I really like the game - but why I don't want to come back

Many of you pro-grinders are missing the point. There's nothing fun about killing the same brainless robot AI 50 million times in a row. You may as well be pulling a lever in a factory, or playing a slot machine. Sure, people with OCD, and people who are addicted to gambling (both rather large populations admittedly) love mindless repetetive tasks... but those people don't stick around to generate communities, they're not social leaders, they don't form cohesive guilds, they don't work well in teams with others, they don't get involved in player politics. In short, they're as robotic as the AI-lemmings they like to spend hundreds upon hundreds of hours smashing. Regardless of how many of those there are, they are followers and will leave as soon as the next big MMO release comes along.

The people who invest themselves emotionally, and therefore have reason to form communities and hire hundreds of "grinders" to bring them crafting materials and craftable goods, the people who lead and build communities... there only needs to be one or two for every 200-500 grinders in order to develop large healthy player-based community activities, like guild rivalries and organized PvP teams and large role-playing troupes. The numbers game played by the marketing teams of nearly every MMO company out there seems to forget... the company only needs one CEO.

If you don't give the CEOs a reason to be around, they leave. Without those people, the grinders slowly drain away to other greener farming pastures where they have a purpose, or where their buddies from the mega-guilds (there are thousands of guilds now that travel from MMO to MMO like locusts because most game developers have still not recognized these "axon/dendrite" relationships in their consumer base) tell them to go this season to grind for their PvP tournament core group.

Instead, MMO marketing teams are enslaved to the investment banker's unreasonable reliance upon meaningless statistics that don't take the genuine reasons for success into account from previous games. To them it's arcane and seemingly random because they tend to believe the game companies are somehow responsible for the behavior of player communities. They're wrong, and they've been wrong for over a decade now, and there's twenty or thirty dead MMOs in their wake. They still have not learned what they're doing wrong, so every development team tries to do the same shot-in-the-dark guess at how SWG got so popular so quickly, versus why WoW got so popular for such a long time.

Some companies have tried relying heavily on player feedback, not realizing that the players themselves are 'trained' to say certain things by MMOs with long term success, without actually knowing what those words entail.

1.) More end-game content!
2.) More itemized incentives!
3.) Raise the level-cap!
4.) More set-bonuses!
5.) Wider variety of elite gear!
6.) More open-world PvP!

Those are the "big six" forum-based demands that invariably result in MMO deaths. Here's what those things ACTUALLY mean.

1.) I spent two months grinding in the HOPE that there was a point where I'd reach an ultimate goal, but there's nothing left to do and now I'm confused and disappointed that everything is so repetitive and linear. I'm not very good at PvP, and I'm scared of doing things I'm not good at already. I'm not social enough to join a large group of other people, and there's nobody knocking down my door to hire me to become part of such a group because there's no community-based incentives to doing so that give me a sense of social gratification.

2.) I've been trained by other MMOs to believe that gear is everything, and skill doesn't matter. I'm not very good at things that require skill and I'm a slow learner. I want to feel a sense of superiority and be able to gloat about my awesomeness, which could easily be accomplished by giving me difficult to obtain vanity prizes, but vanity prizes are not enough to give me a sense of community dominance that I'm looking for because there are very few places for me to show off my uber-leet vanity stuff, and any vanity stuff that does get added is soon owned by absolutely everyone.

3.) I have been trained to feel that level makes me superior to others, and proves that I have worth. Now that I'm done leveling I've lost that sense of value and hope for community dominance. I want that feeling back, and I think being higher level will give it to me because I'm afraid of PvP. I don't know whether I'm good at PvP or not, I just know that in my previous PvP experiences people beat me and then rubbed my face in it and I don't like feeling inferior so I'd rather not do PvP anymore because losing makes me feel bad about myself.

4.) I am good at PvP logistics, but not particularly skilled at winning and filling my favorite roles, so in order to give myself a sense of value and community adoration I like to be wearing big expensive gear with lots of cool bells and whistles so I can feel wanted and give people the impression that I know what I'm doing, which may or may not be the case. I'm stifled by the lack of variety within the role-specialization structure and I want more ways to expand and redefine my skill sets in new directions.

