Development Cycle Archive

Is there any way you could give us the statistics for factions too?

"I'm happy to report that our response time on CS tickets has fallen by a factor of twenty from a month ago (and so has the number of open tickets at a time and the number of tickets created)."

Lol, well, I guess when you can only have one ticket open at a time, what would you expect?

Sorry for being cynical, but when you prevent players from reporting issues online, shut down/ignore their posts when they are made here and still come here and say you are making headway, I have to wonder what measuring stick you are using.

Preventing players from opening tickets and then claiming overall ticket creation is down is laughable at best.

Ok here we go.

This game is currently lacking in (Treasures) and (loot) as you all may know. i and others have explored the universe in search of some form of treasure that is useful but have failed. granted, i know about droideka loot and kryat loot but it's nothing realy. i've checked a vast ammount of dungeons. nothing inside the MagSeals. it's lacking that great feeling that you get when you found somthing exciting. i remember the first time i got a treasure disk i was so amped up to find out what was inside But guess what fellas, you know know what was inside, nothing but a peice of ore and a CDEF weapon, in otherwords, junk. it's like getting coal in your stocking at christmas time. You definatly need a better loot/treasure/rewards system. somthing that the players will find useful.

To the developers-

It is important to understand that nerfing is somthing that should be done in beta, So in order to make up for(your mistakes) you should substitute nerfing with somthing better. (example:devlopers belive that a weapon hits to hard in a certian class) *in order to fix this they should up other classes so they are close to just as good* that would save yourselfs from putting a burden on the players shoulders people pay you to play this game and to have fun, they should'nt have to worry about there class getting ruined. your getting well paid for this game. make it count. it may take some time to do these things but it's worth it for the players and for yourself.

Thank you for reading and i hope you put some serious thought into this.

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ok now this part exlude from the top half of this message

did you make the last big update 'cries of alderan' just to have some type of content? a coder could put together that disk quest in a very short time. Now im hearing that the second big update is basicly the same thing were we must get more disks? kind of makes me wonder. I would like to seeas well asthe players im sure would like to seesomthing intrieging and worth-while in the next big update.

There are a million rumors around that people have opened their FS slot, can you at least confirm or deny that this has happened. No need for servers or names just a yes or know to whether there are any FS open.

The reason why most people havent mastered certain professions is because you simply dont need to. You can enjoy the benefits of multiple classes without having to master any. If it was intended that a jack of all tradesbe better than a master then so be it. A good example is number 1, 2 and 3 on your advanced but not mastered list, Bounty Hunter, Chand Pistoleer. A person can spend his points to get Eyeshot, Master Pistol Marksmanship, Master Pistol Stances and Grips, Creature Taming 4 and Creature Training 4 and enjoy the benefits of 3 classes, having better mods then a Master Pistoleer, the best Pistol Style in the BH line, and nearly the best creature handling. You crank out some data on people having that spec or something similar and you'll see. In the future il bet the next update will show a decrease in either pistoleer or Ch and a increase in novice commando's who of course want to use the flamethrowers.

This can be remedied very simply, put the styles and mods at the top of each of the 4 tiers or in the master box. You would see a dramatic change. Cant believe i need to be saying this months after the game came out.

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Holocron wrote:

The top issues that tend to get reported these days, and which are therefore our top priorities for fixes include missing items (mostly seem to be related to crossing server boundaries); ghosted items on vendors and the bazaar; skills going missing (still no luck on this one!); people getting stuck in certain places; things warping to 0 0 0; and mission NPCs not spawning at waypoints.

One to call out is houses vanishing--every case we have investigated closely has turned out to be a legitimate deletion. So we're planning on providing CS with a way to get the houses back, and we're looking to change how house deletion from unpaid maintenance works so that we don't have this problem coming up as much.

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Holo, I think that there are other issues that people have long since given up on reporting, because it's obvious that the development team cannot or willnot address them,such as pathing and warping issues.

On the houses vanishing, frankly, I think that once again you're overlooking the obvious because you and your developers are not playing the game: there could well be a bug in the maintenance system that eats credits at accellerated rates, and thus when you get around to investigating it LOOKS like the doofus player didn't pay his maintenance, but the player swears he just paid several weeks in advance.

So the player is dismissed as a doofus.

And you've got another pissed customer who has been casually waved aside.

