Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ - Road Map 2017

[RaiderMid]

Good luck with all that player feedback. Remember, none of them are game designers.

 

Henry Ford once said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

 

Also - listening to your player base led you to do the nearly single player experience we have today which you guys seem to be abandoning rather noticeably.

All I'm saying is most of the feedback you'll get will be garbage, let's be real.

 

Except they didn't listen to the player base. The player base wanted continuation of class stories. Not static stories.

[SithKoriandr]

Except they didn't listen to the player base. The player base wanted continuation of class stories. Not static stories.

 

Also hood down and outfits without the waist flaps!

[FerkWork]

I'm liking this but... it's not enough. Gearing through PvP is painfully slow and PvE Operations allow you to achieve BiS gear much faster which is totally unfair to players who strictly PvP and want to stay PvP'ing. There's also the huge gear disparity with how Tier 1 is still going to be a part of this system when the difference between Tier 1 (and I'd say even Tier 2 w/ Bolster) with Tier 4 is pretty big.

 

It's too grindy, PvP'ers shouldn't have to grind for what really is PvE gear, and honestly with all players we shouldn't have to deal with RNG gearing. It's a shame none of this stuff was addressed.

 

To clear something up since people are confused about this. Ops alone cannot get you BiS. No boss drops 248 Belt, Bracers, Headpiece, Chest, MH and OH. So you either have to pvp or gamble. PvP maybe slow on components but it's the only way to get guaranteed BiS and why people are playing it as a component simulator.

[teclado]

Good luck with all that player feedback. Remember, none of them are game designers.

 

Henry Ford once said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

 

Also - listening to your player base led you to do the nearly single player experience we have today which you guys seem to be abandoning rather noticeably.

 

All I'm saying is most of the feedback you'll get will be garbage, let's be real.

A better analogy would be this. Henry Ford produces a car that only comes in black. Customers ask for color variety, Henry Ford says "you can have any color you want, so long as it's black."

 

Most of us are not game designers. You are probably not a chef (playing the odds here), therefore you can't comment on what you like to eat. The chef makes food for you and you are not allowed to comment on whether you like it or not, and you are certainly not allowed to make suggestions for improving the food. See how messed up that thought process is? It just leads to angry customers, and the chef ends up with no job. Chefs have to have customer feedback.

[Eli_Porter]

To clear something up since people are confused about this. Ops alone cannot get you BiS. No boss drops 248 Belt, Bracers, Headpiece, Chest, MH and OH. So you either have to pvp or gamble. PvP maybe slow on components but it's the only way to get guaranteed BiS and why people are playing it as a component simulator.

 

The more Iokath bosses get released, the more 248's will be available to raiders.

[happysister]

Thank you, Keith, for the road map! I truly appreciate the effort you've been putting forth to stay in constant communication with the player base, even if what you say isn't always what we'd like to hear. The increased communication alone already feels like a vast improvement, and I'm always looking forward to see what you have to say.

 

My thoughts on the current road map...

 

Stuff I'm looking forward to:

- The additional ops bosses. Operations are my favorite SWTOR activities, and the past ops content drought mostly depressed me. I'm so glad to get new PvE end game content to run, even if it's one boss at a time. Really looking forward to tackling Esne and Aivela.

- Manaan Stronghold. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAS, I've wanted a Manaan stronghold ever since Forged Alliance. IT'S ABOUT TIME!

- Unassembled Components becoming Legacy currency. Bless you. Bless you, Keith. Maker be praised. *wipes away tears*

 

Stuff that wasn't addressed, but I hope will be addressed in the near future:

- The fact that MM/NiM ops drop mostly useless gear. Not trying to be a Negative Nancy here, but as a progression raider that runs MM operations on a weekly basis, it kinda feels like a slap in the face whenever we kill a boss and it drops a piece of gear for a class that isn't even in our group makeup. Or if the boss drops a blue 244 assembled piece. Those are like the equivalent of 242, and those you can easily get from VM operations. Most, if not all, MM raid teams would have run their group through VM ops to get them geared up before stepping foot into MMs, so what's the point of having the harder difficulty drop loot that's the lesser equivalent of gear you can easily obtain in an easier difficulty? MM ops are far more challenging, so you'd think they'd be far more rewarding than lower tiers. At the very least, I would think that guaranteed 246 drops would be the minimum.

