How Pruning and Removal of Abilities broke SWTOR (And made it worse)

[DreadtechSavant]

On 1/16/2024 at 10:54 PM, TrixxieTriss said:

Checks: Quick travel is still in the game ✅

Checks: Datacrons are still in the game✅ & new ones are still being added, but are now attainable once per legacy. So yes they aren’t once per character anymore.

You might like grinding all the Datacrons per Alt, but once you’ve done it 20+ times, it starts to get tedious. So that was a welcome change they made.

But if you really enjoy grinding Datacrons so much, you can always start fresh on a new server like Shae Vizla & grind them again.

Still, we do agree that pruning abilities either wasn’t needed or went to far when they did it.

I also agree they shouldn’t have removed missions or made exploration missions off by default. But they have recently reverted the exploration missions decision since 7.4 (at least they have on SV). These missions now also have a different map icon too that makes them easier to navigate. 

Never said they had been removed, said the changes made to them or inclusion of them ruined they game.

Welcome to you does not equal good for the game or other players. All it meant is the slow erosion of things to do in game. That is never a good thing long term for any game. If you chose to play many alts as clearly both of us do, then that's a choice you made, a new character has not earned these things. Datacrons  are not needed to play the game, so if board getting them, then don't 

 

I fully agree with the OP. That the removal of abilities and other changes were not good, nor were any of the removal of none class quests. So yes on that we agree. 

[TrixxieTriss]

7 minutes ago, DreadtechSavant said:

Never said they had been removed, said the changes made to them or inclusion of them ruined they game.

Welcome to you does not equal good for the game or other players. All it meant is the slow erosion of things to do in game. That is never a good thing long term for any game. If you chose to play many alts as clearly both of us do, then that's a choice you made, a new character has not earned these things. Datacrons  are not needed to play the game, so if board getting them, then don't 

 

I fully agree with the OP. That the removal of abilities and other changes were not good, nor were any of the removal of none class quests. So yes on that we agree. 

I agree that removing things is never good. But grinding those Datacrons over & over per character was tedious. Maybe there could have been a compromise though. Ie, allow players to choose to open up all Datacrons with each character by paying with credits. But you must have already opened them on at least one character. Sort of like you can open up those legacy XP boosts for different content on each new character by paying credits. 

[fabsus]

even if i like to get the datacrons for all characters, 
i don't really understand, why you can't unlock different things 
with credits or cc.

for example unlocking the map with credits, if you already
discovered it with a different toon.

same for codex entries. 

so players have the choice to pay a sum to unlock it,
or discorver them again. 

[GeneralGyro]

On 1/20/2024 at 2:54 PM, TrixxieTriss said:

I agree that removing things is never good. But grinding those Datacrons over & over per character was tedious. Maybe there could have been a compromise though. Ie, allow players to choose to open up all Datacrons with each character by paying with credits. But you must have already opened them on at least one character. Sort of like you can open up those legacy XP boosts for different content on each new character by paying credits. 

quick travel has been botched

 

quest locations keep blocking the travel points more often than not. its clear this change was made by a passerby UX designer to get something done on their credentials before moving on to another studio.

[Samcuu]

On 1/20/2024 at 11:54 AM, TrixxieTriss said:

I agree that removing things is never good. But grinding those Datacrons over & over per character was tedious. Maybe there could have been a compromise though. Ie, allow players to choose to open up all Datacrons with each character by paying with credits. But you must have already opened them on at least one character. Sort of like you can open up those legacy XP boosts for different content on each new character by paying credits. 

I just recently helped a friend, who had never gotten the datacrons, run through a ton of them. It's actually fun exploring the different worlds, but ur right It's an insane grind that I would never do on my multiple toons. 

Maybe they could just condense the grind a bit. Make a maximum stat pool of the datacrons and assign more points to the more difficult datacrons to get. Like the fleet/rishi datactrons would give u all the stats the starter planets give and once you reach the maximum stats then u can't benefit from the other ones. It's time consuming,  and if you could do 2 or 3 of the harder ones then you'd max ur stats out and have no need to go to every planet to practice your parkour skills. 

