What I am hearing from the raiders is not greed, or selfishness, or a demand to have better gear. What I am hearing from the raiders is that they have little interest in running that content unless they are forced to do so. You certainly did not choose to do it in 6.x*.

 

You're lightly touching on the true purpose of gear grinds here. Grind as a game design feature is basically an admission by game developers saying, "The gameplay of our game isn't really all that fun and has very low inherent replay value, so if we don't provide some arbitrary social status reward in game that requires a tedious level of repetitious play, we expect our players to get bored of our boring game, quit playing it and quit paying for it."

It's an admission of failure to design engaging gameplay. It's also an admission of failure of ability to create content at a rapid pace.

You're lightly touching on the true purpose of gear grinds here. Grind as a game design feature is basically an admission by game developers saying, "The gameplay of our game isn't really all that fun and has very low inherent replay value, so if we don't provide some arbitrary social status reward in game that requires a tedious level of repetitious play, we expect our players to get bored of our boring game, quit playing it and quit paying for it."

 

It's an admission of failure to design engaging gameplay. It's also an admission of failure of ability to create content at a rapid pace.

Very true.

It's why I dropped my sub to Everquest 2 back in 2013. I was grinding gear for the sole purpose to enter another area so I could... grind gear. Very piss-poor positive reinforcement loop. I was level 90 or 95, flying my dragon between two mountains just floating in the sky and suddenly realizing to myself am I really going to spend the rest of the afternoon buzzing through a gear grind, one achingly slow upgrade at a time, for the sole purpose of doing it more?

I called b.s. on that and quit.

In looking back at what might have kept me, and this isn't the only reason, but probably greater generosity with the toon slot count. More expensive in that game to buy slots than in SWTOR. That way I could at least play the same scenarios in slightly different ways with different classes / species (there are stats and abilities such as breathing underwater locked away behind your species choice).

Edit: And I think what may also may have hurt my play in that game was looking ahead at what needed to be done to get through all of the content ahead of me, knowing I'd never do it until I slogged through all that grinding. The sense that I was progressing at all had completely died.

There's plenty of content, usually seasonal, not tied to gear grinds at all in EQ2, but once you've done them, they're essentially the same seasonal content every year. There are content expansions, but they've a gear requirement, sometimes a stat requirement, to play, and that means diving back into that boring gear grind.

I'm attention deficit disordered. Just ask my guild, they see it all the time. Don't ask me to do puzzles in an op AND heal at the same time, not happening. So for me, clinging to one line of play for the sake of gear is more onerous than it may be for other players, because I get ancy after a while and need to do something else. Just can't sit there at one task all that long.

So, being ADD, I'll drift away from the gear grind and roll another toon or play space barbies decorating or re-decorating a stronghold.

And as we see from the complaints on the forum, you don't need to be ADD to get bored with gear grinds.

People who stopped playing around KotET will find out that over the last five years all that was added is: dull Iokath operation, Mountain Queen single boss instance, decent Duxun and the new one. How long do you think it'll keep them? Based on overwhelmingly negative reaction on the forum I would bet that if they keep this system as they describe it now the game will lose a lot more subscribers than it will gain.

I don't know about that, there were overwhelmingly negative reactions to gold augments being introduced, but I don't think anyone ever left over it. There have been doomsayers saying this change will be what finally brings the game to its knees for ages, for as long as I've been playing it anyway. If you come back to two new (quite challenging compared to older ones) operations, and a new one on the way, that's not a terrible deal at all.

I have no doubt people have genuine concerns and are genuinely upset about some of the changes coming. But to predict a net subscriber loss based on what's being said on the forums I find a bold prediciton. Far from all players use the forums, and some portion of people often end up accepting changes they argued were unacceptable when they were announced.

You're lightly touching on the true purpose of gear grinds here. Grind as a game design feature is basically an admission by game developers saying, "The gameplay of our game isn't really all that fun and has very low inherent replay value, so if we don't provide some arbitrary social status reward in game that requires a tedious level of repetitious play, we expect our players to get bored of our boring game, quit playing it and quit paying for it."

 

It's an admission of failure to design engaging gameplay. It's also an admission of failure of ability to create content at a rapid pace.

Yep.

