Galactic Command Gearing Roadmap - Coming This Week

[ahnog]

Please improve the rate at which set pieces drop from boxes.

[DavidAtkinson]

That was extremely well written and more than highlights the reasons why the game is losing subscribers and guilds and dedicated MMO players. The only people that have liked the changes since 4.0 are the solo story people and lots of the original players started to get turned off at 3.x. That alone should have rung the warning bells.

I get why they wanted to attract those solo people, especially as the movies were coming out and there weren't any other solo player SW games around. But they didn't need to alienate the rest of the player base for some quick bucks $$.

The implementation of the whole thing was poorly thought out. They could have easily made it so that there was a story mode and an MMO mode. Then they could have allowed people to choose. Being able to play with my significant other, friends or guildies while levelling is what drew us to the game. It was a social activity that we could sit down next to each other and interact in a virtual world. By changing it to a solo story game, it ruined that experience as we were disconnected from each other. We might as well have been sitting in different rooms. In the end we basically stopped playing at the same time or if we did, she played dress up, while I pvp'd.

In the end she stopped playing altogether and I've seen so many friends leave the game it's depressing. Over a hundred people I personally knew stopped.

I think lots of us would have actually paid money for real expansions. Every other game over the years has done it. Even WoW still does it. Then they wouldn't need F2P as part of the game dynamic and could have used it as a trial for 30 days or only to lvl 20. Imagine how much better the game could have been if they had stayed with a Subscriber only format with paid expansions.

 

You aren't very serious aren't you ? What do you think the majoirty of the playerbase is ? hardcore MMO"ists ? WRONG. the majority playing this game are casuals and story based people. And what's that stupid idea with giving the players MMO mode or STORY mode ? No one would play MMO mode, man. What's stopping you from playing ground content with your friends now ?

 

If this game was sub only, it would be long dead by now. I wouldn't have subscribed if I didn't have the chance to play the game as free to play, and I would never even have touched this game if it was sub only. And there are many like me.

 

You just have to accept the people you call dedicated hardcore MMO lovers are not in this game and the majority are casuals who like doing things solo.

 

I don't mind the command system, but I have a major problem with it. The crates just give useless crap. Literally. What the Developers need to understand is that we want gear. At level 70, for someone who is doing pvp, getting useless jawa junk, and useless green items isn't really helping and any way. People want to have gear. it's simple as that/

 

My command leve; 64 on main and 59 on my alt and I have to disintegrate everything except the command tokens, because the content that is in those crates isn't of any use.

 

What the devs need to do is simple. Increase the chance or the drop rate of actual GEAR> Purple gear with set bonuses. that's what people want.

[stoopicus]

Actually my hope for when they shut the game down is that they will bundle it up with a trivial local server built in and offer it as a standalone single player game. I'd play it for years on and off, running class stories and so on every now and then. Hell, just call it KotOR 3.

 

Bonus points for releasing it with a standalone PvP server so you could run your own warzone instances.

 

They won't do this, of course, but I'd pay $60 for that without thinking twice.

[Wayshuba]

Oh, I agree. You described the fallacy of sunk costs well enough in your previous post. I should probably have phrased it as

 

"I think they are convinced they HAVE to make GC work."

 

I also note that you're not really disagreeing with my take there either

 

Just to note, I am agreeing with you 100%.

[Wayshuba]

I think lots of us would have actually paid money for real expansions. Every other game over the years has done it. Even WoW still does it. Then they wouldn't need F2P as part of the game dynamic and could have used it as a trial for 30 days or only to lvl 20. Imagine how much better the game could have been if they had stayed with a Subscriber only format with paid expansions.

 

This is where you run into the EA problem. Any expansions, or new games for that matter, have threshold targets set by EA in what they want to sell in copies to make their investment back. There was good coverage of this when Dead Space 3 was being developed and how high the bar was set for that title.

 

With an expansion, EA knows how many people are left in this game and unless a title is going to sell 500,000 copies or more, EA isn't going to green light the investment. When you have maybe 100,000 - 200,000 left in this game, they know they are not going to sell enough and thus no meaningful investment in a major content expansion.