[Monterone]

How did Severing Slash survive the pruning?

The most useless ability on sins makes it through and better stuff gets cut. I don't understand the thinking on this. SS seems like such an easy choice; no one likes it, how many actually use it? It's just bloat.

[eabevella]

On 1/16/2024 at 8:33 PM, ArcticFoxy said:

Been playing SWTOR off and on for over 10 years. Don't even wanna think about how much I've invested in this game. I must have made over 30 characters over the course of my playtime here. I am a certified alt-o-holic. Or at least I used to. Or at least I want to be. But right now it just feels bad leveling a new character. Why do I need to wait until level 35 to get more abilities? Why do I only get 1 damage ability at level 15? It feels SO bad now leveling from 15-35 or 40. Doing FP? I am spamming the same 2 abilities over and over. If I'm not sorc, it feels even worse because at least Sorc gets Force Storm early and Death Field at level 15. But I have no force regen ability, I am always spamming only force lightning or shock and mixing in default melee attacks. Madness is the go-to DOT spec. I love DOTs! More DOTs! Do I have DOTs? No, I don't. I don't get dots while leveling anymore.

It's just bad. There is so much dead air while leveling. Why did they do this? Was it too much abilities before? Who cares? I don't think it is unreasonable to ask a new player to spend 5 minutes reading ability tooltips and arranging a hotbar. I do it every day when I make characters. Other people can do it too. It was better the old way. I hope they change it back because I miss my abilities. Give me my abilities back.

Cynical side of me says they do this to encourage people to buy level boost. Maybe, maybe not.

I wanted to write "because they want you to buy the lv80 boost" before I read your last sentence lol

Back to leveling, I absolutely HATE that in 7.0 operative only get the sleep dart at lv25 or 35 (can't remember) instead of lv20 like before and everyone else.

Most DoT classes also feel terrible to play before lv55 BUT you're supposed to finish the best part of the game: the class story before lv50 if you just play the story normally without deliberate grinding.

How is that fun? The answer if NO.

[Anhkriva]

16 minutes ago, eabevella said:

I wanted to write "because they want you to buy the lv80 boost" before I read your last sentence lol

Back to leveling, I absolutely HATE that in 7.0 operative only get the sleep dart at lv25 or 35 (can't remember) instead of lv20 like before and everyone else.

Most DoT classes also feel terrible to play before lv55 BUT you're supposed to finish the best part of the game: the class story before lv50 if you just play the story normally without deliberate grinding.

How is that fun? The answer if NO.

What DoT classes do you include in the majority that play terribly before 55?

[warrico]

It all sucks. They shouldn't have pruned the abilities. They should have made a "legacy ability" tab that would let you use the abilities still (im referring to abilities that are gone and not a talent choice). If I wanna run around using the cover system on my scoundrel, then let me! I want that Han Solo fantasy, not slap stuff.

Maybe a bit off topic, but the same goes for animations. If I want to use my old master strike channel ability then I should be allowed to. Is the new one better for combat? sure. is it better for my star wars fantasy? heeelll no.

[TrueJediLord]

they Pruned alot of things out of this game NiM EV, NiM KP, and some other titles from Heroics, or planet Story Completions.  and their latest Pruning yeah its copy and Paste all over again using Second Combat Choice. so some good choices ,  some were lazy and bad. my latest disagreement how come we havent see the golden Weapon Skins come back laterly? you know the Dreadful / Alliance Gold Weapons? all i seen was the Golden Lightsaber Skin but not the others? the only other weapons around is the Replica Victorius thats White Skinned but but gold when it needs to be gold. but oh well. I would be happy if they would just bring back the Gold Dreadful weapons back new name alittle change design on them,  and EVNim, KPNim, 

[eabevella]

On 1/24/2024 at 3:58 PM, Anhkriva said:

What DoT classes do you include in the majority that play terribly before 55?

