Squad Leader Archive

Greetings Squad Leaders and visitors to our humble forum!

Please do not continue forth unless you are content to read the entire thread. If you choose not to, you will miss out on valuable information that could be potentially extremely important to you and your future.

First and foremost, I want to thank every last Squad Leader and fan of Squad Leaders for sticking with us through this trying time. Folks tend to forget I am a Squad Leader, too!, and that I deeply feel the same pain everyone else feels. The last few months have been rough and extremely uneventful, unfortunately. To the weary eye (and the ignorant mind), it would appear that a lack of effort on the SL community and the lack of the population of SLs has caused us to become at the bottom of the priority list. But, as I will explain, this is not the case whatsoever. Recent weeks have been painful for me, becoming the scapegoat of the ignorant mind. Of course, it was inevitably going to happen sooner or later, but I do sincerely appreciate those of you who have stood at my side and realized I'm fighting on the same front line as everyone else. If I showed you some of the PMs I received, you'd be in shock. I get everything from "YOU MUST BOYCOTT THIS GAME!" to "PlzfixSLsThanksbye" to "You suck at your 'job'" and of course the inevitable people who think I am a Dev or CSR and I can get their SL XP to work again or what not. It's all quite amusing, really.

We are obviously ranked in the lowest of the forums, only ahead of the elite profession boards of Musician, Pikeman, and Image Designer. This makes it all the more important to keep our forums straight and in order. Random posts of things asked at least a dozen other times not only annoy me, they trash the board with uselss filth in an enviornment where I am trying to encourage intellectual conversatation. "THAT'S IT I QUIT", "PLEASE FIX SQUAD LEADER NOW", and various other caps-lock addicted ill-informed posts including, but not limited to "Whereare the SL trainers?", "Why should I be a Squad Leader", and "Convince me not to quit SL" are all ridiculous and do not have a place on this forum, all for their respective reasons. If I need to spell it out to you why, then you're probably one of those people. Productive converstations, inquiries, comments, and ideas are what we need in order to establish strong grounds with a clear support or even unsupport for something. I've seen a couple folks come here and wonder why I don't have this vast array of reports and FAQs and whatever else random thing you can have stickied to the top - folks who are convinced that my labor is only shown by that. If you enjoy this sort of thing, I suggest training Bounty Hunter and clicking over to here: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board?board.id=bounty_hunter. I am not the same as other correspondents. I consider clean-cut boards to be the most efficient method possible. I don't have lock or removal privledges, so I can't remove threads, which is why I have to rely on people to understand this. If it comes down to the fact we have to make the ignorants not feel welcome here, then this is fine with me. And for those of you who don't know, I define an ignorant of our forums as someone who obviously doesn't follow any of the treads here or understand any of the discussions we are having. I realize people will always be coming here for the first time almost daily, which is fine. But the enlightened bunch of them will read through at least a few pages of threads and understand that what they are feeling or their ideas may have already been rotated in.
Now, regarding petitions, protests, riots, boycotts, and so on ... they won't worry. I'm sorry. I know these Dev's, I know how SOE works, and I know how business economics work. You can send them a 2 person petition or a 2 million one, but it will not change the way they prioritize their business. If you think otherwise, feel free to submit the petition yourself. I don't have to do everything, most of you are quite capable of sending things to the exact same e-mail address as I would.

Next on my agenda ...
Many folks have wondered where my next report is or whatever. This I will answer with a timeline.

• Early July 2003 - 1st top 5 list complied and sent


• Early September 2003 - (still no reply) Elaborate report compiled and sent


• (2 days later) Correspondent forums go up


• (1 hour later) Re-post of my September 2003 report


• Late September - SL Developer tells me "only so much time in a day" after I repeatedly bumped the thread over and over.


• Early October - Overwhelming number of new SL bugs crop up, and I immediately bump my original report thread with them, and create an entirely new one of the no-progression XP bug.


• October 22, 2003 - At least most of the bugs fixed and developer contacts me via private message (will get to this).

Here I talk before you today on Oct. 22, 2003, and my original 2 reports have not been replied to whatsoever. Unforunately for us, two things:

• SOE's top priority right now is mounts, player cities, and the Politician profession.


