Open letter to Eric Musco and EA

[Targarion]

Very good read

 

 

 

No one is happy with bioware and their devolpers right now. They seem tired and annoyed with the game instead of being passionate and excited

 

 

This game has so much potential and still does, but they are pissing it away with poor choices and like you said, over promising and under delivering

 

BW has made some great changes to the game that IMO improved the experience from what it was at launch. Unfortunately I can't recall a single change that has ever been received well by the subscribers/F2Pers.

 

I would be annoyed to if I received negative feedback all the time.

[DarkSaberMaster]

Low IQ+Smoke a lot of red tail marihuana= This.

 

Lol. For reals.

[Targarion]

I’ve been playing SWTOR for about a year now, and have seen many ups and downs of this game. Credibility is due where good work was done, so I’d be first to admit that although not perfect, the SWTOR team has done many things to improve this game and make most people have a genuine fun time playing this game.

 

The majority of players still have fun playing this game. I never seen the servers so full since the mergers.

 

That being said, the release of 2.0, specifically the bolster system, has been a disaster.

 

That's an opinion not a fact. I hope you can show how it's been a "disaster".

 

There is no other way to phrase it. The system is broken, exploitable, and has caused the PvP community to be severely disheartened. I’m sure you can see how your customers are responding to this in a negative way, from the plethora of threads on this forum

. True the Bolster system started out rough because of the bug at launch, but since then they made improvements to the stats. I no longer have 19k expertise with my EWH and Partisian gear combined. My expertise is now where it should be 11k.

 

And no, it’s not just forum QQ either. Coming from the best PvP guild on my server, there has been few other topics but bolster in our Mumble, for the past week. The same could be said of general chat in fleet or in warzones, where people are confused about what is going on, and what to do.

 

No comment.

 

 

My question to you is, do you think the majority of your customers care about “mathy” explanations? Do the majority of your customers even bother reading lengthy posts? What do these “mathy” explanations achieve? An even better question to ask is, why does bolster need to be so needlessly complicated?

 

The majority of competitive PVP'ers do their homework yes. The casuals aren't the ones complaining about Bolster either.

 

 

Truth be told, consumers, of any product, just want something that works. Do you think Apple is successful because their products have the best hardware or software? No. It’s because they are simple and elegant. They just work.

Give BW a little slack. They jumped into this MMO world without much experience and now have realized the error of their ways. The game launched too early, without nearly enough content to sustain the massive population they had before. The games refinement will not be a smooth progression. Expect more ebbs and lows in the months to come. Three years from launch, if the game survives, you will see as perfect of a game that the fans always hoped for. It takes that long for companies to manage the trials of growing pains.

 

Look at the original iPod instruction manual for instance.

 

Step 1. First, you have to connect your iPod to your computer (picture of an iPod connected to a laptop via USB).

 

There is no step 2.

You are kidding me right? You are comparing a piece of tehcnology that has been refined for over 10 years to an MMO system? It's like comparing apples to mangos.

 

 

What's the lesson here? Customers want something that just works. Something that doesn’t need to be explained in lengthy posts or patch notes. Something that wouldn't be mistranslated and misunderstood by gamers getting their information from a variety of reputable and less than reputable sources.

 

IMO the biggiest issue facing the majority of players todate is latency not population, or content. Latency is the one thing that will kill this game. Just ask the subscribers from the Asia pacific server who have initiated a petition to stop the merger of their servers, because of latency concerns. It sounds a good chunck of those players already unsubbed.

 

 

 

If I worked for a company that released half-baked products on a regular basis, I’d be ashamed. Don’t you guys have a Quality Assurance team? Are they doing their job testing unfinished products, at all?

 

The difference is an MMO is a live game that continues to evolve. A product like a car or a phone is a one purchase deal. There are no expansions, patch notes to the purchase. What you buy is what you get, much like a regular video game. An MMO is more like a sports league. People come together to participate in an arena like world. The rules of the game always change and so does the equipment of the game.

 

Maybe I’m too hard on the developer team.

