7.0 Follow Up

[BishopSMASH]

I loved being able to save my pvp tokens in 3.0 to buy my expertise gear on day one of 4.0. I still did pvp content to get the tokens, but I was able to enter my first match without having to go through the painful cycle of being under geared until I could buy what I wanted.

 

I also liked bringing new players onto a team, and throwing all of the gear at them so that they could gear up in a couple of hours after joining the team so, I get why people like gear drops in ops.

 

I just don't think that withholding gear from others because they want it to do content that they don't need it for is anything that I should or want to be opposed to. I have also seen posts from people who have physical challenges that truly do need to have the best gear that they can get their hands on to do what most people could do with poorly optimized trash gear like 312 or 318 gear is now. I mean let's face it, most content in the game can be done pretty easily in 236 gear or less. That doesn't mean that people that don't do ops should be prevented from getting anything better than that.

 

The real deciding factor should be what is best for the game/players. Is it better to limit who can get bis gear, or is it better to make it available to everyone? If customer satisfaction is taken into account, then I think that giving unrestricted access to everyone is the better choice (regardless of the content that they choose to do).

 

Ultimately, I couldn't care less about how people got whatever gear they wanted if I was simply able to gear the way I used to. So sure, if people want to gear through GSF or Flashpoints, let them. But if I'd rather get a group of 8 people and blitz through some HMs, get a specific unassembled piece from each boss and redeem each one so that we could get back to doing NiMs, I'd be content. I can debate the semantics of who should have access to what, but if we take it from a "life-of-the-game" perspective, then yeah, giving people the option to get the gear they want can't hurt - especially with the playerbase now vs then.

 

The commendation system was also not a bad halfway point if all people cared about was the iLvl. You could get unoptimized, no set bonus gear from just doing Flashpoints or w/e, but the best of the best came from the hardest content.

 

Regardless, I truly could not be more disgusted than I am with the thought of gearing through GSF, world bosses, and a "weekly" hardmode since the others either don't work or aren't as viable, among other means, week in and week out.

[juliushorst]

This isn't what we wanted. We want to able to get gear directly from operations, like how it used to be. We want to kill a boss and receive a piece of gear relative to the mode we're doing. Those of us who do NiM should be rewarded with NiM-only gear. We don't want to be doing GSF and World Bosses and Flashpoints for gear. If you think we're the ones shaping the game you're sorely mistaken. The people who do only solo and daily content who feel they should have access to gear they don't need have created this mess of a system.

 

I'm not even talking about gear - my purple 326s with 330 set bonus implants are perfectly fine for what I usually do (open world and solo stuff - gear is almost completely meaningless with new scaling, flashpoints on both difficulties and sm ops - my gear is good enough; I want Columni Force Lord at some point because hey, Baras' armor so be ready when the time comes, Soa and Karagga but normally I rarely go above SM).

My actual gripe is with scaling of the open world part - over the years I've seen raiders and pvpers complaining about people performing poorly in their activities of choice because open world is too easy and they don't learn how to play. BW listened to those complains and now open world activities, especially heroics, are a joyless slog with how weak your character and your companion are.

As I said, they give me a way to opt out of this scaling and back to 4.0 \ 6.0 version in whatever way they find easiest \ most appropriate, be it separate instance, skill, item, veteran stacks - I'm a happy camper.

[Glzmo]

We did make key changes to the way we approach rewards in 7.0. We rotate content (including Flashpoints available in Groupfinder and Weekly missions for Daily Areas) for a couple of reasons. First, it allows all reward calendars to be aligned. Conquests, Galactic Seasons, and the Featured weekly content all line up, which means players can make progress towards multiple rewards at once.

 

Second, we heard loud and clear from 6.0 feedback that farming one particular piece of content (like Hammer Station, or a particular Weekly above all others) because it was the fastest way to gear up, but it just wasn't fun. In 7.0, we rotate content to mix and match some of the shortest and longest flashpoints and weeklies each week. As a result, there is more variety in the type of content the gearing system rewards players for completing. Instead of gathering a sheer quantity of items to sort through to find an upgrade in 6.0, which required more and more efficient runs to maximize the amount of gear acquired, we moved to a system that virtually guarantees upgrades to gear by just doing the featured content each week. At the end of the day it results in a quality over quantity philosophy.

