Creature Handler Archive
Thread: While you're fixing the Elite Pets, Make Grand Wrix Elites as well! :)
JFreeman wrote:
I understand. Really I apologize for the lack of communication recently (or...maybe a little longer than "recently"). We've gone through a bit of a team restructuring phase post-CU and post-RotW, assigning different programmers, artists and designers to different sub-teams as the RotW team and CU team came back into the general mix. Some of us are even still moving offices (and almost everyone moved from one office to another, if that gives you any idea of the scope of this).
JaronKai wrote:
JFreeman, thank you for the time you've spent on this board of the past couple of days. I really appreciate and others do as well. Now that we're informed of the fact that you have a proposed solution to the broken pet specials, and that it's being developed, there's a possibility that we can move on to other issues and get ready to give you guys some constructive feedback when it moves to Test Center.
Part of the problem with the lack of communication is that, because no one told us a new system (or any sort of fix) was actively being developed, we were left thinking that a lack of mention of CH in patch notes meant that NO progress was being made, for whatever reason. My patience level, and my willingness to give constructive feedback, goes way up when I know that the Devs are working on their end, and I think it's the same for a lot of others.
I really look forward to seeing this new system, and hope that CHs can be given and In Concept thread or something similar to discuss it in the same way as Smugglers were allowed to discuss the new slicing system. Also, thanks again for keeping us updated on the issues with our pets CL and the "elite" pets. I was very upset when I saw my female narglatches were not "elite" anymore, but when I came on here and saw an almost immediate response from you, I feel like there's no reason to be really angry. A mistake was made, and it's going to be set right, I appreciate that. I look forward to seeing this next hotfix clear everything up, and then to dialoging with you, or whoever is in charge of the new specials system, to get those changes tested, polished, and brought live.
I'm the new Live Lead Systems Designer, for example. It's taken me a couple weeks just to figure out what's going on (prior to this I was on RotW, and prior to that on JtL, so I haven't been "in the loop" much with regard to the live game or combat upgrade).
We also have a new live producer and a new creative director (who still needs to pack up everything he owns and move to Austin!).
Communication will improve, and so will the quality level of our publishes.
Thanks for hanging in there through this one! May there never be another like it...
Thanks for the update on what the heck's been going on lately. I really and truly appreciate it. Sorry for being so frustrated, but this one really was a doozy...my main focus before was Entertainer...then I got CH...and this happened...makes me feel like I can't choose a profession without getting hit with serious issues.
And here's to hoping that the many profession issues get some serious attention soon. From a personal perspective, I'd like to see all the Entertainer professions, CH, and Jedi get some good going over and reworking. Jedi changes/fixes get people's goat, it seems, because they're seen as something as a coddled pet project and main focus of the Devs - when really they lacked the attention given to most every other profession in the game when the CU hit (they hadn't been worked out much balance-wise before the CU went Live). There are still issues with Jedi, and even the new changes you've made to them, so I hope you keep working to balance them and make the looooong grind worthwhile.
Also, please poke whoever's in charge of BE tissues in Tailor schems, and the default color issue with crated armor and clothing. Those are really, really, really trying the patience of those professions, and rightfully so - it hits where it hurts the most in this game...the ol' credit purse.
Thanks again for the communication, I'm loving it, and hope to see more soon. Take care, and I hope all of you Devs have a happy and safe holiday. Happy 4th of July!
JFreeman wrote:
just to figure out what's going on (prior to this I was on RotW, and prior to that on JtL, so I haven't been "in the loop" much with regard to the live game or combat upgrade).
We also have a new live producer and a new creative director (who still needs to pack up everything he owns and move to Austin!).
Communication will improve, and so will the quality level of our publishes.
Thanks for hanging in there through this one! May there never be another like it...
Congratulations on your new position JFreeman. Since you seem to be paying attention to this thread, I am going to hijack it.
I think though you have a very tough road ahead.Starting with JTL, the game has been heading in the wrong direction. By that I mean its been heading away from re-creating the Star Wars movies in a MMO towarda merea traditional MMO with a vaguley Star Wars skin. The GCW changes and CU have only made this worse. I know the starships that should be at war with each other are not going to be, and the TEF isn't coming back, playersare going to contine to wear opposing faction armour and not be at war with each other, and the CU for all its evils is here to stay,but I BEG YOUPLEASE with each new change to the game ask yourself does this change make SWG more or less like the movies the game is based on. If the proposed change makes the game less like the movies, then you need to go back to the drawing board and figure out a different way to accomplish your goal.
If this design standard would have been in place the CU in its current form would never have seen the light of day.
I would like to believe the quality of the publishes will improve as will communication, but we have no reason to believe this will be the case. Personally, I was extremely dissappointed by both JTL and RotW and horrified by the CU. So I won't be holding my breath, give the track record. As to communication, the CU was a meltdown. Don't bother taking polls if you intend to ignore them.
