An open letter to our players

[Max_Killjoy]

I'd say it still gives an idea of general mood. There are happy people around forums, white-knighting all the day long. Yet they are a minority here.

 

If, let's say, only 10% of players visit forums, it still doesn't mean that their opinions aren't representative. That's how polls work IRL most of the time, yet their results are considered accurate (well, somewhat).

 

Someone's always determined to dismiss opinions they don't agree with as a "minority" or to stick a label on it.

 

Here's your first paragraph reversed:

 

I'd say it still gives an idea of general mood. There are angry people around forums, hating all the day long. Yet they are a minority here.

 

Both versions of the paragraph are pretty much an attempt to belittle and dismiss the opinions of some of the people posting here. To paraphrase someone's signature -- if you have a complaint or criticism, you're a "hater", if you like anything about the game you're a "white knight".

[Jedi_riches]

I'd say it still gives an idea of general mood. There are happy people around forums, white-knighting all the day long. Yet they are a minority here.

 

If, let's say, only 10% of players visit forums, it still doesn't mean that their opinions aren't representative. That's how polls work IRL most of the time, yet their results are considered accurate (well, somewhat).

 

All we can really say from this thread is that there are some unhappy people HERE, for all we really know the ratio of happy:unhappy people does not 'pro-rata' up to the whole community in the same ratio.

 

Consider this, usually there is a higher % of people who will write a post with negative feedback about something and a lower % of people who will give favourable feedback. Its usualy referred to as the vocal minority against the silent majority. I am not saying this IS THE CASE here as I don't have all the information to say 100% for certain.

 

As I said all this really proves is that there are unhappy people here.

Edited April 22, 2016 by Jedi_riches

[Esotica]

Scoundrel: Where is my OPS!?!?! :mad:

[DieAlteHexe]

I'd say it still gives an idea of general mood. There are happy people around forums, white-knighting all the day long. Yet they are a minority here.

 

If, let's say, only 10% of players visit forums, it still doesn't mean that their opinions aren't representative. That's how polls work IRL most of the time, yet their results are considered accurate (well, somewhat).

 

Not really. It gives you an idea of the general mood of those who can be arsed to come to the forums. A far, far better idea would be a poll on the launcher. I've worked in this field and have seen metrics of what percentages of entire user bases populate forums. It's small. And usually malcontents.

[Jedi_riches]

Not really. It gives you an idea of the general mood of those who can be arsed to come to the forums. A far, far better idea would be a poll on the launcher. I've worked in this field and have seen metrics of what percentages of entire user bases populate forums. It's small. And usually malcontents.

 

As I pointed out above the usual rule when it comes to feedback is someone is more likely to want to leave negative feedback than to leave positive feedback, which tends to screw statistics if you only use feedback as a way of making decisions.

[DieAlteHexe]

As I pointed out above the usual rule when it comes to feedback is someone is more likely to want to leave negative feedback than to leave positive feedback, which tends to screw statistics if you only use feedback as a way of making decisions.

 

Quite so.

[TheSeventhJedi]

Not really. It gives you an idea of the general mood of those who can be arsed to come to the forums. A far, far better idea would be a poll on the launcher. I've worked in this field and have seen metrics of what percentages of entire user bases populate forums. It's small. And usually malcontents.

 

A fair point. I'd say that the majority of people who are unhappy have just left. It sure shows in-game!

[DieAlteHexe]

A fair point. I'd say that the majority of people who are unhappy have just left. It sure shows in-game!

 

Well, not my experience but then my axe doesn't need grinding.

[alexsamma]

If you want to get a better idea of the state of the game I would suggest heading over to the character transfer thread and reading about the various dead servers and the guilds that are struggling to decide between holding out for server mergers or abandoning their assets while character transfers are still cheap.

 

If KOTFE was nearly as successful as it has been spun out to be dead servers would not be an issue, but instead of seeing a revival in population across all servers we've instead witnessed a drop in population across the majority of servers after the initial surge of new and returning players that 4.0 brought.

 

POT5 - dead

Bastion - Dead

Jung Ma - Dead

BC - Low population, not quite dead.

Shadowlands - ok

JC - ok if you are imps

The Ebon Hawk - decent/good,

The Harbinger - The only truly populated NA server, went from having multiple instances on fleet during prime time to having 1 pub instance and possibly 2 imp instances during prime time.

