Stealth WZ comm transfer removal = cancel

[IanArgent]

When done right computer games are extremely lucrative. The problem is that by-and-large they've been horribly mismanaged by both the money folks that don't understand game design and game developers that operate like startups from the Internet's boom-era (let's try this... *next year rolls around*, let's try this...).

 

MMO's are a monster of another level. My crack about Full Sail... You've got these kids making their little browser games in Unity that don't have the first clue how to design stuff to run as an enterprise level operation. Game companies flat out refuse to hire anybody outside of their own little clique so they're super short on the operational expertise and development discipline needed to make sure these games don't roll over and die at the slightest bit of stress.

 

Game developers are paid peanuts because there's a huge supply of dumb kids who'll do 80-hour weeks for next to nothing. And the game companies have certainly gotten what they paid for: Games started with enthusiasm and Red Bull fueled exuberance with sod-all for discipline. Source code control, what's that? ewww, ain't no time for that. Detailed design? Uh.. .oh here on the back of my hand.

 

Those same games are "polished" when the money folks come down and demand a release. The Red Bull the polishers have consumed has finally taken its toll and the burn out is in full swing while what's left of the team grind through the death march to launch.

 

I'm not going to bring one of my rants about the "open source community" (whose greybeards I respect, but the youth of today, maybe not so much.) As I said, I make my comfortable living running an enterprise-grade platform, for enterprise-grade customers who are willing to pay money for a mission-critical SLA. And I work with vendors who make a lot of money off my employer by providing enterprise-grade services for a mission-critical SLA. But I've got a headache being caused by one of these "smart startups" full of young kids who think the rules don't apply to them, and I can't quite ignore it, because someone decided to be "cheap."

 

Game developers are paid peanuts because there's a huge supply of dumb kids who'll do 80-hour weeks for next to nothing. And the game companies have certainly gotten what they paid for: Games started with enthusiasm and Red Bull fueled exuberance with sod-all for discipline. Source code control, what's that? ewww, ain't no time for that. Detailed design? Uh.. .oh here on the back of my hand.

 

And there' s a supply of people who will pay for the output of that. Hell, I'm arguing that (to a certain extent) the original design of SWTOR, and the ongoing supply of show over substance. Tell me true, was SoR not a bug-ridden unbalanced mess at launch? Were there as many showstopping bugs or as many balance issues in 4.0? (I wasn't paying attention to the new content at SoR; but I was somewhat surprised about the level of bugs for KotFE being low)

[JediRelentless]

OP, wasn't there a way to store the WZ comms in Legacy cargo? Maybe you're to blame for waiting? Edited October 26, 2016 by JediRelentless

[PlasmaJohn]

But I've got a headache being caused by one of these "smart startups" full of young kids who think the rules don't apply to them, and I can't quite ignore it, because someone decided to be "cheap."

 

Tell me true, was SoR not a bug-ridden unbalanced mess at launch? Were there as many showstopping bugs or as many balance issues in 4.0? (I wasn't paying attention to the new content at SoR; but I was somewhat surprised about the level of bugs for KotFE being low)

One had playable content the other was an interactive movie. The number of movable parts in the former completely dwarfs the latter. Of course KotFE had less bugs, it had less to go wrong.

 

But KotFE had some epic fails. Remember the two failed events in December that they left broken? At least one of those events were required for an Alliance alert. December is prime-freakin'-time. Those should have been an all-hands-on-deck scramble to correct with a more tangible apology to the players than 'oopsie, well next time!'

 

Had Austin paid attention to the feedback they'd gotten during SoR's CBT a large amount of the scaling issues wouldn't have blown up in their faces. What's worse is that they left a well known exploit in place for months along with some egregious bugs while minor Cartel Market issues get hotfixed. Yeah, we know the CM is their priority but to have that smeared in the players' faces was telling about the level of contempt they have for their customers.

[IanArgent]

 

 

One had playable content the other was an interactive movie. The number of movable parts in the former completely dwarfs the latter. Of course KotFE had less bugs, it had less to go wrong.

