Summer of SWTOR

[Avicii]

It is a shame that some PVP centric folks are not happy with what is coming to the game in the short term.

 

I hope they change their mind.

 

It's tough because we want to love the game and stay but the lack of support, communication and the delay is pushing players away creating longer queue times for us that don't want to play the cartoony Wildstar or ESO however they are going to make it difficult to hang around till then.

 

This impacts other players as we do buy a lot from the CM as well as paying subs and such. It's never good to lose a section of players.

Edited May 25, 2013 by Avicii

[Ultramecha]

The problem is, they are in a very cried wolf situation. So many times they've hyped up some feature, or addition, only to either underachieve, underwhelm, or scrap it entirely. After years the hype machine, most of us just roll ours eyes at "coming soon, it will be amazing" since we've heard that same story for years with very little materializing out of the big promises. They have cried wolf so many times that now that they may have big features they want to show off months from now, all alot of us think is that we are getting more smoke blown up our you know what.

 

I love SWTOR, but it's pretty clear their staff doesn't love it as much as the fans do. It should be something they can't wait to get home to play after work. Their staff should love the game and more or less be obsessed with it, LOVE IT. Yet, their staff treats the game like it's a 9-5 job and they can't WAIT to leave the office. With ESO, EQN, GTA5, Wildstar, and new consoles all coming out soon... this is not the summer for them to cry wolf again and deliver recycled content. This is the summer where they should be delivering the SSSP, multiple new wz's, multiple new ops, multiple new flashpoints... the stuff we were supposed to get with the expansion. There is so much good competition down the road they can't afford to keep dragging their knuckles with these updates. Work double/triple hours if they have to, but they need content and sooner than august or 2.4.

 

What makes you think they don't love their game?

[Jandi]

Not what I said, just saying only so much can be shared for a reason.

 

Dummies will rage regardless of what they say. As shown by the server transfers. It's impotent rage, however that amounts to nothing (you can check the vocal haters post history to see they've quit a dozen times now, some of them).

 

It's much preferable to keep the fans happy then the haters silent. The fact that they don't understand this shows just how detached from reality the PR guys are and if anyone should be fired, it's the marketing team. Fire them all and hire developers instead. The tourists are already gone. They don't have to sell the game anymore. The only way to increase the amount of players at this point is to placate the current players, they will market the game for them in social media, which will result in gaming news sites picking it up.

 

Staying silent is the dumbest thing you could possibly do at this point. Second dumbest is pre-packed bullet points that are vague and don't really say anything of substance.

Edited May 25, 2013 by Jandi

[Ultramecha]

EA is the laughing stock of the gaming industry.

 

You are right about that.

[bronharth]

It shouldn't BE a small development team. It's Bioware and EA. This is a AAA MMORPG. They should be making a decent amount of money now with F2P and subscriptions and gouging everyone on the CM for dyes, new hair styles etc.

 

Agreed. I wonder what this /handsrubbing-update 2.4 will bring to the pvpers. It has always been a letdown on all updates you did not charge for, BW. I can remember how I was always thrilled of anticipation when there were pvp content updates.

You tell us one day before 1.2 that ranked warzones will not be implemented. You call it "pre-season" and today this sounds like a joke. You took the open world pvp with Ilum away from us. Yeah it was bad, but I'm coming to a point where that would be better than nothing at all. Ilum's "pvp"-section today is a complete joke and you know that.

 

If you tell me you got something /handsrubbing-super-duper-awesome, I'm sorry I do not believe you.

 

EDIT: Don't mess with the stun breaker.

Edited May 25, 2013 by bronharth

[Ultramecha]

Dummies will rage regardless of what they say. As shown by the server transfers. It's impotent rage, however that amounts to nothing (you can check the vocal haters post history to see they've quit a dozen times now, some of them).

 

It's much preferable to keep the fans happy then the haters silent. The fact that they don't understand this shows just how detached from reality the PR guys are and if anyone should be fired, it's the marketing team. Fire them all and hire developers instead. The tourists are already gone. They don't have to sell the game anymore. The only way to increase the amount of players at this point is to placate the current players, they will marketing the game for them in social media, which will result in gaming news sites picking it up.

