SWTOR: Lacking in appeal for the casual gamer?

The lack of good endgame is what killed it for my guild. and the pvp is bleh at best :\

Imo, this game appeals almost exclusively to casual players.

"Hardcores" don't play this game. If they do, they're idiots (not that they aren't anyway... games are supposed to fun, not something that defines you as a person).

The "hardcore" games are that way → (Mortal Online... DIE DIE DIE!)

I think you guys are confusing the term 'casual' used in the conference call with how we, the player population, use the term.

They were simply referring to people who canceled after their first month as casual. It makes no assumptions about their in game activities.

For all we know, it could have been 'hardcore' players who cancelled, unhappy with the game itself.

In WOW you can log in and do a raid on your lunch break. You can do up to 4 dungeons.

Guid Wars you can log in and have a max level character in a few seconds... do a few battles on your lunch, and log out.

These are the games we compare SWTOR, and you are saying SWTOR is more casual? How so? This past weekend I ran the Esseles. It took an hour. I wanted to do a quick run before work. I was almost late.

@OP

Define Casual please.. There are several MMO definitions of a casual player and of any of them the only one I would agree with is :

A player who logs in and plays approximately 5 hours a week or less.

Because other people have definitions of casual as meaning if you are not on the cutting edge of progression you are a casual. Others will state that if you play as many hours in a week as I do that you are hard core. (FYI I play 2 to 3 hours a night and 4 to 8 hours a day on the weekends).. Also I do raid but have not done nightmare content.

So define casual in the context of that article and your question.

My feelings are that some casual gamers probably get a very "non-casual" feeling from the game, due to some of the design choices that have been made.

For example:

1. Costs: This is a big one. There is massive cost attached to EVERYTHING, which gives the game the feeling of being a grinder. Think about the costs associated with:

• Training
• Speeders / Speeder Training
• Crafting Training
• Repairs
• Mod Removal on Orange Armor
• Inventory / Bank Slot Increase
• Legacy Unlocks

You start adding up those costs for someone who isn't out farming crafting materials for the GTN, or farming credits and trash loot to sell, and pretty quickly, it becomes more of a chore to enjoy this game than it needs to be. In several of these instances, other games give these sorts of perks and transactions to players for free. For a casual player that only plays 1-2 hours a day, or maybe 5-8 hours in a week, the costs associated with basic gameplay function can severely damper character progress, or at the least, the fun you have while trying to progress.

2. Solo-Leveling: While Levels 1-25 can be solo'd pretty easily, as you get past Chapter 1, the difficulty of leveling increases substantially. Silver mobs start hitting like Mack trucks, and Golds start hitting like the Incredible Hulk. For a casual player, that may not have a complete grasp on their character's optimal operation, this can make leveling a frustrating task in short order, that even gear can't overcome. I play a Jedi Guardian (DPS Spec) as my main, and in general I am about 1-3 levels over the mobs I am fighting currently. Yet, if I don't have my pocket healer out, those mobs will rip me apart. How is it any fun to get torn apart as a Level 41, by mobs that are Level 38?

3. Flashpoint / Group content access: As of right now, this is very "casual unfriendly" because of the lack of an LFG tool, and thereby necessitates that a person be in a guild in order to do this content, especially on low-pop servers. I am fully aware that Bioware has plans for the LFG tool, but that isn't the point. Right now, in the current Live client, there is no LFG tool, and this is a major hinderance to casual players.

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Considering these 3 topics, I can totally believe that casuals would not hesitate to leave this game.

Casual Games: Games that allow you to do meaningful PVE and PVP content on your lunch break.

The main appeal of this game is to the casual... The problem is there isn't much you can do to develop your character past 50 as a casual without becoming a non-casual.

The thing is; Casuals dont wan't to play this game, and Hardcores don't want to play this game.

So who is left?

Roleplayers.

Which explains why the RP servers have the healthiest populations of them all.

Lacks appeal to casuals? it also lacks appeal to "hardcore" players.

the lack of appeal is caused by the fact that its designed like a single player game with large speed bumps in a attempt to expand on its linear gameplay. This is not something that can be fixed at this point of development as it would require a complete rebuild from the ground up.