If you were applying for a development position for SWTOR or leader position I would hire you on the spot. I could not agree more. You sir obviously have your finger on the pulse of the player base. Something this development team is sorely lacking.

What? JC is horrible. And all I do is PVP only. I have no idea what you are using for measuring fine, but outside of a few hours of prime time there are little to no queue pops for PVP. Do you only play at exactly the 2 hours of prime time every time you play? Because a lot of us play at all different times of the day. And JC is an absolute disaster. Worse then I have ever seen it and I have had toons there for several years.

That's the point. Now that 5.0 went live Harbinger has now degraded to what Shadowlands was 4.0 era. Shadowlands and JC are now in horrible shade. The only chance at group finder popping is during peak time. And even lately peak time is slow. What are they planning on doing about all these unhealthy servers? The current state of server populations is a mess. And 5.0 was the final nail in the coffin with the recent mass exodus of subscribers. Why did they allow the servers to get so bad? Why have they not addressed this problem?

Well when is 5.1.2 coming out. I am seriously hanging on by a thread here. All my friends told me I get what I ask for and told me to quit like they did. I hope this is coming soon because I don't have much left in me waiting for this to happen.

But why didn't he just crank up the unassembled components to pre 5.0 rate? It was an easy fix, why didn't they just do it and end this mess they created?

All they had to do is make unassembled components drop at pre 5.0 (approx. 10 times its current rate) and problem would have been solved. But no, that's just to easy so they are going to torture the remaining player base by not FIXING the problem but instead tweek it a little. It was a simple fix and they failed. They failed us all.

How about fixing the drop rate of the unassembled components and problem is fixed and we can go back to playing this game. Because for me and a lot of people like me, this system is broken. Maybe they just don't want me playing/paying for this game.

I PVP 24/7. I would like to have set bonus set ASAP. 4.0 provided this and for almost everyone I know who plays this game we were happy, happy, happy. But that all changed in 5.0. There was a reason for this http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=912707 the problem is that this development team either forgot or were not here for this. And even more important now, since it seem ALOT of people are overflowing with alts since the DvsL event do we need a quicker gear grind not a longer one. They did not over shoot this gear system a little grindy. They over shot the grind towards gear by a mammoth amount and instead of fixing it they threw some BS % bonus to boxes and command rank. Total mistake. What was need was a massive increase to unassembled components so that people could get set bonus sets on their alts relatively quickly. And instead they did absolutely nothing to unassembled components. As a result my will to play is broken as explained in my earlier post. This was an extremely easy fix to calm them masses but unfortunately they wanted a tweak not a fix. Shame on them.

The funniest part of this is that the thing they needed desperately to raise and raise significantly was the unassembled components. And the secondary issue is raising the drop rate of these crates. And the most important issue for helping people get set piece gear sets quickly (unassembled components) was not even touched. I am done playing until they get this mess sorted out. I have absolutely zero will to play. Its like they broke me with this. And if they don't fix this then I wont return. Its that bad for me. I like the game but this gear grind is totally broken my will to play.

And also hypothetically speaking, if you happen to take bio ware up on the 52 character slot option, it would take you 52 weeks of hardcore grinding 7 days a week to gear those toons. So take a deep breath and look at it for what it is. It is a mess. And the simplest fix is to make the return rates what they were in 4.0. And for some unknown reason that nobody has figured it out why, they would rather completely napalm the player base and have masses of people quit the game before they do that. Why? I am not sure if they know because there is no logical answer. Its like they are trying to see how badly they can ruin things on purpose.

Not in a game that allows 52 characters per server. So no I do not think it is ridicules. And I also think it is a slap across the face of all the subscribers who were encouraged over and over during the LvsD event to make as many alts as you can as fast as you can. This 250% boost did nothing other than make people mad quicker when they open up a crate with nothing in it. And the quicker people are able to gear out their toons, the happier the player base (on average) will be. Its just that simple.

I think the current state of the development team is not to fix the game. I think it is to tweak the game just enough to get their white knight fan base back again. Because the current state of this game has even the white knights in hiding. And I am talking about with the 250% boost. What a joke. It fixed absolutely nothing other then aggravating people quicker when they open a crate with nothing in it. You know the game is a mess when the white knight are hiding and afraid to come out.

Yeah, he is amazing I must say. He really put things is perspective with his post

And in 4.0 I could grind PVP for less than 1 week and have the best min/maxed 208 gear set in the game. What's your point?

