This is the question though. Does the game go down fighting trying to revitalize itself or do we just accept that it is in maintenance mode. Maintenance mode is what Broadsword does, but there were all these people touting Broadsword taking over as developer as the start of some golden age. Nothing that is done with any of the group content has any chance at all of revitalizing the game, but a big story drop might prime the pump enough to get those other aspects of the game back on their feet. If we are not going to even make an attempt to increase the game's population we might as well just go down the path of repeating the old content over and over and making new reskins for the cartel market, Forget about doing anything with the existing content and just focus on fixing the bugs so that when the game does eventually shuts down, at least it will be more or less bug free.

True, but to blame the story itself for all the problems isn't correct. It was the implementation that was flawed. If they had dropped it all as one dump and then used the follow up sub-expansions to address group play, things would have worked out better. Heck, there are even chapters that would have made good operations themselves with just a but of tweaking. The way they dropped the first 9 chapters seemed to indicate it was mostly complete when they launched. I suspect it was done that way to milk subscriptions for an extended period of time (which of course the players found a way around).

Yeah, that was a problem created by Bioware. Each chapter was pretty short. I played it both ways, chapter by chapter and all at once and the all at once way was much better. It occupied you longer and you didn't lose track of the story between releases.

Three email addresses and 3 credit cards would be my guess

I would say based on the total number of players in both camps that there are likely more subbed "story" players than subbed PVP players (even before 7.3). Back before F2P, "story players" still probably outnumbered PVPers though the numbers were much closer. That being purely a result of the larger number of story players. The other problem is how to define the difference between "story" and "PVP" players. Where do you draw the line? Does someone who does the weekly several times in a month but plays story the rest of the time count as a PVPer or story player. If someone comments in the PVP forum, does that make them a PVPer and not a story player. It's really a silly argument about which group "payed" more into SWTOR. That title probably goes to the CM whales.

EA would never do it but I think it would be interesting to see the percentages of subscribers that identify themselves as PVPers vs Raiders vs Story (subs are probably not he main revenue source anymore though - population is too low for that). I think we would all be surprised to some extent how many people are subbed but don't play group content regularly. I personally only play group content now within a guild (no solo queuing at all anymore) but stay subbed because I have a guild to manage. Well, and over 50 characters on Star Forge at various stages of playing through the storyline.

I think it is fine to include it with something else, but as a primary focus I feel it falls flat as only a very small percentage of the game population will even notice the change. Does it matter to the majority of players, no I don't thinks so. Does it matter to a subset of the PVP player base, I'm sure it does. My bigger problem with it is that balancing for PVP and balancing for other content are often at odds. I would prefer they go to a mode more like GSF where everyone in PVP starts with the same stats (based on role) and allow people to buy upgrades with points earned from PVPing. That way you can remove gearing from PVP entirely as a factor and amount of time played becomes the deciding factor. I hope that more clearly explains my position

Sure, include PVP balancing with the big new story drop. I'm fine with that. You seem to think that my post is about just do story and nothing else. It is in fact about boosting the number of players in the game, then the PVPers and Raiders have more population to work with.

No you're not. You yourself even admitted that story brings in players and what we need now is players. You are saying don't do story because an expansion 7 years ago didn't implement it correctly for everyone. I'm pretty sure PVP class balancing is pretty low on everyone's list except for the small percentage of people that are hardcore PVP players (as opposed to the entire game community) Resources can be increased or redeployed. Extending the update cycle is another way to go at it. A big story expansion every two years would be an improvement over what we have seen for the last 7. It doesn't have to be on the scale of KotFE/KotET. Something the size of Rise of the Hut Cartel or Revan would do wonders to bring the game population back up to a more sustainable level.

My point exactly. There wasn't enough of it to move the needle. When I said "no story" I meant "no significant story" but fine I'll take your shot on that one.

Nice to see we are two pages in and there has been no alternative way of bringing players in brought up. Just continuous attacks on story content as the "evil that destroyed SWTOR". How about some of you that think KotET and KotFE were terrible suggest how they could have been done better.

Well since there was no real story added in 7.3 you can't blame those numbers on the story.

How so. The story content since KotET has been miniscule and pathetic at best. All of it together doesn't even amount to as much as the Rise of the Hutt Cartel and that was a pretty small expansion. Most of the post KotET story has been recycled group content (like the traitor arc flashpoints) or massively linear content.

And over the last 7 years they have gone out of their way to drive people who like the Star Wars story from the game.

