An open letter to our players

[Max_Killjoy]

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. Lusasfilm 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

 

 

Ben -- first of all, thank you.

 

Second, I'll post this link again -- my suggestion for a different content development and release cycle, to be more inclusive to more segments of the playerbase.

 

Third... I'm going to suggest again that whatever comes after KotFE be structured in such a way that it is neither required nor presumed that an individual character went through KotFE.

[JennyFlynn]

On the other hand, it would be nice to get at least some kind of mention of what you guys are working on. It doesn't need to be specific, or spoilery. Just....something. We know that there's going to be more story coming out next year. But are you guys working on group content? Flashpoints, Operations, pvp maps? We don't need to know how these things would fit into KotFE. But just some kind of hint or nod that you guys are, in fact, working on some kind of group content or a brand new mode of game play (like you did for GSF or Eternal Championship, for example) would help. Just a simple, "We're in the early stages of production for new group content for people who enjoy grouping together" or, "We're currently in pre production for new game play modes" would be a lot better than "We're working on new stuff, but can't say anything yet".

 

It would help people who are still on the fence about staying, stay. And might incentivize those who left because of a lack of new group content to come back.

 

That's probably a slippery slope though. Say they are working on group content and Ben came here to say "We're planning to introduce new group content next year" and then for some reason, things go awry and the content doesn't get delivered on time or at all as they'd hoped to do.. it would unleash a world of upset. "You said..!!" "Liars!" "False promises!" etc.

 

He did however say they're in the early stages of working on new, non-chapter content so who knows. That's potentially as safely specific as he can afford to be right now. (And it may not relate to group content but it's possible.)

 

Lol I almost called you Max because I saw the avatar, gotta learn to bleeping read.

[Asheris]

You guys have asked us to trust you so many times so far and got burned every time, why this time is any different? We no longer trust you.

 

We? We who exactly? Forum fighters or the rest of the players actually playing the game and enoying it as it is?

 

I don't feel cheated in any way, what exactly did the devs ever said and not kept their word, hm?

[Lesaberisa]

I don't do ops or PvP, so I can't really comment on those sides of the games.

 

As a story player, this letter sounds nice and comforting, but I have not enjoyed KotFE's approach to either the larger story (which feels like it's basically rehashing similar themes and plot points I've seen in the Bioware games I've been playing for years) or the smaller-scale stuff (like interactions with companions, or the shoving aside of so many class-specific companions and the relationships my characters had with them). I have not enjoyed going months with barely a hint at what happened to most of my favorite companions, nor do I look forward to months more of waiting until I get them back. I don't enjoy all of my characters feeling far less distinct than they did up until the expansion, and I don't like how the game barely acknowledges their missing friends/companions/spouses (presumably so players don't dwell on the fact they're missing). I wish I felt more interested in replaying the 9 (now 12) "incredible" story-driven chapters, but they feel like a slog.

 

I wish I was excited to see Season 2 come, but at this point I feel like I'm resigned to hoping for more class/factio-specific flavor, waiting for my favorite companions to "get their turn" (and hoping that they don't get sidelined in favor of whoever you guys prefer writing or killed or written badly) and also hoping for more varied and interesting level design to make chapters feel like less of a drag to play. I don't really feel much motivation to play my level 60s-65s any more, save for a couple of playthroughs of new chapters to see LS/DS differences.

 

When I heard KotFE was going to be a story-focused expansion, I was hoping for different/better. I will just do a better job of tempering my expectations going forward.

Edited April 19, 2016 by Lesaberisa

[DanNV]

Thanks for the post Ben. I appreciate the apology and the willingness to reach out to us.

----------------------------------------------

 

Now... An Open Letter From A Customer To Ben:

(snip)

-------------------------------------------------------------

 

What he said.

 

And thank you again for the post.

[JarenWelen]

Ben,

 

Firstly, let me say that I was rather excited to see that you had posted. Likewise I was very encouraged by your opening statement in which you acknowledged the presence of player feedback on various forms of social media outside of the SWTOR forums. Furthermore the simple acknowledgement that there have been issues these past months is refreshing and is certainly welcomed - thank you.

 

However I admit to finding myself somewhat confused by what you say, as well as what you do not say.

