BW, you can save the game with 1.2 if you choose to.

[chton]

Ah drama, hate to break it to you, 1.2 isn't going to make or break the game. Maybe for you not for the rest of us. Feel free to make a big deal about nothing. Game will continue along with or with out you. Just because you leave doesn't mean game is dead. Sorry but it's true.

[RocNessMonster]

People still play that game? I don't even think that was much of a game when I was a kid.

 

Or do you mean WOW? Sorry, haven't played that in years.

 

It's extremely sad that video games have replaced imagination. I weep for the lack of culture in 50 years.

Edited January 21, 2012 by RocNessMonster

[Mormack]

I don't agree with any of your assessments and would only lead to the game degrading as far as I am concerned by making the galaxy incredibly smaller and Destroying the community.

[Zakkana]

Ease up on the leading rhetoric, and you might get yourself some constructive replies to your ideas.

 

They do need to reduce some of the travel time in game I think. Much of it can be remedied with making getting to your ship more convenient.

 

-Have a quick travel option to port you directly to your class airlock.

-Add an ability where you signal to your companions aboard your ship to come and pick you up. This could perhaps replace the fleet pass.

-Remove the elevators/mini loading screens between you and your ship.

 

Personally, I think they need to do SWG's old system... you had one point everyone went to and then you either traveled to another planet or you hit Launch to go into your ship.

[FourTwent]

BW, patch 1.2 is going to be your deciding factor. From that point forward the game will continue down one of two paths; either the game will reclaim several of the subs I know you lost after the first month and gain many more or it will lose more subs and have few people willing to try the game for the first time.

 

I urge you to include the following in your next major content patch as it will bring the game on par with the industry standards of other games.

 

Make quick travel interplanetary.

Load screens are one of the biggest enemies to the game. Load screens kill immersion and traveling between planets can mean multiple load screens and pointless amounts of running through spaceports. Give people the option to have their ship pick them up at whatever location they are currently at and take them to the space port of another planet in a single load screen.

 

Such an inclusion can also indirectly help with world PvP. Impromptu world PvP has a certain amount of reliance on people being able to respond to the challenge and get there in a reasonable amount of time. Given enough inconvenience, it becomes a long, daunting, and unworthy task to leave your questing area and get to where the action is. This can kill potential world PvP at lower levels.

 

 

Cross-server LFG and/or server transfers, please.

There are still quite a few servers out there that have good populations on them and it is easy to form groups for flashpoints, but this is not the case for several of the servers which have effectively died over the last month. A level 40 who really enjoys their class and story but is stuck on a server where there are only 6 people within their level range and does not get to enjoy the group content or flashpoints because of this is just as likely to unsubscribe from the game as they are to re-roll the same class on another server. BW, you know this is true even if members of the forum are unwilling to believe it.

 

Also, more than a few of the people I've met in this game and on other forums have decided to un-sub simply because they are tired of spamming general with LFG for an hour+ in an attempt to get a viable group. People playing on dead servers just can't find other people wanting to group and people on lively servers watch their LFG go whizzing past as people argue whether America or Australia is a better country.

 

 

Very few people want this game to do poorly and a lot of people see potential with this game if BW is willing to dig deep and catch up with the industry standards of other MMOs currently on the market. I think a lot of people were willing to adapt to the changes BW made in the layout and the gameplay. In spite of this, you should be striving to appeal to the masses. Not just the SW fan who will relish in anything that has a blaster or a lightsaber because this alone will not keep the lights on at your studios. Not just 'hardcore' MMO player who thinks running everywhere and endless load screens are the way its done because people will leave in favor of games with single load screens.

 

 

Everyone on these forums who are being called whiners, QQ-ers, and being told to 'just leave'...they played the game to some degree or another. This isn't metacritic; these are your customers. Everyone who is advocating this game remain in its current state is advocating its demise by the end of the year.

 

shut up troll. the game's not gonna die

[SnoggyMack]

BW, patch 1.2 is going to be your deciding factor.

