Holocron wrote: Does it make good business sense to thus alienate and betray your customers? Why on earth would someone approach it that way?
It doesn't make logical sense, but the impression is that this is exactly what SOE does. You ask why on earth someone would approach it that way? The obvious answer: short term gains.
It is the very definite impression of many players who post in these forums, and others I have met in the game, that, in your development/design approach to SWG, your company is favoring short-term fixes over long-term benefits to the game. If something sells some more units and gets a few more months of subscriptions TODAY, the impression is, then SOE will do it, regardless of whether or not it is good for the long-term health of the game.
Oh, you want an example? Well let's see, this is pretty easy:
The CU. Whether you like it now or hate it now, the fact of the matter is, the CU was not ready to go live when it did. It was full of bugs and holes, and the conversion of various professions was incomplete. For example, Dancers still had a "Wound Healing Tree" even though Mind Wounds were taken out of the game. BEs could still make tissues to benefit stats that no longer existed, and could not create pets properly at all. Creatures for CHs were improperly converted. And there was, and remains to this day, no documentation whatsoever of the new system. Why did you put the CU out before it was ready? Simple: short-term gain. You wanted it out before ROTW came out, to take advantage of the things ROTW would take advantage of (e.g. Lucasfilm marketing blitz), and so you put the CU out way before it was ready (it needed at least another month, probably two, of tweaking). This was a decision made for short-term gain at the expense of the long-term health of the game. You knew if you released the CU and ROTW in solid shape, it would be better in the long run, but you clearly wanted to take advantage of the massive subscription boost made available by the movies. This is the SOE operating procedure in a nutshell -- sacrificing long-term game health, long-term wisdom, for the immediate benefit of some new accounts.
So, here is what the general sense is, if you actually read these forums carefully (which, frankly, nobody on your team seems to do, including the "community relations" people). The players feel betrayed and alienated because it is so transparently obvious that you do not value your long-term customers enough to do things that benefit the game long-term. Instead, the impression is, you are willing to sell your long-term customers down the river for some short-term gain. Now, maybe you don't realize you're doing this (though I find this hard to believe, given how intelligent your team is), and maybe it's not on purpose, but that IS the general impression that your team gives: "short-term benefit trumps everything else, and screw the health of Profession X or Y, screw the long-term consquences to the game, screw everything but the # of accounts we can add this month." And THAT is why players feel alienated and betrayed.
Morwen wrote: Example: The new icons suck. They're unreadable. They make my eyes bleed, and I know I'm not alone. How hard would it have been to allow a choice between the old and new icons? We asked for this small thing repeatedly during the CU beta, we even begged for it to no avail.
AND... this is not just a matter of taste. I do not have any issues with this myself, but colorblind people have told the devs over and over again that they cannot read the new UI elements such as these icons, and they have been IGNORED.
Nice, huh? What kind, friendly, COMPASSIONATE people the devs seem like when they ignore color-blind people for 6 months and counting.
You see, Holo... THIS is the problem. Color-blind people made a valid complaint, and they were told to take a flying leap. And you wanna know why SOE has such a bad reputation? This is why.
It almost doesn't need an introduction... but I suggest that if you've *ever* thought to yourself "This is boring" in any video game... take a look at it. It's a great theory by someone within the industry.
Edit: Raph Koster is the author as well as Chief Creative Officer at SOE.
What?
I would not praise this work. If these are the driving thoughts behind the mind that brought us game-breaking, player exodus causing, wild, hair-brained concepts like the Holo Grind, the Jed Revamp (that went beyond the holo grind issue needlessly to revamp the entire fabric of Jedi,) the completely confounded and isolated FRS system, 50 billion professions - including social professions,... then I, for one, would be the put this nonsense in the shredder.
Assuming that Mr. Koster was responsible for the above mentioned debacles, I have four words for him:
"Don't reinvent the wheel."
The things that continue to undo the success of SWG and our enjoyment, are the fundamentals that other games enjoy and SWG lacks utterly. We could have introduced the Star Wars elements to SWG, and various differentiators, without reinventing the wheel. Would that Mr. Koster had provided gaming venues, battle venues (that worked and emulated the fundamentals present in other games,) and rewards systems that had us engage in battles (rather than dueling,) engage in "something," we'd all be much better off. The great friends, players, and customers that were left along the roadside, like roadkill from this project's conceptual misjudgments are horrific at best.
