Serious question. Obviously, there's a lot of backlash and negativity coming out from the denouncement of these loot changes. Without more context/explanation I can only infer that bioware is doing things to try and enable solo or story focused players to get better loot. Traditionally I'd say almost all of the activity they do in game doesn't really need top tier gear, but hey there is apaprently nightmare replay of story missions, if that's someone's cup of tea, more power to them. My question is why shaft the raiders and PVPers? If it's really that important to give players who historically don't do endgame PVP or ops, I get it, put in a mechanic that gets it to them. But why handcuff players to a system constraining their loot based on the character they're playing. In case you haven't noticed, raiders are leaving the game in large numbers. So for teams that are still functioning, it means members a lot of time have to be flexible and able to slide between different characters and different roles. It means finding friends who might server hop or return after being away from the game for a while to roll an alt and step in to help the team out, it means that flexibility and the ability to trickle down gear alts is more important than ever. Currently, teams can funnel loot to someone if they need to gear out a new character to fill a need on the team, and quickly keep on rolling with whatever they're working on as a team. Also, a lot of raiders use excess loot that noone needs to trickle down and gear out alts so that they've got better geared characters to step in when needed. I don't heal for my raid group, but I've got a decently geared merc & mando As a burnt out player who will raid maybe two nights a week, I still haven't finished KOTFE on any character. I log in to send out crafting missions so I can make myself more stims, adrenals, and medpacks and I log in to raid. That's about it. Fortunately with our current system I can be effective, and through the time I've invested in the game and in my alts bounce around, help others, and still have access to high quality rewards. Under this proposed system, I won't be able to leak down gear, which means I won't be able to step in and help out other teams in my guild on random nights where they're down a person. Even if I am able to scrape together mods and enhancements for a baseline boost, because my command level on mirror characters and alts is low, my RNG boxes will return lower quality gear than on my main. Not because of the content I'm actually doing but because I haven't sunk time on those characters to level command. TL;DR- why not just supplement the tokens and ops tables with this command system. If you're worried about ops being too OP of a loot source, cut the command xp gains. I know plenty of raiders who if we knew we could just gear like we have for years, wouldn't give 2 rips about command gains because it's a system that I'm not interested in participating in. I wouldn't vote to have the best gear in the game available just from grinding the story repeatedly, but if it's really a concern and a priority to get solo players and other types of non-raiders access to this gear, fair enough. But why shaft the playstyle of the raiding community in the process? Many have been considering leaving when KOTET comes out, because there's something unappealing about running the same re-scaled ops we've been doing for 2+ years to re-gear characters all over again. But with the continued tease of "hey we'll do something group content eventually" people are definitely open to the idea of getting back together and coming back for new ops. But this contrived command gearing and whatever system is an additional hurdle to people getting back into things and I think will dissuade players who'd otherwise be willing to re-sub But hey, people can sit here and act like it's not a bad thing when subs continue to leave a game. I'm sure people will be happier without PVE content locusts around to have opinions and finance the game.

Congrats. I'm sure people will be rid of the filthy content locust raiders soon enough, once bioware has siphoned off a few more months of sub $ from them. A larger community/player pool = larger sub base = more resources for bioware to develop to keep the game at a high quality for everyone. Whether you're a solo player, GSF fanatic, PVPer, raider, or just here to make awesome outfits and share dank memes, a large healthy community is good for a subscription based MMO (although the multiplayer aspect is continually diminishing). Yeah, some raiders are douches, but also there are plenty of players who have invested time and energy to develop guides, be it for operations or for specific classes. There are plenty of raiders who have taken new players under their wing (my guildmates back in the day certainly helped me to get more engaged with the game) and have spent countless hours involved with guilds, enhancing the experiences of other players and keeping subscribers around in communities. These are all things that help to open doors to players if they want to engage into other endgame activities. This is down-spiraling into a bit of cat fighting, but the underlying principle at a subscriber model in a game is that players pay for the continual development of content. It seems reasonable to pay to get the updated story content, as it's what bioware is working on and putting out. It's reasonable that to get the full benefit of activities, you have to have a subscription. But for players who are already leveled, geared, and don't really care about the KOTFE storyline, why are they still having to pay to access ops content when at this point in time it's just recycling old content. If you want gear drops or coms (basically any rewards from in there) of course you have to pay to be able to advance your character. But being hit up for $15 a month by bioware to do the same old stuff gets old. And for all the people saying "you just want a handout". No- players who care about this game are finding it increasingly difficult to justify staying subscribed for extended periods of time. People would like to stay invested in the game and support it- ideally with a subscription that feels worthwhile but if not that then through the cartel market or by participating in a guild where they interact with other players and keep others invested in the game.

