Action Items Based on Feedback - Companion Buffs Incoming | Star Wars: The Old Republic | MMORPG.com

System · November 2015

Action Items Based on Feedback - Companion Buffs Incoming | Star Wars: The Old Republic | MMORPG.com

Bioware has a new post from Eric Musco that concerns recent feedback about changes in the companion system after the last Star Wars: The Old Republic patch. According to Musco, the team has taken player feedback from the official forums, Reddit, fan sites and more into consideration for creating an "action list" of things they will be addressing over time.

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Shodanas · November 2015

Sometimes i just can't comprehend Bioware's reasoning.

They shipped 4.0 with broken companions, especially the healer ones, clearly because they did not test them prior to release. Then, they tried to fix the issue with an approach resembling a raging bull inside a porcelain store.

The result: companion healing got nerfed to the ground obviously without testing, again. The insta-gratification, "i'm entitled to everything with 0 effort" crowd took up arms like a child which lost his precious toy and the forums got hit by a shitstorm of hyperbole and hysteria coming from both sides.

/shrug

SBFord · November 2015

Why no PTR action or even incremental increases/decreases to see how it goes before just "NERF!" or "UNNERF!" It's mind-boggling.

renegeed · November 2015

PTR would cost money, can't have that. -EA

mnemic666 · November 2015

SBFord said:
Why no PTR action or even incremental increases/decreases to see how it goes before just "NERF!" or "UNNERF!" It's mind-boggling. :/

Yup. Honestly, I don't even think they bothered to QA the build period. With the existing bug where corpses don't de-spawn, causing massive lag on planets with folks doing heroics...yeah...

That and no PTS/beta for 4.0/Fallen Empire leading to many of these issues to begin with.

jesteralways · November 2015

SBFord said:

Why no PTR action or even incremental increases/decreases to see how it goes before just "NERF!" or "UNNERF!" It's mind-boggling.

Because yet again they will do something stupid, they will maybe buff by 10% and claim it is more than enough or they might not buff at all but tell us to grind influence level which they will claim after the patch will give companions more power per level. So to achieve the capability we had before 4.0 nonsense we will have to grind influence harder or if they decide to go with 10% buff we will never get power level status like we had before 4.0. At this point i am pretty much sure of this.

jesteralways · November 2015

mnemic666 said:

SBFord said:
Why no PTR action or even incremental increases/decreases to see how it goes before just "NERF!" or "UNNERF!" It's mind-boggling.

Yup. Honestly, I don't even think they bothered to QA the build period. With the existing bug where corpses don't de-spawn, causing massive lag on planets with folks doing heroics...yeah...

That and no PTS/beta for 4.0/Fallen Empire leading to many of these issues to begin with.

What are you talking about? They did have beta testing for 4.0 where they invited their "most loyal" customers like gamereasy.com and mmocat.com so that they could spam "buy cheap credtis 1mil/2$" in beta servers. And we ungrateful customers since beta period were put in our places by a shaft shoved through us by eaware austin.

/sarcasm off

jesteralways · November 2015

Shodanas said:

Sometimes i just can't comprehend Bioware's reasoning.

They shipped 4.0 with broken companions, especially the healer ones, clearly because they did not test them prior to release. Then, they tried to fix the issue with an approach resembling a raging bull inside a porcelain store.

The result: companion healing got nerfed to the ground obviously without testing, again. The insta-gratification, "i'm entitled to everything with 0 effort" crowd took up arms like a child which lost his precious toy and the forums got hit by a shitstorm of hyperbole and hysteria coming from both sides.

/shrug

I bet when we were soloing monolith champions before 4.0 with only 190 gears the game was broken and now that we can not solo them even with 216 gears the game is balanced? I wonder whose logic is twisted, yours? or eaware austin's?

d_20 · November 2015

Money talks, BS walks. I guess they saw an impact on their revenue stream, hence the action items. This is a fiasco of ArcheAge proportions.

graverobber · November 2015

PR bulldroppings, late thursday deflection post goes up, followed late friday by another delaying post, then vanishing for the weekend, 3 count'm 3 yellow posts since this tuesdays crap patch.

SBFord · November 2015

I didn't cancel my subscription as I know that they will make this OK. But it's just odd not to have a PTR to have players test this stuff and to provide feedback for iterative changes.

LilithM · November 2015

All those that hated how strong the companions was with 4.0 seemed to forget that you CAN just set them to passive, or turn off some abilities. But no, that would be forcing the gameplay of us casuals on them. But it's totally okay to force their need for "challenge" on us. With absolutely no way to turn that off. First, there was very little challenge in the game to begin with, things (read: combat) where tedious and boring as hell. Making the companions weaker did not change this. The dull combat was simply over quickly with strong companions. Perfect for people like me who play for the story, and RP. If you want challenge go and play a moba or FPS games, like the new SW BF.

jesteralways · November 2015

d_20 said:

Money talks, BS walks. I guess they saw an impact on their revenue stream, hence the action items. This is a fiasco of ArcheAge proportions.