- MM Tyth. It was said that whenever a new boss would get released for Gods From the Machine, the previous boss would get their MM version released. You mentioned Esne and Aivela, but didn't say anything about MM Tyth. I'm hoping that this was just an oversight? I enjoyed VM Tyth a lot, so I'm very much looking forward to his MM iteration. As I said before, I'm a MM raider, so I get a little antsy (and maybe a tad panicy) when waiting on news concerning content of the highest difficulty.

 

Other Thoughts:

- I'm still waiting for my Torque skin for Bowdaar, complete with his wrench.

- I don't care about the other companions, just gimme my Kira back.

- How about a capture the flag style map for GSF?

 

Again, thank you so much for all your efforts and communication. For the first time in a long while, I'm actually looking forward to seeing where the game goes.

[Aehwe]

Haha would you look at that! Exactly as I predicted yesterday. Vague, short and disappointing. Next stop to cancel my subscription since as expected. Next to no new content.

[AscendingSky]

The more Iokath bosses get released, the more 248's will be available to raiders.

 

Nope, wrong. Right now, NiM set piece tokens only drop off the last boss of the raid. All the bosses before that give out COMPLETELY RANDOM gear with RANDOM set bonuses (for classes/specs that might not be even participating in the raid) that's not 248. So at best we'll see one other 248 set drop when the current operation is completed... probably sometime in 2018, at the speed it's going.

 

Now, so far the first boss is dropping a set piece in SM and HM... but we don't know if that's going to continue in the NiM of the new raid, because it's not a thing yet.

 

PvP remains the only guaranteed way to get BiS for all pieces of gear.

Edited June 1, 2017 by AscendingSky

[DarthScruffy]

This.

 

Keith wants to release quarterly updates. A quarter of a year is three months. You got the plans all the way to August. June, July and August. Your next quarterly update is in August/September. So what's the deal?

 

The better analogy is the St. Louis Blues. They're the classic "should be farther along than they are" franchise. However, all the good will has been used up in previous years so they have both sky high expectations and the expectation that a cup will be won every year.

 

I would submit that while the Devs did not sign a certain large, skill challenged forward to a contract that prevented them from doing anything else (that was what destroyed the Blues' good will), they did create the current population issue and it's not unreasonable to ask them to fix it in the near term.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

True, but since we only have up to August on the roadmap, with "And more to come…" I figure/hope the meat of the story is going to come after, and would be on the next roadmap. We are still on the appetizer course. But, I can understand the worry, We all love the game and want it to succeed.

 

My bet is the meat will be the next expansion similar to 3.0 how we had the lead in being forged alliances in flashpoints.

 

This times well with what we had last time a SW movie dropped also. I just hope it's a really nice large expansion like 3.0 was which had story, dailies, operations - PVP is getting a warzone this year which I found surprising but good to see considering how long we went before the last warzone to get a warzone.

[LordTurin]

Nope, wrong. Right now, NiM set piece tokens only drop off the last boss of the raid. All the bosses before that give out COMPLETELY RANDOM gear with RANDOM set bonuses (for classes/specs that might not be even participating in the raid) that's not 248. So at best we'll see one other 248 set drop when the current operation is completed... probably sometime in 2018, at the speed it's going.

 

Now, so far the first boss is dropping a set piece... but we don't know if that's going to continue in the NiM of the new raid, because it's not a thing yet.

 

PvP remains the only guaranteed way to get BiS for all pieces of gear.

 

Not quite, Machine Gods currently drops a 248 Relic on the first boss, so we can probably assume that will continue to be the case (makes sense, they want to reward you for doing the newest content).

[Eli_Porter]

Nope, wrong. Right now, NiM set piece tokens only drop off the last boss of the raid. All the bosses before that give out COMPLETELY RANDOM gear with RANDOM set bonuses (for classes/specs that might not be even participating in the raid) that's not 248. So at best we'll see one other 248 set drop when the current operation is completed... probably sometime in 2018, at the speed it's going.

 

Now, so far the first boss is dropping a set piece in SM and HM... but we don't know if that's going to continue in the NiM of the new raid, because it's not a thing yet.

 

PvP remains the only guaranteed way to get BiS for all pieces of gear.

 

You really think that once the new bosses get released they'll make Tyth stop dropping 248's? No, they'll have designated 248's on HM alongside Tyth. The whole point of the current loot tables is to have gear as an incentive to do the new content.