 

They said that about EGA. That didn't work. They said that about the end of the Holiday season. That didn't work. They said that about patch 1.1. That didn't work. They said that about January 20. That didn't work.

 

These ultimatums and deadlines never seem to stop the game from going on, people from playing it.

[SBite]

Cross-server LFD is the worst thing that can happen to server community. It should never be included in this game. Any kind of LFD that auto gathers a group is community killer. There should be SAME server tool that makes it easy to show ppl that want to come to specific Flashpoint, nothing more.

[GiovFett]

Please Bioware don't make a cross-server LFD/LFF nor LFR/LFO, cross-server blows up the community, in world of warcraft i was never able to make a single raid group without spamming like hell on the general chat, here just because of not having any cross-server stuff i was able to create an entire operation group and finish the operation Eternity Vault, cross-server kill the community, during the beta i heard that cross-server kills the community and now i know why.

[surak]

What is needed is a matching service. It does not put you in a group, it just gives you a list of people who want to do the same flashpoint/quest that you entered your selection criteria for.

 

For the ADHD crowd, a finder for people that want to do the same stuff. You have to make the groups.

 

BTW, this is only a single player game if you want it to be.

Edited January 21, 2012 by surak

[Sabarok]

I've gone 15 years of playing MMOs without using a dungeon finder tool. I can wait a little longer for it to come to SWTOR, at least until there are more dungeons to actually look for. Too much of the community is against cross-server dungeon finder, so that's unlikely to happen.

 

To those of us that never played WoW, some of the "demands" that players say are "must haves" or the game will "fail" boggle the mind since I've never used them. They might be useful and helpful, but the game isn't going to implode because they don't exist. No need to be melodramatic; it only takes away from the ideas you are trying to impart. WoW thrived before those features were added, and SWTOR doesn't need to be better than WoW in every way possible to survive. Lots of MMOs are less-than-WoW and do just fine.

 

Bioware's goal isn't to destroy WoW & conquer the MMO world, but to create a fun and profitable MMO that players enjoy. Who cares if SWTOR never gets a playerbase larger than WoW? This isn't a winner-takes-all market.

 

The launch for SWTOR is done. It's already here and we have what we have. There are only 2 things that can kill SWTOR: No more new features & content or adding a new feature that more people hate than they love. Bioware is already aware of this, which is why their dev teams aren't going to stop added in new features & content, and they also closely evaluate what they do add to their best to see that it helps more than it hurts.

 

Not adding a LFD tool will never destroy SWTOR, but adding a bad LFD tool that does what the players don't want to happen can hurt it. Come back in 2 years. Maybe you'll see the "must have" features "needed" for an MMO, and maybe you won't, but SWTOR will still be here for a renewal on a subscription.

[Scopian]

BTW, this is only a single player game if you want it to be.

Or if no one is around, which is happening more and more.

 

For all those believing this wont happen, have fun believing that kind of magic. Its already on the table, its just a matter of time and it isn't in BW's favor to keep it on the back burner.

 

Bioware already redefined their server populations over the last 24 hours. Krath server, with less than 100 people per faction in off peak hours, is suddenly 'Standard' instead of 'Light' in the middle of the night like it has been for weeks now.

[NoxiousAlby]

Cross server LFG is a breeding ground for the obnoxious, a same server LFG I support because a players reputation still counts for something.

[RJMazz]

You are the authority on what an mmo is right?

 

Maybe not, but he sure is an ***.

[Trigin]

I personally don't care as I tried to get into this game, but couldn't. Just not into MMOs anymore, just thought i'd try after leaving wow a year or two ago. My problem with this post is that everyone seems to think that cross server LFG , and other features found in WoW are unique to WoW. Or that implementing them in SWTOR would just be ripping off WoW. No. These are like technological advancements that BW is ignoring. No one is going to make a new FLIP PHONE and try and sell it as a new, good device. Things like cross server LFG and server xfers are things that the community (consumers) have gotten used to through all new industry leading platforms. If BW doesn't provide them, then the consumers will go elsewhere. Period. I personally think BW rushed this to market without the proper features, and hence, it is going to kill them.

