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Khevar

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  1. Which is why the Empire fell behind the Republic during the vanilla story, despite the pubs being chock-a-block full of corruption and weaklings. Too many Sith act like a pack of rabid dogs who cannot think clearly, suddenly see movement out of the corner of their eye, and shout SQUIRREL!! They spend far too much time stabbing each other in the back, killing actual effective imperial officers and having mercurial mood swings that would make Eli Lilly pant with desire. This results in a chaotic mess that even mediocre opposition can take advantage of. The only reason my Bounty Hunter stays with the empire is that it is profitable. But he sneers at the monumental incompetence of the fools in charge who could have had the war won with ease if they weren't so "busy" being ineffective.
  2. Speaking of the Rakghoul plague, an infected player (not part of the group) ran into the middle of an Ossus world boss fight (the bug one) and died on purpose, giving almost the entire raid group the plague, causing their actions to be interrupted every few seconds as a part of the stage 1 infection.
  3. I definitely recommend seeing all of the class stories. One thing that I ended up appreciating once I had done all 8 was the fact that they're woven together. Actions taken by one class end up affecting another, and seeing how the writers tied this together can be quite enjoyable. One suggestion I would have for doing this is to go back and forth between Empire and Republic, rather than doing all Empire first, then Republic (or vice versa). Although the class missions themselves are unique, there are a number of planetary based quests that are the same for any imperial character, and another set of planetary quests that are the same for any republic character. Switching back and forth between the two factions can help reduce the feeling of "didn't I just see that?".
  4. While I cannot speak for Celise, I view the term "cash cow" in a derogatory way, as in something that will make money without having to put in effort. We've all seen this in the gaming industry. Milk a franchise with the same formula over and over. Add a horrible grind you can bypass with money. Rely on gambling boxes. Etc. The sad thing is that it is financially viable, and so many developers will keep doing it. But occasionally you have developers that are passionate, creative and want to make a really fun game AND make money doing it. I feel like those developers make better games.
  5. It's funny you should say that. You see, I think you're speculating when you say that Bioware has some master plan behind these changes that will somehow make the game better even if people don't like them in the short term. Whereas I think that I'm talking about Public Relations techniques written in textbooks, that were shown to be accurate when more communication raised the general tone of the forums 2 years ago from "murder death kill" to "optimistic" I've been playing recently, though I certainly haven't done so regularly since patch 4.0 convinced my guildmates that they should look for other games to hold their attention. I took a 2-year break after 5.0 dropped. Caught up on (some of) my Steam backlog. Got a console for the first time in 8 years and played some good games there (Horizon Zero Dawn became one of my all-time favorites). Waited with baited breath for Visceral's upcoming SW game only to be disappointed when it was sent to the circular file next to 1313. Avoided Battlefront 2 like the plague. I resubbed late last year out of nostalgia, had fun so got another 3-month sub which will be up soon. I ran a ton of pug PvE content which is one of my favorite things to do. Surprisingly enough I was getting pops pretty regularly not just on my tank and healer, but on my dps as well. Until 5.10 dropped anyway. I liked Ossus. I actually enjoyed the new Ossus wold bosses so ran them several times. (Finally had a group that did the droid one with no deaths, and now understand what the non-zerg real strat is ). But ever since 5.10 the groupfinder queue has been slow and not fun. Last weekend I got sick and tired of Hammer Station so I unticked it and stopped getting pops. I'm not interested in chasing the new gear grind. Don't want to re-run class stories again at this time. Not sure I can muster the interest to log in this weekend or not. So I'll probably let my sub lapse again, and take a another break until the nostalgia hits again. I suspect that 6.0 won't be coming around until late next year -- perhaps then?
  6. Quite true. Another comparison would be a real world situation that was brought up in a book on public relations I read years ago. It compared two instances of a significant service outages for two different areas, handled by two different companies. I read this wayyy back, so you'll have to forgive a purely anectodal example -- I don't remember the details of when and where exactly this was. Anyway, the first company chose to be tight lipped, occasionally giving updates along the lines of "we're working on it, and we'll give updates as soon as we can" The second company was more prolific with their communication. Regular updates were published through news outlets, as well as frequent announcements on local new stations. Because they didn't have estimates of when the outage would be handled, they instead provided information about what had happened, and the steps they were taking to fix the issue. The first company ended up in a PR nightmare with angry angry people. The second company had very little backlash by comparison, despite their service outage being quite a bit longer. Coming back to SWTOR, I myself have been mystified by some of the changes being made over the past 3 years. For example (spoilerified in a feeble attempt at brevity) This was followed by: And now we have: So yes, I do believe that more communication from Bioware would be helpful.
