You're not casual, you're lazy. You want to be able to hit 65 faster when you can already hit it with just a weekends worth of play. There is nothing special about level 65. Casual was (and still should) be defined as making the content accessible for someone with only occasional short time periods to play. The game has _always_ been accessible for the casual player. Bu vocal about Casual meaning that you get everything just by logging in.

I accidentally type DELETE all the time.

Its called the Sunk Cost Fallacy.

Because a blog has text that can be quoted and put back in their faces later when they do not meet their promises. A live-stream is spoken words and so significantly harder to be 'quoted' in a post asking them to honour their promises or make good their past statements. Also, less people view a live-stream overall. Its a way to insulate themselves.

Think about it Sparky... There is one canon story, and its a MMO. Once the Chapters are done the NEXT stage of the MMO will still have everyone at the same point. ANY things that re different will be purely cosmetic and not at all important to the overall story. What it will amount to is, at best, which companions you have available to you from your list of companions that are all cookie cutter exact same voiceless drone companions. EVERYONE in the game is the 'chosen one' and everyone will have the exact same ending point when all the chapters are done. They might have some small little flag on your character sheet that makes future dialogue slightly different but when KOTFE is done, everyone will be in exactly the same universe with the same results. There wont be _different_ versions of each planet for every player based on their choices. There wont be plants you can't access because of your choices. There wont be MAJOR npcs not available because of your choices. You will have exactly the same universe as every other chosen one. Your choices do not matter. They wouldn't matter in a single player game either, per BioWare's wonderful storytelling your get blue/red/green and s crappy cut-scene but the sequel will have you all starting basically in the exact same place again.

This is why the game sucks now. BioWare can not get it through their head that when you make the entire game complete-able by a 'noob' to the game (maybe not noob to MMO's) within two weeks, there is an issue with their subscriber retention numbers. Since the 'new' endgame _discourages_ running alts because the end game targets are so high for mindless repetitive activity (unfun grindage) you'll have to focus on a single player, so _at best_ you make one of each class and shepherd them through the 0-50 content (and reaching Max level well before hitting last class quest in the 0-50 line, then you only need to take one imp or pub through the remaining quests, whichever one you didn't do with your first character and you've seen everything. Since it gets even easier on repeat plays, you're looking at towo months or so of content for a casual casual player. Way to go BioFail.

No I don't actually. I quit playing quite some time ago. I was just a die-hard fan who paid 6 months in advance every 6 months and gave them the equivalent of 25 Subs worth of cash monthly for CC's. I do not do that any longer. I've not logged in for weeks. And I check the forums occasionally to see if there is any hope left while I still have an active sub. As a paying customer though I do have a right to express to them my opinions of the product they are providing and I find this product seriously lacking any sort of long term value, even more so as they have neutered the experience through KOTFE. It had already been significantly reduced because they chose not to continue providing individual class story lines and compressed it down to Empire and Republic, and now its compressed down to a single story line with choices that do not matter at all because the end point is the same for everyone as is necessary in a MMORPG... Even though this is no longer an MMORPG but a subscription based SPRPG with a few multiplayer elements but nothing at all that really justifies a monthly cost for me. I was a whale. And I supported them for a long time longer than I likely should have, considering I saw this writing on the wall for quite some time but continued to support them anyway. But I realized I was in a 'Sunk Cost' mode of thinking and I broke myself out of that. Its quite obvious they have no intention at all of producing a game I will want to continue to play AND they've completely borked what the game used to have which was replayability with Alts, but now with Alliances etc and their crazy requirements, not only is KOTFE extremely boring to repeat, but the 'end game' is ridiculous to try to attempt with Alts.

At this point they should just turn it into a cell phone 'casual' game. They already have the pricing model down, and they've already stripped the game of any nuance and skill. It is exactly as I said it would be before 12x XP was implemented and I was arguing against it. Community has sunk/shrunk even further and BioWare is coming up with more desperate plans to try to entice people to subscribe. But even the diehards are deciding to die and just quit. They lost what amounted to 25 subs per month from me in CC purchases etc. I haven't logged into the game for well over a month now. I just have zero interest in logging in. I check the forums to see if there is any hints of hope before my sub fully expires but mostly all I see are posts asking for this game to be even easier. When it released it was the most casual friendly and one of the easiest MMO's around. Certainly there were QoL improvements that could be made, but instead they've focused wholly on metrics with no idea or actual analysis of what their metrics meant. I am sure the game will be around for some time, but it is diminishing each month. Financially it performs worse and worse over time and the BioWare crew seems too far up their own orifices to deal with it. They decided to rely on 'BioWare Patented Story content' and then give us basically the exact same story they have given us in every other BioWare game. They've taken an MMO and made it a subscription based single player game yet provide nothing, really, to justify a monthly cost and instead have the gall to expect you to pony up even more for the cartel market and even there they are significantly lazy as a goodly portion of everything they release is just a re-skin of existing content. And yes, I know.. if I don't like it, why am I looking at the forums and complaining in a post, just go away... I post because I loved the game and now its less loveable but I want to still love it. So I say something about it. I knew this was coming once they started relying on 12x Exp weekends etc and then turned that into 'permanent' and yet here we have people who still aren't satisfied. Basically it appears the optimal game for them is to create a character, walk into the first zone, find a box, with a monster in it and a slot for a sword to kill it with and a +1000 Holy Avenger sword laying next to the box so they can pick it up, slide it into the slot, kill the beast and then Ding 65. Yay. Now I am max level and the only content I have is 4 years old and repetitive. Such fun. So amazing. Very glitter!

