Feedback from a subscriber and why I'm losing faith in the game.

[Vandicus]

My computer is not the issue. I know this. The computer expert friends I have know this. I spent $2500 on this system to max it out in RAM, video card, video card memory, bus, etc. I play plenty of games. The lag issues I mentioned in my original post only appear in ToR. I cannot explain it. But it has been suggested that game servers themselves are the source. I did not accuse anyone of anything. I simply stated the issues I have personally experienced.

 

 

This issue may be addressable. Even if it were the servers, we'd see massive increases in ping(plus everyone else would experience the server lag as well).

 

You can tell us your ms during a lag spike by hovering over the cellphone reception-like bars next to the minimap, and you can get your fps by hitting ctrl+shift+f. Tell us what these are during a period of lag and we might be able to troubleshoot this particular problem for you.

*EDIT

I'm going to be busy for a short time, though its likely someone else can also give a useful answer. If you haven't gotten a response back by then, I'll be back in just over an hour and will try to help.

Edited April 2, 2014 by Vandicus

[AlienEyeTX]

I said I did not want to get in to a war about this. But I will respond to this once. Just once.

 

From the game's Terms of Service:

 

No cussing in the game. Most people who consistently swear in chat get added to my ignore list. But if I am grouped with someone and I ask them not to cuss and they persist, I'm turning their butt in. And I have every right to do so. If I ever cussed in the game and someone turned me in and I was suspended, well, that's my own bloody fault, isn't it? Rules are rules. Everyone agrees to obey the rules in order to play the game. It is not my fault some folks cannot do so.

 

Opening tickets is how I report things. Stuck in a wall? I open a ticket. Game shuts down while logging in, I open a ticket. Getting an error code? Ticket. NPC is partly inside a tree? Ticket. It's what I am supposed to do unless some developer wants to give me their personal email address to forward things to. This is not some sort of Obsessive / Compulsive Disorder on my part. The ToS also says it is against the rules to abuse the in-game support system. So, I am pretty sure that if I was abusing the system, EA would have banned me a long time ago. And I've been here two years. Blizzard never accused me of abuse when I opened tickets about guards being frozen and not responding or the mob who keeps spawning partly inside a rock and evades all attacks in World of Warcraft. I did not realize that helping out got you labeled a psychopath or gave you the stigma that you were a bad person.

 

My computer is not the issue. I know this. The computer expert friends I have know this. I spent $2500 on this system to max it out in RAM, video card, video card memory, bus, etc. I play plenty of games. The lag issues I mentioned in my original post only appear in ToR. I cannot explain it. But it has been suggested that game servers themselves are the source. I did not accuse anyone of anything. I simply stated the issues I have personally experienced.

 

As for the hacks, hey, I've already admitted I don't know. These could be intended. I know there is a class in the game that can teleport great distances. I know that lag can make it look like someone is still stunned but they actually came out of it two seconds ago in order to pass the huttball. Maybe you can crit someone for so much damage that they die in one shot. If I submit a possible hack and Bioware responds with "This is working as intended," no problem here. This is not me being a sore loser. This is me seeing something strange often enough to wonder if it is legit or not.

 

To be perfectly honest, I do not care what others think about the way I play or that I try to be a "good citizen" in the games I play. Maybe it would better for all concerned if I cussed up a storm, hacked my way to victory, treated everyone that plays ToR like a real jerk, and created hostile posts on the forums and Twitter posts about how the people in the Austin, Texas office suck at their jobs and should commit suicide whenever a problem with the game appears. But I doubt it. Some of us want to help out to make the gaming experience a little more fun is all. I'm so sorry that this means I am worse than some whacko who killed a bunch of people at a Batman movie.

 

Thanks for the time. I think I'll go away now. I seem to disrupted the forums for some.

 

You do know that there is a profanity filter, right? Just check that box and all you'll see are asterisks. Besides, curse worlds =/= vulgarity. In fact, some of the must vulgar things I've ever heard did not include any curse words at all.

 

As for hacks, they must be rare. I've only had one or two instances where I suspected, but even then it was hard to know for sure. Sometimes, people are just better at playing.

 

I'm not trying to diminish your concerns, just address a couple of them. Some are valid, though. However, no game is perfect and things happen. We can notify the devs, but then we have to wait. Either the problem is too annoying to play the game or it is not. Only you can decide that.

