I don't give BW the benefit of the doubt that the move to RNG, gear grind as a substitute for content, and abandoning the end game, which you pointed out in the post I replied to, are the simple result of bad decisions made by incompetent people. I think it was all very well thought out in pursuit of one goal and one goal alone: getting players to keep logging into a game, which could muster only enough genuine development effort to put out one operation every 2 years, so that the in-game monetization tricks could do their work and keep the roof over the head. When you can't put content on the table you need to recycle. And when you are on your 4th itemization and gearing iteration, with the pressure to come up with the 5th one, so you can semi-seriously pawn off a content patch for an expansion to your player base, there are pretty much only bad and worse ideas left. And you can't reasonably expect a CM/producer to say "hey we're here just putting a worse coat of lipstick on our pig plz give us your time and money". They BS and spin. It's actually what they get paid for. I don't hate the player but the game, no pun intended.

Now I'm not saying the guy is the best to ever have graced the industry, but you are clearly blaming the guy for things beyond his control. Gearing reworks in lieu of endgame content cleadly weren't made because any one dev or producer thought it a good idea, but because the studio wasn't given the resources to produce actual meaningfull content, so old contet had to be re-made relevant every "expansion". Dude is basically a cautionary/tragic tale of a kid getting what he wished for - landed a dream job at a WoW killer that was obviously the neglected stepchild of EA/BW very soon after launch. Dude is what, under 40, and completley grey. That is what the death of your dreams does to your hairline lol.

Game has a decent size player base that's stable and was clearly still profitable. What worries me is that, with the SW exclusivity deal gone, IP licensing they've now set up with darth Mickey has hit the bottom line enough for EA to be willing to wash their hands of the game and the steady revenue stream it represented... Meaning resources will likely be scanter for the new studio. And SWTOR type content takes money to produce. I don't think the game is being propped up because of the pvp/raiding scene as much as by people into the setting/their personal sw fantasy. A reduction to minimalistic mmo group content probably won't serve the bulk of the remaining player base. But then again it's pretty safe to assume EA/BW didn't exactly re-invest the vast majority of the revenue back into the game, so it's all speculation. It all depends on the scope of ambition of the new studio, do they plan to still be the glorified maintenance crew or use the opportunity to step up to the higher leagues... we'll see soon enough I guess.

Not that we got much content from BW of late, but I can't imagine the new studio will have the capability to continue producing VO story content at all... which was just about the only reason to stick around. That's basically the hutt lady warming up her vocal cords Bummer.

It would all be fine if could just choose which rep tokens drop during any season, after finishing the track... kinda the way we can toggle which discipline we want gear drops to be for. The current "use a consumable and grind mobs with a companion" mechanic to finish old rep grinds is comically bad. I can't imagine many utilized that torture to wrap it up if they missed the obscurely communicated cutoff time... I know I didn't. Kicked a bad compulsive completionist habit I had for 9 years in this game, so thank you devs I guess lol? It's doubly confusing to me because this game recycles all its content every expansion, recycling it with permanent reputation tracks would be par per course.

Just remember that staying alive is just as valuable as killing the other team. And you can always cheese a gunship 😜 Having said that, I don't even remember people in any of my matches getting upset, and there's usually a couple of 0 kill 10+ deaths players in a match, either learning the leeroy way or suiciding to throw... People don't tend to get worked up over GSF cos rewards are good for the effort put in, since the weekly is 6 losses in a worst-case scenario + you get a metric ton of conquest points for using each ship type in 5 matches anyways, so it's like 1 match difference even if you lose every time... There's a lesson there for BW in their neigh-decade quest to make regular PvP "less toxic" I think... Only wins count quests is toosh design.

And therein lies the rub. There are very effective ways to syphon credits from the economy from where it matters - from people that have accumulated them. But it will inevitably eat into the company bottom line, because any items going to a credit bidding house will be items that would have otherwise gone to the CM. Won't take long to see just how serious they are about addressing the economy.

seems to me that the game is downlading the entire patch to the "wherever you have the game installed"/assets/pending if the size of your disk can't hold the preexisting game + the entirety of the patch it's trying to download there, you're SOL, launcher gets stuck when you run out of room. Not great that he launcher doesn't communicate that to you. possibly re-installing the whole game would work for you as you would delete the old files it is what it is

Had me in the first half not gonna lie

I don't know why they don't just make which rep item you want to drop selectable... In the same way you can choose which discipline you want your loot drops be... It's not like it's some hard-to-get exclusive thing, so why basically take the hampster wheels out for people late to the party?

Well, we did just get a big under-the-hood upgrade, one that most people never honestly expected to see in a game in "maintenance mode".... so that would kinda suggest they haven't given up. Hopefully, content patches start to reflect that now.

And instead of copying WoWs solutions BW decides to roll back the enhanced player mobility they touted as one of the big QoL changes, back when they switched to the "level only via the story and travel fast between quests". But hey, once you're here long enough, you realize everything is cyclical. Issues introduced today are the groundwork for improvements down the line. A cynic might say it's all premeditated in lieu actual development.

