This is one of the most click baity titles and blog posts I've seen in a long time. It's pretty much designed to get the reaction OP gave.

Exactly what I'm talking about. You're not here upset you're not being catered to. You're talking about issues in the solo portion of the game, the parts that are meant to be soloed that are either too difficult to do so, or else extremely tedious. That's pretty much been 100% of what solo players on here have been talking about. So the idea that this is all "Oh those solo players just want it all" is ridiculous. All solo players (the ones upset over the changes) want is for the solo parts of the game to be doable and not an awful grind.

You can keep saying things over and over again, but that doesn't make it true. Just because you say over and over again the population is doing better than previous expansions doesn't make it true. The fleet is at half the size it was three weeks ago, which is pretty much par for the course over the past few expansions. You can say over and over again this is about solo players not feeling catered to, but that doesn't make it true when you have OPs players and Solo players both upset over the changes in scaling (the root cause of the difficulty bump). You act like there are solo players on here upset they can't solo MM FPs when that's never been the discussion. You say solo players have things for them, like heroics. Heroics are the thing solo players are mostly discussing. So the fact that you keep trying to change this into "Oh solo players don't feel catered to" is disingenuous at best. If you want to point to some examples of solo players upset about not being able to solo MM FPs or OPs be my guest because from what I've seen its people upset about the spike in difficulty in solo content (eg. Heroics). You can say over and over again that these changes make the game more of an MMO again, but that doesn't make it true when no one is actually forming more groups to tackle the things that are being discussed here (such as heroics). In fact pretty much the only groups being formed are for RR and HS. You've yet to explain why so many people have made complaints about the OPs scaling, Vet FPs being scaled poorly for groups, etc. on this thread (to a small extent) and on numerous threads. You've yet to show how "solo players are upset they aren't being catered to" when what people are upset about is the difficulty spike in content that was soloable before 6.0. All you do is say the same thing over and over again, acting like if you say it enough it will make it true.

I can say with absolute certainty that Solo Mode FPs, Conquest Boxes, and Renown boxes all drop 278+ gear. It's just a matter of luck. I'm at ilvl 285 or 286 atm and haven't done any group content to get that. Make sure you are checking the mods in dropped items because lower ilvl gear may have higher level mods in it and just keep at it. You'll eventually run into a string of good luck and get some drops.

It's also just not true. As much as ZionHalcyon keeps saying the servers are healthier than ever, in the three weeks since Onslaught released the fleet population has fallen by almost half. That's basically following exactly what we've seen in every other expansion. And for all the talk of this being an MMO again, I've yet to see anyone making groups for Heroics or SFs. At this point SFs are nearly impossible or just impossible to solo depending on your build, but since it's old content no one is doing it. And people are just soloing heroics slower, not grouping for them. So this idea that making these harder has led to more grouping just isn't true. And what's even worse is the change that was a major part of this increased difficulty, the changes they made to level scaling, are heavily criticized by OPs players so this is not a solo player issue, its just solo players and group players are framing the problem differently, through their playstyle lens.

When most people talk about devs posting its shorthand for hearing from anyone in the pipeline, including the producer and community manager. Devs, while short for developers, often encompasses more than just the actual developers. Most MMOs don't have the developers communicate directly with the public, partially for the reason you describe (they are working on the game) and partially because people in community management don't want them putting their feet in their mouth. However, they do communicate through the community manager(s) which is what has been often lacking here at various points in the game's history. I don't know the Bioware internal hierarchy, but based on my experience Keith isn't exactly a dev in the developer sense either. He's a producer which, based on where I worked, means he wears a lot of hats that include external communication of big picture stuff, internal coordination and logistics, etc.

Yeah, I know. That's why I said it would solve that issue

I've been avoiding saying anything like "we should be grateful they made this post at all" because the truth is we shouldn't. This is the kind of communication we should expect. However, that also means people should at least have the baseline amount of respect about it because, as someone who has worked in community management of a game studio, I can genuinely say devs and community managers want to communicate more with and will work harder to communicate with people who (even when unhappy) are respectful.

Your idea would also solve a major issue with companions like Aric where they may not always have access to the voice actor depending on what else he's doing.

Showing disdain at the idea of a 3-4 month period between a large content patch and the next content patch (over Christmas) isn't going to make EA any more or less likely to reinvest in the game. Do you think the Devs are like "well I think our budget is enough, more would only make things worse"? They obviously want to deliver the most content they can and would like as big a budget as possible. So when Keith comes on here and describes a plan to deliver a small dose of content in a month and a larger does in 3-4 that seems like a pretty big step. They can't snap their fingers and deliver 6.1 next month and no amount of whining is going to change that. What it may change is their interest in making these kinds of announcements in the future. Again, that's not saying people shouldn't post criticism. Someone posted about how there is no mention of PvP rewards being altered to work with the gearing system better. That's a legitimate criticism. Being upset that the next content update isn't coming out before Christmas really isn't.

You're not going to get an argument from me that says the amp RNG isn't terrible. Let me just be clear about that. I think it is and they should change it in general. Whatever they do or don't do to refunds not withstanding they need to figure out a better system for amps because the one in place now is insane.

