Community Relations Archive

Now, I'm going to try and make this short and to the point, and not devolve into simply ranting and rambling at length. That being said, let's start with the basic premise of the post - there is a serious lack of communication between the players and the developers of SWG, and it's only gotten worse since the Combat Update.

Let's start with an analogy. Imagine you went to a restaraunt, and ordered yourself a decent, oh let's randomly say...$15 (cough) meal. A nice steak and a side order of fries. Your meal comes, and the steak is burnt to a crisp - barely edible - and you're only given 4 fries. Obviously, this doesn't please you, so you bring back the waiter and explain that you still want your steak and fries, you just want them done properly. The waiter seems to listen, takes notes, then vanishes for a LONG time - to the point where you're getting ready to leave - then finally comes back, takes away your plate of steak and fries, and drops down a Caesar salad - without dressing, a dead fly in the bowl,and all the salad leaves are rotted. You explain that this is not what you asked for, nor what you purchased, and that you want your steak and fries, but the waiter calmly explains that he believes this is what will be best for your meal, and that you should really give the Caesar salad a chance. You realize you'll never get your steak and fries back, but you're still hungry and need to eat - but once again the food is sub-par. When you try to explain what is wrong with the Caeser salad to the waiter, he walks off, never to be heard from again.

As you've certainly figured out by now, this is exactly what the devs have done to us with the CU. Regardless of what your opinions of the CU itself are, there is no arguing that they've been at ALL communicative since it was released. I knew it was a bad sign when SOE posted their blatant lie about how the CU had to be pushed to the live servers because all of the bugs that had been reported had been fixed and they needed a wider scale release to find the other issue. As if the admission that they used PAYING CUSTOMERS as beta testers isn't bad enough, dozens of issues were being reported a day when the CU was released - anyone who was following the CU knows that. Lying to your customers is NOT acceptible, SOE. And amazingly enough, it's just been downhill from there.

Just check Dev Tracker and see how many posts there are from Tiggs or the developers responding to our concerns. I realize the developers are busy, but for Tiggs, this IS her job. Where are the responses? Where is the discussion on what needs to be fixed and in what priority? If Tiggs doesn't know, then it's her job to push the devs and FIND OUT. Right now the impression being given is "We don't know what the players are thinking, and we don't care." This is simply NOT an acceptible situation, and we need to make the devs realize that. Right now we're not only receiving next-to-no communication, but the communication we DO receive are such things as deleting a correspondent's post because it was considered 'trolling', even though it did offer a constructive solution to one of the game's larger issues. Whether or not you believe SOE was in the right to do this, it's simply a terrible policy to not only delete the post, but not have any communication as to the devs' opinion on the issue. We NEED to know what the devs are thinking and what they're planning, and THEY need to know what WE want done - right now, we are given the impression this is not happening. And frankly, if they don't care what I want, then I don't care to continue to pay them $15 a month. If things don't dramatically improve in the next month or two - and given SOE's history, I have no reason to believe they will - I will almost certainly cancel my account. I would have months ago, were it not for JTL - but the CU and RotW managed to also break JTL, creating a great imbalance in space combat between the haves and the have-nots (and this is coming from a 'have'). Is there any communication on this issue? Of course not. We don't even know if the devs KNOW it's an issue.

Alright, this is becoming dangerously close to becoming a rant, so I'll close here. I just want the devs to know that this sort of behavior is not only unacceptible in a company, but it'll cost them customers in the end - I know I'm not the only one who thinks this way. And players, I want you to know that you deserve better than the treatment the playerbase has received post-CU. In this critical time of transition, where substantial parts of the game we've played for 2 years are changing, we need constant and clear communication as to what the devs are doing, why they're doing, and what they plan to do next. Right now, we know none of those things - we don't even know what they consider issues and what they don't. Do they consider the debate "Jedi GCW" issue to be a closed door, or are they looking into it? Will they balance the new RotW ships with the old JTL ships, or is this working as intended? There are dozens upon dozens of these questions that demand an answer, but so far, there is none.

And for the sake of both the players and the survival of the game itself, this MUST change.