This Game Suffers Mainly Because of the Community

[Aghasett]

WoW's community was far more toxic then Swtor's ever was. I can't speak for FFXIV, since I didn't play it, but WoW was horrible for it's community.

 

The SWTOR community is perfectly benign comparative to other gaming communities. To level accusations of toxicity here speaks to the headspace of the OP, not the player base.

[Ardrossan]

So how is Bioware suppose to listen to that many people with different views? Let's take the ui for example. Some loved it, others hated it. Is Bioware suppose to change it because a few people got up in arms about it? They can't listen to every single voice out there. Things wouldn't get done if they tried to appease everyone.

 

By...literally doing what every other developer does. Some of you act like this is the only game in the world and BW is behaving normally. Not communicating to players about what they do all day, missing deadlines without a word, the entire 7.0 "year of celebration" thing that has been completely nonexistent with no explanation or acknowledgement at all, that's not normal game studio behavior. It's from the Star Citizen schizoid playbook. It's not about "appeasing everyone" it's about COMMUNICATING. They don't need you to play defense for them my dude.

 

"let's talk about this one thing and pretend like it's the only thing that matters". I don't GAF about the UI one way or the other, though I would note that among the zillions of requests, few if any players asked for it to be changed. Tell me, aside from white knights, is there anyone loudly insisting that BW shouldn't communicate on a timely basis with players? No? OK then, seems pretty cut and dry to me.

 

 

And the community is a bit at fault for how they handle themselves. How many times have we've heard people say "Bioware fix/change this or I'm leaving"? Or "Bioware is a **** company for x reasons" When you have people like that, I could understand why Bioware wouldn't listen to them. They're not making suggestions to improve the game, they're making demands so the game caters to them.

 

I could give you the capitalist answer, which is that we're customers paying for a service and have every right to make demands in the vein of "do this or I walk". I do the same thing to my cellphone company. Corporations are not your identity, if you're no longer satisfied with a product, you demand a change and/or you leave, you don't just passively settle because you don't want to be inconvenient lmao.

 

Or I can give you the realpolitik answer, which is that history has shown on multiple occasions that BW is completely apathetic to player bootlicking for them on the forum--not only do they not care, they will often end up implementing the changes that players "demanded", like legacy bound datacrons. Sadly, I have rarely seen any of these same people acknowledge it when BW utterly ignores their unasked for defense.

Edited July 17, 2022 by Ardrossan

[Zaldalia]

i understand where the poster is coming from but as far as raids go this is a 8yr old game the mechanic's in most of the raids has not changed that why if i get someone new in my raids i say look it up on vulk.com and give them 5-10 min at most

same with FF14 their are so many guides out their if you get into a raid group that is not new i always expect people to watch a video on the tria before you que up the idea that just because you wana raid i should spend 10 min on each fight explaining ever thing when if you did your homework you would know the mechanics when everone else has done it 50 times already just does not fly with me maybe if your a guildy sure but a random nope

[Darev]

I have a difficult time blaming the ills of this game on the player base.

I don't have the breadth of experience with a multitude of different MMO's that some players seem to have. I generally pick one and play it to death...like this one.

Until 7.0 anyway.

 

Player toxicity has nothing to do with it and I don't believe it's gotten much worse since the early days.

It might SEEM worse if you just look at chat, but that would be because there's fewer "good" players (chat-wise) to drown out the "bad" ones.

 

That's on Bioware / EA, not the player base.

 

How many threads of long time forum posters did you see complain about the impending changes coming with 7.0?

How many threads did you see of these players saying they were thinking about leaving...and then were leaving?

 

The player base is smaller than it used to be. It's been shrinking for a long time. It was temporarily boosted by the switch to the F2P model, then again with the addition of steam players. Drastic measures, in my mind, to combat the smaller player base at those stages.

 

I'm not sure what they can do this time.

 

All that aside, the player base isn't MAGICALLY going to become less toxic. There's no motivation from those player's points of view to change behavior.

It would require additional employees / money / budget and a strict chat moderation program to be put in place....a strict chat police so to speak, who weren't afraid...and were permitted to, ban players, including subscribers and not be concerned about that loss in revenue.

 

A game in this state, that is not going to happen.

 

use the ignore list.

get in a GOOD guild that helps players

they are out there.

[kirorx]

I have played a tank since day 1, so i dont even notice angery hater-aide drinkers anymore. People are going to type stuff that is rude, but they will get over it.

 

Not to compare SWG to SWTOR, but one thing that was cool about that game was the character limits (2 per server; 3 for elders). That wouldn't work here of course since you cant do all the content on a sole character like you could there.

 

That population was not that high either, so you would physically notice other characters and got to recognize people visually, not just by a name in a chat box.

 

Everyone had to manually form groups for content, there was no queing up with randoms. Just hit the Mos Eisley cantina buff up and talk to other players about forming a group.