Hatred and lethality. Never played other classes.

I mean you get most of your classic rotation skills at the end of the the class story (lv50) but that's late and it doesn't click in right away. It ruins the immersion when you are at the height of the class story and know how smooth your character can be at >lv65. Not helping that the story quality only goes downward so you feel like you finish the tutorial stage of your class but at the same time have no desire to play further, so what's the point of the pain of suffering the low level inconvenience?

Another big issue is that the skill tree doesn't feel progressive at all. It doesn't let players learn rotations, it's more about locking key abilities behind level walls so that they can spread the skills thin to hide the fact that there's no real thoughts being put behind pushing up the level limit. They also pruned or keep useful skills behind "choices" but keep trash skills that have 0 use for "free" to have the illusion of level "progression". Not to mention balance is a joke but that's another can of worms.

[fabsus]

master mode content should always add something to the veteran challenge, not just lifepoints. 
to have a consistency back, ev/kp mm neeeded to be deleted or reworked completely. 

reworking an operations needs much more time investment, than just reworking it. 
at the end, you would need to invest a ton of hours, but still have an quite boring
starter operations, even with additional mechanics. but you also could create new operation content.
so they did that. of course it would be a nice way for some beginners to farme ev/kp nim, instead of
nefra/dash/red. 

---

of course during the time a lot of content was cut out. dark versus light bosses, many quests, 
some questlines, some was just cut and not making sense now. we also got several changes to
classes, skill trees and abilities. some were good and made the game more interesting, some not.

actually i like the way we have it now. you need to change your choices, depending on the
stuff you play. classes will work differently, depending on your choices for abilities and tacticals.
so if you just have single target hitting classes, you can change them to add more aoe skills
with costs on single target dps and you also can focus on just aoe. step by step. so you can find
the optimal way for your group, if you try out your class, not just follow guides blindly.

---

but leveling is absolutly frustrating these days. if you are playing sorc, you can level up to
80 with just using forcestorm. there is no need at all, to read what abilities are doing
or giving the player a feeling for that spec. 
for example if i'm playing a dps operative, there is no difference if i play burst or dot
until a certain higher level. the first real dot comes really late. also with the mechanics of
tactical advantages you may could think, you are no melee class at all.
if ur playing sin, playing burst is quite okay, but playing dot for leveling is kinda annoying,
because all you have is a different aoe spell, but not dot. you really don't get any feeling
of the class in late game, not even close. i could go on for every class; it's the same.

no wonder why we really have serious skill issues with new players who just play the
game and don't invest any time reading skill trees, abilities or passives. as long as they
don't have any challenge in the leveling process and are not forced anymore to use
different abilities, we don't need to wonder about dps players doing half the dps of a healer.

in the past, of anybody got the legendary player status, you knew that they understood
at least basics of the classes. this is totally gone and know you need to explain beginners
every little step again and again. 
this is not only frustrating for the players who don't learn anything anymore, because
all new games are way more supportive when it comes to leveling, but also vets in the
game who just don't have left energy anymore to explain basics to beginners on and on
and on and on. 

---

making the game harder again, changing the way we get abilities and get them explained,
also to connect passives and abilities in an optical highlighting would increase the quality
for everybody. also highlighted abilities we don't have in our bars would be nice, in case
you missed something, because even if we lost many abilities and now need to chose some,
we still have many of them. for example if i just take the ani mara as example, we have 
3 straight forward buffing abilities and one more hidden. the average player just would
use one of them.

---

but with "pruning" the team so hard, who should do all the work? if nobody is willing
to invest tons of dollars to finance willing devs with experience and passion, they have
to focus on very different things, not to lose the last subscribers. 

 

[Anhkriva]

1 hour ago, eabevella said:

Hatred and lethality. Never played other classes.

