Why Class Representatives won't work.

[ArchangelLBC]

Exactly 31 days ago, the following was posted in a thread on the shadow forums which primarily focused on the issue of the spikiness of shadow tanks.

 

Hey guys,

 

Apologies for the silence on this. I wanted to pass this back to the combat guys and make sure we had an in-depth conversation about Shadow/Assassin tanks before coming back to you guys. What I can say is that we are investigating the Shadow/Assassin tank’s performance against hard-hitting Operations bosses. I have no timeline on any potential changes right now but I at least wanted you guys to know that we are aware of your concerns.

 

-eric

 

The original thread, first started on the 20th of May, can be found here:

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=641620

 

This was one issue for one class, which had been discussed for months on the forums and had generated several player created models which helped detail the exact problem in excruciating detail. We can safely assume that the devs have been aware of the concern and having an "in-depth discussion" for 31 days. To my knowledge, no further developer response has been forthcoming as to the results of that in-depth discussion.

 

Given that they apparently can't find some sort of reasonable answer for one issue from one class in the span of 31 days, how can they actually tell us with a straight face that they intend to answer 6 issues, from two different classes, every 2 weeks?

 

I hope that discussion truly was in-depth bioware, because I guarantee you that in 41 days this question is going to come up, and when you still don't have an answer the shadow forums are probably gonna erupt, but that's ok because you guys don't pay attention to class forums anyway. Besides, by then you guys might have long since proven the whole idea flawed without ever having to deal with the shadow issue! So that's nice.

 

Enjoy your August.

 

PS: I dare you to prove me wrong, but history is not in your favor my friends.

Edited August 3, 2013 by ArchangelLBC

[Hockaday]

You can already tell the one for the Assassin is one sided already...sad really.

[Tsillah]

Wait, because there is an issue that they haven't spoken much about last month, you jump to the conclusion that class representatives won't work?

 

That is a hell of a jump OP.....I am not arguing that it will all be perfect and fine, because I don't know, but your type of reasoning here is, sorry to say, laughable at best.

[Hockaday]

Also kind of have to agree with T. Should give them a chance. Though, I think the failure will be on the player side, not the dev. Probably a bit of both.

[Farstrider]

I fear that the only reference to understanding the problem that is mentioned, refers to high end Ops.

 

I am a competent full 69 with 66 augs shadow tank, BIS relics, and with the unreliability in the way the damage profile works, I can be ripped to pieces by trash pulls in level 55HMs if certain defensive abilities are on CD, my Guardian, undergeared can walk it...

 

Whilst NiM and even SM Ops are a massive roadblock, it concerns me when no mention is made of the obvious discrepancies between the tanking classes for other content is not mentioned.

 

[Tsillah]

I fear that the only reference to understanding the problem that is mentioned, refers to high end Ops.

 

I am a competent full 69 with 66 augs shadow tank, BIS relics, and with the unreliability in the way the damage profile works, I can be ripped to pieces by trash pulls in level 55HMs if certain defensive abilities are on CD, my Guardian, undergeared can walk it...

 

Whilst NiM and even SM Ops are a massive roadblock, it concerns me when no mention is made of the obvious discrepancies between the tanking classes for other content is not mentioned.

 

 

It is obvious there are issues. That's not the point here though. Just because they have difficulty getting the assassin tank right, doesn't mean that the concept of class reps will fail. It's what we call a non sequitur.

 

I am not defending the class representative idea, nor am I attacking it. Just saying that the OP's reasoning is lacking. It's like saying that because one red car crashed, building another red car will not work.Makes no sense at all.

[Grayseven]

The problem comes with the lack of communication on a known issue.

 

After stating that they were looking at the issue...nothing has happened. So now there will be 3 topics for each AC that are important to the players. If EA/BW can't provide feedback beyond "we are looking at it" for one issue for one AC, what makes people so certain they will be able to multiply that by 3 for each AC?

 

I'd like to believe that they started the Class Rep system with the intention of answering the issues and fixing them, but the OP is right...history is NOT in their favor...