 

But KotFE had some epic fails. Remember the two failed events in December that they left broken? At least one of those events were required for an Alliance alert. December is prime-freakin'-time. Those should have been an all-hands-on-deck scramble to correct with a more tangible apology to the players than 'oopsie, well next time!'

 

Had Austin paid attention to the feedback they'd gotten during SoR's CBT a large amount of the scaling issues wouldn't have blown up in their faces. What's worse is that they left a well known exploit in place for months along with some egregious bugs while minor Cartel Market issues get hotfixed. Yeah, we know the CM is their priority but to have that smeared in the players' faces was telling about the level of contempt they have for their customers.

 

I've said they have (obviously) had long-standing issues in several databases (including story flags, and gearing). The events were not new.

 

I specifically said 4.0, not KotFE - the best I'll do for KotFE is damn the story with faint praise. By 4.0, I mean the refurbishment of the underlying (below the waterline) systems, from Level Sync, to the any-role companions abilities (not balance), to the refactoring of all the existing ops and FPs. They made some minor balance misses, but the base mechanisms worked. Level Sync didn't go "wonky" anyplace that I'm aware of, companion stances didn't end up breaking anywhere (1 bug - the tech companions who receive force power instead of tech power), and the bolster mechanisms had balance issues, but didn't simply fail to work.

 

SoR didn't change the core rules of the game; only "expansion content." That content was more visible than the changes in 4.0; but the changes in 4.0 were more wide ranging and touched a lot more of the underlying systems. And they did pay attention to the balance issues with companions, only to have their response to one faction blow up another faction; no good win there was possible. So now we have difficulty modes for the content this team developed coming (after I spent a year and a half swearing they wouldn't do any such thing; never been gladder to be Wrong On The Forums when I saw that). SoR should have been easier mechanically than everything they did in 4.0.

[TX_Angel]

Gaming company pay is peanuts because the gaming market isn't all that lucrative. It's a hobby, making hobby money. There's a lot of gamers, but games aren't mission-critical to the ones who have money, and the ones to whom it is mission critical, they don't have that kind of money. Thus, poor pay. I make a comfortable living not necessarily because of what I do, but because of who I do it for.

 

https://www.google.com/finance?cid=168725

 

EA has a market capitalization of almost $25 Billion Dollars... That isn't "hobby money"

EA made over $1 Billion Dollars in PROFIT last year... Also not "hobby money"

 

I believe there is money being left on the table, people learn that games are buggy and then wait a few months for them to get cleaned up and buy them at a discount. If the product was better at launch, I think more people would buy it at full price.

 

Further, I think more people are willing to spend more money on a product that is quality. For example, I won't buy Mass Effect 4 at launch because of the debacle of the launch of ME3. I did buy ME3 at launch and all the DLC, now I won't with ME4, waiting for a GOTY edition at a discount.

 

That is all due to the problems with the game at launch, that they ended up having to fix anyway, and even then still didn't really address the problem.

 

Part of the issue in game development is the inability to stick to launch sechedules and actually have the game finished and ready in advance. "crunch time" is stupid, it means they aren't ready and they rush the game out the door full of bugs. The movie business figured this out years ago, have the movie finished and in the can 3 to 6 months before release, everyone goes out and promotes it, and it is perfect on release day.

 

Why can't the games be finished 3 months in advance and launched problem free? They can be, with a different mindset.

[Nempo]

IanArgent, level sync only went wonky (that I am aware of) in the outlaw's den. When level sync was first put in place the outlaw's den had...odd...effects on you.

I had to go through it on my trooper for that Aric mission cause I was too lazy to take the 'safe' route. Entering it I got boosted up to 65 inside of there and expertise was given to me, it acted as though I walked into a warzone. It doesn't do this any longer that I am aware of, or at least hasn't for me.

