Big budget MMO development and large scale production may well be things of the past... but I don't think that's really what caused the problems in SWTOR's development and release. The statement about "you can't duplicate WOW because it's success was partially due to serendipity" may also be partially true, but... I think there is room for successful large budget development and release in the industry, provided: Game theory and design 101 becomes mandatory reading for the developers. This field has come too far in the last 20 years to be written off in favor of "but other company gets away with it!" or "but... that's how thee other games did it!" Grind is necessary for an MMO to continue and be fiscally sound. Grind that "feels" like a grind to the players is not. Find a way to make the "Grind" portions of the game almost as entertaining and engaging to the player as the "featured content" and you'll make millions. This is just one example. The industry standard paradigm of metrics based design is tossed out the window. Metrics based design is great in moderation. As the industry moves more and more to having it be the end-all/be-all of design, it is showing its flaws more and more. Like many other software offerings developed under "pure metrics" SWTOR was released as a bare-bones, minimum functionality with the intent of adding features and content and making adjustments based on collected metrics from users. This, of course leads to nil-innovation, and many users are unwilling to wait for content to be added. Additionally, depending on how you "read" those metrics, you may not get accurate answers or even really be asking the right questions in the first place. Starting with an innovative and fully functional design and refining it through carefully applied metrics is an entirely different story. Put on the big boy pants, put down the ego. When you combine metrics based design with a prevailing attitude among the developers of "the players will know what they like when I tell them what they like" you have a recipe for failure fueled by confirmation bias. Speaking of... Some of your players will know the product better than you do. Accept it. There are players who've been playing MMOs (or older cooperative games) longer than many of your development staff have been driving. Whether you decide to listen to their advice on design or not, just keep in mind that they WILL NOTICE AND NOT BE AMUSED by "cheap" tricks like extending travel times by scaling up your world, keeping overland travel slow, restricting use of fast travel, and making inter-zone travel tedious, and then requiring large amounts of extraneous travel part of the regular play process as a way to extend content by increasing downtime. Invest in customer service. Business 101. Really. Twitterbombs, forum raging (yes, i realize the irony here) and even crazed consumers that show up at the studio are NOT viable sources of metrics. They do represent a portion of the community and of your customer base. They are not the majority. Most of this seems like common sense to me... but companies continue to make the same mistakes over and over, and just go back to crying "oh well, I guess no one really can beat WoW." I guess a certain someone was right when they said it's "so rare it should be a ***-****ed superpower."

Short answer: No. Long answer: See my post in the Unsubscriber's thread. BioWare and EA have lost my consumer confidence and any money I'd have spent on them in the future. As others have noted, DA2, ME3, and this... 'release' have all soured me on what used to be one of my absolute favorite studios. On the plus side, they managed to stick more for another three months of fees before handing me 30 days free, so I'll be around for another three months or so to let them know exactly how much I won't be paying them, and why. 90 days of "exit surveying." They're gonna love it, I'm sure.

Uhm... Are you talking about PvE leveling? Because He's talking about endgame bossfights. I don't recall a lot of fights where ranged is getting "swarmed by NPCs" simply because it's the (off)tank's job to ensure that doesn't happen. Please read the entirety of the original post and try to stay on topic.

You may be waiting a very long time. As noted few of your concerns have been addressed at all, none of them in anything more than a passing manner, and none of them seem to be on the schedule.

