January 26th Livestream Wrap-up

[DanNV]

Resputin,

Don't be so daft, he's talking about WoW & everyone knows it. I have no clue what they are are up to & I gathered as much. Furthermore, I'd be more than happy to pay for an expansion if it meant actual server maintenance & a decent amount of content: class stories, multiple PvP/GSF maps, multiple raids, multiple uprisings, & etc.

 

I paid for RotHC and SoR and would pay for new expansions if they had real content. Of course, that assumes they actually fix the gearing, if it stays as is there's no point.

[PlasmaJohn]

Eternal Championship case in point, quite a few of the people I spoke with testing it on PTS had no real interest to do it more than once on live as they'd done it to death on PTS.

And then there are those of us that did it once or twice live and never gave it a second thought. The fights were neat to see a few times but the rewards just weren't enough incentive once idle curiosity was satisfied.

[Avicii]

The Good:

 

A storyline on Iokath, choice of companion alert, and a staged release for a new Operations. Not bad. Not bad at all. Now if you can squeeze in an 8v8 wz and give GSF a badly needed maintenance pass I think you'd be well on the way to a sustainable content pipeline. If you can stick to this as an annual cadence I think you'll start to earn back some trust.

 

Would I prefer a whole new Op to be released? Of course. But I do understand the effort it requires to develop them. Just to pluck a silver lining out of this I'm going to predict that this will be one of the better QA'd Ops due to how it'll be rolled out.

 

The Fugly:

 

The concept that gear is an incentive is completely wrong. To paraphrase Dr. Demming: Unfair gear systems are a demotivator. RNG is anything but fair. The grind itself makes me just not want to bother.

 

Galactic Command as the primary gear path is an unmitigated disaster as was 5.1's change to bolster. Anybody with even a passing familiarity with PvP will tell you that a gear disparity causes significant harm to that playstyle.

 

Stop trying to shove GC down out throats. It's only going to make us puke it back in your face. Put bolster back to where it was in 5.0 ASAP. That's an easy "win".

 

Reasonable people want rewards commensurate with effort or skill and certainly not governed by a roll of the dice.

 

Agree with all of this.

 

Eric, PvP should be about ability and knowledge not gear.

How do you guys expect new and returning players to compete with skilled geared players who have are T3 through massive grinding or exploiting?

 

They do not have 208 set bonus or gear, they will always be at a disadvantage with no catch up mechanic. In addition the more geared will win due to this and get more tokens while the newer players and casuals will get less tokens furthering the gap.

 

How is this fun or rewarding? It is only fun for those that want to win by having better gear and crushing players who dont, which results in them not queuing or subbing.

 

Why isnt anything being done to address this? Like real action. No one should have to grind for 70 hours in T1 and NOT receive their set bonus to at least help start to get on a competitive level.

 

Suggestion: Increase CXP experience 50% to increase the leveling, increase drop rates by 50%. Ensure that when a player completes T1 they have a full set of T1 gear, send them a token or something to buy it. This will alleviate a lot of the pain with the bolster change. Do the same thing with T2. Leave T3 and Legendary a grind since it is clear skill based competitive game play is no longer something the Devs are interested in.

[RexRuiz]

Is the daily and story be available to preferred users that completed Kotet??

 

Thanks

[Demongoo]

[*]Two returning Companions: Quinn and Elara.

 

I really hope you get to kill Quinn. Also when are we getting Mako back? I miss her

[Osada]

I do imagine all these opinions/suggestions would be neglected and forgotten at some point, but decided to place my coin here as well.

 

Many players do ask for more ops, wz, better gear ect. BW announces of new planets, new missions, return of some companions. I look at all these new chapters and new planets and get dissapointed: they are nice, the galaxy must have billions of planets, thus releasing new one sounds fine. But why not concentrate on the existing planets? Adding new maps, locations, new stories. Now you visit a planet and there's like 1 city in there. or no cities. where's the joy of exploration? For an example, I'd like to see Alderaan much bigger. there's more places like that. and I don't think it's too hard to update the planet with other continents, cities. because how many times the players visited Ziost? why put so much effort in creating new planet which will be forgotten in a month or two?