[IanArgent]

IanArgent, level sync only went wonky (that I am aware of) in the outlaw's den. When level sync was first put in place the outlaw's den had...odd...effects on you.

I had to go through it on my trooper for that Aric mission cause I was too lazy to take the 'safe' route. Entering it I got boosted up to 65 inside of there and expertise was given to me, it acted as though I walked into a warzone. It doesn't do this any longer that I am aware of, or at least hasn't for me.

 

That's interesting. Bet they forgot that even existed, much less to test how Expertise and Level Sync in PvP zones interacted with OWPvP. Hah.

 

Did you happen to notice this in the PvP area of the Western Ice Shelf on Ilum?

[kodrac]

I'm getting old, maybe I should start yelling "damm kids get off my lawn!"

 

I'm just sad about what the game could have been, had the 2.0 to 3.0 era been continued, had faction stories been continued... but alas, that ship has sailed...

 

Ah yes. I'm with you on both fronts.

[TX_Angel]

When done right computer games are extremely lucrative. The problem is that by-and-large they've been horribly mismanaged by both the money folks that don't understand game design and game developers that operate like startups from the Internet's boom-era (let's try this... *next year rolls around*, let's try this...).

 

MMO's are a monster of another level. My crack about Full Sail... You've got these kids making their little browser games in Unity that don't have the first clue how to design stuff to run as an enterprise level operation. Game companies flat out refuse to hire anybody outside of their own little clique so they're super short on the operational expertise and development discipline needed to make sure these games don't roll over and die at the slightest bit of stress.

 

Game developers are paid peanuts because there's a huge supply of dumb kids who'll do 80-hour weeks for next to nothing. And the game companies have certainly gotten what they paid for: Games started with enthusiasm and Red Bull fueled exuberance with sod-all for discipline. Source code control, what's that? ewww, ain't no time for that. Detailed design? Uh.. .oh here on the back of my hand.

 

Those same games are "polished" when the money folks come down and demand a release. The Red Bull the polishers have consumed has finally taken its toll and the burn out is in full swing while what's left of the team grind through the death march to launch.

 

^ You hit the nail on the head... the days of John Carmack doing the one-man thing are over...

 

re: your comment about hiring outside the "clique", part of that is their unwillingness to pay enough to do so even if they wanted to. I wouldn't do it for less than $300K as a base pay, plus full benefits and moving expenses, plus a bonus structure based on the game's profitability and long term success. The bonus structure should provide the chance to earn at least three times the base pay if the game is profitable enough.

 

There is zero chance Bioware/EA would ever pay someone that much outside the C level offices. But my 20+ year resume of managing software development deserves that level of pay. I've launched business software programs that go for $70,000 per seat licence and you can bet those customers don't accept "oh sorry, we'll fix that bug next patch". Such development has taught me how to work with customers during development and to never EVER surprise the customer.

 

Bioware surprises their customers far too much... even at this level...

[Rolodome]

Maybe they are trying to kill the game, Disney may want to revoke the rights from EA because Disney is well loved and EA is one of the most hated companies in America lol (only by people who don't read the news). Oops, I will get the thread locked.

Honestly, if they were trying to kill the game, there are much more efficient ways.

[TX_Angel]

OP, wasn't there a way to store the WZ comms in Legacy cargo? Maybe you're to blame for waiting?

 

For 12 whole hours? you do know we were told in the middle of Monday that Patch Tuesday was doing this, and that only helps if you read the forums every hour...

[JediRelentless]

For 12 whole hours? you do know we were told in the middle of Monday that Patch Tuesday was doing this, and that only helps if you read the forums every hour...

 

Since he/she already planned on transferring them, OP could have stored most of the 80K WZ comms in their Legacy cargo long ago.

Edited October 26, 2016 by JediRelentless

[Nempo]

That's interesting. Bet they forgot that even existed, much less to test how Expertise and Level Sync in PvP zones interacted with OWPvP. Hah.

 

Did you happen to notice this in the PvP area of the Western Ice Shelf on Ilum?

