I've never said swtor was going to die. I've only complained about features before an expac was released once before: I didn't like "bolster everywhere" and "losing companions" in 4.0 (they fixed the companion issue before they released the expac, bolster everywhere is still a mess imo) but I didn't see those as killers for me. I liked galactic command. I was leary of 6.0's gearing, worried most about balance, but was ok with trying it before I complained. In 7.0's case swtor is making stupid mistakes that have hurt other games. For my part I doubt I'll be playing what I saw on the pts. I don't care about currencies (but many people definitely do), I do care about losing abilities for no reason, worse pvp balance, less gearing options, etc.. The backlash over this expac is far more than we've gotten about any other expac pre release. 3.0 had major complaints -after- it was released because the bugs and lag were very bad.

Ability to change Advanced Class is something that was mentioned a lot when it had it's own thread. But that thread hasn't been touched several years. I call profuse BS on anyone that says class swapping took hundreds of thousands of $ to code (although the new UI and loadouts + class swapping easily could have). KOTFE had more game changes than LOTS and that was mostly a story update. That said sometimes just throwing money/people at a problem doesn't solve much. I have no doubt that it would take a bit of time for even the best coders to learn enough about SWTOR's environment to make meaningful contributions - for the first several months + they'd need a lot of handholding and code reviews/rewrites. It really depends how long Bioware's been working on 7.0. I know Keith was talking about it 2 years ago, but Star Wars games were all but dead until Jedi Fallen Order and until The Mandalorian brought Luke back. And MMOs were thought to be dead until The New World showed us there's an interest and the fall of Wow sprinkled a lot of lost gamers into the mix. Now even LOTRO has been talking about "modernizing and big updates". "When the money commitment and new people get injected in swtor?" is the real question, not really "how much money or how many people".

A stealth bar is an action bar or a set of action bars that would become active when a character stealths. Like the action bars that become active when a gunslinger takes cover. From my perspective it would be a very nice-to-have. I'd put the sap, prep and movement abilities that don't break stealth on it and the main/special attack that gets used from stealth.

I had the same impression. I rolled up two 80s, geared one, set up a house and a legacy, did some czerka dailies and heroics (noted that there's little point to doing those now - maybe those Aquatic Resource Matrix things?), got some crew skills up over 600, made sure my legacy has a comfortable few hundred mill, and leveled a character on Tython. Secondary quests that happen automatically seem to have been removed - that's going to affect conquests and the economy I guess but whatever. A Tython bug I had reported just a few weeks ago has since been fixed. While I like the character creator, the animations are cool, it's buggy (the bugs I saw have been mentioned in a swtorista videos as well, they aren't secrets, the bearded women one would be a meme if it was released), the outfitter is still a little buggy, some character screens still say WIP (work in progress). And where is VALOR - I can't get a response on that question and it's missing from where it used to be on the UI screens that aren't marked WIP anymore. What I really want to test is PVP (and conquests which I normally bang out through group queues).

It _is_ better. They did make changes I, and others, recommended. They got rid of guard for dps, cyclone slash is not a default ability anymore - buttons I could sacrifice. And we got guardian leap and the aoe taunt back (initially my guardian had also lost saber throw and focused defense which was lol and I had posts about those, too, but they were among the first things to be fixed). But every fight I tested I'm reaching for my reflect button. Just running around fleet I push by blade blitz button often. Nothing happens. Why not? Group content doesn't pop, there aren't enough people but, as I pointed out, why would there be? My very educated guess is that guardians are going to get crushed in PVP. And raids will be far less patient. "Guardian? Sentinel? Those are healer sponges. Why can't you play commando, gunslinger or sage?" There is no way to tweak that while still staying on the "guardians have to be nerfed" bandwagon which the PTS is on. Shell game feedback along the lines of "nerf this instead" has been played out. From what I remember there's been minimal if any feedback on any of the class threads on the PTS. One person on this board attacks me every time he sees me post, I used to engage, he likes the attention I guess. He's been on ignore.

