I still dont get why its still a thing for bioware to keep f2p & preferred players of the forums. It serves no good purpose, and as you stated, makes the game look much more silent than it is.

Their move to make f2p only talk in channel /1 after level 25 is even worse. Now new players will leave even faster since they cant even chat in /the g channel if they get an invite.

 

No one knows e.g that I've been playing this for *years* as f2p, then later preferred and now for a short while (90 days) as a sub again. Last time was last year, also in the middle.

I did not leave because back then I could chat in /g channel and get / ask help in that way

Exactly. Some of the restrictions on f2p/preferred are absolutely asinine, and clearly exist for no reason other than to force people to subscribe.

Even DCUO gives preferred players (not just previous subscribers, but anyone who has spent at least 10$ on their ingame store) things like being able to jump to the front of the queue to join a server. They reward people who have supported the game in the past, not just those who are currently bending over for the company and taking it right in the wallet.

Bioware and EA are completely disrespecting their customers here. I played this game from day 1 of early access (and was a beta tester prior to launch). I played the entire time that the game was subscription-only, no option for free to play. I'm a founder and one of the people who actually contributed to this game's early success, and how do they treat me? Like a valued customer? Hell no, to them I hold no more value than someone who just came along and hasnt spent a single penny on the game.

That's really the thing that frustrates me the most here, that bioware has absolutely no loyalty to it's customers. Of course, I know that it isnt entirely bioware at fault, it's their EA overlords who treat the entire population of the video game market like their personal cattle.

You're forgetting something else that I'm surprised hasn't been pointed out. The overly complicated and unnecessarily convoluted process that it takes to get logged into the website in the first place. This is the only forum I know that you don't just log into.

First you log in here....oh wait, I have to do the one time password.

Then off to the email to wait for it And wait for it. And wait for it. And since it's been more than 15 minutes, it's expired by the time I finally get it. So I have to start over. And wait some more.

And maybe on the second try, I get a valid one time password. Maybe the third.

That's complete BS and you know it. Dont let an elitist attitude cloud rational thought.

 

The ESO forums are a good source to draw from. They're lively, active, everyone can post, there's very rarely any need for moderation (only a few trolls that pop up every now and then, and are quickly dealt with by either the community or the moderators).

No they are not. That forum is just as bad, it's just that moderation is better since they have to deal with the non-paying hate mongers.

But hey.. if ESO and it's forums is all that for you.. why are you here then?

HAHAHA that's only because the forum goose steppers delete any and all criticism. Negative feedback doesn't stay long enough for anyone to see it. They'd rather delete and ban paying customers than have their faults exposed to the public. Those forums are a joke. At least here we have the freedom to be honest about how we feel.

Pretty much. Yes.. they allow non-subs to post, but they also moderate a lot more heavily and consistently and keep the nonsense under control for the most part.... a task I certainly do not envy the mods there for having to do as I am sure it's constant clean-up on aisle #9 level nonsense to deal with.

For games that have forum enabled for non subscribers.... most often they put them al in their own sub-forum so they cannot spread the toxicity that is so common into other parts of their forum. ESO just appears to be willing to spend the cycles and energy on moderation rather than having strong gates and less need for moderation. That's their choice, but to insist it means those forums are a haven for non paying players is a distortion.

To all the people insisting the forums are dead here ... just wait until the major patches drop because that's when they come crawling out of the woodwork to complain and demand. Unlike in the early years of the game, now days the forum dialog mostly consists of a core set of members that actually do engage and discuss things (which is a minority of members) and a boat load of whining and complaining on intervals that can be bookmarked by major patches. It's not rocket science..... forums are mostly for negative narratives and complaining (this is true of almost all forums I have ever seen on the internet by the way.. so this is not strictly a "gamer thing" to do). And all that narrative crowds out actual discussions between parties looking to actually get answers on something or solve some issue they are having (any casual review of any of the major ISPs and digital services providers, like ATT, Comcast, etc will quickly show this is pervasive in the internet).

If they pushed content out faster here, there would of course be a lot more forum activity because of ---> new patches. People love to #$%&^... and they need them some low hanging fruit to get things moving for them I guess.

Overall.. forum volume of posts is down for sure, but quality of posts and discussion is generally up, and has continued to improve over the last few years (even with all the KOTET hate discussions). I credit this to a general falling off of the most toxic of players, and reinforces the notion that opening the forum for non-subs would just bring these players back not to actually play the game or have productive discussions but rather to just spam hate about the game. The general toxicity in the comment sections on Dulfys web pages pretty well exemplifies what it would be like if they let non-subs post.

This has the Pollner stuff.

Excellent! Thanks so much for that, you saved me quite a bit of time there <3

Thanks. There wasn't anything I hadn't already figured but cool anyway.

But even so that really doesn't change my previous argument about all-in-one offtopic threads. Why we got subforums if everything is mashed up in a megathread with no search function?

You're forgetting something else that I'm surprised hasn't been pointed out. The overly complicated and unnecessarily convoluted process that it takes to get logged into the website in the first place. This is the only forum I know that you don't just log into.

 

First you log in here....oh wait, I have to do the one time password.

Then off to the email to wait for it And wait for it. And wait for it. And since it's been more than 15 minutes, it's expired by the time I finally get it. So I have to start over. And wait some more.

And maybe on the second try, I get a valid one time password. Maybe the third.

I just have one of those security keys so for me logging on is just typing a short extra code in.

I'm surprised to find names that I recognize still posting. Last time I posted was Fall 2016 and a few players are still posting daily to this day.

The referral program is an incentive to remain subscribed even when you're not active ingame. Andryah if you had a link in your signature I would have used it by now.

These forums should strictly be subscriber only. It would compromise the integrity of communication tool to open it up to a wider pool of players. There's reddit for all the disgruntled players unwilling to sub to post.

I'm back because of the 10 days of double exp following the upcoming patch. I've had the game installed this whole time but only launched SWTOR.exe recently do to an unrelated event. It was Metal Gear Solid's 31st Anniversary as a video game franchise and I wanted to take the time to hear David Hayter's Jedi Knight voice over without any spacebarring.