Recently came back myself, haven't seen the 50's and ranked yet, as I'm the type when I come back I start new characters to get a feel for the changes from ground level up. So my only experience is with 1-49 and it hasn't changed much, still enjoyable, still incredibly one sided at times. More preference for premades than their use to be, and recently had more days where my latest lvl 25'ish was the highest char in 10 straight warzones while the other team was largely 40+. For me, it's just a case of okay, let's see if they are any good or just geared, nine times out of ten it's just more talent points/higher end abilities and gear so you can still win, but when they do have a basic understanding of their class, it can be a bit of an uphill grind. This discourages a lot of the more casual types, and so they end up just hanging out at grass or whatever for the duration of matches. Only real issue I've run into: In the month or so I've been back is that I've spent 90% of my warzone time in either Alderaan or Denova. Denova I don't mind, can come back at any point after all, but Alderaan has always been a bit too Zerg friendly for my tastes. So yeah TTK is way down, and with stuns reduced to 10m you see more of a leaning towards melees (lots of sins/marauders/jugs/ops). Also seeing more stealth heavy teams as a result. Balance is still off, but that'll always be an issue in any MMO. Resolve is still glitchy at times. IMO: If you can adapt and be creative you can still have a lot of fun, still win a lot of matches, but if you can't and want things to work the way you think they should, well then...

How about some balance changes? How about structured PvP for 1-49? I assume you mean you want more brackets than just 1-49. I'm an alt-aholic, so I'm regularly leveling up characters through the 1-49 bracket, and I will admit the 40+ characters aren't the funnest to fight against, but it's not exactly gamebreaking. Can still kill them 1v1 with a lvl 12 (granted not a high percentage if they have any brains whatsoever, but it can be done), can still win matches. That's a lot of work to start breaking it up into brackets and will honestly end up slowing down que times greatly. How about a reworked Ilum? Meh never was much for "structured" world PvP. I've personally always felt you just create a zone where killing people gives some perks, maybe add a few objectives for those who want to feel like they are doing more than zerg'ing (which they usually are anyways), and let them have at it. Again, not gamebreaking, and not something that's quick or easy. How about some change to current Warzones to make them less zergy and more objective based? They are objective based, highly so, it's largely the fault of the players not the design that zerg tactics are those most often seen (here and just about every other MMO). Voidstar is zerg'd regularly even though it's more efficient just to send 4 to each side and force the other team into either splitting evenly as well (which rarely happens) and beating you 1:1 on two fronts, or overcommitting to one side. There really is no way to prevent zergs when that is the natural inclanation of the majority of players other than creating so many objectives to chase down that it forces a team to split into ones or twos. Why do you think you see entire teams abandon a point in Alderaan to reinforce another? It's the zerg mentality, it has very little to do with warzone design. How about Arena? I'm not getting into the arena debate again. Some people love it, some people hate it. You'll lose as many PvP'ers as you might gain in my opinion. How about a possibility to make Tournaments? Pretty sure devs already talked about doing that a while back, simply a case of figuring out how to do it. Not hard to see how it'd require some work, it's not a function seen in any MMO I can think of off the top of my head. Not one that worked anyways. How about a freaking duel zone on the fleet? Long as they shove it away from the major areas of activity like WoW did when they forced it to be outside of the cities I'm fine with this, but there is no real outside of the fleet. Best bet might be to put them in the shuttle bay. There's a point by point, but bottom line: TOR isn't designed around PvP. Most MMO's aren't. Guild Wars is. If that's what your looking for, then that's your best bet. When the majority of a player base does PvE that's what a company will spend the majority of it's resources on. This is nothing new. You talked about Arena so I'm assuming your a former or current WoW player. I played that game from launch up to about a year and a half ago, it took them a very long time to figure out how to include PvP in that game to meet people's expectations, and up to the time I finally retired for good it was still 50/50 on whether a player liked it or not, and they had a ton more time to try and figure it out.

