As a Story Tourist who just came for the 12x XP class stories, so frustrated. :(

[Heat-Wave]

What is there to "win", exactly? Getting to experience a story? Did you 'win' something when you watch a movie or read a book?

 

Then you should go watch the stories on YouTube and not try to play a game you don't understand.

 

Reading comprehension isn't your strong suit, is it? I'm here for the story, not to kill ten rats. The planetary quests can be done when I'm 55 and everything is one-shottable.

 

The class stories are nothing but "go kill ten rats" as well, any thoughts otherwise are just kidding yourself.

 

The actual gameplay in this thing is very basic, it is really all about the story. The planet quests on places like Hoth and Belsavis are just as interesting as the class stories. Some of them even more so.

 

I'll be happy if I get through all 8 class stories. That's a perfectly doable prospect. I have no interest in the game beyond that, but BioWare has a great interest in getting the money of people like me in exchange for that.

 

There is far more story in the game than just the 8 class stories. Shame you'll miss it, some of it is quite good.

[Heat-Wave]

Wrong. Why do you think they advertised it so heavily to those of us who've never played before?

 

I represent a vast untapped market to SWTOR -- one that if harnessed correctly can give them massive profit with no additional investment needed on their end. You represent just another sub.

 

Ahh, I see the problem... You suffer from special snowflake syndrome...

[Heat-Wave]

Wrong. This expansion is also aimed at people that haven't played SWTOR or are returning to the game such as myself. The boosted XP allows us to catch up with rest of the player base.

 

Yep, and you get to lvl 50 or 55 and don't really have any idea what you're doing.

 

Then you queue for a warzone or a flashpoint and bumble around like an idiot.

 

The past few weeks I've probably seen it in 1/3 of the GF FP that I've been in, completely clueless people who have no idea what they are doing.

 

You're leveling too fast in a game that you don't understand. It would be as if someone bought WoW, got a free lvl 90 toon, without having played the game, then wondered why they kept getting kicked from raids and group content.

[hadoken]

That's funny, here I thought the promotion was specifically geared to attract ME back to the game.

 

Well I guess it is moreso than the OP, as I haven't had any gearing issues at all

Edited November 5, 2014 by hadoken

[DogeDandolo]

I don't see where the OP gets this "kill ten rats" idea from. True, there is much more combat involved than in Bioware's single-player games, but it's almost never the point of the quests (not counting bonus, objectives, obviously -- I usually skip these when possible, especially the staged ones. Looking at you, Coruscant bonus objectives.). It's usually "retrieve this", "destroy that". In other words, same as most sidequests in other sci-fi RPGs and many in other genres. Add to that that some of the game's most memorable storytelling in my opinion comes from sidequests. Say, the two droids on Impmorra in [HEROIC 4] Comrades in Arms or the scientist hiring you to off his "traitor" wife on the same planet. All of Black Talon and Foundry. Everything involving the Dread Masters. The Nautolan couple on Coruscant. Grathan's cyborgs on Dromund Kaas. I could go on forever.

[Aussircaex]

I represent a vast untapped market to SWTOR -- one that if harnessed correctly can give them massive profit with no additional investment needed on their end. You represent just another sub.

 

Correction: you represent a very minor source of non-renewing income. People like you will spend abolutely nothing, or perhaps $15 once or twice to subscribe, then, as you explicitly stated yourself, you plan to leave. Don't overstate your own importance, especially compared to other players. How can "just a sub" be less important than you?

 

Your sheer hostility and ignorance towards the game is also very off putting. Do you know how many sidequests in this game you can pick up are of the Kill Ten Rats variety? Virtually none. They all have more sophisticated goals. Frequently there are OPTIONAL BONUS QUESTS to Kill Ten Rats, but they are implemented in precisely the way you already want them to be: optional and a irrelevant.

