Can we get free transfers off dead servers please?

DWho · July 23, 2023

48 minutes ago, Darkestmonty said:

Excluding the first starter worlds, it is pretty rare, even on SF, to run into so many people you are waiting more than 30 seconds for something to respawn.

It's the "starter" worlds that cost the game new players (Pretty much through Nar Shadaa). They are frustrated with leveling and quit before they even decide to subscribe. There are nowhere near enough players on any of the servers where merging them will provide a significant increase in playability of group content outside a few core hours. That is just due to the overall low population in the game. Better to keep two servers in each region and let them sort themselves out as to playstyles to maximize the number of players still playing the game. Lower cost transfers is acceptable, mergers is not for a variety of reasons (regional redundancy, better play experience for new players, less exposure to toxicity, etc)

SteveTheCynic · July 23, 2023

2 hours ago, Darkestmonty said:

Excluding the first starter worlds, it is pretty rare, even on SF, to run into so many people you are waiting more than 30 seconds for something to respawn

Well, except for the mobs in the front area of The Face Merchants, whose groups have a respawn delay of five minutes.

Shayddow · July 23, 2023

People used to be waiting for gathering nodes to spawn, back when there was more population. I remember going to Yavin 4 when SOR came out and it was full of people trying to loot in particular slicing nodes. But SWTOR hasn't had that kind of population in YEARS. (and then bioanalysis nodes when DR Lokin's mission during Rakghoul event).

WayOfTheWarriorx · July 23, 2023

6 hours ago, Eckrond said:

So you tried to argument your points, they were shown to be pointless, and now it doesn't matter?

Right.

There is no argument on this. Not everyone who's into mutli-player aspects of MMOS wants megaservers.

You're objectively wrong.

Darkestmonty · July 24, 2023

2 hours ago, Shayddow said:

People used to be waiting for gathering nodes to spawn, back when there was more population. I remember going to Yavin 4 when SOR came out and it was full of people trying to loot in particular slicing nodes. But SWTOR hasn't had that kind of population in YEARS. (and then bioanalysis nodes when DR Lokin's mission during Rakghoul event).

A lot of the missions had respawn timer for items in minutes. Devs have been lowering the respawn timers since they introduced the tagging system. A few missions still need updating and if you notice a spot write a ticket.

DWho · July 24, 2023

20 hours ago, Shayddow said:

One thing that sort of worries me. I did the Coruscant Heroics for one of the Galactic Seasons this week on Coruscant at 5 PM on a Saturday - weekend. (had to do 8 missions & it counts bonus as missions and each heroic has a bonus). Prime time. On Star Forge. The most populated server. I had absolutely no problem doing the bonus (kill 15 mobs) in Black Sun heroic. Either they made the gen increase (unlikely as I didn't see anyone else playing it), or they've lost some serious population.

One counterpoint to this observation: Today I did Face Merchants on both SF and SS. On SF there were 90 players in the instance and all the mobs were standing and no one else was there. On SS there were 50 or so people in the instance and there were 4 people buzzing around on speeders from spawn point to spawn point. It's pretty random. You are just more likely to encounter farmed out areas on the more populous instances but there is no guarantee a low pop instance/server will be better (just a higher probability it will be).

Darkestmonty · July 24, 2023

5 hours ago, DWho said:

It's the "starter" worlds that cost the game new players (Pretty much through Nar Shadaa). They are frustrated with leveling and quit before they even decide to subscribe. There are nowhere near enough players on any of the servers where merging them will provide a significant increase in playability of group content outside a few core hours. That is just due to the overall low population in the game. Better to keep two servers in each region and let them sort themselves out as to playstyles to maximize the number of players still playing the game. Lower cost transfers is acceptable, mergers is not for a variety of reasons (regional redundancy, better play experience for new players, less exposure to toxicity, etc)

Hate to tell you this but on SF I can PvP, find ops groups, and play GSF at almost any hour of the day. The slowest period seems to be around 3 AM EST to about 8 AM EST. I can also solo play which is what I do mot of the time on SF.

You do realize both SS and SF are in the same state right? We don't need "regional" servers for NA. So this excuse of needing "regional US servers" is bunk.

As for "playstyles" what? You really think one server has more "special" players than the other?

One server has 30% of the population of another server. Due to that low population the players on that server are forced to do more solo content and play alone or rely on finding a guild that happend to do exactly the content they like at the same time they usually play. That isn't a "play style". That is the result of players who lack any other options.

SF has 250% to 300% more players than SF so they are more group oriented since players can find groups, PvP, socialize, etc at almost any hour of the day.

