*Important updates needed* Old gamer with new ideas!

[SturmUndSterne]

Greetings Bioware staff and swtor community!

 

First off, I would like to state the obvious since I am a current paying subscriber and long time fan of mmos havng played many closed, open, alpha betas (including this one for 6 months) and just about any mmo you can name in the last 15 years. I LOVE THIS GAME!

 

The game has took a turn in a direction I feel isnt for the best. I want to publicly address these now in hopes that community and bioware staff take notice. Hoping community will have patience and Bioware will implement some of these changes.

 

Here is the list of issues along with some known bugs-

 

1. My primary issue is server populations, even when it says heavy. I play on darth malak pvp server as a republic 50, and have began to play sith. The republic side is pretty much dead. This weekend during primetime fleet had 43 people and empire side had over 100 most of the time. You cant find groups for FP's and planets feel dead. Community makes games for most mmos. If you play on empire side and pvp alot you'll be pvp'ing against mostly empire. This is a major balance issue. You cant have one side thats over flowing and one side thats dead.

 

Dont even make me talk about ilum pvp.....why cant ilum be a server wide planet for ALL imps and repubs? Three republic vs. 30+ empire is pretty much useless.

 

FIX: Server mergers need to happen, and now. There needs to be incentive on republic side for more to play there. Make a Yoda class for us, or something. I want to play in a game that has true open world pvp, and has alot of people ingame at all times. Seeing 3 people on a planet just isnt fun, its LONELY.

 

2. Crafting needs to have rare patterns that are truly RARE that offer some of the best loots in the game. Maybe world bosses with a 2% drop rate for example with exceptional chance for a crafting pattern that maybe only one person has server wide. Make crafting worth all that time we put into it. Make it exciting.

 

3. Bugs. I cant drop gray quests?! I summitted tickets and was told I had to go back and do 15 gray quests if I wanted to empty my log. No, I should be able to drop them period.

 

4. PVE gear seems WAY under par compared to PVP gear. Thats an issue. So now everyone just pvps and why not? 60 valor takes awhile buut champ/centurion gear is fairly easy to get. PVE gear pretty much blows for the time comparison when you cant find a group. Maybe do a server instanced zone where you can cross server que. I dont like this idea, and rather have a 1000 people on my server instead to build known commnity ties. Why are the servers set to hold so few yet show heavy as status of server.

 

5. Timely updates. We need someone to tell us whats coming down the pipeline with some idea of a when. I am watching our guild numbers dwindle. One constant question is "What is legacy?" We need to be informed at a timeline for fixes like this one.

 

Finally, I would like to add that nerfs is not what the game needs. Easier s not what the game needs. An addition of 2 sandbox worlds for 50s would be refreshing. Add Dartomir as a true sandbox planet with rare chances at loot off elite nightsisters, true open world pvp. Merge the servers and increase the server populations asap so people can be on during prime time or dead mans hour and still have people to do things wth.

 

I loved swg. I love swtor. I begged swg not to listen to the nerfs. They didnt, and it died.

 

I am now begging Bioware to look into these items and address them with a possibility of successful implementation into game.

 

I love this game, you have done a GREAT job. I am asking you do these things to make it beyond great.

 

IF you feel the need to flame my post, please be critical of it with supporting reasons.

 

Thank you all for your time.

 

-Blackops- 50 Commando "Rogue Squadron"

-Terani- 26 sith sorcerer "Dark Jedi Legion"

 

1. Arguments against server mergers:

A) Public relations nightmare. (Done to death)

B) Legacy and player names are server-based. Who gets to keep theirs? I'm sorry, I don't want to be forced to change my player and legacy name because BW decided to merge my server, and I play on a nearly-always light pop server.

C) If you give Republic incentives for rolling Republic that have ANY in-game effect, you've in effect nerfed playing Empire. That's a balance issue. MAYBE by playing Republic they get a special title, or extra lines in their inventory/cargo bay, but those have a negligible effect on gameplay.

 

2. Crafting can be improved by:

A) Removing all bind-on-pickup status of items. Make *everything* saleable. Then people will stay Artifice/Armsmech/etc. They can keep crafting rakata relics for their mates instead of only for themselves.

B) Make a tier above these items that require the stat to be 400 to use it, so you have a slight buff for keeping your skills, but you shouldn't be nerfed as a player in terms of gear just because you switched skills.

