A Message from the Community Manager

[Syrrion]

I'm somewhat encouraged by the work of Allison today, lots of interesting stuff in the dev tracker to read (regardless if I like the answers or not). And I'm a cynic, so you are off to a decent start.

 

I'm not keen on the weekly Q&A changes though, seriously the old Q&A was pretty bad but the new system is just a re-hash and still relies on a lottery system of getting questions answered - i.e. does Allison see it, does she take it to the appropriate dev, does the dev give an answer that is printable in a forum etc.

 

I'd rather have a rotating system, one week PVE, another week PVP, another is Story, another is RP, lore or whatever. Then flag in advance what that weeks Q&A relates to so we can all submit our relevant quesitons - and try to answer them all! Sure it would be a pain for the PVP leads, but at least they get a few weeks off from Q&A after that..

 

Finally we also need a dedicated PVP rep. I'm not a hardcore PVPer by any means but that is why I play the game and the same is true of everyone in my guild. Look at the number of posts on this forum, see the massive number of posts in PVP? That should tell you something right there.

[Styxx]

I will add the definition of content. Like, specifics, rather than a too broad of a term - Operation, Warzone, Flashpoint, new race, new planet, new story, Cash Shop content (which should be fluff, if I am to believe them), instead of "Content".

 

And "Soon" would really need to be replaced with a fixed date, an interval, or a fixed unit - previously 4 weeks, now 6 weeks.

 

Because, when you say "Soon" in April and you still didn`t give ANYTHING in August... that`s not soon.. that`s insulting our intelligence.

 

Can you answer this, too, Mr. Gonzalez? What is the definition of CONTENT and if you are willing to put actual specifics into context?

 

Also, can you guarantee the specifics with money? Like... 100 bucks worth of Cartel Coins for each day that passes the deadline of 6 weeks? Or 500 bucks for each patch that doesn`t have REAL content, like Op, Warzone or Flashpoint?

 

"I'm hoping our actions will speak louder than words" - after all... actions speak louder than words, as you said. Time to put some money on the line, just to make sure we pay for our whiskey.

Edited August 14, 2012 by Styxx

[misskaly]

I haven't followed this thread, specifically, but I do follow the dev tracker.

 

I wanted to say thanks for all the effort you guys and gals (the Community Team) are putting into this. It's cool. Though I DID have like 4 pages of devtracker to catch up on. When I started reading through it, and saw I had to go all the way back to page 4 to find my previous spot, I was worried that something horrible had happened! Thankfully, just the opposite. :-D

 

Thanks again, guys.

[Syrrion]

I find it interesting that there is so much "soon" and "we can't say any more about this just yet". I understand the reasons behind it, no need to restate them. But... how come we get concrete dates for some things? We are told F2P will be in November is a good example. Presumably EA investors would not tolerate "F2P will be coming soon" so why should your paying customers?

[Styxx]

I find it interesting that there is so much "soon" and "we can't say any more about this just yet". I understand the reasons behind it, no need to restate them. But... how come we get concrete dates for some things? We are told F2P will be in November is a good example. Presumably EA investors would not tolerate "F2P will be coming soon" so why should your paying customers?

 

I am almost inclined to put my tinfoil hat on and say this looks like stalling for time.

 

Probably to have as much playerbase left, when F2P hits. They are betting on promises to keep players subbed one more month.. then one more.. then one more... for ONE event, which they promptly called "content".

Edited August 14, 2012 by Styxx

[Rapa]

Any word on when the friends lists will be fixed for people that transferred servers?

Mine has been broken since server transfer was enabled, have submitted four tickets and still no fix.

[ScarletBlaze]

Any word on when the friends lists will be fixed for people that transferred servers?

Mine has been broken since server transfer was enabled, have submitted four tickets and still no fix.

 

This. Some of my guild members have this problem as well.

[Sithnut]

Ladies and Gents. This post will not put the devs on a pedestal, it will not tear them down. Frankly, I'm disappointed in the whole system.