Top 5 reasons for leaving: The constant mismanagement of the game and failure to adhere to simple game design principles: Equity in play (two players of approximately equal play ability who choose different classes should not be inequally desired in PvP and PvE because one chose a class with a lightsaber and the developers decide to buff the crap out of it.) Flexibility of use (A class should have multiple viable "specs" rather than one or two, and if skill specs are all cookie-cutter then why even present them as a choice or "tree" in the first place? Just say "hi, you need to be annihilation and you will get this perk at this level and that's that.") approachability, (I should not need 4 full rows of keybinds which were genuinely inaccessible until recently just to run a daily quest) dependability (I should not dread logging in and hitting buttons after a patch for fear of what will happen next, nor should I experience frequent crashes and inability to log in, nor wait 5-7 minutes on a load screen that took 30 seconds to a minute last week.) Utterly horrid customer service, (and I feel as if I have just insulted people who genuinely do perform customer service by calling what BioWare has laughably provided me with as such.) Of two dozen tickets I have submitted, I have received exactly ONE response to: an automated message a week later. All of my issues were dismissed and my tickets closed without reply or consideration. Replies to community issues are nearly as inequitable as some of the gameplay, with certain classes being doted on while other forums receive (I kid you not) devs popping in to troll players in others. Seriously, who thinks that's professional in the least?! Terrible communication on changes. I'm sure that somewhere there is a list of actual changes that go into every patch--if for nothing else than payroll/departmental tracking. (Joe altered X multiplier on Y system) It's probably even already typed up to send to supervisors. Copy/Paste this into actual patch notes so you don't have five pages of threads spring up every tuesday that say "WAS X NINJA NERFED?! I THINK IT WAS. LETS WASTE 2 DAYS TRACKING THIS BECAUSE BIOWARE WON'T PUBLISH PATCH NOTES THAT INCLUDE ACTUAL CHANGES MADE." Poor adherence to stated design goals. I'm sure this sounds pretty harsh, (and likely you already think I've been overly harsh by this point anyhow, so why not?) but what design goals that you've shared with the community do you feel like you actually accomplished? So far, I think the only thing you can honestly check off is "launch game, collect payments." I don't even want to hear about how your game is "brand new and so it's expected we don't have a lot of features!" When I go and buy a new cell phone next month should I forgive them if it randomly won't power on, has no internet access, won't send or receive text messages and the sound quality is awful because it's "new?" No. Especially not if I shell out the same price for it that i did for my last fully featured smartphone and have to pay the exact same monthly upkeep for it. We're not talking about a "lack of content you didn't have five years to add like the other guys" we're talking about basic functionality that is expected from a modern game. There are days I actually pine for the punishment of playing Everquest (the first one) as opposed to dealing with parts of SW:TOR. Game design and theory has come a long way since the late 90s. Catch up. Cheap, lame, and annoying ways to "extend" content you're lacking. Interminable travel times, extended load screens despite having near-SOTA hardware, nonsensically complex travel methods, large EMPTY world devoid of features that seems to have been scaled up simply to make travel longer, lack of even smaller-scale but repeatable content, (mini-games that are enjoyable and not overly repetitive) rejection of an "appearance tab" option because making players grind for certain kinds of gear, grind for money to modify it, changing the way it's modified so it has to be ground again, etc, makes the players spend more time performing activities they DO NOT WANT TO DO for minimal benefit. Seriously, here's a protip: You can include hundreds of hours of 'grind' in your game, but if the players actually enjoy the activity they 'grind' on, you'll keep far more subscribers than you might otherwise imagine. There's a host of other reasons, but that'll do for now. So why did I stay? I was blessed to find a good community of players. We happened to be on a server that's in rapid decline in population, but the friends I made were worth it. I overlooked issue after issue after issue because I just happened to meet the right people and and paying $15 a month for their company actually seemed like one hell of a deal. A lot of them are gone now. Others play far less frequently. The stress of watching the guild fall apart is getting to others, and people who used to be incredibly pleasant are getting snippy and irritable. I am getting snippy and irritable. I'll find a way to keep in tough with these people out of game--maybe in another game provided by your competitors, but either way, in a less stressful environment for us than what your game has become for us. I was taken in by your promises to provide content, fixes, and a genuinely enjoyable play experience, and I will admit to having accepted these blindly as I had previously enjoyed BioWare's games. I feel cheated and robbed of the money I spent on your game--a feeling I have never had before about any of the several other MMOs I have played in the past. I am ashamed I did not come to this decision before you renewed my billing cycle, and I assure you that I will not encourage any other potential buyers to try this game under any circumstances. I am an unhappy customer. I will tell at least 15-20 people (and possibly many more) about my negative experience with this game and your company. I will not return. I will not reinvest. I feel betrayed, and you will not regain my trust or my monthly payments.

