Follow Up From Kurt "Thunderheart" Stangl

[Syban]

How about just fixing old bugs?

Well, we are going to concentrate on this. We have a team dedicated to just that mission. You will see their work in every publish going forward. More importantly, we are going to get stricter on what new bugs get into the system, so addressing any emergent bugs will have priority. Perhaps most importantly, we will be communicating our priorities for and status of fixes more vigorously.

We have an effort in progress to speed up the client also, along with the ongoing fixes.

Comments which will be addressed by Combat Upgrade

"Better armor that is more reflective of the GCW"

"New faction armor"

"Balance out classes"

"more armor types"

"Have combat more immerse, more interactive"

"Increased reasons for teamwork in combat"

"every movie and book I've read has had primarily ranged combat"

"give us something to do that doesn't require clone combat templates in the same armor with the same weapons in the same place"

"make factional armor worth wearing"

"the thing that really ruins the game is the Buffs and food stuff in PvP it all counts on being Buffed and ready"

"More types of weaponry"

"I should not be able to solo Gnarled Rancors by myself"

"I hate needing to buff in order to hunt"

"it would be fine if the game got back to group playing again no more soloing high lvl mobs"

"Moving away from "Melee-Centrism"

"Get rid of titanic BUFFs and uber weapons"

There is much more than this that Combat Upgrade addresses but I thought it was important to show that we are working on the things you want in combat with this major effort. We will start rolling out the detailed information on Combat Upgrade as it exits the alpha test early this year, and enters closed beta. Please sign up for the Combat Upgrade closed beta Here if you are interested in helping us test and tune it before it hits the Test Center.

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. We need the context of the Combat Upgrade to be finished though before revamping the non-combat professions completely. This doesn't mean we are not going to address critical bugs and issues with professions, see the next item….

Correspondent Issues

In addition to fixing current issues with the game and service, we are asking the correspondents to help us with directing some of our fixes effort. If an issue is either part of the Combat Upgrade or a larger profession upgrade it may be tabled until the appropriate time, but pressing issues or things that can make things better immediately will be getting addressed across the breadth of all professions.

Content

More "Star Wars" - We have lots of ideas about this, but I'd like to hear your ideas specifically on "Star Wars"-like quests, points of interest Here .

More music - is coming, nuff said.

Improve the spawning and loot - already in progress, expect to see us work on this almost every publish the next few months.

Real quests, not mission terminals - Expect to see more quests from NPCs.

More content once you reach master - Part of the overall content improvement effort is to add high end content also.

Make the NPC cities come alive again - I'd love to hear your specific ideas on this particular subject Here .

More "dungeons" - I'm not expecting to do this in the very near term as this type of content is very manpower intensive. I'd rather see the team on content working on more quest content first.

More Space quests - This is really just an extension of more quests, since we see quest content as for both for space and ground moving forward.

More planets - you will probably only see new planets as part of expansions, due to their size and scope and the fact they require new hardware to operate. Sorry!

AFK - unattended macroing

This will be going away soon. There will be some issues around losing the ability to do things with recursive macros or while AFK which will need to be addressed as part of this effort, but overall it is better for the game environment to not have this as a sanctioned behavior.

GCW

An over-arching GCW design is my personal priority to complete before end of March. The feedback we have gotten in this thread and by the GCW die-hard crowd has been excellent. My feeling is that the GCW must matter for the game to have a greater Star Wars feel, and this means it will be impact the game (and your gameplay) as much as anything to date. Expect more on our thoughts on GCW during the February/March timeframe.

Underworld

Adding to the underworld is not part of our near term plans, and probably is a candidate for a future expansion given its scope. Sorry!

Jedi system

I'm not going to comment on the Jedi system at this time. Clearly it is an area of contention for the some of you and we need to spend some time clarifying exactly how Jedi fit in SWG.

CS Support

We have been increasing the speed of support and the rigor of training for our CS reps during the last few months. Along with some major work on our knowledge base to help players immediately where possible rather than having to wait for a real person. The core issue here is more about the problems and issues with the software, which generate the calls. We are working to stop treating the symptoms and get the core issues addressed by the entire team. And adding tools for the CS reps to use to better assist you if you need to call for help.

Better communication

We are going to do a few things differently than in the recent past to try and address this issue. We've always listened to our players and incorporated your ideas into our designs, but we haven't been as successful as we'd like to be at clearly showing which specific changes were affected and how they were affected by that feedback. We're going to make some changes to our update notes that will better reflect this so you all can understand how useful and important your feedback is to us.

We're also looking at a variety of changes to the current ways in which we communicate with you, including the patch notes, the message boards, and virtually every other aspect of community relations. We'd like your feedback about any community relation’s issues you'd like to discuss with us here.

"How we will use the team"

Our team is operating as several sub-teams focused on specific objectives. We have teams working on Live/bug fixes, new content, UI changes, and infrastructure changes to the game and more. I will be communicating more about our new team structure in February once the new people are fully integrated and we have a couple of publishes out.

Again, thank you for your continued patronage and support.

Gordon Walton

Sony Online Entertainment

Kurt "Thunderheart" Stangl

Community Relations Manager

[Syban]

A little follow up by SOE

When there is both internal and LucasArts commitment to a plan we will publish one. We have a current development strategy that has been communicated: Combat Upgrade, non-Combat Professions and GCW. Combat Upgrade has been in progress for months and will go into alpha testing this month. Detailed design work for non-combat professions and GCW starts this month.

I'm going to be very conservative about releasing dates. Poop happens and priorities do change in a live service based on emergent development issues, the feedback we get from the players and marketplace feedback. Also things need to be working well before we publish them, not just published to hit a date. This doesn't mean we are not serious about our deadlines, it is more about-facing reality about whether things are complete and correct, or not.

When we have a committed plan we will communicate it. We will also let you know where we are against that plan regularly.

Wish I had an answer you would like better, but this is closer to reality.

Gordon Walton

Sony Online Entertainment