An open letter to our players

[OneHawk]

Hello Ben,

 

Thank you for the informative post. I believe it will go a long way to debunk many of the rumors that have been floating around the community of late.

I'm hoping that you can address an issue that has been brought up in many threads since the release of KoTFE but never replied to by any of your team. Mainly, a large number of players have asked if we will ever be able to customize the armor worn by the new companions introduced with and before the expansion? I realize that it does not affect game play directly but it has a big effect on the immersion in the game as well as the relationship we have with those companions. That being said, it is a BIG deal to myself and many others. Enough so that I don't find myself wanting to play as much as I would ordinarily. I realize that I could retrieve my previous companions from the terminal in the alliance HQ, but I would rather let them be revealed during the chapters so as not to detract from the story. Please, any information you can share with this regard would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thank you

Edited April 20, 2016 by OneHawk

[Kortio]

Hello Ben,

 

I don't often get the chance to write directly to a Producer of a large EA Game, so here we go.

 

I recently resubscribed because I missed Star Wars and my biggest gripe is still that you Nickel and Dime us for fricking everything, even subscribers. Please take a hard look at the Cartel Store as such and how you ask for money for the same thing twice.

 

A big example for that is the mount/pet system. Why are those still not legacy wide? Why do I have to pay an extra 400 (!) Cartel Coins to make a mount account wide, which translates roughly to 4€? As a mount collector this really disturbs me. I also don't want to buy all the mounts available for credits for all my characters. Legacy wide would be a start, in other MMORPGs (pretty much every subscription based game and even some buy to play out there) they are even account wide.

 

Same goes for the quickbar shenanigans for free to play users. While I will never be a f2p player, it is something that deeply disturbs me that you ask money for an essential interface component. Please stop inconveniencing your player just so they pay money. It shows little faith in the product, if you have stuff like this. I tried to bring friends into this game, but they have a strong ethical issue with the fact that you ask money for quickbars. And I understand them.

 

I really appreciate that I get 600 Cartel Coins a month for free, still, I wished those things would finally get addressed and improved.

 

ps.: The mobs could also use a little HP buff. The game is way too easy right now.

Edited April 20, 2016 by Kortio

[AnisaBadgett]

"That cadence will take us through most of the year ending with Chapter XVI, our story finale for Knights of the Fallen Empire."

 

What do they mean that the KotFE story is ending with Chapter XVI? A season finale, or it's done?

 

WHEN ARE WE GETTING OUR COMPANIONS BACK??? Why did we have to put up with this story without them?

Edited April 20, 2016 by AnisaBadgett

[Peritae]

New raids or ****

[JennyFlynn]

"That cadence will take us through most of the year ending with Chapter XVI, our story finale for Knights of the Fallen Empire."

 

What do they mean that the KotFE story is ending with Chapter XVI? A season finale, or it's done?

 

WHEN ARE WE GETTING OUR COMPANIONS BACK??? Why did we have to put up with this story without them?

 

No, there's to be a 2nd season. Look at the bold text.

 

The team recently visited our MoCap studio to create new animations. Charles Boyd spent a week at our VO studio recording more lines of dialogue for future story content. The two most exciting things to share are that our writers are deep into the plot summaries for the next season's worth of chapters

[commanderwar]

"That cadence will take us through most of the year ending with Chapter XVI, our story finale for Knights of the Fallen Empire."

 

What do they mean that the KotFE story is ending with Chapter XVI? A season finale, or it's done?

 

WHEN ARE WE GETTING OUR COMPANIONS BACK??? Why did we have to put up with this story without them?

There is season 2 weather kotfe end in season 1 I do not know

[TheSeventhJedi]

Let me preface by saying that candid communication like this is greatly appreciated.

 

However - it's not candid enough. (I know, please sir, may I have some more?)

 

#1 KotFE might have been a record launch for you guys, but the fact that this post is coming out of the woodwork says that things aren't as rosy as you're making them out to be. My guild - who got the galaxy conqueror title the very first time it was possible, who at one point was fielding a dozen regular ops teams - has maybe four people on during peak hours. Down to zero ops groups and little conquest activity to speak of. There's almost nothing social, I know we're not alone.

