A Message from the Community Manager

[Kioma]

I fully agree with you on principle. BUT...

 

He has every right to ignore or delete rude messages, or messages that are covered by the TOS.

 

Ye-e-es, but you don't seem to realise that we actually have no right to post hurtful or abusive messages. We have the ability, sure, but not the right.

 

For our issue right now, ALL he has to do is provide facts. Name the future content, provide clear deadlines and generally answer the "tough questions" and all the rude and cynical players will forget the past and applaud him.

 

I have to points to make here: Firstly, those rude and abusive players don't have some innate right to be rude and abusive to anyone on these forums. One can ask tough questions without it degenerating into hostility.

 

Secondly, I agree that facts are all he needs to provide but he gets those facts from somewhere, he doesn't invent them. What exactly do you want him to do if he simply doesn't, currently, have the facts that we all so desperately want, and is doing all he can to obtain them for us?

 

But, in all honesty, what he does has been done since 2008. And it`s really getting old. Promises over promises, when all he has to do is do his job.

 

This is the point I'm making. As far as we know he's doing his job as well as he's able to with the resources made available to him and, in all likelihood, doing it well. But if he can't get any more info out of the developers at this point then it's not reasonable to expect him to kidnap someone's pet kitten or stuffed Blizz or Elvis albums and extort them for information.

 

I agree, it's getting old. I'm feeling the frustration just as much as anyone else who wants information and hasn't got it. I've been waiting for ages to find out what I want to know; I actually stopped playing for a couple of months because I was that frustrated (though I didn't cancel my subscription).

 

But one of the vitally important things to remember in such a situation is to save your frustration for the people who are causing it. I don't believe Mr Gonzales is causing more frustration than he can help. I think he's simply the convenient face that people can sling mud at.

 

People have been talking about a disconnection in the communication between Bioware and the playerbase. Now, I'm not going to bother coming up with theories of why it happened or how it happened or even how much it distressed the players; I can't and won't speak for everyone, but I know how much it affected me.

 

But if there was a disconnection between the liaisons and the developers then 'They're still working on it, it's coming Soon' might honestly and truthfully be all the liaisons can give us.

 

If that is the case, and if they're doing everything they can to rectify the situation, then it's not reasonable to demand more from the liaisons. Request more, sure. But don't expect the community team to grab pitchforks and storm the developer offices just because they're being tight-lipped. Aim your posts to recognise that the liaisons' jobs are being made a great deal more difficult because the well of information they rely on seems to have run completely dry.

 

So instead I want it put to the developers that the focus - my focus, in any case, and I hope the focus of several more - is, in fact, on them, as they're the only ones with the information required to correct this situation. Let Mr Gonzales do his job to its fullest extent by giving us something, BW:A developers, please.

 

On a more productive note, however, here's a suggestion for the various Bioware teams to consider: when the game was being developed we had a huge stock of videos, images and other teasers that were released over time and certainly whetted our appetite. I would love to see more of that. Giving trailers, sneak previews and content teasers certainly didn't hurt to promote the game itself; I can't see any logical reason why the same approach wouldn't work for ongoing content patches.

[Revan-the-knight]

I gotta say, while I am looking forward to the new Free to Play option, which I think is a good thing. I am concerned that the over all development quality will suffer or development of the content will start lacking what has so far made this game stand out from the rest. Like the voice over for example.

 

Well the Voice Overs seem to be done WAY in beforehand with the content so that will most likely not be a problem

[dynamofan]

Joveth,

 

I have two questions regarding your post.

 

1) What are the changes you mention at the beginning of your post. Be specific.

 

2) What are the new things in community info outreach and updates that you mention. Again, be specific.

 

None of this is even pertinent to gameplay, so none of it should be highly classified. Just tell us all the truth please!

[Tenebram]

I fully agree in that being rude and hostile does not help get answers any faster, while everyone may be very frustrated, chances are the mods are too.. they get at least 10 new threads a day saying how awful they are and how people wish they would die yet odds are they cant do anything more than they are doing already.. sure they are paid to deal with the players but they can only deal with the players in the ways they are allowed to.. if corporate says "Don't tell them this" then no matter how many times players ask they cant do anything about it else they will cease to be paid for deal with the players, in which case we'd be even worse off. Cut them some slack.. regardless of how much they are paid they do not deserve to be treated so horribly every second they try to help us, which is indeed what they are attempting to do.. if they were not we wouldn't have heard anything.

