Right... when Bioware added a F2P option to the game they were not actually looking to entice a demographic that would be interested in utilizing the F2P option. Makes perfect sense, great post. It's like everyone here completely forgets that the game was steadily dying before the F2P option was added. Going by the arguments you people keep posting, Bioware should have just kept the sub requirement and slapped the cartel market on top of it and. Clearly the F2P option provides no benefit to Bioware at all. edit: I'll quote a previous post of mine here:

There's no basis for this claim at all, you can't just go "oh, we can't count THAT." whenever you don't like what's being said. No we don't, because that's not how the game works. We don't need to assume that this helmet fits any more than we need to assume that helmets which fit a Twilek simply don't exist since we never see any ingame. It's a limitation of the engine or art assets, nothing more. Again, you're plainly wrong here. The dialogue only says one or the other, not both at once. It's dependent entirely on the player's character because there is no official canon in this instance. There's nothing misguiding about the dialogue, it just contradicts your stance so you're trying to remove it from the discussion. You may as well try to argue that any dialogue referencing player gender is "misleading" and should be removed from any discussion as well.

The same principle DOES apply here, that was the entire point of the part of my post that you quoted. If a free trial is made available then people will judge the game based on it, including all of the restrictions the developers chose to put in place. You're right, it's NOT a difficult concept, so I don't know why you keep going back to it when I've already addressed it. I've personally witnessed many people decide the game is not worth spending money on because they were so turned off by the restrictions. I've read many more online posts from people saying they left the game for similar reasons. You can disagree with me on whether you feel anything should be changed and I'll gladly have a civil discussion with you about that if you'll allow it, but this conversation is going to end right here if you're just going to keep acting like I don't know what I'm talking about and make me repeat myself over and over simply because you either can not or will not understand the clear point I'm making. People spend money on things they think are worth spending money on, and don't spend money on things they don't think are worth spending money on. Now that we've both agreed on this point, how about we turn the discussion towards potential reasons why people may feel the game isn't worth spending money on, and what the game could do to make them feel otherwise. Which is, you know, the actual topic of this thread/discussion.

You're trying to make a false equivalency here. If a game doesn't have a demo or free trial then there are ways to learn about that game before you buy it. If it DOES provide a demo or free trial then it's assumed people will judge the game through that. If the demo is not enjoyable then there's no reason to buy the full game. Yes, and what I said is that many people choose not to bother removing those restrictions because the idea of spending money just to remove a penalty is not appealing. The kind of developer who feels the best way to get people to spend money on their game is to frustrate them into it isn't the kind of developer many people feel they could trust to run a MMO they would potentially invest months/years of their time into. Go to any general MMO/gaming discussion site and look at what people say about TOR when it comes up. Once you get past the "DAE hate EA" or "I wanted KOTOR 3 not a stupid MMO" posts, the thing that always dominates the discussion is how off-putting the restrictions are. Lots of MMO players will see that hotbars, a core UI feature, are locked behind a pay-wall and immediately write the game off right there, and I can't really blame them for it.

Preferred players have spent money on the game, so they're definitely not "freeloading for free." And that post is still missing the point that incentives are more likely to get people to spend money than restrictions are. Not to mention the subtler point that even if a player never spends a single cent on the game, that player is still providing value to the game by being active in it. MMOs live or die based on how active the player base, and a player who continues playing without ever spending any money on it is more valuable to the game than a player who subscribed for a month then stopped and never came back (no one wants to invest money in a MMO that appears dead). Plus there's the fact that free players indirectly increase the amount of money being spent on the game due subscribers buying things like weekly passes to sell on the GTN to free players. The idea that free players add nothing to the game and are simply "freeloaders" is extremely shortsighted.

