Honest opinion- do you think the game is in trouble?

[mattgyver]

SWTOR as an entity is in trouble if enough people leave. LucasArts doesn't want another SWG on their brand, nor does EA want to keep pouring in the resources (especially the LA licence) to a product that's not making enough money. What those cutoff points are is hard to say, because obviously EA may be willing to run at a loss until they have something else near release that would replace.

 

The problem we're into is what are they going to try and do to either attract new subscribers, retain the ones they have etc. They may not radically change the game, but they might start trying a lot of things that end up being complete disasters.

 

Well I'm wondering then what they will consider profitable enough. There has been talk about 500k subs being the threshold, so I guess if there were some semi-credible indicator that subs were below 500k then that could trigger the LA doomsday contingency. Other than that the reality will probably be less dramatic. If their aim is higher than 1 million active subs then yeah, that's bad.

[Shingara]

LA dont care if the game makes profit or not, they care they get there license fee and they care more that the game doesnt bring it into disrepute like swg did so whos to say that if there is even a smell of a backlash that la wouldnt just pull the plug, we know they arnt scared of it so would ea even dare to send this to f2p full model.

[Kraye]

LA dont care if the game makes profit or not, they care they get there license fee and they care more that the game doesnt bring it into disrepute like swg did so whos to say that if there is even a smell of a backlash that la wouldnt just pull the plug, we know they arnt scared of it so would ea even dare to send this to f2p full model.

 

Ofcourse they care if they make a profit, that is just ridiculous that you wtoe that, truly ridiculous. And, SWG did not fail, Sony Games..AKA...The Smed ruined it, get it right. And yes, TOR will absoulutely go F2P before summer 2013, guaranteed.

[Shingara]

Ofcourse they care if they make a profit, that is just ridiculous that you wtoe that, truly ridiculous. And, SWG did not fail, Sony Games..AKA...The Smed ruined it, get it right. And yes, TOR will absoulutely go F2P before summer 2013, guaranteed.

 

Im sure you read what i wrote but obviously not in the sentence that i put it, never said that swg failed, and yes smeddly did the harm and thats the backlash that caused disrepute to LA, And LA get the license if it makes a profit or not, EA would have to cover the difference. LA arnt going to go ow well it didnt make as much as you want thats fine just give us half the money.

 

As for your fact that its going to be F2P by summer 2013, can i have this weeks lottery numbers.

Edited June 21, 2012 by Shingara

[Goretzu]

Blizzard hasn't had an innovative idea in their existence. Every game they make is a copy of something else. If there is no other "Everquest", there will be no template to make WoW2.

 

Rehashing Everquest might just be what saves this industry. All it will take is one company to realize that 100 longterm subscribers are more valuable than 1000 short term ones. The MMO's made today will kill the industry, not because they suck, but because they are designed to be "finished", and finished in weeks. Everquest was designed to be a game you never stop playing... and it worked.

 

Indeed Blizzard haven't, but they do have the reputation (which is largely what built WoW) and an ability to steal and adapt ideas to a very high level.

 

Personally I think they are terrified of trying to make a WoW2 (because they will also have to compete with WoW in doing so), but if anyone can roll out more of the same old same old and it be popular it's Blizzard.

 

 

 

 

Innovation can come in many ways, but a lot of it (and a lot of SWTORs weaknesses) come from that (as you say) they aren't like EQ1......... although that's not to say that an EQ1 grind will be popular, but in think more innovative ways to keep players might be the thing. Things like Arche Age maybe.

 

Although it's possible to go too far the opposite way too, SWG probably did this, although in fairness SWGs biggest problem was that the Devs never had any clear design for it and kept changing things in an attempt to retain subs, like bailing out a boat rather than just fixing the holes.

 

 

 

 

if you played pvp in wow, you will realize this beats it by a mile. not sure what you mean by 4 boxes...

 

A lot of SWTOR PvP is better, but CC-wise it is much worse than WoW (last time I played), plus there's not even an Alterac Valley clone (never mind any RvR).