 

Team ranked is all but dead, ranked solo arena on TEH and JC pop during primetime but the playerbase is small (and shared), The Harbinger's solo ranked scene is plagued by multiple hackers that flaunt their "success" in gen chat...

 

I can't comment on PVE, with nothing new put out in ages and the majority of pve players that I knew no longer playing I haven't touched group pve in over a year.

 

The new story line started off strong and I was really excited, but the game play of the chapters is drawn out and boring and the idea of dragging my characters through the new content is off-putting and un-inspiring, most have not started KOTFE, and only one has gone past the initial chapters released with 4.0.

 

The new pvp maps are not something to get excited about, they are poorly designed and extremely buggy, neither map should have made it past internal testing, much less PTS.

Edited April 22, 2016 by alexsamma

[Yespa]

Dear Ben & Team,

 

Thanks for providing this insight and update regarding the state of the game. As you can likely see, there is a ton of feedback to sift through and the state of the game players is just as, if not more important than the state of the game as well. Hopefully amongst all the posts, there will be valuable information that will help navigate the game to its future destination.

 

As of right now, as a day 1 founder and beta player, and having come over from Star Wars Galaxies from Beta and a member of the community team I do have some insight and feedback. First and foremost, the population and server economics are what drive a large force through the game. Spending extra time to master the server condition of players right now will be a key element to the future of the game. Having multiple servers allows the general player base to "evade" economic imperials and guilds that attempt to control the trade market for better or worse, but it also creates a situation where the player base becomes scattered. Additionally, since 2012 there have been those who exploited massive economics and walked away with little but a slap on the wrist (I knew of people back in '12 that walked away from then exploits with half a billion creds near launch) you can imagine the effect each has on the economy thereafter. of course there is only so much that can be done, but as said, the economy is a major driving force, especially since there is so much focus on the cartel packs.

 

Economic: Speaking of the cartel packs, since you mentioned gathering info from around the net, hopefully it has come to your attention that many players that have left and many that still remain feel exploited themselves by having almost any worthy appearance oriented items generated through cartel and very little worthwhile appearance wise or skin wise generated through ingame content. Something especially frustrating for players who are already paying their subscriptions. Can we possibly consider assigning a team member to generating ingame content that side lines along side cartel? We obviously shouldn't suggest competing with it, because that will affect sales, but the game needs more unique ingame content. Its been years since something like the magenta schematic was added into the game. This required an extensive process to craft just one, and is an accomplishment that would leave the player(s) feeling like they did something of value.

 

PVP: Regarding pvp, having extensive star wars and other mmo-esque experience - can we consider including future activities that are outside the "arena" style hamster wheel of pvp? This is a key element of the star wars rpg mmo environment, and although the story is now driving away from cross faction competition, there is alot of opportunity here that would attract players. Planetary objectives that have real time impact that actually has some sort of value associated with it (not outlaws den) for example. Having pvp instance is great and all, but anyone can literally just avoid pvp and thats fine, but theres no incentive to actually engage in pvp other than pride and prejudice. Some people are just pvp oriented, but for the most point, pvp can appear irrelevant and therefor the purpose of factions other than light/dark becomes mostly irrelevant thereafter.

 

Operations: the rehash of the ops after a year of absence hit the community really hard. Im now just finding time to run with some friends through the newly rehashed old operations and it feels pretty bad doing the same stuff from 4 years ago all over again. I personally see this as a move that hurt the players and not something to be excited about. New players will of course appreciate it - they get to experience all the content and be level and gear appropriate which speaks well for them, but retention and tending to the core player base should be a priority as well. Being mostly casual these days, I prefer the KoTFE story updates, so im not personally invested in this, but can see the various angles which im sure youre aware of. Maybe consider adding some more fluff and excitement to the rehash of the ops to make it more appealing, more rewards, incentives - honestly something/anything.

 

PVE: The story update was/is great. KoTFE has been successful regardless of the outcry of those opposed to pve story and the like. Its providing bioware esque story telling (though some could use a real rehash) and gives us a bit of character depth, which for many of us, is what we expected in the first place that the story would continue. KoTFE like chapters and the like can be a major driving force for the game, and the logical anchor for the implementation for any other game design, mechanic or function. A point to be made- the initial release and chapters as they reach us seem to be decreasing in length and difficulty. One thing this game is truly lacking is challenge - something to consider. Without challenge, it leaves the player (aware or not) lacking a sense of accomplishment. Alot of us pointed it out, not sure if the team caught it, but a good example would be when the fight with Valkorian happened in the most recent chapter, anyone with any clue was absolutely destroying that fight, and then it auto completes saying he was winning the fight......I get they want to put content out to the masses but a bit of forethought and real, critical evaluation will go a long way to making the immersion and challenging nature of the game to a way that can be enjoyed by all. Maybe consider offering players a "story" and "hard mode" option for KoTFE, that way new players who are being catered to through the low difficulty of KoTFE can be catered to, while those of us seeking an actual challenge on the toons we've dedicated so much time into mastering can also be catered to.

