http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=398179

It's pretty well thought out, and hopefully Bioware takes a look at it, but i believe it's too late to save swtor.  Only a re-launch with a fundamental design overhaul could truly save swtor at this point.

p.s. I also disagree with him on some points though, such as his Pace of Leveling section.

It has been tried before, back before 1.2 when it actually mattered.

The thread below got hundreds of posts of support, people saying that it was the best post of the year, that Bioware should hire the poster, etc.

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/347213

Instead, the guy was banned and his thread was deleted.

Simply put: Bioware does not care what players have to say, they will ignore feedback, delete threads with suggestions and ban those who post them.

Originally posted by cahenderson

So, there's some guerrilla forum posting going on over in the PVP forums on the Official site. One of the subcribers posted a constructive thread where he made suggestions on what they could change to 'fix' pvp. His original post was outright deleted after significant community activity. Now, various posters are engaged in a game of whack-a-mole with the mods (always a good sign) and continue to post the original thread content in differing titled threads. Here's the original post:

 

 

 

Originally Posted by redmarx allow me to preempt the responses:  "biowarea and 1.2 are awesome you just haven't gotten used to the changes yet, well fine you predicted all the issues so biowarea should hire you and fire their lead developers, stop being an egomaniac, you're wrong, i'm an ea employee and i'm loving 1.2 and so are all these fictitious friends of mine, etc..." here's the most important response: What is done is done, no use crying over 1.2 now, so what would you do to fix it? Fine, i'll give it a shot. I expect to get flamed but alea iacta est, here we go: General: - put all the ctrl+x type keybinds on the keybinds menu so they can be changed. (looking at you "ambience") - add option to remove or move the red text spam in the middle of the screen and its accompanying noise. - allow buffs/debuffs to be resized and moved independently from unit frames. - reduce some of the costs on the legacy stuff, as an aggregate it is simply too much, this isn't korea. - merge the servers: Time to stop being arrogant, admit that you screwed up and the game needs this step to improve and draw new players. Cross-server queueing will only help if people have healthy guilds and a server community to come back to after the warzone is done. Pvp rewards: - rewards for losing become 75% of the rewards for winning in non-rated, 50% of the reward for winning in rated. - if you get vote-kicked or leave a warzone early, you earn no rewards. - reduce cost of pvp consumables. - return to same credits, xp, etc rewards for warzones as pre-1.2. - let unbalanced warzones shut down like they should. - reduce the gap between recruit gear and bm gear by boosting the stats on recruit gear to help new players. - add mods and enhancements to the pvp vendors covering stat combinations such as crit/surge, crit/power, etc - each costing 1/2 of the value of a bm or wh set piece. - add a symbolic +1 to every stat on high rated warzone gear so it is ever so slightly better than war hero gear. Class balance: - equalise the expertise benefits to mitigation/healing/damage to the same ratios as pre-1.2. - revert all class balance changes to pre-1.2 when the overall balance was frankly a lot better. - after that (so going from pre-1.2 class balance), specific class balance changes for empire and republic mirror classes (i'll use empire terminology from here on) like so: - reduce the duration of the uninterruptible buff on healing spec bounty hunter energy shield from 12 to 6 seconds. - increase the number of targets benefiting from kolto missile to 8, increase the heal by 20%, reduce kolto residue to 3%/6%. - reduce the cooldown of jolt for deception assassins to 6 seconds talented, and swap the positions of the talents fade and disjunction in their respective trees. - for powertech, move puncture talent up to 4th tier of the advanced prototype tree. - give snipers the 20% heal debuff, they do need it. - remove friendly force pull extrication from sorcerors, give it to healing spec operatives with the same graphic as powertech grapple, replace extrication with a 25% damage reduction for 6 secs every 2mins defensive cooldown. - reduce the damage of chain lightning by 10%. - make thundering blast instant-cast and creeping terror do the same damage but over 6 seconds instead of 18 to encourage non-hybrid specs. - reduce the damage of operative backstab by 20%, reduce its cooldown from 9 seconds to 6 seconds. - since they cannot code an actual fix to the double hidden strike bug and the double force bending bug, simply use this bandaid: Dark infusion and hidden strike both have a 1.5 second cooldown (will prevent double dipping) - increase the cooldown of undying rage to 3 mins with a talent in tier 4 of carnage tree to make it 90secs, keep camouflage at 50% with no booster talent. - change juggernaut talent decimate to increase damage of smash by 5/10% rather than 10/20%. Those are all the changes i feel qualified to make. There might be others that i have missed, i'm just writing this post as i go along. Evaluate the changes for 1 week, tweak class balance, then introduce rated warzones pre-season. Evaluate again for 1-2 weeks, tweak class balance, and then launch season 1. Finally 2 very important things for biowarea: - let people make level 50s on pts: There was no testing done for 1.2 because of this simple yet somehow inexplicably lacking process, give players the tools, add a npc that sells xp for free, it's that simple. The ranked warzone failure was due entirely to this, because all your "ranked warzone focus testing" on 1.2 pts had no participants. - stop being arrogant, listen to your best players and follow their advice: They know your game better than you do. You might think you have solid internal metrics but you are wrong, your metrics are ****. Your best players analyse the metagame better than you can, with better contextual knowledge from actual gameplay experience, so listen to them carefully and you won't make mistakes like 1.2 again. So many negative changes occurred because biowarea listened to the players who don't really understand the game and don't approach pvp in an analytical manner - learn to filter the feedback so you can ignore the whining of bad/inexperienced/incoherent players and listen to the analysis and experience of good players.  How can you differentiate the two?  You need to listen to people who have been level 50 in dedicated pvp guilds for a long time, who play in premades and spot the imbalances, and further down the line those with the highest ratings - engage with them and turn pvp class balance matters into a dialogue rather than a soliloquy. ... Ps: Get ilum working. There's a long and well-written thread on this pvp forum for you to read and use for a full ilum redesign. Why have you ignored that thread? Swallow your misplaced pride, use the solutions savvy players are offering you for free, and get it done.