5.) I am genuinely good at PvP, but I primarily do group raid dungeons with a few people that I spend a lot of time with. We've run out of raid content to exploit but we're so cliqued up that we've achieved an effective lock-out for any new people into our little club. We feel that the ease with which we obtained every possible combination of items in the game should be a universally understood mark of superiority, but we don't realize that our leader's superior logistical talents and our core group's cohesiveness is such a major advantage because we don't do a lot of organized PvP, largely due to the fact that there's very little incentive to do so. We're master craftsmen in every crafting profession, we have groups of grinders bringing us rare loot drops so we can make the mbest most elite gear in the game, but we are still not competitive enough to dominate the better organized gold farmers in the mindlessly repetitive arenas.

6.) I'm in a group that's awesome at PvP, we practice every day together in spite of the obvious failings of the PvP system, but we're bored of just climbing in valor ranks for no apparent reason and we want to have a wider community base from which to recruit smart motivated skilled players. In our previous MMO experience, open world PvP that puts our guild's name on something and proves we're the people to call when there's gankfests in the world has brought us the people we look for in our long term cohesive community that's been around for three to fifteen years in spite of the tumultuous MMO market's nonstop failings. We want open-world objectives to fight about, faction buff points in persistent world locations to occupy and defend, and we want to see people shouting our guild's name in general chat to help us find the enemy and be the proud defenders of other smaller and less organized factions over which we feel superior.

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SWG provided exactly what the community really wanted, get ahold of the SWG developers from before the Sony-stupidity "Combat Upgrade" and ask them the specifics of what they did. They were geniuses. There is still not a game on the market that provides the personal validation that made SWG so far ahead of its time, and arguably the best MMO that was ever on the market. It failed not because of poor development or poor implementation... but because of a terrible management decision in the FINANCE department that drove away 9 million players over night. Even WoW's success doesn't hold a candle to pre-CU SWG's market dominance. That's the game everyone wants to play, most people simply don't realize the exact nature of their own desires, or weren't gamers yet during pre-CU SWG's heyday. In 18 months, pre-CU SWG did what WoW took 7 years to accomplish statistically. WoW's success is primarily a result of a vast advertising budget combined with the timing of being the most community-oriented MMO on the market at a time when meatspace social activity became more expensive and less socially acceptable than the MMO environment. WoW is a fluke, pre-CU SWG was not.

Thank you for your thoughtful reflection about this, in advance.

Just read this @ http://www.swtorhub.com/pax-east-201...w-james-ohlen:

James Ohlen: Our strategies are based on how our fans react.
Ten Ton Hammer: The ability to choose your own warzone has been one of the most requested features since day one, if that’s going to be a feature at some point, what will it take to facilitate that? Is there any support for population balance?
James Ohlen: We felt that warzones popping was more important than players being able to customize their experience.

What does that tell you? Your fans are reacting by constantly asking for something... You decide that you don't want to implement the feature.

Feeling that various gameplay mechanics are more important than players being able to customise their experience is another reason I don't want to return anytime soon... This kind of arrogance offends me. Like I wouldn't be able to work out how to queue for a warzone without some kind of assistance. That's offensive.

Yes and no.

MMO may be more difficult to balance but lets say that its a different type of game. Grind its a must both in PvE and PvP no matter what. Even Guild Wars had some grind untill you got all the elites you needed (those who played it will understand what i'm talking about)
The difference between PvE and PvP is that PvE has a defined endgame and PvP hasn't; the goal of PvPing is not getting the best possible gear but to play the best you can while beating other players.
In PvP getting the best gear is just the beggining.

PvE can always be added to the game but a good PvP structure has to be designed from the beggining. SWTOR's PvP is not good enough and that's why people will flee to GW2 or some other game.
The recent events like the ilum death or not introducing ranked WZs this patch showed us that bioware definitely has given up with PvP.
Its a shame 'cause when i first heared about bioware taking so much things from warhammer i thought this could be a really awsome PvP game.

