Game Update 5.2: The War for Iokath Delay

[FOETodo]

Hmmm seems I am unbanned from the forums again. (this won't last long since you always ban people who speak the truth)

 

Bioware and EA you are absolutely awful at customer service and the development of this MMO.

 

Your regular players want quality additions to PVP and Operations (that's real operations not just one stupid boss)

 

We don't want crappy box opening experiences, or some solo bore fest that takes the MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER out of MMO.

 

If you are going to consistently f*** up this game, can you please just stop, hand over the rights to a decent developer so STAR WARS gets the love it deserves and decent multiplayer content additions at regular intervals.

 

I honestly think the develop team smoke crack with the money gained from people's subscriptions, it's the only explanation for their moronic decisions. So out of touch with reality.

 

See you next tuesday bioware

 

Just want to point out, that although you evidently feel like you represent the whole playerbase with your statements, you simply don't. I absolutely love the direction this game is going, I very much enjoyed KOTFE/KOTET and am looking forward to what they bring to the table next. You are entitled to your opinion as much as the next person, but don't fool yourself into thinking everyone shares your thoughts on the matter.

[Smuglebunny]

Just want to point out, that although you evidently feel like you represent the whole playerbase with your statements, you simply don't. I absolutely love the direction this game is going, I very much enjoyed KOTFE/KOTET and am looking forward to what they bring to the table next. You are entitled to your opinion as much as the next person, but don't fool yourself into thinking everyone shares your thoughts on the matter.

 

Hey everyone this is the guy ruining the game.

Edited April 11, 2017 by Smuglebunny

[analyis]

Given this patch was on the PTS, I would think you should have known about issues well in advance of the announced release date.

[sivadd]

Hey folks,

 

We want to ensure our updates release at the highest quality possible and Game Update 5.2: The War for Iokath is no different. At this point in time, we are not satisfied with the quality of the Iokath update. For that reason, we are delaying the release of 5.2 by one week, to release on April 18th. This allows the team more time to make improvements to address some of the issues still pending. We did not make this decision lightly as we are very eager for all of you to get your hands on the new storyline, reunite with old Companions, or try your hand at taking down the God of Rage himself.

 

As soon as we know timing for the next maintenance I will post that information. Thank you all for your patience and understanding. We do apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. We will post the patch notes either today or first thing tomorrow so that you know what is planned for 5.2!

 

Thanks everyone.

 

-eric

IF there is no maintenance, how come the servers are down?

[Hichitsuki-hime]

IF there is no maintenance, how come the servers are down?

 

there's a 1 hour maintenance to prolong the XP/CXP event for 1 more week, since they're delaying the 5.2 until next tuesday (at least currently it's next tuesday):D

[Eanelinea]

Hmmm seems I am unbanned from the forums again. (this won't last long since you always ban people who speak the truth)

 

Bioware and EA you are absolutely awful at customer service and the development of this MMO.

 

Your regular players want quality additions to PVP and Operations (that's real operations not just one stupid boss)

 

We don't want crappy box opening experiences, or some solo bore fest that takes the MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER out of MMO.

 

If you are going to consistently f*** up this game, can you please just stop, hand over the rights to a decent developer so STAR WARS gets the love it deserves and decent multiplayer content additions at regular intervals.

 

I honestly think the develop team smoke crack with the money gained from people's subscriptions, it's the only explanation for their moronic decisions. So out of touch with reality.

 

See you next tuesday bioware

 

You're entitled to your opinion. But not all of us 'regular' daily players who've been here years only care about pvp and ops. I like pvp and ops, but I'm here for stories. I did ops and pvp in EQ and WoW.

[DarthNillard]

It's threads like this that make armchair developers and wannabes drive me completely insane.

 

As a professional software developer, I can say that this is not only common, it is pretty much the norm. Hell, the project I am currently working on these days is a couple weeks delayed already and the deploy is nowhere near the size of 5.2. The funny thing? the client hasn't complained. They've expressed their urgency but not a single bit of whine, and they are paying a LOT more than anyone here is for the service.

 

It's replies like this that remind me that being a "professional software developer", specifically for non-essential programming (like video games) is an absolute JOKE. One of the only jobs on earth where you can completely suck at your job, and it's okay.....the paying customers just have to wait longer because you are bad at the one thing you are paid to do. But it gets even better, because what you all completely lack when it comes to a sense of accountability, you more than make up for with a snobbish, snarky attitude and an utter lack of people skills.

