Originally posted by tiefighter25

To Dewe: I didn't mean to imply that their communication was either very effective or heart felt, but they tried a bit, or at least paid it lip service.

They did have that Guild Summit and what not.

After the lay-offs they did decimate their public relations staff and their communication has become consistently worse, as you have pointed out. SOON™ and what have you.

Not sure how much better their communication can be. People on that site ask questions bioware has repeatedly said they will not answer. Worse of all, you can look at 90% of the stupid questions on the forum and find the answers in other posts. The only way gamers feel they get enough info is if the developers call them on the phone while they are taking a bath twirling the phone chord in their hands talking about resolve until the wee hours of the night.

Then people ask for specific dates on content under developement which bioware repeatedly says no(a good thing in my opinion, since theres an over abundance of X developer LIED to us threads because of content getting pushed back lol).

Than the last group of forum questions are usually along the lines of "why does x feature suck", which is the equivelant of asking a mom "why's your baby so damn ugly". I mean seriously, even though I can't stand the game, I'm sure the developers are proud of their work so asking a question intentionally attempting to crap on their vision probably won't get answered lol.

Stephen Reid got a ton of criticism for not posting too much on the forums, yet the guy had his twitter on constant update mode, of which forum members would repost, but thats not good enough, the developer must tell every individual personally or it doesn't count.

While I can agree that bioware has been inconsistent in communication at the best of times, that community there pretty much destroy's any possibility of trying.

I think biowares biggest mistake was with the guild summits, and all the interviews they did at their fansites(darthhater, and what not) and instead should have only released information on their site. Screw facebook, screw twitter, screw summits, screw fansites, and instead just focus on one location for info.

I swear, the forumites are horrible with google. They remind me of feeding cows, if you move the hay 10 feet to the left, the damn cows will stand where their food used to be until you move it back. Yeah, pretty much sure that sums up the swtor.com site perfectly.

(I was going to say alfalfa instead of hay, but I didn't want readers to have to google it)

A lot of their initial bad communication concerns were directly related to pretending the Alpha Hero Engine was in a launch ready state. The , "It's not us, it's your rigs." Garnered a lot of ill will. The subsequent silence on the dropping server populatons prior to the initial merge didn't help matters. Their descion to withhold content till FTP is sort of a dagger to many.

Perhaps commuication will improve following the FTP launch. Although I try to remain impartial, my inate skepticism based on their track record doesn't make me very hopeful.

Originally posted by tiefighter25

A lot of their initial bad communication concerns were directly related to pretending the Alpha Hero Engine was in a launch ready state. The , "It's not us, it's your rigs." Garnered a lot of ill will. The subsequent silence on the dropping server populatons prior to the initial merge didn't help matters. Their descion to withhold content till FTP is sort of a dagger to many.

Perhaps commuication will improve following the FTP launch. Although I try to remain impartial, my inate skepticism based on their track record doesn't make me very hopeful.

I get that, but then again, alot of the issues, where fixable on rig side. Of course I realize people expect a certain ease of use, which bioware screwed up(judging the 3 page fixes, players posted to boost fps), and I'm not going to judge people for not knowing how to tweek settings on their side(I've ruined many a computer trying to figure out how to make toast with it), but bioware was lacking the expertise in the field to deal with those issues. In fact, some of their pc games had similiar issues.

Silence on dropping server populations. Again, thats like talking about a sensitive issue. They had to have been upset about dwindling numbers, embarrassed or hell scared for their jobs.

Yeah the content thing, I would imagine isn't flying over to well(makeb?), than again I can see how they might want to push that out at f2p so as people will pay(since freemium only gets you what was in the game at 1.2), but if I was paying a sub, I would be pissed having to wait.

The way I see it, it's easy to communicate with your fans when everything is good, but say gw2 lost 2/3rds of their subs next month, they probably wouldn't talk about it as often as they do  now. Hell they have released several posts and communications about botting, but fans still scream they are ignoring the problem?. Biowares been getting heat since day one. Scratch that, before launch. Hell, I'm pretty sure as william0532, I've started or posted straight hate on that site when they revealed space as a rail.

Are you still playing?

Originally posted by KingJiggly
A noose to hang my character with.

haha yeah I should have put that on the list.. :D

It seems you are really into playing SWTOR ;-))

One thing I really want to see in TOR is "more immersion": Day/Night cycles, more random things happening, being able to fucling sit on chairs. A bit more freedom when moving about. Critters. At the moment, many of the (friendly) NPCs are not even targettable, increasing the hit my willing suspension of disbelief is taking (because it increases the feel of the worlds being artificial).

