What's the point anymore?

[SentinalMasterWW]

(Before we start this post is NOT Meant to attack anyone, It is a critical Essay I made on the state of the game)

This is not something I would like to say but the 7.2 changes made me do some reflecting and I've come to the point, why play SWTOR anymore? Like the removal of ranked has now killed the PVP scene, People think it fixed toxicity, It didn't anyone who plays reg warzones knows how toxic it gets. Now two things will happen, one you are getting a major exodus of your hardcore PVP playerbase, The only people really keeping the lights on in the PVP scene. Two, any Ranked players left still playing the game are just going to Q regular matches and curbstomp Newbies, rendering the whole "Get new players involved in PVP" Pointless. I played my first few ranked matches last night and it was very fast paced and close, But I won 2/3 of my first ranked matches in this game, They are fun and they are fast paced, They make you get better, they are that mountain you climb to get better in PVP, You wont have that in the new regs, maybe 4's but definatly nots 8's. I was actually looking forward to the next seasons as it would be my first ranked season but I guess that is out the window.

The Whole Season rewards thing is literally a participation sticker, You are not getting rewarded because your getting better and you worked to get good, you are getting a sticker saying thank you for joining the match, Most people are just going to go stealth and camp in the back/spawn and contribute nothing, Why? Because they dont care about PVP they just want the shiny participating sticker bioware gives out.

Compare that to ranked rewards, where you actually have to work and get better, and actually have to win matches?

Bioware is just gutting this game out to make it as bare bones as possible, They don't care anymore. They don't listen to feedback, They don't create content that caters to what the people want and when they do its all half baked, "Gee 30 Minutes of story content and 15 of those are cutscenes, Great I cant wait to see what happens next year." They than add it back calling it "new" and what everyone wanted. The cycle repeats over and over.

I joined this game back in 2017 and had a blast coming back to it, I played during the initial launch but my PC at the time couldn't run it and so I stopped playing it. When I came back I played this game on a POS Toshiba Satellite Laptop, I played on the lowest graphics but I didn't care as long as I could play the game I was happy. ( FYI Dont worry I actually have a dedicated PC Rig now that can run this game on the highest settings)

Just look at the streams, You can see the emotionless in how they don't care about this project anymore, there is not any passion left for the game. Galactic Seasons 2 had that spark, but for me Galactic Seasons 3 is just a cheap tie in to a mobile game, all of the rewards look like nerf guns and the companion is Bootleg Scorpio.

Basically the idea of SWTOR now is "we put Grindy X into game, and you Grind for Y and that's all you get for content." Galactic Seasons itself is fine, same thing with the login, But now I wouldn't be surprised if there is a PVE Seasons for Flashpoints and Operations since they did it with PVP.

So to recap, You have half-baked content, Gutting Features that Players liked, and just in general ignoring what the community wants.

The Sad thing is that fundamentally SWTOR has some the best core mechanics, it has the best PVP System and a really solid and simple Progression system, It's just bogged down by poor Management.

I don't think this game is going to suffer the same fate as Galaxies soon, its just easy money for EA with Cartel Market and Subs. But they defiantly need to look at where they are and where they are going.

[illgot]

Seasonal Rewards have been participation stickers since players could buy them from the vender.

You claim "well we had to win" when the reality was and always has been that guilds and players win traded every season. Non ranked PvP players win traded between seasons and Bioware has never cared.

I feel bad that an aspect of the game you enjoyed is over, but very few people ever took part in it. The primary reason for that were the toxic players in ranked PvP. You can thank those screaming, pouting, children who threw tantrums and /stuck themselves the instant they didn't get the perfect team to carry them for the lack of interest in ranked PvP for SWTOR.

There were a few decent players in ranked, but for every decent player there were multiple toxic players who were louder and drove curious players away.