I'm no expert but it feels this will just feel bad QoL and newbie-wise with little to no tangible effect. People are conscious of the economy being scuffed by people with billions galore dictating market prices. They can macro their toon to QT for the rest of their lives and it won't make a dent. You ain't fixing this on the back of minute transactional taxation. Yes, it adds up to a large sum, but not where it counts. The market will still be dictated and warped by people with purchasing power that won't ever register these changes. Those people are not making credits by hopping from heroic to heroic, they're using the credits they have to play the market. If BW wants to suck credits out of the system they have to give end-game players credit sinks that actually have appeal to those players... with something like WoWs Black Market Auction House. Put up the rarest/removed/most desirable items for a bidding war between the fat cats of the server. If it removes 50-100 billion credits out of the system in one pop, it's worth it to sell a dude the Wings of the Architect or an otherwise 10k CC item.

Previous iterations of tooltips maybe... That's sorta the crux of the issue imho, if you play regularly this information is sorta in your subconscious, prototype = blue. New/returning players just won't have that connection. Faced with a new system of 4 gearing tracks and a metric ton of associated upgrade currencies gained from specific activities can overwhelm already, and at the end the path to modded is also less than clear. Heck I've been here on and off since launch and, being in an uber casual carebear solo phase of my swtor career, it took me over a month and a chance encounter with the quest givers to stumble upon the moddable gear quest... before that I had just assumed that was something gated behind HM ops, which I haven't bothered with and didn't plan to ever do. Since no vendor at the place where all other gear vendors are lol. Granted I'm thick, but catering to the lowest common denominator is sorta the name of the game heh.

Detailed tooltips only show details of mods and dont affect the tooltip otherwise looking at jedipedia I think the guy is right, it doesn't state item quality on the tooltips

I'd argue the Ossus gearing was in fact better because it was more straightforward. If people have to google and ask on forum how your gearing works you failed your taks as a game dev. Since gearing reworks are substitute for content in this game, we swing from a "let's make this convoluted af" to a "let's simplify this mess" patches. Personally I can't wait for 8.0 when BW goes about fixing the mess they intentionally created with 7.0

A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one.

Eh I would not worry too much about the competitive aspect of PvP BW will probably do what it did the last time they declared war on toxicity, stick some valuable mat in the weekly rewards and make only wins count again. That was so fun.

The big gift is that the servers are still on =P

As opposed to now when they QQ they can't afford anything. The second you find a title like that you go for it, but I suspect a title won't tickle enough fancy to move the needle. The thing that would really drain credits is if they made a couple of mounts/items of the premier AAA quality and stuck them on the CM for a limited time, say a month, and made them purchasable by credits only. Obscene amounts of credits only, limited time only. The thing is they can make and keep making RL money from items like that so it becomes a question of is the economic situation really dire enough to warrant giving up profits. Sadly I don't think the devs that hypothetically care about in-game economy ever win that argument over marketing lol.

A game with credit sinks greater than credit rewards would be unplayable. 10 years of credit surplus will give you inflation. You can't really fix it unless you make some egregious endgame sink tied to progression and if it comes to that it's honestly just better to eat the inflation problem. But I'm thinking the economy has a "bubble" and not just an inflation issue. Hypercrates and the most prestigious CM items are where people "invest" their credits to combat inflation. I've got a couple of crates I bought for less than 100 million years ago, when I went on my hiatus. I'm a multi-billionaire on paper now. So there is a vested interest to keep the prices of those things high. But if I wanted to "disinvest" on short notice, I'm guessing I'd run into a liquidity problem, certainly at these prices. If BW put in something (not gameplay braking and) genuinely desirable at 2bil credits, I'm betting people holding these items would flood the CM trying to get the liquidity they otherwise don't want to keep on hand and the prices would implode. Pop goes the weasel. But I reckon that if you ever find a thing like that you'll at that stage also know what's being kept in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. So not bloody likely.

After the initial memberberries hit wares off the show is distinctively mediocre I'm willing to let a lot pass but man the writing is comically bad at times. There's literary a scene and then a plot hole regarding that scene in the very next or even the same scene. That's some next level cognitive dissonance or they're doing design by committee again.

As many said, it's a brutal learning curve. And as so far the problem exists, you can only fix it by having only wins count towards weekly/daily completion. Regular PVP has that. And as a consequence, you now have regular matches that rival ranked in toxicity as people get frustrated trying to get weeklies done. So I for one sure hope BW doesn't try to "fix" this.

Which is both a blessing and a curse. IP keeps this game alive and at the same time, being a licensed IP, doesn't incentivize EA/BW to go beyond the bare minimum. Whereas SE knows it lives and dies by the FF IP and was consequently well-motivated to salvage XIV and make it a success.

I figured out that what irks me most is the fact they narrowed the inventory tab, no doubt to fit the now integrated character/inventory panel to smaller resolutions. Feels a bit claustrophobic losing those 2 columns lol.