At this point, multiple MMOs have converted from 32 to 64 bit, most of which are from the 2008 to 2011 era, and are from smaller, free to play companies. That being said, unless you can convince EA/Bioware that short term, next quarter profits are going to improve by going to 64 bit, they're not going to care. Long term reinvestment isn't going to be flashy enough for the investors, even with proven financial gain or profit protection, is involved.

Having the "feeling" that operatives are overtuned for pvp isn't wrong, it's simply that most people with that feeling lack nuance and actual constructive criticism. Thing is though, even with nuance and constructive criticism, feedback doesn't matter because this isn't THE private discord, because most of us can't contribute direct feedback to dev team, and most importantly, EA/Bioware, on a fundamental level, doesn't care about balance. There's no short term profit in it. A member of the dev combat team takes time off to have a baby, and that's why we had to wait a full year to get any sort of class balance addressed in 5.0. Disgusting that the devs would even offer that as an explanation, yet here we are. Not the parent's fault, Bioware's fault for refusing to properly fund a professional dev combat team that isn't crippled by the loss of a single individual. Still seems that's the case going into 7.0. Get used to more of these threads, because while most classes get a punch to the face for 7.0, operatives (and mercs) are barely getting a slap to the wrist. In other words, the opposite of what should of happened. Quoting a guys's complaints from 2018 to 2022 doesn't make him a troll, if issues causing those complaints existed the whole time. Can you name a time in SWTOR's history where they weren't the best duelist, best node defender, the best node attacker, the best troll class, the class with the highest skill cap, in short "the best'? Was this theoretical time longer than 4 years ago, if in fact it ever existed? It's almost as if giving heals to a class that infinitely delay resolution to a combat encounter was bad class design. Wow. Go figure.

Star Wars, especially more dangerous planets like those found in the Outer Rim/Unknown Region/Sith Space (outside of cities and bases controlled by the military) is more like a wild west type frontier justice system than a modern day bail bondsman agent situation. In the core worlds, during peacetime, there's probably a very low tolerance for bounty hunters who repeatedly kill their targets, but people are going to care less and less about that with increasing social and political instabilities. The more law enforcement gets burdened with dealing with effects of the war, the more bounty hunters can get away with.

I used to get chills and hyped up about watching SWTOR trailers. Watching this, it just feels generic, empty and sad.

I went from 20-30ms to 90ms + random spikes when they switched locations to East Coast, which by my standards is almost unplayable for pvp, I'm sure your standards are a bit different being across the ocean. I ended up getting WTFast as well, took it down to 70ms and smoothed out the spikes. I don't need to use it for any other game, so I consider my WTFast sub as part of my SWTOR sub fee. Can't recommend WTFast enough, especially for people like me in a rural area without fiber, who aren't tech savy about rerouting connections. Also in the Starlink Beta program, but it's still not great for online gaming yet as they still have thousands of satilities left to launch. (But it's still great, currently 300 mbps downloads, 200 up. Still mad at Bioware though, playing SWTOR is basically double the price of any other mmo because of this.

I'll go a step further in my accusations against Bioware. I think Bioware wants massive inflation in SWTOR, and is tracking player behavior in a "post ruined economy" in order to gather hard data on cash shop purchases, and how those increase when in game currency becomes less and less valuable. Why? Because with that data, for other "games as service", they'll know the correct time to break the economy to maximize profit. Gambling mechanics just become the way to give players (false) hope that they can still keep financially relevant "post credit" economy.

For people who have been playing for a number of years, things just aren't going to feel right. You'll be playing whatever story you chose, but you'll probably struggle a bit with merging whatever class you are with the story you're playing. Maybe it'll go away after a chapter or two. Maybe it won't. I think newer players are going to enjoy the benefits of the system a lot more than veteran players, at least as far as going through the early story content is concerned. Were going to be thinking some version of "This feels wrong" for a little while. If you learn to enjoy it, great. If not, just chose the class story that used to match the class you're primarily leveling with.

It's even less of a seeming coincidence when those exact same lootbox mechanics, and the game director responsible for them, are transfered to Bioware's uncoming hit "Anthem", despite the entire SWTOR community being up in arms about how bad the system was. It might sound crazy, but I'm of the firm opinion that the reason SWTOR is still around is to gauge how predatory EA can get with monitization in MMOs. It's like they're trying to figure out how to make something pay to win without letting players directly buy power from the cash shop, in order to avoid the "mobile game" stigma. They know their sports game audience, but it's taken a lot longer to pin down the "nerd market". Just look at the huge misstep with the mobile version of Dungeon Keeper, Anthem, Andromeda, Star Wars Battlefront, etc.

