It seems the way people judge if a game is dead is how much activity there is in the game. No surprises there, 5 servers in total and you can log in and see what the level of activity is. Alternatively how much interest and hype there is about the game, how much anticipation there is or if its a case of well I'm off doing other things delay updates all you want kind of attitude. Take a look at the forum, is it the same old same old mostly name calling. Look at other MMO sites and see if they are reporting positive stories for SWTOR. Alternatively there could look at it completely objectively, how much new stuff to do has been added to the game in the last 6 months or last 12 months. Has the content stagnated, has there been any significant growth to the game in that time frame. Ultimately though is the game getting bigger and better, dead places the burden too far. You could say someone that is brain dead and on a life support machine never to ever have a chance to wake up isn't yet dead. But in all meaningful way their life would be considered over. So lets say you took a six month break from the game or even a year and came back today would you be enjoying vast amounts of new content or be hunting for new things do to within a few hours, let alone 30 days.

I can't understand I can't think of any content update since Keith took over that hasn't be delayed. Shouldn't it have been 'it is our default position to delay'. Was there even a thought that it wouldn't be delayed. It might even be a good thing, but these delays seldom seem to be used to improve the content of the game or the quality of the story or the interaction of companions or adding significant new features. While that everything is delayed you would hope this would be the most highly polished game around. But its for a gear grind which appears to from what Ive seen on PTS effect maybe one or two skills possibly as little as offering an auto crit or reduced action cost. While I was just on and there was one other person in daily zones with me. It just seems lucky EA doesn't seem to impose any deadlines or minimum activity level before they sunset the game.

You will never go broke betting on Keith opting to push back a release date, 'for quality and bug' purposes. And he would be a fool not to often him pushing it back is met with more positive feedback than the content and more fiercely defended as if any of those delays have some how elevated the content, yet the game is still filled with bugs and minimal new content and fewer people around.

Yeah that sums it up pretty much. All good to say how enjoyable the pirate event was. Though from the number of people that were pissed off over the mine quest and nearly everyone just wanted to skip as much of the 4 man heroics as possible it might be argued people didn't find it fun. It did show very clearly though that the idea that hard content should be worth more, with group content just assumed as being harder than solo is flawed. Hell running through trash and fight Hugo was hardly in anyway difficult. Even after the change people just suicided to get to the door. They weren't rewarding people for being better or taking or more challenging content. The only real challenge with the heroics was if you actually wanted to enjoy the content and play it. I cant remember when Ossus came out but are we looking at roughly two bits of content for the entire year. That's not love. Think what that is, is seeing how far you can stretch the loyalty of the player base and how little you can offer and they will stick around for. Turns out if the activity in game is anything to go by, not that little. But not to worry they have a plan, another gear grind cause they are still following MMO models of 10 years ago where everything is based around getting people to run Hammer Station again and again for the 8th year running to grind out gear to replace what they have already got that is now no longer fit for the level synicing content.

I think it has more to do with the coins to credit ratio than anything else. If I'm looking to make credits though cartel market items, though does seem a little crazy as they are about the only thing worth buying, you look at what gets you the best return. If you could only sell an unlock for 1 million credits nothing is really cheap enough and useful enough to make it worth the sale now op passes are out of the market. Is it poor design, sure it could be seen as that. Or maybe it just forces preferred players to think ahead while they are subbed and buy what they think they will need and if they miss something have to sub again to get it.

What is the point in working over the summer to get this gear. Eric has said it will all be sold for credits once 6.0 drops. So instead people should unsub and run heroics till their sub runs out. Take the summer of and do other things, play other games and then come back first day of 6.0 and just buy all that gear for the credits you made running some heroics.

Because there are months between now and 6.0, people may have used that time to gear up mains and alts. Now there is no point, cause as soon as 6.0 drops just head over and buy all the best currently available gear in game for a handful of credits. Talk about the Ossus gear grind being a waste of peoples time, the only new content that the gear people worked for is a limited time event. Can you think of any MMO that puts a gear grind in that requires the number of runs of the same content as swtor just did, to then have it sold for credits after adding just 11 new very short missions, most of which are a result of waiting for the spawn and completely available 50 levels before you would even be able to equip that gear. While the crystals and tokens for that gear will be converted into less credits that if you had run a few heroics. So the only significant new content for an entire year, aside from a 2 hour story is a waste of peoples time and that's a good thing and how MMO's should act and encourage people to keep subscribed and being part of the gear grind. Also Swtor has been increasing the gear cap not with each level cap increase but with every new piece of content. ESO does not increase the gear rating with each content increase, expansion or increase to the CP level and yet is very successful, WoW puts out significantly more content per item level increase and then release content through out, STO adds new reputation with updates but the old rep items and powers and passives are still viable. .I can not think of any game that treats gear as content and its players in the way swtor does.

