Keith - As the new producer........

[Darkside]

Agreed. There is a new thread every week about someone returning to the game and wondering what server is best to play on. Games like Wildstar and STO realized too late the need to bring the most active players together. Fortunately most people who want to do end game content have taking it upon themselves to move their main toons over to Harbinger. Most people will probably log into their old toon on POT5,Jung Ma, Bastion, Shadowlands, or JC look around see it is dead and not take the time out to go to the forums and research where to move to. It's a whole extra step that maybe only 1 in 5 would do.

 

Keith needs to realize that the most important thing for the game is to bring together all the active players as much as possible. It would be more prudent to spend money on updating the servers than it would be to do a 20 second Blur animation for 7 million dollars.

 

I have to agree. It would be prudent for Keith, and most beneficial to all of us for them to create or merge into one or two mega servers before doing anything else to the game. That way it helps the existing players to stay motivated by having people to play with, and it helps new players who try the game out by giving them the impression that everything is alive and hopping. The new mega servers would give everyone a fresh start in a sense, and it makes for a good starting point to measure the success of new content.

[americanaussie]

I have to agree. It would be prudent for Keith, and most beneficial to all of us for them to create or merge into one or two mega servers before doing anything else to the game. That way it helps the existing players to stay motivated by having people to play with, and it helps new players who try the game out by giving them the impression that everything is alive and hopping. The new mega servers would give everyone a fresh start in a sense, and it makes for a good starting point to measure the success of new content.

 

As long as I'm not getting screwed with major lag. We've already consolidated to west coast. I won't be happy with more than 250ms. I'm sitting on 185ms at the moment and even then PvP can be laggy

[Darkside]

As long as I'm not getting screwed with major lag. We've already consolidated to west coast. I won't be happy with more than 250ms. I'm sitting on 185ms at the moment and even then PvP can be laggy

 

Well I would hope that they would roll any equipment and resources from the closed servers into supporting the new ones.

[GalacticKegger]

Honestly - advertising the game and getting people to come is sabotaged by having mostly dead or dying servers. Before you are going to get a wave of potential new players (from a movie or an expac) it is absolutely the smart thing to do to merge them first. You can always re-open closed servers later if the active ones get too busy. But I've never heard of an aging MMO getting -that- many new players. 4.0 was this game's big chance to buck that trend (new SW movie franchise startup + money from EA + ppl from another failed BW startup available to contribute) and part of the reason they blew it was because half the servers even then were hurting badly going into the xpac. A game with a bustling community and busy traffic makes players think something is happening, something is going on - there's something to work towards seeing.

I would think that advertising the game and getting people to come is sabotaged by having mostly dead or dying content. Can't blame a house for losing its curb appeal on how unpopulated the rooms are.

 

A familiar and robust content progression and loot system that isn't alien or low-budget ... supported by a consistent cadence of new and epic Star Wars content to play that isn't so minimalist that it is consumed in a single weekend by casual players ... that satisfies all four pillars of MMORPG game play like the game used to ... is what will bring players back.

 

Judging by in-game activity, the game's makeover starting soon after Ziost was released has lost more players than it has recruited. Rebuild the game back to its full MMORPG prominence, complete with the entire catalog of content progression & loot systems and overall game play expectations it had when it was at its strongest, and the game will rebound. As players come back the servers will then repopulate, rendering server consolidations moot.

 

Minimizing servers isn't the answer ... maximizing the game is.

Edited April 16, 2017 by GalacticKegger

[Celise]

I would think that advertising the game and getting people to come is sabotaged by having mostly dead or dying content. Can't blame a house for losing its curb appeal on how unpopulated the rooms are.

 

A familiar and robust content progression and loot system that isn't alien or low-budget ... supported by a consistent cadence of new and epic Star Wars content to play that isn't so minimalist that it is consumed in a single weekend by casual players ... that satisfies all four pillars of MMORPG game play like the game used to ... is what will bring players back.

 

Judging by in-game activity, the game's makeover starting soon after Ziost was released has lost more players than it has recruited. Rebuild the game back to its full MMORPG prominence, complete with the entire catalog of content progression & loot systems and overall game play expectations it had when it was at its strongest, and the game will rebound. As players come back the servers will then repopulate, rendering server consolidations moot.

 

Minimizing servers isn't the answer ... maximizing the game is.

 

that still requires a lot of resources and time, probably a lot more than bioware are willing to commit to and there is no gaurantee it will work out the way they want either. even so, these servers will be almost long dead by the time it gets around to what you want on release, new massive class stories.

