Unsubscriber's Thread: Tell us a few things

[pure_laced]

Unbsubbed today and the reasons:

 

- Dev team and CS team are complete jokes.

- Lack of communication.

- Lack of QA department to catch even the simplest of gamebreaking bugs that would literally take 5 mins to test.

- Will not pay for a game that is going to a F2P model and still no eta on content updates. World event does not equal a content update. Nightmare mode, new operation equal content updates.

- Alienated their main subscriber base, pve end game raiders and pvp'ers.

- Legacy perks are not rewarding. They still cost gazillions of credits and the higher legacy level you have is meaningless.

[AGSThomas]

This is my second unsubscription. I do not hate this game, and I thought they were onto something during the beta. My first cancel came about because I was playing on a dead server. Months traveled by and server transfers happened. I resubbed for one month. I canceled today because:

 

1. Static Worlds. Nothing has changed to bring these worlds to life. Not only to they not feel Star Warsy but they dont feel like worlds. They feel like isolated zones with speeder hubs. Not only that, the zones are boring and unimaginitve. Most everything thats placed in the world is done so strategically for you to go from one point to the other. I remember back in WoW, my first coming upon the tomb of Uther Lightbringer. I was amazed, I wondered and wondered why it was there. WoWs old continents had so much of that, and it was really great immersion. I dont ever wonder in this game. I honestly thought this was one thing that could be relatively easy to fix. To stealth add little things with every patch. But nothing was ever added.

 

2. Choices Mean Nothing. This one really bothers me actually. No matter what choice I select in my conversations nothing ever makes any difference to my story. Yes, I just spared that Republic Agent for crossing me, so what? My story doesnt ever arch from my decisions. That Agent never comes back to help me, and if I kill him, his friends dont come to hunt me down or anything. The "choice" in this game is so useless that I just kill everyone, regardless of class, cause its more funny seeing them die then it is to have them walk away. Which brings me to..

 

3. Dark and Light Are Pointless. They serve absolutely no purpose. So going down the dark side nothing changes except for the fact that I cant equip a certain type of relic? How come NPCs dont balk at my Dark V Sith Lord? Why does the Jedi Council not feel a distrubance in the force as my Knight chooses every single dark option. Why do I get the title of master when I am marred by Dark Side Corruption? How uncreative can you get? The struggle between dark and light was the very essence of Star Wars. There is no struggle here. Its come to the point where going down the dark side is cooler because you get cool darkside corruption on your face. LAME!!

 

4. The Story Ends. When my story ended on my Sith Warrior for the first through the game I felt like my character was a bonafide Darth. What was I rewarded with when my story ended? My companions didnt talk to me anymore, my story grinded to a halt in that I was forced to just run flashpoints that no one can stomach sitting through the scenes (SPACEBAR!!! SPACEBAR!!!) It seriously left me with a feeling like "OK games over time to restart." If I hadnt played any other MMOs and known the standard fare of gear grinding I would have right then and there. Why have there not been any more class specific missions added to the game like "on your way to your ship someone tries to kill you and you go on this quest line to find out who it was and ends up being somone on the dark council who is now your rival" I dont know, the game at 50 is much more boring than before it and it just seems simple to fix.

 

5. Nothing fun to do at 50. The daily quest grind is not fun. I dont care what anyone says, no one who has done them for longer than a week sits at work (or school) and thinks "man I cant wait to fire up Swtor and do my daily quests!" They are just so incredibly lame. Somehow they have been accepted and I dont know why. How about instead of boring unimaginitive daily quests, you implement some sand box activity for grinding your money. Like make desireable items drop from soloable mobs around the galaxy, then make their drop rate small. Incorporate a little of what diablo does. When I saw a mob in Diablo I couldnt wait to kill it cause it might drop something valuable. Theres entirely too much trash in this game.

 

6. Alt playing is horrible. I thought that maybe with the inception of these character perks that I could level solely through my class missions. Definitely not. The extra XP is marginal at best forcing me to do all but one of all the side quests on the planet just to be at the minimum level for the next planet. After your 5th time through the same side quests its really irritating. Level by dungeons? that might be feasible if I wanted to spend double or triple the time leveling. an average dungeon takes about 30 minutes to complete and gives about 2 bars (with all character perks) So I need to do 5 or 6 dungeons for one level. That's 3 hours per level IF you can get back to back queues and every dungeon runs smoothly. 9 times out of 10 it doesnt so your looking at closer to 6 hours per level if your just doing dungeons. I dont have any sort of ideas how one would fix this (to my liking, anyway.)

 

7. Space Missions. Obviously they suck after the 100th time. Its the feeling of the overwhelming majority. The thing is, they promised us a greatly expanded space game. Not only did they never deliver but it seems to have died along with the jobs of all the developers. How are those guild capitial ships coming Bioware?

 

8. Loading Screens. Need I say more?

 

People like to complain about the UI or sitting/swimming, etc.. I really dont have a gripe with those things, I have a gripe about the replayability of this game being about as fun as a root canal. This game can be saved in my opinion. Serious work is needed and its going in the very wrong direction. Stop creating content people blow through in a day and then complain about the day after and start working on ways we can enjoy ourselves in this huge galaxy you have created. Get your team to start thinking up more star warsy things to do, cause at this time, it doesnt feel like it at all. I'll be back to check on you guys in about 6 months. I hope many things have changed. (for your sake Bioware/EA)

 

-Extremely Dissapointed Star Wars and MMO Fan

[nakoda]

1) the game played too much like WoW.