Honestly when I first started PvP'ing, yeah I thought there was too much CC, now adays? Not so much. I admit when I get properly chain stunned by people who know how to use the resolve bar to maximum effect, I still sometimes do. The resolve system isn't perfect, working with teammates I've been able to lock down an opponent with just basic stuns for probably 15 seconds at the longest while we all maintained DPS on him, and I've had it done to me. It's not all that common (and is usually accidental honestly), but just like with certain damage abilities, you can "cheat" the system a bit by catching it between cycles or before it has a chance to update properly, or whatever - I'm not a programmer I don't claim to understand why it happens, I just know it does. The tendency for an occassional extra stun to slip by the resolve system, or in the case above multiple extra stuns, is where I think the problem really is. That and when pugs face premades or players in general who are good at timing their stuns properly - ie: they wait for the first to wear off before applying the second to avoid filling up the resolve bar on one 3 second stun. Only thing I'd like to see changed would be the timers on stun break halved, that's just my opinion tho.

One of the great things is that there really aren't any cookie cutter specs for PvP, because any build is viable, it's just a matter of what suits you better. PvP also brings out the hybrid builds more, so it's really hard to try and make up a list of "viable" specs. In my experience, any combination will work, it's just a matter of what you feel the most comfortable with, what suits your particular style, and what is fun for you. I've seen people say "You have to be this spec for maximum damage" but while it might work out that way on paper, in PvP which is far more situational, it doesn't really work out that way IMO.

1. Lighting goes right through walls. Rocks do not. Any channeled ability tends to allow a tick or two to continue after the person has los'd you, it's usually not much, and it's not channeled abilities, you can usually get a well timed cast off if it's in progress that doesn't hit until after they've turned the corner. Do it right you can finish the cast and chase it with an instant and they'll both hit even though you technically can no longer see the target. It's just the server taking a second to update your position properly. 2. Bounty Hunter shots keep hitting targets 30 seconds after re spawn in room. So when coming out of War Zone respawn room you are shown to all in STEALTH as everyone can see the bullits hitting you still. Annoying bug that also has downsides for the BH too, sure they can't stealth but they'd rather not be sending up a flare as to where they are some times. Atleast it's not doing damage. Also happens with full auto once in a while (commando mirror ability), but admittably not nearly as often. 3. Damage abilities seem to really lag when attacking a Sith compared to Jedi. The damage is much slower to be shown. Again will bet the favoritism of Imperial over Republic in PVP. There is a bit of a time difference between some of the mirrored abilities, but it goes both ways. 4. Restrictions on Republic for the same mirror abilities is even worse as all advantages are given the Imperials. See above. It's not all that bad, I've played both sides, and continue to do so now that the legacy system gives some reason to, and some things are rosier on one side than the other, but it is a two way street. Bio Ware needs to just drop all work on Imperial and fix the Republic in PVP. Sure, cause only targetting fixes at one side guarantees balance To deny the favoritism now would be a completely unbelievable statement Denied. I will admit there are some imbalances in the mirror system, but there's no favortism involved. It has to do with the animations mostly.

I don't remember the exact numbers, but I know I didn't have the 5k hit (it's 10-49 and my sniper was like lvl 25, best that char can pull is maybe 4k) did have the assassin (a sneaker will always try to solo the door), 2.5k, 75/300k, 15k defense, 10/25 kills of course. I usually average around 10-15 in that warzone with the sniper on strong defenses, that time was just a really quick turn around cap. I spawned, ran straight to the door and planted. They were busy fighting a pair of jugs who had charged them at the little raised platform below the spawn. So the two jugs really get the credit for the quick win.

Grats, got 20 on my sniper, simular circumstances, the defensive medals in Voidstar were a nice addition, assuming you stay on the door you can't really fail to get to the highly decorated mark of 8 unless you get steamrolled. Speaking for my sniper though, it'd be nice if they extended the zone that it credits to defense points just a meter or two more to allow for proper use of cover

Worst case I aim for a minimum of 1 kill per death, if I die I want someone to go with me. Assuming no heals (which I always do) on my powertech it's an average of 2, on my Sorc 3 (lightning draws a lot of attention), on my Sniper yeah around 4. I could probably live longer if I bought into the increasingly popular trend of running when health drops below say 30%, but I prefer to stick it out burn one down and just respawn. Can't tell you how many times I've lived through a fight I shouldn't have because the other guy tried to run.

