New Release Date for Game Update 5.9

[LordAppius]

Electronic Arts can't separate us, because we are not so easy to get killed, don't worry Keith, personally I will play SWTOR to the end. SWTOR is the only MMO'ish game with nice story and amazing voice acting. I admire your hard work and want to say: keep up the good work.

 

You really have no idea how the market works do you ?

 

I understand that some ppl are blind to the truth, which is this game releases mediocre content for the amount of money we pay.

 

Amazing voice acting ? Sure, back in vanila and untill shadow of revan where there existed some coherency and consistency in the story.

 

Good work ? Doubt it, they only started paying attention to their costumers because kotfe and kotet was an outright disaster. Before that they did not pay much attention because they still had an average number of subscribers.

 

Most of the story is full of plot holes that range from poor lazy writing to nonsensical and completely ignorance of the game their are developing, like how can you deliver all companions back to one major player and still have in their desription that they are looking for their previous "master/leader" ? How is this going to be fixed? At this rate i ve no trust in Bioware that they can fix the ridiculous mistake that was Zakuul and its follow up. I would accept a lose end here and there, but there are so many that it just makes no sense and at some point the plot itself negates itself.

 

Biggest problem is how will you get rid off zakuul? and by getting rid off it i do not mean kill every pleb on that planet i mean destroy the eneternal fleet and the gravestone?

 

To follow up one of the issues is how bad the writing is. surely when ppl were writing this they did not expect everyone to believe that from the most 8 powerful ppl in the entire galaxy seven of them would retire/hide/disappear whatever lame excuse bioware writers have come up and not face something that was threatning their own existance. I can understand that some classes like the smuggler, imperial agent, bounty hunter would just scram, but players like both siths and jedis makes little sense. The commando is just a meatbag, so he doesn't really matter.

 

How the story is going back to Imperial vs reps is another big issue. Both sides are completely broken at thsi phase and what will they use to kill eachother? half dead armies and the remaining of whatever they have ? Are they going to claim they have a hidden fleet and army somewhere and that zakuul spies are as competent as lana beniko that could not find an elephant in ant colony ?

 

Lose ends like the first son, the sons and daughters of the emperor are still pretty much alive and that can be a way for him to come back. If bioware actually did kill the emperor with no interaction, help or whatever from characters like Scourge and Revan (not a question of fanboism rather a case of poor writing from whoever thought this was a good idea) is just making us believe in unicorns.

There still exists a room that we have no idea what it serves or do. The odessen base can barely be called a base, i m not sure how the eternal fleet failed to destroy that planet, but okay, lets take this boulder out of the way.

 

The fact that i still have a certain character bugged in my odessen base clear tells me that there is something quite simple about this plot, can't share much because i m afraid this will get ban hammered if i do.

 

Since i m talking about problems with the game lets talk about the companions. It would have been better if they just brought them all back at once, would make it more appealing than giving us every X months a 2 minute cutscene with a lame excuse like "i ve no idea where you were" "i know nothing(joghn snow trademark)".

 

All expansions have issues, no game develops a superb expansion or perfect one, there is no such thing as perfect expansion. PPl might enjoy zakuul for several reasons, the first might be that the community expects so little from the dev team that we have come to accept the crumbles they throw and give us. For instance ppl ahve asked them personal story, not one side story, i understand it is hard to do another 8 stories, but if bioware actually charged for expansion and not obnly for items in the cartel market they would actually get more money (not more than they probably get with the cartel market, because hypercrates since 4.0 are what we all know, even if they tried to fix them huge problem they created they are not nearly as good as they were before 4.0 era.

 

all the events are really tedious after some points and it does not encourage ppl to play them again. a lot of ppl will play because bioware offers little to do. The thing is bioware is not thriving right now at it is leaving from the few new players it gets. It shoudl broaden its horizons at look to what other companies do to keep their costumers, something that is clearly lacking at this point. For some reason we see so many ppl selling guilds/flagships, yes you can sell one or 2 because eventually ppl leave the game for good, but not as often as it has happened since 4.0 and specially after 5.0.

 

The game doesn't need to release monthly content, it needs to release content that can last for more than 1 hour and that incentivates ppl to play. Releasing more augments to make ppl "op" is not real content, but since this is probably one of the best things they can do at this give time ....

 

They can claim, without a doubt, that ranked warzones are more alive now than they were in the last seasons, but the reason that explains this is not because we have more players interested in doing ranked the reason is quite the opposite, we just have the same more ppl jumping and dying like headless chickens to get mats and sell them. Then you have a group of players in theri alts just synch queue and farm these mats farmers and get elo, or if not that they will carry that one friend that is horrible, but somehow is gold rating, eventhough he can't go above 3 k dps. Yeah it is fair, gives everyone a chance i guess.

 

All of this to say that the game is not ok, not even doing averagely, the game is in a really bad spot right now and giving us flahspoints with no depth and that are essentially reskins from other planets (i m looking at you copero, resking of rishi and makeb), is just lazy work. Imagine if you in your work environemnt started to be less effcient, do you think your bosses would keep you working just because you are good looking and have a nice smile ? No, the thing is i ve no idea what bioware does or tries to do, but they should really try to get more ppl, like this is not chemistry not rocket science. More ppl working for a company means more content being developed, that means more players playing the game (if the content is good)

[Toraak]

Thanks for the update Keith. Glad you decided to delay it, if it wasn't ready. I'd rather wait and have the patch with fewer bugs, then have it come out before it's ready.

