Keith - As the new producer........

[GalacticKegger]

"As the Game Producer for SWTOR, I help guide and influence the development team to continually improve the gameplay experience for everyone. Regardless of your play style, there’s a lot we have planned for all of us this year. We’ll have fun activities for you whether you’re a player who loves Star Wars™ stories, or the veteran who is looking for new challenges and more options to play with friends, or if you simply want to play on your own. Look for the SWTOR Roadmap in the coming weeks where we’ll offer insight about what’s happening this year and what you can expect in the coming months."

Here is hoping that Mr. Kanneg retires GC, puts crates back in the Cartel Market and gives us our MMORPG back.

Edited April 14, 2017 by GalacticKegger

[fushnchips]

This Keith is a customer service person and appears not part of any development team.

 

Keith will do wonders for the game because he is also a player like us no offence to Musco or Ben but Keith actually plays the game and enjoys a challange so I have faith in him.

 

This game has needed a mind in this area for a while and lets hope the road map will show some great info and also some ideas Keith may throw out.

[Rebamcfan]

Welcome Keith and congratulations for your new job! Everyone are exited to see what a new person can bring in!

[knoXr]

Besides, the guy completely lost all credibility with me once I heard Malavai's name pronounced, "Mahlahvee," in a live stream. At that point, I seriously wondered if he even played each class story at least one time through... and that is a scary thought.

 

I don't think that was Keith...

[Ippotamus]

A pity this couldn't have been done a while ago.

The damage done to this game is pretty extensive.

Level synched, one button/one story fits all, grey Jedi command drool fest that it has become. *sigh*

How do you salvage that?

I hope Keith has the answers.

Good luck!

[Rankyn]

Besides, the guy completely lost all credibility with me once I heard Malavai's name pronounced, "Mahlahvee," in a live stream. At that point, I seriously wondered if he even played each class story at least one time through... and that is a scary thought.

Oh please.

The voice actors don't even pronounce all the names consistently within the game.

[Talon_strikes]

I've had the pleasure of talking with Keith in the past and I can't put into words how happy I am of this news! He is DEFINITELY was the SWTOR team needs as a leader and as a person who plays the game as much as he does.

 

Keith, I really hope you fix the major content drought that's been plaguing the game and reinvest in endgame PvP and PvE. I'm really confident you will make both solo and MMO players happy though, and I can't wait to see what you have to offer as the new Producer.

 

<3

Edited April 14, 2017 by Talon_strikes

[Schoock]

This is happy news. I'm trying to stay optimistic and believe this will also come with a change in the overall direction the game is taking.

[Calarand]

Here's hoping for some changes for the better. Stars know this game needs all the help it can get because passionate and devoted players can't carry it on forever. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you, sir.

 

And since everyone is doing it, my personal little wish here would be to stop the gleeful attitude towards murdering companions. Yes, the option to kill them is a welcome addition and brings a little bit of permanence to our in-game choices, but the way these kill-offs have been glorified lately by the team is sickening. From Koth to Quinn, there seems to be this attitude that 99,99% of the player base wants them dead which is painfully wrong. Just because someone on the dev team is trigger happy and can hold a grudge towards a companion for YEARS (both real-life years and in-game years in the case of Quinn) does NOT mean everyone else does, so please do keep that in mind for the future.

 

Also, make sure that the companions who get the option to be killed are not marginalized and reduced to mute decorations with no further development coming for them. If I'm romancing Vette, Torian, Kaliyo, Jorgan or Quinn, I want to be able to have the romance growing in the future chapters. I don't want my character's wife/husband to be this silent shadow that never speaks and never ever reacts to anything again just because some percentage of players have decided to kill them off.

[Talon_strikes]

All you folks so chipper that Ben is moving on to something else.. and hated him so much.. they could put a gerbil in his place and you would all drool with anticipation and advanced praise.

 

I don't know Keith, but I wish him well in the new role... but it wont' take long for the pack to turn on him and try to devour him with condemnation here in the forum. I feel kind of sorry for him already to be honest.

 

As for what his actual power is over the state of the game... I really think some of you way over-rate the power of a producer (good, bad, or neutral) in MMO games. And honestly... his prior role was live services director so I find it strange that they would tap him to replace Ben as producer.

 

He claims to have 28 characters and 10,000 hours of game play under his belt.. so that pretty well nerfs all the "you don't play your own game" memes in the forum though.

At it with the strawman again I see. Not surprised.