2) I became disillusioned with the relationship between game developers and the community

3) I decided that I should no longer have to pay a monthly subscription to play a static gaming experience.

4) the MMO genre has gone down a path that I do not agree with.

5) a bunyan on the gaming industry has been growing unchecked for two decades now, called EA.

 

If you would like more detailed explanations, I will gladly field PM's.

 

I stuck around, despite having unsubbed in February (I am still here because I purchased a 6mo sub, plus the extended/free time) because I care about gaming, the mmo genre, and this game had sway over my attention since it's first announcement. I am a gamer, not a quitter. Unsubbing is an action, not a spasm.

Edited August 8, 2012 by nakoda

[rgndrock]

Let me just say that I am the costume wearing kind of Star Wars fan and a huge PC gamer so this game had the potential to drain my wallet had it met expectations. By no means do I hate it but it just isn't for me anymore. A guild merger extended my subscription length but even that can't hold me anymore.

 

1) I can sum up the biggest reason with 1 word. TRUST You can say what you want about not having any details yet, but I have been burned once already by an EA F2P model. Pair that with half truths about the CE store, my observations of poor customer service and lack of QA on patches, and I do not trust Bioware with my gaming dollar.

 

2) Content. Though when many folks claim there is a content issue it is often because they didn't actually put in the effort to become part of a raid team to experience progression, that is not me. OK, so I haven't cleared Denova on HM yet, but I have done the raid group thing. Often 4 nights a week. The same content can only hold somebody for so long. Going back to #1, I cannot trust that content will keep coming in the F2P model when you already were getting $15 from everyone and it never did.

 

3) Ilum. More as a symptom than the actual planet and content. Ilum proved the engine was unstable with large battles. It also proved that Bioware is subject to admit defeat and pull the plug rather than trying to get it right. Sentinels are you surprised? I see a new planet coming now and have to wonder why they just couldn't have been working on Ilum. Countless good suggestions were made but alas,"we removed it" was the reply.

 

4) PVP. I PvP'd hard at release and had a Valor rank of 72 on my BH at 1.2 before re-rolling Republic and now my Vanguard is 76. Those who PvP'd at launch remember the grind that was Valor leveling. Kudos to those who can suffer through the same 4 PvP matches nonstop, but I can't any longer. So I hear there may be a new match style coming. But then there will only be 5 such maps to suffer through. And how long will it take for that? And where is the large scale warfare reminiscent of Hoth that would have made my Star Wars Wet dream? It died on Ilum. #1 FTW.

 

5) And lastly, Legacy. At the implementation of Legacy functionality I was Legacy level 35. I used to talk about it non-stop in Ventrilo. I was stoked. I anticipated Legacy patch day was going to be like Christmas morning with all the cool stuff that was going to be under the tree. True to expectations I had plenty of presents under the tree...THAT SANTA WAS CHARGING ME FOR. Look, I understand charging credits for some of that stuff but did we actually earn anything cool from Legacy level besides the emotes from having Legacy toons? At Legacy 50 I was hoping for some title to show off my efforts but nada. Alas, even Legacy requirements were brought down to cater to F2Pers. See #1 again.

 

I am not saying I will never come back. I am a hard core Star Wars nerd and I still want this game to work for me.

Edited August 8, 2012 by rgndrock

[nakoda]

not letting this thread get lost in the shuffle.

 

these are the real, legitimate reasons why people are upset, not the canned responses that the exit survey requests.

[Briq]

not letting this thread get lost in the shuffle.

 

these are the real, legitimate reasons why people are upset, not the canned responses that the exit survey requests.

 

most wont get that simple point......

 

 

my list:

1. lack of objective based, large scale pvp

2. lack of objective based, large scale pvp

3. lack of objective based, large scale pvp

4. lack of objective based, large scale pvp

5. lack of objective based, large scale pvp

[Wefi]

most wont get that simple point......

 

 

my list:

1. lack of objective based, large scale pvp

2. lack of objective based, large scale pvp

3. lack of objective based, large scale pvp

4. lack of objective based, large scale pvp

5. lack of objective based, large scale pvp

they tried that...

[NoTomorrow]

Just unsubscribed.

I will make the list as short as possible:

 

1. Overall MMO "Skinner's box" design principles. I personally believe that a person should play PvP because it is fun, not because it needs to grind extra 2000 ranked warzone commendations to get that hat. It's a pure fricking grind experience i am not looking forward to experience.

 

2. PvP Matchmaking. Or more exactly the lack of it. The game does not effort at all at trying to make even teams. When we get completely random teams of same factions (no premades), why does one team get 2-3 healers while the other does not? The developers did absolutely nothing to ensure a fair and balanced experience for people that queue alone. Not adding voice communication to the client in a game that so much depends on coordination is beyond ridiculous and idiotic.

 

3. Total CC fest. I am not even going to comment on that, here are just a few of the most horrible abilities in this game: Intimitading Roar/ Awe, Flashbang, Overload and so on..

Edited August 13, 2012 by NoTomorrow

[Feeblezak]

unsubbed because of black lightsabers.

 

seriously.

[Liamnerek]

Reason 1: I un-subbed was due to the fact I started on one server, leveled to 50, found friends playing on another server, leveled again, have multiple 50's on different servers, would like to get them all on one server and can't. Yes, I know...paid transfer..."someday", got tired of waiting. How me having all my 50's on a destination server that the makers of the game chose for me will somehow make it more overcrowded..i just don't get. I can only log in one character at a time so I don't follow the bad EA/Bioware math. I figure they know subtraction by this point.

