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How many have quit ?
admriker444
Member Posts: 1,526
Any guesses or websites reporting anything ? Im curious cause Ive seen so many many goodbye posts in the past week. Players who swore they'd play until the servers shut down are posting the goodbyes.
Someone at SWG posted 1/4 population loss currently and growing. From what I recall from that graph posted here previously, SWG had 225 players. So 25% loss would mean almost 60k players wow.
Maybe devs are counting on Episode 3 to get new players but personally I dont see them getting that many. Too much bad press, bad word of mouth, and a complex learning curve (although quite dumbed down now) will keep the kiddies playing WoW and Guildwars. I'd be shocked if SWG gained 10k new players that stay past 1 month.
And it will soon be 60,002 accounts lost if they dont fix the CU. I cant even play at the moment, between the servers being down and jedi totally broken I cant play at all.
Comments
Games Played » AO | EvE | RyL | EQ | SwG | WoW | MxO | CoH | GW
My estimate is that about 20 % have quit or are in the process of quitting the game. Those figures include the people that pressed the cancellation button but still have prepayed for 1-3 months.
But keep in mind that a large percentage of these cancellations consist of buff bot secondary accounts ... something which you dont need anymore in the new system.
Have fun
Erillion
My brother, wife, and myself quit, but I don't think the numbers are as high as the quitters would like everyone to believe.
I'd estimate about 30% of people are leaving, but about a third to one half of that number is made up by people coming back to try it out.
I'd say that once EP3 releases, they'd be breaking even numbers-wise.
Hopefully, the CU is ultimately something that makes SWG a great game, albeit a new one. My wife, brother and I didn't really want to re-learn a game we were veterans of, under a system so initially full of problems, from a development company with a horrible track record as far as customer concern goes.
We moved on, the game will survive, and in a month, I hope its thriving again.
My time with SWG may be over, but I still want it to succeed, even if I am disappointed that instead of fixing the old game, they went and made a new one.
I really hope that *insert game name here* will be the first game to ever live up to all of its pre-release promises, maintain a manageable hype level and have a clean release. Just don't expect me to hold my breath.
this statement right here is a big thing... if I am understanding it right
Basically the non combatants, such as pure entertainers and crafters and somewhat doctors, were a major part of the player economy. I believe the only crafting profession that wasn't truely hurt by the changes were architects and that's only because nothing they crafted was directly related to combat.
One of the greatest things that SWG HAD going for it was it's beautiful player driven economy. Unlike other games where you either got all your upgrades from an NPC merchant or it was dropped by a creature/npc that you killed... SWG had player crafters. Most pure crafters took great care in selecting the best of the best resources to achieve the best end result. The most destroyed crafting profession of all was armorsmith. Those guys were so outraged by what the CU was doing to them, that the player correspondant got fired after many of his people started a letter writing campaign to SoE.
One of my characters was a dancer and I can't even begin to describe how messed up entertainers are now. We had it bad before... starting with the hologrinders, when the cantinas became hot spots for afk grinders trying to become jedi. Then they added mind buffs and soon after the afk-buff bots came into existance. Basically entertainers were and still are considered a joke in SWG. Where as in the beginning, entertainers at leaster garnered some respect.
Basically with the removal of mind dmg, entertainers lost a whole line of abilities. No longer needed to heal mind dmg or buff the mind... yet, still having to pay the experience to learn the skills that are no longer used. Battle fatigue, which is something else entertainers heal is now almost non existant, unless you die outside of your cloning are or crash in your ship... and battle fatigue gives the least amount of entertainer healing experience so it's negligable.
What they gave entertainers was a small bandaid... "inspiration" buffs. It works almost like WoW, where you walk into a cantina, /watch a dancer or /listen to a musician and you get inspired. Being inspired grants 5% experience increase, crafting bonus and faction increase. It was 10%, but they nerfed it down during the CU testing. This new buff has some inherent problems. It's supposed to replace the mind wound healing, but the amount of healing experience you get while performing the buff is so minimal that it really doesn't make a difference in the long run. Second problem is that any entertainer can give this buff, no matter how skilled... only difference is that if you are less skilled it takes longer to get the full buff.
So, enterainers are being led around with some promise that they will be compensated during the "entertainer upgrade".
Anyway, it's too early and I'm not sure I stated everything properly. But, I'm sure someone else will come through and clarify or fix anything I said
Hi there,
the armorsmith correspondent was fired because he essentially called people to do a mailbomb attack on the developers (2200 private mails I think !).
Entertainers (musicians, dancers, image designers) can do all they have done before .. the same moves, the same music (or even more of them I have heard). They are still the most extrovert type of players, socializing to their hearts content.
What they took away was the (mind) god buff ... just as the took away the god-mode buff from doctor. And that dancers cant equip armor (what for ?) or weapons (ok, some saber dances looked good, but I can live without them) anymore while dancing. So they reduced all those things that reduced most of the entertainer population to AFK mind buff bots. And they kept all the things that MAKE an entertainer an entertainer !
Yes, there will be less entertainers, but many more of them will be online !
