Uh if you're talking about a game getting lots of love, I think you've mistaken SWTOR for ESO or FFXIV... because if you take a look at the SWTOR update history, I think it shows quite the opposite. This is objectively one of the least updated modern and active MMOs on the market bud.

 

Before SWTOR, I played SWG from 2004-2011 when it shut down, so I was mostly used to making my own content since that's the type of game SWG was, which I loved (It wasn't really until Rage of the Wookies and Trials of Obi-Wan that SWG got actual story content updates). Anyway, I've been here with SWTOR since the website and forums opened. If you look, I was the 6389th person to join the forums out of however many millions now. That doesn't mean anything on it's own I know, but I'm just trying to say I've literally been here and active since THE beginning with an active sub from launch to present day.

 

I say all that to say this: It wasn't until very recently (last few months) when I dove into ESO that I understood what ACTUAL content updates on a regular basis really are. There's a reason why ESO is one of the top MMOs going right now and SWTOR is nowhere close. It's because Zenimax is working their asses off pushing out compelling and thoughtful content while EAWare is going years without the amount of content to match even one ESO DLC (not even expansion... just DLC...). As I've said, I've been a loyal defender of SWTOR for years and years, but honestly, EAWare should be embarrassed and ashamed of themselves with how bad other MMO companies with IPs that aren't even 25% as interesting or rich as Star Wars are wiping the floor with them.

 

TLDR: The phrase "is getting lots of love" and "SWTOR" are like water and oil.

I've played SWG and my user rank is way lower than yours at 362344. What are you? 600k something lol?. Not sure the point you are making but OK. I've been here since the beginning too bud, almost double the users before you. Were you even in the NDA beta?

I for one have no issue with GC at all and think it's far better than what was there before.

GC at launch was the primary method of gearing in SWTOR, it excluded free to play players by them not having access to it or to the rewards (including gearing contained within that system). Alongside the removal of free to play passes for content, essentially the game became subscriber only if you actually wanted to play the content.

Any game developer that values progression systems need not rely on the total crux that RNG is, it was a mess when introduced and only slightly improved with later additions to the system.

Prior to GC players could simply play the content and actually participate in all of that content (subscriber and free to play alike), and were able to gear themselves without relying on the crux of an RNG based system. Tokens were earned at varying rates depending on content type, which could be exchanged for gear.

As much as one individual may like GC, I'd lay a bet that there is another individual that didn't like the system (in fact I took a break from the game because of the RNG crux used and half hearted attempts to improve the system). If 6.0 removes that system and exchanges it for something more progressive in terms of gearing characters, I'd welcome that change. I'd probably see value in retaining my subscription instead of popping back once every now and then, mainly because I'd feel like I can progress my characters and not rely on a luck based system for gearing.

It's not just their business model, it's a fact of MMOs. I belonged to a multiple MMO guild; they would fire up one depending on content releases, consistently. There are progression raiding guilds that literally do this with every game they play, and they've been at it for longer than there's been a swtor to claim it's somehow some kind of failing with BioWare. By all means, trash 'em when they have it coming, but this? It's a common thing in MMOs, and anyone that's played more than one or two will know it.

People leaving and coming back is a fact of MMOs, of course, but the update structure/schedule/effort in SWTOR is objectively one of the worst, if not the worst of any "story-driven" MMO to date. That's not OK and why other MMOs (like ESO and FFXIV) currently are, and have been, wiping the floor with SWTOR.

I've played SWG and my user rank is way lower than yours at 362344. What are you? 600k something lol?. Not sure the point you are making but OK. I've been here since the beginning too bud, almost double the users before you. Were you even in the NDA beta?

What are you even talking about?

I always love this kind of thing. So, what exactly would qualify one to be a "player"? Being on board with every negative agenda posted? Kneeling to the "we know better than you what you enjoy" crowd? Guess I'm never going to be a player, and all my progression raiding, back when I gave a damn about it, doesn't mean anything. I used to solo FPs back before there were SMs to carry one through. It was fun, and challenging, and, I thought, made me a player. I guess not, because I'd have to ask what is meant by "allowing us to thrive" as well. I thought I was "thriving" pretty well, when I played.