 

Guilds - guilds need some serious love. Yes we just bumped the roster up to 1000 and implemented different columns, but that no way creates a guild experience. Conquest provides a small amount of inter-guild interactivity, but for the most part the reality of it is a couple of massive guilds just dominate the boards while everyone else acquiesces to the reality they can't touch the guild boards. Some serious attention needs to be applied to the life of guilds. Consider activities such as guild leaderboards and competitions daily/weekly/monthly, inner guild mechanics such as dueling tournaments, pve/crafting/ops/pvp activities, abilities to set specific teams up and provide each team unique timer lockouts and other functions. Have inter guild activities, example from elsewhere would be guild challenges where two guilds could challenge each other and becomes nemesis, allowing guild members to participate in an on-going or weekly kill on sight pvp function of the opposing guild etc. Guild strongholds have very little impact on the game and are outshadowed by the flagships which need some additional love. Its functional where guilds stand at the moment, but they have high potential for expansion and enjoyability and most importantly retention. Imagine having guild wide week long buffs - pve bonus, or a crafting bonus, or extra credits on loot, or increased rarity chance from ops bosses etc etc etc. Potential! Even guild specific companions, guild specific weapons and more.

 

Crafting: The system as I can imagine is a work in progress and has changed ever so often through the years but based on the same framework. This like everything else, has alot of potential. Many people are literally alt-aholics and switch through 20+ toons in a cycle running missions, running crafting timers, and im sure theyre exhausted and the rest of us are in nowhere desirious of engaging in such activity, though the system in its current state is exactly that. below I am going to suggest legacy wide companions and that can have an inclusive effect here as well. My suggestion for crafting is to provide a legacy wide accessible interface that allows you to control all your characters on that specific server from one single location. This would allow you to direct which legacy companions or character specific companions are doing whether it be running missions or crafting. Say a player has 10x lv65 Characters, that allots them ~60 missions & crafting runs at any given time, and only 1 craft run per character so 50 mission opportunities and 10 crafting max which can be allocated to missions instead.

 

We could easily manage this in a window similar to the hangar from GSF or implemented into the tiny craft window we have now. Allow any legacy wide companion, or character specific companion to run with a drop down menu (if we even stick to that system) and allow a player to remain on one specific toon. When missions complete, which ever character a player is logged onto at that moment, is delivered the completed quest. Time and manpower saved, hearts are happy and fun can continue. A game shouldn't feel like, nor take up time and resources like a job does. This will greatly enhance the ability of players to engage in, and enjoy crafting. Further considerations can be found for crafting and I rather put it all in a suggestions thread than ramble on here.

 

GSF: Definitely a great system that is underloved by many. This has soooo much potential! Please make it relevant!! Jump to Lightspeed was and is still the flagship item that Star Wars Galaxies had! GSF was such a great addition and shift from the rails space combat we were forced into here at launch. I understand we are working with different tech and limited resources, but GSF can provide an incredible amount of fun and star wars immersion into the game. We really need to find ways to increase the interest in and usefulness of GSF. The companions are a great hit with many who play just to unlock all the GSF companions. Maybe give us a way to have them as combatant or non-combatant companions on the ground game as well to start as an idea. Also maybe consider adding an entire loot table of GSF parts and such to the game/cartel? There is alot of potential here, if its tapped into you will find a player base of attention.

 

Companions: This has a really good angle to begin with in its current direction! Fix the bugs now before they get buried (the biggest are wrong stats being applied to companion damage/healing and certain companiosn being better worse than others at certain roles without indication). My main suggestion to increase the viability of the companions is to make them Legacy wide. This would unify unlocked companiosn across all characters on a legacy/server thus avoiding the detrimental requirement to raise affection over and over and over across toons. Its more than just a put off its a horrible system the way its currently functioning but can shine! Also consider bringing back unique companion functions (HK-51 for example literally had assisinate, after 5 kills he could auto-kill 1 elite or lower difficulty enemy) these were great, and would make using and levelling all companions noteworthy and situational. Also consider that we bought certain companions (Treek for example) because of their unique ability. Treek was able to heal/damage or damage/tank specifically - that was her thing. She has now been reduced to a skin for us to use and her stats have been all over the place, not good for something we originally bought for a specific reason. By providing each and every companion their own signature ability and play style, it increases the companion viability and purpose...right now theyre just expensive purchases, or quest time sinks for additional skins of what we can already accomplish.