  7. I have another visitor. Stay awhile; Stay ... FOREVER!!!
  8. I can, with confidence, say that if a single dev post appears after a drought of communication, the first thing that will happen is an "unload" of all of the issues people felt are being ignored and unheard, and will likely have a noticeable amount of disrespectful posts. I can also say, with confidence, that if this were followed up by more communication on a regular basis, the overall tone of the group will start shift to a more positive one. Do you know how I know this? This is exactly what happened with Keith first joined this community. Lest we forget, prior to Keith, the amount of hate in these forums that was being directed towards Ben "Thrill of the Hunt" Irving was quite intense, and more than a little over the top. When Keith first started posting he was met with skepticism and some antagonism. The next few posts were met with some begrudging respect. Eventually people that had previously demonstrated a noticeably negative view started to express relief that someone seemed to actually be at the helm and the game may be going in a good direction. The same exact thing could happen again. One or two (or even three) half-hearted attempts at communication will possibly be met with a slew of angry posts. But if the communication were kept up, things would slowly get better. I say this with an unshakable certainty.
  9. Kieth’s credibility has declined in tune with his presence on the forums. Surely I don’t have to spell this out for you. Public relations issues are solved with more communication, not less.
  10. Do you know what would help? If Eric and Keith spent time on the forums talking to us. Consider MattPucevich's posts on the PTS, talking about the new NM raid, or the new instance boss. Or JackieCao's post on the PTS talking about how and why the H4 was developed. Those developer posts were a ray of sunshine for this game, as they talked about the changes. The H4 explanation in particular was an excellent example of how developer communication helps the players. There was this avalanche of feedback complaining about the difficulty of the new Hold the Line heroic. Jackie went on to explain how H4 content had been phased out for a couple of years now, and this was an attempt to put some back into the game. Suddenly, the entire tone of the thread changed, as people understood what was going on. Or how about when Keith first took on his responsibilities? He spent time on the forums, talked about plans, talked about things happening with the game, etc. The general player reception was excellent, because those of us reading the forums felt like someone was actually making good decisions. With 5.10 we have changes being made to the gearing in this game that have not existed in it's entire 7-year run. Slot-locked mods and enhancements. Time limited rewards for different (and exclusive) types of game play. Phenomenally expensive crafting costs. How difficult would it be to engage the audience and talk about this? Even if not in microscopic detail, how about talking about the philosophy of what they're trying to accomplish? Heck, people like you and me have jobs that don't involve SWTOR. It certainly doesn't take much time out of our day to peruse the forum once in a while and make the occasional post on something we find interesting. And yet, there are people who are actually employed by Bioware as their job to "manage the community" who aren't engaging us. When this happens, it's harder come to the conclusion "they have a plan and we just don't understand it". It's easier to come to "they're making poor decisions and don't want to talk about it."
  11. This is a side effect of the "gaming industry" deciding that the genre of space combat sim wasn't worth developing. For the past 15-20 years, the only space combat sims that have been made came from a small handful of independent studios. Even the almost absurd 9-figure crowdfunding of Star Citizen hasn't convinced developers that it's worth making a AAA space combat game. Just how many PC gamers do think even own joysticks these days?
  12. I suppose it's possible, but then why would they choose such a flawed "norm"? Tank gear with a vastly wasted amount of defense, dps gear with wasted accuracy, and dps/healer gear with alacrity values that force you in the middle of a GCD breakpoint. Had the "default" gear purchasable from the vendor allowed one to hit the appropriate stat targets right out the gate, the slot-locked enhancements would have been more palatable. As it is, a dps needs three pieces of healer gear, and a tank has to stick with 248 enhancements or potentially wait for bank-busting crafted gear. I'm not sure about healers though.
  13. Olagatonjedi, The view you present seems to be that of an infallible business, who are making wise decisions that we players don't get because we cannot see the "big picture" or something. But a business is made up of people, and people don't always make good decisions. Isn't it possible that someone in the development of this game is making mistakes? And I don't mean the bugs, I'm talking about intended changes that could potentially be mistakes? Or do you truly believe that the decisions being made by Bioware are all for the best?
  14. I agree, that could be a really fun movie to watch.
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