Another lost subscription

I am curious if many of these people that complain have ever played MMOs before SWTOR. Every MMO I have ever played has the same end game progression: grind quests or dailies, raid, do other dungeon content.

The only difference I can see is that content in SWTOR gets recycled more and released less often.

some of you have a pretty horrible view of how the world works. in my day to day life, i really don't think everyone is out to get me or take everything they can from me. most people are actually quite kind and helpful. if i get in a relationship where the other person or entity just wants to take everything they can, to be honest those relationships probably don't last that long.

First, let me say this post is going to be very long. If you are just here to post a response like "who cares" or "don't let the door hit you" or "can I have your stuff" the only thing I can say is it sucks to be you. I won't be checking in on this thread so your time is wasted. I am posting this not for you, but for Bioware. They need feedback to know what they are doing wrong and this post is going to be that feedback.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, I've been here since closed beta, sent in numerous bug and feedback reports in game and even posted in both the beta and test forums over the 2 years+ I've been playing your game. I have so far spent my time submitting feedback in game and ignored the forums. However, the below is too long to fit into the feedback for in game and the unsub option. Also, I know many of my petitions for help with bugs have been ignored (closed without response) or deleted completely. Hopefully your team reads the forums better than your in game support does the help requests. While much of the below post outlines what I consider to be the biggest issue making me leave, it is not the only issue. Stale and boring content is one issue. The lack of other meaningful activities is another. The complete lack of anything resembling a customer support team in game is another major factor and there are many other little things that add up. I could ignore the other items (lord knows I have with some of the SOE games out there), if there was content to keep me wanting to log in. I would also note that I play no more than 3 hours a day on weekdays (when I raid) and maybe 4 hours a day on weekends, so I am in no way shape or form a hardcore gamer. I ran out of new content after the 3rd month. The release of Kaon and later Lost Island and operations kept me playing, but there has been no new content that lasts long enough to sustain a fun factor in months. Even playing short periods like my hours I was able to finish the storyline of Makeb in a weekend on both factions. When a casual gamer can run out of content for a new expansion in under a month, you have a problem. So now I move on to the original post.

I would like to first tell Bioware that I am not the only subscription you are losing today. My entire guild's command structure and half it's membership (over 30 accounts) will be letting their subscriptions expire over the next few months. Some are leaving to go to other games. Others are leaving MMOs entirely because this game was their last best hope for the genre. I can't fault them. I'm nearly at that point myself. But let me go ahead and get into the meat of this post.

The "Must log in" factor:

I and many of my guildmates are no longer feeling like this game has a pull on us. The people in the guild still have a pull on me (and I believe that has been the case for the others who are leaving), but the game itself is stale and boring. When I have free time I can't bring myself to log in when all there is to do is run one of the 5 or 6 level 55 HMs (that I have run tons of times) or play the GTN (which is loaded with people that don't understand basic economic principles like selling an item for more than it costs to make the item) or go pick up datacrons (that I have done already) or run daily quests (that I have done too many times for my liking). There really isn't much to do when you get down to it. Most of the time if I log in on a non-raid night I sit around the fleet chatting in guild chat or in tells or on vent until I can't stomach the game any longer and when it is a raid night, I can barely make it through the raid without getting bored. Our guild takes frequent breaks to break up the monotony of doing the same raid again that we have done 50 times before.

Lack of content:

There is so little to do in this 1.5 year old game. It is quite sad. Bioware, you have had a great opportunity in this game, but you dropped most of the content development team and focused on the cartel market. Maybe that has not been your decision. Maybe that is EA. But the fact remains that it is 1.5 years after release and we have 3 new operations, a planet you can finish in 4 hours, a couple new daily quest hubs and 2 new flashpoints. At some point running the same content over and over becomes more than repetitive. It becomes a slap in the face. The entire game design for this MMO is to keep doing the same thing over and over again then do it again when a new difficulty is released. That is fine as a side objective, but not as your major content.

Repetitive nature of game design:

When your main way to make the end game last longer for players is to screw up itemization on all gear tiers so badly that everyone has to grind 6-7 chest pieces to fill out the correct mods and enhancements for an optimized gear set, your game development strategy is a failure. No, a tank does not need alacrity. No, defense is not a stat for sniper! Everything else you have given us beyond the content I listed above has been additional difficulty levels for already existing content (HM FPs or HM and Nightmare Mode operations). I'm sorry, but that is a waste and it is lazy. There is no draw for me as a player to run the same zone 90 times to optimize my gear set and my guild's gear sets only to have to turn around and do the same thing again with the same content on a new difficulty for the next tier of gear when you deem it is time to release another difficulty level. If I wanted that, I would be playing Diablo II or III. It is the same exact game design with no subscription fee.

