New SWTOR Forums are coming!

[NicoleMay]

Constructive criticism is welcome and always has been. We've stated that multiple times. If criticisms were entirely removed from the forums, the vast majority of the threads that currently exist would be gone, and we certainly wouldn't be moving forward with a new platform. I'm always on board with reading and gathering feedback that is helpful and constructive. My only ask has ever been that people are respectful to us and to each other.

 

With all due respect, I think we've all seen over-enforcement on this both on the forums and on Twitch. I agree a good chunk of the fanbase can be quite disrespectful, but many people have also been silenced while giving constructive, well intentioned feedback in good faith.

 

I simply hope you keep this policy in check moving forward on all platforms and actually listen to player feedback, since too often it feels like it falls on deaf ears. More so over the past year than ever before.

[BenKatarn]

Constructive criticism is welcome and always has been. We've stated that multiple times. If criticisms were entirely removed from the forums, the vast majority of the threads that currently exist would be gone, and we certainly wouldn't be moving forward with a new platform. I'm always on board with reading and gathering feedback that is helpful and constructive. My only ask has ever been that people are respectful to us and to each other.

 

On a side note to this, when this current forum launched, we initially had the option to create threads with forum polls. This feature was quickly deactivated because it wasn't "intended" to be used. How's your stance on this with his new forum?

Edited September 21, 2022 by BenKatarn

[Gyronamics]

It’ll be easier to create posts, follow topics, format posts, and add images/media.

 

Phwoah, being able to post images and videos

[LanceDefender]

It's all cool new forums or updated launcher, very cool

But where new content?

Where GS3?

Still no info about, yet almost month ago we were told in coming weeks we'll get something.

[DarthCasus]

We're having conversations about this! Just so that you all have an idea of what we're talking about, some of the factors to consider are the volume of posts which impact moderation time, the potential of opening up pockets of the forums to non-Subscribers (if so, which ones), and how we can use the gamification of the new forums to open up new paths for non-Subscribers to potentially utilize the forums. So there's a lot we're talking about, but we don't have details to share just yet. If this were to come to fruition, it will happen in a later phase. What's coming up first is ensuring that the migration is smooth and that Subscribers are in a good state before we move onto other phases. I'll be sure to update you all on this plan once we land on a decision!

 

Awesome! Just happy to get a reply on this, its been an issue I've noticed for quite some time but I am happy to hear its at least in discussion and appreciate the response

 

As long as SWTOR isn't going non-profit and moderators aren't working for free, then imo players who want to post on the NEW forums should def. have to pay.

 

 

 

Maybe just strictly within the all important 'Bug Reports' section?

 

Everything else should be read-only , unless you $ubscribe. ( ESO does this and it works pretty well there for the most part )

 

I'm not seeing any benefit to keeping the community as gated as it is. Its fractured. Posts on the subreddit receive a regular influx of participation and actual discussion while these forums have largely been decaying in terms of activity over the years. We can have the same front page barely move in the General Discussions sub-forum with a few posts swapping spots because a handful of people gave their 2 cents, but how is it fair to gauge feedback of anything here or feel like part of a community when your words are invalid because you're not currently subbed? I don't understand the argument about wanting other people to pay to say their piece when the game has a freemium model. It affects you in no way and discussion could become lively again, or do you prefer dead threads lingering to protect the sanctity of the Swtor forums? I'm interested though, make your case for why keeping a model that helps perpetuate decline is preferable.

 

Also, it may work well for ESO but that is not our situation. You know, decade old game, old forum infrastructure, declining participation, content droughts, etc. We have no reason to remain affixed to models that fit other spaces. Imagine if this game stayed sub only because it worked well for WoW.

[Darthmoriquendi]

You realise if the "love threads" disappear there will be riots!! For the love of all that is holy, PLEASE preserve the QUINN thread! It is a 903 page thing of beauty

 

Totally agree. Same for Arcann whos has 625 pages, and Theron around 327 pages.

I was really surprised to see Arcann have twice as many as Theron as he is so controversial. People either h*te him or love him it seems. I absolutely adore him.

Edited September 22, 2022 by Darthmoriquendi

[JackieKo]

You realise if the "love threads" disappear there will be riots!! For the love of all that is holy, PLEASE preserve the QUINN thread! It is a 903 page thing of beauty

 

I have every intention of seeing that thread get to 1k pages.

 

Where GS3?

 

7.1.1 info coming today! I will not post the info in this thread so as to not derail conversation about the new forums. But I do have more info coming later today, and it will be its own thread.

