It's fairly apparent that they have some sort of focus group that they listen to. You wouldn't have seen them talking about needing to simplify the game and removing currencies and stances and things like that, if they didn't have some feedback mechanism other than the forums that they're listening to. The forums are a better indicator of what the veteran/"hard core" crowd might think, but maybe vets aren't the most lucrative demographic for them. "Rich idiot" is pretty much always the best customer to have, even moreso when you have a cash shop. One guy who spends 10,000 dollars is a lot easier to cater to than 1000 people who spend 10, or none.

Some one asked for it. I suspect it was a focus group of people who don't play video games, commissioned by some genius marketing exec who noticed that "People who don't play SWTOR" was a massively larger target audience than "People who already do play SWTOR" and decided they need to design the game to appeal to people who aren't currently interested. Same kind of decision that Sony to change Star Wars: Galaxies from a "Star Wars simulator" into "WOW IN SPACE." As SWTOR shows, it's not wrong to build a game to cater to a different audience. But as SWG shows, it's wrong to try to make a game with an existing fan base into that game for a different audience.

They're in denial, and totally arrogant in their approach. They think for some reason that their job is a multi year project, rather than a monthly service, so they think that the time to make changes is three months or six months from now, rather than three months or six months AGO. The time to fix this system was before it saw the light or day, with minor tweaks being made once the community saw it. Instead, they still don't grasp the enormity of their own failure, so they're happily steaming their way into an iceberg. Well, they've probably got a focus group, probably the same focus group of idiots who can't understand the concept of currencies, who are like "Yea! It's great! It's just needs to be even more linear, so I don't have to strain my brain to make decisions." Maybe they're turning SWTOR into a mobile game.

Run into melee range to avoid reflect, run out the second she starts channeling, grab heal buffs whenever you see them appear instead of waiting until you're low on HP (since she WILL explode them). Did it first try, having never seen the fight, with no companion (did LS choice) and burning no cooldowns. This was on story mode though, maybe it's really hard on Veteran.

Well, the concept of RNG is exciting, in the sense that you literally don't know what you're going to get. However, there are a number of problems. 1) RNG is RNG. Not every one will have the same experience, and a person who has a lot of good luck might enjoy the system very much while those who don't, might not. It really doesn't matter what they "average" outcome is if you're the unlucky 10 or 20% and that keeps you from feeling rewarded and enjoying the game. Even worse if the lucky 10% make every one else feel unlucky and neglected by their own success. 2) Some people are inherently more risk tolerant or risk averse, and that affects how much they enjoy any form of gambling. Risk averse personality types don't get a positive type of excitement from randomness or gambling, they get negative stress that's temporarily relieved when they get a positive result, but which returns quickly, and amplifies with every negative result. While command crates aren't technically a "risk" (that is, you're presumably just spending time that you would have spent anyway) the psychology remains that some people simply cannot and will not enjoy investing their time, effort, money, or anything else into an endeavor where there is no reliable outcome. Some people LOVE gambling and uncertain outcomes. Since the core game mechanics have never really been about gambling, that means you have a lot of existing, core players, who aren't interested and don't like it, and a lot of players who might have liked it who tried SWTOR and abandoned it a long time ago, and aren't coming back. 3) This is exacerbated by the lack of alternative methods for getting the gear from GC. You MUST grind the system, you MUST tolerate the RNG mechanics, and you MUST simply hope (no control on your part) that the RNG favors you. This can make the system feel less like a form of progress and more like being put in detention, or working a job you don't like, just so you can pay the bills. The rational behavior in such situations is to do as little as possible. In SWTOR terms, that means simply not playing a max level character or doing any of the content that Bioware expects to keep people busy for the next 6 months to a year. But all of this has been covered as nauseum. Bioware either doesn't believe that human psychology is real, doesn't understand it well enough to design for it, or some one just doesn't care, because they've already resigned themselves to this game failing in relatively short order. Or, maybe they've got some really hot metrics that tell them that their MMO doesn't actually need a large player base, just needs a core market of addicted gamblers, and that this design will reward and encourage the core demo while discouraging the dead weight.

Teeseven seems to enjoy them. 4.0 broke them. They will never work correctly, because Bioware is severely understaffed/incompetent, so if a bug doesn't get fixed within a month of being created, it will never be fixed except by accident.