 

If you dont think the game is currently dying, you're ignorant. Their new video showing new features coming to the game was LITERALLY a cry to the forums saying "NO, please don't leave, were doing everything you said, honest, you can even see!".

 

Like seriously... static UI on launch.. this is like 3 hours of work to implement atleast scaling. No excuse as to why it wasn't there at launch. Cause everyone knows they like a 26" 1080p monitor with buttons the size your fist.

Edited January 22, 2012 by Meluna
rude

[Noth]

Or if no one is around, which is happening more and more.

 

For all those believing this wont happen, have fun believing that kind of magic. Its already on the table, its just a matter of time and it isn't in BW's favor to keep it on the back burner.

 

Bioware already redefined their server populations over the last 24 hours. Krath server, with less than 100 people per faction in off peak hours, is suddenly 'Standard' instead of 'Light' in the middle of the night like it has been for weeks now.

 

less than 100 on off peak hours where? On the Stations? On certain planets? /Who doesn't give you the entire population online.

 

Hate to tell you this but on Dark reaper one of the most populous server off peak hours you see less than 100 people on the stations. Yet funnily enough I have no problems at all finding groups for everything. You are not seeing the entire population that is online when you login. I suggest you do more research on the populations of servers.

[sevev]

Explain to me how adding a system that finds groups for you with random people makes the game less of a single player game.

 

BLizzard came up with the idea of cross server LFD (and now LFR) queuing service.

 

Once this was added any semblance of server based community was thrown out the window.

Also, any semblance of friendliness and consideration was thrown out the window by people constantly rolling NEED on items that they couldn't even USE.

 

Subsequently, the WOW community has degenerated into a constant bickering of "nice arena rating bro. or, Nice gear score" amongst it's players.

 

It was through features such as LFD and other things like recount and gear score that messed up that community.

 

The players asking for LFD are WOW players that want the same feature set that is in WOW. What those players do not realize is that pre-LFD the player communities on the various WOW servers were able to get groups and run content.

 

Cross server was not needed before.

It should not be added now.

[Sabarok]

If BW doesn't provide them, then the consumers will go elsewhere. Period. I personally think BW rushed this to market without the proper features, and hence, it is going to kill them..

 

Right, because Bioware isn't the only company doing a Star Wars MMO. There are lots of "must have" features that WoW players are demanding to be added to SWTOR with the threat that the MMO "will die" if they aren't implemented, and since I don't play (and have never played) WoW, they are features I just haven't encountered or used. I never played WoW because by the time WoW launched, I was already bored of playing medieval MMOs.

 

SWTOR launched lacking features I have seen in many other MMOs. It launched lacking features I have never used. It launched with features I have never seen before. The launch is done, and there will be more than enough players to stick around long enough for Bioware to develop new features.

 

SWTOR doesn't need to be better than WoW. Their goal is to have 5-10% of the size of WoW. If they can attract 5% of WoW's players (meaning 95% of WoW players will like WoW better), and get the rest of the subscriptions from other MMOs, SWTOR will make a killing. They are trying to build their own market, and they'll get it, whether you are personally in it or not.

 

Personally, I think SWTOR is still lacking in some important features, but nothing so fatal that it will collapse in a month without them. From what I read, Bioware's launch was far beyond what they expected, so even if they lost half (I doubt it's anywhere near that high) of their playerbase because of features, they'll fall into line of their original predictions. It's not that SWTOR launched too early or with not enough features, but that too many players bought too soon with too high expectations. There's no reason why you can't come back in 2 years when more work has been done.

 

Ideas should be judged on their own merits. Server transfers is good. Faction transfers is bad. LFT Tool sounds good (15 years of playing MMOs and I've only used it once, and it went horribly). Cross-server LFT Tool sounds terrible. Combat Log is a good idea. Damage meters should be 3rd party. Threat meters is too much Easy mode.

