Oh believe me, i read it, and all 11 pages up to this point. The original complaint is real, no questions there. I even nodded in acceptance at first. It's the 11 pages that follow and the replies in them that make my brain numb. This isn't a conversation, it's erosion.

Uhh... ok.... is this another one of those "This is canon because i say so regardless of what you guys wrote" type of conversation again? Cause it sure as hell feels like one. I played KotOR 1 and 2 over 20 times combined with almost every single possible decision taken and ending seen, and you don't see me freaking out like that. You guys aren't fans of KotOR ... you are overzealous nutcases really.

I think we can BOTH agree that is an entirely unrealistic point to start from when creating arguments for this kind of debates. It's an enclosed circle and the sample pool is extremely small. It's like saying " a friend of a friend said that..."

Sounds elitist or not, it's the truth. Humans are known to always look up to that which they cannot achieve or do not have/own. I'm pretty sure the Aston Martin or the newest model of god knows what car would loose it's value both as an item as well as price if everyone could get it. Exclusivity has its place in our society, hate it or not it's here to stay.

The problem with what you're saying is two-fold. If prices drop too much, more people will afford them and even more items will appear on the GTN. This leads to supply being higher than demand even more so than is the case currently. The second issue is that it will break economy even further. With the limitation on credits you already see a lot of items being sold for close to nothing on the GTN.What happens when the market has several times more items on the market. 1. People will either sell the stuff at close to no money (we already hear about ppl vendoring some of the cartel stuff due to oversaturation). 2. People stop buying cartel stuff alltogether since it is no longer a worthy investment. Your idea only covers short-term investment which will likely be higher indeed. But then we run into an issue where even more stuff will pop on the CM instead of in-game in order to balance the revenue out in the long-run.

The way the current system is set up, your only target are the subscribers. Any F2P person that wants to invest any dime in this game will have to sooner or later invest in a subscription due to the credit cap.

That's a load of bull. Sure it's good for the players, but what you're saying isn't going to work like you think it would. A basic example on your costume price. If they would reduce the price to half, subscribers with a key attached can pretty much get one set per month for free. That's not more revenue income, that's lost revenue. And it would be even more revenue lost in the long run in cartel coins purchases. The price isn't EVER a problem when it comes to these kind of things. It's generally accepted that lowering prices more than a certain percent will yield revenue loss. Believe it or not , reducing prices only brings in a small number of people to pay. For the most part people that didn't pay previous to the reduction, won't pay after either. Look at some of the P2W games out there like some of the the 91 games (conquer/zero) or some of the Nexon games (like Atlantica) the prices are sky-high paying as much as 10$ for a lottery box that more often than not yields crap. You'll see the in-game market flooded with the good stuff despite all that. Sure I'd love prices to be lower, but unless there's a good reason and a good model that can effectively allow for revenue despite those losses, i don't see that happening. Obviously i don't see them going down that route, it's a model that doesn't completely fit in this environment, and i hope to god they don't come up with any stupid ideas to implement that here, but the truth is, in cash-shop games, and more so P2W games, a handful of players will bring in more revenue than the rest of the entire server. It's not unheard of in some of those games for people to spend anywhere from 250 to 500 euro's a month. That's 1 person paying the "sub" for 20-40 people. If you offer as little as 10% off an item, if it's a very demanding one (like boxes are atm for ex) you'd have to have at least 10 people buy one during that time to break even with the loss of that one person above. Obviously i can't bring in exact numbers of how many high spenders are in the game, but it's safe to say some of them are spending a lot. In general if the number of high payers is large enough you'd need anywhere from 2-10 (or more depending on how large the discount is) times more sales to break even.