 

***edit*** A note about getting stuck: The other day, I got stuck in a rock in the Civil War WZ. Typing /stuck wasn't helping. I was useless for probably close to 5 minutes. Finally, someone came along an killed me. That freed me. It had not happened before or since. Not worthy of a ticket in my opinion. Just my two cents.

Edited April 2, 2014 by AlienEyeTX

[Malastare]

I will say that some (not all) of the OPs complaints really do come down to some really poor game performance. And, sadly for the OP, the most likely (very likely) cause of that poor performance is local system/network issues.

 

The first good example is the loading of quest boxes. In early versions of SWTOR, location/texture/state of quest boxes was loaded up very early and tracked constantly. At some point (2.0 or so) this was changed to have them "lazy loaded" only when their appearance/state became relevant --in short: when you could see them. This caused some issues for people who zone into areas with dense collections of quests (the Fleet) and begin traveling quickly (speeder or jet boots). The speed they move around can often be faster than the quest items can load their state. Even high-end systems can experience this issue, but the severity of it isn't caused by game code. Server load has some effect, but CPU and disk performance seem to have a much larger affect.

 

The OPs issues are corroborated by the reports of conversations taking time to start. I've actually benchmarked this across a number of systems. Conversation load time is strongly dictated by local disk performance. If you have a local disk with high seek times or low transfer rates (both seem to produce similar effects), then you end up waiting for a conversation to start. Once started, there doesn't seem to be any further delay. The conclusion here suggests that the audio for conversations is pre-loaded in one go, but that the conversation doesn't start until that pre-load is complete. If you have a slow disk, or a disk that hasn't been maintained well, then you end up waiting.

 

This ties into the Warzone animation issues and the complaints about hacking. The OP admits that he doesn't know that he's seen hacking, but assumes so because he can't explain what he's seeing in the game. I can. He explained it himself in other places. The OP often sees extreme latency in animations and game state changes. This is again tied to local latency issues caused by CPU or network performance. Disk may play a small part, but it should be negligible.

 

The OP thinks he's seeing hacking because his client is failing to display animations at the correct times. So, he doesn't see the stun breaks or cleanses or other free-motion abilities firing. In high latency environments, the game will display actual position changes instead of ability animations from a second ago. The myth about lag indicating a player hacking is largely fiction. It can happen in extreme cases, but the vast, overwhelming majority of lag is caused by local issues, not server issues. Again: Unless everyone is feeling the lag, its not server lag.

 

I'm not trying to say that the OP is silly, or say that he shouldn't have the right to express his opinion. I'm trying to explain where some of the issues he had are likely coming from. In my semi-professional opinion, the OP had the unfortunate experience of being subjected to poor performance from multiple sources. It may be that the OPs PC just wasn't up to the task of playing this game, or there may be other issues affecting it. Regardless, the lag the OP describes is far beyond the norm, even for mid-range systems.

[Arkerus]

OP...you are abusing the system. No one opens 65 tickets. Learn to be more flexible and more reasonable and you will be much happier.

 

As for your other issues...

 

I have no idea. You need to tackle it one issue at a time. I have a relatively cheap computer and I don't run into all the issues you do.

[HoboWithAStick]

When you have a freemium model like SWTOR does, long Q times are to be expected because

 

a) hardly anyone subs now

b) restrictions on preferred (limits on 5 warzones/flashpoints a week reduces participation)

c) PvP has been officially killed by Bioware after this thread

 

As for lag, there isn't much you can do when the game has a clunky engine and bad coding. If you were here for the days of Ilum pvp at launch, you would have seen a marked improvement as the game engine can now handle at least 9 players in combat without major lag.

 

The future of SWTOR is bleak as the focus turns to money. A Bioware design brief starts 'Where can we make money from items to sell?' - and up pops PLAYER HOUSING.

 

To me, it's a case now of how much money can they make from idiots paying for items on the cartel market until the game goes belly up and/or fully free to play by Winter 2014. They hardly fix anything, and the majority of SUBS are sick and tired of the 'carrot and stick approach' Bioware use.

 

With 2 major MMOs due for release, is it any wonder they are offering Subs 'perks' for remaining a sub during the release windows of both TESO and Wildstar? Good luck in your quest to get things moving forward but it will be an impossible task

 

You pretty much hit on everything.

