I have tried so hard to like this game, i played at release and quit after a month for personal problems, and enjoyed it back then but had to quit. I returned in Dec 2013 to see what it was like now.

First i couldn't even buy a subscription, living in asia i had to get my mum to buy time cards and send me the codes because a legitimate credit card would be declined, even thought EAware managed to still charge me for the declines.... SO you can take free money but cannot charge me money for purchasing a subscription.

Anyway i battled through and eventually subscribed, i wanted to subscribe because frankly the F2P in this game is utterly gimped when you first begin, unless you pay CC's to buy the unlocks. Paying to unlock a quickbar is really reall ridiculous.

Anyway i subscribed, played for a while, through all the connection issues and such. APparently this game has a 'no ip blocks' in the world. That simply isn't true, from China you need a VPN to play, yet i can play LoTRO, ESO (Beta), WoW (EU), Rift and many other MMORPG's from china with no problems. And China even have their own wow servers here and have utterly changed many parts of the game to fit in with their own rules about gaming, yet i can play WoW -EU version perfectly fine. But SWTOR? Nope need a VPN...

Even once connected you can turn the VPN off and continue to play, ping goes usually from 450-600 on an average day, connection to the westcoast using many ping tracers suggest my ping should be 150-250, that is until i hit the EAware servers and it jumps up to 400+

But connection problems aside i still tried to play, every patch would take forever to download, yesterdays took me 4 hours... Today no server lists even, i had to switch from US servers to UK servers because they became unplayable, well now the UK servers have done the same.

But even without connection problems this game is simply a huge cash grab based upon some RNG cash shop. Every 2 levels to stay on top of gear i would spend an hour spending comms to buy mods for the overly abundant orange mod-able gear. In the beginning this gear was so rare to find. Now it is everywhere.

The game, class stories excluded, is go to planet -x do quests then move to next planet do similar quests and so on so forth. I got two characters to their mid 30's and early 40's and by the time i was at hoth i was skipping the conversations for all quests. Maybe it is the marauder story, it is great, but padded with so many nonsense side quests that you simply cannot concerntrate on your class story and really enjoy it, and add to the gear/mod grind fest that the silly gear system has it feels more like a job than a game. It doesn't flow smoothly, it doesn't ahve the feel of what's around this corner? And the adaptive armour has taken away any enjoyment which once exsisted looting and random drops.

Crafting, well that is the most stupidest system ever designed, at the higher teirs i wait over 1 hour for my companions to do a mission, and you rarely get the rich missions you require to get mats.

There is no housing, no form of any sub-content to take you away from questing and grinding.

And to top it all the Cartel Market is an endorsed RNG gambling system inside a game which is played by children. EAware (recently on the BBC news for exploiting money out of their dungeon master app) is simply using this game as a quick money grab. It is a far cry from the game i played at launch, and it is a far cry from the F2P models used in LoTRO and Rift.

I am expecting flames here from fans of this game, and these are just my opinions. But it is a disgusting model and a lazy game. Which is a shame because i love all things Star Wars and have tried my very best to enjoy this game.

But the constant hassle of buying timecards from another country, declining of perfectly good credit-cards, server connection issues (not my fault, i studied networking at uni), the CM cash-cow and lazy development have really put me off. EA are giving themselves a bad name and it is not just in this game. One day i hope they take a leaf out of SOE and realise that customer service is 50% of the battle.

I am not totally quitting yet, but i am not renewing my subscription nor putting anymore effort into play. This game is only going to get worse and having seen ESO first hand, and Everquest landmark, these are how games should be developed. But i have a feeling even ESO will make the same mistakes and ruin a good IP brand. But SEO, they have really turned themselves around and actually care about customer feedback and relations, Landmark is basically a game building tool for Everquest Next. That is some cool ****!

Not to be rude but.... TL;DR

(Skimmed through the post, most of it was complaining without presenting any feedback whatsoever, so not worth my time.)

Not to be rude but.... TL;DR

That isn't rude, i understand people won't read it. Hopefully people that matter would read it, or read other similar posts which are in abundance on these forums, and decide to make some changes.

But we all know that will never happen.