But in this case the fiasco was initiated by the company without giving a single day of heads up, without any testing and feedback from players. On archeage, people knew what they were getting when they added cash shop in beta phase(and if they actually did some research on korean version), here only thing we had were datamined info and as soon as we spoke about it on forums we had a threatening post from eric and massive numbers of infractions toward the players who discussed the incoming nerf.

Distopia · November 2015

After playing SWG from 03-05, I have no real feelings on this kind of stuff any more, my thoughts on it are don't get too used to anything being a certain way in these games.

jesteralways · November 2015

SBFord said:

I didn't cancel my subscription as I know that they will make this OK. But it's just odd not to have a PTR to have players test this stuff and to provide feedback for iterative changes.

They did the same with every major and minor change and threatened people who brought up datamined info about nerf(recent behavior this one), they have been doing this since 1.3.0 patch, so i am not at all surprised. And as i have said they will really not make it "right", they will not find a middle ground, since their metrics show that without this nerf their current "endgame" content star fortress heroic mode can easily be completed along with solo achievement. This situation is bad for them since they have no content release schedule until january/february and people would unsub either way until then. So i am sure they will come up with post justifying this crap but then will tell us that "soon" they will buff the companions.

jesteralways · November 2015

Distopia said:

After playing SWG from 03-05, I have no real feelings on this kind of stuff any more, my thoughts on it are don't get too used to anything being a certain way in these games.

In case of SWG they tried to turn a sandbox game into a themepark, here that is not the case. Here they are not changing what the game inherently is, what they are doing here is trying to make 4 years old content look challenging with level gimp, it looks fun to newer players but for us 4 years veterans that is not fun, specially when we know just a few months ago we were soloing and farming stuff that is now rendered impossible for us.

They have not managed to add new challenging content to the game, their most "challenging" new content is a 2 men heroic instance and they nerfed the companion so that to complete the "challenge" of 2 men we will have to do 16 men raid and get raid gears and grind companion influence to 50. Does it make any sense? Yet again eaware austin shows they pop ideas out of their ass.

NorseGod · November 2015

It's too late. This is more than about companions at this point. We shouldn't have to go through a huge battle every few months over gameplay changes.

Iselin · November 2015

SBFord said:

I didn't cancel my subscription as I know that they will make this OK. But it's just odd not to have a PTR to have players test this stuff and to provide feedback for iterative changes.

It is mind boggling that they don't use a test server and it's even weirder that their own internal QA doesn't pick-up on large problems like companions being as OP'd as they were when they released the expansion. It just makes the development team look silly when they're forced to do these wild buff/nerf/buff cycles.

Players want to feel like the developers play and understand the game. It's the worst of all possible PR gaffes when they give the impression that they don't play it or understand it anywhere near as much as their players.

jesteralways · November 2015

NorseGod said:

It's too late. This is more than about companions at this point. We shouldn't have to go through a huge battle every few months over gameplay changes.

You know i now think i was wrong in supporting level sync, despite pretty words from them i should have known they would make our leveling and gearing trivial with the level gimp sooner or later. Man really sorry that i made such fuss against people who were against level sync, i guess you are one of them, so this is my apology to you.

Distopia · November 2015

Iselin said:

SBFord said:

I didn't cancel my subscription as I know that they will make this OK. But it's just odd not to have a PTR to have players test this stuff and to provide feedback for iterative changes.

It is mind boggling that they don't use a test server and it's even weirder that their own internal QA doesn't pick-up on large problems like companions being as OP'd as they were when they released the expansion. It just makes the development team look silly when they're forced to do these wild buff/nerf/buff cycles.

Players want to feel like the developers play and understand the game. It's the worst of all possible PR gaffes when they give the impression that they don't play it or understand it anywhere near as much as their players.

My take on it is they should have a PTS, that's a given, yet as for internal testers, to be fair it was fun how it was. You could basically approach the game however you wanted (so it didn't surprise me that it made it to the public that way), even considering healing was OP. IF the nerf was as bad as people make it out to be, that would no longer have been the case, now you'd need to group again to do certain content.. Essentially taking away the single player qualities that were there at the release of the Xpac.

NorseGod · November 2015

jesteralways said:

NorseGod said:

It's too late. This is more than about companions at this point. We shouldn't have to go through a huge battle every few months over gameplay changes.

You know i now think i was wrong in supporting level sync, despite pretty words from them i should have known they would make our leveling and gearing trivial with the level gimp sooner or later. Man really sorry that i made such fuss against people who were against level sync, i guess you are one of them, so this is my apology to you.

No need. I took a wait and see stance on that issue. But, then again, I didn't know that the expansion was just a 3 hour cut scene and the new content was just the old content.

Distopia · November 2015

jesteralways said:

Distopia said:

After playing SWG from 03-05, I have no real feelings on this kind of stuff any more, my thoughts on it are don't get too used to anything being a certain way in these games.

In case of SWG they tried to turn a sandbox game into a themepark, here that is not the case. Here they are not changing what the game inherently is, what they are doing here is trying to make 4 years old content look challenging with level gimp, it looks fun to newer players but for us 4 years veterans that is not fun, specially when we know just a few months ago we were soloing and farming stuff that is now rendered impossible for us.

