Honestly? All BioWare needs to do to retain me as a paying customer once my sub expires in August is COMMUNICATE WITH US.

 

It looks bad when you hide where you're at on upcoming content. It makes people think you're hiding something. BE OPEN AND TRANSPARENT like you claimed you would be. Have someone write up a blog twice a month detailing where the team is at on the road to upcoming content. Tease us with some screenshots. Release a few tidbits to get people salivating.

 

Silence is as good as death in this realm of the gaming universe.

The problem with op gating is you shut down the number of players who are available to play. If a guild is on to the next tier of Op and three of their raiders (for example) have various real life issues to deal with, finding replacements is infinitely more difficult and requires the guild to go back and run the older instance and hope for the right drops to get the replacements up to speed.

 

On the other hand, if you aren't gating on gear you can carry the replacements for a little while until the current content drops catch them up.

 

Many don't think so, but it really is a good thing that so many people are getting geared up on ops and BH gear. It will benefit the top guilds whether they think so or not (lots of good players who were behind in gear and couldn't necessarily catch up to the point where the top guilds would give them a shot.)

 

yep you are slowing things down aren't you? kinda what i am getting at. might want to have a raid with people you can swap in and out to gear up to eliminate this. we did it in another mmo that had gear requirements. took a little longer sometimes but had our own replacements and allowed more people to raid. worked rather well for us. there are solutions to your gating gear requirement problem if people just think a little or had experience with it.

Tbh its not a matter of clearing EC Hm.

My guild has killed kephess only 2x, we have done EC HM for 5 weeks.

We didnt start sooner on HM because both our main tanks were pre occupied.

 

I only needed chest piece and leg piece which i already got, both our main tanks have all the gear they need.

Now its just a matter of getting mainhands for everyone, but we are all at 80-95% max geared.

 

Black hole gear was a nice way to add good ops gear to the list without a set bonus and before group finder it was 'harder' to farm that gear.

Now i am spending the commendations to gear my companions.

 

Yes, I could go and make an alt or 3 or 4 or 5 - that's what the legacy system has been put in place for, to give people who like to see different storylines and play multiple classes a reward and an incentive. However, that's not my play-style, in every game i've played - i've never liked alts and never will - I like to stick to one character and it's as simple as that. I do however entirely understand players who like these aspects of the game. But please for one minute, before you shoot down the raiders of the game, put the shoe on the other foot....

 

Sadly there really arent any real rewards for players who take the time to level and gear 3+ alts. There are little perks that you can BUY with crazy amounts of credits. thats about it. You dont get anything for reaching legacy level 50 right now. Hell I dont even think theres anything for legacy level 30 right now. I really dont get why it takes them so long to release those little perks. Im not a dev and I dont know how hard the coding is so I cant really comment on that. However they really need to add things that you get for free upon reaching a certain legacy level. Might give players an incentive to roll alts or grind more dailies on a main (cringe)

 

 

It's quite simple - this is the challenge that any MMO faces, you have to be able to provide content to satisfy all of your players to retain players. I'm not saying we don't need the legacy system or an incentive for people to level alts or do non-raid content - I am all for that, if we didn't have content for those players then we lose those players and that's bad for the community. It's all about ensuring there is a balance - the game is an MMORPG and lets not forget what this stand for - 'massively multiplayer online role-playing game'. If it's just played for the story line and re-levelling alts. The game simpley becomes an online-RPG. If it only has raid content and no real quest line or story line, all you have is a MMO game.

