An update on the development of SWTOR

[LJ_Gibbs]

1 hour ago, akdonkey said:

It really is. The play how you want was the best gearing system for any MMO. If you say it was not then you did not understand how it worked.  I had many alts geared and had reached the point I was getting other gear sets for appearance.

 

But... but... you don't NEED that gear.  Just as the NiM people.

[Exly]

29 minutes ago, Traceguy said:

Keith said it. Nothing is changing for us in this transition.  

https://forums.swtor.com/topic/930077-follow-up-on-swtor-development-update

Issues like this that make me less than enthusiastic about the coming studio change.  Some things need to change, but if nothing is going to change, then how can I look at that as a good thing.

[Traceguy]

47 minutes ago, Exly said:

 how can I look at that as a good thing.

1st of all, you're not supposed to. The point is that this isn't a bad thing. You thought this was for you?

2nd of all, Keith, the Lead Director of SWTOR said himself that under Broadsword, the SWTOR devs will have more creative freedom than Bioware gave them. Do with that info as you want.

Edited June 29, 2023 by Traceguy

[krackcommando]

On 6/22/2023 at 1:35 PM, xxSHOONYxx said:

DvL was just something they put up together when they realized that when you create an expansion with only story content people do not play it, so to keep people logging and playing they made people do the whole game again, the 8 class stories, all the fps and so on. 
Recurring issue that keeps happening, thinking making people play old content is actual "content", because they wasted all their budget on story and VA.

^this. can't emphasize this enough. the cut scenes are amazing. and the 1.x FPs were really great (choices). but doing that xpack after xpack with lesser quality and sacrificing any NEW end game content is just...horrible.

[krackcommando]

On 6/23/2023 at 3:31 AM, TrixxieTriss said:

I’m not trying to be bitter, but they have lied a few times over the years. Wether directly on the forums, on podcasts, or other social media. 

But for me the worst lie they perpetuate was one of omission when they moved the west coast server to east coast & didn’t tell us until players confronted them about the excess lag after the move. I still haven’t forgiven them for that because they haven’t once apologised to the west coast players or those in the APAC region for the deception. 

how is that your big beef? shouldn't all of 7.x come in before that? like...dropping a 10th anniversary xpack with virtually no content. promising great things for pvp in 7.2 and stringing players along just to kill rated and raise the premade cap to a full 8m? or how about even going back to the disintegration of rated WZs only after everyone paid to transfer to consolidated RWZ servers. lies? eh. but the absolute seediest, dirty, disingenuous sheeit any cutthroat business ever did with its customer base.

[septru]

 

1 hour ago, Traceguy said:

2nd of all, Keith, the Lead Director of SWTOR said himself that under Broadsword, the SWTOR devs will have more creative freedom than Bioware gave them. 

What does creative freedom mean outside of a bunch of a great buzz word? Outside of resource reinvestment I have no clue what "creative freedom" means. 

[krackcommando]

On 6/23/2023 at 12:52 PM, black_pyros said:

I am happy for you, Prum but just in case you are interested in a productive discussion rather than this*, I want to ask which one of the warzones you find more tactical than Odessen and why? I find most maps mostly about go cap and hold at least 2 out of 3 of these stable nodes. Some of them add some little complexity like orange mods + points on kills in Yavin over Alderaan (and btw masses fail to use mods there, even when it's only one type instead of four), but it's nothing close to the variety of Odessen. AH is another example of one of the more tactical maps, probably a second one to the Odessen.

*In case you are not, just ignore this post, please.

i haven't gotten to his response, but hands down the best "tactical" WZs are/were NC and HB (excepting quesh, which is easily the worst of all WZs). NC objectives are not a single channel. NC games can go from 1% to 100% to 1% to 0%. there's always a game to play (as opposed to every other node cap map). it takes actual strategy to cap with coordinated use of cc.

HB with an actual team (and before BW broke every WZ with every class having a reflect and crazy speed/teleport/leap abilities, was hands down the most exciting/dynamic map in the game. also one in which a team could come back down 0-5.

