Development Cycle Archive

---

Evayy wrote:

i was one of those folks that responded in the end of the pages of outcry at your statments from the interview

My first thoughts were how detached the developers seemed to be with the community and where in the heck was this game going ..........

I still would like to bring up the issue of effictive truthfull communication with your customers

You still have public relations nightmare here

First combat re vamp delayed, then possible no macro looping then purge are we to see next merged servers????

or once publish 10 hits mega jedi like rabbits around?

Back in the first few months of the game there was a survey on the fourms on how many folks pvped (a very small percentage)

many folks play mmorpgs because it is not a twitched based game, not everyone was planning on getting jtls and especialy since so many issues still exist with core game do not want to spend even more on a system we know will have issues . That and there are many folks that do not take part in combat and are the crafters entertainers , medics /docs

My suggestion is to truly do some surveys to see what your remaining players want focus on

Have your team that deals with customers take communication courses

Dale carnigee offers some wonderful classes for companies

Work on gaining your customers trust back and just maybe this game can survive it's own development foo pas Unless you are willing to bend a bit to your customers i just cannot see even jtls saving this game

Funny what i see going on now is not the same team in beta that spoke with all of us so effectively, and communicated changes so well to us all, and helped us to feel excited about what we were taking a part in,

---

1. There really should be polls enabled on the forums that each profession correspondent can create.


2. There should also be a dev only thread in each profession forum for answers to that poll and/or answers that the correspondent asked.
   ( this would keep the threads from going offtopic with countless posts when it is DEV and Correspondent reply only )


3. Whatever changes, no matter how small or insignificant. Post them. Like have it on the main page of the forum itself so EVERYONE can see it when they log in. Make use of the Announcments Board. People won't care if the update was this
   
   " Added more hair to some older balding wookiees. Image designers will be able to create wigs now"
   
   Its the fact they everyone actually knows what is being added/readded/taken out.
   


4. If you see a good idea posted by a member, let them know. Alot of people here from what I gather feel as if we are speaking on deaf ears.
   
   
   

Thats all for now.

Message Edited by ratlif on 08-03-2004 03:05 AM

---

Shug_Ninx wrote:

Haden Blackman: That's completely not the feedback we're received from the bulk of our community. The bulk of our community has been waiting for this and, though not necessarily upset, frustrated that they haven't been able to jump into the cockpit of a starfighter and go into space."

Haden Blackman

LucasArts Producer

---

This is in no way a flame. I want JTL to come out myself.

Did anyone ever stop to think that maybe part of the reason people want JTL is because the ground game is BROKEN in so many aspects? You have a profession that is USELESS (SquadLeader), a profession that one has one use (Smuggler), a ranged profession that only has 1 working/useful weapon (Commando), 2 professions that have been nerfed into almost non-existance (Creature Handler and Droid Engineer), a profession that relies on LOOTED weapons to be viable (Pikeman), a profession that the Devs seem to favor (Armorsmith.....double decay?!?!?!?!), Dantooine has been lagging for 4 months now (although you did fix the non-paying missions), ect.

Also when things do get fixed it just seems to widen the gaps. For example NPCs use specials now.....all that did is widen the gap between ranged and melee. Melee still has no problems hunting high end mobs, but now ranged has NO CHANCE!

There also has to be a better way to make the game more challenging other than throwing more, higher HAM, higher resist, higher AR mobs in the game...........it shows a lack of vision.

I my opinion this is all stuff that should have been fixed in the first 3 months after release. I would hang my head in shame if after a year after release a profession was still useless in my product. This is my first MMORPG, and judging by my experience here it will also be my last.

---

PlayeroftheDay wrote:

Combat Revamp ....... "No! Not now!"

Image Designer(emotes)...... "Yeah we can do that!"

Smuggler ....... "No! Not now!"

Swoop Tracks ..... "Yeah we can do that!"

GCW ...... "No! Not now!"

Wookiee Armor "Yeah we can do that!"