 

2: Too crowded...I like the game, but not enough to put up with the cluster**** that doing dailies became, even though I'm sure that's calmed down by now...12 servers...really? 16-18 would have been better.

 

It was and is a fun game set in a great universe, but the leveling experience and story were the highlight and after having done that a few times it got old quick and other games are run much better, plain and simple.

[Haritsuke]

I have followed the game since long before launch. After playing WoW for five years, I retired and played some Rift while waiting for SWToR.

 

I have thoroughly enjoyed the game for 8 months. But my subscription runs out on August 24th. I had planned to be here for years - but sadly I have been caused to break from my commitment early. Contrary to much of what is here, I want to begin with what I enjoyed about the game and then I'll state my disappointments that have caused me to quit:

 

It Was Fun Because:

1. I had realistic expectations. I read up on the game and knew that it wasn't going to have sandbox elements or free-roaming space combat. Managing expectations is one of the keys to enjoying anything. Bioware promised a story-driven wow-clone with first rate voice-acting and on that they did deliver (for the most part).

 

2. The worlds are gorgeous. I love the art-style of the game and I think the artists deserve more accolades for their accomplishments. Yes, you can knitpick about day-night cycles not being there. But for what is there, I enjoyed being in Tatooine and Hoth especially.

 

3. The combat is fun. Many will complain that it is derivative, but I knew it would be going in. But since I am a fan of the old MMO combat style, I was pleased to find that the team had done it well. I've logged many, many hours and I still love my assassin gameplay as well as my mercenary.

 

4. Warzones. Point 3 led to me not only enjoying the PvE, which is what I usually do in MMO's, but for the first time in my MMO gaming, I might have enjoyed the PvP even more. I just hit Valor Rank 70 on my merc yesterday. It has been fun. Huttball, while frustrating at times, can also be wildly fun. I'm amazed that I will actually miss this part of the game when I move on.

 

5. Ops. Many complain that the ops were too easy, but I found them just right for all of the guilds that I found in-game. We progressed, not too fast and not too slow. Everyone had fun without devoting our lives to running ops.

 

-----------------------------------------------------

 

I'm leaving because:

 

1. Freemium. I hate that my money has been going to hiring a smaller staff to overhaul the game design to sell cute things in an item shop. I had high hopes that this game would deliver on its promise of making us feel we were getting our $15/month worth of new content. It has failed hard since 1.2 to do that. I now feel like I have done everything there is to do in the game and I have no idea when the new stuff is coming or if it will be worth it.

 

2. EA. I have not liked their business practices for a long time. If this wasn't a Bioware game, I would have never signed on. But now that EA has clearly taken control, fired most of the dev staff and decided to milk the game for whatever return on investment they can get - yeah, I'm gone. Rest in peace, Bioware.

 

3. The small things. Bugs, lack of real meaning in story choices, poor character creating options, not properly incentivizing or making more level 50 space missions, linear quest design, high cost of legacy perks with no real benefit for attaining a high legacy level, uselessness of most crafting skills and so on were all things that bugged me, but I can put up the little things if I like the direction the game is going in. EA changed that direction and that is the real reason I unsubbed.

 

I doubt I'll be back as a paying customer. Don't know what I'll do with my Darth Malgus statue.

[frst]

Game is boring at 50. The same 4 WZ's over and over.

 

Doesn't feel Star Warsy at all. Try and picture Luke & Vader catching up for a game of footy with their repub/empire mates at any point in Episodes 4/5/6 and you'll know what I mean... Huttball = dumb.

 

Planets are too big for the number of players on them, I almost never saw Pub players on my Inquis during levelling.

 

And finally, the lack of open world PVP is a huge letdown. It was THE thing that kept me interested in playing WoW for about 2 years. It just doesn't exist in SW:TOR, and was the one thing I was REALLY REALLY looking forward to. Why can't my Inquisitor travel to Corruscant to kick some heads? Why can't he go to Tython? Why can't a Jedi war party land on Drommund Kaas ready to kick *** & take names? This is stupid.

Edited August 14, 2012 by frst

[Mixxathon]

I am still here and expect to be for a while longer despite the issues this game has;

 

1. Patch 1.2 effectively killed PVP and at lvl 50 it is simply not fun anymore. Good fun for leveling though.

 

2. For all the grand words about the marvellous Hero engine and the ability to 'drag & drop' content into the game on the fly without any need of patching, I have seen about Zero of that. I can live with the engine but I have issues with being lied to - and in this case BioWare just plain lied to me to get me into this potentialy expansive, chaotic and changing game with alot of GM's interacting with the players, cool content popping up everywhere and maybe even the promise of a chance to get that unique item that noone else has. That was not what I got, but I can live with that. Game is still fun. Would be nice with an apology though....

 

3. I have never seen this amout of negativity on a community forum. Frankly, if this is how SW geeks behave I might have to reevaluate my own participation in said community and perhaps go to the Dark Side and become a Trekkie instead. So, mostly I just try to stay away from the forums here and instead play the game as much as possible. Community IS an issue though, at least tools-wise. Could we perhaps get even the most basic functions during the first year or so?

 

4. World PVP did not work because Hero Engine. Well, it DID work for me since I actually upgraded my system in anicipation of this game so when most players got 10 FPS, I sailed through it all on max settings with almost no speedbump to my FPS, no matter how many players were in my field of view.... But everyone could not do this because Money. Not really a big loss... World PVP has never been a big thing for me.