 

#2 I'm glad you think you have cool things planned. The fact that you've got mo-cap going again has me hoping against hope for a new class. However, we've been burned by your hype so many times that it's worse than hollow words. It's a mockery at this point. Remember the Lucky-77 Speeder Bike that was the coolest thing ever? Better than cross server? Or more recently, your choices matter? You can't say "we've got cool things unconnected to the story later in the year" and expect that to stop anyone from unsubbing. Anyone on the fence is going to unsub and maybe come back if the response is good. I'm guessing from this post that you can't afford that.

 

I'd like this game to get some new traction, I would. But all that cool stuff you're not ready to talk about? Get ready to talk about it. Tomorrow. With specifics. I'm serious. Communicating doesn't do any good if it's nebulous and people may or may not believe you anyway. I know I'm not one of your execs, but I can connect dots. If you're a SWTOR mucky-muck, and you've never posted before, and then you post something like that - those dots connect to tell me that you're bleeding subs. At a greater and more accelerated rate than ever before. You were told to put fears to rest because of all the "why I'm unsubbing" feedback on exit surveys. Well, I'm glad that's happening, but you're putting a bandaid on a bullet wound. Get us substantial and specific information, and get it quick. I'd like to have people to play with again.

[Lil_Fusion]

Touting "50 Operations Bosses" as 'new' content is something you know isn't true.

 

Agreed when I read that I just laughed. Updating old operations to meet the new level isn't new content no matter how it's spun.

Edited April 20, 2016 by Lil_Fusion

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Bioware doesn't say anything, reaction -- "WHY AREN'T THEY TALKING TO US OMG GAME ON LIFE SUPPORT MAINTENANCE MODE WTFBBQ UNSUBBING BECAUSE OF NO COMMUNICATION!"

 

Bioware says something, reaction -- "THIS POST MEANS THE GAME WILL BE DEAD IN 2 MONTHS UNSUBBING ARGLEBARGLE!"

 

 

I don't even like KotFE -- at all -- but the only way we're going to get some sort of change in the future of this game is to actually get the people making it to engage with us. I don't want anyone (well, almost) to unsub, but if you're at the point where you hate the way the game is NOW and you also believe that NO change will EVER happen, then maybe you SHOULD unsub.

 

Based on your post it would seem that for players like you fluff posts like Ben's have achieved exactly what it was supposed to achieve ... make you think they are "engaging with you" without actually having to engage with you at all.

 

Mission accomplished.

 

I don't think people are being unreasonable in the slightest, that post was exactly as people called it. Are we supposed to be in such awe that he even bothered to post that we should post our thanks and gratuity just for the privilege of reading a post from someone on the team?

 

So as opposed to looking at the "who" posted I personally prefer to base my responses on the content of their post which in this case was severely lacking ...

 

All this "mystery" and the stupid "soon" quote they repeatedly hide about just isn't witty anymore, it's just damn outright annoying and I would prefer they either offer up useful information on what is coming next or indeed not bother posting at all until they can, I don't need to read their self gratification posts and what they've already done - I've already done all that content ( and apparently you haven't and most likely won't from your own posts )

[Zhedzaban]

Thank you Ben for this open letter.

 

Like some sort of twisted masochist, I've actually read through this entire thread and it has left me a little bewildered and depressed. Amongst some positive posts the majority of replies are nothing but whining and complaints. If anyone needed proof that gamers are the hardest customers on the planet to satisfy, they only need to read this thread.

 

SWTOR is far from perfect, everyone acknowledges that including the devs. The fact they keep working to improve it should make us optimistic, but all I ever read from a lot of posters here is malcontent. Why anyone would continue to play something that so evidently upsets them is a mystery.

 

Look at things objectively, you are paying a lousy 15 bucks a month for a piece of entertainment. A fraction of the cost to see a movie. Yet people will take the time to rage like they are a disgruntled EA majority shareholder.

