Bounty Hunter Archive
Thread: Patience is a Virtue
BioEngine wrote:
Go check out the Ranger forums.
For our entire history, we have been organizing our efforts to condense issues and refine the methods which we present them in a meaningful and professional way.
And yet our traps have been bugged for 2 months, and 1/2 of our abilities do not work. Not even a "known issue" statement.
InsomniaxAU wrote:
omg dude it seems to me that u are use to people walking all over u
because thats what SOE are doing currently
remember we pay them our hard earntcashto play
and do u really beleive if we stop hassling them theyll move any faster
i think not and u are a fool to beleive it
- Stop confusing the "developers" (i.e., the people that write the code) with the management that tells them to code "quick and dirty" solutions to problems that don't exist, or that provide some marketing hook antithetical or non-canonical to the SW universe (e.g., as I've said: PC Jedi don't belong in the SW time-frame in which SWG supposedly takes place);
- Accept that a crowd of unruly children, as we have been behaving, can accomplish no more than to have its entire group expelled (i.e., totally ignored, or the game entirely "cancelled" -- de facto through lack of attention to customer service and fixes [justifying account cancellation, and hence resulting in the elimination of profit from SOE's equations], or outright elimination);
- Stop character assassinations such as was done to our sole intermediary between we, the Jedi player base, and the SOE development staff and management. (Do you really think SonGouki could maintain the emotional energy required to "continue the fight" with SOE, while dodging attacks from the very players he/she represented? How willing would you be to help someone who viewed you as the Devil's Own, instead of the hard-working and informative liaison they tried to be?)
- Admit that you will NOT get everything you want, and learn to live with it, especially since what one person thinks may provide that last means to a fulfilling adventure may be the very thing that spoils the adventure for someone else. (I don't understand any more than do many of you the statements to the effect that we who play Jedi characters "ruin" the game for them, when it's more likely such ruination is fostered by the same knee-jerk reactionary patches requested by a group of players unrelated to either Jedi players or those that whine about them.)
I sincerely hope that such is not too much to expect.
JerethBane wrote:
Personally I'd say your big bad management boogey man comes in the form of LucasArts rather than SOE.
LA has a proven track record of coming down hard on its licensees to get the product out according to the calander, rather than according ot the needs of the product.
Rebellion, Force Commander, KOTORII......these titles ring any bells?
But that's anothe rant for another venue, LOL).Message Edited by Atobe on 05-30-2005 06:08 AM
Exterminans77 wrote:
Atobe wrote:
As a paying customer you have every right to complain. And complaining can be effective, case in point the experimentation changes that were proposed about a year ago, the community rallied against it and it was stopped. The Jedi community complained and complained about permadeath and it was rightfully removed. Complaining does work, not all the time (see the cu for example) but it does work.
In general the CU itself has grown on me (when I'm not on my Jedi toon) but the state of the Jedi professuion itself is unforgiveabe. There is no excuse for it. We were told that Publish 9 (remember that one, the Jedi revamp) had balanced Jedi for the CU and the rest of the game needed to balanced. We were told this many times when we complained about our damage output. "Just wait till the CU" the devs told us. Well now its here and Pistoleers do more damage than we do. It is impossible for a solo Padawan to level at an effective rate.
All of this gives a person a right to complain. Will it do any good? Only time will tell, I'm not holding my breath but it sure as hell feels a lot better than biting your tongue and saying"Good job dev team."
And as far as constructive posts goes....
There have been tons of them, and the devs claim they read them. So if you take them at their word they should have all the info in regards to Jedi and the rest of the game. They either choose to fix it or they choose not to. Its out of our hands. One of the reasons Son probably quit, got tired of submitting our problems and not seeing any end results.
The points you make are all valid. The current problems lay squarely at the foot of SOE management. Those of us who work in software development often fall victim to changing requirements stipulated by management/customers when we are completing the implementation or final testing stage. As such we are slaves to the requirement document and must constantly update our designs. This is acceptable generally as software development is a cyclic process but the sheer amount of revision that SWG has had to go through and is still undergoing is far too aggressive. The whole thing smacks of poor design work, inadequate requirements capture and I won't even go into testing.
