kayxfour wrote:
The problem is that we need actual answers, even if we aren't happy with them. What is the real problem here? Why are you incapable of communicating with us? It's time to step up to the plate: stop acting like a politican and start acting like a developer. Make a weekly "ROUNDTABLE ANSWERS" thread at the end of each week, or even DURING each week, where only developers can respond and answers to current questions are dealt with. This will help keep dev posts clear of the clutter of the roundtable threads, and it will show the customers that you really do care about their concerns.
You know I don't understand all this craze about lack of communication and need of communication. The time developers spend reading these forums is time developers lose to actually work on the game. Not to mention what developers read here reflects onlya part of the SWG community. And the community that visits these boards is somehow more of the "whiner-type" than those you meet in game. SOE already grants us with MUCH more communication than most of the MMORPGs out there. Look at DAoC there is no official forum and therefore no devs who reguarily visit what players have to say, all they get is a weekly "grab-bag" where the equivalent of our Thunderheart decides which and how many questions she wants to answer.
Now don't think i'm devil's attorney. Cause here's where the sour part comes (my "whine" if you wish). What this game lack isNOT communication, it's a serious developer team. I've played many MMORPGs before. I worked in computer projects myself. And they're among the most unorganized devs I've seen. Very clumsy at determining the priorities, very lazy at debugging, creating single professions without any "as a whole" point of view and no ability to define the professions they did themselves. Lol after almost ayear of "in-live" state of the game they decide to start an "In-Concept" thread for each profession to ask PLAYERS to define their professions. Skills and specials seem to have been thrown out on professions without any summary chart if things are well distributed and fair.
But again, to defend the devs, because I'm sure what they want is do the best game possible, I guess there are producers and marketing dudes behind who push them to release a "carrot" as often as possible to "excite players". I'm convinced there is much to be blamed on Space : they have many devs allocated to this project, perhaps the "core" team that created SWG, I believe this is man power that should have been used to "fix" the game. Because from a QA point of view, SWG should still be in beta and not gold.
Now don't get me wrong I love SWG, and I've stopped playing other MMORPGs for it, but I like it for the graphics, for the swg universe, for the crafting system (with random popping resource harvesting, etc) but definitely not for the technical aspect, forthe "logical" aspect, Ravenedge pointed very well on another example where SWG is again unlogical : the Corvette (1) How does this Mob relate to the others in the game? Does it make sense?
2) Is the Mob's difficulty rating appropriate for what it is? (A rebel Ensign or Engineer should not be more powerful than a Surface Marshal)
3) Brand New Mobs (such as the battle droids), are they appropriately difficult, not for the setting they are placed in, but in SWG as a whole?)
I understand that in a game as huge as a mmorpg, it's hard, but still I feelsomeone is lacking at SOE : someone, not a programmer, who has played the game a lot, in most of its aspects and who has a conception of the game "as a whole" and who would insure that everything the developer team does is in "in line" with the rest, this is usually the job of the producer(s). And imo these guys aren't doing their job very well. Because seeing how nice looking the game is, it's certainly not the art dudes that are incompetent, seeing how well designed and pratical the UI is, how advanced and taking many parameters into account the formulas behind combat and crafting is, it's definitely not the programmers that are to blame : it's the managment team, the ones who say "you, mister computer science phd with 10 years experience in Valve you are going to spend the next week developing this new stuff, and this afternoon debugging", well imo it's in the "overseers" that lays SWG's current problems.
To sum up : wrong priorities, lack of overall understanding and "as a whole" designing of the game. Yet the future is promising, with TH announcing they'll rework the combat balance as a whole. Problem isthey have already started introducing new stuffs (weapons and armors) that further outbalance combat. So here it is, they have announced something good, but again they're doing the same mistake because (probably) some marketing dude behind push them to throw in new "carrots" every month to keep the player "interested". This may be the way to go in short term, it's definitely not the way to go in long term.
