A farm? Really?

[xxSHOONYxx]

3 hours ago, Setta said:

I don't play CC so I had to look into it a bit more

I meant to say disregard candy crush if you didn't like it and to look at lol as in league of legends. A pc only f2p game that makes 1.5-2b annually and has been out for 15 years.

3 hours ago, Setta said:

Not sure if you realize this but there were exploits that allowed people to generate a lot of credits.  I mean a lot of credits, and Bioware never did a roll back. It's why inflation has been so crazy out of control for a while. You had people with 100s of billions of credits.  So yea it's not that unbelievable that people had storages full of hypercrates.  I'm not denying that SWtoR has whales, but I also realize how broken the economy was due to exploiters and how much money people had.  I know some people also made a ton of money by playing the GTN as well. 

Doesn't matter how many credit exploits could have happened, hypercrates don't show up out of thin air with a credit exploit, someone needed to buy it from the store. Doesn't matter if someone, let's name him A, has 1.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000 credits, if someone else doesn't buy with CC a hypercrate then person A won't be able to buy any because they don't exist. It's easy to think how many people you may know who have "everything" and never spent a dime on the CM, but someone did so they could have everything without spending money, and unless they bought it to sell it for credits, they first bought it for them to have.
 

3 hours ago, Setta said:

R4 was new content that you couldn't get stuff from unless you had a dedicated group to learn the mechanics of it, and you yourself had to not suck as well to clear it. It also offered top of the line gear at release for VM

I've been part of a couple of seller groups so i know a bit about it, funnily enough r4 was not the most sold, it was DF for wings or SnV for the crest, 10-11 year old content. Runs for achievements or gear was way below them.
Like 95% of the buyers i saw always had the latest CM weapons or armor and all that CM stuff. You may go and say they bought it with credits again, but those items again have to be bought by someone else from the CM first. 
SWTOR and sale groups had the same target demographics, those that just love to open their wallets. 

[TheBavarian]

I would definately reiterate the problems with mission rewards (extremely long standing issue) and adjustments to other 'questionable' changes made in recent releases.

And another good suggestion - how about some game-engine updates that make better use of $1000+ graphics cards

[JakRoanin]

7 hours ago, Stradlin said:

It is so cool what  the other Broadsword game, Ultima Online, has been able to do when it comes to farming.   We speak of an MMO here that runs with code written in mid 90's. Yet, tons of its features are such that people of SWTOR, TESO, WOW etc would consider em incredibly innovative, if they ever encountered em in a modern game!

 

Firstly, the whole process isn't tied to quests, events and stuff. It actually "works". Ie you get seeds, plant them in souil on your yard. You water them, nurture them and eventually(lets say 1-2 rl weeks iirc)( stuff grows. Then you can cross pollinate  flowers and such, to get a version that suits your needs. 

You harvest some wheat for whiskey,  or grapes for wine. Mix the incredients and then through fermenting, distilling and aging it gradually turns into final product in a suitable oaken barrel. You can name your brand  as you please, and it always shows the year it was made on.  So Ultima players can actually get hyped about old in-game wines like one could irl! "Ooh, this was made in 2009..nice. " All of this is very useless beyond some RP sphere, but also extremely cool!  Then you can take your self made wine bottles to your own little self build, self decorated shop, give them to merchant npc who works for you, define the price and see if players want to buy your obscenely overprized RP wine. Good stuff.

 

Basically, small time busywork such as this can be very cool and welcome and  as an experience, it can grow much larger than its size. Shame it is " just" an event in SWTOR, rather than something more ever present.  Regardless,  I consider this up and coming farming event  like 1000 times more interesting than 90 seconds in map room with same freaking mandos talking about same freaking stuff they were on about  like four  years back!!? 

When everybody&every classs story  is so special that sith lords and jedi masters fall to ground as you half attentively swing a wet noodle at them, then special becomes not really that special. Then, maybe it is the mundane things like farming  that need to grow  into epic proportions instead.

 

This! So much this. People getting so enraged by an event is utterly confounding. We will not be getting daily prompts to go farm, it's just an event, and PIE. But haters are gonna hate, and even if they got all the PvP and Ops in the world they're still gonna hate. 

[juliushorst]

Starwarsdew Valley.

[orichichan]

I would prefer a stronghold on Dantooine. But the event seems fun. Need to test it before saying something on it.