 

If you look at all four expansions in this game (and calling the last two, 4.0 and 5.0 expansions is really stretching it) you'll notice each one got progressively lighter than the last one. This is probably another good indicator of how the population keeps dwindling so the amount of investment in the title each year from EA follows the same path.

 

Finally, you also have to take EAs strategic growth targets into account. This is documented well in their Fiscal Year End CEO presentation last year. In it, they show a very good portion of their growth being tied to RNG lockboxes. This is why they are appearing in almost every game EA releases now. It is highly profitable because it requires so little development and work on their part and they have it down to a science now. They are DEPENDENT on lockboxes and, according to the presentation, within the next 5 years they expect lockboxes to account for more revenue than the core titles themselves.

Edited February 1, 2017 by Wayshuba

[AscendingSky]

Wow. Just wow. I am not sure what I find most appalling about that- probably that THIS is what they are spending time on? Censoring signatures of their paying customers expressing opinions about the performance of people whose salary we fund?

 

All the things that need work in this game, and they are spending time trying to spare the ego of someone that we think is doing a bad job? (Eerily similar to a certain someone spending days obsessing over media coverage of the turn out in DC ~12 days ago...)

 

It's not like you were calling him foul names. Where exactly is the line between expressing our desires for the direction of this game, including its leadership, and disrespect?

 

Because I'm sorry Bioware Austin team, but I also think the failure of SWTOR's Producer to listen to our feedback leading up to GC's implementation caused a lot of the player loss we're seeing now, and he should be held accountable for that.

 

People express opinions about who should lead their country, and whether the management of companies in which they hold stock is doing a good job, and that's seen as our duty as citizens/shareholders, not disrespect. We the players have invested years into this game and would really like to continue investing money in subscribing to it if you'd just give us reason to... it's unreasonable to think we don't have a stake in the leadership of this game too, and want to express our opinions on that.

 

Apparently to EAWare, 'disrespect' is defined as 'anything you say that isn't singing the praises of the developers'.

 

I'm sorry, EAWare, but I can't and won't sing any praises for Ben Irving. He took over as lead producer of this game in the summer of 2015, and (in my opinion, as well as in the opinion of many others it seems) the game has been on a serious downturn since then. Galactic Command is, in my opinion, by far the absolute worst thing that has ever happened to this game. So many people have said that, both on this forum and on the Internet as a whole, and he simply will not listen. Because he had a heart to heart with himself and decided RNG gear boxes were the best thing to breathe new life back into TOR.

 

He was wrong. Catastrophically wrong. Yet he refuses to admit he was wrong, even for so much as a moment, despite the freefall sub numbers and the huge negative blacklash. He refuses to countenance anything more than minor tweaks and added complications and fractal grinds to a gearing system that is fundamentally flawed at its core. Galactic Command is his baby, and he bears the ultimate responsibility for the havoc it has wrought. And if in the end GC is the iceberg that truly sinks the TORtanic once and for all, he will bear the ultimate responsibility for that too.

Edited February 1, 2017 by AscendingSky

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Actually my hope for when they shut the game down is that they will bundle it up with a trivial local server built in and offer it as a standalone single player game. I'd play it for years on and off, running class stories and so on every now and then. Hell, just call it KotOR 3.

 

... You can do that now. You are actually be blatantly ridiculous now.

 

Is it me or has the negativity towards this game reached some sort of ridiculous fever pitch and within this thread has devolved into the repetitive, unrealistic or purely non-sensical?

 

Since when did reddit become more positive than the official forums? Not sure when but it's happened.

The forums have become an utter cesspool of whining over the past couple of weeks ( ironically during a time BWA has taken positive steps to announce upcoming changes/content to improve the game ) with very little in the way of well reasoned debate.

 

What I don't get is with reddit you don't have to pay for yet reddit is somehow more balanced in opinion ( and at the least reasoned discussion and debate ) yet everyone here with these "major issues" is paying for their issues.

 

For example I wonder if after Snave's posts he would actually stand behind them and stop playing/paying until the changes mentioned by Eric take effect as he hinted at in his posts? Of course he won't. He's got a stream to run. It's just more commentary for the sake of attention with little to no substance and definitely no action.

