SWTOR Developer Tracker

[Feedback] Group Finder

6/11/2012 9:03 PM

So, some of you may have seen my posts in the forums and might have been wondering, “Who is this person?” Well, here it is! My name is Antonia “Toni” Phillips; I’m an industry veteran who has been working on SWTOR for the last two years, most recently with the Group Finder team.

A solid Group Finder system is very important to us and we have been keeping a close eye on the forums and your feedback. We are evaluating all of the feedback from the PTS and I wanted to take a moment to respond to the most popular topics we’ve seen.

Thanks for all the responses and keep it coming!

Shuttling to Starting Location:
One of the issues most commonly noted is that you are not returned to your original location when you end/exit a Flashpoint or Operation.

This is not a bug; let me explain that a little bit better!

In the game today, without the Group Finder, when you exit a Flashpoint or Operation you are NOT shuttled back to your original location - you're taken to the entrance.

Although this is currently how the Flashpoint and Operation exit technology functions, we understand the importance of modifying this functionality, especially for the Group Finder. We already have a plan to provide this as soon as possible. The moment we know what update this can be included with, we will let you know!

Tiers of Flashpoints:
What is the difference between Tier 1 and Tier 2 Flashpoints, you ask? Difficulty! Tier 2 Flashpoints are more difficult than Tier 1 and we felt that it wouldn’t be a good experience to place undergeared players into groups where they couldn’t meaningfully perform their assigned role. To support this, Tier 2 Flashpoints will be disabled by default and must be actively enabled through the Group Finder filters. Although there is only a single selection (Lost Island) for Tier 2 right now, there will be more in the future.

In addition, Tier 1 and Tier 2 Flashpoints share the same Group Finder daily reward mission. As we gather feedback when this feature goes live we will be making changes to the reward structure as needed.

Gear Score:
While we may never implement a “Gear Score” system, we understand the need to correctly match players with appropriate content. We also understand the need to match groups with a high chance for success. We are currently evaluating several ideas to improve this.

Ignore lists and Group Finder:
Quick Tip: if you place a player on your ignore list you will never be matched in a Group Finder group with that player. Although we have a loading screen tip already implemented for this option, we realize that we will need to more clearly communicate this.

Advanced Classes and Roles:
The roles that you are allowed to queue for in Group Finder are based on your Advanced Class and not your skill point allocation. For example, if you are a Jedi Sage you can queue for both Damage and Healing. We know that this option launches in advance of multi-speccing. However, once you launch Group Finder you can limit yourself to a specific role if you so choose.

Queuing Order:
Group Finder attempts to place you into a group by evaluating potential group matches in a specific order. This order is matched to the in-game order displayed in the Group Finder window. For example, at level 50, Group Finder will first check if you can form a valid Operation, and if not, it will then check Hard Mode Flashpoints, and so on. The specifics:

At level 50 this will be in the following order: Story Mode Operations, Hard Mode Flashpoints Tier 1, Hard Mode Flashpoints Tier 2, Flashpoints, Planetary Destinations
Under level 50 this will be in the following order: Flashpoints, Planetary Destinations

Planetary Destinations:
You want more content controls for Planetary Destinations and so do we! We know that planetary destinations are an area of improvement for Group Finder in future releases, and we're looking at more options, like adding directly selectable Heroic Missions and world bosses.

As we form our plan for future improvements, one of the pieces we need the most is your feedback. We are in the process of evaluating potential designs for player-set group size and specific mission queuing, among many others.

What do you want to see?

Joveth Gonzalez

6/11/2012 7:13 PM

Hi folks, as promised, we have investigated this issue after seeing how a large number of people didn't have their characters copied (based on the amount of posts in this thread), we decided to go back and manually re-enter those accounts again. Many of you that signed up on Friday should now see your characters copied over.

There was an error involved in one of the manual processes in character copying and we have since rectified this. We apologize for any misunderstanding.

Please enjoy playing on the Public Test Server!

Allison Berryman

Official Q&A Thread for June 15th Blog Post

6/11/2012 6:28 PM

Thanks for posting your questions, everyone! Watch this Friday for our new Q&A blog!

Allison Berryman

Community Q&A Blog Discussion: June 8th, 2012

6/11/2012 3:51 PM

I'd like to talk a little more about how we select questions for the Q&A and what its goals are. The intent of the Community Q&A is for us to answer some specific game-related questions from the community - especially those about how something works or why we chose to make something work in a particular way. Sometimes, we can answer questions about upcoming content (when we have the information), and sometimes we'll address concerns or questions about upcoming changes (such as class changes in an update or other changes that are of interest to the community).

