Pirana
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Posts posted by Pirana
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2 minutes ago, supertimtaf said:
I'm fairly certain that the idea of not charging for KOTET and KOTFE was because they obviously realized how much of a scam that would have been. The decision (and announcements regarding pricings) were made last minute, mostly because they saw that they had no content to warrant a paid expansion. The likely guess is that they spent an absurd amount of money on marketting and sank all that in the flashy trailer, while forgetting to actually work on the game.
We don't know how many devs also left between SoR and KOTFE, that might have been part of why there was absolutely no content on KOTFE, because there was no one to actually make said content. That or they listened again to Ben Irving, the producer at the time, who was so out of touch with how to make a good MMO that he's to blame for most of the bad decisions regarding swtor since it went free to play.Yep, I agree, why there wasn't a charge, which I elaborated on in the next post.
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Might want to pack your bags and move on. lol It's not matter of if, but when.
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21 minutes ago, Pietrastor said:
But that's the point. With a big playerbase you can afford to demand more moneyz. Not so fast with a smaller pool of players. And ESO sub unlocks the expansions so there's that too. Only WOW and XIV do the full sub+paid Xpacks model because only they can demand it
That is correct and since launch, customers have been dropping left and right. This game at one point had over 200 servers, obviously a ton of mistakes were made and one is not charging for expansions, even the smallest one.
Edit: One thing I missed. ESO's VIP doesn't unlock all the expansions, those have to be purchased, it unlocks the DLC's and older expansions, yes. Their latest expansion from last year had to be purchased, their next expansion coming out this year will also have to be purchased and not included in their VIP. Using them as an example was not in your best interest.-
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1 hour ago, Pietrastor said:
Unless you're WOW or (later on) FFXIV u cant have both sub and priced expansions. The price level matters too and is indicative to the players of the size of the expansion in itself as well.
The biggest mistake was EA not doubling down on production after the initial problems like Squeenix did with FFXIV and Beth with ESO. After a while it didn't really matter what would they do, SWTOR wasn't gonna have a rebirth on a massive scale without a substantial effort put into post-launch (re)developement. There was some, but never on the scale Squeenix or Beth did with their respective games
Sure you can, two of the biggest MMO's on the market, just as you have mentioned have proven that to be an effective business model. ESO as well, if people want the full benefits of that game, you're becoming a VIP, aka a subscriber. If you're familiar with the old adage, proof is in the pudding, well, look no further than where this game currently sits. Again though, that's only one of dozens and dozens of issues this game has had since beta. The only defense this game has regarding some of their expansions is they were no more than glorified daily zones, Makeb included, that's why they didn't charge.
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One of many mistakes, too many to keep track of, was them eventually offering new expansions at no cost, other than the price of a subscription. Even if those expansions didn't have the same amount of content of current expansions in Triple A games, you still charge something, even if it's only $19.99, you always charge something. This game's approach to almost everything that has occurred over the last ten years is exactly why this game is in the state that it's in.
ESO and GW2, just to name a couple still charge something for their DLC's, unless you happen to catch a break while playing at specific times, and look at how good things have turned out for them. And they always charge for their expansions, just a silly business model EAWare gambled with.
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This has been requested for years, highly unlikely it'll happen if it hasn't happened yet, but.... As mentioned above, if it became an option, default should be off, with the option of turning them on.
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I'm not sure what's funnier, the fact I remember this thread or that this might be the mother of all necro threads, at least any that I've read over the years, here or any other game. Impressive.
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5 minutes ago, Toraak said:
Have you seen the younger generations? Not to mention the current educational system? Not like we used to have it, where we actually had to do the work. Now grades are just handed to them for showing up. Pass them on to the next grade nonsense.
They won't be taught you should look at tooltips and read them to know what your doing.