Stop trying to attribute being forced to solo due to lack of options as a special play style that needs to be protected.

Edited July 24, 2023 by Darkestmonty

DWho · July 24, 2023

Just now, Darkestmonty said:

Hate to tell you this but on SF I can PvP, find ops groups, and play GSF at almost any hour of the day. The slowest period seems to be around 3 AM EST to about 8 AM EST.

yup, middle of the night. Adding the population from SS won't improve that at all.

1 minute ago, Darkestmonty said:

You do realize both SS and SF are in the same state right? We don't need "regional" servers for NA. So this excuse of needing "regional US servers" is bunk.

Regional as in NA vs Europe. If you only have one server in the US and it goes down, there is nowhere else to play without substantial lag (and by the way, cloud servers are not magically immune to down-time either). Ask the APAC players how much fun it is to play competitive modes at 250-350 ms lag and you won't likely have your favorite character on the European server so you'll have to make due with a lesser character (or "worse" yet have to make a new one - OMG what a thought).

3 minutes ago, Darkestmonty said:

One server has 30% of the population of another server. Due to that low population the players on that server are forced to do more solo content and play alone. That isn't a "play style". That's players who lack any other options.

Not true. Maybe PVP players it is 30% but overall population is more like 75%. As I noted in one of the posts above on Coruscant there were 90 players on SF (only 1 instance) and 50 players on SS (also only 1 instance) during prime time (~7 pm Eastern). So that is more like 50% and that's only counting 1 planet.

4 minutes ago, Darkestmonty said:

Attributing people who have no choice but to solo on a low pop server as having a different play style than people who have option for group content and social play... that's like saying a person walking across the country because they don't have a car has a different style of traveling than a person with a car.

I'm pretty sure everyone except you understands what different play-styles means. If all those "group" players that are "trapped" on SS and don't queue because they can't get pops would queue, maybe they would actually get pops instead of coming to the forums to bellyache.

Just transfer your favorite characters to SF and be happy instead of complaining (that's what us "casual" players had to do when SF became crowded with every PVP player and their uncle abandoning SS for an 5 sec improvement in pop time and brought all the toxicity of SS with them after the last merge - they bellyached alot about SS no longer being the largest server first so I guess there is some precedent for bellyaching about size.)

I think this is more about keeping your character names (in a merge oldest character keeps it while with a transfer the character already on the server keeps it) and wanting a bunch of free transfers to transfer all your loot to a server where it's worth more. 90CC transfers for a couple weeks should sort out the issue. With all the free CCs Bioware has been throwing around, transferring a dozen characters should be pretty simple (how many more than that do your really play regularly). It seems like Bioware is planning that with their back-end Character Transfer maintenance so you might want to wait until the next "up[date"

Darkestmonty · July 24, 2023

45 minutes ago, DWho said:

yup, middle of the night. Adding the population from SS won't improve that at all.

Regional as in NA vs Europe. If you only have one server in the US and it goes down, there is nowhere else to play without substantial lag (and by the way, cloud servers are not magically immune to down-time either). Ask the APAC players how much fun it is to play competitive modes at 250-350 ms lag and you won't likely have your favorite character on the European server so you'll have to make due with a lesser character (or "worse" yet have to make a new one - OMG what a thought).

Not true. Maybe PVP players it is 30% but overall population is more like 75%. As I noted in one of the posts above on Coruscant there were 90 players on SF (only 1 instance) and 50 players on SS (also only 1 instance) during prime time (~7 pm Eastern). So that is more like 50% and that's only counting 1 planet.

I'm pretty sure everyone except you understands what different play-styles means. If all those "group" players that are "trapped" on SS and don't queue because they can't get pops would queue, maybe they would actually get pops instead of coming to the forums to bellyache.

Just transfer your favorite characters to SF and be happy instead of complaining (that's what us "casual" players had to do when SF became crowded with every PVP player and their uncle abandoning SS for an 5 sec improvement in pop time and brought all the toxicity of SS with them after the last merge - they bellyached alot about SS no longer being the largest server first so I guess there is some precedent for bellyaching about size.)

I think this is more about keeping your character names (in a merge oldest character keeps it while with a transfer the character already on the server keeps it) and wanting a bunch of free transfers to transfer all your loot to a server where it's worth more. 90CC transfers for a couple weeks should sort out the issue. With all the free CCs Bioware has been throwing around, transferring a dozen characters should be pretty simple (how many more than that do your really play regularly). It seems like Bioware is planning that with their back-end Character Transfer maintenance so you might want to wait until the next "up[date"

Combining SS and SF is about improving the game for everyone on SS and eliminating an almost dead server to try and retain new players. This is not about improving the game for players on the SF server. I'm sorry you think the only valid suggestion to post is one that primarily benefits the poster.

