So why did so many quit the game over the years?

[Chryptyk]

3 minutes ago, ThanderSnB said:

• 6.3 to 7.0 - 10 months (April 2021 to February 2022) - too long but Galactic Seasons 1 helped
• 7.0 to 7.1 - 6 months (February 2022 to August 2022) - too long but Galactic Seasons 2 helped

thank you for acknowledging that seasons is not actually content.  high five!

[Shayddow]

Many people subscribed at the beginning because.... Star Wars. They got to the end game and then there wasn't a continuation of their class story. So they left.  Codex entries were missing and some remain unfixed to this day.

Makeb & SOR came along. Nice flashpoints, relatively short and easy (at least if not on Master mode. Those are still hard.) Old FPs were taken away (reducing playable content) from solo players. WBs were taken away from solo players with planet -based level.  Makeb was reduced to only 2 stories - one Republic, one Imperial.

KOTFE and KOTET. Other posters have covered the problems here.  One size fits all. Took away companions. Gave back companions who were not the same (could not increase influence in planet story content after they returned). After running your 435609687th character through the SAME content with no difference, it got stale. A few conversations may have been slightly different, but the story was basically the same.

Fractured Alliance: Flashpoints added were just too damned long. Yes, they were interesting to run through. Once. Twice maybe. After that... ugh. 

Operations: Locked behind level 80, even for operations that originally came out when endgame was level 50.  No opportunity to learn the "layout" of the land WITHOUT doing the operation with a group, where you go in and don't want to tie up other people while you explore. 

Cartel Market: problem of Randoms especially decorations : When I pay for something with real money I don't want guesswork. I want what I pay for. Not something that I already have 6 copies of.

 

I'm here hoping to improve things, not to shut them down. By posting about things that bother me, I think that may reflect on what other people possibly may think as well.

Oh, and the only thing that bothers me more than that is - after offing the "galaxy-eating god-mode force ghost", getting killed by some random Killik due to level sync..... 🙂

 

 

[OlBuzzard]

1 hour ago, Chryptyk said:

thank you for acknowledging that seasons is not actually content.  high five!

I agree completely!  As someone else has pointed out in another thread (more than once) .. the GS series is turning into more of a hamster cage in that it's simply taking older material and rehashing it over and over!  IF the GS series takes on a better direction with updated objectives and stuff (see other peoples suggestions in the thread requesting feedback from all of us) ... then it might be interesting to see if it becomes a better means of engaging players in between actual content releases!

[/two thumbs up for both of you]

[Char_Ell]

5 hours ago, ZUHFB said:

sorry are we playing the same game? This game has roughly 10k subs. 6-7k play through steam and 2-4k via the normal Launcher

2 hours ago, ZUHFB said:

steamcharts, if you ask on fleet roughly 70% of people play through steam, steamcharts usually say 6-7k and thus we get to 10k

also where the heck are the other 90k of players hiding? like imagine thinking this game has more than 15k subs, lmao

 

Yes, steamcharts.com shows player activity for players that access SWTOR thru the game client.  Yes that number has averaged around 4,875 (not 6-7k) players per day over the last 30 days.  This is not a subscriber number.  No way to tell how many of these players are subscribed and how many are not.

Asking on fleet?  Really.  I have a hard time believing you've asked enough and gotten enough answers to have an accurate idea of how many players play using Steam and how many use the normal launcher to then extrapolate subscriber numbers.  Sure, you can say this but there is way too much anecdotal data to ascribe any degree of accuracy to your numbers.  It's a somewhat educated guess at best.  I personally would be surprised if the number of Steam players exceed the number of players using the regular launcher.

[xxSHOONYxx]

MMOs are a dying breed, simple as that. Regardless of the mistakes of past expansions the influx of mmo players is just not there to support the people that passively leave. Young kids prefer games that bring them insta gratification and mmo's are pretty much the opposite, grind and hard work to get what you want. Devs in other games tried to appease to the more casual players but that is not working anymore, if you create insta gratification in a mmo you cut the life of it by a lot.

Game can grow and steal players from wow or ff, swtor has a benefit against them that has the star wars ip, the fourth biggest earning franchise according to wikipedia, but for that it will requiere an investment from EA like square enix did when they relaunched final fantasy 14, and that won't happen

[TrixxieTriss]

My reason for leaving for 12 months was BioWare making poor development choices & major changes to systems in 7.0 that made the game less fun. Before that I had been subbed for 9 years straight. 7.0 was the stick that broke the camels back for me.

Coming back for 7.2 because they added or reconfigured a lot of those systems. But they also have a lot of work to still do if they want me to stick around. Game breaking Bug are still here after 12 months 🤯

Plus the current PvP lockout system is draconian & puts me off playing because I often DC due to long distance lag. And putting 8 man premades into the solo queue is one of the more stupid pvp decisions BioWare have ever made.