 

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

 

Excellent news, but I am confused as to why this is being raised. Has there been recent concern that SWTOR would not be supported? I admit to not being up to date with the latest news in the industry, so I wonder if you could clarify this?

 

You are certainly right that the KotFE storyline expansion has been a tremendous success, both with the press and the playerbase. However there are things that are being left unsaid, that I was hoping you might comment on.

 

I remember sitting in a café on holiday two years ago, practically grinning as I read the PTS forum. Someone (Alex?) had started a post calling for feedback on Balance Shadows/Madness Assassins (way back when they were named as such). As the feedback came pouring in, changes were being made on a test server and bounced back off of the players. It was the most involvement I've ever seen a playerbase have, and it was frankly fantastic. It set a high precedent for future changes.

 

Yet communication from the dev team has diminished greatly since then, and I was hoping your post might allude to some of the issues we are facing. There are more threads than I care to count asking for feedback on classes, set bonuses, etc. that have remained unacknowledged (a simple "Thanks, we'll look at these" would go a long way). The most recent dev post in the PvP forum I could find was from September. You mention the new Warzones but not that much of the playerbase is frustrated by getting stuck in Rishi. Ranked is plagued by the Warzone bugs, leaderboard issues, and in some cases even hackers. I could go on.

 

Is this ongoing support you mention intended to address these issues?

 

I hope that it is taken in a purely constructive way when I say - please could you just talk to us? We recognise that changes take time to make, and that sometimes it is not possible to say what is going on. But simple acknowledgements of issues and the wealth of player feedback held in these forums (many of it inappropriate, I know), would build many bridges with a disgruntled community.

 

Thanks for taking the time to post to us, I think we all hope to hear from you again in the near future.

[Lunafox]

Thanks for the reassurances Ben. I'm looking forward to more story and new strongholds for the future! It's good to hear that things are going well and heading in a positive direction. Hopefully it will quell some of the naysayer type posts, cause I'm getting really tired and fed up with those.

[JennyFlynn]

Thanks for the post Ben. I appreciate the apology and the willingness to reach out to us.

----------------------------------------------

 

Now... An Open Letter From A Customer To Ben:

 

<insert a lot of sensible notes from Andryah>

 

Thanks for listening.

 

-------------------------------------------------------------

 

I fully agree. Communication is key and it's unfortunately one department in which the team seems to lack, despite this very much appreciated post by Ben right now. More frequent and open communication would certainly be appreciated especially if it gives us a chance to actually engage in a discussion WITH the team rather than TO the team and being left to wonder if we're being heard.

 

I'd like to see posts like Ben's today more often in general.

[commanderwar]

Thank you Ben for taking you time for writing this. This was needed and I am excited to see what to come.

[teclado]

Wow! Good stuff!

[TUXs]

I'd love it if you could point out anything in the last couple of years that they failed to deliver on.

Here's one example.

 

And here's another:

So to sum up, we’ve created Disciplines for stronger and earlier role specialization, more utility, more flexibility, better balance, and more development time for class improvements - letting our designers do more for you!

Balance has never been worse. When is the last time they did anything to even address it?

 

And of course the promise after ToS and Rav dropped to never go a year between new Ops again...they were right though...they blew straight past that 12 month mark.

Edited April 19, 2016 by TUXs

[SirUrza]

1 paragraph apologizing for bugs.

1 paragraph rehashing content you released.

1 paragraphs not talking about future content.

1 paragraph of PR hype.

1 paragraph making the same empty promises.

 

0 paragraphs acknowledging specific bugs and time line for fixing them.

0 paragraphs about new content, like operations.

0 paragraphs about the direction of the game.

 

KotFE ends the same month Legion comes out. Like WoW or not, with the release of Legion it'll have had 5 new raids come out since SWTOR's last. On top of that, WoW's pvp is being completely overhauled from how you gear for it to having a dedicated talent system.

 

Eventually people are going to realize they don't need to be subbed month-to-month to enjoy SWTOR's current model and this whole letter will be meaningless.

[Count_Mario]

I would like to thank you for this post too!