OPG, by contrast, is horrible. first, it was never played in rated rotation, which means it was never played by teams as teams. the random nature of the map spawns turns the node captures in to pure luck (if you're close) or bad luck (if you're on the other side of the map). that's not adaptability. that's pure chance nonsense. but to the more important point, no WZ ever consists of 8 (or even 5) players playing together to win. so throwing a bunch of randoms onto a map the separates everyone all over the place just makes it pointless and very difficult to work with the bots and DMers on your team. at least in the other node cap maps, if you have a 2-4m DM squad on your team, you could work with them based on their tendancies. in OPG, there's no tendancies. there's no way to cap and hold behind them or anything. it's just 8 mice running around a maze. honestly. what game are YOU playing that makes this a good map? what opponents have you defeated - as a team - that gives you such great satisfaction by winning on that map?

[krackcommando]

On 6/24/2023 at 12:42 PM, septru said:

Optimism or not, the game has been and is already dead. Maybe you're happy with the current state of the game and hopeful that the BioWare dev team can move to Broadsword to continue this status quo of mediocrity. But I'm not. These are the same devs that killed the game once already. 

^he's not wrong.

[septru]

31 minutes ago, krackcommando said:

how is that your big beef?

This isn't my fight, but....

 

If I was APAC and BioWare removed the dedicated APAC servers without a heads up, warning, or acknowledgement of any kind  where my ping was ~20ms and replaced it with clearly inferior US based server where my ping is ~200 or higher and try to pretend like it was anywhere as good as before, I would hold a really big grudge too. Not only was this move a giant middle finger to the APAC community, but BioWare's continued silence on an issue instead of showing any remorse is just more salt on the wound. 

 

It's almost like when BioWare removed ranked PvP flags without any heads up, warning, or acknowledgement of any kind from players that spent over a year of hard work earning (unlike the current bull- participation rewards that BioWare tries to pretend are hard earned) and replaced it with clearly inferior decorations. But what do I know? The ranked community was clearly the devil's gift from hell in the form of a giant cesspool of toxic uncultured demons who deserved everything they got. Just like the APAC community clearly deserved to play with 200 ping. 🤡

Edited June 29, 2023 by septru

[krackcommando]

21 minutes ago, septru said:

It's almost like when BioWare removed ranked PvP flags without any heads up, warning, or acknowledgement of any kind from players that spent over a year of hard work earning

the flags again? why do you care about the flags? they never should have existed. their sole purpose is to troll other players. and quite frankly, I'd much rather sport the flair. with the flair, those flags are meaningless as bragging symbols. but they're huge troll tools. iunno what you did with those flags. but they're pure troll. they're as bad as vote to kick. blame the dozens of others who ran around flagging ppl just to try to anger them. I'll never understand why any of this garbage is allowed in a pvp instance (trees, flags, etc.). you cannot even *** a swear word on the game's posting board w/o incurring infraction points but you can do that crap to ppl in game? just...wow.

edit: careful. don't mention ping. she might take it as a personal attack and block you. (despite my having said I wouldn't play with a ping to AU if that's where my match's virtual server was hosted).

Edited June 29, 2023 by krackcommando

[Char_Ell]

27 minutes ago, septru said:

If I was APAC and BioWare removed the dedicated APAC servers without a heads up, warning, or acknowledgement of any kind  where my ping was ~20ms and replaced it with clearly inferior US based server where my ping is ~200 or higher and try to pretend like it was anywhere as good as before, I would hold a really big grudge too. Not only was this move a giant middle finger to the APAC community, but BioWare's continued silence on an issue instead of showing any remorse is just more salt on the wound. 

This is false and wasn't the server transition that TrixieTriss referred to.  Plenty of warning was given when SWTOR closed the APAC servers in 2013.

2013 March 25 - Eric Musco announced the three APAC servers will be merged into North American servers

2013 August 13 - APAC servers merged into North American servers

TrixieTriss refers to the 2017 server merge where BioWare did not notify SWTOR players in advance that NA West servers physically located on U.S. west coast, the servers with the lowest latency for APAC players and thus generally preferred by APAC players, would be moving to east coast data center until after they brought the servers up on the day the transition occurred.  This is what TrixieTriss refers to and won't forgive them for.  And truth be told I'm still irritated by how that was handled as well.

[septru]

33 minutes ago, Char_Ell said:

This is false

You're right. I confused the merges. My mistake. My point still stands though. They still have yet to admit that SS is located on the East Coast

 

1 hour ago, krackcommando said:

the flags again? why do you care about the flags? they never should have existed.

