DWho
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Posts posted by DWho
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I'm curious though how many people go to the actual length of logging a ticket against someone who breaks ToS with their chat activity? I mean I don't agree with the assessment of the chat but I am curious if it's a fact BWA do nothing about this sort of thing or if reported appropriately how do we know nothing is done to the offending account?
I would think if indeed nothing is done then this is a hot question for Eirc and Keith to answer on why not? Given the game rating there must be a very thin line around the age of players they allow in and the game doing absolutely nothing to prevent some of the content that goes into chat along with levels of bullying that can at times be noticed.
Imo "just use ignore" is not a valid response.
I think people do report it and something is done at some point. The problem is the chat continues until someone responds to the ticket. That could be a matter of minutes or a matter of hours depending on what server, the time of day it is for the person responsible for responding to these kinds of tickets, and the amount of time it takes to investigate whether it is a spurious complaint (a moderator can make that determination in real time and mete out immediate penalties - which is in my opinion a very effective deterrent). Also since there is no immediate response, there is no deterrent to someone else deciding to do the same thing or continue in the same direction (or even the same person just switching characters). The more immediate and visible the response, the more impact it is going to have on deterring that type of activity.
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I'll throw my .02 in here.
I recently resubbed after three years away from the game. The game is great.
I play on Harb. IMP side. Its the most toxic, disgusting chat I've seen in any game, ever. Period. Bar none.
I would love to see even Harb being more active, I use the queue alot, so there are times when a queue takes forever to pop.
My concern win merging any server is not names, or RPs, its the community.
If/when you guys merge some servers can you guys commit to having a GM presence in chat? ITs going to be more active, and more toxic.
Let me be clear, I'm all for a little saltiness from time to time. But sexist, political, racist, the most disgusting things you could imagine are in chat IMP side on fleet.
So, can you guys commit to GMs stepping in? Can you guys commit to being in chat from time to time to keep the population , the new merged community, from turning into Barrens chat from 2004
I agree with this and the Pub side isn't much better on Harb. I know there are people out there that think this is a "special snowflake" concern but it is a serious concern for anyone who has their children playing this game. Its all fine a good for the adults but there are a lot of people younger than 18 playing this game
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Correct. It seems to be the pvp people whining the loudest. Ebon Hawk is doing fine but they ignore this and then want to push RP into an instance which will not work as that will not stop troll and griefers but they turn a deaf ear to that because they want one thing , more pvp but even with mergers that may not happen as not everyone pvp.
What is the reasoning behind the idea that an RP server must be merged. Why can't it be kept as a separate server? Is it that it bleeds of population from the random grouping mechanism? or is there some other reason the RPers can't have their own server?
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Looking at the tor status site that tracks the server population
This is a very bad way to track server population since it simply applies a value of 1 to a server when it is in Light status and 2 when it is in standard status then averages that value over how many points were taken. A server that is at 5% of Light shows up as the same as one at 95% of Light despite the server populations being massively different.
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I agree it seems to mainly be the pvp crowd that wants server merges. As somebody who plays on JC I see no need for it, it get groups and pops for whatever I want when I want it. I might have to wait a few minutes never more than 5 minutes or so and I am okay with that. The server is far from dead, I am very happy with it the way it is, I have not seen anything during my play time or in this thread that makes me see it differently. In fact if I am forced to switch servers and lose my names and have to redo all of my strongholds I am going to be very very unhappy.
I have to agree with this. I do not see an immediate need for a server merger (simply adding a warning on character creation for the old PVP servers should be enough to dissuade those who want to be on a high population server from creating a character there - there is already a warning that it is a PVP server) but I think we do need to look down the road at a time when it may be necessary and try and work out the difficulties before that time comes and some of those fixes would benefit the game currently even without a server merge (like allowing guilds to move intact to a different server - this would be an excellent test of any merger systems related to guilds - and cutting the garbage talk in chat a lot of which is not suitable for younger players).
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I thought of another thing that would need to be addressed. What happens if you have extensive legacies on two of the servers being merged. If I understand what I have read, the oldest is retained and the other ceases to exist. This is potentially a problem for players that have been playing for a long time and have extensively unlocked legacies on more than one server. Some of those unlocks were very expensive either in game credits or real money (CCs). Deleting one of the legacies essentially wipes away the entire investment in the second legacy.
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This is what I've been saying for months now.
West Coast:
The Harbinger PvE
Begeron Colony RP
East Coast:
The Shadowlands and Jedi Covenant merged PvE
The Ebon Hawk RP
Europe:
The Red Eclipse PvE
The Progenitor RP
But APAC is never gonna happen. It's not coming back. :/
Yes, this is the ideal situation (more or less) but there are numerous technical hurdles that need to be cleared before this can proceed so an imminent server merger like this is unlikely. As noted by several others the loss of assets in the merge is a major concern and these issues need to be worked out before any server mergers commence (and should probably be tested with a small merge like a PVP server to a larger server so that it can be more easily reversed if it goes badly). Also of concern are competition for objectives in excessively populated map instances and toxic chat that will come with large server size. There are some people that prefer to play on less populated servers because of the later two points. If these issues could be resolved, the resistance to server mergers would likely drop substantially.