 

Gear: Not much to say here. Im about to make a post suggesting we create a "Bind to Legacy" consumable that can be applied to a weapon. Since we have legacy gear and costume tabs, the main issue now is our weapons. For anyone that gears multiple toons, it is only optimal to utilize legacy weapons which reduces our skin appearance down to less than a half dozen or so per type. This affect cartel sales, because weapons like the arbiter and volatile conqueror's sabers cannot be used cross legacy, so a large portion of the player base will not use those skins anymore, and with the upcoming visual enhancements, that would be relaly nice to have. Also it would be great if we could get a "utility" slot where we can equip one of many new or existing utility items in the game. The MGGV5 allows us to James Bond hook across a room, this would be a great function to add all sorts of craftable/lootable/cartel gadgets that add additional functionality and fun to our heroes.

 

Buffs: Food/Drink/Spice and other buffs are the staple of mmo's and star wars is no exception. There is a limited amount of unique buffs available ingame and they have no been attended to in a long time. Please consider this and update the potential of class specific craftable buffs (Smugglers make spice, Jedi's make Datacrons, Troopers make food/rations, Sage's make specialized drinks etc) or put it into the realm of crafters since they always need love regarding consumables to sell. Also consider expanding the nature of relics, right now theres only a couple designs in place and this has a large potential that is remaining untouched.

 

User Interface: Lets add some more customization to the game. Allow window type changes, color changes, newer formats and just more. Maybe add in some features, reconsider toolbars and how they operate (I have all 6 since forever and are all full with more stuff to put on them than i can fit).

 

A major issue to address since launch is the data leak - many, most if not all game clients over time encounter a memory / data leak that slows the game down tremendously until you have to actually close out and relaunch the game. Not sure of the tech behind it, but people have discussed it in length around the forums over the years.

 

Mounts: are fun and recent additions are becoming more and more enjoyable (Acklay!)...one problem with the mount culture that you can adjust to make it more enjoyable. Besides the cartel infusion of mounts, the ingame options are lackluster at best. Even worse, the rarer ingame mounts are mostly sold for millions of credits on vendors such as the security vendor, but are in no way desirable or even enjoyable while we have all this cool stuff coming from the market. Consider rehashing and adding unique ingame mounts of interest that are generally acquirable (The Wings of the Architect are a great example, but for the most part with recent changes unreachable for 99% of the population. Literally guilds are charging people upwards of 150million credits to urn them to the wings drop). This should not be and detracts from the overall experience. Yes its great we have all these mounts from the cartel, but there is once again no sense of accomplishment, and for the most part we collect the mount, and unless we realllly like it, it just sits in our datapad with no use. There is no status or sense of achievement that comes from it and is like dead clay.

 

There is likely a ton more I could say and missed - so all I can do is just say thanks for what youve done, and we look forward to seeing what youre putting together. Please kindly take what the players want into consideration when directing resources into game enhancements and tending to already current issues and bugs and mastering released content to where it should be. Hopefully with the support and love from all those organizations we have the resources, manpower and desire to make this game truly great for years to come. Keep up the good work on the story and try to find ways to include senses of accomplishment, and uniqueness between characters that are permament through the story. Fix the buffs on the new story weapons (great idea but not legacy bound) and drive the staff to make each story release longer and engaging and many of us will be happy (there will always be those unhappy no matter what).

 

Take care and May the Force be with You,

 

Brother Ted

[casirabit]

A fair point. I'd say that the majority of people who are unhappy have just left. It sure shows in-game!

 

Guess it depends on the server you are playing on. The server I am on is pretty active.

[TUXs]

...There is likely a ton more I could say and missed...

I have no doubt. Just remember, brevity is the spice of life.

[Ayakin_Solaris]

Guess it depends on the server you are playing on. The server I am on is pretty active.

 

It may still be pretty active, but that will in part be because of players transferring from the dead servers to yours.

[TUXs]

It may still be pretty active, but that will in part be because of players transferring from the dead servers to yours.

