Waiting for it to come out to see if its bad is too late. The damage will be done before it can be fixed. As to the Master datacron and other "boosts", that is fine for "experienced" players wanting to blow through the content, but those are not available to new players and there is a world of difference in playing a level 1 character with all the legacy boosts and one that has none. The balance of the core game should be closer to the new player than the experienced player. An experienced player expecting leveling to be challenging is looking for challenge in the wrong place. Leveling has to accommodate all play styles and capabilities. Experienced players have plenty of options to make the content harder if they really want to, new players have very few options available to them to make it easier. Spending several hundred million on gear or real life money on a Master datacron is not an option for them, and shouldn't be expected. My approach to the PTS was to look at it as if I was a new player (minimal boosts, no legacy, etc). From that point of view, the current leveling process is very tedious and not fun at all, a recipe for a quick exodus for new players trying out the game.

This is my point, theres more than enough boosts to get even the most lazy players to finish content. but my argument all the boosts take something away for me, I am ment to be scard of the emperor hes all powerfull, I killed him in 3 hits........ see my point (jedi knight)

 

The only reasonable solution is separate instance with higher difficulty. If you find it fun - more power to you, just don't drag me there because I don't.

once things ARE balanced am 1000% sure new skills and set bonus will come out, Yes it will feal odd to start with but your mara will be better than ever just give them time.

 

Discarding what we can play with our own hands and see with our own eyes, as well as Bioware's own history, in favor of this kind of wishful thinking, is an extreme coping mechanism, and the clearest sign I've seen that even the booster crowd are aware of what an impending disaster this will be, but haven't yet been able to accept it, and are looking for what-ifs and loop holes. "Sure, what you can see is garbage, but what I can baselessly imagine is great!"

*Pinches bridge of nose*

 

Y'know what? Fine. If you and JediQuaker want to keep defending decisions that have little to zero playerbase support under the guise of "Let's Wait and See".....fine. I've taken that stance before as well.

 

Just remember this and this is the difference in this Xpac versus the others.

 

This is the year.

 

This is the year that the exclusivity license runs out and EA stops letting things go on cruise control. This is the year that EA decides which projects are worth the money to rent out a non-exclusivity license for and which aren't.

 

If 7.0 causes another player exodus and another server shrinkage, the odds that Bioware will have the time to fix everything and make it all better before EA says "We're pulling the plug by the end of the year" are remote. The odds are that EA will have made the decision by the middle of the year if not sooner (which may be the reason for 7.0 dearth of actual content.)

 

Previously, EA had already paid up front for the license (of which even the non-exclusivity licenses are not cheap) so, unless it was an insanely bad idea, the majority of the money had already been sunk in. Now EA is actively going to decide whether or not to renew the licensing costs and that means, more than any Xpac before, they're going to be gauging the playerbase and seeing whether the game is worth continued support.

 

But, hey. If you're so sure that 7.0 will knock it right out of the park, more power to you.

 

Yeah, this makes a lot of sense to me. It's probably time to ditch this game since I do not see EA supporting it for much longer after the 7.0 debacle releases.

Discarding what we can play with our own hands and see with our own eyes, as well as Bioware's own history, in favor of this kind of wishful thinking, is an extreme coping mechanism, and the clearest sign I've seen that even the booster crowd are aware of what an impending disaster this will be, but haven't yet been able to accept it, and are looking for what-ifs and loop holes. "Sure, what you can see is garbage, but what I can baselessly imagine is great!"

 

So, just so I understand. BW are on purpose going to sabotage there big cash cow make everyone leave and your saying am crazy? Everyone agrees BW are going to milk this game for every penny and pound, so why kill it now? they could have killed it long before, when there was a smaller player base for one, why go though making 7.0?

 

Its not wishfull thinking, BW will do whats best to make them money, thats what its all about that dollor, so in a COVID world where development time is at a premium, is it any shock there "slowing" the game down? why is that do you think, to give themselfs breathing room to make new content. You crying doom and wanting to jump ship, I happen to think BW will do whats best for them and its in there best intrests to make the game fun and welcoming for all, trust me it isnt a shock BW is doing this now.

 

Truth is WoW is dead, FFXIV is crushing it right now, BW want a slice of the pie, so they will see what works on FFXIV and try and make it work here. So is it any shock there building a platform to work from, remove skill bloat give players more choice on building there toons, if you look at what there doing its not hard to understand why.

