Please stop shooting yourselves in the foot

[Deewe]

Dear BioWare designers and decisions makers,

 

as much as I'm a SW and a MMO fan I sit here, taking the time to write a wall of text instead of actually playing your game.

 

I listened some of the guild summit live stream, read the rest and to be honest you have me worried. Far from delusional, I know this post is only one voice among hundreds of thousands, still I do hope it would somehow be this little spark igniting something in the right place and people.

 

Before we actually dive in, please let me specify the goal here isn't to hurt anyone's feelings nor rant the game but give a fair and honest feedback, feedback based on my own perceptions.

 

 

Going back from October 2008 to now and trying to have a look at the game and its evolution in general, I have the feeling you had (and still have) great design ideas that, I don't know why, you keep butchering with either really poor implementation, or last minute calls ruining them.

 

 

I'll take a few example, mind you:

 

[Two opposed factions]

The game was designed and advertised around 2 opposed factions.

Now, encountering population balance issues, especially in PvP, you find nothing else than adding same faction vs same faction battlegrounds.

 

Not only you are going against one of the core design of the game but also you are, by the same way hurting the feeling of belonging to a specific faction for the players.

 

If you remember well, Blizzard designers, been hammering how players felt attached to their own faction. Dividing players in two factions helped players feel like they are part of a group, especially on PvP servers.

 

Without going into much extend, I can tell you the same faction vs the same faction mechanic will, in the long term, bring more issues than else and it won't fix the population balance at all either. Also while you can certainly justify it with a good story it won't hold long when players will find themselves fighting more their own faction than the other.

 

In short the plaster will make us bleed more.

 

[World PvP]

I'm not very fond of PvP as I always roll on a RP server, still naming some servers PvP is a sad joke to people who like it. One instanced planet isn't world PvP.

 

By design you prevented all players to go on too many of the opponent faction planets. Now your answer to PvP is add more warzones and later on planet(s). Whatever good they are, warzones gets boring, even if they are as large as planets. PvPers wants to experience the thrill of venturing in a dangerous world. Not gather in specific instances.

 

You obviously can't remove the PvP server naming. So let players access to all planets and level their characters by PvPing from 1 to 50. You don't even need to add hours long story based quests to justify this. All PvPers would be more than happy to eat any, even text based mission, that allows them to sneak past the opponent planet defense and land on it to confront the enemy.

 

[Huttball]

The concept is fun, seriously it is even if there are a bit too much CC in it.

 

However while I'm not a lore freak, aren't Jedi supposed to be more than glowbats wielders? Because, let's be honest here, all the epicness of yielding a personally crafted Lightsaber and being a guardian of the force hits the dust the second you enter the arena. So much for trying to make the Light sided Jedi feel heroic. And personally I don't see Vader nor Palpatine doing it either.

 

Supposedly you guys, told us the Huttball would help mitigating the population imbalance.

 

For a game based on story and iconic characters and classes, do you really feel it was worth it butchering this feeling for this? I don't.

 

Now, would you have kept Huttball for non force users and created another force based contest like for the Jedi and Sith that would have been another story.

 

[Crystal color restrictions]

So at first you restricted the colors and now you open the valves.

 

Aren't the classes supposed to be iconic, are they?

 

Speaking of the lore there was indeed a few exception with cross alignment crystals. But

red is one of the most iconic color in SW for LS.

 

What you should have done is indeed allow ranged weapons to use any color but the LS crystals should have been very rare and hard to get unlocks... if ever.

 

[Legacy names]

Too many players don't want to share any legacy or not name, ties... name it between some of their characters.

 

There's this very simple request to a last name, still you oblige players to have all their characters to have the exact same surname or title. BTW yes people knows they aren't obliged to display them, so?

 

I'm going to be blunt here. What aren't you understanding in the above request? Or should I say in what does that annoys you so much that you don't implement it, on top of the legacy name? Is that too much to ask?

 

That's a simple and quick fix that would make, you know, players happy.

 

[Legacy abilities unlock]

Can you explain to us what blood/ties my Sith Warrior shares with my Mirialan Smuggler so he can now force choke other?

 

It doesn't work and it makes having these powers on the default classes seen as less epic.

 

Now, as suggested by others, would you restrict the powers by force or non force users that would be more acceptable and I dare saying more widely accepted. A dark side oriented jedi Lightning an opponent or an IA nut kicking someone would make sense.

 

[Legacy specie unlock]

If we played a [insert_class name] do you really think players wants to roll a character of another class with the exact same specie?

 

How fun is that?

 

Also for the players who already have alts before the available species. Do you really think they'll appreciate being obliged to delete and reroll them to get the new combo? How rewarding is that?

 

Specie changes should be added in.