C) Make all purple-rarity mats drop on a critical from nodes. Make the crit chance small, but how nice would it be to be running around on Coruscant and pick up a wind crystal once in a while?

 

3. Stop accepting quests you're not going to complete. If you out-level the quest, DO IT ANYWAY and send the gear to an alt or a lower-level guildie. They'll use it eventually. I've been 5+ levels over content since I left Coruscant with my main, and I just farm commendations to buy gear for my alts. Makes the second trip through (or third, or fourth) Taris much more interesting if you're not dying every 5 minutes. I'll also address this more later.

 

4. Gear addressed in #2.

 

5. You obviously don't pay close enough attention to these forums. They have WEEKLY updates as to what's coming down the pipe, what's in the works. I'm sorry they haven't expressly told you exactly what things they're doing and when, but there's a valid business model for that.

 

For the rest of this post, you may feel free to tl;dr, because I'm about to get wordy.

 

I'm an avid player of miniatures games. I play Warhammer 40k and Warmachine. Warhammer's parent company, Games Workshop, has a strict company policy of not releasing content until the book it's printed in is available in stores. They have, for years now, done everything they can to stamp out leaks about rules and models.

 

The reason for this is simple. In their mind, if everyone knows what's coming up NEXT, they won't pay any attention to the content that's out NOW. If everyone's always waiting for the next brand-new army and ruleset, then they will stop buying what they have NOW and stop playing "until the new rules come out" or later.

 

My main army in that game has a book that was released back in 2005. Every single army in the game except two have had a book release since then - and of those two, one of them is rumored to be coming out within the next month or two, and the other within a few months of that. I've been operating with an army that is two and a half editions behind the times and that is virtually unplayable in the current edition of the game. Because of that, I've had to make a choice. Either I purchase a new army within the same game, or I stop playing, or I deal with an army that's broken in comparison to all the others. No amount of complaining on my part will make GW release an army update to bring my army in line with the others.

 

Warmachine operates under a different format. They release rules and sneakpeeks for their armies and models before they're available in stores. This leads to intense metagaming and powergaming on the part of its players. Everyone gears up and sets up to be ready to compete against armies that may not even exist in their current format when their rules are printed. People complain constantly about faction and set balance, and points costs are adjusted accordingly. This is better "customer support" in a lot of minds, but if you're a casual player, why do you care if there's a combo that causes you to win in two turns? Unless you seek it out, or discover it on your own, it's not going to apply to you much - and if you discover it on your own, you *won't play it* once everyone realizes they won't get a fair game out of you.

 

Relating all this back to Bioware and this game:

 

If Bioware were to have the customer support level that the PvP crowd and forumsjunkies want, there'd be patches *daily* adjusting, tweaking, balancing, and rebalancing - then fixing the bugs as they appear. Once all of that's done, then they might be able to start seeing how their PvP balance changes affected the PvE game, which is the main selling point of this game to the casual player. I purchased this game because it was KotOR 3 (basically), not because it was an MMO. This is the first MMO I've purchased - ever. I've never been interested in playing a game whose fun factor depends upon other people. I'm sure that there's hundreds of thousands of people who are like me. They're the people who won't join your group, won't respond to your LfG requests in chat, and who ninja your chests as you're playing. I've learned MMO manners as I've gone on, no longer do stupid stuff like that, and try to communicate with others in-game and play in the right manner.

 

My gaming experience would be ruined if every day I had to relearn how to play the PvE game because of tweaks made by whinging PvPers. I'd flat-out quit, and so probably would many others. They simply CAN NOT make changes fast enough to suit the PvPers . They can't make content fast enough to suit the hardcores. I liken it to this: There is NO security software present on EARTH capable of keeping out 100% of the hackers, if they were determined to break through it. There is no way possible to COMPLETELY balance this game class by class, faction by faction. My years of playing 40k have proven that. There is no such thing as true balance. Period. Some armies(players) will always be able to faceroll others. Does that make it a bad game or bad system - or does that just mean that players need to learn to play within the system of rules they've designed?

