An open letter to our players

[CaldoChaud]

Thank you for taking the time to write to us. It might not seem like such a big deal for some folks, but at least it demonstrates that you are listening to the gamers.

 

The question is: are the developers willing to meet the gamers halfway?

 

As a gamer, I'm not looking for miracles. I'm just asking that you don't keep pulling the rug out from under us. If I go to the trouble to create a high-level (50 - 65) character - I don't want that character to be thrashed by a level 16 npc. It just doesn't make sense. And rather than constantly pushing the combat skills farther up the tree with every expansion, why not provide new skills higher up that replace the old ones? Likewise the companion changes... if I maxed out my companion's affection before KotFE, it should have been scaled up to meet the equivalent rating for KotFE rather than force gamers to start over from scratch.

 

I came close to giving up on SWTOR... Its not "big game-breaking issues" that have gamers crying foul. Its the seemingly "small" details and lack of consideration for the time and effort gamers have put into playing the game.

[Kakisback]

Story is nice and all, but group content is what keeps people playing. We know you refuse to care about pvp, but the fact that you didn't even mention it in a post like this shows that you're not even pretending to care. Inb4 "you just got a new map and arena" LOL. Hell, class balance isn't even pvp-specific Edited April 19, 2016 by Kakisback

[Stradlin]

Not a single mention of GSF?

 

GSF is best, most unique portion of this game. Playing SW:TOR as GSF pilot gives experience I'll not get anywhere else. It is awesome. It is only reason I'm sticking around.It is incredibly frustrating to see it getting neglected. Not an iota of care goes to direction of storylines in this game. If I wanted to involve myself to traditional MMO bits..well, maybe I'd do so in game where they remain in development.

 

TLDR GSF NEEDS MORE LOVE!

Edited April 19, 2016 by Stradlin

[Mord_Sith_Spit]

I for one, really appreciate this open letter and the positive vibe I get for the future of TOR. Sincere "thank you", and 2 thumbs up!

[BrotherJohn]

it is nice to see a producer actually post on the forums with that. all you basically said was the same old same old. you want to stop or prevent further poor reviews and trust me the internet is full of actual media reviews that all but tell you to steer clear of swtor, you post a detailed update with what new content will be coming. adding a time line is pointless and not what is needed.

 

BUT

 

saying we have updated and refreshed content is honestly worth mentioning only in passing like a breeze in a snow storm. what would help you and the team is to build up support for not your very poorly written and done short novelettes but real group content FP and OPS centered. Real attention to PVP not just a passing poorly designed new map but a real removal of your reliance upon stuns.

 

Yeah is a tall order and yes you probably will just ignore this post but trust me your game is dying as much as you wont ever admit it, it is. i am seeing it first hand on several servers with several guilds. its not a mystery nor is it unknown to your player base.

 

Here is hoping you and the team turn this sinking titanic around and get her back on track.

 

cheers

[jimmorrisson]

All winter long there have been countless threads asking, demanding attentions and statements from developers on the status of aspects of this game. You may or may not like what was posted or lack there of - however here you go.

 

Since the developers are paying attention please be aware that either the idea of megaservers or cross server queuing seems to be the current most wanted feature.

 

My personal issues with the game are long drawn out missions and class quests Specifically Ilum, Makeb, Chapters 11, Chapters 12 (My favorite chapter so far), then the subsequent companion quest.

 

I would also like to see PvP arenas either made ranked only or into a different queue slot all together. I notice many groupfinder members drop if a arena match pops.

Edited April 20, 2016 by jimmorrisson

[Qwurdilu]

Thank you for playing Odessen Hypergates all day! Our metrics™ showed that singleplayers didnt want to play anything else so we enabled it to groups aswell! Its because we listen to our customers and fix stuff fast.

 

Thank god! This man really knows what we want! awesome!

Edited April 20, 2016 by Qwurdilu

[Jaiyne]

Very happy to read this. Thank you for the communication!

[Volthammer]

Then why are the servers nearly empty?

