Is this lack of communication normal?

[Savej]

From an EA perspective... If they had "communicated": no new raids, no new gsf, no new fps, limited pvp support (1 balance patch, no dialog about the metas), no merges or answers on "better than x-server".. for well over 18 mos starting before Oct 2014, how many people that have been subbed since then would have been? Stringing people along on silence and hope works (to an extent). By the same token BW doesn't want to answer questions from subs on the subject of future content (or lack thereof) without first showing us all of the things we will be getting in as positive a light as possible (spiffy graphics, blur trailer, carefully considered text arrangements, etc). People saying "just tell me there won't be any new raids so I can cancel my sub" aren't thinking about the bottom line in EA's decision to answer that.

[Codedrago]

What does that have to do with his question??

 

The reason for Bioware to post the cantina QnA would be for those who couldn't see it, but if soone already posts the questions and answers up, they don't really need to. Unless I'm jumping the gun and a Cantina event isn't just the QnA...

[FlavivsAetivs]

A Cantina livestream is actually a great idea...

 

~ Eudoxia

[iowaboynca]

So Eric.... have y'all thought about live streaming the cantina events?

 

They did that once and everyone complained about the 'whales' in the front...

 

*edit* actually They did a few leading up to SoR. If memory serves Zorz got their plaque for beating NiM DP during one.

Edited September 14, 2016 by iowaboynca

[Lundorff]

From an EA perspective... If they had "communicated": no new raids, no new gsf, no new fps, limited pvp support (1 balance patch, no dialog about the metas), no merges or answers on "better than x-server".. for well over 18 mos starting before Oct 2014, how many people that have been subbed since then would have been? Stringing people along on silence and hope works (to an extent). By the same token BW doesn't want to answer questions from subs on the subject of future content (or lack thereof) without first showing us all of the things we will be getting in as positive a light as possible (spiffy graphics, blur trailer, carefully considered text arrangements, etc). People saying "just tell me there won't be any new raids so I can cancel my sub" aren't thinking about the bottom line in EA's decision to answer that.

 

Bingo.

 

This is only about profits and nothing else. There is next to zero passion behind this game.

[Archellion]

[*]Guild Management is something that we are always looking to improve. Guild quality of life is important and although I have nothing specific to announce, this is always a place we are looking for opportunities.

 

That's good to hear. Could you maybe try to get a list from the developers of the ideas for Guild QOL improvements they feel are good ideas and willing to work on. I'm not saying they need to list things that are coming out by next month or anything (though if there are some things that will, that would be very welcome news), but just stuff they've seen and gone, "Yeah! Yeah, a guild calendar is a really good idea. That's something we'd like to bring to the game."

 

Such feedback would go a long way toward letting us know that our ideas are being heard and addressed.

 

Thanks!

[Yswr]

Not sure how live streaming the cantina would work, I was in London and it was mostly people getting drunk and having the odd chat with the devs, mostly Ben Irving, I didn't even talk to him much about the game and chatted about him missing rugby and injuries from the sport, as a Welshman and an Aussie are likely to do. His mother and wife were really nice people to chat with as well.

[TUXs]

The reason for Bioware to post the cantina QnA would be for those who couldn't see it, but if soone already posts the questions and answers up, they don't really need to. Unless I'm jumping the gun and a Cantina event isn't just the QnA...

The cantina event is where they're announcing this games future...not just some Q&A session at the end.

[Toraak]

In a thread about lack of communication, I'd like to make a point about one particular area.

 

Galactic Starfighter has been neglected for over 2 and 1/2 years now, it will be 3 next february, since the last update.

 

The last Dev Post was June of last year asking for suggestions on Strike Fighter balancing. There was no reply by the devs to the initial post, yet there is... 180ish pages of community discussion.

 

If there's one area that's experienced a real lack of communication, it's starfighter. I love ops, I like seeing where you all take your portion of the SW story, but the GSF community is what drew me into this game and part of what kept me here.

 

Can you communicate anything, literally anything at all, about Starfighter? Do you all even know the Forums are still there? Do you read them?

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/forumdisplay.php?f=419

 

~ Eudoxia

 

Hate to tell you this eudoxia, but your Feb comment isn't accurate. They added more ships in May or june of that year, so it's just past the 2 year mark by a couple of months. by Feb, they didn't have the Spearpoint, any bomber, or any T3 ship yet. those came from March-June of 2014.