 

I just don't get what the forums have devolved into lately ... I never thought I'd see the day that the sub reddit would be the more positive mass communication channel for the game.

[stoopicus]

... You can do that now. You are actually be blatantly ridiculous now.

 

Dude chill. I'm not saying they *are* shutting down the game, I am saying that when they eventually DO (which they surely will someday), I would love to have the solo class stories bundled up into a standalone product - because they are great.

 

Don't read more into my comment than was there

Edited February 1, 2017 by stoopicus

[Genada]

Part of the reason I think they did this is to try to keep people like me wanting to play and having a sub for longer then a month a a time.

 

I have played this game from launch and taken several long breaks. I started doing this after they quit putting out content, new flashpoints and new ops. These are the type of content that keep me playing a game.

 

So they instead went to a story model. So I went to a story model of playing. Which to me is to sub for a month every year or so, play the new content and leave again.

 

They have put a system in place designed to keep people playing by making gear harder to get and that will take longer to get. The problem here is for a player like me and why I will be letting this sub run out again is that I do not care about gear anymore. The methods of getting gear never bothered me, the lack of content did.

 

You hurt your longer term players by trying to solve a problem with your in and out again players. If you really want to keep players, it's really simple....provide content that is worth staying and playing.

Edited February 1, 2017 by Genada

[Storm-Cutter]

Finally, Galactic Command was a stupid way to keep folks subbed. Other games actually provide sub rewards for logging in. You give me no reason to want to login.

 

Here is what you should do to get people to login and play your old content.

 

1.) Daily login reward for subs

2.) Weekly login reward for subs who have logged in for 7 straight days

3.) Daily mission rewards ( rare armors etc) for running content such as running HM Lost Island to get a Revan Mask etc.

4.) New capital ship decks etc or items to work for (ops deck, pvp terminals, combat arena so that guild members can train in pvp together etc)

 

I login to warframe every day because I get a reward for doing so. They have alert missions and mini-events for running their content to give cool rewards.

 

GC is grinding. The loot drops are awful and I have no enthusiasm to login and play.

 

Exactly. Some games give a daily reward for logging in - even some give it to F2P players. - Weekly events ( not recycled events) daily or weekly achieves, the whole lot. - And some haven't got nearly the player numbers or huge budgets....Just a small team who care about people and reward their loyaly with a dye, a deco, a place to go, a thing to do, a mob to kill for an achieve, a bonus for Xp or w/e.

[Talon_strikes]

Beta

Hey guys, why can't we implement the character transfer system we experimented with since we'll probably need them for launch? Speaking of which, what are we going to do about KP? And Ilum? And the Sage story break on Voss? And this amazingly minimalist UI? Are we bringing back hi-res textures? We going to actually do the Guild Summit? But man ... how about that beta closing light saber party in the Nexus Room? My graphics card nearly fried. And I'll miss the orange pixel.

 

Early Access

Woohoo! First day early access! Wait ... a 2½ hour login queue? Alright people don't spaz. The devs are slowly increasing the pop caps on the servers and said we'd be g2g by launch. Takes a while to get in, but man this is so sweet ... best ever Star Wars class stories, full open world planets, and best of all I can play everything together with my wife and guildmates. Too bad all we have is this text chat-based grouping tool. Would be nice to have a drag and drop interface for that. Speaking of leveling up in a group, these leveling flashpoints are way better than WoW's dungeons for learning group play dynamics while we level. And I LOVE my Force Leap / Force Sweep! Holy snappin' arsels we're launching tomorrow and there's already somebody on Ilum?

 

Launch

They're adding how many new servers? 72? I though they were just going to raise the pop caps? Now they're telling people to roll new characters on a less populated server until the problem is resolved. So what happens if there's only 5 of them on their server? We don't have cross-server queues so they'll be stranded. Was Bioware hoping they would go back to their original server after the queues died down? Where is that character transfer thing we tested out a few months ago?

 

1.1

New content! Sweet! Wait ... Rakghouls? (Fast forward to later in the day in D7) Huh? Why did we wipe? What do you mean the healer exploded? But EV's turrets aren't flashpapering us any more!