Because no one bothers to learn how to play any more. The writing has been on the wall for a long long time. BioWare/EA decided to chase after the customers they did not have rather than work with the customers they do have. This cost them, from me at least, what amounted to @ 25 Subs worth of monthly cash. Casual =/= stupid, but BioWare instead thought that snagging the casual market meant hyperspeed leveling and making everything so damned easy you can strip naked and have a level 1 comp take on the gold mob was the way to go. So, diversity has gone, needing to learn how to play your class, gone, needing to understand how to gear your comp, gone. comp uniqueness, gone. Voice-overs (their main selling point on release) gone for any new content. etc. Also, its hilarious how scared they were of SW:TFA spoliers on the forums but now they spoil their own storylines constantly as a level 15 player may be tossed into a Rishi flashpoint. The game presently is for the lowest of the lowest common denominator. Its barely more than a mobile game, and they charge you entirely too much for what now amounts to a single player game. I'm not ever going to pay a monthly sub for a single player game unless that game is SPECTACULAR and the amount of content added each month SIGNIFICANTLY larger than anything they have yet added.

BioWare, with 4.0 I have the potential to have lots and lots of companions and they are under my command/in my control as part of my alliance, but they usually just stand around and do nothing. Since you have already made the game basically play itself, why not let me determine 4 of my companions (or eight of them) and send them off to do FP's or OP's for me so I really don't have to do anything at all but open loot boxes. This way I don't have to deal with the hassle of playing (or heck, even logging in if you give me a web interface to issue these commands.. QOL!) and I don't have to deal with all the other clueless bad players you created by making the game playable by mashing your face against the keyboard or setting up a 'drinking Bird' to press my 1 key gets them through all the content. TBH I don't even know why you don't give me 1200% experience anymore and rewarding me for pooping all by myself! without anyone's help at all! Also, please make this game more like a Guild Wars but instead of using their model where I pay for the game one time and get all the content updates for free, instead make It so there are no content updates except for maybe once every couple months and then charge me lots of money to get them and only ever give me special things if I keep giving you money monthly and request for nothing in return.. In fact, I am happy to pay you so I can come to the forums and talk about how AWESOME the game is now that I don't even have to play it to achieve anything.

Be careful, some folks are going to start the argument about how its actually 'free' because they give you those cartel coins monthly... so you aren't 'paying' anything at all.

The only way to 'level' through KOTFE is to buy a 'New 60' because if you are playing the game the 'normal' way you'll be level 65 LONG before you get to KOTFE.

EA's business model is that as long as you are paying money, they don't care about you and your thoughts and desires. They put very little into customer retention because A) they are so big and B) they have so many properties that people will play just because of the name/franchise. This makes them very risk averse (in making new properties) and it makes them arrogant. They really do not care about the users because the users whine and complain but the users also continue to pay what EA prices everything at. The only way to aff3ect a change with EA is to stop giving them money. Because then you become important. You are a user they want, not a user they already have.

Yes, this is true. It is also NOT the orange gear you used to be able to get from the planetary questlines which many people liked for the aesthetics. Unfortunately it is increasingly obvious that EA/BioWare is desperately trying to wring out as much cash as possible before they have destroyed their paying customer base completely so I doubt seriously anything will be done when they can instead reskin it a bunch of times for the Cartel Market. This is why my credit card/renewal was removed from my sub and I haven't made my regular purchases of additional cartel coins in several months.

Strawman is painted with a broad brush.

Certainly True Also though, not every game is made for you to play and enjoy. So if there is a game that has a certain convention, then you need to decide if you want to play it, or if you want to quit and go play something more your speed. You don't get to whine incessantly that all the content needs to be easily completed by mashing your face on the keyboard because you're some special snowflake who deserves to have everything they want when they want it with no effort/contribution at all.