 

When mods get down into the dirt like this, it never ends well. Teala was right, "TORtanic" indeed.

the first thing i said to myself after reading it: This guy should be a dev.

i have played ToR myself and almost everything in this post is what i found wrong in the game. a revamp of their features will take months to implant but i do hope Bioware reads that post and learns from it. Now i dont want to be a doom-bringer but Bioware better starts listening to their players, if not the game will crumble even more.

I think that they made a good choice with having the transfers so soon. the 1.3Patch doesn't look bad either with the ranked warzones. 1.4 looks nice also, just think that a lvl cap increase is kinda early.

I hope that swtor gets better, so i can return myself to try it out again, but atm its far from ready for me. Like i said bioware better reads that post, because its brilliant.

EA/Bioware will not take any notice and that seems to be the general opinion of them which is their downfall (apart from making a crap game) and their arrogance is costing them bigtime.

There are game companies out there that put a lot of love and dedication into their games but alas, most are just greedy which ultimately strangles their game to death.

Come the release of GW2 and a couple other games, BW is going to be sitting around looking at sub 100k subscriptions and wondering,  "Wtf happened?"

Serves the arrogant assbags right.

Originally posted by observer

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=398179

It's pretty well thought out, and hopefully Bioware takes a look at it, but i believe it's too late to save swtor.  Only a re-launch with a fundamental design overhaul could truly save swtor at this point.

p.s. I also disagree with him on some points though, such as his Pace of Leveling section.

travel: every themepark game has gone through these pains. they definitely need to make more travel options, hell even LOTRO came out with maps.

leveling:  a thought comes to mind for alts. Heirloom items. I'm no blizz fan for what they are doing right now, but i have to say this was the right call. BoA items that help level alts. secondly, he was right about the mind numbing leveling, the world just seems like WoW does, and games like WoW, very static. Even in the beginning zones that fight in the beginner zone on hutta should have stopped at some point after completing some key quests. Instead you can reach level 50 and go back to see they are still firing most likely LOL. Random event chains, random popup quests in zones, group community quests ( even if repeatable would be more fun ) then gather up five go do them come back to turn them in. The same problem i had in STO is happening here. Where are the communicators? Why even have tech if you can't turn in quests remotely?

performance: they need to stop with the catchup, i've noticed even on my new machine there are serious bugs that haven't been addressed with the memory footprint on this engine, it's horrid. Someone there needs to take that code throw it out and start over.

guild tools: would love a yelp tool. wonder how many breakups in guilds in WoW this would have avoided if we had that. any why don't they have more itouch/iphone/droid tools for this game, aren't newer more innovative games going online all the way? (AHEM GW2) It just makes sense to have more then an authenticator.

