SWTOR: Lacking in appeal for the casual gamer?

And here I thought that this was a game for casuals and the hardcore players were the ones to leave.
My whole guild full of hardcore players was gone, and then we got some more hardcore players, few weeks later - also gone.

All I see sticking to the game are casuals.

This is correct.

Take the Legacy system which in its current form has plenty of casual perks and very few hardcore perks. The problem with it is the monetary costs, asking a casual player to dedicate his entire playing to doing dailies for 2 weeks just to unlock that race he wants is crazy.

Casual base loves flashpoints, WoW proved this. However, without an LFD tool casuals are forced to make their own groups which cuts into playing time and they are unable to finish the FP.

In a nutshell,

Designed for casuals, implemented for hardcores

In that article, EA is using "casual" to mean something different than most of you. They just meant people who tried the game for a bit then stopped.

It's not referring to the false "hardcore" vs. "casual" dichotomy you alll think it is, where anyone who doesn't raid is a "casual'. I log on for a couple hours a few nights a week, level up slowly, occasionally PvP. By forum standards I am a "casual". But the fact that I logon almost every night means I don't fit in the definition of "casual" that article is referring too.

Something like this. They meant players who casually purchased the game, tried it, and found it wasn't for them. Not the die hard SW fans who bought it day one(or early on). It's just regular type gamers who also picked it up and found they didn't like it. Has nothing to do with playstyle or even mindset. Just like an avid MMOer can casually pick up a title from the FPS or racing genre, play it a while, figure out they don't like it, and put it down. As soon as I saw the quote I knew folks wouldn't understand it and try to take it at face value.

Who knows what they mean by 'Casual'. You ask any number of gamers and you could get any number of answers.

Point is they are hemoraging players. Hard to tell if actual or potential subscriptions are falling.

I do know a lot of people unsubscribed after 1.2 due to changes in their favorite characters.

Rather than get into the Casual vs. Hardcore arguments, there are a number of things this game needs to fix.

Appeal: this game needs to appeal to more people than min-max players, and people who like to run around in WZ's and do Raid content at the end game. It needs to appeal to more than collectors who will grind and grind to get limited items.

This game has some features for Achiever and Killer types, but it's weak on features for Socializer and Explorer types. There's really very little to encourage people to play together other than the endgame raid content and PvP zones.

The strength of MMO's is community. People play together for a long time because they 1) make friends playing a game and 2) because there's fun things to do with their friends. This game has very little in the way of tools to build community. In that sense it was badly designed. A duo can master most of the story content. More than that and you're pretty much overpowering any of the spawns. You can only squeeze so much out of solo play and solo play doesn't encourage people to stay after the non-repeatable content is gone. This game may be too solo friendly (as in encouraging people to play alone too much).

The problem with the current spawns is that they're not dynamic. I.e. the spawns do not read the number and level of players in the vicinity and adjust themselves accordingly.

The problem with 4 man maximum groups for most conent is that it dosn't really encourage teaming; especially with companions. If it's just you and a friend why would you need anybody else.

I think the basic design of the game, while OK up through lvl 50, doesn't have enough going for it in the end game. Of course most current games don't either.

On the Mechanix of the game:

1. I'm not in love with the skill trees. They're geared to people who like to work out all the subtle tricks on how to optimize their characters. In that sense they're overly complicated for people who are not min-maxers. That's not friendly to nubie MMO players. A non-mmo player looks at those charts and is asked to make a decision about their character which they can't change--don't tell me that a nubie isn't intimidated by that.

2. Crafting is not particularly friendly as you get toward the upper levels. Missions that take 35+ minutes for your companion to complete slow things down a lot. That's not friendly to people who have limtied time to play or shorter attention spans.

3. Information about the game is not readily accessable to inexperienced players. There are many need to know aspects of the game the developers have been completely silent about on their site. Even WOW had skill trees on their main site for all the classes and archtypes. SWTOR doesn't , and it's not always easy to find the information you want or need, and I've played a number of MMO's.

4. I think the designers went too far in micro managing the classes to ensure they were 'different' enough. It actually stiffled customizing characters. Smugglers and Troopers should have been able to use any pistol, dual pistols, shotgun, carbine, rifle, or sniper rifle. Same for Imperial Agents & Bounty Hunters. All of them should have been able to use a melee weapon as well as a ranged one.

Lightsaber users should have been able to use any configuration of ligth saber they wished: single, dual, or double bladed. Each configuration should have been a 'form'. Let folks pick their form at level 10...and that gives them one of their trees. The other trees should have been defense, force, healing and let people pick from those. Jedi don't have enough common powers. Consulars and Knights should have had some common lightsaber moves and force powers; then added differentiation at advanced levels. The difference between a consular and a knight should be that the consular has more advanced force skills than the knight and the knight has more advanced fencing skills. Goes the same for Inqusitor and Sith Warior.

5. The ecconomy is broken, and superfuous from a crafting standpoint.

6. The arcade space game is very limited in entertainment value. There should have been 3D flyable ships with open space around planets in which there could be ship to ship combat off the rails.

7. Crafters should have had the option of changing the colors on clothing and armor... and there should have been somewhere to change appearance in game in case you got tired of looking at the same hair and /or mask.

8. There should have been more social activietes and locations in the game as has been mentioned.

9. There should have been sandbox areas in the game outside the class story arcs with random repeatable missions.

Oh well, there's a ton of stuff that should have been done that wasn't . We'll see what the future holds.

This article seems to be just another round of rubbish spouted by EA Executives to minimize their gross mismanagement of TOR in an attempt to save their jobs. Unfortunately, it does not help those 1000+ EA employees who lost their jobs do to their executives incompetence

4. I think the designers went too far in micro managing the classes to ensure they were 'different' enough. It actually stiffled customizing characters. Smugglers and Troopers should have been able to use any pistol, dual pistols, shotgun, carbine, rifle, or sniper rifle. Same for Imperial Agents & Bounty Hunters. All of them should have been able to use a melee weapon as well as a ranged one.

Lightsaber users should have been able to use any configuration of ligth saber they wished: single, dual, or double bladed. Each configuration should have been a 'form'. Let folks pick their form at level 10...and that gives them one of their trees. The other trees should have been defense, force, healing and let people pick from those. Jedi don't have enough common powers. Consulars and Knights should have had some common lightsaber moves and force powers; then added differentiation at advanced levels. The difference between a consular and a knight should be that the consular has more advanced force skills than the knight and the knight has more advanced fencing skills. Goes the same for Inqusitor and Sith Warior.

It also goes to show that EA/BW doesn't understand the "language" of the players of the product that they produce.

They also don't understand:

- Testing
- QA
- Customer Relations
-Custermer Service.