It simply doesn't matter whether or not they should have existed. BioWare promised a reward. Some players worked hard for an entire year for the sole purpose of earning that reward. And BioWare later took that reward away from the players who earned it. It's a giant middle finger to every player that put in time, effort, and money to earn that reward. What's worse is that they did it with no warning, heads up, or acknowledgement. Just like the east coast/west coast servers, BioWare  to this day has yet to make one comment on this. 

 

So maybe this is why I'm so skeptical that the same exact dev team at a new studio is going to somehow learn from their mistakes and stop flipping off entire parts of the community with giant middle fingers, when they've literally been doing it for years. 

. 

 

 

Edited June 29, 2023 by septru

[lukeisjedi]

Ive never understood the hate and anger on these forums. I've played off and on since launch and I can see some of the complaints but overall the game is still very good and fun. I do ops, story and flashpoints and only do not pvp. Imo the game is still going strong and imo they have not lied to us. I look forward to the game continuing.

[krackcommando]

5 minutes ago, septru said:

You're right. I confused the merges. My mistake. My point still stands though. They still have yet to admit that SS is located on the East Coast

huh. I thought they were both in TX.

6 minutes ago, septru said:

It simply doesn't matter whether or not they should have existed. BioWare promised a reward. Some players worked hard for a entire year for the sole purpose of earning that reward. And BioWare later took that reward away from the players who earned it. What's worse is that they did it with no warning, heads up, or acknowledgement that they replaced that reward with a clearly inferior substitute. 

oh. it definitely does matter. they needed to go. what was the replacement? (my account that had flags was deleted)

the fact that ppl still plant stuff just to try to piss on and anger dead ppl though is bad. it's how ppl like moophy are made. piss someone off enough, and if they cannot best you, they'll do w/e they can to hurt you. hell. I would. it's like the half dozen ppl who would throw on nikana over the course of a week b/c nikana. 😄

[lukeisjedi]

1 hour ago, krackcommando said:

^he's not wrong.

Yes he is. The game is far from dead.

[SteveTheCynic]

39 minutes ago, Char_Ell said:

TrixieTriss refers to the 2017 server merge where BioWare did not notify SWTOR players in advance that NA West servers physically located on U.S. west coast, the servers with the lowest latency for APAC players and thus generally preferred by APAC players, would be moving to east coast data center until after they brought the servers up on the day the transition occurred.  This is what TrixieTriss refers to and won't forgive them for.  And truth be told I'm still irritated by how that was handled as well.

Your analysis isn't, strictly speaking, correct either.  The datacentres were merged some time (not much, but not zero either) before the servers were merged.  (They upgraded the server hardware and, without having previously mentioned it, also moved the west coast datacentre to the east coast, then a bit later they merged the various as-seen-by-the-players servers(1).

(1) It was a clear hint that a "server", as shown by the game (Mantle of the Force, Hot Prospect Satele Shan, The Leviathan, etc.) is in fact not a server in the "single physical computer that you could buy from Dell or whomever" sense.

[krackcommando]

17 minutes ago, lukeisjedi said:

Yes he is. The game is far from dead.

cute selective quoting. he's not wrong:

1 hour ago, krackcommando said:

Maybe you're happy with the current state of the game and hopeful that the BioWare dev team can move to Broadsword to continue this status quo of mediocrity. But I'm not. These are the same devs that killed the game once already. 

maybe YOU (lukeisjedi) are happy with the current state of the game or are hopeful that the same BW dev team (at half capacity) can improve on a game mired by bad and indecisive...seemingly schizophrenic design decisions, but. I. am. not. so no. he's not wrong. but sure. any game can hobble along. this game has been hobbling along for years on the SW IP. So has LotR Online. /shrug

edit: not sure why that got labeled as my quote. I quoted it from septru's post. but w/e. these new boards are good and bad at the same time. not gonna bother fixing.

Edited June 29, 2023 by krackcommando

[Char_Ell]

33 minutes ago, SteveTheCynic said:

Your analysis isn't, strictly speaking, correct either.  The datacentres were merged some time (not much, but not zero either) before the servers were merged.  (They upgraded the server hardware and, without having previously mentioned it, also moved the west coast datacentre to the east coast, then a bit later they merged the various as-seen-by-the-players servers(1).

