Hello Holotable Heroes!
It’s been just over a month since we posted the Road Ahead Blog, and while we have been purposefully focusing on some of the upcoming releases – specifically our Title Update 12 that was outlined in the Road Ahead, subsequent interviews with Game Changers, the forthcoming patchnotes for TU12, and our plans around the Star Wars Anniversary and the release of Solo, I wanted to take a few minutes to do some housekeeping on some outstanding follow up items and issues.
Follow Up on Beta Tests
We have talked a lot about expanding the beta program for greater input, but doing it in a balanced way so that it is in a controlled environment and doesn’t put us at risk for major game leaks or confusion around in progress game mechanics and balance. If you’re still interested in pursuing the beta we plan on offering, there will be additional opportunities in the future.
For TU12, we opened up the closed beta to a few new guilds, and we are very happy with all the participation from our beta testers. We had hoped to run a larger beta with everyone who signed up for it in the forums for this update, but that will have to wait till a later test due to the time pressures we are currently under.
A huge thanks to those who participated and gave feedback in this beta test and I believe the game is better for it. We made numerous changes to chat, quests, and ships (along with other features) as a result of their feedback. Special shoutout to BHG members Adir and Drogon for talking to our designers in great length about the ships changes and helping us to improve it.
Communication Plan
Our new Community Manager has started, and he joins us in here in the forums as
@CG_SBCrumb. He is still familiarizing himself with the community, but expect to see an intro post from him shortly, and once he’s ramped up, an outline of how we plan to communicate moving forward.
There will be times of increased communication (and times of less communication) depending on where we are in the development cycle, however, we endeavor to keep a steady stream of information flowing through different channels: forums, Reddit, YouTube, and even Discord to be available for concerns, problems, or to listen to what’s going on in the community.
We are in the run up to the launch of a major update and a number of new characters, so during this time, we will also be launching official information like kit reveals and patch notes, but will be doing fewer other types of communications to focus on getting these releases out as high quality as possible.
You can help by focusing bug reports and customer support over at the
EA Help Page. This will help minimize the input hitting individual developers.
Sith Raid P4 Bug
Sometime in the past month, possibly since launch and only noticeable once more guilds started to clear the Heroic Sith Raid, we realized an issue where damage is misattributed to the wrong guild member. This issue seems to be especially evident in Phase 4.
This means guilds trying to ensure a certain member places at the top will be unable to do so. I’m very sorry this happened while some of the very competitive guilds were attempting to unlock Traya. We understand how important being the first or among the first to unlock new characters is, and although I don’t have an answer for you on the bug front, we are still dedicated to this issue. We have dedicated staff to resolve it as a top priority and numerous presumptive fixes, logging changes, and mitigants are going to be rolling out in updates over the upcoming weeks. We will keep you posted as we narrow it down.
I also want to thank Beats and Rebel Force Endor (and their alliance) for providing countless screenshots and running the Sith Raid on our timetable so that the engineers could look at their logs while they do it. It has been invaluable. While both devs and players alike are upset about the bug, it’s heartwarming to see how we can work together to uncover and eventually resolve issues.
Support ChangesI just posted here about how we are going to now be supporting limited time zone changes as a result of extreme moves or other conditions that puts a person four hours or more out of sync from where they actually live. Please don’t write support asking for a timezone change because you want a new payout. This service is offered for people who will be proving they live in a different location than their current timezone. Limited/one-time/additional payout changes is something we are investigating for a later date… very cautiously.
This messaging is just a first step in providing clearer, more tailored customer support. I’ve mentioned before, an individual agent is almost never responsible for instances when you feel you have received bad support. Our Customer Service agents are part of a system, and I am the arbiter of it – I will commit to making sure they (CS agents) are sufficiently supported by the team and myself, so agents are better able to support you. We will continue to make policy changes as long as we feel like we can do it in a way that won’t be abused.
The “Ship Shard”
Another one off policy change we are offering involves a single ship shard. Said ship shard happens to be an outlier in terms of population (and no other metrics) Due to the way we originally set up shards, this anomaly meant that quite a number more people were fighting over the same payouts versus all other ship shards. While we love the shard system, this single shard definitely an outlying case and needs to be addressed. We are resolving the issue before the release of the new ship changes. We are in contact with members of that shard – thanks to AJRSuperstar for bringing it to our attention!
