Hi,

I'm a new player to SWTOR... I was playing FFXIV for a long time, but this game was too time-consuming for me, while lore for me wasn't interesting in even one bit. When it comes to my 8 years wow experience, I just don't feel that's the same game like it used to be, I think I play more of a mobile game, while my favorite class was destroyed and all melee classes dominate so much that I don't see any sense playing it.

I didn't like ESO, overall elder scrolls universe is not fun for me. Then, which to play? I didn't want to play some.. low quality "Chinese" MMO, with aion on top which started to be pay to win. I started to play SWTOR... I was playing it 2 years ago but because of my low-end PC i gave up on it. Now I'm back on Progenitor EU which is 2nd most populated server and... in the fleet at 10PM there were.... 34 people? 30 to 40, I'm shocked, where are the players?

Don't get me wrong i really enjoy this game.. it's quests, setting.. woah, i just feel.. strange, playing mmo which is ghostly empty.. i want this solo gameplay story, but i don't want to feel that this world is empty

Hi,

I'm a new player to SWTOR... I was playing FFXIV for a long time, but this game was too time-consuming for me, while lore for me wasn't interesting in even one bit. When it comes to my 8 years wow experience, I just don't feel that's the same game like it used to be, I think I play more of a mobile game, while my favorite class was destroyed and all melee classes dominate so much that I don't see any sense playing it.

I didn't like ESO, overall elder scrolls universe is not fun for me. Then, which to play? I didn't want to play some.. low quality "Chinese" MMO, with aion on top which started to be pay to win. I started to play SWTOR... I was playing it 2 years ago but because of my low-end PC i gave up on it. Now I'm back on Progenitor EU which is 2nd most populated server and... in the fleet at 10PM there were.... 34 people? 30 to 40, I'm shocked, where are the players?

How many instances of Fleet were there? Plus a lot of people hang out in their Strongholds now waiting for their pops instead of being on Fleet.

Not to mention that summer is generally low pop because the college kids are home, people go on vacations, stuff like that.

Not saying that population isn't on a decline of course. it's not something I personally pay attention to because I don't use GF nor do I PvP so *shrug* I don't know for sure.

But just thought I'd throw some reasons why pop seems low.

How many instances of Fleet were there?

Honestly, I rarely even see a second instance on TRE when I'm on fleet, during prime-time. Going back to 2.0 and 3.0 I can recall 2-3 instances that were all busy, even during summer. If one of the more populated europe servers is quiet.... says something.

The game has been bleeding players at an alarming rate since 5.0 was launched.

bleeding is nice way of putting it, I would said hemorrhaging is more like it

Honestly, I rarely even see a second instance on TRE when I'm on fleet, during prime-time. Going back to 2.0 and 3.0 I can recall 2-3 instances that were all busy, even during summer. If one of the more populated europe servers is quiet.... says something.

I believe you. I just know that sometimes people get all, "Lol, there's nobody here because there's only two people on this planet," and 15 people chime in that there's 40 in their instance, or 25 in another and the original person was like, "Ohhhh, okay."

TRE is active however there's a substantial population decline since last year when I played last (I moved onto other games like Elite). There used to be multiple full fleet instances now it barely breaks 100 people most of the time, most I see now during peak time hours is around 150 which is quite a depressing reminder of the days before server merges.

A lot of people seem to be blaming the lack of direction in regards to endgame content or decisions relating to that however a big empty voice here is the F2P/preferred players at endgame who pretty much relied on the passes to stick around to keep this game (and guilds) active for the people who actually spend the money.

With 5.0 all F2P including preferred essentially got turned into a trial rather than an "inferior mode", and it's easier to see why servers are emptying after people have already reached the end of the "trial period".

TRE is active however there's a substantial population decline since last year when I played last (I moved onto other games like Elite). There used to be multiple full fleet instances now it barely breaks 100 people most of the time, most I see now during peak time hours is around 150 which is quite a depressing reminder of the days before server merges.

 

A lot of people seem to be blaming the lack of direction in regards to endgame content or decisions relating to that however a big empty voice here is the F2P/preferred players at endgame who pretty much relied on the passes to stick around to keep this game (and guilds) active for the people who actually spend the money.

 

With 5.0 all F2P including preferred essentially got turned into a trial rather than an "inferior mode", and it's easier to see why servers are emptying after people have already reached the end of the "trial period".

Removal of passes for operations and war zones hurt random grouping a ton. Bioware really needs to look at bringing those back. What is interesting is to look at how many people are online (using the planetary search function - above the chat bar usually - for each advanced class) compared to how many are queuing (or in group content if you know the location names) for group content. The percentage queuing (or in group content) is surprisingly low for the number of people online.