 

However compared to a game like WAR, SWTORs PvP is utterly terrible.

Edited June 21, 2012 by Goretzu

[metalgearyoda]

 

A lot of SWTOR PvP is better, but CC-wise it is much worse than WoW

 

Whoa... Pump the breaks.

 

last I played wow it was more than possible to be CC'd for 20+ seconds.

 

Lets just... take a minute and remember fear, sheep, cyclone, entangling roots... These didn't have cooldowns. They didn't share DR (last I played).

 

I would take swtors CC over wows... ANY DAY.

 

I mean, our classes have 45 second cooldowns on sheep, 2/1 minute cooldowns on their 4 second stuns, and 20-45 seconds on their knock backs.

 

Now, knock back may give less resolve than they should, and that needs to be looked at but... Compared to wow this CC system is just flat out better.

[Blackardin]

This is a decent game for people who love rolling ALTs. It's a terrible game for people who don't. That's the bottom line.

 

Alts are and have been intended to be a large part of the game, but are you speaking of end game? My first question, considering this statement, would be how much of the end game have you done? Have you completed all dailies including black hole, space missions, datacrons, Vehicle quest-line, nightmare mode, fully geared etc?

 

I'm an end game player and raider myself and I've yet to run out of things to do.

 

What I would say is that this is not a good game for people that want to live it 24/7 as an alternate reality, but as a game it remains fun and interesting with plenty to do end game.

[Mossesman]

I read that, and that is part of the reason for my concern. Does F2p necessarily mean the game is a failure though?

 

Ofcourse not. Infact, Lotro is more successful as F2P than it was sub based.

[dlaselle]

"The MMO market is very dynamic and we need to be dynamic as well," he explained. "Unless people are happy with what they have, they are constantly demanding updates, new modes and situations."

 

He continued, "So we are looking at free-to-play but I can't tell you in much detail. We have to be flexible and adapt to what is going on."

 

from :http://gamasutra.com/view/news/17248...d_Republic.php

 

 

This is what worries me about it going FTP. They go FTP and its the way for them to take the developers and move them to another project and keep just a bare-bones team.

 

All the extra content people love that they are bringing out will become Pay TO Play. I'll /quit before this happens

Edited June 21, 2012 by dlaselle

[dlaselle]

Ofcourse not. Infact, Lotro is more successful as F2P than it was sub based.

 

 

if you consider that anything outside of the newbies zones including quests you have to purchase a success then I agree.

[metalgearyoda]

This is what worries me about it going FTP. They go FTP and its the way for them to take the developers and move them to another project and keep just a bare-bones team.

 

All the extra content people love that they are bringing out will become Pay TO Play. I'll /quit before this happens

 

on the flip side...

 

If we get to choose what content we pay for... Bioware is forced to make content we like more so than subscription because they get direct feedback on the popularity of a single piece of content instead of the game as a whole.

 

I could love the game but look at a raid about saving jarjars species and think "I'd rather not." I would save 10 bucks and bioware would go "hmm... guess people don't like jarjar... Better focus on making something else then"

Edited June 21, 2012 by metalgearyoda

[dlaselle]

on the flip side...

 

If we get to choose what content we pay for... Bioware is forced to make content we like more so than subscription because they get direct feedback on the popularity of a single piece of content instead of the game as a whole.

 

I guess I look at 15 dollars as really nothing. I go out to dinner and a few drinks cost more, a movie and popcorn costs more, etc.

 

To me, I would rather them keep it a sub game, then make it FTP

 

Also, FTP brings in the worse kind of people. People know the game is FREE, but expect tons of new content every month.

 

Take a look at DDO forums for an example. Their new expansion is being released and the only way to access the content is to pay for it.

[metalgearyoda]

I guess I look at 15 dollars as really nothing. I go out to dinner and a few drinks cost more, a movie and popcorn costs more, etc.