 

Decorations: BW creates more and more new crates, new decorations. Fine. But why not use the designs of the ones incorporated in the game already? Again: would point to Alderaan, Kaas, Coruscant. Certainly, players purchase crates to get lots of decorations. Good business, but the ideas and designs are getting downhill.

 

Not sure if that is possible to add some extra hooks in strongholds, but that would be a nice gesture. Especially with guildships (a ship of that size should easily accomodate 2500 troops and personell, now you barely place like 50-100? of them to run out of space. Abandoned ships...)

 

What about new strongholds? Any ideas of creating more of those? (and not to mention an eternal bug of no way to invite opposite faction players to your guild SH and FS)...

Edited January 27, 2017 by Osada

[casirabit]

I'm not going to kill Quinn. That's just dumb.

 

People have different ideas. Just like some killed Kaiylo (my agent did-she had a history with her and didn't trust her).

 

Some killed Aric.

 

Some killed Arcann and Senya depending on how you saw and dealt with things.

 

Some killed Koth -They didn't like him or didn't like the way he did things. (My sorceress killed him, my smuggler didn't)

 

Some killed Scorpio (Done the stor y twice and both my sorceress and my smuggler both killed her)

 

Some have wanted to kill Quinn for ages. (My warrior might-She has a history with him and has a problem with him betraying her. Did she expect it, of course, but being a Sith Warrior she would want to pay him back for betraying her.)

[stuntskateboar]

One, I just wanted to say thank you for the these updates, and FINALLY a new raid. I have very much enjoyed the new story, but I'm a raider at heart. However I'm going to echo Lecto's issues with the game. I'm also on Pot5, and the server is dead. I'm a pub side raiding guild primarily, and most nights we can't do anything. No raiding, PVP, GSF, anything larger than a group of 4.

 

I've built a home on this server with my guild friends, and to expect all of us to pay real money to transfer when we are already paying money for a subscription is ridiculous. The problem lies in SWTOR's hands. They know how much population the server has, how little PVP or GSF are ran every week. Hell I'm on the fleet right now, and including myself there are 7 people on. 7. That's outrageous for 6PM Eastern. I started this game on Kinrath Spiders. We were moved to Fat Man long before our population ever got this low. Then from Fat Man to Pop5 again long before the population even got close to what we are experiencing. We have been left to die on this server. I am paying you for the same product people on Harbinger (for example) receive, but I can't do half the content they can because the population is non-existent. You should have moved us at 4.0. Now it's far past time. It's time to move servers. Please.

[Trlance]

Question about this story War on lokath: this story will be like Makeb? I mean when choose Republic i will have little diffrent story than i will choose Empire with another character? 2 chooses mean 2 diffrents ways to done story like with Makeb or just this choose its only about having Quinn or Elara and story is almost the same doesnt matter what side i will take?

 

People have different ideas.

- my Inquisitor will kill them all ^^ Sage will not xd Edited January 27, 2017 by Trlance

[dawg_bone]

The first and most common suggestion is to go back to 3.0/4,0 gearing and move on. That will take some serious work to integrate PvP, but it should be doable since BW already has the code base for that system. This should be implementable within 2 weeks.

 

Please don't ever talk about coding again.

[PenguinForDinner]

[/quote=DanNV] The first and most common suggestion is to go back to 3.0/4,0 gearing and move on. That will take some serious work to integrate PvP, but it should be doable since BW already has the code base for that system. This should be implementable within 2 weeks.

 

Please don't ever talk about coding again.

 

That's a very non-useful post.

No it would not be trivial to revert to the 3.x/4.x gearing system - but no it's not rocket science.

This farce should never have been implemented in the first place...ripping it out now is both worthwhile and helpful.

And yes, I've been "coding" since 1978.

[EarlWhiteHaven]

I'm hoping their promise that the daily area will have new mission types will mean they are moving away from the whole click on the nodes or kill the enemies before other players do format. The daily areas have been one of the weakest parts of the game throughout the years since they discourage playing when there are other players because if its busy I usually end up spending most of my time waiting by a node for it to be clickable again or running a circuit hoping enemies re-spawn.