 

Will it work? lets wait and see dont start crying before 7.0 is out a lot can happen between now and then.

So, just so I understand. BW are on purpose going to sabotage there big cash cow make everyone leave and your saying am crazy? Everyone agrees BW are going to milk this game for every penny and pound, so why kill it now? they could have killed it long before, when there was a smaller player base for one, why go though making 7.0?

 

This can be easily explained by Hanlon's razor: do not attribute malice to that which can be explained by incompetence.

Also see: Anthem.

Edited January 19, 2022 by juliushorst

Well, this is where I bow out, you can't talk to people who are convinced the world will end, Ill leave you with words of wisdom

 

When a man is convinced he's going to die tomorrow, he'll probably find a way to make it happen.

The pattern of them making panned patches and then finally tweaking it to a palatable state that people are pretty ok with only to make another panned patch is really something, idk what gives with this game. Like how can you even recommend this game to people when you know it might look completely different a year later and then different again the year after that. When I reflect on it in that way, it's no wonder to me it struggles with pop over the years; can't stick to an identity.

The constant reinventing of the wheel and failing at it (and then taking months to fix it) is also one of the key reasons why SWTOR never GREW after the initial player exodus. ESO did and keeps growing despite having similar disaster launch, titanic memes, hardcore Bethesda fans swearing it off, dropping sub model etc. Yet years of quality improvements that had some coherent vision turned the playerabse around and developed positive WOM. Same goes for FFXIV which probably had the worst AAA MMO launch in history, yet now it's poised to become #1 MMO on the market (if it hadn't already). Bioware never had a coherent vision, constantly bumping from alienating one group of players to another and shifting their strategy 180 every year or 2. With 7.0 they seem to be going for a hat-trick of turning off literally evey type of a player still left in the game...

At 80 give the player 75 billion credits,

An infinite amount of money would make the money infinitely worthless. Have you not read the multiple threads about people complaining about inflation in the game? Injecting money into it wouldn't solve anything.

Edited January 19, 2022 by xordevoreaux

My guess is that BW will roll the dice with 7.0 because they've already started swtor2 or a new SW MMO to compete with ubisoft's SW. The game is 10 years old and the game engine is 10+ years old. Theres only so many enhancements you can do to an antiquated game before it becomes cheaper to just build a new game from the ground-up. All MMOs have a shelf life.

My guess is that BW will roll the dice with 7.0 because they've already started swtor2 or a new SW MMO to compete with ubisoft's SW. The game is 10 years old and the game engine is 10+ years old. Theres only so many enhancements you can do to an antiquated game before it becomes cheaper to just build a new game from the ground-up. All MMOs have a shelf life.

 

why do people conclude that ubisoft's game is an mmo or competition for an mmo? its an open world rpg. I imagine its more in the line of Division

My guess is that BW will roll the dice with 7.0 because they've already started swtor2 or a new SW MMO to compete with ubisoft's SW. The game is 10 years old and the game engine is 10+ years old. Theres only so many enhancements you can do to an antiquated game before it becomes cheaper to just build a new game from the ground-up. All MMOs have a shelf life.

Nope. No major publisher is even THINKING about developing any new AAA MMO. These proved to be far too risky investement considering required cost and gamer expectations. Maybe it will change one day, or quasi-MMOs/GaaS games will nearly morph into MMOs eventually, but there will be no new major one releasing this decade if ever. Edited January 19, 2022 by Pietrastor

The constant reinventing of the wheel and failing at it (and then taking months to fix it) is also one of the key reasons why SWTOR never GREW after the initial player exodus. ESO did and keeps growing despite having similar disaster launch, titanic memes, hardcore Bethesda fans swearing it off, dropping sub model etc. Yet years of quality improvements that had some coherent vision turned the playerabse around and developed positive WOM. Same goes for FFXIV which probably had the worst AAA MMO launch in history, yet now it's poised to become #1 MMO on the market (if it hadn't already). Bioware never had a coherent vision, constantly bumping from alienating one group of players to another and shifting their strategy 180 every year or 2. With 7.0 they seem to be going for a hat-trick of turning off literally evey type of a player still left in the game...

Yeah, good point, those other games/teams have shown that turning it around is possible, if you stick with something and build on it. It's as if SWTOR's entire development track over the years is just a mixture of being reactive (but like, really really slowly, like 2-3 years late reactive) and being a dumping ground for whoever gets a hankering to do their grand artistic vision for the next year or two. The result being a confusing hodgepodge of different systems, some of which appear here and there to be vaguely responsive to feedback, but like, really late in their responsiveness, with no holistic tie-in to the rest of the game. It's like the monkey's paw thing with them listening to feedback when they finally do.