Regarding the gear grind though - I actually feel kinda bad for raiders. They're going to be forced to do contents they've already done numerous times to gear up again for the content that they haven't done yet... and isn't even coming out with 7.0.

Yikes.

Maybe at some point the devs (and the players) should just stop trying to appease raiders because, frankly... it's just not really the game for them.

At least in EQ and WoW and Rift, at my time, you could get some decent enough gear grouping to get into raiding so you coul just focus on the new raids. But BW screwed that up too. Plus those games have way more than one raid area per level... but their solo experience sucked.

I don't think it's possible to appease different playstyles without much more resources than BW has, and I'm not sure they are trying to appease the right crowd here.

About the solo grind - at least in 6.0 it didn't feel that much like a grind to me. I could play WHAT I WANTED and get rewards (even if it was just renown crates - I've got a bunch of upgrades from renown crates). I'm really not sure how I feel about being forced into content I don't enjoy (looooong heroics to finish the heroic dailies or weekly areas swamped with other players) to be able to get gear upgrades...

I don't know about that, there were overwhelmingly negative reactions to gold augments being introduced, but I don't think anyone ever left over it. There have been doomsayers saying this change will be what finally brings the game to its knees for ages, for as long as I've been playing it anyway. If you come back to two new (quite challenging compared to older ones) operations, and a new one on the way, that's not a terrible deal at all.

 

I have no doubt people have genuine concerns and are genuinely upset about some of the changes coming. But to predict a net subscriber loss based on what's being said on the forums I find a bold prediciton. Far from all players use the forums, and some portion of people often end up accepting changes they argued were unacceptable when they were announced.

Way to obfuscate the topic. Nobody is saying "Hey, you're gonna lose subs because people on the forums are frustrated".

What people are saying, here AND on the PTR: "These changes will not be met with any enthusiasm except for {NICHE CROWD}. This is a paradigm shift from what you've been doing the past {X} years. Said paradigm is outmoded, and was never valid in the first place. (Ask EQ).

"Based on what I'm seeing, based on what my guild(s) are saying, people will not stick around past the story portion"

If the goal is to bring people BACK to the game, to get new people INTERESTED in the game (It's a telling sign that the only SW game of any note on the market has maybe 200,000 players, not all of whom are subbed), then SILOING gear and LIMITING play (rewards) is not the way to do it.

It's not that I want to be forced to run operations. I've ran operations for years and did so in 6.x just as well. Point remains, adding small gear improvements attained through those operations, makes it more fun to run them. Because you get to continue that sense of character progression. That might bring back some people who stopped playing a while ago. It's a shame we won't get the new operation with launch, that would bring back even more people, but it will come eventually and bring in people.

What about the unique Dxun gear sets? Was that not a "small gear improvement attained through those operations". Horizontal progression is a thing in many, many MMOs. Why did it fail for this one? (Let's be clear, it only failed for NiM raiders, the rest of the player base seemed quite happy with a horizontal gearing progression.)

Way to obfuscate the topic. Nobody is saying "Hey, you're gonna lose subs because people on the forums are frustrated".

 

I'm responding to someone saying "Based on overwhelmingly negative reaction on the forum I would bet that if they keep this system as they describe it now the game will lose a lot more subscribers than it will gain." How is it obfuscating to point out that basing your predicition of how changes will impact the playerbase on forum backlash isn't the greatest idea. A very small percentage of players go on the forums or test on PTS.

 

What people are saying, here AND on the PTR: "These changes will not be met with any enthusiasm except for {NICHE CROWD}. This is a paradigm shift from what you've been doing the past {X} years. Said paradigm is outmoded, and was never valid in the first place. (Ask EQ).

 

"Based on what I'm seeing, based on what my guild(s) are saying, people will not stick around past the story portion"

 

If the goal is to bring people BACK to the game, to get new people INTERESTED in the game (It's a telling sign that the only SW game of any note on the market has maybe 200,000 players, not all of whom are subbed), then SILOING gear and LIMITING play (rewards) is not the way to do it.

As you point out, swtor doesn't have a very large playerbase. I don't remember the 6.0 gearing system bringing in all that many people. Maybe a complete overhaul of the gearing system is exactly what this game needs. Keep people on the gear treadmill a little longer, trying to entice them into doing content that has a higher retention rate to keep a larger share of that initial bump of players that each expansion tends to produce.