 

I think it's mostly the PvP servers. And as a PvP'er I can tell you that it's the general behavior of people on those types of servers that kill them in every...single....MMO. Too many people love to gank lowby zones on their capped out toons, crushing players for hours who have almost no hope of fighting back. Ergo...even people who love PvP end up leaving servers like that.

 

Otherwise, several servers, both U.S. and European are doing fine. Since update 4.3 Harbinger Imp fleet has had 3 instances full of players most nights. Hopefully it's not temporary. lol

[Zasszz]

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.

Maybe send us someone with forum experience next time. Why? Find out if you actually read the forums.

 

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.

Only for the last couple of months? What about the YEARS before that and the bugs you havent fixed like the friendslist not working properly for 4 years, the bugging robes every few meters we walk, the bugged dread masters quest chain on belsavis for imps... But congrats with one chapter that wasnt awful like the two before it. Maybe you should apologize for them too.

 

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

Supporty by whom? The paying players? The F2P players? The streamers? The players that write their fingers bloody to explain to you whats wrong with this game? Or are you talking about the nearly non-existing support team?

 

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.

Wow, the game changed. Really? Thanks for letting us know. I think I would have never noticed by myself... Oh wait, we are not complete idiots.

 

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.

We "have to" take your word for it? You "cant" give us any specifics but you have stuff planned... Stuff is going to happen... No sith, sherlock? Thats supposed to be information for us? Bioware does guarantee that "soon" will be here before the end of time. Maybe.

 

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.

Successfull... how exactly? The way yout turned an MMO expansion into a single player only campaign? That you recycled EVERY flashpoint and operation for max level but didnt bother to create new content there?

It also has the least qualified support team Ive ever encountered in any online game. EA supports this game... Yeah, explains the missing support and not enough devs to fix the 10k bugs that existed for 4 years. And its YOU whos receiving support from them, whatever thats supposed to mean for you. As a player I only feel like getting kicked everytime I directly have contact with the company. I dont see any of that support flowing into the player community. Posts like yours only demonstrate that you have no idea about the community thats actually supporting this game and games like this.

 

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.

Lets see, we get one patch each month with guaranteed droid items which are mostly ugly and not really fitting into a star wars themed game, we get a chapter around our former companions but not really about the main story, we get a list of fixed issues that I can count with one hand and alot of empty promises and everything fits into about half an hour of time to get through. And ontop of that you talk about stuff thats going to happen or more like you pretend to tell us about stuff but you dont say anything about it. Yeah, very exciting.

 

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

 

Ben Irving

Its because of you, whatever your position in your company may be, that we players feel slapped in our faces by a rancor when we want to hear how you are going to adress problems in this what could be a much greater game but you rather jerk off, pat yourself on the back and make more empty promises. Ive seen some self-centered comments from company representative but yours seems to be a new low.

 

You know, you might think you talked about alot but all you did was write alot but didnt really say anything except for "we did alot of stuff, more stuff is going to happen, gimme a tissue while I give myself a rub down for being such a good employee". Why are company representatives mostly not capable of actually adressing the problems? Are you incapable or not getting paid to do that?

 

I really like this game. I love the class stories of some classes, love the star wars lore and that we can feel like we are part of the star wars universe ourself even when its not comparable with the movies. There is so much more potential. The list of stuff thats great in this game is indeed huge.

Unfortunately when I see the old bugs every day I feel like the only thing the devs are interested in is releasing a small chapter once a month, give us ugly bonus reWARTs and then post on the forum "we did a good job, praise us". Thats what we are adressing on the forums. You dont seem to be interested in actually communicating with us.

 

We expect you do deliver good/great content and that you actually communicate with us. Thats why many of us pay a monthly fee to support this game. But this letter is the exact way of how you are not supposed to behave as a company representative. I would feel ashamed to hit the "submit" button. But since you are working for EA, I dont assume you have any decency left to actually care even when your letter pretends that you do. I also dont expect you to reply to us and hopefully you will never write on this forum again.

Good luck to the one making the next announcement.

[Zasszz]

The trolling is strong in this one.

 

Wake me up when you figure out how to distinguish between a dev, a producer, a community manager, and a marketer.

Does is really matter which position ben has? He did a poor job at all of those!