Well each person is different, but I think it is both, and some other things too. 1) RNG is definitely an issue. People have no idea what they're actually working for, which means there's little sense of anticipation. Sure that crate could have something great, but chances are it has some green or blue gear that barely matters now, and literally won't matter in a month or two when the population actually has crafting schematics and crafted items in sufficient quantity to bring prices down on the GTN. If Command Crates were a secondary source of rewards (they had cool aesthetic items, jawa junk, companion gifts, etc) then you'd look forward to them as a treat, but when they are the source of actually improving your capabilities, the RNG makes them less of a treat and more of a trick. 2) CXP is also an issue. It's a linear grind. No matter what you do, you're staring at that one bar as your only mode of advancement. If feels like punching a clock at a job you hate and watching the clock every 5 minutes to see if it's time to go home yet. There are no decisions to be made in terms of even what currency to pursue or which OP or flashpoint might provide the gear you need or want. Even if the grind was fast, it would still be obviously be a grind, because there's no sense of multiple reward paths. Everything comes from CXP so that's all you wind up focused on for rewards. 3) The grind is slow, and it just got even slower. With the nerf to gold mobs, there's not even a grind while you wait for a queue to do the grind. I used to enjoy doing heroic missions in this game. Okay, it's a stretch to say I enjoyed the missions themselves, but I enjoyed that they were a rewarding distraction while I waited for a queue to pop for something I really wanted or needed to do. Now, I'm staring at the queue timer because there's literally no reward (20 CXP for doing a mission is nothing) unless you're in group content. And even then it's slow.

I honestly don't think Bioware understands the essence of what makes a game a game. They seem so focused on randomness, linear grinding, and a narrative that they've lost the core of any engrossing game: meaningful decisions. Without meaningful choices, it's not a game. I'm not talking about choices in the story, either. The story was fine this time around. What isn't fine is everything else. Doing a slow, linear grind for gear is boring. A slow, linear grind that's also based on RNG is infinitely worse, because there's no interaction, no choices, no options, it's just "play the game, get an occasional box, open the box to find disappointment inside, rinse/repeat." On top of that, the execution is what I'd expect from a 5 year old. The CXP rewards are pathetic. Do a heroic, get 20 CXP. Great, if I do 100 of them (about 5 weeks for me, because I don't enjoy doing more than 3-4 a day at most) I'll gain a Command level. It honestly feels like all the rewards are missing a decimal place. Even at 10x the current rate, the loot rate wouldn't be great, again because there's so much RNG. If you're going to have a grindy, RNG based system, then loot needs to rain from the sky, and loot needs to be interesting. Your game has neither. The exciting new group content (Uprisings) is like a Flashpoint for people who think Story Mode flashpoints are too hard to understand. The game is chock full of bugs. My pre order reward Shae Vizla is bugged. My video is bugged. Even the stuff they simplified is something MORE complicated, like the top menu bar. The bottom line is it's just not interesting or fun. There's not much to do, and the stuff I can do isn't worth repeating on a different character. It's barely worth doing once on my main character. I was enjoying the game in 4.0 in spite of all the bad decisions that were made. 5.0, I enjoyed the story, and now that it's done, I see no reason to keep playing.

Yup. It's a big problem. Have to close the game in the task manager to actually close the game, otherwise it hangs at a black screen with the mouse pointer.

Think about what they're telling you with this: Bioware did not anticipate that players would kill enemies.

Maybe she's just not that into you.

Yea, it was a little weird having Acina lecture my sorcerer about the Sith code. Like, bish, I'm Darth Nox. I'm keeper of ancient knowledge. I'm literally infused with the ghosts of ancient Sith Lords. I sat on the same Dark Council as you. Don't tell me what the Sith code is. However, I did still enjoy the mission a lot, and I am not finished with all of KOTET, but up through chapter 6 I have enjoyed it immensely.

1) I don't expect a bunch of players to come flooding back for an expansion, especially when there's no progression content to create urgency or excitement. Maybe when word of mouth gets around that KOTET's story missions are better than KOTFE, but even then, you can binge play it on random Saturday, so I doubt that's going to increase numbers dramatically. 2) The expansion doesn't even come out until tomorrow, so why would returning players be playing right now? 3) 4.0 was busy because of The Force Awakens. Rogue One isn't out yet, and it's not nearly as big a deal. I wouldn't expect nearly the same bounce.

Doesn't work for me. She says "You waiting for me to put on a show?" "I don't think so!" and "What?" When I talk to her.

This bug needs to be fixed ASAP. The mail you get on log in explicitly states that using the token won't prevent you from being able to do the recruitment mission, and yet it does exactly that. On top of that Shae is bugged and has 22k HP at level 70. So yea, that needs to be fixed too.