 

Bottom line.. if they have no news to give us.. yelling wont help.

Edited August 12, 2012 by Tenebram

[BumpBump]

We'll see how long this question remains up here before my post is deleted. We all know that the most asked question you are ignoring is "When will same sex relationships be in the game?" You always say "Soon." Soon passed more than six months ago. There is no more Soon. EA loves to release press statements saying they are committed to including them, but the fact is nothing else has come but press releases. You are voiding the quesion altogether now.

 

 

When will same-sex relationships be included?

When will this post be deleted to avoid the question?

Is there a job easier than being in charge of communicating with the community and simply not communicating with us?

[dynamofan]

I fully agree in that being rude and hostile does not help get answers any faster, while everyone may be very frustrated, chances are the mods are too.. they get at least 10 new threads a day saying how awful they are and how people wish they would die yet odds are they cant do anything more than they are doing already.. sure they are paid to deal with the players but they can only deal with the players in the ways they are allowed to.. if corporate says "Don't tell them this" then no matter how many times players ask they cant do anything about it else they will cease to be paid for deal with the players, in which case we'd be even worse off. Cut them some slack.. regardless of how much they are paid they do not deserve to be treated so horribly every second they try to help us, which is indeed what they are attempting to do.. if they were not we wouldn't have heard anything.

 

Bottom line.. if they have no news to give us.. yelling wont help.

 

I wasn't being hostile or rude. I just want some answers like the rest of the SWTOR community. If information was given with more accuracy and as greater haste I would have no qualms with the dev teams and the community managers.

[Styxx]

We'll see how long this question remains up here before my post is deleted. We all know that the most asked question you are ignoring is "When will same sex relationships be in the game?" You always say "Soon." Soon passed more than six months ago. There is no more Soon. EA loves to release press statements saying they are committed to including them, but the fact is nothing else has come but press releases. You are voiding the quesion altogether now.

 

 

When will same-sex relationships be included?

When will this post be deleted to avoid the question?

Is there a job easier than being in charge of communicating with the community and simply not communicating with us?

 

21:00 - he says this year.

 

Wow.. I managed to answer faster than the new and improved Communication team. I need a raise...

[Tatile]

21:00 - he says this year.

 

Wow.. I managed to answer faster than the new and improved Communication team. I need a raise...

 

Unfortunately I get the feeling that "this year" never meant what we thought it meant (being 2012) and rather equated to a twelve month period starting at some undetermined point and that, given they've said nothing since the Guild Summit in addition to the F2P announcement, SGRA's have been pushed down the development list in favour of "easier" and "less controversial" content, like mini-pets.

 

Of course I'm sure the Community team will come and tell us absolutely nothing on the subject, as usual. But hey, I think the SGRA thread over in the Story and Lore board is about to hit incarnation #15.

[Styxx]

Unfortunately I get the feeling that "this year" never meant what we thought it meant (being 2012) and rather equated to a twelve month period starting at some undetermined point and that, given they've said nothing since the Guild Summit in addition to the F2P announcement, SGRA's have been pushed down the development list in favour of "easier" and "less controversial" content, like mini-pets.

 

Of course I'm sure the Community team will come and tell us absolutely nothing on the subject, as usual. But hey, I think the SGRA thread over in the Story and Lore board is about to hit incarnation #15.

 

To me, when someone says "this year".. it means sometime during current january and december.

 

It is really stretching though, to call a story update for this year, when you just pushed HK and Makeb even further away and with a smaller team. But he DID call a date. They even might deliver, if they rush some half-baked quest, in which you find your long lost cousin and make up with Blizz. I think it`s a decent lead time, from April until December.

Edited August 12, 2012 by Styxx

[Kioma]

To me, when someone says "this year".. it means sometime during current january and december.

