Time to merge the US servers... again. Primetime window getting smaller and smaller.

[casirabit]

I’ve a feeling people are just sick of the grind at lvl 70. There is so much more to do in this game than just grind CXP stuff.

You have all the side planet side quests, there are things to explore, datacrons, heroics, low level flash points and even low lvl pvp

I wonder how many people at those lvls are actually doing all of that or are they just rushing to lvl 70 again? I’m sure not many of them are pvping or it would pop more. Which leads me to think that a lot are F2P..

 

I know I made another alt (even though I already have over 16) because a friend of mine came back and wanted to level another character as my friend didn't have legendary status. I know I am not going to que for any pvp, I really don't care about pvp and rarely will do it.

 

As far as the datacrons, already have them so don't have to do them again (thank goodness). As for as the level 70 grind, it depends on if you think of it as a grind. I already have 4 characters in max 248 gear and didn't have to touch pvp to do it. I have mirror alts so for the most part I can remove the mods and transfer it that way. Of course that might be expensive but I only do it once a character gets to 300 and I only worry about that gear. I only do the missions I want and for the credits, since I am in the process of decorating our guild stronghold on Rishi and then after that I still have a few stronghold of mine to decorate, since I started redoing all mine (I have them all) and just recently finished Yavin and am now working on DK and Corscuant since I tend to have themes and certain "classes" will have ownership of those. I.E. Yavin-My Consulars, Coruscant-My Jedi Knights, etc.

 

I have also taken over 6 of my characters through KOET (et al) and plan to do it on the rest, just not in a rush. I play to have fun and will play my way and each day could be something different depending on what I want to do. Some days I just spend decorating, other days running some flashpoints for decorations, since all of the flashpoints dropped decorations, especially those that are solo.

[TrixxieTriss]

already have 4 characters in max 248 gear and didn't have to touch pvp to do it. I have mirror alts so for the most part I can remove the mods and transfer it that way. Of course that might be expensive but I only do it once a character gets to 300 and I only worry about that gear.

 

To make things more cost effective and usable on all mirror classes or multiple same class Alts, you could try using legacy one set of gear that you can switch back and forth without needing to remove things. I’m sure you do that to transfer items, but why not just keep them in the gear?

[xordevoreaux]

To make things more cost effective and usable on all mirror classes or multiple same class Alts, you could try using legacy one set of gear that you can switch back and forth without needing to remove things. I’m sure you do that to transfer items, but why not just keep them in the gear?

 

I flat out hate switching gear back and forth. I do it only when it's time to stuff the innards from duplicate drops from command crates into the legacy gear belonging to mirrored classes.

 

I have 118 toons across 4 accounts. All are sitting in their own legacy gear.

 

Recommending, as you have done, alternatives to gearing is absolutely fine, perhaps the person will even take you up on it and live a wonderful happy life for doing so, but it's never a matter of wondering why, as I'm sure some will do when they read my comment and then wonder why does that altoholic Xor not switch gear betweeen toons, it would be more efficient to do so.

 

Because that's not what I choose to do.

[IoNonSoEVero]

I flat out hate switching gear back and forth. I do it only when it's time to stuff the innards from duplicate drops from command crates into the legacy gear belonging to mirrored classes.

 

I have 118 toons across 4 accounts. All are sitting in their own legacy gear.

 

Recommending, as you have done, alternatives to gearing is absolutely fine, perhaps the person will even take you up on it and live a wonderful happy life for doing so, but it's never a matter of wondering why, as I'm sure some will do when they read my comment and then wonder why does that altoholic Xor not switch gear betweeen toons, it would be more efficient to do so.

 

Because that's not what I choose to do.

 

Same here. I don't switch gear between characters; they each have their own set. All of my mirrored alts have their own gear. I want to be able to log into any character and have them ready to go without shuffling anything around.

 

The only sharing I will do is to pool the UCs that I get from disintegrating the components I don't need, so the alts all help each other gear up that way.

[Andryah]

Let me say this straight, so there can be no mistaking my position.

I am not an advocate for mergers unless absolutely needed.

I don’t think they are needed at the moment, I think it would be premature.

 

Trixxie and I may not agree on much... but we are in agreement on this.. which is actually one of the few comments that are actually on topic for this thread about the need to merge servers yet again.

 

Server merges will not fix peoples ongoing frustration with random queuing for PvP. I would expect that after several rounds of mergers over the years, and the complete elimination of PvP servers, this would be clear by now. Just because some players want to force everyone on to one server does not mean those players will random queue for PvP.