 

right now i would settle for GC removal and rebuilding the game. small steps usually lead to bigger ones so long as they go in the right direction. eventually bioware will have to test the waters again for big expacs on this new direction. this is likely the best that any of us wil get.

[GalacticKegger]

that still requires a lot of resources and time, probably a lot more than bioware are willing to commit to and there is no gaurantee it will work out the way they want either. even so, these servers will be almost long dead by the time it gets around to what you want on release, new massive class stories.

 

right now i would settle for GC removal and rebuilding the game. small steps usually lead to bigger ones so long as they go in the right direction. eventually bioware will have to test the waters again for big expacs on this new direction. this is likely the best that any of us wil get.

You are so spot on in that this process will not happen overnight. Regrowing the infrastructure will have to happen for the game itself to regrow. Not that Mr. Kanneg doesn't already have enough pressure on him, but any internal growth will also have to satisfy corporate's margin and net earnings expectations. All we can do is hope that he has what it takes to play powerball with the suits, and has a plan that roadmaps target margins and SHV as part of the regrowth strategy. He's sadly just a lame duck figurehead otherwise.

 

For me personally, what I want right now (I'm with you on the GC thing) has nothing to do with new massive class stories. (I don't remember ever mentioning it ... though they would be very nice and likely well received.) Rather it will be predicated on the roadmap that Keith said would be forthcoming. It has to be aggressive, retroactive in scope and all-in committed to old-school subscriber-level accountability. If it isn't then what I want will matter even less than it does now.

 

I stuck it out from closed beta through 4.0. If it is announced that the game is going back to its MMORPG roots then I'm back in and contributing like I used to.

Edited April 16, 2017 by GalacticKegger

[Tsillah]

I have to agree. It would be prudent for Keith, and most beneficial to all of us for them to create or merge into one or two mega servers before doing anything else to the game. That way it helps the existing players to stay motivated by having people to play with, and it helps new players who try the game out by giving them the impression that everything is alive and hopping. The new mega servers would give everyone a fresh start in a sense, and it makes for a good starting point to measure the success of new content.

 

Well even though server merges might help, I do not agree with the reasoning here.

 

Server merges do not bring people to the game. Advertising does. So really they do need to advertise. However, when people come to the game they then have to stay as well. Now that's the part where server merges becomes a topic.

 

However, I do not believe there should be too many server merges and I also do not believe server merges will solve the core issues that drive most players away. I feel like people who want server merges are acting like it will solve all kinds of problems. It won't. Server merges may be helpful in a context of a larger rescue plan. I am on a server that is well populated. People still left when 5.0 hit and 5.1 didn't stop it and 5.2 may help but it's not a full solution either.

 

Also do not forget that when the game came out and started losing masses of players pretty much from the start, at some point the comment was made that they needed 500k subs to keep the game going minimum. Although we don't have actual numbers I think everyone agrees that we are not even hitting that but that's where the CM came in. My point with this is that this game has a rather high cost to maintain it, probably due to the royalties they have to pay to Lucasarts/Disney for using the SW IP.

 

So even though technically MMOs can exist for years with just a few servers that are populated, their cost picture is also lower. I think this is in part why we haven't been getting that much new content and BW has been trying a one-sided story approach instead of a wider net of content. With 5.2 we see a partial return to a wider spread of content again. This is a good step but also there I wonder if it will be enough.

 

I do not envy Keith. Having to steer this game in another direction to recover from 5.0 and hopefully turn the trend around is no small task. I think 5.2 will boost raiding but how much? Chances are that people will run easy HMs again like EV and KP and then people will PvP to gain top tier gear with components. These players already did this in 5.1 and they mostly don't care about PvP so it creates a negative trend for the real PvP'ers who end up being stuck with team mates who don't care if they win or lose, how to do the objectives or might just bum around waiting for it to be over so they can collect their components while they watch TV or something else. This trend will continue because of how they treat loot drops in NiM in 5.2 which is pretty much a stealth nerf because it's not in line with the expectations they set for 5.2. But basically raiders are better off doing PvP than NiM content for BiS gear. I don't think that's a good idea.

 

From my point of view, all Keith can do now is make sure that KotET doesn't kill the game and then show a new direction with 6.0 that will make people believe in SWTOR and BWA again. I think it's possible but I do not know if they can put the resources where they're needed for that.