[JMCA]

This game is stronger now than it has been since launch.

 

All your complaints should be taken in advisement.

 

Especially operations.

 

They've figured out what works. They're going to stick to that.

 

If you have a problem with it your lobbying is only going to matter if you come up with a solution that doesn't slow down their business success.

 

Get over it.

[JMCA]

Thank you Ben for this open letter.

 

Like some sort of twisted masochist, I've actually read through this entire thread and it has left me a little bewildered and depressed. Amongst some positive posts the majority of replies are nothing but whining and complaints. If anyone needed proof that gamers are the hardest customers on the planet to satisfy, they only need to read this thread.

 

SWTOR is far from perfect, everyone acknowledges that including the devs. The fact they keep working to improve it should make us optimistic, but all I ever read from a lot of posters here is malcontent. Why anyone would continue to play something that so evidently upsets them is a mystery.

 

Look at things objectively, you are paying a lousy 15 bucks a month for a piece of entertainment. A fraction of the cost to see a movie. Yet people will take the time to rage like they are a disgruntled EA majority shareholder.

 

I'm starting to think that there's some kind of coordinated paid trolling effort among their MMO competitors. KotFE has been a huge success to anyone remotely paying attention, and there's simply too much rage too long after the fact for this be actual people with real opinions.

 

Even Reddit is exploding with anger that is coming from too many new users to make sense.

Edited April 20, 2016 by JMCA

[commanderwar]

Thank you Ben for this open letter.

 

Like some sort of twisted masochist, I've actually read through this entire thread and it has left me a little bewildered and depressed. Amongst some positive posts the majority of replies are nothing but whining and complaints. If anyone needed proof that gamers are the hardest customers on the planet to satisfy, they only need to read this thread.

 

SWTOR is far from perfect, everyone acknowledges that including the devs. The fact they keep working to improve it should make us optimistic, but all I ever read from a lot of posters here is malcontent. Why anyone would continue to play something that so evidently upsets them is a mystery.

 

Look at things objectively, you are paying a lousy 15 bucks a month for a piece of entertainment. A fraction of the cost to see a movie. Yet people will take the time to rage like they are a disgruntled EA majority shareholder.

 

I read the entire thread and I saw it , more positive than negative. Probably wrong but that's the way I saw it

[TX_Angel]

Look at things objectively, you are paying a lousy 15 bucks a month for a piece of entertainment. A fraction of the cost to see a movie. Yet people will take the time to rage like they are a disgruntled EA majority shareholder.

 

Some of us... or myself at least, are grumpy because we have 4 years of time invested into this game. Because we love Star Wars in general. Because we see what the game could have been.

 

Sure, it is just a game. The $15 a month is trivial to me, I spent $1,500 on CC last year, plus paid for 3 subs, so I was into it for about $2K. At some point, there is just nothing new to do, no new missions, no new content, no new raids, no new flashpoints, no new GSF... ok, ONE WZ map in 2 years...

 

It isn't enough... For $500 sub a year, we have better things to do than this...

 

If they are successful, then good for them. It just will be without me. And that's ok. But I'm still bummed because I like glowing sabers...

[TX_Angel]

KotFE has been a huge success to anyone remotely paying attention.

 

It has? On what objective basis?

 

In the game, it doesn't appear to be the case. Unless you count hundreds of thousands of people playing a solo game and not doing a whole lot else and a few tens of thousands running the new WZ map, quickly getting tired of it.

 

The servers were quite busy in December, but that fell off quickly. From my point of view, KotFE provided a short 6 week bump, but it is now worse than it was a year ago.

[Slowpokeking]

I love this game, thanks for the letter!

[MeNaCe-NZ]

I'm starting to think that there's some kind of coordinated paid trolling effort among their MMO competitors. KotFE has been a huge success to anyone remotely paying attention, and there's simply too much rage too long after the fact for this be actual people with real opinions.