 

When content is not in rotation, it is still available and rewards are still offered, but to a lesser degree. For example, all Flashpoints are accessible by walking into their entrance, however since Groupfinder is the delivery method for ensuring upgrade rewards, not all Flashpoints are available in Groupfinder each week unless they are featured.

 

For Daily missions, we have Weekly mission wrappers ('do 6 dailies') for each area, which are the delivery method for larger rewards. These weekly missions are only available when the rewards are available, which is if they are featured that week. However all of the dailies associated with these missions are still available at all times, and still reward items relevant to gearing or upgrading gear, just at a slower rate than the featured content.

 

All of that boils down to featured content is about aligning different reward tracks such as conquest and Galactic Seasons, plus mixing up content with short and long completion times together to prevent some of the issues that awarding all content equally brought to the table in the 6.0 era.

 

I know that doesn't address being shoe-horned into content, but I hope it does provide the insight as to why we decided to make these changes. What I have noticed in-game is there are a lot more players in the areas, and with share tagging of mobs, I'm finding I'm not waiting around for respawns.

 

Conquests, Seasons...who cares? I get why you think these changes to weeklies were good, but really, they are bad. Please walk them back!

 

People want to play the way they feel like, not be shoehoerned into certain content! IT ISN'T FUN!!!

 

Also, being shoehorned into certain Weeklies means that EVERYBODY is playing these weeklies and content is overrun and no fun because many quest objectives aren't instanced. Now even the shortest daily areas take so long to complete that people with little time to play can't do it. Not to mention, it increases lag.

Plus, if I have one week free from work, I want to play all weeklies, but there aren't enough available! Perhaps you could at least change it so that if one doesn't finish a weekly one week, it will remain available until it's finished (instead of automatically deleting it from the questlog, which was a flawed idea to begin with).

 

Remember when you did this when daily areas first launched and changed it because of all the issues it brought (and you took the wonderful Ilum dailies away, too, the only ones that had conversations with NPCs which made them wonderful - please bring those back, too!)?

 

If I can't play the content I feel like (or have time to do!), I just log out until the weekly for it is available again (likely my subscription will run out by then). But then I'll feel like playing another piece of content and it won't be available. Not fun!

Edited March 6, 2022 by Glzmo

[robwettengel]

The 200+ bug fixes are certainly to be commended.

 

I had been under the assumption that the Raid gear was dropping as pieces previously, but now reading posts that Raiders are on the same currency treadmill as everybody else, I am stuck wondering what segment of the userbase 7.0 was made for. This gear treadmill is going to lead to burn-out. Having been subbed for the last ten years without interruption, I have scaled-back my playtime with 7.0's launch.

 

While having presence limited isn't much of an obstacle to me thanks to plenty of level 50 comps, I am concerned about players who may not have a single one. This could hamper their ability to progress through KotFEET. I also feel that Legendary Players should receive the full presence boosts meant for the number of companion stories they completed. Make that clear in a blog post and put it on the launcher--could possibly provide players with an incentive to complete all the class stories. More playing time on more characters would be good, right?

 

Without GF listing all available FPs, it is more difficult for players to group for FPs that are not on the weekly list. Setup a separate tier that includes these other FPs (especially if they lack a solo mode) and provide them with reduced currency rewards. Yet, these rewards should also be balanced on the amount of time, on average, they were originally intended to be ran in. Let us just say that when BT/Esseles were initially developed, they were invisioned to be completed in X time. X time then becomes the baseline by which to measure all other FPs. If an FP is designed to take twice as long as BT/Es, then it should yield twice the reward of completing BT/Es, and so on. Additionally, some additional loot should be tacked on to prevent players from starting to time their groups to calculate if they could complete 3 BTs in as long as it takes them to complete 1 FP that is estimated to take 3x as long as BT. The additional loot should have some sort of RNG attached to it--perhaps it could be deprecated armor pieces or a random number of tech frags ranging from 10-25. Or how about putting all the FPs back, but just cap the number of times each one can be run per week or have only a single run count towards weekly rewards?

