What drew most people into this game is the story+VOs. They spent millions on the story element, which is cool. But no way can a story MMO ever last. When the story ends, so does the gameplay. Although the story+scenes aren't quite as good as mass effect/dragon age, its still a blast to play a story game in a mmo setting. The problem with swtor is they are drawing from the wow playerbase. Wow players have done tons of casual raiding+heroics+nonstop quests. If they left wow because they are bored of wow, they certainly won't last in swtor. That's the problem.

Yeah, there's so many ways to move the ball from force jump and allies pull. There's nothing wrong with a stealth pass. Personally, I like huttball much better if everyone just ignore the ball. If someone toss me the ball, i throw it away immediately. That's how i play! Much more fun.

Hardcore penality have a place, just not in theme-park games. In a theme-park, you want to get back on the rail ride asap after you fall off. The problem those open-world sandbox games is, they are still about building your character. As such, losing everything means end of the game pretty much. Most people don't want to restart over from scratch because some high level character kills them in 2 seconds. That's stupid game design. But if they ever come out with a real faction-based mmorpg, where your purpose isn't to build your character, but build up your faction. And if you were to die and lose everything on you, your faction can provide for a fast restart. I think having hardcore elements like perma-death and lose everything can work if you have a real faction backing you up. No such game exist though..

Removing factions actually would make a lot of sense. Jedi/Sith are all the same, except Jedi = light force users and Sith = dark force users. The current system actually makes no sense allowing dark jedi and light sith. And why can't smugglers work for imperials. Or bounty hunters work for republic? And the troopers look more like empire soldiers than republic. And republic has ISS operatives. If they remove factions, it would make more sense. They'll have to rewrite quests and story though...

Speaking of EQ1, I remember although you can have 6 men parties, I used to roll with a group of 3. Tank+healer+dps because it was the most efficient. Good puller don't need CC. And with only 3, we were getting great xp and less sharing of loots.

Yeah, it kinda bumped me out when I realized it doesn't matter what i choose as dialogue option. But its a rpg, i just pretend and go with it and pick choices that fit my character. Its just like when I know I save a planet and get my 'rich' reward of 400 credits, its just a game. Or when I defeat the rebels, I didn't really do anything because the world remains exactly the same. Or at level 50 and defeated the Empire and become the hero of the republic .. well not really you didn't really do that. The story and dialogues are just fluff. It adds flavor but ultimately is not meaningful in anyway.

I enjoy the running and long travel time. The problem is the game is very static, nothing really happens while you run from spot to spot, although I enjoy the scenery on some planets. Hoth being the most scenic of them all. I miss the good oldschool 2d rpgs where you see a world map and click to travel...and you can get random encounters! Random encounters are fun.

What are you talking about? The VO+cinematics is the prime feature of this game, and I rarely see people skip them. During first week of Esseles, every newbie would watch the scenes. Nobody was skipping who hadn't seen them before. And most people probably watch their class quest scenes too. People probably do skip the generic quest VOs because they are mostly boring and has nothing to do with anything. The problem isn't the VOs, its the quest mechanic is very boring and generic. People just want to hit accept and go their way.

Yup! One thing SWTOR is badly designed, its such a rail that people rarely bump into each other. Its made even worse since the entire game is divided into levels of 4, and the server capacity is so low. It doesn't have the hustle and bustle of other mmos. Bioware severly underestimated how people want to feel like they aren't playing alone.

Hehe, if all those people faceplaming the OP actually READ the post, they would in fact, be facepalming themselves. The OP admits being extreme and over the top to state a point. The point is extremely valid, but it really doesn't apply to this case, and he knows it. People facepalming the OP is actually saying its okay for games to become automatic bots that plays the game for you...since that's the the OP's main point. So they are in fact, faceplaming themselves.

I thought it was cool at level 1. But it quickly got useless and annoying. I especially hate it when it would roll me to cover to a spot I don't want to be...like I would cover to set up my shot, and boom! Rolls me right next to the mob to get aggro right away. its espeically annoying in pvp when I have a good spot, and it rolls me to the open where everyone can see me! But being an uninterrupt dps turret is fun though. Good thing about turret, you can be immune to all CC and interrupts.

My scoundrel laugh all the time too. Its a healer thing. Healer scoundrels/OP are happy healers!

Isn't battlemaster bad set for healing? For more heals, you need a PVE set. And the level 42 only has pve sets. Bolster increases those stats, so he's like a 50 pve stats. If you wear full pve set, you probably can heal more than that 42. Just a theory, you will have to try it out.

I don't like sandbox games because they feel so pointless. It might be fun to build up stuffs, but why? Sandbox games all revolves around griefing each other. You build something up for the sole purpose of getting tear down by others. With theme-park games, there's a purpose. You collect X items kill Y stuffs, get a reward! It feels like you did something. With the ultimate goal of running endgame instances for awesome loots. Sandbox usually don't have any sort of endgame? No big raids for end game instance, right? Otherwise it would be a theme-park game.

Imo, they should just remove healing altogether and make everyone tougher to kill. No where in star wars were there people sitting on the side pressing their tricorder or shooting green beams out of their autocannons. But heroes are genearlly hard to kill. They usually get beaten up really bad, crippled, or whatever before they die. So instead of a defeat and respawn, how about crippling the enemy player when their health is low. So ideally pvp is all about crippling players and move on to other healthy targets. Or they could try to spend a lot of extra time finishing off the crippled player at the risk of being crippled themselves by healthy enemies... In movies, even crippled heroes are still very hard to kill.