Where are all the players "flooding back"?

[UberSamoyed]

The main issue for many of us isn't the gear situation. It's the fact that there's nothing to gear for.

[Zhedzaban]

I'm a pretty average person... and once I'd gotten good gear on my characters, I didn't quit. Instead, I worked on clearing the HM/NiM content I hadn't done yet on those characters, because that was the whole point of grinding towards good gear in the first place. So your assertion is patently wrong.

 

But didn't you need to do the HM/NM content to get the bis gear? And after you got all the bis loot, did you still run the content just because? I'm sure some people did, and maybe you did to but I'm betting the average typical player didn't. They probably either quit or ran an alt.

[AscendingSky]

The main issue for many of us isn't the gear situation. It's the fact that there's nothing to gear for.

 

Right... we've had the same ops to run for TWO YEARS STRAIGHT now. What's the point of gearing up again if there's nothing new to strive for? This is a point EAWare doesn't seem to get--as witnessed by their breaking their promise that raiders wouldn't have to wait a year between new ops again (this promise being made when ToS and Ravagers came out). Obviously EAWare lied about that, as witnessed by the fact it's been TWO YEARS STRAIGHT now without new ops.

Edited December 2, 2016 by AscendingSky

[gabigool]

With any luck the development team might start asking the players what would improve the game.

 

I'm fairly certain the ducks have more say than the players ever will

[Wayshuba]

We just got 9 new chapters plus uprisings...what are you smoking where you see there's no new content? Maybe you have a handicap and cannot see I dunno. The rng is fine. Every box I've opened has had useful gear and I already had 220 stuff.

 

The RNG is NOT fine, you have been one of the ones known as lucky.

 

I have opened five crates, got one 230 implant, one crafting schematic for a Vectron Slicer, some jawa junk and the rest being useless was disintegrated.

 

Another guildie upon opening 8 crates got one 230 set piece.

 

And it is going to get worse when the crates start coming far slower because of the ridiculous increase escalating quickly to 4990 CxP a tier.

[AshlaBoga]

Right... we've had the same ops to run for TWO YEARS STRAIGHT now. What's the point of gearing up again if there's nothing new to strive for? This is a point EAWare doesn't seem to get--as witnessed by their breaking their promise that raiders wouldn't have to wait a year between new ops again (this promise being made when ToS and Ravagers came out). Obviously EAWare lied about that, as witnessed by the fact it's been TWO YEARS STRAIGHT now without new ops.

 

Apparently buffing bosses to level 65 makes them count as "new.":rolleyes:

[Wayshuba]

The traditional way? Like in 4.0 where everyone geared in 2 weeks then quit unless they were altoholics.

 

I know everyone likes to claim otherwise, but the reality is once the average person min/maxes their main they seldom play it anymore because their sense of progression stops. About the only exception is ranked pvp players and there isn't a whole lot of those.

 

Not defending the current system (although I don't hate it), just saying players needed to be slowed down.

 

The new way is so much better. Now they do the story, get through about 5 crates, see the atrocious RNG and ludicrous grind FOR THE SAME CONTENT THEY HAVE DONE FOR TWO YEARS and quit. Much better.

 

At least you kept them for a few months last time, now you get to keep them for a few days.

 

They could have slowed down gear progression without resorting to the bear of the system they have now. For example, you could have had bosses drop tokens and you need so many to get a gear piece. They could have increased the price of crystal gear, etc. At least players would still be able to plan what they want to do based on what they wanted to get.

 

Now everything is a massive grind and completely RNG. The complete worst of two worlds put into one system. If you are going to go RNG, then the crates should come fairly fast and easy - not escalate to requiring 5-10 hours of play PER CRATE, just for a spin at the slot machine. If you are going to escalate the CxP requirements quickly, then a guaranteed armor piece should drop in each and every crate.

 

It is simple, BW no longer has the desire or resource to produce meaningful MMO content (single player story ripping me out of the environment is NOT MMO content), so they are simply trying to figure a way to keep people subscribing for the same content over and over again.

[Divona]

It is simple, BW no longer has the desire or resource to produce meaningful MMO content (single player story ripping me out of the environment is NOT MMO content), so they are simply trying to figure a way to keep people subscribing for the same content over and over again.

 

Yup. This is clear for some time now. There are some fans who deny this because they are happy how it is now. Its perfectly ok if that generates income for the game. But eventually even whales who buy CM stuff have to move on because no one is buying cosmetic stuff as most playerbase have left game.