This type of merger will also likely take the game down for an extended period of time, and based on the number of complaint threads that pop up when completion of maintenance is delayed by an hour, could be an impetus to drive people away. It needs to be handled very carefully.
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They don't even need that. Just have some guy on-call who reviews the chat logs when someone is reported. He can read a text file on his cell phone...generate an email report that he can review. It could not be simpler.
Yes, but a moderator would be a more immediate impact. Through the report system it could take an hour or more and that person could have gone on that whole time ruining many more people's experience. A moderator could cut it off after a minute or two. Dealing with it in "real-time" would be more effective I think.
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That was an example and a rhetorical question about JC as I know everyone who does Master Mode/NiM Ops on the server. As for EH, Shadow Council is dead (Rip Narsh PogChamp) and the only one remaining Eon moved on to Harb a while ago.
It's bad having nothing to offer returning raiders except things far beneath their skill.
For those of you interested in the raiding community on JC, take a look at this thread. Maybe not up to Harbinger standard but certainly appears active.
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=920634
There is also someone recruiting a 16 man HM DP for tonite if you are looking for that content to complete
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If Jonny is being a D-bag, you can still report him in a ticket. However, if someone is just not the best player in the world and Jonny wants to be a D-bag about it in general chat, then it will do him no good to bash the player who is new to the content and not up to Jonny's expectations.
They could put a moderator online (I'm sure there would even be volunteers among the community) in the most egregious areas (fleet and starter worlds) with the ability to "silence" someone for a period of time in response to their comments or even "kick" them from the server for some period of time. That way it would be an immediate response instead of something that may or may not happen in the future.
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Something that's been thrown around before to help with the low population is a designated free server transfer for whole legacies.
They would have to be a one off all legacy transfer to predetermined servers. Certain servers that maybe seen as ones depopulating would not be available destinations.
Once the transfer was complete, that legacy wouldn't be able to receive a free transfer again and any transfer after that would need to be paid for.
This would enable new, returning and current players on servers who can't get group content or players who want to get away from certain server cultures, a chance to relocate those legacies to more active servers.
If, in the future the internal Bio statics show a sever has basically depopulated beyond Biowares internally set guidelines for it to be viable, then that server could be merged with an active one. At that point it would be safe to assume most of those being merged would be inactive accounts
Keith, there are lots of reasons for mergers and lots of reasons against mergers. Why not let the players make the initial decision by giving us "free" whole legacy transfers, similar to how a merge would happen anyway. Let people's feet do the talking.
I think it is a good idea. It would be relatively simple to implement (sort of like a small server merge) and would allow the players that feel that the impediment to their moving servers is the number of characters they have. It would also leave those that want to play on the medium population servers in an environment to their liking. Alternatively, if cross server queuing doesn't work on a broad scale, would it be simpler if the transfer was only to and from a specific server (say to a specific Nightmare OPs/Ranked PVP server) and then back to their original server instead of potentially going to server A one time server B the next time. Server lag would potentially be an issue so it would likely have to be a regional server. I think point to point lag within the US, for example, is sub 100 ms for everyone (doesn't really help APAC out though). I am assuming that PVP warzones are on the server you currently queue on and not a completely different server.
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😳😳 oh wow, I just never thought people would go to that extreme. The depths people go to is mind boggling.
And sorry I hadn't read through all the pages yet to get to your post. Thanks for reposting it. 😊
It is really sad that people would go out of their way in this manner to make other peoples game experience bad. In a lot of ways, griefers, ruined the possibility of open world PVP on most planets by standing on objectives to prevent people from completing missions or otherwise interfere with people trying to complete missions. It did go both ways where people would use the "PVE shield" to take advantage which is griefing as well (though I sometimes wondered if that wasn't a griefers tactic just aimed at PVP players instead of PVE players). Unintended flagging was one of the reasons PVP was changed to an instance on all servers.
Even more sad is that it only takes a very few to ruin it for everyone.
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I've seen quite few people say that they enjoy 'dead'/quiet servers and do not wish to play on high population servers. The client settings could help there. There is a setting most of you seem to overlook. It may be enough as it is or maybe additionally improved.
If you got to Preferences => Graphics => Visible Character Limit you can control how many players you see around you. They may even add as an option None. Other UI elements, such as number of people in instance or Chat can be turned off and you'd feel like you've got whole galaxy to yourself
Would this be a satisfactory solution to those players?