 

Now I'm not thrilled with the F2P model, but, and this will really shock people like you, this model existed long before 5.0. "but they removed the passes" doesn't mean anything to me, if I'm playing, I'm subbed. I also love "nobody asked for it" being thrown around like someone actually polled the entirety of the player base to find out, instead of just pulling it out of their *** to support their hurt feelings, or whatever. My biggest complaint is the lack of speed in getting my comps back, which is why the vast majority of my alts haven't even started it, which, guess what, is "playing the way I want", and "thriving". I don't expect that to change either, so despite the hyperbole being thrown around by the nay sayers, I'm still going to be able to play how I want.

Let me give you a hint. Lets start with the release of 5.0 and then before 6.0 servers had to merge. You can try and pump sunshine all you want but you're out of touch with the community.

2nd hint ( since you seem to need them): a lot of players left

Uh if you're talking about a game getting lots of love, I think you've mistaken SWTOR for ESO or FFXIV... because if you take a look at the SWTOR update history, I think it shows quite the opposite. This is objectively one of the least updated modern and active MMOs on the market bud.

 

Yeah that sums it up pretty much.

All good to say how enjoyable the pirate event was. Though from the number of people that were pissed off over the mine quest and nearly everyone just wanted to skip as much of the 4 man heroics as possible it might be argued people didn't find it fun.

It did show very clearly though that the idea that hard content should be worth more, with group content just assumed as being harder than solo is flawed. Hell running through trash and fight Hugo was hardly in anyway difficult. Even after the change people just suicided to get to the door. They weren't rewarding people for being better or taking or more challenging content. The only real challenge with the heroics was if you actually wanted to enjoy the content and play it.

I cant remember when Ossus came out but are we looking at roughly two bits of content for the entire year. That's not love. Think what that is, is seeing how far you can stretch the loyalty of the player base and how little you can offer and they will stick around for. Turns out if the activity in game is anything to go by, not that little. But not to worry they have a plan, another gear grind cause they are still following MMO models of 10 years ago where everything is based around getting people to run Hammer Station again and again for the 8th year running to grind out gear to replace what they have already got that is now no longer fit for the level synicing content.

Yeah that sums it up pretty much.

 

All good to say how enjoyable the pirate event was. Though from the number of people that were pissed off over the mine quest and nearly everyone just wanted to skip as much of the 4 man heroics as possible it might be argued people didn't find it fun.

 

It did show very clearly though that the idea that hard content should be worth more, with group content just assumed as being harder than solo is flawed. Hell running through trash and fight Hugo was hardly in anyway difficult. Even after the change people just suicided to get to the door. They weren't rewarding people for being better or taking or more challenging content. The only real challenge with the heroics was if you actually wanted to enjoy the content and play it.

 

I cant remember when Ossus came out but are we looking at roughly two bits of content for the entire year. That's not love. Think what that is, is seeing how far you can stretch the loyalty of the player base and how little you can offer and they will stick around for. Turns out if the activity in game is anything to go by, not that little. But not to worry they have a plan, another gear grind cause they are still following MMO models of 10 years ago where everything is based around getting people to run Hammer Station again and again for the 8th year running to grind out gear to replace what they have already got that is now no longer fit for the level synicing content.

Personally, I gave up on Dantooine after the first day. Zero interest in sitting in chat, doing LFG, like it's still the early 2000s, just so I can move some arbitrary rep marker and eventually buy some decos or some other meaningless item. I would have been ok with a weekly option that gives less rewards overall and can be done solo. But nope... arbitrarily forced group heroics that aren't even integrated into a group finder tool.

MMO models of 10 years ago, indeed.

Let me give you a hint. Lets start with the release of 5.0 and then before 6.0 servers had to merge. You can try and pump sunshine all you want but you're out of touch with the community.

 

2nd hint ( since you seem to need them): a lot of players left

I'll bet ya', right now, with no access to numbers at all, that more people left in the first year than have left between the end of the first year and now. I'd also be willing to bet that it was orders of magnitude higher than what has left since 5.0 to now. I come and go all the time, releases don't have anything to do with it, burn out does. The smoke you're blowing is stinking up the place, let's give it a break.

Yeah that sums it up pretty much.