Why aren't these transactions, every last one of them, logged someplace so you can check and verify that the player paid X credits on this date, the maintenance rate is indicated, and there is a receipt of sometime that the CSR can access?

This seems to me to be a very simple and elegant check on this issue, but all I see is a very casual wave of the hand that these aren't the droids we're looking for.

Here's you're clue. You're dealing with Toydarians here, not cloned stormtroopers, crimelord majordomosor lounge lizards on Coruscant. Many of us cannot be Jedi mind tricked into passive acceptance of your explanations.

BTW, I'd also be interested in a more complete breakdown of how many players are into what professions, and a ranking of mastery in ALL professions, not just the top five.

Holocron,

An addendum to my earlier post:


You talk about getting less CS in-game tickets. I believe there are two primary reasons for this.


1) Users are tired of hearing 'canned' responses that do not actually make them think that their concerns are being addressed in an honest and forthright manner. No one will try to use a CS/ticket system if it is seen as only providing the most generic/canned answers that can be put together. This is a HUGE problem with regard to 'quality of care'.


2) Users are afraid that a CS that's supposed to be there to help them solve a problem will change their name. Period. End of story.



/bow

Respectfully,

Holo, let me assure you that this is completely incorrect. I have no doubt that whatever metric device you have in place to track deletions is recording them as expired maintenance and quite possibly something in the game code is triggering an "out of maintenance and 0% remaining integrity" routine. However, there is a disconnect here. It is happening FAR too often and to people that are absolutely certain about their maintenance levels. Either the maintenance displayed on the control panel is wrong (it doesn't seem to be, it's something I watch closely) or there is something in your code that is sporadically triggering this "out of maintenance" routine.

So I'm not sure how you're tracking down that houses run out of maintenance other than using some metric device, but I'm guaranteeing you that something is quite broken here.

Not only cut down CS response time, but for God sakes train them to become "People Friendly".

Whew, lots to answer.

Have you decided to go ahead with the combat changes? Are you going to reduce rifle speed without a damage increase?

Still discussing the details of the roadmap here, absorbing all the feedback. Also, the designer in charge of combat is taking a well-deserved few days off, so nothing is going to happen for at least a week.

Where are Player City's?

Almost ready to go to testing.

You mentioned NPC's failing to spawn at mission WPs. What is being done about this?

A pretty substantial revision to how we find good locations for placing mission targets. It's substantial enough a revision that it's going to take many weeks to complete.

Are the TEF issues a concern of yours? Do you plan to implement any changes?

Yes, a huge concern, but we don't yet have a solution.

is anyone looking at the Tailor/armorsmith bug? where schematics disapear from our tool when we get more than 256? And how about the necklaces that still don't show an icon in the creation, inventory or examine screens?

I don't know off the top of my head. I know that the correspondents are aware of the issue and are escalating it to us.

the food stack issue should be amoung your top issues to resolve.

I believe it was the #1 issue the chef correspondent presented us.

it is essential that you finish the job of identifying Correspondents for every class.

We're in the process of verifying which correspondents are actively playing. We sent out mails to all current correspondents to see which we got answers from. We're giving them a reasonable amount of time to respond and do the various new things (like get into the TC PA for Correspondents), and any that don't show up, we're replacing. So expect to hear more on this soon.

What about the Least Popular Advanced Profs and Least Commonly Mastered?

Least popular in terms of novices is polearms. Then image designer, chef, fencer, and squad leader.

Least commonly mastered is bounty hunter. Then fencer, polearms, squad leader, and chef.

LOL CS Tickets aren't being posted anymore because people know they won't get answered inside two weeks and even if they do its some kind of automated form letter.

If that were the case, we wouldn't see notable drops in callsright after posting particular fixes.

Why not take the manpower focused on new features, and put them on fixing existing professions.

It's one person, and we DID commit to having cities, vehicles, and mounts for you soon after launch. We intend to keep that commitment.

are all the developers having fun? That's the important thing, right?

I don't know, I haven't asked them lately. I imagine the manacles chafe, but sometimes they do sing when we give them their moldy bread and brackish water.

Now does playing a POPULAR class have any influence on lucking the FS Slot?

No.

See, you got me to say something about Jedi. Bad Holo, bad.

