Why Raise the Level Cap Again?

If you don't raise the level cap, the casuals who barely raid will leave. The end.

They are raising the level cap.
Check the Q&A:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=731089

People are assuming its to 60 because the last level cap raise was 5 levels. In reality, they could run up the level cap to 75 for all we know.

Yep. The assumption is because Makeb raised the cap by 5 a year ago and 5 seems to be the new thing to prevent the kind of number inflation being seen over at WoW. I remember when sustaining 5k DPS was seen as some kind of awesome in that game and now it looks like it's over 100k...

IMO with 5 levels it actually makes things easier on developers. They can easily set the experience rewards and amount needed for each new level to meet whatever play time time-frame they are aiming for while only needing to add 5 levels worth of talents and skills (or tweaking new fights to take into account the added skill points to current trees).

I'm sure they have some tried and true formula on how to go about these things but I'd be surprised to see more than 5 levels added in.

No, content is what gives people something to do. Raising the level cap without quite a bit of content to go along with it would be pointless. From 50 to 55 to level up you can do missions/dailies on Ilum, Sec X, BH, Makeb, CZ and Oricon and you can also do a number of HM FPs and you can also do Ops if they're your thing. The issue is quite a lot of that is level 50 so as soon as you go to level 56/57 all of that goes grey and you stop getting any XP from it.

I'm not against raising it in principle, I just think they need to release quite a lot of new stuff for people to do if it's raised. Fingers crossed that is what happens.

You're arguing a silly argument because everyone defines what content is to them differently. What you feel is content isn't the same as what I feel is content.

I feel very comfortable reiterating that the increase in level (and assuming the accompanying planet with story) is something that will keep casuals and STORY people (my second time saying this) playing the game longer.

The game is built on story. Leveling and questing give a sense of accomplishment and people who are of like minds as myself want the story to continue and go some place. Not with flashpoints, not with ops, not with dailies, but with questing.

If you're fine without that, good on ya. But just because you are fine without it doesn't mean everyone should be. Different strokes for different folks.

Now read what I typed please and not what you want to argue.

I actually agree with you to a point but if you're going to quest you need to add quests and things for people to actually do.

So therefore, as I said......

I'm not against raising it in principle, I just think they need to release quite a lot of new stuff for people to do if it's raised. Fingers crossed that is what happens.

Yeah, that's a my bad.

Apologies.

It took me almost 2 months to level from 50 to 55 on one character. I have something called a life and do not sit on my butt all day to get to 55 the quickest. What you speak about are power levelers that race to end game and then come to the forums to whine and complain that there is nothing to do. From your post I gather you are in that particular category.

Fact is that the vast majority of gamers are not power levelers and are quite happy with the speed of progression as it is now and was with Makeb. Of course this is just my objective observation.

you do realize that its been almost a year since RotHC has been released and makeb right? And along with 55 they also redid the end game ops and released new ops that fed the progression guys sufficiently until Oricon came out and gave a whole new meaning to pain....

If you dont' feel like you are progressing and growing, the game becomes stagnant and you leave. If you grow to quickly the concept of a level becomes moot and alot of the content gets skipped. Finding a balance can be difficult but a year between level caps would be reasonable to most people.

This is my thinking as well, with the caution that BW has been generally slow on adding endgame content since launch. And, now, they will have less to pull from that was already worked on or complete before 2012.

In short, raising the cap, unless BW either 1) has a lot of new endgame FPs and Ops ready to go (skeptical on this), or 2) raises some of the older FPs and Ops to the new level cap, isn't the best idea.

For story folks (I am one of them), you don't need a new cap to bring them back, if they left. They'll want to play the new planet and whatever else is released with it anyway. An expansion doesn't necessarily need a level cap increase, though I understand they often go hand in hand.

For SWTOR, because endgame content is generally slow to arrive, increasing the level cap is a tricky balancing act (no pun intended).