Community Relations Archive

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Tiggs wrote:

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gladiatory2k wrote:
I get the sense that the Friday Feature From a couple weeks ago when they just recopied a FAQ from one of the forums was the low point for Dev communication. That may have caused a meeting or two on seeming lack of involvement by the Dev team. Good to see an improved effort to open up better lines of communication. This is a good step Tiggs!

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Can you elaborate on which Friday feature you are referring to please?

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Guess he means this one

This one.

It's not that it's useless information, it's just that we've come to expect some more interesting "insider information" from the friday features. Player-submitted stuff seems more appropriate for the Tuesday tips.

Although I think that FF was done while you were out on vacation, so we should redirect the lynch mob at Thunderheart.

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Atan wrote:

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Tiggs wrote:

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gladiatory2k wrote:
I get the sense that the Friday Feature From a couple weeks ago when they just recopied a FAQ from one of the forums was the low point for Dev communication. That may have caused a meeting or two on seeming lack of involvement by the Dev team. Good to see an improved effort to open up better lines of communication. This is a good step Tiggs!

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Can you elaborate on which Friday feature you are referring to please?

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Guess he means this one

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Yeah those were pretty stinky Friday Features. It kind of seems they were put together at the last minute because someone forgot to actually right one. A good Friday feature would be maybe something like I don't know, the new FRS...or maybe some insight into a GCW revamp, or even some more astromech stats would suffice.

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Tiggs wrote:

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gladiatory2k wrote:
I get the sense that the Friday Feature From a couple weeks ago when they just recopied a FAQ from one of the forums was the low point for Dev communication. That may have caused a meeting or two on seeming lack of involvement by the Dev team. Good to see an improved effort to open up better lines of communication. This is a good step Tiggs!

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Can you elaborate on which Friday feature you are referring to please?

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my guess is the architect faq by pawlin. pawlin is an awesome guy, but, a FAQ on what housing is isn't really a friday feature in my opinion. considering the game has been out for 2 years.

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Tiggs wrote:

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gladiatory2k wrote:
I get the sense that the Friday Feature From a couple weeks ago when they just recopied a FAQ from one of the forums was the low point for Dev communication. That may have caused a meeting or two on seeming lack of involvement by the Dev team. Good to see an improved effort to open up better lines of communication. This is a good step Tiggs!

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Can you elaborate on which Friday feature you are referring to please?

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the last few have sucked...some have been nothing more then repeats.

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Tiggs wrote:

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gladiatory2k wrote:
I get the sense that the Friday Feature From a couple weeks ago when they just recopied a FAQ from one of the forums was the low point for Dev communication. That may have caused a meeting or two on seeming lack of involvement by the Dev team. Good to see an improved effort to open up better lines of communication. This is a good step Tiggs!

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Can you elaborate on which Friday feature you are referring to please?

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Pick one, Tiggs...Out of the last...year or more, they have mostly been regurgitated info, or nonsensical.

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Tiggs wrote:

We agree with your wants. We are going to be focusing on smaller/cleaner publishes because quality means much more then quantity.

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Good morning community,

The choice of words is reading interesting between the lines.

Lets see:
"We agree" means, there was a dicussion about exactly this at SoEs.

A previous inhousediscussion means, the current way of publishes (much eyecandy in a shiny box, disappointing/nonworking when unwrapped) wasnt working, causing MUCH nervousity in the community, not a good PR anyway.

It must have reached a level where it has become "unstandable" and was to adress.

This is no decision of the Developers but of the current management.

But the management is not on the pulse here, the communication is the key.

So it was obv. the "PRESSURE" from the Devs/Communication passed to the management, causing this DECISION to take place.

I imagine some meeting like
"No Mr Smedley, with all kind respect, but we MUST move away from this PUSH PUSH PUSH PUSH publishes, full of a million additions, all not REALLY tested, becoming a horrible backdraft and eating up OUR manpower to fix them.

The common known internetgamesites slaughter this game since CU, the customers flipping, insulting, herassing us DAILY in the forums, we are called pathetic, we are called idiots, amateurs and whatever.

This is DEMORALISING!

We DO understand the businessmodell of this title, but we will KILL this game if we dont go back to "handsorted fine software work".

We must go back to a HANDFULL additions which we can CONTROL and assure WORKING when published. You pay every of us developers XXX $ a month.

We are NOT effectiv by breaking a mechanism due to the lack of time, needing to FIX it then for the next 7 weeks (like the BE bug). That means, our salary is in effect TRIPPLED - one time to DO some programming, double time to fix it after. That is FAR from "effective" working. And its even FAR from doing a good job.

How good is our job, when we do 20 additions but need (in total) about one year to "post-fix" all bugs we brought in by working in a hassle ?

We cant do new stuff, cant do it WELL when the half staff is working on our mess, cleaning bugs.

So at the end, we havent 20 new funtions WORKING, we have 6 working, 14 broken, 12586 accounts cancelled and 7 from 11 devs fixing it.

But if we add just 3!! new thing per publish (all 2 weeks), but these done WELL - we have more then 50!!! features/additions done in one year, and all working (besides from minor bugs, which are normal in softwareindustrie).

Devs can start concentrating on DEVELOPING (the word DEVELOPER means TO DEVELOPE..they are not called FIXELOPER) again, additions, making SWG a better product, AND EVEN WORK OFF OLD BUGS (which started to happen) becomes FINALLY true this way (cuz manpower will be set free this way).

