SWTOR's Burnout problem

[SentinalMasterWW]

This is something i'm noticing becoming a thing right now in the community. Burnout from SWTOR, players are getting bored and tired of SWTOR. Not of the game, they love this game to their hearts content. But the lack of any real substance in terms of new content is really just causing people to drop the game, not to mention the lack of fixes for the numerous issues the game is suffering from. 

 

The Dev's seem to just focus purely on single player story content and the Cartel Market nowadays, neglecting everything else in the game. Sure the story is the main selling point, but now with the Dev's saying that they are going to start cutting back on more player voiced content in favor of KOTOR style cutscenes their bread and butter selling point is kind of gone. 

What does that leave? The cartel market? I don't see paying 15$ a month for the ability to pay more money on space barbie being a mass appeal. 

 

It seems like the Dev's are rushing quick content out the door, mainly to have a reason to add new cartel market stuff. The last content update felt rushed and to me felt like they rushed it out the door to line up with the Acolyte's premier day to sell Acolyte themed CM content. 

 

I would not mind waiting longer and having less content drops in a year, if it meant they were longer and had more content in them to hold me and other players over. 

Here are a list of really well anything the Dev's could add as content 

-New 312 & 316 Augments, 312 being able to purchased at gear vendors and 316 being a new craft able augment for crafters.

-Reworking and improving augments to offer the full set bonus from 6.0. 

-Undoing Pruning and returning all class abilities

-Improving the Class tree system or perhaps implementing a new system or re-implementing the old 6.0 and past discipline system 

-Reworking and rebalancing tacticals

-New Operations 

-New Flashpoints 

-Nim R-4 and Nim difficulties of older operations. 

-Limiting Premade (Group size) in PVP back down to 4. 

-Adding in a leaderboard system for PVP, A system in which players can optionally opt into to compete and place in different tiers on the leaderboard. At the end of a PVP season, based on your performance and which tier you are in you are given a flair based on where you landed (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Maybe platinum). Alongside a special exclusive reward be it an armor set or weapon set, alongside of course with additional PVP tokens and other goodies. 

-New PVP maps and Modes. 

-Readjusting Prices for the PVP Seasons Vendor, much of the rewards are way to overpriced for what you get. 

-Adding in a Reworked Dark Vs. Light event with the old Rewards. 

-New items on the Galactic Seasons Vendor. 

 

 

This one may be controversial but I do think there should be a discussion on merging the servers once more and creating one big NA Megaserver and one big European Megaserver along with of course the APAC server. 

 

Last thing I want to suggest is story wise, Get rid of the Alliance and the "Alliance Commander". It removes any personality from our characters and just makes them this carbon copy that ruins any real worth of doing replays on alts because all your characters are the same thing.  If we can get character identity back, it will help immensely with replay value on playing on our many Alts.

Edited August 3 by SentinalMasterWW

[TonyTricicolo]

One of the reasons so many players experience burnout is because Bioware and Broadsword keep forcing regurgitated content throughout the years. Finish your story then reroll another. Get all 8 to achieve "Legendary" status. The Dark vs Light event. Conquests. Dailies/Weeklies. Galactic Seasons and on and on and on. Doing the same shi7 over and over again drives people away.

[ThanderSnB]

They have added a lot of limited time events that players feel like they have to keep up with or else they miss out:

• Galactic Seasons - 2 per year, 40 weeks total, about 20-24 weeks of grinding weeklies on 6 servers. That's half a year of grinding.
• PvP Seasons - 2 per year, 32 weeks total, about 24 weeks of grinding. Even though it only has to be done on one server, it can take forever if the player has a losing streak beyond their control due to the random groups they are added to.
• Seasonal Events - These are the once yearly holiday events. Because they only come around once a year, players feel forced to put a lot of time in them to get the rewards.
• Repeatable Events - These happen maybe 4-6 times a year, but still, they only last a week, so players need to grind if they want the rewards.

All four of these can overlap, so it's possible to have a quadruple grind. Because they are limited, players can't space them out. They have to focus on them when they come around. This leaves little time for any non-limited time activities like going through story, gearing up characters, farming reputations, or collecting in-game items (weapons, armor sets, decorations).

Compare to before when there were only two Seasonal Events (Life Day, Night Life) and the Repeatable Events were only one or two weeks out of the month. Players had several "open" weeks to do whatever they wanted. Now every week usually has some time limited thing going on, so players can't do things at their own pace. They are constantly having to jump through hoops for the developers.