 

It is really stretching though, to call a story update for this year, when you just pushed HK and Makeb even further away and with a smaller team. But he DID call a date. They even might deliver, if they rush some half-baked quest, in which you find your long lost cousin and make up with Blizz. I think it`s a decent lead time, from April until December.

 

Yeah. I think everyone assumed 'this year' meant 'in 2012 some time'. 'This year' does rather imply THIS year, rather than within the next 12 months. But it'd be nice to get clarification on it.

 

You know, a single article clarifying a few niggly points from a whole range of features would be good. Like, 'When we said SGRAs would be in this year we meant 2012', 'Yes, Twi'leks will have hats that work', 'If space combat becomes free-flying it won't happen for another X months while we rework the missions so don't look for it before that', 'Class balance has these factors taken into account and that's just how we do it so deal', etc.

[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.

[Kioma]

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

 

I particularly like this suggestion.

[Darknessinme]

SWTOR may be the best MMO game I personally have played. I love Role Play and the community on my RP Server is amazing. It totally makes the game fun for me. I like the F2P, think it is a good thing for the game. I only have two things to ask and any response would be appreciated from those in the know.

 

1. When will they introduce paid transfers to desired servers? I have some characters I would love transfer from the server they are on to the RP-Server I currently play on.

 

2. Paid character alterations to character after creation.......skin color, body type, gender, hair styles, etc.? In my opinion, this would help keep the game fresh for those of us that do RP.

 

Thanks!

[Kioma]

SWTOR may be the best MMO game I personally have played. I love Role Play and the community on my RP Server is amazing. It totally makes the game fun for me. I like the F2P, think it is a good thing for the game. I only have two things to ask and any response would be appreciated from those in the know.

 

1. When will they introduce paid transfers to desired servers? I have some characters I would love transfer from the server they are on to the RP-Server I currently play on.

 

2. Paid character alterations to character after creation.......skin color, body type, gender, hair styles, etc.? In my opinion, this would help keep the game fresh for those of us that do RP.

 

Thanks!

 

Totally agree on both points.

[HiKTB]

Hey Joveth, how's the upcoming new armor going to look? As a Bounty Hunter, I am extremely disappointed with all of the endgame armor. I want to play The Old Republic. Seems like the majority of the endgame armor design jobs were outsourced to India with the only direction being "Make it look like WoW".

 

Jedi Guardian plate metal samurai armor? Seriously?

[Calcifur]

Hey Joveth, how's the upcoming new armor going to look? As a Bounty Hunter, I am extremely disappointed with all of the endgame armor. I want to play The Old Republic. Seems like the majority of the endgame armor design jobs were outsourced to India with the only direction being "Make it look like WoW".

 

Jedi Guardian plate metal samurai armor? Seriously?

 

 

When I started to read your post I thought to myself "did he even look at the JG gear??" Then I read your last sentence LOL The gear looks awful. I know they have a huge wall of concept art for the armor. (Morgan Webbs interview) They need to have the community vote on looks maybe.

[JovethGonzalez]

Hey Joveth thanks for answering some questions today.

 

Here are two specific issues that I think are examples that have been a let down despite official responses given from BW:

 

1. Initially noted Jan 7, http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=144521

Community post on May 9.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=144521&page=5

This is a known issue

 

2. Ready Check. Mentioned at guild summit 5 months ago.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=516154

Still nothing.

 

For #1: Thanks for this, I've pinged some folks to see what's going on there and will update as soon as I hear back.

 

#2: Here is thelatest from Matt Boudreaux, one of our gameplay programmers.

 

Enough promises. Pls deliver

OK! We started on Friday by posting the beginning of more consistent developer responses (via Allison Berryman). Let us know what you think.

 

When?

 

So far after a 4 month draught of information we are told there will be better communication.

 

Then rather than better communication or useful information we are told the Q&A will be better and there will be better information. When will there be better information, cause while its nice to see more yellow text if all it says is yeah there will be more yellow text its not really new information.

 

You should start seeing improvements as of Friday.

Communition? Very hard to believe... You have once promised this and then dissapear for a couple months.

 

Someone bite you in Bioware offices?

 

No biting! We just had a bit of a walkabout as we found our grounding again. During this time, we spent time thinking about community strategy as things settled here.

