Game Update 5.2: The War for Iokath Delay

[xeriphim]

Given last year , they messed up and delayed the release of the eternal championship and it was nothing close to what they promised... should any of us really be shocked Biowares again dropped the ball with updates ? You'd think after the fisaco of 5.0 and the total debacle of galactic command. That this developer would get there stuff together and release a polished finished bug free update. Seriously you announced this update four months ago and it's still not complete ? This is a total joke and now your turning off the cxp boost on top of this ? Really ? .....

 

This is supposed to be a AAA title here Bioware... this means expectations and a Fan base with an IP that literally sells itself. Yet time and again you folks continue to sink to new lows to messing this up. It's like you want this title to fail so you can do something else. The level of muppetry in the direction the development team continues to take this MMO in is baffling. 3.0 was not perfect but arguably it was A whole lot more entertaining and fun then this garbage that's been 4.0 and 5.0 . I don't even recognize swtor from what it once was.

 

5.0 I've had an entire guild leave because of the rng and galactic command sillyness. 5.2 has shown none of the guild members who have left , any real reason or desires for them to want to come back to swtor. The server I normally play on is now very dead. PVP ques ? HA ! yea once a week for two hours if I'm lucky .... GSF ques ? Three years and still never seen that que pop ...... Yet Bioware refuses to acknowledge server mergers requiring a look at. Yes the populations at least on my server are down by vast numbers and instead of addressing this we get superfulous garbage of more direct sales in the cartel market .... Silence from the developers . No sense of any direction of the game. When you have Data miners giving more accurate info that should be all we need to know on the state of things. Instead of Bioware getting out in front of things and being open and transparent with the player base by giving us a road map of planned updates like other companies do.... we get silence then propped up spin doctored live streams . followed with oops our bad a delay on signifigant update. You have a special group called influencers yet you hamstring them by burying them in an avalance of NDA's . So our recourse is the reliable info from Data mining.

 

it's like amatuer hour with comedians in a bad comedy are running the company here. For so called proffesionals I'm baffled at how inept and incompotent Bioware continues to drop the ball with stuff. Five years on and this company takes one tiny step forward then shoots itself in the foot and sets everything back 10 steps .... GG !.

 

It's too much to ask to be Better and DO Better ! .... I have huge doubts the company can even deliver a full five boss Operation completed this calendar year. I think we'll be lucky to see three bosses for the Iokath Operation ready by December. Bioware please .... PROVE me Wrong!.

[Thysillia]

Holy crap this community sounds like a bunch of self-entitled children. Game devs, don't feel bad one bit about having to delay. You guys do excellent work and delaying because you found last minute problems is more than common, its absolutely expected in this day and age. Don't be swayed by the hordes of stupidity commenting in here with their idiocies. "Wah, how unexpected" "you should bend over and let us take you for all you're worth because of a week delay on a free update"

 

give me a break. Grown adults acting like they're 5.

 

 

Good work Bioware, thanks for the update, and we will patiently await it's release when it is ready. It will certainly be worth it. I appreciate you guys trying to push it out in time, and then I appreciate you admitting it's not ready, and taking the hit for it. When you're dealing with a bunch of cry babies, its lose-lose if you release or delay, and delaying it is the smarter move for certain.

 

This. I'm not gonna lie, the delay is very disappointing because I was looking forward to it, but being asswipes about it isn't gonna help anyone. Delaying it until it's ready is always the better option. Wish we'd been told earlier but jesus, it's not the end of the world.

The patch notes look good too.

[DrKlep]

Holy crap this community sounds like a bunch of self-entitled children.

Assuming by "self-entitled children" you actually mean "paying customers" you are correct. I pay for this game, every month, and for my money I expect certain things, among them not having new content pulled out from under me 10 hours before it was set to go in. Bioware is not making this game out of the goodness of their hearts, for us ungrateful louts leeching off of their labors. They are providing a service in exchange for our money, and we subscribers at least deserve better consideration than what they are showing us.

[AscendingSky]

I'm habitually rather harsh on EAWare. I disagree with a lot of the decisions they've made (especially recently) about this game, and I'm not afraid to say so. Anyone who's seen my posts on this forum can verify that. Please keep this context in mind as I say the following, lest you think me a white knight:

 

Calm the kriff down, everyone! This is not the end of the world, or even the end of TOR! Hells, I can actually see this as a good thing! Why? I'd much rather they delay releasing the patch by a week (or even more) rather than repeat the situation we had with several of the KotFE chapters where the patches would be so terrible the servers would be down for DAYS and the chapters themselves would be so bug-ridden as to be unplayable for many players. Remember all those problems last year? Remember how it made subscriber 'early access' to the chapters a joke? Yeah... wouldn't you rather avoid that happening again?