Not to be rude but.... TL;DR

 

 

(Skimmed through the post, most of it was complaining without presenting any feedback whatsoever, so not worth my time. )

Not worth your time? And yet you post this response. Why even bother with this trite response then?

As for the post it's unfortunate that a returning player found things to be such a dismal experience. Being in NA I can't really relate to all the credit card and subbing issues, but tbh, I wouldn't be shocked someone in another continent has problems.

Sorry to hear, but quite honestly, I'm ticked off enough with how things are here lately, I can't be bothered to try and change his mind, or focus on the positive. I suppose all I can suggest is to hang in there, and don't give them any more money...until such time if it ever comes that he's finding his needs met.

Not to be rude but.... TL;DR

 

 

(Skimmed through the post, most of it was complaining without presenting any feedback whatsoever, so not worth my time. )

Ummmm. Okay... i think i presented a great deal of feedback, clearly stating my opinions of what is wrong with this game.

I guess when you skimmed, you missed those bits though.

EDIT: want some feedback in an easy to read bulltet point format;

> Get rid of your IP blocks, it doesn;t stop farmers and i am not a farmer, i am a legitimate expat living abroad.

> Add an appearence tab to take away some of the pain from the over abundant adaptive armour and the cost of modding/change mods in your gear every two level. You'd also sell more armour sets if they were cosmetic only and people would still enjoy looting whilst leveling.

> Fix your payment system, it's not worked properly since launch.

> Make datacrons account wide.

> Give us back world PvP

> Stop releasing CM packs every few weeks

> Focus on proper content and not the CM cash-cow

> Stop giving automated response to customer queries and closing our tickets after you have replies with your non-helpful response

>I could go on but it is long enough already.

Not worth your time? And yet you post this response. Why even bother with this trite response then?

 

As for the post it's unfortunate that a returning player found things to be such a dismal experience. Being in NA I can't really relate to all the credit card and subbing issues, but tbh, I wouldn't be shocked someone in another continent has problems.

 

Sorry to hear, but quite honestly, I'm ticked off enough with how things are here lately, I can't be bothered to try and change his mind, or focus on the positive. I suppose all I can suggest is to hang in there, and don't give them any more money...until such time if it ever comes that he's finding his needs met.

Yeah this is my point, i will save my last two months worth of cc's and maybe buy some account unlocks then return to preferred status and keep checking the forums for updates.

If, and i really hope they do, make changes to the way this game is i will return in a heart beat because i want to love this game. and despite this massive mistake, i still have a lot of love for Bioware.

EDIT: My card was a UK card and originally at launch had my UK address and it didn't work then either. Upon returning it was a new card with a Chinese address and it also didn't work. But works for everything else i purchase from amazon, game, play.com etc...

On the cartel market part:

No. You're not going to get *more* content just because they stop working on cartel stuff. Swtor's current model is similar to a very old model of Card games and such. It's cosmetic stuff, for the most part, that you can easily ignore unlike their other game Dungeon keeper. It is also making the game a lot of money! It would be SILLY to take it out just because parents aren't controlling their credit card info well.

Besides, the team working on cartel stuff is small compared to the team working on the game. We're getting content, and still are, ever since the cartel market.

I will agree, if you bring up F2P, that some of the restrictions are silly. But that's F2P restrictions, not cartel market.

APparently this game has a 'no ip blocks' in the world. That simply isn't true, from China you need a VPN to play, yet i can play LoTRO, ESO (Beta), WoW (EU), Rift and many other MMORPG's from china with no problems.

Didn't Bioware block China because of the absurd mass of gold seller spammers spoiling the game? And didn't the gold seller spam go down by 99% ever since they blocked China? At least that's the last info I remember on that issue.

Sure, it may suck to be an honest Chinese player, but I'd call that self defense to keep the sanity of the rest of the player base intact. Although there may have been other ways to achieve the same result, like banning buyers of credits sold by gold sellers. With no one daring to be a customer (in fear of a ban), the problem would solve itself rather fast.

About the rest of your rant: Sorry to hear you don't like the game; have fun playing ESO then!

Oh, and I'm quite honest about this; ESO is a great game; I played the Beta as well and preordered the boxed Imperial Edition as soon as it was available -- I can't wait to continue playing it for real!