I agree that antagonising the dev's is not a good idea. We need to highlight problems to them and leave it at that. If the problem is significantly impacting gameplay it will be addressed eventually, it is in the company's interest to do this. Patience is required in these matters. Changes to software are not over night affairs, they need to be designed, implemented and adequately tested (by customers in SOE's case) before being released to the general playing public. If things are really bad and you feel that your problems are not being addressed at all then I suggest withdrawing from the game. It is just that after all... a game.
Hi all,
A couple of general points:
1/ I think the problem with the player Jedi population being so large (if that is indeed the case) is that they are so obvious & visible. By visible I mean you see robed & LS equipped players running around everywhere. This could easily (he says) be rectified by Jedi gaining visibility if they have a LS & Robes equipped within 32m of PC/NPS's, in addition to the usual triggers.
The end result of this is that you just wouldn't see Jedi running around unless they were at or nearly at full template.
2/ The devs are sooooo slow at fixing things. How long have smugglers waited for their revamp? I haven't seen the likes in any other MMORPG. As has been pointed out, probably not the devs fault, they are instructed what to code & in what order.
3/ On a point related to #2, there are very few new areasthathave been added since launch that isn't a part of an addon pack. EQ2 has new dungeons added all the time & it hasn't been out long. EQ2 gets major fixes with far more regularity than SWG. I just wish SWG were the same, rather than the actual "new content" being fixes, & other stuff that should have been in on release.
Mark
Go check out the Ranger forums.
For our entire history, we have been organizing our efforts to condense issues and refine the methods which we present them in a meaningful and professional way.
And yet our traps have been bugged for 2 months, and 1/2 of our abilities do not work. Not even a "known issue" statement.
Grienthumb wrote:
Your totally wrong. Good long original post from the 80% I read.
I like to state things more simply. The jedi forums are a sewer. Dont believe half of it. And take none of it seriously except my posts of course
Message Edited by Grienthumb on 05-29-2005 11:45 PM
"Totally" wrong, eh? I suppose you work for SOE to know with such certainty? No? I thought not.
In any case, thank you so very much for bothering to read as much as 80%. Considering the childish nature of most posters to this forum, I suppose I should consider myself lucky to have been deigned with as much as attention from such an obvious authority as some would show a spec of lint. Ooooohh! I'm still tingling.
Personally I'd say your big bad management boogey man comes in the form of LucasArts rather than SOE.
LA has a proven track record of coming down hard on its licensees to get the product out according to the calander, rather than according ot the needs of the product.
Rebellion, Force Commander, KOTORII......these titles ring any bells?
omg dude it seems to me that u are use to people walking all over u
because thats what SOE are doing currently
remember we pay them our hard earntcashto play
and do u really beleive if we stop hassling them theyll move any faster
i think not and u are a fool to beleive it
jbdotcom wrote:
Moving on is correct, I felt much better after hitting the cancel button on my alt. 3 weeks until my primary gets the same, unless thing dramatically improve.