So to be clear, there is no point in gearing up with the Ossus weekly and Vet Mode Queen etc because come 6.0 as long as I have the reputation and a handful of credits (I take it not many as we know the conversion of crystals to credits will be poor, so the conversion the other way will be just as low) I can buy current top tier gear? Just want to make sure I got that right, cause I'm sure the people wondering if they should buy the crafted weapons will be interested to know before making the purchase. As it would appear the only new content that gear will have had any use before it is the basic starting gear for a newly minted level 70 (give or take the rep requirement) will be the limited time event? So the grind for two tiers of new gear will be obsolete before any significant new content drops and before starting Onslaught people should just pop to Ossus pick up the gear and be in the same place as people that have been grinding out crystals and 50 ranked warzones or vet mode queen fights? Cause that doesn't seem to give much incentive for people to bother gearing up over the summer. Are we looking for this Summer of SWTOR as being the Summer of PST, as there is little reason and less content to jump into the live severs?

WoW that's an impressive number of questions and answers. Do still have two concerns, along with a felling of disappointment that you are once again making already obtained materials, coms, gear etc worthless and either offering a few credits probably less than if you had received a credit payout from the mission than the now worthless gear or to be dropped into our new ESO crafting bag never to be seen again, or in fact just take up storage space while you wonder why you bothered getting it in the first place. However the concerns: 1) You will never be able to balance all these tactical and sets if they make any real difference, so you will create a system where there is a must have and this will probably be the piece you stick behind NiM or Ranked PvP; because despite few people playing it and it not being cost effective you keep trying to find enough of a carrot to get people to play NiM and ranked PvP. As Others have said many many times in other threads, this is a game its meant to be fun, if the only way you can get people to play certain content is to make the reward a must have then you are missing the point that what you are trying to get people to play is not fun in and of itself. But ultimately creating an elitist system between the haves and the have nots and the link your gear in chat so we can make sure you can join our group. 2) While claiming that its play your way, Matt and if the combat dev ever came back from leave will make no effort to balance content for all tactical and set bonuses and assume that everyone will have the best set bonus. So I see Matt trying to explain to the last Pug group how to overcome a boss fight: Matt: At this point your assassin has to use his shroud ability on himself and the healer to survive the attack. Assassin: But I don't have that ability, its locked behind NiM ops or 15 weeks of grinding Charles Points, so I'll never get it. I took the Marauder saber throw ability cause I liked it and it looked cool. Matt: ***, Marauders suck you don't want that, you need the Assassin Shroud ability, this fight is all designed around that ability. Assassin: But I don't have it. I thought we could play our way and mix and match based on our play style and what we thought was cool. Matt: Idiot. Okay the rest of you need to vote to kill this noob, put him on your ignore list so he doesn't waste your time and find an assassin with the right set bonus. Now on to the healers, they need the NIM set bonus….

I really liked Dantooine. But sadly, the devs have done there utmost to make sure people will be sick of it by tying it to one hell of a grind, if you want the rep or any of the gear. With 6.0 kills will drop gear was the new game plan, Dantooine kills don't seem to drop much of any value making the rep grind all about daily missions. Wouldn't be so bad but you then force grouping to complete the weekly. While the heroics are fine, the trash mobs are much more challenging than any of the boss fights. Which all makes it feel badly set up or at least a little odd given its not a flashpoint is meant to be 4 people or 2+ so just a random pug of possible 4 dps of vastly different levels, gear and ability. Ultimately the entire game could be vastly improved if everyone got credit for kills, so you don't have so many people spawn camping and from the talk on global chat kill and click stealing. So what is a lovely area with some nice quests will no doubt end up being too annoying with forced grouping or a massive grind where what was nice will become a second job for little reward. Much as the pig companion may look fun, most people have Blizz who is better and all honesty will sit in the roster as just another companion that is never used and not worth going the daily 50 times.