 

[Legacy mail]

Can I ask what's the point of having a mail box in the space ship when we can't recall to the ship and have to almost always pass by one to get to our it?

 

With the GTN and the sell repair droid coming next you don't have anymore the excuse of using them as incentives for socialization as we will be able to use them hidden in our space ships.

 

So why don't we directly get access tot the email and GTN from our datapads. Can't we already send/receive 3D holocom from anywhere? It's just a step below.

 

While you're at it how about making companions more worthy like moving items between us and the space ship and having SW UPS deliver items from/to our space ships.

 

[Hue colors]

Soon we'll be able to unify our gear. That a great new but a good concept, on paper only.

 

Character's will end as twins even more. At least we'll match now.

 

The Unify gear color is a great concept but it only works as a topping. Not a topping of moddable gear but a topping of gear dyes.

 

The first step should have been to add gear dyes in the game not twins mode.

 

[Gear mods]

Let's start with this statement: managing gear mods, with its current implementation is tedious. It's even worse when you starts comparing mods between all your characters and associated companions. So much that you need a piece of paper to do so. The UI isn't there and you stated it's a cosmetic issue only, the UI. So not important.

 

And... there you go you let's dive deeper into it.

 

Guys, the gear mods is like the Hue color: a topping. You're, once again wasting a great idea. Add appearance tabs, then and only then top it with gear mods. One can perfectly go well with the other.

 

[AC respec]

Whatever AC are different classes or not there's a big issue with some roles hard to be filled in groups.

 

Don't fool yourself, most players that would roll alts won't stop if you implement them. Although players that gets bored or want to try new things or help guilds/friends would stay subscriber longer with it.

 

In the end the unhappy players leaves. We both loose that way.

 

 

[World living feeling]

In the guild summit it was mentioned improving NPC spawning patterns.

 

I'm going to quote someone: "Dead, Lifeless, Boring, Stagnant, Monotone, Uninspired Worlds."

 

The NPC AI is either dull or inexistent. The world is static. The environments feels on rails. There is quite none incentives for exploration. And that's the only thing you mentions about this? Astonishing, really.

 

Aren't MMO about delivering a world for players to enjoy? A well designed world makes my brain buy it, TOR doesn't.

 

[Server merge]

Some servers are like ghost towns.

 

When will you get the nuts to merge them? In the long term you are hurting your game more than else and don't be delusional LFD won't fix that.

 

 

I could go on lengthily so as last example:

 

[Guild summit]

An already not that good idea on paper that wasn't very well managed either.

 

The communication of the event wasn't that great and divided the player base in two the pugs players against the guilds.

 

Then apart the PR what what the idea to have 150 person gathered in 30 minutes panels without any organisation nor preparation at all?

 

You should have run dedicated forums topics, gather players questions. Now during the summit group guild leaders by group of 7-10 before each panel and write down 2 questions for each group.

 

 

We all want the game to be insanely successful in the long term, but seems to me you keep shooting yourselves in the feet. It's disappointing for the least.

[Darth-Malice]

I'm afraid you've yet to learn the truth. They don't care. They don't care about anything except getting your money. Now logically you think they would appease people too do this but they don't. Why? Who knows.

[AdmiralOnasi]

Adding more same faction warzones is just a mindblowingly bad decision. It's going to take away what little incentive there still is to play Republic on PvP servers. Every day my server loses more and more Republics, they either quit, move to a more balanced server, or join the Empire. Why? Because having nobody to play with sucks, and losing 2/3 of your warzones sucks.

 

BioWare doesn't give a rip about the Republic, they'd rather keep the Imperial zerg happy than tell them, "No, you aren't getting more same faction warzones. Playing a lot of Huttball is a fact of life when you play the massively overpopulated side on a grossly imbalanced server. If you don't like Huttball, you should level a Republic character."

[Kesica]

Did I read that correctly? you want access to all the planets from 1 - 50?

 

 

I can see it now, level 50s pking on tython. That is the worst idea i've read on these

 

forums in months.

[AJediKnight]

It was 'filler' for me between two big breaded wedges of WoW, as it turns out. I resubbed yesterday, and to say that Warcraft is a dramatically better game that TOR would be a massive understatement.

 

If...

 

WoW

TOR

WoW

 

...equals an MMO burger, I'm afraid I'm left asking 'where's the beef?'

[Zilrota]

Hello everyone,

 

While we do appreciate anyone who takes the time to compile constructive feedback for us, we're closing this thread, as we do have a forum for suggestions and many subforums for specific topics. Don't forget that you can also use the In-Game Customer Service Portal to report any issues you encounter!

 

If you have a specific suggestion or individual piece of feedback, we encourage you to post in the Suggestion Box forum or to make a thread regarding your issue in the relevant subforum.

 

Thank you!