I mean you get most of your classic rotation skills at the end of the the class story (lv50) but that's late and it doesn't click in right away. It ruins the immersion when you are at the height of the class story and know how smooth your character can be at >lv65. Not helping that the story quality only goes downward so you feel like you finish the tutorial stage of your class but at the same time have no desire to play further, so what's the point of the pain of suffering the low level inconvenience?

Another big issue is that the skill tree doesn't feel progressive at all. It doesn't let players learn rotations, it's more about locking key abilities behind level walls so that they can spread the skills thin to hide the fact that there's no real thoughts being put behind pushing up the level limit. They also pruned or keep useful skills behind "choices" but keep trash skills that have 0 use for "free" to have the illusion of level "progression". Not to mention balance is a joke but that's another can of worms.

Level 50 is not the end of the class story, it is the end of the first chapter. If you do quests as they give them, you have lv 80 somewhere on Hoth - three planets from the end of the basic story (without doing any pvp or gsf).

In my experience, Dot classes are leveled just as easily, and in the case of classes like Pyro or Hatred, even faster than their burst counterparts.

I fully agree with the criticism of the skill tree.

[ThadiusMoor]

I agree with much of what has been said through the whole thread.

I barely even play any of my characters in pvp anymore because of how badly they are damaged, abilities-wise, and instead, now I focus on my one and only class that still performs great for warzones, and somewhat decently in arenas, that being agent operative on the dot spec.

For me, it's all about using the stealth to the maximum effect for doing objectives rather than doing actual damage anymore because many of the warzones are class-stacked premades where you can't directly attack them without getting torn up in a matter of seconds all the while being cc'd to death by juggs and sorcs.

My only viable offense is to bypass combat and try to steal objectives under stealth tactics.

For now, this gets me by because the rest, combat-wise, is a mess and overly frustrating to try and use my classes like vanguard tank, sentinel conc, or gunnery commando only to end up being stomped without even having a realistic chance to live and get objectives/medals.

Nothing is more frustrating than going into a match and realizing the outcome is going to be failure the moment you see the composition of the other team.

At this point, it's more entertaining to troll the other team now than actually play the match cause the match is already pretty well decided.

That is never fun.

At least before the ultra-smash of the pruning, every class could at least live long enough to have fun, even when you lost.

The present mess makes it not even enjoyable to roll pvp anymore unless you either take the jugg/sorc meta, or you develop alternate tactics, which mostly will lose anyways.

I'd welcome back the much more unbalanced, but fun version of pvp when we had all the abilities than stay with this pruned disaster.

[ThadiusMoor]

Bump to top.

For Visibility.

This issue is not going away.

[SentinalMasterWW]

3 hours ago, ThadiusMoor said:

Bump to top.

For Visibility.

This issue is not going away.

Appreciate it, 

But honestly I cannot say I'm optimistic that this game will get better. This recent livestream honestly does not get me excited for SWTOR in 2024. Its just further proof the game is just in maintenance now. 

I wish it happened back in 6.0 honestly, The game was in a somewhat perfect shape, Population was healthy, etc. All they had to do if they wanted to do the bare minimum is literally just add more story content, and continue adding Ranked Seasons for PVP'ers. Literally that, and I think a vast majority of the player base would have been satisfied with that. 

Instead, The story of 7.0 has been "Lets modify systems that don't need to be fixed, and somehow make them worse." PVP, PVE, Gearing, GTN, UI, etc. The list goes on.... 

Honestly though the question begs itself, Why Sub to SWTOR? I ask this to everyone in this forum. 

What makes this game worth 15$ a month compared to its competitors in the market? 

-Broken PVP

-Non Existent Endgame 

-Levelling is terrible

-Pruning made even worse

-Meh Story Content. 

Look at the Steam Charts for ESO here and than look at SWTOR's here 

There is the argument of "Well ESO has more staff and a bigger budget." True, but back in 6.0 SWTOR had close to this level of population, even getting at one point 15-20K players back in 2020. Granted yes that was what happened when the Pandemic started, but it was a massive rise in players for the game. But, even a year later the games population look relatively healthy. Now when you look at it, its hanging around 4-6K players. We can't speak for players who use the launcher, but if I had to guess SWTOR's total population is around 6-7K varying. 

