The next two-three weeks will show us some truth of the situation because the one month reoccurring subscriptions will leave or stay and we will see if Kieth’s post about the March 22nd patch does anything to stop the player exodus. If his post does stem the bleeding, they better hope they deliver everything as perfectly as possible on the 22nd of March or people will keep leaving. We should know by the end of April-May if this expansion has killed the game.

It would appear that a blind person who can’t hear or feel, has as much “Vision” as the leaders of this swtor team. Except the blind person’s “Vision” is kept in a vacuum, that we will never be able to see or hear what they hear and or feel what they feel because they can’t communicate it to us. The difference is Bioware has the tools to communicate and they choose not to. They use spin and marketing jargon and double down on poor decisions instead of expressing their “Vision” in real communication or finding out if the players can adequately experience their “Vision”. That is what the problem is and why they are failing. This team hasn’t learnt how to communicate it properly and just when staff do learn, they leave or get promoted to a different team and the process has to start all over again (and I don’t mean JackieKo). It’s why we feel like we’re on this merry go round of old mistakes being rehashed all the time. It’s the team leaders who need to learn to communicate their “vision” to the players and to learn to understand if that “vision” is something the players want, like or will hate. They live in a vacuum of their own ideas and egos and the players be damned. They don’t care about or respect the players at all. At least the Blind person in my opening paragraph has a reason for not being able to communicate, Bioware doesn’t. This game will never replenish the players it has lost over the years. It’s an old game that has old technology behind it. EA and Bioware aren’t willing to invest the funds to upgrade the engine or redevelop the game so it runs properly. They will never get the influx of new players they are hoping for and they should except that. Instead Bioware should be trying to accommodate their existing player base and making the game the best it can be for the majority of those players. With as much story, content and QOL improvements that they can afford. Which would actually bring back older players and some newer players. Instead of this extreme risk taking type of development that drives players away in the hope they get new players. It never works and we always end up with less players each time they do it. Even us die hard players who’ve been loyal subscribers for 10 years have finally had enough of it. When your biggest fans and loyalists start leaving and telling you you’re wrong, you know you’re doing the wrong thing. Keith, Chris or anyone at EA or Bioware still reading this, I’ll leave you with a segment of and interview and quote from Elon Musk: Elon Musk strongly values feedback, positive or negative. In the interview, he was quoted to have said, “really pay attention to negative feedback and solicit it… Hardly anyone does that, and it’s incredibly helpful.” There are just too many reasons why you should prioritize feedback as a leader. This can range from helping to boost transparency, create a clearer picture, conduct performance evaluations to make improvements. https://aboutleaders.com/elon-musk-leadership-style-13-strategies-for-excellence/ So Bioware, use our negative feedback and turn it into a positive to make the game better for the players. Don’t ignore it and only listen to the positives because you’ll miss the bigger picture and continue to lose players .

Did exactly that. Just waiting for the sub time to run out as I can’t play because the UI gives me headaches. No apologies from BioWare or refund or extra sub time given. The lack of customer care and service has dropped lower than I ever thought possible for an active subscription game that wasn’t being shut down. They can easily see how many hours I’ve been able to play since 15th February. I won’t be giving EA or BioWare my money ever again.

I’ve been reliably told they haven’t switched the font back and is still an issue for players who have eye sight issues. Can you confirm that? Because if the font is still the same, the UI/UX will still be a problem for some people like myself.

That’s great that you got through it. But you didn’t compare you’re experience from before 7.0 to this version. Is it indeed harder, easier or the same. If it’s you’re favourite, then you’re probably pretty good at clearing it and know the best tactics. So I’m sure having you compare the difference would be helpful for this discussion. It would also be great if you could redo it once you hit lvl 80 with the new gear and report back.