 

1.2

Bioware is the BOMB! They listened at the Guild Summit and now we have guild banks! And Legacy! And the best and most customizable UI of any MMO I've ever played. Who needs addons when the best is already built in! And we get a new heroic area The Black Hole! And ANOTHER new op Explosive Conflict! I don't get why so many people are ragging on this game and trashing the people who enjoy it. They have to be competitor water army drones or something trying to crash our game. Yes it probably should have launched with 1.2, but hey - we have it now and they keep adding new great QoL features and content!

 

1.5 -1.7x

Free to play? Why? I understand the Cartel Market for buffs and cosmetics. Hell my wife and I do a hypercrate a month each to GTN excess customs, mounts, pets and emotes for guild funds. But F2P? The game doesn't need free to play because free doesn't generate revenue ... it's just a promotional consideration. Oh jeez ... here comes the riff raff () At least we got the Gree, which after the Coruscant quest chain was a really nice surprise. The mandatory PvP quests to complete achievements, while ill-conceived for single players, are fine for us since we have a lowbie PvP night every weekend. And would you get a load of all these damn gold spammers?

 

2.0 - 2.10x

This just keeps getting better. Entire new planets ... Legacy-wide rep ... Strongholds ... 5 additional levels ... new heroic areas ... new gear tiers ... new flashpoints and operations ... Wait, what happened to individul class stories? Well ... hell. Okay, the rest of the game rocks and continuing each class' story would have been a huge undertaking. Though I would have gladly paid $80 for the expansion if they had continued individual class story. I spend at least twice that a month in the Cartel Market for hypercrates and Legacy perks, so ... ya. And these Czerka tacticals ... the lag is horrendous. Maybe it's my PC. Regardless, there still isn't a MMO made that suits my wife and I, and our guild and us, better than this one.

 

3.x

Upgraded my CPU. Going from a i5 to a 4-core i7 made a HUGE difference! More new open worlds to explore, new flashpoints and ops ... this game is awesome. Keep the killer group content coming! Oh wait. What do you mean my wife and I can't do the story dialogues together? Well, at least we can explore Rishi and Yavin as a group. Though I'm not liking the single player direction they are taking story. But the Ops are excellent and I like the solo story mode FPs. But there isn't a level appropriate version we can go back to and farm. That's disturbing. But at least Rav and ToS are giving us our money's worth for end game. I would have paid an additional $40 if they had kept Blood Hunt and Battle of Rishi level aapriate and made solo mode and tactical copies, as well as keeping everything about story - including dialogues - the same so groups can play through them together if they want to.

 

4.0

Betrayal. Except for a few small open areas the entire 5 levels worth of story is solo only? I can't level through the expansion with my wife? Or a guildmate? Or another human being? What? No group content? No new open worlds to explore? No more leveling planet flashpoints? I don't mean no more new leveling flashpoints. I mean no more leveling flashpoints anywhere in the game any more - period. They're all jeezus droid solos or bolstered now? And where the hell are my companions? And why can't I gear them up any more. I spent $100s in the Cartel Market and 1,000s of comms getting them properly geared and their stuff shows up in a dear John letter? The hell with it. When my main gets to Odessen I'll find that terminal and get them back. What? Our loot tables got replaced by Alliance crates? With companion gifts and an end game comprised of nothing more than me grinding to get them back? Sorry. I'll sit the rest of this out. Maybe Bioware will come to their senses with the next expansion.

 

5.0

. . . :mad: . . .

 

5.1

. . . :mad: . . .

 

___________________________________________

 

Time can heal, but it can also fester depending on how the wound is treated. With every turn now Bioware gouges the wound even deeper and rubs salt in it. So here I am, the eternal optimist, hoping like hell one final time that Bioware mans up and gets it right. Like when we gladly paid for expansions and in return received a real MMO with real end game, group story, new open worlds to explore, new Flashpoints, new Operations, even the occasional new PvP and GSF map.

 

4.0 was the NGE bomb that scattered our guild, and 5.0 is when we lost respect for Bioware. For 2 full 16-man Ops teams plus standbys, the rest of our guild who just likes doing small group stuff together (like farming old flashpoints together for customs), and yours truly ... Eric's message Friday will either bring us all the way back or bury us for good.