 

Even Reddit is exploding with anger that is coming from too many new users to make sense.

 

Or you are wrong, it's not the success you think it is and people are legitimately worried and annoyed and "out of the blue" letters to try calm the masses like this support that point of view.

 

If everything is good and it's better than launch why even bother making a post like this "there's nothing to be worried about guys! Honest! I can't say why though, just trust me!" generally just makes people worry more.

[Kaizersan]

Hi there!

 

My name is Ben Irving, Producer for Star Wars: The Old Republic. I don’t often make posts in the forums, in fact, this may be my first ever post. Despite that, our whole team, myself included try to digest all of the internet for SWTOR information – The forums, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, etc. Recently there have been questions and concerns around the quality of our releases and the ongoing support for SWTOR and I wanted to stop by to address those concerns.

 

First off, I want to apologize for some of the issues you have experienced in the last couple of months. The monthly chapter release schedule is new and it has come with some unexpected bugs. It has caused problems for some of you and I want to say I am sorry. At our core, the SWTOR team are all gamers, just like you. We empathize with the excitement of wanting to play a great game only to be blocked by a problem. We spend all of our energy striving to make SWTOR the best game possible and when bugs and other issues get in the way of your player experience, we take it to heart. We are committed to doing better and I think Chapter XII: Visions in the Dark shows we are serious about listening to your concerns and making meaningful changes to address them - a high quality chapter, released on time that we hope has met the expectations of our players.

 

Onto the future. Is SWTOR going to receive ongoing support? The answer is absolutely yes.

 

It's worth starting with the things we have already announced, we talk about them on the monthly Producer Live Stream but I think they are still worth mentioning. We had the launch of Knights of the Fallen Empire – 9 incredible story driven chapters, 14 companion recruitment missions, Star Fortress, 5 new player levels, 30 flashpoints upgraded to be challenging again, 50 operation bosses upgraded to be challenging again, too many heroic quests to count, a revamp of the 1-60 levelling experience and a huge number of quality of life improvements. More recently we have kicked off our monthly chapter cadence and our third installment – Chapter XII: Visions in the Dark – was just released. That cadence will take us through most of the year ending with Chapter XVI, our story finale for Knights of the Fallen Empire. In addition to all the monthly chapters we have built great supporting content – Recruitment missions to explore the galaxy with some of your favorite companions, the Odessen Proving Grounds Warzone, the Rishi Cove Arena, the Eternal Championship and new levels for crafting. That’s actually more content following a major expansion than we have ever released and the team is really excited for all of you to play it.

 

The harder part to address, because you have to take my word for it, are all the features and content we are working on that we haven’t yet announced. If you follow Charles Boyd or Paul Marino on social media you may have seen some hints of this. The team recently visited our MoCap studio to create new animations. Charles Boyd spent a week at our VO studio recording more lines of dialogue for future story content. The two most exciting things to share are that our writers are deep into the plot summaries for the next season's worth of chapters and we have started the early design phase for new, non-chapter, content. You all know the drill here, I can’t talk about any of the specifics (yet) but what I can say is that we have some REALLY cool stuff to talk about later this year and the whole SWTOR team can’t wait to announce it. Soon. TM.

 

Knights of the Fallen Empire is the most successful expansion we have ever produced. It received critical acclaim from press and fan sites but most importantly, it has been successful because all of you have supported us through the expansion launch and the release of the monthly Chapters. In the eyes of all of our partners, SWTOR is a huge success. BioWare supports this game. EA supports this game. Lucasfilm supports this game. Disney supports this game. In fact, for a game that has been live for almost 5 years, we are receiving an incredible amount of support from all of our partners. It’s both amazing and humbling.

 

If there is anything I would like people reading this to take away it’s this: SWTOR is absolutely being supported into the future. We have a lot of content coming over the next few months and even more exciting things to talk about later this year. All of us here at BioWare appreciate your ongoing support and we are committed to providing the best experience possible.

 

It’s because of you, our players, that this game continues to thrive. Thank you for playing Star Wars: The Old Republic.