Controls via a chain of devices and controls directly on a device certainly created a difference in a "test what this is like" situation. It's called input lag, and reducing input lag is a huge part of the gaming hardware industry. So even in your specific recontextualization of your original statement, you are incorrect.

These are the same people that told us they were going to have east and west coast servers, and then told us, with a straight face, that the west coast server was located on the east coast and it was our mistake for misunderstanding them. No accountability, no apology. Huge ping increase for rural players on the west side of the country, and massive ping for anyone located west of the United States. They know they're the worst. They simply don't care, and lying again and getting called out on it doesn't effect them at all.

Here's your experience and credits and rewards for completing the mission! To actually have those applied to your character right away, please buy 20$ of force crystals, or wait a week. My biggest complaint about mobile mmos is actually the reduced amount of abilities, usually 4 buttons and 1 spammable that you mash over and over again. It'd be pretty sad to see SWTOR reduced to that, which is reason number 8 or 9 that patch 7.0 rubs me the wrong way with the direction it's trending.

The steam apps connect your mobile device to a computer, game runs on the computer, and then streams the output of the computer back to your mobile device. Completely different situation than having a portable device running the game directly.

Thinking about all the mmos that have died, it would be really nice to be able to revisit them without having to deal with illegal servers, and I don't think it would take too much development to convert the game into more of a Witcher 3 type experiance. Sadly, especially with AAA developers, gaming is less about what the consumer is wanting and willing to buy and more about the "games as a service" model the industry expects you to put up with to enjoy your favorite IPs.

We need new terminology to define how Bioware handles SWTOR. My vote is for "Maintenance Plus", cause I like to keep things positive.

The most hillarious thing in the world would be if SWTOR's engine actually ran better on a handheld device than a mid to high range desktop pc. It's like EA giving players the middle finger so hard that the execs get carpal tunnel syndrome.

8.0's story could simply be that the Republic, and the military of the Sith Empire get so sick of all these force users that they trick them all into landing on a planet for the "Final Battle" which is just one big carbonite trap, after which it's activated gets pushed past the event horizon of an artificial black hole. (Either/or works, either carbonization or time distortion due to gravity from black hole) New company, could step in with SWTOR 2. Alternate timeline plot where Emperor Palpatine finds the planet of force users frozen in carbonite, and an overzealous Imperial accidently unfreezes it, and the black hole generator fails and it disipates, unleashing thousands of Jedi and Sith into the era somewhere between episode 4 and 6. New company could actually give a s*!@, with a decent engine, eyes on class balance and pvp, and most importantly, an actual understanding of what makes MMOs fun and monitization methods that don't ruin it. Because it has Star Destroyers, Darth Vader, and all the things people recognize with the original films, game has more widespread appeal, but with an solid excuse as to why all these Jedi and Sith (player characters) are running around. A million potential stories pop up, bunch of "what ifs" or wouldn't it be cool, blah blah blah. But yeah, keep Bioware and EA away from SWTOR 2, if in the unlikely event it ever happens.

A merc/criminal/force sensitives (not Jedi or Sith) faction would have been perfect, and allowing them to play both sides to fill up spots in pvp (back when pvp was imps vs pubs) or raids could of lead to alot of interesting reward mechanics and roleplay situations.

They're right, every single time. That's because, every single expansion has Bioware burning down whatever systems they finally had fixed and introduce new broken systems to replace them, which take a whole nother year to fix again. It happens with gearing, it happens with class balance, it happens with everything, and it happens EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Other MMOs have actual expansions, which when bought, pay for much more timely changes and fixes. Bioware has to "wait for an coder" from another failed project to drive down to Austin. These "expansions" are not well funded enough to keep reinventing the wheel every 2 years, but they try anyway, and it's a huge mess. Enjoy a 2 month bump in population, followed by 8+ months of people leaving, followed by a slow buildup of newer players trickling in "because Star Wars", and finally a return of some older players coming back after they waited for enough of SWTOR to get fixed to be playable again. Bioware is happy with this modus operandi, because new players without credits means cartel coin purchases, but this system doesn't serve a loyal playerbase in the slightest. Bioware needs to stop with these "expansions". Just throw story chapters at us, and some new flashpoints and raids once in awhile, and keep a closer eye on class balance and engine performance issues. Everything else is a waste of time and money, and Bioware Austin seems to have neither of those things.