 

I haven't run some of these FPs in years, and the muscle memory is rusty enough without the rest of the group charging on ahead of me skipping stuff that can be skipped and I forget what can be skipped and run headlong into enemies, get killed and then log out in disgust.

[JakRoanin]

I might not need BiS gear to do the content I like, However, not being able to optimize my crap they've forced on me isn't fair!

[juliushorst]

I might not need BiS gear to do the content I like, However, not being able to optimize my crap they've forced on me isn't fair!

 

You can work around it by using pieces from different classes. My sorc wears Boltmaster piece for example.

[NathKnights]

...

People want to play the way they feel like, not be shoehorned into certain content! IT ISN'T FUN!!!

...

 

Pretty much !

 

I want to play Revan, KotET & KotFE ... and ENJOY it!

 

I use to enjoy it under 6.0.

 

I do NOT enjoy it under 7.0.

 

I want to be able to level up and score 290+ equipment crates (I know there are guys out there that think anything less than 310 is trash). I don't play for Ops I play for the story line and that 294-296 kit drops make my toon more resilient. I respect those that want top do Ops (I may want to myself one day); for now though if I have an hour to spare I want to hop on to SWTOR progress my story line a little and get better kit for my toons.

 

With Renown level up I was getting consistent kit drops of mods in the mid 290's. I was enjoying the new Mando-rebellion story line, and whilst I wish Malgus would stay dead was looking forward to more story there as well.

 

Now I can't be bothered going through the content. When I get to L80 at Correlia I ask myself, why go any further, the story line is nice but I've done it before, and I'm not getting the renown level up crates so why bother?

 

Consequently I've can'd my subscription renewal. If there is nothing to replace renown and bring back the fun for me ... I'm done!

 

It was fun whilst it lasted

Edited March 6, 2022 by NathKnights
grammar

[Dunzel]

All,

 

I’ve been playing since day 1 of this wonderful game. Like many of you, I feel 7.0 is not a step forward. I despise the FP rotations. I dislike the combat styles and much prefer the gameplay of 6.0. I started a new Merc/Arsenal char. I’m stymied in the Library on Ossus. No matter what combat style or companion combinations I employ, the mobs kill me over and over, especially deeper into the Library where there are large groups of elite mobs in one pull. I have given up trying to get that new Char up to and through Onslaught. I won’t be able to take that new Char to experience Legacy as the game is presently constituted.

 

Rather than gripe about the changes and badger the devs to “make the game I want…”, I’m using the only method a player can hope to use to effect change. I’ve canceled subscriptions on both my accounts and I’m not buying anything from the Cartel Market. If most people did the same, EA would be forced to admit their failure and change to reflect their customers wants or be forced to stop the game completely due to the financial crisis that would ensue.

 

If you don’t like this expansion, cancel your scrip. It’s as simple as that. Deprive them of cash flow and they will acquiesce to our wishes.

Edited March 6, 2022 by Dunzel

[Dyvim]

Put your money where your mouth is....foundational update? Vision for the future?

 

Let's put your "vision" to the test. The only one that matters.

 

Put up a poll. Ask players, your customers, if they feel 7.0 puts the game on the RIGHT track or the WRONG track.

 

Afraid of the brute force feedback? You should be...

 

Actually, just go balls out and put the poll on the launcher...so every player can vote easily. Afraid? Fear is the path to the inferior development side...

Edited March 6, 2022 by Dyvim

[Farferello]

I still find myself waiting around, sometimes a long time, for enemies to respawn. Mob sharing is great but if you arrived at a bad time after multiple people just slaughtered everything before you got there - guess what, you're back to waiting like you were previously. This problem would be solved if you made respawns in areas (like the Mutations, or Face Merchants Heroics) much quicker. I've even had a time where I was doing Face Merchants but because I didn't hit a group of mobs first, the item I needed dropped for the player who hit them first but not for me. I had to help others who came along and hit the mobs before me clear everything out before I was finally able to hit a respawned group first myself so the item dropped finally. This isn't fun when you're just waiting, and waiting for respawns. It's even worse for clickies like the one Heroic on Pubside Taris where you have to destroy the thing on the ship. They take forever to respawn.