Yes you are. It's fair to say you can't possibly understand the mechanics that go into making game work that strives to keep people playing for months/years unend. Not an easy thing to do. There is no holy grail fix it advice you can give them. An MMO is a trail by fire - some games succeed others don't. That's the reality of the industry and the market.

 

 

The root of the problem is that 2.0 was released way too fast. This is something that came from the executive level. You guys simply did not have enough time to polish 2.0 before it was released. The QA team did not have enough time to review the product before it was released.

That's possible.

 

But why didn’t someone stand up and say something? Why didn’t someone say, “Hey, VP of Game Design, the timelines you provided are unrealistic, we do not have the confidence of making sure the product is ready.”

How do you know they didn't? At the end of the day it's EA that rules on how the game is released and financed. If you are to blame anyone, blame EA.

 

Let us provide sincere feedback on your ideas. Let us share our ideas with you. Use the ideas from the community that are good, and integrate them into your design. More often than not, you will be surprised at the caliber of ingenuity the community can provide, because these are the people that play your game, day in and day out.

That notion is great in theory but impossible to implement in reality. However I will agree that BW needs more transparency in it's direction. I have alway said this from the start. Tell people why they should play your game. Don't keep it a secret. If you want people to buy a product in a saturated market, you have to let the patrons know what makes SWTOR a great game. This is were BW and EA failed.

[Aluvi]

Why are you people tearing down / trolling someone who is so obviously trying open up the developers eyes in the hopes of making the game you play better?

 

Do you enjoy playing PvP in a game where PvE gear with enhancements removed is best in slot by a large margin? (15-25%).

 

Do you enjoy spending 60k+ per warzone to remove and re-insert your augments so that you are not at a further 25% or higher stat detriment? How do you feel about others that win because they are doing this? Is that OK? Because it is not the players at fault here, it's the system.

 

A player comes along and makes a well thought out, informed post, and gives clear expectations of what the PvP community would like to see from Bioware. This is one of the only threads on here that is worth reading, and rather than support it, we get trolls, idiots, and generally misinformed people tearing him down for reasons that are in no way related to the important content of his post, which states simply that PvP and Bolster are currently broken, and also that our feedback about said problems has been largely ignored or not acknowledged.

 

They knew about these problems MONTHS ago on the PTS, and they were not fixed. How is that NOT terrible customer service? Rather than focus on the issue at hand, people would rather try to tear apart the original post, not for it's content, but becuase "IPODS ARE NOT MMOS LOLOLZ NOOB!!!". It's an analogy, a comparison.

 

I'm starting to lose my faith in humanity. Perhaps, on the whole, we deserve to be swindled, lied to, over promised and under delivered - which has been the case since DAY ONE of this game. PvE content was broken for MONTHS after release. Patch after patch, there was not even any acknowledgement of the problem, let alone a fix. The vast majority of content in EV was nearly unplayable. Boss kills came down to how much luck you had "if the game didn't bug out, or someone didn't crash". Garj randomly despawned. The droid boss at the start of EV randomly 1 shot people (it was later admitted that his single target random rocket ability was hitting for twice as much as it should). The pylon boss??? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA don't even get me started! The best was, 3 months or so after launch, we get patch notes that "the pylon bug has been fixed"... and it wasn't even remotely fixed!

 

These issues should have been HOTFIXED, not waited for a week and then "fixed" only to provide more bugs. I don't know what else to say... apparently the PvP community WANTS a broken PvP system from a company that either doesn't care or is not competent enough to fix it.

[Pistols]

Someone you quoted: "That being said, the release of 2.0, specifically the bolster system, has been a disaster."

 

That's an opinion not a fact. I hope you can show how it's been a "disaster".

 

I suppose PvP'ing naked and completely exploiting the system is not considered a disaster? Not too mention the CS team asking for the players help in indentifying the issues? If that isn't a disaster, lol, can you tell me in your mind what would be considered a disaster?

Edited April 18, 2013 by Pistols

[Aluvi]

The majority of players still have fun playing this game. I never seen the servers so full since the mergers.