I could be wrong as I haven't spent much time on Dantooine but can't you buy some gratitude item from the rep vendor for 1 credit. I imagine it does the same thing, if it does instead of a credit sink, shouldn't this be referred to as a moron tax? You can spend 1 credit or 15 million for the same thing. Though given some people defence of subscribing to a game no matter what it offers, they could well have found people that would pay 15 million times the price for the same thing and argue that its value for credits.

In a Koth related theme, if you tell him you are done with Zakuul, and who wouldn't be after they tell you to go **** yourself when you lose the fleet I'm unclear if he deserts you at that point. It was all a little open to interpretation. It does seem the guy just wants to leave yet keeps reappearing.

I'm with not having bonuses on shells. Not so much for a good reason as others have but because Its nice to actually ware the armour I look like I'm in as opposed to the outfit designer. At some point things should look like what they are meant to be, which in the case of an MMO, if I look like I'm wearing a certain set of armour I should be in it. Perhaps this all goes back to the old days of D&D where you had the men playing female characters that were in +5 full plate but in fact looked exactly like a chain mail bikini. As crazy as it sounds a small piece of realism and appearance matching gear would be nice. As opposed to what we will have which is everyone in the most ugly assortment of mismatch pieces to get the tactical while using the holo outfit designer to make it appear otherwise.

I remember Charles and Eric both stating in live streams that a very small percentage of players do the NiM content, at one point it was not considered viable to add the GotM NIM because simply not enough people bothered with that content. It was Keith who reversed the decision to get rid of it as stated by Matt, who said that the only reason it was being worked on was Keith, which suggests it wasn't because over whelming demand by the player base and financial sense. As for PvP I know Cryptic said of Star Trek Online, if they lost every single PvPer then it would make no difference to their profits. Now its a different game and I am sure other games would fold if they lost every PvPer (i.e. battle royal style games). So they have to look at what draws people to the game. Is it that its Star Wars, then is it the lore and the story or is it teaming up with the opposing faction to play Hutt Ball that sells Star Wars. Is it the story and the dialogue system, if so is getting in a pug and working through trial and error to complete mechanics on a boss fight what draws people in. They have the metrics, did the summer of PvP bring in more players than Kotet? Did more players play through Ossus story or NIM Gotm. And at this point what will bring people back and get them to invest in that new mount, saber and outfit. I can't help feel that if you are looking to bring people back you don't want to focus on the top tier content, cause if you have quit and gone elsewhere even if that appeals you can't just jump into it you need to re-gear up , possibly find a guild and learn the new mechanics or tactics.

I want to believe this is going to work. I want to believe they are going to say screw balancing. We will allow you to play your way, customise your gear how you like, we will bring back more options with character builds through expertise, bring in racial abilities and really allow you to build your character how you want! We all know certain games do approach character builds more like this with a wide range of abilities and passives you can use. I want this to be the case, I also want lots of content and meaningful story and my companions coming back in a big way. But sadly, seen too many of these style posts where in theory it looks good and then in practice its implemented horribly, barely doing a fraction of what it sets out to do and generally screwing things up further. Where you create a culture of further elitism, where outside the 'desired' content of ranked and master mode ops you have to use Charles points as everything else drops 2% chance for increased crafting node by 1. While nobody wants you in the group unless you have that must have tactical, there is even less customisation and the Charles point conversion is so bad its either a full time grind (all over again) or just sad so it go and play something else. Which most people have said sod it play something else. Will there be enough new content to facilitate this new grind or even playing your way is it 10% new content 90% rerunning dailes, and old flashpoints, and old operations and old warzones which we all ran add infinitum to get characters to 300 galactic command which is now being wiped. How many times can you think you can get people to run the same old content for the next fraction of a carrot to possibly converted into the must have gear to be considered viable.

Can you (the devs) take one step back and remember that you removed base classes and seriously dumbed down the class progression system to a pick one very basic template and a few utilities because you could not balance the system. Now we retain the very dumbed down progression of what was at the term and still valid called, cookie cutter templates but you now are going to offer far more variety in options and what appear far more extreme powers as part of a gear grind. And your plan to balance it is, to rely on the PTS? Yet in a live environment with lots of feedback on the old style of progression you couldn't balance it, how is a few calls for nerf this or buff that or this is an fing joke going to allow you to balance it. And if you have suddenly found a new and better way to balance all these changes to powers and abilities, why not bring back the old progression system and allow for people to truly play their way crafting from the ground up how they want to play their class and what skills they want to invest in. Or are you only interested in choice and options to skills and abilities if it can some how be tied to a gear grind?