Edited September 14, 2016 by Toraak

[FlavivsAetivs]

Hate to tell you this eudoxia, but your Feb comment isn't accurate. They added more ships in May or june of that year, so it's just past the 2 year mark by a couple of months. by Feb, they didn't have the Spearpoint, any bomber, or any T3 ship yet. those came from March-June of 2014.

 

Okay, point. I hadn't started playing when they updated GSF (I started shortly before SOR launched) but it's still been more than 2 years since we had a bugfix.

 

I mean, it would be nice if they at least fixed the method of glitching into Asteroids to make yourself invincible. Granted it's not usually a problem since only a few of us vets even know how to get into the 2-3 spots where it's even possible, and we don't ever do it.

 

~ Eudoxia

[xMessi]

Hey folks,

 

I thought this thread was a good opportunity to talk about the communication as of late. Although I may not post every day, I am definitely here, reading the forums. I know that there is frustration right now because you are all eager to learn more about what is coming in Knights of the Eternal Throne. We just aren't ready to talk about Eternal Throne yet, and so I can't answer your questions at this time.

 

But, I do want to make sure you know when we will begin really talking about Eternal Throne. That date is October 7th. The day/night of our New York Comic-con Cantina is when you can expect details about Eternal Throne. Once we have crossed the 7th (and through launch), I will be able to address questions in the forum more directly, we will be posting developer blogs related to the expansion, and more.

 

I know this post is an announcement of an announcement but were almost there, only a few more weeks.

 

Thanks everyone.

 

-eric

 

Whatever happen to transparency and roadmaps back in 2.0? I don't know what you guys are planning but it seems you rather do your own thing instead of communicating with us more. I come here at least once a week and I rarely see a dev post that isn't days old and here you are saying you read the forums. I have my doubts about that because if you're payed to be on the forums and communicate what us players want, they you let us know that you did by replying.

 

The most requested thing in the game right now is Operations and PvP, in other words more group content. Maybe you guys should check Reddit and read every single reply at least once a week when people mention something specific. We don't care about HK rewards, we don't care about the next new chapter that will keep us busy for 30 minutes instead of a month, you know like OPs do, we also don't care about the new pack because it seems that you keep making those like nothing and bug free but forget that you have a whole game to maintain.

 

You guys have told us to not trust data mined information but at this point, those people have communicated more in a span of a few days than what you guys have in all your live streams combined since January. Staying secretive doesn't help anyone in any way. You can continue keeping quiet all you want but lack of news is what kills a game in the long run. It makes them loose hope.

 

You made a post a month ago about the game's statics like hours played, characters created that I assume it was to tell us the game was doing fine. Months before that there was another post about how Disney and EA were backing this game but its seems to us that it is not with man power to deliver actual content. It isn't like that. Guilds are dying left and right, people are dropping the game, veterans have almost given up on the game, hardcore raiders are almost extinct. The only thing that are left are the bad players that you want to bring into the game.

 

You're trying to cater to an audience that kills games like these. You should instead focus on your investors, those being your subscriber and telling them what you're planning on making and if that is what they want. We can't have you wasting money on pointless things that don't help anyone.

 

All these changes and the direction the game is taking is only letting us know that you guys don't even play the game, even less, don't interact with the community outside of pointless live streams and Cantina events.

Edited September 14, 2016 by xMessi

[OneHawk]

Hey folks,

 

I thought this thread was a good opportunity to talk about the communication as of late. Although I may not post every day, I am definitely here, reading the forums. I know that there is frustration right now because you are all eager to learn more about what is coming in Knights of the Eternal Throne. We just aren't ready to talk about Eternal Throne yet, and so I can't answer your questions at this time.

 

But, I do want to make sure you know when we will begin really talking about Eternal Throne. That date is October 7th. The day/night of our New York Comic-con Cantina is when you can expect details about Eternal Throne. Once we have crossed the 7th (and through launch), I will be able to address questions in the forum more directly, we will be posting developer blogs related to the expansion, and more.

 

I know this post is an announcement of an announcement but were almost there, only a few more weeks.

 

Thanks everyone.

