Community Relations Archive

The abomination called Publish 24 is still live, demonstrating your machinations in manipulating gameplay and the customers' satisfaction, via nerfs and intentional bugs, in your misguided attempts to correct fundamental game design challenges.

I have spoken about the repercussions of this latest piece of manipulative garbage (P24) to my server and guild, and today, most of my large guild's members are becoming more entrenched in another game, and that post is recreated here, among other points.

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Oct 19th:

The enormity and scope of ninja nerfing, bugging, and unbalancing is unprecedented in the history of publishes (P24.)

I'm not going to rant, I'm simply going to tell you very seriously that I have never heard my guild of veterans so dissatisfied, so fed up, and so disallusioned with SWG than we are today. The entire discussion, all day long, as various layers of changes with the publish have been revealed, is defeatist and disgust, including closing accounts (from many who have never come close to saying this,) to the merits of other games that we should be playing.

It never fails that when you throw a fast one at the players, its usually just when we're getting satisfied with the status quo, and this time, you've taken the cake and more.

You've done some serious damage here.

Oct 25th:

Good job with Publish 24 *sarcasm*

Unfortunately, the issues with SWG are not rooted in the Professions, so while you continue to micromanage at that level, whichwill never get us anywhere but a dissatisfied customer base, we continue to all suffer the real issues of SWG, and further have added insult to injury with your repeated nerfing, tweaking, up to and including wholesale revamping of our roles that we've built and invested both spirit and time in achieving.

The real issues with the game are not the professions, SOE design leaders. Get some perspective. Stop trying to fix the game by trying to make the Queen and the Rook equal game pieces. Step back. The Queen and the Rook are not supposed to be equal, but when you don't have a game board and game design to put the pieces on, it seems like we're unbalanced.

Multiplayer combat (what we call PvP) is not, should not, just viewing one profession versus another absent a game board, or in our case, absent a battleground, a map, or an instanced event, where we can put our unequal roles to use as members of a diverse and complementary multiplayer (say 5v5 or more) combat, which should be engaging, and offer rewards of various kinds to keep us engaged (even if its a victory count, ranks, and other non-loot rewards; though loot rewards are certainly appropriate, too.)

So stop micromanaging, and thereby nerfing and changing roles, our professions. Our professions are not the issue here. Stop trying to make ranged = melee, and mezzers = tanks, and Jedi = ranged, etc. That is as appropriate as trying to make the Queen = Rook. Give us the gameboard that makes the Queen a part of an overall game.

You folks are very poor project managers. Poor designers. Poor communicators. The players will not continue to take this endless changing of their game, and game degredation. Get off the wrong priorities and quit messing wholesale with professions. Get on to the GCW and the venues of multiplayer combat, where your efforts should strategically be.

At this point, you are failing miserably, with a 2-year track record of progressive failure to serve your customers well; in product and service.

Oct 28th:

I'm still there night after night. The 80-90% of my guildmates are not. I hear what they're saying, I agree with them, and await better management of the SWG project, and the ability to enjoy enhancing and developing my roles in the SWG universe without having SOE undo my efforts with their next publish and their next, because they shoot from the hip and focus on vainly trying to balance profession against profession, instead of dealing with GCW and battleground game design that has us appropriately, as mezzers, tanks, Jedi, ranged, etc. working appropriately together in multiplayer (5v5 or more) combat as it should be. Instead SOE focuses on trying to vainly bring 1v1 balance for duelers, resulting in nerfing, destroying roles, invalidating efforts, credits and time spent, and rewriting the game because they can't plan and design past their noses.

Thanks for trying to invalidate the valid issues of thousands of players, sampled by our server's experience, but I'm not buying.

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On Customer Feedback:

Yes, my accounts appear to beon the SOE/SWG black list.

Because SOE/SWGleaderslack business sense, they don't like constructive or negative feedback, and regardless of the feedback's merit, they shoot the messenger and put outspoken critics on a black list.

So, while every other business is interested in their customers' feedback, good and bad, SOE acts like children and blackballs players who are constructively critical of their communications, project leadership, project management,lack of design strategy, and lack of customer input into early stages of design.

All good.

Havea good day, SOE/SWG and LA producers and leaders. Your destiny is in play, and you write your own with each ad hoc misstep and misled action.

Continue to make business decisions to position the design to your planning, such that it is, with ninja nerfs and profession nerfs at the expense of today's play experience and customer satisfaction. Continue to position the players game experience, destroy efforts and roles, in a cloud of secrecy, so that customers are manipulated into continuing their subscriptions in ignorance rather than making informed decisions and having input into the process.

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In closing:

Mr. McDaniels, Mr. Crosby, Mr. Koster, Mr. Julio Torres, I don't know who is running this show, but the leadership is appalling.

Time to spruce up the resume for the benefit of thousands of players in the community. Time to fall on the sword - or take things in another direction with some real leadership on behalf of the community.

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After taking a new toon thru Legacy to level 64, and another CL80 to CL90, I've concluded that this game is bereft of value, and no MMORPG can survive so many role and economic devestations.

Another day with Publish 24, and no word from SOE/SWG regarding plans or remedies. So what's another day?

Two more veterans gone, gave all their stuff away, three more positioning consolidation of their accounts, and retiring accounts, goods and services. The channels in voice chat are expanding for the other game, the channels for SWG are barren and empty. I'm even hanging out in the other game's chat channel just to hear voices.

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After taking a new toon thru Legacy to level 64, and another CL80 to CL90, I've concluded that this game is bereft of value, and no MMORPG can survive so many role and economic devestations.

True that, but I think the audience for this one is clearly SOE, and trust me, they've read it. The OP is dead on. They took a great game that needed some GCW and combat tweaks, and made it much worse with bugs and nerfs. Not to downplay the bugs issue, its not an easy fix to make the game enjoyable again, there are now very serious issues with the game that make it unenjoyable, unplayable, and various content unaccessable. They really took it down the wrong path, and mademinor problems into a crisis - and after they had made so many improvements, too, they go and botch up the whole game.

The CU wasn't bad, wasn't needed, but wasn't bad, but all the other nerfs and bugs make the game generic or just plain unenjoyable. As the OP said, its not the (combat) professions that's the problem, its the fact that there's no content or design around combat other than pure game mechanics. No reason or reward for getting a group together versus another group. No instance, no event, no timing, no place, no reason, no reward, no badge, no victory counter, no associated rank, no faction points, no loot... nothing to take this game into a combat mode that makes us need to or want to group up with people and make use of a mixed group of professions like tanks, ranged, melee, and even the maligned Jedi profession (which is maligned because it seems overpowered [and not anymore in fact] when just viewed on a profession to profession basis.)

This game is seriously hurting and I'd give it a 3 or 4 out of 10, when we had it up toa 7 and heading in the right direction. They really botched things up now. Publish 24 is a killing blow to the game.

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After taking a new toon thru Legacy to level 64, and another CL80 to CL90, I've concluded that this game is bereft of value, and no MMORPG can survive so many role and economic devestations.