EA is probably trying to save money by only testing the features that are explicitly listed in the list of defects and features rather than everything that is affected by the modified code.

OP is providing what is called "customer feedback". In general, it is a Good Thing for companies to pay attention to customer feedback especially when it references competitors and customer expectations. I agree that the cartel market has gone too far. I can accept unique cosmetic items and unlocks for F2P accounts but content that should be accessible from within the game is now exclusively cartel market. I would have loved a long and difficult quest line for the mask of nihilus but getting it is only as difficult as how much cash I want to gamble away on cartel packs. What irks me the most are the "pay to win" items. I watched a naked level 11 marauder tank Black Talon the other day armed with a single Gamorrean Axe which he'd apparently fitted with a +41 endurance crystal. Later on Dromund Kaas I saw people soloing 4 man heroics while dual wielding pink / purple sabers.

Playing under the F2P restrictions wasn't too bad once I got used to the restrictions on chat and having to carefully select what I wanted in my quickbars. What I found most annoying were the limitations on inventory space. Even with sending my companion out to sell the junk every five minutes I still found myself either having to go back to base to find a vendor or leave loot on the ground.

I wish it were as challenging as Space Everquest: Naked corpse runs, XP loss, world boss camping, no map, limited quick travel. Playing MMOs these days... I did some programming for MERC so Smedley is working on a variation of my design.

The law of unintended consequences rules all. Bioware added companions to stay in line with KOTOR and to cater to those who complain about having to find groups when leveling tanks and healers. Unfortunately, the result is that nobody groups except for the heroic missions and most people drop group as soon as it is complete, not even waiting for the turn in. Not a single one of my 50s made it past Social I and I spent months grouping with just about anyone who was interested.

Avoidance tanking is best tanking.

I was on the forums pre launch pushing to ensure that the game wasn't too easy. The response I got from other forum members was that the game was targeted at casuals and that I should stop pretending to be hardcore. Nothing from Bioware. Come launch I start playing and by the time I finished Coruscant I was outleveling the content. Add in a little pvp and a few space missions and I'd started crushing the content by the end of Taris and new missions were green or gray. Literally the only way to move through the class story without outleveling it was to skip missions along the way.

I think you need to take a little time to remember what the game market was like when WoW launched. I'm simply pointing out that WoW launched with fewer features and less content than is expected of a current MMO but didn't run into the same exodus of players because the curve was steeper and they had some breathing room to patch in new content.

WoW didn't launch with a lot of what you listed. No guild levels, no achievements. End game armor was T0 or T1. The T2 armor set wasn't until patch 1.6. The rare mounts in vanilla were *rare*. I don't think I ever got the Deathcharger. I think had TOR make the leveling slope a little steeper and done what WoW did with attunement to end game raids we would have seen players make it past the 3-6 month window. Had they done something like WoW did with AQ and the war effort to open up new operations it would have been a great way to engage players and keep them subbed. My WoW guild worked tirelessly to get those gates open only to be stomped to death repeatedly by what we'd helped release. Good times...

Thanks, that's probably the detail I overlooked. I asked if she could use mail and she said no. I didn't think to distinguish between sending vs receiving.

One of the reasons WoW was able to launch with only a single raid was that leveling to 60 in vanilla wasn't something you did in a month. Once you hit 60 the raids required attunement quests or item drops like the UBRS key. Once you hit MC you got beat down by the first boss for weeks if you weren't wiping on the "trash". For the "casual" player, WoW had BRD which was an absolutely huge dungeon for a five man. A complete run took hours. The problem isn't that there wasn't any content at end game in SWTOR. The problem was that it was too easy to get to and too easy to complete.

Maybe I've missed something but my kid started playing SWTOR when it went F2P and I was looking for a way to give her some unlocks from the cartel market. She doesn't seem to have access to in game mail and trade seems to be similarly restricted. How do I go about purchasing something from the Cartel Market for another account if I have no means of delivering it directly to them? Considering that Xmas is just around the corner, if would be odd if a feature like this was left out.

But but but... you might have to spend coins to play as a furry! Where is your outrage at this obvious attempt to profit from furries?

Is that what happened? I seem to recall the game launching with 8 races, all of which subs have access to. No, it isn't and I think you're blowing things out of proportion. SWTOR isn't like other MMOs where entire starting areas and quests are based on race. If it were a new class and CC restricted you'd have a point but race is just a skin (pardon the pun) in SWTOR. And if it gets to that point EA will have killed the goose that lays the golden egg. At the moment, players get a CC stipend and unfettered access to game content but not all skins. If subs lose that unfettered access to mission / story / operation content there is no good reason to keep subbing and EA loses money. I think we are already seeing how it will go. Subs get access to the new operation. F2P have to buy access to it. Everyone has to buy the new species skin if they want it but it will be priced on a par with other species skins and effectively free for subs with the stipend.

I know. But for new players who want to pad their bank balance and aren't farming those dailies it's an okay way to make some in game cash without going to a gold farmer.

So you choose what you want. I think the mask of nihilus is cool but I'm not going to burn a hole in my account for it until I have everything else that I want unlocked. If EA releases an operation and makes it CC access only, I'd fully expect subs to revolt. A race skin... not so much. You may as well complain that there are armor skins in the CC that subs don't get in their inbox.