An easy way to fix this would be to change Galactic Seasons and PvP Seasons into DLC. They could make it so the first 30 days after release, active subscribers unlock the DLC for free. Free players could buy them with cartel coins. Once unlocked, players could complete them at their own pace. There would be no time limit. The normal weekly limits would be there (e.g. 7 weeklies per week, reputation cap, etc.), but there would be infinite weeks to finish them. Players could take a break from them to do other things in the game as long as they wanted. As part of this, combine the Free and Subscriber Reward Tracks into one and call the whole thing Treasure Hunts instead of Seasons (Galactic Treasure Hunt, PvP Treasure Hunt). Someone else can probably come up with a better name.

Edited August 3 by ThanderSnB

[eabevella]

There's barely story content to fill 1 hour if we remove all the meaningless fetch missions.

I don't want meaningless new gear/augmentation levels without meaningful new operations. Even a NiM EV/KP would be nice. Who knows, Soa might be actually intimidating after 20,000 years of waiting *shrug*

[DeannaVoyager]

I'm definitely burning out.  

- Longer breaks between galactic seasons would be better than no break or just a few weeks break. They are getting too boring.
- We needs new content, especially a new operation. We don't need regrinding the same old stuff over and over again because that's what burns people out.
- Totally agree with undoing the ability pruning. Most classes are now less fun to play.

However I don't want another gear grind or new augments. We have OP gear already. But I would like to get moddable 343 gear and implants + augs that don't require weeks of farming tech frags. I still hate that I can't gear up all my alts, and the only reason why I just do stealther heroics is because I'm too lazy to take the gear out of legacy bank and put it back there. If all my alts had gear of their own, I would be more interested in actually playing them. The required logistics for shared gear is a big turn off for me. 

[Samcuu]

21 minutes ago, DeannaVoyager said:

The required logistics for shared gear is a big turn off for me. 

Did u know that you can set up a load out for your bis gear that will equip it automatically from your legacy bank? 

[LD_Little_Dragon]

2 hours ago, Samcuu said:

Did u know that you can set up a load out for your bis gear that will equip it automatically from your legacy bank? 

That's only good for one set though.
 

It's a bit of a pain to pull out 2 or 3 sets every time I log in, but much less of a pain then gearing up every alt would be.  I know plenty of players who are actually gearing up every alt though, complete with augments.  Too much grinding for my tastes.

Although I agree on the not bothering to pull gear out for running quick heroics.  I run them naked a lot (well, naked with a weapon, need that for my sleep dart to work).

[Zunayson]

3 hours ago, Samcuu said:

Did u know that you can set up a load out for your bis gear that will equip it automatically from your legacy bank? 

Could you explain how to set it up so that a 5-year old can do it? 

What I am expecting: That the legacy bank counts as part of my inventory (while its open) so that a Loadout can equip it instantly.

What I get each time I've tried to set it up: Gear in legacy bank count as missing from inventory

What I currently do: Each toon has a naked loadout so I don't need to remember which pieces of gear go in each slot, i just have to shovel gear between inventory and legacy bank

[bayernbeleafer]

I have also ended my membership in this game. You're supposed to pay €130 a year to be able to play this game... without extras. What has the community received in the last 2-3 years? Not really much, right? And for me, most of it consists of things that no one really asked for or demanded. The current story has been going on for so long that I really don't remember how it started... so it's completely irrelevant. Group activities... you can count them on one hand. A new event that was already ticked off after a week. Date nights with characters that, in most cases, you never dated... who cares about that? The trade network flooded with junk items to curb inflation. Now we're supposed to get recycled bosses, being sold to us as a brand new feature. PVP seasons that only interest a few players because the classes are so unbalanced. Honestly, is the game really still worth the money? For my part, I say no and have already canceled my membership. By November at the latest, I will spend this €130 elsewhere and only occasionally check in. The game has definitely been put into maintenance mode, and the players are to be milked for as long as possible. After 12 years with the game, it's time to move on.

[LJ_Gibbs]

My sub runs out in September... already set to cancel so I don't forget this time.

Can't justify $15 for what little we get.

[SentinalMasterWW]

7 hours ago, DeannaVoyager said:

- Longer breaks between galactic seasons would be better than no break or just a few weeks break. They are getting too boring.
- We needs new content, especially a new operation. We don't need regrinding the same old stuff over and over again because that's what burns people out.
- Totally agree with undoing the ability pruning. Most classes are now less fun to play.