 

There is a lot wrong about how the studio has, and continues to, approach PvP in SWTOR. This has been true for more then 6 years now... and merging servers will simply not address it. At best.. it can mask the problem a bit for some players, but it does not address the underlying fundamentals at all ... as should be obvious now after observing the results of several server merge cycles.

 

Idealistic arguments and petitions for changes won't move the studio. Nor will "empirical" or "anecdotal" information from players. I would expect as we approach the 7th anniversary of this MMO... this would be obvious to everyone by now. I get the frustrations it causes....and in my view, as I have noted before... this is simply the wrong MMO for the random queuing player who exclusively plays for the PvP and wants little or no wait time to play instanced PvP.

Edited September 1, 2018 by Andryah

[Damask_Rose]

I think Biowares mistake is marketing and making the game only about lvl 70 and by making it too easy to lvl and removing a lot of little rewards you got along the way. They’ve incentivised people to rush to lvl 70 and basically disregard everything along the way. If they made the game more about the journey and all aspects like it used to be, I think it would be more healthy.

 

This sums up my feelings exactly.

 

In my little corner, we are all about the story. When we finish a character's story (which often doesn't include FE/ET because of the companion debacle) we start another alt. Lvl 70s might be used for heroics to buy shinies or RP, but not for grinding gear.

 

I read the forums and Reddit every day and I regularly see new & returning players posting about how ridiculously easy the lower level content is and how fast it is to level. Then they get a slew of advice to not use companions, don't update gear, don't do side-content. I can't help but think that gives a bad first impression of the game. As much as I love this game and it's stories (and I also regularly see consensus that vanilla is by far the best part of the game), most people expect there to be some game play in their games, and not just going through the motions.

[casirabit]

I flat out hate switching gear back and forth. I do it only when it's time to stuff the innards from duplicate drops from command crates into the legacy gear belonging to mirrored classes.

 

I have 118 toons across 4 accounts. All are sitting in their own legacy gear.

 

Recommending, as you have done, alternatives to gearing is absolutely fine, perhaps the person will even take you up on it and live a wonderful happy life for doing so, but it's never a matter of wondering why, as I'm sure some will do when they read my comment and then wonder why does that altoholic Xor not switch gear betweeen toons, it would be more efficient to do so.

 

Because that's not what I choose to do.

 

 

Bingo.

 

Not what I chose to do.

[casirabit]

To make things more cost effective and usable on all mirror classes or multiple same class Alts, you could try using legacy one set of gear that you can switch back and forth without needing to remove things. I’m sure you do that to transfer items, but why not just keep them in the gear?

 

Not my choice. I like each of my characters to have their own gear and not a problem for me to do it the way I do it.

[Lunafox]

 

I think Biowares mistake is marketing and making the game only about lvl 70 and by making it too easy to lvl and removing a lot of little rewards you got along the way. They’ve incentivised people to rush to lvl 70 and basically disregard everything along the way. If they made the game more about the journey and all aspects like it used to be, I think it would be more healthy.

 

Which leads me to question, do Bioware count all the F2P people as their main audience or do they count their subscribers? Numbers on a spread sheet saying “we have have this many people playing”, doesn’t equate to the same amount of money being made or a health game. F2P are fly by night players who I believe rarely bring funds into the game and more because they are so restricted in participating.

 

I’ve never been a proponent of F2P in this game, I think Bioware made a mistake early on and gave too much of the game away for free.

 

 

I agree with the above points. I always felt Bioware gave the best part of the game away for free. What sane game runner does that? Age of Conan and others give F2P the first 20 levels for free. Enough to get your feet wet and draw you in, and then you sub if you want to keep going. The leveling is too easy. I know in some of the games I played, it could take weeks, if not months or years to earn xp and levels. At the high levels it was very slow and something of an achievement to have attained a level. You definitely earned bragging rights as a 'no lifer' for achieving top levels. I think a balance needs to be found, enough xp to not be boring, but little enough to make it an experience and keep people around.

 

But! I don't think giving more leeway for the preferred players is a good idea. It's giving away more for free, and lessening the need to have a sub. It's hurting the game, what for the sole purpose of filling queues? That's like giving the food away at a restaurant just to say you have clientele. There needs to be an incentive to sub.

[robertthebard]

How many weeks after the last round of merges did it take for a thread like this to show up? I'd look myself, but it's more a point of "merges don't work" than "I'm curious to know". Issues with PvE queues are more often related to static groups than to actual population issues, and swtor PVP just isn't that popular amongst the general MMO community, let alone the general swtor community. I have never read a thread anywhere else that said "Hey, ya'll should come to swtor for PvP, it's the best ever in any MMO". My youtube feed doesn't have a single "check out the awesome swtor PvP" video, although it does have pages of story content, from Vanilla to comp returns.