That's one way to spin it. Another way to spin it is it's a lot cheaper to write a single story with a few throwaway lines of dialog to make it seem catered to a specific class, than it is to write (and produce) a bunch of separate, thematic stories. Either way, the story only feels right for force users I don't expect it to change, because I don't expect that they're going to suddenly start investing in this game like it's a AAA MMO, when it doesn't have a AAA engine or a AAA player base.

This is about the only thing that would make the CM dyes of any value to me. They need to do the same with weapon tunings and (IMO) with the DvL reward armor sets.

They've already told us that the goal is ~1 hour or more per command rank, and that there are 300 command ranks. So even if we just take them at their word, that's 300-450 hours to max command rank, at which point you're still not guaranteed to have a full set of BiS gear. That's PER character. Of course, most people will probably realize that it's smarter to just share legacy gear across their account, but even then you'll need a separate gear set for tanking if that's something you do, and you'll still need to fill in those relic/earpiece/implant slots as well as keep a variety of offhands. Frankly, I don't want new levels and I don't want to have to re-acquire the gear I already have, and I especially don't want to do so in a way that's even LESS interesting than the current, MMO standard system for doing so.

Good advice. Now, why is the level cap being raised, and why is the system for acquiring gear being changed? Oh that's right. It's because once you're through with the story, the entire goal of the game becomes "obsessing about BiS gear." If they don't force a reset of gear and introduce an even grindier system for acquiring it, then players will say "that's it?" and be gone in a month. Unfortunately, they're still going to do that, once they realize how unrewarding and supremely grindy the new system is, just to get back to where they used to be. It's fine to say "don't worry about the gear" except that if I'm not worried about the gear, then why the hell would I want to grind out the same old content 100000 more times? The answer is: I wouldn't, and I don't. Once I've done the story and seen the uprisings, I'll cancel sub. Not as a protest or an angry gesture, but simply because there's no reason to be subscribed.

You're probably right, but that's a really dumb plan if so, because it's really just going to make the game unrewarding to play, without offering any new reason to play. Basically, as the previous poster said, people are going to play the story with a character or two (maybe all of them if there's some actual reward to it, but that doesn't seem likely), they'll play through Uprisings until they've had their fill of it. Some will play long enough to do all the possible achieves. After that, you'll get a very small group that would pretty much watch paint dry if there were numbers associated with it, and the majority of the population will either go back to leveling alts, if that still appeals, or else cancel their sub until the next actual content arrives. All this system is, is another grind like reputations and such, except this time it's not for aesthetic items, it's for the stats you need to do hard content. So in essence, they're just limiting your ability to do content that you can do right now, and selling this as an expansion. Plus uprisings, which are, whatever they call them, just flashpoints with a separate queue.

I don't even know what to say when some one tells me to "pay attention" when they clearly didn't pay any attention themselves. Go watch it again yourself. What he says is "Hey, this loot from tier 2 crates is not going to be an upgrade, because I cheated myself the best gear (ilevel 240 set pieces) this morning"(paraphrasing). That's not the issue. It's understood that the gear is not going to be an upgrade for a character who literally already has the best gear in the game. How can you possibly get an upgrade on literally the best, and why would any on expect the very best gear to drop from tier 2 crates, when there are 5 tiers? No one is complaining about that. The issue is that it's GREEN gear. That means it will be an upgrade for literally NO ONE unless they just hit level 70 10 minutes ago. You can do weekly heroics that reward two pieces of leveled BLUE gear, and they take about 10 minutes apiece (some of them as little as 2 minutes, if you don't count loading times). You can have a crafter make you EPIC gear (granted, it may be expensive, and it won't have set bonuses, but it's an option). There's no excuse and no reason why any one who is doing "end game" anything would have gear that's worse than level 70 greens. Hence, they will never, ever, EVER have any value. Hence, there is no excuse for them to drop from command crates. EVER. And frankly, there's no excuse and no reason why even blue items should drop from any command crate above tier 1, and even then I would be highly disappointed, since I know I can easily craft or earn blue gear in about an hour just from doing heroics or running around gathering the max level zones. In conclusion, for the TL:DR and thinking impaired crowd: Command crates should not ever drop green gear, and they do, at least up until tier 2. Only an idiot could possibly think that is a good idea or would feel rewarding for players. If it goes live that way, then you'll see people doing the story and then bailing in droves. It needs to be fixed, and frankly, whoever came up with it should probably sent to stand in the corner for a day, so they can think about their future in game design and whether it's a career field they belong in.

