Ranger Archive

I am sure that by now, most of you have learned of the nice surprise that SWG team pulled on us, but there are certain things that bear repeating, once or 10 or 100 or 100.000 times:

Schedule changes of this magnitude and this frequency are simply not acceptable.

The problem is not just the delay itself (bad as it is in itself), but the inability of the managers to foresee it, or the unwillingness to share it in a timely manner with customers.

Of course, you can imagine what this means for a major revamp to Ranger or any other profession.

Does anyone know how long a dormant (non paying) toon is kept on the servers? Maybe I should take a break until they fix their management practices.

I quit on the first of january and came back in early june and all my toons were still there. I thin kthe policy is they will keep it a MINIMUM of 3 months, and more assuming the space isn't needed by new toons.

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VeriBeri wrote:
Maybe I should take a break until they fix their management practices.

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I think that is what they just did. Unfortunately for us, fixing their project management meant creating more realistic timelines for their projects. This is why TH is rarely allowed to give us a lot of info - because if something is mentioned as coming at a certain date, and that date changes, then everyone is unhappy. They gave us the dates they had at the time. With new ideas and new directions entering the mix those dates changed. Now that JTL is a reality for them and not just a concept, probably a lot of how they view the game and how they see it being played has changed. So their plan and timeline must change as well.

I will sometimes take a week or two off from SWG to do other things (like clean my house, see real people, maybe even visit my parents lol), and I have always come back refreshed and eager to play again. I don't know how long it takes for a character to be recycled. I do know that when I have started up new characters on different servers I will sometimes start with a whole load of emails and people on my friend's list. Obviously I was using a recycled name. If you plan on waiting until after JTL then your account will probably have reabsorbed. But if you are thinking only like a month you are probably safe.

I have seen many, many software projects go up in flames because the managment team tried to do too much at once, and everything got done half-a$$ed. They are going to perfect JTL first. Would you rather they delayed that to next year? The combat change will take that long, btw, it's a complete recoding across the board: it's almost like rebuilding the entire game. I'm not certain most see the huge scope of this.

Ships in Star Wars or PvP? Mmmm.... I'll take ships, tyvm. I did not come from EQ, I couldn't care less about how that game is done...

We rangers have been waiting for our fixes for a long time. WE DO NOT throw temper tantums like this if they decide that for the betterment of all, we need to wait a little longer.

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Vorpaks wrote:

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VeriBeri wrote:
Maybe I should take a break until they fix their management practices.

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I think that is what they just did. Unfortunately for us, fixing their project management meant creating more realistic timelines for their projects. This is why TH is rarely allowed to give us a lot of info - because if something is mentioned as coming at a certain date, and that date changes, then everyone is unhappy. They gave us the dates they had at the time. With new ideas and new directions entering the mix those dates changed. Now that JTL is a reality for them and not just a concept, probably a lot of how they view the game and how they see it being played has changed. So their plan and timeline must change as well.

I will sometimes take a week or two off from SWG to do other things (like clean my house, see real people, maybe even visit my parents lol), and I have always come back refreshed and eager to play again. I don't know how long it takes for a character to be recycled. I do know that when I have started up new characters on different servers I will sometimes start with a whole load of emails and people on my friend's list. Obviously I was using a recycled name. If you plan on waiting until after JTL then your account will probably have reabsorbed. But if you are thinking only like a month you are probably safe.

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Thanks for the info...it seems that a 6 month break would risk losing the toon either to deletion or recycling. That poses a problem.

BTW, I am not so sure about their goodwill as you are. I think what really happaned was:

1. Some time after the launch, they moved a substantial chunk of the development resources to JTL. It is their great white hope to achieve a quantum leap in subscription numbers and the deadline is set in stone because of the Christmas season.

2. Since the existing game was clearly "unfinished", and a MMOG needs constant addition of new content, they scheduled a number of fixes and additions.

3. Some months back they realized that they had more on they plate than they could handle.

4. They started throwing things overboard to save the ship, but they couldn't afford to announce this immediately because of the probable negative impact on subscriptions.

5. Now that announcing any more delays to the CB is simply unbelievable, it was its turn to be thrown overboard.

6. The correct thing to do would have been: either adding more development resources at stage 1, or at the very latest at stage 3; or postponing JTL to 2005. It is unethical to neglect your responsibilities to your current customers to sell to new customers.

"Fixing their management practices" was supposed to be a euphemism for "replace the management".

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Fred_Skinner wrote:

I have said it before and I'll say it again: this is good news NOT bad. They decided to give JtLS the attention needed so as NOT to make the mistake they made at launch. This is NOT a failure. They have recognized that doing a few things well produces a better product then trying to do everything at once. The priorities, given what they are, will make the game BETTER this way, and not the reverse.

I have seen many, many software projects go up in flames because the managment team tried to do too much at once, and everything got done half-a$$ed. They are going to perfect JTL first. Would you rather they delayed that to next year? The combat change will take that long, btw, it's a complete recoding across the board: it's almost like rebuilding the entire game. I'm not certain most see the huge scope of this.

Ships in Star Wars or PvP? Mmmm.... I'll take ships, tyvm. I did not come from EQ, I couldn't care less about how that game is done...

We rangers have been waiting for our fixes for a long time. WE DO NOT throw temper tantums like this if they decide that for the betterment of all, we need to wait a little longer.