 

Merging isn't going to make it more popular. It's not going to bring burnt out or frustrated with developmental direction players back either. It's a niche game mode in a niche MMO, the price is going to be the queue times. I know I've never been in a WZ, even locking comps behind them didn't make me want to go. For me, however, it's more an issue of "1...2...3...GO" not being my idea of fun PvP. Ilum, however, was fun. There's a reason I don't have Gree rep finished yet, and it's not because I never went to Ilum.

 

At the end of the day, if I don't find anything exciting to hold me, I'll move on, yet again. At that point, if they do merge, they're not likely to see any more money from me, I just got all my toons sorted out from the last round, and I'm not anxious to repeat the process.

[ZeroTypeR]

Which server would that be and can you define quiet active and what days and times during the day and night.

 

I don’t think the thread is about paying to transfers. I think it’s about people wanting mergers. But before mergers are needed, Bioware have options to try first. One would be cheap or free transfers.

 

I'm on SS and I always see plenty of people roaming around. No specific time, since I log on a random times, but there's always people around and pvp pops pretty regularly.

[TrixxieTriss]

But! I don't think giving more leeway for the preferred players is a good idea. It's giving away more for free, and lessening the need to have a sub. It's hurting the game, what for the sole purpose of filling queues? That's like giving the food away at a restaurant just to say you have clientele. There needs to be an incentive to sub.

 

How about the paid passes? They could reintroduce those to allow preferred players to participate in certain parts of the game they currently can’t without subbing.

Maybe they could buy a story chapter pass that allows them to do one chapter per character. Or a pass that allows 20 pvp matches.

 

I’ve never been preferred. I’ve always subbed, so I’m not sure what would work for them. I did know preferred people who said they couldn’t afford a full time sub (which made no sense to me because they purchased passes).

I do know the game lost a lot of people I knew when;the pass system disappeared.

[TrixxieTriss]

I'm on SS and I always see plenty of people roaming around. No specific time, since I log on a random times, but there's always people around and pvp pops pretty regularly.

 

I disagree. Try playing outside of your normal times and you’ll see a much lower population to do any group content with, including pvp.

If you could give us some time “brackets” as a reference, it would help.

Let me ask, of the pvp pops you get at random times, how many are arena and how many are 8 man?

[TrixxieTriss]

How many weeks after the last round of merges did it take for a thread like this to show up? I'd look myself, but it's more a point of "merges don't work" than "I'm curious to know". Issues with PvE queues are more often related to static groups than to actual population issues, and swtor PVP just isn't that popular amongst the general MMO community, let alone the general swtor community. I have never read a thread anywhere else that said "Hey, ya'll should come to swtor for PvP, it's the best ever in any MMO". My youtube feed doesn't have a single "check out the awesome swtor PvP" video, although it does have pages of story content, from Vanilla to comp returns.

 

Merging isn't going to make it more popular. It's not going to bring burnt out or frustrated with developmental direction players back either. It's a niche game mode in a niche MMO, the price is going to be the queue times. I know I've never been in a WZ, even locking comps behind them didn't make me want to go. For me, however, it's more an issue of "1...2...3...GO" not being my idea of fun PvP. Ilum, however, was fun. There's a reason I don't have Gree rep finished yet, and it's not because I never went to Ilum.

 

At the end of the day, if I don't find anything exciting to hold me, I'll move on, yet again. At that point, if they do merge, they're not likely to see any more money from me, I just got all my toons sorted out from the last round, and I'm not anxious to repeat the process.

 

Warning: I’ve a wall of text coming. My reply got out of hand again.

 

I think this is the second thread I’ve seen and actually been active. The first one died really fast because it was pointless. This ones only been around for a short time. So I guess about 8 months (29 weeks?) after the last merge.

 

Personally, with the move of the servers at the time of the mergers, they only helped me till around March, when they messed up conquest. The affect of that mess up was felt in pvp, especially outside of primetime and it’s never recovered.

 

Prior to March, I did see a decline again at the times I would usually play. I put that down to them moving the servers and making most of the people in my region (APAC) stop playing.

I think the west coast server move nearly negated the west coast mergers because it caused a large portion of players to leave. I believe the mergers for the SS server would have been more successful if they had left it on the west coast.

