad

[Rasticles]

Remember these ...?

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=4691983&postcount=12

 

"...but we do encourage you to hop on the Public Test Server to test the new features and give your feedback!"

 

and

 

http://www.swtor.com/blog/community-team-general-update-may-31st-2012

 

"improve communication between the fans, the Community Team, and the development team "

 

"so that they can respond to players more efficiently"

 

----------------------

 

So, pertaining to the PTS forums in particular..... What? Where?

 

Why have a PTS ...?