 

All good to say how enjoyable the pirate event was. Though from the number of people that were pissed off over the mine quest and nearly everyone just wanted to skip as much of the 4 man heroics as possible it might be argued people didn't find it fun.

That's "interesting". So all the people skipping parts of raids over the years, or skipping parts of FPs never found them fun either? I'm going to lay something on ya' that you need to know before you start putting "people skipped part of it, so it wasn't fun" out there: People skip parts of raids in every MMO I've played. People have been doing it for as long as there have been raids/FP type content where it can happen. It predates swtor by years.

It did show very clearly though that the idea that hard content should be worth more, with group content just assumed as being harder than solo is flawed. Hell running through trash and fight Hugo was hardly in anyway difficult. Even after the change people just suicided to get to the door. They weren't rewarding people for being better or taking or more challenging content. The only real challenge with the heroics was if you actually wanted to enjoy the content and play it.

 

I cant remember when Ossus came out but are we looking at roughly two bits of content for the entire year. That's not love. Think what that is, is seeing how far you can stretch the loyalty of the player base and how little you can offer and they will stick around for. Turns out if the activity in game is anything to go by, not that little. But not to worry they have a plan, another gear grind cause they are still following MMO models of 10 years ago where everything is based around getting people to run Hammer Station again and again for the 8th year running to grind out gear to replace what they have already got that is now no longer fit for the level synicing content.

I'll bet ya', right now, with no access to numbers at all, that more people left in the first year than have left between the end of the first year and now. I'd also be willing to bet that it was orders of magnitude higher than what has left since 5.0 to now. I come and go all the time, releases don't have anything to do with it, burn out does. The smoke you're blowing is stinking up the place, let's give it a break.

Wait so because you can bet something that contradicts what he's saying, he's blowing smoke? Lolwut?

The game is down to 5 servers. That's an objective fact.

that more people left in the first year than have left between the end of the first year and now. I'd also be willing to bet that it was orders of magnitude higher than what has left since 5.0 to now.

This isn't the refutation of 5.0 largely being a disaster that you think it is. It's just an ignoring of percentages to favor a particular narrative. For example, if the population was, say, 2 million at the start and went down to 500,000 in the first year, then it's now literally impossible for more to leave in the next years than in the first year, unless the population also grows enough to increase the numbers so that it can reach 1.5 million in total losses after that first year.

If you look at it in terms of percentages, that makes more sense and is more accurate. You'd want to consider what percentage of the remaining players left, not the raw number. And looking at the shutdown of servers over time is a decent way to gauge that, without having numbers available to look at the percentages on.

Oh no! You dared to not be cynical on these forums!

And they dropped on you as expected.

Btw yes, the game is much better now than back then and i'm excited for the future. Wish it had proper expansion support like other mmo's such as ESO, FF and WoW though. But for the first time in a long time swtor seems to have a dev team with the right ideas.

I'd say without any concrete numbers, trying to analyze percentages is meaningless

To be clear, what I was trying to say is that looking at server closure trends is probably the closest you could get to accuracy without hard numbers. You could maybe extrapolate some percentages from the number of servers closed over time. Though granted we'd have to assume a certain level of consistency in how low a server pop needs to get before they consider closing it.

But hard numbers aside, it's pretty obvious the game is at its lowest point in terms of population, at a meager 5 servers. Whether 5.0 is explicitly to blame for some of that, people can argue over the fine details of, but I'm sure there are plenty who could anecdotally testify to losing guildies or entire guilds worth of guildies - if they were still around to testify, which is part of the problem in getting anecdotal backup on this stuff... many of the people who could confirm are not here to do so.

Which is why it amuses me when people who are still here try to act like there's nothing wrong. It's sort of like saying, "Well I'm still here!" to an empty room. Not a lot of people around to challenge you...

To be clear, what I was trying to say is that looking at server closure trends is probably the closest you could get to accuracy without hard numbers. You could maybe extrapolate some percentages from the number of servers closed over time. Though granted we'd have to assume a certain level of consistency in how low a server pop needs to get before they consider closing it.