 

I took steps to look at playing on Darth Malgus because I couldn’t get pvp pops outside of primetime (which has continued to shrink). Sadly, it’s just too hard to pvp at 320-350ms. I tried for a bit, but it’s just to frustrating, especially with all the increase in dysnc the game has been producing each time they add more content since 5.0.

 

The only saving grace for pvp pops was the 5.9,2 patch. It’s brought in match making, cross faction to all maps and the queue defaults to arena pops when the queue gets low. (The new Match making doesn’t work for some of us, so I’m pretty annoyed about that. That’s also made more pvpers quit and I’m close to it myself. But that’s another topic).

The combine factions queue and the arena default does mean lvl 70 pvp pops more outside of prime time. But I do play a lot of arena now, which isn’t my favourite type of pvp and you are always playing with the same 8-12 people (gets boring).

Neither of those actually help lowbie or mid pvp. Both are still ghost towns due to lack incentives to play it (as I mentioned in an earlier post).

 

If I was only looking at this from my perspective of getting low pops or only arena, I would say mergers were needed. But it won’t help me at the times I play because I don’t think the combined US server populations at those times would make a lot of difference, since Bioware effectively drove off the majority of the people in my region who would usually play at those times.

 

I don’t think mergers are currently needed for US players to play during primetime or even during a lot of their daylight hours. That doesn’t mean they won’t be needed in the future. And before that happens, there are a slew of options Bioware could take.

 

Bioware have damaged the game beyond repair for people who would usually play on the US servers, but don’t play in US primetime, all because of the server move. There is nothing that can be done about that now. They aren’t going to move SS to the west coast again and even if they did, I doubt they would get enough players back to justify it (people got burnt bad with the move and loyalty and trust went with it).

 

For the time being, the cross faction and default to arena pops when the queue reduces, should be enough to keep the pvp part of the game going. I can’t comment on the other group content because I don’t play it.

I will say, if they don’t fix the match making soon, they will see another exodus of experienced players, which won’t be good for the quality of pvp and will reduce numbers even more.

 

The game has become less fun for me and a slew of others since 5.0. It’s the continued degrading of fun in the game that is causing a lot of long time players to leave (example : conquest) If they made the game fun again, people would stop leaving and others would come back.

But Bioware don’t care about long term players. Recently they said as much in a pod cast. According to them, we are the minority of their player base and not their target audience. (look how well that’s worked for them).

It’s no surprise we are the minority now because they drive longer term and dedicated players away. We continue to leave and that’s why the game is in the state it’s in.

Apparently this has probably been their model since launch (if you read between the lines when reading Daniel Erickson’s recent comments on Reddit). The model is obviously faulty

 

I could go on with my analysis of why I think the game’s declined. But I think we all know why. Plus I’ve said most of it before.

It will be interesting to read comments and memoirs of the team in the post swtor era after the game closes down. Maybe then we’ll get an insight as to why the game went this way.

[robertthebard]

Warning: I’ve a wall of text coming. My reply got out of hand again.

 

I think this is the second thread I’ve seen and actually been active. The first one died really fast because it was pointless. This ones only been around for a short time. So I guess about 8 months (29 weeks?) after the last merge.

 

Personally, with the move of the servers at the time of the mergers, they only helped me till around March, when they messed up conquest. The affect of that mess up was felt in pvp, especially outside of primetime and it’s never recovered.

 

Prior to March, I did see a decline again at the times I would usually play. I put that down to them moving the servers and making most of the people in my region (APAC) stop playing.

I think the west coast server move nearly negated the west coast mergers because it caused a large portion of players to leave. I believe the mergers for the SS server would have been more successful if they had left it on the west coast.

 

I took steps to look at playing on Darth Malgus because I couldn’t get pvp pops outside of primetime (which has continued to shrink). Sadly, it’s just too hard to pvp at 320-350ms. I tried for a bit, but it’s just to frustrating, especially with all the increase in dysnc the game has been producing each time they add more content since 5.0.

 

The only saving grace for pvp pops was the 5.9,2 patch. It’s brought in match making, cross faction to all maps and the queue defaults to arena pops when the queue gets low. (The new Match making doesn’t work for some of us, so I’m pretty annoyed about that. That’s also made more pvpers quit and I’m close to it myself. But that’s another topic).

The combine factions queue and the arena default does mean lvl 70 pvp pops more outside of prime time. But I do play a lot of arena now, which isn’t my favourite type of pvp and you are always playing with the same 8-12 people (gets boring).