[DarthSpuds]

Putting pressure on them to hold to an artificially set date and then produce trash code doesn't help.

Let them do what they need to do to make it as right as they can. If it means a week or a month delay, so be it.

May the world be as generous to you.

 

That only works IF after the delay the code isn't still trash.

 

Evidence points to the contrary.

 

 

All The Best

[FlameYOL]

Thanks for warning us beforehand, Keith. With update 5.9 being released later though when can we expect the patch notes to be available? After the update?

[Lyshar]

How will conquest work next week given that it will start on Tuesday using the 5.8a settings, and then those settings will change part way through the week after 5.9 is deployed? Will conquest reset? Will we keep points already earned and just earn new points under the new settings?

 

My guild has started to participate in conquest a lot more lately, so we're all interested to know how it'll work during this transition.

 

Thanks Keith!

 

Wondering the same. It's not like I started to conquest more, but if I don't know if there's a point why should I even start when i haven't even logged on for the past few weeks.

[jedip_enguin]

Maybe we could just skip it altogether since the tank changes are still trash?

[SithKoriandr]

will we see the satele shan armor set into the cartel for the 5.9 ?

 

It was just on the market for two weeks.

[SaerethDL]

That's a ripoff dude. I have exactly 4 days of sub remaining, which would have gotten me the new content on may the 1st or 2nd.. now I have to resub if I want to check out the new flashpoint. I don't want to resub at this point, maybe when 6.0 gets here. I was at least hoping to finish the traitor storyline. What a ripoff. :mad::mad:

[yashma]

How "unexpected" ..... At this point we can't trust their release dates for anything ....

 

Next thrusday they will say we had to postpone it again due to some minor bugs. Not sure how many issues can ONE flashpoint have. The disappointment will be no less than it was with Coppero or Umbara.

 

Agreed

[Lhancelot]

That's a ripoff dude. I have exactly 4 days of sub remaining, which would have gotten me the new content on may the 1st or 2nd.. now I have to resub if I want to check out the new flashpoint. I don't want to resub at this point, maybe when 6.0 gets here. I was at least hoping to finish the traitor storyline. What a ripoff. :mad::mad:

 

I see, well that's interesting.

 

*Tin Foil Hat on*

 

I believe they ran the numbers and determined the chances of people quitting were higher if they released the new patch sooner rather than later. Waiting an extra day or two to release the new patch increases the number of subs by 25%, thus it is so.

[DarthSpuds]

Given how long it has taken them to release the OP, and how late it is what do we honestly think they can achieve in an extra 2 or 3 days?

 

Change the colour of some asset mesh?

Put a door where there was a blank wall?

 

All The Best

[MishaCantu]

If quality is better, delay is fine with me. As long as this traitor arc is done in some sort of believable fashion, I'm good. Two more days is nothing. I doubt Theron will have grown his hair out, but a customization option would be nice. Ha. Who knows, maybe that was the delay. Oops, forgot to create a customization option for Theron that actually works.

 

Thanks for the update, Keith.

[Keta]

That's a ripoff dude. I have exactly 4 days of sub remaining, which would have gotten me the new content on may the 1st or 2nd.. now I have to resub if I want to check out the new flashpoint. I don't want to resub at this point, maybe when 6.0 gets here. I was at least hoping to finish the traitor storyline. What a ripoff. :mad::mad:

 

Watch the highlights on YouTube. It's not like they drug out the release so more people would unsubscribe.

[Newyankalt]

If it was just gonna be pushed back I would have preferred a Friday May 4th release. But best to release a finished product always.

[LordTurin]

If it was just gonna be pushed back I would have preferred a Friday May 4th release. But best to release a finished product always.

 

I'm sure they discussed it, and it would have been cool, but 2 issues:

1. Releasing on a Friday is a bad idea, if something breaks it's harder to fix it/stop exploits on a weekend then during the week when everyone is already in.

2. This way we can spend May 4th playing instead of patching, which is also nice. Especially if the patch runs long. Anyone remember the 2 hour small patch last year that took literally the whole day? That would suck on Star Wars day.

[Exly]

As for the announcement, meh, what's two days if it means we'll get a better product. Fine by me.

 

Two days is not big deal. I do wish however that they would get their act together. Updates are either late or filled with bugs, or both. New systems are implemented like galactic command and the new conquest system that players rebel against and that cause more players to quit playing the game altogether. Stealth nerfs like those to crafting for conquest are done, and many more things that have been discussed before.

 

Sure they got things right before. The did the 1-50 leveling right in the beginning. They did things right with the launch of 2.0 and all the way up to the launch of 3.0 with few exceptions. The did good things in 3.3 for pvp gearing and in 4.0 for gearing for all gearing. They did good with 3.3 when making pvp changes by communicating in advance the changes that they were making, and actually listening to players before enacting bad changes. Then there were the first 8 chapters of KoTFE, and all of the work that they did to make end game content relevant again, that was good. Even star fortress was good in the beginning.

