Catering to the hardcore, and making a game that keeps them playing 6-8 hours a day means that your 'casual' players will be with the game a lot longer and never get bored. Replaying content is the stupidest idea to come into the gaming industry, and has greatly set pack the chances for innovation in PvE. This game has 90% of it's content through the single player story line. It is a game to play for a few months, then put it down for a year, and re-sub for a month every year or so to do the new stuff. BioWare has shown us that they can't churn out content at any effective speed. +1 to the games that charge 3x as much as they should. When you target the casual crowd the subscription price should drop as much as the difference between the casual and hardcore play times. Same exact problem DCUO had. The Box cost pays for the storylines and the subscription pays for the repeatable content. In this case, the repeatable content should be a $5/month subscription.

You apparently don't know how to read or listen so... Cross server PvP is a fallback for when you are waiting for too long. The game will always look on your server first, and the more specialized you have you PvP filter the more likely it will be that you get thrown into a cross faction match.

Because there is this pile of crap called "The MMO Market" and SWTOR is the freshest, least smelly piece of crap in the pile.

If you enjoy mindless gear grinding: Yes If you enjoy Story: No, roll another character.

That 1.7million number is very sketch. About a week before, EA's financial documents where reviewed and the number was more around 800,000 as of Jan 31. That 1.7 mil number was from financials before December 31. It's one of those great legal lies companies can say, even though it's 2 months later they can claim it is current. and the MMO industry shifts around fast, in the case of DCUO, they wen't from . As of Dec 31 ~2million boxes were sold to distributors/bought online. ~1.7 million boxes were bought by consumers(us) ~300,000 boxes remain either un-activated or on the shelves. The bottom line is that there where huge dropoffs in population. If you play republic you see it the most. On my server, which was one of the fullest PvP servers for the west coast, you see about 1/2-1/3 of the amount of republic players online as you see sith. Some people keep active subs, or had long term subs that they can't get out of, so I'm sure there's a huge chunk of players that have accounts running, but are never online, or hardly online. This is also the consequence of such little content at end game, DCUO had the same problem, people only play for a few hours a week with their group, so there is little community outside of guilds. No one has understood that you can't start where other games started, you have to match what is available on the market. There are too many people supporting bad business that nothing happens though.

Bioware dug them selves a huge hole with this game. It was designed like a dirt pile, you can't go change things with causing huge shifts in the pile. This is shown as the re-surfacing of bugs. The changes this game needs to become more replayable are first-development changes, the funding after launch isn't good enough and there is way to much to change. It just wouldn't be fiscally responsible. So the only options now are to add to the pile. The first mistake was making the game a rollercoaster instead of a sandbox as the Star Wars IP deserves. the second was not having free-form space the third was making a single player game 95% of the content. the fourth was making a single story-path for every character, on each side. There are 2 things bioware could do that would make huge improvements. 1. Produce at least 10 hours of new content every month. 2. Add a new PvP map each month

I like trolls, they bump posts for free! nonconstructive criticism with no explanation is very accepted in this thread, after all, people usually read the first and last pages.

It makes sense that the sith received more attention. This is bioware's first chance to really delve into the sith side of things. the first two KOTOR games focused on the republic, even if you where going dark side, you never actually help the sith in any great form. So everything was jedi-looking, and the only "sith" thing was black robes. The Sith received over the top attention to costume design, and the republic armors are just a joke, either tattered rags, 'heavy' robes that look more like trooper gear, or rag-tag heavy armor with random worn out metal stuck everywhere. Republic needs more 'sleek' looks. My buddy that plays a trooper actually had some good sleek looking gear, until he started into the post 50 PvP and the armor looks like it was found in a dumpster. And the subtle things, like not having to walk through a doorway for the outer rooms of the fleet, are things that get to me. It adds an ease of use for one side. And i find it funny that the sith and republic both use the exact same base layout. Lazy... Go download DCUO and check out the Justice League Satellite and the Hall of Doom. That is a good example of how things should work. The 'Evil' side looks dark, and the 'good' side looks sleek, not busted-rusty and seriously needing a polish(and less green, yellow and blue lights everywhere) And the layouts are different. I know this would force changes on your so called 'space combat', and god forbid you cant just copy/paste 99% of what you did. This game is not the end product of a 5 year development, there are way too many short cuts. What ever was done that is making it so ships can't be interchanged, was the worse decision made for this game, now bad ideas can't be fixed without major code revamps, and a revamp of that size is impossible to fit in to all the content development that needs to be done to keep players in your rollercoaster of a game.