 

Many other games have a pretty solid balance between casual content and raiding content. I dont understand why BW cant look at those games and try to learn something from them. Not saying that they should go and start copying them or anything. however this game just isnt even remotely close to being up to par on ANY content right now. PvP is mediocre at best. Very static flashpoint designs that are riddled with bugs. Raid progression is just too short to keep anyone interested for longer than a few months. Again we come back to the issue of them not pushing out content nearly fast enough. I mean we've seen a couple good updates but nothing huge. the majority of those updates were just massively over-hyped legacy upgrades that most people cant even afford

 

There's no need for the non-raiders to tell the raiders to go try some alts (many of the raiders have any way), equally there's no need for the raiders to tell the people who love the levelling content to go play some raids and see how difficult the game is. Both are 2 of the main styles of play in every MMO and both have equal justification. The fact is the developers MUST provide for both audiences and that's why i'm here fighting my corner for what I enjoy and saying we need more raid content and more difficult raid content. Please feel free to add your oppinions in terms of what we need to satisfy the non-raider because this is key to the games development, but there's no need to say the raiders are doing something wrong because they''ve cleared the content and want more.

 

I agree 100%

 

I love raiding and I have 5 level 50s now. I just feel like they could be doing more.

 

Onto my second and final discussion of this post - many have said 'I think the game needs more than new raid content, side-quests e.t.c.'. I fully agree with this - as a raid player - I can't remember the last time I left the fleet, because I really have no incentive to do so. Other than collecting datacrons and dailies - I have no reason to leave (lets remember aswell that dailies and datacrons really don't take that long to get in reality). So after this is done, what do we do?

 

the last thing this game needs right now is more dailies >.< Im really open to anything else at this point lol. The event team needs to stop slacking off and make something happen. SOON.

 

 

Raiders, non-raiders, roleplayers we need to put pressure on Bioware as a collective to release new content for all of us, it may not make a difference but at least we tried. Shooting each others interests down helps noone and the reality is that without all the different play-styles on the game - the game has nothing and becomes boring.

 

Seriously the flaming needs to stop. Im sure the devs dont want to dig through 10 pages of "MY WAY IS BETTER THAN YOURS" to find a decent suggestion.

Edited July 23, 2012 by Fossman

I think they could get away with not needing MORE Ops, if they put more than 4-5 bosses in an Operation. As it is, the top guilds will always be hungry for more content no matter what game they play. However, in this game, if you're going to release Ops that have 4-5 bosses, you need to understand that it's not enough for most guilds if you're going to wait 4+ months between content patches. It's not enough for even casual raiding guilds. However, if an Operation had 8 bosses? You'd be more likely to get away with putting that content out at a 4 month rate.

yes thats all they need right now a new opp for people to pile into and make it lag because they cant figure out how to fix it

yes thats all they need right now a new opp for people to pile into and make it lag because they cant figure out how to fix it

 

That's a whole different other issue we need them to fix. Lets not overwhelm them eh? The lag and bugs is actually playing in their favour in terms of content progression at the moment. There's been a few nights where we could have tkan a bigger chunk out of EC hard mode that lag, an add re-spawn or a boss fight bug has made us all just log off and try again a different day. Unfortunately this is also resulting in a huge loss of players from the frustration. We've had 2 of our 8 man team quit due to the bugs already...

 

However, your right - the lag fix is equally important to them giving us new content. Unfortunately we seem to see neither of those on the horizon.

 

Regards,

Thermal

Elite Gaming

http://www.youtube.com/Thermal8691

yes thats all they need right now a new opp for people to pile into and make it lag because they cant figure out they need to fix it

 

Fixed it for you.

Edited July 25, 2012 by DiLune

Fixed it for you.

 

Good work! In all seriousness though - the lack of communication from Bioware to customers is appalling (what we've come to expect with most MMOs I guess) but if there was simple honest communication of where the dev team are with working on content and implementing fixes - at least there would be something positive for people to look forward to.

 

Unfortunately when we are left in the dark, naturally we will think that nothing is being done to improve the game or fix bugs.

 

I think unfortunately their subscriber base will reflect these issues shortly as much as I hate to say that because SWTOR could be such a great game.