Thank goodness we're heading in the right direction now, post-CU, with various benefits in design, and utlimately, when on the ground and in space, they provide us with gaming and battle venues that engage us in something, for some reason, other than standing there saying to ourselves, "now what do I do around here? Where's the war?"
Message Edited by RedDestinyCC on 09-12-200511:13 AM
Firesped wrote: The problem is that the game is still being adjusted to the new CL system and as such mission grinding is the way to go. We need the game world to accomidate the players who are getting to the higher levels, and since SWG is different in that it is a game where most of your time is spent at a double elite mastery, we need the game world to reflect the fact that most of the game is the "end" game.
We need the game world to accomodate the players who are not getting to the higher levels, who have no interest in a single elite mastery, let alone a double. Casual crafting, and making improved products, and buying and selling, and music and dance and healing, and casual hunting and flying and fighting, and just plain living in a Star Wars universe is all the "end game" that many people want. SOE's current vision of the game seems to encompass elite combatants, and no one else. Specialization, with a heavy emphasis on combat professions, is now coerced, and template variety is stifled. The low-CL game is now almost unsurvivable unless the players accept severe restrictions on what activities will be "allowed" to them.
Fooled me once Fooled me twice R.I.P. Tortia Quinn
On communication..., we remain committed to making it standard policy followed 100% of the time on all our titles. In plain language, we believe that letting you know of possible changes so that you can affect them, letting you know exactly what is going to change and why, giving you details so you can try out changes in testing and make sure they go smoothly, and making sure that all changes are well-documented is critical to good service.
We've even worked hard to stop calling it "community management" and instead call it "community relations" because we think that the word "management" implies the wrong things about the relationship there.
I'm sorry, but this is so off-base from the reality of what SOE is actually doing, that it is ludicrous. I don't know how you can sit there and make these statements. It is outrageous of you do so. I support the way things are going, particularly if the next issue I raise is finally addressed and provided in SWG, but this is really an outrageous statement.
Holocron wrote: No, running a repetitive set of actions over and over again in order to get a reward is not fun. Fun comes from the challenge of new problems to solve, and solving them right at the limit of your ability.
The problem is that people in general (not always, as Ihareo noted!) tend to get more focused on the end goal than the process, and the second a game designer makes the mistake of providing a low-risk repetitive process that gets the player to the end goal, the player will generally (not always!) choose to take it. It's bottomfeeding, it's grinding, it's boring.
It is a design mistake, don't get me wrong. But I do think it's an understandable one. No game can be of perfect difficulty for every possible player. All games are built out of repetitive mechanics and then ringing changes on the mechanics. Both of those facts make it very easy for a designer to fall into that trap. It's still something that you need to try to avoid.
I'm sorry, but here you're all wet. This is nonsense, you need to step back and rethink this conceptual sink hole you've placed yourself in, creatively. Here's where I think you took the original game, originally, way off course, and reinvented the wheel in error.
The problem with the game is not grinding, and repetitiveness, the problem is that you reinvented the wheel, did not provide the fundamentals that other games, successful (measured on enjoyability above all else,) provide.
Here's where you fell off and focused on the wrong thing, and are still off track:
There are no venues for battle, whether PvE or PvP, other than idiotic dueling-level combat. There are no maps, no battlegrounds, no 10v10 or 20v20, no instances, no timed events, very little for people to step in on, enter into, group up for... battles and combat that would be engaging, enjoyable, and rewarding - other than duels. No holding territories, no capture the flag, no timed, scored, or otherwise instanced events, which would offer rewards of SOME kind to engage players in seeking victory the next time out; whether those rewards were in faction points, credits, badges, loot, or planetary control - they are not in SWG at all. You blew it. EVERY OTHER GAME DOES THIS. There are challenges to implementing battles in a MMORPG, to emulate the engaging fun of a FPS, or RPG, but rather than try, you left gaping gaps in these fundamentals and chose not to do any at all thus far.
It's not people focused on grinding, sir, its instead that we're stuck on the bench, preparing for battles that never happens, preparing for gameplay that never happens, preparing simply because there's nothing to compel us to break from grinding in order to go participate in gameplay, perhaps, wow, making progress as we engaged in same gameplay. From the beginning, you had us so completely buried in busywork for months, buried in tasks, mind-numbing tasks, travel time, repairs - rather than enjoying gameplay and combat; the latter not existing even if we had time to enjoy it.