 

The only way we come back is if they announce that all story going forward can be run in its entirety in a group similar to everything pre-3.0, and that they were massaging Galactic Command all along to address the solo end game they announced last week, and that they are reverting back to pre-4.0 for group end game.

 

I have a very bad feeling about this.

Your SWTOR story brought me back to a lot of my old memories during launch, all throughout F2P and RotHC. Those were the days.

 

Though I was VERY critical of the game back then, I think the vast majority of it was hogwash in hindsight. SWTOR was fairly solid after launch, once they merged the servers, after F2P, and during RotHC. As of now? All I can say is all of the criticisms that I had back then surprisingly and actually have meaning now.

 

Instead of being some blind critic, I've switched gears and I'm remaining the optimist as your are GK. Hopefully you are right. I hope the mess that is GC is fixed and we can return to the content update cadence that existed pre-3.0.

Edited February 1, 2017 by Talon_strikes

[DisIzMe]

Eric, are drop rates of set bonus items from crates going to remain the same?

[jozinkopucik]

Hehe. Thank you for remembering. Here's a brief highlight stroll down memory lane........

.

 

*standing ovation*

 

Great post man!!

[Shepird]

in my opinion, by far the absolute worst thing that has ever happened to this game. So many people have said that, both on this forum and on the Internet as a whole,

 

It's made its way to fleet chat on Shadowlands.

[Eli_Porter]

Eric, are drop rates of set bonus items from crates going to remain the same?

 

Practically speaking they're gonna double.

[Voblat]

Practically speaking they're gonna double.

 

It would helpful if you stopped inventing things.

 

He has not mentioned drop rates, merely the frequency of awarding a box. We have no idea if the drop rate per box is staying the same, falling or rising.

 

Just that boxes will apparently come more frequently.

 

Stop pretending speculation is reality.

[DarthDymond]

It would helpful if you stopped inventing things.

 

He has not mentioned drop rates, merely the frequency of awarding a box. We have no idea if the drop rate per box is staying the same, falling or rising.

 

Just that boxes will apparently come more frequently.

 

Stop pretending speculation is reality.

 

His point is that if you're getting twice as many rolls of the proverbial dice in the same time frame then as a practical matter your odds are twice as good as they were before.

[Voblat]

His point is that if you're getting twice as many rolls of the proverbial dice in the same time frame then as a practical matter your odds are twice as good as they were before.

 

Only if drop rates remain constant.

 

Given we do not know this, then as i said, stop presenting speculation as reality, misinformation leads to disappointment when not met.

 

Are there not enough disappointed people already on this forum?

Edited February 1, 2017 by Voblat

[Eli_Porter]

It would helpful if you stopped inventing things.

 

He has not mentioned drop rates, merely the frequency of awarding a box. We have no idea if the drop rate per box is staying the same, falling or rising.

 

Just that boxes will apparently come more frequently.

 

Stop pretending speculation is reality.

 

There has never been any proven or announced changes to drop rates in GC crates. I'm not the one "inventing" things here.

[casirabit]

He probably is.

On fleet gen chat , not once , not even for trolling purposes I've seen people defending this GC garbage.

 

Everybody in my entire guild, who never post on these forums, think this is a garbage gearing system....

 

It would actually depend on your group of people you associate with. I have seen those that love this system (minus the RNG) and then those that don't.

 

The ones that love it is because they are finally able to get the gear without having to jump through hoops to find a group that is doing operations for fun and doesn't criticize them at every misstep they make.

 

The ones that hate it are probably the ones that are doing Nightmare operations and those will need better gear than the way it is dropping.

 

So it is both ways and I am not going to say which is the majority since my circle of people would be different than someone's else. I do know that I have some friends returning in February because they feel this is a system that benefits all players and not just a selective few and they feel if they pay a sub they should have access to the gear doing what they love to do instead of having to do an operation that they may have to put up with people yelling at them even if the group knows it is their first time. I have seen that in operations that people can be quite hateful to new players and then I have seen it where people help but you never know which group you are going to be in especially since they only do operations for a little bit.