 

It's just a week. We can wait a week if it means we can actually PLAY the new content when it comes out. While I understand people being unhappy and disappointed with the delay, some of the complaints on here are overblown to the point of sounding outright abusive and entitled.

 

That being said... EAWare absolutely should have announced this delay before today. There's no way they didn't know the patch was broken before now. I'm guessing the reason they didn't tell us was that they have been desperately trying to fix the code up to the last minute, because even the incompetent spod that is Ben Irving knows that delaying this patch would generate a ton of ill will that EAWare really can't afford right now. While trying to meet their deadline is understandable, I feel that was definitely a bad judgment call on their part.

 

While I don't think we're OMG OWED anything as a result of this week long delay, I would strongly suggest EAWare offer some kind of compensation/apology grant to calm the waters. Just extending the bonus XP and CXP event another week would go a long way, I think.

Edited April 10, 2017 by AscendingSky

[Radzkie]

Aw was looking forward to that sweet sweet story. Oh well.

[JLazarillo]

Currently, the XP and CXP event is going to turn off as scheduled tonight. However, with the delay we definitely want to keep it running for you for another week. We are exploring options to turn it back on tomorrow through the new 5.2 date. I will post updates as I have them.

If I might suggest, because I can see it happening, don't "compensate" for the delay by putting XP/CXP boosters "on sale" in the CM tomorrow. I don't think people would take it in a positive light.

[Badjger]

Eric - what will the cost of Tier 4 gear be in unassembled components? I've been dying for this information for quite some time, it would still be appreciated even though any time to plan ahead is gone. The patch notes don't mention the cost. Edited April 10, 2017 by Badjger

[Rankyn]

Holy crap this community sounds like a bunch of self-entitled children.

You must be new here.

[DarthNillard]

Nothing warms my heart like seeing the Bioware staffers on their forum aliases asking us angry, paying customers to all calm down or pump the breaks any time they break something or make a stupid decision that is poorly received

 

And for all of you still saying cut them some slack after literally years of these shenanigans, answer one question for me. When will the first cartel market item break or be pushed back? I'll wait

[heythereqt]

Is anyone really surprised at this point?

 

Is delaying a single patch to fix major problems a big deal? No, but we've seen this happen time and time and time again. Can anyone legitimately name a patch in the last 2 or 3 years that wasn't either delayed or littered with game-breaking bugs? The players have come to expect incompetence from this dev team. Many of us were saying "I bet 5.2 will be delayed too" last week when the twitch stream was delayed. I just wish they were held responsible for their actions like any other MMO. The game would likely be in a much better place than it is today.

[robwettengel]

One thing that might help us all be more understanding is to know just how large the Team is.

[PennyAnn]

As someone who has played the game since launch and seen the number of bugs that still exist in the game (though I'm certain most of them have been reported multitudes of times), this is not surprising. What's disappointing about this is that it will go live after being delayed and still be more buggy than it should be. Those bugs will be reported, and never fixed. Done any part of the Veteran Mode Temple of Sacrifice raid lately? Fight the walkers and get pulled in while the bosses drop red circles on the group and walker 1 shoots Mega Blast right into the entire group. Not supposed to happen, but it does just about every time I've pulled it in the last 3 weeks. Done the Revanite Commanders fight? They almost always end up with all of them standing down on the ground even though you cannot engage with them because they don't jump back up to their platforms like they are supposed to... and these are just examples from THE MOST RECENT RAID IN THE GAME. Yep, it's 2 1/2 years old, but it's still the most recent. Yet still buggy as hell after all this time. Oh, you're finally fixing the Master & Blaster fight? How about the 15 other bugs in Ravagers? Get to any of those yet?

 

All the people who come here talking about the player base being big whiny babies are just as bad as the big whiny babies, in my opinion. You've forgiven Bioware for consistently producing buggy content that is a day late and a dollar short. If this delay guaranteed any quality in the end result, then I'd agree with you, but there are FAR too many bugs in this game for me to think that this delay will be doing away with those. Sorry. Maybe there was something game breaking that they just couldn't get fixed in the next 12 hours... but to think that they need another week to actually fix it or that another week will produce a high quality product is giving credit where it is NOT DUE.

 

I've never played a buggier game in my life. Even after play testing, delays, and years of feedback. This doesn't surprise me, and it does not bode well for the big subscriber return that I think we've all been hoping will happen in order to keep this game from collapsing like Alderaan under the beams of the Death Star.

[ChunkyGoodness]

One thing that might help us all be more understanding is to know just how large the Team is.

 

I'm gonna go with 18 managers and 3 technicians. I just wonder who forgot to file their TPS report properly.

Edited April 10, 2017 by ChunkyGoodness

[OneHit]

Except you don't deserve anything you self entitled chicken wing. Go back to KFC where you belong.