 

To me, I would rather them keep it a sub game, then make it FTP

 

Also, FTP brings in the worse kind of people. People know the game is FREE, but expect tons of new content every month.

 

Take a look at DDO forums for an example. Their new expansion is being released and the only way to access the content is to pay for it.

 

That's true of most expansions.

 

Also you kind of missed my point.

 

People complain that the content they are given isn't what the majority wants.

 

B2P gives more exact feedback to the dev team. If they see a dip in subs it could be for a number of reasons. If they see a drop in sales for a specific operation they know that that particular type of operation is unpopular and they will focus on making operations that are different from the unpopular one.

 

Edit: Going to be late for work. Bbl.

Edited June 21, 2012 by metalgearyoda

[dlaselle]

That's true of most expansions.

 

Also you kind of missed my point.

 

People complain that the content they are given isn't what the majority wants.

 

B2P gives more exact feedback to the dev team. If they see a dip in subs it could be for a number of reasons. If they see a drop in sales for a specific operation they know that that particular type of operation is unpopular and they will focus on making operations that are different from the unpopular one.

 

Edit: Going to be late for work. Bbl.

 

Have a good day. Paying to play the content you want is more expensive then 15 dollars a month. Trust me that is why I left DDO. Found out that I paid 20 dollars for a group of content, instead of the sub rate.

[Goretzu]

Whoa... Pump the breaks.

 

last I played wow it was more than possible to be CC'd for 20+ seconds.

 

Lets just... take a minute and remember fear, sheep, cyclone, entangling roots... These didn't have cooldowns. They didn't share DR (last I played).

 

I would take swtors CC over wows... ANY DAY.

 

I mean, our classes have 45 second cooldowns on sheep, 2/1 minute cooldowns on their 4 second stuns, and 20-45 seconds on their knock backs.

 

Now, knock back may give less resolve than they should, and that needs to be looked at but... Compared to wow this CC system is just flat out better.

 

 

TBF I've not played WoW since a bit before WOTLK, so things may be different now, but things certainly weren't as bad SWTOR has been.

 

It's not just the CC itself though, it's also that the Resolve system doesn't really do what it's supposed to do - it's not fit for purpose.

 

Now compare that to WAR where the CC is different ("stun until death" should never exist in MMORPG PvP), less available and uses an immunities system that isn't as "fancy" as Resolve, but actually does what it is supposed to do.

Edited June 21, 2012 by Goretzu

[Valkirus]

Whoa... Pump the breaks.

 

last I played wow it was more than possible to be CC'd for 20+ seconds.

 

Lets just... take a minute and remember fear, sheep, cyclone, entangling roots... These didn't have cooldowns. They didn't share DR (last I played).

 

I would take swtors CC over wows... ANY DAY.

 

I mean, our classes have 45 second cooldowns on sheep, 2/1 minute cooldowns on their 4 second stuns, and 20-45 seconds on their knock backs.

 

Now, knock back may give less resolve than they should, and that needs to be looked at but... Compared to wow this CC system is just flat out better.

 

They have reduced CC a lot in PVP in WoW. For example a rogue's sap will last up to 60+ secs on a mob, ( depending on if the skill is glyphed. ) but cannot exceed 8 secs on a player.

[ippollite]

I left after a few weeks. I dont honestly know what made me leave initially, i just stopped logging in and the longer i left it, the less interested i was each time i tried to get past the log in screen.

 

I came back a couple of weeks ago faction balance be damned determined to play the character i wanted to play (the imp agent) from beta instead of the one i felt i should play (smuggler).

 

It was all going so well through act 1. I was excited to get back in game and finding myself losing days i should have been studying reading the forums, or should have been at the gym but playing the game.

I could read the story a mile away, but it was nonetheless relatively fun knowing the climax was building.

 

And now ive just finished my class story quest on taris. Im level 33. Im empire, i hate taris. The only thing that kept me remotely interested in it was the class story. The idea of going back there is just... eugh.