[Tythus]

More WOW crap, plz delete tread ty

Just to add this is in the wrong section of the forums so y i thk it doesnt belong here

Edited January 22, 2012 by Tythus

[Matte_Black]

Aside from very limited server transfers, I want none of that. Too much quick travel kills the sense of distance for me and cross-server mechanics tend to reduce player accountability to their servermates. I'd actually be likely to leave the game if BioWare added what the OP wants. Edited January 22, 2012 by Matte_Black

[Drengir]

Did not read the whole block of text. And the Only point I agree with, is the statement that their content patch 1.2 really needs to bring something! Or else they risk losing too many subs and getting such a bad reputation that no one will even bother trying it out.

 

So, both your suggestions is something i Personally would Not like to see.

The first one: Not so much of a problem, it rarely bothers me at all. I mean, I travel to a planet and doesn't leave it until I'm done there.. and If I have to, then I use a fleet pass.

The second one: Hell no, I was there when Blizzard ruined WoW with it. And sure it's handy, but it Really ruins the experience alot, just one of the reasons being "You get into a group with 3 other players, you run the FP fast and nice, and like the three other players alot. Hell you had a Blast!" now, too damn bad that you most likely Never ever will see them again, short of rerolling to their servers.

 

Broken tools are broken. Just keep the servers full (by allowing server migrations etc if a server goes low and faction transfers to the under populated side) and improve the LFG tool that you already have.

 

Edit: I've since I started playing made 9 Really good friends on the server Just by PvP:ing. Basically I run a WZ, do some great gameplay with a player or acknowledge that he is a good PvP:er and then start a premade with him, starts talking etc. After a few runs you have a new friend to PvP with. Same goes for PvE (had some "regular PvE friends" but since I dislike PvE it's nothing I've delved deeper into).

Now this would all be impossible with these lame tools. Short of a premade, you will never play/get to know people.

Edited January 22, 2012 by Drengir

[TheOnlyKyrenS]

i completely DISAGREE with all your suggestions

 

/thread

[BobaFetaCheese]

The game doesn't need saving.

[AeonWeapon]

Totally agree with OP, and could list alot more.

 

However it gets tiresome arguing with all the naysayers, fanboys and white knights who refuse to see what needs to be done to keep this MMO appealing to the general population (the greater mass of players aren't even on this forum asking for change, they're just quitting if they're not impressed with the game.)

 

In order for an MMO to be competitive and successful, it needs to keep up with all the evolved and developed, tested and tried and true, industry standard features that exist in so many other MMOs. When it lacks these features, it comes off as a very unrefined game that is behind the times. In the case of technology, people buy the product which has all the current features, not the one which is behind on the standards.

 

I really wanted to see this game succeed myself, and I'm saddened that so many features that should have been in game before launch were just neglected. This is very disappointing to many experienced MMO players who are used to great features and conveniences from their old games.

 

And no I'm not talking about WoW, never played WoW beyond the 10 day demo, it didn't impress me. While people were playing WoW I was playing great MMOs like City of Heroes and before that Anarchy Online. I see the same thing happening in TOR that happened when I joined DC Universe -- My friends who play games weren't impressed and didn't subscribe, I'm the only one who stuck around and gave it a chance, and I'm becoming disappointed in the lack of very basic and standard features also (DCU did at least LAUNCH with LFG tool and tons of appearance customization options), and it's only fun for so long when I can't get any of my friends to play the game with me because they find it's lacking these features. Now I see so many people on my server didn't stay in the game and it's gotten even more empty, it's so hard to find a team and it's becoming boring.

 

And to the people that say "games like WoW are 7 years old, this one is new, so you shouldn't expect all the features a 7 year old game has": I feel this is a backwards argument... It is precisely BECAUSE those games are old that a new game should have everything they have and more. TOR is new and it should have launched with all the good stuff any old games have. Those games are old! Why should they have more?

