2014 and SWTOR

[Leafy_Bug]

As someone who has invested a lot of time and money in this game, I am hoping that BioWare will change their approach in 2014. What would I like to see improved in 2014.

 

 

1. Better servers

 

 

This year TOFN has been very unreliable. It crashed many times, a lot of server lag, spikiness and sporadic kicks. If I look back at the previous year and not this one, I can say that apart from a few chat mishaps, TOFN held its own. Now before you start formulating the 'stop using a toaster and get better internet' let me point out that last night TOFN had another major crash where everyone got kicked out mid raid. Some lost Ranked Arena rating and some lost the chance to wrap up an event that took weeks to organize.

 

 

2. Make PTS worth something

 

 

2.5 brought with it some major changes to the game. These changes were tested both in a closed and open beta. The closed beta shaped the final outcome of the patch while the open beta did not really matter. I have been on the PTS in both open and closed beta since the game came out. I have been an avid participant to improve this game and while we may not agree on changes it would be nice to get some feedback from the developers as to why feedback from the PTS is ignored. For example, i scheduled with my guild to test the new Space PVP. We all download the PTS, some had to be helped and guided how to do it via TeamViewer. When time came to test it, half of them could not access it because of an AMD video driver problem.

 

 

Our plan to test and provide feedback was hampered by this little glitch. We said its still on the PTS it will be fixed before launch. They patched the PTS, we updated, and again the same driver error for some of my guildies. Some got worried and said that if this bug happens when 2.5 hits live then they won't be able to play. We reported this bug we pointed it out! What happened? 2.5 hit and the driver error was still in the release. People could not play it and had to spend 20-30 minutes on fixing the game, repairing the launcher, deleting files, copying files, to try to make it work.Some managed while others were left out. Why did we test this release on the PTS when you completely ignored this video driver issue and still released the content? It took you guys how many weeks to deploy a fix where the patch notes state that issues with AMD cards have been fixed?

 

 

The above PTS issue is one amongst many and seeing ignored feedback on basic game functionality will deter people to download 25GB next time. What is the purpose of the PTS if not to weed out issues with patches? I am not referring to class balance and other semantics, I am referring to basic game performance and being able to play it.

 

 

Having said the above, i would like BioWare to be a bit more professional with their PTS and make sure content is in a far better shape to be released rather than releasing it live and causing so many problems. Also, would be nice if you could make a PTS in Europe. Connecting to the one in Austin is problematic for some. 150-200ms lag can hardly be conclusive on how certain things will work on live.

 

 

3. Faster Class Changes

 

 

 

At this point in time BioWare is working on a system where class changes happen every major patch. This can take from a few months to half a year. If a class has issues and content released by BioWare cannot be covered with ease with said class and pushes people away from it, why do we have to wait so long to get developer attention? The Shadow tank debacle comes to mind where for 6 months no developer stepped into the class forums to see what is going on. I would like 2014 to bring more input from the developers in the game and for them to test the content they release with all classes. Other MMOs are constantly injecting incremental class changes with almost every patch. Why doesn't BioWare do the same? What is the reasoning to wait months and months to change a class? I would like to see constant class changes in most patches. A tweak here a tweak there.

 

 

4. Better Guild Support

 

 

I have been a GM in this game for two years now. I started small then had half the TOFN Rep fleet in my guild (had 60 raiders a week) and then restructured to something smaller and more manageable due to lack of time. One thing has stayed constant : lack of innovation for someone who has the guild master control panel. Apart from a menu where you can add ranks, a guild master has nothing worth mentioning. We have no in-game calendar nor a way to advertise our guild publicly. We have to spam the fleet and , as you can imagine, when 5 guilds spam their messages its a complete mess. Why can't we have a system where guilds are rated and advertised in game via NPCs on the fleet and home worlds? You see all these people asking in general 'looking for guild' when a very elegant solution would be for these said NPCs to show which guild is recruiting, type of guild, numbers of members, rating, PVE progress, PVP progress, etc.

 

 

After two years the guilds haven't received anything major. You have given us a reputation feature and in 2.5 you decided to make the reputation icons bigger to cover the tooltip text. We cannot whisper our guild members via the guild window. We have members who use all types of accents because they are from all over. For example, my guild is international and i have people who I cannot whisper privately unless i do ./who Rebel Dream. Open the Who window, right click and whisper on the person who has 6 tildes and 5 accents on the letters.

