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

[Gibonski]

1 hour ago, OlBuzzard said:

Sometime when we all stick together it the best thing we can do!  I realize that is not always the case.  If nothing else it has helped me and others who are not directly involved in the PvP part of SWTOR have a better understanding.  Sure MMO's have changed a LOT over the years.  Most companies that are still releasing them (at least the ones that most of US would consider) recognize that!

Everyone makes mistakes.  What anyone does with that afterwards pretty much defines who they really are!  And (like it or not) it really is just that simple!

It will come down go the point, or are we already here that this game will be compared to Lotro. At least they are experiencing somewhat of a renaissance era and we are still stuck in the dark ages. And they posted a road map believe you me...

The community is a huge part that drives people to this game. It was for me at least since the beginning. I came as a star wars fan, and stayed for the people. I ran guilds, been an officer, did shady stuff and made so many breaks along the way but the memories and nostalgia is bringing me back every time. Since they (devs) dropped the ball with the communication and updates I lack the initiative to stay subbed all the time. I really want just that, keep the hype train going throughout the year, it will make huge difference in your active payer numbers. 

I am happy to see other positive people still making this game alive, but how long it will be so? Will they ever wake up? Where is our New Hope?

[OlBuzzard]

3 hours ago, Gibonski said:

It will come down go the point, or are we already here that this game will be compared to Lotro. At least they are experiencing somewhat of a renaissance era and we are still stuck in the dark ages. And they posted a road map believe you me...

The community is a huge part that drives people to this game. It was for me at least since the beginning. I came as a star wars fan, and stayed for the people. I ran guilds, been an officer, did shady stuff and made so many breaks along the way but the memories and nostalgia is bringing me back every time. Since they (devs) dropped the ball with the communication and updates I lack the initiative to stay subbed all the time. I really want just that, keep the hype train going throughout the year, it will make huge difference in your active payer numbers. 

I am happy to see other positive people still making this game alive, but how long it will be so? Will they ever wake up? Where is our New Hope?

Our New Hope:

It began with threads just like this one!  It is a reminder to all of us.  IMO we have the power to either see the opportunity for change.. OR we can choose not to and go our own way.  That goes for us as a community as well as those who are responsible for the development and content of the game as well.  IMO ... it's a two-way street!

Just because this is Star Wars over confidence can affect ANY of us just as much as anything else can.  None of us are immune to that either!  History is replete with examples:  Custer , Nero ... Napoleon (to name a few).  And I'm quite sure there is ample room to add a couple more names to that list! 

One the other hand .. there are always possibilities.  Some good.. Some not so good.  Just kind of depends on how you want to look at it ..  and what you intend to do about it!  Heck if I didn't think that there were always the possibility of catching a good mess of fish each time I went out .. I'd just stay at home!!  There are days when I probably should have!  On the other hand ... I'm doing my annual inventory and resupply right now (literally right now).  I've never tried glide baits before.  I'm planning on having a few of the basics by this time next week to try something new! 

As far as SWTOR is concerned ... @TrixxieTriss ... YOU summed it up correctly some time back.  The ball is in their court (the development team).

Time will tell!

Edited February 4, 2023 by OlBuzzard

[ksareas]

What would bring you or your friends back?
intermittent game every 2 or 3 years gives me to play and relive a story for 1 or 2 months

What have they not done that people have always wanted players to be interested in?
As a Latino, the language becomes very uncomfortable for us to be translating in our minds if we handle intermediate English and sometimes we miss the cinematics or get hung up on some interactions, I don't even tell you who handles basic English, nor does he play it which loses a fairly large source of players by not translating it, only the texts are not asked for much, really if they were translated easily they would attract between 100k to 200k players, there are a lot of LA and Spanish people who play mmrpgs and they don't play it alone because it is not translated

Is the fact that endgame isn't a big focus a big turn off for people?
Yes, I have played other mmrpg for example lineage 2 and it has a great late game since it focuses on open world pvp, where guilds or clans have a very important impact within the servers and adds an important plus to keep you busy once you finish the story or the level and it really makes you want to improve your character to make good pvps, not counting the hero system of that game that forces you to take your character to the best level by lengthening the late game for several months or years...