 

Thermal

Elite Gaming

http://www.youtube.com/Thermal8691

As a hardcore raider and also an atlaholic (5 - 50's) I find both aspects of the game great. However, as part of a guild that that cleared HM EC one month ago and now having two grps doing it weekly, (mains & alts) I for one am rdy for some new content. Swtor has seen many issues arise, but this one sticks out the most for myself. All I am asking for is a three month timetable on new ops. That seems reasonable and what I have found to be the case in other MMOs. It's been very hard to maintain raiders in our guild due to this issue that we have gone from a 16 man raid team to an 8 man one. I enjoy multiple aspects of the game, but I would love to see more content for raiders cause that's what keeps ppl coming back, end game. Leveling alts goes only so far imo and if BW wants to right this ship end game, along with intresting side events, is solid place to start. Edited July 26, 2012 by Djhots

As a hardcore raider and ..... as part of a guild that that cleared HM EC one month ago

 

No, you're not a hardcore raider. But yes, this is part of the reason we don't have NiM or a new instance. Yet. Not that people aren't clearing it. It's just what it might show people who think they're hardcore. Not being mean, just honest.

No, you're not a hardcore raider. But yes, this is part of the reason we don't have NiM or a new instance. Yet. Not that people aren't clearing it. It's just what it might show people who think they're hardcore. Not being mean, just honest.

 

I dont think its even possible for a hardcore raiding guild to exist in this game...there just isnt enough content to raid lol. but I guess its really a matter of opinion on how to define "Hardcore"

To start off, Thermal, I love your videos. We liked raiding at first without guides, but now we often find ourselves looking up strategies, not because we are looking for short cuts, but because we have a hard time separating the fight mechanics and bugs. EC is not as bad as Soa (some patches caused that boss to do some serious bugging), but it's close. Your video series does a good job laying out the mechanics (and helps us sort out intended mechanics or bugs) for our raid leaders to explain them to the other members.

 

As a GM, I know how frustrating it is to keep a consistent raid group going and BW is not helping with bug/lag issues. I agree with most of your comments too. I think BW was on the right track with these new tiers of FP/OP content but the layoffs derailed the release progression. And unfortunately the bugs and lag mask the great mechanics in EC. I like raids because when we work together as a team the boss mechanics are fun. But BW, I can't stress how frustrating it is when our DPS are trying to kill bombers in Kephess and we get a few seconds of lag. It's also extremely frustrating having to re-clear trash mobs in EC because I accidentally rez'ed with the rest of the group, leaving no one to save our spot in the instance; or because we got de-populated.

 

Personally, I like both aspects of this game, PvP and PvE. I am a full War Hero geared PvP tank and have Full Rakata/BH tank and DPS PvE gear. I can tell everyone in here, it is not just the raiders who are getting bored. This boredom is felt by everyone. 1.2 should have had: a raid with 5 bosses (not 4) and full SM-HM-NiM modes, RWZ's, group finder (should have been launch), and Legacy Perks. Instead half of these things got pushed. When i first heard about Legacy Perks I assumed it was going to be for our Legacy... not perks for each individual character. If I had known that this "Legacy" system (or even any kind of Legacy system) was going to be the focus of patch 1.2 and 1.3 instead of PvE/PvP content I would have told BW how idiotic that idea was. Sadly, 400k+ subscribers did that for me.

 

If BW wants to save any face, its employee's need to start working serious over time hours. They need to use our 7+ months worth of subscription money and release new content. I mean real new content, not things that they tweaked from beta and sat on so they could call it new content. Real PvP/PvE content (Ilum, WZ, 5-boss OP, FP, week-events) not "Legacy" perks. But as of right now, it seems that they are consolidating their resources and milking their current subscribers for all that they can.

Edited July 26, 2012 by Kil-Gorbane

To start off, Thermal, I love your videos. We liked raiding at first without guides, but now we often find ourselves looking up strategies, not because we are looking for short cuts, but because we have a hard time separating the fight mechanics and bugs. EC is not as bad as Soa (some patches caused that boss to do some serious bugging), but it's close. Your video series does a good job laying out the mechanics (and helps us sort out intended mechanics or bugs) for our raid leaders to explain them to the other members.