 

As for server merges...no, by themselves server merges are not a solution. More is required to keep people in this game. Queues for example are in part a problem that is caused by certain content types not being interesting anymore for a lot of players (like Flash Points) as they are old and unrewarding and the GF which is an abomination by itself. When I use the GF it's mostly to use as a taxi after the group is put together.

 

People rarely use the GF to form a group and that is a bigger problem to me than server merges. Also forcing random content for the GF daily rewards is a bad idea because this content is wildly different in difficulty so it often leads to PUGs failing and giving up on the whole idea. For PvP it's a problem because there is only 1 unranked queue where you can run into premades and get no choice in which warzones you want to play and well ranked only has 4v4 which I would think is really boring after a while.

Low level PvP is pretty much dead since 5.0 and even on a well populated server, the pvp queue can easily take 5-10 minutes before it pops during prime hours. I don't really see the appeal in waiting 10 minutes for a 10 minute warzone if you get my meaning.

Also I think that this game has a lot of solo PvE'ers. So even with a high population you have a large percentage of players that will not do group content. I always think it's interesting to see 3-4 instances on the fleet, but it's difficult to get groups together for raids. Can take a long time. I suspect that most of the raiding is done with the guilds that do it but that means that for new players coming in there doesn't seem to be a lot going.

 

TL;DR - Group content suffers in general in this game because it's not rewarding to do and there are too many big bugs in some and the balancing of the difficulty is poorly done. The GF is a piece of crap so people don't use it much unless they already have a group ready to go. PvP is poorly organised and this game has a lot of solo players. These issues will not be solved by merging servers. SWTOR just doesn't support group content very well and that is a bigger issue in player retention than low pop servers.

Edited April 16, 2017 by Tsillah

[Ricul]

So what? The building has a new janitor. You think they will magically fix the bugs and make lasting content? They will propably just write another over the top story like becomming emperor of the universe or something.

[mmmbuddah]

So what? The building has a new janitor. You think they will magically fix the bugs and make lasting content? They will propably just write another over the top story like becomming emperor of the universe or something.

 

I usually give people the benefit of the doubt before passing judgment.

[Costello]

I don't think that Keith will read this post, this thread or even the forums. I suspect that he knows full well that he has been handed a hospital pass and hell I doubt it was even in his job description to 'improve' the game, but rather to keep it going till EA are ready to released Star Wars GO! It may even be that he has been tasked to kill it, with EA looking to assign the staff elsewhere but Disney insistent that as long as its profitable they want their cut.

 

However I live in Hope, after watching Rogue One, and reading the new Timothy Zahn Thrawn novel, I find myself wanting to get lost in a galaxy far away and stand proudly on an Imperial Star Destroyer hunting down rebel scum. So on the off chance, Keith does read this, firstly Hello and on the even more remote chance that of the 10 people left working on the game and those not permanently assigned to the cartel market you can pull off a miracle I break down how many hospital passes you have received.

 

The Hero Game Engine. A legacy of Gordon Walton, an untried untested and beta version of the program that is not fit for purpose. Though in an awful way, Elder Scrolls Online used the same base engine and produced a game that is beautiful to behold with so much choice in appears and combat and even species. There we have Cats, Lizards and Werewolves that are playable, here we have various coloured humans with preset facial features where you can to play around with unrealistic hair styles and even worse facial hair.

 

Which leads onto the stylized graphics. Industrial Light and Magic produce amazing visual effects, we had Tarkin on screen, looking the same as he did 40 years ago. They didn't opt of a look alike or another actor playing the role and make do with being recast and the audience will understand. You are selling the opportunity to leap into the Star Wars Universe only its the 'its close enough' version of Star Wars. Instead of a living breathing Star Wars galaxy its a static cartoonish B movie version.

 

Now there isn't a budget to fix this I'm sure, but if your going to have a static cartoonish worlds when other MMO's are offering realistic deep immersive experiences, it may feel nice saying Gordon screwed us but that doesn't make this the place to be.

 

The we have combat, with hideous ability bloat, turning the game play into being more about managing cool downs and for those that way inclined macroing abilities. Almost all aspects of combat is governed by abilities and cool downs, if I want roll out the way of an incoming attack I better be playing a class that has a roll ability and it not be on cool down. I see a heavy attack coming, I can't block, instead its a defensive cool down, a telegraphed attack 9 times out of 10 it will follow me where ever I go. Red circle on the ground time to take a leisurely jog out and hope to hell I'm not melee DPS as Im going to be forced off target. If you restructured combat and took out the many duplicate abilities with different cool downs you could make it far more reactive and dynamic.