 

But hard numbers aside, it's pretty obvious the game is at its lowest point in terms of population, at a meager 5 servers. Whether 5.0 is explicitly to blame for some of that, people can argue over the fine details of, but I'm sure there are plenty who could anecdotally testify to losing guildies or entire guilds worth of guildies - if they were still around to testify, which is part of the problem in getting anecdotal backup on this stuff... many of the people who could confirm are not here to do so.

 

Which is why it amuses me when people who are still here try to act like there's nothing wrong. It's sort of like saying, "Well I'm still here!" to an empty room. Not a lot of people around to challenge you...

Except that, trying to assign a reason to those closures throws any actual "science" out the window. What were the first servers screaming about merges being needed? The PvP servers. So, if I use your scientific method of proof, then PvP needs to be abandoned because it's not able to sustain it's own servers? Now I'm not really sure, but one of the drops in server numbers, not population, but number of servers, was the closure of the PvP servers, and the toggle between PvP and PvE on every other server.

This is a niche game, with a niche audience. The majority of fans are in my age bracket, and may not even play video games. Some are mad, even now, that this wasn't KotoR 3, or SWG 2. Some are mad that the entirety of the game wasn't the same as Vanilla. I'm not really mad about it, but that was a major reason that I played, I mean, if you ignore the planetary missions for both factions, it's essentially 8 games in one until then. The gamer in me craves a swtor where that ran for the entirety of the game. The guy that has bills to pay every month? He understands that it takes a team of writers dedicated to each class, and this game can't support that. If it had every sub from beta to now, it couldn't support that.

People were mad that it wasn't KotoR 3 or SWG 2 from launch, among other things, and left in droves in the first year. Being mad about what a game isn't is not something that a game developer can fix, especially if they can't make said sequels, for whatever reason. Then there's the hyperbole of "I don't like this, so you shouldn't either, and if you do, you're not a player", that sparked our interaction in this thread. It's clear they wanted a return to vanilla style game development, and it's also clear that they have no concept for how much that would cost. It's not pure laziness that brought about single story arcs, it's also cost to produce 8 stories per world that make any kind of narrative sense. How would one write 8 stories that led back to the FPs that end Ilum, for example?

With this, comes an even greater burn out factor. After all, KotFE style burn out isn't new to this game, it starts with Ilum, and carries forward from there, and Ilum, last I checked, isn't 5.0 or later. So trying to attribute this to 5.0, claiming that nobody asked for it w/out any actual documentation, all while claiming "I don't like it, and if you do you're not a player" doesn't really add to the conversation.

Except that, trying to assign a reason to those closures throws any actual "science" out the window. What were the first servers screaming about merges being needed? The PvP servers. So, if I use your scientific method of proof, then PvP needs to be abandoned because it's not able to sustain it's own servers? Now I'm not really sure, but one of the drops in server numbers, not population, but number of servers, was the closure of the PvP servers, and the toggle between PvP and PvE on every other server.

 

This is a niche game, with a niche audience. The majority of fans are in my age bracket, and may not even play video games. Some are mad, even now, that this wasn't KotoR 3, or SWG 2. Some are mad that the entirety of the game wasn't the same as Vanilla. I'm not really mad about it, but that was a major reason that I played, I mean, if you ignore the planetary missions for both factions, it's essentially 8 games in one until then. The gamer in me craves a swtor where that ran for the entirety of the game. The guy that has bills to pay every month? He understands that it takes a team of writers dedicated to each class, and this game can't support that. If it had every sub from beta to now, it couldn't support that.

 

People were mad that it wasn't KotoR 3 or SWG 2 from launch, among other things, and left in droves in the first year. Being mad about what a game isn't is not something that a game developer can fix, especially if they can't make said sequels, for whatever reason. Then there's the hyperbole of "I don't like this, so you shouldn't either, and if you do, you're not a player", that sparked our interaction in this thread. It's clear they wanted a return to vanilla style game development, and it's also clear that they have no concept for how much that would cost. It's not pure laziness that brought about single story arcs, it's also cost to produce 8 stories per world that make any kind of narrative sense. How would one write 8 stories that led back to the FPs that end Ilum, for example?

 

With this, comes an even greater burn out factor. After all, KotFE style burn out isn't new to this game, it starts with Ilum, and carries forward from there, and Ilum, last I checked, isn't 5.0 or later. So trying to attribute this to 5.0, claiming that nobody asked for it w/out any actual documentation, all while claiming "I don't like it, and if you do you're not a player" doesn't really add to the conversation.

