Community Relations Archive
Thread: SWG Developers: Plese read and forward.
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Homper
Wed Oct 12, 2005 12:01 pm
#1
[Note: A variation of this letter has been submitted to Lucas Arts for consideration.]
Concerning the Combat Upgrade, Flowof Informationand continued tweaking of professions.
Dear developers,
Its no secret that some, if not most of the original development team has departed SWG development to seek opportunities elsewhere. (Mainly, that east coast company.)
I write this to you as a concerned and loyal user of your product. I can honestly say that many in my community (Eclipse) believe as I do on what I am going to say. I will wager and say that the same is true for many other server communities.We realize that the combat upgrade, when published, was still a work-in-progress which would see tweaks and enhancements as time went by. This is what we were told.
However, many within our various communities fail to see the purpose or drive behind the decisions being made regarding details of this product we all love. Because of our failure to understand, you have many people who depart feeling bitter and disapointed about your product. The quickest and best way for you tostand and hold against this, is for you to speak.
As a business admin and human resoursemanagement major who graduated with honors, even I fail to understandwhy you are not more vocal, much more, why thereis silence and veiled responses to very important questions that we continually ask. The only logical conclusion we can draw is that SWG is being used and abused as a cash cow, riding on the high waves of the Star Wars stories, books and films. While monetary gain is obviously why you are in business, I caution you to consider a few simple facts.:
You have many up and coming competitors who would love to steal a piece of the pie. They agressively research SWG's flaws and capitalize on them with aggressive marketing techniques.
You must realize that you have the greatest mound of gold in your hands the world will ever see in a product of this genre. That being, starwars. It is a house hold name. Everyone knows who the famous characters are. We all know the music by heart and many probably can sing the tunes without even a thought. The same can not be said for products such as World of Warcraft. A Blizzard Entertainment Game, City of Heroes or Guild Wars, DDO. The list goes on and on. Because you have such a powerful theme behind your product, you will naturally hold the most loyal customers until the bitter end. But why only hold the most loyal? Why not take them all and boost your profit margins through the roof by simply communicating, and explaining what you are doing?
A simple letter issued quarterly can solve 90% of your community problems. A staff of 3-4 people can be hired once their positions are created. Their soul purpose is to garner information from the various departments that develop SWG. They also get the hottest concerns from your various communities. Once this is done, asimple news letter is published once every three months. I can tell you right now, I have lost well over50 online friends that I met through your product because they did not get any kind of information. My presence in your product, (my character) is in contact with well over 500 people who have voiced such a concern. I have asked them all (truly) if they would stay longer or feel a greater sense of loyalty if there was a better way of distributing information. I can honestly tell you, that 91% of the people I held an impromptu meeting with said just that. The rest were simply fed up with the persistant bugs and what they refer to as Nerfs, which I will describe next.
A nerf can be a subtle, or even a drastic change to the way we interact with our virtual environment or how our character's abilities are managed. With the constant changes, it is nearly impossible to figure out what now works, and what doesn't. I will use my character as an example of this. My character is a Master Defender. This title is defined as a Jedi character whose role (according to your flowchart) is to be a tank. A tank is defined as a character who can absorb an extreme amount of damage output from its opponents. When I interact with the game's environment, traveling with members of my player association, I always serve the role of Tank. With the proposed changes to Master Defenders, they will no longer be an effective tank. Theartificial intelligencewill lose its aggressive stance towards the character as soon as the said character activates its alleged most powerful ability, Avoid Incapacitation.
This ability was already nerfed to the point that it does not deserve to be called a Master Defender ability. Currently, it is only accessible in the Master Defender ability box. This is box that required over 15 million Jedi experience points to reach, not counting all the points needed to become a Jedi skill enabled character, not to mention the time invested.This proposed change will effectively stop a character with simular skillsets from being an effective tank in high end interaction of your product. Now lets face it, 90% of what you're doing is high end content, such as the Avatar Quest, Corellian Corvette and the like.I can go on for many more paragraphs (Especially concerning the Galactic Civil War)and examples. I will leave you to your sensitivity and experience to sift through the good and bad Information.