They have not managed to add new challenging content to the game, their most "challenging" new content is a 2 men heroic instance and they nerfed the companion so that to complete the "challenge" of 2 men we will have to do 16 men raid and get raid gears and grind companion influence to 50. Does it make any sense? Yet again eaware austin shows they pop ideas out of their ass.

What does any of this have to do with what I said outside of the first sentence, which really makes no difference to what I said? When I said I make a point to not get used to anything.. I meant just that.. anything, as SWG saw far more changes in it's life than the CU or NGE. Corpse runs being a prime example...

Iselin · November 2015

Distopia said:

Iselin said:

SBFord said:

I didn't cancel my subscription as I know that they will make this OK. But it's just odd not to have a PTR to have players test this stuff and to provide feedback for iterative changes.

It is mind boggling that they don't use a test server and it's even weirder that their own internal QA doesn't pick-up on large problems like companions being as OP'd as they were when they released the expansion. It just makes the development team look silly when they're forced to do these wild buff/nerf/buff cycles.

Players want to feel like the developers play and understand the game. It's the worst of all possible PR gaffes when they give the impression that they don't play it or understand it anywhere near as much as their players.

My take on it is they should have a PTS, that's a given, yet as for internal testers, to be fair it was fun how it was. You could basically approach the game however you wanted (so it didn't surprise me that it made it to the public that way), even considering healing was OP. IF the nerf was as bad as people make it out to be, that would no longer have been the case, now you'd need to group again to do certain content.. Essentially taking away the single player qualities that were there at the release of the Xpac.

That is essentially the problem. They seemed to go all in on providing the solo MMO experience -- even more than what it already was. They them seemed to say, "oh shit... maybe we shouldn't have done that."

It's that type of indecision that makes them look bad. They should have stuck to their guns and made minor incremental adjustments over months instead of a hasty knee-jerk over-nerf that they are now correcting yet again.

Solar_Prophet · November 2015

I'm still not seeing what the fuss is about. I have no problems on any of my characters doing H2's at any level.

But you know what? Fine. Buff them by about 20% or so to appease the whiny minority. That should be enough to make things easier, but not to the point of once again being able to go AFK and let your companion do the entire mission for you.

People ask why MMO's have gotten so easy. It's because people obviously want to faceroll content, as this whole ridiculous situation proves.

I do think they should have tested possible changes on the PTR before implementing them though. Regardless of which side of the argument you're on, I think we can all agree that the knee-jerk reaction from Bioware really was quite idiotic, as it created a lot of animosity toward them and polarized the community.

Distopia · November 2015

Iselin said:

Distopia said:

Iselin said:

SBFord said:

I didn't cancel my subscription as I know that they will make this OK. But it's just odd not to have a PTR to have players test this stuff and to provide feedback for iterative changes.

It is mind boggling that they don't use a test server and it's even weirder that their own internal QA doesn't pick-up on large problems like companions being as OP'd as they were when they released the expansion. It just makes the development team look silly when they're forced to do these wild buff/nerf/buff cycles.

Players want to feel like the developers play and understand the game. It's the worst of all possible PR gaffes when they give the impression that they don't play it or understand it anywhere near as much as their players.

My take on it is they should have a PTS, that's a given, yet as for internal testers, to be fair it was fun how it was. You could basically approach the game however you wanted (so it didn't surprise me that it made it to the public that way), even considering healing was OP. IF the nerf was as bad as people make it out to be, that would no longer have been the case, now you'd need to group again to do certain content.. Essentially taking away the single player qualities that were there at the release of the Xpac.

That is essentially the problem. They seemed to go all in on providing the solo MMO experience -- even more than what it already was. They them seemed to say, "oh shit... maybe we shouldn't have done that."

It's that type of indecision that makes them look bad. They should have stuck to their guns and made minor incremental adjustments over months instead of a hasty knee-jerk over-nerf that they are now correcting yet again.

I don't really follow their forums, but my impression was they got a lot of grief for the initial OP'd companions... Now they have little choice but to give in to a reverse on the nerf, if things are as bad as indicated in recent articles anyway.

So I'd have to say not having a testing realm for these things is the problem, not listening to players and giving in. As honestly the easier the game is, as well as faster people complete content, the faster they unsub, which is not in anyway to the best interests of Bioware.

NorseGod · November 2015

Solar_Prophet said:

I'm still not seeing what the fuss is about. I have no problems on any of my characters doing H2's at any level.

But you know what? Fine. Buff them by about 20% or so to appease the whiny minority. That should be enough to make things easier, but not to the point of once again being able to go AFK and let your companion do the entire mission for you.

People ask why MMO's have gotten so easy. It's because people obviously want to faceroll content, as this whole ridiculous situation proves.

I do think they should have tested possible changes on the PTR before implementing them though. Regardless of which side of the argument you're on, I think we can all agree that the knee-jerk reaction from Bioware really was quite idiotic, as it created a lot of animosity toward them and polarized the community.

Yeah, they polarized the community. But you're not helping by calling others a "whiny minority". Which you're actually the minority on this issue, btw.

Also, who was AFKing during missions? And if so, what's it to you?

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