Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Trying to bring a little sanity to a board that is rapidly becoming an un-fun place to be
I obviously can't tackle the negativity here on my own... there is just one of me, and I don't represent enough of the BE community, as a player, to matter I guess
There is a saying, if you can't stand the heat then stay out of the kitchen. When I go into a post which is my opinion I don't start feeling sad of upset when people disagree or generally put up alot of resistance. You came on here as I went into the commando and attempted to pull of the same thing. The difference is that you need hard skin and a solid resolve not to feel linched when people disagree. Voicing your opinion publicly is never easy, it's a risk and you need to ensure your not gonna be bothered should things go wrong. I have a 1 star post on the commando forum for my opinion that the flamer dot is a problem and a 4 star for the post about the purpose of the commandos so that just shows the kind of contrast you can get.
They say one man (or woman) can't make a difference, thats bull**edit**. If you put across a decent argument even if the vocal people disagree some folks who don't post still might, plus it's always heathy to challenge existing preconceptions and beliefs.
Do you represent enough of the BE community? Certainly not, your very much in the minority. Always a dangerous situation when you speak out. As for saying that the players are responsible for the state of the forum at the moment and the interaction with the developers it just shows you haven't been around as long as those of us who remember how things started. The community attitude has drastically changed, the state of the profession and communication has not. That means no matter what we do it doesn't matter to the devs.
Just remember one thing. If a CH screams for attention they get it, if a lesser profession player screams they can be easily ignored. We're a minority profession, we have always needed to scream blue murder to be heard over the usual chatter from the more popular professions. The BE community has tried, we have made the effort. Don't start placing the blame onto your fellow gamers for the developers neglect of us.
Yeah, can't overlook that Tal-N was, for a long long time, the upbeat voice of the forums... much like Traigus is trying to be. They finally disapointed him enough times for him to snap....
Everyone has a point of zero tolerance, Tragius has just started to get involved and as you said is trying to fill the role that I maintained for a good 4 months which is more than most people have beared, many have left. I still remain because somewhere deep down I still have hope although I don't know why. The best description of my current position is outraged and frustrated although I don't intend to just walk away as so many have since I'm determined to see this profession fullfilled to it's maximum potential.. hopefully with my help when the devs start taking feedback again.
With the Cities and Mounts out, a lot of stuff is starting to roll. TH has personally gone to every dev with every top 5 list. He has also shown them every single 'State of the" post (for the devs that don't actually look all the time in these forums). We are soon to get all the feedback we have been craving since beta got too big for the devs to effectively communicate. (If TH doesn't play SWG all weekend
) heh.The devs finally have the time to start addressing the stuff we want as players.
I wish JustG would stop leaving BE off the "to be fixed" lists. The other Tal and I both yelled at TH about that... it was a kick in the head to BE's and a PR mistake from hell. The way these guys organize things, it may be a good thing... since all those things were still in the planning phase it seemed.
Overall things are looking up, specifically. We all have to wait for the official responses to te new 'Top 5' system from TH.. it is making me twitchy... I wanna see the plans for all te professions.
-T
Negativity spawns from the core of our class, cloning, continuing to be broken month after month.
Negativity is that we have basically four creatures that we make for the most part that are useful, while many of the remaining clonescontinue to not only be worse than wild creatures of the same level, but in actuality can not be used at all.
Negativity is that every improvement or fix that we have we haveseen is arguably equally or more benificial to another class (pet stims in factories for creature handlers, tissues for tailors).
Fix cloning, the core of our class,andthe negativity will evaporate. Not trotting out the same vague promise of a fix to be released at an undetermined future time.
I know I'm gonna get flamed for this, but Tal is right. We are doing a good job of making ourselves and each other miserable. We all know the facts:
- The manual sets out a vision for the profession that is not met in game.
- A promised fix has been months in the works and we still don't know when it will get here.
- New content continues to go into the game that we should have a part in but don't.