Developers, These wishy-washy changes are truly disheartening to your player base. You have millions upon millions of posts giving feedbackon these forums crying out tobe heard. Please read them. Act upon what makes sense. If not, make a statement as to the direction you are going. Please, for the love of your product, say something. Your Developer and Community relations trackers are often outdated, speak in riddles or vieled answers that leave your customers with more questions.
Sure, there will always be people who rant and rave for no purpose other then to rant and rave. Again,I will leave you to your sensitivityand understanding of forums such as these to sift through the nonsense.When you have such a great request for information as you do now, I believe it is in this product's best interest for there to be some kind, any kind of feedback from your community relations managers. Naturally, they can not tell us anything unless they themselves are aware of kept abreast of your developments.
Personally, I would love to sit in on a few of your board and development meetings. I would love to be a guest speaker to such a meeting and would take a week's vacation to do so at my own expense. (since I have it coming anyways.) You need to listen to feedback of people who care about your product.
You customers need you to speak. There is no other way to say this, but they needto hear your voice, read your words andbe assured that you give a damn. They need to know what purpose and direction isbehind the decisions you're making. The best way I can explain thissense of urgency for information is to compare the pulse of the players to a company's stockholders. Naturally, a company wants to keep its stock holders completely up to date on what they're doing and why. If not, if management is making radical decisions that completely change what once was, company X in our example will be lost. Stockholders (players) will flee by the dozens only to finda company (game) they percieve as being more stable and informative.
Its easy for you to simply execute what you think is best and then rely on the community to figure it out. I can tell you now, that this is not entirely the case for most.Recently, one of your community relations contacts stated that the next few publishes would be bug fixes for this product. While an honorable attempt, we still have bugs that have lasted since launch. Your community simply does not undertand why this is the case. Perhaps we are wrong? If so, tell us your plan for the future of this product.
To conclude, your customers demand to know your direction and plan. You need to tell them, or you will ultimately lose them by the hundreds. Explore the content of your game. Feel howempty it feels compared to this time last year. Even thislast summer was a far cry fromsummer 2004.There are issues on the table that have long been waiting answers. Capital ships? All things Jedi related? A viable and effective GCW? Persistant bugs? The purpose of so many changes? What is your plan?
Will there be capital ships or not? If no, then tell us so we can stop hoping.Will the Jedi professions ever be balanced? The FRS? Able to obtain the primary component for a Jedi's one and only weapon? Viable pearls? A fix to the various bugs involving bases? Turret exploits? A more meaningful planetary scoring system? The slide bugs? Can not knock down recovery while knocked down bugs? The list goes on and on.
Answers, we want meaningful and detailed answers. Not, "We are aware of this and in the meantime we're working on other things." What are you working on?
Answers are the key.
Respectfully submitted,
Visionelle of the Eclipse Server.
P.S. I will be glad to provide any feedback or a fax / emailed copy of my list of 500+ players. I will also gladly accept any private correspondence.
Message Edited by Homper on 10-12-2005 04:34 AM
exileone
Wed Oct 12, 2005 9:25 pm
#2
It's been ages since I've read a post worth responding to on these forums.
Bravo. I couldn't agree more.
I myself would be extremely interested in seeing a poll of the community, listing competing games that are due for release, and which ones they would be interested in playing. Show us you aren't afraid of a little friendly competition, because I assure you, this game has, and always has had, the potential to be the best MMO on the market. Period.
With the combat upgrade, it's obvious that you guys at SOE are paying close attention to the competition and aremaking changes to the game according to what they see in other games (an excellent policy, go with what works), or at the very least, moving the game in the direction of current MMO trends (also a good policy). If only you'd do what most other gamesseem to bedoing so well: listening to their player base, and correcting problems as quickly as they possibly can.