 

 

Another feature I would like implement is a guild data export function. I have to constantly update my website manually and my excel sheets when the game could do this for me. This would help us greatly and would simplify our jobs as GMs. So I hope 2014 brings some love to guilds and guild masters. The current tools at our disposal are more of a hassle than convenience.

 

 

 

5.Decrease Game size and better performance

 

 

With every new patch my SWTOR folder is getting bigger and bigger. When the next major patch will hit, my folder will, again, increase in size. This may not be an issue for my gaming computer but on my laptop and many other systems things will start to become inconvenient. When was the last time when a BioWare programmer just sat down and said ' we gotta do something about these big updates and the size of the game because at this rate we will hit 30-40GB'.

 

 

Performance wise, I will not get into the hero debacle and whatnot. That is not the purpose of this topic, i just hope that 2014 will bring less memory leaks, less drops in frames and overall FASTER LOADING SCREENS. If you look back at Darvannis. Check the loading screen time at release, then 6 months after, then after another patch. You will notice something of the sort : long loading screen, reduced loading screen, longer than release loading screen. Every now and then a patch comes out that has no relation to loading screens and messes everything up. The toaster crew is frowning again and is shouting at me 'SSD, SSD, SSD'. I will kindly reply that I have 4 SSDs in my computer with a very nice speed 700-1000MB/s and SWTOR is running of a nice RAID array.

 

 

6. Organize more events

 

 

I enjoyed the Raghoul Event, then the Chevin one, then the Gree, I started the Bounty Hunter one, then went back to Gree, then back to Bounty Hunter and now I am waiting for the Raghoul event again. In two years we haven't had anything new except the same thing over and over. May 2014 bring us other events because these for me have started to become a bit boring.

 

 

7. Group Finder Tweaks

 

 

I would really like if 2014 would bring to the table some way to increase the number of tanks. In the current state of the game, a damage dealer has no chance to get a flashpoint or an operation in a decent amount of time. The double xp weekend just passed and I will be honest. When I was leveling my gunslinger between 37-44 I had no group finder pop. I would go on planets and do my class quests while waiting in the finder. I got one pop after 1 hour and then the person declined.

 

Damage dealers really suffer in the group finder and I know this because as a tank and healer wait times are marginally less. I have all classes in the game and I can count on one hand how many times I did the FP weekly with my sentinel since the group finder was released.

 

BioWare please find a way to give an incentive to tanks and healers. Some extra credits, extra commendations, extra something because we need more tanks when we do not use our tanks to get our flashpoints and group finder operations done.

 

 

8. MORE PVP

 

 

Looking at the success every double xp weekend has, I am wondering if something similar cannot be applied to PVP. For example, why shouldn't we have a weekend in 2014 where comms / money are increased by 50%? This would surely encourage people to pvp a lot more and gear up faster. Win or lose during this period you get way more commendations or better yet decrease the prices of the PVP items so gear discrepancy is slowly minimized and the majority go in there full exprtise rather than level 40 greens.

 

 

 

The above represents my TOP 8 i'd like to see in swtor next year. Thanks for taking the time to read this and would love to see the list I started grow and maybe even presented to the developers.

Edited December 13, 2013 by Leafy_Bug

[NoFishing]

I normally don't like walls of text posts, but nice job on this one.

 

Edit: one thing I would add is to come up with some really nice perk for legacy 50 players. Something along the lines of a legacy-wide datacron unlocks, no expiration on rocket boost, a discount on CM purchases, etc. But don't insult us with pointless things like a title or pet or fireworks.

Edited December 13, 2013 by NoFishing

[Arandem]

I agree with it all, the only thing I would add is to change the cap on warzone comms. We don't get a cap on credits so please don't cap comms. It gets annoying feeling forced to spend them to make room for more Edited December 13, 2013 by Arandem

[Bzziki]

wet dreams

[Elyons]

All wonderful ideas! I agree and support every notion. You my friend should have a sticky as an example of constructive criticism

[Wintermist]

Very nice post. Thumbs up.

[Darth_Wicked]

wet dreams

 

Very, very Vette.

Edited December 13, 2013 by Darth_Wicked

[DOHboy]

The comment on "decrease folder size and game size" is a counter intuitive request. in order to add MORE content, you have to ADD content to what is currently there. I suppose they could REMOVE content thus making the game size smaller.

 

You want more class story, more zones, more everything, but dont' want more data added to the game folder?

I'm sorry but you can't ADD code to something and not expect it to grow.

 

I think in general you have valid concerns, address issues on people mind, but this one in particular missed the target by a good margin.

[Vember]

Can't argue with any of that.