Why reset every season? Why reset at all? Your Galactic Renown level has no effect on anything, its all based on your gear level. It sounds like the seasons are going to be long and there is no reward at the end to get ranked pvp gear or anything of the sought. So it seems that the reason for the reset it some for of psychological one on the player to encourage a grind each season where they attempt to get back what has just been taken. Though this hardly seems worth while and probably only effects people suffering from computer game playing addiction, so I have to ask what is the point of resetting peoples GR when it doesn't have any effect or even having a rank for it at all? If 10 is the same as 900 then it really is a meaningless number and counter.

You say 'Play your way' which is great. You say 'Harder content will be more rewarding' which is right. However you then seem to think by harder it has to be group content with raids/operations and ranked pvp. Which seems to contradict the first two points, what you meant to say is play operations and pvp to gear up; you were even laughing at the idea that anyone would use Galactic Renown to gear up as its totally suboptimal and a supplementary option, it didn't even really tie into the diagram being out on the right. If your design is to play your way, why is there never an option for people that don't want to do raids or ranked PvP; that no longer see a night spent grinding through mechanics or being subject to win trading as fun. You spoke on the stream how the different set bonuses might require different number of parts and how this could allow mixing and matching, it was suggested that this was similar to the ESO system. Which is all a good thing, its a very good game. However all of this gear acquisition appears like you are ignoring content in place of yet another gear grind; with I'm sure the plan being to be more easily add new gear grinds as you release the next FOTM set to get people to regrind. Can we look forward to a few hours of story content all year, and then the focus being on gearing up with this uber sets as you have balanced the game and pvp round the ability for my assassin to be able to force shroud someone else? Or will a game that some consider far to easy already become trivial when my sorc can one shot lightning everything? If you are going to look to ESO, look at the levels of content they release and the play your way system. I've had max gear there for years and I don't have any great desire to grind anything out there, instead I log in to enjoy the game world, the constantly improving and added story.

I used to get exited by these but now I'm expecting one page of information wrapped in 30 mins of back slapping and possibly some give away to generate a lot of noise giving a mount or something away. 2 yellow posts in the thread posted yesterday and still on the first page. Does that not give some indication that whatever the business model that is being employed at the moment is not working. You have incredibly little content, which is constantly tied to ever increasing grinds for less and less. The story which you take no feedback on seldom inspires with large chucks showing how insignificant the character is and how awesome the current npc is. All the while ignoring the player and their companions, did you really think a few lines of dialogue, where the companion feigns surprise the player is alive followed by a I'm back now! Was doing it right or felt rewarding or worth the wait or even added much from the terminal retrieval system. While in the future, we can look forward to the current gear being made obsolete which will have lasted all of one new monthly event between it being introduced and the next tier. Along with another new skill to add to an already bloated cool down management combat system and possibly 6 more hours of story after a what year long wait. To a degree I get it, you hear people say they play cause its start wars, not for the content, the combat, the story or the PvP. So hell why add any of those things if no one is playing for them. But really look around at where the last two years of ignoring those aspects of the game has gotten you to focus on the cartel market and resurrecting

Perhaps one difficulty with balancing the game is the requirement to have a grind attached to every piece of new content. Even if you accept one grind can be purely rep based with cosmetic items, it seems that they add a flashpoint new augment level grind, new daily area 2 new tiers of gear; as they constantly have get an hour of new content to fill the 5 month gap between the next minimal update. Which means that content balanced for gear 3 or 4 updates ago is going to be easy and possibly boring because despite being able to run through all the content added in the last 4 updates in a couple of hours in reality its seen maybe 3 tiers of improved gear since the first of those updates came out. And that is of course suggesting there is any attempt to make content balanced or challenging. Most people turn their companion to pocket healer and you have a steam of healing constantly going to your character keeping you on 100% health. One way to make it more challenging would be to put your companion away but would it make it more fun, I'm not so sure probably just more grindy and given that grinding is design plan for the game it doesn't need any help there.