Both those PvP development changes are a major reason I’m not pvping anymore. And seeing as pvp was my main activity in swtor, I’m hardly playing the game since I came back.

I can see myself unsubbing again until they address those issues because I’m not getting any value from paying my $20 AUD a month & not pvping 😞

[OlBuzzard]

58 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

My reason for leaving for 12 months was BioWare making poor development choices & major changes to systems in 7.0 that made the game less fun. Before that I had been subbed for 9 years straight. 7.0 was the stick that broke the camels back for me.

Coming back for 7.2 because they added or reconfigured a lot of those systems. But they also have a lot of work to still do if they want me to stick around. Game breaking Bug are still here after 12 months 🤯

Plus the current PvP lockout system is draconian & puts me off playing because I often DC due to long distance lag. And putting 8 man premades into the solo queue is one of the more stupid pvp decisions BioWare have ever made.

Both those PvP development changes are a major reason I’m not pvping anymore. And seeing as pvp was my main activity in swtor, I’m hardly playing the game since I came back.

I can see myself unsubbing again until they address those issues because I’m not getting any value from paying my $20 AUD a month & not pvping 😞

Frist of all ... WB (again).

I remember the pages and pages of stuff written by those who were active in the PvP community of SWTOR.  I'm guessing that the revamp of that aspect of the game was less than what folks were hoping for when 7.1 dropped?  Quite honestly I really do feel for everyone that was directly affected.  It would be one thing if there was little to no input on that topic ... but GOOD GRIEF ... there was TONS of input.  I get it that the team will decide how to make it their own work (and they should).  Yet there is something to be said for listening to the wisdom of those who really are trying to help AND ARE directly involved to the degree that you and so many others were!

Beyond that I really can't and shouldn't comment too much since I'm not actively involved in PvP anymore.  (Not for several years now...  Yeah it's an old age thing I'm afraid).  I an still reek havoc with large mouth bass / drive a boat and I still do my own work around the house (lawn care .. painting and making some furniture from time to time).  But .. now I digress!

I'm seriously hoping that someone will pay close attention to what's being said.  We still need an active PvP community!  Best of luck to ya Trixx!

[Kristallia]

4 hours ago, ZUHFB said:

steamcharts, if you ask on fleet roughly 70% of people play through steam, steamcharts usually say 6-7k and thus we get to 10k

also where the heck are the other 90k of players hiding? like imagine thinking this game has more than 15k subs, lmao

Steamcharts does not have access to numbers like that. Only thing steamcharts know about player numbers is the concurrent players that play through steam. It does not show players that have not game running on this very moment. It also cannot know if player is subsribed or preferred or free.

You cannot really use that data to guess the subscriber numbers. But its still interesting data to see the trend generally, to see if this month have more or less players than previous month.

[ZUHFB]

10 hours ago, Char_Ell said:

 

Yes, steamcharts.com shows player activity for players that access SWTOR thru the game client.  Yes that number has averaged around 4,875 (not 6-7k) players per day over the last 30 days.  This is not a subscriber number.  No way to tell how many of these players are subscribed and how many are not.

Asking on fleet?  Really.  I have a hard time believing you've asked enough and gotten enough answers to have an accurate idea of how many players play using Steam and how many use the normal launcher to then extrapolate subscriber numbers.  Sure, you can say this but there is way too much anecdotal data to ascribe any degree of accuracy to your numbers.  It's a somewhat educated guess at best.  I personally would be surprised if the number of Steam players exceed the number of players using the regular launcher.

When I checked it was 6-7k, but even if the number is lower it is nowhere near 100k as suggested which is the obly reason I even brought numbers into this

[DarthCasus]

13 hours ago, Char_Ell said:

 

Yes, steamcharts.com shows player activity for players that access SWTOR thru the game client.  Yes that number has averaged around 4,875 (not 6-7k) players per day over the last 30 days.  This is not a subscriber number.  No way to tell how many of these players are subscribed and how many are not.

Asking on fleet?  Really.  I have a hard time believing you've asked enough and gotten enough answers to have an accurate idea of how many players play using Steam and how many use the normal launcher to then extrapolate subscriber numbers.  Sure, you can say this but there is way too much anecdotal data to ascribe any degree of accuracy to your numbers.  It's a somewhat educated guess at best.  I personally would be surprised if the number of Steam players exceed the number of players using the regular launcher.