I didn't say stop the CM, but change it. It is not a good thing for the game. Yes have cosmetic things for people to buy, but do not let those cosmetic things effect in-game crafting, having to continuously add mods to gear every few levels etc...

The gear set up in this game is silly and IS controlled by the CM. It is not only cosmetic things in the game, adaptive armour has seriously effected many crafting professions, so too has crystals, mounts etc...

I am all for a cosmetic only cash shop in a F2P game, this however is not anything like this.

Didn't Bioware block China because of the absurd mass of gold seller spammers spoiling the game? And didn't the gold seller spam go down by 99% ever since they blocked China? At least that's the last info I remember on that issue.

 

Sure, it may suck to be an honest Chinese player, but I'd call that self defense to keep the sanity of the rest of the player base intact. Although there may have been other ways to achieve the same result, like banning buyers of credits sold by gold sellers. With no one daring to be a customer (in fear of a ban), the problem would solve itself rather fast.

 

About the rest of your rant: Sorry to hear you don't like the game; have fun playing ESO then!

 

Oh, and I'm quite honest about this; ESO is a great game; I played the Beta as well and preordered the boxed Imperial Edition as soon as it was available -- I can't wait to continue playing it for real!

Ahhh i missed that piece of information about the block. However you're right, there are many better ways to do this.

Banning individuals who participate, blocking trade until one player on your account has reached legacy level 2 or something. I don't know but anything is better than simply banning a whole region, what a massive loss of legitimate customers they must have lost due to this.

I didn't say stop the CM, but change it. It is not a good thing for the game. Yes have cosmetic things for people to buy, but do not let those cosmetic things effect in-game crafting, having to continuously add mods to gear every few levels etc...

 

The gear set up in this game is silly and IS controlled by the CM. It is not only cosmetic things in the game, adaptive armour has seriously effected many crafting professions, so too has crystals, mounts etc...

 

I am all for a cosmetic only cash shop in a F2P game, this however is not anything like this.

Agreed. Artifice has been dead since the day the CM went live. End-game quality crystals with a level restriction 40 levels below the ones artifice can craft of the same quality basically ended our only real source of income, and it only got worse with the collections unlocks. Yeah, there are hilts... but again, we can only craft the same ones that everyone can get with the end-game gear grind, and not the pvp ones.

I, like you, really try to enjoy this game. EAware is making it hard to do that. I have subscribed since day one, and my current sub expires on 4-5, the day after ESO's full launch. I want to play both, but if SWTOR can't make up some ground by that time (almost 2 months) and show us that this game is more than the cash cow we are seeing now, I'll probably not be renewing.

It's sad really. They made such a big deal about using this game engine, yet what has it brought us? I don't see any of the features they were hooting about back in the early press releases (like live updates/downtime-less maintenance, automagic optimization of assets, etc.) were ever realized in the way they thought it would. Bottom line, they took an alpha engine, made it a WoW clone, added in some story-line elements with fancy voiceovers, slapped Star Wars on the front and here we are today.

I would justy love EAware to take note of customers plea's and change they current setup, a simple cosmetic/apperence tab and cosmetic only gear (without mod slots) would go along way to fixing some of the CM issues.

I know they won't change CM cystals to craftable crystal because that would hurt their CM model. But it is what needs to be done, or change crafting completely. Making CM gear cosmetic and giving back crafters the ability to craft actual moddable gear would be a start and it wouldn't effect their CM profit becuase peopel would still buy the costmetic gear and could loot moddable gear from with in the game.

On the cartel market part:

No. You're not going to get *more* content just because they stop working on cartel stuff. Swtor's current model is similar to a very old model of Card games and such. It's cosmetic stuff, for the most part, that you can easily ignore unlike their other game Dungeon keeper. It is also making the game a lot of money! It would be SILLY to take it out just because parents aren't controlling their credit card info well.

 

Besides, the team working on cartel stuff is small compared to the team working on the game. We're getting content, and still are, ever since the cartel market.

 

I will agree, if you bring up F2P, that some of the restrictions are silly. But that's F2P restrictions, not cartel market.

The whole "it's only cosmetic fluff" argument is a copout. It's like saying it's incredibly unimportant to gamers, yet somehow it's also the saviour of the game because it's so important to gamers that many pay extra for it.