[Alericus]

meh...unless I see server merges I wont be playing this content at all. I wont be renewing my sub without mergers and Ive been on since launch. I'm done with this type of game behavior and feel its not worth the wait. You've had well over 2 years to do the right thing and so far nothing, not even a comment. Fine my wallet will do the talking.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

I'm hoping their promise that the daily area will have new mission types will mean they are moving away from the whole click on the nodes or kill the enemies before other players do format. The daily areas have been one of the weakest parts of the game throughout the years since they discourage playing when there are other players because if its busy I usually end up spending most of my time waiting by a node for it to be clickable again or running a circuit hoping enemies re-spawn.

 

Hey there are plenty of unpopulated servers to jump on if that's an issue.

[HoggWeed]

After today's stream... here is my take, and some other random thoughts. Hopefully this comes off without sounding too bitter.

 

I was hoping we would get a much bigger content announcement, say for Summer. A complete operation, warzone, gsf map. So much has been neglected, in addition to the mess that is 5.0/cxp. I've paid for this game for 5 years. GM of a medium/large sized (well, small in activity now) guild on Harbinger. Probably a years worth of gameplay if I add up my alts (my main is something like 200 days). Sadly, I cannot support this game anymore. I've loved this game, but I am disappointed with the studio if I'm being polite. Kudos for finally trying to do something about group content, but group content should never have been neglected like this to begin with...

 

I have very low expectations for daily areas, especially after Ziost which was a graveyard in less than a month after it came out.

 

New story is good for those players, but frankly I haven't enjoyed the story since SoR. The chapter stories are not my cup of tea, both in mode and content.

 

New operation is 2 years too late. 1 boss will not bring back guilds to life, and that's really what I (and many other dead guilds) need to continue to have fun. Its just not enough to make daily players come back so GSF or PVP is healthy on most servers, nor guilds to have people login daily to 'do stuff.' I fully appreciate that this takes time, and maybe better than holding off until late 2017, but in the end the interaction with other players having fun is what keeps paid subscribers around. Most guilds need a large content update to get people subscribed again, to do things. Of course this is just my opinion, 5.2 won't do that.

 

Obviously the other issues with cxp/bug fixing/class balance should be addressed... After 5 years, bug fixes and class balance really aren't even worth talking about at this point. That's a sad thing.

 

Ultimately I'm most frustrated with the studio's lack of communication with their player base. The class rep system should have been a priority, so there were at least a handful of high level paying players interacting directly with the community manager. Sorry Musco, nothing personal, but I would grade you an F as a community manager. No offense, its just how I feel as a paying customer. There are SO many things in this game that are neglected for months and in some cases years, without a word of input from you. Yes I've seen Snave's interviews and I heard your policy of 'well if there's nothing to announce I'd rather not comment until I actually have something confirmed' (paraphrasing), but when years pass and so many things are ignored we feel like you don't care. I'm sure you do care, and maybe you are limited by someone else such as Ben or someone 'in corporate'. In which case they deserve credit for the what I expect to be a continually dwindling subscriber base.

 

Doesn't change how I and many others feel/felt about the state of this game and the lack of communication with your player base.

 

I've loved 5 years of PVP, raiding, cheevo grinding, playing original class stories. It may be just a game, but its given me a lot of fond memories.

 

Sub is done 2/7, I'll not be back. Thank you.

 

iv played 4.5 yrs love the pvp.Pve just bad. with 5.0/5.1 im done gave ESO a try first time last night loved it. the GM in this game only care for $ they never care about the player. hope the servers shut down

[Khaleg]

Thank you everyone for tuning in! If you missed it, here is what we discussed.

 

On Tuesday we released Game Update 5.1 - Defend the Throne

• Master Mode Chapters
  
• 5 new Uprisings
  
• Galactic Command Gearing Changes -- We know that the changes in 5.1 are just the start. We are looking into simplifying, making faster, and making more alt friendly the gearing in GC. We are also looking into making getting through Command Ranks faster.

 

Coming in April, Game Update 5.2 which will include

• Brand new story arc on Iokath. The Empire and Republic are fighting over control of the planet and you, as the Alliance Commander will choose who to side with.
  
• Two returning Companions: Quinn and Elara.
  
• After completing Iokath's storyline, it opens up into a new daily area.
  