[YaddleTwo]

On 5/7/2024 at 6:31 AM, Setta said:

 

Completely wrong.  People have been putting up with sub par patches for several years now. The whole of 7.X has been a disaster and yet people are still tuning in.  You really think there's going to be some exodus of people going to their other cozy games, cause we got another seasonal event that has to do with farming?  Lol no. People know what to expect by this point.  If what you were saying is true, this game would have died many years ago due to lack of content. It is what it is.

 

I've been around since Mud, and played several dozen mmos.  Is this a competition? What are we doing here?

Sigh... except it isn't space farmville.  They added a seasonal event, with other content.  Did people quit in droves when they added feast of prosperity, and serving tables, or cooking food?  OMG oh no everyone left.  JFC get a grip it's a new event, with other content added aside from farming stuff.  A new player won't have a clue as to what's going on, they'll be drowned is hours, upon hours of story content, and other things to do.  The fact that they have 1 less pvp map due to them having an extra seasonal event is not going to mean jack.  Stop being angry for the sake of being angry.

 

One; But population doe not grow from it, and this game is not super finacially well off, stop splicing hairs and misquoting me

 

I said i've been playing to demonstrate i witnessed patterns of players and i've played with all kinds groups , from super casual to hard core dungeon raiders for over 20 years dearie, patterns, i know what gets players to subscribe form experience.

 

And once again you seem committed to ignoring my point. Funneling time and resources to something that isn't going to help sell more subscriptions is not what should be happening right now.

[ronin_chi_lao]

On 5/8/2024 at 10:48 AM, TheBavarian said:

And another good suggestion - how about some game-engine updates that make better use of $1000+ graphics cards

Only if they still had a budget for a rebuild of the game with a modern game engine? Not happening though. (12-year-old game they want to milk for the smaller crew running it now) key word is 12-year-old game.

The only "minor" improvement they still can make good on is the Devs in house version of DirectX 12 we've been waiting on for a very long time. Oh, and more [tons more] textures they been sprinkling in random old parts of the game. (and the recent upgraded "Art" as they like to call it) I highly doubt the performance gains will be phenomenal on "this version" of the hero engine. 

On a pleasant note, I do love what they have accomplished with what they have to work with and look forward to more of the modernization.

As a full subscriber since 2013 with no lapse I will be here to the very end no matter what the game is looking like.

ps. yes, I have played on graphics similar to yours, and it does look good in 4k (FYI 4k resolution was not there in the early years of the game)

[Setta]

On 5/8/2024 at 10:20 AM, xxSHOONYxx said:

I meant to say disregard candy crush if you didn't like it and to look at lol as in league of legends. A pc only f2p game that makes 1.5-2b annually and has been out for 15 years.

Doesn't matter how many credit exploits could have happened, hypercrates don't show up out of thin air with a credit exploit, someone needed to buy it from the store. Doesn't matter if someone, let's name him A, has 1.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000 credits, if someone else doesn't buy with CC a hypercrate then person A won't be able to buy any because they don't exist. It's easy to think how many people you may know who have "everything" and never spent a dime on the CM, but someone did so they could have everything without spending money, and unless they bought it to sell it for credits, they first bought it for them to have.
 

I've been part of a couple of seller groups so i know a bit about it, funnily enough r4 was not the most sold, it was DF for wings or SnV for the crest, 10-11 year old content. Runs for achievements or gear was way below them.
Like 95% of the buyers i saw always had the latest CM weapons or armor and all that CM stuff. You may go and say they bought it with credits again, but those items again have to be bought by someone else from the CM first. 
SWTOR and sale groups had the same target demographics, those that just love to open their wallets. 

Sorry for the late reply man.  Wasn't trying to be dodgy, but got a new puppy, which has taken up a hell of a lot more of our time than I anticipated, so the forums took a massive backseat.  Not to mention been trying to capitalize on the 2x xp with what little time I have.  So will try to reply to this quickly.

1) Fair enough, the previous reply makes a lot more sense now.  That said, LoL is kind of in a league of it's own (no pun intended).  It's an exception rather than the rule.  Even other popular games which follow a similar monetization model, have not had the success of LoL. I mean they might for like a year, maybe 2 if they're lucky, but after that they generally drop off.  LoL defies the odds, and logic.  That said more power to them.