 

The unfortunate part is that since the initial launch of 4.0 they have done little right. Story was forced in order to bring back companions that should never have been taken away. No new group content for endgame for the duration of the 4.0 expansion. Eternal Conflict, lol.

 

Then with 5.0, uprisings, bad flashpoints, and the slowest release of a new 8/16 man raid in the history of forever.

 

Will they ever get their act together and start doing things right again. I know, probably not, but it would be nice to see.

[JamaicanCastle]

Given how long it has taken them to release the OP, and how late it is what do we honestly think they can achieve in an extra 2 or 3 days?

 

Change the colour of some asset mesh?

Put a door where there was a blank wall?

 

All The Best

 

It's only a week late, and that's because they spent that week fixing a different patch.

 

Anyway, given the timing, this is almost certainly some kind of show-stopping bug that they almost but didn't quite catch in time for the planned release date. It's probably "fixed" already, but they need QA to verify that that fix doesn't break something else. So their options are a) release on time, and maybe the game breaks, or b) wait a couple days and there's a much lower chance of that.

[PiiTarr]

I certainly hope so! I want my love back with his scruffy womprat do all nicely grown back in.

 

 

And as for the Nightlife event...can ya'll make the decos donatable to guilds? Please?

 

I was able to purchase all of those for my guild. If that option isn't coming up for you, it sounds like a bug.

[Costello]

It will have been 5 months give or take since their last flashpoint and story update.

 

By the reasoning that a 2 day delay is needed for quality, having spent 5 months working on it must mean the story and the encounter are beyond amazing.

 

Or could it be that Keith has worked out the magic words of saying delay and quality and people cheer and praise him for communicating. I can't imagine anyone working in a professional environment would praise someone for missing their deadline as long as they told them a few days in advance. But it seems EA is an amazing company to work for as you can keep delaying and missing deadlines and as long as you say its for quality everyone is super excited and says well for quality more delays, been 5 months since the last flashpoint, clearly we were rushing you, take longer!

[Lhancelot]

It will have been 5 months give or take since their last flashpoint and story update.

 

By the reasoning that a 2 day delay is needed for quality, having spent 5 months working on it must mean the story and the encounter are beyond amazing.

 

Or could it be that Keith has worked out the magic words of saying delay and quality and people cheer and praise him for communicating. I can't imagine anyone working in a professional environment would praise someone for missing their deadline as long as they told them a few days in advance. But it seems EA is an amazing company to work for as you can keep delaying and missing deadlines and as long as you say its for quality everyone is super excited and says well for quality more delays, been 5 months since the last flashpoint, clearly we were rushing you, take longer!

 

I see your point. The thing is, games and their development are always like this. When a game tells us they are planning to add a patch, then change the deadline this isn't totally uncommon.

 

Also, patches being added often have bugs and rarely on any game I have played have large patches been added where they are flawless. In such situations, I'd rather the game work on making a new patch less buggy than push it out the door to meet a given deadline.

 

I do agree with your point though, which is being they seem to have a large amount of latitude regarding success/failure. I don't think EA monitors anything but the bottom line, money.

 

Player happiness, less buggy patches, deadlines being met for new patches etc. These things EA probably cares nothing about as long as the money continues to flow, which in a way does reflect that players are happy.

[BlastBoomArt]

I don't usually comment on news like this because I'd rather give the devs the benefit of the doubt, but this is getting more than a little ridiculous...

 

It's one thing to delay an update because time is needed to perfect and polish the new content, but as we've seen before, delayed realeases are still buggy as hell and not really up to any kind of standard.

 

And considering there hasn't been an on-time release in what feels like forever, I'd say the devs haven't learned a single thing. I've been a loyal player for some 5 years now, and a major Bioware fan for most of my life, but my patience is starting to wear very thin.

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[Batwer]

On the 4.5 it is still full of bugs ...

[Aeristash]

I don't usually comment on news like this because I'd rather give the devs the benefit of the doubt, but this is getting more than a little ridiculous...

 

It's one thing to delay an update because time is needed to perfect and polish the new content, but as we've seen before, delayed realeases are still buggy as hell and not really up to any kind of standard.

 

And considering there hasn't been an on-time release in what feels like forever, I'd say the devs haven't learned a single thing. I've been a loyal player for some 5 years now, and a major Bioware fan for most of my life, but my patience is starting to wear very thin.

-

 

I don't think there was an issue at all. I think this 'delay' was to secure another month of subs since it was supposed to be released toward the end of this month.

[Confusi]

This thread certainly falls under the 'damned if you do damned if you don't' category. Used to be the same exact whining except then it started off with, 'the devs never communicate with us'. I will join those who have said thanks for the update.

[Eanelinea]

While I'm annoyed at waiting even longer, it won't kill me to wait. But there really better not be ANOTHER wait after this. I get bored playing the same things over and over and while I love the game, the updates take too long to come out even if it's to add a minor thing or a major thing. Happens when one has been here almost 7 years.