[DarthTenor]

No, they did not. What gave you that idea? They created this promotion to lure CURRENT CUSTOMERS into buying the expansion packs. They created the 12XP BECAUSE current customers have been playing the game and are already familiar with the grind and the planetary and side quests, so this was incentive for them to be able to skip doing them yet again and get a few toons quickly to 55. It is a reward for them.

 

You don't have to teach current customers how to gear up. They already know what it takes. They also have alternatives to the grind. They know how to make money, for example.

 

YOU, on the other hand, are new and simply don't know anything. That's OK. We were all there once, but your mistake is assuming the 12XP was designed for YOU.

 

Get over yourself. It wasn't. It isn't about you at all.

 

The 12x XP gain lured me back. Now I can experience the class stories without grinding the side quests(+bonus). So who's to say they didn't make this XP gain to bring back us players that have been playing off an on as F2P.

 

Again I'm having a blast with This XP gain. I not only experience the class story I can Choose to do the side quests as well. At least in the areas that I have never been. My highest character is a level 36 Sage and Have just finished Chapter 1 I believe getting off Alderaan. Sure I may be out-leveling the content but I am enjoying the lore not just from class quests.

 

Now With the 12x XP gain I can level up a Shadow and just focus on the story while doing side quests that are in the area of my main class story. For me this works but I will regret that this XP gain will over come Dec.

 

I hear they might make it a perk how to obtain it I'm not sure. If it's Legacy unlock it will be a grind which I detest in any MMO that is sub based.

[Malorey]

The OP is like a marketing company's dream customer...throwing their money at something without knowing what they're getting! Although cool for us that they have all this money to keep improving the game.

[Ramik]

Televangelist, you'll have to excuse the mob of fools with battered person syndrome regarding SWTOR/BW. If you read through the description of the event it says you shouldn't need to detour. This is pretty typical of their misleading promo information.

 

What if you could just play straight through another class story without the hassle of taking detours to level up and earn credits? What if you could log in right now and be treated to an all-new epic BioWare roleplaying campaign, uninterrupted?

 

Right...

 

My advice is to pick up Treasure Hunting as a crew skill. It was very effective for me and doesn't rely on outside income at all (cartel or credits). I ran missions constantly as I levelled and I was more than geared enough in greens. Depending on your current level (I started around 25) it may be tough to catch up and you may be better off starting a new toon and coming back later to the one currently having problems.

- Pick up treasure hunting

- Run lockbox missions constantly with extra crew members

- Use your healing companion

- Gear yourself first

- Gear your healing companion if necessary, but probably not really needed if you take their personal items as rewards

- Save other unused main-stat gear for new characters to have gear ready for them, OR

- Sell excess gear on the GTN for extra credits

- Buy additional gear using credits or planetary comms ONLY as necessary (e.g. if you are having trouble with quests AND if your current gear level rewards are 30 or 40+ levels higher than what you currently you may want to consider upgrading a couple of items)

 

If you had treasure hunting on every character you'll find that you have more gear than you know what to do with. If you run them constantly while travelling between quests it keeps up with your level pretty well.

 

As far as a speeder goes... if someone uses your referral link (I'm not sure if they need to sub or just use the link) you get an adaptive speeder in your mail for free on every character. Not a perfect solution if they have to sub but it's probably the simplest option if you find someone willing. Otherwise, you'll probably have about 280,000 credits by 55 on each character that you can mail to your next one to buy a speeder at each rank.

 

I can't guarantee it'll work for you, but I only needed help with one quest where my companion was removed from the fight. And the best part is you can do it completely self-sufficient. Tried and tested successfully 1-55.

 

Good luck.

[Aussircaex]

The 12x XP gain lured me back. Now I can experience the class stories without grinding the side quests(+bonus). So who's to say they didn't make this XP gain to bring back us players that have been playing off an on as F2P.

 

Again I'm having a blast with This XP gain. I not only experience the class story I can Choose to do the side quests as well. At least in the areas that I have never been. My highest character is a level 36 Sage and Have just finished Chapter 1 I believe getting off Alderaan. Sure I may be out-leveling the content but I am enjoying the lore not just from class quests.