Is it because history has been done before and then that's it and people don't stick around after that?
the late game is bad, they are just repetitive instances and without an apparent end, you improve the team and then what? You just kill faster but it doesn't have any definitive impact on the game and you just repeat the instances over and over again

I would also add the little content, but as I say if they improve the late game to something more productive and challenging, the little content they do would not be a determining factor for one to abandon the game after 1 or 2 months

Edited February 6, 2023 by ksareas

[TrixxieTriss]

25 minutes ago, ksareas said:

What would bring you or your friends back?
intermittent game every 2 or 3 years gives me to play and relive a story for 1 or 2 months

What have they not done that people have always wanted players to be interested in?
As a Latino, the language becomes very uncomfortable for us to be translating in our minds if we handle intermediate English and sometimes we miss the cinematics or get hung up on some interactions, I don't even tell you who handles basic English, nor does he play it which loses a fairly large source of players by not translating it, only the texts are not asked for much, really if they were translated easily they would attract between 100k to 200k players, there are a lot of LA and Spanish people who play mmrpgs and they don't play it alone because it is not translated

Is the fact that endgame isn't a big focus a big turn off for people?
Yes, I have played other mmrpg for example lineage 2 and it has a great late game since it focuses on open world pvp, where guilds or clans have a very important impact within the servers and adds an important plus to keep you busy once you finish the story or the level and it really makes you want to improve your character to make good pvps, not counting the hero system of that game that forces you to take your character to the best level by lengthening the late game for several months or years...

Is it because history has been done before and then that's it and people don't stick around after that?
the late game is bad, they are just repetitive instances and without an apparent end, you improve the team and then what? You just kill faster but it doesn't have any definitive impact on the game and you just repeat the instances over and over again

I would also add the little content, but as I say if they improve the late game to something more productive and challenging, the little content they do would not be a determining factor for one to abandon the game after 1 or 2 months

That’s an interesting point about no Spanish translation being in the game. Especially when there are more countries in the world that natively speak Spanish than English, French & German combined. 
And with America having such a large population of Spanish speaking people, it wouldn’t have been that difficult to incorporate Spanish voice actors during the original development. 

[TrixxieTriss]

On 2/5/2023 at 8:24 AM, OlBuzzard said:

Our New Hope:

It began with threads just like this one!  It is a reminder to all of us.  IMO we have the power to either see the opportunity for change.. OR we can choose not to and go our own way.  That goes for us as a community as well as those who are responsible for the development and content of the game as well.  IMO ... it's a two-way street!

Just because this is Star Wars over confidence can affect ANY of us just as much as anything else can.  None of us are immune to that either!  History is replete with examples:  Custer , Nero ... Napoleon (to name a few).  And I'm quite sure there is ample room to add a couple more names to that list! 

One the other hand .. there are always possibilities.  Some good.. Some not so good.  Just kind of depends on how you want to look at it ..  and what you intend to do about it!  Heck if I didn't think that there were always the possibility of catching a good mess of fish each time I went out .. I'd just stay at home!!  There are days when I probably should have!  On the other hand ... I'm doing my annual inventory and resupply right now (literally right now).  I've never tried glide baits before.  I'm planning on having a few of the basics by this time next week to try something new! 

As far as SWTOR is concerned ... @TrixxieTriss ... YOU summed it up correctly some time back.  The ball is in their court (the development team).

Time will tell!

BioWares communication this week will make or break it for some players. If BioWare choose to stay silent, we know they’ve chosen to ignore the issues & hope those players leave the game or stop complaining 🤷🏻‍♀️

[jedipattawan]

12 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

BioWares communication this week will make or break it for some players. If BioWare choose to stay silent, we know they’ve chosen to ignore the issues & hope those players leave the game or stop complaining 🤷🏻‍♀️

Do they routinely do some kind of update and they are due for one this week?  