I think it is less about how many characters they see than the perceived difficulty of completing the content. On lower population servers you don't have to worry that someone is going to rush past you and grab the objective you are fighting in front of (Having done 9 DvL characters on Harbinger, that was a constant problem there and I took to ignoring the fight and grabbed the objective first even if it meant dying as a result - I never did go past the lvl 25 mark on them for a variety of reasons related to that server). There is also a substantially lower probability of having a troll (defined however you want to) in chat. While they are present on every server, the likelihood they are on when you are is lower on lower population servers. Turning off chat also turns off the messages you might want to see, like "LFG", and ignoring them only stifles their comments not the comments replying to them which can be just as hostile. Your ignore list can grow quite rapidly. I don't play a lot on low population servers but these are the reasons I do go and play on them when I do.
If they could adjust the map instancing to a lower number, say 50, I think there would be less concern about highly populated servers. The objectives available on the starter planets are pushed to the limit once the population goes past 100 in the instance. A chat moderator with the ability to silence "offenders" would also be nice.
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I am curious as to what the guild status is of people on both sides of this argument. A server merger has the potential to have a severe impact on guilds, especially the smaller ones. Are more people in guilds against mergers, for mergers, or is it evenly split.
Myself, I am in a relatively small guild but we have a nearly fully unlocked guild flagship, a fully unlocked Yavin stronghold, and a seven tab guild bank that is full. This took a lot of effort to accomplish. Reforming the guild roster on a new server probably would not be a huge problem but transferring or losing guild assets or having to repurchase them would be. Merging the big servers would also ensure that we were not competitive at all in Conquest (which is hard enough as it is with some guilds putting up a million conquest points only hours into the event).
I am for merging the small PVP servers into the larger servers (with the caveat that that merger needs to be as seamless as possible) but against a merge at this time of JC and Shadowlands due to their size.
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Alright if that is true, lets for argument sakes say I'm a raider looking for a NiM team with an open spot. And I mean real one not, I did SnV 6/7 and Nefra overgeared. Go ahead I'll wait since it's such a healthy server shouldn't take you a while.
You are talking about an activity that maybe 0.5% (made up number but it is a small fraction of the total community) of the population of the game participates in and trying to use that as a measure of the health of a server. It is a measure of total population and that is all (and total population does not equal health). Nobody has said that all activities are equally playable on all servers but that the populations are large enough that most players can play the content they want the way they want.
If I saw convincing evidence that the issues with Ranked PVP and Nightmare mode operations could be fixed with a server merger without negatively impacting the rest of the community, I would be happy to support it. However, there are a lot of negative impacts that need to be outweighed by something else or addressed before I am prepared to support the size of the merger that some people seem to want. I do support merging the PVP servers with the PVE servers just not big servers like JC and Shadowlands.
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As I recall, didn't someone else on the other thread that was (justifiably, I think) removed take several sets of screenshots over the course of a day comparing the populations of Harbinger and Shadowlands on the fleet and on starter planets at different times? If I'm remembering correctly, those consistently showed Shadowlands as having about 80% the activity of Harbinger. Sometimes the starter planet populations on Shadowlands even outnumbered Harbinger! Now, I don't play on Shadowlands myself, so I have no personal experience to compare those screenshots to, but those kinds of numbers don't sound like a 'dead' server to me...
It was me and it was JC that I took screenshots of. I didn't take screenshots of Shadowlands. However, the survey of Shadowlands I did earlier that week showed that it too was far from dead.
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No, you made that up.
No, it was dead on the wrong target, a complete miss. You just want to lie with this. Where did I say there was something wrong with the other thread?
You are incorrect. It was me that said it and I will say it again so that you can read it. I have no problem getting any of the group content I want to participate in within the normal prime time for the server. unranked WZs pop every 3-5 minutes, I can run story mode flashpoints with only about a 15-30 minute wait (which is pretty good since nobody runs anything other than the solo ones from GC anyway). I run 3 Operations a week with my guild (all Hard mode). I have no problem buying or selling what I want on the GTN and prices are reasonable.
As far as outside of Prime time goes, it is unreasonable to expect group content pops to be good when it is the middle of the night in the time zone of the server and before you go "but Harbinger does", I would point out that Harbinger effectively has 2 prime times that overlap (one for the US and one for APAC which results in an overall extended prime time). Merging two servers in the same time zone will do nothing to change the population drop off outside prime time.
Your problem is using Group Finder to do the content not that the content is not being done. Your assertion that because you cannot get a pop through group finder means that the content is not being done due to low populations is incorrect.
And since you are going to say I am lying (since that is what you do when someone disagrees with you), let me put this bluntly. There is no reason to believe anything you say either.
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That didn't take long. The comments on the previous threads said the opposite, including one poster who went into great detail about how little group activity was available on Jedi Cov, and that the market had droughts on goods as well. I just think you've flat out lied here.