Ok, well just played 4 straight hours non stop with 100% cxp boost on and 10% cxp unlocked on legacy and here is where I am at with this. I am done for now. My will to grind this any longer is gone. #1. The unassembled component rate has remained exactly the same. I honestly cant do this. I have over 40 alts since the DvsL event went live and I just cant go any further with this grind. #2. The current rate of return is better with the boost, but it is nowhere near where I would like it to be. I have played 4 straight hours and have no received 1 piece of armor I need. Not only that, but I also opened about 15 other crates I had saved prior to the patch because I thought the crates were going to be legacy bound. And out of 4 hours of grinding today and 15 crates saved up from before I got absolutely nothing. #3. I compare this update to something like this. You had a very terrible car crash. And you bring your wrecked vehicle to a shop. The car is pretty much destroyed. So the shop does some work on it and tapes up a few things, gets the car running and banged out a few dents. And then when you go to pickup your car the shop owner say "here is your car. Yeah I know its a piece of junk BUT hey its better than it was". Yes true it is better than it was. And yes for the moment it "works" but it was not fixed properly. It was just shoe stringed together to make it "better than it was". In closing this gear system has done me in. I just had to unfortunately send out dozens of emails to my guild mates who quit playing and to tell them don't bother coming back. The gearing system is still broken. Very sad. All you guys had to do to fix this is get the unassembled components to drop at the same rate as 4.0 and problem would have been solved. But here I am once again in this mess you guys made. I am done. I have to get off this wagon. The ride isn't fun anymore because of this grind. It has broken my will to play. I didn't ask you to tweak the problem, I asked you to fix the problem. And I am sorry but you failed. You failed me and a lot of other people who play this game.

That would be a permanent solution, I agree. But it is my understanding that technology can not be implemented with the code and engine these knuckleheads used to build this game on. Whoever made this mistake should never be allowed to be involved in any job that is linked to an MMO game. What a horrible mistake they made by not having it. I honestly believe it has been the demise of SWTOR and probably will be what ends up shutting this game down at some point. Horrible mistake. A definatly game breaker.

I think that is a very accurate measurement. A lot more accurate than anything I have seen besides Bioware actually posting the numbers themselves (which they refuse to do) I wonder why. Its an easy was to measure server health if you actually take the time and do it. If you do this "test" you will find that Harbinger is significantly more active than any other server besides Red Eclipse. And it is not by a small margin. According to this measurement it is consistently 5 times more active than the other so called "healthy" servers IE shadowlands, jedi covenant, bergerean colony, and ebon hawk. Its not even close. IMO if a server is not AT LEAST as active as Harbinger it should be shut down and merged immediately. I think an absolute bare minimum should be Harbingers population. With the current group finder queue system, a server with 2 or 3 times of what Harbinger is would be ideal.

MaximumOwnage approves this message! Thank you sir, very well said!

You forgot the part about peak time on EH. I went to that server off peak and it is a ghost town. Harbinger has very little to no downtime. Also the most "serious" anyones are on Harbinger. It is hard to take any other server serious at this point unless all you do is solo play.

Exactly. I have toons on every US server and they are all by most standards unplayable except for Harbinger. Its just a matter of which one is worse than the next but every server besides Harbinger is basically unplayable for any group content. I also moved 15 toons to Red Eclipse for early morning play. I have no idea about any other EU server, but Red Eclipse is very active at 9 am EST. As far as US avoid every server besides Harbinger like the plague if your interested in any group content (pvp,gsf,ops,fp) or anything used with group finder.

Can you make 52 characters per server in wow? And just prior to their intense gear grind, did they run an event that encourage its players to make 1 brand new character of every class in the game? Your weighing up apples and oranges.

Your absolutely 100% wrong. #1 not many MMOs have 52 slots per server for alt toons. #2 I don't need a grind. I played 4.0 and had all my gear in 1 month and played every single day after I ground my gear. so no it doesn't need a grind like this for gear. it is completely unnecessary and ruining this game right now.

The system itself is fine. Its the grind that they screwed up on. And I already put them on notice if the rate is too low, I'm gone. And nobody from my guild will return when I tell them it is still too low. There is about 15 people not playing right now waiting for my feedback next week.

I will hold of responding to this till next week. If the increase is not enough (I have 50 characters since DvsL) I will be pulling the plug. I hope this will speed things up significantly because maybe my definition of significant and your are different. Maybe not. We will see. Good luck to you because this is a make or break point for me with this game.

And since it dropped, this is the least amount of time I have ever spent playing this game. I don't even log in. This gear grind has completely broken my will to play. On a positive note, games that I would have never tried or spent time playing have now grabbed my interest. I have always played this game since launch and do not play anything else. But since 5.0 that has changed. And the ONLY thing that has broken my will to play is the gear grind. Nothing else for me. I am becoming so bitter with this development group that I am not sure about my future here. I am not going to lie, I love this game. But I have to be honest, if this issue is not fixed completed within the next 7-10 days I am not sure what my future here will be. As it is now I am trying everything I have not to seriously boycott this game completely. I think that is so sad that I and many other are disgusted with playing this game NOT because of the game per say, but because of an arrogant development group who refuses to listen to its player base and make the changes needed to have a smooth working system. What a shame. It is 100% absolutely certain that the gear grind needs to be removed from this game immediately. 100% certain. However you decide to do that, we don't care just do it now. And in spite of that known fact we have to wait till possibly the end of February. Something like this should have been hot fixed 6 weeks ago. Now I sit in what was a fully active guild 3 months ago, to last night for 3 hours the only one logged in. And we were one of the most active guilds prior to 5.0. Why must we wait? What are you waiting for? Same thing with the ghost town servers. You have at least 8 servers (US and EU) that should have been shut down and removed as an option for new players. This should have been done 1-11/2 years ago. Why are they still online? I mean what the heck is wrong with you people? Why do you wait until the maximum damage has been done before you respond or fix an issue. Why? Why is this? What are you waiting for?