• Our Dev happens to be the head programmer of the above.

Lately, for me, it's been like playing hide and go seek with a rock on the Correspondent forums and with our Dev. The correspondent forums are a utter mess right now. The majority of the correspondents are mature and intellectual, keeping their posts and chitter chatter to a minimum, but the place is currently filthy with...

• Random game content comments (e.g. "Jedi are too hard to get")


• General game bugs (e.g. "The Warren door won't let me in")


• Protests (e.g. "I'm not crafting 'till you fix this", "TALK TO ME!", and so on.)


• Ideas for stuff that is wayout of the range of their profession


• News reports (yes, news reports)


• Etc. etc.

Some of the correspondents are entirely too vocal: literally screaming and whining every day. The BH correspondent posts probably 3-5 threads a day and has been asked repeatedly to stop by several correspondents, but of course he just yells at us and resumes his work. It's not that he is rude about it, it's that he starts a new thread for EVERY SINGLE issue. It's not just him, though, there are several doing that and it's just a real mess while I try to get my TWO total posts on the first page. The forum, as it stands, is the exact same as the general forum except with correspondent top 5 lists thrown in there.

I plan to continue my position until I am summarily removed by SOE for whatever reason. If you ever have a problem with me or think I'm doing a crappy "job", posting here or anywhere else will do absolutely nothing. Click the link at the top of the page and tell them yourself and that you think you can do a better job. Unfortunately, we correspondents are judged on whether or not we are doing "good" by how much response we get, which is TOTALLY the WRONG thing to do. Trust me, they are as we speak filtering out the silent corrrespondents.

Anyways, here are the Dev messages I promised you (and yes I have permission to post them). Oh, and for curious minds, there is NOTHING I am NOT telling you because I was told not to. Basically meaning: What you know is the exact same stuff as I know, and I know nothing more.

The bug with SL xp and combat xp caps should be fixed as well as problems with SL commands. I think its all going to live via Test Center. so it might get hot fixed before the next patch or be with the next patch. (Probably hotfix.)

But they wanted to test it all first.

As for other SL fixes...pant pant...need to get cities out the door first.

and next...

Thanks for your patience with the SL bugs and stuff. You've been very good at holding on despite the fact we have been slow to respond to these problems. We'll be getting ramped up on SL eventually, but player cities and mounts need to get out first.

I posted about the big bugs...commands not working and the xp problem. That stuff is fixed and should hit live fairly soon.

Hang in there. SLs are going to get a revamp at some point.

Thank you for your continued support, and I'm always available to talk via PM, AOL IM at Buff Raven, MSN as nosferatubrujah, or Yahoo as vemnox. I use Trillian so I am on all of those at the same time. Please never ever try to personally talk to me about an idea you have, as I will completely ignore it. All ideas should be posted here for community review. I send ALL ideas that are at least remotely supported to the Devs.

Sincerely,
Joey
AKA Captain Vemnox

*

Please DO NOT reply to this thread. It is a double-post, please reply in the other one. Thank you for your support.

Well, a revamp. Nice to hear, at least if its not the puppeteer they were discussing before. I have hope about that because they have had some more time to play the game themselves. Perhaps now they have a better idea of what the game requires. In regards to the comments about SL xp. Is today's change the change he is referring to or are they reworking this new horrid system?

YOU MAY REPLY TO THIS THREAD, IGNORE MY ABOVE STATEMENT

This board went through an incredible spaz and it must have gotten rid of my double-post in the meantime, so everything is fixed and only this thread remains Discuss away!

---

DiLune wrote:
Well, a revamp. Nice to hear, at least if its not the puppeteer they were discussing before. I have hope about that because they have had some more time to play the game themselves. Perhaps now they have a better idea of what the game requires. In regards to the comments about SL xp. Is today's change the change he is referring to or are they reworking this new horrid system?

---

I knew the fix was coming, but I did not know (and still don't) about the XP change. I haven't even logged in my SL yet to see, so I'll have to get back to you on that.

thanks Cap'n... sorry if my recent posts about the class have been a bit "ranty". I fully support the job you've been tryin to do on our behalf.