 

I know it doesn't mean much, but for all my renting here and otherwise I still support the game. Sure there are certain bugs I would like to see fixed, but in generel, there are still people who love the things you have done with and since 4.0. After swearing myself that I would never ever again start a new character, I've created 6 fresh characters because I love the reworked leveling systems. Level sync, useful Heroics, useful Basic comms, farming influence, no longer having to care about gear for companions, it's like my wildest dreams from 2011 suddenly came true.

[Codedrago]

Hmmm... In some way this means this game is dead. I give it a month!

 

And yeah, TALK ABOUT GROUP CONTENT! We haven't received any since the Star Fortresses, you've thrown the PvPers a bone, give it to the Group PvE crowd!

[znihilist]

We? We who exactly? Forum fighters or the rest of the players actually playing the game and enoying it as it is?

 

I don't feel cheated in any way, what exactly did the devs ever said and not kept their word, hm?

 

Yes you don't feel cheated, other people might feel cheated, why do you guys act in such a sociopathic manner, the usual "*_____ you I got mine" attitude? Why is it forbidden for a person to show dissatisfaction with how things are going? Why do you feel personally insulted and feel the absolute need to tell me that you don't share my views? Have I claimed that every single person who play this game shares my opinion? Or is it simply the proclamation that more than one person might hold this opinion that offends you? Why can't you let me show my opinion without you trying to lump me with some group or another?

Edited April 19, 2016 by znihilist

[Managuense]

Wow, there must have been a lot of cancellations,

[diamondscope]

1 paragraph apologizing for bugs.

1 paragraph rehashing content you released.

1 paragraphs not talking about future content.

1 paragraph of PR hype.

1 paragraph making the same empty promises.

 

0 paragraphs acknowledging specific bugs and time line for fixing them.

0 paragraphs about new content, like operations.

0 paragraphs about the direction of the game.

 

KotFE ends the same month Legion comes out. Like WoW or not, with the release of Legion it'll have had 5 new raids come out since SWTOR's last. On top of that, WoW's pvp is being completely overhauled from how you gear for it to having a dedicated talent system.

 

Eventually people are going to realize they don't need to be subbed month-to-month to enjoy SWTOR's current model and this whole letter will be meaningless.

 

then go back to wow and just faceroll the expan like everyone else does .. and yes wow complete mmo joke for gamers that dont know how to learn mechs so yes please go back to wow.. just like the meme's complain about swtor and brag about wow but on swtor for 12hr's prolly and ruining other gamers time that they pay for:rolleyes:

[LtGeneralGezlin]

I'd just like to say, I think it's telling how more positive a lot of the comments here are than on the thread over at the SWTOR Subreddit. Used to be this place was as bad as Mos Eisley, and the Subreddit was a lot more positive, now it's like I am living in an alternate Universe!

 

Wow, there must have been a lot of cancellations,

 

Then again...

[JasonAlan]

So what I read was 'sorry for continually releasing broken content' and 'we're sorry?' If I would go to work and give my paying customers broken **** I would be fired.... Plain and simple. The customers would also receive compensation, hint hint wink wink

[AlienEyeTX]

Here's one example.

 

And here's another:

 

Balance has never been worse. When is the last time they did anything to even address it?

 

And of course the promise after ToS and Rav dropped to never go a year between new Ops again...they were right though...they blew straight past that 12 month mark.

 

I'll give it to you for the Ops. That's for sure. Not that they need any more... there are plenty. But they should still put them out once in a while to placate that tiny, niche base of players.

 

They never announced cross-server. Maybe it accidentally made it into some in-game text, but that only shows that they were thinking about it. They may even have attempted to set it up. But they never announced it. See, kids, this is why they don't announce things until they are all but certain to be happening.

 

I don't know what is missing from the other thing. We got new disciplines and simplified skill tree.

 

I'm certainly not saying that they couldn't be doing more or that everything is all gravy with this game. I just don't think there's been much of anything promised that hasn't been delivered.

[SirUrza]

then go back to wow and just faceroll the expan like everyone else does ..

 

You're implying that 20 minutes mission that comes out every month is difficult.

 

 

and yes wow complete mmo joke for gamers that dont know how to learn mechs

 

A complete joke? WoD raid content was some of the best in MMO and mythic was the difficulty people have been wanting. I want this game to have content that takes 200+ attempts to clear, if you want to talk about face roll, let's talk about here.

