Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Great Expectations, Major Schedule Changes and making SWG the finest MMORPG ever
Oireg
Thu Jul 15, 2004 1:15 pm
#53
shagon wrote:
Everything is getting put on hold for JTL, cause you think this will bring more money. What good is that going to do whenall the people stop playing the game cause of the bugs, exploits and issue we have now and can expect to see on JTL.
Why dont you put JTL on hold for a year and fix the current problems in the game before everyone packs up and move over to different game.
/agree
Janson
Thu Jul 15, 2004 1:15 pm
#54
All I can say is...this is going to be one very ver interesting dev chat later
Mkappus
Thu Jul 15, 2004 1:15 pm
#55
Thunderheart,
Thanks for the new schedule. I haven't read all the player responses so this may be a duplicate question.
Publish 9.X was supposed to remove empty vendors from the world map, is that still happening?
Also, quite some time ago there was supposed to be a Star Destroyer instanced dungeon after publish 10. Is that still planned or is that back burnered, since the Hutt casino is now post publish 10? I noticed you mentioned entertainer quests, but you did not specifically mention the Hutt Casino, has that been delayed as well?
meeuki
Thu Jul 15, 2004 1:15 pm
#56
you acknowledge the concerns we have with the product TH, but it's posts like these you should be *directly* addressing
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thunderheart wrote:
...Clearly the community wants us to do a better job at delivering the game service and this reinforced our decision to make sure we have adequate resources on each update to the game.
The team’s goals are to increase the quality of the service... we agree with the community that our design and implementation process should continue to be improved...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SOE, I don't want to give you a back-handed compliment, and I do think this statement is very well appreciated, mature and professional; but being able to deliver live software updates reliably, well documented and tested for an online service is pretty much a level 1 requirement. You guys have done a tremendous job this past year, but fundamentally with 100,000+ paying subscribers you never should have had the problems you did. And I don't understand why you have to shift resources to improve core architecture or support services (CM/RM, QA, Ops). You already should have a mature release management and QA process, and a stable library set to customize (for new content). If not, please get it together. It's a great game, but these problems undermine your ability to deliver.
Customers feel a really big difference I think between loving SWG and coping with SOE. We don't like your corporate culture, but love this product.
Also, I thought you used contractors from WingCommander and others for JTL. It's been stated publicly that it was a "separate" team working uniquely on JTL that would not interfere with other initiatives. What happened?
Thanks again for the announcement. Clarity is always appreciated.
_______________________________________________
S O L N, "There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny."
Explorer/Confronter
Seeing as Jedi and CH got "balanced" (CH's MONTHS ago), can we expect these profs to be "un-balanced" until the balance ?
The Combat Balance will now be at least 1 year late if it goes live in November (we were told the CB would start in November 2003 for 3 months).
PvE in SWG is a joke - some templates can kill ANYTHING in the game.
PvP in SWG is a joke - some templates are extremely overpowered, some are almost useless
GCW is in a terrible state - you can take out 20 Large turrets in 5mins with a small group of people, bases can be destroyed by ONE person, minefields do hardly any damage. PvP is limited mainly to Jedi and Jedi hunters
We have constantly been fed the carrot of the fabled CB since October-ish last year, and it is constantly pulled back. Many players have only been carryinbg on with SWG because the CB has been promised "soon", to breathe life back into what is becoming an increasingly dull game.
Without the CB, a large percentage of players won't take the risk of purchasing JTL, because so many promises about the CB and the GCW revamp have been broken over and over again.
We were told that the development of JTL would NOT affect the scheduled updates, as the teams were seperate, again this was another lie - as you just admitted (I dont blame you, you're just delivering the news).
I have been pretty vocal persuading people to stay in SWG, as the CB was due, and should make things fun again, now, I doubt I'll still be here by JTL launch.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Chimaera: fg of MOF Master of nothing, Akev - Politician/Master Chef
Now selling food and drinkfrom the Little Chef tent near the Straylight Mall & Shuttleport on Dantooine (-2603 4995)
Custom orders welcome for food food and drink
Thanks for the update TH.
Enough's enough for me. I've waited and wasted enough money waiting for you guys to fix these issues and deliver this mythical combat balance.