 

BTW, none of us here ever stated we hated Ben. We simply didn't like how he was running the game. Keith is a breath of fresh air and we're all excited that someone who actually plays the game and talks with us as much as he does is taking the reigns. Many of us are confident he'll do a much better job than his predecessor, who, to put it simply, wasn't doing a good job because of reasons that don't need to be explained since they've been beaten to a dead horse.

Edited April 14, 2017 by Talon_strikes

[Ahrngrim]

Congratulation Keith and May the Force be with you!

[cashtwomuchos]

A very big welcome to Keith in this position. Goodbye Ben.

 

Keith your vision could do a lot for the future of this game. Honestly i think there is a big "sigh" relief going on in the community right now. Still there are hurdles to take, like EA's support. I'm glad that you are a player too, someone who actually knows the game from our perspective.

 

Best of luck to you Keith. Make SWTOR great again!

[Celise]

Now that Ben is gone at long last! i hope for better from Keith.

 

Ben's Galatic Command is divisive and destructive, it has clearly served no one;

Bioware have lost a lot of subs.

Those subs have felt betrayed by this madness and left in a hurry.

pref and free players have been treated like scum and criminally so.

the current GC system has completely contridicted itself from it's original purpose.

It's a boondoggle.

Ben has now been shuffled elsewhere.

 

I can gaurantee Keith, if he decides to remove this horrible thing from the game and put out the word in the mainstream that it is gone, there will be people coming back to play this game once again, so long as it reverts to where it was pre 5.0 and so everyone can at least experience the game.

 

Hopefully Keith can pull the proverbial rabbit out the hat and make the game worth playing again. i so desperately want to see this game go the right way and become a success.

 

Also i renewed my sub, first time in months after reading the news of Ben's departure, so i have hopes Keith can do some good.

 

RemoveRNG.

Edited April 14, 2017 by Celise

[bahramnima]

Now that Ben is gone at long last! i hope for better from Keith.

 

Ben's Galatic Command is divisive and destructive, it has clearly served no one;

Bioware have lost a lot of subs.

Those subs have felt betrayed by this madness and left in a hurry.

pref and free players have been treated like scum and criminally so.

the current GC system has completely contridicted itself from it's original purpose.

It's a boondoggle.

Ben has now been shuffled elsewhere.

 

I can gaurantee Keith, if he decides to remove this horrible thing from the game and put out the word in the mainstream that it is gone, there will be people coming back to play this game once again, so long as it reverts to where it was pre 5.0 and so everyone can at least experience the game.

 

Hopefully Keith can pull the proverbial rabbit out the hat and make the game worth playing again. i so desperately want to see this game go the right way and become a success.

 

Also i renewed my sub, first time in months after reading the news of Ben's departure, so i have hopes Keith can do some good.

 

RemoveRNG.

 

i agree with you, the galactic command system is a terrible system and ben added this GC to force players to subscribe more than one month because they need to grind for gear, basically it was trick and trap system and hated by almost all players of the game, and in my opinion the GC back fired and game lost subs instead of gaining more, i hope new producer remove it, i am hopeful but we will see.

[Nightblazer]

Now that Ben is gone at long last! i hope for better from Keith.

 

Ben's Galatic Command is divisive and destructive, it has clearly served no one;

Bioware have lost a lot of subs.

Those subs have felt betrayed by this madness and left in a hurry.

pref and free players have been treated like scum and criminally so.

the current GC system has completely contridicted itself from it's original purpose.

It's a boondoggle.

Ben has now been shuffled elsewhere.

 

I can gaurantee Keith, if he decides to remove this horrible thing from the game and put out the word in the mainstream that it is gone, there will be people coming back to play this game once again, so long as it reverts to where it was pre 5.0 and so everyone can at least experience the game.

 

Hopefully Keith can pull the proverbial rabbit out the hat and make the game worth playing again. i so desperately want to see this game go the right way and become a success.

 

Also i renewed my sub, first time in months after reading the news of Ben's departure, so i have hopes Keith can do some good.

 

RemoveRNG.

 

I hope your not expecting things to turn around in a heart beat of the snap of keith's fingers. It's going to be take time and be awhile and for things to turn around so I wouldn't expect immediate changes or even major changes till at least 6.0 drops. If it does change it will take time.

 

Also only "guarantee" in life is death and taxes.

[Marmeladix]

Hello Mr. Keith!

Congratulations for the chair you got to sit on now and I wish you can do better now than your predecessors and or that you previously ever could have done, in steering the any&all of the changes in the game to favor the customers/players_payers, not be mostly against me and all the rest that play this game, the way I have experienced over and over and with most of them, noticing that for me personally the trend of developers team work has been from bad to worst in much much more points than it were the beneficial ones.

