The State of the Game and Community
Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2020 10:40 pm
I made quite a lengthy post on discord, and then realized that it could easily get pushed out of view before people could give it a read or even have a chance to see it. So I've basically copy-pasta the entire thing here, which will let everyone comment and more easily pick on certain things to discuss.
What you have here, at this point, is an erosion of trust between the developers/administrators and the community. There have been several occasions now where one thing was claimed and then the statement changed later. The perception is now that the community does not trust what the developers/administrators say. This is really not a good thing.
You can be flippant about it, you can claim they are all volunteers, you can say whatever – it is all irrelevant, people do not like being lied to, and that is the perception you now are presenting.
Here’s the series of events that have lead us to this point, from my perspective. Remember what I said about perception (please note that I know the difference between a developer, administrator, and community manager, I’m using “Devs” as a catchall name to refer to the SR Team).
Some constructive advice: Stop saying things you will not do, and do what you say. You will need to build up the trust between the SR Team and the community again, I can only recommend you be clear in what you are attempting to accomplish. Start with a stated goal and solicit input from the community. For instance *We are seeing a large influx of high level tapes making it into the economy, we suspect the Jedi are the cause of this* The community will rally around this and share their knowledge on what is happening in game. Their knowledge of actual play may differ from your back end numbers. A discussion can be had regarding this; numbers can be crunched, shared, and adjusted instead of wildly swinging the nerf bat and pushing it to Live.
What you have here, at this point, is an erosion of trust between the developers/administrators and the community. There have been several occasions now where one thing was claimed and then the statement changed later. The perception is now that the community does not trust what the developers/administrators say. This is really not a good thing.
You can be flippant about it, you can claim they are all volunteers, you can say whatever – it is all irrelevant, people do not like being lied to, and that is the perception you now are presenting.
Here’s the series of events that have lead us to this point, from my perspective. Remember what I said about perception (please note that I know the difference between a developer, administrator, and community manager, I’m using “Devs” as a catchall name to refer to the SR Team).
- Player makes some wild claims that cannot be substantiated.
- Devs put in Lightsaber resists on certain NPCs and say it’s because certain mobs are Jedi loot piñatas.
- Players are confused by that statement as no sane person “farms” with their Jedi. Players test the content, voice emotional feedback that this feels bad and shouldn’t be implemented.
- Devs ask when will it not be “sky is falling” with the player base, as if 75% or 95% damage reductions (e.g. 1000 damage to 250 for an elder or 1000 damage to 50 for a DJM respectively) is not extreme and worthy of the “sky is falling” moniker. The largest issue was these changes seemed to have been a knee-jerk reaction and not thought out at all – just put a number in for elders, not matching of other resists; in fact it was just the opposite, the LS resists were higher than Blast, where hammers do double the base damage of lightsabers.
- Devs say Jedi are farming certain mobs and walking away with bags of high level tapes.
- Players scratch their heads at the statement, saying that is TKM+Commandos farming krayts/tanrats, Swordstackers massacring prophet troopers, etc. Jedi aren’t walking away with bags full of high level tapes? (Also note, that we’re getting up towards 100 people attending the weekly event where high level tapes are being given out as rewards, this is causing more of an influx of high level tapes into the economy than a handful of Jedi farming DJM).
- Devs say group content like the mines/dam has higher rewards and that they cannot afford to have solo-able stuff that is better than what you can get in a group (https://forum.swgsremu.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=2358)
- Players are again confused at this, especially since the faction exploit exists, and is publicly known, allowing you to completely skip the group content and go solo the end boss for easy group content loot.
- Devs say that the changes will not go live. Changes to LS resist go live. Devs says it slipped through and that github (the repository where the code lives) is a mystery.
- Devs claim that the changes are not there to hit a profession, that it has nothing to do with loot, and that they will be reverted on the next update.
- Players confused as restart occurs and LS resists were not reverted, but changed (lowered).
- Devs say that NS Elder should have at least 1% resist. Players confused because 1% resist on a NS Elder is really 50% damage reduction. Players begin to speculate that the SR Team does not understand the combat mechanics of SWG. Spreadsheets were made, after making the spreadsheets and inputting various numbers, I began to wonder why am I doing this? Should this not have the first step in the process? Before anything was changed on the test server, should not the development team have done some spreadsheet math to see how the numbers look on ‘paper’ before even beginning to change anything in game? I understand that not everyone is a spreadsheet guru, but I would have happily done the math or created a spreadsheet for the SR Team had they asked.
- Devs say that they will be reverting the LS resists completely on the next update.
- Players again confused as LS resists were not reverted on the update the devs said.
- Devs say that they did not revert because it is on the test server and that testing needs to be done on it.
- Players are… yeah you get the picture. What needs to be tested? This is supposed to be a reversion to previous state? Do you need people to log into test and run around examining mobs to ensure that the changes have been reverted? I’m sure if you select a group of people, give them teleport and god mode and let them run around screen capping examine windows and posting them in discord this testing can be done pretty quick.
Some constructive advice: Stop saying things you will not do, and do what you say. You will need to build up the trust between the SR Team and the community again, I can only recommend you be clear in what you are attempting to accomplish. Start with a stated goal and solicit input from the community. For instance *We are seeing a large influx of high level tapes making it into the economy, we suspect the Jedi are the cause of this* The community will rally around this and share their knowledge on what is happening in game. Their knowledge of actual play may differ from your back end numbers. A discussion can be had regarding this; numbers can be crunched, shared, and adjusted instead of wildly swinging the nerf bat and pushing it to Live.