I must say you guys keep promising all these things and rarely deliver. Good for your bottom line I suppose, keeping people sticking around. I'm tired of shelling out $$ to a game that is not improving and just get more boring every day.
I know you will say, "Stay around, things will get great eventually." Well in response, I say I've waited long enough and am not going to wait another year paying you money to make promises you are unable to keep. If you can't do it, hire more developers if those you have aren't enough.
Good luck.
When does KOTOR II come out?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thunderheart wrote:
...Clearly the community wants us to do a better job at delivering the game service and this reinforced our decision to make sure we have adequate resources on each update to the game.
The team’s goals are to increase the quality of the service... we agree with the community that our design and implementation process should continue to be improved...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SOE, I don't want to give you a back-handed compliment, and I do think this statement is very well appreciated, mature and professional; but being able to deliver live software updates reliably, well documented and tested for an online service is pretty much a level 1 requirement. You guys have done a tremendous job this past year, but fundamentally with 100,000+ paying subscribers you never should have had the problems you did. And I don't understand why you have to shift resources to improve core architecture or support services (CM/RM, QA, Ops). You already should have a mature release management and QA process, and a stable library set to customize (for new content). If not, please get it together. It's a great game, but these problems undermine your ability to deliver.
Customers feel a really big difference I think between loving SWG and coping with SOE. We don't like your corporate culture, but love this product.
Also, I thought you used contractors from WingCommander and others for JTL. It's been stated publicly that it was a "separate" team working uniquely on JTL that would not interfere with other initiatives. What happened?
Thanks again for the announcement. Clarity is always appreciated.
_______________________________________________
S O L N, "There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny."
Explorer/Confronter
Seeing as Jedi and CH got "balanced" (CH's MONTHS ago), can we expect these profs to be "un-balanced" until the balance ?
The Combat Balance will now be at least 1 year late if it goes live in November (we were told the CB would start in November 2003 for 3 months).
PvE in SWG is a joke - some templates can kill ANYTHING in the game.
PvP in SWG is a joke - some templates are extremely overpowered, some are almost useless
GCW is in a terrible state - you can take out 20 Large turrets in 5mins with a small group of people, bases can be destroyed by ONE person, minefields do hardly any damage. PvP is limited mainly to Jedi and Jedi hunters
We have constantly been fed the carrot of the fabled CB since October-ish last year, and it is constantly pulled back. Many players have only been carryinbg on with SWG because the CB has been promised "soon", to breathe life back into what is becoming an increasingly dull game.
Without the CB, a large percentage of players won't take the risk of purchasing JTL, because so many promises about the CB and the GCW revamp have been broken over and over again.
We were told that the development of JTL would NOT affect the scheduled updates, as the teams were seperate, again this was another lie - as you just admitted (I dont blame you, you're just delivering the news).
I have been pretty vocal persuading people to stay in SWG, as the CB was due, and should make things fun again, now, I doubt I'll still be here by JTL launch.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Chimaera: fg of MOF Master of nothing, Akev - Politician/Master Chef
Now selling food and drinkfrom the Little Chef tent near the Straylight Mall & Shuttleport on Dantooine (-2603 4995)
Custom orders welcome for food food and drink
Thanks for the update TH.
Enough's enough for me. I've waited and wasted enough money waiting for you guys to fix these issues and deliver this mythical combat balance.
I must say you guys keep promising all these things and rarely deliver. Good for your bottom line I suppose, keeping people sticking around. I'm tired of shelling out $$ to a game that is not improving and just get more boring every day.
I know you will say, "Stay around, things will get great eventually." Well in response, I say I've waited long enough and am not going to wait another year paying you money to make promises you are unable to keep. If you can't do it, hire more developers if those you have aren't enough.
Good luck.
When does KOTOR II come out?
OOM
Thu Jul 15, 2004 1:16 pm
#57
My 2 cents... I really think the combat balance should come before JTL. Actually it should have come before the Jedi revamp. The combat balance sounds to me like an exercise in mathematics... maybe you should hire a mathemetician and put him/her in a cube for a couple weeks thereby not impacting your JTL schedule.