• Coming with Iokath is the first boss of a new Operation. Each subsequent boss will be released in the future with the entire Op being completely released this year.
  
• We are planning to have a PTS for 5.2 in the next few weeks. More details to follow.
  

 

-eric

 

Pathetic self - patting on the shoulder stream. For no reason...

Nothing about very much needed server merges (or even better X server instancing), or at least offer free (or more accurate at all) guild/ship/guild and personal stronghold transfers. Without that the 90 cc transfer offer is so pointless, ignorant and impudent that it's almost unbelievable.

The best and most intelligent thing would be x server insrancing though (implemented 1+ year ago that is because you've lost countless old, new, and returning customers because you didn't implement this and went on with your ignorant inaction "strategy") but you even lack the competence and know how to do that in your company, my guess is this is not only true for the tech guys/devs but even more for the management. I mean, which company releases such an expensive game on a modified beta engine without updates, and in addition has not even people in the company left who made these modifications, thus not having any know how regarding this core aspect left in addition to the initial stupidly to release that on a beta engine with no updates etc. in the first place?

Incompetence on so many level, just wow... but sadly it's not WoW which is run by an intelligent and competent company who made the right decisions even at the right time as opposed to Bioware. Other companies did too. What else defines incompetence and ignorance if not that?

 

We are suffering on totally dead servers like Jarkai Sword which didn't see a SINGLE pvp/gsf pop for 9 months now, has mostly infinite queues even for stupid tactical fps, max 10 people on the fleet at peak times, all other zones dead as it gets. Many people already unsubbed and will never come back. Yes, some individuals move but many including me rather stop paying for your game before accepting this ignorant, incompetent, impudent and unacceptable server transfer offer where you have to leave major effort like a full expanded guild ship and stronghold, etc. behind. Do something about this or die more or less slowly, rather with an increasing pace from now on.

Other servers are dying too... quicker and quicker, more and more...

Edited January 28, 2017 by Khaleg

[Khaleg]

meh...unless I see server merges I wont be playing this content at all. I wont be renewing my sub without mergers and Ive been on since launch. I'm done with this type of game behavior and feel its not worth the wait. You've had well over 2 years to do the right thing and so far nothing, not even a comment. Fine my wallet will do the talking.

 

Same here. My patience and good will is totally gone due to this, unique in the industry, incompetence and ignorance.

Edited January 28, 2017 by Khaleg

[SteveTheCynic]

Unlike Koth, amirite?

 

-eric

Hey, my Commandogirl made peace with him during KotET. Nicely done, the storytelling if you go down that route (blow the Spire in Chapter X, *AND* let the reactor blow its top in Chapter III, then make peace when he shows up in KotET).

[DarthKartus]

Elara's returning at last, praise the gods!

[Aries_cz]

A small $20 million company put in an entirely new area in there game with voiced story, a new complete system of character advancement added to the game (Aegis), and three new 5-man dungeons. How can a company, with a decent MMO but one not on the top 10 lists, out do SWTOR for content production? That is how pathetic the amount of content SWTOR players get for their money is compared to the rest of the market.

 

Uhhh, Squeenix is not a "small, $20 million company". Their production budget is massive, as is the amount of money funneled into FF14's development (I do assume you are raving about that one, based on your other posts)

[Jepac]

[/quote=DanNV] The first and most common suggestion is to go back to 3.0/4,0 gearing and move on. That will take some serious work to integrate PvP, but it should be doable since BW already has the code base for that system. This should be implementable within 2 weeks.

 

 

 

That's a very non-useful post.

No it would not be trivial to revert to the 3.x/4.x gearing system - but no it's not rocket science.

This farce should never have been implemented in the first place...ripping it out now is both worthwhile and helpful.

And yes, I've been "coding" since 1978.

 

I don't think this game is written in COBOL tho.

Edited January 28, 2017 by Jepac

[Plk_Lesiak]

My God, so much negativity here.

 

TBH, this stream promised more then I've expected to see. It's still obvious that they have very little resources, too little to develop the game in pace of some other high-profile MMOs... But the Quinn/Elara showdown sounds very cool and the fact they even work on new op is a nice surprise.

