Development Cycle Archive

Serial Killa'
Kauri Server
Jedi Praxium Guild

Thunderheart,

Those of us that work in a profession which requires us to both provide a service and coordinate public input know exactly what you guys are going through. I must admit, I'm a lurker on these boards but a SWG player since the beginning. I know what it is like to work so hard to produce a quality product/service day after day while dealing with the "sting" of public opinion. I work in Higher Education but so much of what I see Devs go through rings true for my own professional experiences. I'm preaching to the choir, I know. You guys are at the top of your game and handle your roles wonderfully and with true caring for your player base (even though many don't see that). I can see it clearly in the decisions you make, your willingness to rethink your game, decisive/insightful goal setting, assignment of resources to support your goals, and through you're excellent level of communication with the players regarding the future of the game (this alone sets you apart from all other games).

As a player, I've had the benefit of seeing the Devsvia an anonymous pair of eyes in the public crowd. I value that perspective because it allows me to go back to my own work with insight on how my "public"often sees me. I've learned a lot by watching you guys. I realize that this post makes no difference in the grand scheme of things... but if you do read it, I hope it gives you a bit of a boost. We all need those from time to time.

Congrats to you and the entire teamon all the hard work... and even "harder" decisions which have had to be made. There are many of us out here that see beyond the fanboy-level and have a true respect and understanding of the job you are doing.

Jadin

* Thenna Narsal - Creature Handler (Ahazi)

I am a long time veteran and have over 3000 hours ingame on different characters.

Have tried all professions, and more server than one.

There are peeps that are gonna call me both nerd and addict after this but i dont care as its true. Still

even i have problems seeing reason to stay ingame at current time.

I can live with postponing patches,

i can live with bugs .. to a certain level

i can live with the monthly cost, hell with 5 accounts i have so much online time i atually save cash (no time for anything else)

I can also live with the fact that im probably not getting jedi ever..

There are some problems tho:

Pvp are a joke at moment... There are certain mixes of characters that rule.. no other have any chance at all

economy are a joke, get a character to master, mass kill anything in game in a few hours.. voila .. millionaire

not enough things to do at moment.. i have done it all, tried it all, but refused to grind jedi as im a roleplayer and didnt see how dropping for instance tka to get chef would make me see the path to the force..a way to get fingers burned.. perhaps.. nothing more

pve.. where is the challenge.. buff up, put on armour, kill anything .. no prob..

there came some quests that actually sounded like fun.. like corvette.. but yes.. sure .. a stormie with 180K ham.. hmm,. no wait.. lets put 20 of them.. and make them camp the respawn site..

afk macro campers.. nuff said

why should i wait for the jtl? what am i to do until then?

Why should i pay for jtl, when the main game dont work

why not get another game? only thing to do here is chat.. and that even dont work at all times.. (referring to LAG,, not patch)

1 day a week (patch) day the game is useless.. and dont give me that crap that it takes like 5 hours to update servers.. what are u running the game on? 486 machines?

i have a p42800 with 1 gig ram, and radeon 9800pro.. i expect a game thats over 1 year old to run smooth.. why dont it?

i have prepaid for 3 months just before the patch sadly.. and i cant say that soe has much other to offer than swg (barely)

so cant cancel at moment.. im not letting u have my cash for nothing.. at least ill use the chat (when it works) and talk to my friends.. (the few that is left)

can u at least tell us developers..

why should we stay ?

fair question i would say.. just answer that one.. why should we stay..

Lipaes Bladeforge (deleted)

Linnea Bladeforge (deleted)

1 secret name character ( i cant post name.. some dont recognize roleplaying)

2 accounts for my wife

can u at least give me something to look forward too... that actually will be certain... if not only a date for a desktop theme... anything.. im grasping for straws...

From what I gathered by reading this section, you intend to have publish 10 live sometime early october. This is an un-acceptablelength of time to have to wait. Having recently unlocked, I'd like to experience playing as a Jedi at least oncebefore I lose all interest in SWG altogether. If you intend to release publish 10 during october as I am led to believe,perhaps ahotfix activating all lockedFS slots sometime during early/mid august would be a good idea. This would be a relatively easy thing to do and there would be really no excuse not to do it. Please try to understand this from my (most likely other's) point of view. I have spent god knows how many months working on professions I didn't even want to do and I was brought onto the brink of unsubscription on many occasions, you then decide to punish holo grinders by sealing their FS slots and blatently refuse to open them before publish 10, which I doubt any of us will see anytime soon. This is very bad going.

its a marketing thing guys, come on, all you must see it... Patch 10 is what? More Jedi, finishing it up, i.e. attracting new subscribers... hey who doesnt wanna be a powerful jedi eh? Then focusing only on the Expansion to get it out for christmas, which will do what? Yes thats right, bring in more new subscribers.. Im sure they've crunched the numbers and Im sure, since expansions usually sell, their regular fan base will sit and not cancel because of JtL..

Capitalism at its finest, so yes, Good Job TH, good job all SOE staff, you guys will surely rake in the cash.