I don't know what I'm even supposed to say to this. You tell me, mockingly, it's a "scientific method of proof," which I never stated it was. I said it's probably the closest we could get to an accurate indicator of decline of time, which you haven't refuted. Instead, you threw up some nonsense about how I'm wrong because I must be arguing that PvP should be abandoned because PvP servers went??? (I mean, for one thing, you do realize you can still do open world PvP on a PvE server, right?)

Then you put on my shoulders some shared responsibility for commentary that I didn't make about "If you like this you're not a player." Again, something I never said.

All while trying to use this nonsense to be dismissive of the idea that 5.0 was generally not received well. Of course some people were fine with 5.0. Unpopular doesn't mean nobody liked it. People leaving in droves doesn't mean nobody liked it. You get told dismissive stuff about "not a real player" or whatever the actual words are, probably because of people being frustrated with "but I liked it" being used as some sort of attempt to refute the idea that something was largely unpopular. Telling people they are wrong for liking something is silly, but it's really not difficult to see that 5.0 resulted in significant population loss. Whatever aspect of 5.0 you want to try to attribute it to, you can be my guest, but the frustration with GC as a system was evident on these forums at the time and the devs felt the backlash so hard they made major changes over time to make the system more bearable. There is evidence in that history as well. Evidence with such a lasting message that it was a main point of discussion in the livestream when they talked about spoils of war in 6.0, acknowledging the issues people had had with the 5.0 system and how they weren't able to respond accordingly fast enough because info was put out so late in development. This denial of reality is just tiresome.

I have "High Hopes" for 6.0 and beyond; however being Realistic and tempering my expectations I have to Base those "Hopes" on what we've seen lately from BioWare as far as Capability and some of the Game websites. Story particulars, Size of expansion and the State of the game after the Expansion is played out.

https://imgur.com/bJtpuNu

https://imgur.com/23kFC3B

Wow so much NEGATIVITY in this thread. Let's just remember that the developers are working for us, they learned from the backlash of 5.0, and we will see this new system on PTS then we will judge.

SWG died a long time ago for this game, so as much as Il ove to remember as much as the next person it's not coming back. SWTOR is what we have, and we need to make sure the devs are on TRACK to IMPROVE the game. I've been here since before day 1 (NDA beta player), and the game has changed a lot since then.

People said "No way will this game ever go F2P", "This won't be a game where there are 20 people smacking a boss just to collect a token", "Every story will be unique and you can influence each direction of your path", "TORTanic, will fail faster than SWG ever could with NGE".

And you know what happened? I don't think I have to say for myself you already know as been witnessed in this thread. EA needs this game for their quarterly reports (i'm business & CS major I've done case analisis on these studies, EA in particular) so they won't do ANTHEM level EA fail.

This game is BioWare's baby. The BioWare that first made this game is gone when Star Wars was aquired by EA and the game changed rapidly over the course of the acquisition right before release. And we all seen it !

EA and BioWare needs this game to succeed now more than ever and luckily for them, game has YEARS of failures and successes that they can work on with a new direction it WILL happen. We as PLAYERS just need to give them TIME.

Let's just remember that the developers are working for us, they learned from the backlash of 5.0, and we will see this new system on PTS then we will judge.

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, buuuut the devs work and have always worked for EA, and EA works for $$$$ alone, not us. At this point, I think we should remember that instead.

I don't know what I'm even supposed to say to this. You tell me, mockingly, it's a "scientific method of proof," which I never stated it was. I said it's probably the closest we could get to an accurate indicator of decline of time, which you haven't refuted. Instead, you threw up some nonsense about how I'm wrong because I must be arguing that PvP should be abandoned because PvP servers went??? (I mean, for one thing, you do realize you can still do open world PvP on a PvE server, right?)

 

Then you put on my shoulders some shared responsibility for commentary that I didn't make about "If you like this you're not a player." Again, something I never said.