I got bored and started playing on the sith side, and everything is so much cooler. This is not 'Rebellion' vs. 'Empire', this is 'Galactic Republic' vs ' Sith Empire' The Rebellion was poor, the Republic, is not. The republic locations and equipment screams "I'M HOMELESS" There is cool light, cool dark, and rusty bucket-o-crap Sith have the cool dark look, and republic are the rusty bucket-o-crap. More sleek silver/white with the rust-red republic accents, less shades of brown and gray. Also, robes != homeless. When I enter the Sith fleet I think: "hey, this looks cool and epic!" when i enter the republic fleet is thing: "hey... what to do next..." It is becoming more and more obvious that much more effort was put into the Sith side of the game.

Yes, it's a huge disappointment, but completely expected. This game has been disappointing me ever since i started in beta. Star Wars has too much substance to be restricted to a rollercoaster ride game.

Bottom line. This game doesn't make sense. It's in the Star Wars universe, and there are millions of people playing but.. 1/8th of the population has the exact same back story as you. And what is the point of having RP servers in a game where you have no control over your character other than "attack this" and "craft that"? Star Wars should only be used for Single Player Games, when dealing with iconic character storylines. Star Wars should always be used for Sandboxes in an MMO environment. Yeah, it's a great game and all, but it has ZERO immersion value. This is because it is a single player epic that takes place in a multi-player environment. You can't tell a player that they are the only living "Barsen'thor" when every single consular gets that title. Seriously, how many people read/heard BioWare say "Create your own story" for the hundredth time and thought that the only control you have is: A) Do i kill the dude at the end of this chain, or B) do I let the guy live; both resulting in the same outcome. On a 200 Million Dollar budget, there is absolutely no excuse for not designing your own game engine and featuring every iconic Star Wars planet in your release version of the game. With 5 years of development you are expected to come up with a story tree that doesn't seem like it took less than a year to think up. And this game is far from the "we had to make sure everything fit correctly" excuse, there is 1 npc on each planet, the Bonus Series contact, that acknowledges your story mission in any great detail. With the best financial backing of any new MMO since World of Warcraft, there is no excuse your game is not flawless and fully polished at launch. If the community crys: "buggy" you stay in beta. The first step to getting this game back on the right track is to open up space, first add the missing planets, then go over to MAXIS and Will Wright, and spawn the galaxy with a less cartoony and abstract version of SPORE. I want to go from deep space to walking into the third level of a cave with no loading screens. The second step after space, is to package up the release game, re-launch it as the Pier-to-Pier multiplayer game that it is, and re-spawn the planets you used and let us EXPLORE the galaxy. Then strip the game of any NPC speach that makes the player think they are the most important person in the galaxy. The MMO industry is going to be churning out the same garbage until a studio with some financial backing makes a sandbox and does it right, in a way that anyone can log on and have something fulfilling to do. And for god sake, a youngling can block the blaster shot from 99.9999999999999999% of the galaxy's inhabitants my character is a jedi master and NPCs can land blaster hits... Jedi are an alpha class, and should never be treated otherwise, either all players are force sensitive, our you have to work your *** of to become a alpha-character in a group that should have little to no contact with the rest of the community. There is a Jedi with a blaster pistol in the game, why cant we have one too?

