An Open Letter to BioWare: Improving the Overall State of SWTOR.

[Andryah]

We don't really want them to get discouraged and stop PvPing, though, do we? After all, isn't one of the big points of 2.4 making PvP accessible to a broader range of people, not just the hardcore?

 

PUGs, generally speaking, be they PvE or PvP is not good game play IMO and not good for the long term health of an MMO.

 

Yeah, I get that not everyone agrees with me and some people like to PUG.. but in my view.. it's more about them.. then it is about team play. PUGs encourage a lot of selfish player behavior, and selfish player behavior has never been good for overall MMO PvP health in my experience. In fact, the opposite is true.

 

And forming a competitive team for arena level play is by no means = hardcore. A few regular friends or guild mates is all that is required. So.. no.. I don't buy in to the "we don't want to discourage them" concept. People who thrive in PUG play over real persistent team play.. they discourage themselves in most cases.

 

And for the truly solo rogue player.. 1v1 arena play then.. yeah?

[Gnoblesse]

PUGs, generally speaking, be they PvE or PvP is not good game play IMO and not good for the long term health of an MMO.

 

Yeah, I get that not everyone agrees with me and some people like to PUG.. but in my view.. it's more about them.. then it is about team play. PUGs encourage a lot of selfish player behavior, and selfish player behavior has never been good for overall MMO PvP health in my experience. In fact, the opposite is true.

 

And forming a competitive team for arena level play is by no means = hardcore. A few regular friends or guild mates is all that is required. So.. no.. I don't buy in to the "we don't want to discourage them" concept. People who thrive in PUG play over real persistent team play.. they discourage themselves in most cases.

 

And for the truly solo rogue player.. 1v1 arena play then.. yeah?

 

The thing is - I do, for the most part, agree with you. I never found it difficult to find other people to queue with.

 

That didn't stop the "Premades are ruining non-ranked warzones" thread in the PvP forum from getting over 200k views and 588 pages of posts, though. Whether we agree with it or not, I suspect there will be complaints, and a lot of them.

 

I'm also not sure I'm convinced that queue times wouldn't suffer if a lot of the people who are currently pugging get frustrated and quit. I guess time will tell.

[GalacticKegger]

The thing is - I do, for the most part, agree with you. I never found it difficult to find other people to queue with.

 

That didn't stop the "Premades are ruining non-ranked warzones" thread in the PvP forum from getting over 200k views and 588 pages of posts, though. Whether we agree with it or not, I suspect there will be complaints, and a lot of them.

 

I'm also not sure I'm convinced that queue times wouldn't suffer if a lot of the people who are currently pugging get frustrated and quit. I guess time will tell.

Pugs will always be a Catch-22. Ubers will complain about the quality of player they get in pugs, just like the players who queue for pugs to practice and learn will complain when the ubers condescend them for still being on a learning curve.

 

The fix is (a) for the players who queue as a learning tool to show a core understanding of how to play their toon, as well as display an obvious desire to take strategic advice and improve; and (b) for ubers to take a chill pill and understand what pugs are for. I doubt that will ever happen though because there's just too much attitude.

 

Ubers tell the newbs to pug and learn, yet they chew newbs out for holding them back. Three guesses (the first two don't count) as to who shoulders the responsibility for that one. Just my 2¢.

[LordArtemis]

PUGs are the bane of MMOs, both PVE and PVP IMO. But it is really the only way that casuals can get regularly involved or even approach that kind of end game content.

 

PUGs is how heroics are run for the most part, and it seems to work when you can get a group...which is not very often it seems. But then that is a different situation...you PUG for the heroic because you are trying to join up with similar leveled folks on that particular planet at that particular moment.

 

End game has a matching system...to my knowledge Heroics do not, just an LFG tag.

 

I have suggested the ability to run Heroic 4s at level, with reduced rewards....you could be able to summon three companions of your choice and run it solo.

 

I also suggested they turn heroics on each planet into dailies....with a terminal that offers no xp quests that lead to the NPCs/Terminals or Area triggers for each heroic quest. The rewards, coms and difficulty would stay the same, but you would get a standard payout regardless of level....say 5000 credits each.