 

^^^^ This dude is extra crispy

[OneHit]

@Eric I just want to make sure that sweet fireplace background from the streams is still safe

[Faylestar]

Hey folks,

 

Here are the 5.2 patch notes. Note that they are subject to change between now and next week.

 

-eric

 

Tate slept in today.

[Jagaimee]

BioWare: Oh geez, we have to delay a patch for one single week. Gah... sorry, guys! We should've caught this sooner/were hoping it'd be fixed sooner/were hoping it'd be presentable sooner/we were working super hard on it, but it's just not ready yet. One week to go, then. Cheers!

 

Player base: *whine scream cry rage whine whine scream scream whine whine whine waaaah BioFail screwed SOMETHING ELSE up, oh waaaaah, WAAAAAH, LISTEN TO ME I'M A PaYiNg CuStOmEr I AM ENTITLED WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH*

 

Someone in here said that y'all are acting like a bunch of spoiled children? Yup. They were spot on. It's not the end of the world, it's not the launch of the game itself, it's not something HUGE that NEEEEEEEEEEEEDS to be fixed RIGHT THIS [bleeping] INSTANT OR ELSE UNSUB !!1@@221!

It's a patch.

That was delayed one. Single. Week.

Sheesh, you guys. Calm down. They delay one patch for one week, not a month, not a year, etc., and instantly everyone's up in arms screaming bloody murder about how they "screwed up again." Newsflash: nobody is perfect, and that goes for game companies. Stop assuming the worst about everyone. Maybe they honestly did make a mistake. And if they did... so what? You're really going to tear them to shreds over a mistake? Yeesh.

[Galahard]

I understand mistakes and bugs, just please don't call this the 'best patch launch process ever', like you did in the stream.

 

Go back and fix the bugs, just don't boast about how good you are cause it sounds silly.

 

Patch notes sound interesting, do new class story intro videos point to a new DvL event?

Edited April 10, 2017 by Galahard

[Engeopathichero]

So I have some questions that I hope the Dev Team really takes into consideration. I am perfectly fine with delaying 5.2 if it isn't finished, but I have some questions as to some details.

 

First, why is 5.2 so long after 5.1 (literal months). Regular patches in 4.0 kept things fresh. And I'm not talking about the story either, it kept things changing. And mostly for the better, more content was released, things were being addressed more, and the devs were having much more communication with the community. Now we get a major patch every 2-3 months? And absolutely nothing important in between.

 

Landing party has been broken since release. Literally unclearable. It came out in January. It is now April. Why does it require a major patch 3 months later, instead of a smaller patch sometime in between. The monthly updates have done nothing to even try and fix it. Honestly, it would have been better to disable it completely instead of having groups get to the final boss and then find out that it is literally unclearable, no work around, no fix planned for months. Honestly it's very sad that this is the case.

 

There are a ton of other things that should/could have been addressed as well. Class changes for one. I feel balance should have been addressed long before now, and we aren't even getting any until another patch. Which could be another 2-4 months away if this schedule is kept.

 

Honestly with how many times the game has been shut down for server maintenance, it should have had patches as well. Little things can turn into big problems, and little fixes can solve major issues instead of waiting months to fix. And there are some big problems that need fixing.

 

I am so happy that care is being taken to release a good product. But honestly, there should have been some important updates in between. It doesn't take 3 months to add loot back to bosses. It doesn't take 3 months to fix a single bug. It doesn't take 3 months to do several things coming with 5.2 that could have been released in smaller patches leading up to 5.2. Honestly releasing so much content at once is probably going to cause more problems than help in the first place. Releasing a ton of updates/content at once is going to provide much more room for major problems. Smaller updates can be addressed quicker, at least based on previous patches.

 

I have been playing since 1.2, and I don't remember any major game breaking bug, or class change, or problem that couldn't be addressed sooner than 3 months. I understand making significant updates as opposed to small insignificant patches, but it isn't insignificant if it fixes major problems. Right now the small patches have fallen into insignificant.

 

Given how quickly exploits are taken care of, I find it very sad that exploits are taken care of immediately, but unclearable content isn't addressed for months. Really hope the devs take this all to heart. Please care about your game as much as many of your paying customers do, including myself.

 

TL;DR: You need to update things more frequently. This 2-4 months to fix something is really sad. And then delaying it at the end is just icing on the cake.

[uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu]

Oh great. So don't even bother to change your advertising or nothing? I took a referral because it said EVERYWHERE that this damn thing would be out TOMORROW. My referral will be out by next week and I can't stand playing f2p. False advertising. Announcing it in a thread isn't good enough. Change your bloody homepage which clearly says it will be out April 11th. Too late for me of course. No way am I gonna buy a month sub for something I'll finish in two days max. Not really annoyed about the wait but come on guys you could have changed the dates everywhere else by now. Edited April 10, 2017 by uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

[ArcTrooperElite]

I'd agree except for the fact that it's taken over 2 years to get one ops boss. This is not ok. I do agree that whining and screaming about it doesn't do any good. I'll also tell you that I'm part of the problem, I know it, and I'm sorry. I'm really attached to the characters I've made in the game and to the people I play the game with. Because of these things I've continued to sub month in and month out for over 2 years while we have waited for real mmo content. I've watched them waste time and resources on one and done chapters that aren't fun the first time thru and have no replay value whatsoever. 2+ years for 1 ops boss and now it's not ready when promised, no this is not ok. I've seen WoW, FF, and ESO put out real content while we get chapters and still I sub.