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

And also keep in mind that just because you manage to beat some tier of content, no matter how often you beat it, is no guarantee that you will get gear rewards appropriate to that content, or that enables you to go onto the next level of content. Right now, you do enough ops successfully, gear WILL drop that's appropriate for the content. YOU may not get it, but SOME ONE will get it, and if that some one is a guildmate or friend, that's going to help you get that gear in the future. But with the new system, you might have the most dedicated, successful, skilled and lucky run every, beat NiM ops, and every one who was there gets some green vendor trash. So even if you have the skill to "fake" a certain level of content that's above your gear level, it's not going to accelerate your progress much. Your gear advancement is going to be solely based on the time you have available to grind, and your RNG luck, not your skill or willingness to tackle challenging content.

1) NO companions will be returning in KOTET. None. Not one. They were removed in 4.0 with the promise that they would come back in the story, then that got amended to "Not necessarily in KOTFE, but soon<tm>" and now that's amended to "We'd sure like to do it" with no indication that you have any method for doing so. At MINIMUM it will be two years between the time that they took our companions until the earliest moment that the next batch might be returned. But let's be completely honest: they have no actual plans to return them, so your husband/wife, presumably the most important person in the galaxy to your character, will continue to be vanished, and your character will show no apparent interest in rectifying that situation. Just think about how much sense that doesn't actually make. Your character has time to recruit a bunch of no name companions who are less capable than your former crew (because you haven't invested a bunch of Influence in them) but no time to seek out your spouse, who also happens to be a pretty kickass hero who would probably help your cause an awful lot. I understand WHY this is being done, but that doesn't change my opinion that it's crap, and that's yet another part of SWTOR that threatens to linger, half baked and then half decayed, from now until the game eventually shuts down. PLEASE. STOP. DOING. THIS. And while we're on the topic of things that are half baked: 2) Command crates: On stream, Musco "cheated" himself the epic "Command Point" items that are awarded for beating an operation boss. Each one was worth about 1/3 of a command rank, with the cost of each command rank scaling up. We don't really know how many of these will be needed at higher command ranks, since he was only at 93 out of 300, but we can probably assume it will be "a lot." Just pointing out, that's the baseline when setting expectations for what kinds of rewards players would expect to see. 3) Of the three command crates he opened on stream, there were ZERO set items. For that matter, there were ZERO epic items. Actually, there were ZERO rare items. Every single crate had a single, GREEN quality item. This is from the "end game" gearing system that you can't even start grinding until level 70, and this is what your rewards would look like after doing dozens of operations from start to finish. GREEN, non set gear. You know, the stuff that drops often from random nameless enemies, and that you normally just sell to a vendor, or break down for crafting components. Wait, let me guess: Weekly heroics no longer award loot boxes with blue gear, and gear can no longer drop in the open world, from anything? I've watched these streams. I've read the many posts from Bioware on the forums. These people are clearly not stupid. And yet, who but a total idiot could possibly think "Yea, green gear. That's totally something that players will be satisfied to grind for, at end game only, RNG-based, on a "per character" basis. Oh yea, did I mention that this isn't even AVAILABLE unless you are a subscriber? It's like finding out that Crest is releasing a brand new line of toothpaste that's arsenic-based. It's mind blowing and there's no excuse for why smart adults who presumably care a great deal about doing their job would think this is remotely something worth paying money for. It's 2016 guys. Players can not only judge this system by what immediately preceded it in SWTOR, but by literally dozens of other MMOs that have come before. The rewards for this system aren't just bad, they're comically, tragically, all time "*** were they even thinking?" level of bad. WAKE UP. Fix it. Otherwise "end game" in SWTOR is going to be shorthand for "Time to go play a different game."

Well it's three crates that he actually opened on stream, and they all had GREEN gear in them. Weekly heroics drop two pieces of levelled BLUE gear, and each of them takes only 10-15 minutes. Random world mobs drop green gear constantly. I typically have to sell 10-15 such items per hour while leveling. The fact is, even if every single crate was dropping a piece of set gear, you'd STILL quite often be frustrated by getting duplicates instead of the slots that you need. If 1/2 or 1/3 or God forbid 1/10 of crates drop set gear, that means you might not even get to the point of being frustrated by duplicates, because you might literally never get enough gear to form a full set, even without duplicates.