And concerning crafters ... I consider myself primarily a crafter (shipwright + artisan) .. and I still have combat level 60, which allows me free reign on every planet, but I have to be careful when solo on the pure adventure planets like Dathomir. Not to mention that i can use just about ANY weapon that is not specifically tied to a Master Combat Profession title. So unless you take NO fighting skills whatsoever you can pack quite a punch and use 90 % of all weapons.
Have fun
Erillion
Actually, you are very wrong about what they took away from entertainers. Most entertainers could care less about being able to give mind buffs. That wasn't really the biggest concern.
What they took away that upset a lot of us was mind wounds. That was where entertainers got the vast majority of their entertainer healing experience. If you want to master dancer or musician, you STILL have to train skill boxes that are for the old system of mind wound healing. So basically, dancers got the big screw.
Don't come back here and tell me that inspiration buffs are enough to cover the loss. Since battle fatigue is almost non existant, and gave very little experience before and now, the experience gained through those two things aren't enough to cover it.
Not to mention the lower group size, which if you understood how entertainers got experience you'd understand another reason some of us got upset.
If you really want to discuss the inticacies of how entertainers were screwed, we can continue this, but it's quite a lengthy discussion.
And yes, what the armorsmith correspondant did was wrong, but so is it wrong for the people that are supposed to be in charge of customer relations ignoring their customers wrong. As far as I heard, he was trying to get a response for a couple weeks and got nothing. I'm sorry, but if your one and only job is to be the liason between the customer and the company, you should never tell your customer you were too busy to deal with the problem.
I'm finaly letting my subscription run out. Ever since WoW was released I haven't played that much and the CU does nothing for me. That game's been floundering for well over a year now and I suspect SOE will be giving up the proverbial ghost soon enough.
SOE's worste mistake ... Raph Koster.
Ico
Oh, cruel fate, to be thusly boned. Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee.
Agreed,
They need to tweak the XP gain from inspiration buffs so that entertainers can make up the difference. But overall the Entertainers and Doctors out there did NOT get "screwed" as badly as the vocal folk would have you believe. My best friend plays a Doctor and says it's tons more fun now. He doesn't have to spend millions on components for buffs unless he's feeling really masochistic because he can do just about anything without them. Stims are still a hot commodity as they allow anyone to use them. And CM's (and even normal medics) now have a very useful role in PVE and PVP combat that doesn't include Mind-bombing everyone with AOE's.
I had my doubts about the CU but once you get used to it it is a MUCH better system. The only crafters that are going to have problems with it are those who don't get ANY combat skills. Even mastering just ONE line of marksman makes most crafters fairly safe in the wild because the Elite professions, of every type, DO give CL. It's just the NOVICE profession that doesn't.
Granted: Crafters will have to be more careful on the adventure planets but other than that they should be fine.
As far as SOLOists? I'm a soloer most of the time because of family needing my attention I'm just not able to group until the kids are in bed (wife works nights so I get to play while the kids are asleep till she gets home). Before the CU I hated to solo because I had to go find a doc, usually stand in a buff line and then I could, hopefully, make enough back before I have to log because of a screaming kid or whatever.
Now I can hop on, go kill some stuff, and hop off.
No more hunting for a doc
No more buff line
Now, as to the "folks are leaving"?
I don't see it. My guild is growing, rapidly. We've been adding 2-3 members a night for the past several nights. Players are coming back in droves to check out the CU. And, you know what? Once we teach them the in's and out's they LIKE it.
Frankly it's only minimally different than the old version. The biggest change to get used to is the lack of a combat Queue so you have to pay attention to what you're doing. No more macro spamming in combat actual skill is required now.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
yah that's autoattack, which is nice because you can set a SPECIAL to be your autoattack
Works pretty well. The queue was a little more graceful, however..... would be SWEET if they bring back the Queue but still let us assign a special to be our autoattack instead of 'standard'.
As far as the 'new' game? It's not all that different than it was before, really. Just takes a little getting used to.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
This is not a coorporate decision. This big combat change is the result of Devs trying to fix what the users said was broken when the game came out. In a way it is a bit ironic. Sure, server backups were lacking, patches were meek, yet, we should not blame SOE totally for this game changing bomb.
"Whoever controls the media controls the mind..-'Jim Morrison"
"When decorum is repression, the only dignity free men have is to speak out." ~Abbie Hoffman
How do you figure this isn't a corporate decision? Do you honestly think the Devs made this radical a change to the game without getting authorization to do so from corporate? If you really believe that then you must never have worked as a professional software developer. Because it just doesn't work the way you seem to think it does.
Day to day bug fixes can be done without corporate buy-in but major revamps and projects of this nature ALWAYS have a project manager assigned and corporate directive as to the general direction to go in. Actual implementation is usually up to the devs but concept and 'vision' is usually guided from above. Sometimes it's the Devs that suggest changes and corporate says 'go for it' but if you really think this happened without Corporate's knowledge and blessing you are delusional.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
Hmmm, CU. Here's my 2 cents.
