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Bugjuice

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  1. Quite frankly, I'm not a fan of the trinity. (tank, heal, damage) When I heal I feel obsessive, like I'm playing whack a mole or Tetris, just trying to plug leaks. And when I tank I feel compulsive, and like a control freak. And have to double check everything I do. It doesn't translate into fun for me. Damage roles are much freer to play the game the way they like. They don't actually have to follow any particular set of rules short of shoot stuff, preferably and usually the tank's target. That frees up a lot of attention to do other things, and for me, results in relaxation and enjoyment. Guild Wars 2 claims not to have the trinity, e.g. tank, heal and damage. But what they have instead at high level is control, support and damage. That sounds strangely euphamistic like "tank heal and damage" to me. I hope it isn't, and I hope other games follow suit. The holy trinity is an outdated MMO concept.
  2. Some hate questing. Some hate PVP. And flashpoints are damned hard to come across at level 10-49 even on high population servers. And it takes a while to get to level 50. Most players are casual, afterall.
  3. Because it would give XP, credits, companion affection, some extra commendations, and most of all hopefully be fun. Like I said, at level 10-49 it's hard to find groups. At level 50 it's much easier. So this would *mostly* be a feature for sub-max players. BioWare have said that most players quit around level 35. Or how about alternatively, these instances could also be full players social instances that did not require trinity play, e.g. tank & healer, and could be played with companions taking the place of players. In other words, simpler instances, merely for levelling up in a social way. Oh, and using the LFG was just an example. Using a console like the galaxy map for space combat would be another.
  4. Basically what this all boils down to is that the MMORPG subscription market as a whole is in a steep decline. People have a lot more options now than they did before, and the economic crisis is taking it's toll on people's disposable income. A lot of people are simply not willing, or do not wish, to pay subscriptions. There are more and more "F2P" options out there, and their quality is inreasingly steeply. It's time for SWTOR to evolve with the times, and go F2P, with a blended in-game economy, and microtransactions, but NOT P2W (aka. pay to win).
  5. ATVI(and formerly Blizzard)'s quarterly financial reports actually describe it in some detail. Chinese players in 2010 constituted more than 60% of WoW players. A lot of subscribers have quit since then, while the chinese market has stabilized and perhaps grown slightly. But Chinese players are forbidden by law from susbcribing to an MMO, and are also forbidden from playing more than 3 hours a day. They pay NetEase 6 cents an hour. NetEase pays Blizzard 1 cent per hour. So that's a maximum of 3 american cents a day times 7 million. But then again it's unlikely that all the Chinese play 3 hours a day. More likely they log on once in a while. So the total revenue of WoW in China is pitiful. The reason WoW's profit margin is holding solid is because of stuff like Annual Pass and microtransactions, which have proven extremely profittable. Almost as profittable as the subscriptions themselves. Also, the number of "subscribers" is indeed state at 10.2, but these are actually accounts. But because 7 of those 10 million have no subscription, it's up to Blizzard to define what a "subscriber" is. Might be that millions of these don't even log in once a month. 1.2 million annual passes were actually sold. Not 1.6. And only 5 million people ever bought Cataclysm, with the majority of them having quit the game. ACTUAL number of WoW subscribers, best guess, including free level 20 accounts, and WoW Census logins, is about 3 million maximum. That's figuring conservatively.
  6. It might not be game-wise or technically feasable to micro-manage all your companions, but they could come along as mission specialists in their respective fields, and provide various sorts of backup. Like some of the class quests you mentioned. It might also give added incentive for people to gear their companions, so that class quests where they have to use one of them don't jump up on them... and their companions are naked or in level 7 gear.
  7. That was pretty much one of the quests that made me crave more similar content. That quest was freaking epic, and I was actually shouting at my screen. Possibly the best quest in the entire game. Now imagine if you could do that on a daily basis. Perhaps even using your entire squad of companions.
