But they did, the long Post 4.0 became a barren wasteland by how many players left the game. So yes, messing up the core combat system and not rebalancing content will cause another die-off just like those other changes did. However thats just blatantly wrong, Combat keeps the game alive by making sure it's not mind-numbingly boring. Story may be the seller, but combat holds it all together. Good gameplay justifies Story, unless you just want to watch a movie. Bio-ware takes a long time to release story content and Combat is the main thing people do in the meantime, you do Combat DURING the Story, everything in the game revolves around COMBAT. Endgame gearing is COMBAT grind. If Combat gets messed up SWTOR will have even bigger ghost-towns between content updates and need to find even MORE new players to make up for the loss of existing players quitting over this change. First of all, 2 comparisons of fighting target dummies is no to way capture the complexity/player agency when fighting multiple mobs or a boss. That SWTOR player cannot show off Stuns, Defensives, Openers, or Closers which add a whole lot of animations making it feel much more varried. I assume the same of FF14 but havnt played it, but my criticism for that small snippet is it looks like most of the abilities are just spinning the PC with some gfx, maybe that's just a martial arts class lol. SWTOR players who can Leap, Saber Throw, Choke, etc in actual combat look just as varied, if not more. And for SWTOR not justifying it's combat through difficulty, that's the developers purposely putting the Leveling process on ez mode since 4.0 so players are pushed to max level. Taking away combat abilities to supposedly make it more difficult/justified is in no way an excuse since combat had already been in a balanced state with the current sets for leveling but was purposely nerfed. Moreover Casuals have always praised this change, THEY DO NOT WANT the combat system to challenge them, and that's why we have veteren mode for anyone who wants originally-designed challenge. Removing combat abilities will not justify combat, just diminish it and mildly annoy casuals with a slight difficulty increase or notice of flashy buttons being gone/mildly make happy casuals who don't have to go through the so hard effort of not putting abilities in their hotbar that they don't use. But it will greatly enrage everyone else who enjoyed their class and combat, causing them to leave. I main a Jugg and PTS changes for mirror class guardian are just terrible. *Edit- Lol, Sentinel PTS is just as bad.

Here is the real joke, they are just going to nerf NIM boss HP/DPS to compensate. Fight might be similar, you will just have less abilities to play any portion of the game with, Enjoy Seeing player agency removed.

A Combat Styles update that doesn't trim 50% of the ability bar would be better. Still doable, they could make choices 1/2 instead of 1/3. Or even do Combat Styles without trimming anything, just make loadouts save your quickbars and "Advanced Class" 'Combat/Weapon Style'. Oh it will continue on but it will be the death of something Core to SWTOR for the last 10 years. Out of all the simplifications this will kill any player who likes a little complexity in combat. Never said it was the best. SWTOR has an average MMO tab-target combat. However, even with Disciplines, it still gives great freedom in the amount of utilities, unique animations, and abilities a player get. Taking this average combat and making it below-average/piss-poor just diminishes play. Anyone not playing just for cutscenes = Well I mean this Combat Styles simplification is Step 1 towards console release if it really cuts 50% out of the quickbars. Without this it would be mostly unfeasible to play on Console just in terms of game design, without even getting into the technical aspects. Yes SWTOR has good story, but having an at least average combat system attached makes it that much better, without that, what's the point?

Welp, hopefully Bioware rethinks this update. This will be the actual game-killer. If they ruin combat, who will be left? Maybe their banking on tricking new players and releasing on console, who knows? In the end quality doesn't matter, just the amount of $$ that can be squeezed.

Well you see if a good player only had to do a standard rotation at launch with that difficulity-set.... Now we have players who only press AOE and Basic Attack 1 while leveling as thats how easy it is. This is fine because most of these types just want to see cutscenes. However, they then go out to PvP and Endgame PvE group combat and get rekt/kicked from MM Flashpoints.

kill it with fire ahhhhh

Lol I missed one ability, I think that's called intercede on Jugg, if only 1 ability were to be removed thats the only one I would kill.