 

Both of these changes, IMO, would increase the amount of folks that run heroics, including end game folks. This would also give more reasons for end game folks to come to lower planets, who can assist lower players from time to time.

[GalacticKegger]

PUGs are the bane of MMOs, both PVE and PVP IMO. But it is really the only way that casuals can get regularly involved or even approach that kind of end game content.

 

PUGs is how heroics are run for the most part, and it seems to work when you can get a group...which is not very often it seems. But then that is a different situation...you PUG for the heroic because you are trying to join up with similar leveled folks on that particular planet at that particular moment.

 

End game has a matching system...to my knowledge Heroics do not, just an LFG tag.

 

I have suggested the ability to run Heroic 4s at level, with reduced rewards....you could be able to summon three companions of your choice and run it solo.

 

I also suggested they turn heroics on each planet into dailies....with a terminal that offers no xp quests that lead to the NPCs/Terminals or Area triggers for each heroic quest. The rewards, coms and difficulty would stay the same, but you would get a standard payout regardless of level....say 5000 credits each.

 

Both of these changes, IMO, would increase the amount of folks that run heroics, including end game folks. This would also give more reasons for end game folks to come to lower planets, who can assist lower players from time to time.

Just my personal observation, but I see a lot of HM LFGs in chat. If those same players would actually use the tool that is in place, there probably wouldn't be an issue with queue times. Maybe they feel that they'd get more qualified players through chat than they would using GF? I don't get it.

[Elfa]

This was a PVP complaint post with a touch of PVE tossed in the way its written.

[MajikMyst]

Dear BioWare Austin,

 

The signers of this petition of the Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ community are imploring you for an improvement in the overall state of the game.

 

Before I begin and elaborate, by no means do we mean any disrespect to BioWare Austin with this petition. In the Rules of Conduct, it’s stated that petitions of any form are not allowed, but with the introduction of the new Community Manager (Eric Musco) of the forums, he made it clear that forum moderation, for the most part, was going to be more lenient—and because of that we feel comfortable with presenting a formal written request to implement certain changes that will make for a healthier, happier and growing player-base.

 

We would like to see these changes happen within the year of this date. This should be a very fair and lenient time frame, but we hope you can execute these changes as soon as possible (and please, no soon™!). We understand that you possibly lack the manpower to make these changes asap, but as long as you can acknowledge this petition and can give us some meaningful and elaborate updates then I think the supporters of this petition will be content.

 

Ranked Warzones – Removing PvP content is NOT the answer. The PvP community was told in a previous “Summer of SWTOR” update that Ranked would receive recognition. There was not much to it, but that little tidbit of Ranked recognition was something the PvP community desperately needed. Unfortunately, approximately 2 months later you announce in this update that you’d be pulling the plug on Ranked WZs 8v8.

 

You guys never comprehended why RWZs failed at all. Season 1 never began, nor was it ever even hinted of an approximate release. We never got matchmaking—which was said that would be implemented when Season 1 would begin—and that’s a system that was crucial for this PvP system to expand and improve.

 

Outside that “Summer of SWTOR” update, there was really no interaction with the community on the development of RWZs. Anything asked related to RWZs was always brushed off and avoided, and that wasn’t what the PvP community needed, nor was it appropriate at all.

 

Additionally, you announced the removal of RWZs a bit after you implement server transfers. Your PvP customers spent a lot of money transferring their characters to servers where competitive PvP was more prevalent and healthy, and once they heard this there were a lot of players that left the game and guilds that disbanded indefinitely or for good.

 

These drastic changes just kept piling up, and unfortunately it got more and more PvP’ers and PvP guilds to unsubscribe and quit the game.

 

Although we’re getting the new Warzone Arena system in place, being an avid PvP’er, more of us were concerned with the development of WZs (both Ranked and the system itself) and additional PvP class balance. During the time I’ve spent browsing the PvP forums, I never really saw anything related to Arenas shine.