I want to share this, as I think its the core problem with Broadswords design philosophy. They heavily rely on players just grinding and replaying 10 year old existing content. Galactic Seasons is just an excuse to get players to do well grindy tasks, like for example one of the objectives is to complete 10 or 15 missions I think as a Sith Inquisitor or jedi Consular, so you know they want you to replay the class stories or go grind dailies. 

PVP seasons is just an excuse to encourage players to grind and keep replaying the same old PVP maps and modes over and over again. 

Regarding PVP seasons, I already beat the track. I got the warzone achievement in like 2-3 weeks into the season. I don't care though about doing the Arena achievement but to save on a long discussion, arenas ain't worth it for how long it takes to get into one, and just how bad it really shows your teammates skills are. 

 

Regarding Ability pruning, that is a whole post I did a post while back here in case anyone wants to be bothered to hear my 2 cents on the subject. But for me right now Pruning just killed the fun of levelling alts, You get so little abilities while you level and for some reason the Dev's thought of basically pushing all your abilities  and passives towards level 80 for some reason? I get they want you to level throughout the expansions but why shove everything there? A good example, is Snipers passive they can opt into to increase their main AOE filler DMG by 25%, they used to be able to get that at like level 12 or 14 now its level 63. What? Why is that passive locked until I'm basically almost max level? 

7.0 raised the cap to 80 and took out abilities thus giving these huge dead zones where you get jack. 

Really missed the opportunity imo of introducing a 5th class ability for all the specs.

 

[Samcuu]

7 hours ago, Zunayson said:

Could you explain how to set it up so that a 5-year old can do it? 

What I am expecting: That the legacy bank counts as part of my inventory (while its open) so that a Loadout can equip it instantly.

What I get each time I've tried to set it up: Gear in legacy bank count as missing from inventory

What I currently do: Each toon has a naked loadout so I don't need to remember which pieces of gear go in each slot, i just have to shovel gear between inventory and legacy bank

Here's how I do it. 

1. Set up a load out and make sure every gear slot has a piece in it, it can literally be any gear piece I use all green 324s as u can just buy them for credits. But even empty shell legacy gear will work. 

2. Create a seperate load out that has your bis gear. 

3. Swap back to the first loadout, then place all ur bis gear in the legacy bank. While the legacy bank is still open, click the bis loadout and it should automatically transfer ur green gear into the legacy bank and equip the BIS gear. When ur done playing, just go to a legacy bank and swap load outs again back to the green gear and every piece you want to transfer to an alt should go right back into the legacy bank. 

It takes a bit of setup time but follow those steps on all ur alts you want to use the gear on and it's a breeze after that. I personally have created 3 different sets because I do a high crit build for some toons, a high alacrity build for others, and a full tank set. So you might need a few more than just 14 pieces of gear/augs but it's a lot easier than grinding an entire set for all of ur alts. 

7 hours ago, Zunayson said:

What I get each time I've tried to set it up: Gear in legacy bank count as missing from inventory

Yes I think it tells you that because you don't have any of the gear in ur actual inventory, but if you click the loadout while ur legacy bank is open it will still work. I noticed that it was giving me that message the other day, and for a moment I thought I'd lost some gear somewhere. However when I clicked the load out it swapped the gear out and worked regardless. Guess it doesn't consider the legacy bank when it gives you that message. 

[DeannaVoyager]

4 hours ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

Regarding Ability pruning, that is a whole post I did a post while back here in case anyone wants to be bothered to hear my 2 cents on the subject. But for me right now Pruning just killed the fun of levelling alts, You get so little abilities while you level and for some reason the Dev's thought of basically pushing all your abilities  and passives towards level 80 for some reason? I get they want you to level throughout the expansions but why shove everything there? A good example, is Snipers passive they can opt into to increase their main AOE filler DMG by 25%, they used to be able to get that at like level 12 or 14 now its level 63. What? Why is that passive locked until I'm basically almost max level? 

7.0 raised the cap to 80 and took out abilities thus giving these huge dead zones where you get jack. 

I recently started to level shadow. The resource management is horrible. I know it's been like a joke to say that everyone can now level up with nothing but basic attack and that's why people don't know how to play anymore. But the actual joke is that it's the only way to level up a shadow or assassin these days. You may be able to use 1-2 abilities, and then the rest of the fight you only get to use basic attack because you don't have force/focus whatever it's called or everything is on cooldown. My solution to that particular problem was Shae Vizla, but new players don't have her or any other companions until they leave the starter planet. Even if they did, I don't think sending your companion to kill all the mobs because you can't (by design) is a meaningful way to play. 