 

5. Space Game - while being fun for a few hours, it can become repetitive to say the least, up until the point of me being able to run several missions without looking at the screen. I am not saying that all content should have the exact same target audience and that is completely cool. A game should garner for players of all sorts, but to afford such luxury the game needs to very vast and really have more content than could ever be needed. If SWTOR had that amout of content, the Space Game would be a great addition to the plethora of other minigame systems - but being the Only such system it feel just out of place.

 

A SW game, IMO, needs to be designed with vastness in mind. There should be far too much to do than could ever be done even if leveling 8 chars on the same server. This would be near impossible to create using the traditional way of creating MMO questchains, wich is actually quite time consuming. How about introducing a little randomness into the game? It is not that hard and would make this game much more alive. Here is how to do it:

 

1. Write a simple system that allows for every NPC in a characters Filed Of View to have a chance of becoming a questgiver. This quest should be unique to the character, but let it scale with groupsize.

 

2. Write a Random Quest Generator using any number of parameters. More is More so use alot. It will not take many hours to do this anyway.

 

3. Make all the quests time limited to create a sense of urgency and also as a way of purging unused quests from your systems.

 

4. Let the generated quest play out in the open as much as possible. There is a big difference in catching the pocket thief in the cantina on Vaiken Spacedock as opposed to in a small instanced room in a back alley on Tatooine.

 

5. Create incentive to do these kinds of quests.

 

Such a system would be awesome if coupled with the Dailies. Just think about it... randomly generated dailies.. I can almost taste it. Come to think of it, it could also be implemented into the Bonus-part of all quests. Random bonus requirements....could work.

 

Anyway, this game could be so much more with just a little afterthought. I will be here a year from now if things do not go completely south with the F2P going live.

Edited August 14, 2012 by Mixxathon
Spacing

[Illydar]

1. Boredom. I was expecting so much more to do in SWTOR than we have been given. Yes, each class has it's own "storyline" but aside from those 5-10 missions per planet each and every other mission is exactly the same. Once you reach 50 you can hope to run an Op, go PvP for eternity, or grind out cash and equipment for alts and start all over again.

 

2. F2P.

 

3. Crafting system is a joke. I have some darned good crafters in this game but it get's so expensive it's becomes cheaper to simply go farm gear or buy it on the GTN. That takes away any feeling of accomplishment for the hard work put into crafting. Also, crew missions are designed to make it nearly impossible to gain low level, rare materials once you cap. My armormech crafter has no need for 5 missions at tier 2 to be nothing but fabrics. C'mon. Really Bioware?

 

4. PvP went from fun to grind real quick with small rewards to boot. This is the first MMO (and I've played many) that I ever PvP'd in and I loved it. But again, once you run the same things over, and over, and over it becomes a choice of continuing that or go run some missions that you know like the back of your hand.

 

5. Broken promises, deaf ears, and poor customer / community service on the part of Bioware / EA.

 

I would like to say though that in the beginning I had a blast. I have met some truly fantastic people in this game. Way more than bad to be honest. I had hoped to continue those friendships for several years in this game but sadly, the majority don't even play any longer. Bioware, I will thank you for the fun I have had and I wish you luck in the future.

[badwind]

having got several characters all the way through i have had enough

 

1) F2P - why should i cough for others enjoyment

 

2) PVP - enough said

 

3) Crafting is unrewarding and pointless

 

4) Limited imersion and apart from the odd wavy light stick it is about as 'Star Warsy' as my cat... and hes called frank...

 

5)Poor community interaction from the developers/customer support and not following through on promises, there are still bugs that havnt been fixed from when i started playing

 

Over all, they have the bones of a good set up... its just all been done in a slap happy way wich has gone to produce a product that leaves you with the idea that its all a bit 'Meh'. Parting grade: D - ,really needs to pay more attention and to get the basics correct first

[RonBorg]

The Space Combat and the Space Ship (mechanics/concept) could use alot of improvement.

 

StarTrek Online has a good space combat system. The cusomization level of that game and equipment stuff is pretty good. (except STO has a crappy ground mission and crappy story telling mechanic. I hate their away team and the way they do quest or deliver the story).

 

Would be really awesome if SWTOR has a improved Space engine allowing exploration. Improving space combat for PVP in warzone space. Better story based space missions, alien encounters. Pirates. etc.

[Trauglodyte]

The reasons why I will be unsubbing shortly:

 

1- Zero Communication From EA. I thought the Q&A was a great idea. And then it started slipping. Now, its basically a list of questions that make the company look good or L2P answers from devs that want the player base to play a specifc AC tree the way they intended even if it isn't fulfilling moderate numbers in a vacuum. Add on top of that the multitude of prior Devs that have since been released and the impending F2P and you've got a perfect storm of people paying money for a product that isn't providing any sort of direction to those of us still playing AND paying.

 

2- Eternal Gear Grind and Imbalance. It isn't just the PvP grind (I'm in full WH) but it is the added weight of having to PvP for BM gear to upgrade to WH gear to pull out one mod or enhancement to make my vanilla WH gear better. Then I have to drop Armorcrafting to pick up Biotech to further extend my power.

 

3- Continued Lack Of Class Balance. It has been 8 months since this game has come out and the only true nerfs seen in this game was two for the Operative/Scrapper, a slight talent switch for Marauders/Sentinels, and a minute adjustement to Assassin/Shadow tank trees. Marauders and Pyro PTs are still on top, healing Sages are struggling versus the other two healing ACs, hybrids continue to dominate full specced ACs, stealth is a complete joke, tank stats mean nothing in PvP, and playing a spec that is a "hit and run" means that you're doomed to being less than fully optimal in a rated game.