Thought out post yes, intelligent quite Subjective as hell? check check and triple check. While i respect your opinion on the matter, and posting long topics is generally something i like reading, most of the things you say are just too subjective and do not take into account things like resources/resource management/profit/time investment vs return/etc. it's really a wasted effort. We all want a perfect game but it just isn't going to happen. What you could do is understand how some of the things i mentioned above impact development of a title, and what changes could go through to actually HIT Live. As long as money and profit dictate the life expectancy of a title, there will not be game that can make the majority of its player-base happy (by majority in this case i mean something like 90%, since 100% is impossible at any time) Please continue and bring forth ideas and suggestions; you never really know what may become reality. Just don't think that because you have an idea that might be accepted by your peer it automatically means you are able to design a game of this magnitude. P.S. Before anyone starts jumping the gun on me, no i do not think Bioware did a marvelous job on this game either. There are plenty of things that could have been, can be and should be done better. The game is neither great nor bad at this point, and honestly, mediocrity in the MMO market can sometimes be more harmful to a game than being outright terrible.

Never underestimate the idiocy of the human being. As smart as humans can be, they can be just as stupid, if not worse. There's 2 things to always watch out for: - people filled with ignorance. - people living with the illusion of knowledge. As long as these 2 types of people exist, anything is possible.

Quality Assurance Lead Tester. I kinda test games and stuff. I chose to play a Sith Juggernaut as my first char which is kind of weird since my first character in all previous games was always a mage/sorcerer-type caster followed by a healer. There's really only one thing that managed to trump my addiction for the caster class, and that's my addiction to blue quirky/agitated/talking back twi'leks. Yes... Vette made me do it.

Actually even wow did it, if we're going to point fingers and all that. Even to date there are a ton of servers with a total population of less than 2000 characters (yes characters, not players). It's simply not as pronounced because there are the FCM's and the PST's implemented, which are coming here as well. But then again patience is a virtue long dead. What i find truly funny though is the comment you quoted. (since i'm too lazy right now to quote 2 ppl) People complain about how Bioware did this insane mistake of opening server (which i won't deny ofc, it was a mistake) because they listened to the players. But when it's time to point the finger at the players, they brush it off and call them incompetent for listening to the players. Yet they continue to grasp for attention and "teach" them how to do their jobs right,etc. How much more room is there in this forum for hypocrisy i wonder.

If it was at 50 id' say it was both a dick move and a bad move in terms of item selection. But since this is about low level and gearing/leveling up, it really doesn't matter. Unless you're a tank specifically it doesn't matter if you wear medium or heavy. I had,when i dinged 50, 2 or 3 pieces of medium armor on my jugg and it barely made any difference. At 50 it's going to matter when you start going for heroics etc, but even then it only REALLY matters if your jugg friend is a tank. The "nice/fair" thing to do obviously would be him passing on the item for you, but it's not completely wrong if he takes it either.

For me its annoying when i want to log in from the workplace. Since the browsers at work are "safe" and all passwords and usernames are reset every day, i always end up just reading since i can't post anything. Obviously by the time i get home i forget about the topics and the replies i wanted to send out. And since it's relatively easy to misplace or break the little guy, I'd rather know it safe at home in front of the monitor. It's not a major issue, but it's still annoying.

You're comparing apples with oranges. Making a group for specific content with specific goal in mine, like achievements/mount runs/etc. is not the same as running a normal dungeon for rewards. This game doesn't reward achievements/mounts (at least currently) the same way wow does. You'll be able to choose between looking for a group or running the LFG. And since most people will rather hit a button than socialize, people will be forced into LFG regardless. You said you played wow, it should be pretty obvious to you by now. The funniest lines you said are: There is ALWAYS a choice not to use it. Nobody is making you and if you feel you have no choice, well that's your own fault and nobody else. It's entirely down to you. You have the choice. You have the option. Don't try to pass the blame or make up excuses. Don't want it? Don't use it. It is that simple. You want one system with seemingly one option to turn into a system that is...you guessed it, one sided. Oh but the new system is DEFINITELY less one-sided than it is now, since you like that option more and all.... /facepalm