I don't mind that guy usually, because there are a lot of fresh players on my server. Average warzone in 1-49 the Republic team is mostly over lvl 30 while ours is usually under level 30. So it helps the new people, which I'm seeing a ton of despite all the doom and gloom about low subs. My problem is when that guy starts to get negative in his chatter. Recently in an alderaan I had a Sentinel/Gunslinger team come after me while solo defending, I did call in the inc, but to guild not to ops (oops), and then was too busy fighting to notice my mistake. So I killed the Sentinel, wounded the gunslinger, died, and came straight back to the point. Despite the fact others had noticed my health dropping and came to help, that guy felt the need to go negative and start spouting stuff like "Don't defend if your not going to call inc." That's the point where that guy goes on the ignore list. Cause that guy shouldn't go negative, and if he's really "that guy" he shouldn't be leaving someone solo to defend in the first place. So I'm in favor of that guy if he's being helpful, when they start to turn negative, they accomplish nothing but bring down the group. This isn't boot camp, this isn't the marines, you don't make a better PvP'er by trying to break them down (cause chances are you won't see them again to try to rebuild them), keep them positive, keep it fun, otherwise they'll either /ignore you, or quit. Now if your one of those that would prefer they quit, that's fine, but don't complain about long que's later.

Lol, the 2009 under my name looks bad now, but I'm no fanboi, I'm a realist. Is TOR everything I wanted it to be? No, but no MMO in history has and probably ever will, and it's better than my current alternatives, including those coming out soon (I've tried all the beta's, I get some people like some of them, I don't). I think TOR is going through a bit of a rough patch, but nothing I haven't seen in other MMO's, so I stick it out because it is the nature of the beast, and I am an online gamer, and as I said I like this more than what I'm seeing out there. If you don't, that's fine, to each his own. There are up trends and down trends. Right now I have seen some indications of less time played per player, but actual count doesn't seem to have altered more than I would expect at this point. I do believe the indicators you are using are faulty though: - server queues are gone They expanded the pop limit on all servers to prevent that problem. Still happens on a few of them though. - most servers are light/std now instead of full/very heavy See above statement, and also keep in mind people tend to migrate from low pops to heavy pops. Server mergers are neccesary though. While I do see a regular number of completely new players (not migrators or alts you can tell if you actually talk to them) coming into the game, it's not enough to compensate for the sheer massive number of servers with the expanded pop caps. - fleets are <150 players now instead of 230+ Legacy system encourages players not to just hang around on the fleet but actually level up alts to unlock various perks and abilities. Some that extend to PvP as well. Personally I like having a character with all four buffs for PvP, so I don't have to depend on other people to buff me. - wz queues taking longer to pop On your server maybe, on mine it's been pretty steady. 50 queues down? Maybe they're leveling alts or attained what they wanted out of PvP. Plenty of reasons aside from population drops. - fp groups harder to find Even in WoW where they have groupfinders, it can be a decent wait. - less items on markets More cash flow as people get higher level, more people buying stuff up. Last week I made a ton on the markets, stuff I sold was bought up near immediately when I priced it at slightly above the game's suggested price. The opposite can also be true, if people were just overpricing everything it will kill the market in a hurry. Or if they try selling stuff but it doesn't sell, why bother again? Has nothing to do with a population, just with the server economy. On my first server, which was low pop there were more items than on my current high pop server unless I log in at non-peak hours, because people are buying it up too quick, and the GTN system doesn't promote holding onto a lot of items if you're not hitting the fleet a lot. - most friends in the friends list are "offline" That does suck, but keep in mind your average player goes through up and down trends in play time. They get into something and play for hours for a while, then decide to lay off for a while for any number of reasons such as the real world. The "new toy" effect does wear off after a while as well. In beta and after launch I was averaging obscene amounts of time a day, now I've scaled it way back, not because I enjoy the game less but because I was missing out on real world stuff, and because I got past that new toy phase. - where have all out guildies gone? Again, sucks, but it happens.