 

As for the Story, it would be wrong to ignore keeping up with the Valkorian's as it was something special, creating a 2 year arc telling other peoples story (in this case the Valkorians) relegating the player to the side line was just bizzare. But in fairness the issue with the story went back much further than that, in so much of the original story the player was relegated to the mindless bruiser, who through sheer luck or in most cases brute force managed to win through. More often then not it was the antagonist in each story that proved to be the more interesting and clever while the player won through cause they could chop their way through armies and then over come the big bad through button mashing cool down management combat.

 

With the stories often characterized by blatantly obvious betrayals that completely blindsided the character. It seems that if the character wasn't immortal and also (thanks to level scaling and far too much XP) incredibly ungodly powerful they would have ended up as a footnote in the story. They certainly never seem to show much in the way knowing what is going on. I can only hope that 5.0 saw the last of betrayal story lines and 5.2 will show a smarter and forward thinking Alliance Commander/Emperor who starts having contingencies and plans within plans. Though why you made the player head of the most powerful empire ever is beyond me it makes the idea that they would then be heading into battle with one companion somewhat strange.

 

Though this leads to 5.2. Delayed for quality reasons. It seems strange to play that card so soon. It is of course effective, utterly meaningless but bound to get people cheering that your not going to release a buggy product. It some what equates to 'We are Delaying 5.2 because Terrorism is Bad and Democracy is just a little better!' So all the supports can say how if it wasn't delayed the Terrorists would win. There are bugs that have been in the game since launch, there will be bugs in 5.2 and you picked a week with a public holiday in it to get it up to scratch. Incidentally a week which saw the Star Wars Celebration, the release of Rogue One on DvD and the release of the Thrawn Novel. So you have a short working week, missed out on a long weekend people could come back to the game, a long weekend that included a fair amount of star wars hype to not be releasing an update that had originally be suggested it could launch as early as March.

 

And the cherry on the top of that decision, to show the commitment to quality on the 14th of April you post a blog 'The War for Iokath: A Deadly Superweapon Emerges. http://www.swtor.com/info/news/news-article/20170414 where the final line is 'Get ready to throw your support behind either the Republic or Empire and determine the future of the galaxy on April 11 in ‘The War for Iokath’!' So even though its posted after the delay announcement the front page shows that the update is coming April 11 which is a lie. Whoever posted that knew it wasn't true but posted it anyway or the commitment to quality doesn't extend as far as posting accurate information.

[Andryah]

TL;DR - Group content suffers in general in this game because it's not rewarding to do and there are too many big bugs in some and the balancing of the difficulty is poorly done. The GF is a piece of crap so people don't use it much unless they already have a group ready to go. PvP is poorly organised and this game has a lot of solo players. These issues will not be solved by merging servers. SWTOR just doesn't support group content very well and that is a bigger issue in player retention than low pop servers.

 

Group content tends to suffer in all MMOs these days, to one degree or another. I agree that it appears more so this one though. See.. the problem here at it's core in the market is that over time.. studios have been persistently making MMOs more and more solo friendly. That does not mean that group content is ignored by studios, but it does mean that it is more difficult to serve group content in a manner that meets player expectations.

 

15 years ago, before WoW launched... almost all MMOs were NOT solo friendly. Yeah.. you could solo some of them somewhat effectively, but by and large they were tuned for group play, and without group finder systems at all. So in the old days.. players formed adhoc groups at certain locations in the game that became commonly known as LFG spots. It worked OK, because players needed to group, and players generally learned who each other were over time on the same server, so credibility and reputation played a stronger role in MMO grouping... because it was all ad hoc and by consent (very different then the GF mechanics players have come to depend on) AND there was no cross-server play of any kind.

 

But the real effect over time is that almost all MMO studios have been persistently and deliberately making their games more solo friendly, and in the process, less social in the context of group play. GF mechanics and the PuG approach through GF have over time attempted to solve one issue (social grouping for content) and replaced it with anonymous throw-a-way groups. I think this is a no win situation for both studios and players, because it really does not solve the natural conflict between making players dependent on grouping (the old school approach) VS making a game more casual in that players can play whatever, whenever, rather then being locked into forced grouping.

 

The reason all of this is more problematic for some in SWTOR is that SWTOR actually took the solo-friendly approach from day one and then doubled down on it over time, at the expense of some of the more classic group content elements that actually force players to group to access it. Some people are upset by this, and others are not, or are less upset about it and simply adapt. But I don't expect, 5 years in, for this studio to backtrack to a more classic old school MMO model, nor can they be all things to all people. As such, those that rely on random grouping for content and demand lots of group content to help feed/force random grouping are going to be largely unhappy with this MMO in the long run. As such, these players will be much more transient about playing SWTOR... and that may not be a bad thing overall for studio or players to be honest.