 

-eric

 

Hi Eric,

 

Thank you for your feedback. If you would not mind could you please provide some information on a subject that has been asked about many times since the release of KoTFE? I have posted on the forums and even sent you and Tait PMs asking about this but to date I nor anyone else has ever received any feedback from you or anyone else at BioWare on this issue. If you are really reading the forums, please respond to this question...

 

Question: Is there any plans to make it possible to customize the appearance and armor on the KoTFE companions?

 

Thank you,

 

OneHawk (Subscriber since Beta)

[UlaVii]

that is incorrect as they just introduced whispering a guildie via the right click method with QOL feature too

The guild panel right click to whisper function has been in for years and it's been broken through most of it, totally chokes on character name contains special signs like ô and ê. The exact same right click functionality from the /who panel works perfectly.

 

2012: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=536018

2015: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=848249

2016 March: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=876695

2016 April: 4.3 with the new even more broken guild panel

 

I do like the look of the new guild panel and it's much better to have the large version all the time as it lets people see the message of the day easier but the 3 bugs I keep griping on about really ruin it. Fixing them and throwing in more than 10 ranks would be super nice

[GrandLordMenace]

Those are all topics I feel like we have talked about quite a bit, but I think those tend to be conversations that happen around Cantinas. They may not be as prominent on the forums:

• Guild Management is something that we are always looking to improve. Guild quality of life is important and although I have nothing specific to announce, this is always a place we are looking for opportunities.
  
• PvP balance, really any balance, is an on-going thing. We are always looking at the current state of the game and what needs to change. We have an expansion coming and if you look at previous expansions as an example, they typically come with changes...
  
• Player choice is an interesting topic. KOTFE in many ways had more impact for your choices than our previous stories. One of the pieces of feedback we saw is that sometimes you may make a choice, but not see the consequences until much later on (Koth!). This can definitely lessen the feeling that those choices had impact, since the choice and impact of that choice were far apart.
  
• Developer feedback is something that waxes and wanes a bit. Where we have opportunity to seek out feedback and for players to engage with developers, we try to take it. Previous conversations around class changes are the best examples. I know it isn't on-going, but we try to capitalize on those opportunities as we can.
  

 

 

 

After killing 30 skytroopers, yes

 

-eric

 

First of all, I gladly appreciate the communication. Something is better than nothing.

 

RE: Balance, I think it's a noble goal, but without a public test server (or at least a closed one, but no one actually knows if that exists, the "datamines" could just be made up), I have a hard time believing Bioware will do a good job with balance.

 

Personally, it'd be great if you guys could actually talk to us on the class forums in advance about class balance, maybe bring in a few of the guidewriters who still play to look at the changes, not even the story content, just the changes with classes. We love it when you guys ask us to test things like the WZ cap change, etc, more testing is better than less testing. Show us the new abilities! We want to see the new animations, skills, etc, and how stuff balances! Don't leave us in the dark!

 

No one has a problem with stuff being unbalanced on a test server. Everyone has a problem with things being unbalanced on the live server.

[Wafflenator]

Trust me folks... As someone who has been ghosted by Blizzard developers for 12-14 months at a time more than once, let me tell you the SWTOR dev team and their level of communication is pure liquid awesome. We can wait a few more weeks

[WheresMyWhisky]

You do realize the vast majority of the community enjoyed KotFE and never even visits this toxic wasteland of a forum that the debbie down gang is trying their best to destroy.

 

Lol you have seen the population on many of the servers now right? If the vast majority liked it why is even TRE half dead at times these days given that most of TOFN transferred there because their server was dead.

 

Not that they were ever that communicative but they have been noticeably less so since 3.0 when the combat dev tried to explain why they had made a complete mess of the watchman / annihilation spec and was actually tracked down on facebook etc and threatened. So the community with reactions like that have undoubtedly reduced the amount of interaction the devs would want to have with us. So to an extent we only have ourselves to blame

 

But the whole not saying anything about operations is hurting the game, my guild have had many raiders leave for WOW in the last month (enough to setup 2 -3 raid teams) as they do not believe their will be new operations in the expansion. With the general argument being if there were going to be they would have told us. Eric you must have also seen this if you read reddit, the forums etc. With WOW dropping new raids imminently you are just hurting yourselves by saying nothing ,if you actually have new raids coming, as most of the raiders have had enough. Although there are a few silly ones like me that hang onto the hope that new raids will be announced on the 7th. If there aren't just tell us as you have fleeced an extra year out of us anyway.