 

Shared mobs are great if that's the only thing you need. But if you need item drops, clickies, or only a certain amount of mobs spawn, it still sucks because you're still waiting on the slow respawn timers. This isn't fun.

Edited March 6, 2022 by Farferello

[Jedi_riches]

Put your money where your mouth is....foundational update? Vision for the future?

 

Let's put your "vision" to the test. The only one that matters.

 

Put up a poll. Ask players, your customers, if they feel 7.0 puts the game on the RIGHT track or the WRONG track.

 

Afraid of the brute force feedback? You should be...

 

Actually, just go balls out and put the poll on the launcher...so every player can vote easily. Afraid? Fear is the path to the inferior development side...

 

After playing for a week or so I can categorically say the only thing I like about 7.0 is combat styles, everything else is either badly implemented (secondary combat style and loadouts) or plain stupid such as the weeklies rotation and resetting of missions at daily reset.

[Kryptonomic]

We have experienced this bug when playing on our live characters, however, this bug does not present itself on our development servers. Reproducing a bug on development servers is step one in resolving any issue as it allows us to dig deeper into the source of the problems.

 

This is generally why you use an orchestrator test harness in MMO testing. Stand up a production-like shard. Point the orchestrator to the shard, turn on synthetic transactions and make sure the equivalent of semantic monitors are running. The monitors will pick up if there are massive spikes in any stat, such as damage via any of the transactions (combat).

 

If you suspect a "death volume," in the orchestrator turn on monitoring of priority bands/lines (or whatever your modified Hero Engine calls them). Verifies that none are being incorrectly set (like the one on Tython near the Forge where a Consular can step on rocks, clearly not near the edge, but fall to their death).

 

All this said, entirely agreed: these are hard bugs to track down in many cases. Less understandable is how you get bugs like the opening crawl disappearing for all newly created class stories. Nowhere near as game damaging, of course, as a boss battle that can be bugged. But in its own way, these smaller bugs actually do more to damage confidence in your ability to actually test your own game.

 

You don't need orchestrators or anything else for that kind of bug. You need the Mark 1 eyeball and the thought that "Hey, we changed how class stories start up due to new combat styles. We should make sure that the class stories all start the same way." It's literally an impossible bug to miss. Assuming you look. So when you say:

 

As of this post, this patch will include at least 200+ fixes of varying degrees.

 

What a lot of people think is: "Great! Lots of bug fixes. Then again, given history, the fixes will likely break lots of other things. Things that may seem entirely unrelated."

 

Which goes to:

 

Because we are implementing all of these fixes in one push, ...

 

Which can sound great until you realize that the more fixes you have, the larger your surface area for regression problems. And given that testing has already proved faulty, people's confidence often isn't sky high in these "big bang" deployments. Smaller deployments with more moderate fixes might be warranted. That said, it's understood that deployments are a heavier aspect for games like this, which tends to lead to more "big bang." Which means emphasis on good testing -- and good testing tools -- becomes crucial. Thus:

 

...we want to ensure the necessary time is allocated to test them all to quality.

 

Yes, but as even the strongest fan of SWTOR will note, obviously the time allocated has never been sufficient for the team. There are things that were noted on the PTS that were genuine bugs -- versus just disagreements around implementation -- that the SWTOR team never fixed. And that was with an extra month or so of development time.

 

7.0 is a foundational update to the game. The fundamental refactoring of all abilities and Advanced Classes into Combat Styles, the addition of the long-requested Loadouts feature, and the beginnings of new UI/UX and Itemization constitute the most significant systemic changes made to SWTOR since launch.

