Really? GSF looks like an iPad game But anyway, when you look at what GW2 can do cross-server wise with what has got to be a far smaller budget from a no-name publisher and studio and compare it to SWTOR....it's ridiculous. I mean hundreds of people from 3 different servers fighting in the same castle, guilds spanning multiple servers, whispering/grouping with players on other servers, etc etc.

Some people just want to watch the world burn

Not really missing anything, anyway.

They're also finally removing veteran ranks at the end of the month, and replacing them entirely with champion points which are earned across account. Will make alts a lot more feasible now that you don't need to spend 80-90 hours after hitting endgame just to use the best gear - 160 champion points in your account will essentially make all of your chars vet 16 now. Also I like ESO's model as well - I only really care about pvp, so I bought imperial city DLC and ignored everything else without paying the subscription and it works out well for me.

Nope. ESO came out in spring 2014 for PC, and then on consoles over a year later (summer 2015).

Battlefield 1 actually looks pretty good, though.

ESO works pretty well on consoles - I play that on xbox one and it's a solid game. Aside from relying entirely on voice chat it's also fairly identical to the PC game, and tbh the voice chat is done well enough that it isn't a problem (imo). Personally I won't buy sto, and if the sub model is more restrictive than eso (wouldn't be hard) I don't see it doing well.

Well, that is just really self centered. You can't honestly expect players to go out of their way in their attempts at finding PUGs. Do you expect them to go to every planet in the game, every zone and every instance, to find a dps for an operation? If you want to participate, then be proactive about it and join a pve guild and watch guild chat while you quest. Or, create your own guild or group up with your friends - or, go on fleet and start a PUG yourself. Yeah, let's blame the players. Everything is definitely their fault and BW is just a scapegoat.

The game has already had two massive server merges, and now we see the few remaining servers are often at light population with players attempting to consolidate themselves together as much as possible. That said, I don't see the benefit of chastising players and writing them off for choosing to play the game like an mmo...when it is an mmo. The more subscriptions BW drives away, the less resources they have to create everything, and the game will suffer for it.

http://dulfy.net/2016/01/14/swtor-jan-14-producers-livestream-notes/ In the video of the stream itself, skip to 26:20 paraphrasing "Is meant to be solo challenge to test player skill, transitioning the players through the chapters and into group content" Dulfy's notes are pretty much the same thing, too. eh, I don't think that's very ambiguous. If it was just about getting starter gear, why would it be about testing skill or transitioning players - especially with FP, dailies, and of course revan/kotfe already giving easy basic crystals.

Well, the same could be said about players who actually enjoy kotfe - they're perfectly content, and if they're moreso focused on solo content anyway they're probably in a bubble and have no idea what the rest of the playerbase feels, but to them SWTOR is doing fine. But any way you look at it, kotfe is not typical content in an mmo and it's also an abrupt change in the game to suddenly have solo story content as the primary focus for the foreseeable future. Players not interested in this are being asked to patiently wait for years for whatever content interests them, when in the past BW attempted to balance all of them at the same time. This forced shift towards content many don't care about or don't enjoy is not welcome to many players, and to the players who do enjoy kotfe - what would you do if SWTOR ignored story content completely for 2 years and expected you to do flashpoints, pvp, or operations while paying $15/month for the duration?

I remember BW acknowledging the wait time for operations in group finder, and an attempt to alleviate that by making GF ops 16 player operations (where a lot more DPS can fit per pop). But apparently the matchmaking system couldn't cope with that and it was scrapped iirc. TBH when I've done operations I very rarely used group finder, but they have acknowledged in the past that content with trinity roles is typically a bottleneck in group finder. Also, every guild I've ever been in has had operations as a goal and most without ever really defining themselves as a pve guild. Players were recruited, when many players reached cap, we started doing ops. Personally I always preferred PVP but I did a lot of ops as well - but I think to just say that players who do operations are a minority isn't realistic. Maybe we're moving towards that with the way they're taking the game, but that should be viewed as a problem rather than simply the evolution of the game. I guess I kind of assumed that "non-chapter content" would mean classic mmo content (ops, etc.) but the comments about that make a good point - he would probably have said operation, he must know it's something players want.

