SW:TOR is (surprise!) an MMO. MMOs are video games that function around a core of social interaction. Holidays are social events that are recognized by most if not all of a particular nationality or culture. MMOs, since their inception, have generally connected those two dots and made holiday events to bring those real-world social occasions into their online communities and take advantage of that sense of communal belonging. Why you are taking this so seriously is absolutely beyond me. Does having a reindeer tauntaun over the holidays make it canon? Is Disney going to announce red robes, christmas lights, and snow blowers as part of the new movie? No, because that would be absolutely retarded. IT IS A BIT OF HOLIDAY FUN, OP. YOUR PRECIOUS LORE IS SAFE. Even EVE Online, one of the most all-round serious MMOs I can think of, had snowball launchers for X-mas. Their dark, gritty science fiction epic didn't burst into skittles because of it.

No amount of Cartel Market purchases will ever get you the top raiding gear tier or PvP gear. Yes, selling CM items on the GTN can be a pretty good source of credits, but it's not as though credits are hard to come by in this game. They practically fall out of everything. If cash flow is your limiting variable then you need to play more. But hey, let's see if we can't get another five people to come in and judge the game P2W by their own unique, arbitrary standards. Such a productive discussion.

And then you made his case for him.

It can allow you to unlock new ships faster. Ship requisition is ship specific for upgrading that ship, fleet requisition is a character wide pool for upgrading other ships if you don't have enough ship req on that ship. It also unlocks new ships. It's a pretty tiny CC fee: 1 CC per 25 ship -> fleet. It's almost identical to an XP boost but doesn't affect the upgrading on a ship you already have ship requisition for.

If you don't think the CM team goes through pretty much every thread on the forums you are quite mistaken. They're also very active in responding to a lot of important player queries and concerns (a certain chestpiece being 5% off in brightness doesn't count as important). Hating on the game is one thing, but people hating on the CM team just go too far. Their job is a nightmare, and if I had to deal with the people on these forums on a daily basis while keeping a friendly face I would probably go insane in a week.

Finally, a cosmetic feature that will actually have some rarity. I tried to think of another MMO with a dye system that didn't make black and white dyes incredibly expensive but I failed. Unless you'd rather they put them back into packs?

Just letting you all know, ESO is confirmed for not having chat bubbles either. I think it's safe to say current MMO developers don't care. Neither do I now that it comes down to it. Deal. With. It. This is probably the second most trivial thing you could possibly waste energy complaining about, the first being the slight perceived brightness tweak of a certain chest piece. Anybody saying performance issues are the reason chat bubbles aren't in the game needs to stop providing opinions on software development altogether.

If they see a reason for them, yes. The first set were shortly before the Makeb launch to get as many people at level cap as possible to play the expansion. The second time was in anticipation of the summer "dry" period for gaming to give players a reason to get back into the game. So if either of those criteria (level cap increase or seasonal low point in players) are met again they'll probably do some more double XP weekends.

I actually wouldn't be surprised if the class stories eventually get continued. They have a sizable amount of that content pre-written and voice recorded as evidenced by data-mining of the game files. I'm more curious if Makeb was ever intended to have class stories or if a "break" from them was planned from the beginning.

Doesn't everyone? We're all just a disjointed group of subjective viewpoints analyzing from our unique perspectives with an utter lack of objectivity. It's important to stop, stand back, and try to avoid the biases that come from such a limited existence and take things in their full. Also, I feel that meme was dead on arrival.

That. is. the. point. It's supposed to have some bad enhancements in such in there so you have to play more to min/max it. So that, you know, effort and skill has rewards rather than "Here's your perfectly stat calculated best in slot armor, good job mindlessly grinding and pressing the right reward!". They've been doing this since game launch, do people not look at the stats on purple gear? Why is this becoming an issue now? Buy some mods and fix it yourself, you'll suddenly be slightly better for it. Kind of confused. You complain that they're not making enough serious changes to balance...but then say that you'd prefer smaller changes. And honestly, if they were to focus on balancing one AC it should be vanguard. Assault has been the worst dps spec in the game since the 2.0 nerfs. Its burst from AP was completely neutered and it needs fixed relatively badly. I'm sure they're planning other changes to the classes to bring them better into line for arenas but they're probably going to wait until they've actually seen how arenas play out for the different ACs before doing anything too drastic. And really, balance in this game isn't that bad compared to other MMOs besides the occasional exception like VG/PT dps. But I'm not sure how this relates to the new solo and 4v4 ranked arena queues likelihood of increasing PvP participation. Hoboi. 1. Nobody will ever be happy with balance and balance changes. If they started throwing in badly thought out balance changes every patch people would be even unhappier and the delicate web of balance that they've constructed since launch would fall apart. Or did you think that balancing the eight different advanced classes with their arrays of mostly unique skills was easy? Is this your first MMO? What paradise do you hail from where balance is constantly screwed with and yet always perfect? 2. How is it a requirement? You can play fine without min/maxing, but some of us like a way to put extra effort in for a slight advantage. Isn't that how competitive games are supposed to work? But no, please, throw around opinion as fact. It's fine, I don't mind. 3. Because the turbulent launch of this game had something to do with PvE being prioritized over PvP updates and gear not perfectly min/maxed at the vendor? That's quite the stretch. The game also seems perfectly healthy at the moment between the stabilized subscriber base and the cartel market doing well. Okay, define "biggest guilds". Because in my experience the biggest guilds are 500 player noob guilds that recruit on Korriban/Tython for the rep/xp bonuses. I assume you meant "the most srs bsns PvP guilds" in which case...okay? I wonder what fraction of a percent of the player base that adds up to. I can't see the removal of RWZs for arenas causing that large of a player backlash. One point seven percent of the warzone pops were ranked. That is less than one in fifty on the PvP minority side of things. It was a highly exclusive system with a high bar of entry that never functioned well, I assure you that the vast majority of players won't and don't care outside of the PvP forum.