 

Hey, good to know a community team does exist.

 

I was wondering, for each bug on the known bug list could we get like a stats next to it? Eg, being investigated, cause identified, fix in next patch? I think this would stop many people asking about testament bug over and over again and t would also make it a lot easier to get information.

 

Thanks Joveth!

The Known Issues are meant to be high visibility issues that affect a large number of players. You can assume that all of the Known Issues are being worked on if they've made it onto the list. I'm not saying that yours is a bad idea, it'd just be a bit redundant since all of them would be "currently being worked on".

 

A couple of points.

 

1. The Known Issues thread has been a joke. It is seldom updated and when it is bugs that have been known for some time by many people and reported frequently that happen to a large number of people are frequently omitted. In addition we have seen bugs disappear from that list that aren't fixed with no explanation. Plus it has no status... no "We can't seem to reproduce this, can someone give us more information?" or "We have identified what the problem is but it is a tricky one and we are working on fixing it."

 

2. I am going to hope against all hope you are being imprecise when you state that a "document" is managed internally. If you have (like most of the software development houses out there) a bug tracking system, it should be relatively uncomplicated prospect to generate a weekly report from that of open bugs, descriptions and their current status (minus things like dev name/etc) and post it. The only trick is someone has to be vigilant about making sure the description is something that is actually descriptive and safe for public consumption.

 

If you do not use a bug tracking system... I worry. The reason such systems exist and are so widely adopted across the software development industry is that without them bugs get lost/forgotten and fall through the cracks. Since what we the users have been observing is bugs being lost/forgotten and falling through the cracks (often from as far back as beta), perhaps you should rethink your internal processes and bring them in line with modern programming practices. They also have the added benefit of taking less time to maintain and use than manually maintaining a bugs list and can often be used to create/populate patch notes (do a report on all bugs fixed in a given release and their descriptions and boom, patch notes.)

 

There are many free and easy to maintain bug tracking systems out there if you don't have one, there are also many commercial issue/bug tracking systems if you want to spend the money and have corporate support behind the product. Either way something is better than nothing.

 

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.

 

1. Everything in the Known Issues list that is removed should have a corresponding patch note when it is fixed. Occasionally, we have missed a few when the patches went live, but we've historically added the patch note when this is discovered. We're working on improving this with every deployment.

 

2. I should have been a bit more clear here. There is an internal document (used by us on the Community team) that is used in ADDITION to company bug tracking software. Our entire bug tracking system is not an excel spreadsheet (trust me).

 

3. Thank you very much for this. Yes, this is constructive and thorough. I will make sure that this is investigated and looked into.

 

I am going to be blunt. You sound like a politician. You use a lot of words to say very little and commit to nothing specific that you can be held to. Communication is good, hot air is not.

 

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

 

I read ALL 19 pages of this thread now in a row and was especially focussing on Mr. Gonzales' responses and how they relate to his promises at the beginning of the thread.

 

It is disheartening to see that he only gave one real answer in all his replies: Daniel and this other guy are still working for Bioware.

 

Everything else we got was the usual banter: We will try. We will do. We hope. Soon.

 

I am sorry to say it, but as of now, Mr. Gonzales has proven all our concerns as being right. As someone already said: hot air like from a politician. Every further word of him will make things just worse. Maybe this is why he seems to have abandoned this thread already.

 

As someone else also wrote (actually several): Mr. Gonzales' next repsonse better have some REAL INFORMATION in it. To me, this is a very urgent matter. I need to know if they are actually doing something at Bioware and/or if they at least know what they are doing. I really don't know if they do. And seriously, if you fail to believe that such a company has a clue, this is a bad sign. We are are not talking about a little local company with 2 employees who lost track of their stuff.

 

I am on high alert. Something is going very wrong. And yes, I am sure that Mr. Gonzales is capable of doing his job properly. This leads to only one conclusion: He is NOT ALLOWED to give out any real information. There is no reason why he should not WANT to, at the end, he chose this job (I guess), so he must have an interest in it. Thinking that he is only giving us hollow banter, because he has to... this is the actual scary thing.