 

And then, due to being utterly SICK of spam healing to keep kaliyo alive i decided to respec so i could play with teh doc instead. So here i am, an op concealment suddenly incapable of killing a level 34 silver droid and wondering where it all went wrong. Am i doomed to have to grind taris for another two levels? Am i going to have to respec back into medic and suffer painfully slow (but safe) mob grinding?

 

I dunno. The alternatives are to run warzones. Run space missions and run dungeons. Maybe i need to wait on 1.3 for dungeons. Im bored to death of space missions, and warzones just dont appeal all that much. Somethings fractured, and i think its just mundane gameplay. I was so stoked at the start of this, but i cant help but feel its not me, but the game. Something feels so utterly uninspiring about it. Dont get me wrong, i LOVE the story quests. I love the cut scenes. But the whole rest of it just feels like going through the motions.

 

Bioware, we need to have a chat dudes. Ive supported you since black isle and baldurs gate. I even bought dragon age 2 and i DID like the idea of making it more poltical and all about factionalism. I bought and didnt even complain about the three colors ending for mass effect (though i cant bring myself to nightmare mode through all three games because nothing i do for the previous three weeks of game time seems to matter). But this, this has seriously compromised my relationship with you. It feels like youre treading water and going through the motions. Get it together. If you cant deliver world pvp at least Make my questing experience both diverse and exciting.

 

dailies dont cut it. More dungeons dont cut it. Im sick of dungeons. I had my fill in wow, and frankly its your own fault here. If you put as much effort into the later dungeons you put into BT/esseles i might WANT to run them, but hammer and athiss made me realise those two starter dungeons were stand alone and everything else was a grind. Im an unhappy fan.

 

Loyal though. So im gonna pop back into the game and see if i can re-motivate myself. The problem is, i shouldnt be the one trying to find reasons to come back into the game. I should WANT to play it because its fun. Its not fun. Im not enjoying it. But i want to see that class story (which is amazing) despite all the negativity i get from playing the rest of the game.

 

Dont get me wrong... the point isnt really the whole 3 level disparity. Thats my punishment for stealthing. The problem is the need to stealth because grinding through 1000 mobs to get to my objective is kinda tedious gameplay. I didnt buy diablo after all.

Edited June 21, 2012 by ippollite

[kitsinni]

IMO the game is going the strongest it has ever gone since maybe launch week.

[Nightspirit]

I don't think the games in trouble, but I do think that the game will not live up to what BioWare expected it to. I see the subscription numbers hovering at about 1 million which is still very good for a P2P MMO.

[Hillarious]

I'm not worried, upcoming content looks amazing: Group Finder in the next few weeks, HK-51 coming soon, a new warzone "ancient hypergates" that rewards players for killing each other as well as objectives, and the new planet "Makeb"

 

Will healers be rewarded for healing people ?

 

Will people that draw a key player out of a battle for a few vital moments be rewarded for doing so ?

 

Will people that interupt, knockback, pull or disarm a player at an important moment be rewarded for doing so ?

[Dubbya]

This game has been trouble since the first day I have played it. Almost everyone I knew on the game has become bored and canceled their sub. I canceled mine the other day as well. All of the things I said based on my first impressions are still true of this game today - and it's dying and will continue to die because this game did way more things wrong than right.

 

This is a decent game for people who love rolling ALTs. It's a terrible game for people who don't. That's the bottom line.

 

I could go into more detail of all the things that are wrong with this game but to be honest that would require a few thousand pages and I've already gone over them ad nauseum on this forum in the past anyways. So there is no need to rehash them.

 

But to answer your question: Yes, the game is in trouble. It's been in trouble since release. Eventually it will stabilize with a relateively small clique of players who enjoy rolling alts over and over and listening to cutscenes. It will deffinitely go Free to Play. And while it may take this game a while to fade out completely, it lost its shine a long time ago in a galaxy far away.