 

Of course, it's an MMO. Expansions hit and people pick the game back up. Hell I even picked WoW back up and lvled to 90 when Pandaria hit, when I swore that I wouldn't, and I played for a good 2-3 weeks.. and promptly realized I didn't want to play anymore. Make no mistake, we're just in the "honeymoon" period.

 

That's an opinion not a fact. I hope you can show how it's been a "disaster".

 

Do you work for EA/Bioware? Fanboi much? The PvP system does not work. The entire principle of playing PvP in an mmo is about fairness and to a degree, balance. When one player can exploit a loophole in the game system to give him/her a grievously unfair advantage, that is broken. The game makers "fix" to make pvp more fair has done THE OPPOSITE. How is this not a disaster? Nothing has gone as planned on the PvP end of things.

 

. True the Bolster system started out rough because of the bug at launch, but since then they made improvements to the stats. I no longer have 19k expertise with my EWH and Partisian gear combined. My expertise is now where it should be 11k.

 

What are you even talking about? Did you even read anything he posted, or that everyone else is posting? BOLSTER breaks your stats. Wearing full PvE gear with no enhancements is currently BEST IN SLOT in PvP. Removing and Reinserting augments gives a stat boost of 25-35%. We are talking 40-45k hp possible on a dps warrior with full min/max power gear. My guess is that you are spouting these lines of text without even playing 55 pvp yet. Uninformed = unintelligent.

 

No comment.

 

This should have been your whole post, because obviously you are NOT qualified to comment on things which you are grossly misinformed of.

 

The majority of competitive PVP'ers do their homework yes. The casuals aren't the ones complaining about Bolster either.

 

"Competitive" PvPers that do their homework is extreme minority in this game. There are maybe 1 or 2 guilds per server, that have maybe 8-10 players in them, that know enough to qualify as competitive. I assure you, it is not just the "competitive" players that want a PvP system that actually works.

 

Give BW a little slack. They jumped into this MMO world without much experience and now have realized the error of their ways. The game launched too early, without nearly enough content to sustain the massive population they had before. The games refinement will not be a smooth progression. Expect more ebbs and lows in the months to come. Three years from launch, if the game survives, you will see as perfect of a game that the fans always hoped for. It takes that long for companies to manage the trials of growing pains.

 

Here we go again fanboi. True, they jumped into the mmo world with little experience, and maybe that would be acceptable if there haven't been MMOs out for the last 15+ years with many companies refining them and paving the way for other companies to follow in their foot steps. And sorry, I'm paying $15 a month for this game NOW. If it is going to take 3 years for it to become playable, I think my money is best spent elsewhere. Hey, that new car you bought? You can drive it in 3 years, sound cool? That is what you are saying is acceptable.

 

You are kidding me right? You are comparing a piece of tehcnology that has been refined for over 10 years to an MMO system? It's like comparing apples to mangos.

 

You're right, an ipod .. pad.. whatever, is quite a bit more complex than a single piece of software, even one as big as an MMO, so that further reduces your comment. And MMOs in general have been around for longer than 10 years, so you would think that they could at least hire consultants from the industry to help them out.

 

 

IMO the biggiest issue facing the majority of players todate is latency not population, or content. Latency is the one thing that will kill this game. Just ask the subscribers from the Asia pacific server who have initiated a petition to stop the merger of their servers, because of latency concerns. It sounds a good chunck of those players already unsubbed.

 

I've counted two posts in the PvP forums about latency, and about 200 about bolster. I wonder which one is more relevant? But don't get me wrong, input latency with broken GCDs (abilities using a GCD but the ability not triggering due to latency/terrible engine design) is certainly an issue.

 

The difference is an MMO is a live game that continues to evolve. A product like a car or a phone is a one purchase deal. There are no expansions, patch notes to the purchase. What you buy is what you get, much like a regular video game. An MMO is more like a sports league. People come together to participate in an arena like world. The rules of the game always change and so does the equipment of the game.