 

All of which would have argued for a more graduated roll out of features so that regressions were minimized and feedback was easier to ascertain. Consider you also say:

 

More story will be coming including new locations to explore, a PvP revamp, and more visual and modernization improvements are also underway.

 

Which sounds exciting ... but "revamps" and "refactors" and "modernizations", when done in a "big bang" style, tend to lead to lots of bugs and lots of issues. Unless, again, you have solid testing. And here testing doesn't just mean finding bugs, it means finding a way to get feedback well before features are too baked.

 

...but this update also opens the doors to new players who have never experienced SWTOR before.

 

So yet an extra challenge to add to the above, right? Not only are you changing a whole lot, but you are trying to satisfy existing players (some who have been with the game since the beginning) and whole new groups of players. That means differing and competing expectations. This is even more so tricky in a gaming landscape where the idea of the "pure MMO" is pretty much gone and the gaming demographics have largely changed and shifted to an older player base. This will also be a context in which there is more Star Wars gaming (eventually) to be available.

 

And if you do want to attract those new players, try not to introduce obvious bugs like removing the opening crawl, which is pretty much an iconic Star Wars experience. And I'm picking on that simple thing because if something that simple can go wrong, how much else can go wrong when you start designing (or re-designing) entire systems of gameplay?

 

Ambitious ideas are great! But ambitions have to be tempered by realities and, at least for a lot of us (I suspect) and speaking for myself (certainly), trust has been eroded quite a bit that the ambitions can be fulfilled. I'm hoping to be proven wrong. I remember way back in the day when SWTOR was originally conceived as a single-player RPG that would be monetized by large expansions. Then it was conceived of as the "WoW killer" in order to (1) jump on the at-the-time viable MMO market and (2) recoup the production costs.

 

It's been fascinating to watch SWTOR evolve and I truly do think there has been a lot of adept changes by the SWTOR team. But I also think those changes often get swamped out by the sheer number of problems that SWTOR faces as it fails to fix some of the underlying problems. Those problems have forced the game to sit in an uneasy balance with the single-player story-driven narrative experience it clearly wants to be and the multi-player group-driven gaming experience the current team is driving it towards.

Edited March 6, 2022 by Kryptonomic

[meddani]

a PvP revamp

oh boy. can't wait for that to be horrible like everything else in 7.0....you're gonna ask for feedback on that & ignore it anyway right?

[robwettengel]

The Dev team has the e-mail addresses of all players. Why not send everyone a survey once a year that would serve as a roadmap to guide the next xpac's development.

 

Pose questions like: Do you want us to--once again--devote development time to implementing a new gearing system? Do you want more PvP maps? How often would you like to see a new Op? What is the most important modality of content to you as a player? Space should also be allocated after each Y/N question to allow feedback.

 

Take the answers and use them to guide your decisions. Then you also have hard data of what the players want because you asked them and can use this as leverage in dealing with other executives and BW and EA who could have their own ideas for what SWTOR should be like (and might not even play the game, but because they're Ultra Senior VP of Yadda Yadda, they need to be listened to and heeded) and tell them that SWTOR's player base hates that idea, and reveal the survey data.

[mentalmackem]

We did make key changes to the way we approach rewards in 7.0. We rotate content (including Flashpoints available in Groupfinder and Weekly missions for Daily Areas) for a couple of reasons. First, it allows all reward calendars to be aligned. Conquests, Galactic Seasons, and the Featured weekly content all line up, which means players can make progress towards multiple rewards at once.

 

Second, we heard loud and clear from 6.0 feedback that farming one particular piece of content (like Hammer Station, or a particular Weekly above all others) because it was the fastest way to gear up, but it just wasn't fun. In 7.0, we rotate content to mix and match some of the shortest and longest flashpoints and weeklies each week. As a result, there is more variety in the type of content the gearing system rewards players for completing. Instead of gathering a sheer quantity of items to sort through to find an upgrade in 6.0, which required more and more efficient runs to maximize the amount of gear acquired, we moved to a system that virtually guarantees upgrades to gear by just doing the featured content each week. At the end of the day it results in a quality over quantity philosophy.