 

Player population continues to fall making it harder and harder to pvp and do operations. Content seems to be focused on things that can make them money, GSF and soon the player housing.

 

Being that so many players have opted to spend their time in game buying things with cartel money its put bioware in a position where they no longer need focus on content that keeps subscribers playing the game but rather paid content they can make money off of. Clearly they will continue to make player content but emphasis seems to have been put on things that can draw extra cash.

 

I stopped playing this game because I was tired of not being able to que up pvp outside of peak hours, tired of doing the same operations over and over and tired of new cartel stuff coming out all the time when pve and pvp content sometimes takes 6-9 months.

 

I understand they need to make money but I feel they have gone too far. I think it would have been better for them to close the servers down then to sell out and continue milk players.

[Rasen]

Just to note OP if you want to provide Bioware this feedback without getting agitated in the process email them. I know lots of people think the forums are a good place for communication with the devs, but as long as so many different people can reply to your thread it will never be a a good place. Anything posted here is subject to discussion and that is what is going on here. I can only imagine how frustrated you might be with some responses, but I recommend not even browsing this thread. You left your feedback, the devs will probably see it and you won't need to care what the community thinks. I'd still say to ensure the feedback reaches them you should also email them directly. Direct emails are far better forms of communication IMO.

[DarthTHC]

*Lag* ...

 

If you write a well-mannered, non-inflammatory post to these forums asking for help with lag, people will help you. I've seen it happen time and again.

 

There are many sources of lag in any game, and the vast majority of these are not within the domain of control of the game's publisher. Only one is - server lag. The interesting thing about server lag is that just about everyone will experience it at just about the same time. That's the type of lag we saw in KDY for the first several weeks, before they fixed it.

 

If that's not the case, if only a fraction of people in the area you are in see the lag when you do, then there's nothing BioWare can do to help you.

 

You have to help yourself by figuring out what type of lag you're getting then addressing that appropriately. Again, make a nice, friendly post to these forums with this as the specific topic, show some patience, humility, and a willingness to listen and try things, and people will help you.

 

*My tickets are full.*

 

This is the first I've ever heard of this problem. Yes, the ticket system should probably not get stuck like this. But my gosh, man, 65 tickets?! Thicker skin, go with the flow.

 

What the heck are you reporting people for?

 

*Hackers*...

 

Of all the times I've heard any legitimate complaint of hackers, BioWare was on them like stink on... bantha droppings... immediately.

 

But hacks will exist in any game. Get a screen cap / video of it if you can. Then report it through the proper channels here.

 

*Developer communication.*...

 

The current team has communicated more real information more frequently than any before it. It didn't just stop. It's still happening. Again, more than ever.

 

When Musco first came on and he, like every single one of his predecessors, said they would communicate more frequently and provide better information, this cynic decided to count. Yep. I counted. Pretty lame, right? But I had heard it before and I wanted data to throw back in his face when he failed.

 

Result? More frequent posts with real content by far than any of the predecessors and it's still going strong. Best communication team by far and I'm impressed with what they've done.

 

Check DevTracker. You'll see it.

 

Could they do more? Probably. But they're never going to tell you about anything they don't have nearly ready to go, out of concern of customer disappointment when the inevitable... bantha droppings... happen and they are unable to deliver.

[Jadescythe]

CS tickets are not meant for reporting. Right click, report, select reason. But be warned, if you are only reporting for foul language that isn't directed at a player, your report will most likely be ignored. The game comes with a chat filter to avoid seeing the language if you do not want to.

[TUXs]

Excellent post OP! EXCELLENT!

[tanerb]

Lack of developer communication is the biggest issue imho. And yes, I don't count 1 sentence codex stolen lore as developer communication

[NoFishing]

If someone constantly drops the f-bomb in chat, I turn them in.

 

Wow, really? They are just words. Welcome to the internet.

 

[GalacticKegger]

OP brings up some good points ...

 

*Lag*

I get a LOT of lag moving around on fleet and in the Tactical FPs. But those are the only places where it consistently effects gameplay for me. I get some occasionally on Alderaan and Ilum, but for the most part my connection is stable.

 

*My tickets are full.*

That's a LOT of tickets. I'll average a few a week (bug reports or ninja looters mostly) and currently have none open. So I have no idea how one account can have 65 still pending - unless they happened in such rapid fashion that they were mistaken for a DoS attack.