I've had many friends leave Galaxies to play other MMO's that are currently on the market, ones that are better managed, but offer half or less what SWG has to offer in terms of freedom. Here, we can choose to do whatever we want with our characters, and move in nearly any direction that we choose.
True, the community seems to be incredibly vocal about things that don't go their way in regard to their chosen professional skill set, dispite the fact that they have made these choices freely. But that alone speaks to the desire of the player to continue to play the game and to see it improve.
It's been very clear to me that when the Developing team and the community relations advocates have communicate clearly with the community, and have added elements to the game that the playerbase has wanted (or something that they didn't even know they wanted until it was announced) the developershave beenpraised for their work. But when the developers spring something on the player base that they weren't informed of, and never asked for, then there is nothing but hate and ranting on the forums.
I'm not saying you should give us everything that we ask for. Not in the least. Just let us know what you are doing before you spring it on us, is all that most of us ask for.
I'm not saying you should give us everything that we ask for. Not in the least. Just let us know what you are doing before you spring it on us, is all that most of us ask for.
I'll give you the prime example: Trials of Obi-Wan.
Nearly every post revolving around it when it was first announced was full of "What? Why? When did we ask for that?" sort of shock and surprise from the community. I personally reacted the sameway (though I wasn't as open and vocal about itas most were on the forums). After some thought,the idea started to sound intriguing to me. Once I got into the betaand I tried it out, I can honestly say that it's the most fun I've had in the game in ages and I'm committed to purchasing this expansion. In fact, it convinced me to finally break down and purchase the Rage of the Wookiees expansion as well. It may have well kept me from quiting the game entirely.
Nearly every post revolving around it when it was first announced was full of "What? Why? When did we ask for that?" sort of shock and surprise from the community. I personally reacted the sameway (though I wasn't as open and vocal about itas most were on the forums). After some thought,the idea started to sound intriguing to me. Once I got into the betaand I tried it out, I can honestly say that it's the most fun I've had in the game in ages and I'm committed to purchasing this expansion. In fact, it convinced me to finally break down and purchase the Rage of the Wookiees expansion as well. It may have well kept me from quiting the game entirely.
That's a clear case of something that I didn't know I wanted. But you gave me enough time to digest the information, decide if I was comfortable with this unexpected direction that the game was taking, and then to decide for myself. Again...you gave me the choice, and I thank you for that.
A little simple communication goes a long way.
Anyhow, thanks for a great post. You got my support.
OldManDog
Thu Oct 13, 2005 4:26 pm
#3
In your whole letter, the thing that stands out the most, to me is this line here:
"its alleged most powerful ability, Avoid Incapacitation."
That being said, is your point of view, and I to point it out, but if you look at Master Light Sabers, The actual block, You will see Saber Dervish. It is not a Master LightSaberists "Most Powerful Ability", unless the person who is looking at it is saying, In My Opinion, it comes from the master block so therefor must be my "best" "goto" ability.
which is not the case.
"its alleged most powerful ability, Avoid Incapacitation."
That being said, is your point of view, and I to point it out, but if you look at Master Light Sabers, The actual block, You will see Saber Dervish. It is not a Master LightSaberists "Most Powerful Ability", unless the person who is looking at it is saying, In My Opinion, it comes from the master block so therefor must be my "best" "goto" ability.
which is not the case.
Klinsek
Mon Oct 17, 2005 7:55 pm
#6
Great post. Sums up my own views and beliefs quite well.
I have always had more faith in the franchise rather than SOE's ability to carry it through. I always figured, "They simply can't let a Star Wars title this big remain in disarray much longer. One day this game will be everything I hoped." Well, here it is 2+ years later and I honestly don't know what to think anymore. My hope has been replaced by fear. Fear that the game is going belly up and all the free time and money I have handed over willingly to SOE will be in vain.