Edited November 12, 2022 by illgot

[Hadsil]

I am sorry you're not getting to enjoy the endgame playing crunch. You are not wrong to want it fixed, however it possibly could be fixed. The other side of the coin are players like me who are only in it for the Story. For me I still have fun with it. Of course I want new content with new story to continue on and on, but for whatever reason they aren't doing that there already exists a great deal of story. That makes it exciting for new players. For me I'm not bored with it yet. I have reached a point where I just might do one or two missions on a planet class story, a chapter in Eternal Throne, or whatever then stop playing until the next day or two days later or whenever. When you know the story it can be boring, but it is that absence of playing that lets me get back into the mood for another mission or two. I'll be playing until either the game shuts down or I'm too bored with the story.

[ZUHFB]

5 hours ago, illgot said:

You claim "well we had to win" when the reality was and always has been that guilds and players win traded every season. Non ranked PvP players win traded between seasons and Bioware has never cared.

No. The conquest mains and PvErs wintraded, the PvPers didn't care about that because all they want is to have fun. I do not care if person X wintraded gold because it isn't actively hurting me, I still have my rewards and I earned them. Why would it matter that they didn't earn them? Wintrading between seasons... lmao why would someone do that? Removing ranked bc of wintrading... how about removing wintrading??? What.

We reported them to bioware, bioware did nothing for too long. I don't blame people for wintading anymore, apparently it was allowed!

[illgot]

6 minutes ago, ZUHFB said:

No. The conquest mains and PvErs wintraded, the PvPers didn't care about that because all they want is to have fun. I do not care if person X wintraded gold because it isn't actively hurting me, I still have my rewards and I earned them. Why would it matter that they didn't earn them? Wintrading between seasons... lmao why would someone do that? Removing ranked bc of wintrading... how about removing wintrading??? What.

We reported them to bioware, bioware did nothing for too long. I don't blame people for wintading anymore, apparently it was allowed!

Awesome, because Bioware isn't taking out PvP so your fun will still exist.

Edited November 12, 2022 by illgot

[ZUHFB]

1 hour ago, illgot said:

Awesome, because Bioware isn't taking out PvP so your fun will still exist.

Yeah they are, the good thing about ranked was to not fight NPCs. Regs are barely playable, usually its 2v3 or 3v2 and everybody else might as well be afk

It's like saying "They are only removing NiM raids! Raiders can still raid SM and HM", it's just not the same.

Edited November 12, 2022 by ZUHFB

[illgot]

9 minutes ago, ZUHFB said:

Yeah they are, the good thing about ranked was to not fight NPCs. Regs are barely playable, usually its 2v3 or 3v2 and everybody else might as well be afk

It's like saying "They are only removing NiM raids! Raiders can still raid SM and HM", it's just not the same.

Like ranked players didn't throw tantrums and refuse to fight or use /stuck because "this team is full of losers so I'm not even going to try"

Ranked pvp wasn't a flawless wonderland.

Edited November 12, 2022 by illgot

[xordevoreaux]

9 hours ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

why play SWTOR anymore

I had a fairly involved discussion about that with one of my guildies who was out on PTS testing 7.2. The conversation revolved around PvP players and what their attitude toward 7.2 will be given their play style and the elimination of ranks and the leaderboards. I've come to understand that PvP diehards aren't interested in much other than fighting each other, and that can be done against any backdrop, not just SWTOR, but any game offering competitive cooperative play.

With the PvP leaderboards going away, a major reward for PvP players -- seeing how their performance stacks up against their competitors, is going away.  Not difficult to comprehend the loss of such a reward feedback loop.

For me or anyone else, therefore, to enumerate all the other activities for how one may continue to enjoy SWTOR when those activities aren't a priority for PvP players is a waste of everyone's time, and I have no answer for how PvP players can adjust their thinking to remain in SWTOR with the upcoming changes. None.

I must say, however, I completely disagree with the OP's over-generalized plural use of the word features.

Quote

Bioware is just gutting this game out to make it as bare bones as possible,

Hyperbole. Not everything is being gutted. Not everything is bare bones. Hundreds of hours of story content attest to that. Lament the turn PvP is taking in 7.2 if you wish, but to describe the game as bare-bones when it definitely is not merely heightens your one-dimensional thinking about the game.