Neither of those actually help lowbie or mid pvp. Both are still ghost towns due to lack incentives to play it (as I mentioned in an earlier post).

 

If I was only looking at this from my perspective of getting low pops or only arena, I would say mergers were needed. But it won’t help me at the times I play because I don’t think the combined US server populations at those times would make a lot of difference, since Bioware effectively drove off the majority of the people in my region who would usually play at those times.

 

I don’t think mergers are currently needed for US players to play during primetime or even during a lot of their daylight hours. That doesn’t mean they won’t be needed in the future. And before that happens, there are a slew of options Bioware could take.

 

Bioware have damaged the game beyond repair for people who would usually play on the US servers, but don’t play in US primetime, all because of the server move. There is nothing that can be done about that now. They aren’t going to move SS to the west coast again and even if they did, I doubt they would get enough players back to justify it (people got burnt bad with the move and loyalty and trust went with it).

 

For the time being, the cross faction and default to arena pops when the queue reduces, should be enough to keep the pvp part of the game going. I can’t comment on the other group content because I don’t play it.

I will say, if they don’t fix the match making soon, they will see another exodus of experienced players, which won’t be good for the quality of pvp and will reduce numbers even more.

 

The game has become less fun for me and a slew of others since 5.0. It’s the continued degrading of fun in the game that is causing a lot of long time players to leave (example : conquest) If they made the game fun again, people would stop leaving and others would come back.

But Bioware don’t care about long term players. Recently they said as much in a pod cast. According to them, we are the minority of their player base and not their target audience. (look how well that’s worked for them).

It’s no surprise we are the minority now because they drive longer term and dedicated players away. We continue to leave and that’s why the game is in the state it’s in.

Apparently this has probably been their model since launch (if you read between the lines when reading Daniel Erickson’s recent comments on Reddit). The model is obviously faulty

 

I could go on with my analysis of why I think the game’s declined. But I think we all know why. Plus I’ve said most of it before.

It will be interesting to read comments and memoirs of the team in the post swtor era after the game closes down. Maybe then we’ll get an insight as to why the game went this way.

 

I can only speak for myself, but I canceled my long term sub due to changes to the game to accommodate PvP. After wave upon wave of nerfs that adversely affected toons in PvE, I bailed. Upon my recent return, I respec'd out of some of the harder hit classes, but that's not going to hold my sub open.

 

They did indeed drop the ball with conquest, and the current wave of changes, which I can't be sure of the dates on, I wasn't here, didn't do anything to make me excited about it. I made my suggestions on fixing it way back when, and I don't have the inclination to waste my time going over that again, it's a waste of my time, but queue times weren't a part of the issue for my leaving. I had static groups for the content I played, and when they weren't full, we could easily pull the dps classes we were short, since we had a surplus of tanks and healers. Merges won't correct that "issue" either, as people that still have their static groups for everything but solo queues are going to still have those.

 

They did everything they could to make PvP more "appealing", and broke PvE to do so. That's going to cause people to do what I did, and just leave, especially if, like me, they have a lot of experience to know that until they make every class but the FotM use nothing but basic attacks, PvP is always going to be "broken" in the eyes of a majority of the PvP community, that is, after all, an industry wide phenomena.

[kodrac]

This is probably the most important part of the entire post. More people are leveling than are playing end game (assuming everyone who is level 70 plays end game or the number of "end-game" players might be even smaller). This is something that has been disputed by the people who are having difficulty with random groups for a very long time and now there is "proof". There are "lots" of people playing the game that are not queuing for PVP or Raids.

 

New characters are more fun to play in the current "atmosphere". And with the dismal CXP rate, I only play 70s during 2x windows and that's only if there isn't any new toons I want to over level.

[Andryah]

New characters are more fun to play in the current "atmosphere". And with the dismal CXP rate, I only play 70s during 2x windows and that's only if there isn't any new toons I want to over level.

 

A lot of the changes they made over the last few years have actually played into new characters being more fun, and in particular less tedious to play for a broad segment of the player base (though not for most single facet players). I think this was intentional on the part of the studio as they, like many players, feel the original class story arcs to 50 are the best part of the game even today. In some respects, they are playing to the core strength of their game .. and making the on-ramp into the game much more friendly with 4.0 gives new players an excellent pathway to enter the game and not feel crushed behind a sense of feeling like you can never catch up to long time veterans (unlike most other MMOs).