What about the unique Dxun gear sets? Was that not a "small gear improvement attained through those operations". Horizontal progression is a thing in many, many MMOs. Why did it fail for this one? (Let's be clear, it only failed for NiM raiders, the rest of the player base seemed quite happy with a horizontal gearing progression.)

That could be a solution, but if you were to put certain Legendary Items behind operations wouldn't that be worse? Especially if they're BiS for a lot of content. A lot of Powertech tanks weren't very happy with the only really viable tanking set being locked behind Dxun. And that's kind of the problem right there. Only a couple of them were really useful, a bunch were utterly terrible and some were mediocre.

Seems to me that having a relatively minor stat difference would be much better than locking away entire bonuses behind certain content. If you make the bonuses no upgrade, then there's no progression in it, better to stick with the other bonusses. If you make them upgrades, then you're leaving out a significant part of your player base from getting those bonuses. Like any powertech tank not being able to/wanting to run Dxun to get their Emergency Power set.

Of course on PTS it's not just a matter of a few gear tiers. I've touched already on the horrible optimisation and non-modability of solo gear. That **** needs to go immediately. I would be okay with having powerful bonusses locked behind NiM operations. That would give me some character progression to work towards in operations, but I'm not sure how solo players and especially pvp player would feel about that one.

As you point out, swtor doesn't have a very large playerbase. I don't remember the 6.0 gearing system bringing in all that many people

Biggest two introductions of new players in recent memory was Bioware publishing SWTOR on Steam and then the fiasco with Activision Blizzard, neither which had anything to do with any content in SWTOR.

Bioware can't rely on externals like that as a constant, however, but when one widens one's perspective to every MMO on the market, there being only one Star Wars MMO is to Bioware's favor.

All games have gear, and to an extent a variety of species, a variety of game play, a means to progress. People on the forums cite the Content Wars, where game X is better than SWTOR because X is always coming out with new content.

Unless I'm interested in that other game's content, that game's publisher can put out a new full expansion of every day of the year and I won't care. I must care about the content. A stream of additional content that I don't care about won't help that game.

What we see on the forums are the content locusts who swoop down in a giant cloud, devour the latest content, and fly away again, not to return until the next season's harvest. The rest of us might wish for a new operation, or a few more flashpoints, but the noisiest complainers are those locusts, not willing to hang around or maintain their subs between bouts of new content.

Yes, I run a guild active in ops and flashpoints and engaging the game's content, but half the time if not more I'm soloing, and I don't see the new expansion as killing or limiting solo players.

The only draw is the Star Wars content. You can toss lightning, ice, and fire as a wizard in EQ / EQ2, so flicking lightning from your fingertips is not exclusive in the gaming industry to SWTOR. Just the light sticks and the SW lore.

So when you put this game's content side by side with every other game's content, I'd be hard pressed to say what is the magic bullet to draw in new players.

Edit: Broadly advertising the game would help.

What we see on the forums are the content locusts who swoop down in a giant cloud, devour the latest content, and fly away again, not to return until the next season's harvest. The rest of us might wish for a new operation, or a few more flashpoints, but the noisiest complainers are those locusts, not willing to hang around or maintain their subs between bouts of new content.

 

 

 

.

I'm certainly not a "content locust", as, I doubt, are many of the other naysayers. I'll find something to do. However, there comes a point where, am I doing something simply to be "doing it"?

<-- Wow refugee, joined from Steam (You nailed those two).

I (and I daresay I'm not alone), would like to see SOMETHING "new" for my $15 / month. Doesn't have to be every month, but sheesh, listening to the folks who have been here two plus years, the paucity of new content makes me want to go all 'Office Space' and ask the Devs, "So what is it you would say you do around here?"

What we see on the forums are the content locusts who swoop down in a giant cloud, devour the latest content, and fly away again, not to return until the next season's harvest. The rest of us might wish for a new operation, or a few more flashpoints, but the noisiest complainers are those locusts, not willing to hang around or maintain their subs between bouts of new content.