 

The only way I can make sense of it as something competently done is if the goal after launch (or maybe after F2P) was never about stabilizing the game's pop and building on it, but about making back the enormous amount of money spent on development and much, much more, like some sort of testing ground to see how much money can be made from an MMO shell with the least amount of investment. I know that prob sounds conspiratorial... incompetence and infrastructure problems coming back to haunt them seem more likely, but I can't help wondering if that's a component of it. The almost-but-not-quite-entirely-P2W embedded in so many systems after F2P is hard to ignore, as is the endless cycle of fresh store MTX and for a long time there, lootboxes.

 

Edit: Like again, I know it sounds a bit conspiratorial, but if we think of this as being like a mobile game or online casino, instead of an MMO, I would say the track of development since F2P starts to make a little more sense, even if still littered with the incompetence of bugs and such. Like it's built to promote and normalize the store, rather than the store being an ancillary add-on to help it keep going.

Edited January 19, 2022 by Rolodome

why do people conclude that ubisoft's game is an mmo or competition for an mmo? its an open world rpg. I imagine its more in the line of Division

 

Thats still a rumor. Ubi has not confirmed if it will be open world or an MMO. I'm leaning towards an MMO since the only SW MMO they're competing against is a 10 year old one. The snowdrop engine is highly scalable and has well designed asset structure for modeling so it has the potential to be used in an MMO.

why do people conclude that ubisoft's game is an mmo or competition for an mmo? its an open world rpg. I imagine its more in the line of Division

 

Because the media covering games keep talking about the rumors, so there are many headlines calling it an MMO. For example. You can't really blame people for thinking it might be an MMO when articles keep calling it an MMO.

 

According to Ubisoft, the game will be quite different from the Division.

If the story is good enough, it will still be a major competitor to SWtOR even if it is only single player or co-op. A sizable portion of the SWtOR playerbase is here for the story, and the story has been rather neglected as of late.

Because the media covering games keep talking about the rumors, so there are many headlines calling it an MMO. For example. You can't really blame people for thinking it might be an MMO when articles keep calling it an MMO.

 

According to Ubisoft, the game will be quite different from the Division.

If the story is good enough, it will still be a major competitor to SWtOR even if it is only single player or co-op. A sizable portion of the SWtOR playerbase is here for the story, and the story has been rather neglected as of late.

 

Single player games are not cash cows like MMOs. I doubt disney would grant the license to ubi unless they were expecting long-term profits. Unless ubi found a way to mimic GTA Online's style (which would suck because SW universe is too big), I'm putting my money on an MMO.

Edited January 20, 2022 by AxelStorm

Single player games are not cash cows like MMOs. I doubt disney would grant the license to ubi unless they were expecting long-term profits. Unless ubi found a way to mimic GTA Online's style (which would suck because SW universe is too big), I'm putting my money on an MMO.

 

why not? Disney is getting rid of the exclusive rights to SW, so they could easily sell the idea of making an Open world RPG that isn't an MMO. Disney makes more $ for every game it can get created using the SW Franchise.

Single player games are not cash cows like MMOs. I doubt disney would grant the license to ubi unless they were expecting long-term profits. Unless ubi found a way to mimic GTA Online's style (which would suck because SW universe is too big), I'm putting my money on an MMO.

Not to be too much of a downer, but it's prob gonna suck as monetization goes either way, if the way the later AC games went are any indication. Ubisoft, EA, and Activision are kind of the sith triumvirate of the video game industry.

Single player games are not cash cows like MMOs. I doubt disney would grant the license to ubi unless they were expecting long-term profits. Unless ubi found a way to mimic GTA Online's style (which would suck because SW universe is too big), I'm putting my money on an MMO.

 

Knowing Ubisoft they'll make open world mostly singleplayer game with some online component, multiple pre-order bonuses and monetized mostly through microtransactions. Era of big MMOs is mostly over and I don't expect any new big player to emerge in the genre.

Knowing Ubisoft they'll make open world mostly singleplayer game with some online component, multiple pre-order bonuses and monetized mostly through microtransactions. Era of big MMOs is mostly over and I don't expect any new big player to emerge in the genre.

 

Pretty much this (New World being an exception). Much like other genres, MMOs, especially MMOs based off this type of gameplay, had their day in the sun but now, like Flight Sims (a genre I miss), they're heading into their twilight.