Edited November 12, 2022 by xordevoreaux

[ZUHFB]

2 hours ago, illgot said:

Like ranked players didn't throw tantrums and refuse to fight or use /stuck because "this team is full of losers so I'm not even going to try"

Ranked pvp wasn't a flawless wonderland.

In very rare cases this did happen. Justified? Sometimes. There is no fun in playing a 3v4, that's why I am doing ranked! If I wanted 3v4s and people just afking or just walking a straight line typing "plAY ObJeCtiVe GuYs" I'd do regs, but I don't want to do that. I want a 4v4, fair or not but if a players is so bad they cannot count as a player - EVEN IF winable - it's just not fun! 

If you don't like ranked that's fine, but removing it entirely isn't beneficial to you either. The most complained topic in 6.X was premades, now there are even more of them AND F2P players so the average player will get rolled even harder.

[arunav]

13 hours ago, ZUHFB said:

I want a 4v4, fair or not but if a players is so bad they cannot count as a player - EVEN IF winable - it's just not fun!

This is a great example of why there are, in all likelihood, a few dozen of you on all of Star Forge that still played ranked regularly. 

Entitled, whiny at best (often extremely toxic at worst), and high maintenance. It wasn't worth trying to figure out who was cheating and who wasn't each season, and BW probably decided to just take ranked out of the game accordingly. Given how small their staff is, I don't blame them at all. The ranked community, if you can call it that, brought this on themselves, quickly driving off the overwhelming majority of those who ever tried the game mode, with its toxic cesspool of a culture. 

Who would want to spend even part of their day policing it, let alone set aside time and resources to reward it each season?

Edited November 13, 2022 by arunav

[ZUHFB]

1 minute ago, arunav said:

This is a great example of why there are, in all likelihood, a few dozen of you on all of Star Forge that still played ranked regularly. 

Entitled, whiney at best (often extremely toxic at worst), and high maintenance. It wasn't worth trying to figure out who was cheating and who wasn't each season, and BW probably decided to just take ranked out of the game accordingly. Given how small their staff is, I don't blame them at all. The ranked community, if you can call it that, brought this on themselves, quickly driving off the overwhelming majority of those who ever tried the game mode, with its toxic cesspool of a culture. 

Who would want to spend even part of their day policing it, let alone set aside time and resources to reward it each season?

Entitled? Entitled to what? A gamemode that existed for years? Or entitled to want fair games? I can just leave after I see a NPC in my team, why would I spend my time playing with someone who doesn't even value their own time much less mine? It's straight up disrespectful to queue ranked without gear or proper knowledge of at least the basics, ranked is viewed as toxic only by the people who don't play it since they got flamed there once for actually wasting the time and elo of their teams. I am sorry if that offends you but it is the reality. I am wasting my time, the player will never improve because the prerequisites just aren't there at all, anything like "try to do some regs and join us when you get gear" gets met with a response like "you don't pay my sub", but somehow when I say that in regs it and people get upset it's different? 

Regs are quite simply not fun, they are too easy. It's like beating up a dummy, there is no counter play there is no trying it's only "oh nice they broke my root guess they'll die now". Not only can I not improve vs NPCs, no I also gain nothing if I was to try. Solo ranked was always the gamemode I could just queue into on a night without any raids or after the raids chilling in voice with the team and have some fun. I can't do that with regs, I'd rather log of and play OW2 instead of beating up NPCs. 

Is ranked toxic? No, it's competitive. If people wouldn't speak their minds it wouldn't be a good gamemode since the rewards would be so bad nobody cares about winning or losing.... Wait, that sounds familiar... OH RIGHT it sounds like regs.

[SentinalMasterWW]

The idea of removing Ranked as solving toxicity in SWTOR is honestly pointless and fundamentally stupid. Every Game, Every fandom has toxicity you cant get rid of it, unless you purge the entire playerbase. Ever been to Fleet Chat? Drommund Kaas chat? There is toxicity everywhere in this game, yet General Chat was not removed, People in Op's and Flashpoints can get toxic when you dont know the mechanics yet those are never removed. 