 

Even if there are new raids, you need to look at the amount of content you release compared to WOW and FFXIV. They both release much more content than SWTOR and don't leave a section of the community out when they do. In the KOTET I really hope you have learned and release new content for all sections of the community whether they be raiders, questors (story players) or pvpers the other games do in their expansions so should you. Also I hope the story is better in kotet as it kind of sucked in kofte and when that's what you are selling the expansion on its kind of embarrassing with plot holes everywhere and choices that DO NOT matter.

 

Anyway if there are no new ops it will be off to WOW with rest of the guild

Edited September 15, 2016 by WheresMyWhisky

[OneHit]

Don't even try Azudelphi. He doesn't try to reason or understand, he just throws insults & name calling. Real sad, but shows his maturity.

 

Really? Cause a lot of us feel thise are topics you have avoided talking about. If you have talked about them please provide a link. A general direction even an I'll google it

Edited September 15, 2016 by OneHit

[Bruticis]

Lol you have seen the population on many of the servers now right? If the vast majority liked it why is even TRE half dead at times these days given that most of TOFN transferred there because their server was dead.

 

Not that they were ever that communicative but they have been noticeably less so since 3.0 when the combat dev tried to explain why they had made a complete mess of the watchman / annihilation spec and was actually tracked down on facebook etc and threatened. So the community with reactions like that have undoubtedly reduced the amount of interaction the devs would want to have with us. So to an extent we only have ourselves to blame

 

But the whole not saying anything about operations is hurting the game, my guild have had many raiders leave for WOW in the last month (enough to setup 2 -3 raid teams) as they do not believe their will be new operations in the expansion with the general argument being if there were going to be they would have told us. Eric you must have also seen this if you read reddit, the forums etc. With WOW dropping new raids imminently you are just hurting yourselves by saying nothing if you actually have new raids coming, as most of the raiders have had enough although there are a few silly ones like me that hang onto the hope that new raids will be announced on the 7th. If there aren't just tell us you have fleeced an extra year out of us anyway.

 

Even if there are new raids, you need to look at the amount of content you release compared to WOW and FFXIV. They both release much more content than SWTOR and don't leave a section of the community when they do. In the KOTET I really hope you have learned and release new content for all sections of the community whether they be raiders, questors (story players) or pvpers the other games do in their expansions so should you. Also I jpe the story is better in kotet as it kind of sucked in kofte and when that's what you are selling the expansion on its kind of embarrassing with plot holes everywhere and choices that DO NOT matter.

 

Whoa, that was very painful to read, not really sure what point you're trying to get across here at ALL. I noticed you said something blah something about WoW and FFXIV and comparing SWTOR. No thanks, I despise those games! So, if you're calling for SWTOR to be more like those games (honestly it's really hard to figure out what you're advocating), that's a big NO THANK YOU from me. There's a million cookie cutter MMOs with loads of forced group content you can go play. I like SWTOR's niche market, catering to the more story focused crowd.

[OneHit]

Those are all topics I feel like we have talked about quite a bit, but I think those tend to be conversations that happen around Cantinas. They may not be as prominent on the forums:

• Guild Management is something that we are always looking to improve. Guild quality of life is important and although I have nothing specific to announce, this is always a place we are looking for opportunities.
  
• PvP balance, really any balance, is an on-going thing. We are always looking at the current state of the game and what needs to change. We have an expansion coming and if you look at previous expansions as an example, they typically come with changes...
  
• Player choice is an interesting topic. KOTFE in many ways had more impact for your choices than our previous stories. One of the pieces of feedback we saw is that sometimes you may make a choice, but not see the consequences until much later on (Koth!). This can definitely lessen the feeling that those choices had impact, since the choice and impact of that choice were far apart.
  
• Developer feedback is something that waxes and wanes a bit. Where we have opportunity to seek out feedback and for players to engage with developers, we try to take it. Previous conversations around class changes are the best examples. I know it isn't on-going, but we try to capitalize on those opportunities as we can.
  

