Nemarus Posted April 19, 2015 Share Posted April 19, 2015 (edited) As anyone watching the Celebration Cantina stream witnessed, the presentation was heavily choreographed and focused on new PvE content and fan perks. BioWare's present focus is (rightly) retaining existing players and drawing in new players, on their strongest pillar, story. This leaves all PvPers (both GSF and the much larger, older war zone community) feeling neglected. I submitted several question notecards--all but one were about GSF, but I was fairly confident none of them would be chosen. Luckily, one of my other questions/suggestions (Wookiee/Rodian/etc. Costumes using mount tech) was brought up during the panel. The devs were intrigued by the idea and invited me to talk more with them about it after the panel. I tracked down Jesse and, after some brief conversation about "mount costumes ($$)", I confessed to him that my real topic of interest was GSF. Luckily, the first conversation had gone well, so I had his ear for at least a little while. I began the GSF discussion with the same disclaimer as I started this post--that we *know* GSF is not the focus right now, and that we aren't looking for miracles. I then went on to tell him about the community we have. The GSF guilds on each server, some with hundreds of members. The regular Super Serious Nights where aces agree to congregate on one server and compete--he seemed quite charmed by that. I said that we have a vibrant and creative community, and that we have self-filtered our requests to be modest and targeted, but we need someone to look at them and give us acknowledgement and feedback. As an example, I said that we were not looking for some grand combination of GSF, guildships, and war zones. That instead we would like a tutorial that is 1) more discoverable and 2) a little bit more useful. Jesse noted that they had a lot of metrics about everything, and that focusing on improving accessibility tended not to improve participation numbers by a large extent. Rather, he asserted that the initial marketing push had created a lot of excitement around GSF, but then it had dropped off. I countered that, to this day, we get new players coming to our forum, wanting to try GSF, but being somewhat lost and overwhelmed. I tried to impart that GSF is really a masterpiece, once one gets over that steep learning curve. Jesse noted that he also enjoys GSF, and that there are still devs on the team who love it. He said it "shouldn't be too hard" to find one of those devs to engage with us. To what end? He made no promises. I didn't ask him to. All I wanted was to tell SWTOR's creative director about our awesome community, how much we love GSF, and how we just want to have an interactive (and hopefully collaborative) dialog with someone from BioWare. I feel like he understood that desire, and that he will sincerely try to find someone to be our contact. I'm sure some of you might have played it differently--more directly perhaps--but I felt that, amongst a thousand fans demanding the impossible, it would be better to be the one gently asking to start a conversation about what might be possible. It was a brief, rare moment of opportunity, and I did my best. Now if we do get someone in here, let's do our best not to lose them This is going to be a long road I think. Edited April 19, 2015 by Nemarus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brrbrlpp Posted April 19, 2015 Share Posted April 19, 2015 Great job! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Homodmitrius Posted April 19, 2015 Share Posted April 19, 2015 Oh man, you did a great job to all of us! Hope now they will pay an attention to gsf and the situation will move from a deadlock. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lwiggles Posted April 19, 2015 Share Posted April 19, 2015 /Highfives Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarthMeridian Posted April 19, 2015 Share Posted April 19, 2015 Thumbs up Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nyghtrunner Posted April 19, 2015 Share Posted April 19, 2015 I'm not going to hold my breath over any news released any time soon, but sounds like you did a great job of being a representative of the community, Nem. Kudos, and I really hope something ends up coming out of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AgentRobP Posted April 19, 2015 Share Posted April 19, 2015 I submitted several question notecards--all but one were about GSF, but I was fairly confident none of them would be chosen. Luckily, one of my other questions/suggestions (Wookiee/Rodian/etc. Costumes using mount tech) was brought up during the panel. The devs were intrigued by the idea and invited me to talk more with them about it after the panel. I tracked down Jesse and, after some brief conversation about "mount costumes ($$)", I confessed to him that my real topic of interest was GSF. Luckily, the first conversation had gone well, so I had his ear for at least a little while. So you got to talk about GSF by pretending to be interested in disguises? I see what you did there... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sylvidre Posted April 19, 2015 Share Posted April 19, 2015 (edited) Thanks for trying anyway, hoping this with lead to something... someday Not playing on US servers I can only see on this forum the great GSF community you are (for example : many people here seems very friendly with newcomers and opened to discuss and help them). And this thread is just another example. Edited April 19, 2015 by Sylvidre Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wvwraith Posted April 19, 2015 Share Posted April 19, 2015 The fact that they wanted to hear more from you and you got to talk with him sounds like they're listening to things. I'd be happy even if they would add a map or two. I was kind of hoping with the supposed new people they've added that they'd stick a few on the pvp/gsf content for the game. I think most of us are not expecting them to move mountains, but a few rocks would be a good start. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caernos Posted April 19, 2015 Share Posted April 19, 2015 Nem, Just want to say great job and thank you for talking to the devs about this. It may not do anything but at least we had a voice. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Binthurmung Posted April 19, 2015 Share Posted April 19, 2015 you sir almost made me cry, ty ty Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vospir Posted April 19, 2015 Share Posted April 19, 2015 Ave, Nemarus, morituri te salutant! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Archonitek Posted April 19, 2015 Share Posted April 19, 2015 Cheers Nem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RickDagles Posted April 20, 2015 Share Posted April 20, 2015 Very cool! It's good to know someone is pushing for us. Hats off to Nem for being the hardest working guy in the GSF community. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Verain Posted April 20, 2015 Share Posted April 20, 2015 Very nice Nem! First, I'm always nervous when someone quotes a dev doing realtalk ("...they had a lot of metrics about everything, and that focusing on improving accessibility tended not to improve participation numbers by a large extent..."), because often the talking point gets blown up later, and unfairly. Still, you know that GSF forum isn't really the place to go hyperbolic on this, and it's really good to know. I actually disagree with them to some extent, mostly because so many of the games that just went bonkers feature a great tutorial or ramp-up- but in the world of GSF and SWTOR, it could just well be the case. I do still hope for the basic improvements of the tone I listed ( http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=8097490 ), especially including the free-fly tutorial on any map solo with ships in your hangar. I get that ROI is a big deal, but if the I is small enough... Second, I'm glad that some of them are into it (unless that's pillow talk, but I sort of doubt it- you didn't ask him an uncomfortable question, after all). The game has always been too cool for there to not have been some of the devs playing it when they can, so that makes some sense. That also bodes well for the future, because those guys will be reasonable meta-tuned whenever they have a dev push. My honest worry has been that we end up with, at some point, a group of fresh-faced foodship devs who, with all good intentions, trash the meta to pieces and then get pulled over to some other game. Third, I wouldn't count on anything coming out of the idea that one of them might have enough time/budget to check into GSF beyond maybe the almost year-long outstanding bugs, some of which have badly injured weak components (maybe ion missile snare duration, almost definitely EMP field range, sab probe snare breaking the entire move if selected) and just been highly confusing (almost all "deals damage over X seconds" cutting off based on some XML entry error from last summer, ion railgun top tier talents having the launch effects with the summer tooltips). I do have hope that we'll have those looked at at some point. If they do actually have time to engage the players, that would probably be about simple tutorial issues, alternate game modes (that's the biggest piece they could add for moderate dev time, because any game mode opens up new stuff for each ship), and even meta balancing- but, entirely without malice, let me say that I find that unlikely. We'll probably see new stuff on whatever schedule they already have for rounding up the devs and putting them on GSF for awhile- an event that could be rather distant still. Really nice that they were willing to discuss GSF at all. Solid work. The plan was always to deploy a blackbolt with sensor dampening. Obviously, Imperial Intelligence could not communicate this fact before this time... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrixHiraeth Posted April 20, 2015 Share Posted April 20, 2015 Really nice that they were willing to discuss GSF at all. Solid work. Agreed. I also agree that new maps/modes would be the best use of limited time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lendul Posted April 20, 2015 Share Posted April 20, 2015 As I have said before. At the very least they could fix the outstanding bugs and erroneous tool tips. As a good faith gesture. I am past the point of expecting further development aside from maybe cartel re-skins. It would be nice if they would polish what they do have so that it works correctly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HiddenPalm Posted April 21, 2015 Share Posted April 21, 2015 (edited) How do folks on this thread intend to get Bioware Austin to stop abandoning GSF/WZ'S? Everyone sounds a bit overly passive. I can understand the OP having to trick and smooth talk a dev to stand there and smile while he delicately moves the