Conquest is a big factor in how I play the game, and my favourite Conquest event is Total Galactic War, something about which I've written many times. I know I'm not alone in this, and it seemed like Bioware recognised the event's potential as something that drives activity as well, as they tended to cleverly schedule it for times that were otherwise "lull periods" over the last couple of years - such as between seasons, or during the months when Legacy of the Sith ended up being delayed.
With that in mind, me and many of my guildies were certain that we'd get a Total Galactic War some time in February, before the start of Galactic Season 6. Every week after reset, we'd check to see what the next week's Conquest event was supposed to be, and every time we were a little disappointed that it wasn't TGW - but we figured it was going to come around soon. Except... it didn't. GS6 launches this Tuesday and it seems unlikely that the devs would insert an event like TGW right at a time when people are already busy with seasons anyway.
In the comments on my post about Kessan's Landing, someone asked whether I expected any big changes in what kind of content we're going to get in future updates, now that SWTOR's development has fully moved to Broadsword. I responded that I didn't expect any drastic changes since it's effectively still the same people making the game, but with that train of thought on my mind, the "missing" Total Galactic War gave me pause.
I think the transition to Broadsword has mostly gone well from a player perspective. New content delivery hasn't slowed down, and if anything, the devs seem a bit more relaxed/happier in their public communications. But as another commenter said, there were a lot of lay-offs in the transition, right? That's got to have had an effect, no? We don't know the exact numbers, but based on the official statement at the time, the team could've lost up to slightly less than half of its members.
Honestly though, even if we assume a worst case scenario in terms of numbers, that doesn't necessarily mean that future content updates will suddenly be half the size. There are job roles that are valued internally and that do help to improve quality and processes but that don't have an obvious impact on the size of the final product. Plus past word through the grapevine indicated that Bioware was quite liberal with re-assigning SWTOR devs to other projects if it suited them, meaning it's possible that some of those people who were sadly laid off during the transition hadn't been doing that much work on SWTOR in practice recently. All speculation of course, but my point is that it's probably not as simple as "x% of the team not making the move means x% less content from 7.5 onwards".
I don't work in games or development, but in online retail, and a bit over a year ago a situation arose in my small team where literally everyone but me handed in their resignation within a relatively short period of time. This was scary for me personally because it meant that I suddenly had to cover the work of three people, though fortunately management was very supportive and we eventually got replacements for those who had left. However, what was really interesting to me during that time was how effectively I was able to keep our basic output going. Everyone else just agreed to temporarily slash everything that wasn't absolutely essential to keeping operations going, from optimisations to reporting to countless meetings. And it worked! So from a customer's perspective, there was probably no noticeable difference at all, even while we were very aware that we were doing things "sub-optimally" behind the scenes. I wouldn't be surprised if the SWTOR devs had to do some of that immediately after the move to Broadsword, but at this point they've probably settled into some different processes anyway.
What does all of this have to do with Conquest again? Well, it made me wonder whether "making sure certain things happen with Conquest" was one of those small things that actually did get lost in the transition. The last Total Galactic War happened in early September, which was technically two months after the move, but based on past datamining I read about, the Conquest schedule actually seems to get locked in several months in advance, so that event could've been a leftover from before the move. I also noticed that both 7.3's Interpreter's Retreat and 7.4's Kessan's Landing didn't come with any "kill enemies" Conquest objectives like they exist for pretty much every other planet in the game. So it might well be that there was a specific dev who tended to look after that stuff and who no longer has time to do that or is no longer there at all. It's a small thing, and if this is the worst side effect to come out of the Broadsword transition, I'll be a happy camper; it's just something that stood out to me as a Conquest enjoyer.
Have you noticed anything in the new content releases since last July that struck you as unusual and that you think could be attributed to the move?
" We don't know the exact numbers, but based on the official statement at the time, the team could've lost up to slightly less than half of its members."
ReplyDeleteThank you for finding the source. I was the Anonymous, who brought that up in your earlier post on Kessan's Landing.
And i was in a stream of SWTORISTA a few weeks ago, were this got mentioned too. And she flat out called this basically a lie. That the "around 50% mark" was never mentioned anywhere.