2) Yes you're absolutely right that the HCs don't fall out of thin air, someone does have to buy them.  But, (and here's the important part,) I never said they did.  All I said was that currently I don't believe they're selling as much as they used too.  The credit bugs were years ago at this point, and people had different spending habits back then, than they do now.  At least that's my belief, and looking at HC sales on the GTN across 4 servers that I play on also leads me to believe this, but to be fair, it's not like I have actual data on it, so /shrug. 

3) I believe you.  I don't know the reason for this though.  Maybe aesthetically people like those wings better. Maybe those runs were cheaper. Perhaps some other reason is in play that I'm ignoring, honestly idk, but it doesn't really change anything either.  Your right I would say that those weapons / armors could have been bought with credits, cause what else are you going to use credits on when you have billions?  I'm not saying no one buys CC (hell I still buy them), I'm saying that I don't believe they make as much money now as they used too from CC sales.  Here's a quote from yours truly.

On 5/7/2024 at 2:38 AM, Setta said:

I think the days of SWtoR making bank on the CM and not worrying about subs are over, at least that's what their business practice implies to me. 

Which I stand by, I don't think CM is making as much money as it used too.  Not that it doesn't make any money at all, that would be silly and preposterous. As such, they seem to be making a bigger push to make subs more enticing.

[Setta]

On 5/12/2024 at 6:16 AM, YaddleTwo said:

 

One; But population doe not grow from it, and this game is not super finacially well off, stop splicing hairs and misquoting me

 

I said i've been playing to demonstrate i witnessed patterns of players and i've played with all kinds groups , from super casual to hard core dungeon raiders for over 20 years dearie, patterns, i know what gets players to subscribe form experience.

 

And once again you seem committed to ignoring my point. Funneling time and resources to something that isn't going to help sell more subscriptions is not what should be happening right now.

I didn't realize I was misquoting you.  If I did I apologies, and if you don't mind giving me an actual example of me doing so, so I know what to look out for, and avoid in the future.

I assume we've all been playing MMOs for a while.  Of course content and player friendly (as opposed to greedy business decisions) are going to bring more people in.  No one is disputing this.  However when resources are limited, and you're trying to retain as many players as possible, you have to decide on what your priorities are, and what you can and can't afford to do.  Clearly their priorities in this case was the casual single player audience which is generally the biggest population of the player base.

And you've missed my point, that this is a skeleton crew who is targeting the most amount of people it can with the limited resources that it has to retain those people, as other stuff slowly trickles in. 

[xxSHOONYxx]

12 hours ago, Setta said:

1) Fair enough, the previous reply makes a lot more sense now.  That said, LoL is kind of in a league of it's own (no pun intended).  It's an exception rather than the rule.  Even other popular games which follow a similar monetization model, have not had the success of LoL. I mean they might for like a year, maybe 2 if they're lucky, but after that they generally drop off.  LoL defies the odds, and logic.  That said more power to them.

This is a graph up to 2017 for pc that showed the revenue of games. Idk how accurate it is, but by my experience is not that far from reality

In game microtransacctions far surpass the purchase of games. It's simply how games are made now. And it's pretty old, so going by that trend it should be much higher now.
 

12 hours ago, Setta said:

I'm saying that I don't believe they make as much money now as they used too from CC sales

Sales are probably down because less people play, comparing may of 2024 to may of 2023 the peak player count of the game on steam is 32% lower. The average of players throughout the day on may 2023 was very close to what the peak numbers are now. 
 

12 hours ago, Setta said:

As such, they seem to be making a bigger push to make subs more enticing.

How is it more enticing to sub? The content is so easy it's boring which is a tactic to cater to those people that open their wallet.
Content that requiere a sub is being removed, no more ranked and pvp was open to f2p.
Operations that requiere a sub were forgotten and nim r4 canceled.


Not only they removed Valeo one of the bosses, but the NiM was canceled. And if you even want to be picky, r-4 sm and hm was not even launched on 7.0 either.
I can't think of anything that they changed or added to make subs more enticing.
All the aws/64bit is not sub enticing (which to their credit is good) not only f2p has it too but has no staying power on the game to entice people to stay subbed 

 

[Setta]

1 hour ago, xxSHOONYxx said:

This is a graph up to 2017 for pc that showed the revenue of games. Idk how accurate it is

Let's assume it's 100% accurate. 