Lets take a population count right now since you believe SS has about 75% of the players that SF has.

Republic Fleet (since you want to rely on Republic)

SS Fleet: 74 players

SF Fleet: 164 players

SS Coruscant: 59 players

SF Coruscant: 179 players

Did you just enter one instance of the planet without checking all instances? There are 3 instances for Fleet and Coruscant for SF while SS has one instance of each. There is no way 74 players is 75% of 164 players or that 59 players is 75% of 179.

I am on SF. I transferred over multiple characters and anything of value months ago. I am not complaining because I am stuck on SS. I am debating the ignorance that "SS is special and our players are special and we don't have a population issue, look man, I mean just look, we have at least 75% of the population of SF, there is no problem with our population".

The rest of your argument about needing multiple servers for redundancy if another server crashes is lacking. If it was so important to have redundant servers, where are the redundant servers for DM, TH, and LV? How does redundant servers help people who do not have characters on those redundant servers? Your argument that we need redundant servers only helps a very small portion of the population of which I qualify more than most since I play every server.

Retaining redundant servers because "oh, well what if the servers go down for an hour, all the people will need a place to play" does not help people who only play one server and the reality is that having a server with severe population issues will have a greater impact on the games notoriety of being dead than the few times the servers have crashed and a minority of people can hop onto the redundant server to play until their primary server comes back online.

Edited July 24, 2023 by Darkestmonty

DWho · July 24, 2023

17 minutes ago, Darkestmonty said:

Combining SS and SF is about improving the game for everyone on SS and eliminating an almost dead server to try and retain new players. This is not about improving the game for players on the SF server. I'm sorry you think the only valid suggestion to post is one that primarily benefits the poster.

Except that a more packed server is only better for group play (which is the minority of players playing the game, its an RPG-MMO after all so that is expected), it is significantly worse for leveling play which is what all new players do first. Not merging the servers and allowing transfers is a far better solution as it does not negatively impact anyone.

Let's take a look at your primary "example" of why servers need to be merged. Supposedly there is this huge number of players stuck on SS that can't get group content. That really begs the question of, if there are so many, why can't they get pops. Are they just not queuing for some reason (like it's not their preferred play-style perhaps), because if there really are so many "trapped there" and they would actually queue, pops shouldn't be a problem. It seems far more likely there just aren't enough to get pops even when they all queue, therefore, no need for a server merger to "save" them.

Just checked Coruscant myself:

SF: 122 (on three instances - 1 instance had only one other player and shut down right after I left)

SS: 60 on 1 instance

again, about 50% not 30%. That's not bad for a secondary server that has been all but abandoned by group oriented players.

Again, I see no need for a server merger when transfers are available. Having a low population server is not some sort of detriment to that game unless it is the only server.

Edit: SS is hardly "almost dead" being the 2nd or 3rd most populated server in the game

Edited July 24, 2023 by DWho

Darkestmonty · July 24, 2023

36 minutes ago, DWho said:

Except that a more packed server is only better for group play (which is the minority of players playing the game, its an RPG-MMO after all so that is expected), it is significantly worse for leveling play which is what all new players do first. Not merging the servers and allowing transfers is a far better solution as it does not negatively impact anyone.

Let's take a look at your primary "example" of why servers need to be merged. Supposedly there is this huge number of players stuck on SS that can't get group content. That really begs the question of, if there are so many, why can't they get pops. Are they just not queuing for some reason (like it's not their preferred play-style perhaps), because if there really are so many "trapped there" and they would actually queue, pops shouldn't be a problem. It seems far more likely there just aren't enough to get pops even when they all queue, therefore, no need for a server merger to "save" them.

Just checked Coruscant myself:

SF: 122 (on three instances - 1 instance had only one other player and shut down right after I left)

SS: 60 on 1 instance

again, about 50% not 30%. That's not bad for a secondary server that has been all but abandoned by group oriented players.

Again, I see no need for a server merger when transfers are available. Having a low population server is not some sort of detriment to that game unless it is the only server.

Edit: SS is hardly "almost dead" being the 2nd or 3rd most populated server in the game

group play, solo play, trading. SF wins in every category.

You did read what I posted right? That SF had 3 instances of Coruscant open. One instance was maxed out at 120 people, but the other two and had less people split between them than the one single instance open on SS.

This means that if you found yourself in the full instance on Coruscant while playing on SF, you could have dropped to one of the other instances which had less people per instance than SS had in their one instance.

