Hi,

A while ago I got a feedback request survey from Bioware and in the end it asked me what I would see where improvements were necessary. Unfortunately that box had a 300 character limit. Yes, I realize the irony of that and the hubris which must have lead them to believe nobody could potentially have a suggestion on how to improve the game which would require more than 2 sentences.

When it told me that I had posted to many characters, I of course was a bit upset about it, having typed up a rather lengthy post of where I believe the game could be improved. Since then i've watched 2 dev streams in which they kept asking for Feedback, and I kept thinking to myself yeah, as if”.

But ultimately I realize that I can't expect them to understand my opinions of their changes if I never bother to write them down. I am not active on the Forums, because.. well its a Bioware game. And ever since EA bought Bioware, I haven't felt like they are listening to anything their players have to say anyway. And so today I am starting on a pointless endeavor. I am going to write my feedback again, and in more detail this time. It will probably remain unread and unanswered by anyone of importance, but at least I will have the peace of mind, that when I am finally moving on, that I at least have given my feedback and that it wasn't my fault. This entire post is an exercise in self centered egoism on my end.

Who am I and what is my experience with SWTOR?

I've been with SWTOR since its Beta. I played my Jedi Shadow in the beta to quite a high level, ground through the slog that was the game back then, an decided to cancel my preorder of the game as result of it. To much grind, to many time sinks. Huge areas, lots of pointless back tracking and an awful grind.

I returned when the game went Free to Play. Played as Subscriber, to max level, and remained around until Raise of the Hutt Cartel and Galactic Starfighter came out, at which point I lost interest in the game again. It was just one big grindfest, but it was Star Wars.

Early last year, inspired by the StarWars movie, my wife suddenly wanted to play the game, so I returned with her. We are both subscribers...

Treatment of Customers, past, previous and future

I am appalled by the way EA keeps treating their customers. I mean, even back when it went Free to Play I never felt like this game should ever be played without being a subscriber, but that was right at release and I somehow thought that they might soften a bit on their stance as the time progresses. I know, silly me.

I was around for when the Cartel Market and its packs were first introduced and I think its appalling to see a company selling what amounts to lottery tickets to young children, that undoubtedly play this game, and hear Developers seriously defending what is “Baby's first Gambling racket” as something the customer base wants. And no, I do not expect any official to read past this point, if they even made it this far, and weren't discouraged by the wall of text in the first place. Remember, dear reader, this is an exercise of egoism and in entitlement.

Besides, why should I be less egoistic than EA? I understand the desire to make money. Seriously I do, and at least I get to buy things off the GTN, but at the same time I couldn't stand to play this game without being a subscriber either. Especially now with 5.0 where everyone that isn't subscribed is further locked out of features of the game.

And then of course there are subscriber rewards like the HK-55 bonus chapter. I was subscribed the entire time, except for a single day. But because I was one day late, I am not eligible for the HK-55 bonus chapter. Tough luck, thanks for playing, you weren't subscribed for a single day in those 6 months, so really... screw you. That really made me feel appreciated, when I sat there and wondered why my wife had access to the HK Bonus chapter and not me. So thanks, glad you valued my contribution to this game.

But the reason I am actually upset and insulted by EA Bioware is the fact that your customer support is only available to me while I am a subscriber. A few months ago, you sent me an email about subscriber rewards being 30 days of free subscription, which I thought went quite nice with the fact that I was just about to renew my subscription anyway. But of course that never happened. So I contacted the support via the ingame mail. And the nice person was like “Yeah, urm, here is a phone number, please call them”. So not only do I only get customer support when I am subscribed, but also that support is only there to tell me I should call another phone number so you can charge me extra for calling that phone number? Thank you, that really made me feel like my subscription meant so much, j/k. I would have understood it anyone could use the email support and the phone number existed for everyone, and everyone thus has to pay. Why do I have to take time out of my work day to try to somehow fit in that call with your business hours? You could have just as well answered me in my support ticket. But hey, what the hell, I am just a subscriber, right?

