Open letter to Eric Musco and EA

[foxmob]

many changes to the game equate to being blindsided by a mugger in a dark alley because the PTS is a pointless exercise in quality control. In short, while I agree with your assessment and can appreciate what you're saying...it falls on deaf ears..

 

I lul'd. great analogy. ty for this morning's entertainment.

[Morpurgo]

Well looks like they are going full speed towards third Golden Poo award in a row.

 

Nice letter with lot of common sense but with EA the common sense is shunned commodity. Money talks and golden poo walks.

[HettonVir]

Honestly, EA/Bioware could take serious lessons from CCP, the developer of Eve Online. While the game is complex and utterly maddening, CCP is VERY active with their players going so far as to hire dedicated and long time players to work for them. They give a live video feed to the their developers meetings and have some of the best in-game GMs and CSM's Ive ever seen for an online game. It will be said "Well that game is smaller." and I would agree. However, Im not sure why someone from customer relations or the dev team cant log in to look at the forums and maybe ask those that arent trolls about how to make the game better.

[Viper-Mist]

i have two words for you

 

Electronic Arts

 

/thread

Edited April 19, 2013 by Viper-Mist

[Skyhigh]

Does this guy even work for EA anymore?

[Cilas]

So the thread bashing devs via YouTube video gets replies, but not this

[Kophar]

Oh I'm sorry, forgot we're counting free accounts, where half those are most likely credit farmers.

 

Even then, 2 million players is a laughable stretch at best with 23 total servers. Do the math, that's roughly 100k players per server, and I know 1/3 of those servers are completely empty. Lol @ quoting "created accounts" and justifying that is the actual number. Not too mention, it says "2 million accounts created" since the launch of F2P...not an actual "current number".

 

GG again.

 

U didnt believed him, he gave you proof, u still dnt believe the official report.

Let me tell you something pal, EA/BW is making more money from their F2P's than the subs itself. Every single MMORPG that went F2P with sucess wich was the example of SWTOR, allways double or treble their revenues.

Empty servers??? Where? Asia/Pacific? Pff, they never counted for much tbh. And their problem is going to be fixed SOON. MMO subs are long gone and they will be gone, give it another 1-2 years and ull see what im talking bout.

If you want to believe or not, thats your own problem.

Anyway it smells of trolls around here as usual, im out of the post.

[lxynl]

The people who post on these forums, the people who write the patch notes, the people who design the classes, skills and game balance...none of those people are the people writing the underlying code. Most programmers on this game probably agree with the community but they're just coders. Get a ticket, close a ticket, report a bug, escalate it to project management.

 

Ironically though none of that matters. In fact, these forums don't really matter. Why? Because these forums are not reality. They're only vaguely correlated to people's real opinions. What you see here is a lot of people throwing hyperbolic tantrums over every stupid thing. The majority is generally silent. If I'm Bioware the only thing I'm checking these forums for are bug reports and exploits - but I'm relying on metrics, surveys and other feedback for a picture on whether or not the community likes the game and changes to it. I'm looking at how much PVP people are doing and the quantity of PVP passes being bought. But the last thing I'm doing is making decisions based on kneejerk reactions from a dozen out of 2 million people. That's a large reason I think the OP is full of **** - because anyone who works in the software industry in a capacity for understanding sales and metrics knows everything I just said and wouldn't start offering "advice" without any information other than anecdotes.

 

you are full of sht

[Pistols]

U didnt believed him, he gave you proof, u still dnt believe the official report.

Let me tell you something pal, EA/BW is making more money from their F2P's than the subs itself. Every single MMORPG that went F2P with sucess wich was the example of SWTOR, allways double or treble their revenues.

Empty servers??? Where? Asia/Pacific? Pff, they never counted for much tbh. And their problem is going to be fixed SOON. MMO subs are long gone and they will be gone, give it another 1-2 years and ull see what im talking bout.

If you want to believe or not, thats your own problem.

Anyway it smells of trolls around here as usual, im out of the post.

 

I can't stop laughing...

[ParagonAX]

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.

 

QFT

 

/sigh

[Targarion]

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.

 

Nope, and neither do you so I guess that makes us even. But honestly if you are having a bad experience in the game why play swtor? If you feel it's been a disaster, vote with your wallet and leave the game. BW has already acknowledge the bolster is bugged and if they haven't fixed it yet, they are trying to fix it. Despite this fact, people think the more they complain the quicker it will get resolved. On my server, BC, I haven't heard a lot of complaining about Bolster, bugged or no bugged.

 

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.

What I am talking about is when I hit 55 a couple days after 2.0 launched, I noticed my expertise bolstered to 18k and after the last major patch, it was reduced to around 11k. Hence it looks like bolster doesn't add every little stat per mod like it use to. I could be wrong about this, but that was my observation. ATM naked pvp in level 55 wz seems to have gone away completely. And people who do show up to level 55 wz in pve gear are getting owned pretty bad.

 

I did read his entire post. What I disagreed with I quoted into segments and gave my thoughts on each point. Did I make a faux pas here?

 

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

Qualified...hmmm...I didn't realize that I was speaking to an accredited certified BW expert. I might need to see your credentials just to make sure you are licensed QQ'er .

 

 

"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.

Have you spoken to all 100 plus guilds in the game? Have you spoken to my guild(s)? You really know what we think? I don't think so. But I acknowledge there are competitive people who hate bolster, and there is a debate going on my server form as well. Some people hate it, some people like it, some people don't care. I personally like the idea of it. There is definitely room for improvement. And if there is still bugs in it, I hope it gets fix too so we can end this discussion.