 

4- Halting End Of Story. I lucked out on my Operative in that I had probably the richest and most intriguing story of all of the ACs, Imperial or Republic. But, then it came to a crashing halt and I've got nothing left to do. All of the millions of dollars spent on voice over is now meaningless.

 

5- Promises Left Unfulfilled. Basically, this was a game that hat the opportunity to print billions. Instead, what you have are long load times, boring PvE which forces people to space bar through the same rhetoric every time, the lack of actual feel of being in G Lucas' origianl trilogy universe, and a million other things that simply make you feel like the designers and game company owners just don't want you to enjoy. The game has been out for 8 months and there isn't anything that really makes you want to keep logging in. And now the game is going f2p but the people appointed to be Community Liasons aren't talking to us about anything other than F2P and the only game updates have been fluff additions that don't actually start to fixing the multitude of bugs that exist. Could you all take 5 minutes to figure out why it is after I leave a LFG that I have to relog just to get a new instance to pop? Seriously, license to print money and you failed to deliver. Instead, we got WOW IN SPACE with the same talent trees, the same LFG tool, the same WZs, and the same kind of end game content.

[islander]

I've just today finally decided to unsub - at least for a month - and try out Guild Wars 2.

 

You can guess why: PvP is dead. A new warzone is nice, but in the end it's arena PvP and that's just not very interesting as a full time gig, compared to the possibilities of RvRvR in GW2.

 

It may just be that I'll get into GW2, and within 4-6 weeks decide it's mediocre/overrated. This happened to me with Diablo 3 back when I unsubbed the first time (due to ead server). Blizzard is just as bad these days, except they still print their own money.

 

Then I'll come back again.

 

The war hero gear grind has rotted my fun out of the game. I play my main and literally do nothing but PvP 15-20 hours a week. I have an unplayed alt because of it. It's too much of a grind in order to hold my own in the activity I like to do the most.

 

Additionally, I'm tired of all the little bugs, the inattention to detail. It seems like over and over the dev staff simply fail at fixing bugs. You see them all over the game, I point you here for example:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=520095

 

Ultimately, I look at this game after 8 months, and all I do is play the same 4 warzones night in and out and that's my "PvP". It'll take me at this rate another 6 weeks to actually get full WH. Meh.

 

If not for GW2 I'd continue on...but this hard core Star Wars fan once again feels disappointed by the lack of time and attention put into the game by Bioware so its time for me to take a look at another game and see if it makes me happier.

Edited August 14, 2012 by islander

[DahLliA]

My 2 cents:

 

Preordered the CE and have subbed since headstart, but this new event just showed me how bad this game is at it's core, and I really don't see them fixing it. Might not even be possible with the cannibalized version of the Hero engine they're using.

 

Added to all the broken promises and outright lies(removing the grind my ***) it's just not worth playing any more.

 

If they ever make it so you can level solely from class quests(which are the only part of the levelling experience that isn't a grind packed in VO) or make the world feel alive, and not just like a static background, I might return.

 

But I really doubt that's going to happen. They've shown time and time again that they're unwilling or unable to make any good decision. And now with the F2P mixed with EAs greed I don't have any hope for this game.

 

This game should have been so much better.

 

RIP Bioware and Star Wars MMOs.

 

And shame on you BEAware for turning the SW IP, Bioware and a mountain of cash into a broken, stuttering pile of s**t.

 

EDIT: Forgot the 40% of unsubbers unsubbing because of the monthly fee line.

 

Everyone who bought this game knew it had a sub fee and were prepared to pay it.

 

And saying this game isn't worth 15 bucks a month isn't the same as saying they'll return if it goes F2P.

 

A bad game is still a bad game even if it's free.

Edited August 14, 2012 by DahLliA

[TheTeaSpice]

Well, the days are closing in and sub becomes inactive in 2 days so I thought I share some of the reasons why I have left SWTOR. I unsubbed back in the beginning of July and unfortunately, I don’t see the game moving in a direction that would warrant my play time. I do wish this game and all its current and future players the best as I move forward to new games and activities. I had hoped SWTOR would be a game I would be playing for years but, sadly this is not the case. These are just my opinions and suggestions and I don’t present them as facts for the community. It’s a very very long post and main reasons are in BOLD and underlined for those who don’t care to read a wall of text.

 

1) Linear Game Choices. - The game very much leads you through the nose as you progress 1-50. From your companions, class story and order of planets you quest on. Even on the planets themselves you are constantly on rails, exploration outside of datacrons is not encouraged. After levelling a few toons I just grinded pvp and instances to level instead of doing the same thing over again. The world is also dead. If I looked outside my window and people were like the way they were in SWTOR I think I was in the Twilight Zone or something.

 

The second thing for me that makes it feel you are locked in are that your LS/DS choices don’t really matter, or any choice you make while questing. There may be a change of dialogue, a slightly different way of doing a quest but, there are no changes of real substance. LS/DS determines your relics (or lack thereof for poor grey players) up to level 50, corruption, 1 companion, a few titles, and 1 legacy ability. This hammers it home that your choices don’t really matter at all, regardless what you do you're pretty much guaranteed the same outcome.

 

1A) Some Changes to Improve This - Small to grand scale dynamic events occurring on all the planets. Every once and awhile imps, pubs, local hostilities decide to take arms against players and friendly bases. Hidden areas or event determined (locals get the upperhand example) quests that are available to players who want to deviate from the path. Some changes that you make upon the world are permanent (phasing instead of private instances) so you feel like you were actually there and did something. Make the world more alive and static like the way cities and towns are in real life!

