How to revive SWTOR from the current mess.

[Yogol]

During server downtime, I thought about the state that this game is in and what can be done to fix it... here are my thoughts...

 

- The leveling path is very, very narrow: fighting mobs 3-4 levels higher then you is pretty much impossible, unlike in other games. The result is that if you are 25 and your friend is 22, he can't help you out at all.

This is probably very, very hard change, but I mention it here anyway, because it's good that Bioware sees what the results are of decisions like this

 

- The planet-levels are very, very small: planets are only good for 3-4-5 levels, so very few people are together on a planet, start worlds aside.

This is probably hard to change too, altough one can imagine more content added to planets, with different levels. Doesn't need to be class quests with fance voice acting and all, just basic content.

 

- There is no cross-planet chat: there may be 500 people online at one server, but you can not talk to them, because they are on different planets.

This is by far the most community-breaking decision they made. It's possible someone needs help from my higher level alt, but I will never know, because I can't hear people from other planets!

Personally, I can not think of one single reason why Bioware made this decision.

Would this lead to an over-crowded chat? I doubt it. In LOTRO, for example, there were often 500 users in glff and it worked perfectly, a few /ignores aside.

 

- The lack of cross-server group-finder: there may be 100 other players wanting to do a FP, but I don't see them, cause there is no cross-server grouping.

Would this encourage class-inaproriate ninja-looting? Yes, unless the loot system is changed. And that can be done easily: just don't let anyone loot BoP stuff outside their own class. This would make it impossible for you to do HMs to outfit your companion, granted, but that is a small price to pay to fix things and not let you wait for an hour straight just to do a FP.

 

- Needless to say, fixing the bugs in the current group finder would be highly desirable as well. (fix people's roles, give people the correct commendations, let people join...)

 

- Make it possible to queue for a group from an alt.

If I am leveling my poor level 25, I got no way to see if anyone wants to do a level 50 HM on my main. If you let me queue my main, even when playing my alt, this would be solved.

 

- Fix the crafting system!!!

- make each skill usefull, like have each skill make one consumable (amunition, potions, relics, stims, meds, scrolls, food, drinks, whatever you wanne call it, just make sure each class has one)

- give more than 5 missions (this is a no-brainer: making us hop in and out of your ship to refresh missions is just plain silly)

- have a higher crit chance when you use -say- 3 times as many materials or some crit item (it is EXTREMELY annoying when you do not crit 15 times in a row while you got 20%... and the odds of a streak of bad luck would go down alot if the percentage was 40-50% or so).

 

- Have a clearer end-game path...

Alot of people are confused of what to do when they hit 50... you got the dailies on Ilum and Belsavis (if you know about the Bonus Series), you got the FPs on SM, the black hole commendations on Corellia, there are the the FPs on HM, the ops... but there is no explanation to a player what to do first.

And the Group Finder doesn't help at all: if it happens to group you for a HM with 2 players that have no gear for it, well, you just lost an hour of your time!

 

- Test better.

Sure, this is an MMO and it's easy to miss bugs... but don't tell me that the launcher is hard to test... how is it possible that you ever went live with the patcher that makes you pick your envirenoment? Lack of testing.

It's like that for weeks now: every player that logs on to the game and has to select the environment sees immediatly: this is not been tested. Think what bugs like that do to your reputation... this is a small but everyone sees them... for weeks now...

 

- Make the forums accessible when servers are down.

It's been like this for eight months now... Time is up where you can say ''sure, we will fix this''. Eight months is enough!

Edited July 24, 2012 by Yogol

[JonathanCP]

 

- The lack of cross-server group-finder: there may be 100 other players wanting to do a FP, but I don't see them, cause there is no cross-server grouping.

Would this encourage class-inaproriate ninja-looting? Yes, unless the loot system is changed. And that can be done easily: just don't let anyone loot BoP stuff outside their own class. This would make it impossible for you to do HMs to outfit your companion, granted, but that is a small price to pay to fix things and not let you wait for an hour straight just to do a FP.

 

Not that you have bad ideas. But if you cannot understand that the reason behind LFG not popping instantly is NOT a lack of player but a bad distribution of Tank/Heals/DPS and that cross server LFG would change nothing about it, then I'm much much less inclined to take your other ideas seriously.

[BenjaminminU]

Not that you have bad ideas. But if you cannot understand that the reason behind LFG not popping instantly is NOT a lack of player but a bad distribution of Tank/Heals/DPS and that cross server LFG would change nothing about it, then I'm much much less inclined to take your other ideas seriously.

 

Exactly this, cross server grouping would change nothing, except make it worse. All we need is for bioware to encourage people to play as healers and tanks. Sometimes even when im queued with another dps and a healer or tank the group finder still can't find a 4th for the group.

[jgoldsack]

Exactly this, cross server grouping would change nothing, except make it worse. All we need is for bioware to encourage people to play as healers and tanks. Sometimes even when im queued with another dps and a healer or tank the group finder still can't find a 4th for the group.

 

Exactly.

 

I don't use the group finder on my healer or tank, because I am tired of getting blamed for everything that goes wrong, even if it is not my fault, and I am simply tired of dealing with rude people. The reward for it simply is not worth the effort.

 

So I simply don't use it.

[Spatology]

You must not have played in a while,

 

Most of these are N/A or just plain wrong.

[DarthTHC]

Not that you have bad ideas. But if you cannot understand that the reason behind LFG not popping instantly is NOT a lack of player but a bad distribution of Tank/Heals/DPS and that cross server LFG would change nothing about it, then I'm much much less inclined to take your other ideas seriously.

 

Oh really? So when I jump on my mid 30's tank and queue and get no pop for a while then I pop right on over to my mid 30's healer and queue and still no pop, that's a role distribution issue? This is on a destination server, so it's not a (single-server) population problem. This is a problem that X-LFG would solve.

 

Yah, yah, I know... "community", whatever that means (I've seen it defined as harassing players who make you cry, so yay?). Ignore works. So does thicker skin. So does understanding that the percentage of idiots won't change; only the frequency with which you see them (and the good ones) because you'll get more groups, faster.

Edited July 24, 2012 by DarthTHC

[WickedDjinn]

It's not a mess. It just is what it is. You either enjoy what it is or you don't.

[SirRobin]

Revival? Sorry but the last five or six years of MMORPG's makes it clear that that is very unlikely. TOR is a "good" game but in a crowded marketplace, good just isn't "good enough" anymore. TOR had its shot, it missed, and now its just another face in the MMORPG crowd. Not that that is necessarily a "bad" thing, but BioWare should focus on maintaining instead of trying to take another shot.

[Velgar]

- Test better.

Sure, this is an MMO and it's easy to miss bugs... but don't tell me that the launcher is hard to test... how is it possible that you ever went live with the patcher that makes you pick your envirenoment? Lack of testing.

It's like that for weeks now: every player that logs on to the game and has to select the environment sees immediatly: this is not been tested. Think what bugs like that do to your reputation... this is a small but everyone sees them... for weeks now...

 

I do not think that is a lack of testing, that was added for some reason to accommodate some future feature. It would not exist at all unless it had some future use where you will actually have to choose among various environments from a single launcher. What that means opens a whole new avenue of speculation.

[Newyankalt]

Some of these ideas are rather stupid. Cross planet chat I don't want people always spamming the chat. Planets should also be certain level who needs 50s ord mantel ruining the game for the starting people.

[Newyankalt]

Tried going back to read the rest and stopped its just too pathetic.

[Spatology]

Lets take this thread in a serious direction.

 

I think the current lull in subscriptions is actually just he building base for future population. WoW didnt start off with 12 million players and hold those subs. Infact, their first year was VERY similar. People joined the game, then left because of all the bugs and its difficulty.

 

IMO what you are seeing is, the stabilization of server populations after transfers. The game hoppers have left. People with ADD are gone. GW2 hype is almost over.

 

Look around you guys and start writeing down names or remembering who you are playing with. When this game goes through its second growth spurt, its gonna be a bumpy ride~.

[paul_preib]

During server downtime, I thought about the state that this game is in and what can be done to fix it... here are my thoughts...

 

- The leveling path is very, very narrow: fighting mobs 3-4 levels higher then you is pretty much impossible, unlike in other games. The result is that if you are 25 and your friend is 22, he can't help you out at all.

This is probably very, very hard change, but I mention it here anyway, because it's good that Bioware sees what the results are of decisions like this

 

This is relative, another player can help in the way of support if it is too much higher (i.e. 4-5) but even at around 3 levelish they can still be fairly effective. If you mean you and a friend cannot do a heroic 4 that is at-level for you and >3 levels ahead of the friend (the only time I would see you overtly needing help) well that isn't really intended.

 

Not a fan of the simple "at X many levels higher your chance to miss is laughably high" manner of gating you off overall, but I really don't feel this part is much of an issue at all.

 

- The planet-levels are very, very small: planets are only good for 3-4-5 levels, so very few people are together on a planet, start worlds aside.

This is probably hard to change too, altough one can imagine more content added to planets, with different levels. Doesn't need to be class quests with fance voice acting and all, just basic content.

Depends on your "Very few" definition, as well as probably server. I have been leveling a few alts at the same time right now, so seeing a fair amount of time on multiple planets. Yes there's not 100+ on every planet but I am consistently seeing 50-60 on low level planets like Nar Shadda, Tatooine. Not sure on the Chapter 3 planets (Hoth through non black-hole Corellia), but so far up through Alderaan I see good numbers and getting a group for heroics (the only real reason a leveling planet's population would matter) is about as easy with the big server sizes as it was during the initial fervor of the first month or so.

 

- There is no cross-planet chat: there may be 500 people online at one server, but you can not talk to them, because they are on different planets.

This is by far the most community-breaking decision they made. It's possible someone needs help from my higher level alt, but I will never know, because I can't hear people from other planets!

Personally, I can not think of one single reason why Bioware made this decision.

Would this lead to an over-crowded chat? I doubt it. In LOTRO, for example, there were often 500 users in glff and it worked perfectly, a few /ignores aside.

 

You forget one major thing-- GLFF in Lotro is a created channel, not something Turbine gave us. Yes the idea caught on an virtually every server has a glff, but you have to actively /cjoin it, it isn't the same as a general/trade/pvp default chat. So your server is welcome to do the exact same thing and I know the servers I have been on pre and post transfer have user created lfg global channels as well.

 

 

- The lack of cross-server group-finder: there may be 100 other players wanting to do a FP, but I don't see them, cause there is no cross-server grouping.

Would this encourage class-inaproriate ninja-looting? Yes, unless the loot system is changed. And that can be done easily: just don't let anyone loot BoP stuff outside their own class. This would make it impossible for you to do HMs to outfit your companion, granted, but that is a small price to pay to fix things and not let you wait for an hour straight just to do a FP.

 

Group finding issues I believe are tied to the decision to make flashpoints 4 man content, which requires a much higher tank/healer to dps ratio then most other games. The 5 man system of WOW and 6 man of LOTRO both mean that dps has a much easier time putting a group together, and also frees up the content to be more friendly towards using an offspec to fill out that last spot if needs be.

 

So cross server would not ease this situation. I think 4 man flashpoints are a fine design idea for leveling flashpoints, but really were a mistake when it comes to level 50 (especially hardmodes) as it restricts both the design of the content and the capacity to put groups together.

 

- Needless to say, fixing the bugs in the current group finder would be highly desirable as well. (fix people's roles, give people the correct commendations, let people join...)

 

Not sure on the commendation issue (have not seen it, doesn't mean it isn't there)-- but I do think a huge number of the "bugs" in group finder are those that simply queued up without bothering to uncheck a role they are not built for. The game simply picks what that specific class can do and presents it, it would be unrealistic and probaly end up genuinely buggy to expect the group fiinder to analyze your spec and decide your specific role.

 

That said I do think it would be smarter to default to everything unchecked, then have the player himself have to actively select his role.

 

- Make it possible to queue for a group from an alt.

If I am leveling my poor level 25, I got no way to see if anyone wants to do a level 50 HM on my main. If you let me queue my main, even when playing my alt, this would be solved.

 

Don't think I have ever stumbled across a game that has the capacity to queue a different character from what you are logged into. It would be quite nice-- for me with multiple alts I can level say the 34 vanguard while the 20 scoundrel and 21 shadow are queued for Athiss/Hammer Station.

 

But the support for that beyond a lobby-esque verbal agreement type of group finder (i.e. one where you type in your name and info/what you are looking for into a group-find lobby of sorts and wait to be contacted) is an unrealistic expectation. Group finder is not going to pop, log you out of your current character, log you into the one you queued, and put that one in the group and popped in the instance. That's asking a bit much of one.

 

- Fix the crafting system!!!

- make each skill usefull, like have each skill make one consumable (amunition, potions, relics, stims, meds, scrolls, food, drinks, whatever you wanne call it, just make sure each class has one)

- give more than 5 missions (this is a no-brainer: making us hop in and out of your ship to refresh missions is just plain silly)

- have a higher crit chance when you use -say- 3 times as many materials or some crit item (it is EXTREMELY annoying when you do not crit 15 times in a row while you got 20%... and the odds of a streak of bad luck would go down alot if the percentage was 40-50% or so).

 

I can see them pushing crafting skills into more useful avenues with the augmentation revamp. I also don';t think a consumable is the way to go. I think right now the limited appeal stems more from the RE system making it not worth your time to work towards good leveling schematics (a bit of bad RNG luck and by the time you've learned to make that purple you've almost outleveled its usefulness), along with having few desirable endgame-ish items.

 

This is in part to how quickly/easily you can get into Columni/Battlemaster gear and thus have rated 136-140 gear that outpaces what you can craft.

 

For giving more then 5 crew skill missions, meh I think they need to tone down the frequency of companion gift pops among crew skills, especially the ones that are crew-mission only without a gathering aspect (diplomacy, treasure hunting, etc.). Make it so you cannot have more then two companion gift missions in a given tier at one time and it'll be fine with 5.

 

For crafting crit chances-- You could argue this prior to 1.3 where for example getting a crit on my rakata belt was an extremely beneficial surprise rather then something I overtly hoped would happen. But at present crits do one of two things-- make two of an item (no point here to your 'using more materials to make it crit approach) or give it an augment slot, and most of the crafting professions whose item crits yield an augment slot can make their own kits (yes I know there are biochem implants for example that cannot). So no, I'd ask for the RE system to be reworked long before any worry of crit chance.

 

- Have a clearer end-game path...

Alot of people are confused of what to do when they hit 50... you got the dailies on Ilum and Belsavis (if you know about the Bonus Series), you got the FPs on SM, the black hole commendations on Corellia, there are the the FPs on HM, the ops... but there is no explanation to a player what to do first.

And the Group Finder doesn't help at all: if it happens to group you for a HM with 2 players that have no gear for it, well, you just lost an hour of your time!

 

a big part of the reason that it isn't spelled out is because you don't HAVE to do any set order for things. Yes to do nightmare mode ops you have to be geared from earlier operations, beyond that the accessibility is quite open.

 

You can effectively perform up through the storymode operation/hardmode flashpoints (aside from maybe LI) with augmented battlemaster gear, a few columni pieces sprinkled into level 22 purple modded gear, or number of permutations. There is no explanation as what to do first because there is no one thing you need to do first-- people already take issue with how much on rails this game is, that would keep things just that much more linear.

 

 

- Test better.

Sure, this is an MMO and it's easy to miss bugs... but don't tell me that the launcher is hard to test... how is it possible that you ever went live with the patcher that makes you pick your envirenoment? Lack of testing.

It's like that for weeks now: every player that logs on to the game and has to select the environment sees immediatly: this is not been tested. Think what bugs like that do to your reputation... this is a small but everyone sees them... for weeks now...

 

In-game bugs concern me, pick my environment on the loader... not so much. As you mentioned lotro before I will revisit that-- Isengarde, the pit of iron, falling through the world in so many different locations that they had to close the entire area down for awhile. Draigoch the focal entry level raid for this game's current content still goes braindead far too often. Nothing like a 35-45 minute long encounter stalled at 34 minutes and 3% because the boss bugged out.

 

I am not saying the game is perfect, it is far from. But I would rate the bugginess of the game as a sub year-old entity as not too terrible compared to elsewhere.

 

 

- Make the forums accessible when servers are down.

It's been like this for eight months now... Time is up where you can say ''sure, we will fix this''. Eight months is enough!

 

 

Actually this is deliberate so people don't sit around flooding the forums with "is it back up yet, when is it back up, are they back up yet, why is it down so long, etc."

 

 

 

There are flaws, and things I'd love to see tweaked in the game. Plenty of design decisions that could help, but I think most of those laid out here run between unrealistic (a cross-toon group finder queue) to just not that big of a deal (no forum during server maintenance).

Edited July 24, 2012 by paul_preib

[macumba]

cross server group finder is not only bad cos of ninja looting. if people can get away with thing with impunity because they are on a different server and reputation means nothing they will come up with all sorts of crap.

 

just one other example: you could have a player join and directly leave after the first boss because the only thing he needs from the flashpoint drops there. then you have the harassment and all the other joys.

 

right now anyone who misbehaves will fill my ignore list and I wont be matched with them again. in addition to that I can point out on the fleet if someone did something bad if you know what I mean.

[WickedDjinn]

Lets take this thread in a serious direction.

 

I think the current lull in subscriptions is actually just he building base for future population. WoW didnt start off with 12 million players and hold those subs. Infact, their first year was VERY similar. People joined the game, then left because of all the bugs and its difficulty.

 

IMO what you are seeing is, the stabilization of server populations after transfers. The game hoppers have left. People with ADD are gone. GW2 hype is almost over.

 

Look around you guys and start writeing down names or remembering who you are playing with. When this game goes through its second growth spurt, its gonna be a bumpy ride~.

 

We need to stop comparing any MMO to WoW.

 

The reason WoW became what it is can NOT be duplicated. WoW is the result of circumstance, time and place, as much as anything. Those stars will never again come together. The time had passed.

[Hillarious]

Exactly.

 

I don't use the group finder on my healer or tank, because I am tired of getting blamed for everything that goes wrong, even if it is not my fault, and I am simply tired of dealing with rude people. The reward for it simply is not worth the effort.

 

So I simply don't use it.

 

And this is key.

 

I have played a healer for over 10 years in MMORPGs.

 

We are losing community and making games too solo friendly. We make it relatively easy for players to escape reputations and we "protect" people from other players actions by over policing games.

 

We make it ways for people to "progress" but this just means they do so at the expense of forming relationships they may need later on to do content.

 

Players are equally to blame because they cant be arsed to try and make friends.

 

Allowing people to dual spec isnt the answer. You need dedicated healers and tanks that know their craft. Same for DPS.

[DarthTHC]

cross server group finder is not only bad cos of ninja looting. if people can get away with thing with impunity because they are on a different server and reputation means nothing they will come up with all sorts of crap.

 

just one other example: you could have a player join and directly leave after the first boss because the only thing he needs from the flashpoint drops there. then you have the harassment and all the other joys.

 

right now anyone who misbehaves will fill my ignore list and I wont be matched with them again. in addition to that I can point out on the fleet if someone did something bad if you know what I mean.

 

What a sad outlook on humanity you have. We're all naturally horrible to each other, and we only behave well when there are obvious, instant repercussions for misbehaving?

[macumba]

What a sad outlook on humanity you have. We're all naturally horrible to each other, and we only behave well when there are obvious, instant repercussions for misbehaving?

 

its been that way with x-server lfg in wow, so its simply an observation and THE reason why anti-x-server ppl don't want that. maybe you were lucky ? or maybe your one of "them" I don't know.

[Sarlegant]

I wouldn't argue that there should be dedicated tanks, healers, and dps... problem is a pve tank can't hold aggro in a pvp contest.

Duel specs would be a great answer.

Making the cost of a respec nil would be a satisfactory solution in the short run.

 

There are plenty of money sinks already... respecs need not be one.

[Emeda]

- Fix the crafting system!!!

- make each skill usefull, like have each skill make one consumable (amunition, potions, relics, stims, meds, scrolls, food, drinks, whatever you wanne call it, just make sure each class has one)

- give more than 5 missions (this is a no-brainer: making us hop in and out of your ship to refresh missions is just plain silly)

- have a higher crit chance when you use -say- 3 times as many materials or some crit item (it is EXTREMELY annoying when you do not crit 15 times in a row while you got 20%... and the odds of a streak of bad luck would go down alot if the percentage was 40-50% or so).!

 

The way the game is designed, its impossible to fix crafting.

 

Most of the leveling crafting anyone does is not for that character. By the time your able to craft something and gather the mats needed you have already outdated the item you were making. Also it takes too much time to make something thats an upgrade (epic gear) that will last you only 4 levels before a green matches its stats.

 

Anything they add to crafting now will be a FOTM item and thats it. Like the augements. People will buy them the first 1-2 weeks but then after that they are so easy to make yourself.

 

Crafting in this game is a side mini game. It can never be fixed with this style of game.

[Yogol]

the reason behind LFG not popping instantly is NOT a lack of player but a bad distribution of Tank/Heals/DPS and that cross server LFG would change nothing about it

 

Not ALL people on ALL servers that are waiting in a queue are DPS. With big numbers of independent servers (especailly servers with tiny populations), there WILL be healers & tanks out there waiting in line on some servers and DPS waiting in line on other servers.

 

Even when the end-result will indeed still be that DPSers will have to wait, there will be groups made that wouldn't never start without cross-server queueing.

 

Ofcourse, with more tanks & healers, this would not be smaller issue. But it was Bioware's explicit decision to stick with the usual DPS / healer / tank trinity, so they should come up with a solution.

[Elkirin]

Remove the forums, remove all the websites with helpers, guides, youtube videos etc and remove voice chat systems and then people will speak in chat to each other in game to work out how to do things.

 

Otherwise stop pretending that the early days of UO/EQ etc where teams of community members worked together in game to solve raids/puzzles are ever going to happen again. We worked together because we had to work together.

[Synxos]

Ofcourse, with more tanks & healers, this would not be smaller issue. But it was Bioware's explicit decision to stick with the usual DPS / healer / tank trinity, so they should come up with a solution.

the solution is simple and has been known since EQ, probably earlier....

you make 6 person groups.

1 tank 1 healer 4 dps.

There's no problem with the holy trinity. The problem is stupid devs making groups smaller for no reason(except maybe their engine can't handle 6 player groups, in which case, they need a new engine).

Edited July 24, 2012 by Synxos

[Chaori]

Played healers in WoW for 6 years, playing a tank in SWTOR and absolutely love it. Have never played end-game in any MMO as a DPS. I have no idea why there's a shortage of tanks and healers, it is extremely fun. Maybe they don't like the responsibility and being called 'noob' if the group wipes but meh, I think it's far more interesting than button mashing as DPS. Watching buffs/debuffs on self/enemy, learning and practising fights and improving on cooldown usage and timing and boss/add control is so much fun

 

Go plays tanks and healers guys, you won't be disappointed!

[Ashu-ri]

The way the game is designed, its impossible to fix crafting.

 

Most of the leveling crafting anyone does is not for that character. By the time your able to craft something and gather the mats needed you have already outdated the item you were making. Also it takes too much time to make something thats an upgrade (epic gear) that will last you only 4 levels before a green matches its stats.

 

Anything they add to crafting now will be a FOTM item and thats it. Like the augements. People will buy them the first 1-2 weeks but then after that they are so easy to make yourself.

 

Crafting in this game is a side mini game. It can never be fixed with this style of game.

 

Actually, on most of my characters now, my crafting is equal to my level, if not ahead of my level. My shooters have always had blue gun barrels waiting for them.