 

Staying silent is the dumbest thing you could possibly do at this point. Second dumbest is pre-packed bullet points that are vague and don't really say anything of substance.

 

Yeah thats true. At least they are starting to provide roadmaps which is nice.

[Vaerah]

No PvP till autumn? Glad I can unsub and remain F2P till then.

[translucentwolf]

/YAWN

 

Yeah...if my account weren't already cancelled, it would be now. As expected, 2.2 is small and disappointing. Nothing interesting or exciting coming down the pipeline except more recycled PVE endgame. Not even new PVE stuff, just recycled.

 

I'm sorry, that's not enough to keep me around for the rest of the year. 3 double XP weekends? Really? Did you miss the part where people were requesting a way to make double XP permanent?

 

See ya SWTOR, I'll check back in 2014, maybe the next DLC will be here by then (but probably not).

 

Say hi to the pandas, won't you?

[DarthBama]

Cut them some slack. They are a small development team. Plus dealing with server transfers is a headache for sure.

 

Star Wars Galaxies had like 2 developers at the end and put out more stuff than this, lol.

[SpaniardInfinity]

PvP players! I’d love to be able to tell you more about what’s coming in 2.4 and we’ll have more details to share as we get closer. To be clear on the scope of what I was hinting at, we are not going to get closer and just say ‘huzzah, a new Warzone!’ We are working very hard on larger PvP features that everyone will enjoy but are especially targeted at our more hardcore PvP community.

 

I don't want to come across as rude and maybe it will anyway, but come on. I understand why you're being secretive about it --you don't want to let out any details in case it gets pushed back. It happened with ranked (1.2 to 1.3) and to be frank, it should have happened with Bolster (2.0). Maybe that's not possible because of time restraints, okay. Fair enough. You also probably don't want to let anything else out to spoil the surprise or to give out details that vindicate the common PvPer complaint that the developers have no idea what they're doing in the PvP department.

 

But it's kind of sad when you look at what PvP has gotten since launch. We've lost our designated open world PvP area (yes, there were problems with it, but show me which part of the game doesn't); we've gotten two new warzones (the most recent in December); and Ranked has been in a Preseason coma for the last year (in fact, if 2.4 arrives in September/October, it will be a year and a half old). Yes, there have been 2 new tiers of gear (PVE has gotten 4). Bolster was an absolute fiasco and you must be willingly ignorant to say that it wasn't.

 

So who cares, I'm just some poster on the forums, but at this point, I think its about time YOU, the developers, act in good faith instead of the other way around. Why should PVPers continue to support your game? I mean, isn't it at least a little bit contradictory that you just told PVE players why they should support your game this summer and then casually told the PVP community to wait until September or later?

 

With that said, I'm glad to see you guys are at least communicating more often. I actually think this post in general, which has caused quiet the stir is very bold and very respectable. I hope it continues.

Edited May 25, 2013 by SpaniardInfinity

[Arkerus]

Agreed. I wonder what this /handsrubbing-update 2.4 will bring to the pvpers. It has always been a letdown on all updates you did not charge for, BW. I can remember how I was always thrilled of anticipation when there were pvp content updates.

You tell us one day before 1.2 that ranked warzones will not be implemented. You call it "pre-season" and today this sounds like a joke. You took the open world pvp with Ilum away from us. Yeah it was bad, but I'm coming to a point where that would be better than nothing at all. Ilum's "pvp"-section today is a complete joke and you know that.

 

If you tell me you got something /handsrubbing-super-duper-awesome, I'm sorry I do not believe you.

 

EDIT: Don't mess with the stun breaker.

 

 

Illum wasn't working properly and the engine can't do anymore than 30 or 40 people on screen. It needed removed. It was broken from the start. Instance PvP is a lot more practical and personally more enjoyable that Zerg fest crowd PvP.

 

There is no "joke" about the current pvp section on illum. It's part of an event and specifically designed the way it is.

 

Ranked isn't moving forward because people aren't playing it. They aren't going to kick off a season if there are only 2 or 3 ranked teams on each server. Perhaps they have a new rank system in store. I can't say for sure.

 

I am interested in wha is coming and it sounds like they are trying to do something different. I can wait for a bit.

 

You don't sound very happy. Maybe you should find something else to enjoy and check out PvP later?