 

Absolutely, it will continue to evolve, but it needs to evolve in a way that does not make a major aspect of the game that was previously fine unplayable.

 

Yes you are. It's fair to say you can't possibly understand the mechanics that go into making game work that strives to keep people playing for months/years unend. Not an easy thing to do. There is no holy grail fix it advice you can give them. An MMO is a trail by fire - some games succeed others don't. That's the reality of the industry and the market.

 

Are you a software programmer/game developer? Do you college degrees or experience working on large scale MMOs that would qualify you to make such statements? Oh, right, you're just saying "stuff" again because you're a fanboi. Maybe the OP doesn't understand all the mechanics of how to program a video game, much less an MMO, but then, he isn't being paid to, in fact, he is paying THEM to, and they are failing at it. If you asked a company to program a working piece of software for your company, agreed on payment, and then received an inferior, shoddy product that was unusable in your production environment, would that be OK? I think not. This is not different.

 

How do you know they didn't? At the end of the day it's EA that rules on how the game is released and financed. If you are to blame anyone, blame EA.

 

Who is blamed was not the point of the post. We all know that EA is two time winner of the "worst company in the world" award, but Bioware did the major programming and design on this title, therefore they are largely (at least 50%) responsible for it's current state. Regardless, the point of his post was not to point fingers, it was to give EA/Bioware a chance to view, in a well written, precise format, our grievances towards this game, and hoepfully, a chance to respond to the community.

 

That notion is great in theory but impossible to implement in reality. However I will agree that BW needs more transparency in it's direction. I have alway said this from the start. Tell people why they should play your game. Don't keep it a secret. If you want people to buy a product in a saturated market, you have to let the patrons know what makes SWTOR a great game. This is were BW and EA failed.

 

Oh so it was marketing that failed? Does marketing take care of programming the game, patches, bug fixes, and community management? Do they take care of adding new content that keeps players interested too? This game had plenty of subs on launch, and even 4-5 months into the game. People left because PvE was broken, classes were grossly unbalanced, the games engine performed exceptionally poorly for the level of graphics, and in general, they ran out of things to do. Tell me again how this is the fault of the marketing team?

 

The truth is, you're just another fanboi spouting off nonsense with no idea what you are talking about. Go buy 5 more copies of the game and wait 3 more years for them to fix it.

[Benets]

the question is? Do you think bioware really care? They do not care, this game have one of most stupid things in pvp i've ever see.

 

In bioware minds, is fun to stay 12 seconds doing nothing cos' you already spent the CC breaker and can get two full CC with no diminish.

Bioware really think is fun when everybody can hit a class for almost all life in 3 seconds, but this class need something like 4 seconds to begin do some dps.

This is retard.

[Riggz]

Dev response maybe?

[Purple-Punch]

It all comes down to deadlines that MUST be met .. In this case, EA's shareholders ..

 

They knew they were pushing a bugged 2.0 .. Of course they knew it, it was on the PTS .. LOL

 

Why did they knowingly push bugged code? Deadlines and taking on too much with too little of a staff to get it done. Plain and simple.

[Azarai]

Ohlen recalls BioWare entering development on SWTOR already behind the ball with an untested engine and a team put together so quickly that internal communication issues became problematic. Since the engine itself had never been used or optimized towards the creation of an MMO, many times in the development cycle the team had to go months without a playable build.

 

Taken from http://raidwarning.com/bioware-creative-director-details-swtor-development-issues/ which has a link to a pretty good read. Anything, from a video game, to a new business, or a person who strives to be a professional athlete, understands that in order to be successful you must have a strong, solid foundation. Obviously that wasn't the case with SWTOR since the entire game was based off an engine NEVER USED for the creation of an MMO. Why EA/BW would even fathom basing the most expensive game in history off an engine that had no credible testing to it is beyond me; that's an issue they need to take up and answer. But with a weak foundation, just like a building, the more you pile on top of it, eventually everything will come tumbling down on itself, which honestly makes me sad because I had great hope and expectations for this game, like many of you probably do as well. Just like others, EA/BW has a very limited time with my own subscription before it expires and isn't renewed.