 

Regarding the CURRENT forums, we're going to be doing some prep work for next week, so you all may see some sub-forums move around. Going to do our best not to disturb your usual browsing, but I wanted to give a heads up that some of the sub-forums may be shifting at some point today/tomorrow.

[JakRoanin]

Here's my question will the new forums be more friendly to uploading screenshots from our STEAM accounts?

[Jett-Rinn]

Well... I guess that answer the whole

 

The game is going to shut down any day now!!!111eatatjoes!!! rants over the past year or so....

 

As I said before there is more brewing than we know...I'm really glad to see these forums. it's a long time coming

 

 

Anyway...are we going to notice a stylized difference? And if so could this mean a revamp of the Webpage as well?

Edited September 22, 2022 by Jett-Rinn

[Sarova]

Totally agree. Same for Arcann whos has 625 pages, and Theron around 327 pages.

I was really surprised to see Arcann have twice as many as Theron as he is so controversial. People either h*te him or love him it seems. I absolutely adore him.

Wow! That is surprise, I thought Theron's would be the longest thread as he appeals to so many and is still very much in the game for a lot of people. I had no idea Arcann's thread was so big - he's catching the one and only king of the love threads which is Quinn.

Let's hope they are all saved in their entirety when the new forums launch. Imagine the fun* we can have with the ability to post images and videos

 

*clean fun of course Devs!

Edited September 22, 2022 by Sarova

[lythinae]

 

Many of the features of this new platform encourages positive behaviors hence why we can award unique badges for informative, friendly, and constructive posts. The same guidelines and Rules of Conduct are still in place though! There are also other moderation tools in place to help us navigate heated topics and comments.

 

Absolutely needed, tbh. My hope is that this can be extended into the game, where the general culture is ... not great (there really, really needs to be some kind of active in game moderation beyond just a reporting function. Was not pleasant logging in the other day and seeing a group of Exodus Union players *** cosplaying)

[Sarova]

You realise if the "love threads" disappear there will be riots!! For the love of all that is holy, PLEASE preserve the QUINN thread! It is a 903 page thing of beauty

i have every intention of seeing that thread get to 1k pages.

♥ Yay! ♥

[Renata_Roselli]

So instead of fixing game breaking bugs, annoying glitches, server stability and other issues related to gameplay, BioWare decides to waste time on a new forum where only 10% of the player-base actually uses. Amazing. Edited September 23, 2022 by Renata_Roselli

[Nee-Elder]

I'm not seeing any benefit to keeping the community as gated as it is. Its fractured.

 

Paying for a service, or privilage to use that service, is not "gated" . It's just modern business economics..

Call it Forums+ if you like.

 

As for being "fractured" , that is due to the evolution (or devolution) of the interwebs & gaming chat habits in general ( Discord, Twitch, YouTube channels, In-game genchat streams, overall preference to VOICE & emoji's instead of typing, spelling, grammar, words, etc. etc. )

 

Forums have always been fringe: Vocal-minority needing to vent & rant , combined with lurking-majority who simply want fast reference information. Somewhere in between is a constructive discussion now & then.

 

Posts on the subreddit receive a regular influx of participation and actual discussion while these forums have largely been decaying in terms of activity over the years.

 

Blame that on EA's lack of funding & support for SWTOR , which has become a shell of it's original intended self.

 

Regardless, only a fraction of the playerbase (now or back in 2012) ever bothers to use these forums/website, much less post on it. Consequently, in order to maintain a brand NEW forum layout & level , it's going to take somethng called money.

 

And if BioWare truly wanted greater "participation" , they would somehow integrate official stickied threads/polls into the game LAUNCHER, so that players would be more inclined each time they play. Instead, we get that truly awful & tacky leftside corner POP-UP window upon 1st login trying to sell us more Cartel carrot re-skins.

 

We can have the same front page barely move in the General Discussions sub-forum with a few posts swapping spots because a handful of people gave their 2 cents,

 

Quality over quantity.

 

but how is it fair to gauge feedback of anything here or feel like part of a community when your words are invalid because you're not currently subbed?

 

Careful, you're getting close to 'strawman' territory.

 

or do you prefer dead threads lingering to protect the sanctity of the Swtor forums?

 

Again, another borderline presumptuous 'strawman' type bait question.

 

Also, it may work well for ESO but that is not our situation. You know, decade old game,

 

ESO began in 2013 (beta) , so it's only about a year "younger" than SWTOR. Plus, BioWare copies ESO all the time lol . ( Unfortunately EA won't allow them to copy ESO content frequency though )

 

Imagine if this game stayed sub only because it worked well for WoW.