  8. It's just that having a trinity type game mechanical approach in a game where the wide majority of talent specs are dps and servers don't support a lot of concurrent players is an insanely bad idea. The LFG is a huge boon to the level 50 crowd when coupled with server transfers. But it doesn't do much for the sub-50s. Alternatives to levelling are currently: -Questing (I dont know about you but by the time I'm done questing a planet, I pretty much never want to set my foot there ever again) -PVP (if you enjoy being a whipping boy and having a 0:50 statistic) -Space combat (a railshooter not everybody enjoys, though I do, and that you can only do once a day) If SWTOR is going to survive and thrive, then the majority of people who are quitting around level 35 need something more to do to get the process speeding along to level 50.
  9. The "success" of World of Warcraft is somewhat overstated. While incredibly successful financially, at most it had 6-7 million subscribers at the height of The Burning Crusade. Today it has less than 3 million subscribers. By far the vast majority are Chinese netcafè visitors who are already on a F2P program. Hardly anything to boast about - unless you're Blizzard's marketing department trying to impress upon people how massive your game is. WoW was tremendously financially successful because it was the right game at the right time. Launching an equally successful MMO today is an impossible task when you have to compete in terms of content with a game that is almost 15 years in development. EA tried doing this by throwing money at SWTOR, and this game has a massive world as well, but it takes years to polish a proper MMO not to mention to craft an ever progressive endgame. Minigames and wardrobes aren't nearly as important. So I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with the article. Where SWTOR went wrong is focusing too much on the game world, and not enough on fundemental game experience, e.g. meat and potatoes of daily play.
  10. Planet quests are dull once you've completed them once. People don't want to play the same gather X, kill Y quests again and again. They want more dynamic encounters, like flashpoints. But queues are often long, and it's hard to find the right mix of people. Particularely below maximum level. Alas solo or even duo dungeons which do not require the trinity, in the spirit of The Esseles and Black Talon.
  11. Well yes, but class quests are not repeatable, and not all that involved (i.e. fairly simply structurally), and are not available at all times. This would be a means of levelling up besides those other methods.
  12. So hear me out before you call me a nut. I realize the idea is a daunting at first. But many games are doing this, e.g. RIFT has 'chronicles' and WoW has 'scenarios', The Secret World literally has solo instances as part of a class quest but also repeatable. Level 10-50: These would be things you could "queue" for solo using the LFG, or perhaps accessed via. your ship for levelling up your character in an alternate way. For people who are bored, lonely (e.g. low pop server), queues never popping up, playing in the middle of the night, or who simply want to play by themselves for a bit but have finished quest content on the planets. In difficulty they would be *slightly* easier than Black Talon and Esseles (soloable for most classes before level 15), and slightly more challenging than your average class quest. At level 50 these solo instances would have sub-par loot. Say green only, or a blue or two, obviously not meant to replace endgame play but buff up solo play and offer players that have completed quest content and are unable to find groups in a timely fashion an alternative and fun way to level, maybe with some daily quests that reward commendations. I feel very confident a lot of people would like this once they got into it. Afterall most time spent in an MMO is spent playing solo. EDIT: Okay, this was meant to go in the suggestion box, I find the new forum structure a bit confusing. Sorry about that.
  13. Sounds like a good idea to me. I'm also very wary of accidental misspellings and sending stuff to someone else's characters. I always double check names and such I have dotted down in an excel file. It would be so much easier if the game at least gave you a list of characters you yourself had on the server marked with a special color, as opposed to say friends & guild members.
  14. Many of us are in the same boat. Especially day 1-2-3 Early Access players. We only had a small choice of servers. And now all those servers transfer to other day one servers. I am unable to play half my characters (imperials) because they are now on a dead server transferring into the very same server I have all my republic on.
  15. I have to say I really disliked learning about additional race unlocks several months after the game was released. By that time I had already created my characters. 8 imperial & 8 republic. So more slots would be welcome. We also need a multiple choice of destination servers for transfers. But doubling the slots would fix most of this.
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