We'll have to see where EA goes with this but, so far, it looks like the Cathar unlock is going to be priced on a par with the others so you're looking at an account wide unlock if you choose to use two months of your sub cash. Alternately, players can buy it and sell it on the GTN for credits so you can get it that way. Initially I was focused on the restrictions inherent in the F2P model but as time goes on I'm beginning to see things about it that I like i.e. the ability to buy unlocks with your "free 500" and sell them on the GTN for credits.

I can see your point if EA starts putting operation access for subs in the cash shop but we're talking about what is effectively a vanity skin and will probably be priced on a par with the other race unlocks. If it were a class, I'd agree with you since classes are associated with starting planets and quest lines but I don't consider a full body mustache to be "content".

Subs get a CC stipend so they will get Cathar basically for free. If subs have blown all their CC on other things they only need to wait a few months and they'll get Cathar with the stipend coins they've saved. If, however, subs have spent all their coins but want Cathar the day it's released then they can pay for it. It's called "budgeting".

The interesting thing is that your statement "the game is the same every single time you load it" doesn't have to be true. Developers like it to be true since it provides a consistent and controlled experience but it doesn't have to be. There is literally no reason that the game world itself cannot evolve as the game progresses. The following is part of my dream MMO design: Lay out a huge world via programmatic terrain generation. Not just big but *HUGE*. Place faction and race cities as the central nodes for themepark play. Those regions are "civilized" and relatively static. Connect them with some form of quicktravel but limit access to it based on reputation. Limit access to quests based on reputation, if you want the epic quests you'll need to have high reputation. Give each faction city an alignment and guard reaction is based on alignment and reputation rather than starting race i.e. that chaotic evil hobbit is totally welcome in Mordor but will get hung in the Shire. Mission choices affect both reputation and alignment which affect where and who you can play with. Bordering on "civilized" static areas are is an unpatrolled border region that players can build in provided they have high rep with bordering civilization Borderlands have better resource spawns Borderlands have limited pvp between players Borderlands spawns creature bases which, in turn, spawn raiders who attack player bases and local quest hubs Leave spawned bases alone too long and they get stronger. More defenses, better defenders, more raiders etc Leave it long enough and it spawns a boss level leader requiring small raids to put down. Killing a player modifies your rep and alignment based on their rep and alignment. Kill a bunch of dwarf noobs and the dwarves start to dislike you but the orcs start to like you Outside the Borderlands is the Wilds. The Wilds has free building, free pvp, larger and more frequent mob base spawns guarding the best resources Wild areas have "alignment" and "threat levels" which determine how the terrain is "skinned". A forest left in the hands of evil shifts to a darker and more menacing appearance. Mission hubs can change faction as well due to this. The thing is, once you program the underlying world mechanics you'll have a themepark that guides players into a huge sandbox that changes based on player action or inaction. You could have guilds who's primary purpose was patrolling roads and securing trade routes if that's what they wanted to do. The trick is to slowly ramp up sandbox content as players progress through local quest lines i.e. guild missions like "go into the borderlands, retake guardpost X and repair its walls". Enough wall of text. Game worlds don't have to be static.

Making a profit is no longer sufficient in the modern business environment. There are things like the price-earnings ratio that drive how companies make decisions. You have to not only return a profit but have a good stock price (EA's is in the toilet) and show consistent growth. If you don't, Wall St analysts start complaining and the board starts looking at swapping out c-level execs. I've seen companies hit their numbers every quarter for two years during the worst recession we've had in decades and still be considered failures because the stock price wasn't high enough for investors. If EA starts getting pressure to raise its stock price (down to $13 from $50 in 2008) you can expect them to take the easiest route to shoring up their numbers first i.e. layoffs and cutting expenses. The stock market has largely recovered from the crash in 2008. EA, not so much.

1. Follow the leader 2. Stay close to your neighbors 3. Not too close 4. Avoid stationary objects These four "rules" are all that is required for flocking behavior in groups. The complexity arises not from the carefully coordinated programming of the individual elements but from their interaction. In the same way, an appropriate selection of heuristics and internal states can result in emergent behavior from what appear to be a static set of rules.

Yeah, if they're not going to be improved upon I'd at least like the state machines from QE back. I had a conversation with some friends of mine recently where I outlined how to put together a more dynamic and evolving game world than anything currently available without inventing anything new. The response was a mix of "that would be f*cking awesome" and "after years of WoW, people would do nothing but complain".

The problem is that if behavior isn't at least superficially novel, we get bored with it. The solution is to make games more challenging, not easier.

You're overthinking the problem. I'm not talking about machine learning, I'm talking about a slightly more complex but otherwise static state machine. It's already been established that building a smarter mob that presents more challenging behavior though an interaction between a small number of heuristics, the local environment and a little monte-carlo is trivial. The trick is not making them too hard. Give each mob and internal state: 1. Idle 2. Alert 3. Attacking 4. Defending / Healing 5. Controlling 6. Retreating Use that state, the mobs HP, number of allies within N meters, number of enemies within N meters, etc as inputs into the state machine and its heuristics and let it run. You also need to remember that while there may be a large number of people logged into a "super server", each planet is its own VM so the computational load is distributed across a larger set of cores than you might think.