Edited May 25, 2013 by Arkerus

[Vaerah]

Cut them some slack. They are a small development team. Plus dealing with server transfers is a headache for sure.

 

You know what? SWTOR is the umpteenth EA MMO I (stupidly) decide to play and I can tell you that the "small development team" is not a valid excuse any more.

 

They ALWAYS start with over-budget, bulging big teams, they become small only because they keep failing delivering good games again and again till the bean counters start cutting budget and developers.

 

So, no, having a small team is part of their problem of being unable to deliver a single good MMO, not something to "cut some slack to".

 

I only played $100M+ budget EA MMOs with epic teams and guess what, in one year they always fail, tank, have to consolidate servers, downsize till they are reduced to "small team".

Small team is an effect of incompetence, not something unavoidable that comes from the heavens.

[Screaming_Ziva]

July 23rd look for a return of the Relics of the Gree Event for a nice two week long run. Per community request the Event will scaled up to level 55 on this next run!

What community requested this to be scaled up to 55? Better yet, what community even requested this come back at all? We want the Rakgoul event back, not the Gree for a fifth time.

[Ultramecha]

What community requested this to be scaled up to 55? Better yet, what community even requested this come back at all? We want the Rakgoul event back, not the Gree for a fifth time.

 

Did you miss the angry mob that was pissed it wasn't 55? Many people like gree.

[Groovykool]

Summer of UNSUB

[Vaerah]

Ranked isn't moving forward because people aren't playing it. They aren't going to kick off a season if there are only 2 or 3 ranked teams on each server. Perhaps they have a new rank system in store. I can't say for sure.

 

Another person who confuses cause with effect.

 

PvP is not being kicked back because there are 2-3 ranked teams on each server but because EA failed to let people form up more teams:

 

1) No cross server WZs this makes impossible to queue up and find a game fast and so people quickly get tired and leave. WoW implemented cross server battlegrounds like 5 years ago.

 

2) The whole RWZ gear up concept is flawed. You put competitive gear to require RWZs to be purchased. Too bad the few RWZ guilds are hardly letting someone with Partisan gear in, so anyone willing to play RWZs has to grind regular WZs for weeks or more. This immediately cuts the pool of perspective new RWZ players, once exhausted the current RWZ pool (natural players turnover) you are left with the same few hard cores and that's it.

 

Yes yes I know, now someone smart will say that their guild even invites level 52 gear players for their RWZ because they are oh-so-skilled.

 

3) There is specs and gameplay stigma. I enter a WZ (not even talking about RWZ) and I am automatically assumed to be Shadow tank spec and tank gear and automatically shouted to get cobwebs sitting on a node and get 2 medals a WZ.

In regular WZs I can tell them I am infiltration spec and that I am going to guard the node only for some minutes, then I WILL have my share of fun, deal with it.

In RWZ the leader would not even let me join the team, tank spec or die (yes I know blah blah there's your enlightened guild who allows in every spec and actually does RWZs with 5 infiltration shadow, I am sure it's true).

In the best case it's "1 tank specced shadow in, 1 (out of 10 in guild) infiltration in tops, and this only because dude XYZ with class ABC today can't play (else no inf shadows are in), the others queue up and hope".

Edited May 25, 2013 by Vaerah

[justandulas]

What makes you think they don't love their game?

 

Well, I can tell you that the PVP devs don't love their game, and it shows because there hasn't been any content, or significant pvp content, basically since 1.2. If you are going to work on a game, it should be something that you obsess over. That you want to play all night after work, that you want to play on your day off. The pvp content we've been given and now told to wait til 2.4 sends a very loud message that they aren't passionate about SWTOR's PVP. The PVP team must be just taking EA's money and spending it in vegas every week because nothing ever translates into the game for us. With a single year, I could create 10-20 new warzones so what's BW's pvp team's excuse for only one new wz every 18 months with not a single crumb of content for an expansion? Games where devs love and play their own game around the clock show in the amount of content that's added, because they are adding for themselves too.

[Screaming_Ziva]

Did you miss the angry mob that was pissed it wasn't 55? Many people like gree.

