I don't really care what happens to other classes. If I was playing "the best pvp class" or whatever, I wouldn't be playing dps guardians or sentinels. Of course other classes will also be arbitrarily nerfed but that doesn't mean the nerfed results will be balanced, just as the ability choices given at various levels are not remotely balanced. Look at defensive spec'd guardians and dps guardians. In 1v1 or 1v2 or 2v2 or 4v4 one class is much better. It's like that on live and it's like that after the nerfs on test. Balance has not changed, characters are just weaker, less interesting, less fun. Both classes are losing lots of options. If I wanted to play tic tac toe, a game with very few options, I would already be doing that. Note that very few people over a very young age play the games with the fewest options unless money gets involved. One of the main selling points of expansions used to be, we're talking about olden times here, that we'd get new abilities. On test my characters are losing all but one of the new abilities they've received from every expansion in this game. Heck, they've lost things they started the game with. Does one ability per AC at 80 make up for that? No. How is this fun? How are these nerfs needed? That case has not been made.

First, people learning the game start at level 1. If you're relearning the game, start at level 1. 25+ abilities really aren't hard to manage with a bit of practice unless you have physical handicaps worse than mine. From my own experience on the current PTS, there's -a lot- my guardian or sentinel can do on live vs what they can do with the buttons they are left with on test. Nothing that's been removed was "redundant", there are just holes in their capabilities.

So which "new abilities" are you referring to exactly? The ones you assume will change everything? I'm responding to your post which was just a whine about other posters. If you're going to whine about other posters I'm going to answer you. I'm not waiting until Nov to discuss major problems with what I'm seeing now based on testing I've done, posts I've read and the streams I've watched very closely. In development terms, November is going to be here very very soon. What "new abilities" are going to make up for the guardian that doesn't take focused defense or the sentinel that's trying to pvp with blade blitz instead of guarded by the force (or vanish)?

You're making guesses and assumptions. BW has essentially admitted that they are reducing the number of abilities to reduce our character's effectiveness and to remove some player skill as a factor in things like pvp. Whatever adjustments they make to how various abilities work, I personally am completely opposed to both of those. I'm all for balance adjustments, the game needs those, but we've got 0 indication that balance is a component in what they're doing. In pvp for example, a guardian that has a choice to take focused defense and doesn't is going to be very very sorry he did that, that is all. Sentinels with guarded by the force are just going to beat those that take blade blitz in duels and arenas. These updates aren't making the game or my favorite characters (guardians and sentinels) remotely better in any way from my perspective. I'm sure other classes will be similarly neutered but I don't see balance in PVE or PVP, or a better experience for newbies who will be endlessly harassed over ability choices, being the result.

Ditto

You don't get 30+ buttons to put on your toolbar when you're 1st level. Even if you have 30+ buttons on your toolbar you can remove buttons you don't want to use more easily and more painlessly to others by just deleting them from your UI? Having BW delete them for you means no one else can use them either, right? BW removing abilities -and- BW rebalancing the game around everyone having less abilities is going to cause massive issues. Game's like this are often played by some people for years, why hurt them just for players that may or may not decide to come back for a few weeks every year or three (or ten)? I'm not meaning to target you, I don't want you to feel like I'm attacking you personally, but if your expressed sentiment was really the motivation behind these nerfs it seems extremely short-sighted.

To the above I can say "no". There's been talk about freezing force (guardian snare) and sentinel's snare being merged with other abilities. The hard stun ability was accidentally removed from sentinels, it's being returned. Awe is an option, just not in the currently available loadouts. Blade blitz is available as is transcendence although transcendence may be nerfed a bit if the option to spec it to work on a cd isn't returned. Of course having these now will likely mean you've sacrificed other things.

There are lots of guides for setting up toolbars and keybinds for FFXIV. I see way over 30 key binds on several character screens. This guy's talking about healers and tanks and dps: My focus guardian ON THE PTS (edit) has 23 things bound right now, with introspection (rest), force might (class buff), his vehicle and heroic moment being clickies. Guard might as well be a clickie too but I've gotten used to it being keybound. Things I add binds for: rocket boots, wz stim, wz medpac, non-wz medpac. And I have binds for actions like "target next ally" even though those don't show up on hotbars. The main takeaway for/from me: If a game like this is going to be played for 2 - 50 hours, maybe it doesn't need a lot of keybinds/abilities. If a game is going to be played for months or years, a little complexity is a good thing; it keeps things interesting. Lots of keybinds hasn't hurt games bigger than this one. There are lots of types of games out there. Some of them want you to keep track of your facing and things like block and dodge and targeting mechanics, taking cover, hiding in grass or behind rocks to shoot from, and quick swapping things like weapons to do different effects. This isn't one of those games, this one has abilities arranged on hotbars. Lowering the number of them just to satisfy an arbitrary "max" number that someone decided (after 10 years) seems short sighted.