EXACTLY!!!! They think it's all new players flooding the game when in reality, it's alts of people who are transferring. What we have now is largely what we'll get...

[casirabit]

EXACTLY!!!! They think it's all new players flooding the game when in reality, it's alts of people who are transferring. What we have now is largely what we'll get...

 

I find that a little funny actually when everyone says the only server that is active is the Harbinger and yet I play on Ebon Hawk and we are active and then I say this and get this response when everyone says all the other servers are dead except the Harbinger......

 

So which is it? Is the Harbinger the only one active as everyone claims or can we finally admit that there are other servers that are active as well?

Edited April 22, 2016 by casirabit

[Max_Killjoy]

It may still be pretty active, but that will in part be because of players transferring from the dead servers to yours.

 

Interesting how, if a server is "dead", it's support for your position that servers are dying, and if a server is lively, it's also support for your position that servers are dying...

 

Makes it kinda hard to offer counter-evidence about a server not actually dying, when all evidence is supposedly evidence for your position.

Edited April 22, 2016 by Max_Killjoy

[DieAlteHexe]

I find that a little funny actually when everyone says the only server that is active is the Harbinger and yet I play on Ebon Hawk and we are active and then I say this and get this response when everyone says all the other servers are dead except the Harbinger......

 

Guess it's down to what one wants. I've a great guild and friends on JC. We do just fine. We don't need lots and lots of people around. Some folks do for legit and other reasons. If it makes 'em happy, fine by me. Less to stumble over whilst we happily do our thing.

[Jerba]

Just finished reading through all the pages; there are a few posts I'd comment on but it's too many pages back now.

My take on the whole thread is: The players who appreciate the letter are believing it because they are not informed about the state of the game. The players disliking the letter are advocating for MMO/group content even though it should be clear by now that the game is only focused on story. And you have the names of the typical trolls posting here who I just overread.

 

For example:

• BioWare will not continue the class stories. One hour of new story for each class each month is not feasible; it's eight times the development costs but would not lead to eight times the subscriber numbers. BioWare is barely able to produce one hour of story content each month, and they need to take months-long breaks from time to time to ensure they have content ready for the next season.
  
• The fact that KotFE companions (Lana, Theron, Senya, Koth etc.) cannot be customized was a design decision made more than a year ago. I do agree with you that it would be better if the companions were customizable, but this would take a huge amount of work because they need to go back on their previous design decisions.
  
• Haha on the players thinking 5.0 will still arrive late this year. The devs have already stated last November that 5.0 will not come in 2016 but more like Spring 2017. But obviously most players don't know this because they don't follow the development of the game too closely, which explains why they are more hopeful about the state of the game. (yes, plans can change and we may get 5.0 this year but I doubt it. In any case, we'll know more on June 12.)
  

 

I don't have very high hopes for the game. The recent conquest bonus issue is a perfect example; it speaks volumes about the state the studio is in at the moment. Or you can just look at the 4.3 issues that don't even get a weekly bugfix patch when a unplanned hotfix would be required.

Players who just care about the story don't notice stuff like this because it doesn't affect them. The devs go to great lengths to ensure the story chapters are bug-free while the rest of the game is falling apart. But if the trend continues, I foresee more bugs leaking into the story chapters as well.

 

To the players requesting more communication or a Q&A: This won't solve the problems, the devs just don't have any answers. There are some bugs where the fixes are years overdue, and to improve the state of the game we'd need class and content balancing, and reversal of some design decisions. More communication would have been nice one year ago, shortly followed by fixes to all those issues. Now, the devs have an insurmountable amount of bugs they'd have to fix before I can even begin to consider feeling better about the game again.

And no, we don't need to give them a list of things to fix, that's the job of the Community Team. There are literally hundreds of threads documenting all the issues with the game; each subset of the player base has their own set of issues. But I'm pretty sure the devs know what the issues are, they just don't have the resources to fix them. E.g. the PvP group queue bug was reported on PTS and still made it live because they didn't prioritize it correctly, or did not have enough staff for it.

 

However, it's also wrong of the MMO/group players to say the game will fail. I foresee it to have another few years even if it just focuses on monthly story chapters, with the existing MMO content in maintenance mode and no new MMO content being added. Story players may not login very often (which is why the servers are so empty), but they still pay the full subscription price and finance the game just as much as a raider, PvPer, GSF player, heavy RPer, decorator etc.