I just feel that this game could be so much more, surely they've learned their lesson by now like the team at WoW did when they lost 2mil subs all at once and suddenly the next patch there were new features..... It just seems to me that they could be putting in things like the randomization of quests in zones and the turnin remote features to improve the game and make it more in line with what would REALLY happen. Not everyone traveled back in the movies to speak in person with someone, they DID have a communication system for a reason. And randomization of quests in a zone, community quests, and random quest chains are they way of the future and dramatically improves immersion when done correctly. Hopefully they listen to this guy.

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Originally posted by itgrowls

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Originally posted by observer http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=398179 It's pretty well thought out, and hopefully Bioware takes a look at it, but i believe it's too late to save swtor.  Only a re-launch with a fundamental design overhaul could truly save swtor at this point. p.s. I also disagree with him on some points though, such as his Pace of Leveling section.

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travel: every themepark game has gone through these pains. they definitely need to make more travel options, hell even LOTRO came out with maps.
 

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when vanguard first came out you had to run your ass everywhere. there was no transportation, but at least the travel was somewhat interesting. going through 6 magical doors every time you want to travel has to be the lamest mechanic ever designed.

The companions DO chime in. However Bioware has a serious blindspot as they are unable to comprehend that for good story telling, ALL party members need to ALWAYS be present if they got something to say.

It has always been a case with Bioware that only those party members in your active group, speak up. Some companion left back at home might have a wonderful line but it won't be heard because you are questing with another group.

This is why Final Fantasy games tend to have more story, the devs don't put any hidden lines in the game that depend on what team you picked, all of the chime in as scripted.

Changing this is trivial as far as design and coding is concerned but it requires someone to swallow their pride and admit that their current method is flawed. And that is very hard to do, especially when you are doing so poorly. 

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There is however far more broken stuff with the whole companion idea. They you loose them when you send them crafting, for hours on end. That dark side gets them very late in the game so is crippled in crafting terms. That some just don't make any sense for combat and therefor won't ever be there to take part in a cut-scene. My BH Kyoka (or whatever her name is) is maxed at 32, others are near zero, she is the only that makes sense for me.

That their alignment can't be changed. How many make conversation choices for story OR to min-max companion points?

That most of the content relies on them being there, few MMO's would have thought that forcing EVERYONE to be a pet handler class would be smart.

That finding out which present is best is a matter of keeping a spreadsheet open. This spreadsheet existed since early beta, nobody is seriously going to try to reproduce it themselves, this isn't 1980 anymore were we draw our own maps. Trial and error with such expensive items is just not fun, especially with so many different companions.

There combat conversations are WAY to few, did nobody at Bioware realize that with MMO playtimes of years, people were going to hear the same line millions of times? Oh, maybe nobody at Bioware seriously expected anyone to play that long.

It would explain a lot.

had to pause and come type this after the surnames. Yikes! he went to town. 

This is a Star Wars fan right here. Good for him.

It's pretty much all been brought up before in its individual pieces for months, numerous times by numerous people.

There's less "noise" now than their used to be in terms of the massive amount of bullying and shouting down suggestions that was going on by people who for some reason perceived this demonstrated their loyalty to the game or something so maybe Bioware won't outright dismiss it this time -- the epic length of it actually makes it harder to pretend it got "lost" in the chaff -- but I wouldn't hold my breath.

There is always a gamer or 3 that really seem in tune with a particular MMO.

The write ups Furor used to do on FOH were awesome. Although Afterlife was the local home server guild, Thott didnt hold a candle to Furors write ups.