Jedi Skill tree, including fudging damage numbers and throwing inRobe art, etc "Yeah we can do that!"

---

That's a great way of outlining the reason why so many players are upset. Instead of working on 1 thing that does matter, they instead work on 10 things thatvery few peoplecare about (with Jedi possibly being the one exception).

Haden you should become a politician cause you are an amazing spini artist.

The old "I'm sorry it, this will not happen again routine!"

I imagine gamer's in the future will refer to lieing, false hopes and trying to do to much with to few people. As the SWG effect.

What did the developer's get done in the past year? Maybe piss off every customer.

GCW = broken from beginning
Combat Balance = seriously messed up better at launch
Content = nope sorry after JTL, Combat balance, jedi patches, smuggler revamp, BountyHunter revamp,.....
Players = Most have moved on or are hold accounts but not playing with hope SOE will fire current developers and start over
Jedi = Far to many and could never be balanced with keeping storyline
PVP = Not sure haven't seen in awhile but heard it's jedi killing guilies for FRS points
Developers = Trying to find something else to put on back burner
Economy = duping, jedi grinding, force crafting
SWG = So What Game?

Must say good thing we got unemployment in the US Hayden becouse another couple monthes I sure your going to need it bud.

Smugglers aren't angry (or, as it's hard to maintain anger for over a year, exasperated, resigned, bitter, or defeated) over the combat balance being pushed back--we're angry that any kind of serious smuggler attention has been promised and pushed back since August of LAST YEAR. The many developer promises to us are chronicled and linked to 4-5 times in this thread already, so I won't bother, but if you want a single smuggler to ever believe you know anything about the crippled state of our profession--a state we've lived with since it was slapped together in the last week of Beta--you'll read those posts, you'll see that we've been promised fixes over and over and haven't seen the first effort to address our complaints, and then you will finally be able to open your mouth about our neglected profession without looking ignorant, oblivious, and worst of all, unconcerned.

---

Shug_Ninx wrote:

Hey everyone -

Sorry it's taken me so long to respond to all the forum posts regarding the combat revamp and my recent interviews. I was in San Diego for Comic Con and then plowing through literally thousands of e-mails, PMs, and forum posts since my return to make sure I understand all the concerns and questions. I certainly didn't mean for the interviews I gave right before leaving town to cause such a stir or upset any of you, and I regret that I couldn't have been more active on the forums over the past few weeks.

First off, I want to tell those of you who are upset over the timing of the Combat Revamp and Galactic Civil War revamp that I feel your pain. I've been working on Star Wars Galaxies (in one form or another) for over five years (half a decade!). During that time I have grown to truly love this game and the community, not just as a developer, but also as a player. As a player, I've been excited about all the new additions to the game, concerned about any changes, and anxiously awaiting each update. Like many of you, I don't want to wait for the Combat Revamp either. I wish it could be in the game tomorrow. As a developer, I'm disappointed that we couldn't find a way to get it to you sooner.

Second, I want to apologize for any consternation, frustration, or anger that my interviews might have caused. Normally, we do most of these interviews as written Q&As, but I gave these via phone, moments before I had to rush out to meetings and then to San Diego. They were also done back-to-back. I'm sure I could have chosen my words more carefully, but the key points to take away should be:

We're always upset about any changes to our schedule, and we recognize that you're upset too. With that said, the (formerly known as) "combat balance" and Galactic Civil War revamp are going to come after Jump to Lightspeed (which launches in October).

We want to transform the combat balance into a more sweeping Combat Revamp, and we want to take the time to do it right.

Combat Balance is the top priority behind JTL, followed by the Galactic Civil War revamp. We know that these are both very important to the community. We also recognize the need to address Smugglers and Squad Leaders.

We have been and continue to work on the Combat Revamp. Work on the Combat Revamp will not stop due to JTL. We will get it out as soon as possible after JTL.