 

*Hackers*

Pretty sure there are hackers in PvP because there are (unfortunately) hackers everywhere. Something to consider is premades pwning GSF as well as unranked WZs which gives the impression of hacking. Get 3 Maras synchronizing Predations in Huttball on Ventrilo and it gets ugly fast. Get 3 escorted Gunships triangulating with an escorted bomber on Ventrilo and it gets ugly fast. To borrow from one of my all-time favorite comedians ... ranked premades invading unranked WZs typifies the "pussification" of PvP.

 

I still play both, but not as much as I used to because competing with premade kill zones as a solo player isn't much fun.

 

*Queue times*

I have zero queue issues with WZs, GSF - or even GF when I queue as a tank - on Harbinger, Jedi Covenant or Begeren. However GF, when I queue as DPS, is a totally different story. I've left queues after having been in them for 30 minutes queued as deeps. But it's like that for every MMO with holy trinity grouping systems. The tactical flashpoints would be a great solution if they could just fix their friggin' lag.

 

*Developer communication.*

Personally, I could not care less if dev either doesn't personally respond to my requests or is withholding information about something they are working on and not ready to divulge. Dev tracker and the Cantinas are enough for me in that regard. I'm okay with just not being that damned important.

 

Having said that, there are bugs that have remained since beta. LOTRO also has some. WoW also has some. STO also has some. Every MMO that's ever been made and is still going has some. They are annoyances to be sure. But so is the POS Windows operating system the game runs on ... and the occasional CO bottleneck it runs through ... and the game's threading which all but bypasses my gorgeous killer graphics card and heads straight for the CPU's throat ...

 

*Team balancing*

GSF has a way for the teams to balance classes before the WZ begins. The players just have to communicate during class selection. Ground WZs do not have that luxury because the classes are fixed upon player entry into the queue. Which takes me back to the issue of premades having such an insurmountable advantage in a solo environment.

 

You mentioned concern over WZ finder not seeming to balance the teams' roles out. Here's a question: wouldn't a role-centric PvP system create the same queue time problems that the role-centric GF system has now?

Edited April 2, 2014 by GalacticKegger

[NoFishing]

From the game's Terms of Service:

 

No cussing in the game. Most people who consistently swear in chat get added to my ignore list. But if I am grouped with someone and I ask them not to cuss and they persist, I'm turning their butt in. And I have every right to do so. If I ever cussed in the game and someone turned me in and I was suspended, well, that's my own bloody fault, isn't it? Rules are rules. Everyone agrees to obey the rules in order to play the game. It is not my fault some folks cannot do so.

 

The ToS do not mean "no cussing". We are not in kindergarten here, and the occasional f-bomb, idgaf, ****, ffs, or f u, is not in and of itself disruptive to chat. Now if someone is just spewing a constant stream of obscenities without any actual discussion, that would be reportable.

Edited April 2, 2014 by NoFishing

[RandomXChance]

I will say that some (not all) of the OPs complaints really do come down to some really poor game performance. And, sadly for the OP, the most likely (very likely) cause of that poor performance is local system/network issues.

 

The first good example is the loading of quest boxes. In early versions of SWTOR, location/texture/state of quest boxes was loaded up very early and tracked constantly. At some point (2.0 or so) this was changed to have them "lazy loaded" only when their appearance/state became relevant --in short: when you could see them. This caused some issues for people who zone into areas with dense collections of quests (the Fleet) and begin traveling quickly (speeder or jet boots). The speed they move around can often be faster than the quest items can load their state. Even high-end systems can experience this issue, but the severity of it isn't caused by game code. Server load has some effect, but CPU and disk performance seem to have a much larger affect.

 

This is pretty much it. Due to some poor decisions and optimizations, even a relatively "high end" system can have these issues. I used to see the exact same issues as you until I upped my RAM to 16GB and moved to an SSD. With 16GB, I have 10-12 in use while playing SWOTOR. That means that if you have 8GB or less, the system will have to use HDD virtual memory. If you have a mechanical HDD, then you have just now double-downed on the slowness.

 

In PVP there are certainly hacks. I have three times seen a Sorc using Force Barrier sail down the ramp and across the goal line in Huttball to score. Not sure how that works using just the given game mechanics.

 

Nice post btw!