 

Now.. this can have a negative affect to the PuG model of play in that it gives players other pathways then playing one character at level cap over and over and over again (which is kind of the MMO norm in the industry, and gets really boring in most MMOs regardless of content release pace). The negative affect being fewer players logged in playing level 70s (where most group play takes place) ... but you know what.. there is nothing wrong with this really, particularly for players in good guilds who organize a range of guild sponsored activities (which brings known group members with it) and they can switch out characters from their collection to best match whatever activity is on at the moment.

 

This can also have a negative affect with long time veterans who really don't want to partake in the best part of the game in many players opinion... as these veterans want more level 70s to play with in group activities. But the thing I think these very veterans fail to realize is that making it essentially an end game only focus WILL NOT make more people random queue with strangers. Then again.. long term veterans of any MMO generally enjoy a range of game play and content within said MMO and are not dependent on only one facet of the game getting new content attention. These same players are very likely not queuing for random grouping either... because like it or not they realize this route leads to most of the bad social aspects of any MMO.

 

At the end of the day... regardless of the MMO being played... players that play only one facet of an MMO can and will get bored, frustrated, and disillusioned over time. I think the various studios understand this and they bake this into their planning and they do expect players to come and go over time. Normally, this would be true for the class leveling in most MMOs... but SWTOR does live in a unique position in this regard in having this aspect of the game very well fleshed out at launch, and continued to improve mechanics surrounding leveling to keep it that way. The fact that they could not continue these class story arcs post launch is a disappointment for some avid class story lovers for sure, but no MMO is all things to all people. The only players I observe that do not like the class story arcs are those that simply want to get a new character to level cap asap so they can go play their favored facet of play at level cap ... and bypass story arcs or space bar through them anyway.

Edited September 2, 2018 by Andryah

[Andryah]

They did everything they could to make PvP more "appealing", and broke PvE to do so. That's going to cause people to do what I did, and just leave, especially if, like me, they have a lot of experience to know that until they make every class but the FotM use nothing but basic attacks, PvP is always going to be "broken" in the eyes of a majority of the PvP community, that is, after all, an industry wide phenomena.

 

I get what you are saying here, but I don't personally think they "broke PvE with their current focus on buffing up PvP. But it did change PvE. As with any change in an MMO.. there are carryover effects from one part of the game to another.. so take class balance for example (something I have never ever heard any PvPer in any MMO in almost 20 years of playing state that a studio got it right or knows what they are doing), it will have some effect on PvE as well unless the MMO has strictly partitioned walls between PvP and PvE.. so in that sense.. yeah... changes to PvP.. caused changes to PvE. Different people will judge the impact to their preferred play differently.. which is fine.

 

The business model for this particular studio is to work on one major aspect of the game at a time, and then rotate through other major aspects over time... then .... rinse and repeat. Whether we as players think that is right or wrong, this is the path this studio has chosen to pursue. The one positive I see here in this approach is it makes it very clear that regardless of what EA may have wanted... the studio understands SWTOR never was and never will be a WoW killer (only WoW can kill off WoW).

 

This business model is not a new model for MMOs by any means... but SWTOR does it more then most, and WoW does it less then most.. so in some ways the two represent the extremes in the industry. That said.. both studios very much appear to understand that they cannot hold a majority of players between major new releases and actually pursue a business model that assumes a majority of their players do actually game hop and will come and go over time. Subscriber retention is a unicorn in the modern MMO era. Players are less invested in any given MMO, they have lots of choices when they get bored or frustrated, and are generally more willing to move around then say 15 years ago. I think the studios understand this and plan for it, even if some players insist that the number one thing a studio has to do is retain subscribers. In reality.. a revolving door of subscribers (or in a blended model like SWTOR) a revolving door of players can be a good thing for the studio. Of course it drives some players to frustration.... for a range of personal reasons. But an MMO is not designed around any given player, or faction of players... that is the living space of small niche MMOs that focus almost exclusively on a few narrow facets of MMO play.

Edited September 2, 2018 by Andryah

[robertthebard]

I get what you are saying here, but I don't personally think they "broke PvE with their current focus on buffing up PvP. But it did change PvE. As with any change in an MMO.. there are carryover effects from one part of the game to another.. so take class balance for example (something I have never ever heard any PvPer in any MMO in almost 20 years of playing state that a studio got it right or knows what they are doing), it will have some effect on PvE as well unless the MMO has strictly partitioned walls between PvP and PvE.. so in that sense.. yeah... changes to PvP.. caused changes to PvE. Different people will judge the impact to their preferred play differently.. which is fine.