I understand the frustration in some of us, especially the long time 50s. We want new content, we want it quickly, and frankly some are disappointed. The Community Team is in a tight spot right now, they relay what they are told, when they are told to. What can they really relay when they aren't being told anything? Please. One person tell me that.

The response by the individuals on the forums, by the paying subscribers, is horrendous. I enjoy this game. We ALL enjoy this game to some extent. Yes, the devs have let us down, that is NOT the fault of the Community Team. The Community Team is here to appease US. Treating them like it is their fault our content is not arriving will get us nowhere. Sadly it has come to the point that the fans have no faith in the dev team, some have no faith in EA, most are struggling with both. But blaming the Community Team, calling them spineless, destroying their confidence, continuously beating them to a pulp with rude comments and derogatory remarks... DOES NOTHING but make the game as a whole worse off.

I know we are all disappointed that the dev team constantly tells us "monthly content updates, bug fixes, rebalancing" and it fails to happen. We SHOULD NOT be taking it out on the Community Team... The first few pages of this thread disgust me, I find the sheer audacity of people to be baffling. How many of you really think that attacking the Community Team is going to get you anything? Yes, they can go and say to the dev team "yeah... fans are super pissed..." But it hasn't worked in the past, and I highly doubt that will change at the drop of a hat. If you are discontent with the game by all means, make yourself heard... But is it asking to much for dignity to be upheld? Complete lack of respect for a person is what i just saw, how can any of you even call yourself human after a display like that? You took a positive, optimistic post by the Community Team and tore it to shreds because it wasn't "exactly" the response you were looking for. The response of the team was professional, even for the extreme remarks thrown around, I for one stand up for the team... because The Community Team are the heroes the community needs, but not the ones we deserve right now. So we flame them. Because they can take it. Because they aren't heroes. They are silent guardians, watchful protectors. Jedi Knights.

[Nanok]

3. The generic form people get saying "Thanks for the bug report, but don't expect to hear back from us..." is frankly inappropriate customer support. In every software house I have worked over the years, cases are attached to bugs and once a bug is fixed the customers who logged the bug get notified (sometimes even automatically) that their bug is fixed in a given release. What you do is frankly dismissive and rude, it makes it seem like our concerns are not important and that your customer service people have more important problems to deal with than deal with customers. Combine that with a tendancy for some of your customer service people to be dismissive makes for a very hostile customer service experience frequently.

 

For a concrete example of what I mean by support being dismissive, recently I logged a case that I just finished a random operation (again) and didn't get black hole comms. They replied with something to the effect of "make sure you are using the system right and if not log a case with these many pieces of information that you don't likely have access to anymore and in the mean time I am closing this case.

 

On the one hand they should have all the information they need in that case to look at it: the character I logged it from, the time I logged the case and the logs should be sufficient to search on. On the other how difficult is it to update a case with "can you reply with the following information" and /leave the case open/ since the issue is obviously not resolved yet instead of just dismissing the person as not worth the support person's time.

 

Hopefully the above is constructive and specific enough to make my feelings known. To be clear, I love the game and it has been relatively bug free compared to other MMO's first years but the lack of appropriate communication both on bugs and support issues make it feel to people like the game has no attention paid to it and makes people feel like there are more problems with it than there might actually be.

 

i loled when i read this.

the last time i used the "bug report" feature i was told to reset my phase. i was talking about using the ship to travel from on planet to the next. i even wondered if the guy actually read my message or just told me some random thing to do.

he also " closed" the bug report. maybe I wasn't clear enough in my initial report and that made him miss the issue, but in that case i would have expected him to request more info. the second ticked i submitted regarding the issue was closed without an answer. that was actually better than some CS representative showing me he has NO idea what i was talking about by replying something completely unrelated to my bug report.

