An open letter to our players

[TX_Angel]

Bioware's rep just said "we want to communicate".

 

So I'm going to take that statement at face value, and attempt communication. If no one ever takes the opportunity and everyone says "That guys full of it, no way I'm buying this." then nothing changes.

 

Now, if it turns out they didn't mean it all, then twice as bad on them.

 

I suppose the difference between you and me would be that I took your approach last year, last time this happened...

 

You're there now, I was there last year. This one was a bridge too far...

 

I've lost track of the number of posts over the years from Bioware promising change, something new, better communication, only to never hear from that person again.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=517855

 

Allow me to share that post for you, from 2012, when the game was 9 months old... A version of that post has come and gone every year.

 

I can see why JovethGonzalez isn't with Bioware anymore, read this:

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5000877#post5000877

 

He was rather combative with people. Above all else, anyone posting for a company on forums needs to rise above the fray, let people vent, post the facts, and never engage with the grumpy stuff.

 

If someone posts a question and gets grumpy about it, reply to the question and just pretend the grumpy isn't there. That is one mark of a professional.

[Max_Killjoy]

By posting, you're demonstrating that you're on of the people being billed by Bioware for something....

 

Yeah.

 

And?

[TX_Angel]

Most companies don't communicate with their customers at all, unless it's to sell them something or bill them for something.

 

Does Ford have discussion forums?

 

Does AT&T have "community managers" or a monthly Q&A?

 

https://www.google.com/?ion=1&espv=2#q=ford%20forums

 

Ford has reps that post in a number of the Ford Forums that exist on the web. It is worth noting that you don't pay a monthly fee to Ford, you buy their product outright. (financing, even leasing, is through another company and they have a dealer network for official support).

 

AT&T provides a monthly fixed service, if it works, you don't need help. If it doesn't, they have both in person support in stores and a 800 customer service number.

[Max_Killjoy]

https://www.google.com/?ion=1&espv=2#q=ford%20forums

 

Ford has reps that post in a number of the Ford Forums that exist on the web. It is worth noting that you don't pay a monthly fee to Ford, you buy their product outright. (financing, even leasing, is through another company and they have a dealer network for official support).

 

AT&T provides a monthly fixed service, if it works, you don't need help. If it doesn't, they have both in person support in stores and a 800 customer service number.

 

So Ford does have forums now -- interesting. I'll have to check the other car companies out of curiosity.

[Codedrago]

By posting, you're demonstrating that you're on of the people being billed by Bioware for something....

 

Then Max sucks at his job

[Lil_Fusion]

Expect to see level 70, since everything is level synced, it gives the appearance of "new shiny" without anything actually changing.

 

Sadly I agree with you there, and then they will talk about how they scaled 50 operation bosses to be challenging again, while NiM exists they will have highlighted hardmodes as they do now to give the same gear, so why would anyone want to bother with doing NiM? The exception is for the 2-3 guilds that are actually clearing that content that still stick together because they can use their NiM Crystals so they can sell the vanity mounts and titles at ridiculous prices. There is so many things wrong with endgame raiding at the moment, and going back to what you said it will be more of the same with fancy new tier of gear you can get out of the highlighted hardmode each week and devalues nightmare versions of each boss respectively and doesn't give you a sense of accomplishment regardless that they've been around for years and years now.

[Pagy]

Most companies don't communicate with their customers at all, unless it's to sell them something or bill them for something.

 

Does Ford have discussion forums?

 

Does AT&T have "community managers" or a monthly Q&A?

both of these companies readily communicate not only through ads, but through twitter and social media. neither produces video games though.

 

i'm not sure what you're getting at?

 

compare apples to apples; does bioware communicate as much and effectively as blizzard?

Edited April 20, 2016 by Pagy

[TheSeventhJedi]

I suppose the difference between you and me would be that I took your approach last year, last time this happened...

 

You're there now, I was there last year. This one was a bridge too far...

 

I've lost track of the number of posts over the years from Bioware promising change, something new, better communication, only to never hear from that person again.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=517855

 

Allow me to share that post for you, from 2012, when the game was 9 months old... A version of that post has come and gone every year.

 

I can see why JovethGonzalez isn't with Bioware anymore, read this:

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5000877#post5000877

 

 

He was rather combative with people. Above all else, anyone posting for a company on forums needs to rise above the fray, let people vent, post the facts, and never engage with the grumpy stuff.