This forum is horrible for getting ideas through, You have approximately 4 minutes to get a reply to a new post before it is lost forever. I posted this same idea 2 days ago to no response. All that BW needs to do is add a power crystal slot and remove stats from color crystals. And color crystal schematics can be unlocked the higher the level starting with green/blue/red at lv 1 and colors with black or other color inner glow at 400. You can add more shades and the customization you know the game should have. Then they need to remove any alignment/faction restrictions on any color. I find it funny that the most popular Jedi saber master's color is restricted to the Sith. This game is lacking in customization and every day more and more people are hitting 50 and seeing how limited their customization is. It's really hard to see customization when every time a good hybrid build becomes popular it gets ruined in the next patch. BioWare is taking the extreme method of keeping balance and it's leaking into other parts of the game.

Remove the stats from color crystals Bring back power crystals from the kotor games. Now we can use things like pre-order and razer crystals and not have to sacrifice stats. Then there can be a raid with a krayt dragon that has a chance to drop a pearl that would be useful and not a T3 gemstone which smears the reputation of the krayt dragon.

Probably not, I would have bought it and tried it out. ... but any other setting with this same framework wouldn't have kept my attention. The IP gives me some security that the game will try and improve. The only thing I hate about what has been done with the IP is the super nerf to the Force. I'm sorry but there should be only a few dozen non-jedi that can take a jedi master. And the constraints to what we are able to do leads to Force Unleashed style actions in cinematics, and casting re-skinned wizard spells in gameplay which kills immersion for me. This game is on a ticking clock for me, that is governed by the first major content patch, if it is just a copy of what blizzard does, I won't stick with it for long, I'm not looking for some more time burning content, I'm looking for a step in the sandbox direction and away from the story lines. Story is a great hook, but not for long, It will get you at least 1 month and a chunk of 3 month subs, but you need content with high replay value and story has the lowest replay value. There is a lot of Star Wars blindness happening here, a lot of the game's flaws are covered up to most of the population, or they don't have the mmo history to see what is missing.

Play every tank until the end of Taris(if you are doing everything you should be ~lv 26) By that time you have the majority of your abilities and a good idea of what the class plays like. We can't tell you what you are going to enjoy, I enjoy certain things about each tank. You need to tell us what you want to be able to do and we can tell you the closest you can get.

When you talk, your character talks. But first nail down that problem of hearing random conversations that queue up from the npc you passed 20 seconds ago that play at full volume. Wouldn't it be cool if your voice was actually in game and traveled as far as it should? Now you can truly see how many 12yr olds, and men playing women there are. And now chat channels are radio frequencies. Keep text in, but it should be paired with VOIP Just make it really easy to mute people and only allow a system where you have to press a button and hold it down to talk. this way you can bind a bunch of channels to buttons. Then pay people to sit there with a global mute button to silence the attention seekers unless they are in the special "attention seeker" frequency. /innovation

Exactly what new role are you thinking of? Buffs and Control are the only other possible roles, and those are intertwined in to what is already available. If you want innovation, make a sandbox with 200 7 hour bioware story lines throughout the galaxy.

WAR was worse than that *these are all US server numbers, the EUR servers where on a separate system. Their launch numbers were about half of what this game was. They opened 20 additional server at launch. I can't remember the number they started with The first cut brought the game to 60 servers (about 350,000 subs, at the 3 month mark) then down to 22ish(desert area opens up) then down to 9ish now it's down to 4. And hundreds of guilds locked on dead server db's because there it is impossible to retrieve a guild unless the leader has an active account and there is no leadership passing in the db's. Though a game like WAR will fail a lot faster due to population than this game will. about .05% of the total content (ilum) relies on server population. The entire point of WAR was Open RVR fighting which relies heavily on population while TOR, at it's heart, is a glorified waiting lounge. Flashpoints aren't really hard to put together, it's the heroic missions that give you good gear for leveling that lasts a while that are hard to do. If it wasn't for low population I would have never visited Voss before 50.

What the game needs is a dedicated set of leveling servers and some level 50 servers. I hate leveling post lv30 because putting a group together is next to impossible during the off hours. Or better yet companies need to stop dividing the population and just make instanced servers like champions online started with.