Edited August 14, 2012 by Nanok

[DarthMord]

The problem here isn't that SWTOR is a bad game. It's actually a great game that is plagued by it's creators and investors. The investors, EA pull the strings of the creators (devs) and in turn people like the community team end up having to shovel the poop. EA doesn't care about anything but making their investors happy and making money, as a customer being provided a service I can respect that. The problem is that EA has no clue, and never has had a clue on what their players want. They gobble up indie company's who have begun to establish themselves and then they push that company to its limits demanding a product they can sell before it's ready. It happened with Ultima Online, It happened with Warhammer online and most recently it's happened with SWTOR.

 

While much of the fault is on EA's shoulders because it's obvious they have cut their funding to Bioware, we know this from the massive layoffs, restructuring, the stockholders call and of course the absolute lack of content released, and lets not kid ourselves. The lack of content or news of content is most likely due to EA throwing a wrench in the works while they figure out how to salvage the debacle they created and restructure. I'm willing to bet the Dev's aren't working on anything but priority bugs and releases. Other issues and requests are probably all on hold while EA fleshes out their Free to play model, which I believe is a very smart move on EA's part for several reasons. It will revitalize the game and give it longevity and personally I love this game and would like to be playing it in 10 years. But in order for that to work EA has to be able to find a proper balance of releasing content and not gouging the customer which I think we can all admit we are a little worried about. But F2P is definitely a GOOD thing.

 

So what does this have to do with the community team? Everything, all of these changes mean that EA has tied the hands of the Dev's and by extension tied the hands of the community team leaving the rest of us chomping at the bit for information. Now don't mistake my understand or 'educated guess' as being a fanboy... I'm in no way happy or pleased with the crap that has been pulled by EA/Bioware. We have been promised one thing after another from in game systems, items, and functions to streamlined communication and everyone of those promises has been broken several times over. Frankly I'm proud of the community, because if you read every post in this thread as I have been doing since it started we are united in saying the same thing, we want communication, information and we collaboration. So far the only response we have gotten is "We will" and of course "soon". Direct answers to specific questions are still being answered the ONLY way the community team can which is to say, beat around the bush.

 

To the community team, I know you've probably taken all the feedback you've gotten from this thread back to EA/Bioware's exec's and said that their customers want these things but as I mentioned before they are out of touch with their customers, so tell them this customer said (and you can quote me on this) They need to read through this thread post and spend the time to actually see for themselves what their customers want because if you want a game that will make you money, you give the customers what they want. There is no middle ground. Do or Do not there is no try...

[Kioma]

Not too much slack, to be sure. In order to have any sort of dialogue, there needs to be two sides to anything. Yes, there has been a lot of skepticism here, but there have also been signs of trust. I welcome constructive dialogue, as it only helps to push us forward. If I wasn't consistently challenged, then there would be little motivation to do better. Thank you all for your feedback, and for your words. They mean a lot.

 

Oh, certainly. Some slack, not all of it. We still want answers. My point is more that while there needs to be two sides to everything there should also be a fair bit of understanding on both sides - us understanding you have limitations and you understanding why we're feeling so out-in-the-cold.

 

Having said that, can I ask: any news on SGRAs? Alternatively, is this something you've actively been told not to address?

[Tatile]

Having said that, can I ask: any news on SGRAs? Alternatively, is this something you've actively been told not to address?

 

Mr. Gonzalez at this point simply acknowledging that this question has been asked would be sufficient, as you have not addressed any questions on the subject.

[Laurreth]

3. The generic form people get saying "Thanks for the bug report, but don't expect to hear back from us..." is frankly inappropriate customer support. In every software house I have worked over the years, cases are attached to bugs and once a bug is fixed the customers who logged the bug get notified (sometimes even automatically) that their bug is fixed in a given release.

 

While I agree somewhat, I'm not sure if it would be a big plus. The patchnotes appear to be fairly comprehensive, and with the amount of duplicates or vague reports that are probably floating around the system, giving feedback to reporters would likely end up being much more of a hit&miss than just pointing people at reading the notes.