There might also be some stuff that wasn't clear at the time of the interviews (or wasn't clear from the interviews) that I think it's important you know (if you don't already):

We are committed to receiving feedback from and engaging the community. To that end, we'll be holding a correspondent summit at the end of August.

The community is going to be fully-integrated into the design and implementation of the Combat Balance and GCW. We'll be pumping out design docs as they are ready (the HAM revamp is already on the forums). We'll be starting feedback threads for the designs, and eventually the Combat Balance will have its own "sandbox" for testing. As the correspondents and others play through all the changes, we'll be doing lots of focus threads to get feedback on the actual implementation.

JTL is a high priority for us not only because it's something we believe that players really want (based on focus testing, press reviews and previews, forum posts, in-game feedback, PMs we receive, feedback from events such as Fan Fest Comic Con, surveys, etc.) but also because it is setting a tone for quality going forward. We also feel that we need to have JTL out there before we tackle the full-blown Galactic Civil War revamp because a large portion of the content is faction-based.

We will continue doing frequent publishes that contain interim combat fixes and some small (but cool) tweaks and additions between now and JTL.

We are NOT shifting a huge number of people over to working on JTL. JTL's progress is such that we will probably only need to pull 1-2 designers (out of 9) from Live. The one area where JTL will impact us is in testing - most of our Testers will likely be working on JTL in the weeks prior to its launch.

Finally, regarding specific answers to the interviews themselves... I've reread the interviews numerous times and I can understand how some responses could have been misconstrued or taken out of context. I'm not going to go through every answer, but if you have specific questions/responses you want me to address, feel free to post them on this thread.

I will cover the one answer I wish I could clarify, take back, or nuke:

IGNPC: We often hear the loudest cries from a relative minority. Still, it seems odd that all the comments sent our way have been negative.

This was in no way intended as a slight against the community, or even those community members who posted "negative" comments or sent IGNPC negative letters about the combat revamp timing. I was (poorly) trying to articulate a common phenomenon that basically boils down to "happy community members are generally quiet community members." This has been true for us since launch.

I could have probably answered the question better with something like: "The players who are happy with everything aren't necessarily motivated to send you letters or post negative comments on the forums. Those players who are unhappy with something are far more motivated to let us know about it so that we can address the issues."

I could have also reiterated a point I made in my Game Informer interview by adding something like: "And even though they are often perceived as a 'vocal minority,' these players come from the core of our community, so we take everything they say very seriously because they have such influence and, in some ways, understand specific elements of the game better than we do. We receive thousands of constructive posts from these folks."

Then, I could have ended with: "And, just to show that there are always two sides to every issue, we almost always have community members who do take the time to post to the forums in open support of our direction."

I'd also point out that we also try to get feedback from "non-forum posters", including players who never hit the forums, fans of the films who are intrigued by Star Wars Galaxies but aren't playing it yet, and even people who have left the community. At the end of the day, we want to know what current players like and dislike about the game so we can build on our strengths and correct our weaknesses. The forums are often the best place for the latter (but that's certainly NOT all they are used for), but when we want to know what people like about the game, we often have to solicit that information and look beyond the forums.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I'll try to be active on this thread throughout the day, so feel free to shoot me any additional questions.

Haden Blackman

LucasArts Producer

P.S. Please remember that it is NOT Thunderheart's (or anyone else's) job to respond to my communications. I am again sorry that it has taken me so long to get back to the community, but please don't take it out on Kurt.

P.P.S. There a conspiracy theory brewing over a post I made to a Vader thread, which was then mysteriously deleted. No, I wasn't fired (sorry!). The thread asked if we would see Vader and other named characters in more prominent roles, and my response was basically "Yes." We already have Boba Fett showing up in Live Events and there are plans to do more of that. We also want to revamp the major NPCs (eventually). All that is still true. Everything involving a "named NPC" does need my approval and Lucasfilm's approval. As far as the thread disappearing, our best guess is that it was a technical hiccup on the boards, though I won't rule out gremlins or mynocks.

---

Thats great.

Its also almost a year and a half too late.

CANCELLED