 

Now With the 12x XP gain I can level up a Shadow and just focus on the story while doing side quests that are in the area of my main class story. For me this works but I will regret that this XP gain will over come Dec.

 

I hear they might make it a perk how to obtain it I'm not sure. If it's Legacy unlock it will be a grind which I detest in any MMO that is sub based.

 

 

I saw 12x as primarily a carrot to returning players, not new or existing ones. After a certain point in an MMO's life, former players become a more responsive and lucrative market than fresh players. This one is meant at least in part to those who figured "I like the looks of that new expansion, but I never got my character past level 33, and I don't want to buy an expansion but not get to play it before I spend three weeks leveling".

[TUXs]

With 8 characters, that means a major financial investment.

 

You have 8 characters now? lol. You've got to be trolling...right?!

[Heat-Wave]

I saw 12x as primarily a carrot to returning players, not new or existing ones. After a certain point in an MMO's life, former players become a more responsive and lucrative market than fresh players. This one is meant at least in part to those who figured "I like the looks of that new expansion, but I never got my character past level 33, and I don't want to buy an expansion but not get to play it before I spend three weeks leveling".

 

^ This, right here...

 

I'm not a "returning player", but I do have a few alts that I wanted to level, but didn't because of the grind (I have 21 alts now).

 

So this was a day one purchase for me, it has allowed me to level 4 alts in the past few weeks and I couldn't be happier.

[Jadescythe]

Again, this isn't about SWTOR as an MMO, this is about SWTOR as KOTOR 3 through 10.

 

Perhaps you need to go back to KOTOR 1 and 2 and replay them as you don't seem to recall how they worked. Lots of killing mobs, lots of random quests that have their own unique story that don't relate directly to the main storyline. Having to do all the side quests for levels/money to get gear and be good enough to do the major quests. SWTOR works the same way, you're just cutting out all the side quests that give you the helpful rewards and gear and expecting to be able to faceroll through the content, which isn't what this 12x XP offered.

[Rieverre]

I would have no problem spending 150k gear per storyline either -- that's like $2 per storyline when I buy a cartel pack and sell it on the GTN -- I just want it to not be this weird convoluted process to figure out how to spend that $2 so I can go back to doing game content.

 

Here's a hint - PLAY THE GAME. Also, tutorials and the codex are there for a reason? The game _and the 'annoying' sidequests on the started worlds_, actually teach you how to do stuff. So do the Heroics on the faction capitals. Your first time through, you're meant to do that stuff so you learn how to keep doing stuff without ragequitting at boss fights. Shocking, I know.

[Rusah]

I represent a vast untapped market to SWTOR -- one that if harnessed correctly can give them massive profit with no additional investment needed on their end. You represent just another sub.

 

Sorry but you do not represent massive profit in any way. You'll come spend maybe 100-200 experiance the storylines then are gone.

 

1. As a sub for a year i spend 180 (on current exchange rates that is 287 in your currency) on sub, plus have purchased two expansions. So in one year as a sub that is more than any story tourist will spend.

 

2. All the storylines can be done as a free player, you do not need to spend anything at all to do them. Yeah there is the free play char slot restrictions but since you just wanna see the stories and leave you can just delete and remake to bypass that. Where is the profit exactly in something that story tourists can get for free?

 

3. The real money maker is the cartel market, i forget the exact figure, but i think it was around 130mil made off the cartel market in the last finincial year. I see on the forums people buy 2-3 hypercrate packs whenever one comes out. That is an average of $20 worth of cartel coins for every one of those packs sold, and they sell a ton of em.

 

As someone who doesn't use the cartel market just pays sub and nothing else i am a small fraction of the earnings.

 

As a story tourist there is no profit because all the storylines are available for free. Sorry to tell you this but you came and bought stuff to experience something you could have gotten for nothing. If you had not pre ordered played the game without the 12x boost you could have experienced every single story for nothing at all.