 

1 hour ago, Samcuu said:

3. Swap back to the first loadout, then place all ur bis gear in the legacy bank. While the legacy bank is still open, click the bis loadout and it should automatically transfer ur green gear into the legacy bank and equip the BIS gear. When ur done playing, just go to a legacy bank and swap load outs again back to the green gear and every piece you want to transfer to an alt should go right back into the legacy bank. 

As LD_Little_Dragon above already said, it only works if you use the same setup every time. No changing tacticals or set bonus, no changing class or spec. 

I change spec, sometimes even class during an operation quite often. 

[Samcuu]

7 hours ago, DeannaVoyager said:

changing tacticals or set bonus, no changing class or spec.

You can set up a load out for every kind of build u play on that toon. Takes about 2 minutes and u never have to worry about finding ur gear again. For example on my vanguard I play dps, tank full mit, and skank. That clearly requires a bunch of different pieces. I store them all in my legacy bank, then one click swaps me into whichever spec I want to play thanks to the loudouts. In fact it's extremely convenient considering you can access ur legacy bank anywhere with the legacy perk. 

Edited August 4 by Samcuu

[xxSHOONYxx]

Think it's time for people to accept what SWTOR is instead of what could have been or what could be. 
SWTOR is just not a good mmo, and nothing short of a big money investment into the game will change that. Even from the beginning it was lackluster as a mmo with no endgame content whatsoever, doing flashpoints get's SO boring due to all the RP on them and having to watch the same cutscene for the millionth time, other mmos pumping basically in an expansion the same amount of raids/amount of bosses this game released in 12 years.
And a single player "mmo" with 10 million VA is just a niche product that has low player retention so you end up with situations like this. They wanted to go a different route than wow and they did, it was just awful for the game success wise, if you measure success by amount of people playing it. 
If you like mmo this game is just not for you, go and spend your time on something you will enjoy

 

16 hours ago, LD_Little_Dragon said:

It's a bit of a pain to pull out 2 or 3 sets every time I log in, but much less of a pain then gearing up every alt would be.  I know plenty of players who are actually gearing up every alt though, complete with augments.  Too much grinding for my tastes.

You could create 3 loadouts with that gear and pull everything in seconds. Although you would need to put back manually into legacy when you are done and maybe that's what you are calling a pain

[LJ_Gibbs]

13 minutes ago, xxSHOONYxx said:

Think it's time for people to accept what SWTOR is instead of what could have been or what could be. 
SWTOR is just not a good mmo, and nothing short of a big money investment into the game will change that. Even from the beginning it was lackluster as a mmo with no endgame content whatsoever, doing flashpoints get's SO boring due to all the RP on them and having to watch the same cutscene for the millionth time, other mmos pumping basically in an expansion the same amount of raids/amount of bosses this game released in 12 years.
And a single player "mmo" with 10 million VA is just a niche product that has low player retention so you end up with situations like this. They wanted to go a different route than wow and they did, it was just awful for the game success wise, if you measure success by amount of people playing it. 
If you like mmo this game is just not for you, go and spend your time on something you will enjoy

I think this gets lost in all this.  It's NOT coming back to getting constant even half-baked expansions.  The little story and small tweaks (date night and seasonal events) is all we are ever going to get anymore.

If this wasn't the Star Wars IP it would have never made it as long as it has.

[HobbesToo]

40 minutes ago, xxSHOONYxx said:

You could create 3 loadouts with that gear and pull everything in seconds. Although you would need to put back manually into legacy when you are done and maybe that's what you are calling a pain

You can create a 4th loadout that is "empty" and that can put your gear back into your legacy cargo hold.

[Samcuu]

43 minutes ago, xxSHOONYxx said:

You could create 3 loadouts with that gear and pull everything in seconds. Although you would need to put back manually into legacy when you are done and maybe that's what you are calling a pain

You don't need to do anything manually as long as u have place holder gear on ur toon, meaning basic greens or even legacy shells. When u store ur bis gear in the legacy bank and the bank is open, ur loadout will swap the placeholder gear with the bis gear inside the legacy bank, and bis gets auto equipped. Only thing you can't easily get is a tactical, so I do end up having to manually put a tactical into my legacy bank once I do the swaps. 

[eabevella]

The legacy cargo method is still a pain in the void when the switching is between toons.

[Samcuu]

18 minutes ago, eabevella said:

The legacy cargo method is still a pain in the void when the switching is between toons.

I dont understand how anyone thinks it's a pain lol it's one click and ur gear is swapped instantly...takes me 10 seconds. 