[Nefand]

I love this game. The Star Wars universe has been an intricate part of my life, originally releasing on my 3rd birthday (uh oh, don't do the math!). I have never loved another IP as much as I do this one. My SO even wrote a novel length table top RPG based on Old Republic for us to play through with our gaming group, that's how much I love it.

 

Still, it's nice to get some feedback. I know you'll still take crap for some really stupid things, but I hope you are able to brush it off. And if you guys ever need a round of beers, look me up; I'm only a couple hours south of Austin.

 

much <3 to the SWTOR team!

[KidLee]

Thanks for the post Ben.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

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

 

Let's be honest here Ben ... all this post does is come across as smoke and mirrors to me. There is nothing of substance to it and it reads as marketing spiel for what you've already done.

 

Great you told us we aren't getting maintenance mode, we already knew that but you can only say that "up until EA does decide to put us in maintenance mode" so that decision isn't really yours to make but it's nice to know we are getting another season of this story content that people can skip and pay to get in one hit.

 

A lot of the flack you get comes from nothing announced for content outside of the story content and well let's be frank here ... we are talking operations or something to cater to the community that enjoy this sort of content ( something interesting to keep them pay and playing beyond the story content - repeatable raid content was great for this - EC will not be due to how any lack of need to repeat the content for most top level players ).

 

You have spoken of new contact coming outside of chapters but that could mean a couple more "star fortresses" or some other solo friendly content that is only going to cater to that player base.

 

For all the success you've found with KoTFE as you say you are slowly but surely flushing it down the toilet with this on going silence because let's be honest ... this post told us nothing at all really much like the previous developer stream.

 

If anything all you've done is more than likely have people speculate even further that there will be no more decent operation style content becoming because you blatantly refuse to state "Yes we do have more operations coming but that is all I can say".

 

Seriously why not just come clean? Why poke the bear that is your community with posts like this that will have them questioning even more why you can't just confirm in a really general sense what is coming? This silence crap is stupid ...

 

I personally believe the fact you've had to make a post like this means you are taking the doom sayers seriously and subscriber trends are on the wane and you are worried they are going to contribute to pushing people away or are just plain think a non-informative post like this is somehow going to keep people wanting to leave subbed ... it's not.

 

People aren't leaving because they think the game is heading towards maintenance mode either, people are leaving because they are bored of the state of the game as it stands.

Under your current model they can resub in a few months time and get all your story content for one price and rinse and repeat next season ( no doubt you'll do something to the pricing structure the next season to try avoid this of course ).

They leave because that's all they see coming ... you need to keep people subbed by promising them right now that there is operations coming this year, there are more flashpoints coming this year, you do plan on doing more PVP maps and some stuff for GSF. Actually specific ... this "soon" crap is an insult to the community, be general about what we are getting and leave the specifics out of it.

 

Otherwise people read your post and read more of the same ******** that tells us absolutely nothing and we can keep on pointing to the declining community ( which is why you really needed to make a post like this else you wouldn't have bothered if everything was "all good" ) and the lack of anything to look forward to other than more KoTFE and 1 time wonders like EC.

 

The ball is in your court ... try get something to announce by the next developer stream and really prove that there is something to honestly look forward to on the horizon instead of nonsense posts like this.

 

Thanks.

[Fixiooo]

PR spinning and riddled blog that tells us nothing. I've seen this before.

[Mytrae]

Maybe one day u'll understand that no one care of solo content. Only casual like that cuz they only do the 15min per month their chap and come back next month. Yes its worth for you, free money but when this terrible chapter story will end. No more free money.

 

Maybe the cartelboy will keep you alive for few months but no more.

 

Maybe one day u'll realize thats the hardcore gamer doing PVP/PVE daily that keep your game alive. Open your eyes, thats not the casual who keeped WoW alive since 10 years. Come on how can u be blind like that?

 

Do what a MMO are made for, release MULTIPLAYERS content seriously. We are in 2016. Wake up

 

Stop lie in your all communications posts, I HAVE NEVER SEE SOMEONE HAPPY OF WHAT YOU HAVE DONE for the last months.