First off, assumption on people's backgrounds is not a strong starting point for your argument. Your complaint about poorly organized guilds, while founded, does not help the community either.You could have started your own guild but instead chose to be passive on the issue instead of trying to help it. You say you've been searching for a proper community oriented guild for over 20 years? Well honestly, that's one of the fattest lies i've heard yet. Most guilds in older mmo's had great guilds with a strong sense of unity and fairness. The mmo community has only grown worse in the last 5-6 years. (again for most MMOs) I'm not saying there weren't many bad guilds back then, but if you weren't able to find a guild to your liking in those times, then your expectations from people are too high, and am very much inclined to mash you in with the 1% you've just been talking about. Your next paragraph pretty much confirms what i said earlier. You have high expectations of people but are not inclined to do anything about it beyond pointing the finger. I already said i agree with a LFG tool being implemented, no need to explain it all over again. The cross-server functionality however is a bad design decision. There's several points for that which have been brought up before as such there's no need to mention everything all over again. I could write a bloody essay several pages long on why that is bad, and that is not limited to the design itself but the players as well. Your P.S is what actually caught my attention and is the main reason i wanted to answer to your post. I'm not going to list a whole resume on my past and current jobs, suffice to say I've worked with people, more importantly customers, for a good 10 years now, both in the gaming industry as well as other departments, and one thing i can say for sure, is that most often than not, the customer is an idiot. I say idiot but that doesn't really fit the bill right. What any company with a shred of brain does is take ideas/input/feedback for their product and mold that product into something fitting for the customer in general without changing the product itself. Customers will almost always try to get more out of a deal than they originally bargained for, and will result to petty threats and imaginary arguments to prove their point without any bit of insight on the matter. This sadly holds true for most complainers on the forums here as well. They have no clue on the matter, they believe they know things without properly researching them, often throwing half-assed arguments and proof around with no actual value. Generally as a company, you want to listen to the feedback and weigh it in, if its valuable, without compromising it. In this case, when the developers offer a solution to a problem, people ask for more, generally things that fit their individual needs, regardless of the outcome and consequences. The cross server tool is, in most cases, a bad thing to do. The actual uses for cross server tools are limited and should stay limited. When companies start listening to their customers too much is when things turn uglier and uglier. This brings me back to my initial post about customers being stupid. They are, and if you give them something, they want more. If you give them what they want, they start abusing it and eventually complain again for something else. In the case of the cross-server LFG, as mentioned before, it means a complete destruction of any possibility at a server community. One of the reasons you can't find a fitting guild is because people lack a connection. When a server is "isolated" it creates order, it's an illusion for the most part,it's forced, but it's there. People have to behave and adhere by the rules created by each server. This forces the community of each server to keep its population in check. With a LFG tool, people become even more anonymous. They do not have to behave and their actions go unpunished. Which in turn forces people that would normally, of their own free will, behave, or contribute to the community resort to petty behavior as well in order to keep an even playing field. It's a vicious cycle that start with that single flip of a switch. Don't get me wrong, it's still going to happen,even without this tool, but it's going to happen far less. Each server is like a town/city. If there's a thief in your city, and that thief is also a resident, chances are he's going to be recognized and caught relatively fast, as well as suffer the consequences of his actions. It is also less likely to happen due to the high risk. If that thief happens to be from a completely different country, and he's just passing by your city for a short while, there's a higher chance for a theft to occur, and a higher chance for him to go uncaught and unpunished. (taking into account how the system in the MMO works) On the other hand, it offers the possibility of meeting new people from different servers. Sure that's a good thing, and sometimes, or even often, it works out well. But then you stumble over the situation where you might meet someone you get along with, but after that one night out, you won't see him ever again. There are obviously many other scenarios, but in the bigger picture of things, I've not yet been able to find enough arguments(or be given enough) to tilt the scale in favor of cross-server instead of server only. Bottom line is that, most often people will ask for things that are fun for them, individually, but not for the people around them, and cross server functionality is that kind of function. It brings chaos in an environment where already there is little order or unity, with many people that are constantly trying to disrupt that order. People have to understand that "fun" doesn't always translate to "right". This is where the difference between people that are ignorant and people that are aware is shown. In an mmo, you want to create things that are fun and fair for everyone, not just certain individuals. More so when this tool is put in place to facilitate grouping easier. I am perfectly aware that the world is not pink and fluffy, and it probably will never be, but that won't stop me from trying, in whatever way i can and is within my capabilities,instead of dismissing it and jumping on the bandwagon to Self-centeredsville.