 

Sorry man, but you want to have a mmo that is 6 years matured on day 1. Remember when WoW and EQ released, they had 1 raid dungeon that you need 40 people for, took 3 days to complete and only the most exclusive people went in. Also pvp for Eq was basically limited to duels and WoW pvp was limited to world pvp and duels. BG's for WoW didnt come out for a couple months. The problem is people like you want 15 different raids with tiers, dual specs, achievement systems (BW kinda has with the lore), battles ground system's, dynamic enviroments, lfg tools, an expansive guild system (like sending ingame email to all members and a guild ranking system, all on day 1. Here is a news flash, IT WILL NOT HAPPEN FOR ANY MMO THAT IS JUST RELEASING!!!!!

[Dubbya]

 

A lot of SWTOR PvP is better, but CC-wise it is much worse than WoW (last time I played), plus there's not even an Alterac Valley clone (never mind any RvR).

 

However compared to a game like WAR, SWTORs PvP is utterly terrible.

 

 

Please tell me you are joking. WoW is famous for stunlock from 0-100 even with a trinket or the world of 1-shot. I played WAR for like 1 week and found it dead is that game still even going?

[Inzuher]

I think the game is doing alright. Sure I has had a few BOPS on the way, but Bioware seems to be fixing it. Sure there are always ways to improve gameplay, but there always are, and Bioware are doing a good job to follow up on the needs. Look at the ranked warzones, LFG-finder and Makeb for instance.

 

I left after a few weeks. I dont honestly know what made me leave initially, i just stopped logging in and the longer i left it, the less interested i was each time i tried to get past the log in screen.

 

I came back a couple of weeks ago faction balance be damned determined to play the character i wanted to play (the imp agent) from beta instead of the one i felt i should play (smuggler).

 

It was all going so well through act 1. I was excited to get back in game and finding myself losing days i should have been studying reading the forums, or should have been at the gym but playing the game.

I could read the story a mile away, but it was nonetheless relatively fun knowing the climax was building.

 

And now ive just finished my class story quest on taris. Im level 33. Im empire, i hate taris. The only thing that kept me remotely interested in it was the class story. The idea of going back there is just... eugh.

 

And then, due to being utterly SICK of spam healing to keep kaliyo alive i decided to respec so i could play with teh doc instead. So here i am, an op concealment suddenly incapable of killing a level 34 silver droid and wondering where it all went wrong. Am i doomed to have to grind taris for another two levels? Am i going to have to respec back into medic and suffer painfully slow (but safe) mob grinding?

 

I dunno. The alternatives are to run warzones. Run space missions and run dungeons. Maybe i need to wait on 1.3 for dungeons. Im bored to death of space missions, and warzones just dont appeal all that much. Somethings fractured, and i think its just mundane gameplay. I was so stoked at the start of this, but i cant help but feel its not me, but the game. Something feels so utterly uninspiring about it. Dont get me wrong, i LOVE the story quests. I love the cut scenes. But the whole rest of it just feels like going through the motions.

 

Bioware, we need to have a chat dudes. Ive supported you since black isle and baldurs gate. I even bought dragon age 2 and i DID like the idea of making it more poltical and all about factionalism. I bought and didnt even complain about the three colors ending for mass effect (though i cant bring myself to nightmare mode through all three games because nothing i do for the previous three weeks of game time seems to matter). But this, this has seriously compromised my relationship with you. It feels like youre treading water and going through the motions. Get it together. If you cant deliver world pvp at least Make my questing experience both diverse and exciting.

 

dailies dont cut it. More dungeons dont cut it. Im sick of dungeons. I had my fill in wow, and frankly its your own fault here. If you put as much effort into the later dungeons you put into BT/esseles i might WANT to run them, but hammer and athiss made me realise those two starter dungeons were stand alone and everything else was a grind. Im an unhappy fan.

 

Loyal though. So im gonna pop back into the game and see if i can re-motivate myself. The problem is, i shouldnt be the one trying to find reasons to come back into the game. I should WANT to play it because its fun. Its not fun. Im not enjoying it. But i want to see that class story (which is amazing) despite all the negativity i get from playing the rest of the game.