I have to imagine the only incentive to not even say "we're working on new ops" is because they're not and when they confirm "no new ops" people will leave and in the meantime why not get subs for as long as you can. If they put out something with 5.0 I'll take a look to see what it's like but I have really low expectations

This is the experience of a lot of players, and having to re-gear in 5.0 to keep doing the EXACT same thing with nothing else on the horizon is enough for a lot of people I know to finally pull the plug.

My thoughts- if you want gear drops coms and all of that stuff you have to Be subbed. So if i want to gear characters out, I'd have to sub. But why the hell have I been paying for a game for 10 months when I'm not even playing kotfe story chapters, just running once or twice a week with guild mates in ops that evidently aren't on bioware radar anymore. Why the hell should I sub to then have to gear all my characters again to keep running the same ops that my team already cleared this past tier. I wasn't happy with 4.0, but rescaled old ops was at least to go but we had 8 ops that would all drop whar me need and most of those ops had been untouched for a long time before then. 5.0 looks increasingly like I have to pay bioware and re gear all my characters to keep doing the same stuff I already do. Like others have said, there are a lot of people who love this game and have been around for a long time who just won't anymore. A shrinking playerbase is bad for all involved, and as more guilds and communities go under those groups of players are not something easily rebuilt.

Has this seriously not been fixed yet? The lack of communication with the community is embarrassing. I can't believe that players like Sir Copperfield are being wantonly ignored by the dev team. This has to stop now bioware.

Sir Copperfield? Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time. The amount of disrespect in this threat is appalling.

The 60 meter range mobs that auto aggro and apply snares are annoying as hell. Glad i spent a lot of my time figuring out who i was still in combat with. Kaliyo was still very... kaliyo, and i like the apparent interplay of the kaliyo decision point with Koth potentially. Really glad it's been 3+ months coming for this drip. I've barely got my 3rd character spacebarred through KOTFE to get to odessen where I can start recruiting and interacting with the previous companions (getting them to interact with their previous companions when those get introduced is nice.

maybe if you promise not to injure me. I think I should be off work by 8:00 for at least the next little while except sometimes when I'm out of town. Im fully aug'd with mastery augs and i have legendary player buff.

TBH the emperor as a title is pretty outdated. I prefer Supreme Leader. Great bunch of players of different interests/playstyles ranging from casual to hardcore to former hardcore, good and bad, salty trolls. Especially in a time when group content output is not really in the cooking pot, the community and relationships people have built over 3+ years is what keeps a lot of us around, logging in, and enjoying our time.

where's the illuminati icon?

Honestly, I could've never thought of something as hilarious and ridiculous as this. Over the summer was already an announcement to most serious raiders "there's nothing for you here". I find the reduction of incentives for doing Nim even further disappointing and goofy. Even if the line of thought is "nim is only for challenge and the couple prestige rewards (mounts, titles)". Why take away more incentives from players running content- at least have cosmetic armor shells or something else, because players naturally feel dissatisfied when they get less reward from dong old stuff we've done plenty of times before. Amusing to see just how far it will take to get players to unsub. But I think the message has been made clear this summer that endgame group content interested dedicated players are not the core audience. Our subs count the same $$$ amount but we have a much peskier appetite for content. Shrug.

I'm legitimately confused if this is an amazing troll or if OP is the new target audience for endgame content

Interesting to see the various responses- my perception is that for the most part this is trying to make ops more accessible to people who haven't or don't do them. There's a lot of frustration coming from the so called "elitist progression" community and talk like these are the people who are effected. For the top tier raiders left, yeah , it does, and I suspect more will continue to leave. I think this also affects a lot of people that are more casual, SM focused raiders who have been around, gone through the older ops before (even if they don't have the same intensity and progression desires, these players like to have new things to do). Glad some people are motivated by this but I know a lot who aren't. In imagining if I want to stay subbed or not I just think about when the xpack comes out do I really want to be in EC, TFB, SV nim again week in, week out for my scheduled raids? I enjoy those ops and still go back and do them sometimes but as fun changes of pace. I just don't have the desire to jump into the fray and lead a team (and also don't have the patience for people's mistakes in those). The challenge would be a fun thing on the side I'd like to test myself- but not enough to energize me and keep me going. Sub runs through 9/30, I've unsubbed to make sure I don't get another 6 mo subscription billed automatically. Probably will just play the extra month up to release to see what it's like and to get the rewards in case I want to come back to the game (with drastic changes away from this course set by KOTFE). I'd encourage people who are considering un-subbing to at least hit it, give them your feedback, and then whenver your sub time runs out re-up if you actually feel like playing. Right now this blog (and past experience with the ops) gives a pretty clear picture of what endgame PVE will look like upon KOTFE release. Ask yourself realistically if you want to pay $15 a month for that. THere's much more to the game, yes, but for many players they find raiding a unique experience not duplicated by other things in gaming. Endgame group content keeps a lot of people around I think the population turned off by this is bigger than bioware anticipates possibly and unsubbing is really the way to make your voice heard. EDIT: forgot to talk about that groupfinder, while convenient, is not what keeps long time subs raiding. We'll use it for quick ports or extra rewards if it's convenient but in my experience from the past few years (my positive ones that motivate me to stay subbed) PUGs get constructed in chat on fleet, with gear and achievement inspections. Friend lists, guildmates, etc, are another important part beyond just set raid teams. But again, it's player relationships and interactions, not solo players being mushed together by matchmaking. Then again, I could be way off and the hope is to cast a wide net pulling in a lot of people and use new/returning players that cycle through (and the ones that have the appetite to replay the story a lot) to be more focused and sustained then the current base of longtime players who's tastes for content can be more challenging and demanding to keep up with.