[Gibonski]

16 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

BioWares communication this week will make or break it for some players. If BioWare choose to stay silent, we know they’ve chosen to ignore the issues & hope those players leave the game or stop complaining 🤷🏻‍♀️

Did I miss something? Are we expecting a post or are we just being hopeful as always? 

I don't expect for them to answer from one simple reason.

They would think of replying as submission to our calls, whereas it's entirely the opposite. 

They will gain so much more in our eyes. 

But You, the community already know that. 

Edited February 6, 2023 by Gibonski

[Chryptyk]

They would gain immense respect for admitting mistakes.  it's ok to be wrong about something.  what needs to happen after that is those mistakes need to be fixed though.  

Businesses thrive by making a good product and keeping customers happy, or at least giving them the perception that they are trying to do so.

I don't know about the rest of you, but judging by general sentiment, the customers for this game are not happy.  They feel ignored and neglected.  Additionally, since 7, the game has not seemed like a good product.  7.2 was a move in the right direction, but overall, there's still a lot of unhappy customers out here.

When there is this much discontent, there needs to be rapid change; not silence, not brushing customers off, not quelling of negativity.  Those complaints need to be taken seriously and quick corrective action taken.

 

[Nee-Elder]

1 hour ago, Gibonski said:

Are we expecting a post or are we just being hopeful as always?

The latter.

42 minutes ago, Chryptyk said:

  it's ok to be wrong about something.  what needs to happen after that is those mistakes need to be fixed though.  

, but judging by general sentiment, the customers for this game are not happy. 

If by "general sentiment"  you mean the usual  vocal-minority  type suspects posting on these forums, then yes those peeps def. aren't "happy" and frankly never will be.   Most players, however, are typically going about their business in-game each day, content as can be, and never bother to read much less post on forums nor lolReddit rant threads.

As for your 1st sentence i quoted:  Have you considered the probability that BioWare doesn't believe they were "wrong" and therefore, in their eyes, have no "mistakes" to fix ?  Rather they simply have an internal agenda to implement, irrespective of extenal "sentiment" and instead governed by their own company mandate to keep pushing the game forward.

Look, it sure would be nice to get more behind-the-code promo posts on the regular, like ESO Devs seem to do far more often than here.

Either way though, i'm personally anticipating more 7.2 type adjustments in eventual 7.3  and maybe, if  EA  actually still cares about SWTOR, some tie-in to Mandalorian Season-3 ...more than just another re-skinned mini-pet.

Edited February 6, 2023 by Nee-Elder
Reason: once again, the information vacuum takes hold

[Chryptyk]

52 minutes ago, Nee-Elder said:

Most players, however, are typically going about their business in-game each day, content as can be, and never bother to read much less post on forums nor lolReddit rant threads.

You really can't be blind to the number of people that have quit the game, right?  There's many reasons they have quit in droves since the start of 7.  Those vocal minority types are voicing why people are quitting.  

 

52 minutes ago, Nee-Elder said:

Have you considered the probability that BioWare doesn't believe they were "wrong" and therefore, in their eyes, have no "mistakes" to fix ? 

To not recognize one's mistakes when told what they are is pure ego, and egos as such need to be put in place.  The customers have given them a chance to make things right.

And well, they are failing miserably at it and the falling sub numbers will continue until they actually start listening and fixing things.

Edited February 6, 2023 by Chryptyk

[Nee-Elder]

9 minutes ago, Chryptyk said:

You really can't be blind to the number of people that have quit the game, right? 

I've been here since 2009, adapting & enjoying SWTOR as a 'themepark' psuedo-MMO style video-game nearly everyday, so i'm certainly not "blind" to who & how many have quit over the years.  Nice try though.

In any event, to use your own interesting sentence structure: You really can't be delusional to the number of people at BioWarEA who care what you & the vocal-minority thinks, right?

F2P'ayers & CM buyers  are the main target audience for SWTOR.

Not subscribers.

In that respect, they are def.  NOT  "failing" .  Quite the opposite, unfortunately for longtime players like me who prefer what this game was originally founded (and intended) upon.