Your subscribers are treated like scrubs that need to be thankful to you. You make money off of people with lottery tickets... and Preferred Players are already 2nd class citizens. There is nothing Preferred about Preferred Players. You still restrict large portions of the game from people that spend money on this game. And pure free to play players? Forget about those!

But anyway.. 5.0 and the way forward (suggestions)

Man, if I ever felt like you give a damn about your players, then it was with the introduction of 5.0. A feature once again only available to subscribers.. and which rewards are quite literally scrap. What the hell is the nonsense about you waffeling on about “play the game how you want to play it”.

I still can't play the damn outlander story with my wife. A good one third where we can't play together, because we can't be in the same instance together. Playing through the Outlander Storyline was done for us via sharing a dot on the minimap to see where the other one is.

Seriously.. ***! But hey.. we can replay it now with each other, right?! That is still several hours of needing to play without her. Its not how we pictured playing together... you know in an MMO.

And Command Ranks.. what the heck. I get 2 command points for a gold enemy, 20 for a quest. That is not playing how I want it .. that is being punished for not playing how you think I should play it... with 16 idiots in a Raid, running heroics or PVP... Is it to much to want to play the meat of the game?

It is sad that the meat of the game, the fun part, actually is still the old stuff. Which is filled with broken quests, by the way. And even the old stuff, the number of times I cannot spectate cutscenes of my wife, or my wife cannot spectate cutscenes of mine is hilarious.

Given that at one point you tried to sell us this game as an MMO in which you would get the full story by playing with your friends and experience their story, you sure as hell go to lengths to make playing together through the only piece that your game does well, its story, is a pain and punished.

And even when I play how I want it... and once every 3-4 hours, getting the pittance of command points, I get a level up... and my reward is some RNG crap. Quite literally scrap in some cases.

You screwed up crafting, an activity I enjoyed. You continuously removed gear vendors from the game. My old Smuggler still has weapons that cannot be bought in the game anymore. I quite loved that weapon model. You rather introduce ugly Market Place weapons instead of at least bringing the weapon models back that you have removed and now largely only exist as green items anymore.

Your outfit designer doesn't even include an option for weapons, so I can use whatever weapon model I want. But at the same time you expect me to loot and pick up the ugly crap. Or worse, in the Story force me to use some ugly weapon to beat on Arcan. Funnily enough that very same weapon seems useless in the rest of the story.

When I read about the Skill rebalance, I though “oh, they might fix the Lightsaber combat!” but no.. the lightsaber combat is still as boring as ever. A Star Wars game in which the Lightsaber combat feels floaty and like you are hitting people with flashlights. What is it about your non lightsaber classes feeling most satisfying to play? Their weapons are at least viscerally interesting to play.

And while we are on the subject of satisfying to play. If you make me fight through hordes of henchmen, I would prefer if every class could dispatch them as satisfying as the Gunslinger and Sniper. I am not talking about PvP, I am talking about mopping up trash mobs. The stuff you littered the game with. With my Jedi/Sith characters I find the non light saber attacks the most satisfying to use, because they actually do damage, while the light saber.. you know the weapon that is supposed to cut through bulwarks, does a pittance of damage, as I wave them up and down at the enemy.

The worst offender of this is the Shadow/Assassin, however. Thrash is still just an up down animation. One of your most used attacks has an animation that is just an up down stroke, breaking any and all flow... One would think you would have re-balanced it by now, to make the lightsaber attacks actually the big money makers and the other attacks the filler. The weapon that is supposed to dismember the people it hits, should actually do the damage and not a force wave generated from a fist or the end of a lightsaber.

And what is it with the Sorcerer and sage still not having a Lightsaber throw? You know, the one class that is supposed to have prowess in the force... levitating stuff and whatnot.. they don't have a lightsaber throw. Its incomprehensible to me.