@JackieKo, @EricMusco & @KeithKanneg, I know you folks Cannot Reply to every issue, but I ask you this, Can you at least Address your Customers, Your player base, and say that these issues are known to the Dev's and are being worked on, or at least say you are aware of them. It would go a long way in building confidence in your community. 

Why is that I won post of the day Twice, With these two post here & here critiquing the game? Maybe its because a majority of your player base is asking for the game to be improved. They are not Asking for massive Expansions like ESO with its chapters (though it would be nice in a perfect world). They are literally and have been asking for just fixes to a lot of the issues 7.0 brought. There is good in what 7.0 brought, but there is so much that is hurting the enjoyment of this game.

We are vocal about it and I make these posts for two reasons, 

1) I enjoy having this discussion with other users. 

2) I bring it up, because I care about this game. I want to be vocal because I want this game to improve, and be here another 5 years  maybe even 10. 

I am going to end this on a basic list for the Devs, a list that I think it totally fair and reasonable to ask of the Devs. One that I stated in one of my post about where we are going.

-PVP Revamp, An actual one. Give PVP seasons a purpose for vet PVP'ers, there are a ton of great ideas over on the PVP side of the forums. Do a leaderboard like system and reward the top 50-100 players, Hand out more PVP tokens, flairs, etc. Create PVP Armor/Weapons for those who say get in the top 25 or top 10. It gives some purpose for them to contribute. But in general anything to bring some life back to PVP. Alongside this, Experiment with a season and Remove Premades to be a thing for a season, See if it fixes or addresses the issue of premades. They are becoming a pain for the casual PVP audience getting farmed by their meta comps.

-Undo Pruning, Add abilities back for all classes. 

-Rework the Combat Style tree, The tree feels underwhelming currently, @ThanderSnB had a great idea on how to fix them. 

Quote

 

The tweaks I'd make would modify the existing system:

Make all active abilities baseline just how it was in 6.0.

Add new passives to the ability tree to fill the spots of previous active abilities.

Make all passives in each row have the same theme. - No pairing utility passives with DPS passives. Themes for rows could be DPS, self-healing, movement, damage reduction, etc.

Modify passives so there is a reason to use all of them. - For example, don't put two burst damage passives in the same row. Players will figure out which is strongest and never use the weaker one.

I added to this by saying ,If we were to build off this current system, I would add to this list there needs to be more slots in the ability tree to fill in the level gaps, and like I said move more abilities towards the start of the game to help smoothen out the experience.

-Better class balancing, Classes are all over the place, There is an old post by Musco himself explaining how balancing works. Currently though it feels inconsistent, with where classes are. Changes that adhered to that post alongside reverting pruning would help. 

It basically boils down to three things essentially that the Dev's could easily fix. Reverting Pruning and improving the tree, PVP Revamp, and finally consistent class balancing.

 

 

Edited February 22 by SentinalMasterWW

[TahliahCOH]

I can't speak to this in broad terms, but I have hated that the knockback on penetrating bolts option was removed. I mostly play solo, so I used this a lot to push back baddies who were melee and way too close since snipers can't move as readily as other classes and have only two powers that can be used while in motion--their cheapo first power and the grenade. I've noticed other gimps on other toons, but this is the one that really galls me the most.

[kirorx]

Just give my powertech death from above again; I hate that new animation. Not all my characters wear a backpack lol, so it looks silly 

[_Re_V_aN_]

Actually... they need give something good for jug tank. This spec is rly pain in a** on most NIMs. U can't play this now unless u don't care about healers. Give him back reflect/maddash for use in same time. Give him back, speed on chilling scream - this also just give back. If u have problem with balance because PVP, just make diferent utilit tree for this. BW just nerf weak classes because pvp, but they just don't care what have it influenc on pve. Skank immortal is op on pvp? Yes, tank immortal is sh** on pve? Yes. U can't create balans when u have same "utilites" for two diference things. 
Now u have Sin tank, this have force speed, far more cc break than rest, phantom stride, pull, cloak, i don't even want says something about shraud...