 

Thanks very much for the compliment and we're glad it's helped you and your guild mates - it's always great to hear that.

 

I agree with all of your points entirely. The games release should have been at 1.3 essentially rather than making everyone beta the game for a few months. That way, they would of had time to make new content and spend less time on bugs. Unfortunately it appears EAs grasp of Bioware has resulted in a quick release and as soon as the moneys been made back, cutting of staff then making the game as profitable as possible by doing the bare minimum.

 

If the devs don't do something fast - I really think there's going to be another huge drop of subs in the news

 

Thermal

Elite Gaming

http://www.youtube.com/Thermal8691

/signed

Honestly? All BioWare needs to do to retain me as a paying customer once my sub expires in August is COMMUNICATE WITH US.

 

It looks bad when you hide where you're at on upcoming content. It makes people think you're hiding something. BE OPEN AND TRANSPARENT like you claimed you would be. Have someone write up a blog twice a month detailing where the team is at on the road to upcoming content. Tease us with some screenshots. Release a few tidbits to get people salivating.

 

Silence is as good as death in this realm of the gaming universe.

 

This is the answer...it's not always the speed of the release as much as building the correct amount of anticipation...Like good foreplay lol

 

 

this page pretty much sums the major issues.

Edited July 26, 2012 by Fossman

3/4 of these comments are pure laughable. Swtor puts out more major updates than any game I've seen to date. For those wanting pure nightmare raids try the original Everquest. Think of being the number two tank in the number one guild of your server and banging your head on ONE raid for 3-6 months... Think of this raid as being only a tier 2 raid of four tiers. You want hard?? I done it for over 5 years. Yes some expansions w ere borefest we would clear all 13 raids in less than four months due to the fact we could only key 3-4 ppl per tier per week. You want some chit like that go for it. I play a game to have fun I don't need a second job again. So good job bioware. Just fix the bugs.

Ignore the TC. The super hardcore will plow through this stuff and scream for MOAR no matter what. No matter how fast you shovel content out for these types its never enough.

As others said, to be honest it's all about keeping people interested by talking with us. I know they're going through tough times at BW Austin, thanks to EA. Personally I really do blame EA for like 70-80% of the game's shortcomings. It's difficult to blame the community because theyre gonna be there in every game. There's gonna be hardcore peeps, casuals, the in the middle people, the whiners and the fanboys.

 

You can look at certain aspects of the game that have been changed based on feedback from the playerbase (from beta too) and say damn, BW should have just taken charge and led through with some of their ideas instead of trying to please everyone. Attempting to make a more classic style MMO similar to the old WoW without bringing some of the convenience from new-WoW, yet still trying to cater to the casual crowd that bring in the money.

 

But all that aside in terms of raids, we do need more to keep us going, things like acheivements, ones which are a bit more tricky than the speeder ones or just the time trial ones.

I cant comment on TBC WoW era, because allthough I cleared all content with my semi-hardcore guild, we started late hitting SSC when MH was released, always playing catch up. This was kinda great because we had a set ladder and we never ran out on content right until the end, and then WotLK hit.

 

With WoTLK it was a little different. Being semi-hardcore, we cleared everything, but at our own pace. We would kill things, and then we worked on the acheivements which was imo the most fun I had. Working on Sartharion with 3 drakes up and trying to 8man Malygos. Then Ulduar had it's hard alternatives too with acheivements for doing so, and it was fantastic.

 

It was such that we cleared everything. After clearing we hit the acheivements, now usually we were at the kind of pace where as we got all the big acheivments done we only had like 2 weeks before the next raid was released. Dont get me wrong, Im sure there were plenty of hardcore guilds that had to wait much much longer, but we all know they make up a small minority, and they dont always mind waiting a while. But this truly is a long time, not inbetween releases but in between clearing everything and waiting for the next.