 

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.

 

I don't think it's acceptable. As a paying customers we must decide if we are going to put up with it. If not leave the game. That's what I would do. I think the game has a lot of potential and I am having fun which is why I continue to pay. If that makes me a fanboy thats cool. Gotta be a fan of something these days.

 

 

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.

Unfortunately an evolution of a game doesn't always progress in an upward direction. SWTOR is a perfect example of that.

 

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.

 

We are all making speculations about the game because the only people who really know what's happening with the game our the developers and associates. I don't need to be a software developer to know that. I agree, the fans have the right as paying customers to voice their grievances and opinions about the game, that's why the forums exist. And if I paid for something I hated, I would never go back to that vendor again. At least we can agree on that much.

 

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.

Agreed.

[CharterMonkKent]

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

 

I didn't bother reading this whole thing, no developer is going to have the time to read it either. If you were really a (successful) consultant you'd know to keep it short. Unless you are one of those that force RFPs on people, if you are then may God help you

 

The PvP in 2.0 (bolster bug excluded) has been implemented quite well. They were able to fix naked bolster relatively quickly. Queue pops are faster than ever even though there are now 4 "levels" of war zones. Developers know that people will continually want subjective perfection in MMOs (or anything that's developed). That being said, the few come on the forums to say this or that, the majority are in game playing the new content.

[Darth_Vampirius]

Great post overall, OP, but if they scrap Bolster in the 55 bracket, PVPers will start dominating PVP. We can't have that!

[Kovaos]

Great post overall, OP, but if they scrap Bolster in the 55 bracket, PVPers will start dominating PVP. We can't have that!

 

Ain't nobody got time for that.

Edited April 19, 2013 by Kovaos

[Darth_Vampirius]

I They were able to fix naked bolster relatively quickly.

 

Good point, only Naked Bolster is not fixed. Put on empty shells and remove your implant, ear, and relic slot gear... and enjoy the Naked Bolster goodness!

[CharterMonkKent]

Good point, only Naked Bolster is not fixed. Put on empty shells and remove your implant, ear, and relic slot gear... and enjoy the Naked Bolster goodness!

 

what you described is clearly not working as intended, as the devs said it will be fixed. that being said it isn't naked bolster since it requires gear. I meant having WZs full of people in the boring ol TOR undies. at least it could have been something sexy

 

end game pvp is performing just fine right now (except perhaps oper/scoun roll )

 

people on the forums are beating a dead horse at this point. this thread for instance, a condescending forum post to a dev that is already working on a fix.

 

to be honest I was worried 2.0 was going to have such a big bug that they were going to need to roll back the patch. i was relieved that didn't happen. while there was/is a nasty bug it doesn't stop people from playing the game. i'm also glad they removed expertise from pvp gear acquired prior to 2.0 (that only made sense and it should have been done when the patch went live).

 

anyway. i'm off the subway now and typing on my iPhone is a pain. the game will be fixed and people will still complain on the forums about something. such is the reality of millions of people trying to enjoy the same thing

Edited April 19, 2013 by CharterMonkKent

[Pistols]

end game pvp is performing just fine right now (except perhaps oper/scoun roll )

 

Drugs are bad mkay...

[Kovaos]

Drugs are bad mkay...

 

mmmmmkay

[CharterMonkKent]

Drugs are bad mkay...

 

ranked are fine and active on The Bastion. and drugs are fun. what are you talking about trollio?

[thesadplanet]

I didn't bother reading this whole thing, no developer is going to have the time to read it either. If you were really a (successful) consultant you'd know to keep it short. Unless you are one of those that force RFPs on people, if you are then may God help you

 

The PvP in 2.0 (bolster bug excluded) has been implemented quite well. They were able to fix naked bolster relatively quickly. Queue pops are faster than ever even though there are now 4 "levels" of war zones. Developers know that people will continually want subjective perfection in MMOs (or anything that's developed). That being said, the few come on the forums to say this or that, the majority are in game playing the new content.

 

So basically what you're saying is: I didn't read because its too long for my pea sized attention span. Nobody else will/has read it either despite the thread reaching 9 pages, mostly from people supporting the OP. Bolster is working fine and the people who say/prove otherwise are irrelevant.

[Pistols]

ranked are fine and active on The Bastion. and drugs are fun. what are you talking about trollio?

 

RESPECT MY AUTHORITAH!!!!

[CharterMonkKent]

So basically what you're saying is: I didn't read because its too long for my pea sized attention span. Nobody else will/has read it either despite the thread reaching 9 pages, mostly from people supporting the OP. Bolster is working fine and the people who say/prove otherwise are irrelevant.

 

Nope. You didn't get it right. He wrote this thread for one person (and an entire entertainment company for some reason), that person's name is in the title. I said that person isn't going to read it because they are already fixing the problem. Do you want them to stop developing and read all the complaints about bolster on the forums? Nope, you don't. And I didn't say bolster is fine, that would be silly. I said in end game it's fine because top tier gear in ranked is working well enough.

[CharterMonkKent]

RESPECT MY AUTHORITAH!!!!

 

Haha. Yes sir

[MotorCityMan]

Blah Blah amature opinion piece, blah blah

 

 

Another armchair developer.

 

PS If you want to keep track of what developers are saying, check the catagory called, oddly enough, Developer Tracker. There has been a wealth of information and discussion about bolster for at least the last 3 months.

Edited April 19, 2013 by MotorCityMan

[Ibokagain]

Nice Post Viperin

 

I definitely agree as the development team has a huge disconnect from their customer base. Hopefully they can fix this and improve the game in the long term.