If the customization options (ie fluff) had been in the game in the first place, as is expected of an MMO in 2012, then they very likely would not have lost 2 million subs, and wouldn't have to settle for the Plan B of a cash shop.

I personally like the gear situation. At launch, it was difficult to get the armorings/mods/enhancements at your proper level. However, since they changed to a single planetary comms, rather than individual ones, it's been really easy. Also, there's nothing saying you have to re-gear every 2 levels, just because mods exist at that level. Most content is easily doable in mods 4-8 levels below current level. For that matter, there's nothing saying you HAVE to use orange/moddable armor. You can use the regulars greens and blues that drop while doing missions, but the mods are so cheap anyway.

I would like to see them add more orange schematics to synthweaving and armormech, but there are plenty of non-CM orange adaptable sets as well, mostly from the reputation vendors. Color crystals were the most hurt by the CM, but artifice can still craft enhancements and relics, so is far from useless. Not really sure on your mount argument, as cybertech has only ever been able to craft 3 different mounts, and while additional schematics would be nice, they can already make the most variety of items that are useful.

The whole "it's only cosmetic fluff" argument is a copout. It's like saying it's incredibly unimportant to gamers, yet somehow it's also the saviour of the game because it's so important to gamers that many pay extra for it.

 

If the customization options (ie fluff) had been in the game in the first place, as is expected of an MMO in 2012, then they very likely would not have lost 2 million subs, and wouldn't have to settle for the Plan B of a cash shop.

That is ridiculous. The mass exodus of players was mostly content locusts that always abandon a new game after trying it. The rest were people that burnt through the content and end game stuff faster than BW expected, and pvpers unhappy with the state of owpvp.

No amount of fluff would have kept them around. Say what you will, but the income from the CM did keep the game afloat, and continues to be a larger portion of their income than subscriptions. It's not like they invented the cash shop model, look at all the games making loads of money with microtransactions on cell phones. This is how a large number of people are choosing to pay for their games now-a-days.

Didn't Bioware block China because of the absurd mass of gold seller spammers spoiling the game? And didn't the gold seller spam go down by 99% ever since they blocked China? At least that's the last info I remember on that issue.

 

Sure, it may suck to be an honest Chinese player, but I'd call that self defense to keep the sanity of the rest of the player base intact. Although there may have been other ways to achieve the same result, like banning buyers of credits sold by gold sellers. With no one daring to be a customer (in fear of a ban), the problem would solve itself rather fast.

 

About the rest of your rant: Sorry to hear you don't like the game; have fun playing ESO then!

 

Oh, and I'm quite honest about this; ESO is a great game; I played the Beta as well and preordered the boxed Imperial Edition as soon as it was available -- I can't wait to continue playing it for real!

The whole "it's only cosmetic fluff" argument is a copout. It's like saying it's incredibly unimportant to gamers, yet somehow it's also the saviour of the game because it's so important to gamers that many pay extra for it.

 

If the customization options (ie fluff) had been in the game in the first place, as is expected of an MMO in 2012, then they very likely would not have lost 2 million subs, and wouldn't have to settle for the Plan B of a cash shop.

So what you're saying is: "2 million people quit because they didn't have customization options at launch". Care to support this with some actual numbers, or are we going to have to settle for "I pulled this out of my ***, and I'm going to run with it."? None of the people I know that played this game at launch left because of lack of customization, they had a list of other more game breaking things that they went on about.

Regarding "cost of changing mods every two levels", why do you change mods every two levels? Simply because they are there? I swap mods every 5 levels or so, unless a particular mission is giving me fits. Then, I don't pull the old ones out first, I simply overwrite them. I craft my own mods via Cybertech and artifice, so that "cost" is covered by my gatherers. I had all this figured out before my first toon hit 30. What's the problem here?

Yes, some of the restrictions on F2P are quite silly. However, since this is the model they chose to run, you have three options open: Play it as is, sub, which seems to be giving you a hard time due to the region you live in, sorry to hear that, but I'm of the considered opinion that every MMO should totally lock China out of their servers, and open special Chinese servers so that they can sell gold to eachother all day long, or simply leave. When I find a game isn't providing me with the entertainment I want from it, I don't "try to make myself like it", or "really want to love the game" anyway, I simply leave. My only comments will be in an exit survey.