 

It's because of the little achievements that I consider WotLK raiding to be more fun that TBC, despite the quality of TBC raids being better. It gives you something to do, to chase after, to enjoy. As they say variety is the spice of life. We dont want to be doing our very dull farm raids. Everyone goes into a sort of robotic mode of just wanting to clear everything asap, just to get it over and done with the for week.

Sure we could spice things up ourselves, but lets be reasonable here. People do things for fun and reward, something as small as filling an acheivement system or earning a title is all we need to add some life into raids.

 

Beyond that, yeah we need to be teased more about the new Ops. It might be a long way away, so maybe they dont want to build excitment too early, but they mention how theyve been working really hard on the new Op, and I get the feeling that and Nightmare EC will be released at the same time.

If so, just show us a bit of this hard work, screenshots, an opening cinematic maybe, heck even just a blog about the story behind it along with some of the ideas flowing and challenges faced when designing the new content.

 

I recently returned to WoW after quitting at the end of WoTLK. Never played Cata, heard I missed out on the best part of it, being the early heroic dungeons and raids. Going there now, where its just 1 8 boss raid on farm for months on end, and the general bad taste people seem to hold, I can truly see SWToR having a very successful raiding scene if given the time to grow.

 

One other thing, slightly offtopic, is how swtor said they might open the door to Addons. I sincerely hope something like Deadly Boss Mods never exists in SWToR. SWToR has plenty of audio and visual cues for all the important mechanics ingame, and it does mke a difference, as opposed to just watching the bars knowing exactly when a boss is about to cast his abilities etc ahead of time, takes some of the fun out of it.

To be honest, I just feel like once you get geared at end-game, that's all there is to it.. there's no tradable drops from end-game that are worth a serious amount. There should be super rare drops that are very valuable so it's not just a case of completing end-game content to gear yourself and then hope for more content to upgrade again.. it feels like there's nothing to do once your geared.

3/4 of these comments are pure laughable. Swtor puts out more major updates than any game I've seen to date. For those wanting pure nightmare raids try the original Everquest. Think of being the number two tank in the number one guild of your server and banging your head on ONE raid for 3-6 months... Think of this raid as being only a tier 2 raid of four tiers. You want hard?? I done it for over 5 years. Yes some expansions w ere borefest we would clear all 13 raids in less than four months due to the fact we could only key 3-4 ppl per tier per week. You want some chit like that go for it. I play a game to have fun I don't need a second job again. So good job bioware. Just fix the bugs.

 

Uh....perhaps you've never heard of Rift. It blows this game, and pretty much every other MMO, out of the water when it comes to massive content updates. This game? 1.1 was basically stuff that was supposed to be out at release outside of, maybe, Kaon. So that means 1.2 was really the first major content release patch. It took 3 more months before we saw another major patch which was just QoL things like Group Finder, Ranked WZs (which were supposed to be cross realm and aren't), and Augment Kits. No new content was added. That means it's been 8 months and there has only been 1 true major content patch. That's Blizzard type speed. Not exactly something to be proud of.

 

I think the video posted above was a very, very accurate view of SWTOR. I'm not asking the game to compete with games that have been around for nearly a decade. However, if you're going to hang your hat on the leveling process, it should have lasted longer. Then, if you're going to be an MMO, you have to put out a little more endgame than what has been released. The biggest problem? Making SM Ops a much more efficient way to gear up as opposed to HM FPs. Outside of HM Black Talon, I never even bothered running any other HMs before stepping into Eternity Vault. Didn't need to. That was an entire block of content made relatively useless.

 

But, back OT, we need new Ops. EC has gotten stale already. If you're going to make people wait 4+ months, push out an Op with more than 4-5 bosses.