The devs have set a clear direction for the game and I don't expect them to change it, especially after they restructured the dev team, letting go of combat designers and hiring story writers. It's foolish to hold on and expect the game to change; if you care about MMOs, August is the perfect time to switch - just a few weeks after the release of the final KotFE chapter, Legion launches.

 

Anyone care to speculate on:

 

a) Whether or not the response is what Ben expected when making this post? It seems very clear to me that the majority of responses were not encouraged by this communication. I wonder if the reaction was expected or if it was assumed this would be well received.

 

b) Whether the general sentiment of dissatisfaction will be considered legitimate or if they will interpret it as the eternally-dissatisfied player base making noise.

 

c) Will there be a response?

a) This letter wasn't meant to start a dialogue, it's just to appease the casual players to ignore all the doom & gloom on forums and social media and have fun playing. And it looks like it was successful in that.

 

b) The devs have already realized that there is no point focusing on MMO veterans anymore; I'd be surprised if they even read through all the responses in this thread.

 

c) Obviously not.

Edited April 22, 2016 by Jerba

[Ayakin_Solaris]

Interesting how, if a server is "dead", it's support for your position that servers are dying, and if a server is lively, it's also support for your position that servers are dying...

 

Makes it kinda hard to offer counter-evidence about a server not actually dying, when all evidence is supposedly evidence for your position.

 

I wasn't talking about US servers, I am referring to EU; I can't comment on US servers.

 

I play on TRE which is by far the most populous EU server. It is noticeable on that server that there has been an influx of players transferring in from other servers - some because they have french toon or guild names have clearly transferred across from French servers, for example. Also, there are a large number of players that have transferred from the English pvp server, ToFN, because that server is pretty much dead.

 

There is also this - yes it only covers ranked pvp but there is a noticeable drop in the number of players which is symptomatic of the wider game. Also, if you look at the total number of ranked players by server, look at the difference on PoT5 or ToFN from season 1 to the latest season 7.

 

The pvp servers are all dying/dead and if you don't see that you either have your head firmly buried in the sand or you're just plain obtuse.

[Max_Killjoy]

I wasn't talking about US servers, I am referring to EU; I can't comment on US servers.

 

I play on TRE which is by far the most populous EU server. It is noticeable on that server that there has been an influx of players transferring in from other servers - some because they have french toon or guild names have clearly transferred across from French servers, for example. Also, there are a large number of players that have transferred from the English pvp server, ToFN, because that server is pretty much dead.

 

There is also this - yes it only covers ranked pvp but there is a noticeable drop in the number of players which is symptomatic of the wider game. Also, if you look at the total number of ranked players by server, look at the difference on PoT5 or ToFN from season 1 to the latest season 7.

 

The pvp servers are all dying/dead and if you don't see that you either have your head firmly buried in the sand or you're just plain obtuse.

 

Then make it clear you're talking about PvP servers -- it makes it look like you're making the mistake of judging the entire game on the problems of the PvP servers.

 

Guess it depends on the server you are playing on. The server I am on is pretty active.

It may still be pretty active, but that will in part be because of players transferring from the dead servers to yours.

[ElZaguero]

Just remember, brevity is the spice of life.

 

My GF does not agree

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Remember, the majority of players (especially the content ones) no NOT haunt forums. They're too busy enjoying the game.

 

It's foolish to try and claim "victory" (on either side). Some people like this, some do not, some are on the fence. We do not have anything even close to a data set to work with.

 

Perhaps but this thread is all we have to gauge it off and my post was in relation to this thread.

[TUXs]

My GF does not agree

None do I believe it's a lack of understanding, not agreement

[blendedseal]

I just hope that for season 2 of KOTFE they just decide to release everything at once. I'm pretty sure 90% of the bugs we see every new episode, along with the EC delays, are due to KOTFE being designed to be released all at once and not chopped into smaller chapters because Bioware is a bunch of greedy *****

[Zasszz]

and to improve the state of the game we'd need class and content balancing

Class balance only means all classes will be either cut down or improved, both to the same point which results in all DPS classes having the exact same output. To achieve that they have to either remove abilities that are too strong or nerf them into the ground. In the end you will have eight classes but one tank, one healer and one damage dealer. They play slightly different but have the same output. The opposite of what you have now.

Just look at WoW. The class balance destroyed the fun of mostly all classes. Since they started to balance pvp it heavily affected pve aswell and they cant get out of that nightmare.

 

You need diversity! Ask yourself which scenario is more beneficial for the game.