Lack of draw to existing content:

I play MMOs for the ever expanding content and the shear amount of things that are worth my time to do. EQ and EQ2 for example had huge amounts of stuff to do at max level. Dungeons, raids, collection quests, crafting that mattered, guild halls, personal housing, heritage quests, epic quests, loot to farm, alternate advancement points to gain experience for, and more. The list goes on and on and on before you even touch PVP. If you were max level and didn't want to do any of that, you could always go back and mentor (lower your level) and do the zones that you hadn't done when you were lower level, because unlike SWTOR there were more zones and more quests to do per level range than required to actually level. In SWTOR, when you hit 50 you have completed at least 75% of the quests because you need to do them to level (unless you level through PVP or space missions that are repetitive as well). In EQ2 you had barely scratched the surface at about 20% of the available quests when you maxed out your level.

Game updates and what they should be for:

Every 6 months these games released more content via patches and their games are still receiving expansions even 14 years later (in the case of EQ1) with content expanding faster than you can clear the existing content. This content is created because subscriptions get paid and the subscriptions get paid because there is so much to do. The development teams on these games understand that content (not cash shops) are what drive subscription renewals. SWTOR has failed in that regard. Bioware, you have made the cash shop your priority for development time. So much so that every patch has nearly as many (and sometimes more) cartel notes than fixes. I don't need to tell the player base these things. They have all seen it and you have read more than your fair share of threads about the fact that subscribers feel like the game is not for them.

Why we pay subscriptions:

No one pays a subscription just so they can pay additional money for stuff on a cash shop. Before the expansion hit, subscriptions had dropped off dramatically. People were not logging in. For the first couple weeks after the expansion populations jumped dramatically. This should tell you something. Subscriptions get paid when new content is released. When the content was cleared and people had nothing new to do, they stopped logging in again. The population levels are dropping again and the expansion is only a few months old. At some point there needs to be content updates. New missions that are worth our time to do. No, rep grinding is not new content. No, achievements are not new content. It is enforcing the paradigm of doing the same damn thing over and over and over. Sorry, but even a hamster gets tired of the wheel after a while and steps the heck off.

What does Bioware want this game to be?

If you want this game to be catered to Free-to-play, you are succeeding. In a year or two the majority of players will be free-to-play (if it isn't that way already) because there isn't anything that warrants paying the subscription. Is this a bad thing? I don't know. I just know that it will not sustain the game in the end. Every game that has gone free-to-play from subscription based has failed. Maybe SWTOR will be different. Maybe. I had high hopes for the expansion as did the leadership in my guild. We hoped that you would give us enough content in an expansion to make the game last a year until the next expansion and give us a bigger pool of subscribers to recruit from, but you didn't. You gave us 4 hours of leveling and a new operation that could be cleared on both difficulties in the first week. The Star Wars franchise couldn't save SWG and I don't think it will save SWTOR in the end.

That's a wrap:

Anyway, that's my 2 cents. I'll probably give FFXIV a try again (since I already own the game and they are revamping it with a more player friendly experience) and if that doesn't work out I'll probably drop back to EQ2 if I decide to still play MMOs. I'm thinking that MMOs might be a dying genre since there are none being released anymore that understand that content and community is what makes the game worth playing. Anyway, before I get into another soap box speech...

Thanks for at least a short distraction. I did have fun with your game. It just didn't last very long.

Cue the obligatory troll responses and grammar attacks.

Enjoy your blissful ignorance.

/walloftext didnt read it and I dont care.

actual experience and observation from real-life encounters is different from ignorance. semantics.

just because bioware is evil doesn't mean everyone is and it doesn't mean every corporation is. sure, there are a lot of evil corporations. monsanto, all of the big banks, enron (who is now defunct). we should elect better leaders to establish a decent SEC and DoJ, but there are still good people and good companies out there that live their life and still make reasonable profits without hurting or manipulating or scamming others. it really does happen in real life sometimes.

/walloftext didnt read it and I dont care.