Ignorance is not a real explanation. But what do i care. Keep going at it. You're a role model to me... /sarcasm off @ topic: Personally i say yes to a LFG tool as long as its server based. Cross server tools opens too many doors for player abuse. Item stealing and verbal abuse (and not only) become common place in such an environment. I understand not every player does this, but as long as even one every 4 people does it, it is enough to ruin the community and the run. Anonymity on the internet breeds bad behavior. As long as its sever based that anonymity is limited since you still have to take mind of the people around you. Cross server LFG tools simply turn every individual into "the pretender"... if anyone remembers the show. In short LFG i can live with, cross server no. With this particular tool the line between making and breaking the community is extremely thin. It's up to you to decide which goal you're pursuing. Cross server to me is like going to play tennis (or other sport) on a real field in your country with someone from a different country, while they're still there. It's awkward and plain wrong.

nice guide again Almar. just remember to update the first post with all the new info

curious when new info is out on these fella's.

Which is perfectly fine really. You needn't feel bad for the game. A game does not have to have 100 servers and 10milion subscribers. That's the whole point of the genres and diversity. It works just fine for Single-player games. It's ok if there are many MMOs out there. It's ok if all of them 1mil subscribers. or even less. As far as they make some profit and stay afloat they are good games---> for the intended people. People are infected with the WoW virus nowadays and everything that doesn't keep up with that is crap. This is why it doesn't work (at least not anymore) for MMOs. Even people that didn't play wow get in this trend simply because of the big numbers, which makes it twice as sad. This mentality is exactly the reason so many "bad" games and "just like x" games are created all the time instead of more new creative/innovative ones. People are demanding them without even realizing it. When we get back to the right mentality of "not my taste" instead of "this is crap" we'll start having more better games overall.

It happened in vanilla only. Might have happened once or twice in TBC as well which i cant remember but that's about it. There's a pattern there...and a reason. Which is fine tbh... in this early stage of the game it's beneficial. I'd be raising an eyebrow if they did this further down the line though.