 

Although I think that the slow pace would be much more acceptable for most if they lowered subscription fee... Truly, it's lower where I live, but from US/UK point of view it would be a very hard sell for me - paying for this game the same money that I pay for WoW, a game threatening to drown me with content every few months and providing small updates all the time.

 

(I wonder what happens to Dorne when you side with Empire? Can you take her prisoner? Can you lock her up in a dung... Well, nevermind )

[TL_Roff]

I did pop this in during the live stream wrap up but.. it kinda slid on by..

 

Gent's what about the SOLO players which likely make up more then 50% of your player base..?

 

Solo players..

They don't do group content... the reason are their own.. but it could they're just super casual players.. or don't really have time or the patience to work with other players to do group content, or have had some experiences with "The Impatient ones" (Come on hurry hurry just hit space bar.. ell if you would keep up with the rest of us you wouldn't get killed etc etc.. get my drift?) ,And don't want to deal with other players because of it. People who play swtor really just for the "story" for the interactive movie part of it.

 

I'm a mostly solo players.. and here's what I would like to see.

 

All flash points having a solo story mode....you don't need to give us a over powered bot.. Just let us take more the none companion with us.. for that matter up to 3 or 4 of our companions! (hey, unlike real players companions will not run off and leave you hanging! We've got all these companions.. let us use them more!

 

Same same star fortresses, same same, uprisings, same same any "story" mode group content. This includes Operations!

 

Assuming you would do this the only addition to game mechanics that I can think of as a must have is some sort of group formation controls for what I should think are some fairly obvious reasons.

 

I'm nearly 60 and finding actuall mature players who are not going to rush off and leave the people they are with in a lurch is a very very very rare thing (don't belive me?.. go use group finder and do some pvp.. pay attention to the number of players that actually try to go for victory conditions instead of seeking out the nearest enemy player to PvP instead of trying to co-ordinate some team strategy)

 

There nothing as a game dev's that you can do to make players co-operate more with each other other then the carrot and stick approach.. which will raise a stink just as it has in any other MMO that tried it. SO better to not deal with that.. the Players either do it on their own or they do not.

 

In the mean time I pay my monthly sub. I want access to the same thing everyone else has access to and I don't want to have to depend on other players to do it...because after several years of SWTOR (subbed since last year before KOTET/KOTFE) the one thing I have learned as a given is other players cannot always be depended on..I've seen raiding/PvP/ Ops guilds break up because players could not be depended on to suck it up for thier guild mates..to many selfish self centered types.. ie Children (at least to my older eyes.. they may disagree...but the behavior I see renders their opinion on the matter pretty much BS. Sorry if it hurts anyone feelings.. but it kinda like taking a running jump off a shear cliff..you may not like but your still going to fall to the bottom!)

 

SO what about them SOLO players which are a huge part of your player base?

 

Maybe if the more wanna be social types are faced with the fact that players DON'T need to be social to play..well, could change the dynamic.. PvP is still going to stay group content and could be expanded almost exponentially. I see no reason why there cannot be open faction based PvP zones with up to 30-60 players per side.. the game engine can certainly handle it..( though players may need to turn some graphic options down to avoid system lag in all but the most high end computers)

 

ANyway.. them my thoughts on what going on..

 

Right now the only place I'm getting command points is anything that's NOT group content.

 

Oh and speaking of command points.. ya'll left this user with the impression that command points would be a stand alone currency. *shrugs* they're useless to me. I play Solo. unless I can get the drops locked behind group content they are absolutely useless to me.

 

And for the record.. My real world life I deal with hundreds of people a day.. when it's time to recreate I DO NOT WANT TO DEAL WITH MORE DUMB SELFISH SELF CENTERED UNTHINKING HUMANS.. noth'n personal.. but there is a reason I'm a solo player!

 

So, more Solo love please.

[Plk_Lesiak]

So, more Solo love please.

 

Well, they are giving us more story and a new daily questing area... It seems solo players are still getting more love then anyone else.

[Vasharia]

There is currently an issue with the new Master Mode Chapters:

If you finish a Chapter on Master Mode and you look into your Chapters then you don't see the medal that you already finished it.

Also Archievements for the Master Mode Chapters wuld be awesome