 

Personal story should have at least 2 critical choices that affect the way remainder of your story is played. For example if 1 Sith Warrior makes the A choice after Act 1 and another Sith Warrior makes the B choice, the remainder of their personal story has notable deviations from one another. A questline that begins once someone reaches Dark1, Light 1, or Grey 1 (seriously stop gimping and lying to those people who choose grey!) to further explore their morality choices and ends when reach level 5.

 

2) Crafting - The ability to craft from your bank and companions gathering and crafting for you is the best part of crafting in SWTOR. The remainder of crafting isn’t good at all. The RE system is way too random and too much of a pain to deal with. Several times I would outright abandon tiers because, I couldn’t get the next level to pop after numerous times. Also, REing green cunning gear several times only to get the Redoubt to unlock made me want to head desk a few times.

 

After levelling a few crafting professions I smartened up and just went Biochem. With Biochem if I had infinitely better luck with the randomness of RE and when I did RE and I got to the next level, I was guaranteed to acquire a recipe for something I need, not a Redoubt chest piece for my Sith Sorc. The items made with Biochem were relevant for a longer period of time and were not easily replaceable with comm and looted gear. Biochem and Cybertech (for grenades in PvP) felt like the only 2 viable choices in crafting. Couple your toons with either profession and Slicing for a few of them and you are set. Terrible design!

 

2A) Some Changes to Improve This - Crafting should be a viable and robust system for players to provide the community with gear and supplies. Reverse Engineering would have worked better as something we “learn” rather then a small random percentage to acquire a recipe. For example(all numbers are arbitrary): When you RE an green item (without setting anything) you learn 1% towards Overkill, Critical and Redoubt level of that item. When you crit on REing that item you learn at a rate of 3% towards Overkill, Critical and Redoubt along with acquiring the augment slot. When you choose to specialize into a recipe, say Overkill you learn at a rate of 5% for each RE, 7% for each critical success. The ability to know whether or not you know a recipe would have been helpful. Also, there needed to be more unique skins (and complete sets) for crafted gear so there is more of a demand from the community for them.

 

3) PvP - The best of times and the worst of times. Admittedly, this is the part of the game that was the most fun for me albeit at times, the most frustrating. Frustrating area coming more from the trolol players in there then game mechanics but, still some fault on Bioware’s part as well. Huttball was a lot of fun on my juggie and sorc, not so much on my Op and merc. Novare Coast being my second on the list for good times. Great players and friends made in WZ which definitely enhanced the experience. Changes to allowing same faction for all WZ in PvP and not having a cross server que where meh. Resolve problems and stun wars were meh too!

 

Some issues with PvP first lie in how players are grouped up for a warzone. Pre 50 bracket you have a combination of players from level 10-49 in the same game. Bioware has a boost system in place to make it appear everyone is on the same playing level. Well they are not. A level 12 player vs a level 45 player will most likely get creamed regardless of skill level of the level 12 player. Not only does the level 12 not have access to skills in the latter part of their chosen tree but, they generally will not have equipped gear with tertiary stats such as Surge, Defense etc.. When everyone is boosted all those stats are boosted as well but the level 12 player will only have the stats they currently possess upped. You can even see the health difference between 2 characters of the same class with high level disparities, the higher level player will have more health and upon inspection better stats then the low level player. Even on my healers I have very easily taken down low level players, those specced into damage I’m sure can just kill them off 1 2 3.

 

The second problem comes into play when you reach the 50 bracket. Until you are able to get War Hero gear (or at least BM but even then) just expect to get facerolled. The general community consensus is just to take it, grin and bear it through the daily grind until you get geared enough to become a viable member of the team and it’s your turn to faceroll those poor saps in Recruit gear. And if your team doesn’t have enough players in BM and WH to your liking well you can just leave that scrub team and reque. Also Ilum. Yeah =/

 

3A) Some Changes to Improve This - Well, there are some ideas I have had rolling around in my head for this. One is to make small brackets for PvP under 50 say 10-29 and 30-49 with cross server que etcc.. Eh but, the more I think about it the better system in my opinion would just to make everyone geared level 50’s with gear only used in PvP. No expertise stats and you can only enter PvP with designated PvP gear. Warzone commendations are used to buy different looks for your toon but, everyone stays at the same gear level. PvP is determined more by skill (and healers heheh ) then gear alone.

 

Engine should have been one that would have been able to handle large scale PvP skirmishes if you were going to launch and advertise it as a feature of the game. Also, might have been better to make such large skirmishes a separate que, cross server, maybe even Server vs Server so that battles aren’t lopsided because of faction imbalance. Should have launched with Novare Coast and additional maps added as time went by. Also, a 15 minute debuff for players that leave WZ’s early.

 

4) Space - Is not the final frontier. It’s Galaga Redux and I admit, I had a lot more fun playing Galaga then space missions in SWTOR. That could be because the game was released in 1981 and was appropriate for it’s time and current competitive games whilst SWTOR space missions feel like we have gone backwards. It looks great visually but the rails, companions buzzing in your ear and repetitiveness of it leave it little charm. I knew what it was going to be like before launch and I thought “well maybe I can just go with it” but, that was not the case. After doing the missions on a few characters I completely abandoned it.

 

When I watched Star Wars Trilogy as a kid my hero of the story was Han Solo. He had his own ship, he did what he wanted, went wherever he pleased and he smuggled Spice. I wanted to experience the vast emptiness of space, the wonder, amazement and discovery in a SWTOR universe, smuggle Spice, get dangerously close to stars, land on uninhabited planets and walk around etc... Instead I got a click map and a space shooter on rails. In hindsight I realize how lame it was for SWTOR not to have a robust space exploration system. It’s Star Wars, sheesh!