 

And please stop saying you have work hard for this game. Rescale ( without any idea of what u are doing, i mean, have you realize that the scaling of operation have made impossible timer run ? Like dread fortress with grob'thok taking 10 minutes to die for a boss without any strategy. You have just put more Hp and damage on the boss, thats not enough to keep player motivated to kill boss who they already farmed years ago in every difficult )

 

And as usual, your post is like speaking to say nothing, always the same message since last year in different words. "We are working hard blablabla" my dog work probably more and he doesnt need to tell us every 2 months

Edited April 20, 2016 by Mytrae

[Johnycat]

I, for one, was very thankful for the OP - what a great update, and exciting news for the current and ongoing support for this game. I am thrilled to hear about the commitment and support SWTOR is receiving - my favorite pastime.

 

 

Thank you!

Cheers,

J

[Vashadan]

So the post was basically:

 

-we have worked hard and it shows

-we are working hard and it shows

-we will keep working hard ...

 

Righto, keep at it.

And thanks for all the fish.

[HiltoftheDragon]

One question......

 

Where are the new raids.

 

You cant expect 30 minute chapters each month to keep this game going.

 

New raids man.....new raids.

[Aeristash]

Don't die swtor

[Soalri]

I unsubbed because of this post. I guess I'll resub when the chapters are done since there is no reason to log on daily.

[lord-angelus]

Yayyy, 50 shades of soon.....

 

That letter is really worrying. I dont think that we wont get ops, again. And if thats the case, nothing can save this game anymore

[Max_Killjoy]

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.

Edited April 20, 2016 by Max_Killjoy

[Jstgetitovrwith]

Frankly, this comes across as a bit insulting, to add a bit of a flair, a 'slap in the face' even.

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

especially when a lot of them were and are still broken, loot on them hasn't been consistent since

release, and many of them are completely irrelevant. You removed any and all gear progression by supplying

top of the line stuff to people completing a hard mode that many consider easier than most story modes, while

simultaneously denying those completing Nightmare this gear until very recently.

 

While "critical acclaim" to you sounds good, all I noticed was that the expansion didn't get dumped on by

most review sites. You know why a lot of people like this game, and enjoyed it? Cause the content cycle during 2.0 was something that we enjoyed, we had multiple tiers of raids, we had NEW flashpoints and operations on a fairly consistent schedule, there were new planets and daily areas, there were little side mission like the shroud and dreadseed quest chains, as well as a lot of other content.

Now there's is just 4 years of legacy content that honestly isn't as difficult as it was when it came out, purely by the fact that WE HAVE DONE IT BEFORE.

Add to that that several of those 50 operations bosses are completely irrelevant and never really touched by 99% of the raiding community and I find your post lacking understanding of the actual state of the game.

 

Take your money from the cartel market, milk those poor souls dry, but don't pretend this game is the same one that your older fans loved and sunk hours into. Now it's just a poor man's kotor, made with a buggier engine that uses way more resources than reasonable for quality, and a community so invested in their money not being a waste that they'll defend posts like this to the death despite how shallow and transparent they are.

 

and remember, L2P, H2F

[AlienEyeTX]

Stuff...

 

Stop lie in your all communications posts, I HAVE NEVER SEE SOMEONE HAPPY OF WHAT YOU HAVE DONE for the last months.

 

And stuff...

 

Mytrae, I'll step in here and help you out, buddy.

 

I am happy with KOTFE. Is it perfect? No. I don't know a game that is. But I like what they are doing.

 

And, of course, more stuff to come along with the chapters. Unsub if you want, but there is more to subbing than just getting "30 minutes" of content per month.

 

Guess what? I'm not the only one who thinks this way. So get off your high horse (pony?) and settle down. Feedback from players is great, but you're just being a jerk. Maybe you need a timeout or something? Because that's about what your maturity shows.

 

Here's the deal. If you don't like what you're reading or what you're playing; leave the game. It really is that simple. I don't want players to leave, but if the game ain't fun for you, why would you spend your time on it?

 

If you don't like what the producers have to say about it, it's probably time to move on. I know I would.

 

Oh, and don't be a jerk to someone who's going out of their way to let us know that they hear us and they care.