 

Although, we'll see if Microsoft can turn WoW around. It'll never be the giant it once was but, after MS clears out the toxic elements (Bye Bobby) of Activision-Blizzard, they may be able to stabilize it.

Would you say that what's on the PTS now is "challenging"?

 

🤣 they wouldn’t know because they refuse to test it themselves. How can someone have an informed opinion if they have no first hand experience?

Seems you understand nothing. Nobody complains because he gets weaker in old story content - most people complaining because their classes get nerfed into oblivion with gear stats they cant even change anymore, what mean they can't play anymore the things that they're playing right now. Mara or juggs for exampel will be dead for pvp & most harder pve content after 7.0. And sorry to say but I want lose competetive classes I like because you get bored and watching tv while doing old story content... You talk about bringing raiders back and making endgame fun & then argue to balance arround oldest low level content? Wth?!

 

But they aren’t a real raider themselves because they leave the game every time as soon as they do story. If they were a raider, they’d stick around for many months doing raids. Their whole raid rhetoric (trolling) is just a point they’ve picked from reading other peoples posts to see if they can get a rise out of us. Don’t let them upset you with their trolling.

Edited January 20, 2022 by TrixxieTriss

Waiting for it to come out to see if its bad is too late. The damage will be done before it can be fixed. As to the Master datacron and other "boosts", that is fine for "experienced" players wanting to blow through the content, but those are not available to new players and there is a world of difference in playing a level 1 character with all the legacy boosts and one that has none. The balance of the core game should be closer to the new player than the experienced player. An experienced player expecting leveling to be challenging is looking for challenge in the wrong place. Leveling has to accommodate all play styles and capabilities. Experienced players have plenty of options to make the content harder if they really want to, new players have very few options available to them to make it easier. Spending several hundred million on gear or real life money on a Master datacron is not an option for them, and shouldn't be expected. My approach to the PTS was to look at it as if I was a new player (minimal boosts, no legacy, etc). From that point of view, the current leveling process is very tedious and not fun at all, a recipe for a quick exodus for new players trying out the game.

 

Exactly this ^^

 

When we test on the PTS, the idea is to test all parts of the game and from different perspectives. It’s not just to find bugs or see what’s new. It’s to try and provide real feedback on the experience. Is it fun or boring, does it feel too easy or too hard, are rotations clunky, are the stats (gear right), are mobs too powerful or too squishy, are the mob or game mechanics balanced or broken? And of course, are the game’s functions working as intended?

 

Those of us who’ve bothered to test and test properly, have discovered many issues and reported the feedback to BioWare, who have made some changes, but not enough in my opinion. There are still too many changes that aren’t close to balanced in a wide variety of areas. Of course, BioWare will have had 6 weeks more to work on it by the time 7.0 is released. But most of the stuff we reported 6 months ago, so I can’t see them having it fixed within a 6 week period when you consider how many actual bugs still needed fixing and how much WIP stuff still needed their time to finish.

 

This was something that many of us long term (experienced) swtor players were worried about at the start of this process. We know BioWare have limited resources and knew it would be impossible for them to balance the whole game properly around the class pruning. We warned everyone and BioWare they were biting off more than they could chew. And sadly, they didn’t listen and Im 99% sure it’s going to bite them and us in butt when they release.

 

That other poster thinks we enjoy posting about doom and gloom. But I know I don’t and Im sure others don’t either. I love this game and I hate what I’ve seen BioWare do to it over the years. Im passionate about the game and want what’s best for it. That’s why I bother testing and providing feedback (unlike some others). I can say 100% from experience, that the changes BioWare have made for 7.0 WILL make some players leave, which the game cannot afford.

This can be easily explained by Hanlon's razor: do not attribute malice to that which can be explained by incompetence.

Also see: Anthem.

 

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

 

Well put. Sadly, most of those who saw to Anthem’s demise were absorbed into the swtor team when Anthem failed.

My guess is that BW will roll the dice with 7.0 because they've already started swtor2 or a new SW MMO to compete with ubisoft's SW. The game is 10 years old and the game engine is 10+ years old. Theres only so many enhancements you can do to an antiquated game before it becomes cheaper to just build a new game from the ground-up. All MMOs have a shelf life.

 

I highly doubt that. Disney would be crazy to let BioWare make swtor2 because of how badly they’ve squandered the possibilities with swtor.