Conversely, people like you (and others) have been claiming "subs are falling!!  game is DEAD!!"  every few months since 2012.

Nothing more than fun forum fodder.

Meanwhile,  update after update rolls on and BioWarEA does whatever they want to do whenever they feel like doing it.

[Chryptyk]

33 minutes ago, Nee-Elder said:

Meanwhile,  update after update rolls on and BioWarEA does whatever they want to do whenever they feel like doing it.

And that right there is the problem.  And that is why they fail.  not taking care of the customers.

i've been here since the beginning too.  and 7 is the worst it has ever been.

we have no way of knowing who is spending money on CM.  personally, i don't know any f2p people who spend a lot on CCs.  The only people i talk to who spend real money on CCs are subs.

We know the game is kept afloat by the CM, that much is certain though.

And i didn't say game is dead or dying, for that matter.  i only said sub counts are falling at a very high rate since 7, which is also very well known.

Edited February 6, 2023 by Chryptyk

[SteveTheCynic]

22 minutes ago, Nee-Elder said:

Conversely, people like you (and others) have been claiming "subs are falling!!  game is DEAD!!"  every few months since 2012.

Must I remind people of this?

On 7/23/2021 at 7:20 PM, SteveTheCynic said:

Also, here's something I posted on the GW2 forums:

"game is dying" is (or should be) a generic meme in all MMORPG forums, even to the extent of things like

• Game released today: "Game is dying."
• Game released yesterday: "Game is dying."
• Game just released a new expansion, all the servers are jam-packed with players: "Game is dying."
• Game will release in two weeks: "Game is dead."

 

 

[DeannaVoyager]

10 hours ago, Nee-Elder said:

If by "general sentiment"  you mean the usual  vocal-minority  type suspects posting on these forums, then yes those peeps def. aren't "happy" and frankly never will be.   

I think you mixed the words minority and majority there. 🤔

 

I also think you underestimate the "happiness" of people if/when some of the major issues will be fixed.  People are unhappy because of millions of bugs, state of pvp and devs not communicating, to name a few. It's unrealistic to expect everyone cheering happily with major issues going on on several areas of the game.  

 

 

[Hrafnhildur]

Hi, I started playing in 2020 and back then I was in a very big and very active guild, one of the biggest on DM server. In the last 2 years, a lot of people quit and I was curious why, so I asked them on guild Discord. Here are the answers I got :

- lack of content

- too much of some companions and too little of others

- changes in gearing

- some classes being nerfed and very weak, forcing people to play classes they don't necessarily like, but are stronger

- not enough LGBT+ romances, especially for ladies

- Galactic Seasons companions being uninteresting 

 

[sharpenedstick]

When they abandoned individual class stories, they also abandoned individual class companions. Now unless the devs decided they liked a companion enough for them to factor into their "vision," you might get a short blurb and that's it. For romance content, it only makes sense to romance people like Lana and Theron, who are going to be consistent characters. Your original class romance ain't going anywhere.

[OlBuzzard]

44 minutes ago, sharpenedstick said:

When they abandoned individual class stories, they also abandoned individual class companions. Now unless the devs decided they liked a companion enough for them to factor into their "vision," you might get a short blurb and that's it. For romance content, it only makes sense to romance people like Lana and Theron, who are going to be consistent characters. Your original class romance ain't going anywhere.

Agreed!  And several of the returns from some of the original companions was seriously lacking to begin with.  Now I can't help but to wonder if this is simply because someone doesn't want ANY of the companions to compete with those received through GS (which are directly attached to the CM) or those that are PURCHASED through the CM???

It just kind of really raises that sort of a question!  Is that why so many were killed off in the first place??

[/shrugs] ... I maybe off track on this one! (Or maybe not)

[jedipattawan]

I do think the outfits, weapons, and companions offered on the CM could be even better.  I haven't seen much that made me think wow I really want that bad!  They could step up their game more in that department in my opinion anyway.  