Does complaining or making demands accomplish anything? Nope. We already know the devs ingnore that kind of behaviour. Instead of getting their attention we just wind up festering in our own little cesspool of anger. I don't say this as a completely innocent party. I was pretty fed up and grumbled quite a bittoo when the last update went in and we got no love, but I got over it when I realized:
- We aren't going to get an answer on timing any time soon.
- There are other things I could be doing that are fun.
- Lots of other professions are broken, so switching professions may not be the answer.
As someone up above noted:
"How many posts have you read where people play alternate characters? "I have a BE that sits on the shelf waiting for the profession to be fixed while I play (enter fun profession here)." You don't see many people saying "my bounty hunter is boring so I play BE since its much more fun." That right there speaks volumes."
For me the alternate character happens to be in an entirely differentMMORPG that has been live overseas for at least a year and has all (or most) ofthe bugs worked out of it. I'm having fun again which is really what counts. Ido check in here from time to time to see what kind of changes have gone in and how they have affected the game. When the majority of the breaks are fixed here I'll come back and give it another try. Until then though, there's no sense in beating my head against the wall.
The bottom line is that no one can steal your joy unless you let them. Forget about the stuff you can't change. Find something you love to do in game or outside of the game and go do it. You'll be glad you did.
Haggis
Heres the thing.. many professions are in the same boat as you... nada, nothing from the devs since beta.
Chefs were left behind until a couple of weeks ago.
And you make a serious logical Fallacy.. You aren't keldarins boss. his priorities are controlld by someone else.
I am willing to bet money that the bol fix and mounts were pushed from way beyond his pay grade, no matter what his personal opinions (he may agree with the changes, I dunno, but am willing to give him benefit of the doubt). Corporate action at its best. Not excuseable by anyone. Not a result of CH's... CH's do not have a magic bell that summons devs.
Overall the devs have dropped so many balls for so many professions, we are standing hip-deep in a ball pit.
All but maybe 5 professions have serious fundimental problems (medic is one of the 5 that works). Some are so seriously broken they have to be rewritten from scratch (DE, Chef).. others have empty/ broken trees (smuggler/ BE)... almost al lte combat classes have 5+ broken specials.... yet nobody heard anything.
The origional correspondent program was an e-mail black hole.
The new one, has taken forever (IMO) to ramp up. here, in the middle of Nov. is the first time, anyone is going to get any answeres besides 'we are looking into it.' It isn't just BE. It is everyone... And it looks that everyone will finally get some feedback soon... and hopefully it will keep good people from quitting. SWG needs to regain player trust... or it will keep Hemmoraging players like AO did...
It took AO a long time to recover.
I nearly quit, like many correspondents have. I may look optamistic here, but I am a very pessamistic person by nature. I'm the guy who expects the worst from people, corporations, and can point out exploits, because I go to the lowest point and work up from there.
I didn't quit, because SWG has 1 more chance to prove to me, it will be a game that I want to play. Issues like kthe BE situation are ar more important to me, then individual fixes. I want the game to be good, not medics to be good.
That's why I'm here. I'd hope that's why all the Correspondents are here. Not for personal profession gain, but to make the best game possible for the most people. The second I think SWG isn't doing that, I'll be the first out the door.
-T
And dont be so sure we arent Keldarins boss. I know I'm taking an extreme here, but guess who's paying for his salary. It aint SOE out of the kindness of their hearts. And the way things are going with SWG losing players because of this type of incompetance (this is a whole nother story for next week though) there will be cutbacks. One person doesnt really mean jack, but I estimated SWG has lost at least 50-60% (next week, I'll explain it all) of their player base and its still shrinking. Not Keldarin's boss, no not directly. The masses are his boss and the masses are speaking with their dollars.
Tilen
Scylla
Traigus this 'shut up and deal with it cause your not alone' approach isn't going to work. Just because someone else is in the same boat doesn't make us feel any better because while it is true there are the chefs and smugglers who are in the same situation the trouble is that they're not right 'next door' to the profession which is recieving the most attention (namely CHs) so we can see they're dealing with something that we're supposed to be part of but are being treaded as if we're seperate.