I usually vote for the top healer (in the hopes it'll encourage more healers to q up) or someone I saw going the extra mile, otherwise I don't bother. I also don't vote for anyone in a match where we all just stunk it up and lost not because they were better, but because we couldn't work together and failed epicly. The term you want to see at the end of a match is GG (Good Game), those games I'll vote, the others, what's the point? So you or I did 300k+ damage or healing, we still failed epicly. Besides, I rarely note a change in my rewards on a match where I got 5 or where I got none.

Yes and no. Yes, PvPers are the minority in just about every MMO I've ever tried in the last decade of online gaming. The vast majority of MMO's at their core are not designed for PvPers, because there are more PvEers than there are PvPers, and generally speaking PvPers are harder to please than their PvE counterparts. There are many reasons, but one of the main ones is: In every match someone walks away a loser. Sometimes those losses are severe, some of those losses will result in taunting, trash talk, and other negative aspects that the majority of MMO players are just not good at dealing with. So they'd prefer to stick to something they understand, can predict the outcome of, and generally doesn't have as many negative aspects. The average human being doesn't deal with defeat or failure very well, and when you apply that to an online environment, coping mechanisms vary from emo-like venting "OMG everyone left the node?? You all suck", to accepting that you can't win them all, to some just saying I don't see the point. The no part comes in that just about every player will try PvP at some point in just about any MMO, and in a game like TOR that actually has cash/experience/gear rewards, and dailies and weeklies that encourage you to PvP, the average of say 10-30% of players in a MMO that regularly PvP is probably a bit higher, at least in the 10-49 bracket, the lvl 50 bracket is less inviting of the casual PvPer. That said, hardcore PvP'ers (those that will put in hours and hours every day) will always make up a very small percentage of most MMO communities. There are exceptions, games like Guild Wars that are designed in reverse, PvP > PvE. These forums are the simplest example out there of why that's a fact though. What are the majority of posts? Are they helpful? Constructive? Or just people venting and flaming each other? It's not a fluke occurence, this doesn't just happen in TOR, it happens in nearly every PvP community. Imagine the reaction of a PvEer interested in PvP and looking at these forums? Why would he bother?

You already have the exisiting Kotor worlds to add if you want, and obviously have plenty of established story to work with. For new ones? Dathomir (Nightsisters, Rancors, Clan Sisters), and Mandalore (Mandalore homeworld) would top my list.

Me and customer service, not so much with the talking these days. Let's just say my last run in ended with me wondering if the person on the other end had actually read anything I had said, or was in fact a living person Very circular conversation with them apparently thinking I was protesting something, when I wasn't. Was weird, they were always very responsive in beta. I agree though, it doesn't seem lag or FPS related.

That's what I wrote it off to originally, but there's no 'snapback' when it ends, or any sudden flurry of activity like having hit a severe lag spike. I can run over half a map, get attacked along the way, but do nothing other than take damage. Was really fun in a recent huttball where I had the ball, and kept runnin it like normal but couldn't do anything but move and get beat on If it's lag, it's a new breed for me, just glad it seems to be pretty rare.

It's a rare one, I'd say about once every 10 matches or so I seem to get almost ghosted in a way - in that it's kinda like the old ghosting bug that could occur in WoW where you were connected to the server but not. People can still attack me, or heal me, I can move around the map but I can't pick up any buffs, interact with any terrain features like the jets in Huttball or explosives on doors, or execute any abilities. It tends to last about 10-30 seconds and then with no apparent cause, it ends. Not a huge deal, just it's something I hadn't run into before, so was curious if any of my fellow PvP'ers have had a simular experience.