I'm not sure where you got the impression from my post that they couldn't make up their mind. As I said, many of them DID make up their mind, and their decision was base experience was so frustrating that they weren't interested in putting any money in the game. And you'll need to "underastand thart" just because someone doesn't throw money at the game after the first 2 hours of playing it doesn't mean they're "too cheap." The gamers I generally talk to and swap recommendations with aren't afraid to spend money on their hobbies. Quite a few of my friends are into CCGs and spend as much on card packs as many here spend on cartel packs. They just didn't see the point in spending money on a game that was actively making itself worse in an effort to frustrate them into spending money. edit: And I really like how you're actually trying to act like you know my real life buddies and their spending habits better than I do. You can repeat your "too cheap" mantra all you want, it's not going to be any truer the next time than it was the last.

I've tried to get people into the game and things like limited hotbars, being unable to equip purple gear, unable to hide helmets, unable to open lockbox quest rewards, and the whole "YOU ARE NOW EARNING LESS EXPERIENCE, SUBSCRIBE TO FIX THIS" thing turned many of them off before the game ever had a chance to really draw them in. First impressions are everything and the first impression SWTOR gives new players is that the game is going to pile on restrictions and annoyances until they spend money out of frustration, rather than out of a desire to buy something cool. I feel the cash shop itself is generally fine, the only "problem" is with how Bioware tries to get people to subscribe. As someone who's put almost no thought into how to solve this, my suggestion would be to remove most of the visible F2P restrictions such as equipment/quest restrictions, match color, hide helm, ect. Then add more incentives to get people to subscribe to the game. Possible examples: 1) Add veteran rewards, maybe every so many months you're subscribed you get a token that can be redeemed at an ingame merchant that gives unique vanity stuff. Every so often more stuff is added to the merchant so there's always something new for long-time subscribers to buy. 2) Run deals every now and then to get people to subscribe to get a special item. Something like "Everyone who has an active subscription during the month of December will be granted exclusive access to the brand new swirly Red/White candy-cane color crystal." A lot of people are going to dismiss this simply because "IT'S FINE BECAUSE FREE PLAYERS DON'T DESERVE ANYTHING ANYWAY," but I'm fairly confident in saying that someone is more likely to end up spending money on a game if the developers incentive subscriptions rather than penalizing free players. People don't spend money on games they don't enjoy so intentionally making the game worse for new players is just shooting yourself in the foot. edit: With that said, I can understand why Bioware went the route they did. It's a LOT easier to just lock off parts of your game to free players than it is to add new stuff for subscribers.

What, you doubt that Bioware will heavily modify the engine to port the game to consoles when they already have plans for a sequel? I can't imagine why. It's still the only way I could see Bioware giving the SI an official species, though.

If the basis of your argument revolves around: 1) The game's inability for ingame item models to account for differing alien head features. 2) Throwing out actual ingame dialogue simply on the basis that it disagrees with the argument you're trying to make. Then you might want to step back and rethink your stance. The game clearly states that the SI's forefather was an alien if the player character is an alien, meaning that neither character currently has a canon species. Trying to use Bioware's inability to make helmets that play nice with horns or head tails as proof that ingame dialogue is wrong is really, really, really silly. Maybe if some day that TOR2 post turns out to be real and the SI ends up surviving Bioware will have to pick a canon species for that character, but as of now the "canon" is that the SI's canon species is whatever the player picks. Most Bioware games work like this.

I heard from another inside source that the inevitable appearance of Star Wars characters in the next Kingdom Hearts game will be canon which means Sephiroth, Donald Duck, and Captain Jack Sparrow will become canon Star Wars characters and they will play a pivotal role in Episode VIII: Invasion of the Nobodies.

Sometimes some people are just looking to have a little fun rather than making another super serious WHO IS THE MOST POWERFUL JAR JAR BINKS OR NALAN CHEEL, YOU KNOW THE BANDFILL PLAYER FROM THE MOS EISLEY SCENE IN EPISODE IV. I WANT TO KNOW WHO WOULD WIN IN A FIGHT SO I CAN COMPLETE MY POWER RANKING CHART thread. That doesn't make them trolls.

My post wasn't meant to be taken as seriously as it was.

I believe everyone's overlooking a very important fact that's going to blow this case wide open: Wrath can turn his Jedi companion to the dark side, Nox, master of cunning and manipulation of both enemies and allies alike, is unable to turn a mere padawan to the dark side. Open and shut case, take 'em away boys.