No, I have that graph active permanently and the 30 day numbers changed radically the 1st March. From what I can tell, the minus or plus numbers you see are based on the increase of player numbers from the previous average for the month. They aren’t the actual subscriber or free to play numbers. The data is limited to do a real deep dive. I also don’t understand why there are fractional numbers of players. That part makes no sense unless it has to do with people downloading, but not logging in to play. Or there is a time requirement to say you logged in and actually played before it records as a whole number.

What and who am I pandering too? I made the thread to show that numbers have dropped and are on a downward spiral. Am I somehow pandering to BioWare by saying that? All I pointed out with my response to you, was you were using the graphs wrong.

The cynic in me, plus how quickly Keith’s post appeared after the thread I made, makes me think you’re close to the mark. I wish I wasn’t, it shouldn’t be this way. We need better communication from him more often. Other producers at other games do it even when news is bad and they apologise if there is a problem. BioWare and Keith can’t even apologise to players who can’t play because of the headache inducing UI changes or the Ryzen bug. They haven’t even offered these players a refund or extra sub time to compensate. They offer nothing, not even remorse or empathy.

Have you done it since 7.0 landed? I haven’t, so I can’t compare. But is it possible that the ability pruning, stat scaling and companion nerfs have made it too hard again for some people?

I dont think so.

Also reading the website data incorrectly.

Dude you are reading the data on the website wrong. It’s now March, so the 30 days setting resets to the beginning of March. Look at the graphs for 1 month, 3 months and 6 months and you can easily see we are approaching the same amount of players as before 7.0 landed.

No, and it seems from Keith’s recent post, he doesn’t have any plans to reintroduce the fun back into the game. They are doubling down on their stupid vision to ruin the game for me and many others. Which only leaves one option. Stop paying and playing for this game. 10 years subscription, only missed a month when I got married. Sad that the 10th anniversary has made me quit And no, you can’t have my stuff, I already gave it to Tora.

The only feedback I have is to revert the abilities and trees back to the way they were for every class. Then balance those abilities instead of removing them or making us choose. If something is too OP, then tweak it a little bit at a time till it falls inline with how it should be. And do the reverse if something is UP. If stuns are an issue or immunities are problem for in some content, then tweak those individually or lock them for certain content. They don’t need to Nuke every thing if it’s only a problem in on operation encounter or ranked pvp. Simply put, they should revert back to the old system because that would be a POSITIVE change from the current system.

My dear Casi, Keith/BioWare just don’t get it. I believe they honestly don’t have an F’ing clue what they’ve done wrong and why we’re so upset with them. They just don’t get it. Which I find amazing because it’s been/being shouted at them from the rooftops for several months now and he still gave you that response. They are all totally tone deaf or so utterly arrogant to think the players wants and needs don’t matter to the continued success or I dare say survival of the game. How do they they expect to implement “THEIR VISION” for the future of the game if there are no players left to play or pay for it? His response to your plea to understand the situation and make changes to improve the game for us players, only proves he doesn’t understand or doesn’t care. Either way, it seems nothing is going to change anytime soon to make the game fun again for us. I’ll be doing what many long term players like yourself and Trixxie have done or will probably do, unsubscribe until BioWare make significant changes to make the game fun again. We can only “hope” the game is still here for us to return to.

Of course not. They aren’t that type of company that cares about their players as long as they got their money. We’ve unsubbed, that’s the only response they understand and will stay unsubbed until all their promises are filled and our requests addressed. We don’t need to pay to play until they are willing to listen. There are 3 or 4 newer games just released or on the Horizon. Swtor won’t last the year at this rate.