The XP "fix" was terribly implemented though... we need to make sure the dev knows it has really messed things up (I've been posting/being ignored on the main board).

I vented in another thread and I know that wasn't the best thing to do. I really do appreciate the work you're doing. I think if we were just communicated better with, things would be a little more smooth. I browse the forums once every day or couple of days and don't always see anything important. Woke up this morning with only a vague notion that anything was fixed.It wasn't until in game and playing that I realized what they had done. I appreciate the way you try and tell us whats going on but its saddening to never hear anything from the devs or csr's.

Thank you for your post Vem. Please keep that up, sometimes its the only way to know what they're doing. I wish things would be fixed prior to this new content being released. That said. I'm still here, just not earning any xp for skills that get me killed and am not entirely sure they're even working. :/

They banned poor Stazi for 7 days from the swg boards... Yet do nothing to his game account, they are all too happy to take his money and make sure he can't say anything...

SOE's top priority right now is mounts, player cities, and the Politician profession.

Our Dev happens to be the head programmer of the above.

Ok this is terrible news.

Once mounts and cities are released there will be TONS of bugs. I don't care how much testing they do, there will be City Halls disappearing, exploits to be fixed, mount balancing to be done. This is how EVERY major addition to an MMOG goes.

It could very easily be another 6 months before all of the issues with cities and mounts are fixed. Then how much longer until they actually get around to completely rewriting the Squad Leader profession?

*adds this to his squad leader revolution post*

ThunderHeart just added a post in the SWG Discussion forum.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=734086

Apparently the NEW SL xp calculation will be changed. Will it go back to the previous calculation? Who knows. Apparently, it's possible thatit's up in Test Center.

He said he would look into it.

Thunderheart wants to help the players, but he doesnt know everything. I HOPE this will be fixed. I can't believe theyre screwing around with THAT part of SL.

So the SL board is truely dead

1). Make a petition and your an idiot because it wont work

2). Make a Suggestion and you will be told "hey you idiot someone said that 2 months ago so go read all the 2 month old posts or you ignorant"

3). So try to do something constructive like I did 2 days ago by trying to make a SL stragay guide. Gets you no where. My post droped faster than my posts on Gen Discussion.

4). make a post about the correspondent not doing his job and your an idiot because its just not true


Well is there anything else?? i think that wraps it up

SL = a stupid joke


Zal'hanan Master Rifleman / (Master SL a (4,4,4,4) loser)

Dear Cap'n,

Occamz here from Tarquinas. I"ve been following this forum for months now. This is basically the only forum I read now and it is due to my love of the SL profession. I would like extend my personal thanks to you for your absolutely stupendous job on these forums. You are always available, you follow every thread (it seems), you have constructed well organized and thoughtful accounts of this community for the Developers and have taken more than your fair share of punishment for it. That is why we address you the Squad leader of the Squad leaders.

My personal involvement with SWG has decreased lately, partly because of financial reasons, but mostly because it has been eclipsed by more important and fun projects. This makes me sad because I play this game with friends, old and new, and I love Star Wars. I haven't posted here much lately because it truly feels like everything has already been said about three dozen times...over and over and over....but I have noticed that there are a lot of newer names around here and the overall tone of the forum has brightened.

I see the Squad Leader as the beacon of hope in this game. We are generally organized, motivated, and precise players by nature which makes us great people to team up with. We have held onto this game not out of spite or desperation, but out of hope and appreciation of all the other amazing options this game offers. I have no doubt that SL will eventually get something here and there, but it isn't something I'm holding my breath for. In fact I don't believe that it is really all that important. Everything is broken so ask yourself am I going to have fun or not...it's as simple as that.

I'd really like to see some new and creative stuff on this forum....maybe some RPing, just to have something fun to read. The constant tirades and "here's my idea for SL" are plain tired. Since there is no way to remove these junk threads (and I think it's starting to bog this site down, personally) don't make 'em. Nobody cares anymore how much you hate or flame. I want to see more fresh ideas, work-arounds, storys, jokes, you name it. That kind of stuff is what make this forum so cool to begin with; the average SL ispretty intelligent.

Enough of my stuff,

Cap'n Vem.....YOU ROCK!

Occamz Zryzor

Tarquinas