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New Boss at Bioware, any hope for a change?

merovejec

By merovejec
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merovejec

merovejec

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Found this on reddit: Boss change at Bioware

 

So it seems Bioware is getting a new boss and apparently she likes RPGs (not MMOs). Anyway there are couple of things to this, like lately there were a lot of comments made for lack of communication, which is really true. I mean look at the forums, there is absolutely lack of official information from Bioware, people have to open up PTS launchers with software to provide data mining info. We have to watch news to see which team goes where in EA, whether the OPS team is moved to Mass Effect or PVP team to whereever else. We have to analyze EA stocks, share holder information in order to see if swtor is doing well financialy or not. You have a community manager who is there to communicate, but instead he only posts minor this here and there. Yes, they started doing a stream and Musco tried to play swtor for the second time in his life, but come on.... They should be all over the forums, making comments, statements etc. what does that guy do all day??

 

Once ever few years Bioware shows meaningless statistics about how many Sentinels have been created in the game and how many chose light and dark side for their toons. There is no information on subscriber numbers (ok yeah that would be too much), even server capacities have been removed. We have no idea how the game is doing.

 

The website contained very old information for a long time. There was still Underworld and Kell Dragon gear for a very very long time, eventhough we already had much higher levels of that. Holonet only mentions 4 operations, flashpoints not updated and still showing they r lvl 50, 48 etc, no mention of GSF. This is the company strategy? Not to show off what the game contains?

 

You dont have to be Sherlock Holmes to see that all this could indicate lack of funding or lack of teams for specific parts of the game, but I dont want to go to those topics now. From my experience a new leadership leads to changes, changes in company and processes, maybe this is what we have been hoping for.

 

All i want from Bioware at the moment is more communication. I want it to be like before, I want them to introduce some staff at the cantina, look this is the Development team, this is the Cartel Market Team (OMG he has a gun!!! BAM BAM BAM!! - just kidding), show us that there are people working there and working on something. Like that picture from Bioware in that cinematic, that was nice. We want some real data to talk about, not just what we find from share holder reports, data mining and EA news bulletins.

 

If there is new leadership, I hope things do change.

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merovejec

merovejec

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It is never a good sign, when a company hides information. ;)

 

Yes true, we all know that, in fact there were only like 3 occasions where Bioware officially published an indication of subbed players. The initial statement of "the game needs 500 000 subs to be profitable" may not be true right now, as the game is in maintanance mode as you can see yourself and lives mostly of the Cartel Market.

 

Its also true that showing the numbers would probably scare people away, but thats why they need to change so that they will be able to show the real and positive numbers in the future.

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bahramnima

bahramnima

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Yes true, we all know that, in fact there were only like 3 occasions where Bioware officially published an indication of subbed players. The initial statement of "the game needs 500 000 subs to be profitable" may not be true right now, as the game is in maintanance mode as you can see yourself and lives mostly of the Cartel Market.

 

Its also true that showing the numbers would probably scare people away, but thats why they need to change so that they will be able to show the real and positive numbers in the future.

 

they will never reveal subscription information, most games wont reveal such info, as for communication i agree with you, they are like we are working on group content but we can not say what is it, are they gonna add new planet or another story expansion.

is she gonna change all this? we have to wait and see.

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lilathrone

lilathrone

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Yes true, we all know that, in fact there were only like 3 occasions where Bioware officially published an indication of subbed players. The initial statement of "the game needs 500 000 subs to be profitable" may not be true right now, as the game is in maintanance mode as you can see yourself and lives mostly of the Cartel Market.

 

You state this maintenance mode many times, but i don't really think a whole new expansion coming this fall is maintenance mode.

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merovejec

merovejec

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they will never reveal subscription information, most games wont reveal such info, as for communication i agree with you, they are like we are working on group content but we can not say what is it, are they gonna add new planet or another story expansion.

is she gonna change all this? we have to wait and see.

 

Like I said, i know about the sub numbers, they wont say it overall, but information like that they have 1 millions "active" players every month dont really tell us much.

 

On that communication i have watched the July stream to hear that sentence again: "We are currently working on group content, now im not saying its operations, not saying its a flashpoint, or its a wazone, im not hinting any specific type of content we are working on" lol well, thnx for the info xD

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merovejec

merovejec

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You state this maintenance mode many times, but i don't really think a whole new expansion coming this fall is maintenance mode.

 

It is my impression of the game, you see very little bug fixes, most things they implement they break. They even break stuff when they fix something. Even the patch was postponed cause the Pack Opening Experience was late in development.

 

Now, imagine that the game is really financed and relying on the Cartel Market purchases. They want to provide an improvment to that area to make even more money and they are late with that!! They cannot even manage that. This is really slopy and gives me "maintanance" idea of the game.