[ShaDeschain]

Hi!

 

I can not tell you how happy I am to learn that vanilla companions are finally returning and that we can customize our newer companions.

The main reason I choose to not use them is the lack of customization. Now if you could just reintroduce armor/ mod/ etc. gearing for them, that would be great! You took away a good chunk of immersion when you simplified things.

 

Thank you for the roadmap and the continued communication. I really appreciate it.

[Dewlmenow]

The more Iokath bosses get released, the more 248's will be available to raiders.

 

Considering there are 6 missing set pieces and 4 remaining iokath bosses, your solution doesn't fully solve the problem. Not to mention it's stupid to only get gear off final bosses.

Edited June 1, 2017 by Dewlmenow

[Alssaran]

I would submit that while the Devs did not sign a certain large, skill challenged forward to a contract that prevented them from doing anything else (that was what destroyed the Blues' good will), they did create the current population issue and it's not unreasonable to ask them to fix it in the near term.

 

Your entire point is completely useless to my post though.

 

The person I was quoting was directly talking about how this roadmap was too little content for 2017 to sustain the people, and he was disappointed that Keith didn't go into details beyond August. However, seeing that Keith plans to release a roadmap every three months and keep us updated on any future feature on a new "Wednesday newspaper", which we largely never had all the way back since 2.X, one can hardly blame them for taking a first step and expanding on it.

 

And that's the crucial issue. You can expect them to fix the server issues, but expecting it all to happen in one go and hoping that Keith will now magically fix them within two months shows a gross missconception about how slow resource management and development can be.

 

Keith has promised us to keep us updated about any new feature and changing feature in the upcoming Wednesday newsletter. Also, the next roadmap for everything following these changes is coming in two-three months.

 

What's unreasonable is to expect them to fix all the problems you might have ever cared about in a single quarter and with a single roadmap, espescially after the guy just took over from Ben. They might have to switch course first and slowly adjust development.

 

Point is: Relax. Unsubscribe or don't, depending on whether you're a patient person or not. See what the coming few Wednesdays bring to light and what their long-time planned features are. Weekly updates , quarterly conversations and roadmaps, class balance, raid bosses and GSF updates are still miles ahead for what we had in the past two years. It fixes one of the most broken things in this game - communication.

 

So take a chill pill, don't quote wrong stuff, and just relax.

[Thaladan]

Keith you reacted to our legitime anger about roadmap delay, and this is important for me. so "apologies" accepted.

 

it seems obvious to me but apparently it's important to say that YOU must listen your costumers, because we pay to play and you're paid to make us continue playing and paying.

 

We are star wars fan but we are not idiots fan..

 

I appreciate the future content, especially a new warzone and stronghold.

 

BUT first of all : i'll be waiting the class balance because it's an absolute necessity to make this game a good game.

Edited June 1, 2017 by Thaladan

[commanderwar]

also Keith quick question confused to what this means

 

"in addition, we’ll review and adjust which companions you received through Alliance Alerts"

 

this can mean a few things, if you can clarify that would be great , but again great roadmap

Edited June 1, 2017 by commanderwar

[DarthScruffy]

Your entire point is completely useless to my post though.

 

The person I was quoting was directly talking about how this roadmap was too little content for 2017 to sustain the people, and he was disappointed that Keith didn't go into details beyond August. However, seeing that Keith plans to release a roadmap every three months and keep us updated on any future feature on a new "Wednesday newspaper", which we largely never had all the way back since 2.X, one can hardly blame them for taking a first step and expanding on it.

 

And that's the crucial issue. You can expect them to fix the server issues, but expecting it all to happen in one go and hoping that Keith will now magically fix them within two months shows a gross missconception about how slow resource management and development can be.

 

Keith has promised us to keep us updated about any new feature and changing feature in the upcoming Wednesday newsletter. Also, the next roadmap for everything following these changes is coming in two-three months.

 

What's unreasonable is to expect them to fix all the problems you might have ever cared about in a single quarter and with a single roadmap, espescially after the guy just took over from Ben. They might have to switch course first and slowly adjust development.

 

Point is: Relax. Unsubscribe or don't, depending on whether you're a patient person or not. See what the coming few Wednesdays bring to light and what their long-time planned features are. Weekly updates , quarterly conversations and roadmaps, class balance, raid bosses and GSF updates are still miles ahead for what we had in the past two years. It fixes one of the most broken things in this game - communication.