Edited February 1, 2017 by casirabit

[DanNV]

Be careful what you wish for. They may just say it's a failed experiment and shut the game down.

 

That is a risk. But as the game is now, we wouldn't be losing much if they did and it's the only way things are likely to turn around. The longer it takes for them to take an interest the better the chance they'll just cut their losses.

[DanNV]

Because I'm sorry Bioware Austin team, but I also think the failure of SWTOR's Producer to listen to our feedback leading up to GC's implementation caused a lot of the player loss we're seeing now, and he should be held accountable for that.

 

There is no doubt this is true. Months of feedback saying it's terrible, get rid of it and he is still pushing forward. There was a really good post yesterday analyzing those actions and comparing them to the business world. It fits what I know, too. He will push ahead, absolutely convinced if he just keeps adjusting it things will turn out OK. He'll do that right up until the game dies or EA fires him. He is far from the first person to hold onto a really bad idea won't be the last, either.

[ivanhedgehog]

____________________________________________________

 

 

We understand your time is precious so thank you for spending some of it with us. While your taking the time to come out here and mingle with your customers is commendable, the fact that you are ignoring what we are saying is not.

 

We come back to you and tell you that we don't want crates. That we don't want unassembled parts. That we don't want unassembled tokens. That we don't want Galactic Command ... and your move is to discuss changes to what we don't want and justifying grind time per crate?

 

Eric,

 

WE DO NOT WANT GALACTIC COMMAND.

 

The uproar you're hearing isn't because the system needs work. It's because your players want no part of it.

 

You good folks are finally figuring out what we have been trying to tell you since last fall ... the system will not handle an MMO end game. Galactic Command is a single player tablet RPG achievement system you are trying to adapt because grind is a cheap replacement for content. There is a reason you can't get it right ... it's a square peg in a round hole. You had the perfect peg for that hole before KotFE and removed it, which ended up killing off an entire player base. It's time to get it right.

 

What we REALLY want

We want our pre-4.0 end game back. We want increasing content difficulty progression. We want the fight mechanics to be intricate, complicated and taxing ... not the scorecard that keeps track of it.

 

When we drop a boss we want the boss to drop a WHOLE piece of gear or a whole token that can be redeemed for a WHOLE piece of gear, plus a legacy-bound comm everyone can save up to buy additional gear with. Just like they used to. We don't want a CHANCE for real gear, a token or comms ... we want the damn drops. If we have to keep running a Op to get the piece we need ... sweet. This is supposed to be a MMO for crying out loud.

 

We don't want to see this:

https://i1.wp.com/www.xamxamsays.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/GalacticCommandOverview_854x480.jpg

 

We want to see this:

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3805/10282827503_99fe92c140_o.jpg

 

Relegate Galactic Command as the BIS achievement system for the new solo track end game (as it only has to be balanced for a single player) and bring back real end game progression with real loot tables for large group end game like we had before 4.0. PLEASE. Twisting our feedback to fit your downsizing agenda then telling us it's what we're asking for is gosh darn infuriating.

 

You need to realize, GC will not be leaving us. at least not this year. You want content the way you want it, BW has to balance what all players want. They are trying to make it better and had better be quick about it, but they will not be reverting to 4.0, that just isnt going to happen. Hopefully they will come to a compromise that we can live with. The suggestion that they eliminate crates gained from 1-30 is a good one, those levels shift the results by a lot. The 3.0 ops with HM and hardmare modes only was just as big of a mistake as 5.0 GC. They need to find a happy medium that satisfies a majority of their customers.

[Quraswren]

SNIP...

 

I just don't get what the forums have devolved into lately

SNIP....

 

The forums evolve and devolve with the game.

 

The current swtor game is in a terrible place through both poor design and poor development and thus the forums reflect that. The paying customer disgruntled with the way the game has turned so rapidly because while 4.0 wasn't the amazing content driven experience we wanted. It was metric tons better than the mediocrity we got in 5.0.

 

When the game gets this bad, expect the forums to reflect that in a more negative way than just the general complaints/feedback forums usually get.

[Forren-Midosea]

For those that wwant this game to e shut down, lets wait two years and see if there are rumors about new star wars rpg