 

When content is not in rotation, it is still available and rewards are still offered, but to a lesser degree. For example, all Flashpoints are accessible by walking into their entrance, however since Groupfinder is the delivery method for ensuring upgrade rewards, not all Flashpoints are available in Groupfinder each week unless they are featured.

 

For Daily missions, we have Weekly mission wrappers ('do 6 dailies') for each area, which are the delivery method for larger rewards. These weekly missions are only available when the rewards are available, which is if they are featured that week. However all of the dailies associated with these missions are still available at all times, and still reward items relevant to gearing or upgrading gear, just at a slower rate than the featured content.

 

All of that boils down to featured content is about aligning different reward tracks such as conquest and Galactic Seasons, plus mixing up content with short and long completion times together to prevent some of the issues that awarding all content equally brought to the table in the 6.0 era.

 

I know that doesn't address being shoe-horned into content, but I hope it does provide the insight as to why we decided to make these changes. What I have noticed in-game is there are a lot more players in the areas, and with share tagging of mobs, I'm finding I'm not waiting around for respawns.

 

 

 

Great there's more players in those areas now but what happens when the majority of us are finished with galatic season 2, don't want to do the dailies and weeklies in areas you are pushing us into and are still months away from season 3? In season one myself and most of my friends where done months and months before season 2 was even mentioned.

 

I guess my biggest question for you is what happened to play your way and why is it now play our way?

[Damask_Rose]

The people who do only solo and daily content who feel they should have access to gear they don't need have created this mess of a system.

 

Let me get this straight. You think the people who enjoyed 6.x gearing are responsible for 7.0 gearing? Are you suggesting 7.0 gearing was designed as a punishment for solo and casual players enjoying access to good gear for playing the content they enjoy, and that the raiders who resented not having exclusive gear for their preferred content had nothing to do with it?

[Sethenon]

All,

 

I’ve been playing since day 1 of this wonderful game. Like many of you, I feel 7.0 is not a step forward. I despise the FP rotations. I dislike the combat styles and much prefer the gameplay of 6.0. I started a new Merc/Arsenal char. I’m stymied in the Library on Ossus. No matter what combat style or companion combinations I employ, the mobs kill me over and over, especially deeper into the Library where there are large groups of elite mobs in one pull. I have given up trying to get that new Char up to and through Onslaught. I won’t be able to take that new Char to experience Legacy as the game is presently constituted.

 

Rather than gripe about the changes and badger the devs to “make the game I want…”, I’m using the only method a player can hope to use to effect change. I’ve canceled subscriptions on both my accounts and I’m not buying anything from the Cartel Market. If most people did the same, EA would be forced to admit their failure and change to reflect their customers wants or be forced to stop the game completely due to the financial crisis that would ensue.

 

If you don’t like this expansion, cancel your scrip. It’s as simple as that. Deprive them of cash flow and they will acquiesce to our wishes.

 

This right here is the only solution, you get 2000 words to tell them why you are canceling. If I was someone doing this I'd use up all 2k of them (and I did).

Edited March 6, 2022 by Sethenon

[AragarVarnus]

Hello.

 

I am not sure if any of the developers or community managers will read this, I do hope they will. This is how I see things; it is just my humble opinion. Ultimately, I wanted to add my 2 cents and be vocal, I think it's important for customers to voice their discontent.

 

TL; DR:

• To the players: Value your money, do not settle for little and few. EA Games is filthy rich, if they really wanted SWTOR to STRIVE they would have invested in their developers.

• We should not settle for a few crumbs of update here and there.

• We should not believe in false promises.

• We should demand better communication (which I see people doing, that’s great).

• We should not fall for the illusion that is this patch (or “expansion”).

• Bring back the real “play the way you want” in SWTOR.

• Developers/Producers: Do not ignore the people that are calling you names, read through the words of anger. There is disappointment and frustration, do not turn your back on it and face the responsibility of your actions. Communicate with us. Listen to us.

 

Full version:

Let me start with something positive:

For 10 years, you’ve managed to keep this game alive and relatively speaking, kicking. Which, given how much the SWTOR team has shrunk over the years, is impressive.

