I personally think the podcast title is pretty good... because I have a BAD FEELING about what's to come.
What I (personally) like:
- 2018 expertise requirement to join solo queue is going to be the best change. Finally! I love it
- Adding an official way to transfer comms between characters. It's a nice change after the PvP decorations were not tradeable via legacy storage to transfer Warzone Commendations.
- reduced prices for Mods is nice because right now it was cheaper to buy a Dark Reaver Setitem (1000 Warzone Commendation + 2500 Ranked Commendation) of whatever spec of your class to get the Mod + Enhancement you need (compared to 2800 Ranked Commendation + 1200 Warzone Commendation to buy Mod & Enhancement).
What I don't like:
- AE won't interrupt tapping... to be honest I know a lot of people are crying about it... mimimi I can't tap because of the sorcs spamming their AE... but guess what? Every other class has a cooldown on their AE ... why not giving the Sorc/Sage a cooldown on their AE and you are done? Death From Above, Death Field, Smash, Overload, etc .... everything has a cooldown except Force Storm (and the equal on repubic side) - yeah I know Sweeping Slash and Lacerate also doesn't have a cooldown but sorcs/sages are most annoying . Give every AE a cooldown and it would help a lot. A complete removal of the interrupt effect is a step too much from my point of view.
- Removal of Ranked Commendation. What's the point in this decision? I just don't get it. It basically smashes all the motivation from SWToR players that are really interested in PvP. True PvP players and PvE players aren't that different. They invest a lot of time and effort to achieve high ratings (PvP) / firstkills (PvE) and to get the best gear for their class. With the removal of Ranked Commendation everybody will get the best PvP gear. Casuals probably don't alter their mods/enhancement to achieve the best for spec but besides this everybody who plays PvP will run around with BIS gear. How to avoid that? Well either the BIS gear items become very expensive [like 7500 Warzone Commendation for 1 Setitem + the previous item to upgrade (which would be the same price right now 3 Warzone = 1 Ranked)] OR you just stick to the Ranked Commendation.
What I want to say is ..... Players that are not interested in PvP won't get motivated by this move to play PvP and get BIS gear for something they don't like and true PvP players lose their motivation because it doesn't matter if they play Ranked (Champions League of SWToR PvP) or normal BGs (street football/soccer [whatever spelling you prefer ] to reach their goal.
- Season tokens instead of Tier specific rewards. Ok .. so I can fool around all season long, don't have to try my best every round throughout 3 months and still get all the rewards just by playing a lot? What I really liked about PvP (which is why I'm a PvP player for quite some time now) is that you don't have to invest so much time compared to raiding. If you've got one hour a day to play and use it well you can still achieve a good rating and get the rewards. Which is nice to know, because you don't have the pressure to play X hours a week as in PvE Progress to be at the top. With the change from specific rewards to Tokens I will still get Tier 1 rewards as a good player with a high rating... I know that BUT what's the point in it? Every fool who has 2018 expertise and lists nonstop soloqueue will have the same rewards at the end of the season like I do. Noone can see that player A is a good player and player B is a noob that just plays nonstop. Why come up with that change? It's like making Nightmare Boss rewards (Mounts, kill specific titles etc.) purchasable via Basic Commendation IF YOU JUST PLAY ENOUGH.
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Sorry for the long post, but this really bothers me and if these changes (especially the Ranked changes) come like that I'm out. And I guess most Ranked Players that have their motivation in getting RARE RANKED PVP ONLY REWARDS will see it the same way and quit or won't put as much effort in solo queue / team ranked fights as they used to.