 

One can only dream for such $uccess here in what could've been the best combo of SWG story/sandbox with WoW raid/action . You know, something deserving of the STAR WARS brand. But alas, here we are "celebrating" the 10th Anniversary year with....another hamster-wheel Galactic Seasons and retread Cartel re-skins? Sheesh.

 

--------

Back more ON TOPIC: i support the new forums and having the FULL use of it be included with the 12-15 dollar monthly subscription.

Edited September 24, 2022 by Nee-Elder
certain people complain about anything lol ( do they not realize this game & company must make MONEY?! )

[Jett-Rinn]

So instead of fixing game breaking bugs, annoying glitches, server stability and other issues related to gameplay, BioWare decides to waste time on a new forum where only 10% of the player-base actually uses. Amazing.

 

Hey I won the betting pool!

 

[EricMusco]

On a side note to this, when this current forum launched, we initially had the option to create threads with forum polls. This feature was quickly deactivated because it wasn't "intended" to be used. How's your stance on this with his new forum?

 

Hey there!

 

Ok yeah, let's talk about polls and the forums. This is a decision that might even predate me as CM but I know the philosophy was shared over the years. Polling is something that is, generally speaking, a great engagement feature. However, part of the challenge is that players will often look at polls on the forums and their results as "supporting data" for things as opposed to a means of conversation.

 

The forums are an excellent source of feedback and discussion but it is worth understanding that the forums represent a very small fraction of the playerbase. And even then, forum-goers tend to only fall within the most engaged of our player types. That is a bunch of words to say, the forum community is excellent but it is not always an accurate representation of the full breadth of our playerbase.

 

Now, it is for that very reason that the forums are valuable, to get that feedback from our most engaged players. But is also means that polling is not going to always be accurate outside of that understanding. Which is fine for us, but can make it challenging to have meaningful conversations coming from polls if players take those very limited numbers as fact.

 

That is why we have leaned towards keeping polls disabled in the past, but I will let Jackie speak to any plans for the new forums.

 

-eric

[JackieKo]

Hey there!

 

Ok yeah, let's talk about polls and the forums. This is a decision that might even predate me as CM but I know the philosophy was shared over the years. Polling is something that is, generally speaking, a great engagement feature. However, part of the challenge is that players will often look at polls on the forums and their results as "supporting data" for things as opposed to a means of conversation.

 

The forums are an excellent source of feedback and discussion but it is worth understanding that the forums represent a very small fraction of the playerbase. And even then, forum-goers tend to only fall within the most engaged of our player types. That is a bunch of words to say, the forum community is excellent but it is not always an accurate representation of the full breadth of our playerbase.

 

Now, it is for that very reason that the forums are valuable, to get that feedback from our most engaged players. But is also means that polling is not going to always be accurate outside of that understanding. Which is fine for us, but can make it challenging to have meaningful conversations coming from polls if players take those very limited numbers as fact.

 

That is why we have leaned towards keeping polls disabled in the past, but I will let Jackie speak to any plans for the new forums.

 

-eric

Following up-

 

For the reasons listed above, we will not have the functionality available for players when the new forums launch, however, I can foresee opportunities where we would potentially grant the functionality to super active players who drive community events. As time goes on, I'll be on the look out for these opportunities and also be reading player feedback on how they would like to use the feature should it become available to them.

 

Thanks!

[BenKatarn]

The forums are an excellent source of feedback and discussion but it is worth understanding that the forums represent a very small fraction of the playerbase. And even then, forum-goers tend to only fall within the most engaged of our player types. That is a bunch of words to say, the forum community is excellent but it is not always an accurate representation of the full breadth of our playerbase.

 

Now, I fully expected this answer to come up. But I gotta ask, exactly how you are even gathering feedback and where you are pulling that from? It's been mentioned in the past that you guys still use focus groups when testing out ideas for future content and stuff, and not the actual playerbase, so the fact that you won't allow your playerbase to actually do such a thing as creating polls and voting is a little disingenious when you want to engage more with the community.

 

As you mention, the people here on the forums can be considered the "most engaged" players. Shouldn't that be even more reason see how they react to things and engaging these people more? I understand that probably the biggest majority of players in the game still the "faceless masses" of F2P people who never spent a buck on this game, but considering this game needs to survive off subscription fees and MTX and that only people who are subscribed can even post here, I would think that this is a very important group to actually listen to to keep the revenue stream going. It's not like you send out any surveys to players or something, so I would think that the forums should be the #1 source of feedback to this game's development, but it often feels like you are just cherry-picking your feedback from parts unknown.