Cool story bro...

I have tried so hard to like this game, i played at release and quit after a month for personal problems, and enjoyed it back then but had to quit. I returned in Dec 2013 to see what it was like now.

Welcome back!

Anyway i subscribed, played for a while, through all the connection issues and such. APparently this game has a 'no ip blocks' in the world. That simply isn't true, from China you need a VPN to play, yet i can play LoTRO, ESO (Beta), WoW (EU), Rift and many other MMORPG's from china with no problems. And China even have their own wow servers here and have utterly changed many parts of the game to fit in with their own rules about gaming, yet i can play WoW -EU version perfectly fine. But SWTOR? Nope need a VPN...

 

Even once connected you can turn the VPN off and continue to play, ping goes usually from 450-600 on an average day, connection to the westcoast using many ping tracers suggest my ping should be 150-250, that is until i hit the EAware servers and it jumps up to 400+

Pics or it didn't happen. If pings on EA servers were 400+, then everyone playing the game would be 400+ and complaining. Everyone. Not just you.

But connection problems aside i still tried to play, every patch would take forever to download, yesterdays took me 4 hours... Today no server lists even, i had to switch from US servers to UK servers because they became unplayable, well now the UK servers have done the same.

You should probably try to fix your connection problems. Living in Asia though and connecting to servers that are US West Coast, you're definitely going to get some latency.

But even without connection problems this game is simply a huge cash grab based upon some RNG cash shop. Every 2 levels to stay on top of gear i would spend an hour spending comms to buy mods for the overly abundant orange mod-able gear. In the beginning this gear was so rare to find. Now it is everywhere.

Spend comms every 2 levels? You can get gear sufficient to leveling by following your class quest chain and spend zero comms. If you like the orange gear, you have the option to use it and plenty of ways to get commendations to upgrade it. It's awesome to have options, isn't it?

Oh, that "cash grab"? You are forced to buy exactly zero things from the Cartel Market to get all those orange, slotted pretty clothes. You can get them from GTN for credits.

The game, class stories excluded, is go to planet -x do quests then move to next planet do similar quests and so on so forth. I got two characters to their mid 30's and early 40's and by the time i was at hoth i was skipping the conversations for all quests. Maybe it is the marauder story, it is great, but padded with so many nonsense side quests that you simply cannot concerntrate on your class story and really enjoy it, and add to the gear/mod grind fest that the silly gear system has it feels more like a job than a game. It doesn't flow smoothly, it doesn't ahve the feel of what's around this corner? And the adaptive armour has taken away any enjoyment which once exsisted looting and random drops.

This game is and always has been about story. That's what BioWare has always done best. If you don't like the stories, there are other parts of the game that can be fun, sure. But the guts of the game is story. How could you not be aware of that before you started playing? Never heard of BioWare?

Again, there is no gear/mod grind fest. Do the quests and they keep you sufficiently geared to keep doing your quests. It's not even hard. It doesn't even require thought. Do the quest, take the reward, equip it, done.

Crafting, well that is the most stupidest system ever designed, at the higher teirs i wait over 1 hour for my companions to do a mission, and you rarely get the rich missions you require to get mats.

Isn't it interesting that you get multiple companions with which to craft and they'll craft even after you log out? What a stupid idea. Isn't it interesting that you can do anything that causes a loading screen and your crafting missions will all be reset so you can get the ones you want?

There is no housing, no form of any sub-content to take you away from questing and grinding.

Right, you don't have a ship. Also, you can't do war zones or flash points or space-on-rails or space PvP or crafting or socialize... I mean seriously, this game is a pure, keep you on the tracks, straight shot through the same old same old boring stuff with no ability to choose to do anything different. It's amazing anyone plays.

And to top it all the Cartel Market is an endorsed RNG gambling system inside a game which is played by children. EAware (recently on the BBC news for exploiting money out of their dungeon master app) is simply using this game as a quick money grab. It is a far cry from the game i played at launch, and it is a far cry from the F2P models used in LoTRO and Rift.