 

Overall, the timeline of PvP has been a very rough one to say the least, and it seems like more PvP’ers are unsubscribing and quitting left and right due to these drastic changes that are being made. I think it’s a huge mistake you guys are making taking more PvP systems away and not even improving the ones that you possibly can. For example, World PvP would be understandable, you’ve made it clear on that before, but as for something smaller like RWZs, it just doesn’t make sense.

 

At this moment, there is a petition to stop the removal of RWZs. This system has loads of potential and is still able to work. Concerning PvP patches, maybe one PvP patch can solely focus on the system of 8v8 WZs, while the next PvP patch can focus solely on the Arenas system. RWZs just shouldn’t be removed. Let us have more content. As said previously, many players and guilds have unsubscribed and quit but if there were PvP patches that solely focused on the 8-man system then PvP overall in SWTOR could definitely be improved.

 

Our first request is that we implore you to read that petition, respond to it and hopefully have a change of heart of RWZs.

 

PvE Operations and Bosses – Our second request is that we implore you to adjust the difficulty of Operations and its individual bosses. With a lot of the new content, guilds will return to SWTOR, complete the Op a few times and leave due to boredom. There are minimal changes between each of the difficulty levels of each Operation. Furthermore, some bosses have a difficulty so incredibly easy or hard, that it makes the operation no longer fun.

 

The following are changes that we wish to see:

 

• Regarding Difficulty: Adjust the difficulty levels for each Operation. Story Mode SHOULD be able to be completed with the proper gear of any level. Hard Mode SHOULD be significantly harder—not just a tiny bit—and you should not be able to complete Hard Mode until you are at least 50% in whatever tier gear that is dropped in Hard Mode. Nightmare Mode SHOULD be significantly harder than Hard Mode and should be near impossible to complete without almost full top tier gear. This will make things more challenging for those who enjoy PvE and they will clear and get tired of content as quickly.
  
• Regarding Individual Boss Fights: Some bosses are WAY harder than others. For example, there were those who at the release of TFB NiM that were able to defeat everyone but the Dread Guards. It is our opinion that the difficulty of bosses should be around the same as the others, with a slight upward scale of difficulty until you reach the final boss (which should be the hardest). We know there are some bosses that are considered a “DPS check” of a sort, but in the aforementioned example, the hardest boss was the second boss. The first boss should be the “DPS check” for an Operation, not some boss in the middle.

 

PvP Rewards and Missions – This petition, about PvP rewards, has received a good amount of support, and our third request is that we implore you to read that petition, respond to it and hopefully implement improved rewards/features (such as something like this). It’s ridiculous how PvP returns very measly rewards, with only 2 (lowbie PvP) or 3 (endgame PvP) PvP missions to work with.

 

Many of us feel like you are trying to force us to enter a play style we loathe with a fiery passion (e.g. dailies, FPs, etc.), and as for crafting, it costs us credits to advance which can be detrimental to the little we already earn.

 

Some players have brought up the issue of “Chinese credit sellers” trying to exploit the rewards if they were buffed, but with a vote-to-kick option in place and an automatic boot for 1 minute of inactivity at the spawn area it makes it a lot harder for anyone to try and exploit the rewards.

 

I know many PvE’ers and crafters will not understand where we’re coming from, but I hope you can support this petition in whole with the troubles of “PvP Rewards” being included. We would never want this to be inflicted upon you guys if you were enticed to PvP for the best rewards.

 

Additionally, the PvP community is very bothered by the fact we’ll get no credit whatsoever for the daily and weekly missions for Ranked Arenas. You’re making it to where there’s even less of an incentive to participate in Ranked Arenas.

 

Players who participate in Ranked PvP should be getting more rewards and incentives for doing them, not less; and the incentives shouldn’t be slashed when participating in them. That being said, our fourth request is that we implore you to adjust the credit given and allow the dailies and weeklies to count for Arenas.

 

Rejoining a PvP Match – Our fifth request is that we implore you to address the suggestion of rejoining a PvP match after disconnecting.

 

In PvE, players who disconnect have a period of time of being able to get back into the group they were in. This should at least work with Ranked PvP matches. Once one team loses a player due to a disconnect in their match, they automatically lose.