Changes to Rebel Assault on the Calendar
From
@CG_Tophat: We are updating the Event calendar for May to move the Rebel Assault instance on 5/21 to 5/26. Our upcoming client release (which includes Quests, Improved Chat, Updated Ship Combat, Titles, and more!) will be launching somewhere in that window of time. Given the size and scope of the update, we figured it was more prudent to reschedule the Rebel Assault and make sure that our update didn’t unintentionally collide with guild coordination. We apologize for the schedule change.
And there you have it, a clue about TU12’s release! We’ll talk more about the release schedule, specifically as we reveal everything in the update through the patch notes, and also how we plan to roll out ship changes. As always, dates are subject to change, but this is what we’re aiming for.
Thanks for being such a great community, and as always we’ll see you on the holotables,
-Carrie
Replies
I also belong to a original ship shard and it is also a hell at payout (20 active players for a single payout).
Can we have full transparency on this decision?
Because to me, although the shard that has been described is indeed really active (I am really glad you solve their problem), there is no difference with most ship shards at high end which started at the time of ship creation.
Unless shown otherwise, it creates a feeling of unfairness to most veteran players.
@CG_Carrie @CG_SBCrumb
I am in said ship shard and, please believe me, it is nothing compared to anything else in the game. For me, it is common to drop 300 ranks within a matter of a few hours. We have analyzed this shard to death and while it may seem unfair for other players, who are not in it, it is clearly much much more competitive than what other players have.
Thanks @devs for finally acknowledging and solving (to some extent) this issue!!
I am not saying who should reverse their decison. I read the Reddit posts and I fully agree that this seems highly competitive.
(By the way I would precise from top 10 to 300+, because falling from 4K to 4.3k in matter of hours is not that hard).
My shards is also highly competitive (not that level) and compared to younger shard, ours is fairly more active.
I just ask for the metrics they used, and also the point of comparison to others shards created at the same time so that we can say it was fair to keep the decision to your shards.
What are the boundaries and the critical region of the decision process?
Because to the players from my ship shards, they all perceive it as a commercial move from CG to please highly valued customers. As the ship shard certainly involves many of these for such degree of competitiveness.
Did I read that way to quickly? Is she saying it would only effect the single ship shard? My post might be completely irrelevant. I keep reading it over and over and can't understand what she's trying to say will happen.
What more are you expecting? We had a preview of what they are going to be like.
What did you analysis precisely? Which metrics were studied?
She stated it clearly in the update itself:
Which seems to indicate that one ship shard simply had too many people in it.
In game guild: TNR Uprising
I beat the REAL T7 Yoda (not the nerfed one) and did so before mods were there to help
*This space left intentionally blank*
But for ppl like me that are up at the wee hours and is on a more euro time than est.
I am ready to bet is it not that. It is the constituent of the population and not its size.
Just think this out.
They have identified a single outlier case and are fixing it. If we can get this fixed, properly (in a way that satisfies both the players and the developers) then you have proof of concept. Step two is to implement this change into other areas where it applies.
This goes for the changing of payout times too!
Baby steps!
At my payout, we are 7 guys competing (plus the usual **** who tries everyday to drop you at the last minute, even though it is not his payout). 1h before, there used to be 1 guy but he left the game and, 1h after, only 2 guys. It's pretty much the same story the rest of the day. I know guys in other shards who never had any competition at their payout in both arenas : 900 free crystals each day, 3M+ GP in F2P. How can it be seen as fair or balanced ?
Secondly, my arena payout is at 5pm, ships at 6. In the winter, it's 1h earlier... Not the easiest schedule when working.
So, why shouldn't I be allowed to change my payout time? I read you are afraid of abuse. I am sure you can find some system to prevent it from happening. No one ever proposed to forbid lighters because some **** could use it to start forest fires...
Let's be real--that's not going to happen :P
That at least would be different.
Yeah I think at this point we're all way too afraid to ask for challenge gear to be removed after the nerf of the sith raid rewards. I can't imagine how haat rewards could get any worse, but if they nerf the pit rewards like they did sith raid .....