Message Edited by jphillips1868 on 07-01-2005 05:35 PM
We have to sticky this one, or none of the other Profs will believe a Dev responed to us and is following a thread
Seriously, I was ready to cancel my accounts this morning. I was just so tired and frustrated with no communication and feeling like a chump.
Now, well heck, I am glade I didn't inform my guildies
This is great that we are getting communication. But now the bad news....
Who is going to inform the BEs that we can custom train our pets and don't need to pay for custom engineered pets??
I would....But my phone is ringing.....Shower is on.....Someone is at the door! Gotta Motor! Good Luck with the BEs!!
Dotck
JFreeman wrote:
Communication will improve, and so will the quality level of our publishes.
Thanks for hanging in there through this one! May there never be another like it...
This, alone, is worth a lot IF YOU DELIVER. I returned from being gone about 6 months because I wanted to check out the post-CU world of SWG. I am happy to say that combat is now interesting and fun. However I have been less impressed with publish 18 (chat tabs? hello?) and publish 19. It felt like the "same old same old" - new bugs added, old ones not removed.
My main concern with SWG today is the increasing effort to move away from crafting (smugglers, doctors, CM's, lack of diversity in weapons due to caps etc). Loot is good. Only loot, in SWG, is not good.
Anyway this is where I would normally say "keep up the good work". However I feel more inclined to say "try to start doing a good job going forward". Realize that the number one priority to the players is bugs being fixed. Especially ones introduced recently. The quick action on lairs, CH bugs (although one of the most severe profession bugs ever to go live) and slicing issues is good. Now jsut acknowledge and fix bugs like chat tabs resetting, combat group list resize (can't see the distance to group members), space radar resize (worked in beta for a while) and all the other known issues.
Make one publish be focused purely on fixing issues. No new features. Call it.. oh. Publish 21?
JFreeman wrote:
We also have a new live producer and a new creative director (who still needs to pack up everything he owns and move to Austin!).
Communication will improve, and so will the quality level of our publishes.
Thanks for hanging in there through this one! May there never be another like it...
Heheh...I spent 10 great years in Austin...I love that city.
Thanks for keeping us in the loop....It is nice to have someone communicate with us.
Finally we find out why there has been such a lack of communication lately. I hope your are right and things will improve because for the last couple of months there has been next to no communication.
JFreeman wrote:
I understand. Really I apologize for the lack of communication recently (or...maybe a little longer than "recently"). We've gone through a bit of a team restructuring phase post-CU and post-RotW, assigning different programmers, artists and designers to different sub-teams as the RotW team and CU team came back into the general mix. Some of us are even still moving offices (and almost everyone moved from one office to another, if that gives you any idea of the scope of this).
JaronKai wrote:
JFreeman, thank you for the time you've spent on this board of the past couple of days. I really appreciate and others do as well. Now that we're informed of the fact that you have a proposed solution to the broken pet specials, and that it's being developed, there's a possibility that we can move on to other issues and get ready to give you guys some constructive feedback when it moves to Test Center.
Part of the problem with the lack of communication is that, because no one told us a new system (or any sort of fix) was actively being developed, we were left thinking that a lack of mention of CH in patch notes meant that NO progress was being made, for whatever reason. My patience level, and my willingness to give constructive feedback, goes way up when I know that the Devs are working on their end, and I think it's the same for a lot of others.
I really look forward to seeing this new system, and hope that CHs can be given and In Concept thread or something similar to discuss it in the same way as Smugglers were allowed to discuss the new slicing system. Also, thanks again for keeping us updated on the issues with our pets CL and the "elite" pets. I was very upset when I saw my female narglatches were not "elite" anymore, but when I came on here and saw an almost immediate response from you, I feel like there's no reason to be really angry. A mistake was made, and it's going to be set right, I appreciate that. I look forward to seeing this next hotfix clear everything up, and then to dialoging with you, or whoever is in charge of the new specials system, to get those changes tested, polished, and brought live.
I'm the new Live Lead Systems Designer, for example. It's taken me a couple weeks just to figure out what's going on (prior to this I was on RotW, and prior to that on JtL, so I haven't been "in the loop" much with regard to the live game or combat upgrade).
We also have a new live producer and a new creative director (who still needs to pack up everything he owns and move to Austin!).
Communication will improve, and so will the quality level of our publishes.
Thanks for hanging in there through this one! May there never be another like it...
It still does not explain why Tiggs and TH were so absent and tight-lipped on the forums. It's their job to communicate and maintain community relations.
UnknownX11 wrote:
Finally we find out why there has been such a lack of communication lately. I hope your are right and things will improve because for the last couple of months there has been next to no communication.