 

No, the gree event was like a month out or so after the level sync and by then it was all fixed.

[IanArgent]

https://www.google.com/finance?cid=168725

 

EA has a market capitalization of almost $25 Billion Dollars... That isn't "hobby money"

EA made over $1 Billion Dollars in PROFIT last year... Also not "hobby money"

 

That's actually irrelevant - their product sells at hobby prices; and not huge hobby prices at that. No individual is spending a lot of money, or demanding high quality.

 

I believe there is money being left on the table, people learn that games are buggy and then wait a few months for them to get cleaned up and buy them at a discount. If the product was better at launch, I think more people would buy it at full price.

 

Further, I think more people are willing to spend more money on a product that is quality. For example, I won't buy Mass Effect 4 at launch because of the debacle of the launch of ME3. I did buy ME3 at launch and all the DLC, now I won't with ME4, waiting for a GOTY edition at a discount.

 

There's a growing price disruption in the industry coming from Steam, and GOG, and even Origin; but it hasn't broken the old model yet - you may believe money's being left on the table, but nobody making the decisions does, and the disruption is being caused by the small Unity shops PlasmaJohn was bemoaning earlier, not big publishers releasing low-bug-count AAA games.

 

That is all due to the problems with the game at launch, that they ended up having to fix anyway, and even then still didn't really address the problem.

 

Part of the issue in game development is the inability to stick to launch sechedules and actually have the game finished and ready in advance. "crunch time" is stupid, it means they aren't ready and they rush the game out the door full of bugs. The movie business figured this out years ago, have the movie finished and in the can 3 to 6 months before release, everyone goes out and promotes it, and it is perfect on release day.

 

Why can't the games be finished 3 months in advance and launched problem free? They can be, with a different mindset.

 

Convince the aggregate game-buying public that they have to pay more money, to get higher-quality programmers, to get a higher-quality product. Good luck with that.

 

BW is bucking the trend by offering a "smaller scope, higher quality" product in post-4.0 SWTOR. Doing only one or two things, but doing them with high mechanical quality. Shame they produced such a poor story.

[IanArgent]

^ You hit the nail on the head... the days of John Carmack doing the one-man thing are over...

 

re: your comment about hiring outside the "clique", part of that is their unwillingness to pay enough to do so even if they wanted to. I wouldn't do it for less than $300K as a base pay, plus full benefits and moving expenses, plus a bonus structure based on the game's profitability and long term success. The bonus structure should provide the chance to earn at least three times the base pay if the game is profitable enough.

 

There is zero chance Bioware/EA would ever pay someone that much outside the C level offices. But my 20+ year resume of managing software development deserves that level of pay. I've launched business software programs that go for $70,000 per seat licence and you can bet those customers don't accept "oh sorry, we'll fix that bug next patch". Such development has taught me how to work with customers during development and to never EVER surprise the customer.

 

Bioware surprises their customers far too much... even at this level...

 

$60 a seat, or even $15 a seat a month, simply won't pay for enterprise-grade software. On top of the idiots who cheerfully work starvation wages "because it's in the INDUSTRY, Man!" (I know far too many folks in the entertainment industry who are doing it essentially to get their name in lights, and are living on ramen in a sublet broom closet because of it. It takes all kinds in the world, I guess).

[peter_plankskull]

Since he/she already planned on transferring them, OP could have stored most of the 80K WZ comms in their Legacy cargo long ago.

 

They could of, but they weren't required to ultimately do it and for various reasons they didn't. We should of got more than a days notice for something like this. It's like preparing for a hurricane anytime during the year and the weather people wait till the last moment for one to hit impact to avoid causing mass panic. Could he of prepared for a hurricane beforehand? of course. Could the weather people responded to the threat earlier? Indeed.

[Transcendent]

I've said they have (obviously) had long-standing issues in several databases (including story flags, and gearing). The events were not new.