 

This is probably one of the biggest gripes the PvP community has, after the removal of RWZs.

 

Friends of SWTOR – Our sixth request is that we implore you to fix the issues with the referral program and to try and compensate those who didn’t receive the rewards they're entitled to.

 

I was one of the subscribers who utilized this feature and followed every direction on the Friends of SWTOR page, only to never receive the rewards. Some of us who never received our rewards have also provided proof; such as pictures, our friends’ account information, etc. to show Customer Service that we should have gotten the rewards.

 

The program is obviously bugged, but BioWare, we’re respectfully requesting that you can look into this so those who’ve had issues with the program can receive their benefits.

 

There are already two major threads surrounding the issue.

 

Subscriber Benefits – Our seventh request is that we implore you to improve subscriber benefits IF POSSIBLE. Even if discounted, paying with real life money/CC to utilize the Collections feature and the Appearance Designer shouldn’t be the only option.

 

Not every benefit should be handed to us, but I think you’d be doing loyal subscribers a HUGE favor to utilize credits as well. Maybe have it revolve around the subscription payment method too, where subscribers who pay for a 6-month recurring subscription have the best benefits.

 

At the moment, it seems like most of the benefit rewards have been titles. This request can be debated with good points raised on both sides, but surely there’s room for improvement somewhere!

 

Class Balance and Bugs – Warzone Arenas are dropping soon when they shouldn’t be. The way classes are right now, there are many specs that are just not ready for it. I can guarantee there will be many teams running with 2 Op/Scoun healer or 1 Op/Scound healer and 1 Tank, and 2 Knight/Warrior Smashers.

 

Class balance updates happen every 5 to 6 months and that makes class specs feel like they're FOTY.

 

Our eighth request is that we implore you to work on more classes and specs if possible. It’s just really slow at this point overall, and if possible this area of development should be expedited with the introduction of Arenas and new harder difficulty Operations.

 

Our ninth request is that we implore you to look into certain class bugs that severely need to be fixed (Knight/Warrior leap bug; Sage/Sorc Force Regen bug). They’re detrimental to a player’s performance and it’s just pretty unacceptable to have the bugs stay unfixed for several weeks+. When I was playing SWTOR, I played my Guardian and Sentinel less and less due to that annoying leap bug. It wasn’t helpful at all in PvP and it was just plain old annoying.

 

In conclusion, we just want the severe class bugs and class balancing not to negatively impact difficult PvE instances or Arenas.

 

Public Test Server – Our tenth request is that we implore you to listen to your players on the PTS more often and try to interact more frequently. These testers take hours of their time out of the normal playtime to help test the game for you, and provide invaluable feedback so you can greatly improve an upcoming patch.

 

I don’t mean this with any disrespect, but from what I’ve witnessed you guys are guilty of ignoring past feedback (like the whole bolster debacle before 2.0 was released) and that really didn’t help the PvP community at all. It took you guys several weeks to get bolster working as intended.

 

Overall, we hope you can improve in this area.

 

Ability Delay, Frames Per Second and Lag Issues – Our eleventh request is that we implore you to keep making noticeable improvements to engine performance, and to hopefully note these improvements in future patch notes:

• Ability Delay thread.
  
• Google search on “swtor lag”.

 

The heavily modified pre-alpha engine must be an extremely difficult task to code and improve, but we hope these improvements keep coming because it’s annoying how the ability delay resurfaces, and FPS decrease for certain customers with random patches again and again.

 

Forum Interaction – The moderation of these forums has always been pretty strict, and many of us are guilty of resorting to flaming and trolling and the like, but by no means do we visit these boards to purposely flame and troll, etc.

 

From my experience, I’ve had a pretty rough time with the moderation here. I just don’t think it’s fulfilling its goal of being friendly and welcoming if it’s so easy to be slapped with a warning or infraction for those who are more pessimistic of the game, BW/EA, etc.

 

As you can see, previous moderation was far stricter, and with that being said, our twelfth request is that we implore you to do something for those who had sanctions imposed on in the past. Allison and Joveth really made it hard to start any pessimistic topics and discussions, but it feels the same way with the current and new infraction system in place.