New weapons and the way they are distributed are kinda cool. Problem is we had ZERO warning weapons we had used for months and spent tons of creds on would suddenly be FAR out of our useable range. This doesn't really effect the master level characters. Commandos can still use Flamers, BH's can still use LLC, sure. But people who had Rifles 4 in Marksman suddenly found that ALL the weapons they had were now far above their level. And without info on what the CAN use, people were frustrated, broke, and confused. Besides, most Weaponssmiths have no idea at the start what they could or should make. So supplies are really low even if you can figure out what you can use. All this was compounded by the fact Merchants had to reload all their stock before you could see the details on an item before you bought it. Lots of people who wanted to test the new system went looking for weapons to replace the ones they were no longer able to use, only to find they couldn't see the CL required to use the weapons the Merchants were selling. Again, frustrating.
They seem to have adopted the EQ tier type system for XP and Mobs. If you have CL 10, and kill a CL 4 creature, you get almost no XP. If you attack a CL 12, you are almost doomed. CL 15? Forget it. This creates the locate Mob that grants best XP that you can survive, level, find next creature, rinse repeat I hated so much in EQ. Used to be you could kill higher level creatures, trading danger for XP, or kill tons of lower level creatures in safety for little XP. Most people hovered in between those 2 extremes, but you had a choice. Seems now you on that EQ type Mob treadmill. Grrrrr
Even the new Icons kinda annoy me. Sure they are visually better, but also less clear. The old single color ones were easier to identify in a fight. The new ones create a "clutter" for the eye in a hurry that distracts me. Maybe just me, hehe.
BE's making Meds bothers me. Sure it's a big boost to BE, but kills Docs. A few pieces would have been ok, just as Architects needed some Artisan or DE Stuff. But moving all the Meds to BE forces a level of interdependence Docs aren't used to. Besides, BE's are currently pretty rare. In a few weeks/months it will be better. But until then we will loose alot of Doc and CM's to Respec.
All in all. CU had some good ideas. But it was too much, too fast, and too drastic. Tweaks, some new weps/droids, and a few fixes would have been super. The CU is draining a puddle with Dynamite! LOL
I must disagree.
I am glad they took away the insane buffs the Docs could give and I am a Doc.
It is different however because they now force Docs to be in combat to get XP.
That makes the game very different for Docs. We no longer get XP for healing in the med center.
If I wanted to constantly fight or be involved in combat I would have become a Combat Medic.
So please dont tell me its not different.
Support Bacteria, its the only culture some people have.
It's not the game I enjoyed playing and all I can do is now is mourn its passing into history.
Cancelled and know of many, many more who have cancelled and many who went back for a looksee and cancelled again.
Now your opinion I can truly respect Nolf. You know the game is gonna continue and you also know the CU was a mistake. But a mistake that in the end will probably serve the game alot more then the old system. I can truly respect your reasons for leaving and can't really knock a single point you have made other then one. Sony has shown alot better development with its other games then SWG, my guess is because LucasArts whom seems to be a flailing company these days is making life fairly miserable for the developers. There seems to be some other influence in SWG that is messing things up, because how SWG is handled is far different then EQ II and even EQ 1 now.
Enjoy whatever game you do end up in and maybe in time we will see you again in SWG. Until then, good gaming!
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
Actually thats not entirely true. Yes the players did demand this, and the players kept in touch with SOE the whole way through, and SOE was pretty clear on what they were trying to develop for the players. They then blackflipped and pushed something that was very different onto TC without it every going into alpha or a closed beta to see if it was a feesible system. They changed what they said they were developing, they added a level system that was never mentioned. They rushed this system out so they could get out their second expansion at the same time the last movie is released. So thats 2 expansions that have cut into the development of the CU which was originally held back after the annoucement of the first expansion because Blackman said the system was a huge change and NEEDED alot of unrushed developement and test time.
The players (atleast the ones with legitimate issues, which are most) aren't mad about the CU, they are mad because they didn't get what they were promised, and what they did get is very incomplete. Its about like shoving a square peg in a round hole. Ya, you can force it in there, but it never really does the job right and it will always leak.
I was and still am very for the CU, however SOE made some shortcuts (which I have a suspicious was done after very heavy pressure from LucasArts) to get this thing out now and behind them so they can market SWG like made at the release of the new movie, which is the last time Star Wars will be at its height.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
Ya, but it really blows when you approach a mission and have a mob targetting but not double clicked or have hit attack and the moment you arm your weapon into your hands you start shooting it. That tends to get a group a bit cranky at you...
I don't know why it does that, it shouldn't start shooting until I TELL it too.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
Its a game, you can do anything you want.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
Ya, but it really blows when you approach a mission and have a mob targetting but not double clicked or have hit attack and the moment you arm your weapon into your hands you start shooting it. That tends to get a group a bit cranky at you...
I don't know why it does that, it shouldn't start shooting until I TELL it too.
That's odd... I don't have that problem but I do find it annoying that /peace no longer works to stop you from shooting at badguys.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
Thats because the ESC button is now the old /peace command.
Just not well communicated to the player base (just like setting auto-attack with STRG + click on chosen basic attack).
Have fun
Erillion
I want more.... BLOOD!!!