Yes, how it originally was. Much better for end-game credit sink, companions were actually unique in their abilities and prowess. They got armor from the class quest as gear reward too. Before your companion would actually go through different armor as you leveled same like the main character. Much better connection to them. Now I barely gear them at all and they wear the same **** the entire game. Bioware would never revert back the companion however. Streamlining the companions into literal skins of each other is what allowed them to monetize and sell them to the playerbase. You would need a Classic Server to get the og game back.

Check the PTS to see the real changes

Unscaled to their original level for the early ones would be nice. At least you don't have the issue of needing to purposely NOT do side quests. I wanna stay on level so I have to skip heroics too very annoying.

Bruh, can you really not get below 400, are you a trolling? Account #10,691,840 seems like troll Average human reaction time is not 450ms, maybe 300 but my 60 year old relatives can give sub 300 constantly lol. https://humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime And regardless of reaction time, you don't need top tier DPS from every member to win an OP.

We all do, but it ain't coming back without a classic server so Rip. Losing flamethrower was really doing us BH players dirty lol

What if I want a combat-focused SW [MMO] experience with tab-target combat? It exists right here and I enjoy it and wouldn't want it cut away. I give my final piece in here https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=995367&page=12 hopefully they dont kill good combat

OPTIONAL DIFFICULTY TOGGLES for both types of players is the solution. All unique and fun combat scenario are luckily INSTANCED. Where are the Class Story, Planetary Arc difficulty options for instances. Even some exploration side quests have their own instances that could be difficulty-set.

Yes, if you mean that by SWTOR's thing is making terrible revamps that drive away more and more of its established players. They can go very far in streamlining alot of things in the game, but destroying the essential combat system through combat style pruning is going to kill whatever lite-traditional mmo players are left. I guess you can run an mmo with only casuals in the boneyard of where an actual game stood, but its purpose will only be for the cash-shop, and most trivial gameplay possible. TBF, yes, this makes sense. However in the process they gutted their original design with the simple bandaid less difficulty fix which destroys the content for actual gameplay players. The super-easy cutscene only, 5 ability difficulty shouldn't be the default, it should be an optional toggle, or they should at least add an optional toggle for the intended design difficulty that worked if they want super-easy as default. In the end, the original design is what was best developed in terms of $$, testing and dev team. The rest of the **** we get has been skeleton crew content development and fixes. I'm guessing you didn't play pre 3.0/4.0 but the class story difficulty was in no way as difficult as Wildstar. It just wasn't mindless AOE slam everywhere like we have now. And maybe their metrics show this type of "story" player is more prevalent after they burned everyone away with a terrible endgame and failed content support for traditional mmo players. However, they should still leave a difficulty option available for them and shouldn't destroy the combat system of the game in favor of players who don't use it in the first place. Shoot, instead of the 3.0/4.0 updates why didn't they just add permeant 20xp boosts for those who wanted them, would've been better than burning the well-designed gameplay in revamp, could've done content development instead. Lol, pre-3.0/4.0 was no where close to dark souls design. This game wasn't super-challenging, it simply wasn't faceroll easy to a point it no longer incentivized players to play its gameplay or learn its combat-system. I agree, but good solo content can also be difficult and fun. I enjoy solo content but still wouldn't want it to be as faceroll as it is now. IE Boss cutscenes in class story were more immersive for me when ya know, they felt like bosses in the gameplay instead of 5-secon- mash-button-to-get-to-next-cutscene-machines. Yeah, PvP has always been kinda bad lol. I enjoyed hutball the few times I played it and open-world PvP is a fun immersive gimmick the few times it happened until it impeded my questing. The 7.0 combat revamp would destroy the viability PvP has for those who like it though.