I certainly do not qualify as a "content locust" as I have maintained a sub on my main account since I returned to the game in December 2016 and have regularly subbed my alt account (it has been subbed for about a year at this point). I left the game in 2013 not due to lack of content but due to medical issues.

I am also not a regular doomsayer. I have certainly never claimed that anything the devs are doing is going to kill the game, and I have not said that about 7.0.

I have cancelled my two subscriptions. So long as this is the direction the devs want to take the game then I will not pay for it.

Might 7.0 bring in some people? Absolutely, but the question is not whether it will bring in some people. The question is, how long will they stay? The game has lost two regular subscriptions in me and I will not pay for it so long as this is the direction in which it is going. Yes, it is the only Star Wars MMO. If it was not Star Wars I would not be playing it, but the fact of it being a Star Wars game will not keep me paying (or playing) on that alone.

Not only that, even in pve the best gear is a reward for killing a boss, therefore quite clear proof they dont NEED the gear either.

This has always been about bragging rights which is what most raiders truly want by keeping everyone else's ilvl inferior.

As a solo player I'm happy for others to have their fun their way, but I also want my fun. As long as I can play the story from the beginning of the Class Story all the way to the current Malgus story and beyond in Story Mode, including the story mandatory flashpoints, with whatever gear the game does give me I'm happy. Do not repeat the major error that was the initial launch of Spirit of Vengeance*. Let me play the story and others can enjoy the operations, non-story flashpoints, and PvP arenas with all the top gear they crave.

*Spirit of Vengeance still has an issue where it remains much harder playing with only the gear the game gives you compared to previous content, but it can be played and finished now with such gear. For now you can upgrade at fleet for better gear to overcome this difficulty. Hopefully that won't be removed. Doesn't have to be the top best gear, just enough to play story content comfortably.

It's not that I want to be forced to run operations. I've ran operations for years and did so in 6.x just as well. Point remains, adding small gear improvements attained through those operations, makes it more fun to run them. Because you get to continue that sense of character progression. That might bring back some people who stopped playing a while ago. It's a shame we won't get the new operation with launch, that would bring back even more people, but it will come eventually and bring in people.

Point remains, adding small gear improvements attained through flash points, Conquest, renown, and solo activities, makes it more fun to run them. Because you get to continue that sense of character progression.

The same stance works for solos as well. We want continual progression as well to BIS gear, I think most of us are fine to have gearing be faster for those that do Ops or FPs, but we still want to be able to get to BIS as well. That is why we play the game - to grow and progress, but to do it with the activities we enjoy.

It doesn't hurt Ops players if solos get BIS, so why are they whining about it?

Today solos can get BIS playing the activities they enjoy. In 7.0 solos will not be able to get BIS unless they play Ops. This is obviously limiting and negative impacting solo players.

I don't know about that, there were overwhelmingly negative reactions to gold augments being introduced, but I don't think anyone ever left over it. There have been doomsayers saying this change will be what finally brings the game to its knees for ages, for as long as I've been playing it anyway. If you come back to two new (quite challenging compared to older ones) operations, and a new one on the way, that's not a terrible deal at all..

There is much more to complain about here than some augments - gear, weekly resets, nerfed conquest and rotating content - it will affect most of the playerbase, usually in a negative way. I simply ignored the golden augments and just sell my mats for them on GTN, turning a negative into a positive. Those changes I won't be able to mitigate so easily.

I have no doubt people have genuine concerns and are genuinely upset about some of the changes coming. But to predict a net subscriber loss based on what's being said on the forums I find a bold prediciton. Far from all players use the forums, and some portion of people often end up accepting changes they argued were unacceptable when they were announced.

I promise I'll stop basing my opinions on the forum as soon as the devs stop basing game's direction on some secret discord server

But seriously wherever those changes are discussed (Reddit, Steam) reactions tend to be mixed to negative.

This is the meat and potatoes: there’s virtually no reward for raids in 6.x. Is raider-tier gear the best solution to making raids more rewarding? It’s hard to say. It really depends how all this fits into the new systems the devs are creating in 7.0.

Ops players get options for some gear in 6.0 that is not available to non-Ops players. If I want a set of Apex Predator I have to either play Ops or hope I can get it through Kai over several months.

That is not a small advantage that Ops players got in 6.0.

