Let me get this straight...

[Resputin]

WOW has cross realm play. What does SWTOR have? WOW invested in their game to help players on lower pop servers still enjoy the benefits of group activities...what did SWTOR do?

 

Not sure, how much would it cost to make that happened. If they invested in that, how much time would they have to budget into other content to make people stay? Its all about the budge. People complain about how many dead servers we have, well right there should answer why we dont get great expansions, why our ops is lacking. They don't have the funds to be able to produce it.

 

As far as transfers. I don't know if it cost resources to actually do it or if its all automated. If its all automated then they should have free transfers all the time. If it cost resources then they should maybe just open it up for a short period of time.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

If given an option of solo vs ops, and people take solo, then that is absolutely an option that should be available going forward. It would be foolish to ignore the Oricon lesson.

 

You REALLY have to think outside the bounds of a customer here if you actually want new operations to continue being created.

 

2.x they were more or less forced on people, metrics would have dictated healthy amount of people doing them regardless of *grumble grumble* ). 3.x they listened to *grumble grumble* and made it optional. Metrics would have shown a large decline in people doing the operation content and thus they have made no more to date as it was not justified.

 

As a player who wants operations I feel if they went the 3.0 route again the metrics would be even worse due to reduced population and we'd see no more operations being made again.

 

I feel we have solo story so why not group story? If you don't want to do the group story then fine but this is an MMO so that's sort of bad luck.

 

I agree gating solo story with group boss at the end is a bad idea but I do think the operations need their own incentive.

 

Rather than forcing people into group content they would rather not do (yes, that is what it is), they'd be far better off incentivising ops more (and with more than just a faster gear progression).

 

It's only forcing if they make it solo content with forced group content at the end. If it's group content all the way through there is no forcing of anything.

 

I've never even finished the solo part of Oricon, since I know I won't be able to actually complete the story. It's a whole section of the game that might as well not exist for me since I can't (in my case, it is not just preference, it is a physical impossibility) actually complete it, there is no point even starting.

 

That was Oricon though and I'm not advocating for solo story with gated part at the end. I'm advocating for pure group content. This is an MMO and I'm sure there will be more solo story content to come but if they did make a pure group story then so be it. Many group players felt they needed to leave the game due to no new operations for 2 years so if you feel you need to do the same because they made a story based group content in the mid of the year ( with no doubt an solo expansion end of the year ) then you need to make that choice for yourself.

 

For them to develop content ( costs money ) and give an option for everyone to skip it a 5 minute fight that they probably won't repeat it ludicrous from a development and profitability point of view ( the problem with 3.0 operations - well one of ).

 

Dangle a big enough carrot in front of players, and make the entry into ops faster and simpler, and people will do them. Try to force them into it and most will just refuse out of spite.

 

Yet as an avid pugger 2.x was the golden age of operations for this game and that's in my less than prime APAC timezone. Clearly 2.x got something right. Remember apparently 4.0 launch had the highest subs ever so ifi t was purely population based then this would have been the best time to pug but it wasn't - it was awful. 3.0 was similarly disappointing.

 

People might not have liked it but 2.0 worked well for operations. The only change I would suggest is not making it solo content that leads to forced group content. Make it group story all the way through.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

The gating that Oricon did was a big mistake. For every person it pulled into raiding it caused several more to rage about it. Over one fight and a stupid cut-scene. Content gating (in both directions) is just as bad an idea as forced PvP.

 

You said it yourself, the utterly broken tuning was what killed raiding in 3.0. Content gating would not have solved anything there.

 

I think read my previous post as that's my thoughts on most of this in regards to gating.

 

I'm happy for a form of compromise but I think offering a solo option is plain silly unless of course it was solo content to begin with which 2.0 and 3.0 were and was a mistake to end it with group content.

[AscendingSky]

Why did you get so far away from that philosophy and really only created single player content for so long (baring uprisings that really are some of the most mediocre content made)? Different content is not mutually exclusive but you focused so much on just one area with little else being focused on for a very long time and to the detriment of the game as well as your gamers.