And sometimes...Tiggs can even amuse the community with comments, which popcorn she is just inhalating.
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This COULD have been a meeting happens just..or simply too much phantasie of a SWG lover (<--me).


And MAYBE the Management started to SEE valid points in that, prooven by the last report from the accountholding

Anyway, the end of the meeting COULD have been like "Make it so", which is why we read quiet more Devspostings again.


COMMUNICATION....is NOT posting ANNOUNCEMENTS (Threadopening), the REAL interessting posts are the ones starting with a RE:

THAT is communication.
Its called "Communication", not "Announcication".


The way is right, GO GO GO Devs.



And since you are bettering it again, Tiggs, i lift your TV-Ban, which mean: SIMSONS FOR YOU AGAIN...YAY !!!

Ok...Se"cks" (<--boardfilter) in the city MAYBE too...i make THIS dependant on the chat-tab bugfix tho.



I agree - the current bug-QA-Dev sytem seems to be ineffectiv.

What do we want ALL at the end?
A fun making, working title, high quality, minor problems, cashcow for SoE, affordable (fee) fun for the customer, happy Devs going home feeling doing a good job blablabla (motivation...important).

The chain:
Bugreport-----QA----------------DEVs
^^^^USER ^^^SILENCE ^^^^not aware


As you can easily see:
QA lacks the knowledge of the DEVELOPERS.
How can a "non professional non-coder" decide if something is working intended or not, where deeper knowledge and TIME is needed to decide this ?

And the QA person isnt AWARE of the gamemechanism like a Dev, how can she/he decide about priority of the issue ?!

What seems low-prio to a QA employee could be MOST annoying to the casual player !

Like you said Tiggs, according the friday feature:
What isnt informativ to ME, might be informative to/for the next one (or so...english isnt my motherlanguage and i recall it from my mind).

The same is valid for QA:
What might seem not important to THEM, might be annoy the community to HELL.

I can easily see it:
What important is the chat-tab bug when essential things like TISUES not working ?

That is only the HALF truth...cuz not every1 is a BE/Chef/Tailor.

A Swordsman will give a wet one on the BE bug.
Og course its smallminded, finally he is ALSO using the food from chefs which need BE enhancer.

But what he can SEE/TOUCH/FEEL is...the chattabs everytime logging in. And flipping out everytime.

THATS why the boards are full with it. It might be not a "gamebreakingbug", but its a "loud" PR-effective bug.

YOu see what i mean ?
There are different prioritys in "bug-weighting".

This system could be reworked to better the productstate easily and overall.

Of course, NO company likes to "reveal" problems of products to the public.

But one second...let us REALLY think about something for a short moment:
IS THIS TRUE ?
Does the public REALLY DONT KNOW about the current state ?

I think, thats the illusion...the wrong one.

See, the boards are FULL FULL FULL with ALL kind of problems. Everyone (whith a subscription) can see it.

Soo....what do we miss ?
Right...a QA BOARD !!
THERE IS NON !

I DEADLY SERIOUSLY suggest an OPEN BUGTRACKER.
This bugtracker should contain all known bugs.

Only the effect that every1 can SEE if a bug is on this list, makes many feeling MUCH better about it and its even avoiding a little amount of re-/bug report (Filtering THEM out means: Manpower..money..you get the idea)

It should ALSO contain a way to REPORT bugs (maybe by correspondents-only to make sure, its not spammed with NON-Bugs (technical issues or NICE-TO-HAVE etc).

Then (and THIS is the key), every bug has a RATING.
Users can RATE (once per account), how IMPORTANT the bug is.

Why letting a QA decide over YOUR work and OUR experience, when you (Devs) and me (all player) can do this without anymore work but much better ?

Take it into the next meeting plz, all for the sake of the title...


Thank you (whoever arrived finally at this line) for reading this long post - you are really interested in SWG


Disclaimer:
Wrong spelling, grammar, order of words etc. are INTENDED to make it obv that the world is NOT ending after the US-Boarderline (im from Europe)

You all have a great day !

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Tiggs wrote:

There are many people who did not know about those guides which is why they are featured and will continue to be featured. People invested time to gather the information and create those documents. Give them credit where credit is due please.

There is no written rule on what a Friday feature has to be. Just because it isn't informative to you, doesn't mean it isn't informative to someone else.

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I think the "Player Guide" Friday Features have been excellent. I spend alot of time helping in the various support forums here and everyday I see questions about combat, housing and guilds. Now there is an official page I can point those people to that will answer their question and any others they might have on the subject aswell as giving them some useful tips and info.
Alot of you vet players questions the usefulness of those guides but trying asking some of the new players that have joined us recently.

Now that we have Tiggs and TH in here talking why not use this to benefit us and the game instead of attacking them over things that have been done in the past?

They are trying to keep the game more interesting by coming out with new things...problem is they aren't getting as many new players and loseing more and more older players because they are giving us more bugs. As everyone always says listen to the players and fix the old bugs before introducing new bugs....bh hunting jedi on kashyyk....y-8 mission....just to name a few of the ones that tick most people off

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Tiggs wrote:

There are many people who did not know about those guides which is why they are featured and will continue to be featured. People invested time to gather the information and create those documents. Give them credit where credit is due please.

There is no written rule on what a Friday feature has to be. Just because it isn't informative to you, doesn't mean it isn't informative to someone else.

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Do you have no grasp at all about what the community expects from you based on previous posting history and track record? It can't be that simple, but I regularly get that feeling... vet rewards, friday features, profession revamps, etc. etc... It just seems that we're on totally different galaxies sometimes... more times everyday