What are you saying?

I'm well over the age of 15 and am known in my circles as the contrarian. I also have no friends that currently play the game, so I have none to impress. I kept a cool head in beta testing and begged testers to submit proper feedback and not jump to conclusions before the product was released. I witnessed some of the worst PR and community relations take place during testing and my outlook began to change. I saw builds that got worse with time, features removed with no explanation, and a whole bunch of spin. I am not negative because I care what someone else thinks, nor do I feel that being negative is a fun exercise. I am negative because I sincerely hope that with enough "feedback" some of the core problems with the game will be fixed. I'm also an idealist and think that the whole SWTOR development experience is a good learning tool for future developers. You may be satisfied with the current state of the game, but I dare say that most changes and improvements that people are asking for would enhance your gameplay as well--even if it does not seem to matter to you now. You can't put us all in a neat box and label us as being members of the herd, dysfunctional, angry teens or malcontents. I fit none of those categories and despite having contributed reasoned and well laid-out arguments, I have come to understand that any complaint or criticism will be dismissed and attacked. If anything, the very state of the community should clue people in to the inherit problems lurking beneath the surface. There really are some major sustainability issues going on--some may not be tuned into it now, but they can be devastating to everyone if they aren't fixed quickly. One last note. I have noticed that a majority of the well-constructed and intellectual posts on this board are written by the critics. That's not to say trolls aren't in abundance either, but at least many posters are trying to cut through the noise and attempt to explain their reasoning. I find the complete dismissal (complete with TL;DR) of ANY critical post to be the pinnacle of intellectual depravity.

No no no. I don't mean dancing, I meant the idea of a party-bomb! ie. A mechanical device that you throw at a group of people, forcing them to dance. Believe it or not, a force power that did this would make more sense.

Must be the PvP developer. Badda-bing.

This is why I prefer flying--groping and all. It will not "fix" what I find troublesome about the game. My issues are more core/fundamentals at this point.

What is this Episode I you speak of? Gungan? Is that out of a Disney movie for kids? And I'm oh-so-chill, even when annoyed.

Fair enough and point well taken. I've drifted away from the RP (socially and personally) and though I want to feel like I'm acting the hero, I guess I'm now more interested in making progress while being entertained. I'm also the type of person that won't watch a movie more than once unless it's a true classic or really has a depth that has to be appreciated in multiple viewings. I don't consider myself to have a short attention span, but when playing, I always envision the goal line so-to-speak. I guess I would be more motivated to play again if I felt the reward waiting for me at 50 was--decent. Also, I've mentioned before that a main issue I have is not being allowed to choose alternate pathways to level. Two or three zones or even legitimate side-activities that reward decent XP is always nice. Admittedly, PvP (ie. Huttball ad nauseum) is not that type of alternate path I am looking for.

Bull. Ask around and see how many people spent months playing games for faster or unique mounts, titles or other reward unlocks. It's side content, yes, but if executed properly, it can be the pressure valve for players annoyed with bad PvP *cough cough* or repetitive PvE *clears throat*.

Yeah I'm gonna get flamed for this and called a spoiled sport, but it's junk like this (and that frackin' train in WoW) that really annoy the snot out of me. It's supposed to be Star Wars, right? There wasn't this kind of banal humor in any of the movies that I remember--a freakin' party bomb? It's childish tripe. It's like these devs don't even respect the IP enough to keep this junk out of it. What's next? Haris Pilton? X-Ray goggles? Some reference to Justin Bieber? Dummies. /rant

And HAVE you actually leveled up all those characters to 49 like you said you would enjoy doing? Because around the third alt (if you can get the second past 35) it starts to become an exercise in masochism. Only because the class story does not constitute a majority of the questing and leveling experience. And worse, all class stories take you to the same planets in the same order and even to the same areas.

Good post and agree with your assessment of the leveling experience. After your second alt, and after the enchantment of V.O. wears away, it's actually one of the most painful leveling experiences I've ever had. Oh yeah and the most immersed I ever felt in an MMO was the Old Forest. I actually dreaded going in there. Got lost most of the time and at night it was scary. That and the music really sealed it. Can't have experiences like that in a game and just forget about it because of the SW IP or voice acting.

OP is not making a hypothesis, only presenting a set of data. Any extrapolation or inferences made from these data is speculative--it's a snapshot. If her data collection method was biased or "flawed" then you may have a point, but given that she describes her method and appears to capture all available data (at least consistently which is more important than accuracy in this case) I can't see the problem with posting it. Now if she came here stating a hypothesis and making correlations based on one set of data, then I would completely write this off as having an underlying agenda. People are deriving their own hypotheses from these data--it has nothing to do with how many active subscribers there are, and everything to do with server faction ratios and population RELATIONSHIPS. Again, that has nothing to do with accuracy of the numeric values if you are collecting the data consistently over a suitable sample size. If I see three jars filled with candy, as long as I can validate the consistency of the volume (the jar) and the candy (all round and the same size) then I can legitimately draw conclusions from visual data (observation is really the term here) that one jar is filled with more candy than the other. I don't need to take them all out and count them in order to validate my claim--given that reasonable and perceptible differences are present. In the end, I walk away knowing that Jar 1 has more candy than Jars 2 and 3. There is no hypothesis, simply observed fact. Watch little kids at a birthday party use this technique to choose the largest slice of cake.

I was being sarcastic, but I admit I shouldn't have hinted at it a bit more. I agree with the OP, but after a while, it seems like nothing said here is ever considered valid or legitimate. You are either a hater or a Biodrone.

I think I may have been too deadpan on the delivery. But regardless... I agree.

Pfft. Armchair dev. Have you ever considered that the real devs know what they are doing? There is a reason you aren't working at Bioware, so let the professionals be the ones to decide what a grind is and what one isn't. And if you aren't happy with the grind, you could always go farm datacrons or level up companion affection. Just another member of the vocal minority.

Many so-called armchair devs have been picked up by game companies. Ideas aren't created in a vacuum. I don't understand you guys. What kind of critical post would you accept as being valid? I've seen post that didn't mention the word "quit" once, were written better than most people's term papers, and yet were still maligned by angry defenders.

You seem to be confusing the artistic, marketing, psychological, sociological, business aspect of creating a game (none of which require a degree in game development) with the technical ability to code it.

That's the wrong answer. Please see my post above. Pay your dues and you will be fine.

Because you are a filthy slave.

How helpful can a tire be on a car. After all, you can't drive a tire to work can you?

Our speeders hover? That's news to me.

Don't need a ton of abilities to make combat fun or hard or engaging. Lots of people are drawing false correlations between combat difficulty and amount of different abilities. Should have one filler/resource builder (or dump) and the rest should serve a specific function. Look to LotRO's warden or runekeeper classes for different approaches to traditional combat. Of course, SWTOR is very traditional--and that's putting it politely. Not to be a downer, but myself and many others asked Bioware to have Assault and Sundering Assault merged into one ability for Juggernauts. We received no reason as to why this wasn't an option, and as you see, nothing has changed. I doubt fundamentals will be refined until pink slips start going out.

OP, I wouldn't be so inclined to just slap items in the sell pane and be done with it if the interface was actually user friendly. As it stands, it's a royal pain to try and do an research or trend analysis with what we have. I do mark-up artifacts and slotted epics, but for the most part, I just don't find the GTN UI friendly enough to invest a lot of time into the market. As a fanatic user of Auctioneer, I would like nothing more than to play the market, but pair the UI with screwy crew skills and you have pretty much nothing more than a flea market.

Or more importantly, when they fix the other professions to make them viable.

See?! I told you so! That proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt right there!