I play them a lot...until level 40. Those 40+ missions are far too difficult to complete so I don't even bother trying anymore. Many others aside from myself have asked for nerfs (especially Sullust Interception! level 3 upgrades recommended my arse!) for existing 40+ missions, and they want to add HARD MODES?!

 

Seriously? Development time spent on the least used part of the game that many complain about being too hard at the higher levels and you geniuses waste time and resources to make Hard Modes?!

 

Wow guys, you are so freaking clueless.

Exactly this.

I play them a lot...until level 40. Those 40+ missions are far too difficult to complete so I don't even bother trying anymore. Many others aside from myself have asked for nerfs (especially Sullust Interception! level 3 upgrades recommended my arse!) for existing 40+ missions, and they want to add HARD MODES?!.

The level 50 space missions can be done while eating cereal and half asleep. I have done it and I do them maybe three times a week; usually twice. Use your "special weapons" like EMP and power converter module and you will be fine. If you still have trouble then look up a video or two on youtube. That helped me with Operation New Eclipse.

Many others aside from myself have asked for nerfs

[sarcasm] Something is too hard for maybe half of the players so let's nerf it. Because difficulty = no fun! [/sarcasm]

I dont because they are simply way too hard at lvl 50. I have all the best stuff (purples) for my ship and still get wiped out on them. I used to when I was lower level but the end game space missions are simply way too hard for too little gain.

You have to install that device that will switch all power to weapons or to shields, you buy it with your space fleet commendations, once you have that you just the 1 key and it will like double your fire power for your weapons, if you activated the shields part of it it regens them pretty fast....

I was always getting killed to until I started using that, made all the difference in the world....

As for the OP question: Ya i did space mission each day, but once I hit 50 and got the title for doing the last space mission I kind of stop doing them... If they put in some new ones and add more stuff we can buy with fleet comm's then I would keep doing them...

Rarely anymore. I'll do some if I'm waiting on a crafting result and am on the ship, otherwise nope.

Other people like the space missions so that's good to know, and I hope they're having a blast.

space missions was a vital XPs for lvl up and is vital for daily coms and still is vital for crafting boxes.

doing them every day none stop if i have time i do and the gray ones for more space coms

Haven't done them in months. Put some black hole coms as rewards for the new missions, and I'll run them daily.

Fleet comms = Grade 8 mats = (61) mods, armoring, enhs, etc. = BH comms.

Think of it as parallel progression paths.

Even though I enjoy playing free flight space combat sims, this is what I see as wrong with the idea of free flight space combat in SWTOR. We're talking a minigame here, in a game that's this open to a wide enough range of player skill. When you're talking about wanting special hardware for a minigame, you're taking things too far. I know as many people that don't do space combat because it's too hard as those that don't do it because it has no challenge. Changing space combat to a free flight 3D space sim is just going to mean that there are that many more people in the first category.

 

I'm all for harder bonus missions. As is, I tend to set goals for myself that go above and beyond what the mission and it's real bonus missions require. There's one bonus mission that I don't consider easy (10 frigate shield generators on a map where there are only 10 frigate shield generators, and you only get one pass on 4 of those shield generators). On the other hand, doing the Drexel sweep and ending with the shuttle at over 80% health does feel like a bit of an achievement in a level appropriate ship, at least for me.

special hardware? a simple joystick or gamepad or a keyboard and mouse is all you need for 3d free flight. Just so you know, the only thing that kept SWG going after SOE screwed the pooch on the ground game there was JTL. If JTL never existed SWG would have died the exact day they changed the game.

I don't know. Most people I know don't bother with them. Instead we crank up Battlefront 2. But at least one of my friends love the missions and runs them every day. We make fun of him a bit for it. He can't handle Battlefront.

At any rate, IMO the feature has little to no widespread appeal. Adding more missions is a bit obtuse from my perspective.

until they take it off the rails, nope I won't touch it, if I wanted to play star fox I can just go play star fox.

Also, Pazaak.

i know of some that have basically leveled up alts almost entirely through AFK macro'd space missions. I'm sure they are to blame for biowares "metrics" that show that people out there actually love the rails, lol

do some class quest, then just before your done for the day set up a rail loop and let it go overnight, easy xp

special hardware? a simple joystick or gamepad or a keyboard and mouse is all you need for 3d free flight. Just so you know, the only thing that kept SWG going after SOE screwed the pooch on the ground game there was JTL. If JTL never existed SWG would have died the exact day they changed the game.

That is so true about JTL. That is the main reason I stayed in SWG after both debacles went down. JTL was the only thing it had going for them after SOE messed things up with CU and the even worse NGE.