Sadly, we do agree on this. lol
I was just chatting with someone about this the other day. This generation is completely different, although, I also believe that had we, or at least I had access to the internet as a youngster, I'm not sure I would be any different, although, in my defense, I did hit up the local library frequently when I couldn't find an answer in newspapers or magazines, I still put in the effort.There are plenty of tools for people to succeed in games, perhaps I'm the one being naive in thinking people can read. lol
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20 minutes ago, eabevella said:
Well, I read it, and I didn't know what "interrupt" means because there's no where in the class stories that *need* you to use it except for the Consular final boss. I think I brute forced the boss because I thought the channeling means I have to git gud and kill the boss before the channeling ends lol
Edit: another funny bit I just remember. SWTOR is my first MMO. I thought you're supposed to jump to evade enemy attack for a few hours lmao
Abilities are given for a reason, they're not cosmetic. We all make mistakes, after the first attempt, you should have realized there has to be a way to beat that boss. LoS doesn't work on that boss as it's a quake that hits the entire cave area, assuming you were aware of that mechanic, so there had to have been way to beat it.
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59 minutes ago, Toraak said:
Remember there is a large number of players in this game that aren't from the MMO setting. Many are here because it was a Bioware product and a continuation of the Kotor series, nothing more.
So for some players they won't put in the time the rest of us did to read the tooltips, and understand what each ability does. Granted I also came from MMO's as well, so that was the first thing I did in beta/launch to learn what my class could and could not do.
Reading shouldn't have to be told to anyone, new player or not, BW game or not. This is something most people should have learned during their educational years. I stated "a little more leeway". Making excuses as to why these things happen when people are given the tools to succeed is enabling that behavior. Read, it's not a difficult concept. -
26 minutes ago, eabevella said:
I died like three times when I first did the Consular last boss because nowhere in this game had taught me what "interrupt" is before the boss.
I wish there are tutorials made into story missions that teach new players utility skills like interrupt/break cc more than I want the class stories made more difficult. If I want difficulty, I'll just play marksman in nim raids.
Read the tooltips: Mind Snap and Force Stun, both clearly state what the abilities do.
If someone is coming from another MMO, you should always read any ability that can be dragged onto the toolbar, you should also read all passives, that shouldn't have to be stated. If a player is new to the MMO genre, then sure, I can understand a little more leeway, but even if they're new, those players should read those tooltips and don't haphazardly engage in combat.
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^ There are some truths in there, but make no mistake, the game was made slightly harder by pruning some of the abilities and skill tree choices actually mattering more now. The leveling process also doesn't grant you a plethora of abilities early on, which it did for years, launch no, but in the years following, players were granted a large array of their arsenal early on. The power creep, poorly designed level-sync and the game being made easier all play a part of the current game and its more casual approach.
If people want more difficult group content, play WoW's Mythic Plus, if people want more difficult open world content, play GW2's first two expansions, Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire, where if you're new, it's not a matter of if you'll die, but how often, and the HoT content had to be tuned down due to the difficulty after it launched. This game's difficulty is a shell of itself, and as little as they did to try and revert it over the years, it's still too easy and unlikely to change given the current status.
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Leveling is trivial in every MMO I've played, whether it's GW2, ESO, FF14, WoW, even New World isn't hard. If people want to work on their rotations because mobs are dying too fast in the open world, hit up a target dummy on the Ziost Shadow on the Imp side or on the Gav Daragon on the Republic side, or run some FP's and use the opportunity when you get to a boss. Mechanics can be learned from reading guides or watching YT videos.
When SWTOR first launched, the leveling process was much harder, and for whatever reason EAWare thought it was a good idea to tune it down and even altered mechanics such as the Jedi Knight boss fight near the end of the storyline, making it a near cake walk now compared to then. They also made the companions overpowered for awhile until they realized they buffed them too much and had to nerf them. Hit up the target dummies if mobs are dying too fast, work on rotations and your muscle memory, because it's not going to happen during the leveling process.
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24 minutes ago, Toraak said:
Don't get me wrong I use Shae as DPS as well. Just depends on how lazy I feel like being at the time. If I feel like falling asleep or not paying much attention I'll put Shae in heals, if I'm looking to pay at least 50% attention I'll have her in DPS role.
Exactly why I only use DPS companions, content is trivial, no reason to use heals or a tank. If I'm too lazy or sleepy to play, I log off and find something else to do that doesn't involve gaming.