 

And before you start babbling a response and hyperventilating from your swivel chair in your bermuda shorts, let's be clear. I am not a developer, but I worked for a billion dollar SaaS company for several years. If a release got delayed, heads rolled and Devs got fired. Accountability = a higher level of effort which leads to an overall better product which creates and a much better customer experience.

 

What these Devs get away with is a farce....

[Eanelinea]

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.

 

Two years is nothing. I'll be coming up on SIX years in December this year and I keep subbing and hoping new content that I enjoy (story, class story, etc) will come out or one day come out, sooner than later. I'm annoyed for the delay because it was something new to do and I got back two old companions. The week will go by quickly, but we didn't even get a sub reward this time which was kinda meh for me.

[Smuglebunny]

it's replies like this that remind me that being a "professional software developer", specifically for non-essential programming (like video games) is an absolute joke. One of the only jobs on earth where you can completely suck at your job, and it's okay.....the paying customers just have to wait longer because you are bad at the one thing you are paid to do. But it gets even better, because what you all completely lack when it comes to a sense of accountability, you more than make up for with a snobbish, snarky attitude and an utter lack of people skills.

 

And before you start babbling a response and hyperventilating from your swivel chair in your bermuda shorts, let's be clear. I am not a developer, but i worked for a billion dollar saas company for several years. If a release got delayed, heads rolled and devs got fired. Accountability = a higher level of effort which leads to an overall better product which creates and a much better customer experience.

 

What these devs get away with is a farce....

 

thank

you

 

the excuse for everything is "its just a game calm down"

 

Its just their jobs.

Edited April 11, 2017 by Smuglebunny

[TUXs]

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.

Right?! I find it kinda funny that you and I, arguably two fairly vocal critics, are so supportive. Know what the difference is? COMMUNICATION! Eric sure as hell didn't want to delay the patch - nobody at Bioware did, not even Ben...but it happens. I'm not happy about the delay, but I am understanding of it and I appreciate their communication on it.

[IvanovKaramazov]

It's replies like this that remind me that being a "professional software developer", specifically for non-essential programming (like video games) is an absolute JOKE. One of the only jobs on earth where you can completely suck at your job, and it's okay.....the paying customers just have to wait longer because you are bad at the one thing you are paid to do. But it gets even better, because what you all completely lack when it comes to a sense of accountability, you more than make up for with a snobbish, snarky attitude and an utter lack of people skills.

 

And before you start babbling a response and hyperventilating from your swivel chair in your bermuda shorts, let's be clear. I am not a developer, but I worked for a billion dollar SaaS company for several years. If a release got delayed, heads rolled and Devs got fired. Accountability = a higher level of effort which leads to an overall better product which creates and a much better customer experience.

 

What these Devs get away with is a farce....

 

I agree with many things you said, but it's not about "getting away" with anything. If they do screw up so bad and so many times there wouldn't so many people here frustrated about the delay of a patch. I believe it was wrong to tell the costumers about this delay at such short notice and a bigger compensation should be offered. But I also think it's the right call to not launch the patch if there are issues to work on. I also think their choice to make us wait so long to have our old companions back or at least have closure on what happened to them is a disrespectful baiting. Now two important companions of two classes are coming back. What about the Jedi Knight's companions? The Sith Sorcerer's? What about all the others'? The players whose main toons are from those classes don't deserve as much as the Sith Warriors and Troopers to have their old companions back? That makes no sense and pisses me off way more than this delay. Which I repeat, should have been announced earlier and therefore a compensation to the players is more than fair. But people screw up in every field. And I still think the SWTOR team got it right way more than wrong. Still, being more careful about possible delays in the future is a lesson they should learn. Also, the only problem with the great storyline of the last expansions is a big one. And now they are bringing back only 2 companions of 2 classes? How is that fair? That is a big screw up for me. But I respect everyones' frustations.

Edited April 11, 2017 by IvanovKaramazov

[casirabit]

Let me formulate it in another way so that your little brain can comprehend it a bit better

 

lets say you and a bunch of friends had planned something fun an exciting adventure for a few days. You had planned this for a while like a month before. Your all excited for this tommorow and there are no hints for this to be canceled or anything.. Suddenly all these friends call you like 12 hours before your about to go on this exciting adventure and CANCEL it all! and forcing you to push it back 7 days.

 

Now how happy would you be?... lol

 

If my friends did that I would be sad but I sure wouldn't be jumping down their throats because something came up and they had to cancel it for awhile. Things happen and when stuff like this happens is when we show what kind of character a person has.