INTRO: Tbh, If the combat revamp managed to fix difficulty into a harder range I would support it. However, I don't see how removing player agency through ability pruning can accomplish that in anyway that's fun to play at a high skill level. Its impossible, 7.0 streamline will only dumb down the already dumbed down combat if it looks like its going to be implemented as in test server. But this time, it will be dumbed down at the functional level instead of being messed up because of mob dmg/health settings aren't tuned well due to broken bolster/lvl-sync system trying to propel everyone to endgame that isn't even that good. The great skill range in PvP will also be ruined if abilities are pruned/simplified. Long fight with multiple mobs with many buttons > short fight with less mobs and less buttons. Multiple DCDs allows one to vary when to increase survivability, Multiple Stuns allows one to do stun management if fighting multiple mobs, etc. When difficulty was correct, none of these supposedly "bloat" abilities caused any problems, they were vitally useful and still are in actual good GAMEPLAY content. Depending on the abilities pruned/merged, it will be the ruining of the core high skill combat that is possible in the game but just isn't seen that much because mob difficulty was nerfed ages ago. If I were to use my Sith Vengeance Jugg for an ACTUAL EXAMPLE, that's a class-spec where I literally use EVERY SINGLE ABILITY. Maybe other classes have useless abilities but I haven't played them extensively since years ago and can really only talk about this as its the one I'm playing rn. ABILITY BREAKDOWN ======================================================================================= ======================================================================================= STUNS: Intimidating Roar/Force Choke/Force Push/Force Scream: 6 sec aoe stun, 4 sec channeled stun, 2 sec push stun, 4 sec stun. Intimidating Roar: Is great for survivability as it stuns everyone around except the target you attack. Force Choke: Is great as the channel can be cancelled and an enemy will stay stunned for 4 seconds, can switch to another target in that time and get DPS in or just murder who is being choked. Force Push: Is a push, vital as its the only push ability for Jugg, self-explanatory. Force Scream: Works in the Jugg rotation as it does good dmg/crit dmg, can also do a nice stun. Also vital passive that increases it crit over time so that it can charged over for a large dmg atck. Smartly using these allows a player to fight multiple mobs by switching targets quickly which is fun when accomplished. Losing any gimps variable combat choice and/or could remove something iconic from the player, IE the Force Choking/Pushing. STANDARD COMBAT/ROTATION: Assault: Lvl 1 Basic combat ability, has all the dynamic animations when doing killing blows or swinging. Used to generate rage/hit really low health enemy to not waste rage. Unthinkable to remove. Viscous Slash: Lvl 1 Basic combat ability, the nice 2-handed overhead slash animation. Early finisher and big dmg ability when early leveling. Used in higher lvl combat when all other attacks on cooldown, def used. Sundering Assault: The great rage generating and armor sundering attack. Essential. I use this before all other attacks on single-target as it does the armor debuff and gives me good rage. CORE DMG ROTATION: Ravage: Large saber damage attack, known by the old cool animation it had. Core single-target dmg-dealing attack to hit when done cooling. Shatter: Does a DoT and instant damage. More importantly, with right passive, refreshes ravage so you can do Ravage-Shatter-Ravage. Impale: Another Big Damage Attack, pretty sure does most base dmg as single-target attack. Used in rotation as Impale-Ravage-Shatter-Ravage or Ravage-Shatter-Ravage-Impale or whenever. SITUATIONAL/OPENER/CRIT: Saber Throw: Generates Rage and allows Jug to hit targets and range, lets you kill low health mobs at range. Also iconic animation. Retaliation: The Jugs unblockable dmg ability. Useful when everything is on cooldown or enemy is on low health and you don't want to miss against an enemy with high defense stat. Hew: The Jugs critical killer for enemies under 30% health. Also Iconic throw animation that is DIFFERENT from saber throw. Force Charge: Only Jug ability to close distant from far away, vital for that closing distant and as rage-generating opener. Enrage: Free Rage generator, great for burst dmg or when you mismanaged your rage-generation in rotation and/or fighting a boss. Furious Power: Self-buff for more damage, the ability that gives you expendable charges like other classes. Max 4x 25% more damage on next melee attacks. Crucial for setting up your highest dmg rotation. AOES: Vengeful Slam/Smash: The Jugg AOE, unremovable. Sweeping Slashes: The 2nd Jugg AOE, less dmg but can be increased through a utility and is alot more important if you are a Marauder. 