 

The game hasnt receive new stuff apart from KOTFE and other story chapters. Yes, warzones, eternal championship, which were also bugged with a great deal. Also things like the 16M operation bug and many more that exist and didnt exist before. These bugs were introduced now and havent been fixed. They are only maintaining the game and adding very little. This has been so for almost 2 years now.

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PlasmaJohn

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You state this maintenance mode many times, but i don't really think a whole new expansion coming this fall is maintenance mode.

And yet the CM, the one place that they took pains to keep fresh and address issues in a timely manner, has been getting only recycled content of late. Nothing new whatsoever.

 

Optimistically maybe they got the message that some of their CM practices have slid too far into shady territory and they're doing a rethink. The pessimistic view is that if they can't even bother updating the CM so that's a pretty clear signal that Maintenance Mode has arrived.

 

Who knows which view is correct? They can't be bothered to let us know what's going on. Or are too afraid to confirm the worst.

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Andryah

Andryah

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........... If there is new leadership, I hope things do change.

 

1) an editorial opinion piece, with all your usual talking points =/= any facts, just your opinion. Nothing new either, from comparing it to your usual narrative.

 

2) what you linked was an organizational announcement, not a release to investors, so to think or even imply it's faulty for not providing sub numbers, etc, shows me how really out of touch with reality your views are.

 

3) the linked announcement has absolutely nothing to do with your personal vendetta for more and better communications, which frankly is itself a ruse IMO. If they did communicate, you would attempt to crucify them over every comment and how it does not meet your personal definition of what SWTOR should be.

 

4) Samantha Ryan taking on her new role, and her being an RPG fan only indicates that the Bioware studio will continue to focus on producing RPG games... their actual core business. MMOs is so far, a one off product release for them. So, IMO, this is a good fit as EA is more then just SWTOR. In fact, MMOs are not core to EAs business and honestly never have been. I'm not even sure why they purchased Mythic, or Bioware over the years.

 

Basically, you are using an EA level organizational announcement as soapbox for something else entirely. Sad. Why not just have a discussion about without pretext.

 

Personally, I have no idea if this organizational change is a good thing or a bad thing. And neither does anyone else. Time will tell on that one. What IS clear for the organizational announcement is that they are consolidating their leadership and focus of development across their entire product family. In essence homogenizing mobile, and non-mobile gaming under a common management umbrella. It's a business decision at the EA level and has absolutely nothing to do with SWTOR.

Edited by Andryah
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tharbison

tharbison

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We can only speculate about any of this.

 

If they made an announcement they were in maintenance mode, what impact would that have on the population? Probably not good.

 

If they made an announcement they were working on bug fixes, players would complain they should be working on new ops.

 

If they made an announcement they were working on new ops, players would complain they should working on new WZs.

 

And so on…

 

This isn’t their first rodeo. They know what they should and shouldn’t communicate, and for good reasons. Despite that, players will, and should, be heard. I hear you! I wish they’d share more too. But, I imagine it’s in their best interest not to.

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TX_Angel

TX_Angel

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You state this maintenance mode many times, but i don't really think a whole new expansion coming this fall is maintenance mode.

 

I don't think you quite understand what is coming this fall...

 

That isn't a "whole new expansion", it is MX mode with 30 minutes of dripped game play each month...

 

In the time since our last operation, Bioware could have made a whole new game, we had 1 PvP map in 2 years, no GSF for 2 years, no group content of any kind in over a year...

 

If this isn't MX mode to you, then I'd hate to see what you think that looks like...

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TX_Angel

TX_Angel

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This isn’t their first rodeo. They know what they should and shouldn’t communicate, and for good reasons. Despite that, players will, and should, be heard. I hear you! I wish they’d share more too. But, I imagine it’s in their best interest not to.

 

Actually, it IS their first rodeo...

 

And they really DON'T know what they should and shouldn't communicate...

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psandak

psandak

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In the time since our last operation, Bioware could have made a whole new game, we had 2 PvP maps in 2 years, no GSF for 2 years, and a complete redesign of all existing group content

 

If this isn't MX mode to you, then I'd hate to see what you think that looks like...

 

Fixed.

 

Do you really think what they did do:

  • Turn all SM FPs into Tactical
  • Add solo mode FPs
  • retune all Ops to be level 65
  • establish Heroics as the new "dailies"
  • AND implement level sync and bolster across the board

was just a flip of a switch?

 

You may not like what they did, but what they did do took significant resources to accomplish.

 

With regard to MMOs the generally accepted definition of "maintenance mode" is: "the point in an MMO’s life where the patches and new content slow to a trickle or stop completely" or some variation thereof.