I would pay to see this... But you're already being paid more to keep up the posting, I suspect. On topic, I'd agree that Operative DPS isn't useless. Unless you're a great player among very, very, very, VERY bad and undergeared ones, ("tank just pulled... think I'll go take a smoke break." "what's this big purple marker on the floor? Should I stand in it?" "I like to activate my abilities by individually clicking them with my mouse, while switching back and forth between SWTOR and another window with NetFlix") it's unlikely you're going to shine. As melee DPS you don't keep up. As ranged DPS you're pathetic. You bring no unique strengths, no utility that doesn't require others to fail in order to be useful ("timmy stood in the fire--he must be catching up on 'Bones' reruns again. Hey Operative, shoot him a battle rez so when he switches back he can still out DPS you despite being dead half the fight.") and the singular task they are defined to perform (melee DPS) they do not fulfill adequately. Seriously, since we've got all these "teams of Operatives" in PvP making everyone quit, how about we see a couple of them switch to PvE and try out some nightmare modes with a team of operatives and a couple tanks? I know from experience that there are relatively few fights you can't complete with your DPS composed entirely of Marauders and Juggernauts--most of them aren't even that much more difficult than they are with a "balanced" team.

Experience shows otherwise.

As a player with a level 50 Operative, I would just like to say: It's my fault. For realz, yo. Me and 15 other guys have rolled Operatives on every single server and we log in together just to queue for warzones and stunlock everyone all the time to make them quit the game. We don't even win most of the time, we just spend the whole game stunlocking people for chuckles. Because we can totally do that. Georg said so.

Many experienced operative players do have a pretty negative outlook when it comes to the class, and not without reason. Leveling PVE play is a lot of fun without being as incredibly simple and easy as it was for my BH, Sorc, Assn, or Jugg, and I did greatly enjoy it. It was a blast. The story was nice, and while I still loathe Kaliyo, it has some amazing support cast. In the end game things are a bit different. I'm a terrible healer, and for the safety and peace of mind of myself, and my friends/guildmates, I avoid it at all costs, but I'm told Operative healing can be quite rewarding. DPS, on the other hand is frustrating for many players, (of either DPS spec) and takes a lot of effort to manage to underperform other classes within what some people might call "acceptable limits." You won't outperform anyone unless they're AFK. The new Merc rallying cry (for arsenal mercs who still don't realize they have more buttons than Tracer Missile) is "we do less DPS than operatives! ***!" Players of other classes know we do crap for damage, we know we do crap for damage, and some people seem to be just fine with that. Whether their Op (if they have one) is their alt and they think their main can only be relevant as long as the other classes "stay down" or they're folks who really do work very hard to do a lot of damage with an Op (and still pull less than people playing very poorly on other ACs) and don't think there's a problem because "hey, I do all right," they are dead set on shouting that we're not only "just fine!" but Ops might still be too good! Combine this with BioWare's own policy of scapegoating and ostracizing the class an its players* and you have a recipe for a very unhappy group of people. When you're asked to bring another toon to an op/organized pvp group/etc. specifically because the other players do not want to have to make up for having an Operative instead of DPS they feel is useful, and they feel justified in doing so because they figure "even BioWare knows the class is $#@%, dude!" then let me know how happy you feel. Unhappy people are negative. *Everything from blaming the class for a rash of unsubscriptions, telling us we collectively need to "Lrn2P NUB," refusing to respond to questions here while doting on other class forums, to responding only to obviously idiotic troll posts because it's an "easy win" for the dev team to call it out while walking right past pages of well thought out and polite requests for clarification,

Fallacy: "straw man" argument. I didn't say it was a reason for me personally to quit. If I believed so, I would have done so. I believe some may consider it to be so (as some have demonstrated as much by quitting and leaving forum feedback (and feedback elsewhere) that specifically stated their reasons for cancelling their subscription. If I believed it was a reason for everyone to quit, or even a majority to quit, then I would still probably quit, as being the lone individual on a server (which would be the result of a majority of players quitting) is not an appealing notion. Fallacy: "straw man" argument. Happening to a variety of specs/classes/game aspects is not every class, nor every aspect of the game. Some≠all. Even among the "variety" there is a further degree of separation in severity. If the changes were happening across the board, and equally distributed, I would care far less. The inequality is what bothers me. Developer methods and behavior shape the game they develop. I am not entirely sure why you might think otherwise. (if you do) As a result, developer methods and behavior have an impact on game play. How the game plays is indeed a reason to play (or not play) a game for many players. If you use a separate metric on choosing which game to hand your money to, then more power to you, of course. While I haven't come to the point of quitting, I have found the increasingly erratic and unpredictable changes in gameplay due to developers abandoning basic design precepts in favor of "mob rule" to be distressing and tiring.