 

Ben Irving

 

got to love your Vague use of "Non Chapter content" which can mean anything that isn't related to the chapters which can mean a million things so stop BSing and tell us what you really mean.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

The servers were quite busy in December, but that fell off quickly. From my point of view, KotFE provided a short 6 week bump, but it is now worse than it was a year ago.

 

I find it better than this time last year personally ( from a pug perspective ) but it does seem to be on a downhill roll in terms of numbers as it did last year ( and arguably every year ).

 

Problem is last year they had KoTFE to announce, year before they had SoR etc. etc.

If this year the attraction is another season where people can subscribe at the end to get it all, or say at the start then once more at the end then we aren't going to see a big pick up like we do most years ( except at the launch - usually the announcements alone stem the tide if you follow the trends on torstatus noting you can't compare year on year anymore you can still watch the trend over any given year ).

 

Throw in a couple of operations, flashpoints andthis year imo becomes one of the most successful in terms of content yet ... ignore that content at your peril using this model because you've allowed people to buy a full 16 chapters for $15-30 over the course of more or less a year if they so choose ... over time the newer players are going to end up like the older players and also have done so much they can't warrant month on month subscription.

 

Something will have to give sooner or later.

[Kaizersan]

Based on your post it would seem that for players like you fluff posts like Ben's have achieved exactly what it was supposed to achieve ... make you think they are "engaging with you" without actually having to engage with you at all.

 

Mission accomplished.

 

I don't think people are being unreasonable in the slightest, that post was exactly as people called it. Are we supposed to be in such awe that he even bothered to post that we should post our thanks and gratuity just for the privilege of reading a post from someone on the team?

 

So as opposed to looking at the "who" posted I personally prefer to base my responses on the content of their post which in this case was severely lacking ...

 

All this "mystery" and the stupid "soon" quote they repeatedly hide about just isn't witty anymore, it's just damn outright annoying and I would prefer they either offer up useful information on what is coming next or indeed not bother posting at all until they can, I don't need to read their self gratification posts and what they've already done - I've already done all that content ( and apparently you haven't and most likely won't from your own posts )

 

That is why I love FFXIV because Yoshida the head of FFXIV doesn't play the be vague game he tells you what is coming out because he knows he owes the players that much to be straight forward and honest about future content where BW is not that good,

Edited April 20, 2016 by Kaizersan

[TX_Angel]

That is why I love FFXIV because Yoshida the head of FFXIV doesn't play the be vague game he tells you what is coming out because he know he owes the players that much to be straight forward and honest about future content where BW is not that good,

 

Yea, I've always wondered what the big secret is...

 

We should already know what to expect from now until the end of the year...

 

Heck, I know more about games that aren't even being launched until the end of the year than I do about what is happening to this current game in 3 months, and this game wants my money today...

[commanderwar]

game director of the game twitted out there is group content and pvp content coming a week or two ago, vague but still something Edited April 20, 2016 by commanderwar

[Lil_Fusion]

That is why I love FFXIV because Yoshida the head of FFXIV doesn't play the be vague game he tells you what is coming out because he knows he owes the players that much to be straight forward and honest about future content where BW is not that good,

 

That's because it flopped when it originally came out and they re-released it and now its probably the king of MMO's at this point in time. If only Bioware took a page from other successful MMO's books and didn't make the mistakes that others did. Only took years after to get half the QOL's that other games had for years. Here we are though an MMO that doesn't provide any new group content.

[Focusangel]

Recruitment missions to explore the galaxy with some of your favorite companions...

 

This is the only part where i need to say - this is not true. My opinion obviously.. but the companions we got so far, not really what i would call "favorite". In fact.. they are at the very bottom of my list, if even on the list.

And i think from what i have seen there are a lot of people feeling the same way.

[Kaizersan]

Jame ohlen game director twitted out there is group content and pvp content coming a week or two ago, vague but still something

 

That could just mean more heroic 2 as BW considers it group content.