Its because this most recent generation of new games/iincoming gamers define casual differently than the previous generations. Casual used to be that you had other obligations and so you only gamed 'casually' meaning for short periods of time when you could find the time, and so doing some things was a bit more difficult because gaming content was often designed so that a raid might takes many hours of dedicated play to clear. Casual thus also meant you likely didn't have the top tier gear, but it didn't mean you were a 'bad'. As games evolved to make the experience for these players better, and to cut the length of high end content down etc, so that if you only had a 1 or 2 hour block in which to play on occasion, and they made the game feem more like you were able to accomplish something in a shorter period of time, the bar got lowered and what was slowly becoming defined as a 'casual player' changed. Casuals now are basically the 'bads' from before. These are people who may not have time restrictions on their schedules etc but who endeavor to be good at something but instead a new generation of special snowflake narcissists who have been used to being catered to their entire life who think that participation means they deserve achievement/reward. Now get off my lawn *shakes cane*

I was going to edit and add to this post but I see people got in before I could. Eric, it may be worthwhile to show the folks 'some' of your ability to Datamine the live game stats. Give players a before 4.0, after 4.0 set of data, not everything, so you don't give away the tools for people to use to then get you to adjust balance by their actions, but maybe something just to show, average deaths per player, or per companion. Maybe something just showing the average healing output pre 4.0 and post 4.0 so that players who are busy using their most recent anecdote to judge the changes are instead maybe shown hard data. The lack of communication at a 'nuts and bolts' level does do a lot to spur all the irrational claims on the boards/word of mouth. If you were to give players more concrete information they'll have a greater opportunity to use some logic and reasoning and understand why changes may have been made. Using the CSM debacle as an example. Players are still upset with 'you' over this because they had the hard data, they knew what the numbers were before and after as well as the numbers for the Hutt Celebration Event. You couldhave leveraged this knowledge into not only a reasonable patch/nerf/balancing but you would have .. had you done this, had more satisfied customers even though they may not have gotten exactly what they wanted. Your post to start this off was good, and explaining the reasoning and rational behind something is good. It will be even better if you provide some data to put the reasoning into context for people who are expressing their viscera based on personal anecdote.

Glad to hear you saw how ridiculous companions were.

I am not sure you would be missed. How much were you spending for your sub? How much in cartel Coins? Just saying, people who spent a lot more than you, I am guessing, have quit and they didn't really seem to affect BioWare's decisions.

Yeah, WoW was released ten years ago.. The market was SOOOO small. (WoW was more difficult than SWTOR)

Necro'd twice in one day by the same person. My comments above still stand. In fact add to this that more things like this are why the game is so incredibly boring now because Legacy Gear was part of the downward spiral into so casual your pet rabbit can play as they hop on the keyboard you put in their hutch.

Suggestions like this are why the game is a complete mess right now. It's been dumbed down so continuously its now not a game, its a chose your own adventure interspersed with occasional ham fisted button mashing.

First, if you spend several paragraphs saying how you do't like a thing, then you are complaining about the thing. Second, use your legacy stronghold, you can put GTN, and various bank access andreduce the amount of time you hae to go to fleet.. So there you go, a plague free zone. Just like the real world, to avoid it, you'll have to isolate yourself.

You are missing the point. They provide so much experience from doing just Class Quests etc because they decided that the story has to be tied to being at least a certain level before continuing on. This was because they wanted you to experience other content they created as well and planned on players chapters being achieved as they also did planetary sidquests, explored etc. over time they have removed all of that, BUT they keep making the storyline continue from a certain level. I'm saying, that the story shouldn't have any level tied to it at all and in fact, you should be able to cap out the STORY at a far earlier 'level' because your level is unimportant to story. Your level is now inconsequential to the story as a whole... so no need to tie it to level. This allows them to have everything _after_ the 'soft level cap' (EG the maximum level you could reach by doing the story alone) be more MMO focused. This means the story focused players get what they want. The MMO focused players get what they want, and BioWare nolonger has to make ALL the game through cap level mouthbreathfacerollOMGIDONTWANTTOWORKTOPLAYAGAME easy to satisfy people who want only the story. Example: Lower ALL the exp gains from story missions etc so that the very highest level you could achieve by doing them (including KotFE stuff) to 35. 'Rebalance' all the story missions so they can be doable by someone who is in that progression. Give players ALL the equipment upgrades and companion upgrades and everything they might possibly need to make the game faceroll easy for the story portion to make the 'casuals' as they are now defined 'happy'. Players who want JUST bioware patented super-wonderful story! Single Player Experience can have it.. Its JUST like it is now, it just doesn't require you to get to level 60+ at any point to finish it off. You get everything you need from doing the quests to advance you to the next part of the quest and it will be super simple because 'CASUAL!'. And that super simple aspect caps at alevel that's @ half the currentmax level, because.. who cares, level and RPG is obviously unimportant its STORY. Meaning everything after that 'soft cap' is the MMO content, not tied to BioWares patented Super Special Storytelling. Once you cap at the 'Story' end (level 35) you can choose to continue on and the game gets 'harder' because bioWare no longer pets your hand and tells you that you are a special snowflake and gives you everything and instead you have to start paying attention and playing the game to succeed in it. OR you can chose to go do story again. The point is, BioWare continues to tie Story Chapters to a level of achievement in the game (max level/prior level cap) and by so doing they have to continue making the game super easy for 'casuals' so they can get to that point to continue their story, degrading the game for anyone who wants RPG elements and progression. Its a compromise deal that allows them to keep everything in the game as it is excepting just rebalancing the Story missions so that you can complete your story long before you reach level cap. The 'story' stuff becomes like an extended tutorial in a way, and once you're done you can either wait for more story or you can learn to play an MMO.