 

 

 

After killing 30 skytroopers, yes

 

-eric

 

Would you mind providing a link to where you have talked about upcoming operations. Anything past SoR that wasn't reworked would be great. Apparently I'm mistaken and I'd love to see all this new operation talk

Edited September 15, 2016 by OneHit

[OneHit]

The guild panel right click to whisper function has been in for years and it's been broken through most of it, totally chokes on character name contains special signs like ô and ê. The exact same right click functionality from the /who panel works perfectly.

 

2012: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=536018

2015: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=848249

2016 March: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=876695

2016 April: 4.3 with the new even more broken guild panel

 

I do like the look of the new guild panel and it's much better to have the large version all the time as it lets people see the message of the day easier but the 3 bugs I keep griping on about really ruin it. Fixing them and throwing in more than 10 ranks would be super nice

 

It actually didn't improve the size of the guild window. Ive had the same message up for a while. All they did was double the dead space. Now we have twice as much black to the far right. And i did try re typing it. Just a bunch of dead space. The guild motd is pretty much the same size too. They did after 4 years fix the whisper bug. I guess in another 4 years they will fix the dead space

[OneHit]

Whoa, that was very painful to read, not really sure what point you're trying to get across here at ALL. I noticed you said something blah something about WoW and FFXIV and comparing SWTOR. No thanks, I despise those games! So, if you're calling for SWTOR to be more like those games (honestly it's really hard to figure out what you're advocating), that's a big NO THANK YOU from me. There's a million cookie cutter MMOs with loads of forced group content you can go play. I like SWTOR's niche market, catering to the more story focused crowd.

 

Ya. They really cornered the market on stories that don't connect from month to month and have no ending

[Bruticis]

Ya. They really cornered the market on stories that don't connect from month to month and have no ending

 

Good thing you're too smart to keep paying those wily tricksters.

[OneHit]

Whoa, that was very painful to read, not really sure what point you're trying to get across here at ALL. I noticed you said something blah something about WoW and FFXIV and comparing SWTOR. No thanks, I despise those games! So, if you're calling for SWTOR to be more like those games (honestly it's really hard to figure out what you're advocating), that's a big NO THANK YOU from me. There's a million cookie cutter MMOs with loads of forced group content you can go play. I like SWTOR's niche market, catering to the more story focused crowd.

 

Really wasn't that hard to read. Nor painful. Someone could try and explain it to you but you didn't get it the first time. We're glad you like the story though. Just for an FYI. When someone talks about end game an the lack of it they aren't trying to bring your experience down. He wasn't saying he was unhappy that you enjoyed your experience. All he was trying to say is he would like to have the same enjoyment you have but with a different aspect of the game. This is in no way a slight to you or people like you who only enjoy the story. If you recall this game used to come with story and endgame content. The sub fees that we have paid all along have not changed. What we get in return for them has drastically changed

Edited September 15, 2016 by OneHit

[Lunafox]

That's cool and all, but this isn't really all about the eternal throne. To me it's also about talking with the community, commenting on fan fiction, commenting in the off topic section, you know, just general chit chat in general?

 

As a community manager i'd want you to talk with us, more than an "announcement manager", cause that's the impression I get.

 

Ahh, what I wouldn't give to have the powers that be say something uplifting about my writing. I think I'd die of happiness and shock.

 

But yes, general comments and even displaying a sense of humour about the things we go on about here wouldn't hurt.

 

Though I would like to know what's coming, I'd just be happy if we were spoken to sometimes. I don't reddit and always get the feeling the dev/community crew prefer it there...

[OneHit]

By proof you mean pull things out of thin air and claim they are facts like the debbie downer gang does?

 

I'd like to see your links on the "vast majority" of people who liked kotfe. It always suprises me when people who love the story but don't care for endgame content meet these vast majority of people. I feel like i know a lot of people but im always in groups of 8-16 of them. I run a fairly large guild and speak with a lot of other GM's who run large guilds. And i haven't really heard a lot of glowing reports for kotfe. I also read a lot of different forums. There's usually about 1-2/20 people who think the story was amazing and call the rest the "vocal minority". The other 18-19 think its kind of bland. Do you single player pros have guilds where you group up to play all by yourself? Is that where you get this in your head that you are the majority? Is there a forum besides massively OP that I'm missing that there is actual numbers that make you the majority. How do you tally this. I typically just count. Maybe you can provide some insight to this vast majority