Honestly I think what the PVP community ACTUALLY wanted was Balancing, QOL improvements, New Content (Maps, modes, etc) and an idea of when the next ranked season started. Making the ability to Q for 4's and 8's alongside removing restrictions on PVP was appreciated but I know of no one in the past few months who wanted ranked removed from the game.

[illgot]

4 hours ago, ZUHFB said:

Is ranked toxic? No, it's competitive. If people wouldn't speak their minds it wouldn't be a good gamemode since the rewards would be so bad nobody cares about winning or losing.... Wait, that sounds familiar... OH RIGHT it sounds like regs.

I think there is a pretty clear line between saying "hey, you are using the wrong Tactical and rotation for ranked PvP" to "go %&$ing kill yourself you *&%& trash noob, HOW DARE YOU QUEUE UP AND RUIN MY #^$#ING GAME!!"

My ignore list while playing ranked was more ranked players than fleet gen chat trolls.

Simple fact is "speaking your mind" drove off enough players that Bioware no longer saw supporting Ranked PvP as a viable option for SWTOR. Congratulations, the "I'm just speaking my mind" group succeeded in their mission of driving the new and curious players away from ranked PvP and killing the game mode.

Edited November 13, 2022 by illgot

[Nee-Elder]

38 minutes ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

. Every Game, Every fandom has toxicity you cant get rid of it, unless you purge the entire playerbase. Ever been to Fleet Chat? Drommund Kaas chat? There is toxicity everywhere in this game, yet General Chat was not removed,

You're  right , obviously , however....well... let's just say imho  if  SWTOR had actual  in-game  Chat-Moderators  monitoring things as they happen, it would do wonders for at least  reducing the toxicity in a noticeable way.

Sure,  it's also very easy to  /add-ignore  or  right-click-report  or  simply  turn off  'genchat'  alltogether.

But gosh if only Disney & EA  could witness just a few minutes of the typical absolute  BILE  that gets spewed in  genchat (on a daily basis) , perhaps they wouldn't be so stingy with budget$ for  Moderators.

Sir Alec Guiness  is probably turning over in his blue-glowy grave  at the very thought of  genchat trolls being representative of  STAR WARS "fans".

[ZUHFB]

2 hours ago, illgot said:

I think there is a pretty clear line between saying "hey, you are using the wrong Tactical and rotation for ranked PvP" to "go %&$ing kill yourself you *&%& trash noob, HOW DARE YOU QUEUE UP AND RUIN MY #^$#ING GAME!!"

My ignore list while playing ranked was more ranked players than fleet gen chat trolls.

Simple fact is "speaking your mind" drove off enough players that Bioware no longer saw supporting Ranked PvP as a viable option for SWTOR. Congratulations, the "I'm just speaking my mind" group succeeded in their mission of driving the new and curious players away from ranked PvP and killing the game mode.

ok yeah, you're right but in my experience that only happened after vote kick removal and if the person keeps and keeps qing going 0/11... not an excuse and I never said smth like that, but I can understand it, maybe that guy deleted the progress the player made in the previous week in 25 minutes. I would be upset too. It shows they care, it shows they are invested and its not 100% bad

[illgot]

34 minutes ago, ZUHFB said:

ok yeah, you're right but in my experience that only happened after vote kick removal and if the person keeps and keeps qing going 0/11... not an excuse and I never said smth like that, but I can understand it, maybe that guy deleted the progress the player made in the previous week in 25 minutes. I would be upset too. It shows they care, it shows they are invested and its not 100% bad

Oh so it's OK to be toxic to a person who isn't doing well? After all, being toxic is how you show you care...

It's a shock why so many new players tried ranked once and never returned. 

[Sarova]

On 11/12/2022 at 5:01 AM, Hadsil said:

The other side of the coin are players like me who are only in it for the Story. For me I still have fun with it. 