3/4 of these comments are pure laughable. Swtor puts out more major updates than any game I've seen to date. For those wanting pure nightmare raids try the original Everquest. Think of being the number two tank in the number one guild of your server and banging your head on ONE raid for 3-6 months... Think of this raid as being only a tier 2 raid of four tiers. You want hard?? I done it for over 5 years. Yes some expansions w ere borefest we would clear all 13 raids in less than four months due to the fact we could only key 3-4 ppl per tier per week. You want some chit like that go for it. I play a game to have fun I don't need a second job again. So good job bioware. Just fix the bugs.

 

I was in Afterlife, so yes I remember all of that. However, that was also the most fun raiding experience I have also ever had. WoW comes a close second.

 

The problem is most guilds that raided NiM EV/KP skipped Story Mode altogether because it was a waste of time. That leaves 4 bosses (less bosses than the previous initial release, and KP integration) on one difficulty mode. This is supposed to fulfill us for 6 months? My alts run HM EC clears.

 

I actually likes the way they did KP initially. 1 boss, then the others a couple of weeks afterwards. They could do the same thing like WoW did with ToC/ICC if I remember correctly. They did a wing at a time to give people stuff to do, then it opened up another wing the week after or couple of weeks after. In the end though it was 8+ bosses. That is content.

3/4 of these comments are pure laughable. Swtor puts out more major updates than any game I've seen to date. For those wanting pure nightmare raids try the original Everquest. Think of being the number two tank in the number one guild of your server and banging your head on ONE raid for 3-6 months... Think of this raid as being only a tier 2 raid of four tiers. You want hard?? I done it for over 5 years. Yes some expansions w ere borefest we would clear all 13 raids in less than four months due to the fact we could only key 3-4 ppl per tier per week. You want some chit like that go for it. I play a game to have fun I don't need a second job again. So good job bioware. Just fix the bugs.

 

TSW have been out for a month and has released 7 new quests (which, if you play TSW, is a big deal; quests are not "go kill monsters")

 

They also have a CLEAR break down of what's coming over the next 6 months, a raid, some instances, more quests, and some features. It's easily more content then SW:TOR put out in it's first 6 months.

 

Rifts puts out new content every month on a given date.

 

COH and STO both do monthly "episodes" where there is a new story and quest line every month to play though. COH's takes about 5 or 6 hours, STO is a little shorter.

 

Basically, you need to play more games. SW:TOR is not the clear winner in the current generation as to content release, it's not even close.

 

More importantly every MMO in the current generation has CLEAR time line and release schedulers and sticks to them. There is pretty much no MMO you could play today that is less then 5 years old other then SW:TOR where you wouldn't know EXACTLY what was coming next and when it was coming.

 

That's the real problem. I know exactly when to expect the first DLC for boarder lands 2, when it will be out, and what's coming after that and the GAME ITSELF HASN'T BEEN RELEASE YET, but I don't know when the MMO I'm paying $15 a month for is going to have anything new for me. That's just ... unforgivable.

 

And they publish a weekend FAQ telling us what ISN'T coming and how we shouldn't be expecting changes or additions we are asking for, which isn't helping.

Edited July 28, 2012 by lexiekaboom

And they publish a weekend FAQ telling us what ISN'T coming and how we shouldn't be expecting changes or additions we are asking for, which isn't helping.

 

To be honest, the FAQ is just a weekly ball washing festival. It doesn't really answer any real questions. It may as well not even exist. Each week it gets smaller and they handpick questions that are relatively unimportant to the overall aspect of the game itself. "Why wasn't this perk included?" Oooo. Mind-blowing material there. It's a joke. Despite the fact that most people can't stand him, at least Ghostcrawler comes out and tells people what's going on and what their plans are. He answers questions that are tough questions not just softballs tossed gently down the middle of the plate.

 

It makes me contemplate why I've defended this game and whether or not it's worth it for me to continue my subscription. I'd rather give my money to Trion. Hell, sometimes I'd rather give my money to Blizzard and I effing HATE what's happened to WoW.