population, the event and BW's head in the sand

[LyraineAlei]

Update:

 

Now waiting 20+ minutes plus for a pop on Harbinger (the King of servers). Odessen is now a ghost town which was once the 4.0 mini hub of activity. Once I hit the 30 minute mark I log off. Debate that all you want cause I know people have extremely polarized views on it. We have 5 club houses with 1 kid in each of them. Perhaps it's time to have just the 1 club house.

 

Personal Rationalization: It is possible people were not at Odessan, but were instead out running the event or leveling other characters. Or due to summer season in the northern hemisphere, people are not playing SWTOR as much as in the rest of the year. Players during the NH's Summer tend to drop in numbers or consistency.

 

Additional Note: Fleet has risen in population during this event, when it had dropped considerably when 4.0 went live.

[HuaRya]

Population at different mission hubs was probably a bad idea to even mention because my main point is pop times. See you at CZ-198

[Gokkus]

Right, let's determine the success of an event by one random person's observation...

I'm all for feedback, but this seems more of a tremendous overestimation of the OP's importance rather than genuine feedback.

 

I agree with what has been said before, this should have been a post in another thread, if posted at all.

[BrotherJohn]

well to see this post float to the top was well nice. to read through and see the continued discussion of the issue was nice. to see the continued fall on the sword because bw is right discussion was sad but reality as any mmo i have ever played (and its been a few to say the least) there are always fans, me included here, that will say and say and say as much as they can to defend the sinking ship for as long as they can before they themselves just give up or the game closes down with a shadow of a population from once it was.

 

the issue that I started in this thread is just as important now as it was the past couple weeks and months. the game is taking a down swing. the servers are getting lighter and lighter even at peak times for that servers representative coast. the que system which was horribly poor to start with for as long as I could remember just is dead empty now, regardless of the time of day or the server. Even the biggest of servers the juggernaut that people say is the best server of them all is showing signs of weakness as of late, even on peak hours. Yes nay fan boys , i have indeed checked multiple planets and locations to assess the population and no its not scientific fact but it is a good enough assumption given what i saw.

 

The game simply is under populated for what content is available and the event was a sad but last dtich half baked decision to try to bring the game back to life. yes it has brought in new people for sure, i have seen and talked with many but it is not holding their attentions for more than a weeks time at most. Most have just stopped logging in at all and some are questioning if its worth subbing because what they have seen so far is "fun" but "not worth money"

 

The easiest of things BW could do is just suck it up. say they wanted to blah blah blah for what ever reason they see fit to say and merge the servers east and west into two servers. They have merged before not once but twice. they have the means to do it and arent incompetent in this regard (all thought I personally thing they are). Yes names will be issues and that is why the added in the ability to add a space. yes pvp servers will say what but that is long since been killed with the pvp instance (which by the way was another example of a failed attempt to populate servers) Yes they removed population meters from teh server page (yep you guessed it another failed attempt to hide how poorly populated most servers are). Yes guilds are an issue right now but they can and should devote time to work on transfers for guilds linked to a guild leader.

 

So why not merge them? i am sure i will get some very poorly written and lame excuse from the fall on a sword crowd.

[Ethern]

Nice way to cover up to start this back up again. Stop beating a dead horse and let it go, Bioware has more or less said it's not going to happen and continuing it on is not going to change their mind. Can this please stop?!

Where did Bioware say that?

I think it's a mistake from them. Mega servers are the future.

[HuaRya]

Where did Bioware say that?

I think it's a mistake from them. Mega servers are the future.

 

Very true. Will certainly be a main selling point of the next MMO.

[jimmorrisson]

I would rank server population as the one of the top issues or the top issue amongst players. I am suprised that the matter wasn't brought up during last week's convention.

[Savej]

Where did Bioware say that?

I think it's a mistake from them. Mega servers are the future.

 

In a recent stream Ben Irving did say BW has no merge plans. No merge + no x-server = very bad call by BW (unless something bigger than SW7 and 4.0 is about to happen which I highly doubt).

[ThrakhathSpawn]

A server merge would destroy the costume tabs of anyone that got merged. I also do not want to lose any of my names!!!!!!

 

This is a solo excuse for cartel coins, not an MMO anymore, server population really doesn't mean much.