 

Since this is as good a place as any to bring it up, I actually think that there's too much feedback on bug reports in some places. I'm fine with a response to the ticket, giving the premade "thank you, watch the patch notes" text. But often, I will get a live chat response to /bug submissions that essentially boil down to the same thing: just a "thank you", without actually asking for new information. To be honest, I find that communication rather awkward, since I'm not sure what to say other than "thanks for the response", smile politely, and hope the CSR closes the chat again. Fun enough, most of the time that happened when I was in warzones or flashpoints, making things even more inconvenient.

 

Now, again, I welcome communication from support, and I do really appreciate the manner in which it is handled for this game, but at the same time I think that live chat that does not solicit new information is a bit of a time-waster for both parties.

[ProfessorWalsh]

Most often, Allison will be posting on their behalf.

 

Joveth, that is good and fine and all, and I am behind that 100% but I'd like to make an offer.

 

Why not sit down with the player base, via a chatroom session thing, and simply talk to us? This isn't pre-production anymore. We should be to the point where we can speak bluntly.

 

I know when I was writing for AAJ and we would do interviews the, "BioWare Response" was quite possibly the most annoying thing that we could get. I spent thousands of dollars personally to travel to conventions and what not to do interviews and unless I asked a softball question like, "So the Sith can be good?" or "So we can jump?" we rarely got any actual answers. That frustrated me to no end.

 

I'd love a chance, personally, to ask hardball serious questions and get legitimate answers... Not "We aren't talking about that" but I mean real honest to goodness answers.

 

My first question would be straight up:

 

"During the development cycle of the game your dev team, on more than one occasion, stated that they did not want this game to be like WoW. Not only that but they specifically stated that "Everyone fight the boss" was not "heroic" and would not be in this game. So, the game is out, and there are tons of those fights, in every single Operation and Flashpoint. I seriously want to know at what point in the development cycle the old idea was abandoned and I want to know why it was abandoned."

[Tatile]

What time does the Community team usually start looking at the forums? I live in England, so it would be nice to know when would be a good time try catching your attention on subjects.

[Laurreth]

What time does the Community team usually start looking at the forums?

 

Pretty frequent polling suggests that "yellow posts" start showing up on the devtracker at around 15:00 CEST (13:00 UTC), mostly Tuesday to Friday (we all know how Mondays feel, and damn meetings), which would suggest that most, if not all, such posts are originating from the East Coast I would suggest trying around 17:00–18:00 BST to give them a chance to grab coffe.

 

Of course, that only catches the writing schedule.

[Tatile]

Funny, they're working when I am. Thanks, I'll be sure not to bother outside of that hour ^.^

[JattaGin]

Most often, Allison will be posting on their behalf. In the upcoming weeks, you'll see more community projects that we think that you'll enjoy.

 

Internally, the community team has specialized and there are more interactions with the developers (hence the increase in communication).

 

Stay tuned for more.

 

I think Allison's answers yesterday which can be seen in the dev tracker seem like a good start. I hope you keep it up like this. There is still not much real information behind, but the way how this is presented, reads much better (for me) and I did get the feeling that your efforts are sincere. So this already is a good thing and it shows that we are used to get so little from Bioware (regarding the communication) that even small bits like yesterday make us feel much better. (Or at least me. But I am sure I speak for others, too.) So, thanks and good luck ! *Fingers crossed*

[Hyde_v]

I just found this thread. I'll keep this short:

 

I'm willing to give the community team a chance. The game is still relatively new and there are growing pains. The F2P model has me worried about the game's future. The last Q & A was a let down. You say change is coming. Ok. I will see how it goes.

[Felioats]

I have another guild-related question regarding a feature promised at the guild summit. A guild tax. The guild leader can set a percentage of credits looted by members to go automagically into the coffers.

 

Like the ready check, it was one of those things one of the developers was like, "We don't already have that in the plan? Uh-oh. Add it to the list."