Its those numbers or nothing though. I could see a little more still playing on the OG launcher but not much more. The game has clearly been in a slump and I think people would be surprised to see how much heavy lifting whales and dedicated fans do in terms of revenue for mmo's and other supported 'live services'. Subscribers or not, maintaining an mmo from a company's perspective is about finding a happy minimum and working toward the next thing while that minimum is kept busy. The numbers could literally be in the ballpark of 20k people playing total, mixed all between F2P/Pref/Sub and still maintaining roughly 50x the profit each year because of a small subset of big spenders for whatever reason. Its an established trend and would tell us more about why there's almost no push whatsoever to advertise the game outside of expansion drops, and why player numbers in general appear from what little we can see are so low.

While we can't be anywhere near accurate about sub numbers, which I think have been irrelevant for a while now, steam charts do provide a worthwhile perspective regarding trends. A sample, yeah, but better than the nothing-ness we get from the earnings reports.

[easyandrew]

no offence to those affected,,,but those influencers do not help either,,thanks to them all new players just want to rush right away to 80 then are stuck with us,,countless times they either get slaughtered or die so fast in ops, a lot quit right away,I had many new players in my guild but leave after a few days or max 1 week. All told me the same thing,,This was not what they saw on ``youtube``. So that unibrow twit,the fat russian or the fabio of influencers I`d like that say thank you for making people dumb and totally clueless. There was 1 that actually helped explain things and how to actually play but he quit the game. In all what I`m trying to say is because of 3-4 youtubers everyone and everything is predictable now so it becomes meaningless...

[FlameYOL]

19 hours ago, ZUHFB said:

steamcharts, if you ask on fleet roughly 70% of people play through steam, steamcharts usually say 6-7k and thus we get to 10k

also where the heck are the other 90k of players hiding? like imagine thinking this game has more than 15k subs, lmao

So you pulled it out of your behind, got it.

[ZUHFB]

12 minutes ago, FlameYOL said:

So you pulled it out of your behind, got it.

then get a more accurate estimation... like am I your mom or something? don't like the numbers get better ones, oh wait, there aren't any better ones

accept those, or give me better ones, just that simple - saying they aren't proof of anything... then get me better ones or sit down, holy moly.

[jedipattawan]

Oh that sub number I pulled from mmo population a sub estimation site that uses reddit active users as a way to determine accurate sub count.  It's likely ways off idk.  If there's only 10k people even playing then idk how they even keep the lights on, but at least the games still around to experience and they're still able to make story content regardless.

Edited January 28, 2023 by jedipattawan

[OlBuzzard]

One of the things that hurt (and I can't believe that I forgot this) ... was the elimination of class stories.  I see some of it trickling back into things again.. BUT that still needs improvement!  IMO it's unlikely that a smuggler and a JK will see things the same way OR that other NPC characters should respond to the entrance / presence of different characters (Sith lord vs JK) in the same manner as well.  Yes I IIRC there were some minor differences in the characters that I ran through 7.2  That was a good thing!

Granted this may seem minor (when compared to the rest of what others and I have already posted, but I do believe that it added to the overall discouragement of a lot of players.  It certainly has taken away from the original concept of SWTOR.

[ZUHFB]

1 hour ago, jedipattawan said:

idk how they even keep the lights on

they don't, that is why we get no content and that is why people are quitting

the mmo population site even displays numbers for MMOs that are shut down, my number is more accuracte by a large margin

explain how its 5k steam players, even if its 10-15k using the old one (highly unlikely) it is still not even in the same dimension as 100k

Edited January 28, 2023 by ZUHFB

[SteveTheCynic]

21 hours ago, Nee-Elder said:

Agreed ( obviously ) , but they don't have enough funding$ .

Therefore, as i've been saying for years:  BioWare should give  US , the players, much much more tools to create our own content  to help the community better/longer  between updates, and until such time as EA  invests/promotes significantly again into SWTOR.

OK, but how does that help people who aren't here for sandbox-style gameplay?

[Nee-Elder]

1 minute ago, SteveTheCynic said:

OK, but how does that help people who aren't here for sandbox-style gameplay?

Well, you have the other 99% of the game already, no?

Then BioWare would still keep trying their best to release  typical theme-park STORY & Ops content  every year , like they did pretty successfully with 'Ruhnuk'  7.2 update.

My  'sandbox' concept/suggestion is merely to fill the gaps AND to create a better player-imagined & player-governed  infrastructure.

Unless you enjoy being reliant on a corporEAtion who doesn't even like this game, combined with a BW team who barely has enough coders to fix a few bugs every month?

[SteveTheCynic]

1 minute ago, Nee-Elder said:

Well, you have the other 99% of the game already, no?

Of course, but having that doesn't advance the existing half-finished story.

1 minute ago, Nee-Elder said:

Then BioWare would still keep trying their best to release  typical theme-park STORY & Ops content  every year , like they did pretty successfully with 'Ruhnuk'  7.2 update.

Well, OK, but only once they had finished building the infrastructure for the proposal, and all the possible buildings, and so on.