But they aren't saying that vanguard is "working as intended". They acknowledged that it is lacking in burst and overall dps and they they're working on it on the PTS. I don't see the problem with "Yeah, we're working on it" as a response. The "perception" comment people keep quoting is regarding utility options as a tank/dps class. They were saying that perception was a part of that because nobody was complaining about those abilities before VG/PT dps got nerfed, so once that was back up to par the issues people were having would probably fade away on their own. I have no idea why sorcs are complaining. I'm seeing 2x lightning sorc teams stomp 2x smash monkey teams in arenas on the PTS, and even before that they were never far behind the FotM classes.

"a lot" is relative. I'd say a minority of PvPers left, PvPers being a minority in general. So not many people left, and I doubt it was even a blip on their radar. The changes they are making are likely to expand the PvP community far more than what they have lost by removing RWZs.

A bug? In software? IN MMO SOFTWARE? Call the president, these programmers must be extra-dimensional saboteurs. Everybody knows programmers never have problems with bugs.

Lies, SWTOR is the only game ever made with CC. Bioware invented it and gives everyone too much of it because they're too lazy to balance the game. Resolve is broken because it rewards good play and should be fixed immediately with far less though out solutions. That was sarcasm. Just to be clear. Ok, good night.

You're not supposed to tell them that PvP gear is actually good in PvP. Best replace all of that with "lolbolster just put on crafted 54 pve bloos". I like meeting people in PvE blues, especially when their name tag is red. To OP: Because accessibility. Apparently getting roflstomped by geared PvPers the second someone even looked at a WZ funny doesn't do good things for the PvP population.

Wrong studio. Although OP didn't specify...are people not aware they have more than one studio?

They will. They're watching the 2.4 PTS and seeing how arenas are playing out. Balance is not achieved by throwing in a bunch of changes to every class and just seeing how it goes, they have to be careful.

As a tip, don't read text from the internet condescendingly in your head. It's not hard to imagine the other parts of human communication that aren't present in text when you don't try to keep it fairly neutral as you read. Why would they be condescending in answering questions anyways? Because they hate players? Please. As I've said elsewhere, duh. This is not even remotely the first time they, or any MMO developer, has said that. It's a fact of game design: PvE is static and needs new content regularly to keep interest, while PvP is dynamic and is mostly left up to the players to create the gameplay. Look at any other similar MMO and you'll see the exact same thing. Whatever, If I were them I'd completely ignore the forums and the entirety of the very vocal minority that lives here. For some reason they keep trying to "create a dialogue" instead of just banning people. I don't understand it.

They were explaining that PvE requires a relatively constant supply of new content in the form of operations/flashpoints/planets because those systems are static and don't change from one encounter to the next. PvP on the other hand is dynamic, each game changing not only because of the map but because of the players and tactics they utilize against each other. People here should know this, hardcore PvPers ramble on about it enough in their argument of "PvP > PvE!". And did people not know that they put imperfect stats on gear on purpose? It's to give incentive to min/max by putting more effort into the game. Aherpderpderp. These are both commonly accepted concepts within the MMO industry. I'm sorry if it's a revelation to you. Except, as I said, this shows that they apparently do. If you're looking for people who don't know how MMOs should work look no further than these forums.

"Petition posts are frowned on. If you have an issue with the game, please discuss it in a civil and informed fashion." I just wish they'd translate that to "All petition threads will be deleted and all participants temp banned." Alas, I can only dream.

Bye. You've seemed to actually be a positive presence on the forums so I will not straight out flame you for creating yet another painful "unsubbing QQ" thread. As you are, or I guess were, the shadow class rep I suppose you have more of an excuse than most. Wow, an MMO player who's upset that the game developers didn't perfectly deliver their specific desired reality. Clearly they screwed up by not meeting all of your expectations. So unique, I don't think I've ever seen something like this in all the MMO's I've ever played. /sarcasm It's your choice to quit, but accusing the developers of "screwing up" because they didn't conform to your single viewpoint is a massive failure in objectivity. Let's look at Bioware's promise regarding the Class Representatives: "Up until the scheduled date, the rep’s job is to work to figure out what the top 3 issues or questions are for their Class. Once posted, we will begin working with the Combat Team to get an answer or comment to all 3 of those issues, regardless of what they are!" Did they say they would be the answers you wanted? No. Did they say they would give back an entire essay for each reponse? No. Did they say they would agree with the questions in regards to game balance? No. In fact they set up a series of expectation guidelines that they might and probably would do quite the opposite. This isn't to make you happy, it's to get some rationale behind the balance decisions they've made even if you disagree with the rationale. If the scoundrel rep asks "Why are scoundrels so bad at healing and why does scamper not go twenty meters instead?" would you expect the answer to be "Good point, we'll go throw those changes into a hotfix right away!"? They said that they would answer three questions regarding each AC, and they've been delivering. The entitlement oozing out of this and the answers threads is making me gag.

In this thread: people who have no experience whatsoever with game design. And people complaining about the "broken" game balance in SWTOR need to play a different MMO to get some perspective.

Right? They're not even remotely final changes and everybody is attacking the entire PvP team because they think they could do better. How about we give back real feedback on the changes from the PTS so that they can make adjustments? That making any sense? Testing on the player test server? Constructive feedback? Less tearful complaining?

I feel like there's a huge amount of people on SWTOR who have never played another MMO. Yes, the gear changes. No, that's not a bad thing. Everyone would be bored out of their skull if there was a reachable perfect gear level that never changed.