 

Additionally, with our twelfth request (as it pertains to the forums), I hope interaction on the forums can be increased in other areas. As an avid PvP’er, it’s extremely rare to get a yellow post in the PvP forums. I think most of us who avidly visit the PvP forums can say the PvE forums (FPs, Operations and Heroics) get more responses, but I hope the CMs can see how ignoring other parts of the forum isn’t very helpful and we hope that activity can be increased around the board.

 

Polls – Although both online petitions and polls can be rigged pretty easily, I am adding a few polls to this petition just to give BioWare some information on this thread. I think providing this information will help the growth of this petition, and will give BioWare some invaluable statistics concerning this petition and its participators overall.

 

 

• A poll about your subscription.
  
• A poll about which topic applies to you the most.
  
• A poll of a ranking you deem each topic.
  
• A poll about your opinion on the petition.
  
• A poll about your rating on the petition on a scale of 1–5.

 

Finale – BioWare, I have compiled all of the main concerns that many subscribers and former customers have raised. Whether you’re a PvP’er, PvE’er, or feel like you haven’t been appreciated as a loyal subscriber, etc., I hope this petition warrants a signature from you, and that you can support it, and give any and all amount of constructive feedback and criticism.

 

This won’t be the final iteration of this petition. It still needs to be updated here and there and improved, but for the most part, I hope that you can sympathize with the concerns raised here and can change your direction as soon as you can to keep your current subscribers and bring back old ones.

 

If you want to sign the petition and support it, please do so by posting in this thread (e.g. "/sign" or "/support")!

 

If you have read the full petition and answered each of the polls, please add a ":D" at the bottom of your post!

 

Yours truly,

 

MrJurgens (FriendReferral) and SenaZane;

 

The signers of this petition

 

Ok.. Next time you write a post like this.. Can you at least include something important to all and not just you???

 

Like in game calendars.. Which you neglected to mention..

 

More events and content in general..

 

More side games like Pazzak and other things..

 

We get it.. You like PVP.. But you just ignored the half of the community that doesn't...

 

Seriously.. Bioware would honestly be better off ignoring this one.. Just saying..

 

I will give you props for your effort.. It is a very nice post.. But you don't cover the over all state of the game.. In fact you don't even cover the state of a single aspect of the game.. Sorry..

[RaithHarth]

The game is fine. Not perfect, but more than good enough to pay for. If you disagree, why continue playing?

 

The only problem I have is the lack of space content, instead they gave us a flight simulator on rails, which makes me feel I'm on auto pilot 100% of the time, it's time to go beyond that and increase it's boundaries, give us more freedom on our movement plus give space content the recognition it deserves with pve story driven content and introducing pvp into the fold as well.

[FriendReferral]

This was a PVP complaint post with a touch of PVE tossed in the way its written.

I needed to cater to players outside the PvP player-base.

 

Ok.. Next time you write a post like this.. Can you at least include something important to all and not just you???

 

Like in game calendars.. Which you neglected to mention..

 

More events and content in general..

 

More side games like Pazzak and other things..

 

We get it.. You like PVP.. But you just ignored the half of the community that doesn't...

 

Seriously.. Bioware would honestly be better off ignoring this one.. Just saying..

 

I will give you props for your effort.. It is a very nice post.. But you don't cover the over all state of the game.. In fact you don't even cover the state of a single aspect of the game.. Sorry..

Not just me? Someone should check the signatures this petition got, and what's going on on the PvP forums.

 

 

I get it—you want a ton of more QoL stuff. I'm pretty sure BW has already commented on stuff like that, but to also be elaborate I should say QoL stuff falls under the engine's category. You know it's pretty difficult for them to code stuff like that probably because of this messed up engine.

[The_Grand_Nagus]

The only problem I have is the lack of space content, instead they gave us a flight simulator on rails, which makes me feel I'm on auto pilot 100% of the time, it's time to go beyond that and increase it's boundaries, give us more freedom on our movement plus give space content the recognition it deserves with pve story driven content and introducing pvp into the fold as well.