This is the hook that keeps me subbed even though I should probably pause because I've literally done every combination of available story and have 70+ alts.  Slightly off-topic so spoilered:

Spoiler

I'm waiting for more of the Malgus/Arn/Rivix story and hoping for something big in the chapter style of KotFE next year (without the waves of sky trooper style trash mobs - just a sprinkle).  It would be great if the Malgus et al storyline continued/concluded in this story style like this.  The mando storyline is okay, but not immersive due to the long intervals between each part (and I have an idea of where it's going - but I don't want to be right). 

There are some characters from the mando story I'd like to see in future content or have in my alliance (Indigo, Bask Sunn, Malgus) I'd really like to know more about Malgus - how did the current Emperor find him and resurrect him? How did they control him?  How did he break that control?  How did all us force users subdue him? Why with all his power & knowledge is he allowing the Sith or Jedi to keep him imprisoned? What's Darth Krovos's connection to Malgus?).

If I was a billionaire I'd fund a KotFE-esq storyline but I'm just an in-game credit billionaire 😆

 

[recalcitrantIre]

52 minutes ago, Sarova said:

and hoping for something big in the chapter style of KotFE

never gonna happen

Bioware went into a surprising amount of detail about why they dumpstered that style of gameplay presentation and it could basically be summarized as "the playerbase prefers Netflix-style binging of content rather than serial dripfeeds"

[SteveTheCynic]

2 hours ago, recalcitrantIre said:

Bioware went into a surprising amount of detail about why they dumpstered that style of gameplay presentation and it could basically be summarized as "the playerbase prefers Netflix-style binging of content rather than serial dripfeeds"

aka it's actually *our*(1) fault.

(1) For some value of "we" whose fault it might be, but specifically one that doesn't include me.

[Nee-Elder]

4 hours ago, recalcitrantIre said:

 it could basically be summarized as "the playerbase prefers Netflix-style binging of content rather than serial dripfeeds"

That ^ goes to a larger more  societal  problem, with humans becoming increasingly  mentally, practically, & emotionally  dominated by so called "technology" .   (aka:  Clones with their phones )

However, my feeling is:  In SWTOR there's room for BOTH  the sheep and for the sophisticated.   Room for both the insatiable speed-gamers AND the methodical story-absorbers.  Room for both grindy repetitive  'Dailys'  and for branchy repeatable KOTFE/KOTET style 'chapters' .

Problem is, nowadays there seems to only be ONE  BioWare Developer hired specifically for the proverbial '4th pillar' (story) --> https://forums.swtor.com/topic/924119-new-short-story-quotall-thats-leftquot/

Edited November 13, 2022 by Nee-Elder
Reason: 2nd problem is: EA funding + faith

[OlBuzzard]

4 hours ago, Nee-Elder said:

That ^ goes to a larger more  societal  problem, with humans becoming increasingly  mentally, practically, & emotionally  dominated by so called "technology" .   (aka:  Clones with their phones )

However, my feeling is:  In SWTOR there's room for BOTH  the sheep and for the sophisticated.   Room for both the insatiable speed-gamers AND the methodical story-absorbers.  Room for both grindy repetitive  'Dailys'  and for branchy repeatable KOTFE/KOTET style 'chapters' .

Problem is, nowadays there seems to only be ONE  BioWare Developer hired specifically for the proverbial '4th pillar' (story) --> https://forums.swtor.com/topic/924119-new-short-story-quotall-thats-leftquot/

You and Savora are both pretty close.  I'll go out on a limb and say that IMO we NEED to see a return to the KotFE / ET style while keeping some of the style we see in the current presentation as well.  There has to be room for:

** Story

** Multi-level difficulty PvE

** PvP with multiple styles... 1v1; 2v2; 4v4; and large scale PvP such as 10v10 (or more).

There HAS to be room!  IMO it is a mistake for us to assume that a game (MMO style) MUST choose one style or design over the other.  I personally do not begrudge any player who's style or ability is different (or better) than that of mine!

IMO it's time for the companies who are planning / designing these games to simply roll up their sleeves and get down to it!!

NOT going to happen??  Only if we give up and believe it!  