JB
Message Edited by Atobe on 05-30-2005 05:46 AM
Message Edited by Atobe on 05-30-2005 05:48 AM
Atobe wrote:
How does all the complaining about SWG -- and the Jedi situation -- help?I freely admit: I'm as guilty of complaining aboutthe post-CU SWG situation as anyone else, yet the fact is: all theunfocused complaining in the multiverse is not going to change one damned thing in the minds of those who hold the future of our beloved game in their hands.I can tell you from personal experience (as a commercial software developer with more than 20 years in the business) that "users" (that's us) complaining and whining to the developers (you know: the "them" and "they" as mentioned in so many articles on the SWG fora) does no good whatsoever. All that whining does is create an emotional barrier to the sort of creativity and problem-solving we absolutlely require from the SOE developers.How would you feel if all that you'd worked and slaved over for months was as ridiculed, lambasted and pissed on as we've been doing to SWG before and after the CU? You'd feel bad, you'd feel impugned as a creator, and I guarantee you, you be less willing to expend the effort required to satisfy those who've been bitching at you like we've been doing to "the devs".Except for the Jedi aspect (yes, I'm biased), the far greater majority of the CU has been implemented quite well. It has, and will continue, to improve the overall playability of SWG. Yes, it has bugs. Yes, it needs improvements and changes, even beyond the Jedi-related aspects. And thoseimprovments will come. As must be obvious to anyone: the CU was a MAJOR change to so many of the fundamental aspects of SWG that it may as well have been released as a different game.And let us not forget: the problems resulting from the combat upgrade are the direct and sole responsibility of the SOE management in LA, who not only deemed (as so many other ignoramus management-types have done in years past) that coming to market, in time to achieve some thoroughly unachievalble marketing objective with a piss poor product, was more important to them than building what the designers of the product knew was right, workable (and, for a game, fun). SOE management also forced out many of the very people who could have provided the rational solutions for which we've been begging. (Yes, the SWG developers are people, 98% of whom love this game as much, or more,as you or I.)Case in point: SOE released a reworked (at the behest of management) Combat Upgrade, instead of the original CU vision of the developers, just so it would be in place before the release of a movie unrelated to SWG (except for the commonality of the Star Wars universe). I have seen such stupidty time and time again in my own 20+ year career as a software developer. I'll be the last person on this planet to suggest that marketers are rational, but then again, most consumers aren't rational either (anyone around here remember "pet rocks"?).So, could we all take a step back, and give the overworked (and likely underpaid) developers at SOE a frakkin break?! Personally, I would like to see every one of them given a month's paid vacation in their destination of choice, a sabbatical if you will. And when they come back, the best thing we could do for ourselves as players would be to givethose developersa consistent, rational and sensical list of the "warts" we see in the game, what we would like to see changed and how, and give them a frakkin chance to evaluate and implement fixes tothe problems that we and they both know exist?Those who think that complaining louder and more iracibly than someone else will get more attention than those who speak with reason and patience are very deluded people indeed. In software development, the squeaky wheel does NOT get the grease. With money-makers like EQ and EQ2 to back them up, SOE management doesn't give a rodent's hairy behind what we, the devoted SWG players, think, if all we do is scream and yell like squalling infants. Even if every SWG player cancelled all of their accounts, do you really think SOE will care? Not bloody likely.So, please, let's all take a step back, take a deep breath, and move on. If "moving on" means quitting SWG, so be it. It is a game, after all. And I wish you well in your other adventures. But for me, as of now, moving on means accepting the fact that we've just been through a major upgrade to the software application we've been using. If we want "fixes" that not only address our individual problems, but that don't break the game for everyone else, we've got to give thosepeople in development a chance!
As a paying customer you have every right to complain. And complaining can be effective, case in point the experimentation changes that were proposed about a year ago, the community rallied against it and it was stopped. The Jedi community complained and complained about permadeath and it was rightfully removed. Complaining does work, not all the time (see the cu for example) but it does work.
In general the CU itself has grown on me (when I'm not on my Jedi toon) but the state of the Jedi professuion itself is unforgiveabe. There is no excuse for it. We were told that Publish 9 (remember that one, the Jedi revamp) had balanced Jedi for the CU and the rest of the game needed to balanced. We were told this many times when we complained about our damage output. "Just wait till the CU" the devs told us. Well now its here and Pistoleers do more damage than we do. It is impossible for a solo Padawan to level at an effective rate.
All of this gives a person a right to complain. Will it do any good? Only time will tell, I'm not holding my breath but it sure as hell feels a lot better than biting your tongue and saying"Good job dev team."
And as far as constructive posts goes....
There have been tons of them, and the devs claim they read them. So if you take them at their word they should have all the info in regards to Jedi and the rest of the game. They either choose to fix it or they choose not to. Its out of our hands. One of the reasons Son probably quit, got tired of submitting our problems and not seeing any end results.
Message Edited by Exterminans77 on 05-30-2005 12:56 AM
Message Edited by Exterminans77 on 05-30-2005 12:57 AM