TOS + Ravagers came out in fall 2014 - 1.5 years ago. In the open letter to us (the playerbase) BW stated that future operations are still in the early conceptual/design phase: If they're not even going to talk about this at all until the end of 2016, and they're devoting their resources to creating a 2nd wave of chapters - it will be a very, very long time before any new operations make their way onto live servers. And, let's not forget BW's promise to never go another year without a new operation which has now been surpassed, and based on this open letter will be surpassed again before we're even told the first details of future operations. WHY, then, have you created EC to "train" the playerbase how to perform in operations if operations are simply no longer a priority? Would whatever resources you spent doing this not have been better spent making an actual operation, instead of yet more single player dlc? This game is not KOTOR 3, this is an MMO. If you expect players to patiently pay $15/month for at least another year while you continue this experiment with badly written single player content as the focus of a group oriented game like an MMO - you are incredibly naive.

The faster they come out, the faster we can be done with kotfe forever.

Will SWTOR die in the foreseeable future? No. If they continue to release single player content while charging MMO fees, are MMO minded players going to continue to leave? Yes. For BioWare to have a sketchy track record with content releases and then 4 years in when players/guilds/etc are fairly established if somewhat impatient given the delays between content - just to suddenly and fundamentally shift the entire focus of the game towards single player story time, you cannot expect players who have been waiting for years for content to just be like "oh ok, that's fine." No, just no. Do you realize that after another lengthy delay between operations (just as an example) they told the playerbase there would never be another delay like that - and now based on the Dev's open letter it is apparent this delay (which has already been surpassed) will now be doubled? But yeah progression guilds who fall apart are all stupid because they don't see how awesome kotfe is, right?

ugh 16 left, they can drag kotfe out well into 2017

He's right. I've played other MMOs that have far better pay models, examples being: ESO: With the current model, without subscribing you get full access to the entire base game as well as as crag lorn which was the 1st expansion released. Every additional expansion/dlc is optional, but not having them will not block you from anything e.g, they are all isolated from one another and you can easily reach max level without them, and do as many dungeons or spend as much time in the pvp area as you want (or whatever you like). Most of them are focused on pve, and I only bought one of them as it was actually pvp focused and in total I've spent about $40 on this game. If you subscribe, you obviously get access to every additional area as well as a slightly increased XP but the difference is added to the normal base XP. GW2: No subscription model at all, and is supported through the in-game cash shop which is far superior to SWTOR's cartel market. Nothing is reskinned versions of previous additions, and no nothing is P2W but they actually put effort into this shop while simultaneously frequently releasing content in their living story campaign (they often promote that as free DLC every two weeks). They did charge $50 for their last expansion, although that is substantially less than you would pay SWTOR while waiting between their "expansions."

retrograde amnesia caused by the imperfect carbonite freezing process (as referenced by valkorian). Actually, would be logical because that is often an affect of anesthesia (perhaps a few hours worth of events immediately before it was administered, etc.) which I suppose would be fairly similar to carbonite freezing.

You must be new here. Welcome to KOTOR 3. Anyway, just as an example, they stated in the past that there would never be another lengthy delay between operations but that delay has already been surpassed pretty substantially. And, if future operations are at best in the concept phase the delay will likely be doubled. And, if that is only happening at all because of their surprise at backlash against kotfe then it just shows how incredibly naive they actually are at BioWare Austin, and imo necessitates clear communication all the more. Like, actual communication with tangible timelines and not just stupid jokes about things coming "soon," as though being charged $15/month for single player dlc in an mmo and just being expected to wait indefinitely for mmo content is hilarious.

it would be 95% about kotfe and 5% marketing claptrap about how ops and you know, actual mmo content, is being worked on but is at best in the preliminary concept stages - although they'd probably say something like more information was coming soon and think it was cute to use their own terrible communication as some kind of joke (again).

Yes! ...as long as your smuggler/jedi/sith/everybody made the same choices as bioware's outlander omniclass

The faster kotfe is over and done with, the better

they probably wanted to wait until the rishi map was "ready," so they could talk both up at the same time and show everyone how awesome swtor pvp is but tbh it would not surprise me at all if they literally just forgot

well, he has a point though. Like, they spend time on this, when it's been a year and a half since they added an operation and will likely be at least another year before it happens? People are tired of waiting for mmo content while being charged mmo subscription fees, and BW just keeps releasing single player rpg story chapters that are not mmo content. And, releasing frivolous stuff like this just makes people wonder where there priorities are - because if they have resources that are not tied up in kotfe, why aren't they doing something constructive with that?

I vaguely remember reading here that the warzone and op passes for F2P are very unpopular, like they dont sell a lot of them at all. I suppose that means most people content with f2p are content with the story stuff and leveling from 1-50, which I also suppose is one reason BW is pushing into more story content - to try and encourage these ppl to subscribe.