 

All while trying to use this nonsense to be dismissive of the idea that 5.0 was generally not received well. Of course some people were fine with 5.0. Unpopular doesn't mean nobody liked it. People leaving in droves doesn't mean nobody liked it. You get told dismissive stuff about "not a real player" or whatever the actual words are, probably because of people being frustrated with "but I liked it" being used as some sort of attempt to refute the idea that something was largely unpopular. Telling people they are wrong for liking something is silly, but it's really not difficult to see that 5.0 resulted in significant population loss. Whatever aspect of 5.0 you want to try to attribute it to, you can be my guest, but the frustration with GC as a system was evident on these forums at the time and the devs felt the backlash so hard they made major changes over time to make the system more bearable. There is evidence in that history as well. Evidence with such a lasting message that it was a main point of discussion in the livestream when they talked about spoils of war in 6.0, acknowledging the issues people had had with the 5.0 system and how they weren't able to respond accordingly fast enough because info was put out so late in development. This denial of reality is just tiresome.

It's way simpler than you pretend; I used PvP specifically because the servers were shut down due to population issues, even after they were merged.

It's ironic that you cling to "nobody liked it" while accusing me of diverting with my PvP example. I laid out a few reasons why people have left, I ignored others, such as PvP being meaningless here. I have 5 examples of that specifically, since they were people that came over here from Aion, wanting to PvP, but found that it didn't matter at all to the main game, they left. They had 30 days of sub, but they didn't last that, because they didn't come for stories, or Ops, they came for PvP, and it was, and is, pointless. It has absolutely no bearing the game whatsoever.

I used "science" because science looks at effects and tries to find causes. You looked at the effect, fewer servers, and assigned a cause, 5.0. You railed against any evidence, no matter how factual, of closures prior to 5.0 because "narrative". As one of those players that comes and goes with the tide, 5.0 is not a major factor in my coming and going, as I said, burn out starts seriously hard at Ilum, if you're playing stories, and that predates 5.0 considerably. So unless you're postulating that I'm the only one, it's likely that your premise is flawed. Calls for server merges, and cross server queues predate 5.0, considerably as well, and it doesn't take long after a merge for the threads to pop back up. I've been on the forums a while, I've seen it happen, and it's not any more frequent after 5.0 than it was before.

The "if you don't understand, you're not a player" is actually a post in this very thread, one I quoted and addressed directly. It's perfect to go along with the "Why you shouldn't like 6.0 " thread: someone assigning what they believe to everyone else. "Largely unpopular" is ironic as well, isn't it? After all, it's based on "All of my friends hated it", along with some confirmation bias on the forums, which is also ironic, since only about 15% of a game's population, any game's population, use the forums. Why? Mostly because they don't have time to come to forums and complain if they don't like a game, and because they don't want to be attacked for liking the game, such as most of the responses in this thread at the OP, for having the audacity to believe the game has improved, in their opinion. They're not allowed to have that opinion, nor are they allowed to express it on the forums. After all, it flies in the face of the narrative. We can't have anyone thinking the game's doing ok, after all, the devs won't make SWG 2 if they believe someone likes what they're doing now.

I digress: How many thousands of exit surveys do you have that you're using as evidence that 5.0 et al caused this mass migration out of swtor, or are you just looking at the latest server merges as all the proof you need? What about the previous merges? You see, looking at the big picture, instead of "but I didn't like it, and you shouldn't either", there were merges in the first year. Were they leaving because they knew what was coming in 5.0?

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, buuuut the devs work and have always worked for EA, and EA works for $$$$ alone, not us. At this point, I think we should remember that instead.

Where does that money come from? It's not like you launch an MMO, and it suddenly sprouts money trees in their corporate lobby. They're not going to please everyone, no game company does, so they release what seems like is going to keep the lights on, and keep the money coming in. I'd love to condemn businesses for trying to make money, but as someone with bills to pay, I expect that the business that is my household will have income to do so. There's some shady **** going on, to be sure, but not every monetization is shady.

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, buuuut the devs work and have always worked for EA, and EA works for $$$$ alone, not us. At this point, I think we should remember that instead.

If you look up cynicism in the dictionary, you'll find this quote.

I am a person who was a subscriber since day 1, who finally ended their sub in June 2018 (honestly, stopped playing in April 2018). When I heard about the expansion I made the decision to re-sub for the expansion and here I am.