It's that fact we're sitting here watching changes we're supposed to be part of but we're only getting the occasional glance from the devs which is really what pushed me too far. If it was a case where they were getting around to us eventually I might be more positive but the fact is they're dealing with things which sit right at the very heart of our professions purpose.
Chefs sit next to Doctors and gnash their teeth, every time soneone throws a 2k buff and makes thousands of credits. DE's sit next to WS (who have the most money out of anyone, except Holocron farmers) and seeth with impotency since they have 2 things to sell (craft stations/med modules).
Smugglers are a step ahead of you, they only have 1 dead branch... bad choice on my part.
I can't be trying to make you feel better... I have nothing to make you feel better with. But you aren't alone in your pain. Some of the people here don't have this access to this perspective, and don't know that they [BEs] haven't been singled out for abuse. That's how nearly everyone here behaves, as if there is a vast conspiracy to make all BEs quit the game.
The devs have done a lot of poorly thought out things everywhere. Some of them include BE... that's all.
-T
I've seen several instances where players have done or said negative things. Camping and ninja looting is the example that comes to mind. The devs knew, or really should have known, the kind of circumstances that lead to that kind of behavior, but when anyone calls them on it there's always someone who says "It's not the devs fault, people just have to play nice." Play nice? Holo once compared the SWG population to that of a good size town. Can you imagine such a city that gets along with no laws and no police force because everyone plays nice? No, it's human nature we're dealing with here, multiplied by thousands of players.
How do you prevent BE's from selling bugged clones for outrageous prices? Fix or remove the bugged clones. It's a design issue, because no matter how many times we tell people to play nice some will go right back to exploiting the system.
How do you prevent BE's from profiting from misinformation? Make the information readily available in the form of a complete description or in an easily accessible manual explaining how things are supposed to work. How many of us have sold tissues not knowing exactly how or even if they were going to work? We have to find out all of this stuff by trial and error. Very sloppy implementation there.
So now, in this place where we are meant to discuss the major issues of our class, which definitely do include changes made to other parts of the game, we're supposed to play nice once again? If you noticed, there were few people who supported Tal-N's proposal to replace the dev, though many of us can sympathize with his reason behind bringing it up. I also used to tell people to be patient and remind them that the devs were under a lot of pressure yadda,yadda. But without useful communication from that side there is not a single thing I can tell people, or even myself, that will counteract this tide of negativity.
I wish there was. I wish there was something I could point to that would give hope to those of us who have lost it. If the dev did post and say that our changes would be in Saturday I would cheer, but carefully. How many times do we have to be disappointed before we are allowed to complain about it? And as an earlier post mentioned, if it was going to take this long to fix cloning, why didn't we at least get a band-aid or two? I've been wanting a Tybis of my very own ever since I exploited Yavin 4 for the mask scent scouting xp, yes, I've been a BE that long.
people would not have such strong opinions if there werent something to the class they really enjoyed
for me it is the clones. i dont think anyone expected how much of a success creature handlers would be or how attached people could get to their pets. ive made pets that were gifts for birthdays. i know a number of people who have given up the creature handling class yet still carry around what i made for them on their datapad. it is something a bit more personal than churning out stims so that people can enjoy playing the game the way they want to with so much less downtime. its very different than making components for other crafters to use.
while some may see tremendous negativity i see a great deal of passion on for this game that is being squandered by such poor management of the profession.the time to truly be concerned is when you see indifference.
ummm Tal-N, please get a clue before you try to argue with guesses or lies...
chs get the most attantion - you are right, but only if you take that negative, and then its not CHs that get the attantion, its commandos and bountyhunters that let devs go for a nerf-bat compain...
if you are talking about the changes that are comming.... well.....
they are a minor point compared to the BE-changes - but overall as nice when you consider chs waiting for the new cling system(as everyone in the game that got any pet)
but gues what: those changes where talked about MONTHS ago too...
some minor balancing changes, which were PROMISED, like gurreck level balance after ar2 nerf, or close to promised, like medic healing exp for pets - so chs would have another way then deal with BEs that charges1 credit/ham healing for their petstims