2 Lightsabers makes this ability do more dmg so Marauder can do Smash/Sweeping Slashes after each other. MECHANICAL ABILITIES: Disruption: Jugg Interrupt. Mechanically essential. Unleash: Jugg Purge/Breakout from stun ability. Mechanically essential. DCDs: Saber Ward: The all important Absorb dmg ability for 12 seconds. ESSENTIAL. Saber Reflect: The all important REFLECT dmg ability. DIFFERENT FROM SABER WARD as it REFLECTS dmg to opponent and has the ICONIC animation of Reflecting all blaster bolts back to targets. ESSENTIAL. TANKING ABILITIES: Enraged Defense: Self-heal for Warrior-Class, useable while stunned so good oh **** pop/when something burst dmgs you. Vital for tanking. Taunt: Self-explanatory, single-target taunt. Vital as its only one. Threatening Scream: Group taunt. Vitals its only one. VERY SITUATIONAL: Mad Dash: Dashes the character 20 meters forward and does an odd cone attack. I tried to use this for DPS but realized it doesn't generate rage and is very hard to aim for dmg. However, reading it and the passive that can be attached to it, it is essentially the Jugg's 2nd BREAKOUT ability. The passive "Through Victory" allows it to be used when immobilized and it purges effects. IE- VITAL ability for good PvP, lets you escape from massive amount of stun/run away from a group of enemies. Also would be a waste to remove this as the custom animation it has is nice, pretty sure the ability was a latecomer to the game in 4.0 though. Chilling Scream: ESSENTIAL in PvP to slow down nearby opponents. Semi-useful for tanking pve mobs so they can't walk away from you fast. ======================================================================================= ======================================================================================= ABILITY BREAKDOWN BREAKDOWN CONCLUSION: All in all, a fictional rotation for a dangerous single target that's only focused on me ends up being.... Saber-Throw^, Force Charge^, Sunder, Smash/Slam/Slash Aoes*, Furious Power^, Ravage, Shatter, Ravage, Impale, Retaliation*, Choke*, Push* ^Only used on opening/setting up most powerful rotation. *Only used when situational relevant for mob groups/low health/ wanting stun/pushing off cliff/mob groups. -Force Scream is used whenever its charged up for a crit with passive/a stun is wanted. It can also do good dmg on its own. -Hew is priority used whenever its pops as available through a passive or an enemy is below 30% health. -Sunder/basic attack 1 is used to regain rage/re-debuff enemy armor. -Basic attack 2 "Viscous Slash" is used when one has excess of rage and everything is on cooldown, this def happens many times in long fight. -All taunts are used in group content if I'm tanking or see a group member low health against a target. -All DCDs are used when I situationally want them and gauge how badly I'm being damaged by mob group/boss. How the **** can a good majority of these abilities be removed/merged without screwing things up? Combat would be even more simple than the supposed super "complicated" rotation above. Some say "Muh more buttons bad combat" However, unique buttons with various cooldowns, uses, and triggers is what makes for the skill-gap and fun combat. Obviously there is a point where there is too much and a human can't reasonably press the different buttons in time/choose the right ability in the right scenario, but that is clearly not what we have. Yes, some people with less skill will have more trouble, but we all started at that stage and should be expected to get better as we play more. The game shouldn't be made dumber because some people refuse to/can't learn. =================================================================================== Now, I get that some/many Casual "STORY" players only use 5 buttons and thats a 'problem' (ehh not really). If someone is going to ignore most of the combat system that's honestly their wanted choice. Its not like the game forces them to learn nor do they want to be forced to learn as many casuals have said they don't like/want "tedious" combat anyway. Imagine the game was suddenly set to pre-3.0 leveling difficulty, the casual-player uproar would be enormous. And really, for casuals that is a PERFECTLY VALID GAMEPLAY PREFERENCE/CHOICE, maybe someone just wants to watch cutscenes/rp character and dress them up? (Very weird to me as someone who wants GAMEPLAY but eh its fine, people like different things) But, destroying the combat system for all of us that enjoy its little bit of complexity/skill/variability is downright terrible. Especially in the way PTS shows the gating of abilities vs passives, etc. ===================================================================================== ===================================================================================== Alright, after all that, lets say I considered removing abilities? What could I even merge/remove on the dev side without making combat too much stupid and simpler? Maybe they just want the ability bar to be a 'bit' less cluttered so potential new cartel-mar.. *cough*( i mean casuals), are less put off by the oh so traumatizing amount of abilities on their