 

If someone posts a question and gets grumpy about it, reply to the question and just pretend the grumpy isn't there. That is one mark of a professional.

 

So much this. I've given plenty of constructive criticism. For instance, my number one wish for the game is legacy influence. It would go a long way to upgrading KotFE's replayability and give me the tiniest of incentives to slog through old heroics again. A new class, while significantly more difficult, would do this even better.

 

Then I see this. Not only have I heard it before, it's subjective, unspecific, and quite possibly spurious. Remember when we were told we'd never go that long between ops again? When was that? Oh right - it was right before 3.0 dropped! You want to praise him for communicating? Awesome. Me too. I'll offer that praise when there's actual communication.

 

Essentially my point is this - something happened to make Ben post, and I don't believe for a second it was the incessant forum whining. It's not like there's some magical number of forum posts that the shareholders see and then force a dev to go post. It reeks of defensive tactics brought on by losing money. So he comes on here and says, quite literally, "Hey guys - please don't leave! We'll make more stuff, just please don't ask us to say what it is!" To all of you in the "well, they're damned if they do/don't," save it. If they're worried about people saying their new content isn't good enough, they should shut down the forums. Conversely, BW could end all fears (for good or ill) this very second.

 

"Hey guys - here are the ops/fps/other things we have in the plans for the next six months." Awesome. Maybe things change, maybe they get pushed back, but at least we have an idea of what to hope for and can decide whether or not to continue to pay a sub.

 

"Hey guys - we're fine with no new ops. The next year is going to be more of the same." Also awesome. If that's their business model, and they feel it's sustainable, then own it! Be proud of your work! There is absolutely no reason for this secrecy. BW has not earned the right for me to "take [ben Irving] at [his] word." Because I don't. Show don't tell, deeds not words, crap or get off the pot. Certainly don't ask me to be grateful that a gold post typed out a whole lot of nothing.

[NakodaTheJedi]

You talk about new content but yet you still haven't fixed the massive amounts of bugs that are already existing.

 

Please, for the love of god, fix the broken things first.

 

that's all we want. but at the same time with programming you have to leave it broken or go in try to fix it and break it worse I've heard programming is not an exact science its an art theres no such thing as perfection. However it wouldn't be so bad to maybe update the entire games graphics

[Sarova]

Wow, there must have been a lot of cancellations,

This is exactly what I was just saying to someone else.

As posted earlier the current "season" of KotFE ends when WoW: Legion is likely to be released and wow's devs really have been listening to their player base in the Alpha testing - I have Legion Alpha access and just about all of the issues raised with bugs and character play have been retuned for testing with each release and many of the changes have improved gameplay. Having unsubbed from WoW to return as a sub to SW, I can see me reversing this decision, especially in relation to group content (as a soloer I never thought I would ever say that). As an example, with the recent changes to SW it's no longer possible to team up with friends to play and experience the game's new content together - something which we really enjoyed pre-kotfe as we all tended to pick different conversation options so it was nice to see the outcomes from other choices. This means that we can't get on skype or TS whilst playing because we're to busy focusing on reading the ridiculous black screen tab conversation choices in our different solo instances of the same part of the game and have no idea what part our friend(s) may be on and interrupt them.

The producer's open letter came across as marketing/politician speak; nothing in it gave me any confidence that I can anticipate improvements/bug fixes in the future and I'm very disappointed at the long time scale for this story arc. It would have been nice is they'd given some sort of timeline map though I'm guessing that this might have resulted in mass unsubs when we saw that our favourite companion would not be returning until Dec 2017.

[Tsillah]

Thanks for this open letter. It's very encouraging to see this type of communication, not to mention the content of it. Some people still can't stop moaning for just a minute so that's a shame, but I am really glad your wrote this letter and I hope, as ever, to see more communication coming from you guys in the hopes that we can finally have a more adult dialogue on these forums...well at least from time to time....a man can dream right?

[onemoreround]

After reading just felt like a pointless message that failed to inform me of anything it was so short on detail. Clearly it is very carefully worded to try & retain subs by giving hope of new content but providing no timeline or real information on what to expect. I have no doubt if they were anywhere close to bringing out new substantial content like operations/flashpoints (in the next 6 months) they would have given more information & a vague delivery date as it would have been massively in their interest to do so to retain/bring back subs. So for me another disappointing update on a game I've very much enjoyed but find myself slowly but surely drifting away from. Unfortunately not enough money is being invested to produce what I found to be great in the original game, quality individual class stories & group content.