[AwesomeTacoCat]

10 hours ago, jedipattawan said:

I do think the outfits, weapons, and companions offered on the CM could be even better.  I haven't seen much that made me think wow I really want that bad!  They could step up their game more in that department in my opinion anyway.  

Please don’t suggest to the devs that they spend more time than they already do on CM “content”, you will doom us all. 

[xxSHOONYxx]

On 2/8/2023 at 8:47 AM, sharpenedstick said:

When they abandoned individual class stories, they also abandoned individual class companions. Now unless the devs decided they liked a companion enough for them to factor into their "vision," you might get a short blurb and that's it. For romance content, it only makes sense to romance people like Lana and Theron, who are going to be consistent characters. Your original class romance ain't going anywhere.

Individual class stories and companions are just too much work for what they actually give in the long term, not only writing 8 different class stories, waiting those 8 stories to be approved by disney, but then paying for the voicing of other npcs plus different companions, and not only that but paying it 3 times for english german and french. which is probably why new companions speak in gibberish so they don't have to go through that money and time sink. Because of that story content is probably what requieres the most work and money spent and what gives the game the least in terms of longevity because no matter how good a story is, the replayability is just not there like other actual replayable endgame content. 

[jedipattawan]

24 minutes ago, xxSHOONYxx said:

Individual class stories and companions are just too much work for what they actually give in the long term, not only writing 8 different class stories, waiting those 8 stories to be approved by disney, but then paying for the voicing of other npcs plus different companions, and not only that but paying it 3 times for english german and french. which is probably why new companions speak in gibberish so they don't have to go through that money and time sink. Because of that story content is probably what requieres the most work and money spent and what gives the game the least in terms of longevity because no matter how good a story is, the replayability is just not there like other actual replayable endgame content. 

I'd love to see more deep engaging end game with story also as a part of it.  Kind of like fighting through the various enemies in Jedi Fallen Order on the harder settings and difficult boss fights.  Nothing wrong with a nice bigger budget end game with some fun content to boot.

I have zero clue what each operation is about and nothing really seemed to lead me there when playing through the story that I noticed.  It seems like something that is off to the side and separate from the rest of the game.  Edit:  I do recall Revan leading me to an operation actually, and even giving me the option to fight the boss my own way which was cool.

Edited February 9, 2023 by jedipattawan

[xxSHOONYxx]

2 hours ago, jedipattawan said:

I'd love to see more deep engaging end game with story also as a part of it.  Kind of like fighting through the various enemies in Jedi Fallen Order on the harder settings and difficult boss fights.  Nothing wrong with a nice bigger budget end game with some fun content to boot.

That will hardly happen in this game because story content became too easy or else some people complain they can't do the story. For story here lately is just a some cutscenes and dialog in between slogfest of mind-numbing "enemies" that you could afk while your companion kills everything, making the story content just so boring. 

I personally didn't like FFXIV and the backtracking of their msq and the story was painfully boring, but their story boss fights were actually entertaining and taught people to play the game unlike here, and if you had issues beating the fight it gave you an option to make it easier. New players here (especially new mmo players) after they complete the story have no idea how to play the game at even a basic level, and the removal of sm op mechanics didn't help either as a welcome to endgame content. While in other games story progression and new cutscenes is like a reward, here that is given and the only difficult part to reach the next cutscene/story progression/dialog is how boring the fights in between are and not falling asleep through them. Adding a million different adds in between is not fun, making the npc's/bosses health sponges with no mechanics is not fun, but having to avoid aoe/cleave damage, dcd usage, interrupting and mechanics on the other hand it is more fun and keeps you more engaged, focused and entertained

Things that are too easy become more of a chore, rather than something engaging that keeps you entertained

Edited February 9, 2023 by xxSHOONYxx

[Balameb]

On 2/5/2023 at 11:23 PM, ksareas said:

What have they not done that people have always wanted players to be interested in?
As a Latino, the language becomes very uncomfortable for us to be translating in our minds if we handle intermediate English and sometimes we miss the cinematics or get hung up on some interactions, I don't even tell you who handles basic English, nor does he play it which loses a fairly large source of players by not translating it, only the texts are not asked for much, really if they were translated easily they would attract between 100k to 200k players, there are a lot of LA and Spanish people who play mmrpgs and they don't play it alone because it is not translated

 

On 2/5/2023 at 11:54 PM, TrixxieTriss said:

That’s an interesting point about no Spanish translation being in the game. Especially when there are more countries in the world that natively speak Spanish than English, French & German combined. 
And with America having such a large population of Spanish speaking people, it wouldn’t have been that difficult to incorporate Spanish voice actors during the original development. 