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JCW West
Master's Mall
Smuggler/Scout/Artisan Items/Weapons/Loot
Now with Shipwright vendors and space loot!
876, -4460 Coronet
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Originally I was going to leave with out a word, but reading this, all 27 pages of unhappyness...

All I have to say is wow. Thats brave telling every one this, just a week or two from when all the people who signed up for a year subscription is due to expire (ie. me).

6+ months before any real changes to the game. Even longer before the GCW (which is starwars btw, not space) gets work. Promised fixes for other professions, delayed even later (ie smuggler).

Why I left, and won't come back.

1) Has anyone figured out what the CS in CSR stands for?

- Replacing equipment lost to game bugs? Nah. I lost millions in equipment, resources, bazaar sales, etc. all to "known bugs".

2) There are game bugs that will also be getting veteran rewards

- Vehicle warping. I warped over 1 km, only to be killed by the person I was running from.

- You warping on dismounts. +/- 150m in any direction

- Autostoring vehicles

- The new fantastic content, is ALWAYS SCREWED.

. People went to go through that meat grinder you call the DW Bunker, only to find that you couldn't craft the goods, and it would eat all your rare resources.

. Nyms theme park. The first quest was uncompleteable, at the very beginning, middle, and in the end, he said "Null".

. Loot kits, reports of killing 1000's of NPCs, no drops

3) Meaningless grinding for professions. I finished droid engineer. Not by making actual droids, but making 10 zillion advanced frames. You think, that by actually finishing a complete droid, that would be more important. Pretty much any proffession that has crafting is mastered by making 1 item 1000's of times.

4) Content.

- The only planets worth doing NPC quests, and Tat, and Dant. Which had the revamps. As for the rest, I tried doing the quests on Naboo, from the Gungan head-cheese. 1000 creds, drive 7-12k round trip. Rinse/repeat.

- Corvette. Great potential, crappy implementation. OMG, people are finishing it, lets sprinkle more SBD's, and 300k ham troops all over it. Cuts out the regular player, with average armor, average weapons.

- So, according to your stats, 300,000 players. 30000 went to the corvette (10%), and 3000 (1%) completed it (#'s might be off some what, this is from memory).. And I bet, the completed # is alot of people who were klingons, and let some one who knew how to finish it, complete it for them.

-95% of everything is run, kill, run back

- 300k HAMS is not content. Its just a way to trash armor, and waste30-60 minutes killing it.

5) Jedi

- You have been kissing their asses since the beginning, which amazes me, considering how little Jedi have to do with Starwars in ESB time frame.. lessee.. Obi is dead, there's Darth, and the emporer.. Yoda.. Those are the only ones that come to mind.. I'm sure there is more in the expanded universe, but no way they'd be as common/dense as they are now. One trip to the squill cave for the hermit quests, 10 jedi, in the 10 minutes I was there.

- Its had more attention that any other proffessions combined, and its only been around 5-6 months, to a very limited group of people.

6) Races

- You posted the stats for player races. Then later a comment about how people like to play what they know, human/zabrak. Wellllll... If the other races werent completely useless againsts current content. The early days of the game, you had Mon Cals, Trandos, humans, twileks, rodians, and wookies. And they were all common.

. Wookies only got armor (and not very good) becuase they went on a crusade.

. Trando's. Fearsom lizard warriors my ass. Inate abilities useless, rediculous caps on stats, and the inability to wear a complete suit of armor. Nothing like getting hit for 4500 damage, again, and again, and again.

. How many of the Mon Cals, trando's, twileks, and rodians do you see any more.. Not many.

7) Veteran rewards.. for any one who's played for 30 days. Nice commitment to everyone who stuck around for an entire year. OOH, but i get a space ship if I stick it out for another 6-12months for JTL.. no thanks.

8) Worst of all, putting the existing game on hold for an "expansion".

I'm honestly not sure who has made more of a mockery of Starwars. SOE and Everquest in (sort of) space, or Lucas with his prequels.

Did I want leave? No.I love starwars. I saw it back in '77, and still have alot of my old starways toys. Did I see the point in continuing to play. Nope. I'll get my star wars fix from watching my movies again.On the plus side, I have alot more spare time now.

--------8<---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ytossk (hatched April 05)- Bounty Hunter Extraordinaire.
Imperial Shocktrooper, Hutt Thug

There ain't nothin that can't be fixed by a bigger gun.


Survived SWG Beta 3, Classic SWG, CU, NGE, ToOW beta

*gets home from work*

You have got to be fukin' kidding me.

I'm sorry, but did TH say that the CM bug fixes were the start of this stop-gap for the combat balance? I hope he knows that those changes are utterly worthless and that CM's are still the overpowered class they have always been. The dev team has taken a potentially great game and turned it into a complete **edit**ing disaster. Honestly, how many of you would still be playing if not for the people you have met in SWG? Very few I'd bet. I can't imagine anyone staying for the "content" or <cough> the GCW. Hope to see all of you in some other game soon because this one is going nowhere.

Thunderheart I'm going to repost a post I made in this thread

It may be slightly out of context, but I feel a good bit of it many of the community leaders and elders can relate to.