 

You are the only person I have ever seen call what we currently have in game a "flight simulator". I'm not sure what kind of flying you think that simulates. More like a roller coaster simulator.

[Haiken]

You are the only person I have ever seen call what we currently have in game a "flight simulator". I'm not sure what kind of flying you think that simulates. More like a roller coaster simulator.

 

Other than the Take off and Landing it pretty much is, when you are in cruise flight, even the climb and descent (80% of the flight time) is dull and boring as hell, the airplane is keeping the speed, heading and the altitude by itself, you just make sure is doing its job, so yeah, Space combat is kinda like commercial flying.

 

Source: I am a pilot.

[The_Grand_Nagus]

Other than the Take off and Landing it pretty much is, when you are in cruise flight, even the climb and descent (80% of the flight time) is dull and boring as hell, the airplane is keeping the speed, heading and the altitude by itself, you just make sure is doing its job, so yeah, Space combat is kinda like commercial flying.

 

Source: I am a pilot.

 

I guess since we are talking about space COMBAT, I assumed he was talking about COMBAT aircraft flying, not COMMERCIAL aircraft flying. I know, what a SILLY idea for me to have considering we were talking about COMBAT

[Haiken]

I guess since we are talking about space COMBAT, I assumed he were talking about COMBAT aircraft flying, not COMMERCIAL aircraft flying. I know, what a SILLY idea for me to have considering we were talking about COMBAT

 

lol, I was not correcting you, I was just explaining how could it be similar to a "flight simulator".

[FriendReferral]

lol, I was not correcting you, I was just explaining how could it be similar to a "flight simulator".

More on-rails like a RC sim like Nagus said, so comparing it to that makes more sense. The only thing in this game that isn't on-rails is the PvP, something I enjoy greatly.

[Andryah]

lol, I was not correcting you, I was just explaining how could it be similar to a "flight simulator".

 

Agreed. Somebody just wanted to nit pick you IMO.

 

In addition... it DOES in fact simulate flight..... on rails.. as originally commented. So yeah... you are right on IMO.

 

It is however not a flight combat simulator.. but the earlier comment did not claim it was either.

 

Anyway.. the whole complaint about space play in game is kind of old news since they have already teased out a trailer on what very much appears to be free flight tactical space combat PvP. I can't wait for the QQ about wanting "auto-pilot" style features in it for QoL when it goes live.

[GalacticKegger]

More on-rails like a RC sim like Nagus said, so comparing it to that makes more sense. The only thing in this game that isn't on-rails is the PvP, something I enjoy greatly.

Guild Wars gets my vote for being the poster child of an MMO on rails. LOTRO as well, though not nearly to the extent that GW is. This game, not so much. Ya there are areas that the player can't explore, but I have found the vast majority of map areas to be accessible with a little hand-eye coordination. Even the christened king of open world MMOs was like that until they introduced flying mounts. The only thing about that game that I miss.

 

What I really disliked was the story-based time phasing, which forced players to be on the same quest all the way through or they couldn't even see each other. It doesn't get much more on rails than that.

 

Players looking for a sandbox experience should find themselves a sandbox game instead beating themselves up because the game they are playing isn't one.

[The_Grand_Nagus]

I can't wait for the QQ about wanting "auto-pilot" style features in it for QoL when it goes live.

 

I cant wait for you to QQ about other people QQing

[LordArtemis]

Guild Wars gets my vote for being the poster child of an MMO on rails. LOTRO as well, though not nearly to the extent that GW is. This game, not so much. Ya there are areas that the player can't explore, but I have found the vast majority of map areas to be accessible with a little hand-eye coordination. Even the christened king of open world MMOs was like that until they introduced flying mounts. The only thing about that game that I miss.

 

What I really disliked was the story-based time phasing, which forced players to be on the same quest all the way through or they couldn't even see each other. It doesn't get much more on rails than that.

 

Players looking for a sandbox experience should find themselves a sandbox game instead beating themselves up because the game they are playing isn't one.

 

Well, I would respectively say that being "on rails" on the ground is one thing...yes, it's quite common.