[annabethchase]

I believe he's saying the lack of a response to a fairly clear and important request is the issue, because a "discussion" yellow post does need an eventual "here's the results of what we discussed, or at least what they are going to try".

[oaceen]

i don't really see this as a problem tbh. i think this system was put into place so questions like that can be asked and answered a lot more quickly.

 

at least, i don't see as nearly a big a problem as with the scoundrel rep buying his way into the position and seemingly knowing very little (if anything) about the class and never having posted about scoundrels before this whole rep thing came up.

 

meh.

[Grayseven]

The problem becomes perception over intention. EA/BW may have the best intentions in the world with the CR system, but our perception has been that long term issues may get discussed once or twice but are followed by endless silence on the subject.

 

I'd love to see this work. I'd like to see it expanded to other representatives for player issues like Crafting, Missions, Bugs. But until it actually does work, EA/BW is fighting an uphill battle against the perceptions of the player base that have been dashed against the rocks of hopelessness time and time again.

[BrianDavion]

this is the first I've heard of class reps, are we talking devs whose job it is to specificly talk about one class, or are we talking a select group of morons from the community who are supposed to represent our concerns to BW? cause if it's the latter that won't work. I've seen other games do it and it's always aweful. (the ones for the broken OP classes always insist said class is balanced)

[branmakmuffin]

Wait, because there is an issue that they haven't spoken much about last month, you jump to the conclusion that class representatives won't work?

 

That is a hell of a jump OP.....I am not arguing that it will all be perfect and fine, because I don't know, but your type of reasoning here is, sorry to say, laughable at best.

Yeah, I agree that class reps are a waste of time, but the OP has nothing to do with the subject of class reps.

[Liwilliams]

Also kind of have to agree with T. Should give them a chance. Though, I think the failure will be on the player side, not the dev. Probably a bit of both.

 

I think it's better than nothing, no doubt.

 

However, I believe their lack of direction with the Sin class is a fantastic example of how they will address questions. Most classes will be asking about balance in some way, shape or form. If they can't address one unbalance since Makeb, how are they going to handle a hard three balancing issue questions?

 

If anyone understood the shadow community, they would understand the concern we have here. There have been multiple numbers given to prove what we're saying. There are multiple situations where we given them the information, and naturally, there have been thousands of suggestions on how to tweak the class. And all we get is, well, nothing.

 

It's still sad to see that end-game for a shadow is reroll.

Edited August 3, 2013 by Liwilliams

[LordArtemis]

I think it would be best to put the boat to sea before we are sure it's going to sink.......

[ArchangelLBC]

The particular example here is just that an example. One that was perceived as a serious issue by the Shadow community. Now while class reps are certainly an interesting vehicle for getting questions delivered to the devs quickly (4 weeks at max as opposed to waiting 6 for them to finally notice Kitru's thread), my concern is that after 31 days of "in-depth" discussion they haven't gotten back with so much as a "working as intended". 31 days. Count em'. A complete month. 4 and a half weeks. All without so much as a peep on an issue which they HAD to know was huge for the assassin/shadow tanking community

 

Now they expect us to believe that they'll be able to handle 6 issues, coming from 2 completely different ACs, every two weeks. That's twice the ACs, 6 times the issues in total, some of which will by necessity be even broader than "tank spikiness", and they want us to believe that answers will be delivered to all of those issues to both of those ACs in less than half the time.

 

This is not the first issue that's taken them months and months to get an answer back to us one way or another (I note the seemingly endless tyranny of the stun bubbles, and the same timeframe before they told us that Smash in PVP was working as intended, the endless cries from 1.2 until 2.0 from mercs/commandos begging for more utility which still needs tweaking, operative DPS, Jugg/Guardian threat issues, and on and on and on).

 

The thing that concerns me here is that this particular example isn't from over a year ago with a different community team. This is an example of a solid month of silence right before they tell us they're going to be addressing 6 issues, from two ACs, every two weeks.