However, we don't use it to answer questions based on the popularity of the question - for big things that we know are very important to the community (like upcoming character transfers), we'll use standalone blogs or similar methods as soon as we have information to share instead of waiting to put it in a Q&A. We are always very aware of what the important issues are in the community, and we're dedicated to addressing those as soon as we're able, but the Community Q&A is not the venue we'll generally use to address that kind of topic. We also may not be able to answer some questions about upcoming content if we have no new details or information to share.

Thanks to everyone for your continuing participation in the Community Q&A!

Allison Berryman

tionese/columni/rakata/warmaster set bonuses

6/11/2012 3:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by beatonthis

whats the point of having adaptive social gear if we cant take our set bonuses from the end game sets and put them into them? i know campaign and WH are linked to the armouring mod so why not just copy that for all the rest?

Campaign and War Hero are both newer sets of gear. The armoring mods of the older sets don't carry the set bonus with them, but Campaign, War Hero, and new sets going forward will.

Allison Berryman

Guardian/Juggernaut Feedback: Single Saber Mastery

6/11/2012 3:16 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by BigRedJedi

This is just the tip of the iceberg on feedback, and I encourage everyone that is contributing to the PTS Feedback to be as specific as possible in addressing concerns, rather than the all-too-common "The sky is falling" and "ZOMG Nerfs!" threads that do little except capably demonstrate that we silly humans are terrified of change.

Thank you very much for being constructive and specific. This kind of feedback, which isn't alarmist and is thought-out and detailed, is exactly the kind of feedback we hope to see more of on the PTS. Having specific details about what players like or don't like helps us provide good feedback!

Amber Green

Stucking in the Air

6/11/2012 11:53 AM

Hello there! Thanks for taking the time to be detailed in describing this issue. We would appreciate additional details about this, please.

First, will you please confirm if this is something that is consistently happening to you, or was it only in this one instance? Additionally, does this happen with any specific abilities?

Thanks for testing! o/''\o

Eric Campbell

[Server Status] Server Unavailable: Public Test Server

6/10/2012 3:14 AM

We are currently investigating issues that have caused the Public Test server to go down. No current ETA, we will update you as soon as we know more. Thank you for your patience!

Update [11:20pm CDT] - Server is back up and ready for play! Thanks for your patience!

Allison Berryman

[Feedback] Group Finder

6/9/2012 5:36 AM

Thanks for all the Group Finder feedback, everyone! We're working diligently to gather your bug reports and feedback. In regards to role icons being incorrect - we have fixes for this and several other Group Finder UI issues coming soon. Keep your reports and feedback coming!

Joveth Gonzalez

6/8/2012 9:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sovrad

if this is preview of how server transfers are going to work in 4 days, may the old and the new gods bless you because you are gonna have one really bad day on 6/12.

I like you because you're a Game of Thrones fan.

While I can certainly appreciate your skepticism, understand that these are two very different processes. We all want to make sure that character transfers work 100% of the time, but as it is a new system, of course there may be some things to work out once it goes live. Rest assured that many eyes will be monitoring to make sure that the process goes well.

Joveth Gonzalez

6/8/2012 9:52 PM

Allison relayed that character copies were done for today and that players who filled out their surveys incorrectly, may not have copied over. One of the most common reasons why a copy fails is a mistake somewhere on the survey, but of course, other factors may be a cause. In fact, on the PTS blog we state:

We cannot guarantee that every character will copy to the PTS successfully, however we can assure you that characters on Live servers will not be affected in any way should the tool fail. If you notice that you filled out the survey but your character did not copy, please fill out the survey again.

We know you are all excited to play, but please also allow for constructive discourse.

Allison Berryman

6/8/2012 9:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seront

Allison, @SWTOR tweeted only 40 minutes ago that transfers are still ongoing:

" We're still copying. Check back later tonight if you haven't been copied over yet! -KF"

Are they really finished for the day or not?

They are finished for the day - the copy process for today's batch has been completed.

Allison Berryman

6/8/2012 9:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Niorlan

I checked the information I put in very carefully when I filled out the survey last (which was before the deadline), and still my character isn't copied over. I do think the system does need to be re-evaluated, because it does not seem to work as confidently as you might believe if so many of us still do not have characters copied over despite putting in the right information.