I think a lot of our flames and passion comes from the love of the game, and the potential the game has, but hasn't reached even half of that yet. The CSR department is horrid, it was from the start, anyone who says otherwise must have been very lucky. Most CSRs are clueless about the game, sometimes I wonder if they even play the game.

Maybe I just get upset because I've experienced a large portion of the game, and still find many things unbalancing. I mean seriously should it have taken months to get combat medics toned down into scale with the other professions in PVP? Rifleman is also another issue (don't get me wrong I have an alt that is a Rifleman) the main problem with rifleman is the ability to target the un-healable pool, AND have a large arsenol of weaponry, AND weapons that pack a punch. This jedi revamp does have me slightly worried, If jedi's are already balanced for the Combat Revamp, what will become of the other professions?

I do have to wonder how many of the development team PVPs, there are essentially 2 end games (well 3 with jedi) Either become a filthy rich toon, PVP (when you can find it), or level/play your jedi. Sure PVE is fun, but at the same rate, doing the same thing over and over and over again becomes monotonus, and more often than not those players will leave the game, or defer to one of the other end games to pass the time, maybe even switching between them.

Lies, yes lies, or maybe misinformations, streched truths, concepts that never went into reality. If I had a dime for every time something was stated to be changed in an upcoming patch I'd be a rich guy. I remember something about house item limits being changed, the hex colored item names being chooseable.

So many of us know we have ideas that could make this game more enjoyable, there are so many broken/unused items in the game, When was the last time you saw someone wearing bone armor? There is next to no benefit from wearing it, there is almost no reason to wear padded armor, about the only 2 armors armorsmiths have worth making are Ubese and Composite, the others simply aren't effective. Maybe the combat balance in publish 21 will address these things, unfortunately for some fixes didn't come quickly enough.

Don't get me started on the TEF system either, or the GCW, most of the veteran players could make the developers cry if they were to meet head to head. I saw a promotional video a while back, I didn't see 96m combat medic balls flying through the air, essentially thats what PVP has come down to, a few select professions, mainly CM, Doc, Rifleman, Fencer, Carbineers, and Pikemen for support, (can't forget Jedi now also) When was the last time you really saw any other professions playing competitively in PVP?

My suggestion for the combat revamp is to get some dedicated players into testing it, I personally don't feel test center will do, as the population is much lower than a live server, not to mention PVP as a live server knows it, is non-existant.

SEAs, it has been a year now and themultiple stat modded SEAs still don't work, again more higher end content/toys out the window essientially because they're not working to their full potential.

Remember when the double 75% reduction went in to pvp? Remember the repair nerf, that "hasn't changed". Hundreds if not thousands of players voicing their finds on the forums, oh no they couldn't be correct, repairs don't work the same as they did the day before the patch?

It is an endless list really. I do feel that SDraven is partially correct, we DO care about this game, but at the same rate many of us are losing faith, or have lost it.

If I'm not mistaken there were somewhere around 300,000 paying customers at launch. I'd wonder how many subscribers are left. I'm fairly sure that number hasn't increased over 300,000 otherwise we'd have seen a few headlines about it on the main page.

Flame me all you want, I feel everything I've written here to be truthful.

Maybe SDraven will say I was blaming the DEV's for everything that doesn't suit me, and possibly thats true, however I don't have the ability to alter the game code, nor do I have the ability to get things fixed.

Maybe next time I'll RTFM and figure things out on my own, wait just a minute what manual? The one that leaves many questions to be answered, and without information on how things are intended to work, its hard to say what a bug is.

Impossible to see the future is. -Yoda

AtlantisCH

Master Armorsmith (Radiant)
Vendors: TBA

I am sorry, I am trying hard to be optimistic but I have to say this is BS.... I WILL be moving on to WoW or EQ2, and giving up my game accounts.

Most of my friends of 60 core people have left this game due to combat boredom, the 6-8 of us left had no intentions of jedi except 1, and after I tell them wait til the balance and give it another chance you guys pull this crap. It was a HORRIBLE decision to put Jedi over combat and the GCW, they are NOT a major playerbase, and now because of this bad decision we have to wait again.

People are excited about space, but how many of the real mmorpg community are going to enjoy twitch games? Maybe a little bit but most played these games cuz their skill based with some player skills being brought to bear, but those skills are mainly how good they are with key combos or knowing when to use what power and how often.

Just when I thought ok 1 more damn patch to go thru before I can have some fun again and now I find not til after october! I already get so bored of this game its not funny, most times I surf net reading whats coming out more than I play, this is the biggest letdown I can imagine. For features annnounced and planned back in december, this stinks royally.

What is the lead designer a jedi fanatic? how is the lowest percent combat profession came to have 2 months and more of development time, while those of us who waited patiently are told to wait some more.

Unfreakingbelievable is all I can say.........

Smuggler? No?

/pout

Ok I learned my lesson with bio-engineer. FOTM here I come.

Hida Riken, Kettemoor - Pink Teras Kasi
Hovanoi Riken'lar, Kettemoor - Bartender
Fasma Tarien, Valcyn - Wallflower

Long Live the Teras Kasi!
It's the community stupid!

Pretty much no new **edit** until october..I see you guys are **edit**ing up again. Jesus way to ruin a good thing.

Hostile-