Most posters on these boards and on reddit and on discord are not fans of these changes. I haven't even seen any influencers endorse them. Similar updates like the ones BW is threatening this game with have been done for other established MMOs (SWG, Wow) and they fell very flat. They shouldn't do them. If newbies need better intros to the game or better access to resources to learn it, that's another matter.

7.0 isn't ditching anything. It's not removing tab targeting. It's not really making things more simple. It's just taking things away from active toolbars. It's entirely likely you will need to setup several "loadouts" for your class that you will need to switch to for specific fights that you will need to know ahead of time. If you want to play 7.0 right now you're free to remove most of your non-attack buttons from your toolbar (assuming you're dps or tank): have fun. Combat, doing dailies on Onderon on test, is more challenging than doing them on live. But rotations, on test at least, aren't changing - you're still going to need to know how to use them. It's mostly the conditional defensive options that are going away - so if something bad happens you'll have fewer ways to handle that. For those that knew how to use them they're going to be missed. And removing them doesn't mean you'll still be able to do the same old content any more easily without them. As far as which mmos are most successful goes, the top two have toolbars every bit as full as swtor has now. Wow classic has more buttons for some classes. Millions are happy to play those games and they are relatively much more loyal customers than most casuals. I'd be interested in a combat redesign for swtor. But not so much along the lines of ESO - ESO did what it did because "console", not because it was trying to make a better PC game. I would call its combat a weakness of that game (for PCs). It makes up for it's combat in other areas. Amazon's combat has similar problems and is similarly a weakness of that game according to people that have played it for more than a few hours. But what swtor is doing is not a redesign, it's just taking scissors to our character's current tools.

SWG went on for years after its NGE. It just had a lot fewer players. But this change is closer to something Wow did which also very arguably cost Wow subscribers as well. But Wow didn't die either. I'm not sure that this particular game will survive another significant player exodus though. For my part if my warriors and knights (I play a lot of those) are missing even half the abilities they are currently taking from us I will unquestionably be gone. According to parsely, with one or two exceptions, I use all of the abilities I have in every wz, every arena. I couldn't care less about being able to do dailies or run flashpoints with a healer - those things are already comically simple and would not hold my interest if this game didn't have PVP. PVP is also flawed but it has its moments. This game needs more things to manage in combat not less; if not cooldown buttons then something else. As was mentioned there are other games out there (and other hobbies to pursue).

Yes, pruning will make tanks and stealth and healers more important than they already are. I don't see that being a good thing. Stealth already has huge advantages in duels and when guarding or attacking nodes. If a non-stealth dps (or tank) node guard doesn't know exactly what he's doing or his cooldowns are on CD he can easily be made a complete fool of by an average stealth user. Tank juggs can often kill two dps juggs if they fight to the death; on test this is still very true. Why do we still have metas where one player that picked the right class/spec is categorically much better than another? Why do we want to increase those disparities?

Choices yes, but once people figure out which ones perform better there will not be much variety at all, just the smart one and the dumb ones. For example, for pve the choice between GBTF, vanish and blade blitz is a simple one unless you do raiding maybe where you might need blade blitz if you don't have transcendence. Look at now, guardians have all sorts of tactical options or... they can get Grit Teeth. Theoretically, if I hadn't canceled my sub, I could have a lot of sentinel loadouts ready for switching if I was doing arenas vs duels vs casual pve vs raiding... but why? Why not let me keep what I have now? It's actually much more confusing keeping track of 4+ loadouts vs just the one that I have now for a given sentinel/spec.

SWTOR isn't breaking its "Wow clone" heritage by reducing its key count, it is following in the steps of one of Wow's worst expansions. You don't make a rusty tab targetted "Wow clone" into "not a rusty tab targeted Wow clone" by sawing off the top of a buick and painting a Ferrari logo on the back of it. Divekick is a parody of a fighting game. If you're trying to make swtor a parody of an MMO you're well on your way.

And your list of "everyone that's been shouted down" right now is one person?

I've noticed that with a couple of the people defending the nerfs. I didn't look up this guy but two of the others just started posting two weeks ago (or less). It goes along with BW paying twitch people to play their game; for some games it's been better and cheaper than commercials. Money well spent I guess.