As it stands, in our mature guild of mature players, crafters, combat, pilots, support professions, and Jedi among us - most of us in our circles can sum it up this way:
We are grinding, and grinding, and holding out, and grinding, paying as we go - all of this in preparation for a game that doesn't yet exist. Let's hope we get our SWG game someday, and get out of locker room and onto the playing fields.
Message Edited by RedDestinyCC on 09-12-200511:46 AM
Lots to reply to in the above, but I figured you're less interested in rehashing the past and more interested in concrete things that we will do to improve things.
I wanted to let you know that I spoke this morning with Alan Crosby, who recently became our director of community relations, about the update process. For those who do not know, the position of director of community relations is a relatively new one here at SOE, one that we've been planning on having for a while. Alan's job is to enforce community policies across all the titles--and one of the first is the update process, which includes the whole In Concept->In Dev->In Testing thing.
I didn't mean to give the impression that this process is fully in place across all the games, or even working at peak on the games where it is implemented. It's not. That's why we have Alan in this position now.
The plan is to have this system roll out across all the games in the coming weeks, and along the way, fix it on any games where it exists but is not being used to its full intent.
To reiterate: our goal is
prospective changes should be discussed in advance of implementation to gather community feedback
as implementation proceeds, the changes are documented and posted to In Development as they are completed
when ready, these detailed notes are posted as a source of information for testing
when propped to Live, the notes are updated with any changes necessary, and posted as the latest update
a history of updates is maintained to serve as documentation for added features
As you have pointed out, some of this is not happening. The objective is to make it all happen and become habitual, as soon as possible.
I've asked Alan to stop by on this thread to introduce himself. I presume you will let him feel the full power of the Force.
-Raph Koster Chief Creative Officer, Sony Online Entertainment
Lots to reply to in the above, but I figured you're less interested in rehashing the past and more interested in concrete things that we will do to improve things.
I wanted to let you know that I spoke this morning with Alan Crosby, who recently became our director of community relations, about the update process. For those who do not know, the position of director of community relations is a relatively new one here at SOE, one that we've been planning on having for a while. Alan's job is to enforce community policies across all the titles--and one of the first is the update process, which includes the whole In Concept->In Dev->In Testing thing.
I didn't mean to give the impression that this process is fully in place across all the games, or even working at peak on the games where it is implemented. It's not. That's why we have Alan in this position now.
The plan is to have this system roll out across all the games in the coming weeks, and along the way, fix it on any games where it exists but is not being used to its full intent.
To reiterate: our goal is
prospective changes should be discussed in advance of implementation to gather community feedback
as implementation proceeds, the changes are documented and posted to In Development as they are completed
when ready, these detailed notes are posted as a source of information for testing
when propped to Live, the notes are updated with any changes necessary, and posted as the latest update
a history of updates is maintained to serve as documentation for added features
As you have pointed out, some of this is not happening. The objective is to make it all happen and become habitual, as soon as possible.
I've asked Alan to stop by on this thread to introduce himself. I presume you will let him feel the full power of the Force.
and out of all of this what will make the community the happiest (100% satisfaction will NEVER be attained) is just what you are doing now LISTENING and responding accordingly.
thanks for your time holocron this is some of the best stuff ive read off the dev tracker and its happening right here on our galaxy!
/pep holocron
/bmoc holocron
RaReece DavisaR \`nnnn]nb[ggggggggggggggggggggg)
BUY MY SHIZZZ!!! Davis Enterprises LTD. ~3 N. Main~ Varia Naboo
- Strength In Numbers - Loyal Subjects of the Empire Asia Brothers Industries - Asia Hall SiN CiTY, Dantooine (Offers Vendor at -4703 -1404) A player bodyguard can't protect you either, something agroes you, you are dead. The only difference between a pet and the person, is you pay the person to stand there and watch you die. -- Straker Atrella
Can you give us a time frame when you will return to the subject and review it's progress? Not boxing yourself in as to how long it should take to complete (not that anything in an MMO is ever complete...), but a commitment to come back and weigh in on how you feel the progress is going, and how we do.
I really want to love SWG again, but there needs to be a massive shift in communications if this is ever going to happen.
Lots to reply to in the above, but I figured you're less interested in rehashing the past and more interested in concrete things that we will do to improve things.
I wanted to let you know that I spoke this morning with Alan Crosby, who recently became our director of community relations, about the update process. For those who do not know, the position of director of community relations is a relatively new one here at SOE, one that we've been planning on having for a while. Alan's job is to enforce community policies across all the titles--and one of the first is the update process, which includes the whole In Concept->In Dev->In Testing thing.