I do not think this game has improved much at all. I think it has the same problems it has had for several years now. First let me say though that I completely accept the one-story-for-all model. I know that to maintain 8 stories was impossible; if they tried we'd probably still be in the RotHC era. That said, It's been two full years since the last expansion, with a drip of new content throughout. GC at 5.0 launch was a factor in the mass exodus, but not the sole problem. They expect us to play through the same content 50 times over and like it. They tout "choices that matter" that in the end don't. The F2P/sub model has too many limits/punishments on the former instead of enticements/rewards on the latter.

Chances are that my 60 day sub will come and go, during which time I will do the story a few times and maybe raid a little, and then I will go back to preferred status and play the story on alts until the next big expansion...probably two years from now. EA/Bioware will get $30 from me and no more.

There is no doubt the game has improved. This isn't about being negative or positive.

The truth of the matter is that despite improvements, they constantly do dumb stuff that drives people away and take forever to make an adjustment.

Its just a fact, that a lot of people left after 5.0...turned off by RNG & 300 levels of CXP. They actually thought it was a good system and released it. I had a look at closed beta and immediately reported feedback on the forums in SEPTEMBER about it being a terrible idea. Not only got ignored, it got removed.

It took months for them to adjust things and it still sucks compared to 4.0 era of gearing. It takes just way too long.

Also, they are clueless on class balance. Mercs got released and immediately everyone knew they were OP but it took 11 months for a nerf.

Lesson to take a way from this? Hope for the best but expect the worst. I've very doubtful on the new gear stuff (amplifiers and whatnot) because it already looks like some classes are looking like they've got some OP stuff to choose from while other classes are going to still suck. If I had confidence the devs would be making changes each week to tighten up balance I would be much more optimistic. Possibility they are adjusting things that frequently? Pretty much zilch.

How many months will it take to fix it, meanwhile, warzones are trash because of FOTM?

If you look up cynicism in the dictionary, you'll find this quote.

Count me as cynical as well then.

I try not to comment too much on the new expansion because these forums are way too negative as it is. However, I'm not getting a good vibe from the GR system and the new gearing system. I recognize how haphazard the GC system was implemented and I welcome a reduction in currencies. I also understand that, as EA is going to be required to reveal the odds on it's lootboxes by the end of 2020, they're looking to replace lootbox systems.

But, all the same, "I've got a bad feeling about this".

If you look up cynicism in the dictionary, you'll find this quote.

Nah just being realistic and looking at the game, it's situation, and it's creators from an objective POV.

There is no doubt the game has improved. This isn't about being negative or positive.

 

The truth of the matter is that despite improvements, they constantly do dumb stuff that drives people away and take forever to make an adjustment.

 

Its just a fact, that a lot of people left after 5.0...turned off by RNG & 300 levels of CXP. They actually thought it was a good system and released it. I had a look at closed beta and immediately reported feedback on the forums in SEPTEMBER about it being a terrible idea. Not only got ignored, it got removed.

 

It took months for them to adjust things and it still sucks compared to 4.0 era of gearing. It takes just way too long.

 

Also, they are clueless on class balance. Mercs got released and immediately everyone knew they were OP but it took 11 months for a nerf.

 

Lesson to take a way from this? Hope for the best but expect the worst. I've very doubtful on the new gear stuff (amplifiers and whatnot) because it already looks like some classes are looking like they've got some OP stuff to choose from while other classes are going to still suck. If I had confidence the devs would be making changes each week to tighten up balance I would be much more optimistic. Possibility they are adjusting things that frequently? Pretty much zilch.

 

How many months will it take to fix it, meanwhile, warzones are trash because of FOTM?

So now we get to the root of the issue, eh? It doesn't matter what they do, because FotM has always, and will always be a thing where one can build their own classes. There will always be those players that take the system they are given and milk every possible advantage out of it. It's interesting to note, however, that the gearing system has absolutely nothing to do with it. It's not like there weren't nerfs to classes before 4.0 in an attempt to combat just that, right? "(Insert class here) is OP and needs to be nerfed" has been a rallying cry in games with classes and PvP since it was introduced as a whole, let alone in swtor.

Edit to copy/paste quoted post, just in case...