Hi Keith, glad you have finally posted. I’ve read all of you’re replies and it seems you still don’t understand the underlying problem with what you’ve done to the game. It would be oversimplifying it by saying you’ve made it unfun and boring, but that’s the gist of it. Many others have been trying to point out all the issues for the last 7-8 months on the PTS (which you promptly ignored) and also since 7.0 went live. Communication is key and you take way to long as the producer to communicate. Now you guys are asking players to test again while you’ve ignored us so thoroughly for 8 months. I ask you, why should we? You don’t seem to listen or care what we like or don’t like. Sure you made some small changes, but not enough to count and that’s why so many of your dedicated players have left the game and your Steam numbers are plummeting towards being lower than pre7.0. This sort of communication from you should have been happening before 7.0 and the feedback should have been actioned from the PTS. You may not realise this but you’ve got a lot of very angry players and they’ve stopped giving you the benefit of doubt because you take so long to communicate with us. We feel like your “live” crash test dummy’s being slammed into the wall over and over and you don’t care if you kill us or the game. We appreciate you guys have a vision, but you’re terrible at communicating them to us. Dumping your ideas on players and then ignoring the players if we hate them doesn’t earn you any love or forgiveness when you revert or tweak them over a 12-24 month period. Most of the things that went live could have been avoided if you had actually acted on the PTS feedback. And I’m not not just talking about the multitude of bugs. Most of the UI issues could have been resolved if you’d only listened to the feedback on the PTS. The gearing system is a shambles, hardly anyone likes it. Your goals to reduce clutter, RNG or reduce repetitive grind on one activity have had the reverse affect. You totally redesigned a system most of us liked instead of just tweaking it to achieve those goals. There are a plethora of other things the players hate like the ability pruning, but I’m not going to list them all because if you don’t already know, it means you aren’t reading the feedback or having it communicated to you properly by the team and that’s where the underlying problem lies and nothing we say now will make a shed of difference. 7.0 feels like the death of the game because you guys were too arrogant to listen to the player base feedback AGAIN. No one from BioWare has even mentioned or acknowledged the font change that is also causing problems for some players. It’s great that you’re reducing the contrast etc, but what about the FONT that has now made it nearly impossible for me and others with sight issues to see anything written in the game. I wish you luck this 10th anniversary year, you’re gonna need it because you’re driving more and more people from the game. You can make all the plans in the world for the games future. But if you don’t take the players on the journey with you, you’ll have no players left and the game has will have no future.

You’re looking close to peak times, the real test is off peak and in between the hump. It’s actually falling faster and is where it was in December. Within another 2 weeks it will be below that if the trend continues. Use the 1 month, 3 month and 6 month scale to see the real trend. It’s only been 2 weeks and it went from peak of 19000 per 24 hours to 9500 per 24 hours. That’s averaged over 30 days, so those averages are actually lower at the moment.

This is true. But they’re the only numbers we can use to measure success.

It’s not even a month and According to Steam charts we are already back to Pre7.0 population numbers and falling. What a waste of time and resources for 12 months and a 10 year anniversary hype up. If only BioWare had listened to the player feedback last year on the PTS and the forums. If only they hadn’t been so arrogant and communicated with the players. Long time players warned them over and over this was going to happen. None of them wanted this to happen. And they pleaded with BioWare to listen. But BioWare always knows best even when shooting themselves in the foot. Will BioWare start to listen now that so many have left, including some of the longest and most loyal subscribers the games had? How fast are they going to revert some of these changes or make vast improvements to things they changed. How fast is new content going to come while they fix everything they broke? The game will be lucky to survive till May 4th with speed things are happening and players are leaving. And still not a peep from the games producer, lead design dev or anyone in charge at BioWare. They continue to hide behind JackieKo. If they really cared about the players, their game and had pride in their jobs, one of them would have addressed the community by now. Where are you Keith and Chris?

Chris Schmitt?

They probably went with the easiest and fastest to implement with the least amount of technical difficulty or effort required. It may have even started out as a bug and they decided to make it a feature. Regardless, just move on. It’s in the game now. It’s not hurting anyone and is actually helping some people. They aren’t going to remove it cause that would take it away from some players and take away resources to fix real problems in the game.

Anyone tried running naked shells with only main hand / off hand stats. There used to be a naked bolster bug years ago.

The only winning move is to not play

100 times worse.