 

Regarding your claim that:

"have always been a very active player with nearly 10,000 hours of gameplay, 28 plus characters and tons of achievements. I love playing the game and participating in all different types of gameplay, with PvP being one of my favorite activities. So, when you have frustrations with the game, I’m likely having the exact same concerns"

...I give you for now the benefit of a doubt, a huge doubt, since is seems to me that none of you there on Bioware and around is a real-real player, in pvp or any other sectors of SWTOR. This because there are so so many issues that just linger there for years, never being addressed, with fixes that would really make an impact to improve the gammer experience and customer's satisfaction, while others that were of much less importance or impact have had priority (and most got some downward changes from my perspective).

 

I provide to you just only 1 single example, because I have gathered much more ingame time than your "10,000 hours" on each of the 2 main chars of my 16, and also believe to have gathered a lot more of direct observations and "frustrations" about how wrong some aspects can be kept in SWTOR.

 

I admit that I have no experience about how things are running on the US servers, since I have been using the EU Progenitor and Red Eclipse (a bit) servers, but assuming that the program is the same and only the players are others, here is my example >

 

In a wz, when I click insisting upon a pylon/console/node to capture and (much more) when I insist to place a bomb on a door, with the often result that my char gets killed,

the channel/cast/cursor keeps running until the timer's end,

preventing me for even 8-9 seconds to respawn and resume the fight. I have no delay when the decease occurs in other circumstances. Am I being penalized for focusing on the objective of the wz?

 

This is stupid. This faulted feature is there in the program from the beginning, no1 fixed it and this is more stupid, because any real wz player would have noticed it by now and got upset enough to do something about it if it could. I sure would have.

 

I can understand that the one that wrote the code for that was a non-player and had no real vision of what needs to be done there to round things up and he made a mistake, had a slip out, an intelligence hole... but the fact that your devs team never ever become aware of the aspect to repair it until this very day, especially since declarative you "focus more on pvp" now, well...

 

Mr. Keith, I so wish you prove me right in the assumption that the counselors that advise the devs team are as fake players as some of the ones that wrote and post spec guides on Dulfy (for 1 example like the one that declared himself a Progenitor player and some long time ago posted there a scoundrel guide > I immediate added the declared char to friends and only seen it pop online 2 times since, for like 10 min. or less in total... that big of a real player he was/is!)

 

Thus I wish you Mr. Keith to prove worthy and to be the right man in the right place.

Edited April 14, 2017 by Marmeladix

[Celise]

i agree with you, the galactic command system is a terrible system and ben added this GC to force players to subscribe more than one month because they need to grind for gear, basically it was trick and trap system and hated by almost all players of the game, and in my opinion the GC back fired and game lost subs instead of gaining more, i hope new producer remove it, i am hopeful but we will see.

 

i have never bothered with the GC system, i think the highest level i got was 14 or something like that and i don't ever intend to expand it. i saw what your writing there a few days after trying it and realised there was no good in it.

 

I hope your not expecting things to turn around in a heart beat of the snap of keith's fingers. It's going to be take time and be awhile and for things to turn around so I wouldn't expect immediate changes or even major changes till at least 6.0 drops. If it does change it will take time.

 

Also only "guarantee" in life is death and taxes.

 

To me hope is an illusion, but every once in a while i entertain the idea of being optimistic as it makes things interesting that way . but i know it will take some time to get something in place, at least half a year to clear out Ben's future content from the pipeline and then it will be Keith's work from that point on, this is assuming Keith is willing to let ben's content to come through. otherwise it will take over a year before any of Keith's plans for SWTOR are known and put into the game.

[Nightblazer]

To me hope is an illusion, but every once in a while i entertain the idea of being optimistic as it makes things interesting that way . but i know it will take some time to get something in place, at least half a year to clear out Ben's future content from the pipeline and then it will be Keith's work from that point on, this is assuming Keith is willing to let ben's content to come through. otherwise it will take over a year before any of Keith's plans for SWTOR are known and put into the game.

 

I agree I expect a timeline of at least 6 months to a year to clear all this up. It will take time as there are many things that will probably need to be pushed out for the sake of getting it out there before the fixes can be made but there may be something things that would have gone out that can either be prevented or changed before then. My time table is set at about 6 - 12 months so we'll see.

