Development Cycle Archive

I understand wanting to get things right.

Thanks for the additional informaiton. I hope as a whole between the letter and these types of post it is a positive thing and they continue.

Thank you for the post.

Just a suggestion regarding your last comment... can the star rating system be disabled for dev threads? All people have opinions, and like the afk macroers, the star rating system probably isn't working as intended.

As well, I did have an interesting post here: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=csystems&message.id=14085which tries to understand how things are worked on... it had some interesting feedback, however it did get some whinners.

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JustG wrote:

I'll respond to some of the more popular questions about the State of the Game here:

Why is the Jedi Revamp being done before the GCW revamp

Two reasons: First, the GCW revamp is a long-reaching, complex set of changes. It will take awhile to define, design, and implement it. Along the way, each publish, we are working on fixing broken things with the GCW to make it more fun. The large overhaul is a mid-term goal. Second, we really want to stop the hologrind. We feel that AFK macroers are not healthy for the game. We want it to stop as soon as we can. And yes, we are aware that we are the ones that put the system in place. This was not what we intended, but things have evolved to this point.

Why is the combat balance being put off?

The combat balance is another massive overhaul. We want to get a lot of player feedback from it, and make sure we have it right before we put it in the game (to avoid another Crafting Experimentation situation).

Why are you not fixing my broken profession now?

We ARE going to do a round of bug fixes for all combat professions, and try to fix the major broken things with each. Keldarin (Live Senior Systems Designer) has a thread in the correspondent’s forum right now asking what they want fixed. Talk to your correspondents.

Each of these comments say pretyy much the same thing. It is important to realize that some combat professions have already been "rebalanced" vice the others, so those folks are left out to hang-dry while we wait a very long time for the rest of the rebalancing. Bug fixes, while certainly necessary and indicative of QA oversights, will not address these balance issues.

While I certainly appreciate the comments, Gary, I have to be honest and say the situation, for me, is untenable. Many of these issues should have never made it out of the design stage, let alone QA. From my perspective, I see a lot of "thrashing" behind your comments, e.g., focus and leadershipwas lacking for quite some timepost-release, and because of that we have the current state of this game. So now everyone is in "hurry-up" mode, which is only going to exacerbate the situation.

Two perfect examples are the original Jedi system, which never should have made it out of the design/concept stage, and the recent "crafting nerf" of Publish 7. No better commentary about the original (and still in-force) Jedi system can be made than the one made by CGW magazine - see my sig for that. As for the P7 crafting nerf, that stayed in through the P7 rollout in spite of the fact that there was almost universal opposition to it. The only reason the nerf was rolled back the day after the P7 rollout was because of that uproar. It's not as though those feelings were expressed the day before P7 - those sentiments were known weeks prior to it. The customer base may not be the best evaluators of subtle changes, but they certainly are when the proposed change is so far reaching. The fact that SOE let the crafting nerf get out at all clearly indicates that in all issues, "DEVs know best", e.g., you will not listen to your customers unless there's a direct threat to the revenue stream. No post-rollout comments of "Hey, it was a nerf and we pulled it back - sorry about that" are satisfactory. The points are that (a) the proposal should have never made it to a code implemetation infirst place, and (b) failing that, the outcry from the customer base should have never been ignored. The fact that the nerf code got into the rollout says that you're not listening in the main, only do so when it's absolutely necessary, and then only grudgingly.

Here's a clue for you - the game stopped being yours the day it went live. It became ours just as much from that point forward. That's a concept SOE and LucasArts does not grok even now. The end result is what we have now. A lot of important issues are half-done, poorly done, or totally undone. No focus.

And let's toss inhighest monthly fee in the industry...for a game in this state? No thanks, Gary. While I sympathize with your team's travails, the truth is you guys brought it on yourselves. I wish you luck, but I'm not giving you my money after March 28.

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why are riflemen getting2 new guns?

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haun wrote:

why are riflemen getting2 new guns?

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JustG wrote:

Second, we really want to stop the hologrind. We feel that AFK macroers are not healthy for the game. We want it to stop as soon as we can. And yes, we are aware that we are the ones that put the system in place. This was not what we intended, but things have evolved to this point

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see, you saying the hologrind hurt the game doesn't mean much.

it's 5 months later - you should have taken it out of the game 4 months ago when EVERYBODY said it was a problem.

stating its a problem now is just silly.

i know you guys had to push jedi for christmas but allowing holocrons to rot out the game for months is just too much.

it's kinda like CM's now - they are destroying the gcw (not to mention riflemen/cm) yet you are letting the months go by with nothing being said or done.

are you going to announce mid august that CMs were overpowered and you now see your mistake?

how about some faster hotfixes on things that cripple the game.

JustG

When are you going to enhance and "add fun" to the commando profession?

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PadawanChong wrote:

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haun wrote:

why are riflemen getting2 new guns?

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Because they're bored killing everyone with the same guns?

Because they fire at 1 second a shot which is tearing up the barrels and they want something new?

Take your pick

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JustG wrote:

Why is the combat balance being put off?

The combat balance is another massive overhaul. We want to get a lot of player feedback from it, and make sure we have it right before we put it in the game (to avoid another Crafting Experimentation situation).

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