Not entirely surprised by this. Had been expecting it a bit. Does not motivate me to stay subbed. Curious to see how the demographics of the player base shift with this news. some interesting/nice QOL things in the changes. Like being able to do old things for fun/challenge but not a substitute for new ops and progression. I think these things go too far in the other direction of oversimplifying an already not that difficult part of the game to be marginally more inclusive. Challenge of old ops=good. WOuld do them for fun and cosmetics, not even needing BIS gear.

Endure all the problems of having more people to play with? I think the people who are wanting POT5 merged off totally understand their character names, etc, might not be there waiting for them and WE DON'T CARE. It is only a positive influx of players already on more populated servers who get to keep doing what they're doing with more people to play with. We're willing to sacrifice a lot to not be on a dead server. But our communities we've built and guild resources we've gotten together just seem to be an unnecessary loss, as leaving a even more dead than before server floating around can only lead to confusion and missed opportunities for new and/or returning players

if they're opening up this door- it really seems logical to just merge POT5. I'd prefer atransfer to another East coast server (there really wasn't alot of OW PVP taking advantage of PVP server rules even before POT5 died) for consistent ping. But if a PVP server is really a higher priority for players, they have cheap transfers to help facilitate that. If they're not wild about the destination server, there are cheap transfers. Name taken and that is your priority? Cheap transfers to other servers. With cheap transfers POT5 is going to be even more of a graveyard, so why not just go whole hog with a merger to preserve legacy banks, guild ships, etc...and then let players self select if they're unhappy with the destination wit cheap transfers. TBH as a GM I would probably pay an extra 180CC to transfer the empire and republic guilds over (however I'm pretty sure the technology doesn't work that way- only mergers can do that). A dead server will be even more dead, so why not just merge good ol' potpie and let us pour our liquor in memoriam.

Can we still bioanalyze its corpse? SO pot5 populaion, with the announcement of 90CC transfers... is the dead server going to get even more dead? 90CC is a much more palatable price, however I still think it's messed up that basically now as more people leave POT5 any groups that don't want to give up their stuff or community will be faced with a worse server or the need to merge. What say you, 80 people left on republic fleet? Are people thinking twice about this or paying for the lifeboat?

1.) What about guilds and their resources being moved? 2.) Is this a solution for the (unacknowledged) population issue for POT5. Much more palatble of a price tag, but as a GM I don't feel good about asking my community to leave behind the hard work we've put in to unlock all of our things? Can we at least talk openly about how POT5 has been dead as a server for several months and it's negatively affected subscriber experiences? EDIT: +1 on swtorista's points, a lot of communities on dead servers have members that will come back periodically to the game... another reason why a half baked (albeit cheaper) server transfer solution still is much less desireable from a subscriber perspective than a server merge.