[Purple-Punch]

Ohlen recalls BioWare entering development on SWTOR already behind the ball with an untested engine and a team put together so quickly that internal communication issues became problematic. Since the engine itself had never been used or optimized towards the creation of an MMO, many times in the development cycle the team had to go months without a playable build.

 

Taken from http://raidwarning.com/bioware-creative-director-details-swtor-development-issues/ which has a link to a pretty good read. Anything, from a video game, to a new business, or a person who strives to be a professional athlete, understands that in order to be successful you must have a strong, solid foundation. Obviously that wasn't the case with SWTOR since the entire game was based off an engine NEVER USED for the creation of an MMO. Why EA/BW would even fathom basing the most expensive game in history off an engine that had no credible testing to it is beyond me; that's an issue they need to take up and answer. But with a weak foundation, just like a building, the more you pile on top of it, eventually everything will come tumbling down on itself, which honestly makes me sad because I had great hope and expectations for this game, like many of you probably do as well. Just like others, EA/BW has a very limited time with my own subscription before it expires and isn't renewed.

 

Yea, but even the engines that work for MMO's now at one point in time had NEVER been used for an MMO .. Its a trial and error phase .. and were paying for it .. will an MMO venture ever use this engine again? Probably not!

[Xenith]

Dear Eric, and staff/executives of EA,

 

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a senior consultant in strategy consulting, from a top tier international consulting firm. I specialize in consumer business. I provide strategic management advice to consumer business companies for a living.

 

Why am I introducing myself this way? Not because I am trying to toot my own horn, but because:

1. I’d like to establish at least a small amount of credibility, amongst all the troll posts on this forum and other social media avenues.
    
   
2. Top-tier consulting firms would be very reluctant to provide advice for anything less than $100k, depending on the specific assignment.
    
   
3. More importantly, because they are getting paid for the job, consultants more often than not end up saying what clients want to hear, not what they need to. Because you don’t know me nor my employer, I have no such hesitation. The advice I’m about to give is sincere and heartfelt.
   

 

I’ve been playing SWTOR for about a year now, and have seen many ups and downs of this game. Credibility is due where good work was done, so I’d be first to admit that although not perfect, the SWTOR team has done many things to improve this game and make most people have a genuine fun time playing this game.

 

That being said, the release of 2.0, specifically the bolster system, has been a disaster. There is no other way to phrase it. The system is broken, exploitable, and has caused the PvP community to be severely disheartened. I’m sure you can see how your customers are responding to this in a negative way, from the plethora of threads on this forum. And no, it’s not just forum QQ either. Coming from the best PvP guild on my server, there has been few other topics but bolster in our Mumble, for the past week. The same could be said of general chat in fleet or in warzones, where people are confused about what is going on, and what to do.

 

Although the bolster debacle is far from over, there are some important themes we should identify, in order to find a solution and prevent problems like this.

 

Theme one. The simplest solution is the best solution.

 

“I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” – Bill Gates

 

In your post here, you stated that the PvP team is actively working on a solution on bolster, which by your own admission is a complex system. You also stated that you will soon provide a “mathy” post explaining bolster.

 

My question to you is, do you think the majority of your customers care about “mathy” explanations? Do the majority of your customers even bother reading lengthy posts? What do these “mathy” explanations achieve? An even better question to ask is, why does bolster need to be so needlessly complicated?

 

Truth be told, consumers, of any product, just want something that works. Do you think Apple is successful because their products have the best hardware or software? No. It’s because they are simple and elegant. They just work.

 

Look at the original iPod instruction manual for instance.

 

Step 1. First, you have to connect your iPod to your computer (picture of an iPod connected to a laptop via USB).

 

There is no step 2.

 

What's the lesson here? Customers want something that just works. Something that doesn’t need to be explained in lengthy posts or patch notes. Something that wouldn't be mistranslated and misunderstood by gamers getting their information from a variety of reputable and less than reputable sources.