Sadly, constructive posts like this always fall on deaf ears around here. Hopefully someone at LA will catch it and get it to the right hands. It is pretty apparent at this stage of the game that SOE has lost sight of things and needs some helping guidance. If they feel they haven't, they are certainly doing a terrible job of conveying that message to the customer base. On the surface it seems they are completly lost and without direction.
Someone, anyone.. please save our game and bring it to it's full potential.
I have always had more faith in the franchise rather than SOE's ability to carry it through. I always figured, "They simply can't let a Star Wars title this big remain in disarray much longer. One day this game will be everything I hoped." Well, here it is 2+ years later and I honestly don't know what to think anymore. My hope has been replaced by fear. Fear that the game is going belly up and all the free time and money I have handed over willingly to SOE will be in vain.
Sadly, constructive posts like this always fall on deaf ears around here. Hopefully someone at LA will catch it and get it to the right hands. It is pretty apparent at this stage of the game that SOE has lost sight of things and needs some helping guidance. If they feel they haven't, they are certainly doing a terrible job of conveying that message to the customer base. On the surface it seems they are completly lost and without direction.
Someone, anyone.. please save our game and bring it to it's full potential.
eadthem
Tue Oct 18, 2005 7:09 pm
#8
You just said the exact prob with Sony?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com
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Now I bet we will never see anyone form Sony post in thisthey could never agree/admit they ever mad a mistake (the combat upgrade)
Maby I missed it but you forgot lying.
I recall them saying the combat upgrade was gona speed up combat
And now no combat quarry even slower cool down action delays
And all combat professions have nearly same damage and speed TK is just about as slow as rifleman. And when is the last time you ever saw someone with a sward pause to cool off for 2 secs
well thats my 2 cents that andim tyerd of beaing treated like a 10 year old by sony. Ive alredy made plans to cancle and move to startrek online when it comes out anything is better than this. Ther support and devs are alredy activelycommuncating with a player base thay wont realy have for almost another year in beta.
Jadan1
Fri Oct 21, 2005 9:34 am
#10
you make some good points. but unfortunately i dont think it will make much help. This is a good game, and there is alot of room for improvement, but there would be alot more love for the game in this community if the correspondents or the devs would keep us better updated on whats going on. maybe so many people wouldnt be upset with them and flaming so much if they just took the time to answer some questions instead of keeping silent so much.
the problem is that they give us a forum to make ideas and speak on the game, but they dont give us any feedback on what we say. they dont let us know if ideas are doable. they dont let us know abotu outstanding issues. and it really doesnt seem liek they are going to do any major updates on things that people have been complaining about. now thats just poor customer sevice. like i said, i love the game, but if i got to the point where i didnt want to play anymore, they just make it easy to say goodbye and go join FF11 or WOW. you dont see playonline having issues like this. And you know what the worst part about this is. right now. this forum is really hot, there are people all over the forums talking about the recent events about the bad customer service, and the only response we can get is a message from TIGGS saying that we should watch our mouths. i feel bad for this game honestly, because sooner or later people are going to get tired of the lack of customer service and will stop playing. and only at that point wil the pressure start getting to the devs, and only then will they start stepping up the game. and thats a shame that it has to come to that for it to happen. all we are asking for is for you (devs) to do is talk to us more, and isten to us more. take some polls on some of our ideas. base some of your updates on the ideas that have gotten good responses. This has been a rough week for you guys as far as these topics are concerned, i justhope u guys are listening.
Redspot
Tue Oct 25, 2005 2:21 pm
#11
This is by far one of the best reads I have ever come across on this forum.
And to add to the cookiee jar on fixes.. I dont remember who told me..
"Blizzard provides more content and bug fixes in 1 patch, compared to the 3 expansions SWG has recieved"
.. I think everyone should be supporting this post, I personally will sticky and bump if I ever see it hit the bottom.
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