If i sounded like the entire blame is on the customer than my mistake. It was never the intent, and i think for the most part i did point it out relatively clear. My focus was mainly to show the difference in perspective between players and devs. Yes Bioware has a lot to talk about and fix. I don't deny this and vehemently agree that a lot of changes are still needed to make this game better. The point I'm mostly trying to make is that for most reasons players bring up for something, quite often they are blatantly ignoring another. In the first paragraph you also confirmed one of the points i made. You do get feedback, regardless of method. I'd say it's also related to the business at hand that you are in. Some of the steps you take for feedback might already have been taken in this regard here as well, or it was not, or it was not possible. That isn't the thing i was referring to however. The point i was trying to get across was that feedback is an extremely important step of development. Feedback can make or break a product. "Im not quite sure what you are driving at here. So, you are saying, BW doesnt care about my feedback because Im expendable? " Exactly the contrary. I'm saying they value your feedback. They want your feedback and they check the feedback. You are not expendable. No player is. But players leaving, as part of a business, are after all numbers. And when you calculate your numbers you always take that loss into consideration. The objective is to get the target number of subscribers. As an example. If your initial target for profit after covering expenses is 1mil subscribers and you get 2 mil you're happy and satisfied. You don't want people to leave obviously, but your first target was 1mil. Obviously you will try to keep the 2 mil, but any business man knows that's not possible. People come and go. Some leave, new come and you might grow bigger or smaller at the end. What your actual target is at this point, is to keep your sub number above 1 mil (or whatever your current target is if it changed). As long as you manage that, the product is successful. So at this point your target is to satisfy those at the expense of others if it's the case. It sounds "rough" saying it like that, but that is the truth. Which brings me to the last point i would like to address on the matter. As previously mentioned you want good feedback. The forums are partially in place just because of that. Most of the parts of the forum are for discussing the game in general. Forums focus mainly on being an information center as well as a social hub in the grander scheme. One could argue that there is room for improvement when it comes developer feedback, and I'd even go as far as agree with you. But there is one thing that quite often is the main reason for the lack of it. And that is in fact... player feedback. It's actually quite the round robin. Players complain- devs may want to fix it but don't have the feedback they need- players complain about lack of reply- devs reply- players complain about the answer- dev try using numbers in-house - player are smart and find work around to screw the numbers (voluntarily and involuntarily) - improper fixes are applied - players scream. And the whole cycle starts over. An mmo is a never ending product that only really becomes "finished" when it gets closed, and even then the product is technically not finished. That's what sets the mmo-industry apart from most businesses. You can't and won't ever have a perfect/finished product (this is what i was referring to by 50% enticing in my earlier post). What you can to is improve upon it. But improvement has to be founded, and without the proper feedback you can't improve the product. You can only CHANGE it. There's also the thing that no matter how you look at it, devs and players are not really the same. The devs see the game one way the players another. Players are many with different play-styles and different views. If feedback is provided correctly, things that the dev's can't "see" can be brought to their attention. Which leads back to my initial paragraph about perspective. Developers are just as perspective blocked sometimes as the player. It's the feedback that can shift their perspective. One last thing i wanted to touch upon was the thing you mentioned about the lack of communication on the dev's part. One very often seen and recurring pattern is that (as mentioned in the earlier post) many players are ignorant in regards to their surroundings. When you see 20 topics on the same issue, see a reply from a dev that is completely mangled without any foundation, same issues reported in hundreds of tickets you can probably see better why replies can be scarce. It is not as much the lack of feedback from the devs as it is the fact that people either: 1. Not getting the answer THEY want (irrelevant of the fact that it might or might not be good for the game) 2. Not getting an answer when they want. 3. Not getting an answer personally (see 20 topics on the same issue, where people all demand an answer.) If we help them we actually help ourselves. Personally I'd prefer to see the forums cleaner from all the rubbish and 20 more or less identical topics. Yes i know it's not our job. It's theirs. But when you want fast replies, yet all you do is flood them with inconsistent and useless threads, you're actually forcing them into searching for feedback in a sea of insanity. It just slows them down in finding the feedback thus the communication is slowed as well. It's easy to point the finger at the devs, but players really should start pointing at themselves as well. It's called being aware. /sigh ... Just look at the comment before this one and see what i mean.

This is how it started. You answered to my reply initially regarding the "feedback" provided. It was about people giving feedback in general. Mainly people who think they are giving feedback when they are not. You continue with a most unusual line. It's not your job to communicate your desires, but its the producers job to fulfill them? You say you work with what again? Software? And how exactly do you know what kind of software you need to make or how to improve upon it? You read minds or something? There really is no way to improve on a design without PROPER feedback. You SHOULD know that. Bad feedback, or no feedback, lead to a bad product. Trial and error is not improvement in this case, it's a war of attrition. Now to your last reply. You are right, you don't need to articulate why you stop paying. That being said, you don't need to articulate it at all. It's obvious to them enough from the canceled subscription. That is my issue with " i stop paying" posts. To make matters worse they add "feedback" to the reason they quit, that in fact is no feedback at all. Their job is to give feedback so you keep on paying. Fair enough. But how come when they do give feedback, people always find something to complain? I honestly don't even know why i have to explain this. My main gripe with this one is the fact that, previous experience in the matter, states, that no amount of feedback, no matter how large on the producers part, is enough to satisfy the customer. The customer always demands more. Even when the feedback that comes from the producers addresses the issue, the player, most often than not, will ignore what they said based on their own "knowledge". Hence the mention of ignorance in my earlier post. Players think they know what drives a game and how it works when all they know is what they personally like. This is an MMO, not a custom made game for one persons own unique taste. The target is many people with different tastes. I'm using fictional numbers here, but statistically you'd only need to have say... 50% of the whole game enticing to a person to make it "successful". You want to satisfy as many people as possible but it's not the objective. What you do want though is to make sure the people that do stick with you, can keep being satisfied. I'm sure you'd be extremely happy yourself if people were to use your app and say "This app is ****, the guy who made it is lousy at this, (insert other extremely "useful" comments here) he should learn how its done." Good luck improving on it when you don't know what needs improving. My point with the price was mostly to focus on the matter of satisfaction per "buck" you get out of it. I'm not saying to keep on paying for it because it's cheap. I'm saying, as long as that 15bucks can be justified, i don't see where the issue lies. The thing to note here is that the 15 bucks have to be put in perspective with whatever else you can do with it. If i have to choose between going out one more time each month(club movie or w/e) or having a source of entertainment for the entire month, as long as i play it at least say.... 15 hours, it's far more efficient to pay for the subscription. The way i personally see it at least, it's not about what this game offers for my 15 bucks a month, but what else can i get for that money that offers as much entertainment and is available as broadly. But as i said: The issue I'm addressing isn't the fact that people are unsubscribing. I'm perfectly ok with it and the developers are probably too (to an extent). If you don't like something you shouldn't stick to it like glue just because.There's a reason we have the term "target audience". My issue is the unfounded remarks and the people that think they are smart and knowledgeable when they are not. Those kind of posts only create a false image for the game. It makes the game look worse than it actually is for the newcomers. And why I do wish people were their own masters when it comes to decisions they take and don't act like sheep most of the time, the truth is many people rely heavily on what other people say regardless if it's true or not. Every time people fling " I unsubscribe" posts around (or similar) someone will be sent away from the game with them. Not because the game might be bad for them as well, but because they don't want to take the chance. The fact that many people don't put enough effort into their research also doesn't help. People will rather listen to a guy telling them it's not worth it, than to check it out themselves (either through videos or screenshots or game play footage or w/e) As a wise man once said.. "It's ok to not like things, but don't be a dick about it." Note: In case it wasn't obvious.. that's a generic "you".