Quote

In game microtransacctions far surpass the purchase of games

So do subscriptions. I'm not sure I follow your point.  A one time price of a game, vs reoccurring payments. Guess which one will come out on top after just a few months....  Micro transactions aren't different in that sense either. It's just more stuff for you to spend your money on, at once rather than waiting a month to do so again.  Not to mention there are so many layers and nuances this ignores I don't even know where to start, and I really don't want to write a book here explaining apples to oranges again as this post is already going to be plenty long as I have other points to still address.
 

Quote

Sales are probably down because less people play, comparing may of 2024 to may of 2023 the peak player count of the game on steam is 32% lower. The average of players throughout the day on may 2023 was very close to what the peak numbers are now.

Less people equals less sales sure, but my point was that there's less stuff to get excited about buying too.  Yea there will always be those people who want / need to have everything, and they'll spend the $ on it.  However a good deal of people have made their space barbies just the way they like them.  Several of them in fact by this point. They don't necessarily need another ugly space pirate outfit, or a medieval armor set in SW (and other junk) that the devs keep shoving down our throats. Most of us don't need every mount, emote, title, etc.  We got what we need by this point.  If something worth it comes along great. Otherwise most people are content on dress up.  That's why I say the sales of micro transactions in this game are going down compared to what they once were.  Not because of the number of players, but yea that does impact it too.

There's also no need for certain people to keep selling HC or other items to make more and more credits.  After you hit a certain number of billions it's pointless to keep acquiring more, you more or less have everything you need as is.  We're at that point now after many, years. Again as with everything there are exceptions. Maybe a returning or new player(s) comes back or joins who's got an itch and is spending money like crazy. Can and does happen.  Maybe someone saved up a lot of CC from sub / authenticator rewards and decided they need want credits so they buy a few HC to sell or w/e and yes I have no doubt there are still a few whales out there, who buy just for the sake of buying, like a disease just can't be helped they carry on. But generally these are exceptions rather than the rule. 

Quote

How is it more enticing to sub? The content is so easy it's boring which is a tactic to cater to those people that open their wallet.
Content that requiere a sub is being removed, no more ranked and pvp was open to f2p.
Operations that requiere a sub were forgotten and nim r4 canceled.

Bioware failed to deliver on a promise? **Gasp** Blasphemy! You and someone else here keep missing this point.  Nim R4 would appeal to what like 1% of the player base? If that? What makes more sense for a skeleton crew on a budget to work on. Content that anyone can do, or content that maybe a couple hundred people can / will do? It's not rocket science. The company cares more about the casual, which is the majority of it's player base. 

The removal of ranked as you point out, supports this notion. Back then people who sucked got flamed for sucking (hell they still do, just no where near as badly) cause you were lowering people's rating, with your suckage.  Now it doesn't matter.  You just need to win X matches, earn Y medals C amount of times, or play Z amount of games, not achieve a rank against tougher and tougher opponents for your rewards.

The stress / anxiety of it all was more or less removed for the casual player, at least as much as it could be by the devs. Now people are more likely to do these activities now without the worry of them holding a group back, because their performance is almost inconsequential. Giving those people another avenue of the game to explore. Thus more likely they'll continue spending money as they play & have fun (hopefully). Rather than the alternative of being stigmatized and not playing this part of the game due to their low skill level and the stress it brings on them for being there. Without even really being given a fair chance to improve cause they'll get flamed for sucking while they try to learn, and quit way before they get good.

You ask why it's enticing to sub.  I know I've answered this before, but I'll do it again, since it's quick. Because if you're playing the game, you probably want access to some of these things if not all of them. 

* GS Track (more rewards, and faster progression)
* PvP Track (more rewards, and faster progression as well)
* Have extra combat styles
* Have access to all of your credits
* Exp bonus
* Needed for SM Ops that they still repeat after years and years for better loot
* Plus all the unlocks for authorization.  Section X, Blackhole, 3rd crew skill,  unlocks for adaptive armors you can wear, hide helmet feature, use emotes,  etc.

Can you play without this stuff? Sure, you can even get authorizations for some of those things to have them permanently unlocked, it's still not the same though, as some things you just can't unlock.  Game is just better as a sub.