Couldnt agree more. And sadly I dont see anyway they can fix this. In hindsight they should of made 4-5 planets with lots of different zones on each. Including zones which had mixed questing hubs. Then you could level entirely on 1 planet. They could of still had the class quest but it wouldnt of made you do it,

This is what happen when people constantly complain about credits being useless and also not having anything to do. They create credit/time sinks.

Funny thing? If they'd have given all the perks away based off legacy level alone, people would be on the board right now complaining that they already have everything unlocked and are bored again.

Bioware truly can't win.

I agree.

To some extent, that is their own making. Yes, consumers can be very fickle and difficult to please in so many ways, but BW is making some fundamental errors in their first MMO that is creating this give and take of like and dislike all at the same time. When people complain about having too many credits, I don't think they were thinking about having to use it all on Legacy items that they don't even think are all that great. BW is fixing one problem with a poor solution. That's why they can't win right now.

Guess what happens if you mount up and ride into the Sunset in WoW? It might take a couple more minutes but the result will be the same.

You mean like pvp, level another character, craft, rp with friends, run 8 and 16 man ops, find hidden easter eggs (yes there are a couple,) participate in the current world event, or just hang out with friends...

Can't argue these are great ideas. Good thing this game isn't even 5 months old and has plenty of time to add some of this later.

We didn't. A person in a thread about mmo burn out did.

Couldn't disagree more. Many people are enjoying the new legacy system very much. I am sorry you don't but don't spout opinion as fact. It's not.

I don't get all of these people claiming the game didn't live up to expectations. How does one make this statement when every single mechanic, every single system was known about well in advance of release and has been picked apart and raked over the coals on the forums since release.

How does one not know what to expect? How does one form the wrong expectations? Do you assume that the game will magically change during the install process?

Have you logged on and participated in the world event? Have you killed the new boss? You know the one that spawns in the pvp area of Tatooine? You know the one that is causing world pvp to break out on most servers?

FYI, some people hate this. I personally like world pvp as long as it is designated to it's own area (people roll on pve servers for a reason) but there is a large chunk of the player base that would be happy to never see an ounce of pvp.

In a situation such as this, how do you make all players happy? They took a positive step forward in this regard with the world event. Give credit where credit is due and don't claim there is Zero world pvp because there is.

You took a long time to attack a poster who expressed an interest in a different playstyle than you. Your problem seems to be that you assume everybody thinks like you and you are wrong.

You said it yourself, not everybody has the same motivation. You say people want options and they don't want to do dailies. I've been playing since mid-beta and I DON'T do dailies. I hate them. Always have. Refuse to participate in them. I log on daily and still find plenty of things to occupy my time. I am not everybody and don't think so much of myself as to assume I am. Believe it or not, lots of people do, thoroughly enjoy dailies.

Having read all of your posts in this thread one concludes two things.

You wish TOR was WoW...It's not.

and

You canceled your sub, something you point out, multiple times and even felt so strongly about it that you made it your signature on a forum of a game you don't even like enough to play but care enough about to post non-constructively (daily quests suck/why no world pvp is not constructive, it's redundant, use the search feature) and copiously upon.

Let us hope Bioware can survive without that 15 dollars per month. I hope you find joy and happiness in the next magical MMO. Good luck finding one with your pet features and presents no grind, no dailies, open world free for all pvp...oh wait, there's already a game like that, it's called Eve Online and has about 300k subscribers.

The key word in that sentence is "vanity," as in, it's totally fluff and not necessary to get unless you want to. It baffles me that you would state that you enjoy playing the game, but have decided to quit over a mechanic that every MMO has that is 100% an optional play style.


TLDR: Don't like grindy things? Don't do grindy things. Problem solved.

Or perks could be granted from quests unlocked via the legacy system.

Something to do and a reason to do it without it becoming a resource sink.