I was flabbergasted, because i was sure i read that somewhere. I didn't find it asap and thought i was crazy and have imagined things.
I never know, what to do with those official company statements. They are always worded in the most unclear way. "...more than half of whom are expected to move to Broadsword". What does this mean? "expected to move". They basically wrote their statement without knowing for sure!? Which means the "expected 50%" have or have not moved to Broadsword.
Not, that this matter much. We will find out eventually.
I'm not sure about the legal situation in the US, but here in the UK, if your job stays the same but your employer changes due to some reorganising, you are given the option to stay on or end your employment without penalty.
DeleteIf something similar happened here, the "are expected to move" wording may have been in reference to that, in the sense that EA wasn't actually looking to actively lay people off but that they hadn't had legal confirmation from everyone yet that they were happy to stay in their jobs under Broadsword, so they had to estimate a ballpark figure. IGN broke the news before EA had actually said anything officially, so EA basically had to scramble to get an official statement out on short notice.
There was never an official statement as to the percentage or number of BioWare employees that would not make the transition to Broadsword. The "Currently, roughly 70-80 people are part of the core development team of The Old Republic, more than half of whom are expected to move to Broadsword." statement came from the referenced IGN report which did not name its source.
DeleteGood catch, the quotation marks end before that sentence. I always read the following paragraph with the implication that it was paraphrasing more information provided by EA, and I think many others did too. But looking back at the first version of the article on the Internet Archive, it seems that quote was kind of inserted right in the middle, and everything after presumably still came from the "sources familiar with the matter" cited at the start.
DeleteI'm not sure if this is true or not, but Broadsword seems to communicate less than before. Sometimes over a week goes by without a single post from them. Sometimes their social media pages aren't updated for a number of days either. I think they are probably overworked and doing the best they can, so I'm not criticizing them. It's just an observation. Things will probably improve for a few weeks after today's update though.
ReplyDeleteI woul say overall their communication has increased since the move to Broadsword. There may have been fewer "fluff" social media posts about things like favourite companions and CM sales, but I certainly feel like I have a much better idea of what's going on and what they're working on. The last month or so in particular has been fairly quiet, but that's not unusual as we basically knew what was coming after the last dev stream and they were getting ready to launch.
DeleteI don't do Conquest, so that's a nice observation to hear. I suspect we'll see things like that around the edges due, as you say, to the smaller staff sizes. (I know how that feels, as well. It can be overwhelming if you dwell too much on what isn't getting done...)
ReplyDeleteI do like the steady drip of content now over waiting between larger patches, but I wonder if some players felt like EA/Bioware was deliberately holding Swtor back and that the move to Broadsword meant the team would release a storm of content in every area. :sigh: It would be nice, though, to see content in each of the areas with the various seasons. But then we're back to 'robbing Peter to pay Paul'. I have no answers, but I am glad to see the game seeming to thrive under the move to Broadsword.
As far as communication goes, while Broadsword may not be communication as much, I find the quality and depth of the communications are noticeably improved. They've 'pulled back the kimono' in a way they didn't in the Bioware days.
"Pulled back the kimono"? That sounds slightly dirty to me, haha! I've only ever heard that expression with "curtains".
DeleteI think realistically, the dev team's resources are still going to be the same or slightly less for now, so nobody should be expecting any miracles. My only hope is that if it's true what was being hinted at on social media when the transfer news first came out and Bioware was using revenue from SWTOR to fund the slowness of its single-player development, there might be an improvement in funds being fed back into the game at Broadsword that could slowly increase its budget/output again if the devs do well.
I probably should have said 'open the kimono', whereas 'pull back' and 'open' both work for curtains. Well, at least in my area. All I can plead is that my wife's medical surgeries today had my mind a bit more scattered than usual. :)
Delete"(...) but I wonder if some players felt like EA/Bioware was deliberately holding Swtor back and that the move to Broadsword meant the team would release a storm of content in every area (...)"
ReplyDeleteOver the years i learned that parts of the community are exactly like this... hopelessly optimistic. Sometimes i wonder if they actually live the better life.