a lot of players enjoy story content- personally and many of the other players I know got into this game (particularly the MMO and endgame aspects of it) and have really enjoyed it because the leveling process was pleasant and we felt overall attached to our characters. This is something I noticed when checking out wildstar. It's a real strength of this game and what I think cultivated a large portion of the subscriber base (at least a lot of the players I've played with continuously for the better part of three years) However, my concerns as a player now are for the health of the player base. Maybe there are a lot of people who do just keep re-rolling characters and keep leveling players. Great for them. My perception however is the community of players tha I'm used to playing with (POT5 as a server is 10 kinds of dead- another gripe for another thread) that has kept myself and many other subscribers going is group content. I've played through all the class stories, sometimes more than once and again, find it an enjoyable experience that has helped me invest in my characters and enjoy playing them a bit more. But what keeps a LOT of players around (again- players who really like the story and enjoyed it! would probably show favorably towards stories in metrics!) is endgame content, be it PVE, PVP, both, group content keeping them playing with other players. Re-scaled content up to a new level cap could be engaging and fun, if properly incentivized with more useful rewards (coms that are worthwhile or some sort of useful gear tokens - useful in the sense of worth using in endgame content at max level). However, rescaled content would feel a bit stale. I still run the old ops sometimes for fun and the rewards, but the lots of subscribers crave new content, and suffer and/or leave when left in droughts without content (see: last year). My concern with all of this focus and energy (exciting that they're doing what look to be some cool things) on story which has most often been effectively single player content. As a player I no longer have the appetite for single player content that I first had when I started. Learning about MMO aspects, getting involved with a community and group play is what's kept me (and many other players) subbed to SWTOR for a long time. We've already seen a lot of players leaving lately, and people can do name calling and "can I have your stuff" all they want however many players that had left put alot of time and energy into developing guides, videos, etc that helped make endgame content more accessible for more subscribers (and therefore helped MORE subscribers have fun and desire to say subbed). As much as I'd like all the forums to be decked in sackcloth and ashes like myself many days, it's good to see some energy and excitement about the game. However, there are some serious concerns for the subscriber base, concerns that won't be alleviated just by more story content. These are subscribers who have been around for a LONG time and who HAVE enjoyed the story content previously and probably metrically show up as enjoying it and participating in it. A healthy and active endgame for top level, repeatable group content (at least in my perception) is important for maintaining a large subscriber base which will provide the resources to do many different things, including satisfying expansions of more single-player oriented content that players will think is cool. My worry is that there are a lot of players who still are worried and players from this population have already been unsubbing for the past several months. Which just isn't good for the experiences of other players or for the overall health of the game.

old content (if decently incentivized) could be fun. But to just scale up old content without providing new endgame content also would be unacceptable. Slightly worried but will hold out hope a little. POT5 still needs a merge though, speaking of fallen empires

Honestly, I think that the issues and demands of players have shifted a bit from the release of SOR. Whatever solution that they were working on may or may not have been strong for addressing the challenges currently faced by players which has drawn out and lengthened the process for communicating and developing a response and hopeful solution for server population issues. let's also not continue to necro this thread, it's old stuff and there are newer, more current threads talking about these issues

yeah- when it boils down to it also, since I'm subbed for a while yet I wouldn't want to take a month off effectively while still paying hoping to force a merge. I'm sure that they're trying to assess and figure out the best way to handle these issues (whether it's names, server styles, east/west coast, someone's feathers will be ruffled by anything they do). The time it's taking and lack of communcation is frustrating (see http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=816574 ). Earlier threads trying to discuss this issue a month or a month and a half ago were moved over to suggestion box so at least to have threads hanging around in general discussion is nice. It's an issue that should concern players as more than anything community and the MULTIPLAYER aspect of the MMO is what keeps subscribers retained outside of the time it takes for them to take in the story content (in the majority of cases)

And the reason players continue to talk about this issue (or try to get the discussion going) is because the more players that feel this way and quit the game is BAD FOR THE GAME OVERALL. It's a lot of players who don't really want to quit, like the game and want to see it succeed, but are increasingly frustrated. I understand players quit all the time and it's a usual thing. However, players who have been subbed for years, play a lot, and are active and engaged with other players are NOT the ones you want to see headed out the door (at least I'd think as much). These are players who aren't quitting because they dislike the game, it's players who are on a dying server who feel ignored, who continue to pay subs but either don't want or don't have the time/money do invest in setting up life again off their current server. Players who if given a server merge would be good citizens and contribute to activity and community on another server (and accordingly hopefully help other subscribers to have fun). @TUXs- I'm not sure if I understand your question, by giving up POT5 for a month or something you mean not playing on POT5 so the metrics look even worse? As I've said previously I personally don't have an appetite for leveling multiple characters right now, so if I were to transfer one character away from my server with all my legacy and leveled/geared characters it'd feel pretty lonely and I wouldn't have the freedom to do the different things I've worked to level/gear/etc (pvp, pve, different roles, different classes) that really contribute to my having an enjoyable gameplay experience currently. It's really the freedom and flexibility afforded to me by the number of characters and crafters on my legacy as well as the friends that I have on POT5 that help most to make my gameplay experience enjoyable (we've been running the same raids for over 6 months) and make me want to stay subbed.

because many players who are paying subscribers don't want to (for some players) pay for a transfer, just to invest hours again (yay its faster with 12x- I still would rather do other things with the game then spend hours re-leveling a character to then re-gear that character to THEN start doing what I have the characters and gear to do currently) to do the things we have already earned and worked to accomplish with our existing characters. This is before factoring in the community, guild, etc aspects that other players have mentioned. Yes I still have it, but does it matter if it's had on a dead server? Guilds have worked to earn their guildships and that can be a thing that enhances your guild experience and adds another (albeit minor) plus for recruiting. The relationships, /f lists, communities and the like that are already built by players on a server are incredibly valuable for subscriber retention. Setting sail to a new server away from those ties players less to the game.