 

I specifically said 4.0, not KotFE - the best I'll do for KotFE is damn the story with faint praise. By 4.0, I mean the refurbishment of the underlying (below the waterline) systems, from Level Sync, to the any-role companions abilities (not balance), to the refactoring of all the existing ops and FPs. They made some minor balance misses, but the base mechanisms worked. Level Sync didn't go "wonky" anyplace that I'm aware of, companion stances didn't end up breaking anywhere (1 bug - the tech companions who receive force power instead of tech power), and the bolster mechanisms had balance issues, but didn't simply fail to work..

 

Hate to point this out (but I'm going to anyway).

 

Level Sync probably used the same framework shared by Bolster / Expertise. Companions probably used a less intelligent version of the GSI droid. Refactoring of old content used a version of Bolster and at the most a system to adjust the values (which was probably already in the game from Lost Island era....).

 

So none of those systems were "new", they were simply re-purposed. You can think of 3.0 as the test bed for the companion systems, and PvP as the testbed for Level Sync.

[DarthEnrique]

Can I have your stuff? (Surprised no one asked this yet. Lol!)

[IanArgent]

Hate to point this out (but I'm going to anyway).

 

Level Sync probably used the same framework shared by Bolster / Expertise. Companions probably used a less intelligent version of the GSI droid. Refactoring of old content used a version of Bolster and at the most a system to adjust the values (which was probably already in the game from Lost Island era....).

 

So none of those systems were "new", they were simply re-purposed. You can think of 3.0 as the test bed for the companion systems, and PvP as the testbed for Level Sync.

 

I really hope they did refurbish and extend the existing systems; left more time for them to QC them everywhere (except, apparently, the Outlaw's Den. Whoops). The hard part wasn't that they came up with them, the hard part was making it work smoothly across the board.

 

And given that the GSI droid does all three roles simultaneously and under pure AI control (and only in a handful of FPs at introduction, meaning they had an even more constrained set of options), extending that to the companions wasn't exactly a cut-n-paste feature add.

[Kyuuu]

it wasnt stealth it people were warned..

[TX_Angel]

Convince the aggregate game-buying public that they have to pay more money, to get higher-quality programmers, to get a higher-quality product. Good luck with that.

 

Yes, you say that because you can see only two options... I laid out a third and you dismissed it out of hand...

 

You don't have to charge more, you simply get more people to pay full freight by having a reputation of putting out a quality release.

 

SW The Force Awakens made how much at the box office? Did anyone going to see it expect anything other than a finished, polished release? What would happen to ticket sales the first two weeks if the special effects weren't finished and the movie was missing a few lines of dialog, only to be fixed on week three of release?

 

That is what you're missing, along with most of the game industry...

 

BW is bucking the trend by offering a "smaller scope, higher quality" product in post-4.0 SWTOR. Doing only one or two things, but doing them with high mechanical quality. Shame they produced such a poor story.

 

Did you just actually say... "higher quality"? with a straight face?

 

You must be joking, 4.0 was sad in so many respects in terms of quality... it plays and looks like a 10 year old game, which it largely is...

[americanaussie]

You're just defending the indefensible...

 

Why? Are you on the payroll? There is no excuse for this, the OP is correct...

 

But seriously though the gear will be obsolete in 5.0. They are doing away with expertise so why wait to gear up?

[TX_Angel]

But seriously though the gear will be obsolete in 5.0. They are doing away with expertise so why wait to gear up?

 

ALL current gear will be trash when 5.0 drops, there is no point to gear up anything now...

[americanaussie]

ALL current gear will be trash when 5.0 drops, there is no point to gear up anything now...

 

Then, really there's no point to this post either. I've been holding off. I finally bought a nice dye but I refuse to use it until after 5.0 for the same reason.

[peter_plankskull]

Then, really there's no point to this post either. I've been holding off. I finally bought a nice dye but I refuse to use it until after 5.0 for the same reason.

 

...You can put the dye in now and just rip out the mods for 5.0, like every other expansion... unless something pretty on the CM comes along, you should be good.