Someone else that gets into the nitty gritty as well.  Yes, it's as you say but no, I did not specify that level of detail as the move of the pre-merger servers from west coast to east coast and the subsequent merger of those servers into the current five servers was all part of the 2017 server merge project.

[LJ_Gibbs]

5 hours ago, Traceguy said:

1st of all, you're not supposed to. The point is that this isn't a bad thing. You thought this was for you?

2nd of all, Keith, the Lead Director of SWTOR said himself that under Broadsword, the SWTOR devs will have more creative freedom than Bioware gave them. Do with that info as you want.

Oh... you poor soul.  Believing everything that the head of dying game says. 

[LJ_Gibbs]

1 hour ago, lukeisjedi said:

Ive never understood the hate and anger on these forums. I've played off and on since launch and I can see some of the complaints but overall the game is still very good and fun. I do ops, story and flashpoints and only do not pvp. Imo the game is still going strong and imo they have not lied to us. I look forward to the game continuing.

1.  Old game is old.

2.  Promises hardly ever kept, if at all.

3.  Promising so much, but giving very little.

[LJ_Gibbs]

1 hour ago, krackcommando said:

 can improve on a game mired by bad and indecisive...seemingly schizophrenic design decisions,

"We have too many currencies"

.. proceeds to introduce 7 more new ones.

[JakRoanin]

They just axed one of the currencies, I think that time will tell. All I can say is that repeating the same things over and over help nobody, especially if its just saying "The game is dead" it isn't. How do I know? I can still log in!

Can things be done better? YES! That Onderon bug is pissing me off.

Are the gearing currencies still discombobulated? YES! Seriously, Up the Tech Frags and stop dropping Ops and WZ currencies in open world.

But on the positive side, the upgrades to the 64 bit, and the ones still to come make the game run better. This is good.

The story is being developed by passionate writers who love their characters. That's excellent!

HOWEVER- The pacing is off because of the update schedule. This is not good.

BUT- Now that everything is moving to Broadsword its entirely possible 2024 will see a dramatic reshuffle. If things aren't better by next summer then I fear the doom and gloom might justified.

[OlBuzzard]

1 hour ago, JakRoanin said:

[/snip-snip-snip]

BUT- Now that everything is moving to Broadsword its entirely possible 2024 will see a dramatic reshuffle. If things aren't better by next summer then I fear the doom and gloom might justified.

IMO ... that just depends on just how much action is taken to support the talk.

As for currencies ... maybe they should take the nod from Disney ... Then they could tell people to put their money where their MOUSE IS.

😇

[JakRoanin]

Well, I believe it's reasonable to give a grace period while the staff transition and move to new offices, I mean this is a luxury product and real life is real life. These people are making a huge personal adjustment as well. There's going to be kinks and growing pains. It is what it is. And while we might be annoyed about bugs and currencies, and not enough content. They'll have to adjust to the new structure before they can start developing more. The new story will probably start around Thanksgiving/Christmas, and then they'll need to start walking the walk instead of mumbling the talk. 

[OlBuzzard]

5 minutes ago, JakRoanin said:

Well, I believe it's reasonable to give a grace period while the staff transition and move to new offices, I mean this is a luxury product and real life is real life. These people are making a huge personal adjustment as well. There's going to be kinks and growing pains. It is what it is. And while we might be annoyed about bugs and currencies, and not enough content. They'll have to adjust to the new structure before they can start developing more. The new story will probably start around Thanksgiving/Christmas, and then they'll need to start walking the walk instead of mumbling the talk. 

You could be right.  I'm just not so sure how many will be willing to wait essentially until next year to see things really start rolling again.

The other side of this could easily be that a number of key people knew that this was coming months ago ... and have already started making changes so that when the transition began it might help to expedite a few things.  There are always surprises (more like hick-ups) in the process when making this sort of changeover.

I myself will simply wait.  I have some key things that if they remain status quo ...  I'm just not going to continue to hold out any longer.  Sure this is Star Wars.  And yes I do enjoy a lot of the game.  But there is so much more available elsewhere right now!  Yes, there is a lot that has been done correctly ... in the past.  There are also dozens of things which continue to overshadow the good intentions.  The next GS should give me a good snapshot of their new direction.