 

[TrixxieTriss]

On 2/22/2024 at 3:32 PM, SentinalMasterWW said:

What makes this game worth 15$ a month compared to its competitors in the market? 

Just on this $15. This is a sore point for many APAC players because we pay in USD. But this wasn’t always the case. We originally paid $15 AUD & then they closed our servers & we got moved to the US servers & had to pay $15 USD

So APAC players usually pay $20-23 AUD, depending on the exchange rate.

If you are comparing swtor to other games & value, it loses out heavily here in APAC even before the game’s issues, like pruning are even considered.

The 2 top MMO’s in the APAC region are WoW & FFXIV. Both of which are $15 AUD for APAC players, not $20-23 AUD. So already they offer more value than swtor does to APAC people.

Now that we have an actual regional server again, BS could fix this by doing what both those other games do & offer the swtor sub for $15 AUD. The same as they do for the other regional servers.

 

Edited February 23 by TrixxieTriss

[YaddleTwo]

1 hour ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Just on this $15. This is a sore point for many APAC players because we pay in USD. But this wasn’t always the case. We originally paid $15 AUD & then they closed our servers & we got moved to the US servers & had to pay $15 USD

So APAC players usually pay $20-23 AUD, depending on the exchange rate.

If you are comparing swtor to other games & value, it loses out heavily here in APAC even before the game’s issues, like pruning are even considered.

The 2 top MMO’s in the APAC region are WoW & FFXIV. Both of which are $15 AUD for APAC players, not $20-23 AUD. So already they offer more value than swtor does to APAC people.

Now that we have an actual regional server again, BS could fix this by doing what both those other games do & offer the swtor sub for $15 AUD. The same as they do for the other regional servers.

 

 

 

Ugh that sucks! And i would not be paying 20 dollars plus for this, or any other game monthly! That is just too much!

[TrixxieTriss]

Just now, YaddleTwo said:

 

 

Ugh that sucks! And i would not be paying 20 dollars plus for this, or any other game monthly! That is just too much!

Some of us have been paying that & more for several years since they moved us to USD

[YaddleTwo]

Just now, TrixxieTriss said:

Some of us have been paying that & more for several years since they moved us to USD

 

I am so sorry, and that should absolutely be rectified!

[PlasmaJohn]

On 2/21/2024 at 11:32 PM, SentinalMasterWW said:

Honestly though the question begs itself, Why Sub to SWTOR? I ask this to everyone in this forum. 

What makes this game worth 15$ a month compared to its competitors in the market?

Blows about 6 years worth of dust off the account.

I was in the mood for a Star Wars game.  Played through both Jedi Academy and KOTOR.  I wanted the action of the first and the story of the 2nd so I decided to do another play through of the first three chapters here and hopped on as Preferred.  When I left the cap was 70 and I was getting dangerously close.  I also had it in my mind to unlock the post KotEE content.  So here I am.  FWIW my first alt wound up at level 77 before staring at the mission to go to Ilum.

I'm not really here for endgame although I'm starting to get the itch.  That said, if I wasn't here I don't think I'd be playing any of TOR's competitors.  FF14's raids are more akin to synchronized swimming (pattern memorization + flawless execution) than a coordinated effort to defeat a challenge.  None of the others really appeal to me.

 

Quote

-Levelling is terrible

I haven't found that to be the case.  In retrospect I may be leveling faster than most.  I've been doing a fairly comprehensive run: Both class and planetary, most side quests including exploratory missions and I have multiple sets of the 50% xp boost armor.  Both the class and planetary chains drop a major experience boost.  In other words I'm probably blowing past the skill gaps.

I am decidedly not a fan of the design decision to make skill choices exclusive.  Rather shameful how hilariously uneven which classes were forced to "choose" between core rotational abilities and which ones escaped that madness.