 

Dont get me wrong... the point isnt really the whole 3 level disparity. Thats my punishment for stealthing. The problem is the need to stealth because grinding through 1000 mobs to get to my objective is kinda tedious gameplay. I didnt buy diablo after all.

 

 

I know how you feel and I can't help but think that they made a huge mistake when creating so many world quests. Instead I think they should've made a lot more class story quests, so that you acctually played a whole new story each time you made a new character and not just a new class story with 90 % of the leveling experince and story being the same as when you leveled your other characters.

[Stovokor]

I thought SWTOR was in serious trouble as Ranked was pulled just prior to 1.2. I watched so many players leave expressly due to that. It was a mix of those that had re-subbed and existing players. Now after the transfers I think the game is on the right footing. Many player's that I know from my old server are back and same pattern probably mirrored elsewhere. Now after transfers II think the worst is behind ... and nearly everyone i talked to is happy wit the outcome. Bioware needs to deliver on Ranked WZ and compelling raid content that can't be completed too soon to really take the game forward. Too really get subs and face off with GW2, SWTOR need Open world PvP that is well designed around the time GW2 comes out. But overall this game definitely has its following for various reasons ...

[ippollite]

Sorry man, but you want to have a mmo that is 6 years matured on day 1. Remember when WoW and EQ released, they had 1 raid dungeon that you need 40 people for, took 3 days to complete and only the most exclusive people went in. Also pvp for Eq was basically limited to duels and WoW pvp was limited to world pvp and duels. BG's for WoW didnt come out for a couple months. The problem is people like you want 15 different raids with tiers, dual specs, achievement systems (BW kinda has with the lore), battles ground system's, dynamic enviroments, lfg tools, an expansive guild system (like sending ingame email to all members and a guild ranking system, all on day 1. Here is a news flash, IT WILL NOT HAPPEN FOR ANY MMO THAT IS JUST RELEASING!!!!!

 

Theres some things that this argument works with Volume of quests or planets, or streamlining, or stuff like that. I can get behind the claim that a game within its first year cant be expected to have tier 5 level dungeons on release. I can also appreciate that every time wow expands certain things are never played again making them to all intents and purpose obsolete and thus not actual content.

But on the flip, a significant chunk of wows development cycle was learning where those mistakes were and rectifying them (or simply recognising that they were trapped along certain routes theyd rather not be - gear inflation).

 

SWtoR wasnt created in a vacuum. It had a massive opportunity to not follow wow into its little black holes. It had 7 years of dungeon fights to study up on and 7 years of forum data to research what their playerbase wanted and what they hated. They kinda dropped the ball on a lot of those things, and theyre accidentally finding themselves stuck on the same *end game is the real game* (raid or die) path that wow found itself on (making 1-50 content obsolete). The big difference is that wow learned from its playerbase (even if it required the threat of SWtoR) that a lifeless azeroth was one of its central problems. They went for the fix in cataclysm. The playerbase didnt want a revitalised azeroth, so theyve gone with scrapping the old world entirely. Only they werent wrong about the idea. So theyre recreating it in pandara. I kid you not. Its their second crack at azeroth, only instead of having to level an alt to experience it, you can run it on your main and thats what is going to make all the difference.

 

Players are grouped in, they will be in each others faces and there will be mass pvp and it will breath life into a game that should be well on its way out and lacking in ideas for at least another year. Make no mistake, they screwed up with cataclysm but only because they were targetting new players and not their current playerbase, and though theyve lost a lot of players for good (me for instance), panda will work once people actually get out into the world and cant hide in their capital cities anymore (assuming of course they cant). The talent system is also phenomenally good and reminds us all that star wars, in its desire to copy the things that made wow successful forgot to look to the future a bit and thus destined it for medicority by mistaking nostalgia for genuine desire.