Also latino here. I fully agree that adding spanish translation would help a lot.

Recently my nephew asked about what games i play and i think i picked his interest with trying SWTOR. Then i realized he is not good a english at all and would never be able to understand the game.

BTW, ESO actually added spanish last year; so i don't think is unreasonable to ask for for text/subtitles translation.

[Riyar]

"A process that completely ignores the PTS and issues that arise. Every time a big new release comes out broken or poorly designed, you see posts from people who were on the PTS saying "we told them this was an issue." "

^ This is frustrating.
The rush to put out updates that aren't ready doesn't help.

My raid friends quit in 7 because of the rework of the way the classes play, the gearing system (which people on the PTS were very vocal about saying "this is not good"), and because the new ops was overly difficult/glitched, and made us frustrated and feel like we were bad at the game. Lol.

(We got to the 3rd boss in 3 or 4 sessions, but then half the group didn't sub again cuz they weren't having fun on it with all the changes.)

So I think that definitely isn't the kind of endgame content that will keep a MAJORITY of endgame players around.

 

And another thing I don't know if anyone has mentioned: a lot of players on SWTOR are mean, and very little has ever been done to discourage bad behaviour / encourage people to be nicer.

--Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of really nice people I've encountered--but there are a LOT of impatient, rude, trolling & offensive folks around.

[Gilrenna]

The Nostalgia is strong with this one...

It's why I keep coming back. I wasn't even remotely a hard-core SW fan when I discovered this game. But by the time I had played through the Smuggler story on Ord Mantell, I was hooked. I loved it. The voice acting, the cutscenes w/ my beautiful character front and center in them all, the engaging story and laugh-out-loud humor & sarcasm, the dialog choices, the romance & friendships. I couldn't get enough. This game made me a SW fan. 

I played all 8 class stories and loved every minute. I refused to read anything online or in the forums about the game for the first 6 months because I didn't want any spoilers. I just wanted to live the stories. I was happy and clueless. Because of that decision, I still remember the soul-crushing moment I realized all my beloved class stories ended with Corellia. The disappointment was palpable when it became clear to me that the companions I'd married to my characters were not going to feature prominently in the future.

I think I cried. But I kept playing. Ilum. Makeb. Then Shadow of Revan. My excitement was renewed with this. I loved Lana & Theron. The lore. I played a little bit of everything. FPs, Ops, WZ. Joined a guild. We were halfway through KOTFE when I began playing & I'd finally made it there. I liked the chapters despite the problems. They made me feel a little bit like I had in the beginning. Later, the Theron traitor storyline was something I loved, especially for my characters that had romanced him. 

It was when Ossus came out that I first began really struggling with wanting to continue playing. I took long breaks, unsubbed, came back once in a while to RP in the cantinas, flirt with whoever, and rehash the glory days. My guild made a comeback during SoV, and I maxed out my gear, progged all the Ops. It was fun for a while. 

Then everything changed again. I had top gear on everyone, but I...was...so...TIRED. Tired of gearing up, tired of dailies, tired of repeatables, tired of Heroic Missions, tired of waiting for that loving feeling to come back. I've just returned after another long break. I did the stories, but I don't know if I can stomach the dailies or getting more gear. My guild finally died for good.

I honestly don't know how to feel about the game anymore. So many currencies to keep up with. So many dailies. PvP is a mess. New gear system. Malgus keeps coming back but refuses to fall in love with my Warrior or get some decent cosmetic surgery...Ugh.

But hey, it's been a slice and I just can't seem to completely let go. Too many memories.