 

Cartel market spenders are the ones that pump over 90% of the profit in plain and simple.

 

Finally on your gearing issue, the side quests provide gear, to stay geared without a pool of creds you need to do em, once you have a char done you can do dailys earn creds and have enough cash to gear alts whenever you want.

 

When i started the 12x i have 6 55's and 3 in the 30's. I now have:

11 X 55's,

1 X 50

4 between 11 and 13 just off the starter worlds

In total i am about 1.2mil down in credits from what i had at the start, but i still got plenty of credits left.

Edited November 5, 2014 by Rusah

[ScarletBlaze]

There has been talk about the 12xp being put on the cartel shop but it was stated it was something they were looking into. Now I would take that with a grain of salt. That does not mean it will and there could also be restrictions due to some of the complaints about 12xp, mainly the ones that are finishing the story and then trying to do flashpoints, operations, etc in gear below the accepted range that is suggested by those missions.

[ScarletBlaze]

I would have no problem spending 150k gear per storyline either -- that's like $2 per storyline when I buy a cartel pack and sell it on the GTN -- I just want it to not be this weird convoluted process to figure out how to spend that $2 so I can go back to doing game content.

 

You going to have to spend some time learning some things on your own about how to gear etc. Most of us did and even though it was advertised for new players, it seem to be targeted for players who had left to return and try to level prior to the expansion coming out in December.

 

Everyone has a different way to gear their characters. I craft all my armor, modification, enchancement, hilts and/or barrels I need and that my boyfriend needs but then again I have all the crafting etc I need to do so but that is because I have been here prior to launch and took the time to learn what I needed to do.

 

Sure I asked some question but then I went and researched the information myself so I could have a better understanding as to what was needed and what was expected when I decided to run the end game items. I wanted my gear to be at the correct level for those missions.

[Televangelist]

You have 8 characters now? lol. You've got to be trolling...right?!

 

Why wouldn't I? I want to experience all the class stories.

 

Right now I've got the following, all in the range of levels 18-25:

 

-Light Smuggler

-Dark Trooper

-Light JK

-Dark JC

 

-Light SW

-Dark SI

-Light BH

-Dark Agent

[DogeDandolo]

Why wouldn't I? I want to experience all the class stories.

 

Right now I've got the following, all in the range of levels 18-25:

 

-Light Smuggler

-Dark Trooper

-Light JK

-Dark JC

 

-Light SW

-Dark SI

-Light BH

-Dark Agent

 

Uuh, you may want to mix it up a bit. Most storylines work much better when not just blindly following the LS/DS metre. That said, I think the previous poster's jibe was aimed at eight characters not being very many these days. Hell, I started playing only in May and have 15 lvl 55s now.

[Televangelist]

Sure I asked some question but then I went and researched the information myself so I could have a better understanding as to what was needed and what was expected when I decided to run the end game items. I wanted my gear to be at the correct level for those missions.

 

I've Googled plenty -- but there's all sorts of conflicting information out there from different eras of the game, and lots of information about how to do endgame stuff or gear up for big group content, but extremely little about "what's the required gear/approach for handling story content bosses solo," because that wasn't really a meaningful or major playstyle prior to the 12x patch, and nobody's writing guides to "here's what your character should have at level 20".

[Televangelist]

Uuh, you may want to mix it up a bit. Most storylines work much better when not just blindly following the LS/DS metre. That said, I think the previous poster's jibe was aimed at eight characters not being very many these days. Hell, I started playing only in May and have 15 lvl 55s now.

 

Those aren't absolutes -- they're rough general paths to follow. But I like gravitating more toward one side or the other.

[Televangelist]

Perhaps you need to go back to KOTOR 1 and 2 and replay them as you don't seem to recall how they worked. Lots of killing mobs, lots of random quests that have their own unique story that don't relate directly to the main storyline. Having to do all the side quests for levels/money to get gear and be good enough to do the major quests. SWTOR works the same way, you're just cutting out all the side quests that give you the helpful rewards and gear and expecting to be able to faceroll through the content, which isn't what this 12x XP offered.