[Jadescythe]

The events part doesn't seem as important, but I can get on board with what this player has posted. Hopefully some of these changes will take place.

[gorstram]

OP,

 

That was a fabulous post. Yesterday, I commented that finding a well constructed critical post with solutions was like finding a diamond in a sewer the size of Manhattan. Well, I'm glad to say, diamond found.

 

I went ahead and PM'd Amber and Eric to ask them to look at this thread. This is the kind of stuff they should be taking back to the devs.

[chuixupu]

I think all of this would be great.

[Avicii]

All very good suggestions and ideas to help improve the game.

 

They did some good things with the PTS and inviting players for closed beta to assist in testing is great. When you get the right players that care about the game to put in the time and write conclusive bug tickets with repro steps that cant be understated. And to all that took part thank you.

 

Despite the vile nature of some of the posters and their need to decry the game as a failure and nitpick all the flaws there are still good community members who provide valuable feedback that is constructive even if it isn't positive which is required to help the game grow. All MMOs need to time to add features and fine tune existing features and community feedback can be valuable in this process.

 

Another thing, the Cantina tours are great and I would like to see that continue in 2014, it was great to meet everyone in Seattle, minus the fact the venue couldn't hold everyone.

[Icebergy]

1. Can't say that I've had any complaints about the server, but better is always...better.

 

2. Hopefully they can pull this off so that the game will be tested better and have less bugs.

 

3. Faster =/ better. I wouldn't be too quick to ask for faster. While it is by no means perfect, this is the best class balanced MMO I have ever played, so I wouldn't encourage them to change this too much.

 

4. Yes please.

 

5. See #1. Can't say I have any complaints about the game's performance, but better is always better.

 

6. As long as they are supported by lore and have a back story, and do not take away from new Operations development, I am definitely in favor of this.

 

7. Number of tanks isn't the problem, tanks just don't want to take the chance of getting abused by a douchey DPS. This is a community problem and can only be solved by the community.

 

8. There really should be more PvP maps, if nothing else. You would think that it wouldn't be too hard for them to reskin Huttball or Alderaan or something a couple times a year.

[DarthTHC]

First, you did not "invest". You spent your time and money partaking in an entertainment activity. That's not an investment. An investment in the game would be buying EA stock or becoming employed by or an intern at BioWare Austin.

 

Some of your points are right on. Others are flawed. I enjoy pointing out flaws so I'll be consistent and do that...

 

5.Decrease Game size and better performance

 

Game's just going to keep getting bigger. The more content they add, the more assets there will be. Voice. Images. Videos Textures. Whatever format the cut-scenes are in.

 

More performance, sure, and they seem to tweak something with each patch.

 

Smaller footprint? Don't bet on it.

 

I would really like if 2014 would bring to the table some way to increase the number of tanks

 

There are a lot of tanks. Tanking is easier in this game than any trinity-based game that has come before it. I see them all over the place.

 

...a damage dealer has no chance to get a flashpoint or an operation in a decent amount of time

 

Patently untrue. I have queued up my tanks and healers exclusively as DD's for the past week. My typical wait is ~30 minutes. That gives me a nice whack of time to practice guitar. It would give anyone who wants to play the game a nice whack of time to do some missions or check GTN.

 

30 minutes is definitely not out of line for DD's. Want faster? Put some effort and thought into your gaming and be a tank or healer.

 

...one hand how many times I did the FP weekly with my sentinel since the group finder was released

 

Your sent must be on a lot of ignore lists. I've done the weekly religiously with my Sentinel every week since I created it. Again, with ~30 minute wait time each time.

 

BioWare please find a way to give an incentive to tanks and healers. Some extra credits, extra commendations, extra something because we need more tanks when we do not use our tanks to get our flashpoints and group finder operations done.

 

BioWare, please do not waste your time on this. The problem, speaking as a tank and healer here, is not that rewards are insufficient but that too many of the people we get randomly grouped with are under-geared or improperly geared, improperly specced, do not know how to play their classes properly, and do not know how to behave in flash points.

 

If you are going to add something to the game to help with the Group Finder queue times, please add a way to educate players about those things. They need to know the right stats to have on their gear for their class and role. They need to know that green gear 12 levels below them is unacceptable; doubly so when the main stat on it doesn't even match their class's primary stat. They need to know how to use their crowd control abilities and how not to break crowd control on controlled targets. They need to know how to read party chat and react appropriately. Finally, they need to know that it's not OK for them to roll NEED on every item that drops, but instead only on items that actually improve their current character.