[MasterAwe]

Hi Dev-team!

First off, naturally I am disappointed like the rest of the community, but hey - the tech world is impossible. Something as simple as fixing an eyebrow position on an NPC can cause seeker droids to pull Crate-O-Matics from a personal star ship. (No, I still haven't found one since being consistently subbed from December 2011 ) But the line about "Still not being satisfied with 5.2" so you are delaying it, could have been presented better. Just roll another lie into it -

"As we readied the system to be patched, we discovered that the technical issues on the Test server were not due to the hardware, but in fact, embedded somewhere in the patch. We are hoping to have 5.2 up ASAP - no later than 4/18"

 

At any rate, at least whatever the issue, it is being addressed. Which is saying something because what is seemingly being ignored are the issues that are keeping the game from being fun. It has been brought up a few times within this thread, but it is worth saying again. I play this game because I love Star Wars and being emmersed into the Star Wars Universe, however, instead of pausing new Cartel Items, gree/bounty/rak events, etc. and taking a month to fine tune/ fix known issues plaguing the game, you pump out new cartel items with absurd drop rates, add new uprisings, and make class Introduction videos more cinematic. That is the real issue here.

 

Your customers don't care that 5.2 is delayed. We care that "all of a sudden" you care about creating a "polished" product. MMO's are by no means perfect or polished, that is why you have weekly maintenance, but your lack of fixing any bug other than major exploits, is a disservice to players and creates the animosity we see in this forum.

I'm in the minority, I love the new system introduced in 5.0. I think it makes the game run more efficient and rewards the individual player both casual and hardcore, but instead of rushing new content and re-skinning ops (*Cough Temple of Sacrifice - basically took bosses from EV, EC, SNV, DP, and Ravagers, covered them in "Yavin/Revan" skins, and told us "Look! A new Raid!"), maybe take some time to fix the bugs that exist.

 

Let us play the new content, grind up CXP to rank 300 and get bored. Meanwhile - DON'T introduce a new gear tier, DON'T make new Cartel Market items (legit just rotate old packs like you did before), and DO go back and polish old content and old bugs. Then we may think you care about the game and next time you pull an update suddenly, maybe some of us wont whine and we'll say "Meh, at least my raid group doesnt wipe due to faulty mechanic" or "Well, at least when playing the story in master mode I dont die from a 12k attack when my character has 85k/70% health left."

 

Phew, my <insert whiny consumer here> is over

I hope you get 5.2 fixed and ready to roll and thank you for keeping this game running because I really do love it

Edited April 11, 2017 by MasterAwe
Spacing and paragraph did not work right

[Bengartrell]

The XP bonus is not active. Please fix it.

[Stellarcrusade]

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

 

What makes you think forum posters are grown adults? I just assumed they were actually 5.

[IvanovKaramazov]

What makes you think forum posters are grown adults? I just assumed they were actually 5.

 

Sure, cause your post is very mature.

Edited April 11, 2017 by IvanovKaramazov

[-Hughesy-]

You're entitled to your opinion. But not all of us 'regular' daily players who've been here years only care about pvp and ops. I like pvp and ops, but I'm here for stories. I did ops and pvp in EQ and WoW.

 

It's an MMO, just in case anyone else continues this crazy debate let me repeat, it's an MMO.

 

If you want stories go play a single player star wars game like knights of the old republic (which is good). Where I agree you need a base storyline to tie things over in an MMO you must surely agree that group content must be a priority in a multiplayer game.

 

Operations, PVP and dungeons/flashpoints - core of an MMO and keeps guilds together, that sense of working together to achieve something. Unless your guild all play the same storyline, at exactly the same time and get all excited about it? (which I personally would find uber strange but hey diversity makes the world go round). Playing the story is like watching a movie, sure you can go to the movies with friends but you sit there in silence, tunnel vision, no talking (unless you're American which for some reason like to scream and shout watching movies, a notion that the rest of the world does not share). Group content equals communication, teamwork, socialising and fun. It's pretty well know that humans are packs animals and enjoy the company of like minded others, multiplayer games embody this.

 

I dunno why some fanboys are ruthlessly defending the devs, you won't get a free cartel pack or pat on the bum for being a good little doggy.

 

The service blows, Star Wars is being neglected by two crap companies: EA and Bioware. Most gamers despise EA, I quite liked the early mass effects but then Bioware sold their soul to the devil that is EA and now they belong in the same boat.