[psandak]

SSD will not help you when the engine is bad.

 

The game stops for a few seconds when I open the Legacy tab. Sometimes it lags for a second when bringing up the companions tab. Mission reward terminals on the fleet sometimes take 10 seconds to spawn. Which is silly.

But SWTOR Unleashed does help. That being said, without 16GB of RAM it is only slight (to load all the recommended files onto the RAM drive you need 12GB free RAM).

that said... cross server queueing MIGHT improve pvp, but it will NOT improve pve - overall. sorry.

Agreed, but what will improve the PvE queue times is incentives to queue in underrepresented roles. Blizzard did it with WoW to great success (DPS queue times were cut in half).

 

The engine definitely has problems and what you're describing in your post can absolutely be attributed to its issues. But what OP was describing here:

 

is way outside the norm, and may be due in part to something going on at his end.

 

Also, OP there is a bit of a workaround for the serious lag that Fleet tends to cause: A lot of it seems to come from the engine's issues with rendering text on-screen. If you turn off character and NPC nameplates, it seems to help a lot. It's an annoying hoop to have to jump through, but it might be the lesser of two evils if you're having consistent lag issues on Fleet.

I noticed a small improvement when I turned off nameplates

 

That is surprising. I understood that it was going to be difficult, maybe even impossible to implement. But I thought they would still at least try to implement cross server queues.

Maybe they did try, and came to realization that it is not possible or at best extremely resource intensive (AKA thousands of man-hours and millions of dollars in equipment upgrades) and therefore stopped trying.

 

You know, if you have 65 unanswered tickets, maybe you should ask yourself "Does this really need to be sent into customer support?"

 

I have played MMORPGs for probably 8 years now, I think I've sent in 2 support requests.

 

Yep.

 

That many tickets do imply some mild form of OCD and / or sore loser syndrome to say the least.

I hate to say it, but I agree. When I saw that number I thought, "***?!?"

It has to be. Elder Scrolls is out this weekend and Wildstar in June. So they need to dip in to show they are still interested.

Just a little cynical are we now?

 

 

By opening frivolous tickets you actually DEVALUE the entire system and create a crying wolf scenario where people no longer take you seriously.

I think this above all else regarding your tickets is true. OP, Have you thought that maybe it has gotten to the point where you are akin to the boy who cried wolf? CS, "OMG yet another ticket from him."

[Jeweledleah]

wait... you are opening TICKETS to report players for foul language? dude... there's a report function specifically for that that does NOT clog up the ticket system. right click name, select report, select reason FOR the report, hit ok, done!

 

that said.... dude... you so wouldn't make it in our teamspeak... if use of curse words bothers you THAT much. people curse. people use cuss words. this is what profanity filters are for if you don't wish to see that. when people start going into harassment, offensive slurs especially directed at specific players, you know serious stuff - ok, I can see report (NOT ticket) being in order, but just couple of f-bombs? yikes

[Malastare]

I used to see the exact same issues as you until I upped my RAM to 16GB and moved to an SSD. With 16GB, I have 10-12 in use while playing SWOTOR. That means that if you have 8GB or less, the system will have to use HDD virtual memory.

 

SWTOR uses two processes which running 32-bit mode. That caps them at 3GB per process, meaning that the game cannot use more than 6GB of memory. I don't know what else you're running on your system, but I run Firefox, Chrome, IDEA, Thunderbird, a few SSH terminals and some monitoring apps while playing and still don't reach usage levels that high.

 

Normal OS usage (Vista SP2, Win7) shouldn't be more than 2GB or so. SWTOR doesn't normally use more than 5GB. 8GB of physical RAM is enough to run the game from purely physical RAM. If you have other applications running, you might get some disk performance degradation due to reduced disk caching, but that shouldn't have a huge effect. For most people, there is no need to have 16GB of RAM. Sure, its nice if you've got it, but your memory usage levels are not normal.

[JimG]

I rarely post my own feedback about any game. For me, I do not see much of a need. Game developers are going to do whatever they want to do no matter what a majority of people say to them.

You lost me there. Sure, they've never added anything to this game based on player demand. Right, lol.

[RandomXChance]

SWTOR uses two processes which running 32-bit mode. That caps them at 3GB per process, meaning that the game cannot use more than 6GB of memory. I don't know what else you're running on your system, but I run Firefox, Chrome, IDEA, Thunderbird, a few SSH terminals and some monitoring apps while playing and still don't reach usage levels that high.