 

Yes, and no. Some of the classes were devastated by the PvP nerfs, while others weren't, or weren't so much, as it were. Perception is reality, when you can't take a class through a solo mission, because 2/3 of your skills won't work, or are worthless against a mob, it's not a L2P issue, it's a "but mah PvP" issue. I've got a few decades of experience in MMOs too, and I've seen this "X is OP and needs to be nerfed, but my class is UP and needs buffed", despite others telling said player that the classes are fine. You get enough wine, you'll get some cheese, eventually. The only MMO that I've played to date that completely shut the PvP crowd down was DDO, where PvP wasn't even on the radar as a focus, and the devs told 'em "this is all it's going to be, if you're looking for a PvP focus, you'll have to look elsewhere". They can't do that here, as they tried to make it relevant, but they failed, on so many levels, to do so. Conquest was where they could have pulled it off, and nope, they dropped the ball.

 

The business model for this particular studio is to work on one major aspect of the game at a time, and then rotate through other major aspects over time... then .... rinse and repeat. Whether we as players think that is right or wrong, this is the path this studio has chosen to pursue. The one positive I see here in this approach is it makes it very clear that regardless of what EA may have wanted... the studio understands SWTOR never was and never will be a WoW killer (only WoW can kill off WoW).

 

This business model is not a new model for MMOs by any means... but SWTOR does it more then most, and WoW does it less then most.. so in some ways the two represent the extremes in the industry. That said.. both studios very much appear to understand that they cannot hold a majority of players between major new releases and actually pursue a business model that assumes a majority of their players do actually game hop and will come and go over time. Subscriber retention is a unicorn in the modern MMO era. Players are less invested in any given MMO, they have lots of choices when they get bored or frustrated, and are generally more willing to move around then say 15 years ago. I think the studios understand this and plan for it, even if some players insist that the number one thing a studio has to do is retain subscribers. In reality.. a revolving door of subscribers (or in a blended model like SWTOR) a revolving door of players can be a good thing for the studio. Of course it drives some players to frustration.... for a range of personal reasons. But an MMO is not designed around any given player, or faction of players... that is the living space of small niche MMOs that focus almost exclusively on a few narrow facets of MMO play.

 

Ok, not sure what this last paragraph has to do with anything I wrote. I'm not looking for a game to be built around me, or my playstyle. I commented on how initially my playstyle, or at least part of it, was initially supported, but then nerfed due to PvP. When you can play a class to 70, running a dps comp on a dps toon for the majority, and then, out of the blue, you can't finish a solo mission, or a mission where you're required to use low influence comps, it's not a L2P issue, at least, not for you. Regardless of how some will rail against this, the perception remains, and as I said earlier, perception is reality. It was nerfed because enough PvPers claimed it was OP, and BW listened, and nerfed 'em, trying to get these players to stick around. It cost them my sub, and the current iteration of the game isn't going to be enough to keep me wanting to play, after I spent an hour with Heskel. I got through it, but the frustration of spending an hour doing something that, on the mirror took me one try, so about 5 minutes, even with telling Valk to stick it, means that I'm not happy with the design choices made, and won't be sticking around.

 

This has to be addressed before people start screaming again for merges. If people can't play the toons they want to play in a manner that is efficient, and entertaining, they won't stick around.

[TrixxieTriss]

The problems with nerfing and buffing between pvp and pve have mostly been because Bioware uses the wrong methodology to balance and “don’t listen” to what the actual problems are.

 

They don’t look at the “whole picture” together. They split DCD, survivability and then balance around damage.

This means they nerf the wrong stuff and buff the wrong stuff.

 

Ie: Mercs were too strong in pvp, but it was not the dps that was the problem, it was survivability and DCDs. We told the Devs over and over and over and over... what the problem was. Except instead of nerfing the DCDs, they nerfed the damage, which didn’t need it and was fine as it was, no one was complaining about that.

Then they also left the DCDs as they were, so the problem wasn’t fixed at all and the QQ about them being OP continues to this day. The OP status was never about the damage and Bioware were / are clueless.

 

That dps nerf really affected the pve guys and it wasn’t needed. We all told them, pvers and pvpers alike.

But they refused to listen.

All they do is follow some dps combat metric against training dummies who don’t hit back. The whole method is flawed.

 

They did the same to my beloved dps Sorc 2.5 years ago and it’s never recovered and its now one of the worst performing classes in pvp. Sure they can be hard to kill, but if you can’t kill anything, what’s the point. You may as well play a healer.