 

I love Star Wars, and I love MMOs when they're full of convenient UI and quality of life features that make it a pleasure to play, limit downtime, maximize fun time, and most of all, encourage team play -- both by making it easy to arrange teams, and by providing the proper incentives to people who might not otherwise team that much.

 

I really, really wanted this game to succeed, but I'm beginning to fear it won't. ALL the missing features need to be added fast, before the population dwindles more and more. And people need to stop arguing against this before it's too late. Having current features that are competitive with other games will keep this game alive and thriving, don't argue against progress and allow this game to stagnate.

 

This game, in a star wars universe, with a good story, a good basis, should be hugely populated, not just populated by a minority of diehards and people like me who stick around hoping the game will get much, much better.

 

I hardly play anymore, I come on these forums and hope to communicate the need for change to the developers. I still pay my subscription, but it is in hope for very soon improvements, because the fact is, I'm already very bored, letdown, and disappointed.

 

At the top of the list, I would love to see the LFG too like OP said, so I can actually get into the game and be playing the content within 10 minutes. I'm tired of shouting LFG LFG LFG for an hour to get a team.

 

Only allowing team members to roll "need" on items their character can wear, which have their primary stats. If they want it for companion, they have to roll greed and hope they win the roll. Fair enough, and I need not say more. And this very easily eliminates any problems with the LFG tool leading to ninja looting like people claim.

 

And I fully agree with OP that once you unlock bind points you should be able to fast travel between planets, the traveling sequences should only be forced on you the first time you get to a planet or waypoint. This would really allow people to just easily jump around to where something is happening, whether it's PvP, a friend's FP or raid, whatever. And just generally circumvent the tedium of mass load screens...

 

Additional things that are badly needed:

 

MUCH more character appearance customization options: allow us to mod endgame gear, put in much more moddable gear models, and put in a system to change the color of gear or at least match it like in beta.

 

Very customizable UI, especially with movable and resizable hotbars and windows.

 

Dual speccing, so you can set up two builds for your character and switch to fill a needed role on a team.

 

Faster speeders for gods sake!... they just don't feel speedy, they go at the speed of a bicycle. If you look at the speeder scenes in star wars movies, the scenery flies by, at least at the speed of the taxi speeders in the game. (Think of Return of the Jedi, speeder chase in the forest)

 

MUCH more incentives for sharing missions with people in game, and the ability to share planet missions you have already done, so you can join people to do them again. Give more rewards to these people, in the form of social points, xp and credits, some loot, to encourage them to team up for regular missions... because as it is, if it's not heroic or a FP, people consider it a solo mission and do it alone, and it's too hard to coordinate people, even friends and guild members, because no one is ever on the same missions or at the same level. Bioware might want to examine a teaming system like City of Heroes, which allows people of any level to team, whether 1 or 50, equalizing them at the team leader's level, and allowing the team to share anyone's missions and get normal rewards for their current level. Some games I have played have game structure and systems in place designed around encouraging grouping... a game has to be designed like this, because if it's not easy to arrange group activities, the fact is that most people will just solo as long as it is possible. When i played Anarchy Online, they were a bit hardcore about it, and usually you could find a team simply because you couldn't survive much of the content without a team.

 

CHAT BUBBLES! So you can see who's talking to you. Hell, half the time people have the chat window closed and don't even know if you're trying to talk to them.

 

Some sort of PvP side balancing system... I'm not sure exactly what, but maybe incentives for the side with the less players, extra creds for the underdogs depending how outnumbered they are. This would encourage PvPers to switch to an alot on the rebublic side when the empire severely outnumbers them.

