- rotate aggro between players. - kiting. - use x/y/z to your advantage. [etc] I think the problem may be that the trinity has 1 viable tactic (tank gets hit by it, dps hits it, healer heals tank). And we might actually have to come up with new roles and new tactics...

http://www.swtor.com/legalnotices/rulesofconduct B(4) is the releavant article: I've opened 10+ tickets, all were responded to within 24 hours... so I opened a ticket asking whether that means "all macros" or "all macros that facilitate xxx"... The ticket took a few weeks to get a long and detailed response, and based on that response - I still have absolutely no idea what the above rule means .

That's incorrect. -> Soloing in an MMO usually provides lesser reward than grouping (e.g. solo loot is 'green' and group loot is purple or whatever). But the difficulty is no harder. The logical choice is: - pug queue. - premade queue. 2x reward of pug queue. - ranked queue. Uber reward of some type. Just make the rewards 'something other than ludicrously unbalanced equipment' and people will accept that.

After seeing many iterations of votekick in many games, you will be votekicked: - because you are a terrible person (e.g. spamming racist comments). - because you are intentionally harming your own team. - to make room for a guildmate. - to make room for a 'better player' (aka 'gearscore' or whatever). You will not be votekicked for messing up.

A lightning storm of sith inquisitors A gravel pit of jedi consulars A fridge of republic troopers A booty of jedi knights A screen of snipers/gunslingers

IMHO Medals are a counter to /afking a match, they seem to work and should remain. - the medals should be 'easily obtainable' by someone normally playing a match (and I think a decent number are). I'd prefer to see a limit put in place for 'general play' medals (5?). And then real objective medals allowed to exceed that cap.

My own gripe: Why do we even have fog-of-war? a) I seem to know the position of the entrance to a cave within 0.01cm, but I don't know which road goes there? b) I seem to know the position of the entrance to a cave within 0.01cm, but don't know that it's 1200 feet above/below me? c) I seem to know the precise layout of all 3 levels of the ultra-secret hidden enemy base, but I don't know which road to take? Pro-Tip: go to google images and search for "[zone name]" + map before driving into the blackness.

IMHO traditional sandboxes are too expensive, too buggy and too much of a risk for anyone to build a sandbox MMO in 2012. But that doesn't mean that 'Theme parks' are the future exactly. WAR->Rift has shown the possibility of a 'Safari park' - a place where the rides are part of the park, are quite unpredictable and can trash your cafe. Anyway, MMO design is evolution - and in a way we are evolving back towards some very different types of sandbox.

"Hello sir, this is Corruscant security, we've detected an unusual item in your cargo hold, please land at the new orbital station." "Go to Tython and ..." "In preparation for the new player-owned star destroyers, we've increased the size of the spaceports" "Messa your new ship droid replacement!"

To be fair, people complain about the reflections in the fleet, not the mirror .

There's a slight bias for Empire due to mirror imbalances/turret bugs - but it only really affects a relatively small number of tight matches. As I've seen something similar - in all likelihood you are facing a few BMs, and your side doesn't have any. Unfortunately the best way to get that gear is winning 3x matches a day, and that doesn't sound very likely. Roll an alt?

The question is simply "are there more things to DO". (a designer could increase the size of Drommund Kaas by a factor of 4 and then add some mountains - maybe in an afternoon - but that is not "adding content" in a sense that we would understand unless there was a purpose to adding all that space). I don't know the truth either way, but I wouldn't say that Tython was "content-dense".

If they removed all the speeder points from Drommund Kaas, would that be 'adding content'? what if they increased the number of mobs required to kill for quests? Without knowing what he spent the time doing, it's impossible to know whether Jedi have 'more content' or 'more time sinks'.

Except it's not work. It's more akin to a gym.. We both pay a subscription fee - you spend 15h a day in there, other people spend 1h a day... -> a casual player is effectively subsidising your play time. On top of that, when you compete against a casual user, you believe that you have 'earnt' the best gym equipment whilst they should compete on the clapped out bike with the broken saddle. MMO design is complete nonsense .