 

I’ll leave finding the elegant solution for you and your team, but here’s just one suggestion.

 

Theme two. Underpromise, overdeliver.

 

One of the biggest failures about the bolster debacle is how it was handled. From way back in 2.0 PTS, many testers have repeatedly pointed out the bugs with the system, and how easily exploitable they were. We were promised that the system would be fixed, and that it would work for 2.0 release.

 

It wasn’t.

 

Instead, the well-documented “naked bolster” bug once again appeared.

 

So you promised that the team is looking at this, and that the system will be fixed in a maintenance patch.

 

It wasn’t, again.

 

Exploits involving removing enhancements/mods/augments surfaced, problems that once again were well-documented on PTS discussions.

 

How could the PvP community not be discouraged?

 

If I worked for a company that released half-baked products on a regular basis, I’d be ashamed. Don’t you guys have a Quality Assurance team? Are they doing their job testing unfinished products, at all?

 

Maybe I’m too hard on the developer team. The root of the problem is that 2.0 was released way too fast. This is something that came from the executive level. You guys simply did not have enough time to polish 2.0 before it was released. The QA team did not have enough time to review the product before it was released.

 

But why didn’t someone stand up and say something? Why didn’t someone say, “Hey, VP of Game Design, the timelines you provided are unrealistic, we do not have the confidence of making sure the product is ready.”

 

So maybe this is a theme that your executives could heed. Always promise less than what you think you can deliver. In other words, overdeliver. Surprise your customers with pleasant experiences they were not expecting to receive. Don't provide them with disappointment after disappointment of not delivering what was promised.

 

Theme three. Engage your customers.

 

As a community manager, your job is, presumably, to monitor social media channels for customer feedback, and relay the feedback to your developer teams.

 

In many of your posts, you have stated that you will pass on issues reported by the community, or ask the developers for explanations so you can relay to the community.

 

But why aren’t the developers engaging the community themselves?

 

If every single one of your design / development team spent 30 minutes each day visiting the forums and looking for feedback, would that be time wasted?

 

Even CEOs of retail giants visit their own stores on a constant basis to engage customers. Why can’t the development team do the same?

 

The keyword here is engage. Simply relaying information is not enough. One post per day is not enough. Tell us what your plans are for bolster, before implementing bolster. Let us provide sincere feedback on your ideas. Let us share our ideas with you. Use the ideas from the community that are good, and integrate them into your design. More often than not, you will be surprised at the caliber of ingenuity the community can provide, because these are the people that play your game, day in and day out.

 

So, three small pieces of advice. Take from them what you will. I know you will read this Eric, and hope you take them seriously. I also hope you can pass along the message to the powers that be in EA.

 

Treat your customers with respect, and they will return in kind. That’s not just how you build a successful game, but how you build a successful company.

 

Sincerely,

Party Time Viperin

 

 

QFT! Good post and good points.

[Azarai]

Yea, but even the engines that work for MMO's now at one point in time had NEVER been used for an MMO .. Its a trial and error phase .. and were paying for it .. will an MMO venture ever use this engine again? Probably not!

 

But you don't build probably the most hyped and budget-wise the most expensive game in history on an engine that was completely unproven and tested for an MMO. It may have been a gamble but it was a completely unwarranted one when they could have used one that was proven. It could have saved them a TREMENDOUS amount of development and coding heartache that we are currently dealing with well over a year into the launch of the game. It just disappoints the hell out of many in the community that we're dealing with issues based off of dumb decisions made during the development process that could have easily been avoided. Such a shame and waste of an epic IP.

[SomeJagoff]

Even CEOs of retail giants visit their own stores on a constant basis to engage customers. Why can’t the development team do the same?

 

So you're saying that Best Buy has better customer service than Bioware? That's pretty harsh...

[cashogy_reborn]

agree 100% with the OP

 

sadly, the people calling the shots for this game doesnt care what we think.