conversation to gsf from the mount costume topic (that I personally found hysterical seeing the Bioware team insanely excited to talk about anything but warzones and galactic starfighter). That's called diplomacy. But Im confused as to what the rest of the contributors to this thread think is going to happen now? Some posters are saying they are grateful that atleast a dev talked about it. That didn't happen. All the OP said was that he was "charmed". I think everyone missed the OP's point. Its going to be a long hard road. From reading what people are posting, Im confused as to whether or not the contributors to this thread are ready to travel on that road and fight for GSF. Edited April 21, 2015 by HiddenPalm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nemarus Posted April 21, 2015 Author Share Posted April 21, 2015 (edited) How do folks on this thread intend to get Bioware Austin to stop abandoning GSF/WZ'S? Everyone sounds a bit overly passive. I can understand the OP having to trick and smooth talk a dev to stand there and smile while he delicately moves the conversation to gsf from the mount costume topic (that I personally found hysterical seeing the Bioware team insanely excited to talk about anything but warzones and galactic starfighter). That's called diplomacy. But Im confused as to what the rest of the contributors to this thread think is going to happen now? Some posters are saying they are grateful that atleast a dev talked about it. That didn't happen. All the OP said was that he was "charmed". I think everyone missed the OP's point. Its going to be a long hard road. From reading what people are posting, Im confused as to whether or not the contributors to this thread are ready to travel on that road and fight for GSF. There is very little we can do until we get a community rep, or better yet dev, reading and responding in this forum. My conversation with Jesse Sky (the creative director) resulted in him saying there were devs on the team who still love and play GSF, and that it shouldn't be hard to get one of them to engage with us. He seemed genuinely sincere to me, as best as I could tell. Certainly, he seemed more legitimately engaged with me than he did some other people throwing out crazy requests and suggestions at him. Unfortunately, the ball is largely in his court now, and he cannot receive PM's. We'll need to give him some time to see if he indeed sends someone our way. He has a lot of other stuff on his plate right now, what with 3.2 and #FallenEmpire. That being said, if we don't hear anything by the end of April, we should definitely continue to send PM's to EricMusco, TaitWatson, and NickAvola, asking them for acknowledgement and communication. But we've got to keep it polite, positive, and collaborative. And we need to take this step by step. First step is to start a two way conversation. That has to be our single initial goal. Once engagement is established, we work on getting basic, modest requests done. Bug fixes. Simple numerical balance changes. New player improvements (tutorial, give everyone a T1 Bomber and Gunship, buff Rapids, etc.) At this point, asking for new content, be it ships or maps or even cartel skins, is pointless--all it does is create noise and paint the picture that we're delusional and blind to BioWare's current priorities with SWTOR. Being indignant and demanding--or even just wishfully optimistic--may make us feel good, but it's not going to accomplish anything. We need to be pragmatic if we want to save GSF. Edited April 21, 2015 by Nemarus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Verain Posted April 21, 2015 Share Posted April 21, 2015 How do folks on this thread intend to get Bioware Austin to stop abandoning GSF/WZ'S? We... don't? What Nem did was great. No, it didn't result in anything we can stick on a calendar, but it does let us know that they are out there and do care. I think we also got some honest answers as well, which is great. But, like, they have to be motivated by the things that motivate game designers/devs/companies. That is to say, creative direction, profit, customer satisfaction, interesting worlds, etc. A group of GSFers can't somehow twist one of those wildly. Super Serious Nights help the community, by upping player participation and fun- some protest, spamfest, petition, or other rant likely won't (and if it has actual participation, will likely hurt the community, as some vocal members could end up banned). There's no "organize and we will win" here. We come up with cool stuff, we enjoy the game, and whenever they get to it, they get to it. They obviously won't put it off forever, but neither is it likely that there will be much of a community if they punt for TOO long, something that they know. Plenty in the community host events, organize things, etc. That's what we do to help GSF, we don't need to "fight for" it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linuxizer Posted April 23, 2015 Share Posted April 23, 2015 Thanks for trying and sharing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pilgrim_Grey Posted April 24, 2015 Share Posted April 24, 2015 Thanks for doing that. Anything to keep this on their radar is a good idea. GSF really is a great part of the game and a great change of pace from the normal MMO ground game. If they put a little more into it to make it accessible, there is no reason it shouldn't take off more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts