Are we a dying breed?

[rickasaur]

Is the SWTOR community dying harder than I realize? I try to get people's opinions on other websites about certain swtor topics. But all I am finding is outdated info, rarely more recent than patch 1.3. This is my first time posting on forums here, but maybe this is where I need to stay.

Is anyone else really bummed out about this? Or am I just not looking in the right places?

[Rafaman]

Hard to say. Here is my view of it.

 

With all of the hype surrounding this game prior to launch and right at launch there was a cottage industry of websites claiming to support and or have exclusive information on this game. However, after a while, and after realizing there would be little or no money in it, many sites just stopped entirely updating their content. What remains are the sites that are relevant. The ones that care about the game and have a following. Not the money grabbers.

 

Are we a dying breed? No. I don't think so. We have been consolidated to a great extent though. Dulfy.net, DarthHater.com, and a few others are where we are now. I find a great deal of useful information in these very forums though. The Class forums for example are outstanding.

[Talon_strikes]

I see fewer and fewer players posting in the Unsubscriber's Thread, which gives me one reason to believe that we are not dying, but pretty stable. After the "hype period" of FTP ended and since most of the consolidation is complete, the game has found its niche and probably won't be growing much for a long while.

[OddballEasyEight]

We are no more a dying breed than punk or heavy metal is... Both had their "glory days" when more or less everyone was into it, but when it faded from the mainstream all that remains are the true fans. The people who appreciate it for what it is, and not just because its "new" and "popular".

 

World of Warcraft is like hip-hop tho... its changed and warped from its origins and now its just bland and feels factory-made to appease the masses...

[Marshal_Ney]

What are you talking about? Most EU server are always with several instances for each planet,and i play from day one.

You forgot or you don't know how was SWTOR a year ago,with empty instances.

the people who like the game are there,and most of them prefer to loggin and have fun than keep posting.

[Alavastre]

If anything there has been an increase in player base since F2P. Which was the point yes? So no, this game isn't dying. I've been impressed by the changes recently, and though there are still some problems and stuff missing, over all it's worth playing.

 

They need to come out with the next chapter of the class stories and have a little media campaign and they could probably bring back a lot of people. At least for a while.

[JediCahlwyn]

No it isn't dying.

 

Pick better sites:

 

Dulfy.net

Darthhater.com

Noxxic.com

 

All three are always up-to-date. Dulfy is great for events/strats, DH has articles, Noxxic has character builds/rotations/talents, etc.

[Icestar]

Is the SWTOR community dying harder than I realize? I try to get people's opinions on other websites about certain swtor topics. But all I am finding is outdated info, rarely more recent than patch 1.3. This is my first time posting on forums here, but maybe this is where I need to stay.

Is anyone else really bummed out about this? Or am I just not looking in the right places?

 

It has its ups and downs but, it will survive.

 

I bet many old players wants to try Hutt Cartel thingy among other things

[ahduth]

No it isn't dying.

 

Pick better sites:

 

Dulfy.net

Darthhater.com

Noxxic.com

 

All three are always up-to-date. Dulfy is great for events/strats, DH has articles, Noxxic has character builds/rotations/talents, etc.

 

I haven't looked at noxxic lately, didn't it used to be pretty bad?

[Eillack]

OP,

 

If you go on the forums more than playing it would seem that way.

 

For me, seeing Heavy-Full constantly busts your belief.

[Eternalnight]

I haven't looked at noxxic lately, didn't it used to be pretty bad?

 

It's still bad and probably a lot worse than before.

 

Not only does it still contain a lot of false information, that is not even just outdated, but has always been false, but even the few bits of correct information it had are getting outdated.

 

Noxxic (at least for SWToR) is the worst mmo guide in the history of mmo games.

 

I'm seriously starting to believe Noxxic is just a troll site that is on purpose feeding people false information.

[DarthTHC]

I don't know about other sites, but this community doesn't seem to be "dying".

 

Then, when I look inside the game, I see former guildies - people who haven't logged in for 100-200 or more days - coming back. That was just last night actually. It's a good feeling.

[JediCahlwyn]

That is a huge overstatement at best.

 

At WORST noxxic is great for new players, gives them a starting point. I've found their suggested builds/rotations are fine and have seen improvement in friends' game play after they used the site's advice.

 

Do you have some specific examples as to why it is so bad?

[SamuraBob_Fl]

That is a huge overstatement at best.

 

At WORST noxxic is great for new players, gives them a starting point. I've found their suggested builds/rotations are fine and have seen improvement in friends' game play after they used the site's advice.

 

Do you have some specific examples as to why it is so bad?

 

Noxxic isn't quite terrible but I don't like it, and here's why:

 

When I played WoW I relied on Elitist Jerks a lot for guides, and the nice thing about the site was that there was detailed discussion of the math behind the prescribed specs and rotations, and multiple people checking that math.

Noxxic, instead of providing reasons, gives only mere assertions. That means that when I look at a spec and it doesn't quite make sense to me, I have no way of figuring out whether I'm missing something or the author is. They apparently expect us to take the stat priorities on blind faith. I have yet to see the evidence that they're reliable enough to warrant that.

[Eternalnight]

That is a huge overstatement at best.

not really

 

And I seriously believe Noxxic is a troll site spreading false information on purpose. Why else would they not correct any of their bits of false information that has been known to be false for more than a year

 

At WORST noxxic is great for new players, gives them a starting point. I've found their suggested builds/rotations are fine and have seen improvement in friends' game play after they used the site's advice.

At best Noxxic is a way for a completely clueless player to find a path to mediocrity.

 

Do you have some specific examples as to why it is so bad?

Seriously, it would take thousands and thousands of pages of text to list and explain everything that is wrong with Noxxic.

 

Ok, lets take just one page from one guide for one spec of one class:

 

http://www.noxxic.com/swtor/pve/sith-inquisitor/assassin/darkness/stat-priority

 

Absolutely everything in this page is completely wrong.

Apart from the most childishly obvious things (like that assassin gear includes stats like willpower but not aim), there is not even one piece of correct information in the entire page.

 

The "optimal" percentages for Defense, Shield chance and Absorb are completely wrong and not even close to what they should be. Often being anywhere from between 5% to 15% off the mark, which is unbelievably huge margin of error. (fully geared and optimized assassin tank should have something like 30% defense, 45% shield chance (or 65% shield chance with Dark Ward up) and 60% absorb)

 

They also seem to copy/paste the same numbers for different classes while completely ignoring their differences. Like they give exactly the same numbers for Juggernaut tanks, which is absurdly wrong since different tank classes have very different optimal numbers. Also they claim that they get the same percentages with the same amount of stats in their gear, which is even more absurdly wrong since different tank classes have very different base percentages from which they start from.

 

The percentages they give are of course not correct for any class.

Also the amount of stats in your gear that they claim you need to reach the said percentages do not match at all for anyone.

 

Also there should not be > signs between the stats for tanks. You don't just stack one stat all the way up before you start even start with the other one, but should be working to get them up in equal proportions towards the optimal numbers.

 

 

Next we get to Willpower. Noxxic says: "Increases the damage and healing done by your abilities". Ok, this is even more stupid. Willpower only increases healing done for sorcerers. However you can't just copy/paste same text for different classes to whom it does not work the same way. Adding a statement like that to a guide that is about assassins and only about assassins is very stupid and misleading and can create all kinds of misunderstandings for new players, because assassins do have many (self)healing abilities, but those are not affected by willpower at all.

Some of their heals are a percentage of max health and are then affected by the endurance stat, which noxxic also forgets to mention

 

 

But now we get to the biggest fail of all. Accuracy. Absolutely everything they say about accuracy is completely wrong.

Where do I even begin?

See, here's how it is

-Force/Tech attacks do not benefit from accuracy at all.

-Force/Tech is not the same thing as special attack.

-All Melee/Ranged attacks are not all "normal" attacks with 90% base accuracy. Only one attack for each class is a basic attack with 90% base accuracy. The other melee/ranged attacks are special attacks with 100% base accuracy (although they do still benefit from accuracy rating up to a point since they can be dodged by the bosses defense chance.)

-Bosses do not have any "defense" against force/tech attacks. They only have defense against melee ranged attacks. Accuracy over 100% for force/tech attacks reduces the target's resist chance, which is 0 for all PvE mobs including operation bosses, so accuracy does not benefit force/tech attacks at all. (note this is going to change in 2.0 when they will have resistance against force/tech, but the Noxxic guides are still supposed to be for the current game (1.7) and they also have had that false information for more than a year before we even knew about 2.0)

 

As for assassin tanks, they only have 3 attacks that can be avoided by the bosses defense and only one that can miss even on targets without defense. These contribute less than 5% of their damage and less than 1% of their threat. Missing 10% less on an ability that does 1% of your threat would mean 0.1% more threat. Too little that you would ever even notice the difference. Accuracy is nearly useless to assassin tanks. It is always better to take mitigation stats like shield rating instead of accuracy rating, no matter how much you have them already. Therefore the optimal amount of accuracy rating for assassin tanks is no accuracy rating at all.

Claiming that they need +10% or 330 is incredibly stupid.

 

 

Now all of this has been known for more than a year by anyone and everyone who looks and analyzes their combat logs, but still in that entire time Noxxic has not made any attempt to correct any of their false information.

 

And this was just one page of one guide. There are more bad stuff in the other pages of this class guide and the other class guides have many similar mistakes too.

Edited March 8, 2013 by Eternalnight

[islander]

I see fewer and fewer players posting in the Unsubscriber's Thread, which gives me one reason to believe that we are not dying, but pretty stable. After the "hype period" of FTP ended and since most of the consolidation is complete, the game has found its niche and probably won't be growing much for a long while.

 

At least on the Imperial side, the population on Pot5 has been pretty stable for the past couple months. Prime time there's two full fleets with a third fairly populated.

[Hovergame]

I use Xfire to get an idea, but you need to check regulary. And SWTOR is quite stable for months, which is REALLY encouraging for the future.

[Andryah]

Is the SWTOR community dying harder than I realize? I try to get people's opinions on other websites about certain swtor topics. But all I am finding is outdated info, rarely more recent than patch 1.3. This is my first time posting on forums here, but maybe this is where I need to stay.

Is anyone else really bummed out about this? Or am I just not looking in the right places?

 

You are just seeing the after effects of the modern locust phenomenum that circlres every major game relase these days (and not just MMO games either).

 

The game launched under the typical huge modern player based enthusiasm bubble... which propgates tons of new fan sites, and cheezes up every MMO forum on the planet around launch. Then things settle down, a lot of players quickly move on to the next "shiny" on the internet, and the game establishes what is it's stable base.

 

The real measure of an MMO in the modern era is to look at it about a year after launch and see what the population dynamics are. In SWTORs case... it's populations and server activities have been stable and modestly growing for months now. While we do not know exact population number for the player base, rough estimates based on observing the servers suggests the remaining super servers are (not including APAC here as their population issues are yet to be solved) busy, stable and being super servers each one is ~ = to 3 of the old servers in terms of total population. So from obseravtion, this MMOs is large, growing, and has a bright future for years to come and is agruably the current number 2 in the western MMO market for revenue generating player base.

[DarthTHC]

You are just seeing the after effects of the modern locust phenomenum that circlres every major game relase these days (and not just MMO games either).

 

The game launched under the typical huge modern player based enthusiasm bubble... which propgates tons of new fan sites, and cheezes up every MMO forum on the planet around launch. Then things settle down, a lot of players quickly move on to the next "shiny" on the internet, and the game establishes what is it's stable base.

 

The real measure of an MMO in the modern era is to look at it about a year after launch and see what the population dynamics are. In SWTORs case... it's populations and server activities have been stable and modestly growing for months now. While we do not know exact population number for the player base, rough estimates based on observing the servers suggests the remaining super servers are (not including APAC here as their population issues are yet to be solved) busy, stable and being super servers each one is ~ = to 3 of the old servers in terms of total population. So from obseravtion, this MMOs is large, growing, and has a bright future for years to come and is agruably the current number 2 in the western MMO market for revenue generating player base.

 

Can you show us this purported "locust effect", supposedly a big uptick in interest at launch followed by a huge decline months post-launch, in WoW or Rift? LOL!

Edited March 8, 2013 by DarthTHC

[Andryah]

Can you show us this purported "locust effect", supposedly a big uptick in interest at launch followed by a huge decline months post-launch, in WoW or Rift? LOL!

 

Yeah... let's take Rift for example... since it represents the modern era launch for an MMO [WoW does not, it relies on it's legacy population from an earlier decade, at a different time in the market...preceeding the large MMO market that WoW actually created. That said... WoW actually suffers the same effect with each of it's last few expansions, it's just that they do it with short term resubs from their legacy base of veterans.]

 

Rift launched to great hype excitement, and large population (~800,000, based on available data at mmo.net). 7 months later, it had lost ~70% of it's peak launch player population, but was reaching signs of stable popilation rates. From available data, it appears that Rift has followed the common dynamic of modern MMO launchs where populations pop, decline, the then stabilize at a fraction of their launch population before beginning a stable ongoing run rate and modest population gains over time.

 

TSW.... similar results. Tera West.. similar results. GW2... similar results. The peak launch numbers are different for different MMOs because there is different pent up hype and interest in the characteristics and IP... but the locust effect dynamic is pretty consistent in the modern era of MMO releases.

 

so LOL right back at you

Edited March 8, 2013 by Andryah

[Crawelc]

Can you show us this purported "locust effect", supposedly a big uptick in interest at launch followed by a huge decline months post-launch, in WoW or Rift? LOL!

 

WoW sees it every xpac, and swtor has more subs than rift. Not sure what your point is

[DarthTHC]

Yeah... let's take Rift for example... since it represents the modern era launch for an MMO [WoW does not, it relies on it's legacy population from an earlier decade, at a different time in the market...preceeding the large MMO market that WoW actually created. That said... WoW actually suffers the same effect with each of it's last few expansions, it's just that they do it with short term resubs from their legacy base of veterans.]

 

Rift launched to great hype excitement, and large population (~800,000, based on available data at mmo.net). 7 months later, it had lost ~70% of it's peak launch player population, but was reaching signs of stable popilation rates. From available data, it appears that Rift has followed the common dynamic of modern MMO launchs where populations pop, decline, the then stabilize at a fraction of their launch population before beginning a stable ongoing run rate and modest population gains over time.

 

TSW.... similar results. Tera West.. similar results. GW2... similar results. The peak launch numbers are different for different MMOs because there is different pent up hype and interest in the characteristics and IP... but the locust effect dynamic is pretty consistent in the modern era of MMO releases.

 

so LOL right back at you

 

What was RIft's population 5 months post-launch, as a percentage of that initial ~800,000?

 

What was SWTOR's 5 months post-launch?

[Pistols-GS]

I remember the days when threads moved so fast, it took 10+ pages to read everything on one days worth of peeps posting. Now it's a month to get that many pages (PvP anyways).

 

Not knocking the game here, but decisions made within the first few months of this game, and the lack of action at the major 1.2 fiasco, caused a major rift with PvP players. I can't say I blame them for the sour taste they got from EA at the time.

Edited March 8, 2013 by Pistols-GS

[Andryah]

What was RIft's population 5 months post-launch, as a percentage of that initial ~800,000?

 

What was SWTOR's 5 months post-launch?

 

Based on available data.... about the same actually, give or take 10%. All the new MMOs are spiking high and quick. then tailing off quickly until they reach a stable settling point. Rift stabilized at around 200K and SWTOR stabilized at around 750K (some will argue 500K, but I never saw good data to support that), based on available data. Tera did not fair as well, and GW2 is kind of hard to track.... but i's waaaaaay down from launch as well. TSW is a little harder to figure out given how their servers are setup and there being no good independent data, but from my obseravtion.... similar... though I'm not sure yet that it has stabilized.. so it could continue lower yet.

Edited March 8, 2013 by Andryah

[islander]

Yeah... let's take Rift for example... since it represents the modern era launch for an MMO [WoW does not, it relies on it's legacy population from an earlier decade, at a different time in the market...preceeding the large MMO market that WoW actually created. That said... WoW actually suffers the same effect with each of it's last few expansions, it's just that they do it with short term resubs from their legacy base of veterans.]

 

Rift launched to great hype excitement, and large population (~800,000, based on available data at mmo.net). 7 months later, it had lost ~70% of it's peak launch player population, but was reaching signs of stable popilation rates. From available data, it appears that Rift has followed the common dynamic of modern MMO launchs where populations pop, decline, the then stabilize at a fraction of their launch population before beginning a stable ongoing run rate and modest population gains over time.

 

TSW.... similar results. Tera West.. similar results. GW2... similar results. The peak launch numbers are different for different MMOs because there is different pent up hype and interest in the characteristics and IP... but the locust effect dynamic is pretty consistent in the modern era of MMO releases.

 

so LOL right back at you

 

This is actually well reasoned. There are so many good choices for the gamer who's not 'in love' with just one MMORPG that this is exactly what happens. You see upticks, just like here, for new patches and those slowly bleed away after a while - just like other recent MMOPRGs.

Edited March 8, 2013 by islander