[Rosiemae]

You weren't replying to me, but I'll address your points...

 

The primary problem, I think, for many of us is that we don't see value for our money. For all the hundreds of millions SWTOR is bringing in, where is the return to the players?

 

Even if they said "no more operations ever!", but instead season 2 of the solo story was going to be class stories, I'd be fine with that.

 

The primary problem is that what they are putting out isn't worth paying for, in my opinion. If the sub was $5 a month, I'd pay it happily for what they do, but it isn't worth $15 a month.

 

The launch content and even 2.0 was rather rich in detail and flavor... 3.0 and to a greater extent 4.0 has been very mild and bland. We are just not getting that much anymore... the 8 class stories were what made this game special, they should have never stopped doing that.

 

Exactly. The class stories are what sets this game apart from all of the other MMOs.

 

However, when things like class chapter completion bug and aren't considered important enough for hotfixes, and the cherry on top is when CS is surprised that customers are angry about it. My recent experience with this very problem has me on the fence of stay or go. That particular bug should have been fixed as soon as it surfaced.

 

So to me, as stated many times already, this is just PR that doesn't really say a lot to me as a player. Actions speak louder.

Edited April 20, 2016 by Rosiemae

[JediAkemi]

Another suggestion (which may have already come up) is MORE TESTING.

 

Have the test servers constantly up and running a month ahead of the live server like Star Trek Online does (or did, not sure if they still do). Have people testing the new content before it goes live to find the bugs and eliminate as many as possible.

 

Several people call the two days early access for each chapter "badly disguised beta testing", and so far they're right.

That's what test servers are supposed to be for, not the live server.

The biggest complaint always seems to be the bugs that multiply with each new update, and the answer should surely be more testing before the update goes live.

[jubakumbi]

Is it so difficult for some of you to grasp that you have outgrown what this game has to offer?

 

Nothing lasts forever.

 

No MMO or any video game can fill the void in your life forever, nor is it intended to do so.

 

If you are done with this game, move on to another and please stop yelling at the rest of us, and the developers, that like the game.

 

How is it so difficult for some of you to realize it's just time for you to move on; there is simply no video game in which you can live forever and avoid the RL...yet.

 

If you have 'done it all', then move on to the next thing that makes you happy and stop trying to make the rest of us as unhappy as you are!

 

Just GO and let the rest of us enjoy the game.

[robertthebard]

No...but both companies go to extensive lengths to tell their customers what they have coming (new styles, latest phone or vehicle features, car shows, commercials). I don't watch much TV, but I bet you I see an add for BOTH of these companies daily in an hour only of watching TV.

 

I know when AT&T has a special going on. I know when there's a new phone they have...I also know about Ford's new safety features, I know the awards they've won, I know the prices...

 

When you advertise as much as those companies do, you don't need a forum...but you know damn well what your customers want because those companies BOTH listen.

 

Yeah, I loved Ford's "taking your car in to our service centers is the same as running around in a lion cage with raw meat" commercials, almost as much as I love their "hey, every 20 years, we can make something good happen" recent commercial.

[Golgulok]

I very rarely post on the forums, but for this I'll make the exception.

 

This 'open letter' is a slap in the face to be honest, and looks to me like a damage control attempt because BW is unsettled by the deluge of negative information and near outrage there is floating around social media concerning the game. And rightly so, because there's a lot of it and they've only themselves to blame.

 

This has been building since January with the push-back of the first chapter instalment and has been snowballing since. Each month players, like me who have been subbed for a long time, are clearing chapter content in 30 minutes that is totally underwhelming, each chapter so easy to clear and so utterly repetitive that you grind your teeth getting though it, whilst watching the game engine buckling under it's own weight. The lag and frame-rate drop in some of this new content is astounding!

 

The chapters are too short, the content is ridiculously easy, and they feel direction-less. To compound this issue you have to grind parts of it across multiple characters because in your infinite wisdom Legacy wide alliance influence is not present. The content does not replay well, because it's so repetitive.