That is how the game works, the more people there are the more instances that open. You could find two instances on SF that were emptier than the one instance on SS thanks to the higher population being spread out.

You want to complain about running into too many people on a server where there is only one instance open and that single instance has more people than the two of the three on SF?

I'll do the math for you.

SS had one instance with 59 players on Coruscant.

SF had 3 instances totaling 179 players on Coruscant, one of which had 120 players. This meant the other two had a split of the remaining... 59 players. 59 players divided by 2 is less players per instance than 59 players divided by 1.

For solo purposes, since that is what you seem to be focusing on, SF wins because it has more instances open with less players.

Claiming SS has 75% of the population that SF has then claiming it has 50% of the population doesn't match Coruscant which currently has over 3 times the population... which is closer to 30% than 50% and especially your original claim of 75%.

SF generally has 2-3 times the population of SS. You can argue all you want about how it feels, but the reality is SF has a vastly larger population which allows for more instances per planet to open up so it can feels less crowded than it is (and at times less crowded than even SS).

Edited July 24, 2023 by Darkestmonty

DWho · July 24, 2023

57 minutes ago, Darkestmonty said:

I'll do the math for you.

SS had one instance with 59 players on Coruscant.

Lets look at some other numbers too. On NS there was 1 instance of 75 players on SF and one instance of 40 players on SS. That's 115 players (which is less than 120) thus instead of the 40 players you had on SS you have 115 players on SF. You can pick and choose to get favorable numbers as can I. They are both true but my experience is that more planets will have more crowded instances. To add, most new players don't know how to change instances and so are stuck on whatever one they log into (experienced players don't have that problem which is why they generally underestimate the frustration of new players in crowded environments)

Every one of the arguments you have made was made before the last server merger (in 2017 I think) and of all the benefits you are touting for merging servers, a grand total of none of them came true and we lost 5-10% of the population within weeks of the merger and never gained its back.

I've been through several mergers and they are extremely unpleasant situations.

1) You end up having to rename a lot of characters that are on the server being merged into the "larger" server (sometimes names you may have had for years).

2) Your legacy bank is packed full since you only have 1 Legacy bank per server, so there is no where to shuffle off excess gear you want to keep. People are asking for more legacy tabs which indicates a lot of people have nearly full Legacy banks on each server they have characters on.

3) you will likely be over your unlocked character slot limit meaning any new character you want to create, for whatever reason, requires you to either purchase multiple character slot unlocks or delete lots of characters. Your idea to create dozens of "placeholder" characters is just silly because the main reason you would want to make a new character is a change to the game that affects only newly created characters- like races, hairstyles, combat styles, etc which you can't "reserve" in advance.

4) During the merger things go missing (and even finding something you have is a pain.). Tickets do get resolved, usually, but it takes months because the priority is keeping the merged server running.

5) If you are lucky, there is an overflow bank where everything gets dumped in that doesn't fit in you legacy bank and you have to wade through hundreds of items to find anything because there is no rhyme or reason to how it is decided where the stuff goes. It took me months to get mine all sorted out and stacked properly.

6) Your carefully planned attempt to maintain some sort of challenge in the game by having a full legacy only on one server is out the window since all achievements are merged (which also means you can no longer complete them a 2nd or 3rd time for the enjoyment as I stated in one of the other posts about why people want to play on different servers). This effectively removes playable content from the game.

7) lots of settings get reset to the defaults and have to be reset

I have watched two guilds disintegrate as a result of a server merger (people claim not merging servers caused PVP guilds to disintegrate but it doesn't matter what kind of guild it is, those players are gone - so there is no upside there for a merger). The players in them were fed up with the hassle it caused and just plain quit the game. These were very active guilds prior to the merge with dozens of people online at a time. Now those same guilds are logged into by the old guild master once every couple of weeks to maintain control and nothing is ever done with it. I inherited two other guilds (voluntarily from the old Guildmaster) that had the same thing happen. That's four guilds gone shortly after the merger (and they were big guilds at the membership maximum)

Then there is the image of having only 1 server per region. Most people interpret that as a dying game whether it is true or not and thus don't even bother with it.

Your pie in the sky idea of what a server merger will mean is misplaced. Server mergers are always a negative impact on the game and never its salvation.

Edited July 24, 2023 by DWho

WayOfTheWarriorx · July 24, 2023

1 hour ago, Darkestmonty said:

This is not about improving the game for players on the SF server.

Obviously you already know my stance on this, so I'm not gonna rehash that. I'd just like to point out a couple of things here.