[BoySaber]

Congrats Keith. I am happy see some bright future for swtor. It is always good to have a player itself call the shots. I saw your message and it made my day. The only bad change in this is whatever opportunity former producer took, the players of that other game will have to pay the price for us to finally enjoy swtor. People who are not qualified for the job should simply not do that job. Only those who play the game know the game, know where the problem is and what has to be done to fix it. Looking forward to see new updates to the game. Get rid of this Galactic Command disease and terrible currencies chaos. Make gear drop from bosses, from completing missions, or buying them with credits or one single type of token currency, the better the piece the higher the cost. You will see players coming back to this game, because this is why they left. Once this is fixed game can finally take its original course, and focus on both solo and multiplayer goals. And stay in touch with your players via twitch, once a week, one hour a week! Edited April 14, 2017 by BoySaber

[RowanThursday]

Congratulations on the appointment and fingers crossed for a bit of sense.

 

I do hope Ben Irving's severance package will be determined by RNG, so he can be rewarded with a bit of fun and excitement on his way out.

[PoshTS]

Congratulations on the appointment and fingers crossed for a bit of sense.

 

I do hope Ben Irving's severance package will be determined by RNG, so he can be rewarded with a bit of fun and excitement on his way out.

 

"Better things" Yeah Hopefully EA fired him for losing them so many SUBs because of GC. They have literally fired more talent people and closed down more talented studios for less.

Edited April 14, 2017 by PoshTS

[Soljin]

This is exciting news for sure, congratz!

 

This game certainly needs new direction and influence especially from someone who plays the game a great deal, even better!

 

As other games have proven you can keep a game populated and relevant long passed the "standard" MMO expiration date if it has a loyal player base. My hope is that this will be considered moving forward as many veteran players have been alienated as of late.

Edited April 14, 2017 by Soljin

[Sarova]

...Keith your vision could do a lot for the future of this game. Honestly i think there is a big "sigh" relief going on in the community right now. Still there are hurdles to take, like EA's support. I'm glad that you are a player too, someone who actually knows the game from our perspective.

 

Best of luck to you Keith. Make SWTOR great again!

^^Well said. After reading his intro letter I felt excitement about the game for the first time in ages (with the exception of the news of Quinn/Dorne returning) and have hope that the all areas of the game will improve with his appointment. I'm really hoping he has tried playing a lightning sorcerer in PvP (or in any area of the game post 5.0) so he knows our pain!

[AnisaBadgett]

I'm probably way too late for this post to be seen, but Keith, try to remember that Genchat and reddit don't represent the entire playing community.

 

There are active, vocal and passionate communities on Tumblr, those of us who post our blood, sweat and tears in fanfiction forums, not the least of which is Archive of Our Own. Yeah, Twitter is a place but honestly, 140 characters is not enough to have a discussion.

 

We'd talk more in these forums but on a good day, it feels like shouting into a sarlacc pit.

 

A lot of us are female, real ones in real life. We're gamers, we're fans, we're nerd girls. We're transgendered men and women. We're nonbinary. We're boring middle-aged folks with 9-5 jobs who love to come home at night and swing a lightsaber at anything in sight. We play on our own. We raid with our guilds. We play dress up with our toons.

 

We're light-sided Sith and dark-sided Jedi and we love the gray areas, too. Every companion (exc maybe Skadge) has a fandom. And yeah, we might argue about them but to hear the people who run the game diss our fave, problematic or not, is pretty disheartening. I didn't like it happening to me, and I don't want it happening to others, even if they like someone I don't.

 

You might have favorites but let's be honest my guy, you shouldn't show them. This is a small fandom, relatively speaking. Fans of the larger Star Wars properties look at us like we're nuts sometimes. We're further divided by favorite class, favorite faction and favorite love interests. We don't need YOU to make things worse.

 

Anyway, welcome to the show. Please take your seat. The houselights will be dimmed shortly.

[casirabit]

I am going to get some hate for this.

 

the Galactic Command is not horrible, just needs to be fixed so it works better.

 

There are people that this helps because they are not raiders nor pvp players but everyone seems to forget about them. For raiders and pvp player gear was easy for them but for the others it wasn't.

 

Yea I know well if you are not a raider then you don't need the gear or other things. This was a breath of fresh hair for those people but of course people are going to say they don't count, which is something this community has done since the beginning.

 

Anytime you bring up a way for them to get gear, outside raids and pvp you get hate from this community. I know I can get gear but I know people who actually came back because they were able to get gear "gasp" without having to do raids or pvp.

 

So instead of taking it out completely it would be better to figure out a way that it can be beneficial and give the raiders and pvp a way for them to earn their gear better and a way if you get the same piece you can exchange and make it alt friendly.

 

Happy Easter.