 

This is a core issue, and I think the decision to realise content in these small chunks is nothing more than a cynical mechanism to retain subscribers. The rewards… Lets not even go there.

 

To add to this major issue, you have failed numerous times to deliver on promises. Pushed back content release dates, released content that has not been properly tested. The mind boggles at the debacle that is 4.3. The new warzone cross faction grouping… How could you NOT foresee the games grouping mechanism popping this WZ with more frequency due to the fact teams can be populated at a quicker rate due to it pulling from a larger pool of queuing players?!

 

I mean seriously, do you not have some kind of system in place that could possibly highlight these issues before they present themselves? PvPers have had a bad time, constant Proving Ground WZ pops back to back for hours on end, this on top of the group queue broken.

 

Lets move on to PvE, what can I say that's not already been said… Reworking Operations to new gear tiers is not new content. We've been grinding this **** for years….

 

The rewards tiers for gear is completely broken and illogical. HM flashpoints are totally irrelevant, SM flashpoints can be use to gear whilst levelling, making crystals (comms) totally redundant even at lower levels. All this before we even get to 50 and access SM operations, which people are clearing with groups of 8 yes 8 fracking Marauders! Or with nothing on except a main and offhand weapon!!!

 

The journey through the game is now disjointed, does not flow and seems confusing. A new players learning curve is now such a mess you're having to teach people how to deal with mechanics with a 'Solo' Daily (that was supposed to be released over a month ago) because people are facerolling content even at low levels. It's madness… The player journey through the game is now an absolute mess.

 

Operations… Well. I'll just leave it there.

 

The game as it is, is direction-less. This guy pretty much sums it up.

[Max_Killjoy]

Another suggestion (which may have already come up) is MORE TESTING.

 

Have the test servers constantly up and running a month ahead of the live server like Star Trek Online does (or did, not sure if they still do). Have people testing the new content before it goes live to find the bugs and eliminate as many as possible.

 

Several people call the two days early access for each chapter "badly disguised beta testing", and so far they're right.

That's what test servers are supposed to be for, not the live server.

The biggest complaint always seems to be the bugs that multiply with each new update, and the answer should surely be more testing before the update goes live.

 

Yes - MORE TESTING.

[TX_Angel]

The rewards tiers for gear is completely broken and illogical. HM flashpoints are totally irrelevant, SM flashpoints can be use to gear whilst levelling, making crystals (comms) totally redundant even at lower levels. All this before we even get to 50 and access SM operations, which people are clearing with groups of 8 yes 8 fracking Marauders! Or with nothing on except a main and offhand weapon!!!

 

The journey through the game is now disjointed, does not flow and seems confusing. A new players learning curve is now such a mess you're having to teach people how to deal with mechanics with a 'Solo' Daily (that was supposed to be released over a month ago) because people are facerolling content even at low levels. It's madness… The player journey through the game is now an absolute mess.

 

I think it was a huge mistake to put bolster into HM FP and SM OPS. I also don't think OPS should be in GF, I've only ever finished maybe 2 or 3 true random OPS PUGs, ever. Everyone pre-forms then queues, why bother.

 

If no bolster existed in HM FP and SM OPS, and those were the only places to get unique gear, then you'd see them actually cared about more.

[Lil_Fusion]

I think it was a huge mistake to put bolster into HM FP and SM OPS. I also don't think OPS should be in GF, I've only ever finished maybe 2 or 3 true random OPS PUGs, ever. Everyone pre-forms then queues, why bother.

 

If no bolster existed in HM FP and SM OPS, and those were the only places to get unique gear, then you'd see them actually cared about more.

 

I agree that bolster shouldn't be in HM FP or SM OPS, then again group finder ops have been around ages and worked fine for any i've jumped into back in the day, as of now i'd have to agree most of them you pug people still can't get past bosses like EC and tanks, the list goes on.

 

I think HM FP's should be for players that are 65+ not for those people who hit 50 and que up for a tank and are a DPS because they're too lazy to untick a box or too ignorant. for that matter. I usually don't even bother pugging SM operations because the rewards are crap anyways, I have never had 216s, went from 208s to 220/224 because it's just that easy to gear with the highlighted hm shïtshow.