[recalcitrantIre]

15 minutes ago, OlBuzzard said:

You and Savora are both pretty close.  I'll go out on a limb and say that IMO we NEED to see a return to the KotFE / ET style while keeping some of the style we see in the current presentation as well.  There has to be room for:

** Story

** Multi-level difficulty PvE

** PvP with multiple styles... 1v1; 2v2; 4v4; and large scale PvP such as 10v10 (or more).

There HAS to be room!  IMO it is a mistake for us to assume that a game (MMO style) MUST choose one style or design over the other.  I personally do not begrudge any player who's style or ability is different (or better) than that of mine!

IMO it's time for the companies who are planning / designing these games to simply roll up their sleeves and get down to it!!

NOT going to happen??  Only if we give up and believe it!  

its weird to see someone demand a return to KotfE/4.x style as well as a plurality of content

in case you need a reminder, 4.x had three pieces of new non-story content: Star Fortresses and the Eternal Championship, both of which were still primarily solo-oriented content; and the Odessen Proving Grounds 8v8 map

5.0 fared marginally (but only marginally) better with the introduction of Uprisings but the near immediate nerfs to the primary uprisings that people were playing left yet another bad taste in peoples mouths amidst the other bad tastes 5.0 brought, and 5.2 and onwards was essentially a return to "traditional" SWTOR content

large scale instanced PVP has not happened and will not happen because the engine just does not run well enough to support it, its the same reason why Bioware has finally abandoned the development of 16p raids; in fact 8v8s still probably only exist because none of them involve NPC actor processing

[OlBuzzard]

36 minutes ago, recalcitrantIre said:

its weird to see someone demand a return to KotfE/4.x style as well as a plurality of content

in case you need a reminder, 4.x had three pieces of new non-story content: Star Fortresses and the Eternal Championship, both of which were still primarily solo-oriented content; and the Odessen Proving Grounds 8v8 map

5.0 fared marginally (but only marginally) better with the introduction of Uprisings but the near immediate nerfs to the primary uprisings that people were playing left yet another bad taste in peoples mouths amidst the other bad tastes 5.0 brought, and 5.2 and onwards was essentially a return to "traditional" SWTOR content

large scale instanced PVP has not happened and will not happen because the engine just does not run well enough to support it, its the same reason why Bioware has finally abandoned the development of 16p raids; in fact 8v8s still probably only exist because none of them involve NPC actor processing

You're absolutely correct!  I'm not suggesting it's the quickest or easiest way to take care of matters (or the cheapest).  Just sayin' that that IMO it's the best!  Just because so much has been needing as much as it has for sooooo long doesn't mean we throw away the golden opportunity.  NO!  No!  Oh good grief no!  Now is not the time to retreat!

Torpedoes???  What torpedoes ???  Damn the torpedoes ...  FULL SPEED AHEAD!!!

[Hadsil]

13 hours ago, Sarova said:

This is the hook that keeps me subbed even though I should probably pause because I've literally done every combination of available story and have 70+ alts.  Slightly off-topic so spoilered:

  Hide contents

I'm waiting for more of the Malgus/Arn/Rivix story and hoping for something big in the chapter style of KotFE next year (without the waves of sky trooper style trash mobs - just a sprinkle).  It would be great if the Malgus et al storyline continued/concluded in this story style like this.  The mando storyline is okay, but not immersive due to the long intervals between each part (and I have an idea of where it's going - but I don't want to be right). 

There are some characters from the mando story I'd like to see in future content or have in my alliance (Indigo, Bask Sunn, Malgus) I'd really like to know more about Malgus - how did the current Emperor find him and resurrect him? How did they control him?  How did he break that control?  How did all us force users subdue him? Why with all his power & knowledge is he allowing the Sith or Jedi to keep him imprisoned? What's Darth Krovos's connection to Malgus?).

If I was a billionaire I'd fund a KotFE-esq storyline but I'm just an in-game credit billionaire 😆

 

They have combined the Malgus and Mandalorian stories. I don't know if it was always meant to be that way, but by convenience they introduced never heard of before NPCs to link the stories together via a holocron.

 

[eabevella]

Reading this thread reminds me why I don't do PvP lol