 

These 19 pages totally disillusioned me (even further). I will still play the game though, because I still enjoy it. But really... something has to be done. Quickly.

 

That's two politician mentions back to back. Look, we're trying something different and the changes will be gradual (starting with more frequent dev reponses) in the upcoming weeks. I hope that you give us a chance to prove ourselves. Rest assured, I aim to deliver.

 

I'm seeing a whole heap of cynicism (and worse) here. I posted this in another thread but I'm going to go ahead and repost it here because I firmly believe it's true:

__

I understand where the cynicism is coming from. I get the reasons behind it, I comprehend people's ongoing frustration and I can see how Mr Gonzales's words - very obviously, to my mind, illustrating that he's in a very awkward position caught between developers who won't tell him much of anything and a player base that's sick of not hearing more - might not inspire much confidence in some.

 

But do I think the cynicism, derision, ridicule and outright hostility levelled at the Community Manager actually helps? Most certainly, I do not believe it helps in the slightest.

 

Considering his position Mr Gonzales is, in my opinion, a damn brave man. He's contacted the community knowing he's going to cop it in the face for matters that he has limited control over and he hasn't flinched. There was no way that announcement wouldn't raise ire and yet he's in there talking, trying to reason, giving us what he can even though he knows the majority of people won't be satisfied with it.

 

Cut him - and all the community team - some damn slack. It's not their fault the developers are giving them breadcrumbs at best. Having us howling for blood sure isn't going to help anyone's case.

___

I'll also add:

 

For my own part I'm very encouraged by the renewal of communication. It's true that the community has heard a great deal of Soon and is quite tired of it, but if this is a reboot of communication then it's very early days.

 

The best thing we can do is not jump down anyone's throat, to wait and to give Mr Gonzales a solid chance at getting us what info he has - while at the same time remembering that if he can't that's not necessarily his fault, and yelling at him isn't going to change the situation.

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.

 

Joveth,

 

I have two questions regarding your post.

 

1) What are the changes you mention at the beginning of your post. Be specific.

 

2) What are the new things in community info outreach and updates that you mention. Again, be specific.

 

None of this is even pertinent to gameplay, so none of it should be highly classified. Just tell us all the truth please!

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.

 

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

 

Stay tuned for more.

[Tatile]

Mr. Gonzalez, is there any chance of getting ANY word on SGRA's, other than the obligatory "get back in your hole so we can ignore you some more"?

[Yndras]

Jonothan, I like you. You have balls and character. Im sorry people are giving you a hard time in this thread, but to me it shows that you have great character. To come into a hostile environment such as this and stand here with a white flag saying, hey guys im here to help......

 

I appluad you! You are a champion!

 

Dont let the complaints get you down, these people have obviously wanted to complain for a long time and can't see the changes or difficulties you and your team have faced in the past months.

 

P.S I like your style more the Mr Reids. Not that he was a bad guy, he had a tough job and he did it well under the circumstances, ive just got alot of respect for you and think you are doing great job

[Kellour]

I'm frankly disappointed that it took this long to get a fire lit, and it's one of the main reasons why I've decided to play less, or none at all. To me it has honestly felt all along like the Developers looked down their noses at their playerbase.

 

I attended PAX East and the Meet n Greet and listened the the Devs condescend to entire rooms of their players, and when I had the chance to actually ask them my own personal question (with regard to PVP Healing just before 1.2 came out) the answer I got was a more democratic version of "Too bad, so sad." You can't give your players the middle finger and then expect to engender a positive, healthy relationship with those players.

 

You can't make promises and then never deliver. Well, you can, but you can't expect players to stick around - and clearly, whether you love the idea of F2P or hate it, the game is suffering from dwindling subscriptions/players.

 

It just all feels to me like "too little, too late" and while I think it's great that there are players who can get past it all and will continue to play well into F2P and beyond, I'm just not one of those people. I don't wish the game any ill-will, but I DO wish the game hit more "high notes" for me personally. I wish I didn't get angry when I hear words like "Soon" and "Metrics." Most of all, I wish I were still having fun with the game.. but between a whole barrel full of "Soons" and a serious lack of actual information, I'm just not.