There seems to be only two types of people on our server that actually like the Gree event:

 

#1 - People who are getting legacy weapons

 

#2 - PvP gankers

 

That's about it.

[ForsakenKing]

Another person who confuses cause with effect.

 

PvP is not being kicked back because there are 2-3 ranked teams on each server but because EA failed to let people form up more teams:

 

1) No cross server WZs this makes impossible to queue up and find a game fast and so people quickly get tired and leave. WoW implemented cross server battlegrounds like 5 years ago.

 

2) The whole RWZ gear up concept is flawed. You put competitive gear to require RWZs to be purchased. Too bad the few RWZ guilds are hardly letting someone with Partisan gear in, so anyone willing to play RWZs has to grind regular WZs for weeks or more. This immediately cuts the pool of perspective new RWZ players, once exhausted the current RWZ pool (natural players turnover) you are left with the same few hard cores and that's it.

 

Yes yes I know, now someone smart will say that their guild even invites level 52 gear players for their RWZ because they are oh-so-skilled.

 

3) There is specs and gameplay stigma. I enter a WZ (not even talking about RWZ) and I am automatically assumed to be Shadow tank spec and tank gear and automatically shouted to get cobwebs sitting on a node and get 2 medals a WZ.

In regular WZs I can tell them I am infiltration spec and that I am going to guard the node only for some minutes, then I WILL have my share of fun, deal with it.

In RWZ the leader would not even let me join the team, tank spec or die (yes I know blah blah there's your enlightened guild who allows in every spec and actually does RWZs with 5 infiltration shadow, I am sure it's true).

In the best case it's "1 tank specced shadow in, 1 (out of 10 in guild) infiltration in tops, and this only because dude XYZ with class ABC today can't play (else no inf shadows are in), the others queue up and hope".

 

well you obviously havent tried ranked since at least 2.0.

 

1)Ranked wzs pop on a regular basis. people want cross so that new teams dont have to face people that have been queing together for months and elite teams from different servers want it so that they can que against each other.

 

2)Min/Maxed Partisan is all you need to be competitive in ranked WZs and that only takes about a 7-10 for the average person to get if they have a plan. conq is nice but the difference isnt large enough to exclude a person from a ranked match.

 

3) people are upset at you because you arent playing your roll of guarding the node. You can do that in infiltration now. heck, some teams prefer that so that you can put pressure on their node when they need it. your problem is you say you are going to guard the node and then leaving it. who wants to que up ranked with someone like that?

 

anyway, i said my peice even though i doubt you will ever read it (lets be honest, i know i wont come back to see if you replied lol)

[Ultramecha]

Well, I can tell you that the PVP devs don't love their game, and it shows because there hasn't been any content, or significant pvp content, basically since 1.2. If you are going to work on a game, it should be something that you obsess over. That you want to play all night after work, that you want to play on your day off. The pvp content we've been given and now told to wait til 2.4 sends a very loud message that they aren't passionate about SWTOR's PVP. The PVP team must be just taking EA's money and spending it in vegas every week because nothing ever translates into the game for us. With a single year, I could create 10-20 new warzones so what's BW's pvp team's excuse for only one new wz every 18 months with not a single crumb of content for an expansion? Games where devs love and play their own game around the clock show in the amount of content that's added, because they are adding for themselves too.

 

Development time takes longer than you think. Compare to wow, which may get one or two new warzones a year

[Cupelixx]

What makes you think they don't love their game?

 

All you have to do is look at the state the game is in and the nature of the updates happening to see it. It's obvious that they don't love their game, take no pride in their game, and don't care about their game. If any of those 3 scenarios were true, we wouldn't have bugs go unfixed for months. If any of those 3 scenarios were true, they wouldn't be pi----- in our faces by giving us these blasé, uninspired game updates in a wrapper of "look how awesome these updates are!".

 

They love the money way more than they love this game, that much is clear. The hood clipping bug on the Saber Marshal's Robe has existed since game update 1.2. We're going on to game update 2.2 now and there is no fix in sight. They won't, because taking an hour away from development of cash shop items would be unacceptable.

 

They come to the forums now posting stuff like "the game is healthier than ever, everything is going great" and "our new policy is more transparency". If the game is doing so well, why do I already see a massive drop in primetime players on the Harbinger? If the game is doing awesome, why can't they allocate development resources to things players have asked for since beta? Why can't they allocate more resources to fixing bugs and polishing the game?