 

As new players aren't integrating or learning their character under this new companion solo hero mode, there is an increasing gap where people only group with people they know using channels and premades for PVE. This can make you think the active population in group content is much smaller than it is, but in reality, a *lot* of it is going on behind closed doors in full premades.

[IanArgent]

Depends on your server - I can get into PvP and TFPs whenever I like on Jedi Cov; at least during "prime time." I've never been able to get into ops since I've been playing (3 years+), so no difference there

[SteveColoSp]

The only other solution is cross-server queuing.

 

But according to them they have something "better than cross-server" coming. Unless it already came and was so lackluster that we missed it.

[Toraak]

I know many of you will not agree with this, But Cross server queu's are not the answer. I've played WoW with LFR, and Cross servr queu's mean only this. People will be complete ********* to each other simply because they will never see them again. I've seen it many times, and cross server in WoW drove me away from that game dealing with the terrible attitudes I saw in it's Cross server LFR. Building a servers raiding community, even if it's from merges or just from helping to teach the new 4.0 players that do not understand how to play because of the Solo easy mode leveling.

[Slowpokeking]

I also think the whole LFG system was horrible, this badly affected the experience of grouping. Other than the FPs, the LFG tool is useless, it really requires MAJOR improvement.

[gabigool]

I know many of you will not agree with this, But Cross server queu's are not the answer. I've played WoW with LFR, and Cross servr queu's mean only this. People will be complete ********* to each other simply because they will never see them again. I've seen it many times, and cross server in WoW drove me away from that game dealing with the terrible attitudes I saw in it's Cross server LFR. Building a servers raiding community, even if it's from merges or just from helping to teach the new 4.0 players that do not understand how to play because of the Solo easy mode leveling.

 

This game does not need cross server. It needs new content, and an effort by Bioware to ensure said content is functional and balanced.

 

Lack of cross-server is not the problem. It's a possible remedy to the problem. the problem is a continual decline in that population over the past two years due to it essentially being ignored.

 

Stop ignoring it. Problem goes away.

[Slowpokeking]

This game does not need cross server. It needs new content, and an effort by Bioware to ensure said content is functional and balanced.

 

Lack of cross-server is not the problem. It's a possible remedy to the problem. the problem is a continual decline in that population over the past two years due to it essentially being ignored.

 

Stop ignoring it. Problem goes away.

 

We are getting new content, Bioware needs to fix/improve a lot of current content as well.

[Nevaeh-Heaven]

Couldn't you have just stuck this comment in one of the umpteen server merge threads

 

/PSA

 

He should have. As with all topics now irrelevant on what its about that have more than 5 threads get reported as spam. More so when the thread is by the same player. If you look at all the threads they have less than 40 different players posting in them, and not all of the players agree.

I don't agree with merging server but do think players have the right to ask. They don't have the right to fill up the forums with 20+ threads on the same topic. Be that merge servers or something else entirely.

[mpddispatch]

I dont necessarily agree with everything the OP said but I too see the decline in population, even on Harbinger. The DS vs LS Event did boost the population a little bit I think, but it has returned to the levels it was before the Event kicked off, and possibly declined some. There are many ways you can measure population such as PvP queues and FP/OP queues. But I see declining population through other means. One of those is planetary populations. I play alot, yes I'm the loser with no life, so I'm on quite a few hours everyday and at different hours. I rutinely travel from planet to planet recruiting for my guild. While I'm on each planet I check to see how many instances there are and how many people are on each instance. I do this several times a day, its just something I do while im sitting idle after throwing out the recruitement message in chat. I can tell you this........population is declining, for whatever reason. The 3 most populated worlds are the starter planets and the capital planet. You know its declining when you land on a planet like Hutta at 8pm, which is in the prime time slot, and there is 54 people on the planet....on Harbinger, the most populated server there is. It doesnt just stop at Hutta either, Koribban might have 60+ on and DK hovers around 100. The other way I measure population decline is through guild membership. Im not talking about people leaving the guild to go elsewhere. What I'm talking about is the number of people you recruit that just stop logging in 2-3 weeks after they joined. I can recruit 40 people in a week and after 2-3 weeks, only 6 or 7 of the 40 I recruited are still logging into the game. I tag each person I recruit with a join date, I just checked the guild roster and since July 1st I recruited a total of 56 people. Of those 56, 41 of them stopped logging in in less than 2 weeks and only 7 of the 56 have logged in since the 2 week mark. Where did those people go? They didnt join another guild since they are still in mine. They simply quit playing. Unfortunately, this game is in a decline and short of some major overhauls, I dont see it really changing. I think the only reason this game is doing as well as it is is because of the Star Wars name attached to it. This game will keep chugging along until it outlives itself. We are coming up on the 5 year mark since launch, and Ive been here for every single one of them, but Im skeptical on whether or not it will last another 5 years. I dont think I will, I know that.