 

They were trying to court the indecisive casual gamer demographic, the one that will get free to play games and then spend hundreds in microtransactions. Hence a hard focus on solo content and tokens you can buy to instantly start out at near max level. Which destroyed this game as an MMO, and a lot of the people who bought this game to play an MMO instead of an episodic single player RPG with a graphical chatroom interface ended up leaving.

 

They've been promising they'd focus more on group content for, what, two years now? They also promised we'd never go a year or more without a new operations dropping again, and now it's been two and a half years since the last, so we see how untrustworthy EAWare are now.

 

Make this an MMO again, devs. Please. I beg you.

[wababab]

Gear wise, yes some changes... not all grind. One of the options is just looting it from bosses in Operations.

 

I only pvp, not into raiding, how does this help my main and alts i do not know:eek:

[wababab]

Playing PvP will give you Unassembled Components which you can turn in for an Unassembled piece to turn in for gear. Gear turn-ins require Command Tokens which are a Legacy-wide currency you get from Command Crates.

 

So returning to something like comms grind for pvp gear, which in turn is not pvp gear but it is pve gear.

 

Large amount players will play swtor for pvp and story lines as main interest. And pve players play pvp only for whatever 'magical points' they can gain from pvp. And as fair few, I have no interest of joining guilds and running operations and other pve stuff

 

There was no need to mess with pvp gear system at all mister:mon_trap:

Edited January 25, 2017 by wababab

[Wayshuba]

So you think its good to compare these two examples and expect them to have the same amount of content.

Example A

Expansion =15 sub

Example B

Expansion = 20 on top of your 15 sub

 

I have no clue how anyone could look at that and expect example A to have the same amount of content example B drops. You have less revenue so you put out less content.

 

Okay, I'll bite. Let's take out the $20 expansion and just go with the content you get with the sub.

 

BWs was already stated.

 

Here is the other one: http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/topics/detail/d90ea3ee6d083eaba4f22e5deefe934b0a0a464e

 

Ooops. Their patch that comes with the sub still has ten times the content of what BW gave you for your sub.

 

No matter how you look at it, SWTOR players get some of the least amount of new content compared to almost any other AAA MMO on the market.

[Wayshuba]

I do not like WoW. This game you describe might sound fun. What is this game?

 

Thanks!

 

Sorry for the delayed response. It is FFXIV - A Realm Reborn with the Heavensward expansion. A new expansion is coming this June. You have to buy the game (but it's a bundle for $40) and it has a sub fee but this is what you also get major patches on a regular basis for that sub fee.

 

Hope that helps.

Edited January 27, 2017 by Wayshuba

[Wayshuba]

Well first you cant compare. The one has a expansion which cost 20 bucks on top of the sub. The other one is a update that comes with your sub. Just because they call it a expansion doesnt make one. In my opinion expansion is content you get on top of the regular game and comes with a purchase price. My only guess is that they dont think they would profit by spending a X amount of money in a true expansion with the amount of revenue they would make from it. I guess SOR their last true expansion was not that profitable. If it was my guess is that instead of every December us getting updates we would of got huge expansions like 2.0 and 3.0.

 

Fine, skip the expansion... Here are the patches you get with the sub fee.

 

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/topics/detail/d90ea3ee6d083eaba4f22e5deefe934b0a0a464e

 

Still outpaces BW "expansions" by ten fold.

[AscendingSky]

Fine, skip the expansion... Here are the patches you get with the sub fee.

 

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/topics/detail/d90ea3ee6d083eaba4f22e5deefe934b0a0a464e

 

Still outpaces BW "expansions" by ten fold.

 

Most MMOs on the market do at this point. That whole 'deciding to run the marathon at mile 5 when the leader is a mile from the finish line' saying is so very, very evocative of what EAWare is doing. This is far too little, far too late.

Edited January 27, 2017 by AscendingSky