 

I'd rather them make quality, timely content (and the reality is, a 2.5 month old game already having one mini-expansion and about to have a second is UNREAL in game value) at the high standards of the game they've set for themselves than to push out half-measures to placate perceived issues in the game. There are literally HUNDREDS of hours of content in this game. If your goal was to race to L50, then gear up, then be the ultimate master of PvP, you've cheated yourself out of a gaming experience that has in my life been second to none. That's why I say you should go back and do the greyed out quests. If the L50 pvp-type game is the game you want, there are ample opportunities to play games that are based entirely about PvP.

 

In short, don't ruin my RPG because you want more MMO.

[Saltydogz]

Very constructive posts and the legacy problems are much clearer now.

 

As for taking away from others, I do not wsh that. I wish to have more added.

 

One true open world sandbox is an addition that will not take away from any rpg'ers.

 

Having classes that can become "hero slot" with perma death (outside pvp arenas)

 

 

My ideas are "choices" and not enforced on others. People can choose to make a hero class, to play the monthly leader of the faction, or to go to the open world darthomir.

 

 

Very constructive ideas from everyone though! TY!

[Saltydogz]

Lost another person today.

 

Please do something soon.

[Dranzen]

My primary issue is server populations, even when it says heavy. I play on darth malak pvp server as a republic 50, and have began to play sith. The republic side is pretty much dead. This weekend during primetime fleet had 43 people and empire side had over 100 most of the time. You cant find groups for FP's and planets feel dead. Community makes games for most mmos. If you play on empire side and pvp alot you'll be pvp'ing against mostly empire. This is a major balance issue. You cant have one side thats over flowing and one side thats dead.

 

The pop issues were known since Beta but Bioware didn't know/address the issues of faction imbalance. They had the numbers, but I don't believe they knew how to address it.

 

Also, they fundamentally created the planet population problems by creating far too many areas. Essentially, the game engine is incapable of rendering a lot of players and an a massive environment. Bioware addressed this by making a decision to create lobbies or small planets instead of creating just a few planets with massive areas, different levels, and hundreds of players.

 

But Bioware was an RPG company, not an MMORPG company, so I don't believe the designers even thought about how alienated players would start to become 3 - 6 months down the road. It's also a major part of why we see so many issues on the forums and in conversations with other players. Yes, the game is young, but it has some fundamental design flaws for a MMO - not so much for just a single player RPG.

 

I know what you mean though. I can't stand making an alt on my server - a server categorized as heavy. When you're 1 person on an entire planet with only 14 others at your level range and people refuse to party up for quests and skip the Heroics, it's frustrating.

 

I honestly don't think they have the capability to do server merges. The amount of chaos it'll cause with name changes (characters and Legacy) will be the bottleneck. I just don't see them doing it.

 

I also don't see them doing transfers. Would Legacy exp transfer? What if you have characters on the other server, would they merge Legacy exp? They've honestly created a system that limits a lot of that kind of flexibility.

 

I can see it now, player A is John Moonstrider and poor player B who also chose Moonstrider is Obi-stown Moonstrider#2. Or better yet, they even dare ask player B to change his legacy name.

Edited February 18, 2012 by Dranzen

[Saltydogz]

Good post!

[sebbecr]

You're not... and its still a bad idea (in my opinion).

 

No joke classes, please.

 

And if you claim that a Yoda-race class isn't a joke, you're kidding yourself. Like Jawas and Ithorians and Ugnauts, armor would need to be completely re-done, animations would need to be re-done (eg: most lightsaber attacks which would strike above a Yoda's-Species' head). And then we've still got issues with hitboxes and the various character interactions that are based on characters of a normal size.

 

And as if that weren't enough: We don't even know the name of the species. Why? Because Lucasarts actively fights attempts to write stories about them. They're not going to green-light the idea for Bioware just to get some chuckles out of video game players.

 

if WoW had gnomes, SWTOR can have Yoda class.

[Zachajariah]

Does no one agree with anything I said?

 

Surely republic poplation feels dead to others?

 

Republic is definitely dead. Just got my shadow and immediately roll a sith sorc. Max repub on any planet is about 10... MAX. Fleet, 30. On my sith it's always 125+.

 

The truth is.. I love republic. I don't see why dark I and above sages can't get lightning???? Also I think it's hilarious all the sith mobs and the pvp reward is a purple lightsaber when the ONLY person you see in the movies with a purple lightsaber is a Jedi ........................................................................................................................................................................…......…….....................................................