 

So take a chill pill, don't quote wrong stuff, and just relax.

 

They knew they had this problem for quite some time. They literally had two years of data on changing habits. It's not unreasonable to say "there should have been a plan". And while appreciate your concern *pats on head* I am making the adjustments I need to make.

[Alssaran]

They knew they had this problem for quite some time. They literally had two years of data on changing habits.

 

Yes, and there was another guy in charge for quite some time, and Keith had basically no input on what to do. Now he's in charge, and it seems he is hitting the right nerves, considering that people seem way more balanced and content with recent communication than they have been in two years.

 

Once again: A completely irrelevant point. The old guy had his chance. He didn't do it. He left. Now a new guy took over, and this new guy seems committed to the task. If he'll pull through with it, I guess time will tell. Complaining that the new guy doesn't seem to adress issues just a month into his job, while most of Ben's old content suggestions might get finished still, is just idiotic. To use a simple analogy:

 

Imagine you eat out at a dinner, and that dinner is serving the most gruesome, slobbish dinner you can imagine. You complain to the manager and walk off in a huff. Two years later, due to an advertised image change, you walk into the place. It looks nice now, it seems the staff is much kinder than it was before, and the waiter is actually listening to your order. However, before the waiter can even recommend food, you walk up to the new manager and accuse him of horribly missmanaging the shop for the past two years.

 

Doesn't sit really well.

Edited June 1, 2017 by Alssaran

[Icykill_]

Hi Keith,

 

#populationproblems

 

Still no word about the Dinosaur in the room (it's so big now it squashed the elephant). Lots of people on lots of servers and in lots of time zones cannot play group content anymore because of lack of population on those servers or in those times zones.

I hope this is going to be one of the first topics your weekly "player communication" includes.

Starting this week...

 

#crossfactionpvp

 

It's time for crossfaction pvp. Players such as myself can't pvp at reasonable times (our time zones) because of lack of population. At 9pm AEST last night there were 68 players in the imperial fleet on Harbinger. There were 24 on TEH.

 

Keith, I'm glad you were able to get the roadmap out on time. It looks like a good start. Let's hope these weekly communications will address the other tough issues listed above.

[Darkside]

As part of your planned QoL coming in few months, please, please double the amount of bank tabs available to us for our ever growing inventories, or at least add all legacy armors/weapons to collections, cause there is literally 3-4 full banks+ worth currently in the game right now! Think of those poor databases hamsters! Edited June 1, 2017 by Darkside

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Hi Keith,

 

#populationproblems

 

Still no word about the Dinosaur in the room (it's so big now it squashed the elephant). Lots of people on lots of servers and in lots of time zones cannot play group content anymore because of lack of population on those servers or in those times zones.

I hope this is going to be one of the first topics your weekly "player communication" includes.

 

 

#crossfactionpvp

 

It's time for crossfaction pvp. Players such as myself can't pvp at reasonable times (our time zones) because of lack of population. At 9pm AEST last night there were 68 players in the imperial fleet on Harbinger. There were 24 on TEH.

 

Keith, I'm glad you were able to get the roadmap out on time. It looks like a good start. Let's hope these weekly communications will address the other tough issues listed above.

 

I think server merges should be something he should also address once and for all and would help with the issue of trouble finding groups. "Yes we are looking into merging servers" or "no this currently isn't on our radar" ...

[Icykill_]

What about PVP access for preferred players?

 

Bring them back please, the queues are getting slow and they put money in the game too, at least bring back the passes.

 

Yes, this is urgent and could be fixed with the next patch. It would certainly address some of the pop times.

[Eli_Porter]

Considering there are 6 missing set pieces and 4 remaining iokath bosses, your solution doesn't fully solve the problem. Not to mention it's stupid to only get gear off final bosses.

 

You can still get gear off non-final bosses in NiM. BiS Armorings for your class are hard to get lucky with, but 246 mods and enhancements are still an upgrade over the 242's you get in HM. And yes you sometimes get screwed with 244 drops, but some characters can still use those if you've got tons of alts.

 

Maybe we'll get the rest of the 248's in the following operation. I personally prefer it over having them release a new tier of gear when the next operation arrives.

Edited June 1, 2017 by Eli_Porter

[Icykill_]

The only question that really matters : what about dead servers

 

#Dinosaurintheroom