Edited December 13, 2013 by DarthTHC

[tman_ac]

You have some good points, wanna comment on most of your points:

 

1. As I do agree that crashes are always a bad thing (like yesterday), the downtime of the Server was so low that you can't actually request better servers. However, I agree that over the curse of the year the game performance itself has decreased a lot. My theory is that the Collections is causing this, cause when they introduced that feature I had it the first time that mission terminals were loading for some seconds. Before, they loaded instantly. (and yes, I have a high-end computer)

 

2. Agree 100%. I am always testing as well on the PTS and moaned about not recognized Feedback in the PTS forums a lot. It can't be true that we invest our time to find bugs, post them on the PTS forums, and Developers are not reading/listening/ignoring it and release it unchanged. So please BW, for 2014 please move some capacities to the PTS forums and listen to our feedback!

 

4. I really hope Guild Features will become a lot of love in 2014. Dreaming for Guild Capital Ships since the beginning. Some QoL-Features would be nice as well. The NPC idea is actually really nice, but I doubt we will ever see something like that.

 

5. As already said in 1., I agree that every new patch is decreasing the game performance. The game 1 year ago did run a lot better than now. Dunno if it is technically possible to decrease the game-size. I would not mind to have 100GB of data if the game runs better. Free HDD-space shouldn't be an issue at all for any user at this point.

 

6. Well, if you recap it we got 2 Events in 2012 (Rakghoul and Chevin) and 2 in 2013 (Gree and Bounty-Hunter, 3 if you count in the upcoming lifeday event). I think 2 new Events are pretty much okay in one year. I hope the revamped rakghoul event will make as much fun as it was back in the days when it was first launched. Then give us another recurring event in 2014 and we should have a big variety of recurring events.

 

my2pence

[Bugattiboy]

1. Better servers

That costs money. EA doesn't like it when things costs money.

 

2. Make PTS worth something

PTS is already "worth" something. It serves as early access to what will be on the live servers because EA can say all they want about listening to their customers, but talk is cheap and their actions have already spoken... loudly.

 

At this point in time BioWare is working on a system where class changes happen every major patch. This can take from a few months to half a year. If a class has issues and content released by BioWare cannot be covered with ease with said class and pushes people away from it, why do we have to wait so long to get developer attention?

Because fixing classes requires doing actual work which requires man hours and those employees have to be paid for their time and efforts. So I reiterate, EA doesn't like it when things cost money.

 

The Shadow tank debacle comes to mind where for 6 months no developer stepped into the class forums to see what is going on. I would like 2014 to bring more input from the developers in the game and for them to test the content they release with all classes.

I would like 2014 to bring more input as well, but please be realistic. Testing the content before they release it? *stifled laughter* You're not from around here are you?

 

Other MMOs are constantly injecting incremental class changes with almost every patch. Why doesn't BioWare do the same? What is the reasoning to wait months and months to change a class? I would like to see constant class changes in most patches. A tweak here a tweak there.

Because other MMOs have a combination of a bigger dev team, more resources, or a publisher that cares. I'm sure we all love to see constant class changes.

 

The toaster crew is frowning again and is shouting at me 'SSD, SSD, SSD'. I will kindly reply that I have 4 SSDs in my computer with a very nice speed 700-1000MB/s and SWTOR is running of a nice RAID array.

Install the game to a RAM disk. RAM will ALWAYS be faster than an SSD. It also helps to not try and play the game on computer that you know will not run it.

[Elfa]

Whats going to happens is Bioware, under the staunch over watch of EA, wil continue to milk as much cash out of the pockets of addicted players until this game goes under due to market changes/ newer tech/newer MMO's, whatever. They'll continue to add the least bang for the most buck they can get a away with and that's that.

 

You see, Bioware wants to make the game the best they can, of that I have no doubt, but they are under the watchful eye of EA and their investors who only care about cold hard cash. They can only do what EA allows them to do and that is very little unless it involves holding players upside down by their ankles and shaking them for falling change and I don't see that ending anytime soon.

 

Do I hate EA, no, they are a business and that's what businesses do nowadays. They care about profit, not loyalty, not unless that loyalty can be used to make more profit. However, the fact is that any business today, beholden to their very impatient investors, will toss you under the buss in a heartbeat in order to make that bottom line prettier come quarterly report time.

 

Maybe I'm just being cynical or maybe I'm right, not sure since I can't find my tin foil hat today. Bottom line, unless the changes made are to increase player numbers or keep the game running, I wouldn't count on any non-profit making quality of life changes.

Edited December 13, 2013 by Elfa