[DenariusJay]

The DS vs LS Event did boost the population a little bit I think, but it has returned to the levels it was before the Event kicked off, and possibly declined some.

 

Yep I've seen that too. It's burn out - plus the event is buggy, people completing FP's that aren't even counting (depths of manaan), also gating an entire tier of rewards behind a delayed chapter 16 was a total mistake - missing DvL rewards through the mail is another one I've seen, also the BoP for DvL packs is just deflating. List goes on.

 

Players are burnt out. The initial surge was fun but when you hit bugs and gated behind content that isn't even freaking released yet - disappointment sets in and players login less.

Edited July 24, 2016 by DenariusJay

[Toraak]

We are getting new content, Bioware needs to fix/improve a lot of current content as well.

 

But for part of this discussion they are correct. we are only getting certain types of content (in this case solo). The raiders are starting to unsub and move on to other games because of the Lack of new End game content. BW can tell us they are working on new group content all they want, but until they show us (or at least tell us) New Operations are coming, this game will continue to lose at least part of it's community as the raiders find someplace else to go. We're heading very quickly to the 2 year mark of no new raids in December. I have already heard people say if we have no new raids by that 2 year mark they will unsub , and uninstall (this isn't a threat from me, I don't no what I'll do personally, I'll probably stay for GSF until I get truly tired of it).

 

What this game truly does need instead of Cross server queu's, or Server merges is Content for all aspects of the game (Solo, PvP, PvE, GSF, FP's, Operations). This is the cure to get people to come back to the game if it's even possible anymore. The only way this will happen however is if EA/BW actually put some money back into the game, and I don't see them doing that.

Edited July 24, 2016 by Toraak

[gabigool]

But for part of this discussion they are correct. we are only getting certain types of content (in this case solo). The raiders are starting to unsub and move on to other games because of the Lack of new End game content. BW can tell us they are working on new group content all they want, but until they show us (or at least tell us) New Operations are coming, this game will continue to lose at least part of it's community as the raiders find someplace else to go. We're heading very quickly to the 2 year mark of no new raids in December. I have already heard people say if we have no new raids by that 2 year mark they will unsub , and uninstall (this isn't a threat from me, I don't no what I'll do personally, I'll probably stay for GSF until I get truly tired of it).

 

What this game truly does need instead of Cross server queu's, or Server merges is Content for all aspects of the game (Solo, PvP, PvE, GSF, FP's, Operations). This is the cure to get people to come back to the game if it's even possible anymore. The only way this will happen however is if EA/BW actually put some money back into the game, and I don't see them doing that.

 

I also think the devs need to have a serious think about the chasm they've created between the KotFE crowd and meaningful endgame content. They've made some major changes to the game that has destroyed any sort of skill development.

 

It used to happen naturally as part of gameplay, combined with a logical progression path.

 

I can empathize with wanting the endgame to be more accessible, more quickly - and it needed an overhaul - but the mechanism of change used has actually had the opposite effect.

[americanaussie]

People are finally realizing that this event is nothing more than grinding to the death without a real reason to do it, rehashed content and Cartel Market publicity. This game has had a lot of luck being Star Wars themed, if not, knowing EA I bet it would have been shutdown years ago...

 

People don't get that this DvL event is probably aimed at lost subscribers in an attempt to bring them back and get them excited about the game. It may not be aimed at people who have leveled everything to 65. It may be aimed at people like me who have only 2 characters at level 65. And 3 class stories that I have never done. All events cannot be aimed at the whole populace. They're generating interest in staging for the new expansion. It's just typical, smart marketing.