[Thraka]

2 hours ago, Samcuu said:

I dont understand how anyone thinks it's a pain lol it's one click and ur gear is swapped instantly...takes me 10 seconds. 

Is there a trick to this we might be missing? Loadout says equipment is missing when I try this. Does it not work if the loadouts are for different combat styles?

 

[DeannaVoyager]

5 hours ago, Samcuu said:

You can set up a load out for every kind of build u play on that toon. Takes about 2 minutes and u never have to worry about finding ur gear again. For example on my vanguard I play dps, tank full mit, and skank. That clearly requires a bunch of different pieces. I store them all in my legacy bank, then one click swaps me into whichever spec I want to play thanks to the loudouts. In fact it's extremely convenient considering you can access ur legacy bank anywhere with the legacy perk. 

I get it, you like loadouts. I don't, because they are not working well enough for me.

First of all, setting up a loadout takes more than 2 minutes. I know because I've done it many times. Second, legacy bank has a long cd. You can't take it out between every boss to change gear and/or loadout. All gear needs to be in the inventory before the raid begins because guess what happens when someone pulls a group of trash mobs while you are trying to change gear from the legacy cargo... Third, if you want to do different loadouts for every different tactical/implant combo and you have more than one class, you'll run out of loadouts pretty fast. I know because I tried it. The loadout system is fine if you only have one class and only one set of gear you always use. For more classes and specs it doesn't. It's a mess.

 

5 hours ago, xxSHOONYxx said:

Think it's time for people to accept what SWTOR is instead of what could have been or what could be. 
SWTOR is just not a good mmo, and nothing short of a big money investment into the game will change that. Even from the beginning it was lackluster as a mmo with no endgame content whatsoever, doing flashpoints get's SO boring due to all the RP on them and having to watch the same cutscene for the millionth time, other mmos pumping basically in an expansion the same amount of raids/amount of bosses this game released in 12 years.
And a single player "mmo" with 10 million VA is just a niche product that has low player retention so you end up with situations like this. They wanted to go a different route than wow and they did, it was just awful for the game success wise, if you measure success by amount of people playing it. 
If you like mmo this game is just not for you, go and spend your time on something you will enjoy

Unfortunately you may be correct. I haven't really played for a few weeks now. Last swtor raid I joined was maybe 3-4 weeks ago and raiding has been the only reason why I've subscribed. I've been playing another game lately to get my daily raiding fix and I'm more committed to that than swtor. 

[thorrnnn]

On 8/3/2024 at 7:49 AM, TonyTricicolo said:

One of the reasons so many players experience burnout is because Bioware and Broadsword keep forcing regurgitated content throughout the years. Finish your story then reroll another. Get all 8 to achieve "Legendary" status. The Dark vs Light event. Conquests. Dailies/Weeklies. Galactic Seasons and on and on and on. Doing the same shi7 over and over again drives people away.

i know the feeling. i have 38 toons on 1 server and hated doing KOTE, etc. over and over. some i skipped past but since i wanted a romanced LANA i HAD to run through that storyline. if i was doing the story content i'd tweak it for each class. maybe a slight change depending on faction/class.

[Samcuu]

2 hours ago, Thraka said:

Is there a trick to this we might be missing? Loadout says equipment is missing when I try this. Does it not work if the loadouts are for different combat styles?

 

It says equipment is missing because the equipment in question is not in ur actually inventory, it's in your legacy bank. Even if it says equipment is missing, once you click the load out it will still swap whatever gear u currently have equipped with the gear coming out of the legacy bank. 

[eabevella]

6 hours ago, DeannaVoyager said:

I get it, you like loadouts. I don't, because they are not working well enough for me.

First of all, setting up a loadout takes more than 2 minutes. I know because I've done it many times. Second, legacy bank has a long cd. You can't take it out between every boss to change gear and/or loadout. All gear needs to be in the inventory before the raid begins because guess what happens when someone pulls a group of trash mobs while you are trying to change gear from the legacy cargo... Third, if you want to do different loadouts for every different tactical/implant combo and you have more than one class, you'll run out of loadouts pretty fast. I know because I tried it. The loadout system is fine if you only have one class and only one set of gear you always use. For more classes and specs it doesn't. It's a mess.

Exactly why it's a pain.

Loadout is only useful if you have different sets on your toon all the time, it's pretty much useless to swap gears between toons because you still need to strip the toon before the gears can be swapped. And because it doesn't necessary line up the gears between swapping, the inventory space ends up a mess always.