 

Now some may believe that a chapter a month and CM stuff is a "trickle," I respectfully disagree. They could have released all 16 chapters at once and then nothing at all for a year...very much like what Blizzard does with WoW. Yes that's right, in a given WoW content cycle there is often a FULL YEAR OF ABSOLUTELY NOTHING released. A typical WoW expansion cycle is:

 

  1. New content is released (granted a lot more than a SWTOR expansion)
  2. Over the course of a year bug fixed and content updates are released
  3. a new expansion is announced
  4. And then for about another year there is NOTHING new; Blizzard only patches major bugs

rinse and repeat.

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tharbison

tharbison

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Actually, it IS their first rodeo...

 

And they really DON'T know what they should and shouldn't communicate...

 

You're right - as MMO devs, this would be their first. I was thinking more in terms of being a game dev in general. They have several very successful triple A titles under their belt. All of which required communication.

 

What they should or shouldn't communicate is subjective, but since they're in the driver's seat, and have all of the metrics, I'd argue they know best.

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Gray

Gray

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Found this on reddit: Boss change at Bioware

 

So it seems Bioware is getting a new boss and apparently she likes RPGs (not MMOs). Anyway there are couple of things to this, like lately there were a lot of comments made for lack of communication, which is really true. I mean look at the forums, there is absolutely lack of official information from Bioware, people have to open up PTS launchers with software to provide data mining info. We have to watch news to see which team goes where in EA, whether the OPS team is moved to Mass Effect or PVP team to whereever else. We have to analyze EA stocks, share holder information in order to see if swtor is doing well financialy or not. You have a community manager who is there to communicate, but instead he only posts minor this here and there. Yes, they started doing a stream and Musco tried to play swtor for the second time in his life, but come on.... They should be all over the forums, making comments, statements etc. what does that guy do all day??

 

Once ever few years Bioware shows meaningless statistics about how many Sentinels have been created in the game and how many chose light and dark side for their toons. There is no information on subscriber numbers (ok yeah that would be too much), even server capacities have been removed. We have no idea how the game is doing.

 

The website contained very old information for a long time. There was still Underworld and Kell Dragon gear for a very very long time, eventhough we already had much higher levels of that. Holonet only mentions 4 operations, flashpoints not updated and still showing they r lvl 50, 48 etc, no mention of GSF. This is the company strategy? Not to show off what the game contains?

 

You dont have to be Sherlock Holmes to see that all this could indicate lack of funding or lack of teams for specific parts of the game, but I dont want to go to those topics now. From my experience a new leadership leads to changes, changes in company and processes, maybe this is what we have been hoping for.

 

All i want from Bioware at the moment is more communication. I want it to be like before, I want them to introduce some staff at the cantina, look this is the Development team, this is the Cartel Market Team (OMG he has a gun!!! BAM BAM BAM!! - just kidding), show us that there are people working there and working on something. Like that picture from Bioware in that cinematic, that was nice. We want some real data to talk about, not just what we find from share holder reports, data mining and EA news bulletins.

 

If there is new leadership, I hope things do change.

 

I giggled a bit thanks for the laugh, the worst part is that this is the truth. Don't forget that when the Community Manager actually communicates with the community, he makes an Announcement of an Announcement!

 

He even caught himself in action in another similiar thread: "I know this post is an announcement of an announcement but were almost there, only a few more weeks." - Eric Musco

 

I'm not fooling myself anymore, this game (as a MMO) is a sinking ship.

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Tintfax

Tintfax

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Fixed.

 

Do you really think what they did do:

  • Turn all SM FPs into Tactical
  • Add solo mode FPs
  • retune all Ops to be level 65
  • establish Heroics as the new "dailies"
  • AND implement level sync and bolster across the board

was just a flip of a switch?

 

You may not like what they did, but what they did do took significant resources to accomplish.

 

With regard to MMOs the generally accepted definition of "maintenance mode" is: "the point in an MMO’s life where the patches and new content slow to a trickle or stop completely" or some variation thereof.

 

For me it was very clear, that this was the groundwork to go in "maintenance mode".

As they called it: "make the old stuff relevant again"... cause they knew, that there will be no new content.

 

We will see in Oktober, but i'm pretty sure, that the announced stuff will be a big disappointment for all mmo-focused players... and they know it. That's the reason for not communicating at all. ^^

 

... and i would really be very happy, if i am wrong. But i don't think so. ^^

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merovejec

merovejec

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was just a flip of a switch?

 

i know that mainly KOTFE wasnt a flip switch. You have to record all the dialogs and that in several languages so we got A LOT of voice acting, costs etc and thats just the real life stuff, not to mention programing. Of course, its a lot, but whats management is there for. They need to adapt, hire more ppl, alocate resources etc, its their job, we are paying customers and all have our expectation.

 

This stuff cant be done in 1 day for sure, but in the past things were going much better than now.

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