Cheers,
Ait
Matsubaa
Thu Jul 15, 2004 1:16 pm
#58
Pushing back the combat rebalance any further is unacceptable.
I will maybe be renewing my account after JTL comes out just to see if it holds any interest for me. In all likelihood SOE's baby, EQ II will be getting my subscription money by then if I haven't dropped the MMORPG scene altogether after too many disappointments.
Far from the finest MMORPG ever, SWG has only proven to me that a dual management model can't work and any game license in this way will instantly fall to the bottom of my list. People who aren't doing the work are dictating the pace at which work is done and it shows in the grave errors made constantly.
I'm a wookiee who waited almost a year for my first suit of armor and will have waited significantly more than a year to have a suit of armor suitable for PvP.
I'm a Creature Handler who was gutted in December with the understanding that it would be *one* or *two* months until the rest of the community saw changes as sweeping as the ones which destroyed my favorite profession.
I'm a Ranger/Scout whose traps include the atrocious Lecepanine Dart trap whose only effect is to produce Dizzy status on creature NPCs on whom Dizzy serves no purpose.
My combat skill consists of the Marksman Carbine line and 3 boxes of Carbineer. With carbines as my weapon hunting unarmored is suicide, hunting armored is worse. Unless I am fully buffed the lowest encumberance armor combined with the HAM cost of the best carbines available is also suicide unless I commit to 20 minutes or more of auto-attacking. While buffed I can spam the highest cost specials I have with the highest cost gun I have without ever seeing my HAM change.
These are issues which could and should have been addressed in the Combat Rebalance which should have been attempted, if not completed, in January of this year. You've had now 7 months to finish the Combat Rebalance from when it was announced and almost 13 months from when the game was released to fix the glaring issues with combat and the GCW in general.
During this time you have rewarded players who quit their accounts with 2 free weeks. You have rewarded players who stuck with you with a picture and a ship designed to drum up support for the Space Expansion which has sucked up so many resources from your developers that the existing game is suffering with no end in sight. You've rewarded griefers and power gamers with the hallowed Jedi who are now the bane of our existence, stealing kills and slaughtering other players by the dozens in efforts to climb the Jedi ranks. You have refused to even acknowledge many of the complaints and solutions brought to you by the community.
Fix it all and fix it well and you *might* get your players back. As SWG stands now it seems to have been an abortive attempt at something good.
I will maybe be renewing my account after JTL comes out just to see if it holds any interest for me. In all likelihood SOE's baby, EQ II will be getting my subscription money by then if I haven't dropped the MMORPG scene altogether after too many disappointments.
Far from the finest MMORPG ever, SWG has only proven to me that a dual management model can't work and any game license in this way will instantly fall to the bottom of my list. People who aren't doing the work are dictating the pace at which work is done and it shows in the grave errors made constantly.
I'm a wookiee who waited almost a year for my first suit of armor and will have waited significantly more than a year to have a suit of armor suitable for PvP.
I'm a Creature Handler who was gutted in December with the understanding that it would be *one* or *two* months until the rest of the community saw changes as sweeping as the ones which destroyed my favorite profession.
I'm a Ranger/Scout whose traps include the atrocious Lecepanine Dart trap whose only effect is to produce Dizzy status on creature NPCs on whom Dizzy serves no purpose.
My combat skill consists of the Marksman Carbine line and 3 boxes of Carbineer. With carbines as my weapon hunting unarmored is suicide, hunting armored is worse. Unless I am fully buffed the lowest encumberance armor combined with the HAM cost of the best carbines available is also suicide unless I commit to 20 minutes or more of auto-attacking. While buffed I can spam the highest cost specials I have with the highest cost gun I have without ever seeing my HAM change.
These are issues which could and should have been addressed in the Combat Rebalance which should have been attempted, if not completed, in January of this year. You've had now 7 months to finish the Combat Rebalance from when it was announced and almost 13 months from when the game was released to fix the glaring issues with combat and the GCW in general.