 

Nerfing isn’t the pvp communities fault for complaining something is too OP in pvp. It’s Biowares fault for not understanding the actual problem or bothering to listen to the pvp community explaining “in detail” what the problem is and how to fix it. Sadly, pve guys sometimes get shafted because Bioware refuse to try and understand the actual issue. But, it goes both ways, pvpers have been affected in the past in similar ways.

 

Bioware need to change their methodology on how they balance and not just use dps like a holy grail.

Edited September 3, 2018 by TrixxieTriss

[Liquor]

merge them.

 

I'm not going to spend the CC to move 74 characters on 1 account, 23 on the wife's account, and 26 on the kid's account. even if the transfer was 90 CC. I wouldn't spend the time to move that many characters on a dying MMO with sub-par performance in PvP and 8-man operations.

 

waiting for the new SW MMO to release.

[TrixxieTriss]

merge them.

 

I'm not going to spend the CC to move 74 characters on 1 account, 23 on the wife's account, and 26 on the kid's account. even if the transfer was 90 CC. I wouldn't spend the time to move that many characters on a dying MMO with sub-par performance in PvP and 8-man operations.

 

waiting for the new SW MMO to release.

 

What if the transfers were free?

[robertthebard]

The problems with nerfing and buffing between pvp and pve have mostly been because Bioware uses the wrong methodology to balance and “don’t listen” to what the actual problems are.

 

They don’t look at the “whole picture” together. They split DCD, survivability and then balance around damage.

This means they nerf the wrong stuff and buff the wrong stuff.

 

Ie: Mercs were too strong in pvp, but it was not the dps that was the problem, it was survivability and DCDs. We told the Devs over and over and over and over... what the problem was. Except instead of nerfing the DCDs, they nerfed the damage, which didn’t need it and was fine as it was, no one was complaining about that.

Then they also left the DCDs as they were, so the problem wasn’t fixed at all and the QQ about them being OP continues to this day. The OP status was never about the damage and Bioware were / are clueless.

 

That dps nerf really affected the pve guys and it wasn’t needed. We all told them, pvers and pvpers alike.

But they refused to listen.

All they do is follow some dps combat metric against training dummies who don’t hit back. The whole method is flawed.

 

They did the same to my beloved dps Sorc 2.5 years ago and it’s never recovered and its now one of the worst performing classes in pvp. Sure they can be hard to kill, but if you can’t kill anything, what’s the point. You may as well play a healer.

 

Nerfing isn’t the pvp communities fault for complaining something is too OP in pvp. It’s Biowares fault for not understanding the actual problem or bothering to listen to the pvp community explaining “in detail” what the problem is and how to fix it. Sadly, pve guys sometimes get shafted because Bioware refuse to try and understand the actual issue. But, it goes both ways, pvpers have been affected in the past in similar ways.

 

Bioware need to change their methodology on how they balance and not just use dps like a holy grail.

 

You know, when I started playing a healer spec'd sorc, I could save a dps with a bubble. Some damage mitigation, and a smallish HOT, Heal Over Time. I wonder what metric they looked at to see that that was OP? Maybe there's a secret mob forum, where they all complain about not being able to kill players? My Assassin/Shadow tanks used to use Phase Walk to protect, and improve the performance of healers, again, must be a mob forum we don't know about? Nope, it was the PvP forums. Most of this comes back to "How dare they use class skills to win", sort of like the nerf, ages back, to Smash, where they used a fully PvP geared Mara against a group of naked players to show how "OP" it was.

 

But this is way off topic, other than looking at why a population might be dwindling, I know for a fact that after wave 9000 of PvE nerfs, I canceled my sub and left, I wonder if I was the only one? I also have to wonder if my threshold was higher than other people's thresholds. I asked back then, when I left, if they really thought there were enough PvPcentric players to keep the lights on, and based on the OP, and the queue woes, that there must not be enough players game wide, or they wouldn't be looking to merge, yet again.

[Falensawino]

I agree. weekdays fleet has less than 20 ppl on at a time. the ques for grouping takes too long and eventually ill leave game.

 

Fleet counts are NOT that useful anymore. More people stay in their strongholds or flagship

 

/who fleet

 

is only going to bring back the first 100 results

[TrixxieTriss]

I’ve still been tracking numbers when I play by using the 1-10, 11-20...... 61-69, 70+... count system

 

It goes up and down, but Tuesday (my time) is by far the worst day of the week at this time.

9:30pm AEST

12:30pm GMT

7:30am EST

4:30am PST

 

Star Forge

Imp = 457

Rep = 540

Total on the server = 997

 

The time zone reflects the low numbers. But I have to say, this is the worst I’ve seen so far.