Dear Bioware, EA and any other developers that contribute to Star Wars: The Old Republic,
I'm the guild leader of Warriors of Ashla. We're a guild that originally formed in Star Wars Galaxies and have played together in SWTOR since it launched almost five years. On behalf of the remaining members of the guild, I'm posting this so the brains behind SWTOR can hear our concerns. This is not an attempt at trolling or sparking a heated debate. We want to love playing this game again, just like we used to.
As the title of the thread implies, the theme to this post is related to the upcoming Dark vs Light event. Upon reading the rules at swtor.com/dark-vs-light We have some... concerns.
After almost five years of playing this game, the majority of the players in our guild have played every class, finished every flashpoint and completed every heroic (numerous times thanks to 4.0). The thought of doing everything all over again for another event has repelled more payers than it has attracted back to the game. Here's how a guild member described the event after reading the rules:
Since Knights of the Fallen Empire launched, our guilds attendance has spiked during the release of each chapter. Those spikes, however, have dwindled gradually and consistently since 4.0. The carrot-on-a-stick analogy works well here. With each chapter, there's a small carrot /reward in the form of some wonderful fully voiced and animated story. But that content only lasts for an hour. Even if you have one of every advanced class of every faction in the game, there's only sixteen hours of game play (repeated 16 times).
The carrot is small, but the stick is even smaller. Each chapter seems designed to tell the story instead of challenging the player. Anytime a fight has a chance at getting difficult, there are three or four heal stations in the room ready to make it a walk in the park. Before I know it, the new content is over and I get a mission saying "Coming soon".
To fall back from the repetition of each months story update, all we can do is play end-game content. The same content that hasn't changed since 3.0. Nothing in the end-game has changed since January, so each month we get one hour of, "Oh that's interesting" then back to the grind. But what's left to grind? Most of the players in my guild that have been playing since launch have a main character of two that's already very well geared for PVP and PVE. So there's no incentive to play once we've seen this months chapter. That's like only watching TV to see the latest episode of Game of Thrones and only if it came out once a month. Why own a TV to use it once a month? Why subscribe to play once a month?
The KotFE story is great, but we want something to DO not to WATCH. I've seen changes made to the game based on player feedback and so I hope this feedback gets to the correct people and doesn't fall on def ears. If you want to see more feedback from members of Warriors of Ashla, go to www.warriorsofashla.enjin.com and check out the shout-box on the left side of the page.
Lets make SWTOR great again!
Regards,
Dingoe
Warrior of Ashla