I want to love this game. Hell its Bioware (or as close as you get these days) the guys that made Dragon Age Origins, its Star Wars, its the game that 7 years ago had my Sith Warrior raising from an apprentice, forming a group of unlikely companions and raising to the position of Emperors Wrath. But I take a break, play other games do other things, come back and find, well little reason to log in. Other games do it better. Other games offer more content and other activities are a lot less grindy. Now fair play if it was just me, but of my guild from what I can tell no one has logged in over a year. Not one person has ever been listed on the conquest score board, there is no activity on the log even to say someone has logged into leave the dead guild. While my friend list is always 0 active players, though in either case it could be we are missing each other, its definitely a vast difference from how things once were. Even with the new guy coming into polish up the forums, they are pretty dead. An event gets delayed and no one cares; there appears to be very little anticipation for it so when its delayed, obviously the announcement is late on a Friday, its thanks for the announcement but appears to have made very little difference to any plans people had for next week. So you have to worry if when 6.0 does drop, the funding for it and anticipated player base is going to be so low, while those that are around so uninterested when it drops, that its going to have almost no impact on the game other than to add 4 hours of story and 400 hours of grinding for that one piece of gear you want, only knowing full well if there ever is any new content it will turn that 400 hour gear grind into a waste before there is anything new to use that gear on.

Wasn't this picked up while it was on the PTS? Why are you not having people test the final build?

What about how effective your efforts are going to be and will it have a positive effect on the game? You have said that its only a very small number of people that are exploiting, most views are that even if caught nothing is done so it doesn't act as a deterrent. Its currently held that even if you do ban someone you reverse the decisions as you got it wrong. It appears that the game has almost no development resource, look at the utter lack of content in the last 2 years and the quality of that content, we are talk 2 min companion returns (where there returns were delayed so they could be done right). So with those almost no existent resources, hemorrhaging players, is spending time giving cheaters and exploiters a harshly worded e-mail begging them not to do it again or they may get a 3 day ban really going to achieve anything and therefore the best use of those resources. Would not more be done to improve the situation simply be done by finding an alternative way to reward the monumental crystal therefore removing some of the intensive to win trade in ranked PvP to get the reward.

Will the big issues be addressed. Such as the lack of content and the lack of a player base or interest in the game. Overly the last 2 years (and possibly before that) the player base seems to have drastically shrunk and the forum activity has seen a massive decline probably because of a lack of belief anything will be done. Now you can have a new guy come in and make posts on what old tired 5 year old event is going to be rehashed this month, but that doesn't mean we haven't seen a new event in like 3 years and the same 3 get rolled out every few weeks. You can have some other guy come in and say win trading is an issue in Ranked PvP, great for those people that are being negatively effected by this type of unacceptable cheating. But I'd be surprised if Ranked PvP is a massive draw to this game. I can't think I've ever seen an Advert for this game telling me the reason to play is because it has Ranked PvP. While the only feedback on Story or Solo or Casual play is a hopefully the guy in charge of story is looking forward to seeing the 30 or 40 people that turn up at the Cantina event. So currently this all feels a little like a con, no new content but we will make posts about very old content and pretend its something special and new; or make posts that we will be more vigilant in season 11 of ranked PvP which fails to explain the previous lack of vigilance in the previous 10 seasons as if this were new. But ignore them, this season we will get it right. So it is looking like its the promise of more communication in place of anything done to tackle the lack of players,subscribers,interest or content.

What is the penalty for win trading? It seems to simply be having their score reset. What about the other benefits gained from exploitative behaviour, such as CXP, Unassembled components, Crystals (now both masterwork and Monumental). It seems they keep all the other rewards, so lets face it that is not much of a penalty at all. If they play fairly, probably get few rewards, they aren't win trading cause they are the best and feel sorry for others. If they cheat and get caught, lose a ranking they wouldn't have anyway but keep all the other rewards. If they cheat and get away with it, keep it all. Where is the incentive for them to play fairly? Is there not also a concern if you remove win traders, alt accounts and bots from the queue then ranked pvp will become even rarer than it already is. Also given, you believe only a very small number of people are participating in this behavior, how much impact is this going to have. The game is hemorrhaging players, there is an incredible lack of content, are we gearing up for another summer of PVP in place of content, or do you have sufficient resources now Anthem is out the door to deal with this issue and all the other issues that plague the game. As lets face it the lack of content effects everyone as opposed to a very small number of people, while there is no evidence that you actions here will have any effect other than to tie up very limited resources investigating people that you ultimately take no action against.