 

4A) Some Things to Improve This - Should have been more like EvE with less ganking and boring mining and tons of exploration with the awe and wonder like Spore has. Space missions as they are should have been the side quests of Space not the heart of it. Also, skirmishes be they PvP and PvE in space. Customize the ship interior and be able to interact with more things on it. Guild ships. Yeah that.

 

5) Fluff, and Fun - Oh Legacy you just could not fill that niche. You talked the community up the wazoo about this feature and then you didn’t even launch with it released. Yeah okay that wasn’t your shining moment. Then when the first version came out it was lackluster at best. Your second addition to it came and I think most people smartened up that it was just an elaborate credit sink for nothing worthwhile. The only thing I found useful from Legacy perks were finishing Act2 and gaining access to that buff for all other toons. I’d say presence for maybe those people still traditionally levelling. I stopped doing Dromund Kaas and the rest of the planets a long time ago. Also unlocking races, eh. The other “fun” and “fluff” features, absolutely no reason for me to drop credits into. After Legacy you have some small items you can purchase after reaching Social levels or from special merchants like CE or DD merchants. Hmm, I think that is it.

 

There are no little programmed fun events going on ever, can’t interact with hardly anything, no easter egg things of interest, nothing seasonal or something great to to involve the community, no exploration. Just nothing at all for you to do outside the norm of levelling and grinding. You have 2 events (one just started) which are killing and looting items and doing dailies. Cause everyday I think at work, “Man, I can’t wait to log into SWTOR and do some dailies!”

 

Hell, I remember dragging my friends in EQ1 to BB to show them this dwarf I found named Glorin Binfur that would react to things you typed out to her like “ I love you.” I remember GMs organizing level 1 rogue halfling jumps off of mountains for prizes in EQ1 amongst other things. EVERQUEST1 over 10 years ago had these things in game!!! Dammit, I mean c'mon seriously they even had a dye system.

 

In GW2 I found an underwater Quaggan Village in the Sylvari starting area. There was a sea organ down there with a Quaggan nearby humming a tune. The tune is the beginning of the GW2 theme and if you figure out how to play it on the organ all of the instruments will come alive and play the tune. A giant clam also opens up with a chest inside containing a few random items. That small thing was so epic in it’s own right and so memorable and filled the desire in me to find more things like it, of which I have no doubt there are more in the game. SWTOR has so much possibility to add things like this to the game but, they just aren’t seen as important or the devs don’t care or something. It’s a shame, a real shame.

 

5A) Some Things to Improve This - The Legacy system needs major love and less credit sink! There needs to be some small scale events going on, or mini games, or some fluff outside of the levelling gear grind of the game. Pazaak, sabbac, swoop racing, wampa target practice, easter egg mini games etc... just something more. Anything else to give people besides dailies and hanging around the fleet queuing for instances and pvp. Unique and complete sets for different tiers of Dark, Light and Grey toons would have been nice too along with a dye system!

 

6) Business Model and the Desires of the Community - When a company decides to compete with well established competitors in a particular area of business they need to hit the gates running. They need to not only offer the same features and services as their competition but, need to take it one step further. Another notch up to convince people to switch to their company and retain them or even try the business out. Why would anyone want to switch from their current MMO to SWTOR? Is brand name and IP enough to not only have people play SWTOR but also continually subscribe? Unfortunately, for Bioware/EA that doesn’t seem to be the case.

 

When the game launched in December 2011 outside of VO SWTOR trailed behind what other MMOs were offering. Instead of the gates opening and SWTOR being at a sprint, it was a crawl. Since that time SWTOR has been playing catch up, implementing tools and game mechanics that should have been available come launch. Suggestions and ideas that were brought forth since Beta were just rebuked and rebuffed. With some they caved in, albeit a little late with the amount of subs they have lost. From group finder, to the ability delay to server transfers, etc.. they just took too long to do anything about things that mattered to players. The enthusiastic communication from Bioware quickly dried up which seemed to drive the community into a frenzy. Not only that but, the promises, such as rolling out new content monthly never happened which further enraged players and furthered the decline. Coupled with the bugs and “thousand paper cuts” of problems happening just contributed to the let down. The end game is roll alts?! You are kidding me!

 

6A) Some Things to Improve This - SWTOR should have released with the expected same features as other competitors have and something more. Yes VO and the “4th pillar” (story) is nice but when the 4th pillar ends at 50 and VO conversations are trivial and pointless, well what do you have? They should have had at least 2 major content patches near ready to roll out onto the test server and more in alpha stage. This would have been able to keep up the expected pace and promise of continuing new content. More PvE and PvP content at launch and additional updates at least every 2 months until the 6 month mark and then a slow down, a continuous test server, knowing what valid concerns are (ability delay, blaming it on us then admitting there was a problem) and knowing where to put your foot down (constant nerf/buff syndrome, opening tons of servers). Statements and promises concerning the game are kept. Open and honest communication, no PR spin that no one believes and shreds your credibility. If you make a mistake, just own up to it apologize and try to do better next time. Isn’t that what we teach our kids? We don’t raise them to put massive spin on a mistake they made to try and shift the blame elsewhere or make themselves look good.

 

In closing, there are a ton of other little things I didn’t touch upon that could use improvement. This post is a novel as it is! Thank you people I played with in SWTOR for making the gameing experience much more tolerable. Wouldn’t have kept on logging in if it wasn’t for you guys.