 

Forgive me if, after all this time, I'm disinclined to give them the benefit of the doubt this time. What possible benefit of a doubt can anyone give them with such a recent example of 31 days of silence staring them right in the face?

 

I hope I'm wrong, but generally speaking the leopard cannot change its spots.

[Grayseven]

I think it would be best to put the boat to sea before we are sure it's going to sink.......

 

Maybe, but haven't we already seen a smaller boat sink?

[Kitru]

The thing that concerns me here is that this particular example isn't from over a year ago with a different community team. This is an example of a solid month of silence right before they tell us they're going to be addressing 6 issues, from two ACs, every two weeks.

 

The difference is that, with the class reps, they've at least *promised* to respond rather than leaving it open-ended, which has always been the problem. The problem that I have is the order of the ACs chosen: they chose the ACs with the fewest problems first rather than ACs that actually *have* major problems, which doesn't really suggest that they're interested in actually doing anything about the classes that are actually *going* to have questions that won't be answered easily.

[oaceen]

The difference is that, with the class reps, they've at least *promised* to respond rather than leaving it open-ended, which has always been the problem. The problem that I have is the order of the ACs chosen: they chose the ACs with the fewest problems first rather than ACs that actually *have* major problems, which doesn't really suggest that they're interested in actually doing anything about the classes that are actually *going* to have questions that won't be answered easily.

 

i had to laugh a bit that sentinel and sniper were the first round of questions.

Edited August 3, 2013 by oaceen

[helpmewin]

They can't re-balance shadow tank cause they don't have enough people to do this, all their work is 2.4 . They can't buff shadow tank cause they afraid whine from knights/warrior communtity. So next year and maybe in 2.4, but its not fact. They never do shadow tank better or equal to guardian and this is fact, they afraid whine from most popular class in the game. Edited August 3, 2013 by helpmewin

[Icebergy]

They never do shadow tank better or equal to guardian and this is fact.

 

What? Apparently you didn't play pre 2.0.

[helpmewin]

What? Apparently you didn't play pre 2.0.

 

I play he was worst then guardian tank in PvP as tank, but shadow tank hybrid was one of the best node guarder as now and the best ball hander in hutt ball, but not equal to guardian tank hybrid. Shadow tank was playable in PvE as tank not in PvP after 1.3. The main problem for guardian in PvE was threat pre 2.0. Now shadow is worst tank in the game, not simply the worst and to the point that it generally not a tank.

Edited August 3, 2013 by helpmewin

[chuixupu]

i had to laugh a bit that sentinel and sniper were the first round of questions.

 

The Sniper community already knew who we wanted a rep and was already pre-emptively organizing questions before the class rep voting even started, so I'd ask us first too.

[Icebergy]

I play he was worst then guardian tank in PvP as tank, but shadow tank hybrid was one of the best node guarder as now and the best ball hander in hutt ball, but not equal to guardian tank hybrid. Shadow tank was playable in PvE as tank not in PvP after 1.3. The main problem for guardian in PvE was threat pre 2.0. Now shadow is worst tank in the game, not simply the worst and to the point that it generally not a tank.

 

If you had problems PvPing as a shadow before 2.0 then you have bigger problems than your spelling and grammar.

[Andryah]

Wait, because there is an issue that they haven't spoken much about last month, you jump to the conclusion that class representatives won't work?

 

That is a hell of a jump OP.....I am not arguing that it will all be perfect and fine, because I don't know, but your type of reasoning here is, sorry to say, laughable at best.

 

/Agree.

 

I really do not understand why people need to take an issue and use it as a platform to attack and denounce something completely different. Which is exactly what the OP did in this case.

 

Personally, I am not optimistic about the effectiveness and viability of class representatives, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the complaint presented by the OP. These are two completely different topics.

[helpmewin]

My hybrid DPS vanguard have more survivability than shadow tank. Mockery. I do HM FP 55 with my full partisan hybrid vanguard DPS as tank. Funny.