It's a hybrid model, not just cash shop.

Children, all children, should be supervised by their parents so they aren't spending money on things that parents don't want them to spend money on. That's the job of a parent. A good parent does that job. A bad parent complains that the world isn't doing that job for them, then complains when the world does do that job.

I agree that the game is a far cry from the game we played at launch. It's far, far better.

I've played the f2p model of Rift and hated it. What did you like about it?

I am expecting flames here from fans of this game, and these are just my opinions. But it is a disgusting model and a lazy game. Which is a shame because i love all things Star Wars and have tried my very best to enjoy this game.

 

But the constant hassle of buying timecards from another country, declining of perfectly good credit-cards, server connection issues (not my fault, i studied networking at uni), the CM cash-cow and lazy development have really put me off. EA are giving themselves a bad name and it is not just in this game. One day i hope they take a leaf out of SOE and realise that customer service is 50% of the battle.

 

I am not totally quitting yet, but i am not renewing my subscription nor putting anymore effort into play. This game is only going to get worse and having seen ESO first hand, and Everquest landmark, these are how games should be developed. But i have a feeling even ESO will make the same mistakes and ruin a good IP brand. But SEO, they have really turned themselves around and actually care about customer feedback and relations, Landmark is basically a game building tool for Everquest Next. That is some cool ****!

This game actually has been getting better over time and all indications are the developers aren't slowing down yet.

I've seen ESO first hand. There is no way I'll play that game. It's going to crash and burn in the PC market. Might do OK in the console market.

Have fun in EQNext, I guess.

I would justy love EAware to take note of customers plea's and change they current setup, a simple cosmetic/apperence tab and cosmetic only gear (without mod slots) would go along way to fixing some of the CM issues.

 

I know they won't change CM cystals to craftable crystal because that would hurt their CM model. But it is what needs to be done, or change crafting completely. Making CM gear cosmetic and giving back crafters the ability to craft actual moddable gear would be a start and it wouldn't effect their CM profit becuase peopel would still buy the costmetic gear and could loot moddable gear from with in the game.

There are a lot of things crafters, even Artificers, can make to be wildly profitable. If you can't figure out what those things are for yourself, perhaps you should visit the crafting board here on this forum.

Didn't Bioware block China because of the absurd mass of gold seller spammers spoiling the game? And didn't the gold seller spam go down by 99% ever since they blocked China? At least that's the last info I remember on that issue.

If that's the case, I'd hate to see what gold seller spam was back then.

Oh. Wait. I was here the whole time.

Gold seller spam is worse, far worse, today than it has ever been through the life of the game. I don't think it's gone down by 99%. Up 99%, maybe. Not down.

I don't know the region these spammers are spamming from so I won't guess if it's China, Philippines, Mexico, USA, whatever. But they're there, in force, every day, on both fleets and all starter worlds, 24x7, advertising multiple web sites.

If you make yourself try and like something, in the end, you will not like it. It has to be there. The feeling of pleasure and enjoyment NEEDS to be there for you to truly enjoy what it is that you are doing. If you don't enjoy something, do not force yourself to play it just because you really wanted to like it. I understand where you are coming from though. Maybe get a different mindset?

Bravo, exactly.

There are a lot of things crafters, even Artificers, can make to be wildly profitable. If you can't figure out what those things are for yourself, perhaps you should visit the crafting board here on this forum.

Artificers make enhancements and dyes. Those are the only profitable things, then not really all that profitable. I gave up on that and only make things for my characters.

Cybertech, Bio and Arms is where the money is. Armoring and mods, implants and augment slots.

Artificers make enhancements and dyes. Those are the only profitable things, then not really all that profitable. I gave up on that and only make things for my characters.

 

Cybertech, Bio and Arms is where the money is. Armoring and mods, implants and augment slots.

That's intriguing. Some Artificers I know have things they can sell at over 500,000 credits profit per unit. They don't sell dozens a day, but at that profit margin you don't need to.

There are a lot of things crafters, even Artificers, can make to be wildly profitable. If you can't figure out what those things are for yourself, perhaps you should visit the crafting board here on this forum.

Indeed.

If you cannot carve out a profitable niche in crafting (many people do it), then change in game careers.