 

TheTeaSpice

[Vanderaan]

Guild Wars 2.

 

 

This is my first and last post on these forums, Farewell all.

Edited August 15, 2012 by Vanderaan

[Celebrus]

My top 5 reasons are:

 

-Complete Lack of difficult and engaging content at end game as well as quality repeatable content.

-Unoptimized engine. You can't call a game a MMO when it can't handle 30 people on the same screen without tripping over it's own feet.

-Free to play announcement. Little interest in supporting this pricing model, the only way to get that point across is to simply walk away.

-Horrible rate of content delivery. Which is still continuing with the announcement of expected August content being pushed back into September.

-No pull. I simply don't feel the pull from this game that kept me playing it for months and believing it was going to improve steadily the entire time. That hasn't happened in my eyes, in fact this game's life so far has been a steady regression.

 

I probably wont be looking back, as I can't see anything they could possibly do at this stage to change this situation from my perspective. With most MMOs I've left, I've left intending to check back in 6 months or a year to see what progress has been made. I see no possible way of redeeming this game in my eyes and will not be making that annual check up on ToR.

Edited August 15, 2012 by Celebrus

[BulldogzLife]

I decided just yesterday to cancel and my sub runs out this Saturday. The problem is it's hard to come up with just 5 reason to cancel, because there's so many.

 

1.) No new content: My guild and I have been clearing the hardest things for over 3 months already. I can't remember when EC came out, but it was 4, close to 5 months ago maybe? For 4 new bosses? That's just unacceptable.

 

2.) Bugs, Lag, etc.: So on top of no new content, they are trying to remedy their old content or in some cases don't even care to fix it. The instances are still horribly laggy at times, which while you can work around it in some cases just is very unprofessional. It also leads into my next reason...

 

3.) No open world PvP: Ilum was a complete bust. There was almost no point to go there, and if you did you had to expect terrible gamebreaking lag. That the game engine can't handle 20 people in the same area fighting is a complete oversight. This doesn't allow for any epic battles or events to take place, and seeing how when you think Star Wars you associate "epic" it's a letdown.

 

4.) Free to play: While I don't think this is necessarily a bad idea, it shows completely the direction the game is heading. As it stands, this game is not worth 15$ a month and the content released shows it. I've played every class extensively, and thanks to rested xp and such it didn't take long to max level and gear most of my class characters.

 

5.) No communication, or fulfillment of promises: So we just received this new event, which is essentially more DAILIES (which is in no way to be considered content), and it's just for cosmetic items and such. Additionally, the patch is pushed back to next month which would deliver us this new content, and I find out in a random post on the forums. But what about all those other features we were told were coming? Guild capital ships, new warzones, planets, new operations!? We have received almost no feedback, or information regarding these and many other ideas. Instead, we receive something essentially useless, like Legacy.

 

Like I said it was hard to come up with just 5 reasons, and some could be divided into multiples. I enjoyed playing the game, but it has become frighteningly stale. There were some huge mistakes made in development and in some of the areas they focused upon, but the game still does have potential. If they can really fix their errors and make a strong come back I may decide to give it another shot, but with GW2 coming out there is probably very little room for SWTor to continue to disappoint.

[Belunos]

I had quit after a couple of months, but just re-subbed. I already know it probably won't last long. Here's my reasons:

 

5) This game should have released with a real LFG tool. There's one in now, I haven't messed with it really, but this was a big issue for me when I first quit

 

4) I feel like too much effort was spent on the myriad cut scenes, and not enough on game polish.

 

3) Too many random mobs. If you're not stealth, it feels like a great deal of time is spent wading through hordes and hordes of 3-somes

 

2) Lack of areas leveling areas. I'm of the honest opinion that I should have a least two places to play for nearly every level range. It's such a linear path every time you start a new character. And on that, there's only 2 starting areas for each faction. For an altaholic, this is nearly unbearable.

 

1) Companions. Well, not companions per se (though I honestly don't care for them very much), but because of companions you had to make enemies stronger or our characters weaker. The end result either way, at least while leveling, is that I often feel weak.

 

You can tell I don't RP much, nor did I make it to 50 on my first run through

And honestly, the only thing that has changed since I was gone is number 5

[somejerk]

way way wayyyyy too linear when it comes to leveling. Sure the story is different for each class but god.damn do I really have to do the same planets four times in row without any real variation? Sure I could roll an Imperial character but that's just applying a placebo thinking it will cure the symptoms and leveling via PvP is not worth it without the 30% legacy bonus.

 

Flashpoints and Ops have no relation to your class story at all. Why aren't Ops dealing with Imperials vs. Republic when after chapter 2 they've openly declared war on each other? Why do your class quests not lead in to going to those flashpoints and ops as a kind of side thing that you should do but you don't really have to do?

 

Dialogue on quests not related to your class or the FPs/Ops was a waste of money. It still boils down to go to X, kill/collect X, go back to X and it's never mentioned again save the occasional mail or two.

 

Removal of Ilum is unacceptable. It should have just been made into a huge WZ consisting of like 20 v 20 or more IE. Wintergrasp.

 

Space combat uses recycled missions and is on rails. I can forgive the recycled missions but honestly I don't see why you couldn't include free movement in them. Also, no group space content.

 

In short it's almost been a full year since release and we've had no post-50 story extensions, 2 ops, 2 FPs, 1 WZ, 2 events and that's it. Don't expect much change when free to play hits.

Edited August 16, 2012 by somejerk