Wrong. You pay so you are entitled to limited access to a monthly subscription based game. You get exactly what you pay for. Access to the game and what it offers. The "FUN" you are talking about is first and foremost subjective. Whether you personally like what you are getting or not, is a completely unrelated and different story. Next you say you do not owe Bioware an explanation... this one boggles my mind.... If you don't owe them any explanation...then why do they? More so, why even waste your time and ours by telling us you're unsubscribing? You'll be gone anyway. Third on the line, it's called feedback. Every company or business asks for feedback in one form or another. Whether you personally accept that or not is not in question here. In order to improve on a product, you need feedback. But not any feedback will do. "this X sucks, you guys are bad at this" is not feedback, much less so a constructive one. It's not your job to offer them feedback, same as it is not their job to listen to your wishes. Yet they try and do it anyway.(which in all truth is why games end up failing big time- listening to players) Where's YOUR part on the compromise? Oh right...your 15 bucks. The company offered you a certain item that they believe is worth the 15 dollars (lol... complaining about dollars when so many people pay a heavier currency). There are 2 courses of action you as a paying costumer take if you don't like what they offer. 1. Stop paying. 2. Offer feedback on what they can do better for those precious dollars of yours. Thing is, most people don't give a rat's *** about making the game better, they just want it better without lifting a finger. Then go make a game yourself you masters degree game designer and come back telling me how much a cakewalk it was. You have to take decisions that impact the entire player-base. But obviously you know that since you worked on so many games. Actually it's not even limited to games. This holds true for any business environment or community oriented project. All things considered, MMO gaming is one of the cheapest forms of social entertainment out there right now. You are getting your money worth of entertainment in no time at all. I find it ridiculous that you think 50cents a day is a huge money sink. Heck even the entire value of 15 is ridiculously low. Go out one night a week to a club or something and you probably end up wasting 4 times as much. Just because people are being ignorant about it does not make it any less true. Honestly, if you find feedback a ridiculous idea, you really need to analyze the world around you a little.

Gasp!.. Someone who get's it.... I... I... I think I'm going to cry now.

It's intelligence that will get their attention not stupid wisecrack comments. SERIOUSLY!!! You people complain without giving actual feedback. You "quit" because your self-entitlement doesn't become reality, you compare games to get your points across but you NEVER use your heads when doing so. Just ONCE I'd want to see a "quitter" give actual concise smart and well thought reasons for quitting.