 

Make space missions part of the plot -- Starship battles are just a detached side game that has nothing to do with the story. It would have been so cool to have these missions as part of the story line. Consider how "Star Warsey" this would be: You're about to leave a planet and head to the next planet... but oh no! An enemy fleet drops out of hyperspace and begins bombarding the planet! You have to avoid the orbital bombardment and get to your ship and take off from the surface, then you have to fight your way through enemy fighters to get out of the system! You yell to your crew "quick! man those turrets! Keep these fighters off of us while I charge up the hyperdrive!" You have to fight them off until you're able to break free and make the hyperspace jump. That... would... be... awesome. Or consider this: You arrive at a new planet, but it's under an enemy blockade, you have to find a way to slip past the enemy fleet, or fight through, just to land on the planet surface. Or, you're a bounty hunter, you're after a bounty, your target escapes and jumps on their ship and takes off from the planet, now you have to get in your ship, chase them down and try to disable their engines to capture them, or force them to crash land on a planet so you can resume the hunt.... There's so many creative, exciting and interesting ways that space combat could have been worked into the story, and these things would add such a great star wars feel to the game.

 

Flashpoint wipes -- if everyone in a team dies, they should NOT respawn on the fleet, forcing them to go through a load screen TWICE before they can get back into the action. This is especially annoying to people with slower machines with long load times. They should respawn at the FP area start, just inside the entrance, still inside the instance, so they don't have to go through two pointless load screens.

 

Ability to set companion follow distance, or just increase it, so they follow off camera and don't keep getting in the way of what you're trying to click.

 

FIX ABILITY DELAY!!!!!

 

Add target-of-target!

 

Add multi targetting (one friendly and one enemy targeted at the same time for heals/buffs and attacks respectively.)

 

Add mouse over healing!

 

Allow single button press area effect attacks! (just hover mouse where you want to cast it, then hit the number and it will cast there, without having to click the ground, OR, just pick an enemy target, hit the number, and the AoE will cast centered on that enemy.)

 

Fix tab targetting to cycle through enemies properly!

 

Make companion missions go directly to pending, so they don't interrupt whatever else you're doing or close other open windows!

 

Allow more windows to be open at once, and let us move them!

 

Add medium and heavy armor versions of all the social armors, so they're useful to all classes!

 

Make social level operate across all characters on server, like legacy levels... it takes forever to get social points unless you have a friend you play with 24/7. And increase social point rewards, 2 to 8 is nothing.

 

And I could go on with more, but these are some of the most pressing and important things if this game is going to keep up with the competitors... these will keep players around, and these are what will truly encourage and preserve community and server population.

 

I know, TL;DR, but those of you who don't have a short attention span, read and consider what I'm saying. The game has to appeal to the masses, not to a few. I really want this game to become the leading MMO, but it's not off to a good start in that sense... it should have launched with all the competitive features that would allow it to keep up with the times, it should have what every MMO has and much, MUCH more. Then TOR would rule the MMO world... and I really want that to be a reality.

 

And to you anti-progressives, really, stop going "we don't need, we don't need, we don't need", if they listen to you, you'll kill the game. If you don't want to use a feature, don't use it, but let those of us who do want to use it have it. A lasting, years-long MMO needs to have options to appeal to all player types. Really, like with the LFG tool, if you don't like teaming with people on other servers, don't use it, form a team with your friends or people on server, then queue up a premade team for a FP or Op. Yes, you can let us have our way and still do things your way, everyone can be happy... you don't have to kill our fun to keep having fun your way. Is it more important to for you to be against the addition of features you don't' want to use (for whatever reason) OR to keep the game populated and profitting by letting more people have the things they want

 

The bottom line is, if this game does not have all the feature that all other MMOs have it will not be competitive. If it does not have all that and more, it won't be the MMO industry leader. And if the game does not develop all the features that MMO players have gotten used to, that they have come to know, to love, and to expect, it will not appeal to the mass majority. If this game cannot attract and keep the majority of MMO players, it will not continue to turn a profit, then I really fear that EA, with their corporate all-that-matters-is-profit-and-the-bottom-line mentality will bail out on the project, abandon it, and this will become another failed free-to-play MMO, (like DCU, WAR, AOC, etc.) and there will be no future additions to the project.

 

Add features... allow them to add features... and keep the game alive and thriving in the long run.

 

TL;DR, wall of text

Edited January 22, 2012 by AeonWeapon

[AeonWeapon]

/bump