Only thing i don't agree with is the leveling.  It should have been slower but with way more fun stuff tossed into the mix.

I too would have to agree with many of the naysayers, as some would call them... Bioware IMO is not walking, but running full speed down the wrong path... I think there are a number of game breaking issues that drove myself and thousands of others away from the game.. We have expressed why, and it seems the only response we get is "Suxs to be you"... Well, no worries, many more games are on the horizon.. I can live wtihout SWTOR, but can SWTOR live without us?..  EA.. how's that employment plan working for you lately?  lol

Originally posted by observer

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=398179

It's pretty well thought out, and hopefully Bioware takes a look at it, but i believe it's too late to save swtor.  Only a re-launch with a fundamental design overhaul could truly save swtor at this point.

p.s. I also disagree with him on some points though, such as his Pace of Leveling section.

That was an awesome post and if they would implement the suggestions by that player - I might actually give the game a go.   :)

It is extremely rare for developers to pay any attention to the huge and often constructive conversations on their forums - and when they do it is invariably to draw the wrong conclusion and make the wrong decision.

Originally posted by Teala

Originally posted by observer

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=398179

It's pretty well thought out, and hopefully Bioware takes a look at it, but i believe it's too late to save swtor.  Only a re-launch with a fundamental design overhaul could truly save swtor at this point.

p.s. I also disagree with him on some points though, such as his Pace of Leveling section.

That was an awesome post and if they would implement the suggestions by that player - I might actually give the game a go.   :)

It was an amazing post, i find it hard to believe that Bioware would actually delete it in the manner they did, its not like the guy was trolling in any way though i can imagine some of the criticism would be a bit hard for them to take.... hopefully they saved a copy for the devs to study, i'd hate to think the guy put so much effort into it all for it just to be ignored out of hand, that the game needs 'fixing' is beyond doubt. But does Bioware have the willpower to do these things?

on another note, Starwars 1313,  saw the trailer thing and about all i could think of, omg, another cutscene game,  i can only conclude that LA is totally out of touch with reality.. i don't know what it is these days that encourages games developers to think that games players just want to watch interractive movies.. 

None of the things listed there are the reason why SWTOR flopped.

SWTOR flopped because it tried to out do WoW at WoW.  Instead of innovating on one aspect (which I liked personally) they needed to innovate on things like combat, classes, questing, ship combat, dungeons, world PvP, and a host of others.  SWTOR will always be "yet another failed WoW clone" and nothing will change that.

The guy makes some great points, and BW might be able to make the game better, but it's too late now.  The game will never be as popular or as great as they hoped it would be, no matter what they do.  IMO if players are not extremely satisfied with a MMO within 1-3 months, it's pretty much a wrap.  I'm not saying SWTOR will die soon or anything, it will just never be the success BW hoped it would be.  

Originally posted by Zylaxx

None of the things listed there are the reason why SWTOR flopped.

 

SWTOR flopped because it tried to out do WoW at WoW.  Instead of innovating on one aspect (which I liked personally) they needed to innovate on things like combat, classes, questing, ship combat, dungeons, world PvP, and a host of others.  SWTOR will always be "yet another failed WoW clone" and nothing will change that.

Pretty damn true... but the guy did make some good points on how to make the game better.  

I remember telling my friends, who were so hyped on this game, that this was pretty much a WoW clone.  They wouldn't hear it.  Needless to say most of them quit.  

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!

My biggest complaint is the lack of immersion. This guy brought it up in his post and I agree with almost everything he said. I wish the game had more quests from companions.  In the Bounty Hunter story, after you do Belsavus you call your team together on your ship and notice that Torian is gone.  Find out that Torian's been Hunter-napped and taken to Hoth, and you have to go save him...This is the most immersed I've ever been in this game, going to save my fellow Hunter and crewmate.  It was the middle of the night, and I had work in the morning, but I didn't care! I was going to save Torian!  The next day at work I was so tired, but happy that I saved Torian :)

Edit: Oh, and there should be an Affection pool, so that if you get a companion to 10,000, any affection you gain for them after that goes into a pool that you can give to other companions...I want to save up 10,000 affection for when HK comes :)