You know that you had 41 total ships in that game that players could pilot. It makes being locked to one ship in this game a bit sad. Space in this game has a major lack in content. Space in Star Wars is such a major factor that they really need to focus more on the Space Aspect of this game. I dare say this but it is Kind of disgraceful to have such a bland Space Feature for being a Star Wars game. At least that is my opinion.

i know of some that have basically leveled up alts almost entirely through AFK macro'd space missions. I'm sure they are to blame for biowares "metrics" that show that people out there actually love the rails, lol

 

do some class quest, then just before your done for the day set up a rail loop and let it go overnight, easy xp

After posting and reading this I had to edit my posting to comment.

It is really sad that people can Macro Space Combat. It shows a lot about how messed up it is. If one can Farm it with a Macro while AFK then it needs to be changed. Again my opinion.

They are actually fun. I do think they got the cinematic feel, in SWG you would often be floating around for 10 minutes. I like these.

YES, THIS!!!

A lot of people say they miss how open space was in SWG, but jumpin' Jesus on a pogo stick!!! I hated how long it took to fly out to a mission and then back. It was BORING.

For me the space on this game just doesn't feel right. It's not just being on the rails that I dislike but the actual look of it, it looks almost cartoonish at points and really doesn't have that epic Star Wars feel for me. I liked the space in SWG a fair bit, but my favourite Star Wars space gameplay will always be the Rogue Squadron series, they really nailed it all for me.

For what it's worth I really did try to get into the space combat here, I played multiple missions multiple times hoping I'd enjoy it but it just really isn't my cup of tea, especially not while it remains a rail shooter.

To address the question in the title of this thread, I talked to Jonathan Crow, a Gameplay Telemetry Analyst here. The data that we have shows that nearly half of all currently active players have played at least one Space Combat Mission in the past 30 days.

One Space Combat Mission in the past 30 days. I wonder how many of those happened to be the Cartel Listening Station mission over the couple of days the bug was active during the Chevin event.

Ehhh.

They're okay.

I find them extremely boring and difficult

Personally, I almost don't play them. The rail shooter is just boring, especially once you've done each mission as it's always the same with little room for variation.

I wish space combat missions were like the X-Wing/TIE Fighter (still the best PC game of all time!) Series of games (or even Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed, but X-Wing Series style would be better), including co-operative multiplay like in X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter: Balance of Power. Same controls (including Joystick support), same kind of gameplay (heck, get Larry Holland on the case!). If that was the case, I'd play that all day.

To address the question in the title of this thread, I talked to Jonathan Crow, a Gameplay Telemetry Analyst here. The data that we have shows that nearly half of all currently active players have played at least one Space Combat Mission in the past 30 days.

 

To address another point brought up in the OP, it's important to note that we are working to bring more Space Combat in addition to the many other types of content that players enjoy (including things like the new Operation, Terror from Beyond, and the new Warzone we talked about at Gamescom).

Thanks for the info Allison, however I feel the data could be parsed in a different way to be more accurate in understanding community trends.

Maybe Jonathan can look at it from this angle:

How many active players have completed at least 30 space missions in the last 30 days? How does that compare with the number of people that completed 30 WZs? And 30 FPs?

How many active players have completed at least 5 space missions every week for the past 3 months? How does that compare to WZs and FPs?

Taking just 1 instance in 30 days is not a very clear indicator of a popular feature, you want to analyze which are the features that a) keep people engaging with the game every day and b) have long term replayability.

To address the question in the title of this thread, I talked to Jonathan Crow, a Gameplay Telemetry Analyst here. The data that we have shows that nearly half of all currently active players have played at least one Space Combat Mission in the past 30 days.

 

To address another point brought up in the OP, it's important to note that we are working to bring more Space Combat in addition to the many other types of content that players enjoy (including things like the new Operation, Terror from Beyond, and the new Warzone we talked about at Gamescom).

As others have mentioned, alot of those that have done a whopping 1 mission in the past 30 days was to take advantage of the cartel listening station bug. I bet most of the rest are running macros to level.

One Space Combat Mission in the past 30 days. I wonder how many of those happened to be the Cartel Listening Station mission over the couple of days the bug was active during the Chevin event.

Personally I'm never playing space missions, not even on alts despite that it's "free" exp. I cannot understand how BW can put time and energy into it when there are much more important things to take care of. How about adding rare drops on every planet? That would give players incentive to do something other than standing around in the fleet.

I have to admit that while space missions can be fun the first few times, they quickly get boring considering that they're all rail shooter segments, and while rail shooters can be fun, for something like this it doesn't quite work, an OCCASIONAL rail shooter would be fine to me but there needs to be missions that just let you fly around however you like.

What I'd love to see is to maybe make it something like Wing Commander or Rogue Squadron, so you can fly all around the space battlefield and have the feeling of more freedom, you can of course put in borders that force the player to loop back into the designated field if they get too far off course, I think doing something like this would make space missions far more interesting and get more players hooked on them.