 

TL;DR - MMOs these days are much more motivated to put emphasis on solo friendly content over group friendly content and mechanics. Some MMOs more so then others. SWTOR will never be all things to all people and history has shown that they will continue to put first emphasis on story arc driven mission play that is solo friendly, followed by small group story arc driven content like FPs, etc, and less priority on large group PvE and PvP.

Edited April 16, 2017 by Andryah

[Jett-Rinn]

I usually give people the benefit of the doubt before passing judgment.

 

Yeah but here at Sociopath central it's all hate all the time.

[Tarbacca]

Congrats to Keith, but I have a feeling that the shrinking of the development team since launch doesnt bode well for the future of this game. I hope you guys can turn it around and it doesn't die like SWG did.

[Lorahlei]

Congratulations Kieth, I hope you bring this game back around. I for one have become so bored by the NEW content, that I have a tough time even logging in. It really feels like I am in the middle of a CW television show, the whole time, when every time, my veteran crew crashes in a landing bay, or on planet (seems like noone in this universe knows how to land a damn ship), or god forbid, I try to kill the bad guy and they get away EVERY time. All of my conversations need to take my character in a direction, that my RP heavy tune, would NEVER go to. I for one would like to see some new content for the low levels, I feel like I am a god without a purpose in the high level story arch.

 

Again Congratulations Kieth, I hope you run this better than your predecessor.

[Jdast]

Yeah but here at Sociopath central it's all hate all the time.

 

Quoted for irony and hypocrisy.

 

<<I can insert an eyeroll too>>

[mmmbuddah]

Yeah but here at Sociopath central it's all hate all the time.

 

Isnt that Imperial fleet?

[Jett-Rinn]

Isnt that Imperial fleet?

 

They have gained ground since last time.

[Jett-Rinn]

Quoted for irony and hypocrisy.

 

<<I can insert an eyeroll too>>

 

What you couldn't work in a lame shot at Andryah too?

 

Who are you and what have you done to Jdast???!!!!

[Darkside]

They have gained ground since last time.

 

AND SOON WE WILL CONQUER THE INTERNET!!!!............cough gah huuuu cough....i mean yeah, they seem to be spreading.

[Jett-Rinn]

AND SOON WE WILL CONQUER THE INTERNET!!!!............cough gah huuuu cough....i mean yeah, they seem to be spreading.

 

nOooOooOOO!!!!!!

[Lionflash]

how long until the swtor community turns on Keith...

[mmmbuddah]

how long until the swtor community turns on Keith...

 

He has 2 years. xD.

 

No but seriously. I am not sure how long Irving was in power, but I am thinking 2 years or so? And that is 2 years of constant smurf ups and mis steps. You only give someone so many chances. He earned the criticism.

[Rion_Starkiller]

He has 2 years. xD.

 

No but seriously. I am not sure how long Irving was in power, but I am thinking 2 years or so? And that is 2 years of constant smurf ups and mis steps. You only give someone so many chances. He earned the criticism.

 

Lucky for him, the game can't get worse. Can it?

 

Let's brainstorm the ways the game could actually get worse, in the hopes that they will never implement any of those ideas.

 

I'll start:

• Focus solely on railroaded story chapters.
  
• Pour resources into "making the CM better" instead of focusing on content for subscribers.
  
• Use the newly created CM pack opening experience to create Galactic Command RNG-based loot system for all content, including PvP and Operations.
  

 

Oh, wait that was 4.0 and 5.0.

Edited April 17, 2017 by Rion_Starkiller

[Darkside]

Lucky for him, the game can't get worse. Can it?

 

Let's brainstorm the ways the game could actually get worse, in the hopes that they will never implement any of those ideas. I'll start:

• Focus solely on railroaded story chapters.
  
• Pour resources into "making the CM better" instead of focusing on content for subscribers.
  
• Use the newly created CM pack opening experience to create Galactic Command RNG-based loot system for all content, including PvP and Operations.
  

 

Oh, wait that was 4.0 and 5.0.

 

Let's add cxp chance cubes too

[Rion_Starkiller]

Let's add cxp chance cubes too

 

Oh god, but wouldn't they have to create content to go into those cubes? What would those cubes pay out?