I agree with your above statement totally. It's not about improving the game for players on SF. Everyone knows that they don't need any help. What I would like to point out here is that while it wouldn't improve anything for SF players, it would effect them negatively. They only lose from it.

Assuming that SS is in fact a "dead server", just for the sake of argument -

Based on the notion that it would just be about helping players from SS and does nothing for SF, would you not agree than that in cases of name conflicts, legacy name conflicts and guild name conflicts, it should automatically go in the favor of players from SF. That it should be the people from SS who have to change their names wherein there is a name conflict with people from SF?

1 hour ago, Darkestmonty said:

The rest of your argument about needing multiple servers for redundancy if another server crashes is lacking. If it was so important to have redundant servers, where are the redundant servers for DM, TH, and LV?

Star Forge already goes down an inordinate amount of the time, much more than the other servers, adding population to that would only make that worse and very well might cause it to happen more often.

DM, TH, and LV are the redundant severs for each other.

SS and SF are the servers for the North American Continent. DM, TH, and LV are the servers for the European continent. Boarders between countries are imaginary lines.

Europe has multiple countries in it and so does North America.

So for example, people in California or Canada connecting to SS or SF are a lot further from the server base than people in Eastern France are from West Germany in the boarder areas.

1 hour ago, Darkestmonty said:

Retaining redundant servers because "oh, well what if the servers go down for an hour, all the people will need a place to play" does not help people who only play one server

There is some truth to this. I only play on one server so when Star Forge goes down for the umpteenth time, the fact that SS is still up doesn't do anything for me. However, we also have to consider the countless players that do play on multiple servers. They count too.

From a business POV, which do you think is better for a business, not providing a service to 40% of your customers that was paid for, or all of your customers? (speaking in terms of North America.) I think that's more or less common sense.

I'm sure customer satisfaction is something that they give some consideration to. I don't imagine they think some of the customers in one area are more important than customers in another area in terms of customer satisfaction.

1 hour ago, Darkestmonty said:

the reality is that having a server with severe population issues will have a greater impact on the games notoriety of being dead than the few times the servers have crashed and a minority of people can hop onto the redundant server to play until their primary server comes back online.

I'm of the notion that nothing says a game is dead more than not having enough customers in all of North America to have need for more than one server.

Now if SS is dead ,well than, yeah, I guess some people who only play on SS might get the impression the game is dead. So that would be a valid concern.

But, people playing on Star Forge wouldn't get that impression.

If SS is in fact as dead as you say it is (I'm not there, I have no way to confirm one way or the other) , than following that logic that than means not many people play on SS, ergo, those people would have a very limited impact on the games notoriety of being dead.

I wouldn't worry too to much about it dude, if SS is really that bad, they're simply not going to have a choice, they will have to merge the servers. Whether some of us like it or not.

Edited July 24, 2023 by WayOfTheWarriorx

DWho · July 24, 2023

Other things lost with server merges:

1) Any legacy content can now only be completed once instead of once per server.

2) The feeling of accomplishment as you ding off those achievements a second time (or 3rd, or 4th) is lost.

3) Half your CQ point gains. If you are in guilds on both servers you have to choose which guild gets your conquest points (all those legacy only objective now count only once). This alone would probably halve my playing time and make me consider going Preferred since CQ is about all I do with high level characters in the game anymore.

4) Lost Storage space. Merging SS and SF cuts your Legacy storage in half (only 1 bank per server)

5) All legacy based game rewards are halved (CCs, GS tokens, other legacy currencies gained through play)

6) Half (or more) of the playable content since you are now limited by the characters you have when you exceed the unlocked slot limit (right now a sub could have 120 characters (on 5 servers) to play without having to buy any slots and could make a new character by buying only a single slot (as opposed to having to buy 96 slots - or delete 97 characters)

I know this means little to characters who focus on a few characters for group content but it is a huge issue for people who have been playing the game for a long time and accumulated dozens if not hundreds of characters). You are pretty much telling them they have to play group content if they want to play their high level characters.

DWho · July 24, 2023

2 hours ago, Darkestmonty said:

having a server with severe population issues

This particular part of your statement has been disputed by quite a few other players that actually play most of their time on the SS server. I see no reason to take your word for it that SS is dead when I play there a lot and it doesn't feel dead to me.

I play group content as often on SS as I do on SF and have seen little to no difference in my ability to do the content. Of course I don't just queue and sit in my stronghold (or on fleet) and wait for the pop either so maybe that's part of it. People who play more different types of content seem to have a lot less issues with the game population than those that focus on only a few types.