I would prefer to see something like:

"we'vefinished the artwork and models for the starships a week ago. They've been tested and are still having some bugs such as wookies comming out on the other planets as rodians, butthe devs areworking on that specific issue as I type. Our goal is to have the starships ready for implementation by the next publish which is September 27th at 4AM PST. We may or may not have this finished by then due to some other bugs we've rescently noticed causing PCs with darth vader's head and Leia's metal bikini body (Although some of you wouldn't mind). Please remember these are goals, not promises so if you don't expect it to be done and it is well enjoy the suprise, and if it's not you won't be let down. In other aspects, we've started working on fixing the ...."

We are terrified of giving out dates. Sorry. For that matter, just the detail in THIS post makes many folks here uncomfortable. Please bear with us as we adjust to opening our kimono.

Also, general areas of interest I'm sure all the players would like to hear about would be

• actual dates for the storyline arc quests (Scheduled start dates, deadlines, etc...),
  
• broken quests that have been fixed,
  
• new content that has been added after Thorough testing,
  
• GCW updates,
  
• new badge quests,
  
• Theme park exspansions (After they're working as intended)
  
• And anything regarding the "In Development" area of the site.
  
• New professions, skills, etc

The plan is to revamp the way we do patch notes. As we contemplate fixes or new features, we post the ideas for how to fix the problem or do the feature here in this forum. Once we do any work on it, we put details in In Development. So most of the above would show up here, then go to In Dev. Then it'd go to In Testing once it's on TC.

We'll be able to do this better once we have the assistant community manager in place. It's takes a significant amount of time to do right now.

Could we please have a forum area for new content ideas that comes from players?

I am unsure if we can legally do that.

if we get to see a ranking, can we at least see some percentages?

Percentages are very miselading, because people can have more than one.

• Did you forsee this being the most popular advanced profession?


• Are there more of them than you thought there would be?


• Why do you think it is the most popular?

Originally, no. Yes. Because it's the most powerful way to PvE.

Why do you think this profession, out of all the advancedprofessions, is the one with the most masters? Sheer numbers, or something else?

Numbers, plus it's powerful.

canyou let us know what the Dev Teams' collective take is on the fact that so many view the current incarnation of SWG as 'Pet Wars'?

Well, basically, the feeling is "this is going to be hard to fix."

Our first thought is to enhance droids so that it can at least become Droid Wars, which is Star Warsier.

I'm concerned about how often you will allow our correspondents to give out "news". Having the development/change discussions behind closed doors is all well and good....and understandable. However, I caution you to not keep themfrom releasing news in a timely manner. If the correspondents are not able to give their respective communities feedback, we'll all be right back in the same boat we were before. Just make sure that you are able to let them release something on a weekly basis, perhaps. Do not keep them silent for too long or they will be seen as ineffectual (along with the Correspondent forum in general). Make sure that they are allowed to talk about something official and 'on deck'. This will, I'm very sure, keep the noise level down on each respective profession board.

We agree. Hence the new policy I mentioned.

Suggestion: Allow profession correspondents to build/post polls to their respective forums.

Unsure if we can getthe forum software to do that, butI will ask.

I am a little surprised that tailoring is not on that list. I have seen many new master tailors popping up and my buisness has slowed considerably. Maybe everyone has all the clothes they want now and too many tailors... not sure but my income has really slowed. Luckily I have some saved

I am also rather disappointed that an easy fix is not in the update patch for tailors, how hard is it to fix invisable necklaces? i would like to see the necklace while I make it. I guess I don't know why this would be so difficult to get fixed but it sure would make alot of tailors happy.

I got my CSR response to the stuff in my safety deposit box disappearing. They gave me a detailed description of how the current policy is to allow players a one time item replacement with credits.

So....you guys only intend to replace stuff that disappears as a result of factors entirely out of my control and *almost* entirely under your control once? So if my stuff blows up more than once, I'm just supposed to kiss it off, either now or later?

Your database is dying, if not dead. Fix it. Replace it. Whatever you need to do, but don't continue piling more crap on top of the whole deal until you can trust that the foundation can actually hold it up. As things are going, it sounds like we're headed for critical mass where if there's any failure, it'll be a catastrophic one that eats all of our characters, items, houses, etc. and with all of that, it'll also destroy your business.

If my RL bank can use Oracle without telling customers to limit the number of accounts, letters in their name, number of ATMs they can use,or the amount of money they can hold in their accounts, then I don't see why SWG can't manage anything similar for one tenth the number of customers.