Fallacy: Appeal to authority. The truth is that one can look at both actions, facts, statements, patterns of behavior, and many other factors both preceding and after an action to gain tremendous insight, and provide probable reasons and deduct future patterns of behavior. For instance: Months of testing and focused examination of something like a tradeskill is put in place in the game. After initial adjustments, the tradeskill is deemed to be suitable. Certain vocal parts of the community who do not wish to utilize that tradeskill complain that its rewards are too high, despite actually being far less than a variety of other activities, including most other tradeskills. More adjustments are made, and the tradeskill is deemed to be suitable. Certain vocal parts of the community who do not wish to utilize that tradeskill complain that its rewards are too high, despite actually being far less than a variety of other activities, including all other tradeskills. More adjustments are made, and the tradeskill is deemed to be suitable for "launch." The tradeskill remains as altered for several months of further testing. After launch, certain vocal parts of the community who do not wish to utilize that tradeskill complain that its rewards are too high, despite actually being far less than a variety of other activities, including all other tradeskills, and is having a beneficial effect of a floundering "fresh" economy as it stands. These complaints, due to the increased number of players after launch, reach a volume the devolpers have not seen before, including semi-organized "twitter bomb" complaints. The developers claim that a "bug" has resulted in much higher return that they had not noticed previously during MONTHS of testing (during which time the returns from that tradeskill were entirely consistent, trackable, observable, and were actually being tracked and openly reported by several testers.) and the returns will be "tweaked." More adjustments are made, and the tradeskill is deemed suitable by everyone but the people actually paying to play the game. (Not counting several forum posts by members of EA/BioWare "creative Marketing" departments. You might recognize a few of them ITT!) Excited by this, certain vocal parts of the community who do not wish to utilize that tradeskill continue to complain that its rewards are too high, despite actually being far less than a variety of other activities, including all other tradeskills. Due to a lack of return on this tradeskill, many players have abandoned it entirely, and the lack of its former primary return in the economy causes a continuous drag in its flow. Further unnanounced changes are made to the tradeskill to further lower its returns. Vocal parts of the community diminish their complaints on this issue, but begin to complain about the costs of items given that they have just sabotaged the primary driving force of their economy and sent it into a spiral of returns lower than costs. Changes are made to the inbuilt costs of the expenses of the game, which are suspiciously similar in proportion to the loss of flow from the adjusted tradeskill, making it a wash for players using that tradeskill, but a net gain for players using others. Given that you can replace "tradeskill" with "[utility]," "class," "healing," and various other game terms and this cycle of behavior continues to stay quite true, I'd say that these people are not far off from accurately describing the behavior of the developers.

I like type 2 and 4, myself. I made my assassin toon type 3, as it was the only option that made the female sith pureblood faces look attractive. (I think she's striking, anyhow) I was quickly put off by how very, very odd and unnatural the movements look for type 3 (male and female) although being in a skirt certainly solves much of the problem for the female movements, where the weirdness seems to be in the legs and hips.

My heart bleeds for you, really. Except that it doesn't drop you out of combat in either PvP or PvE, and stealth is just as sketchy in both. I guess they'll just have to settle for all the other working utility that they do have. Darn.

Carry on, folks. No sense in derailing the chuckles over one very sad individual.

You have posted nothing in this thread other than QQing about us having a bit of fun and trying to find some humor in the situation we faced. Your "contribution" so far has been insulting, rude, condescending, and actually completely irrelevant to what our actual concerns would be, were we to express them in a non-humorous tone. Still, I'm not mad at you. It's clear that you have some strong issues tied to your own self-esteem, and healing in warzones and posting big numbers while not actually accomplishing objectives in objective based scenarios makes you feel like a big man. I'm very sorry, and I hope your life takes a turn for the better soon.