During this time you have rewarded players who quit their accounts with 2 free weeks. You have rewarded players who stuck with you with a picture and a ship designed to drum up support for the Space Expansion which has sucked up so many resources from your developers that the existing game is suffering with no end in sight. You've rewarded griefers and power gamers with the hallowed Jedi who are now the bane of our existence, stealing kills and slaughtering other players by the dozens in efforts to climb the Jedi ranks. You have refused to even acknowledge many of the complaints and solutions brought to you by the community.
Fix it all and fix it well and you *might* get your players back. As SWG stands now it seems to have been an abortive attempt at something good.
Ryquin
Thu Jul 15, 2004 1:16 pm
#59
Dharma812 wrote:
Ryquin wrote:
What the heck is the "Character Transfer System" ?
Just another revenue stream...one that once again only applies to 0.000000000001% of the population.
Um, that really didn't answer my question.
Could someone post a link to the info on this?
DankMohda
Thu Jul 15, 2004 1:17 pm
#60
I feel something, as if thousands of players all hit there cancel button at once.......
Sometimes I honeslty think you want to drive everyone away fromn SWG
nolan007
Thu Jul 15, 2004 1:17 pm
#61
Vagrantprodigy wrote:
Hire more programmers, and get your priorities straight. Oh, and please don't announce deadlines if you are gonna keep changing them
Brooks's Law: "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later."
AudioOrgana
Thu Jul 15, 2004 1:17 pm
#62
I have to say I am hugely dissapointed.
As excited as many of us are for JTL, "it's in the combat balance" at times has been the answer to at least 75% of the issues players have brought up since last year.
Why are we being punished for poor scheduling?
AO
As excited as many of us are for JTL, "it's in the combat balance" at times has been the answer to at least 75% of the issues players have brought up since last year.
Why are we being punished for poor scheduling?
AO
yusonge
Thu Jul 15, 2004 1:17 pm
#63
Dharma812 wrote:
FIX THE GROUND GAME FIRST.
as was stated FIX THE GROUND GAME FIRST.
Aracon
Thu Jul 15, 2004 1:17 pm
#64
TH, I have spent a year waiting for this combat balance. 180 bucks of my hard-earned money for a game that isn't even balanced. I kept saying "It's going to get better, they're going to fix it soon!" Boy was I ever wrong. I have to seriously think if I'm going to cancel my account or not before the end of the month is over. Waiting until well past October for something that should have been fixed a year ago is absolutely absurd.
I do not blame you personally, you are just the messenger. However, you need to show your higher-ups just how pissed off we all are right now. You were once one of us TH, show them our dissapointment with this.
You people have spent months now catering to a SMALL portion of the playerbase. You only nerf/halfass-fix a class when they are affecting your precious Jedi(Combat Medic). We've all just grown so sick of it. We want our Combat Balance. We PAID for a balanced game and for over a year now we have yet to recieve it. You people need to rearrange your scheduling and get to work. Delay the expansion if you must.
So yes, I have a decision to make. Should I keep playing a game that is horribly, horribly unbalanced and that has been promised to be fixed for a year now? Or should I stick it out and continue this blind loyalty that I have to Star Wars and wait for things to get better?
No matter what the decision is, one thing is for sure:
No matter what the decision is, one thing is for sure:
I can not reccommend this game at all anymore.
I have never seriously complained about this game before but now I have lost complete faith in SWG and its development team. May the Force be with you...you're going to need it.
Cyc66
Thu Jul 15, 2004 1:17 pm
#65
I doubt the two groups will merge after the JTL launch. A team will stay focused on JTL because we all know it will be buggy as hell, a few will go to the main SWG group and the most talented will go to EQ2. I bet that's where Q3P0 went also.
Hey devs, if you want us to be kind and understanding why don't you give us a discount on the monthly fee for beta testing your game!
Also, I hope you plan to at least add in those new spices for the smuggler (that are already ready to go live) along with the other quick fixes you mentioned.
You guys are obviously understaffed and over worked so I don't really fault you, I fault SOE.
Hey devs, if you want us to be kind and understanding why don't you give us a discount on the monthly fee for beta testing your game!
Also, I hope you plan to at least add in those new spices for the smuggler (that are already ready to go live) along with the other quick fixes you mentioned.
You guys are obviously understaffed and over worked so I don't really fault you, I fault SOE.