The "initial set of whiners" aren't the ones who made the change, Bioware is. People are "blaming" Bioware for what happened because they're the ones who did it, not the people posting on the forums. I mean, do you actually have a point with this post or.....?

I'm going to blow you're mind right now: This forum is actually made up of more than one person, and the people who complained about the drops being too good aren't the same people who are upset about the drops being nerfed.

The "lore" never states what the character's species is. Ingame dialogue that changes based on the player's species does. The same "script" that says Nox is his descendant is also what calls him both an alien and a human. I know you really want this to be true, but you're going to have to be content with the fact that it's just something you want and not hard canon.

And according to the game he's an alien (if the player is a non-human). Your argument about how unlikely it is for him to be an alien is largely irrelevant when the game comes out and outright states that he was. If Bioware felt having an alien Sith Lord be so revered at that period of time was such a lore breaker then his species wouldn't have ever been used as a species-variable plot point in the first place.

Tanking gear still has a fair amount of strength/willpower/aim on it, last I checked. As opposed to what the previous poster was talking about, where healing gear would be presence/endurance with no damage whatsoever. Derp indeed.

Just because things were changed at some point doesn't automatically mean it was "dumbed down." Tying healing and damage to the same stat was the right move, otherwise you run into a situation where healers need to have a second set of gear just for soloing because otherwise they have no damage. Separating them into two separate stats doesn't make the game require more thought (as the use of the word "dumb" implies) or offer interesting choices to players, it just adds unnecessary tedium and inventory clutter to a role that people are already reluctant to play. Anyway, this is off topic.

Yeah, this seems like the more interesting way to take things. If healing is supposed to be a core part of a class, regardless of spec, then there should be mechanics in each spec that work with healing in some way. Improving DPS Sorc/Sage self healing would be more interesting than giving them stances that basically turn them into straight DPS classes like Mauras and Snipers.

Sorry ahead of time if this is in the wrong section of the forums. So one of the nice things about attaching a security key to your account is getting 100 CCs every month even if you let your subscription lapse. The mobile security key can only be attached to a single account, but I just became aware that apparently the physical security key fob can be tied to 5 separate accounts. How does this work with the monthly 100 CCs? Does every account get 100 every month? Does only a single "primary account" get the 100 CCs? It seems crazy to me that you could spend $5 for a fob, make 5 free accounts, tie them all to the same security key, and just let the accounts sit until you can buy some cartel packs or whatever on each of your accounts. With 5 accounts the fob would pay for itself within a single month. Which makes me think it either doesn't work this way, or doing this would be breaking some kind of rule.

I don't play a Sorc so I'm not too familiar with their issues, but it seems like the issue seems to be a disconnect between how the devs envision the class should be played vs the players. The players feel Sorcs don't have enough survivability, so they ask for better cooldowns. The devs argue that they already have self healing to make up for the lack of powerful cooldowns. The players then feel that self healing as a DPS spec is too weak or too inefficient to be a suitable survivability mechanic. If this is truly the case (again, I don't have a Sorc so I don't know first hand), it seems that the next step should be thinking of ways to improve a Sorc's self healing ability as a DPS spec. There are plenty of ways that a mechanic could be added near the end of the Sorc DPS trees that improve their ability to self heal. Just off of the top of my head, a stacking buff that improves the casting time / force cost / healing value of the next heal the Sorc self casts, and stacks are generated by casting X abilities. Something like that could allow self healing to act as a viable survivability mechanic over the course of a fight, without allowing them to just turtle up as effectively as a healing spec could (since they would need to build stacks through attacking). And that's just the first thing I thought of as someone who doesn't even play the class. I'm sure the people who do could come up with much better ideas and maybe even have them ready for the next round of mirror class questions.

Horse to death.

The rules of conduct also state not to derail threads and that problem posts should be flagged rather than replied to. yet here we are.

It's nested in a series of drop-down menus. If you choose "not enough content," there's a second drop-down box which says "I would be interested in seeing the following added," then there's a third box with the option "story quests."