A second thing would be the engine. We're now almost a year into the launch, and there are still bugs like the taxis in Nar Shaddah flickering constantly, the jumping still feels off, and all in all the engine just makes me ask: "Who in all nine hells made them use it?!"

Yes, more space flight and many other things would of course be nice, too. But TOR is lacking on a fundamental level (it's still fun, I just re-subscribed to experience the BH story - but after that, I'll unsubscribe again), and adding on top would not be the first thing I'd do.

Originally posted by Mueslinator

One thing I really want to see in TOR is "more immersion": Day/Night cycles, more random things happening, being able to fucling sit on chairs. A bit more freedom when moving about. Critters. At the moment, many of the (friendly) NPCs are not even targettable, increasing the hit my willing suspension of disbelief is taking (because it increases the feel of the worlds being artificial).

 

True, all of this would be great

I just started playing two or three months ago, and I'm just about done with it now (5 classes with completed storylines, and rapidly running out of motivation). Raiding and PvP have never been of interest to me, so my main issue isn't unique to this game: the end game has nothing for me. Given that the game was marketed as a story-driven experience, the only thing that would get me back would be monthly updates of the class stories; the class stories were what brought me in, and the complete lack of updates for them is why I'll be leaving. Staying in SWTOR after finishing the class stories is like staying in your theater seat after seeing a movie. Once you've seen the show, there's no reason to stay.

Even if they add 10 levels and another chapter or two to the class stories in an expansion pack (which is apparently what they're doing), however, I probably still won't return. Frankly, they just can't keep up with the player consumption rate of content, which is probably why the game has such high turnover. That, and the fact that class stories make up such a small percentage of the quests you do that burnout is almost inevitable. People start to get sick of seeing the same planets, doing the same world quests over and over and over. There's only one track per faction, which really reduces the enjoyment of the game's primary selling point: alting.

I think everyone involved would've been better off if they'd just made the game the world's first singleplayer online roleplaying game, no co-op at all. Make it KOTOR with a subscription, have a single branching storyline and update that each month. Essentially, achieve the same thing selling KOTOR 3, 4, 5 and 6 would if you made them as console titles, but without the 1 or 2 year wait between releases. Just make it a steady stream of content that lets you follow an ever-expanding, branching storyline. Screw class balance, screw guild systems, focus entirely on that fourth pillar that was heralded in every single press briefing. As it is, we got 2% "Saving/Destroying the galaxy" storylines and 98% "Kill 10 Rattataki" quests.

Originally posted by Jenuviel

I think everyone involved would've been better off if they'd just made the game the world's first singleplayer online roleplaying game, no co-op at all. Make it KOTOR with a subscription, have a single branching storyline and update that each month. Essentially, achieve the same thing selling KOTOR 3, 4, 5 and 6 would if you made them as console titles, but without the 1 or 2 year wait between releases. Just make it a steady stream of content that lets you follow an ever-expanding, branching storyline. Screw class balance, screw guild systems, focus entirely on that fourth pillar that was heralded in every single press briefing. As it is, we got 2% "Saving/Destroying the galaxy" storylines and 98% "Kill 10 Rattataki" quests.

Tbh, I wouldn't be opposed to this only if they had coop like NWN.

Originally posted by Rydeson
The game would need a complete revamp..  SWTOR plays like a mouse maze skinner's box..  The planets were not wide open masses, the classes were OK 

I have to agree with this, unfortunately Bioware and EA are to high nose arrogant to admit their game design sucked and they need to take it offline for a year for a major revamp done by a new team, new director, new everything to save what needs to be saved.

its pointless, its been 11 days since this thread started and only 185 votes.

other polls get 1k votes in less than a week

Originally posted by kb056
I have no interest. Shut ToR down and give me back my Pre-CU SWG.

This.

I want to roam in a Star Wars themed universe not play through a bunch of prescripted story lines.

Originally posted by Kyleran

I want to roam in a Star Wars themed universe not play through a bunch of prescripted story lines.

 

Exactly what you , I and othes have been saying for awhile.. But Bioware is not listening.. oh well :(

Originally posted by Thane
they could start with not restricting the freemium version to an unplayable state ^^

It's playable. You want to play more - pay.... last time I checked we are not living in freebie country... yet. And I hope we won't.

Originally posted by Sevenstar61

Originally posted by Thane
they could start with not restricting the freemium version to an unplayable state ^^

It's playable. You want to play more - pay.... last time I checked we are not living in freebie country... yet. And I hope we won't.

As soon as they add an expansion pack, people will pay again