 

You did Kill Ten Rats quests in KOTOR 1/2? lol why

[Televangelist]

Ahh, I see the problem... You suffer from special snowflake syndrome...

 

Except in this case, the target market I represent *is* a special snowflake, from the financial perspective of BioWare. Feel free to keep crying about it, though?

[gentleblade]

I am basically SWTOR's dream customer. I'm someone who would have never bought their game in a million years, because I don't like paying money to Kill Ten Rats (aka standard MMO leveling/advancement), but who was lured in by the prospect of getting to see all the class stories without any grind, and now I've spent $50 on the game in the span of a month. If SWTOR can attract people like me, they'll be rolling in dough.

 

But so far, while I love the story content, this experience has just been *amazingly* frustrating. It all comes down to the insane hoops I have to jump through to gear myself.

 

 

 

People told me I needed to get GTN credits, so buy cartel coin packs and sell them on the GTN. Okay, I did that. There was a 36 hour delay for some reason, which is terrible. I had to figure out the right pricing ratios of cartel coins to GTN prices, too... if SWTOR just sold me credits directly, it would save so much hassle.

 

 

Then people told me I needed to get a speeder and a +41 power crystal from the GTN with those credits, and then unlock them across my characterse using cartel coins. Okay, I did that (bought a +41 power crystal, level 10 req, sea green hawkeye from the GTN, and a purple speeder that came in one of the packs from the GTN), but now how the hell do I unlock them?

 

Apparently there's some way in the "Collections" to do so -- but when I look on the YouTube videos telling how to unlock your stuff (isn't it a little crazy that people have to produce YouTube how-tos for such basic features?), they have a little blue icon that does the unlock trick on the things they've obtained in the collections interface, and I don't. I see no place to unlock my speeder globally *or* my crystal. The crystal doesn't even appear in collections for some reason, even though when I mouse over it the game tells me it's a "Cartel Item"! *** is going on?

 

Oh, and I'm supposed to buy orange armor in the GTN, unlock it, and then mod it somehow, and then share the mods across characters with the same primary stat, but the armor looks insanely expensive in the GTN, to the point where I might just be better off paying cartel coins?

 

 

How the eff does any of this work? I don't want to figure out your stupid inventory system, I just want to have fun playing a cool KOTOR story.

 

 

Can SWTOR either produce a guide explaining to story tourists how to do all this mind-numbing busywork, or just let me pay 20 to 30 bucks to skip worrying about gear entirely? Just give me gear that's great for me and my companion doing the story content but wouldn't work well in a flashpoint or whatever they're called, so real players don't have anything to complain about.

 

Jesus, this is so needlessly FUBAR. It's as if they made a huge promotion for bringing new players to the game, and then totally structured it around people who already understand how all this stuff works. I've played maybe a dozen MMOs in the past, half to the endgame, and I've never seen something *this convoluted*.

 

 

The actual time I spend playing the game leaves me deeply impressed, but this meta stuff just leaves me feeling frustrated, angry, deflated. As it stands, I can't recommend SWTOR to any of my friends, because none of them have 1/10th the patience I do for figuring out this kind of arcane BS.

 

Kinda makes you wish they just made a KOTOR 3 instead huh

[ikinai]

I've Googled plenty -- but there's all sorts of conflicting information out there from different eras of the game, and lots of information about how to do endgame stuff or gear up for big group content, but extremely little about "what's the required gear/approach for handling story content bosses solo," because that wasn't really a meaningful or major playstyle prior to the 12x patch, and nobody's writing guides to "here's what your character should have at level 20".

 

Here is a rough guide for playing through story mode only. Your gear should be roughly around your level with main stats present. So, at level 20 on a sith warrior you should have roughly level 20 gear on with strength, if you are a tank you may want some added stats for shield or defense if you can find it.