 

Thanks for any updates you can offer, even if only to confirm that it's still in the plan.

[Deewe]

The public changes started last Friday. We heard your feedback about the weekly Q&A so we decided to morph into a more dynamic model. Developers will now be responding more frequently to questions on the forums (which you can follow on Dev Tracker).

 

Most often, Allison will be posting on their behalf. In the upcoming weeks, you'll see more community projects that we think that you'll enjoy.

Hello Joveth,

 

few things comes to mind. First a well made Q&A session is worth thousand posts. Especially for people that don't lurk on the forums and as such get a wrap up presented in a weekly Q&A. So better not ditch it yet.

For now the main issue in its current iteration is it lacks any meaningful entries. As such you are giving people the felling either your producer don't care about his customers or is clueless about whats needs to be done.

 

The second part being the fire and forget trend you guys used in (hopefully) the past isn't enough. It makes you look bad and I dare saying hurting your subs

Some of us understand you are screening devs from the forum (rage) but the state of the game is way beyond that.

Whether you like it or not you actually need the devs to step in and accept to be challenged by the players.

You guys have to earn back people trust and respect because they have been deceived, a lot.

As such while Allison efforts are appreciated, they are giving the image the devs are still hiding and not willing to accept to be challenged by the players.

 

Before anyone steps in and mentions players aren't designers: well some of us are and things is contrary to a say Football game, players are actually in the field. So if they tell you they want larger shoes give them even if you are certain they are wrong. Also slight difference in a MMO the players aren't paid to go into the field, to the contrary. So you want to please them, a lot.

 

Then while you guys have supposedly a great data mining in TOR the numbers you get are... wrong.

Ex: I keep opening the map, not because it's handy or well done but because it sucks and it's painful to use. So I need to keep opening it to find my way around.

 

So don't trust the numbers ever. Ask players.

As such I'd invite you to add in game polls just after the loging screen. You could be very much surprised by the outcomes versus what the data mining, the forums or the focus groups tells you.

 

And:

 

Sorry you feel that way. I'm hoping our actions will speak louder than words and win you over eventually.

We both know you have no other way around, regarding how badly TOR delivered and how bad was the communication till... now?

Edited August 17, 2012 by Deewe

[Tenebram]

Why cant the people wanting information regarding Same Gender Romances have a thread in general discussion like every other group of people.. we get shut down any time we try to make a thread anywhere else other than story and lore and have for the past 9 months.. not only have we not been given any information but its almost like we aren't even allowed to ask despite it being promised to us at the guild summit. Edited August 14, 2012 by Tenebram

[Tatile]

Maybe because putting it General Discussion would mean Bioware would have to address this issue, rather skirting it all the time?

[Ashania]

Why cant the people wanting information regarding Same Gender Romances have a thread in general discussion like every other group of people.. we get shut down any time we try to make a thread anywhere else and have for the past 9 months.. not only have we not been given any information but its almost like we aren't even allowed to ask despite it being promised to us at the guild summit.

 

Well... they said 'this year' at the guild summit, so there's 4 months left to see if that was true. But that would mean new content, and the only realistic content for 'this year' would be Makeb - which may or may not continue the player class story (i'm betting on not) and therefore no new companios (bar HK - but he's not a likely SGR candidate).

 

If SGR's are indeed coming, they would likely just be throwaway NPC's in random quests on Makeb giving you a [Flirt] option.

[Uluain]

If SGR's are indeed coming, they would likely just be throwaway NPC's in random quests on Makeb giving you a [Flirt] option.

 

Indications in April - when information was at least available - were that same-gender content related to current companions, not all romanceable companions but the ones that "made sense", and that this had been decided fairly early in their design process. The delay, we were told, was about "getting it right" in a story sense, not a delay awaiting an expansion that would bring new companions to the game.

 

Maybe they have nothing new to tell us, and the last word is still current. Has Community asked them? If not, why not?

Edited August 14, 2012 by Uluain