I don’t like blaming only the developers like people usually do, I believe that they are doing what they are told even if they don’t agree with it. Sadly, however, I feel like these same devs are lacking love when it comes to this game, the passion died and heck, I understand. I’ve worked on the same project at my job for years and it takes its toll. But ultimately, it IS our job to push for QUALITY and CONTENT.

 

Now to the people that keep shilling the developers:

Value your money. I’ve been like you, cheering and hoping that the game will never die and that more people will join. Open your eyes. You ARE the customer, you PAY for a service that is CLEARLY not being delivered as it should be, I admire those of you who still hope though, after all these years, I feel like my hope died.

 

To the very upset people (like me):

Threatening and calling names won’t help anything other than making ourselves feel better. Be concise, I understand your frustration, I understand your disappointment, after all you are all subscribers, paying for content and quality, expecting nothing less from the developers, and we keep being deceived year after year, given crumbs and they expect us to just enjoy it.

 

To the Developers and especially the directors of EA Games:

Please, respect your players/investors’ opinions and feedback. If the point is making this game better, so far, it is not working, the higher ups need to know this. I’m not jumping ship until the servers are shutdown, I made this mistake back in SWG and I stopped playing before it died, and I couldn’t experience its last days, so I’m sticking to SWTOR until death do us part. But again, please respect your players (whom, I repeat, are also your investors).

 

A note about MMOs and GAAS:

I’m not particularly fond of how subscription fees work, be it on an MMO or a “Game as a Service” genre. I strongly suggest watching “Game as a service” is fraud video on the Accursed Farms channel on YouTube. You’ll understand what I am trying to say.

 

Basically, all the money we - players that have been around since day 0 of SWTOR or newcomers - invested, is just never coming back to us. And even if you bought the Collector’s Edition back in the day, it doesn’t give enough return for 10 years of subscription.

 

For comparison: I’ve been a subscriber since day 0 and never stopped paying. That’s 120 months x 20 dollars-ish. That’s around 2,400.00 dollars “invested” or spent. And this is not counting on all items bought on the Cartel Market. An investment usually gives the investor a return. When SWTOR shuts their servers down, neither BioWare nor EA Games will ever give us back this money.

 

This is something, that I believe people know (I’m being hopeful), but don’t take into consideration when they play the game, we the players should not be content with a few crumbs thrown at us here and there, false promises and illusions.

 

Lastly, I see people here demanding better communication and I completely agree. Communication is K-E-Y.

 

If EA Games’ plans are to shutdown SWTOR by blaming it on the players, you’re doing it right, continue this path and you’ll shoo the veterans, potential newcomers and returning players.

 

Bring us back the real “play the way you want” in SWTOR.

Edited March 7, 2022 by AragarVarnus

[juliushorst]

Let me get this straight. You think the people who enjoyed 6.x gearing are responsible for 7.0 gearing? Are you suggesting 7.0 gearing was designed as a punishment for solo and casual players enjoying access to good gear for playing the content they enjoy, and that the raiders who resented not having exclusive gear for their preferred content had nothing to do with it?

 

It's actually much, much worse. If you play solo the new gear is absolutely meaningless - all stats in scaled areas (and that's like 99% of solo areas) are capped so the gear they want you to grind won't make you any more powerful for your content.

[Totemdancer]

I’m using the only method a player can hope to use to effect change. I’ve canceled subscriptions on both my accounts and I’m not buying anything from the Cartel Market. If most people did the same, EA would be forced to admit their failure and change to reflect their customers wants or be forced to stop the game completely due to the financial crisis that would ensue.

 

If you don’t like this expansion, cancel your scrip. It’s as simple as that. Deprive them of cash flow and they will acquiesce to our wishes.[/Quote]

 

This right here is the only solution, you get 2000 words to tell them why you are canceling. If I was someone doing this I'd use up all 2k of them (and I did).