 

Normal OS usage (Vista SP2, Win7) shouldn't be more than 2GB or so. SWTOR doesn't normally use more than 5GB. 8GB of physical RAM is enough to run the game from purely physical RAM. If you have other applications running, you might get some disk performance degradation due to reduced disk caching, but that shouldn't have a huge effect. For most people, there is no need to have 16GB of RAM. Sure, its nice if you've got it, but your memory usage levels are not normal.

 

I have read many of your posts, and it is always nice to hear from someone who knows what they are talking about.

 

I am used to running my system very clean of background tasks because before moving to 16GB, I had only 4 (now that IS a problem!). When I look at the performance monitor while raiding (Parsec, TS, Razer software, Firefox with 2-3 tabs for EPGP running), it usually shows 10-12 in use. Not saying 8 is insufficient, just with RAM prices so low and seeing more than 8 in use, seems like not a waste.

Edited April 2, 2014 by RandomXChance

[Livedwatermelon]

When you have a freemium model like SWTOR does, long Q times are to be expected because

 

a) hardly anyone subs now

b) restrictions on preferred (limits on 5 warzones/flashpoints a week reduces participation)

c) PvP has been officially killed by Bioware after this thread

 

As for lag, there isn't much you can do when the game has a clunky engine and bad coding. If you were here for the days of Ilum pvp at launch, you would have seen a marked improvement as the game engine can now handle at least 9 players in combat without major lag.

 

The future of SWTOR is bleak as the focus turns to money. A Bioware design brief starts 'Where can we make money from items to sell?' - and up pops PLAYER HOUSING.

 

To me, it's a case now of how much money can they make from idiots paying for items on the cartel market until the game goes belly up and/or fully free to play by Winter 2014. They hardly fix anything, and the majority of SUBS are sick and tired of the 'carrot and stick approach' Bioware use.

 

With 2 major MMOs due for release, is it any wonder they are offering Subs 'perks' for remaining a sub during the release windows of both TESO and Wildstar? Good luck in your quest to get things moving forward but it will be an impossible task

Damn I see a whole lot of players asking for cool features and BW saying nope to a lot of them.........do they know how to run a MMO? Don't answer that.

[GalacticKegger]

Yeah I'd prefer for the removal of referrals or at least a limitation when it comes to forums.

Personally, forum posting privileges should be limited to PAYING members. Referrals are cool having viewer access to whatever they want ... they just shouldn't be allowed to touch anything. Edited April 2, 2014 by GalacticKegger

[Darth_Wicked]

Personally, forum posting privileges should be limited to PAYING members. Referrals are cool having viewer access to whatever they want ... they just shouldn't be allowed to touch anything.

 

This is my opinion as well and something that Bioware should have considered from the very beginning, together with the "Confirm" button for the referral.

[GalacticKegger]

This is my opinion as well and something that Bioware should have considered from the very beginning, together with the "Confirm" button for the referral.

That and accounts that unsubscribe should have posting privileges removed the moment they complete the process - regardless of how much time they have left on their subscription. Combine that with a Trojan Horse referral protection plan and we'd lose all of maybe, what ... 40 forum "personalities"? Compared to the ½ million or so active subscribers who are directly supporting the game, that .0001% population loss becomes addition by subtraction imho. Edited April 2, 2014 by GalacticKegger

[Jadescythe]

That and accounts that unsubscribe should have posting privileges removed the moment they complete the process - regardless of how much time they have left on their subscription. Combine that with a Trojan Horse referral protection plan and we'd lose all of maybe, what ... 40 forum "personalities"? Compared to the ½ million or so active subscribers who are directly supporting the game, that .0001% population loss becomes addition by subtraction imho.

 

Ya, cause BW is going to take away parts of the game that people paid for. Should go over really well. They should also limit access to FPs/Ops/Wzs etc. for the last week of the month until your subscription gets paid again. Because it's not like you already paid for that month or anything .

[GalacticKegger]

Ya, cause BW is going to take away parts of the game that people paid for. Should go over really well. They should also limit access to FPs/Ops/Wzs etc. for the last week of the month until your subscription gets paid again. Because it's not like you already paid for that month or anything .

Why would any part of the game be limited or taken away?