 

Being in a rat maze is quite another. Take a stroll across Taris. By the time you are done you will almost smell the cheese.

 

You would think the folks that made the map would have realized by now that we might want to know where the OPENING IS IN A WALL THAT IS BLOCKING OUR WAY....you know, so we can move past it.

[GalacticKegger]

Well, I would respectively say that being "on rails" on the ground is one thing...yes, it's quite common.

 

Being in a rat maze is quite another. Take a stroll across Taris. By the time you are done you will almost smell the cheese.

 

You would think the folks that made the map would have realized by now that we might want to know where the OPENING IS IN A WALL THAT IS BLOCKING OUR WAY....you know, so we can move past it.

War torn and demolished environments tend to be "Oops ... can't go that way. Damn ... can't go that way either. Oh hey, here's a hole/trail/path, and another one over here. Sure wish the roads were still intact ..." navigational hell holes. A city-sized space ship that crash lands in the middle of paradise becomes an instant obstacle course (with really big obstacles) that makes just getting around a challenge. Which I believe is the spirit of what the designers were trying to portray with Taris. Eastern Hoth as well.

[branmakmuffin]

Players looking for a sandbox experience should find themselves a sandbox game instead beating themselves up because the game they are playing isn't one.

Yeah, coming to a heavily linear, story-driven, theme-park MMO like TOR and then wanting more sand box is like going to a vegan restaurant and asking for a hamburger.

[LordArtemis]

War torn and demolished environments tend to be "Oops ... can't go that way. Damn ... can't go that way either. Oh hey, here's a hole/trail/path, and another one over here. Sure wish the roads were still intact ..." navigational hell holes. A city-sized space ship that crash lands in the middle of paradise becomes an instant obstacle course (with really big obstacles) that makes just getting around a challenge. Which I believe is the spirit of what the designers were trying to portray with Taris. Eastern Hoth as well.

 

I get that...I do.

 

That makes it real. It doesnt make it fun though IMO. Nothing spells "not fun" more than running up and down a path looking for a hole, agroing a million mobs along the way.

 

There is real, and there is real silly. I think they tipped the scales a bit. As I said...sure, it's ruins. But there is a map. So one would think someone might mark the paths a bit better.

 

The real problem, IMO, is not the terrain...its the map design.

[AndasKastor]

I don't agree with many points of the petition, but I do agree on some.

 

Since I participated in the polls.

[GalacticKegger]

I get that...I do.

 

That makes it real. It doesnt make it fun though IMO. Nothing spells "not fun" more than running up and down a path looking for a hole, agroing a million mobs along the way.

 

There is real, and there is real silly. I think they tipped the scales a bit. As I said...sure, it's ruins. But there is a map. So one would think someone might mark the paths a bit better.

 

The real problem, IMO, is not the terrain...its the map design.

I agree, though the only paths that get marked in destroyed environments are protected supply line routes. Those are marked quite well in the game. Everything else is up for exploration. Go off the beaten path and you take your chances. But off the beaten path is usually where all the action is.

 

I'm not defending the design. I just choose to approach obstacles for what they are and work them like a puzzle. The day they become too much work is the day I look for something else to do. In the meantime, it's merely part of an environment that (having survived hell holes on five continents myself) I don't find over the top at all. Exaggerated to be sure, but in a cartoon fantasy sci-fi environment things are supposed to be exaggerated.

[Blackardin]

Call it whatever you want

 

I'm not calling it whatever I want, I'm identifying as what it is. ;p

i was just defending myself you were the one being disruptive by trying to psycho analyze someone you dont even know.

 

Poking someone with a stick, and then parrying their retort is not defending one's self, it is instigatig.... and there is sufficient data in your plethora of postings to make that determination.

 

Im not here to serve others im here to make critical assements about the game

 

What you are doing is professing your personal interest, regardless of how they may affect the game or others, and calling it what you will. Part of that is human nature, part of it is selfishness...and it has been disruptive.

[Helig]

/Signed

 

I like SWToR (otherwise I wouldn't be subbed), but the game has a lot of flaws that need to be addressed.