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True.

Thats not the main problem tho. The problem has been that the developers have beendangling the carrot of the almight combat balence(tm) in front of the playerbase since the end of 2003.

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Fred_Skinner wrote:

I have said it before and I'll say it again: this is good news NOT bad. They decided to give JtLS the attention needed so as NOT to make the mistake they made at launch. This is NOT a failure. They have recognized that doing a few things well produces a better product then trying to do everything at once. The priorities, given what they are, will make the game BETTER this way, and not the reverse.

I have seen many, many software projects go up in flames because the managment team tried to do too much at once, and everything got done half-a$$ed. They are going to perfect JTL first. Would you rather they delayed that to next year? The combat change will take that long, btw, it's a complete recoding across the board: it's almost like rebuilding the entire game. I'm not certain most see the huge scope of this.

Ships in Star Wars or PvP? Mmmm.... I'll take ships, tyvm. I did not come from EQ, I couldn't care less about how that game is done...

We rangers have been waiting for our fixes for a long time. WE DO NOT throw temper tantums like this if they decide that for the betterment of all, we need to wait a little longer.

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I don't think my post includes enough caps and/or exclamation marks to qualify as a tantrum

You are absolutely right, if we assume that the development resources (budget) are fixed. They are not.

If they are unable to do both JTL and the other stuff at the same, they should have foreseen it and hired more people. If it requires convincing the SOE upper management to invest more, well, it's part of their job. They made a choice between giving their customers what they paid for (a game realizing the vast potential of the SW universe) and keeping their managers at SOE happy. It seems we have lost. This is the management failure that I'm talking about.

BTW, I am aware that this thread doesn't have much to do with the ranger profession, but it is about something that will affect the ranger community like all other SWG customers. Nevertheless, I will try to refrain from posting any more responses in the interests of communal bliss & I apologize for any annoyance it may have caused.

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Fred_Skinner wrote:

Ships in Star Wars or PvP?

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Unlike some believe the combat rebalance wasn't all about PvP.

Things that should be affected by the balance:

Fixing of the broken combat professions (from your PoV it's understandable that you do not notice this, but rifleman is of all existing combat profs one of the few working mostly 'as described', which is btw one of the core reasons making it look 'overpowered').

Making PvE challenging again, the current situation of combat is easily as unhealthy for the game as the hologrind, the existence of 'sologroups' (and the fact that it is the most used type of 'group') describes the sorry state of PvE enough. A Multiplayer game that does contain only little real multiplayer content (Let's sum this up, there's krayt hunting, the corellian corvette and the deathwatchbunker where groups are "required", and in the first only to actually stand a chance to get lootrights, not to be able to kill the krayt) is broken and needs fixing ASAP.

The rebalance was expected to adress two issues that would change the PvE portion as much as the PvP portion of the game to a more healthier state, too powerful buffs (*including* some chef foods imho, not only the doc portion of buffing) and armor, neither high end composite nor good ubese with the current stats are healthy for the game (don't come up with the 'don't use buffs and armor then', some content cannot be handled without them but gets silly easy with them, also many combat profs suffer from way too high hamcost that require some sort of buff to handle them, as I play two combat profs that both harm me more than my target when I am unbuffed I know this feeling a bit .).

I'd prefer fixing the game that I bought and want to play first before another (completly different I might add) game gets released that happens to be plugged into the existing one we right now play. Especially as we can expect that after the release SW:G - Jump to Lightspeed still will eat up development time that cannot be used to fix the game many of us want to play and bought in the first place, SW:G - An Empire Divided.

To make matters worse they announced to push in some 'short term fixes' to combat, however the past has shown us that this band-aid fixes have usually changed matters from bad to worse (the recent cm change is a perfect example for this, result are even more powerful poisons and diseases as experimenting on range now got mostly pointless due to the poor implementation of that "fix").

A small note on the whole JTL vs. ground based swg: I am not overly fond of 'twitched based games', if I would be, I'd probably play Planetside and not SW:G - An Empire Divided. I however very likely will buy JTL and play it, as most of my friends and guildies will spend all time in space, a release of a well developed space expansion while the ground based game is still left broken will do one thing: kill the ground based game. Well, I actually start to consider to pick up WoW when it comes out, even though I do not like the background at all :-).

Message Edited by darmokVtS on 07-16-2004 05:03 PM

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Calculus_Entropy wrote:

I have a wuestion for you Beri. Are excited for JTL? Are you just dieing to get behind the wheel of an iconic Star Wars ship? Or are you not going to buy JTL? I have a theory I need to check on....

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hehe I know I'm not him, but I thought that was a great question and I wanted to help you flesh out your theory

at the moment, I'm planning on sticking around for JTL and seeing what happens from there. However, there is also a good chance I will need to break for several months since a lot of things obviously aren't changing anytime soon, and priorities seem to change on a weekly basis (devs priorities I mean). So, I can understand Beri's frustrations, along with everyone else who are leaving.

So, to give my 2 creds to the question, I'd have to say that personally I'm incredibly excited about getting behind the controls of one of those starships. However, I am questioning whether or not I will still be interested by the time it comes around, as well as when it does come around will I still be interested in the ground game. It's a difficult question to answer really, since who knows what may come up to pull me away (or not) from SWG in the meantime.

Just thought I'd shed a little light from the "very disappointed" side of the issue