[americanaussie]

What I'm talking about is the number of people you recruit that just stop logging in 2-3 weeks after they joined. I can recruit 40 people in a week and after 2-3 weeks, only 6 or 7 of the 40 I recruited are still logging into the game. I tag each person I recruit with a join date, I just checked the guild roster and since July 1st I recruited a total of 56 people. Of those 56, 41 of them stopped logging in in less than 2 weeks and only 7 of the 56 have logged in since the 2 week mark. Where did those people go? They didnt join another guild since they are still in mine. They simply quit playing.

 

I can honestly say that once I get a character to level 65, I move on to the next character. I don't log in to the old ones as often. I make a lot of alts and they are all in various guilds. I don't bother to ensure each are in the same guild. I'm bad like that. I'm still playing, just not so much on the finished characters.

[JattaGin]

They're generating interest in staging for the new expansion. It's just typical, smart marketing.

 

^^this.

 

People don't get that this DvL event is probably aimed at lost subscribers in an attempt to bring them back and get them excited about the game.

 

I think they do understand that. But they are upset because they think the game should cater only to them, because they are the ones who have always been here and playing the most. It's like the game broke up with them, but still wants to be friends and those players also want to remain friends, but... it's not working. Some last verbal fights and eventually, the contact gets lost. Some players manage to make the transition from love relationship to friendship, but many don't.

[striderXIII]

I think a lot of players have their head in the sand as well.

Here are the facts:

 

1) BW made 90cc transfers available for a limited time and added PVP/PVE instances, effectively killing most PvP servers.

 

2) Apart from a population web-page somewhere, they don't have any indicator which servers are dead and which are populated, so new and returning players can't really know that a server is dead, and not the game when they make a character/continue a character on a dead server.

 

3) On the DvL Event: They are making you play trough all the content again on multiple newly created characters with rewards, most of which they made available trough the CM SEVEN DAYS after the event started. SEVEN DAYS. Of course people won't play the event or they'll stop playing the event.

 

Put yourself in a returning player's shoes.

Let's say you played on TOFN before KotFE hit. You have ... 7 lvl 60 characters that you invested time/money in. You return and behold! your server is dead. No PvP pops, no WZ pops, you can't even get basic mats for crafting from the GTN.

What do you do? Do you pay 70 dollars to transfer all of your characters? Or do you say "screw this game"?

Remember, you've stopped playing it before, for whatever reason.

 

Making an event that will lure in players to return and then not solving the issue that some of them will return to dead servers is a waste of energy.

 

I'm guessing that for every day this problem has existed, SWTOR has lost tens, if not hundreds of players.

 

I'll be rude and say that I think that BW has their heads so far up their collective a**es that the only way to see the light is trough their mouth.

And by then it might be too late.

[PennyAnn]

I think there are too many issues that Bioware would have to fix (and don't seem to know how judging by their other "fixes") before they could ever merge servers. Yes, two names would help alleviate some of the name change issues I would think, but not moving an entire guild's Guild Ship or a player's complete Stronghold would definitely bar me from moving too. People like to belittle that as "trinkets and shiny things" and I respond: that's what this game is about, no matter what aspect you play! It's your super prestige and unique decorations, or your min/maxed full BiS PvE or PvP gear, or that mount you love so much from the cartel market... all of the things that people love most about this game are trinkets, but they have immense value to those who value them.

 

A guild ship is not a minor investment. It's not insignificant and is painful to consider in exchange for MAYBE improving your wait times for queue pops.

 

Without figuring out how to essentially lose nothing when you change servers, I think Bioware server merger ship has sailed. It might do more harm than good, to be honest... driving away anyone whose server is being shut down because they don't WANT to move. I also do not believe that the limited populations on the remaining servers coming to Harbinger or any other server to combine will be massive enough to really influence queue pops for anything (PvP, GSF, Group Finders, etc.).

 

No, I think Bioware's best bet is to make a game that's so fun that the servers they have get populated again. They aren't having much luck with keeping that going for any length of time, however. And because of it, this is becoming more and more of a single player game all the time as entire guilds leave for WoW to find some group content and cause the server problem to get ever worse.

 

Let's just hope some better decisions for the server population issues are found, or there will be little development for these non-story areas of the game and they will further decline.