 

Of course its not all doom and gloom, we do have certain things that put the game way ahead of its competition and offers experiences no one else can (and opportunities for enhancement should they just unleash their vision and stop trying to place themselves so rigidly in the centre of the bell curve). But it needs to make a move soon. Just like when WAR came out, wow is now adapting, stealing and learning from the positive features in start wars and providing some of those things in its new game.

 

It feels like SW just doesnt have that magpie spirit. It feels like it has an internal vision and wants to bring that about, ignoring of course the changes in habits that have been happening in the mmo world over the last few years. It honestly feels like it heard the cries that "THE BURNING CRUSADE WAS THE BEST OF WOW and it all went downhill after that!" and has actually taken the claims seriously instead of just the posturing of a group of players vying for relevance now that theyre 5 years older, have less free time and are likely getting whupped everywhere else in the game.

 

It feels like the game wants everything to go back to 2006 when we all apparently loved sitting in our capital cities spamming for groups, running endlessly all over the (game) world to deliver dumb ancillary (time wasting) quests and forcing us into grinding earh elementals (world questing) in the badlands for XP and money because there just isnt enough interesting things to do in the main (class) quests to keep us occupied.

 

But space missions. Companion missions (mass effect style loyalty missions). Class missions. Puzzle quests. World PVP zones. They all have a chance of breathing life into this game. 5 years of awesome raid boss mechanics which it can literally just copy direct from wow and stick it in space, means they can spend much more time on the story. On the HOW part of the game over the WHAT (we get) part.

 

The problem is that sharded servers, continual instancing, dungeon crawling (through the same models over and over and over again - dragon age 2! yay!), and a sheer lack of planets and questing to make up the gaps or follow a different path, serves to kill world engagement as well as destroy the desire to replay the game. Pre burning crusade wow was the same. If you were horde, the idea of being tangoed (durator--->barrens--->stonetalon--->thousand needles - a lot of orange with serious level gaps), replaying the game was miserable. But then again you could just go somewhere else and have a crack at the undead zone chain instead. No such luck in this game.

 

Its probably time for SWtoR to do a wow patch 2.3 and XP buff if im honest. Not so we can all get to 50 easier, but so that we dont have to do every quest on every alt just to keep our class story moving. Maybe then we can skip certain planets with some of our characters and spend a great deal of our replay time on those quests we havent seen or done already. At least that would go some way to helping encourage players to replay the game a bit without feeling they were repeating 70-80% (generous) of the game.

 

I dunno, 1.3 is nice and all. But its not enough. 1.4 needs to be following it fast on its heels. The whole speed of the game needs to be rethought. It just feels grindy.

 

And i know... all mmos at their core are grindy.

 

I understand all mmos WERE grindy, i understand the mechanic to keep you subbing is the next obtainable shiny thing, but this argument is mistaken. It correlates the overriding mechanism of playing a game (to complete an objective) with the style of the game. Under thsi criteria pretty much every game does that, not just mmos. But we arent talking about removing the motivation for completing something. We're instead just talking about the means to achieving the goal. You know... the "gamePLAY" part. The bit that helps create differnet GENRES in gaming.

 

The HOW you get to the next shiny thing.

 

Nothing compels this to be a grind. Well, nothing except a complete failure of imagination. Its time this game looked at its competitors NOW in the year 2012 and brought in some of those ideas instead of basing its gamePLAY on an 8 year old model that players are kinda bored with.

 

I should stress this though before im completely written off as a moaner: 1.3 and server mergers will halt the decline and lack of interest in the game. I just think they need to be REVERSING it. Theyve stabalised the game as far as im concerned (or will have by the next patch), they now need to start recognising that they can start defining their own game with their own mechanics instead of creating wow with cut scenes. Start stealing from the secret world or guild wars. Put much more weight into the unique things this game has. Let mythic off the damn leash to figure out how to solve this dead world thing before everyone gets stuck on their fleet queueing for flashpoints, operations and warzones.

Edited June 21, 2012 by ippollite