JFreeman wrote:
We're not just "fixing" specials, though. We're replacing that with a specials system that has a lot of new special abilities. So you tame different creatures to learn their specials, and then teach those specials to the pets you actually want to use, depending on what combat role you want the pet to fulfill.
KzinKiller wrote:
JFreeman wrote:
I find your lack of faith...disturbing.
Gimpynoob wrote:
You have faith in the developers???
The fix for this just passed QA on Test Center.
No offense, but since we've been waiting over 5 weeks for an iota of progress on broken Specials, you'd have to have more faith than a televangelist's hairstylist to be a CH and faithful these days.
So we didn't want to "fix" the old specials system, since we were replacing it instead.
The new specials system is currently in development. We just want a little extra time to polish it, and that's why you don't have it (or a fix to the old system) yet.
This is just like WoW and if there was ANYTHING that you copied from that game I was hoping that it would be this. I loved having the ability to learn stuff from my hunter's pets and teaching them to others, it was more interactive and a lot of fun. Thank you SOE
Thanks so much for starting this tread because now i have a name to attach to my hatred.
So JFreeman is behind all the recent pet nerfz - I'd like to find a picture of him so i can start
throwing flaming darts at it. JFreeman LEAVE MY PETS ALONE! Screw the "NEW AND IMPROVED"
SPECIALS. The old specials worked just fine - why not go back to school and really learn how to
program them before releasing even more game and mind breaking code. GET MY DRIFT- you obviously
don't know anything about this game or are too busy moving into your ofiice to care - I"LL LET YOU KNOW
NOW - GO BREAK SOMETHING ELSE BUT LEAVE THE PETS ALONE CAPEESH?
My pets are my friends and noone messes with my friends.
JFreeman wrote:
A whole lot of good stuff.
At least they picked someone who (usually) sounds like he knows what he's doing
SWGHottie wrote:
It still does not explain why Tiggs and TH were so absent and tight-lipped on the forums. It's their job to communicate and maintain community relations.
UnknownX11 wrote:
Finally we find out why there has been such a lack of communication lately. I hope your are right and things will improve because for the last couple of months there has been next to no communication.
No, working at a software dev company that's bigger than SWG, that actually makes complete sense to me in light of what JF said. They are changing a lot of roles at the top, which means that for the moment there will be a lot of internal confusion about goals, priorities, strategies ... things that won't get ironed out until the new people at the top can brief their teams and organize. If they're shuffling that many chairs at the top, then Tiggs and TH can't say much because they don't KNOW much.
This actually explains a *lot* about the quality of the code in Publish 18 and 19 ... it looked like it was produced by a team in disarray and, what do you know, it was.
That is not an excuse, btw ... I still find it very unprofessional. But it's a reason, and I can live with that. However ... the window that the 'new guys' at the top have for establishing a reputation for integrity and professionalism with their customers is a very narrow one ... they have a LOT of past mistakes to make up for if they want to look good with this community. I think JF's participation here today and overall in the last week was a very nice olive branch to offer us. It means nothing without followup ....
And JF, let me emphasize that one ... it all means nothing without followup ... we've heard promises of improved communication and code quality over & over since Beta, and in the end they've all fallen flat. The classic example would be TH's 'Twenty Questions' initiative when he promised to answer 20 questions from us every week ... he made it 2 weeks, skipped a couple weeks, made it another week or two, then dropped it flat. You cannot follow through that way, or your professional life will be most unpleasant.
Tens of thousands of people who very much wanted to love this game have quit in the last year ... if the game stays the way it is today for much longer, it's only going to get worse. Regrettably, you just don't have a lot of margin for error today, because of the size of the errors in the past. You need tremendous improvement in your QA processes first, then in your communication, and then in your execution of planning. I hope you realllly like your co-workers, because you've got some hard work to do with them.
JFreeman wrote:
We're not just "fixing" specials, though. We're replacing that with a specials system that has a lot of new special abilities. So you tame different creatures to learn their specials, and then teach those specials to the pets you actually want to use, depending on what combat role you want the pet to fulfill.
KzinKiller wrote:
JFreeman wrote:
I find your lack of faith...disturbing.
Gimpynoob wrote:
You have faith in the developers???
The fix for this just passed QA on Test Center.
No offense, but since we've been waiting over 5 weeks for an iota of progress on broken Specials, you'd have to have more faith than a televangelist's hairstylist to be a CH and faithful these days.
So we didn't want to "fix" the old specials system, since we were replacing it instead.
The new specials system is currently in development. We just want a little extra time to polish it, and that's why you don't have it (or a fix to the old system) yet.
Sounds very cool, but alot like WOW hunters abilities. Not that that is a bad thing, just very similiar to another game is all....