hotbar. Well ****, its not much to work with. ====================================================================================== ====================================================================================== POSSIBLITY 1: Remove Tanking abilities from DPS Specs? "broader" (Remove all Tank/Heal-spec abilities from DPS specs) Jugg Ex: Remove Single-target and Group-target taunts, also Enraged Defense. What's Achieved? About 3 Hotbar Abilities removed. CON: Ruins the little ability people have left to Hybrid. Maybe someone want to be a DPS-Spec-Jug that wears a Shield and can semi-TANK. Worse than an Actual Tank and tanking, but still much better than DPS-equped spec at tanking, and also does more DMG than TANK-only spec, but not more dmg than Actual DPS-equp-spec. Sure its not optimal but why do people need to play "optimally"? This sorta stuff ofc worked better when skill trees were still around. Extend this to other classes as you wish. IE- Remove healing abilities from Mercenary? ======================================================================================= ======================================================================================= Possibility 2: Remove the Interrupt & Purge/Breakout abilities from all classes and make them innate hotkeys like Action-Combat MMOs with some type of HUD indicator for them. Jugg Ex: Remove "Disruption" and "Unleash", *maybe remove "Mad Dash" aswell since its really a breakout. What's Achieved? About 2 Hotbar Abilities removed. CON: Actually nothing much, this is doable. However, I would personally still want a hotbar ability as I play very visually with my quickbar. I might forget to do interrupt/purge if it were just a hotkey without the current greying out of all abilities and pop-up of highlighted breakout lol. Also its not like this is actually removing any abilities just hiding it beneath a different mechanic. ===================================================================================== ===================================================================================== Possibility 3: Do 1 & 2. ===================================================================================== ======================================================================================== Possibility 4: Do what Bioware is doing and ruin combat by haphazardly... gating certain abilities with passives, removing certain abilities outright, and merging abilities without adding a functional replacement for the ability that lost out in merge. Also maybe do this with 1 & 2 for the ultimate streamline and dumbing down. IE- one I will keep mentioning for functionality loss on a potet merge, merging saber throw with hew would never work because of their different use cases and functions. ======================================================================================== Do everything they are doing above in only 6 months for all classes, enemies and bosses, while balance the entire game around it lol. TL;DR: Its impossible to streamline combat without ruining any complexity or skill thats left in it, many of us use all our abilities, Casuals don't care for actual combat anyway; why simplify it, who is it being done for but yourselves in some bid to monetize simplified ability-sets/combat styles? With pruning, will also reduce the great variety of shiny animations/colors/effects we get to see/use in general combat. ================================================================================ Side Tangent: [Give me a "Classic Mode" for lvl 1-50 Flashpoints that contain Static Leveled enemies, no gosh darn Health Stations, and unnerfed bosses. I want to be a lvl 8/9 doing the Black Talon and actually have a difficult end boss fight with originally designed 4 PLAYERS or 2 PLAYERS WITH COMPANIONS who are in LVL RANGE difficulty. Lvl 16-17 doing hammer station too, etc. Maybe even no Bolster or ******** lvl-sync but thats a stretch.. Classic Flashpoints could even allow for the reappearance of iconic flashpoint gear instead of whatever that endgame **** is for veteran-mode drops. I been leveling and noticed veteran flashpoints are stupid and less difficult than pre-4.0, why they ruin difficult content for casuals but then even casuals get a robot-helper mode aswell?? could've just added robot-helper mode thats it. Also extending veteran/master difficulty options to all class story/planetary arc instances. I would love to play my class missions through a linear path without bolster/lvl sync in a way similar to how it was orig designed because it just worked better and was much more immersive leveling experience. Can't even use good rotations/medpacks against class story bosses. And they are all still hyped up in cutscenes with their taunts as if they were difficulty to fight ruining immersion, infuriating. I'm finishing up Sith Warrior and been disappointed every single boss, can't wait for *********** Baras to die in 5 seconds. Side Tangent. ========================================================================================