Edited September 23, 2022 by BenKatarn

[DarthEndonae]

I fully agree with keeping polls disabled. Any poll here wouldn't be a representative sample of the playerbase as a whole. Also a lot of people don't seem to understand that the way a question is asked can introduce bias into the results or may not even be a good question for a poll because you're mostly only going to get people's perceptions, and the mob isn't always right.

[JakRoanin]

But how can we upload our screenshots from STEAM on the new forums?

[EricMusco]

Now, I fully expected this answer to come up. But I gotta ask, exactly how you are even gathering feedback and where you are pulling that from? It's been mentioned in the past that you guys still use focus groups when testing out ideas for future content and stuff, and not the actual playerbase, so the fact that you won't allow your playerbase to actually do such a thing as creating polls and voting is a little disingenious when you want to engage more with the community.

 

As you mention, the people here on the forums can be considered the "most engaged" players. Shouldn't that be even more reason see how they react to things and engaging these people more? I understand that probably the biggest majority of players in the game still the "faceless masses" of F2P people who never spent a buck on this game, but considering this game needs to survive off subscription fees and MTX and that only people who are subscribed can even post here, I would think that this is a very important group to actually listen to to keep the revenue stream going. It's not like you send out any surveys to players or something, so I would think that the forums should be the #1 source of feedback to this game's development, but it often feels like you are just cherry-picking your feedback from parts unknown.

 

The forums are the place that we primarily get player feedback from even more so when it comes to PTS. We also gather it from a number of other places both official (social media, content creators) and unofficial (Discord, Reddit, Twitch) but the forums is the place we engage the most.

 

That, of course, is speaking specifically to feedback. Data, design goals, etc. are all a component of our decision making that goes beyond player feedback. These are things are working to be better about communicating as well to help drive better feedback.

 

Circling back to polls. If players like, or do not like something (or both), it is usually pretty apparent from the conversations around it. Polling adds little value from a feedback gathering standpoint since the "data" itself isn't usable to validate it. But on the flipside, forum-goers might take a poll as that data validation, which is only true in a vacuum. (Note from Jackie: That isn't to say that staff won't be using polls to gather snapshot insight. When we do use them for the sake of feedback, they will have a very direct and intended purpose.)

 

As stated above I think we can help here by being better about communicating our intent for things we do and changes we make. Along with being better about communicating what we are doing (or not doing) based on feedback.

 

-eric

[Ambrodel]

These are things are working to be better about communicating as well to help drive better feedback.

 

...

 

As stated above I think we can help here by being better about communicating our intent for things we do and changes we make. Along with being better about communicating what we are doing (or not doing) based on feedback.

 

-eric

 

I'm sorry, but I really don't understand this bit. Better about communicating? What's holding you back? The art of communicating is as simple as..... saying what you think.

 

If you want to tell us your thoughts on a topic, tell us your thoughts. If you want to know what we think about something, ask what we think about something. If you want there to be actual communication between devs and players, with the intention of making things better, communicate with, not just to, your players.

 

And even though I have a job, if you need someone to help you communicate, I am more than willing to help you in that regard.

[Exly]

As stated above I think we can help here by being better about communicating our intent for things we do and changes we make. Along with being better about communicating what we are doing (or not doing) based on feedback.

 

-eric

 

I agree, that would help. Your studio has said this several times in the past and has never done a good job of following through and actually improving your communication.

 

Start being honest and learn to better communicate and maybe someday I will trust you. Until then I remain skeptical.

[phalczen]

Circling back to polls. If players like, or do not like something (or both), it is usually pretty apparent from the conversations around it. Polling adds little value from a feedback gathering standpoint since the "data" itself isn't usable to validate it. But on the flipside, forum-goers might take a poll as that data validation, which is only true in a vacuum. (Note from Jackie: That isn't to say that staff won't be using polls to gather snapshot insight. When we do use them for the sake of feedback, they will have a very direct and intended purpose.)

-eric

 

What about polling on the launcher itself?

[Nee-Elder]

phalczen said:

What about polling on the launcher itself?

 

yep , i mentioned/suggested the same thing buried within my previous bloated reply post on page 2.

 

heck i mean they're testing a NEW launcher coming soon anyways

Edited October 1, 2022 by Nee-Elder
correct page