SWTOR's lead PvP designer answers community questions

@Professer

Everyone knows Gabe is terrible.

@Professer

How can you feel bad for someone reaping the rewards of their own incompetence? I feel bad for someone that was either unable to do their job because of outside reasons and is getting shit for it, or someone that is getting shit despite doing their job properly, but I can't feel bad for someone who failed at their job getting shit. If you screwed up, you deserve to know that you screwed up. If your job is to make PvP engaging, fun and somewhat balanced, and you failed miserably, you should know full well the unholy shitstorm that will come your way.

@Professer with the exception of Ilum PVP is actually a good time in SWTOR... IMO

Disclaimer: The above statement is an opinion not a fact I am entitled to that as much as you are entitled to your own. Just please no the difference between the two.

Who would have guessed that people would be negative out the lead PvP designer in comments. I did NOT see that coming.

@edgecrusherO0 prolly because he's working under EA's yoke.

But I imagine he's being paid handsomely.

I'd roll that into investments, honestly... length of career with a boss like EA depends on either EA being an asshat or not, or how long you can stretch your sanity.

@Repopulation know*

@Repopulation

Level 1-49 works very well for PvP. The problem is PvP alone can't support a subscription game.

It amazes me the amount of hardcore players progression Raiders and such in this game are minuscule....why on earth do they want to open up the whole Gear Score can of worms by implementing the Combat logs and bringing a DPS meter into the mix?

Biowares biggest mistake is they keep trying to gain street cred with the Totalbiscuit crowd.

@Professer More or less his own fault, he caused all the problems. If he was really the `lead` designer he would have never let that thing called Ilum through.

The leader PvP designer in SWTOR deserves to be fired. He failed at practically every level of his job.

I only have one question to Gabe:

HOW THE HELL does he still have a job?

seriously, honest question....incriminating pictures of some CEO at EA?

The Official Asia Pacific (Oceanic) launch has been a bit of a mixed bag. As an Australian player who has been playing since the last big beta I can say with some confidence that most Au/Nz players who wanted to play did not wait for the late delayed release date. We all ordered the game online and have been playing since early start along with everyone else.

Though it’s old news now how BW delayed the official release here, it came as a huge shock to our community. No other MMO had done this to Oceanics before, we have always been able to buy the game, subscribe and play alongside our American or European friends. We had become somewhat accustomed to this being the standard treatment to expect from any new MMO. Likewise we as a community also know we have to lobby hard pre and post launch to try and get US Based servers labelled as Oceanic so our community can play together. Something which sadly doesn’t always happen.

So on one Hand, BW shocked us by delaying our launch date, especially when several non-english speaking nations were being included in the normal launch date and we were not. It certainly generated a huge amount of ill feeling towards BW and SWTOR.

Then a few weeks ago, BW announce they are not only going to designate Asia Pacific servers, but they are going to (and have since done so) make actual physical servers here in Australia. This is unprecedented among MMO’s. It certainly went a long way towards healing the rift created by not including us in the initial launch window for the game.

But now BW tell us they are unable to do character transfers till late April, which has enraged no few players who are worried about losing their chosen character names, guild names and legacy names. A recent post in response to these concerns states that BW just isn’t ready to do the transfers yet and are working hard on it.

All in all it seems Bioware really needs to learn a lesson about communicating with their players and fans. If they had come forward in the beginning and said, Asia Pacific release date will be delayed because we are giving you actual physical servers and character transfers will follow a month or two after that, then this very bumpy up and down ride that we are having would have gone a lot smoother.

The game is great, we’re enjoying it, but this whole give with one hand and take with the other side show is really not helping the community and doing very little for player confidence.

I seriously doubt any of you folks judging Gabe have any clue what it takes to get a MMO PvP system running smoothly. You are of course allowed to be angry and voice your opinion but it doesn't really mean anything unless you have the expertise to point out how the systems are broken and how they could have been fixed. If you don't have that expertise you are just nerd raging with no real purpose.

No MMO I have played, in 13 years of playing MMOs, has had a flawless PvP system. They need time to balance, debugg and optimize. That can only really happen with real life players. Players will learn to break a system in ways the Devs aren't equipped to. In open-beta they should have had a period where all they did was stress test and debug pvp with live players. But that is all hind sight observations which mean fuck all really. Could it be better? Yes. Will it get better? Probably but it will require patience on the part of the player base while they work it out.