 

I'd love to have confidence in the game, but tell me this, if you couldn't manage to accomplish all the things you're promising here in this thread in the first 8 months of the game's release, why should I be confident you'll be able to do so now that the company has been gutted of so many employees and have shifted the focus to F2P? How many months do you expect your customers to wait before they bail?

[Tuscad]

Jonothan, I like you. You have balls and character. Im sorry people are giving you a hard time in this thread, but to me it shows that you have great character. To come into a hostile environment such as this and stand here with a white flag saying, hey guys im here to help......

 

I appluad you! You are a champion!

 

Dont let the complaints get you down, these people have obviously wanted to complain for a long time and can't see the changes or difficulties you and your team have faced in the past months.

 

P.S I like your style more the Mr Reids. Not that he was a bad guy, he had a tough job and he did it well under the circumstances, ive just got alot of respect for you and think you are doing great job

 

Lol his name is Joveth not Jonothan XD

[Jawstheshark]

You asked for feedback, so here goes.

 

>Give us a proper 'Bugs' forum group. Part of the issue is your CSR direct just about anything under the sun they cannot answer to the 'Suggestions' forum.

Have stickies in this 'Bugs' forum relate to current hot topic problems. Seek player collaboration in tracking down unusual issues. I guarantee you have some good analytic people playing this game that would spend a few hours helping out. In game bugs and PC hardware / installation type bugs should be in seperate silo's and have dedicated areas for each.

 

>The known issues thread is as someone else said a Joke. Lets get some of the real high impact things in there. Also share some status of it. Like, severity level, est time to fix, is a fix in progress, do you need more info, etc.

 

>Give us a 'Coming Soon' forum group to highlight features you are creating and to solicit feedback on refining them. Include the 'When' of the items arrival. Like TBD, or 1.4, or 2013, etc.

 

>Quit closing every ticket with either 'Make a new ticket' or 'Sent to Devs, the crack monster sends his regards'. If an issue a ticket is reported for is not resolved leave it open. If a fix is in progress, A: make sure it is on the known issues thread, and B: provide the ticket submitted with a URL to the thread to go read up on it. Also no ticket submitted should leave the player's internal list unless they delete it, or it is closed and really old.

 

>Train your CSRs more, lots more. If you have farmed it out to India, pull it back.

 

>Greatly encourage your CSRs to play the game themselves. I put in a fun ticket that it would be cool to be able to ride the carts in Denova, and I got back 'Please provide details about which zone you had trouble in' Really....

 

>Keep track of players who submit accurate, frequent reports that help you. Solicit them to collaborate on other bug issues and helping in the PTR

 

>Pay attention to items reported in the PTR before you go live. There should always be an 'ABORT' option on a patch.

 

>Older bugs should have some priority. I know 3 people in my guild whose quest class bugged out and cannot be completed, from waaaay back in Jan. Really?! If you have to just manually patch up such folks' character so at least when new content comes they do not get locked out. Not to mention fixing the quest that bugged them in the first place.

 

> Fix the performance issues of the game engine. For the shiny level SWTOR provides, it consumes almost twice the system resources to deliver them than your competition.

Edited August 13, 2012 by Jawstheshark

[HiKTB]

You asked for feedback, so here goes.

 

>Give us a proper 'Bugs' forum group. Part of the issue is your CSR direct just about anything under the sun they cannot answer to the 'Suggestions' forum.

Have stickies in this 'Bugs' forum relate to current hot topic problems. Seek player collaboration in tracking down unusual issues. I guarantee you have some good analytic people playing this game that would spend a few hours helping out. In game bugs and PC hardware / installation type bugs should be in seperate silo's and have dedicated areas for each.

 

>The known issues thread is as someone else said a Joke. Lets get some of the real high impact things in there. Also share some status of it. Like, severity level, est time to fix, is a fix in progress, do you need more info, etc.

 

>Give us a 'Coming Soon' forum group to highlight features you are creating and to solicit feedback on refining them. Include the 'When' of the items arrival. Like TBD, or 1.4, or 2013, etc.