 

Did exactly that. Just waiting for the sub time to run out as I can’t play because the UI gives me headaches. No apologies from BioWare or refund or extra sub time given. The lack of customer care and service has dropped lower than I ever thought possible for an active subscription game that wasn’t being shut down. They can easily see how many hours I’ve been able to play since 15th February. I won’t be giving EA or BioWare my money ever again.

Edited March 6, 2022 by Totemdancer

[Muckbeast]

Having all my stats reduced and my companion weaker than ever before makes playing the game not enjoyable, at least for me. What's more with this scaling the gear we have to grind is entirely useless in 90% of the content I'm actually doing regularly - in scaled areas my performance in purple augmented 236s is pretty much the same as with old 306s.

 

The scaling situation is a lot worse than I expected. This plus the broken companions just makes solo/conquest/story content a lot less enjoyable than it used to be.

 

Stats in Fleet:

Acc: 110.06%

Crit: 36.59%

Alac: 7.42%

 

Stats in Tatooine:

Acc: 115.65%

Crit: 27.97%

Alac: 2.35%

 

Change:

Acc: Gain 5.59%

Crit: Lose 8.62%

Alac: Lose 5.07%

 

Screenshots here:

https://imgur.com/ZbgPjPf.jpg

 

Absolutely brutal.

 

We are getting MASSIVELY NERFED now when scaling down.

 

Probably similar things are happening to companions.

 

FULL DETAILS HERE:

https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=1003396

[juliushorst]

Acc: 115.65%

 

How useful, when hardest content in the game requires 110%...

 

Alac: Lose 5.07%

 

It doesn't sound that bad... until you realize in reality you lose about 60% of what you had.

 

Absolutely brutal.

 

We are getting MASSIVELY NERFED now when scaling down.

 

If Keith thinks that nerfing us in the open world will push us into group content, he has reached his "RNG is exciting" point. The only thing that will be pushed is "unsubscribe" button.

[Dyvim]

Hello SWTOR Community,

 

...

 

Not only does the launch of Legacy of the Sith begin the journey into updating the game, but this update also opens the doors to new players who have never experienced SWTOR before. 7.0 is meant to invite new players to the game while also bringing new experiences to returning and veteran players.

 

...

 

- Keith

 

 

There are the only sentences of any meaning in that mess. Just like the NGE, this whole trainwreck has one REAL purpose, get new subs, somehow. Accomplish the impossible task of finding a massive NEW playerbase, for a game that is headed in the wrong direction. These decisions are being made at the expense of your existing customers. They are OK with that, because they have probably been given the ultimatum of "grow the game to make it more profitable or EA will pull the plug, and on SWTOR and your job..."

 

Mistakes of the past, repeated again.

[iopseal]

I think the dev team are hoping that the dust settles and that the (remaining) player base will just get used to the new update and things will settle down, that might explain why KK and co are ignoring our criticisms and their boilerplate PR response doesn't really addressing the actual substance of the criticism.

 

Funny thing is I've been reading interviews from the SWG dev team that admitted that this exact response from them (assuming complaints as temporary adjustment period and ploughing on with their "vision") was a serious mistake that led to its death spiral. I wonder if we will be reading the same kinda reflections from these developers in the years to come?

[juliushorst]

There are the only sentences of any meaning in that mess. Just like the NGE, this whole trainwreck has one REAL purpose, get new subs, somehow. Accomplish the impossible task of finding a massive NEW playerbase, for a game that is headed in the wrong direction.

 

...by making leveling slower and less appealing, with only few skills at early levels? Trying to make SWTOR into a raiding-oriented game is a hopeless pursuit, raiders won't migrate to an inferior clone of their favorite raiding-oriented game. SWTOR's only actual strength and defining factor is storytelling. They should focus on this wile giving players something to do between story drops.

Hire Alexander Freed if the team isn't up to the task of creating a captivating storyline (current focus appears to be on military \ espionage and Alexander excells at writing this kind of stories set in Star Wars universe) and make old content fun again by fixing scaling so we have something to do between story drops. Then market it as a story-focused game in shared universe.

Also stop fixing what ain't broken.

Any other direction is, in my opinion, a road to premature death of this game.