I play FPSes against players with more time than me, and they kick my ***. Their equipment is the same, they're just really good at playing it. If he plays better, doesn't he already have an advantage? I don't know what's happening on other servers but on mine it appears if you don't like pvp at 50 you just quit or roll an alt... and it appears everyone has . I suspect the people who would agree with you have already left - I've only got 7 days remaining.

Hard to disagree with any of your post, but probably too late to do anything about it - nerfing gear would cause a [censored]-storm .

500-300k? We're in a period of high sales (TOR was #3 in the UK PC sales chart last week), and yet server pops are stable/marginally negative. Looking at TOR with a fresh set of eyes, maybe this game is a poor fit for the $n/month subscription model? A GW-style model seems more apt: - pay to purchase the box. - then, free to play online. - expansion cost $$$. Given the design of SWTOR the expansions could be 'micro-expansions' released regularly... I just can't see people paying $n a month for TOR, but I could imagine them spending another $n to see the next chapter... /shrug

SWTOR was #3 in the PC charts last week in the UK. -> this game is in it's growth phase... and yet even with large amounts of new players arriving, the game appears to have a stagnant or slightly negative population growth . Hopefully they can take a fresh look at things, and try to turn it around.

Because the whole system is brain-dead . 1) expertise is supposed to balance against PvE gear. 2) without PvE or PvP gear you are at a somewhat huge disadvantage. If you banded PvP on expertise level, PvE gear would be the best gear in each level - destroying the whole point of expertise... As people argue elsewhere - the obvious solution is to remove the expertise stat and make "presence = PvE version of expertise".

I think we've all done run around swinging a lightsabre only to realise you're facing the wrong target... and most of us have carefully guarded a turret from enemy forces only to turn around and discover someone just capped it . Mine has to be wandering around on huttball, snared by a bug for 3 minutes.... eventually I discovered that I'd somehow toggled auto-run off and was simply walking .

Day/night cycles and weather patterns involve heavy manipulation of shadows. The shadow system in SWTOR appears to be a problem. Increasing the NPC count would equally stress parts of the engine that aren't particularly happy at the moment. (this may be loading time rather than any 3d rendering/texture issues) The only thing that really bugs me are the mobs standing around waiting to be slaughtered .

Civil war is (in theory) a volatile map: A team with a strategic advantage (more flags) has a tactical disadvantage (more flags to defend, whilst your opponent can focus on attacking a single point). -> the game naturally pulls itself into balance - the 2 teams will naturally fight a close battle... The side speeder routes and the 2 attack buffs inside the central flag area are both detrimental to this mechanic . IMHO force speed on this map is also 'difficult' from a balance perspective.

^ This. The only real change needed is to move sprint down to level 10. Ignoring sprint, I would much rather play a 10-49 match with 7x level 10s than play a level 50 match with 7x fresh 50s .

In 2004/2005 WoW released. It competed against: - a 5 year old EQ with 8-9 expansions under it's belt. - a 3 year old DAoC with ~4 expansions under it's belt. - a brand new EQ2. [etc] It did not compete against 1999's EQ, nor did it compete against 2001's DAoC. It was compared against "the other boxes on the shelf". It had to compete against the huge content advantage of EQ, the polish/pvp of DAoC and against the brand-loyalty of EQ2. It was a huge uphill battle, but that's what a new MMO faces... if you can't build an MMO like that, maybe you should make a different game? In a shop TOR is in box #1, WoW 2012 is in box #2. Compare them, pick one. WoW 2005 is only relevant if you have a time machine to take ToR back and put it on the shelf next to it.

^ different spec to him, but entirely agree. Slow Time is more practically useful, FiBs damage/healing seems pretty insignificant in warzone terms, and the various buffs for it are mostly useless... but nothing compares in a warzone to dropping a 38m ranged aoe interrupt on a flag/door.