 

Relinquish the star wars MMO rights, give it to a company who actually care about the franchise because it is quite clear you don't.

Edited April 11, 2017 by -Hughesy-

[DarthNillard]

So to be clear on what's transpired as of this moment:

 

1) Promised a date in late March/early April months ago

2) Actually given a date in mid April

3) Posts and notes and a livestream and tweets about the release up until the day before

4) Last minute delay for a full week for the release

5) Community goes nuts, demands the CXP/XP bonus at least continues

6) Devs pull the servers down anyway to release a patch to meet this demand

7) THAT PATCH failes

 

Are we being punked? On Iokath, is the final cut-scene going to be Austin Kutcher running out to tell us that we were being punked?

[TUXs]

Let me formulate it in another way so that your little brain can comprehend it a bit better

 

lets say you and a bunch of friends had planned something fun an exciting adventure for a few days. You had planned this for a while like a month before. Your all excited for this tommorow and there are no hints for this to be canceled or anything.. Suddenly all these friends call you like 12 hours before your about to go on this exciting adventure and CANCEL it all! and forcing you to push it back 7 days.

 

Now how happy would you be?... lol

How old are you? Have you never had a flight delayed or a trip ruined by weather? Never had anyone cancel because of a cold? **** happens. The trip is still on, just pushed back a week...not a big deal at all.

[TUXs]

So to be clear on what's transpired as of this moment:

 

1) Promised a date in late March/early April months ago

2) Actually given a date in mid April

3) Posts and notes and a livestream and tweets about the release up until the day before

4) Last minute delay for a full week for the release

5) Community goes nuts, demands the CXP/XP bonus at least continues

6) Devs pull the servers down anyway to release a patch to meet this demand

7) THAT PATCH failes

 

Are we being punked? On Iokath, is the final cut-scene going to be Austin Kutcher running out to tell us that we were being punked?

Producing a video game and working with millions of lines of code, isn't quite as cut and dry as you seem to think it is. They had a goal. They advertised that goal. They thought they could hit that goal...but they couldn't...it's a minor delay, not a cancellation.

[IvanovKaramazov]

Producing a video game and working with millions of lines of code, isn't quite as cut and dry as you seem to think it is. They had a goal. They advertised that goal. They thought they could hit that goal...but they couldn't...it's a minor delay, not a cancellation.

 

I'm with you on that. And I also believe, taking in account the big picture, the SWTOR team is doing a great job. But an error in calculating the time they would need to launch a patch is still an error that has consequences to their customers. I don't agree with some people here who apparently want dev's head for this. But a compensation for the customers who moved time around at work or college for example is only fair. That's all. Doesn't mean they aren't doing a good job. People make mistakes and **** happens. EDIT: fixed a typo after a bullying. Still reporting the very polite and friendly player who pointed out my spelling mistake in a very respectful way.

Edited April 11, 2017 by IvanovKaramazov

[TUXs]

I'm with you on that. And I also believe, taking in account the big picture, the SWTOR team is doing a great job. But an error in calculating the time they would need to launch a patch is still an error that has consequences to their costumers. I don't agree with some people here who apparently want dev's head for this. But a compensation for the costumers who moved time around at work or college for example is only fair. That's all. Doesn't mean they aren't doing a good job. People make mistakes and **** happens.

That is a perfectly reasonable reaction and expectation.

[tonitirola]

in games like black desert if they do a mainteance and if it takes longer then suspected they give a usefull item to players and say in a mail sry for longer mainteance.

this is what i call service and not like here.treat players like ******es

[Bengartrell]

I'm sorry. But some people need to think.

 

These people are PROFESSIONAL. They should know what they are doing. Mistakes like this are costly.

Edited April 11, 2017 by Bengartrell

[AscendingSky]

Right?! I find it kinda funny that you and I, arguably two fairly vocal critics, are so supportive. Know what the difference is? COMMUNICATION! Eric sure as hell didn't want to delay the patch - nobody at Bioware did, not even Ben...but it happens. I'm not happy about the delay, but I am understanding of it and I appreciate their communication on it.

 

I think it's because while we're not at all afraid to criticize EAWare and this game, we don't do so out of a motivation of hatred and destruction. We want the game to get better! So we don't just blindly attack every single move EAWare makes no matter what like some kind of anti-white knight (would that be a black knight?). While I know I can be harsh towards the company, I also try to be fair. Sometimes things can't be helped, and I certainly don't want to blame people who aren't actually at fault.