First off, holding players with new story and content patches is a tried and true way to make yore game free to play. PvP is the core of any true replay value, it doesn't have to be two players fighting, it can be like that kiddie arcade game where you make the frog go up the pole by squirting the leaf with water, two people working towards the same goal in competition to see who does it better. As it currently stand, TOR has an 'End'. This is hit when you have finished your end game gear sets, the drive to play is then lost, not at first but you can only take the same missions so many times with no reward before you get bored. What TOR needs is a End Game Campaign. Warhammer was on the right track, but the population of the two sides played too large of a role, and by the time you hit the opposing city it was 3am and everyone was too tired and it was impossible to hold the city until the next day when people where on again. TOR needs a campaign that is not as fast, or easy to reset. Every 'Contested' planet needs to be truly contested, there needs to be a contest, each planet should hold some significant resource. I know how much bioware likes linear progression, so all in all, the campaign is a game of tug-o-war. X amount of controlled planets are required to attack the opposing home planet a successful attack of the opposing home planet unlocks a raid to fight the opposing 'General' Defeating the opposing general gives you tokens to purchase pieces to the 20 most epic looking sets of gear, that have NO MODS IN THEM, purely for look. The fight can be completed once by every character. Based on popular vote of how many people let the general live(light) or killed them (dark) determines if the character is killed off completely. If a general is killed, they will never come back and bioware has to have another character and story ready for deployment. Each general would have vastly different fighting styles, and once things pan out each server will be participating in a different campaign. Now there is a reason to have characters on multiple servers. The key here is staying away from a few things: 1. The base story of the mission can have absolutely no relation to the current story. 2. There can't be only a few groups with access to altering the campaign, there needs to be a way for everyone to participate on any level and actually make a difference. 3. The campaign has to be fair and skill based, there can be no open pvp and all pve success needs to be weighed by success % instead of the number of successful attempts... You know what, never mind, you can't do this unless you limit accounts to 1 faction per server, and there is no way to do that now because character transfers were never developed and too many people already have heavily invested characters in both factions on the same server, killing any and all hope of any faction vs faction fighting or end game that involves any Massively Multi-player aspects. I didn't mean to, but I just lost a good chunk of hope for this game when i came to this realization. I started the post thinking i could help add some replay value to the end. I guess our only hope is random number generators, or some really fast programmers/graphic artists/storywriters. Ill throw the idea out anyway in case there is a nested idea bioware can use.

End game PvE in TOR is an oxymoron. There is post 50 PvE, but no reason to continue PvE once you have all the gear and ran all the missions, thus ending the game. The drive to continue playing needs to be to have fun, not acquire gear and xp. A RNG system or dynamic campaign between factions would be a start.

Using Tor-head as a source kills all of your credibility, data-mines are a good way to get a baseline, but generally have mountains of erroneous data.

There's a long way to go before you can claim the game doesn't have enough modifiable verity Every planet has orange gear that drops Every Flashpoint has orange gear that drops A lot of Missions return orange gear Underworld Trading has a chance to return orange gear for every tier. There are at least 20 sets of orange gear available for purchase(That BioWare needs to make heavy/medium verities for. ) The piece of armor you are looking for may be in the game, you just have to find it. A lot of NPCs will be given unique armor, that's just something you have to deal with. There has to be at least one thing BioWare doesn't hand to you on a silver platter, in this game it's gear customization.

The suggestion should be "Fix technical problems before releasing the game" Once you game is out, well... it's out. You now not only have to make it work you have to start churning out content at least half as fast as we can get bored with it, especially in a PvE story driven game. If you fix the technical problems you lose the bored people. If you add more content, you lose the frustrated people. Either way you lose, and if you do both at the same time you lose a little less. BioWare was the company that could have released a polished game, but they wen't over budget on voice acting and had to release before they lost anymore money. Now they have to pay the consequences, which the past 5 years of MMO releases have shown us, is a steady decline of population while you race the clock to try and be the next mmo since WoW that actually makes it out of the hole before you dip too low and have to start downsizing the development team.

It's a time sink system, the gear you want is in the game. It's just a matter of getting it as a drop, or a crit on an underworld trading mission, or someone else getting it and putting it on the market. If you ever post a suggestion that saves the player time/money, don't expect it to make it into the live game.