 

so yes please go back to wow.. just like the meme's complain about swtor and brag about wow but on swtor for 12hr's prolly and ruining other gamers time that they pay for:rolleyes:

 

Sorry, I can decipher what you're saying.

[Clarian]

I want SWTOR to be around for a long time, because I have a lot left to do. So this is good to hear.

 

My only plea is: Don't take away the launch content, and restore that which has so far been taken away. (Such as, heroic-quest-giver NPCs and turn-in conversations).

 

(Well, and, my other only plea is: Fix bugs. Such as Kallig's mask making hoods disappear rather than fitting beneath them.)

 

I for one have no concerns about the quality of the recent content, simply because I don't intend to ever touch it. (No class stories...Republic and Empire teaming up...meh.) The launch content is the gold standard for SWTOR, and there's plenty of that for me. Just...don't take it away.

 

Oh yeah, and my third only plea. Do something like Blade & Soul's option to hide other player's characters. Muting their audio would be great too.

[damonskye]

Ben, if you read this, I want you to know that I appreciate what you've said and what you've done.

 

My problem with SWTOR -- and please take this to heart, because it's shared by a lot of people -- is that we don't know where this is all going. Not story wise... I don't want to know where the story's going, that's the fun in the ongoing chapters. But GAME wise... we don't have a clear direction:

 

* We don't know why we need to get our Alliance to level 20; it's just become a grind for the sake of grinding, and while I have gotten my Alliance to 20 on one character, the rewards were almost nonexistent (you can buy those mounts cheaply on the GTN).

 

* We don't really know why we need to get our companions to such a high level because at fair (20-30) levels they seem to do just fine. Sure it's great to have a level 50 companion, but what will we need it for? Especially since we end up losing these companions during story chapter progression anyway.

 

* We don't know what will be around to engage us later. I find myself redoing old content -- NOT KOTFE CONTENT, but leveling 1-50 again for the stories there -- because I end up not having much to do. Queueing for hard mode flashpoints is an exercise in futility; it almost never pops. Story mode group-finder operations are a crap shoot; invariably the tank leaves after the first wipe. There isn't any replayable content currently at high end game that's KOTFE specific except for the star fortresses which got old quickly (and don't really offer anything new to the mix). I know we're getting the Eternal Championship but you'll have to forgive your audience for thinking it's still vaporware because we haven't seen it yet.

 

* Finally, we don't see BioWare or your team as engaged as you do. Bugs go months, if not years, without being fixed. Legitimate grievances here aren't addresses, or if they are it's pretty flippant. The 'community managers' do not engage with the community. The only real discussion here is between people posting their legitimate concerns and the people who then attack them for posting them in the first place. The only time we see people like Eric Musco is in the video-based hypefests which seldom address anyone's actual concerns and merely regurgitate already known data.

 

You took the time to provide an open letter to your players, and I respect and appreciate that. Can I ask that you therefore return the favor in kind and allow open letters like mine and the voices of so many others -- some newer, some older, some like me who have been here since the beginning -- to fall upon YOUR ears?

 

We want to love your game. We want to enjoy it. But we want to know you're hearing what we have to say, too.

[Count_Mario]

I'd just like to say, I think it's telling how more positive a lot of the comments here are than on the thread over at the SWTOR Subreddit. Used to be this place was as bad as Mos Eisley, and the Subreddit was a lot more positive, now it's like I am living in an alternate Universe!

 

Reddit seems to be the place for former subs now or maybe it's just where the more toxic players went.

[Mevan]

EA supports this game. Lucasfilm supports this game. Disney supports this game.

 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

 

That's hilarious. Genuinely. If EA supports this game, then that would mean it's you and your team are the crooks behind the constant attempts to extract every cent possible from every player possible no matter how ****** and underhanded you have to be to do it.

 

So which is it; EA is forcing you to squeeze the playerbase until there's no one left to extort? Or your team are hell-bent on making swtor one of the most expensive games to enjoy on the market for some other reason? Blow your own trumpets all you like.

 

Actions speak far louder- like bumping the price of server transfers up to a laughable price once again.