And you are forgetting another poster that said just the opposite Mr. Kennedy
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Even IF (and that is a HUGE IF) BW were to get the merge process 100% perfect and players lost no personal assets and guilds were merged intact with all guild assets intact, there are still the issues of server populations/communities.
Many people are very happy on their current servers.
Some players prefer a lower population. Some do not want to spend all their time fighting over resources or quest objectives. While it is possible at times to move to another instance, all too often there is only one instance with a population some players find to be too crowded, often just beneath the threshold for a new instance to be created.
Some prefer a more respectful and responsible community than one will find on Harbinger, the highest population server and also the server with the highest percentage (and number) of players who display "less than desirable" behavior. Some do not even want to think about being forcibly merged into the cesspool that is Harbinger.
These are very important points. Excessive competition for mission objectives is a very frustrating situation. If you want an example, look at how difficult it is to complete the bonus mission for the Coruscant heroic Face Merchants. You get to the area and there are already half a dozen people standing around waiting to jump the spawn when it materializes. Now take this situation and apply it to many of the mission objectives on Tython, Coruscant, Korriban, and Dromund Kaas (the kill X NPCs or find X components missions). I played this game when there were 150 people on the starter planets and it was very frustrating to be lined up 5 or 6 deep on mission objectives, or worse, you wait your turn and then someone jumps in and ninjas the objective. High population brings out the worst in people (ninjas, chat bullies, harassment, chat sewers), Harbinger is a good example of all the things that can go wrong with a high population. Just sit in chat for a while on fleet there and you can see how disgusting it gets.
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Ranked PVP does pop of JC but only when guilds are active doing it (meaning that the majority of ranked PVPers are in guilds and thus plan their ranked PVP). The ranked PVP population is tiny on both servers so merging them would have no significant effect on Ranked PVP pops. For a very long time PVP activity has been migrating to Harbinger and away from the East coast servers.
Furthermore, neither JC nor Shadowlands are low pop servers. I had posted in the previous thread the observed populations for both including screenshots for JC and Harbinger. The lowest comparison of JC to Harb populations I found was was 80% of Harb at 10 pm Eastern (end of prime time for the east coast and in the middle of prime time for west coast).
Someone also posted TorStatus numbers that indicated that there had been a -0.1 population change during the week on JC which was at 0.99 at the time. That means that JC had to have reached Standard population at some point during the week to get to 1.1 on the population measurement in order for it to be a -0.1 change at 0.99. If a server can get to Standard population it is hardly a low pop server when Harbinger only gets there about a third of the time.
The only servers that should be considered for mergers are the old PVP servers and even then, people on those servers need to be taken into account. So the answer to the question should JC and Shadowlands be merged is No.
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Has anyone else noticed a drop off in people logged in since the roadmap was released?
Both TEH and Harbinger have been pretty dead since it happened. There are still people about, but it seems there is a noticeable drop in the last day.
Is there some holiday or something happening in the US because I can usually get pvp pops with in 2-3 mins at this time and it's more like 1-2 matches an hour at the moment. That's if there is even a full team on both sides.
No real drop off on JC. Fleet between 90 and 100 and Starter planets around 70 where they have been for the last week. I did notice that Harbinger is running higher than usual on fleet at the moment but lower than normal on the starter planets, so maybe the apparent dropoff was transitory.
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Start at 65 and Start at 70 tokens pretty much killed lowbies and midbies PVP. That along with the accelerated rate XP is gained now compared to a couple years ago means that most people are getting to lvl 70 before starting PVP. The midbies and lowbies PVP on JC has been weak (or really non-existent) for a while now. Lvl 70 PVP is still pretty good with pops in prime time between 3 and 5 minutes and outside of prime time not too much longer. If all you do is PVP then JC is probably not the server for you. If you do a mixed bag (PVP, Ops, Story) its pretty good. As far as GF goes, JC is more heavily Guild oriented than a lot of other servers so much of the Flashpoints (what little is done outside the solo stuff in GC), Uprisings, and Operations are handled through guild groups. If you are doing a lot of group content, I would recommend finding a good guild especially if you want to do anything outside of Story Modes.
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Jedi Covenant is a friendly and fairly active server. It is a little less populated than Ebon Hawk. Harbinger is the biggest server and caters to a large PVP contingent. The community there can be a little caustic. Shadowlands is less populated than Ebon Hawk, Jedi Covenant, and Harbinger but the community seems nice. Ebon Hawk has a strong roleplay (RP) community. JC, Ebon Hawk, and Shadowlands are East Coast Servers, Harbinger is a West coast server.
Server Merge Discussion Thread
in General Discussion
Posted
Another 16 man HM getting organized on JC for those interested.
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=923926