I agree with what is being said - you can pretty much do almost everything you need to do without the Fleet so many don't hang there. I only go to the Fleet to buy companion gifts, get into a few of the flashpoints and pick up contracts during Bounty Contract weeks, so I'm generally in and out pretty quickly. Having said that, I was surprised by how empty it was yesterday.

Usually the Fleet is on a lag for me - there's a long wait while the black screen resolves. That happens in any area with a lot of players. But I went by yesterday night during prime time and even though it was Bounty Week the Fleet loaded right away for me and I didn't have any lag at all. Nobody seemed to be around.

I do wonder how much The Thing We Can't Discuss Here has affected player pops/subscription already. I know I was less motivated to log in yesterday - the only reason I did is because I am trying to make some bank for my new stronghold (finally bought Yavin).

The game has been bleeding players at an alarming rate since 5.0 was launched.

This.

A lot of players were unsatisfied with KOTFE and KOTET, and then 5.0 and the galactic command grind hit. I think the cumulative disappointments are driving players off with 5.0 being the last straw for a lot of people. More populated servers like Harbinger, the Ebon Hawk, or Red Eclipse have enough of a population that they can weather the dip in population for the moment, but less populated servers can't.

SWTOR is far from dead yet and there is still time to turn things around, but the decline is going to be steady if there isn't a serious course correction soon.

Between Bioware's very slow response on the GC system revision (not enough btw) and cutting F2P off from endgame, they pretty much garroted their own player base.

Now they seem to be trying to salvage but don't appear to have been given more resources... So good luck to them trying to recover what they have lost player wise.

Between Bioware's very slow response on the GC system revision (not enough btw) and cutting F2P off from endgame, they pretty much garroted their own player base.

 

Now they seem to be trying to salvage but don't appear to have been given more resources... So good luck to them trying to recover what they have lost player wise.

it won't happen.

i've been back only for a few days and i can see just how awful they are doing. nerfs no one asked for or wanted. not fixing bugs or the insane amount of hacking and cheating going on. add in they still have that awful rng crate system along with microtransactions.

it's clear to me that this game is on it's last legs. I hope after this comes crashing down we can get a real dev team to work on an swg pre-cu 2.0 as that would bring in tons of money and people.

I don't know what you guys are talking about. According to the dev team the last 2 expansions have been the most successful.

And they *technically* aren't wrong. It's the spin they're putting on it. It was probably monetarily successful because you have to be a sub to access the story stuff and with Galactic Command you *also* have to be a subscriber. People subscribed for the new story and then bailed after a month or so. But their profit numbers, for that specific time, was probably very successful. And that's what they are spinning.

Because KotET is, what, nine months old now? And they're still talking about how successful it was? That's old news at this point. Tell us how successful you are NOW.

And they *technically* aren't wrong. It's the spin they're putting on it. It was probably monetarily successful because you have to be a sub to access the story stuff and with Galactic Command you *also* have to be a subscriber. People subscribed for the new story and then bailed after a month or so. But their profit numbers, for that specific time, was probably very successful. And that's what they are spinning.

 

Because KotET is, what, nine months old now? And they're still talking about how successful it was? That's old news at this point. Tell us how successful you are NOW.

It seems like things nosedived *after* KOTET - if there had been a season 3 and/or the CXP hadn't happened, it would be interesting to see if people had stuck around.

A lot of people also don't use Fleet anymore because they are sick and tired of the "sewage chatter" that's always guaranteed to be ther, or people can get the other things they need from Guildies and their Strongholds.

I can honestly say that this New Dev teams are trying to do better than the past few years, with only not having enough resources to do both Story and Multi-player content. Can't always win.

The last time i saw 2 instances of Fleet on the Harbinger was back when they had the Command XP boost. A lot of us saw all these players coming back and asked for the Command boost to stay because of having more playability in this game, but the Devs stopped it, and now more people have left again.

I blame 5.0's Galactic Command along with it's gearing system. Weekly passes were taken away then the End Game was made subscriber only with gear made subscription bait.

End game gear was first only offered in random prize packs upon completion of new xp system level. Then a complex vendor system utilizing two different currencies to be spent amongst multiple vendors was introduced. Alongside boost tokens in the store for the new endgame xp system.

If you decide to advance via pvp you were most likely met by a pre made army of mercenary and commandos who have already reached tier 4.

As I have preciously stated, I propose that July's double cxp week be made the new default rate. The drop rate and command tokens inside can stay at the same current rate.