But while we are nitpicking, could we maybe chose the animations we want for the Sorcerer and the sage? I very much would love a red version of the Sage effects on my Sorcerer and not everything being boring lightning. Even Vader throws objects at people. You could really improve the game by letting me pick animations from both classes. You already mirror them, so why not give me a window in which I can pick which skill i'll get? They do the same thing, do they not? If I want my Sorcerer to hurl objects at people instead of lightning, why not let me? Make an interface at level up “chose your ability”. You'd get a huge amount of mileage out of this minor change. I probably would enjoy a lot more classes than I currently do, if I just could just remove the abilities whose animations I do not like (like for example the Troopers grenade volley..seriously, shooting grenades out of a rotary gun? I'd rather give the Trooper a wrist rocket)

What I really want is you to improve the ability for me to play with my wife, tho. I want to be able to be with her. And not jump through hoops to play with her. With cutscenes I do not have access to, with the whole hassle with access a group members ship.. there should be a button in your ship or something to join a group members ship. Call it a docking button or whatever. Or at least give Strongholds the ability to let me join group members ships.

And what the heck happened to Galactic Star Fighter? In 6 months I got into a single match.

Conclusion...

Over all, I don't see how my wife and me will keep playing this game for much longer. As soon as she finished the story lines with her characters, we will move on. I am tired of being treated like a wallet. I am tired of the inability to directly purchase the customer I want, without needing to play the GTN or grind for hours and hours to make the Credits to buy from other people the items I want, or through obscene amounts of money at lottery tickets to gamble for something halfway decent.

I am tired of the constant grind. And apparently you seem to believe that its a good thing to grind command ranks. As if I would have any interest of going back to replay sections I already played. Because thats the normal thing to do, right? Once you finished watching a TV show, you plug it right in and this time you play it with the Icelandic Sub, for extra challenge level.

And on top of that you force me into your play style. My first playthrough the new content was with my Sniper. What a pain in the butt, considering every damn boss seems to require mobility. The story line was idiotic for a non force user, and there is barely and difference between the classes. Why would I want to play through the new content again with a different character?

I get a pittance in command points for playing story missions, and as subscriber I reach level 70 by the end of the main story, thanks to xp boosts and rest exp as subscriber and whatnot. If I go through Ilum, Hutt Cartel, Shadow of Revan and … before I even reach the Outlander story, I have reached 70 many times over. Funnily it didn't bother me back when I didn't get any exp anymore. At least I didn't feel compelled to do the side missions anymore, because that is just busy work with barely any story, but now that command ranks are in, I play those missions again.. because without them it takes an eternity to reach the next rank. I currently feel punished for playing the old content, playing the quests you have in, and I feel punished for not grinding the same missions over and over again for command points. And the sad thing is.. I feel that is where you were at your best. Despite everything... when you released SWTOR I wanted KOTOR 3. You said you wanted interwoven stories, and I agree, for an MMO it was great. Your new content is a KOTOR 3 light, it barely fits with the majority of your classes, and its a single player experience. I wish you had done KOTOR 3 instead of this. Even after all these years... a lot has improved and you still suffer from the same problem. You are original in your stories (some more some less), you are poor in the gameplay mechanics, and you view your customers as wallets that only exist to be drained as much as you possibly can. The Customer is not King for you, and you seem to be stuck believing the customer owes you a debt of gratitude.

Anyway... my wife and me agree that we will finish the characters which have grown dear to her. Given her busy work schedule that should at least give you time until the next installment. You'll probably not win me back, but luckily for you, i'll keep playing as long as she is happy, and she is a lot more forgiving then I am.

I don't expect it to change, tho. If anything the last few Dev Streams made it clear to me that you are absolutely out of touch with your player base, and only listen to the people nodding and clapping.

I don't expect anyone to listen or even have read this far. I know its a wall of text, but as I said.. I can't just keep mumbling to myself about how great this game could have been or how little I agree with the direction you are taking, if I never take the time to go to your forums and write out a post about my feedback.

And with this I have done so.

Thank you for your time.