Why all the hate?

Thank you.

I think the problem is a habit and cycle of personal attacks. People are bound to take criticism personally when the critique shifts from the issue with the game to the players making the complaint. It happens all too often. When people can't make a counter point based on the issue they usually shift to their fellow players rather than accept they don't have leg to stand on.

Good, well thought out post.

The only thing you missed is that they also have to make the game fun. Grinding for hundreds of hours to get the gear for the content you want to play (and were playing before the "expansion"" or spending a fortune crafting or a larger fortune buying the parts (that are generally inferior to the drops) is NOT fun. Hence the exodus, reduced server populations, longer queue times and for BW reduced revenue.

That's exactly why I like the chapters, no grinding for 10-20 levels. You just jump right in. The boost is also really nice. I'm beaten this game on almost every toon at least once. Now I can just dive into the story. I'm sure if they're are no updates to the story in the next few months. I might become discouraged. I like the current thing they have.

Once I've done the new chapters a couple of times, they're boring. Extremely boring. The grind I am talking about id Galactic Command. It was the final straw for me and many others. It's not going to get better, it just needs to go. Until BW gets that, things aren't going to improve, the game is not going to become fun again and populations will continue to decline.

Thank you.

Here's the problem. They can't make the game "fun". there is no blanket, catch-all sweet spot for fun. What is fun for one player is the opposite for another. For instance, the grind. There are players that love that grind you hate. Whether or not there is a lot of them isn't the point, they are out there. Changing everything to appease one group or the other is bound to cause a dust up no matter which way you go.

The company's best best is to provide a lot of options rather than rails. Don't try to make everyone play the game in the exact same way or squish incompatible playstyes together for development convenience. (*cough* PvP and PvE balance*cough*)

As I said years ago, I believe on this forum, Bioware needs to set up a rotation where each playstyle has a fixed focus relation to each other. PvPers will get content targeted for them after Raiders. Story people will be in the rotation after PvPers and so on. It may not be a fixed time, but it will be a fixed relation in that you always know when the focus should come back to your preferred style.

People would be more patient if they knew they were for sure going to get a turn. It would also help to cut down on backbiting.

I actually think this sums up the core behind the behavior accurately and succinctly.

If you look at the expansions over the last 5 years, that is exactly what they appear to do.. and some people don't like content being in rotation like you suggest. Some of our more vocal negative narrative prosecutors like to point out they prefer WoW style expacs ever three years and would pay $60+ for them. Instead, SWTOR releases expacs yearly, and they tend to be focused on a specific segment of content at the expense of others.

The only content they have apparently dropped completely is OPs. Though I would say they have tabled GSF.. probably because there is not that much more to productively put into GSF. Players wanted SWG free form space play.. and when they did not get it with GSF... a lot of them walked away from GSF. But GSF is still popular and played by players and it is PvP.. so see next paragraph.

Of course PvPers will complain they get ignored too long and too often.. but in reality it's player vs player and the fact that players feel they need constant new additions to instancing in PvP seems kind of silly when the actual content you are after is killing any other player that you come across. PvPers have some valid concerns about class skill and discipline changes over time... but this is normal for PvPers in MMOs from my many years of experience playing many different MMOs... so I chalk that one up to "normal noise".

They need to be more transparent. The last releases have been haphazard in who gets their content next. it also will often radically changes direction mid stream. This is partially why many people don't feel like they will ever get a turn and battle it out on the forums trying to get their shot. Further, the people who communicate to the players have to constantly obfuscate to try to hide the musical chairs that has been going on in the background. That's not at all what I am advocating here.

What I am talking about is an open, declared rotation where everyone knows exactly where they stand and can rely on it. I know it isn't an easy thing to pull off, but this is the bed that the company has made for itself. Bioware will have to either lay in it or continue on with compounding outrage. It may take time to work through the rotation, but it should let players now they won't get automatically shifted to the back of the line for a last minute major, reactionary change.

To illustrate the problem, several players have cited that the company said they weren't going to take too long getting ops out. Later the company completely abandons making them. As a side note, if uprisings were the same thing they would have called them Ops. This kind of turn around gives players who like that content no confidence in the team or the game. No amount of uprisings talk will reassure them that they can take the company at it's word regarding larger group content. That means they will continue fighting for their share of the crumbs... or they will leave which is worse.

The team can't stop the complaining or the forum battles. They can however, stop the practices that are fueling them. It all goes back to fighting over the crumbs. If they share more of the pie and stop withholding from players so much, they will see a reduction in the amount of desperate, angry players. Once that goes down they can return to more normal levels of complaining.

I wouldn't call it hate, but there are a lot of things going wrong, and the community has every right to be upset. I'll list what I can think of at the moment. Keep in mind that I used to "white knight" on these forums and support the game as much as I could, but you can only be nickel and dimed and/or flat out lied to by a dev team so much before you turn to the other side.

Here we go:
Group content has been completely ignored for 2 years (with the exception of uprisings that should really be called glorified Heroics), despite constant posts on forums, reddit, twitch, and other outlets showing that players want more. PvP has received only 2 new maps in 3 or 4 years, and otherwise has been completely ignored. Expansions that added explorable worlds, daily hubs, and hours of other fun content were replaced with expansions that added instanced corridors, single-player-only gameplay, and chapters that have more animations than they do actual gameplay or content. 99.9% of any cool new mounts, weapons, and armors are exclusive Cartel Market items that require you to pay real money, rather than be rewarded for actually playing the game. GSF is completely abandoned. Strongholds and conquest are mostly abandoned, with almost any new decorations being exclusive to the cartel market. Events have been abandoned, with the only new one over the last 3 or 4 years being the DvL event--which just recycled all the content in the game as a means of keeping people subscribed. Companions that we loved, were customizable, and gained affection by playing the game were removed and replaced with companions that aren't customizable and require hours of clicking "give gift" to raise influence. To top things off, rather than keep the old endgame system and just give us new content (what everyone wanted), they gave us an RNG gearing system that requires weeks/months of grinding old content and doesn't guarantee any reward (what no one wanted).

TL,DR: Nearly everything that was once great about this game has either been completely abandoned or moved to the cartel market to make players pay more money. While I personally very much enjoy the new chapter stories and animations, it's not nearly enough to make up for everything else that was once great and is now left behind.

This is what I'v been saying lately. The problem is the underlying design principle that makes up the foundation for all content. Until they stop playing keep away and stop trying to crudely squeeze money from players, they are going to keep building more and more angry customers. Those will eventually turn into jaded customers who will refuse to buy and will attempt to stop others from buying. It will only get worse as more and more people "switch sides".