There could be additional reasons for a character copy to fail (which we'll investigate) that are unknown, but one reason we could identify was not filling out the survey correctly. For any that failed for other reasons, we still may not be able to copy those characters, but we'll investigate the causes.

Allison Berryman

6/8/2012 8:26 PM

We have completed the batch of copies - players who filled out the survey since the last copy should now be copied to the PTS. We did have some instances where the information was not filled out correctly, and unfortunately those characters could not be copied. Thanks to everyone for your interest in helping us test 1.3 - we're looking forward to your feedback and bug reports!

Alyson Bridge

Scheduled Maintenance: June 12th, 2012

6/8/2012 7:00 PM

Edit: We have extended the planned window to 7am CDT.

Hello everyone, we wanted to let you know that we will be performing scheduled maintenance for four hours on Tuesday, June 12th, 2012 from 2AM CDT (12AM PDT/3AM EDT/8 AM BST/9AM CEST/5PM AEST) until 7AM CDT (5AM PDT/8AM EDT/1PM BST/2PM CEST/10PM AEST). All game servers and SWTOR.com will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than five hours, but could be extended.

This weekly maintenance is done in order to make general improvements and to check performance of the game so that we can continue to provide a consistent, quality experience. Quite often (but not always) after a maintenance period there will be a patch to download. After the maintenance, please login via the launcher to download the latest patch. If your launcher was open during the maintenance, you must close and reopen it for a fresh login.

Scheduled Maintenance

Date: Tuesday, June 12th, 2012
Time: 2AM CDT (12AM PDT/3AM EDT/8 AM BST/9AM CEST/5PM AEST) until 7AM CDT (5AM PDT/8AM EDT/1PM BST/2PM CEST/10PM AEST)

All game servers and SWTOR.com will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than five hours.

Thank you for your patience as we maintain service for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™.

Allison Berryman

6/8/2012 4:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaywinnit

What if we filled it out correctly originally, and still haven't been copied over, are those copies still taking place as well?

As we mentioned earlier in the thread, if you were not copied, filling out the survey again and ensuring it was correct would include you in today's batch.

Allison Berryman

Official Q&A Thread for June 15th Blog Post

6/8/2012 4:05 PM

Hello and welcome to the official Q&A thread for questions to be answered for the June 15th, 2012 Q&A blog post.

As a reminder, well be starting up a weekly Q&A blog series in which we will select questions from the community and post answers to them every Friday. Well have the next set of answers next week on June 15th, 2012, but before that, we need your questions!

Please use this thread to ask your question (one per community member, so make it count!). On Monday at 2PM CDT (8PM BST/9PM CEST/5AM AEST), we will close this thread, select the questions, and get answers to them for Fridays blog post.

In order to increase the chances of having your specific question answered and to help us keep the thread manageable, here are some guidelines on asking questions:

Keep your question relatively short. Background details are welcome, but dont go overboard.
Please actually ask a question. We want to hear constructive feedback elsewhere in the Forums.
Use common sense we cannot answer everything, especially on far-reaching content.
This should go without saying, but be respectful.
Limit yourself to one question in this thread, please. You can always ask another question next week!
And finally, as a reminder, this is not a discussion thread. Do not comment about what somebody else has posted.

As development plans are always subject to change, questions about future features will often get vague answers which can be repetitive and sometimes annoying. With that in mind, the development team is more interested in questions about current in-game features or systems, or questions about why development decisions were made. Youre still welcome to ask questions about future features and well continue to answer them where appropriate just expect the occasional soon.

Any other posts apart from questions in the thread will be removed.

With that being said, please ask away!

Allison Berryman

Community Q&A Blog Discussion: June 8th, 2012

6/8/2012 4:05 PM

Hey everyone,

Please discuss this week's Community Q&A blog in this thread!

Will Wallace

1.3 Character specific legacy perks

6/8/2012 3:05 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Iwipe

Anyone know if the legacy perks for earlier speeder training grant you the speeder training as well?

The speeder perks grant the ability automatically when you purchase them, no trainer necessary.

As for costs and benefits, I appreciate the constructive and comprehensive feedback. I'm re-evaluating the numbers and seeing what can change (for example, I'm dropping costs on the companion affection perks and boosting the modifiers). Prices and benefits are not set in stone at this point, so thanks for helping test and evaluate them!

A Peckenpaugh