Game Guides Archive
Thread: Friday Feature January 14th Part 1 – Space Tour 2
TashSunrider wrote:
Thunderheart wrote:
Novock wrote:
No offense but months ago TH told Commando that their role definition would be the following week's FF. I think thats been what 6 months ago? I'll believe it when I see it.
Things change. I bring you the best information I have at the time and we all roll with the changes as I bring them to you with as much grace as possible or less information flows.
This is a two way street. If I'm going to bring you cutting edge news, then expect some of it to change. It is the nature of all things and not just games and game design.
This would mean anything if the combat fix wasnt promised the first time in November 2003 and we still have no hard information whatsoever with the same excuse every time when a promised date wasnt hold.
This isnt some expansion or something we have to be overly thankful for .. its the fix of a broken core system which should have happened before the game went live.
"We have been working on hitting regular dates with high quality. We are trying to communicate with the player base, and listen to and act on your input about the game. One of the reasons that development houses are so reluctant to share information with the community is that, by their very nature, things ALWAYS change. We are taking a huge risk here by pushing this information out to you. I need to make a very strong caveat that things may be removed, changed, and added to the schedule."
And at the end....
"Once again: This schedule can, and most likely will change. But this is how it looks right now, and we wanted to share it with you. We'll keep you informed as much as we can along the way."
As you can see no one was promised anything... so the devs never lied to anyone. I know I have posted this same thing a couple times now but people who wont let the past from over a year ago die and look at the now andstop harrasing the devsbotherme.When a dev sits there and says for example "I promis you guys next weeks FF will be about the smugglers revamp" and then it never happens.... THEN and only then are they lieing to you. I cant believe we even still have people talking about this... its old new. Get over it... crying about it isnt gonna make things go smoother, its gonna make the devs shell up and not say a word till its published. And I for one would not blame them ONE BIT for doing that because the community in general is very imature. And TashSunrider Im not directing this rant at you just so you know 
/end rant
I will take back everything I said if anyone can show me the words "promis" and "Combat rebalance" in the same sentence
BleuDestiny wrote:
Seeing a lot of good things that are specific and tangible in communications changes here, in the dev and community relations approaches. I'm very excited to see these changes. So to the SOE team, "Thank you."
One thing that I don't see necessarily mentioned as a change, that has historically resulted in alot of lost business, and a lot of player attrition, is the lack of community input taken into consideration when designing changes. For example, when our game had a fundamental problem in the jedi holo-grind (publish 8 and prior), we were out of the blue and unceremoniously handed a jedi revamp including things like negative XP, and this bizarre FRS system, that many if not most of the community considers a real mess, unattractive, clunky, unenjoyable, andnot congruent with the other professions. So we started out with a holo-grind problem, not necessarily anything otherwise wrong with skill trees as they existed, and were handed a convoluted mess as a solution. There was no opportunity to give feedback before we went too far down the path of developing this so-called jedi revamp. This is true of many publishes, we get handed things, often designed to fix prior problems, and the solutions are often not any better.
I see it as a fundamental bias in the decision-making game designers, that they've got these crazy ideas that are rather consistently not in keeping with the broad desires of the gamers/customers, and who at least might have been influenced down different design paths if we player/customers, by forum,or by focus groups, somehow had the opportunity to say earlier on, "FRS-what?!?, are you nuts?"
So back to where I started, I don't see any acknowledgement intheotherwise great communication over this last week, that says that you all are going to also improve ongetting communityinput intosolutions, plans, or priorities on the drawing board, before they're committed to code and too late to change.
Message Edited by BleuDestiny on 01-14-2005 01:44 PM
Thunderheart wrote:
To the best of my knowledge it hasn't changed yet, but its been a crazy week. The bottom line though, if something needs to be pushed out to make it cooler and more fun, chances are more than likely that we will push a date out a littl ebit to get things right.
Thunderheart wrote:
Actually thats true, but if Tyrant walks in my office and says, "Change of plans", guess what happens?
the same thing thats been happening for the last 18 months? I know, lucky guess, right?
(Make sure you give it a few minutes to update the images)
Use the Space Tour to:
Find out which space stations can turn you overt for PvP and how to's
Learn how each of the areas in Space fit into the Star Wars universe
Learn how to get to the Deep Space zone
Discover new landmarks and new areas of space to explore
Have a great weekend! 
Message Edited by Thunderheart on 01-14-2005 03:31 PM
Message Edited by Court-Jester on 01-14-2005 11:15 AM
Court-Jester wrote:
2 more fridays until Jan is over. Combat info?
*edit*
Just noticed this is part 1. /crossesfingers...
I'm putting together the first CU stuff for next Friday, but its just the beginning. They wont be every week or anything, though Cal and I are working hard to get you a CU update early next week.
Yay for Combat Upgrevalence info!
I'm ready for thisstuff to get into full swing I'm also ready for the info on the Smuggler revamp (and other non-combat professions) that SOETyrant spoke of not too long ago:
"Smuggler revamp / non-combat profession upgrades
The smuggler revamp is important and detailed design work starts on it and several other of the non-combat professions in January. [snip] "
Any info on the Smuggler/non-combat profession revamps, TH?
Message Edited by NickHeel on 01-14-2005 02:35 PM