Its pointless to argue. Some people were never going to be happy with any news. Releasing early 2020 only makes sense since the Christmas holiday is coming up and they weren't going to do major development then. The fact that they are releasing new heroics and a new alliance alert during that time is already the most we could have expected. Some people will moan no matter what Bioware says.

Thinking about it more I really think 200k should have been where they had it. It takes 4 players to start a guild. You can have fewer, but we can assume Bioware wanted 4 to be baseline number. So a small guild should be able to reach its goal when the baseline number of players all reach their individual goals. If few players participate then those fewer will need to hustle sure, but if everyone participates then the guild reaches its goal. That makes sense to me at least.

It's got a 2 hour return timer so you could return it. That doesn't mean the devs intended the result of free rerolling of amps. It's not like whether its a bug or not makes a difference though. If the devs think its working then they'll leave it in. I'm not saying don't do it or your all exploiters or anything. I'm saying because of what amps are supposed to do to the economy I wouldn't count on the method being around forever. I personally expect they will try to find a way to keep people from having free rerolls.

Maybe not, but to me it definitely seems unintended (based on the concept behind amplifiers being a credit sink) to have a method to freely reroll an amplifier. Maybe it's not a bug, but it seems like one to me.

The fact that you are saying things need to be changed is my point though. If 1-2 romances were okay they things wouldn't need to be changed because 1-2 is what we're getting. It's just (for example) Aric's return came very early whereas Kira's only now. My point is if people were satisfied with 1-2 per an update you wouldn't see people unsatisfied with the current system, but obviously people are unsatisfied despite getting 2 more vanilla romances in Onslaught and having a new vanilla companion be romanceable. The problem is at 1-2 per update you are looking at 17 updates to get through all 25+ LIs. Even if they release 3 updates a year that's 5+ years to get through them all. If in 6.1 we got 1-2 more (which at the rate we've gotten them seems likely) then you'll still see a lot of people upset there weren't more or different or longer ones just like you do right now.

Well here's the thing (and why I personally have my doubts about what people say they want vs. what they will want), they have been doing the drip feed. The reunion scenes have been the drip feed. It's just that it's been 4 years because (as I've pointed out before) there are so many companions. Just this update they've had two LIs return (one only half returned, but will fully do so soon). On Ossus there were two returning as well. So if you only want 1-2 LIs per an update that's what's happening. So yeah, Aric hasn't gotten one in forever (although his voice actor opens a different can of worms for him in particular), but Kira and Tharan have. Torian may not have gotten one recently, but Doc has. And that's my issue with the idea that people would be okay with the drip, they haven't been. And I understand why, I do, but you can't tell me that people are okay with it when there are people who are asking for more Arcann romance scenes even though his romance is way more recent than anything we've gotten from, say, Vette. I'm not calling anyone a liar when they say they'd be okay with it, but even if some of you would be okay evidence shows that the vast majority of people posting on these topics wouldn't be. Again, some of this can be solved by emails and such, which has been suggested, but the idea of drip feeding one or two companions is exactly where we are now and we still have this thread. So I think it's hard to say *most* people would be okay.

You know, all of this is more than I would have expected, especially 6.02 coming in December and 6.1 targeting early 2020. This is perfect communication and makes me far more excited about the future of the game than I would have been otherwise. I'm definitely interested to see what tweaks you are coming up with. So thank you for posting this.

I consider myself a pretty average player and don't understand why you think it's hard or frustrating. I went up 3 ilvls and got a set piece yesterday. All I did was run a solo SF, a few heroics, and solo Korriban twice and spent around 1k tech frags. You don't need to have BiS overnight. In one week with 0 grouping I'm at ilvl 283. Yes it will take a few more weeks to hit 306. Yes from there I have to work toward BiS which will take time, but it's doing things that are fun to me. I don't have to run an op over and over. I don't need to do MM fps. I don't need to schedule my life around the game. I just play. That is the easiest and least frustrating gearing I can imagine.

I don't think as many people are worried about it shutting down as are worried we won't see significant content development though. That's why, to me, this is neither good nor bad news. There's nothing in there that really signifies EA will be reinvesting into the game, but they are at least happy with the current model. As someone who would love to see the content model improve instead of stagnate, this really doesn't tell me much.

Last week I got between 100-125k conquest points in my solo guild, so I think a duo could potentially do it but it would take a lot of time. I feel like 200-250k would have been a much easier goal for small conquest goals.

I'm sorry. I disagree with Zion on a lot, but he's right that communicating a vision an implementing that vision are two separate things. It's not like if they communicate with us today or in three months that it will change when the next update will be, everyone knows that, but it does change how much we know. It is definitely not semantics. Communication helps the players understand where things are headed no matter whether they are headed there quickly or slowly.

This seems like a bug and I wouldn't count on that staying for long.

Definitely not hard capped. I got ilvl 284 pieces from Solo Korriban FP tonight. Beyond that you can get pieces from the fleet vendor (the random pieces you buy will always be the next even ilvl above yours, so if you are at 276 the pieces will be 278) with tech fragments and you get 100 tech fragments for each renown level. Outside of FPs I've had rare upgrades drop, but 99% of drops are below my ilvl, but at least with those you can still decon it for more tech frags.

I was talking about the person you were quoting not having a real argument and lacking reading comprehension not you. I was trying to support what you were saying, but I can understand how you took it the way you did. Rereading it I can see how I wasn't clear about who I was talking about.