[Torvai]

I'm actually happy they're delaying it. Because we get another week to try and finally kill Styrak at the "intended" gear level

 

On the other hand, someone at Bioware had to know this was coming. And they certainly could have said it a few days ago too.

If they went like "We've encountered major issues and trying to fix it in time" and then delayed it, it would've been accepted better I think. And when they said it this way and then even got it out tomorrow, well, that would've been pleasant. But no, rather keep players in the dark.

 

And to those that say people here are crybabies, I agree, to a point. But on the other hand, most of us "crybabies" are here since the start. Continuously. And this is not an exception, it's the norm, sadly. Patches, even major ones we paid for in the past, were either delayed or so full of bugs that they should have been delayed. So no, it's not entitled whining, it's speaking from experience. Sadly.

 

But I guess that's what happens when you are so understaffed that your community manager is needed for internal testing(musco admitted that himself during a stream some time ago) and you can't work on class balance when ONE dev isn't there for whatever reasons.

[Engeopathichero]

BioWare: Oh geez, we have to delay a patch for one single week. Gah... sorry, guys! We should've caught this sooner/were hoping it'd be fixed sooner/were hoping it'd be presentable sooner/we were working super hard on it, but it's just not ready yet. One week to go, then. Cheers!

 

Player base: *whine scream cry rage whine whine scream scream whine whine whine waaaah BioFail screwed SOMETHING ELSE up, oh waaaaah, WAAAAAH, LISTEN TO ME I'M A PaYiNg CuStOmEr I AM ENTITLED WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH*

 

Someone in here said that y'all are acting like a bunch of spoiled children? Yup. They were spot on. It's not the end of the world, it's not the launch of the game itself, it's not something HUGE that NEEEEEEEEEEEEDS to be fixed RIGHT THIS [bleeping] INSTANT OR ELSE UNSUB !!1@@221!

It's a patch.

That was delayed one. Single. Week.

Sheesh, you guys. Calm down. They delay one patch for one week, not a month, not a year, etc., and instantly everyone's up in arms screaming bloody murder about how they "screwed up again." Newsflash: nobody is perfect, and that goes for game companies. Stop assuming the worst about everyone. Maybe they honestly did make a mistake. And if they did... so what? You're really going to tear them to shreds over a mistake? Yeesh.

 

It may only be a week. But that's not entirely the point. Some of these fixes and updates have needed to happen for months. Yes some of that frustration has caused some whining. But remember that there is some justification. Given how much time we have waited for this patch, it's understandable to be a little upset that none of it is getting released on time. Especially to the people resubing for those changes.

Edited April 10, 2017 by Engeopathichero

[PennyAnn]

BioWare: Oh geez, we have to delay a patch for one single week. Gah... sorry, guys! We should've caught this sooner/were hoping it'd be fixed sooner/were hoping it'd be presentable sooner/we were working super hard on it, but it's just not ready yet. One week to go, then. Cheers!

 

Player base: *whine scream cry rage whine whine scream scream whine whine whine waaaah BioFail screwed SOMETHING ELSE up, oh waaaaah, WAAAAAH, LISTEN TO ME I'M A PaYiNg CuStOmEr I AM ENTITLED WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH*

 

Someone in here said that y'all are acting like a bunch of spoiled children? Yup. They were spot on. It's not the end of the world, it's not the launch of the game itself, it's not something HUGE that NEEEEEEEEEEEEDS to be fixed RIGHT THIS [bleeping] INSTANT OR ELSE UNSUB !!1@@221!

It's a patch.

That was delayed one. Single. Week.

Sheesh, you guys. Calm down. They delay one patch for one week, not a month, not a year, etc., and instantly everyone's up in arms screaming bloody murder about how they "screwed up again." Newsflash: nobody is perfect, and that goes for game companies. Stop assuming the worst about everyone. Maybe they honestly did make a mistake. And if they did... so what? You're really going to tear them to shreds over a mistake? Yeesh.

 

Yep. We are. And you get to watch. Enjoy! (Trust me, we'd rather be tearing the raid boss we've waited 2 1/2 years for apart instead... but well... another broken promise.) This isn't the first time, won't be the last.

Edited April 11, 2017 by PennyAnn

[Lunafox]

Tate slept in today.

 

Tait's gone, man.