[Eillack]

Too bad the OP doesn't work for EAware / TOR...though the OP lucked out in a way b/c they prob have their soul still haha.

[Aluvi]

So you're saying that Best Buy has better customer service than Bioware? That's pretty harsh...

 

If you walk into Best Buy and say "I have a problem with this product, it does not function as advertised" you would at LEAST get a response, and probably a refund. You won't get either here.

[sirullrich]

So you're saying that Best Buy has better customer service than Bioware? That's pretty harsh...

 

It is true!!

[Groncho]

Dear Eric, and staff/executives of EA,

 

good ideas

 

Sincerely,

Party Time Viperin

 

well done gringo, good idea

u sound like a consultant but is mostly common sense and +10 for that (not a common thing to find in this forums)

we posted several times in the PTS forums about the holes bolster had for exploiting

Bolster is not a bad idea, the problem here is the business model , they need to retain customers and all the sytem is based on grind x1 or grind x2.

Bolster is good for making the grind a little bit enjoyable but sadly they didn't tunned it (no explanation why, when it was reported )

/Signed (1 of the 2 million players:D:D:D:D:D)

Edited April 19, 2013 by Groncho

[Rabios]

one of the only posts I was able to read through fully wise words TAKE HEAD DEVS AND BIOWARE YALL ARE ON THE BRINK HERE !

[sauerkraut]

C'mone guys am i the only one here who sees, BW just represents the usual American business ethic. Crappy product, lots of advertisement, lots of promises, hire a top law firm, to counter sue the complainers, get a CEO who well connected, (but does not have the sligthers idea what his company doing) get Rich and get out, get a golden parachute, h'asta lasagna suckers. Edited April 19, 2013 by sauerkraut

[angelserra]

i just want to say that i have felt alot of this and support the premise that has been written by the post but usually unable to write it in such a clear manner that would relate my thoughts.

 

Please bioware read this and pass it along to the top because i know there must be meetings weighing what really is a concern.

i know you have to come up with a system and your trying hard to create a environment that is for both casual and hardcore but the bolster system trumping gear is a problem for enjoyment as a semi hardcore pvp player

[Riggz]

i just want to say that i have felt alot of this and support the premise that has been written by the post but usually unable to write it in such a clear manner that would relate my thoughts.

 

Please bioware read this and pass it along to the top because i know there must be meetings weighing what really is a concern.

i know you have to come up with a system and your trying hard to create a environment that is for both casual and hardcore but the bolster system trumping gear is a problem for enjoyment as a semi hardcore pvp player

 

Same feelings here

[Dedrayge]

I think we can all agree, if people had just used their bloody free recruit gear, we wouldn't have a messed up bolster system to deal with right now. Instead, we could have had recruit gear more in line with the higher tier gear which we didn't have previously. Although, I will admit, PvP with a fresh lvl 55 is a hell of a lot better than PvP with a fresh 50 just over a year ago when there was no recruit gear.

 

Just to be fair to BW, they have no control over people exploiting. It's a choice gamers make. So really, a part of the blame does belong to the gamers that choose to exploit. If no one exploited, we'd be enjoying more balanced PvP. But, at least they are trying to make PvP more balanced and take it in a direction of being skill based. It's also nice to see we aren't seeing the typical "Working as intended." bull ****.

 

I'm also inclined to agree that unrealistic deadlines imposed on the developers have hurt the game.

 

 

By the way, Viperin, really nice post and far more constructive and useful than the typical moaning that goes on around here. With any luck, it helps BW to wake the **** up because it's about time they did. So personally, I appreciate your effort to try and get the devs back on track. I enjoy this game and like the objective based PvP it offers. So, I definitely would like to see the game succeed and have more intense PvP matches.

 

Getting tempted to go back to playing GW2.

[ParagonAX]

Too bad the OP doesn't work for EAware / TOR...though the OP lucked out in a way b/c they prob have their soul still haha.

 

Lol I'd hope so

 

Although I am really under the belief that EA employees do not like where things are going with the game/company either, but are unable to act because of policies and directions given by executives.