Edited December 2, 2016 by Divona

[yaxmutal]

On the plus side I have seen more players online than recently, more in guild, multiple instances on Fleet, on Odessan etc.

 

On the minus side the gearing system is DISGUSTING. I am not going to spend 300 hours per character to try and get gear. I will let my sub lapse and wait until they admit this was a horrible mistake and fix it then I will return.

 

I love the game but this RNG + insane grind is an incredible blunder.

[Vinak]

Bioware doesn't seem to know what an expansion is anymore.

 

Literally a day's worth of content and implementing a horrid RNG grind system that is nearly on par with Asian MMO's just isn't going to draw people in. More likely to chase them away in fact.

 

I don't have the time to play the same old content I used to play and literally get nothing for it. I'm a "well establish" player. I don't consider random greens, armor shells, companion gifts, and jawa junk to be worthwhile rewards for doing...well, anything. Really. Maybe a brand new player might find those things worthwhile perhaps.

 

MMO's work on a carrot and stick methodology. Take away the carrot and replace it with a random bag that will more often than not have nothing in it breaks this methodology. It's bad enough we haven't had any new content in 2 years now.

Edited December 2, 2016 by Vinak

[mfourcustom]

Man I remember back when 2.0 dropped and **** was nuts! So many people so many instances of makeb was the closest i've seen the game to launch in terms of player pop since the first threeish weeks of launch. I know in SOR **** was going ham as well but most def not as big as 2.0... Man idk every xpac has gotten just worse in terms of content/support for the game. I think SOR was probably it for the game in terms of "second chances/third chances for most players. The large majority of players I knew and came to knew from server merges and such left the game when 8v8 rated was removed... Granted It's not like i knew *********** everyone but i'm talking about more than a handful or large solid as **** guilds that either focused in both pvp and pve or just pvp. Many of those players came back for SOR gave the game their "third" chance so to speak and it just wasn't anything really newish ya new story and an ops or so but how many times can you run the ONE newest op knowing this ops is probably all your gonna get that xpac.. lol how many times can you play the same WZ with no point behind them other than queuing 4s if you can get behind the idea's of 4s... Now i know SOR was a renaissance period so to speak for the game but the game just doesn't hold people... You get to a point in these xpacs where you find yourself lacking all motivation to do anything at least this is what I gatherer from speaking with friends who refuse to come back for 5.0 and mostly looking back I know for a fact I would have quit this game around like 1.4 lol If i didn't have a great guild filled with people I enjoyed spending my days with... The devs have to say these things like "players will flood back" its their job... but really I think they burned the majority of their as i call them "mmo player base" too many times not only with these ****** story driven xpacs but with many failed promises and lies in the past and down right stupid moves (removing 8v8/making nightmare ops pointless) It is what it is I guess this game was doomed to fail with EA in charge and a story focus and not a content focus like wow has (fail in terms of being an mmo i should say) It's more or less been a very depressing xpac one every I knew that i was hoping to come back have said they will not lol and fleet numbers during early accuses have been sad really (yes i understand fleet numbers are not a direct indication of server player base health) but still I know for a fact during 2.0 early accuse lol I wasn't saddened by the numbers I saw on fleet nor did I get so much negative feed back from friends/guildmates I was trying to get to come back to the game and give it a shot again. The games on its last legs imo in terms of player base maybe not overall health of the game since i'm sure bio and EA fail still are making solid profits off the cartel market whales but you have to stop and ask yourself what has the game really devolved in to? It's sure as hell not an MMO anymore It was yes at one time and if you wanna call it that so you can feel like a "hard core bad *** MMO player" go ahead but your wrong... lol You cant burn people this many times, you cant string along people with "better than cross server" and you shouldn't be removing *********** content in a game that's already fighting and uphill battle. I sometimes wish this game never had the star wars named tagged on to it see how long it lasted after launch I guess about one and a half years. Who knows all i know is its 2016 and the game has no cross server queue system and had that system been deployed sometime around 2.0ish it would have saved this game. Now we have this... Whatever it is. Edited December 2, 2016 by mfourcustom

[Frenesi]

Yea, lol. I guess you can only pull "single-player only" expansion one time

[jauvtus]

snip

 

But hey, we might get another DvL event in the future! Surely that will bring a lot of ppl back!

[mfourcustom]

But hey, we might get another DvL event in the future! Surely that will bring a lot of ppl back!

 

Should that happen... andIf people really fall for that **** again and do it lol I will lose all faith I have in humanity.

[Alexandrozingsw]

But hey, we might get another DvL event in the future! Surely that will bring a lot of ppl back!