Now my guardian on test has a choice of one of these: Awe Blade blitz Saber reflect My current guardian has had all of them since 2015. If he wants force clarity he has to get rid of a root/snare purge. For his snare he gets to snare with bladestorm or root with blade barrage. Guard is gone (won't be missed but) The current guardian on test is better than he has been but still heavily nerfed. Who do I complain to? I would love to test him in pvp but there's only 13 lvl 80s on rep side and none of them are in pvp instances. Except for one running Esseles, none of them are in any potential group instances.

.....

But you see that's not fun at all. I can do a little of it but not for hours/days/weeks. It feels like work. Unpaid work. The little things that drive me (and those like me) to "keep going" are completely lacking on the pts.

Testing group enough to make the group finder and pvp pop means many people need to spend hours, possibly many, on the PTS. When every task (working on crew skills, augmenting gear, doing any story quests, collecting various currencies) brings with it a question: "why am I doing this my character's going to be deleted soon" a lot of the drive that keeps many players (like me) in the game and active on live servers is not going to be there. At the very least we need schedules "these hours are for pvp qs, these hours are for flashpoints, these are for ops".

The impression I'm getting from you is "whatever the devs did or didn't do, that's my opinion". Can you tell me why my guardian who's had saber reflect since 2013 and blade blitz since 2015 suddenly can't do them now? And if those abilities are "too much" then why am I able to pick them if I'm ok with eliminating something else I've been able to do on my current live guardians for over five years. We've heard two different answers from three devs about why they're doing the pruning (reset game balance or make the game more accessible) but neither of those answers really lines up with the actual changes which seem more like arbitrary nerfs, mostly to classes with already the least utility and power compared to some others which didn't get hit nearly as hard and perform much better in measurable things like dps leaderboards and ranked pvp.

Just a note for you: When a game company releases an expansion with changes that people don't like, players really do leave the game. To an extent there are always some people whining about any change. The complaints for this expansion have far exceeded complaints I have seen for any other expac (SOR got a lot of complaints but those were post launch). If you want to see examples of expansion impacts on sales/sub numbers feel free to look at Wow - we basically have those numbers available. For my part I'm probably going to leave this game over this xpac's changes, at least for awhile (6+ mos). I've never said that before.

Wow has more buttons. Wow classic especially. FFXIV has about the same number as SWTOR. ESO is a console game and you manage other things in that which SWTOR doesn't have. SWTOR has added ... 3 buttons to dps knight/warriors since launch? And they've removed some too. If you've been gone for a few years it's usually a good idea to play around with a new character for a little while until you remember things or figure them out again.

Any talk of "balance" that starts and ends with "# of abilities" and doesn't look at ability effectiveness, cooldowns and relative class performance vs others is at best superficial and useless. It becomes insulting when classes with relative performance deficits vs others are being asked to give up the most. That's how I view the "balancing" they've done so far. Even on paper none of it makes any sense to me for either pvp or pve. If the goal was to reduce "# of buttons that should be bound" someone wasn't thinking there either.

Everyone can choose a stealth class now or whenever they started playing. That doesn't mean everyone has. Or will...

I'm glad I didn't schedule a vacation to check out the new xpac. I feel sorry for those that did. /notsarc

Waiting until a week after the last possible minute to say "damn we need another 2 months" is very not good. That said I don't think you had a choice based on what we last saw on the PTS. As far as I'm concerned you're keeping my subs for 2 months that you probably wouldn't have if 7.0 was released next week.