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1 hour ago, DeannaVoyager said:
On a lowbie characters Shae as dps is the only way to go for me too. Some classes are horrible at low levels, you don't have enough abilities, and the ones you have have long cooldowns or eat up all your energy because no resource management yet so that you can only use basic attack most of the time. Shae will fix that. Or any other companion on dps. When progressing to higher levels and planets and I get more power, I will change companion to heals so I don't have to stop all the time, like Toraak said.
When I mentioned 'smarter route', I chose those words due to the various skill levels among gamers, I don't need to use a healer, never have, unless I'm a HM FP and we lose the healer, that's it, open world, it's never needed. There was time before the companion change that each one had their own role, tank, heal or dps, and didn't have the option to right click the portrait and change, then yes, I would have used what their role was. Only going to use the Republic side and not the mirror classes or abilities:
Sage - shield, heal and HoT as a dps
Commando - DCD's, HoT, which people should be using between each pull anyway whether they're health is topped off or not to proc HVSC
Gunslinger - Cover or DCD
Shadow - Stealth class that is over-tuned at the moment, notably Serenity. If someone is having a hard time, then reading one of those Vulkk guides might be in their best interest, there should be zero problems unless someone is new
Vanguard - Finally a class where there is some down time between pulls, no off heals and for a heavy armor wearing class, they're squishy and their rotation can be as unforgiving as Commando AS, so burning up cells can occur if you're not familiar with the class
Scoundrel - Off heals and a heal. Another over-tuned class currently that also has stealth
Guardian and Sentinel - Two classes where there might be some down time to regen health due to being in melee range, so I can see using a heal comp here for two different reasons, downtime and new players.With all that though, I can see some benefits to using a healer comp, everyone plays the game differently and it is a safer route. I'm almost always running around with 50%-75% health in the open world, not having my health topped isn't game breaking nor am I OCD. lol Running a DPS companion expedites open world content faster and that's been the case since the companions were given the option to select roles. People should play the game the way they want though, and if using a healer companion helps, then go for it.
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40 minutes ago, Toraak said:
That is the unmodded armor I use as well. The DvL armor. I just don't put anything into it as I level. The only difference is I generally use companion as healer, so I don't have to keep stopping to rest all the time. I just go from one fight to the next without stopping.
That's probably the smarter route, I use Shae because her overhead arsenal is too good to pass up when she's DPS. Probably should have mentioned that in the other post, having her also trivializes the content, even at level 10 influence, but really, a healer does the same thing, just a safer method.
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1 hour ago, Toraak said:
Gear doesn't matter. I don't even gear when I am leveling. I use unmodded armor shells. Only thing I upgrade is my MH every 10 levels or so. I'm sure you could do all of it without even upgrading your weapons.
Close to what I do.
I use the xp gear provided years ago, no inserts in any of the pieces and the comp is set to DPS, not tank or heal. It starts to get a little sketchy when you get to the Black Hole and CZ, but prior to that, it's super easy.It's a skill problem if people are having issues, other than perhaps the small class buff, provided all buffs have been unlocked. Someone mentioned just the other day that heroics were hard, that displays a disparity in skillsets among people.
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Yeah, launch pve was actually somewhat challenging. Then a few years later, the companions were given steroids, only to be nerfed. The leveling process now is a joke. They did make things a little harder by changing the skill trees around and forcing decisions, but the leveling experience is still trivial.
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20 minutes ago, RevenantMac said:
Agreed. If ESO could do that then Swtor could but just as you said it might be too late. Then again, there's no harm for asking the devs to thinking about it. Maybe with luck they might return it.
Yeppers, all you can do is suggest it, nothing wrong in trying.
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26 minutes ago, Stradlin said:
...Launch of SWTOR got quite a bit of praise way back when. It went much smoother than most other popular MMos of that time. Were there some server crashes, lots of bugs, bits and pieces of unfinished content? Sure. As was to be expected in a brand new MMO back then.
I'm not sure if any MMO has gotten as good reviews as 1.0 of SWTOR did back them. TOR had its issues and its unpolished bits. Messy launch wasn't among them.
People playing didn't compare launch of TOR to some perfect fairytale ideal. Rather, they'd compare it to their somewhat fresh memories of wow launch, or first wow expansion launches and such. Like there was some 2-3 month period in 2005 where wow in some EU servers quite simply became unplayable during peak hours.