 

for the achievment you say? =P

[Setta]

Should that happen... andIf people really fall for that **** again and do it lol I will lose all faith I have in humanity.

 

Well I hate to break it to you, but you know there's going to be someone out there, somewhere, who's going to be all for it .

[jauvtus]

Should that happen... andIf people really fall for that **** again and do it lol I will lose all faith I have in humanity.

 

You know there are three infinite things...

[Setta]

You know there are three infinite things...

 

I thought it was 2, and one of them I'm not entirely sure about.

[majopucik]

So where is everyone?

 

lol like Ben said on the stream: "everybody came back, they loved the story..."

 

I guess everybody is still on their way

[Vaerah]

SWTOR encountered 3 "events", each of which could potentially be fatal to a MMO.

 

1) Has been taken by EA. This alone is guarantee of a despicable future.

 

2) "Free to play new business model" happened, and it happened exactly right after this truly expensive AAA budget MMO had been released with a suscription model. BW had really to waste endless amounts of manpower to retrofit SWTOR so that it could survive in the "free to play" MMO era. Of course, this impacted both the game fun (paywalls are never nice, expecially when you have them even as full sub) and contents amount / quality.

 

3) "Casual / solo player era" happened, where the highly social MMOs of old were slowly taken over by solo / casual friendly ones. I and millions other players are "guilty" of that, as we were in our university age in early 2000 and could dedicate 8+ hours a day to gaming. But today? We got families, jobs, bad jobs and no jobs to deal with.

Needless to say, MMOs had to gradually drop their social requirements and group requirements.

I had TREMENDOUS fun at 40 men raiding, but nowadays even finding 8 people to play at the same time most of the time, became a dire task.

 

So, SWTOR managed to miss 3 massively important boats, it's actually only thanks to BW / EA big shoulders if SWTOR has not gone down.

However the struggle is all here. These "solo player" expansions, featuring little group content, are a testament to modern day gamers. All those who CAN play a lot and in large groups, are going to find themselves quite left in the cold in these days.

[Costello]

I think it is a damn shame that people aren't flooding back. The Kotet story (except for chapter 9 and time stop chats) was vastly better than Kotfe, but really after a year of being told each dull and disappointing chapter was the best ever why would anyone give this another chance and come back.

 

There is horrendous ability and stat bloat to the point it looks and feels childish, off the top of my head take the maurader he has upward of 6 defensive cool downs (I may miss some):

Cloak of Pain

Saber Ward

Undying Rage

Force Camouflage

Obfuscate (yes you need to spend a utility here)

Unity (yep need a companion and some legacy stuff)

 

All vital to be used as part of the cool down management system. The game is serious more about cool down management than reactive combat.

 

While the game world is stale and boring, nothing ever happens and the fleets as the player hubs are equally lifeless. With the lack of immersion it makes exploring or being part of the game world pointless (chances are you can't interact with it anyway) which puts a demand to constantly have content. Which would be great but they are rehashing 5 year old content.

 

While the End Game grind, is for gear that now comes from random lock boxes (my last contained 4 piece of junk that got scrapped), and what does getting this gear allow for. Easier runs through repeated Vet or master level content where things have more health and do more damage for more random lock boxes to get more pieces of junk to scrap. Hell if I was half as smart as the million of people that didn't come back I'd just wait it out until either I can buy nearly top tier stuff off the GTN (which I can finance by purchasing hyper crates inplace of my subscription) or just wait for next level increase when basic new gear is better than the best that 300 GC had to offer.

 

So really what is to encourage people to flood back. 10 Hours of new story and 1 hour of a let down of story? Even if that works whats to keep them?

[Dreadonis]

It's going to be a flash flood followed by drought.

[Neshira]

I've already been seeing more people on the fleet and defintely more people in the expansion areas than I usually see. I'm only playing the first one now (not the new one, the one before that.) so I'd assume that the new expansion areas are even more populated.

[TUXs]

I've already been seeing more people on the fleet and defintely more people in the expansion areas than I usually see. I'm only playing the first one now (not the new one, the one before that.) so I'd assume that the new expansion areas are even more populated.

What server? There were 2 instances of Pub Fleet on Harbinger last night (about 9 central)...one had 174 people, the other had 16. No bounce, no returning players...just the same few.

[Nomaad]

I've already been seeing more people on the fleet and defintely more people in the expansion areas than I usually see. I'm only playing the first one now (not the new one, the one before that.) so I'd assume that the new expansion areas are even more populated.

 

More fake news.