I think you know what solution I want.. (Obligatory Shill-time) C L A S S I C It so clearly solves the constant battle the devs find when having to choose who to cater too.

In essence, if there are a niche amount of players who want a Classic version, and they would sub to experience it, how does Bioware really lose considering they already keep those dead EU servers running. Classic Server WHEN! There are alot of people who've been alienated and will continue to be alienated as they streamline this game, they just keep another option open and they can reach a broader audience of different players.

And that works too

Well that's only because they destroyed the leveling content in patches 3.0 and 4.0. Didn't use to be that way. You would certainly be destroyed if the content was how it was originally intended. Full rotations were used during class story bosses/missions, aswell as stimpacks/medpacks, and God Forbid, maybe even grouping with someone if you were really stuck....

Sure you can potentially play a Trooper that uses the entire Bounty Hunter ability-set, or a Bounty Hunter that uses the Trooper ability-set, but to achieve this they are going to cut/gate away 4-6 abilities from every class. Very bad if you actually know how/when to use certain utilities or just enjoy the freedom of trying different types of rotations. Its like oh wow I'm really just the Bounty Hunter spec with the trooper story. Death-from-above in the trooper story wow so much new choice. There has to be a way they could untie class-set from story-choice without pruning our abilities.

Well its not like they can transition this game from quickbar combat to action-combat. Some say simplifying the quickbar combat makes it similar to "action-combat" because those games have less abilities, maybe 5-6 in the hotbar. This is hilariously wrong because those games have built-in blocks, light/heavy attacks and other features tied to the action-combat system. It is way to late in the dev cycle to try and implement those features. Moreover, by reducing the vast array of abilities players have access to, all that happens is the game's traditional quickbar combat gets worse. Anyone who thinks Hew and Saber Throw can be merged because they are both "saber throws" probably doesn't read the description of abilities lol. Hew is a critical finisher on enemies less certain % health while saber throw can be used anytime which makes it a good opener. Removing either of these or merging them would mean removing player agency if there wasn't a replacement ability.

Considering this game wasn't made in the mid-2000s its very likely they have the old codebase properly archived. Of course it wouldn't be compatible with the current launcher nor would it have any of the engine improvements but the older versions of the game definitely exist in some storage somewhere. The easiest way for them to launch a Classic SWTOR would be for everyone who wants to play it to download a separate launcher and then play the game as it was without any of the engine changes made over the years but even WOW didn't want to go this route and its kinda a hard sell to just re-release the same old content and market it if it doesn't have ANY improvements at all, even if that's all some would want lol. Depending on how polished they would want it to be, it would probably take at least 3 months of dev-time to setup if they made improvements to it. And that all depends on how much the game has actually changed behind the hood since 2013/2014.

By completely simplifying the current full ability-sets to potentially sell new "combat-styles" they will have just removed what was already in the game and then have the audacity to sell it back to us as a slightly-different but diminished product.

As much as they decided to show these changes 6 months in advance instead of 1 month, have you known any studio that would backtrack on a plan of action that's probably been budgeted for and already in progress? Much less Bioware/EA. They want to simplify ability-sets and they are going to do it. They will justify it through combat-styles but simply having different classes getting the ability to use animations from other classes is a far-cry from what they intend to delete to accomplish it. I can't wait to see how the other classes get their utilities axed when they are dropped on the PTS, if we even get to see them.