Then perhaps simplify the (Unassembled Tokens + Previous Tier Gear) = (Unassembled Gear + Command Tokens) = Gear system.

I spent my afternoon on Harbinger where there was only 1 Fleet instance when I was used to seeing 3 Fleet Instances before.

Good background here already. 4.x and KotFE was bad for the game and chased off a lot of end-game players. 5.x and KotET was a disaster with the GC gearing mess that they refuse to let go of and still try to tell us is worth keeping in the game. The game is circling the drain. They may manage to slow things down and keep people around for a bit, but the game is not in a good way. Just look at http://mirror.torstatus.net/shards/us/trends for current trends and https://web.archive.org/web/20160811034528/http://www.torstatus.net:80/shards/us/trends for a year ago. Those numbers alone tell you the game is all but dead on most servers. EA and BW may keep it around for a while since there isn't a new SW MMO rumored anywhere, but EA might also pull the plug due to the low numbers. We don't know.

All summed up, if you like the 1-50 story, your fine, you can do it all solo. If you like end game, you need to be on one of a very few servers or you won't get groups. Same for PVP. I wish you luck.

The game is dying.....

They are going to put as little effort with as small as crew as possible to maximize profits(by this I mean mainly cartel market content) for this dying game and then be done with it once the rights to it have expired and not renewed. Let's just hope a capable game company buys the Star Wars rights and the next Star Wars mmo is actually good and monitored from hackers.

A lot of people also don't use Fleet anymore because they are sick and tired of the "sewage chatter" that's always guaranteed to be ther, or people can get the other things they need from Guildies and their Strongholds.

 

I can honestly say that this New Dev teams are trying to do better than the past few years, with only not having enough resources to do both Story and Multi-player content. Can't always win.

 

The last time i saw 2 instances of Fleet on the Harbinger was back when they had the Command XP boost. A lot of us saw all these players coming back and asked for the Command boost to stay because of having more playability in this game, but the Devs stopped it, and now more people have left again.

The current dev team we have is basically the same dev team we had before "the most successful expansions to date" they just have different titles. Sure they they got rid of Ben, and Tait quit. But the current dev team is the same old people that have been feeding us **** and telling us it smells like flowers for years. Nothing has changed. Nothing will change besides one day the game will stop loading.

And they *technically* aren't wrong. It's the spin they're putting on it. It was probably monetarily successful because you have to be a sub to access the story stuff and with Galactic Command you *also* have to be a subscriber. People subscribed for the new story and then bailed after a month or so. But their profit numbers, for that specific time, was probably very successful. And that's what they are spinning.

 

Because KotET is, what, nine months old now? And they're still talking about how successful it was? That's old news at this point. Tell us how successful you are NOW.

That's an assumption. They have been asked over and over again by what meta they consider this successful and they wont respond.

That's an assumption. They have been asked over and over again by what meta they consider this successful and they wont respond.

I assume because they seem to think metrics only exists in a vacuum but once examined in a production environment would be shown to have several modifying factors.

A consistant subscription = Yay KotFE/ET

Ignoring the playtime dropoff of that sub.

Ignoring that that sub chose to only inflict that story on a single digit percentage of their regularly played characters.

Ignoring countless other factors/modifiers to the singular "metric" that completely change or negate the stand alone interpretation.

No metric is an island. Trying to get to the metric in a vacuum island gets your game lost at sea.

The Progenitor has seen a heavy decrease in players in 2017, that is unfortunately true and cannot be denied.

However, the fleet population is no good indicator for population. It's not the number one place anymore for hanging out while e. g. waiting for something. Thanks to group finder and the galactic command interface and mission boxes in warzones etc. there is no need to stay on the fleet - unless you maybe want to form an operation group manually.

I never understood why high fleet numbers are a good sign. People on the fleet basically don't play, because there is nothing much to play on the fleet rather than the waiting game, the GTN game or the hide and seek game. Oh, and the datacron, but who even remembers that.

That's an assumption. They have been asked over and over again by what meta they consider this successful and they wont respond.

Of course it's an assumption. My use of "Probably" totally gives that away

BUT, because of the fact that we needed to be subbed for new story content (which usually brings people back if only to play the story) AND we need to be subbed to do Galactic Command, their numbers-at least for the month after the new expansion dropped-were most likely higher than they were the month prior to that. And so, with the proper spin, they can say, "Hey, it was successful! We got a huge profit during the first month. It was a success! High fives and back pats all around!"

I'm not saying they were right. I'm saying that they are being selective about what metrics they're looking at and liberally interpreting the word "Successful."