I'd love to see a financial breakdown of the voice acting in SWTOR, or any game really. It's a well known fact that even the most well known voice actors (for anime and video games) in the United States are middle class, or lower middle class, with a few rare exceptions. You have to be very well loved by the respective community, and keep doing the convention circuit, to make a good living as a voice actor. Yet for some reason, back when voice acting became much more common and consistent in video games (I'd say 2002-2003) developers and gaming journalists would go out of their way to make it seem so great that a gaming company would spend so much money on fully voicing a game. I really doubt if even 15% of the voice acting budget even makes it to the voice actors. It's really more of a question of, "How much money is lost in production" not "How much were the voice actors paid." If you really wanted to save money, and could trust EA to put that money back into the game, I'd say axe all the non-English voicing/production in the future. Most French and German people understand English pretty well, and you can always keep the subtitles in their native language.

Thanks for the very articulate response, but from what I've read, that's factually incorrect. Yes, gear drops item level from activities outside operations will rise as the expansion gets patches, and those will eventually match gear drops from 7.0 operations, however..... New operations, introduced in 7.1 and 7.2, etc, will offer a higher tier of gear than available previously. In other words, more difficult operations will always the be the only source for the best gear for the entire expansion, not just the 7.0 launch. I'd also state that the main "intention" of the 7.0 gearing mechanics is clearly to get more people to participate in operations. It's a smaller part of the community now, but if the devs achieve what they're working towards then it's going to be a lot larger for the next couple of years. All your other comments, I agree more or less. The best skill any player, of any game can have is the ability to listen and learn. But that's easy for a lot of people to forget, and it takes a very special community culture (like FF14) to push back against the gamer mentality of "numbers first". In SWTOR, the critical mass for maintaining a community of players with that healthy attitude is pretty small. (Ex. A guild can only get so big before toxic behavior creeps in, and maintaining positive relationships between larger and larger groups of individuals begins to require exponential effort.)

The 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto Principle, is an acknowledged and integral (and integrating) factor in the monetization of video games outside of initial purchase prices and online subscriptions. In fact, it applies in multiple degrees. It's not about "most" or "casual" players, it's about extracting money from payers. The 80/20 rule, in economics, states that 80% of revenue comes from 20% of customers. Applied a second time, 64% of revenue is generated by just 4% of a playerbase. This is exactly how free to play, mobile, and in this case, hybrid sub/f2p online games work, and that 4% (probably more as time goes on) is exactly who is going to be buying hypercrates to pay for op carries in SWTOR. I don't think "most" people, or casuals in WoW paid for raid carries, but 100% of them in the past few expansions saw the spam in general chat and LFR selling carry services, and close to 100% of them knew friends/guild members who purchased carries on a regular basis.

7.0's best gear is being locked behind Ops. Credits are almost worthless at this point, requiring hundreds of millions to buy mediocre cosmetics. People are already buying Op carries from guilds, for hundreds of millions, for exclusive raider cosmetics. It's pretty easy to see that 7.0 will feature a lot of Guild's carrying people for profit, and as credits become more and more worthless, ultimate packs and hypercrates (or specific purchases the guild asks for) are going to be the real currency in those transactions. So who benefits? Follow the money. Whales < Raiding guilds selling carries < EA. I humbly submit to you, the real reason renown is getting axed, conquest nerfed, crafting reduced to uselessness, and a host of other questionable decisions for 7.0. Just like Blizzard made huge bank on people buying Wow Tokens to pay for carries in raids, the 7.0 gearing structure will push non-raiders into spending real money to get hypercrates, and trade those for carries from raiding guilds. These players won't need the gear of course, objectively speaking from a game mechanic point of view. Yet they will need this gear, from a psychological point of view. We all know what it means to stand in front of the Stormwind bank, on a raid tier mount in raid tier gear, don't we? And we all know what it feels like to be a plebian in an mmo, staring up at those bastards thinking, someday that will be me looking down on the common folk. Finally, Bioware Austin understands the mind of a gamer. Finally, you too can stand with the elite, while the scrubs stare at your item rating in jealousy. All it will take is a mere 300-400$ worth of hypercrates. If you've got a few billion credits, buy a few now and take some of the sting off your real wallet. Buying carries isn't just a gaming option. It's a lifestyle. You're not roleplaying a bum in the gutter, are you? No one's going to believe you're good at the game with that 316 item level. It's 326, or off to the dumpster with you, even in groups doing content that doesn't even benefit from 326. Because that's how the mind of an online gamer works. You're either the best, or you're nothing.

It's an expansion, because all the systems they finally got working decently are being axed in favor of new systems that will take a year or more to get working and balanced again. Bioware Austin mimics all of Blizzard's bad habits "expansion" wise, even though WoW's history is a literal roadmap of bad turns.

Naive player "Your over criticizing is your weakness." Vet player "Your faith in Bioware products is yours."

Oh yeah, can't wait for Endwalker! Was there some other game getting an update or something?