[justandulas]

Development time takes longer than you think. Compare to wow, which may get one or two new warzones a year

 

Why is that though? The reason is takes so long with WoW is because their engine is old and isn't coded well. One of the benefits of the hero engine is that it supposedly is so easy to develop for. So, what's the hold up? I literally think if BW flew me out for a single week I could develop half a dozen new well balanced WZ's, for free, so why do we PVP subs have to wait a year in between wz's, including being ignored throughout an expansion, when they have a team being paid the big bucks to make PVP content?

[schmel]

It shouldn't BE a small development team. It's Bioware and EA. This is a AAA MMORPG. They should be making a decent amount of money now with F2P and subscriptions and gouging everyone on the CM for dyes, new hair styles etc.

 

If Sqaure Enix can completely REMAKE FFXIV in about two years, then what the hell is our development team doing?

THIS. Exactly this! This isn't some indie game from a small start-up. If you figure that the game has about 500,000 subs, who pay $150 a year in subscriptions (we're going with some very rough estimates here), that would be $75million from subscribers alone. That's quite a lot of money. The average salary for a game developer is $84,337 (http://www.gamespot.com/news/average-2012-us-dev-salary-84000-6406397). But we don't want average developers. We want really good developers. So lets pay them, say, $120,000, or approximately 142% the going rate for developers. At that salary, a staff of 300 developers (my recollection is that, at release, the game had 400?) will cost $36million. That would leave $39million to maintain and upgrade the servers, pay the utilities on their buildings, etc.

 

Not that much, I know, but all of that is BEFORE you take into account the CM. Take the huge influx of cash from the CM and all of a sudden a staff of 300 developers (the estimates are, of course, rough. they're also deliberately exaggerated. I think a staff of 200 might be enough. But I use 300 because if we can afford 300, we can definitely afford 200) seems pretty feasible, while still netting Bioware a comfy profit. I wonder if Bioware is reinvesting in the game at all right now? If they want to take their cash and go, that is certainly their right, but I would definitely be saddened and disappointed by it (and I genuinely don't think it would be a good business decision either).

[Jandi]

THIS. Exactly this! This isn't some indie game from a small start-up. If you figure that the game has about 500,000 subs, who pay $150 a year in subscriptions (we're going with some very rough estimates here), that would be $75million from subscribers alone. That's quite a lot of money. The average salary for a game developer is $84,337 (http://www.gamespot.com/news/average-2012-us-dev-salary-84000-6406397). But we don't want average developers. We want really good developers. So lets pay them, say, $120,000, or approximately 142% the going rate for developers. At that salary, a staff of 300 developers (my recollection is that, at release, the game had 400?) will cost $36million. That would leave $39million to maintain and upgrade the servers, pay the utilities on their buildings, etc.

 

Not that much, I know, but all of that is BEFORE you take into account the CM. Take the huge influx of cash from the CM and all of a sudden a staff of 300 developers (the estimates are, of course, rough. they're also deliberately exaggerated. I think a staff of 200 might be enough. But I use 300 because if we can afford 300, we can definitely afford 200) seems pretty feasible, while still netting Bioware a comfy profit. I wonder if Bioware is reinvesting in the game at all right now? If they want to take their cash and go, that is certainly their right, but I would definitely be saddened and disappointed by it (and I genuinely don't think it would be a good business decision either).

 

Not a single cent of profit is put back into the game, It's how EA operates. You can find the evidence to support this claim easy enough if you choose to. It's how every single game under EA works, don't delude yourself into thinking SWTOR is somehow a special case. They operate the gaem at a bare minimum with no plans whatsoever in place to increase it's funding, ever.

[schmel]

Not a single cent of profit is put back into the game, It's how EA operates. You can find the evidence to support this claim easy enough if you choose to. It's how every single game under EA works, don't delude yourself into thinking SWTOR is somehow a special case. They operate the gaem at a bare minimum with no plans whatsoever in place to increase it's funding, ever.

If that's true, it makes me sad As I said, they have a right to do that if they want, but I don't think I could run a business that way in good conscience.