It really was, at least at the start. For me they lost the plot when they began turning it into a fantasy trinity game in tights - it lost that epic superhero feel. And to a great extent that appeared to be in reaction to vocal player feedback regarding balance and 'fairness'. There were a lot of dev team changes around the same time iirc and it felt like they had a knee jerk reaction. It was never the same again.

Agreed on PTS being a valuable resource. I think they are tied down by the story limiting, or more likely outright preventing, much use of the PTS at the current time unfortunately. While I'm sure it would be potentially possible to pull some of the mechanical changes out and put them on PTS, that would take significant resources and would be far from able to catch all bugs, or even most, as the live patch would be an amalgam of both PTS tested parts and not. They simply can't put each chapter on PTS as that defeats the purpose of the concept. On the upside, 4.1 is supposed to contain a large number of bug fixes.

Its a good question. While I don't know explicitly for SWTOR, I was closely involved in early beta for CoH and ongoing for the first 18 months or so of live, and there the devs did certainly read (or most frequently get sent by community reps) ideas from suggestion box type forms. As for making changes that are 'wrong' objectively - I wouldn't say that. They make changes that some players don't like for whatever reason(s) and there are some decisions made that some or all players may not understand but they aren't switching things around for giggles, changes are made for a reason. Sometimes a change may end up being more unpopular than expected, the companion nerf is a great example. The influx of players brought about by KotFE seems to have shifted the demographic of the game more than expected and that led to a far greater reaction to the nerf than was expected, leading to the un-nerf shortly afterwards.

Interesting read, and I agree with the overall sentiment on how criticism is provided is vital. All the hyperbolic vitriol you see on any gaming forum is basically ignored. I chatted with a CoH dev once about this - the view they take is that the kind of people that post like that will basically never be happy. Same with the 'change this or I quit' people - ok, off you go then. because if its not this issue, it'll be a different one next month. Now, some folks that move from supporter to critic are likely to be taken a little more seriously - in that respect being a long time poster can carry a little weight. But it's still not much, and for good reason. We have maybe 50 or 60 regular posters in the general discussion section, maybe even less. It's few enough that you rapidly not only recognise names but also recognise posting patterns. Yes you get drop-ins fairly frequently but the simple fact is that the vast majority of subscribers, let alone players, never post here and probably rarely, if ever, visit. They are busy either playing or living a life. Which leads onto the second point - that people that do post here regularly are extraordinarily invested in the game, for one reason or another, because otherwise they simply wouldn't bother. I'm sure there are a few exceptions but that general statement golds true for any online community. There are millions upon millions of people that like the Harry Potter franchise, but a tiny fraction of those spend time on HP forum sites. We know that the current subscription numbers are in excess of 500k, although we don't know by how much so I'll use that a working number. So, we have 50 odd hyper-invested regular posters 'representing' 500k overall subs and a significant additional number of Preferred and F2P players. And those regulars have a myriad of views. The majority appear to be negative but that's expected - people don't complain about something they like (more on that at the end) but even within those overall detractors there is a huge range of views of individual subjects. Thirdly - threads in these forums tend to become reinforcing loops of the same people agreeing with each other. The classic "^^^ This" is an example of this. This feeds into both stifling contrary views (people are a lot less likely to voice a minority view, simple fact of social existence) as well as reinforcing the posters' own views that they represent the majority of the playerbase. Lastly, to go back to the point earlier about people not complaining about something they like - it's a simple fact that the vast majority of players of these games come and go in silence. I've played in excess of 10 different MMOs, most of them for multiple years and poured gods know how many hours into them. But I've only ever been active on 2 official forums - this one and CoH. I played WoW for over 7 years but never posted once there and hardly ever even looked at the boards, similar (though less time) for AoC, ESO, EQ, EQ2, FFXIV and others. While the opinions presented here are potentially useful, we all vastly overplay our importance and influence.

You make that claim a lot - that EA/BW are constantly being deceptive, lying about numbers etc. To what end do you make that claim? During December you said we would know more about the success of the game after this most recent earnings call. Now it has delivered news that doesn't meet your speculations you are 'spinning' yourself to include the next call with another set of doom and gloom 'predictions'. As far as I can see the one with an agenda is you, that for some reason you actually want the game to fail, or would for some perverse reason enjoy seeing it do so.

You are the one doing that, frankly. Not directly, but by your consistent negative attitude, which is just as bad now as it was before the holidays. You've stated multiple times that name calling etc is uncalled for, then post in support of threads and posters that do exactly that, on an almost daily basis. You snipe while hiding behind semantics.

Then answer the question which you've dodged for the last 3 or 4 posts. How does 208/216 static gear help move players from easy solo content to harder group content? No more "I think its fine as a reward because casuals". Why is static gear a good thing vs moddable gear and/or armourings/mods/enhancements/hilts/barrels in helping meet the stated goal of EC. What does static gear of the same or worse iLevel than what they are already wearing teach these players? I'm not 'defining' the meaning of your posts, you are doing that fine yourself. Believe me, I could be a lot less charitable with the way you are posting and about how it comes across on your apparent attitude about 'casuals', because right now you are coming across as very condescending and elitist towards them. I don't think that is actually your view, but it's what's coming across with your definitions. I personally like to think that the majority of players are capable of learning about how optimizing works, how to tweak moddable gear to get the best performance from their characters and how doing these things could make ops level content much more engaging for them. I want them to start to become engaged in the elder game, you seem to be happy giving them strings of beads.