Ops players get options for some gear in 6.0 that is not available to non-Ops players. If I want a set of Apex Predator I have to either play Ops or hope I can get it through Kai over several months.

 

That is not a small advantage that Ops players got in 6.0.

Set bonuses are going away so that's one investment not to have to worry about in 7.0

Always easier to pretend people who disagree with you do so for selfish reasons, rather than their actual reasons. That way you can feel morally superior without actually considering anyone's viewpoint, very nice. Great contribution to the conversation too.

I think you misunderstand me...

I'm not speaking of your motivations. I'm summarizing. It's just compression.

"I need/want an unfair gear advantage."

- AdjeYo (summarized/paraphrased)

If you can't stand by the essence of what you are saying, perhaps you should reconsider.

Ops players get options for some gear in 6.0 that is not available to non-Ops players. If I want a set of Apex Predator I have to either play Ops or hope I can get it through Kai over several months.

 

That is not a small advantage that Ops players got in 6.0.

Yep only the new raid (out of the 11 operations) had anything decent.

The argument about getting new players with those changes...

Realistically, what would attract people in the gearing changes in 7.0 that didn't attract them in 6.0?

I might be daft, but "play the content we want you to play every week then wait until our next update to upgrade your gear further" doesn't sound as much fun as "play the way you want to upgrade your gear in the time you want."

I mean, yeah, they might stay longer if they have to wait months to get the max rating that they can get, but realistically... how many will? And is it worth losing current subscribers over?

Set bonuses are going away so that's one investment not to have to worry about in 7.0

Not entirely true. The set bonuses are just being moved to the implants and being renamed Legendary items. While these items were on the PTS, none of us know how we will acquire them, or what will be needed to upgrade them.

What we see on the forums are the content locusts who swoop down in a giant cloud, devour the latest content, and fly away again, not to return until the next season's harvest. The rest of us might wish for a new operation, or a few more flashpoints, but the noisiest complainers are those locusts, not willing to hang around or maintain their subs between bouts of new content.

Been here since beta, constant subscriber since launch. In other words, have supported this game for 10+ years. On what basis, exactly, do you make the assumption that people who are unhappy are 'content locusts?'

You are not "nerfed" you have a similar gear progression as with 6.0 for the solo track. You still get that sense of progression.

You dont, let's create a hypothetical example, let's say max gear level is 100.

OPs players can reach that 100 gear ilvl, that is max progression.

Literally everyone else(the majority) is limited to up to 90 because they arent doing OPs therefore their progression is unjustly ended early. AND THEY KNOW IT ended early because raiders wanted special treatment which exacerbates the problem.

But if you drop BiS gear from solo content, that removes any sort of gear progression from NiM raids

Once again your argument is "screw everyone else's progression, I want raiders to be special and have extra progression just because they are doing that type of content".

Do you realize how selfish and wrong that is?

just get no gear progression from doing operations

Yet you still have to go through the same gear progression as everyone else, you are literally asking for SPECIAL GEAR PROGRESSION that is available in OPS only, you again are arguing that you want raiders to have special treatment while screwing everyone else's gear progression. I understand your argument, the thing is, you are hurting everyone else's progression because a minority aka raiders want to have special progression, that is wrong and selfish.

It's not that I feel entitled or want to feel more special than others. What I want is a rewarding gearing system. As I do harder and harder content, I want the gear dropped to get better and better.

At some point in life, some realize that words are meaningless, and what only matters is actions and consequences.

Your actions have the result of screwing the progression of the majority for the benefit of a tiny minority, you cannot argue its not the case, you want raiders to have extra special stuff for your own sense of progression and you dont care if it screws everyone else's feeling of progression, you want to be treated as special because you do OPS.

Been here since beta, constant subscriber since launch. In other words, have supported this game for 10+ years. On what basis, exactly, do you make the assumption that people who are unhappy are 'content locusts?'

Oh I suppose I could spend an hour trundling through old threads where people who said they were quitting once rage quit again over content. In between releases, you hear nothing.

Raiders can clear NiM OPs with less than NiM gear. IOW, said gear is a REWARD, NOT a NECESSITY.

However, to sell carries, there has to be a reason for people to buy the carry (other than title, mount, deco, et al).