Edited April 21, 2016 by Lil_Fusion

[Stradlin]

Boy don't I feel special. I greatly appreciate this wall of text about nothing while enjoying watching an MMO where MMO parts are getting flayed off and dropped out of live dev. Looking forward to next 90 celebration of stale talking heads though. Gonna be exciting to see if next planet is L shaped or S shaped corridors. My bets on L!

[Jerba]

As the others have mentioned, thanks for writing the letter, it's always nice to hear from the devs.

TX_Angel has already given a perfect reply, I 100% agree with him.

 

It took you a long time to address all the negativity on the forums and social media, although I find the letter to be intended more for new players to reassure them that it's a great time to start playing, and not to keep the veteran players.

 

I myself have been very critical for the past 1.5 years (around the launch of 3.0); from my experience the game has been going downhill since then. 2013 was a great period in SWTOR's history (and yes, RotHC was followed by more content than KotFE), primilary for a raider like me, but then it got worse - increasing time between patches, more bugs that aren't fixed, the worst kind of exploits that were way too long in the wild, design decisions that don't make sense and fewer dev posts to explain them.

 

While I already suspected most of what you wrote, it is nice to get an official view on the situation. I totally understand that KotFE is successful from a monetary perspective - SWTOR has the monopoly on story-based Star Wars games, and the new movie plus the surrounding merchandise renewed the interest in Star Wars.

My main concern ever since you announced KotFE was: Does it make sense to focus around casual players and ignore the dedicated veterans? Which has me thinking you are no longer interested in seeing the game grow long-term and rather focus on making a quick buck until the bugs become so severe and the server maintenance so expensive that the game needs to be shut down.

 

And I haven't seen you addressing this in any of your dev posts. Your letter has not convinced me about the state of the game, and I'd say a letter like this only gets written when the situation is bad. However, thanks nevertheless for writing as it will be an important part in SWTOR's history when we look back a year from now.

 

Writing a letter alone will not solve the situation; if you are committed to supporting group PvE content again, you need to place a bigger focus on it, specifically:

• Address the huge imbalance between difficult vs. reward across the whole PvE endgame. Either balance the bosses, or redo the gear tiers, preferably both.
  
• Commit to fixing loot bugs, or at least authorize CS to give out loot manually if you can't fix the bugs in a timely manner. (DP Council during Priority week anyone?)
  
• Fix the bugs in various boss fights, (especially the 16 HM/NiM phasing bug) and if new bugs occur, fix them within a week, don't leave them in-game this long.
  

And I'm not even talking about new content. Obviously, I'd rather take a new operation than all these things, but the three bullet points are things which are required in an MMO that follows the WoW-style raiding model like you did up until 3.0. Unless you start addressing these things, operations players will not be satisfied and continue leaving the game one after another. (in fact, my guild dropped from 100 to 50 active accounts over the past six months, and other guilds got hit even worse)

 

I really hope that you are not that out of touch with the players, that this letter is mostly PR and that you realize why so many veteran players feel disappointed in the dev team. (and by this I mean veterans across the whole playerbase, the issues with raiding I mentioned above are just a small part of what needs to be improved)

I enjoy SWTOR, I spent a lot of time and money into my characters and I want to see this game succeed. I want to enjoy logging in, tell other players how great the game is and have fun playing - but at the moment and for the foreseeable future this is not remotely possible.

Edited April 21, 2016 by Jerba

[auroroavalor]

Expect to see level 70, since everything is level synced, it gives the appearance of "new shiny" without anything actually changing.

 

They won't level sync NiM's again.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Most companies don't communicate with their customers at all, unless it's to sell them something or bill them for something.

 

Does Ford have discussion forums?

 

Does AT&T have "community managers" or a monthly Q&A?

 

Wasn't the entire purpose of the post by Ben to sell us something? Or more to the point keep us paying for something ... it certainly didn't communicate anything I didn't already know to me just like the previous developer stream.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Thanks for this open letter. It's very encouraging to see this type of communication, not to mention the content of it. Some people still can't stop moaning for just a minute so that's a shame, but I am really glad your wrote this letter and I hope, as ever, to see more communication coming from you guys in the hopes that we can finally have a more adult dialogue on these forums...well at least from time to time....a man can dream right?

 

If you took your blinders off a minute you would read there is some fairly constructive debate going on around the content of Ben's post and the state of the game as opposed to just outright "moaning".

 

His post might be enough for you, that's cool, this is not the case for many others as evidenced by this thread.