I would suspect you are right for the initial creation of the start at 60 (your previous post) but that as soon as you took a few steps in game, that template becomes irrelevant. As to why they keep the data? Probably two fold. Firstly, that's how the system was designed, I doubt they imagined this sort of thing becoming a possibility back then. And secondly, I've seen people post here on more than one occasion that they created a 60 and then deleted but want it back because they bought something off CM and bound it to that toon or whatever. The problem was the whole being able to get the token back ad infinitum if you deleted prior to getting 61. That was definitely a mistake. Given the option of now disallowing that or changing this armour situation to discourage mass 60 creation/deletion cycles just for the armour, I think they went the best way.

The problem is people are making assumptions instead of reading. Eric clearly states, after presenting that list of where they can be found in 4.1, that they are faction specific - Remnant gear isn't faction specific.

And the OP states that non-faction versions will be added. But I get that reading more than a twitter message length of text is hard these days.

It also states the sets (being made available) in either alliance crates or through crafting are faction specific. The sets currently available in the crates are not - therefore, they are not the same thing.

I'm not going to get into this argument again, since you are ignoring the entire premise of EC in a bid to get cartel coins added as a reward instead of trying to get it to do what's it's allegedly been designed for.

Not sure where this confusion is coming from. Eric's post clearly states this look is being added to the alliance supply crates, says nothing at all about it being removed and the existing remnant set(s) being the only thing available.

Oh I'd prefer it left as is, but given that its causing issues then it needs to be changed and what they are doing seems a good compromise.

Ok, I get what you are saying better now. I just don't think there should be an effort to reveal such a thing early within the story because that very act removes any sense of dilemma about the other companions. I.e. if we get an 'early' list of all the companions we know aren't coming back we know, by simple extension, the ones that are coming back. Any reveal of information early will seriously reduce the impact of the story for many players. FWIW though, I don't think any old companion will simple 'vanish' never to be heard from again. Some may be bit players like Vik but I think that will be very few (and even they may re-appear at some later point (if possible).

These two statements don't make sense. The 'target audience' for EC is players that looking to get into harder group content, as stated by Steven in this very thread. But you state that static gear is for people that don't care about augmenting and min/maxing. I completely agree that static gear is for people that don't care about augmenting and min/maxing (or even understanding the idea of better optimizing gear at a given iLevel) - THAT is exactly what makes static gear a total waste of time and effort for EC.

The data problem isn't about gear, its about the characters themselves. BW have stated several times in the past that by the time you get to 60 the data build up for that character is significant. Although these are create at 60s the same data requirement is still there for tracking all the things that could be done and have, or have not. This is a non-issue for level 1's that also get created over and over, as the data set for them is miniscule in comparison. And because there is an expectation on BW to retain deleted characters for possible restoration, they won't simply erase that data for a deleted start at 60.

Why do you have to know what's happened to them before you find out within the story? This is the bit I do not understand in the slightest. It's exactly as I said first - you want to totally ruin the story for everyone else because you feel a need to know things as a player that your character cannot know. You don't control what any companion does within the story, that is BW's role. The aren't "forcing you to impose stories" they are just saying "wait and find out". If they DID give away major story points as you are asking, I for one would never trust them to make an RPG again, because doing so would be totally antithetical to the very concept of telling a story.

Good change, and appreciate the early warning.

What you say doesn't require you to know any information before it revealed within the story though. In fact, from your stated point of view of following the BW story (I think) then you asking for information in advance of reveal through the story makes zero sense. That isn't to say you can't make up whatever story you want for YOUR character, but trying to impose something on what, say, Nadia, has been doing before its revealed by BW is the kind of god-mode nonsense that makes video game RP so unappealing to me.

Did you delete the XML file?

I'll bring this into a perspective you may appreciate more. As a Star Wars fan, how would you feel about someone that told you everything that happened in TFA before you went to see it? And then proceded to tell you everything that happens in the next two movies? Because from the point of view of someone invested in the story, that is what you are asking for. It'd be like opening up Lord of the Rings and on the first page is a list of who lives and who dies. Or watching Game of Thrones were the opening credits shows who is going to survive or not that season, and the next season, and the next season.

Only none of those other companions can do what T7 can do - and that is move about the city without being noticed. T7 makes a great tool for getting out of a couple of difficult situations in a logical and consistent manner. I can't imagine Khem being able to wander around at will and remotely shut down AA guns.

Well my Vanguard hopes he won't be on the ship...

Try here for a bunch of videos for different weapon types, then TORfashion for the 'sounds like' page to get a look you like similar sounding blaster pistols The old custom built blaster pistol isn't too far off on sound, akthough I didn't listen to them all by a long shot.