 

So people IMO acted pretty decent to each other because your character could get a reputation and nobody would want to play with you anymore.

 

I am not saying its better that way, but there was certainly more consequence for your actions. Here you can play any one of your 40 or so characters and so you could be rude with little consequence.

 

At least we have legacy ignore now. I never use it tbh, since i just accept that some people are rude; but most are not

I would say my player interaction in SWTOR has still been mostly positive and friendly with only a few bad eggs

Edited July 18, 2022 by kirorx

[DarthSpekulatius]

WoW's community was far more toxic then Swtor's ever was. I can't speak for FFXIV, since I didn't play it, but WoW was horrible for it's community.

 

the FFXIV Community is so Toxic they are Weaponizing the Report System.

Play with an Accessibility mod that puts a slightly Larger Countdown number on Icons -> if you Stream it, you WILL get banned because a Viewer WILL report it.

 

as for WoWs community, I got Items traded after a Dungeon, while my Gear was worse then what dropped several times (sometimes even without asking) same as what I did myself/benefited from in SWTOR when that was possible, but @OP it's not that the SWTOR community is less nice, SWTOR literally removed the Ability to trade Gear some time ago.

 

If people enter a Groupfinder activity in the wrong Spec, in WoW they can go Outside, change and come back (in M+ elsewhere you might be able to just change inside while out of combat idk. I'm just a wow casual).

Again, it's not that SWTOR players are toxic and just insist on staying in the wrong spec, SWTOR players have no Option but to either do that or Leave. Since a recent patch, you can't change spec in a Groupfinder Group anymore disregarding if you are inside or outside the Instance.

 

 

 

I don't care what People write in Fleet/Trade chat, Imo actions speak louder then words, but SWTOR Players get their hands tied more firmly each patch.

 

 

people not automatically trading away Gear that has stats for their offspec / their 13th alt might feel bad, but they did equal amounts of work and rng smiled on them, and it makes the times when you do get Gear traded feel so much nicer.

 

back in the good Days a group chat with "oops I listed for the wrong spec." followed by a "lets try anyway." by the Group and the person then trying a new Role, was usually a far more fun Flashpoint then the ones where everything went flawlessly from the start.

 

basically the Game has shaved away almost all possibilities of helping each other, except for hard carries where one player does most the Work and the others just run along.

And I don't think most People want a Carry, I do believe many Players would want to pull their own weight so that "kindness" usually goes unappreciated.

 

I think SWTOR is way less Toxic then what you seem to think and much of the "Toxicity" it has developed was caused by bad Decisions, removing the Possibility of kindness leaving only the "Darkside" and a "neutral" Option for Player to Player interaction, I think the only "Lightside" option left is throwing players a few Million Credits.

that's almost like the Lightside option in the FP (was it red Reaper?) where you free some defenseless adds that then proceed to attack you and get killed, in the past, if you were a full stealther Group you pick "Lightside" and Stealth away to actually be nice.

By the way, that was removed too. You can't drop Combat anymore, now you'd have to /stuck.

[analyis]

When it comes to PvE, I've seen endless amounts of instances where players trying to get into raiding aren't welcomed in that side of the community because raid groups / guilds allegedly can't be bothered to teach new folks. Which I find to be ironic considering the fact that they themselves didn't start out knowing every raid like the backs of their own hands.

 

I disagree that the raiding community is toxic and not willing to help new players progress and develop in raids. I have been in or led numerous guilds in the past 10+ years where progression teams for sm, vet, or NiM ops were an option.

 

There was a mass exodus of competent raiders in 6.0 for two reasons, lack of content, and dumbing down the difficulty levels to the point mechanics in sm were pointless.

 

With the introduction of 7.0 and 7.1 it appears BioWare has gone back to the roots of the game to increase the raider base to where it once was . This is great in theory but there are flaws due to a miscalculation of what the broader player base has become. What I am seeing with Guild progression teams isn't a lack of assistance but a lack of desire to learn or get better and more an expectation for raids and gearing to be stupid easy. To get people into discord to explain fights or gearing verbally instead of typing a tome in chat is like pulling hens teeth. For pug groups first rule of thumb is if you don't know the fights say so and a brief explanation or invite to a discord will be given the vast majority of times.

 

If Bioware wants to build and maintain the raiding community, to what it once was, the R4 raid needs to be a success and new raids need to be included in semi regular drops. Not once every 3 to 4 years.

[akdonkey]

 

SWTOR suffers from a lack of care from the developers. 7.0 has driven off and upset a large number of players due to its incomplete release and broken promises, then add in the horrible backward *** gearing system the developers implemented, followed by the news that they're moving backward even further with 7.1 and how the gear drops will work with that operation...you couldn't devise a more damaging system if you tried.

 

 

This Comment Right here.