[Nee-Elder]

55 minutes ago, SteveTheCynic said:

Well, OK, but only once they had finished building the infrastructure for the proposal, and all the possible buildings, and so on.

Your desire to be a contrarian is clouding your ability to see the obvious, Steve.

All of the 'objects'  & 'templates' & such has already been built/coded, within entire game database + previous strongholds systems.

What i'm proposing is merely a method by which we, the community, has greater access to those in-game tools.  An expansion, if you will.

So that we, as PLAYERS, can better utilize our own imaginations & inclinations. ( aka entertain ourselves while we wait for BioWarEA to give us their version....eventually )

Sure, there would have to be some level of  time/effort on BioWare's part to commit maybe one-half 'dev cycle' , but ostensibly the beauty of  'sandbox' type availability ( as an augment to the other 99% themepark SWTOR ) is that it basically manages itself  once it's been implemented.

Edited January 28, 2023 by Nee-Elder

[OlBuzzard]

@SteveTheCynic  sound points!  But perhaps a question for both you and @Nee-Elder ...  is there room for both ideas?  Time, money, and other resources?  Frankly I was hoping to see more of this in the suggestion that Nee-Elder made in ... well in the suggestion box.

Please note @Nee-Elder .. just because I disagree with a point or two is no reason to distrust that point of dissatisfaction!  Sometimes really good stuff can come from a debate.  I've seen that recently (both good AND bad) in the last couple of weeks!  I'm personally always striving to get the better parts to come out in the end.  Sometimes that works .. and sometimes it blows up in my face.  But I refuse to give up!

[Nee-Elder]

10 minutes ago, OlBuzzard said:

But ...  is there room for both ideas? 

My contention is: YES, there def. is room for both.  See my post above ^ for code clarity.

However, as fun as this topic is,  i'm not so delusional to think BioWare  will ever grant any of my more 'sandbox'  wishes.

Miracles could happen though, after  64-bit phase is completed.

10 minutes ago, OlBuzzard said:

Frankly I was hoping to see more of this in the suggestion that Nee-Elder made in ... well in the suggestion box.

Already done-->  https://forums.swtor.com/topic/927076-possible-sandbox-land-owner-type-system-and-potential-credit-sink/   ...as well as other related 'suggestion/sandbox' type hyperlinks within my sig below. ( re: Crafting of LS's )

Edited January 28, 2023 by Nee-Elder

[OlBuzzard]

1 minute ago, Nee-Elder said:

My contention is: YES, there def. is room for both.  See my post above ^ for code clarity.

However, as fun as this topic is,  i'm not so delusional to think BioWare  will ever grant any of my more 'sandbox'  wishes.

Miracles could happen though, after  64-bit phase is completed.

Already done-->  https://forums.swtor.com/topic/927076-possible-sandbox-land-owner-type-system-and-potential-credit-sink/   ...as well as other related 'suggestion/sandbox' type hyperlinks within my sig below. ( re: Crafting of LS's )

There is a LOT of anticipation of better things to come ... the 64-bit thing being one of them!  You're looking for a sandbox .. and I'm looking for a space station ..  or maybe a nice lake (complete with bass boat) in the middle of that sandbox!! 

OH!  I'll take a peek at the update in the suggestion box as well!

[/two thumbs up]

[felleto]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whGtoNzw-u0

A very enlightening video on the topic. Couldn't reccomend it enough.

[OlBuzzard]

7 hours ago, Nee-Elder said:

My contention is: YES, there def. is room for both.  See my post above ^ for code clarity.

However, as fun as this topic is,  i'm not so delusional to think BioWare  will ever grant any of my more 'sandbox'  wishes.

Miracles could happen though, after  64-bit phase is completed.

Already done-->  https://forums.swtor.com/topic/927076-possible-sandbox-land-owner-type-system-and-potential-credit-sink/   ...as well as other related 'suggestion/sandbox' type hyperlinks within my sig below. ( re: Crafting of LS's )

I'm understandably curious!  How could this be done?  By that I mean:
** What areas?  
** WE know that a large part of SWTOR needs to be restored ...  several areas I've presented my own list (in more than one thread). 
** How would you better define this?
** PvP areas??  Better accessibility?  How to encourage new players or perhaps returning players that have been gone for a while.
** PvE??  I've personally thought that having multiple levels of difficulty would most definitely help. 
** There also needs to be a complete revamp of GS to gain confidence in participation in between new chapters being released.
** As I'm seeing it right now your idea works well in providing a subsidized platform of activity in (perhaps) multiple areas.

Are these topics a part of what you have in mind.  If not.. that's cool! Outline several things to discuss!  If you prefer, we can move this to your discussion in the suggestion!  Heck .. I'm game!  Let's give it our best shot!  If we aim at nothing, we WILL hit it every time!