Making the game simpler doesn't bring in new customers. It doesn't keep the new customers they get. And it definitely won't keep many of the experienced players. 4.0 had a tutorial interface for new players. That included toolbars with a small selection of abilities for new players to start with if they were just starting at 60. 4.0 got new players because it had great marketing (Blur trailer featured at E3 that year, there were tons of producers selling the new xpac, The Force Awakens had people excited about Star Wars again). Solo content was suddenly everywhere with bolster added to all planets and heroic 2s being able to be teleported to. It was all easy for solo players and groups. The new players left shortly after 4.0 released; they didn't stick around for the chapters. The most successful MMOs by far right now have much more populated toolbars than this game is going to have in 7.0. The successful games with smaller toolbars have other things to complicate combat, keep it moving and to keep players focused.

You could do that last week too but not everyone noticed. It takes a silly amount of clicking to get to 306s, though. Other notes: If you want your ship and the class companions start chapter 1 and cancel it as the cinematics start. And there's a clickable dais on Odessan in the open starting area that gives you all the money you can spend and some matts (left over from a prior test).

I have nerve damage in both hands and I'm no spring chicken. I only use two mouse buttons and have to disable the other ones because my grip has me accidentally pressing them. I do ok in pvp (and master mode fps and ops when I get corralled into running them). I take a little bit of pride in my handling of my characters in this game. But if I can do it most people can. And if it gets reduced to 1.5 bars everything about this game will be joke. My sentinel on test is losing 8 major abilities most of them given to him in 1.0, not 5-6 fluff ones. He's kept cyclone slash, valor and inspiration which could be deleted from the game or turned into passive procs if reducing "# of keys" is really the main goal. And again, new players start the game with ~4 buttons to keybind, not 30. Getting from 1 to 75 still takes enough time that they won't be new players anymore when they get there. But mastery is supposed to take time. People who master simple games quickly also leave them quickly.

It's possible they've taken feedback and tweaked some things. Sentinels kept their saber throw ability by default in the loadouts I tried on test which could be in response to the outcry over guardians losing theirs by default. For my part though there are no ways to tweak this new system. I can't swallow any of it. If they want to rewrite their combat system that would be ok with me. Heck, if they replaced all classes and combat and gave us Amazon's system I'd certainly be willing to try that (I'm not sure yet if Amazon's system is any good at high levels but it might be). I'd be open minded. But just taking away abilities we've had since 2011 and feeding them back in menus which mean we lose many and spinning that as "now you have choices! be creative! express your individuality!" is... a parody of an expansion. It's like a used car salesman selling me a car with a missing wheel and saying "it's a new design! Do you want the missing wheel on the front or the back, customer's choice!". It's the laziest approach to "overhauling" classes that I've ever seen. The only thing they can say to make me happy is "Whups! Nevermind!" I don't see that happening. I was doing other things before the livestream that let us suppose that guardians would be able to use 2 sabers and didn't mention massive nerfs, I think it's time to get back to them and far far away from this.

You lost me. Why not? MMOs are games people are meant to spend dozens to hundreds of hours playing. In that amount of time anyone can get functionally used to a normal, situational rotation with however many keys. But where does it say everyone should be able to master it easily? Why should the full setup be limited to 20 keys (or whatever you think they should be limited to)? SWTOR is tab targeted, it doesn't have active defenses or things like complex range/facing/targeting or combos to manage. Managing keybinds/rotations, CDs, interrupts, avoiding aoes and dealing with cc is just about it for complexity in this game (outside of team coordination and pvp strategies). Dumbing that down, removing situational utilities makes the game slower but not easier (or less confusing for newbs). No new player should be starting the game with more than a few keybinds to pick from anyways, this really isn't about brand new players or people that only have a few hours under their belts.

Guardians (non-tanks) still had force stasis and force push, same cds as on live. I don't think they're removing those. But who knows, maybe it just occurred to them.

If this goes live the way they've implied it will with these tests I don't know if it will be an NGE but it will be an epic misfire. It's weird how they're picking a ten year anniversary to push changes that many of their most experienced players are going to hate the most.

I doubt you will be able to swap loadouts after you land in a wz. We can't respec or even change our gear inside them currently.

I like blade & soul's combat system more than swtor's, it uses less keys and combos and has been in eSport competitions. But there's no way this game is getting turned into that. What they are doing is making swtor dumber and with a much lower skill cap (and with a lot less players).