Long queues, sometimes well over thirty minutes depending on server, tons of bugs, notably the Commando bug on Coruscant which completely halted the story, where you had to send a ticket in. Or the Sith Sorc bug, same thing, completely halted story progress. Male body type four, which prohibited players from accessing certain areas, notably datacrons.
Regarding the praise, no, I remember differently, or maybe because I spent time on the forums trying to get my tickets taken care of and perusing all the other hundreds of complaints. You're right about one thing, no game has a smooth launch, so it's to be expected, but this game did not have a good launch. Compared to New World and a handful of others, yeah, it was a great launch. lol
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That ship has sailed, it won't be reverted at this point. What staff could have done, is allow scaling/level sync by right clicking the character portrait and allow the player to set the level. If you're level capped and don't want to have to deal with low level mobs on starter planets, and possibly pull threat, you stay at the level. If you want to play with one of your friends, you right click your character portrait and set the appropriate level, it's not automatically assigned by the game.
ESO still has the best level sync out there that I've played. You can run any open world content there is, in any area of the game, your character is scaled up or down. At the time of implementation, this game received a lot of mixed reactions to this change. It has been suggested to be reverted numerous times over the years to no avail.
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37 minutes ago, Gamer_Auto said:
Speaking from a story point of view, is what I meant; not necessarily "game as it released on day one".
I would hope so, given that's where the main story originated from.
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1 minute ago, Toraak said:
I would say 2.x was peak. Once SoR came out even end game content didn't get a NiM Mode for Rav or ToS, and the story for both republic and imperial were basically the same in SoR.
Which is fair, all opinions are subjective.
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9 hours ago, Gamer_Auto said:
For being as old as it is, and for not having as much choice as many of us would have liked in it, Vanilla continues to prove itself as peak SWTOR.
Vanilla is what started this snowball and it hasn't stopped rolling yet. lol Just to give you some insight:
* Level cap was 50, there was almost no end game. One Operation in EV and around seven FP's on both factional sides along with the storylines, there wasn't anything else other than hub quests and a few bonus series, that was it.
* Game launches without a group finder, Had to meet on the fleet for something as simple as Flashpoints
* Another Star Wars MMO launches without space
* Vehicles weren't an option until level 25
* Sprint level 15, yes, you had to run sluggishly around until that level, meaning the starting zones were slow, very slow. lol
* Anytime you loaded into a planet, you were forced to run through the orbital station prior to landing on the planet, couldn't mount up, run only, and without sprint lol
* No Strongholds and daily heroics menu to short cut quick travel and/or fix their bugs when you got stuck
* Speeders on planets, (the mechanized travel spiel droid) had to be opened up by visiting each area, you couldn't click the speeder near the spaceport and travel anywhere.
* QT terminals, you had to click on the ones you wanted to open, couldn't be in the area and it opens automatically
* The inner ring on the fleet where the ship phase doors are located, classes had to enter their specific doors, Trooper, Smuggler, Jedi Knight etc. If you were a Trooper, you couldn't enter the Smuggler phase door for instance
* Bugs: this game has more bugs than a dog in a flea factory, notably at launch, think it's bad now.... lolSome of those are qualities of life, but ultimately what it shows, is that this game wasn't ready for release. SWG's contract ended, easy transition.
As mentioned previously, I would go with SoR expansion as the peak, but it certainly wouldn't be vanilla. Vanilla SWTOR is what led to the mass exodus of players and the game going FTP in under a year.
From an optimistic point of view, this game compared to when it launched is night and day. A new player just starting this game out will be busy for a very long time. I hope along with many others that we're wrong about this game and its future, and that it does indeed persevere and grow again. Realistically, that's what we all want.
Would you be open to paying for expansions again if it meant more resources available for core content?
in General Discussion
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Nor should they have, they didn't deserve it due to releasing an unfinished product.
This game is where it sits because the people that ran this game, and ran in into the ground, are directly responsible for its failures. They were handed the keys to the Ferrari and drove it off the cliff. Those other games have people that actually listened to their player base and formulated their decisions based off of that. Had they made better decisions this game wouldn't be down to a handful of servers. It's been one huge domino effect since launch.