 

>Quit closing every ticket with either 'Make a new ticket' or 'Sent to Devs, the crack monster sends his regards'. If an issue a ticket is reported for is not resolved leave it open. If a fix is in progress, A: make sure it is on the known issues thread, and B: provide the ticket submitted with a URL to the thread to go read up on it. Also no ticket submitted should leave the player's internal list unless they delete it, or it is closed and really old.

 

>Train your CSRs more, lots more. If you have farmed it out to India, pull it back.

 

>Greatly encourage your CSRs to play the game themselves. I put in a fun ticket that it would be cool to be able to ride the carts in Denova, and I got back 'Please provide details about which zone you had trouble in' Really....

 

>Keep track of players who submit accurate, frequent reports that help you. Solicit them to collaborate on other bug issues and helping in the PTR

 

>Pay attention to items reported in the PTR before you go live. There should always be an 'ABORT' option on a patch.

 

>Older bugs should have some priority. I know 3 people in my guild whose quest class bugged out and cannot be completed, from waaaay back in Jan. Really?! If you have to just manually patch up such folks' character so at least when new content comes they do not get locked out. Not to mention fixing the quest that bugged them in the first place.

 

> Fix the performance issues of the game engine. For the shiny level SWTOR provides, it consumes almost twice the system resources to deliver them than your competition.

 

Great ideas. I think ultimately a lot of the community's cynicism and frustration really comes from how long it takes to fix seemingly obvious bugs, like unload's graphical loop glitch that goes on forever after a target is dead (at least with my merc). Hopefully more developers will be like Joveth and figure out that hiding from the community isn't the best tactic. Three cheers for him!

Edited August 13, 2012 by HiKTB

[ChazDoit]

Well I gotta say, Joveth must be the toughest tank on all of the old republic, he's been tanking the whole SWTOR community on the forums these days.

 

You know some people feel Bioware is very tightlip about future content, for example we haven't seen a single screenshot of "the super secret space project" and we would like to see you guys beign more open about the stuff you're working on, I know this is not your call to make but I hope you can escalete this concern to whoever is in charge of deciding such things, thanks.

[Costello]

I am hopeful for the first time in a long time about TOR.

 

I want it to be a sucess. But so much of the development was we can't talk about that or when it was questioned what about this needed end game feature being told full VO or Story rather than answering the question it started to see like the players were to be ignored.

 

Things haven't been any better for the last 5 months, I could go through the problems or how any update seems to take months and months to see the light of day. So its going to take a lot to win back trust I think. A start would be this Friday.

 

1) Massive Species Discussion. We shouted they have listened we will discuss what species are going to be added to the game in the very very near future. People are to lay out the pros and cons and discuss what can and can't be done.

 

2) The super secret space project. If this gets binned or morphed into something else the fact it existed but exact details were unknown is pointless. If Its full 3D space that might be a reveal apart, but don't have it as flash points or 2+ Heroics and keep that a secret, we all think its going to be 3D space or at least hope it is. If its not don't keep it a secret and if it is tell us and people will get excited for it.

 

3) Ask Guilds what they want. We had a guild summit and I have no idea what came of it. But people should want to be in guilds to build massive guild captial ships (or whatever) and work towards these massive goals. Find out what massive goals are needed and work towards bring it in.

 

4) The future of Open World PvP. I know in todays culture everything has to be fair but MMO's are not about Warzones. Teleported into a frecking Hutt Ball tortuanment where you fight club away isn't what MMO's are great for, thats some first person shooter. So if fight clubbing isn't my thing when will there be PvP that is more world domination and less MW3.

 

5) Where is the content. I don't know how large the team on TOR is, I don't know how bad the Hero engine is and how hard it is to put new content in. But the pace of content is horribly slow for a game you want people to pay to play. On the one hand the levels of content are staggering but on the other it seems almost no optional content. I can't opt to goto Tat or Alderaan I have to goto both and do most the world quests on them and bonus quests to advance.

 

This sort of communication is required. I suspect also two way communication and that things are happening. While the speed of content or development is not the community teams fault or responsibility. But as it stands things have got to improve and the game has to start deliverying, and that wont happen if things continue the way they have been for the last 3 years.