That had a lot to do with playing PVP requiring a subscription. which is why I have said over and over again that to get a new influx of players they need to put out substantial story. The MMO pieces don't bring in players in any significant numbers. Story isn't the be all and end all any more than any of the group play aspects but what this game needs desperately now is an influx of players. If even 5% of them stayed after it would be an improvement on what we have now. Well, I liked them and a lot of other players liked them as well. Were they perfect no. But they showed what a substantial story drop could do for the population. Like them or hate them, you cannot deny they coincided with the biggest increase in game population ever (you can argue it was some other reason if you like but the fact still is, they were significant in size and kept people busy for a considerable time - certainly more than any other content addition since)

When it is by far most of the content released, yes. You also forgot all the flashpoints they added which they tried to pass off as story but were really dumbed down group content with a few cutscenes. It dipped quickly because there was almost no story at all. People showed up for the new story burned through it in an hour or two (and the ending flashpoint was horribly bugged) and then saw nothing else that interested them and left. GS seasons, as far as I can tell, along with conquest is pure MMO content. All MMOs use grinding to extend player "participation" There is no MMO that doesn't have a significant amount of grind in it. Lack of actual content is the problem and that is why we need a big influx of players and as I said, story is the only reliable way to bring in players but it needs to be significant. An hour here or there isn't going to do anythnig.

three operations with multiple difficulty levels, and a bunch of flashpoints compared to about a grand total of 10 or 12 hours of story (and generally bad story at that because it was delivered through group content during part of that run.

You make my point exactly here. Players join the game for the story making it by far the best way to increase game population

You are completely wrong here. Without significant story to draw in players, the MMO parts fail (we haven't had any significant story since KotET and the game population has continued to collapse even though they have added MMO content almost exclusively). You can't blame story for the continuation of the collapse when there hasn't been any in 7 years..

Not kidding at all. It was the biggest influx of players since launch by far. You clearly hated the story and that colors your opinion of it's effect. The reason they cut KotET short was the bellyaching of group players that they didn't get enough new content and that ruined KotET as a whole with the rushed storylines and cut content. It didn't retain players well, which is true but it doesn't change the fact that the biggest increase in the game's population occurred with a big story drop. We have focused on non-story content now for 7 years and are we better off now than we were then, I think not. The focus for the last 7 years has been a failure and it's time to go back to something that at the very least will bring in new players You can't retain players you don't have and no other content in the game has shown any indication it can bring in new players.

A lot of those out of game systems developed because Bioware allowed toxicity in chat to run rampant and people just got sick of it. How many people play with only Guild chat open as well.

The game has been bleeding players for years now and all the attempts at retaining players have basically failed. The only content that showed any indication of bringing in lots of players was story content like KotFE and KotET (whether you liked them or not, they brought in tons of players). Dev efforts would be better spent bringing in lots of new players and then finding a way after that to retain rather them than spending time trying to retain current players with minor tweaks to the game. Those tweaks are not going to bring back any significant number of players and what the game needs now is a big infusion of players. Perhaps the devs don't have enough resources to pull off a big story drop, but the status quo is not working. That said, the story needs to take a new direction. Both the Sith Emperor and Darth Malgus storylines have worn out their novelty (one could even say that the Malgus storyline was nothing more than a continuation of the Sith Emperor storyline with a new antagonist). No matter how many times you kill or defeat them, they kept coming back. Conquest has just about worn out its attraction as well and with the flop that was GS5, Galactic Seasons is on the ropes too. What kind of storylines do people think would infuse new life into the game? I think a "new" threat from outside the galaxy, sort of like the yuuzhan vong, would be a fresh story (for the game anyway) that would appeal to both Force Users and non-Force Users. Having them invade both Republic and Imperial space at the same time would give both sides something to fight and even give light sided Imperials and dark sided Pubs a way to "fight for" their preferred faction. You could even make a new type of warzone where NPCs are continually spawning and attacking both sides. An operation could be based on establishing a beachhead against further invasion or even taking the fight to the invaders and flashpoints could be designed around turning back the invasion on different "Outer Rim" worlds. Please keep comments constructive as "Story sucks" and "The Devs don't have the time for that" type comments don't help at all. At the same time if you have a good idea outside story that will bring in a lot of new players, feel free to lay that out along with why you think it would be a big draw for increasing the game population. The end goal is to bring in lots of players, whatever the content might be.

I don't know, do they?

See, that is the difference between "casual" PVPers and "Pros". The casuals group up to play with friends and the Pros group up to gain an advantage or find a challenge. It's why making adjustments to PVP based only on comments from the "experienced" PVP players is problematic. The "casual" PVPer and the "Pro" have different ideas of what they find enjoyable (or important) about PVP.

It's not that there is a difference between casuals and hardcore PVPers in premades (since they are usually from guilds there is a good chance of there being a mix), its that the loudest complainers about the existence of premades (people who want them out of the "solo" queue) are people who are definitely hardcore PVPers. Hardly a misinformed opinion when you can see by the post history of those complaining what their "status" is. To add something to the discussion about PVP improvements. I'd like to see a dedicated 8 vs 8 and 4 vs 4 that are exclusive to guilds (with conquest rewards different from the normal solo queue). So that guilds can challenge each other to a warzone or arena competition without worrying about getting grouped in the normal solo queue. No need for a guild to be a dedicated PVP guild in order to engage in a little friendly competition with another guild. The negative I guess would be that it would reduce the pop times in the solo queue as it would likely reduce the number of players queuing in that manner. Edit: added note about dedicated guild 4v4 and 8v8