Makeb and SOR were hopeful until they released and were buggy as hell and very underwhelming. They were our first introduction to the fact that class stories were over and expansion stories were going to be short and small compared to class story chapters. That took time to process. 4.0 had people complaining about the lack of endgame content and the exclusive focus on solo play. People came in for the initial story and because it was SW's 25th anniv and because TFA was a success and because of Blur's trailer. Then, after a few months, they left. I would say the current devs agree with the 4.0 complainers, in 7.0 they have phased out everything they could have from that patch. 5.0 had people complaining about command crates. BW eventually got rid of them so I guess BW agrees? But the damage was done, 5.0 was not good for swtor. More people left. 6.0 there wasn't much doom for that but the new gearing system did have people concerned. BW is getting rid of almost all of 6.0s gearing changes so they must agree? The best thing BW did for their game since fixing 3.0's bugs was the server merges that many players were loudly asking for since before 4.0's launch ("better than x-server" was a meme). In each of these cases, 4.0, 5.0 and 6.0, BW could have saved themselves a lot of money and effort and failure if they had listened to their loudest complainers. But say what you want, SWTOR hasn't seen this much backlash against an expac pre release. This is new. Youtube, Discord, Reddit and on these boards - almost no one is excited for most of the changes coming with BW's 10-year anniversary. And many are dead set against them.

Because every sub is about to have two ACs instead of one, a lot more characters are going to have stealth as an option at endgame. But because we can't change ACs (styles) in the middle of flashpoints/operations/arenas/wzs not everyone will be using their stealth class all of the time.

LOL! Is that supposed to make sense? "Use the force, trust your feelings!" How many loadouts were working on the PTS? What are your feelings saying about the release of loadouts on 12/14? Were weapons showing up in outfits? The outfit designer was being changed, I remember tinkering with the new ui. We were told they would but maybe weapons won't be addable now because we didn't see them on the PTS? When someone posts words on an announcement/advertisement page about a service that people are paying for and then they reverse them (at the last minute) that is how legal action -can- happen. The wrong words in the wrong place matter far more than anything you think you saw on the PTS. Again, the quote I posted was not vague, it was very specific, it wasn't wrapped in any disclaimers and it was echoed in other places.

The system was never really "dropped on the PTS". Everything we saw was a preliminary "work in progress". We still didn't see how force users will change our specs to the LS/DS flavor if we want to, for example, and as far as I know that's still happening. There are tons of things that are supposed to happen on 12/14 that we haven't seen or that we haven't seen the final version of on the PTS. This was the wording on BW's announcement news article: "If you have an existing character when Legacy of the Sith launches, when you log into the game, you will be able to choose a Combat Style immediately. You can choose a Combat Style similar to your previous Advanced Class or choose something new. The choice is yours!" This wasn't a yellow post or something posted in one of Jackie's colors, it was posted on 8/6 to the swtor website. I'm not saying BW shouldn't be able to change it or that it's some sort of crime against humanity, just that people have a right to be pissed about this last minute reversal because that's what it was. It doesn't affect me, I have well over 50 75s. I've played all the styles and all of the stories. But I can appreciate the perspective.

Months ago, we were specifically told we would be able to switch our current live style. You're blaming players for taking them at their word? Or you just disagree they should want to?

yep - couldn't do it on the pts. We aren't just talking about removing accuracy or overloading alacrity/crit.

In 6.0 there's progression - you don't have to do anything in particular but you do have to do a lot to get 306 gear with your choice of sets, tacticals, augments and amplifiers. No one pushes one button and goes from 270 to 306. In the current 7.0 there's no special progression. You do one particular raid or you get 326/330 non-moddable gear. People that do other things "don't need better gear"? That's just BS. Every activity has challenges that can be solved faster and smoother with better gear. Those willing to put time and effort into getting it should be able to. Who gets the Limitless achievement by "loading up the game"? Your attitude is exactly why MMOs and MMO'ers have a very bad reputation and those that think like you deserve it.

Add flexibility. Let us change our style choices occasionally. Do you want to compete with modern games like FFXIV or not?

I'm not saying anyone's right or wrong to quit, I'm not addressing that. But my understanding is that unlocking the second style on a given character requires that you first finish chapter 3 on -that- character (and you need to be subscribed to use the second style). Where does this notion that you need to have the style unlocked in your legacy come from?