I didn't mean to give the impression that this process is fully in place across all the games, or even working at peak on the games where it is implemented. It's not. That's why we have Alan in this position now.
The plan is to have this system roll out across all the games in the coming weeks, and along the way, fix it on any games where it exists but is not being used to its full intent.
To reiterate: our goal is
prospective changes should be discussed in advance of implementation to gather community feedback
as implementation proceeds, the changes are documented and posted to In Development as they are completed
when ready, these detailed notes are posted as a source of information for testing
when propped to Live, the notes are updated with any changes necessary, and posted as the latest update
a history of updates is maintained to serve as documentation for added features
As you have pointed out, some of this is not happening. The objective is to make it all happen and become habitual, as soon as possible.
I've asked Alan to stop by on this thread to introduce himself. I presume you will let him feel the full power of the Force.
This is exactly what the masses wish for. We want legitimate corospondence which leads us to continue investing our monies into the experiances and entertainment which can be yielded from SWG. The hard part is allowing for events which continue to validate yours and others posts.
Holocron, thank you for showing - well me at least - that someone still cares about the state of the game. Myself - I've been playing for over two years now and seen the best and worse that is has to offer (ie the infamous Commando / CH nerf of '03).
At least in my opinion, the original goals of the game got blindsighted to popular demand - being that this was suppose to be a game where you could submerge yourself into the Star Wars universe and really live the movies to some degree or another. That draw, among other things, brought me to SWG. When I originally bought the game, I read on the back of the box itself " ... even travel down the path to Jedi ..." which in itself almost made me not buy it after beta. The game was set, originally, in the time between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back - with the story arches The Cries of Alderaan and the such ... which were engaging and fun. However, the popular outcry to that statement which me myself had read on the back of the box had gotten a hold on everybody's mind.
To this end, it comes down to, which is more fun? Being a Jedi in an era where techanically there are not suppose to be any save the handful that survived Order 66? Or following the movies where players could engage in events in the movies itself (ie The Battle of Hoth or the like)? The latter was tried and ultimately failed in The Matrix Online ...
To some degree this game is still Star Wars ... I still have memories of my first momments in game being completely new and overwhelmed to the mystery of it all. Now having done nearly if not all the content that this game has to over ... it simply a matter of faith.
Having played WoW myself, I'd say it was the better of the two games - gameplay, CS, and content wise. However, SWG's community is more closely knit and interactive ... something that WoW is too large now to do effectively. Like here on Shadowfire - mostly everyone knows each other even if just to have heard their name before....
There are a few things that SOE could do to improvement ... well a lot of things. Overall though, I'd say over the last two years on SWG I've had more fun than on any other game - despite the fact that the customer service has been a bit lax and the gameplay as evolved more so to a Jedi Online style game.
Melgamius Avatar of the Force Cephalopod Lv60 Undead Warlock Shadow Council
I wanted to let you know that I spoke this morning with Alan Crosby, who recently became our director of community relations, about the update process. For those who do not know, the position of director of community relations is a relatively new one here at SOE, one that we've been planning on having for a while. Alan's job is to enforce community policies across all the titles--and one of the first is the update process, which includes the whole In Concept->In Dev->In Testing thing.
I didn't mean to give the impression that this process is fully in place across all the games, or even working at peak on the games where it is implemented. It's not. That's why we have Alan in this position now.
Raph, I appreciate you clarifying that these things may not be in place today, and that the expectation is that they will be...
However, given the incumbent staff members and the historic performance, I would use caution when using the term "enforce." The staff seems to take this in a different direction than you imply. I believe what you mean to convey is rather that "communication service standards," will be consistent across all titles. Some people seem to take the term "enforce" entirely off target.
I have posted here a few times and some of you may be familiar with me. =)
We are working to get this process back into place on SWG and you will see the early phases of that this week as Thunderheart begins to update the update areas of the board. We do want to keep you all informed and involved in the process and will work hard to do so. All I ask of you is to give us time to get information and get it posted.
As far as my enforcing Community Policies, that is internal only. Tiggs and Thunderheart have to worry about me, not you. I make sure our teams are all doing the same things to keep thier games community informed, involved and entertained. I do not plan to enforce policies upon you, the SWG players. =)
Brenlo Bixiebopper Director, Global Community Relations - SOE --------------------------------------------- It's a rough life, but someone has to live it.