I dunno about a medal, I'd prefer just an option "Do you want to join games in progress?" It sounds messed up, with the high rate of quitters on some servers, it leaves people out of luck right cause no one will choose to join late right? Wrong, some people are just trying to get their daily done, so they are fine with coming in late to a win. Others just don't care about it, usually I don't, but yeah 3-4 late joins in a row can bum you out a bit.

It's a complicated topic. There are generally three approaches to it from my stand point: Ditch Expertise Gear If you ditch expertise gear then everyone is fighting in PvE gear, which favors the endgamers who raid heavily. You'll still have gear differentials just like you do now, but there will actually be a larger gap to close in some cases. Level the Playing Field The other viable option is using the bolster system to level the playing field entirely. Take gear out of the equation and make it so every character of a certain class has the same stats no matter how he or she is geared. While this does level the playing field, maybe one person prefers to gear towards crit/surge, while another power/surge, another power/alacricity, and so on as there are a ton of gearing options, and while people do tend to stick to "cookie cutter" set ups, some of us do like to play outside of the box. PvP Bonus Gear Instead of a PvP stat you have PvP gear that has bonuses aimed and designed specially towards PvP. Ability enhancements, things of that sort. This is the compromise approach, still allows people to gear for PvP but doesn't make the person take less damage, or deal more, across the board. Each has it's downsides. I'm personally not a great person to comment on this, I admit it, because I don't enjoy 50 PvP. It's the same problem I had in WoW with endgame PvP, the majority of the time it has very little to do with skill or knowing how to play your class, and much more to do with your gear. Can an undergeared character win? Of course, anyone can win any fight against anyone under the right circumstances, but the playing field is slanted towards those who put the time into it. Is there anything wrong with that? Depends on how you look at it. It's how it works in PvE, so why not? Others feel it shouldn't be about gear. While I do enjoy the underdog challenge the majority of the time, after a while it does get tiresome fighting the same uphill battle every match. It's a complicated issue that's going to have a vast variety of differing opinions. Some will approach it logically, some will approach it emotionally, some will just troll because that's what they prefer to do.

Sorcs/Sages are basically early WoW Shadow Priest/Mage hybrids. Have some of the strengths of both of them, but have all the weaknesses they both saw early in WoW before they started being given some survivability perks. The squishies, who you kill first not only because it's easy, but because yes they can kill you if you ignore them. There are a ton of quick and easy fixes to survivability that would be balanced, some of which have been mentioned in this very thread, but it's not going to happen in my opinion. The good news for Sorc/Sage players is they will probably never see a real nerf. The bad news is they will probably never see a real buff. The problem is it's the flashiest of the ranged classes, and ranged classes always generate more hate in any PvP environment in any MMO. You can miss being hit by a sniper's shots very easily visually, even grav spammers and tracers can be overlooked, you cannot miss being smacked with force lightning. Six other people can be hitting you, but your eye will be drawn to that stream of lightning. So even though six other people were in fact killing you, the hate will flow for that lightning. Sage is a little more subtle with it's stones, but not much. It makes a lot of people want to play it because it is cool to play a class with flashy moves, but in PvP those same flashy moves make you very easy to spot, and very easy to hate. I honstly believe Bioware wants to create a properly balanced game, and isn't worried heavily about player opinion when making changes (Sentinel buff is proof of this), but even they won't dare buff the flashy class. Mages and Priests had to wait what? Six years? So six years from now, we might see some changes

Actually I do think it was a mistake. It seems hard to believe, but think about it. How many changes were made in one patch? Looking at the few answers they've given on the subject, I don't think it was intentional. I really think they just made so many simultaneous changes that some of it wasn't fully tested, and it resulted in TTK being shorter than intended. So how do you step it back if that's the case? Can't just go back to pre 1.2 numbers can you? You can't, because if it is a case of it being a result of so many changes, you could be messing with some of the stuff they did want to see out of 1.2. No, I think this was a case of oops, and it's going to take some time to figure out how to backstep it without just upping health levels or tossing in a defensive buff. That's my opinion anyways. If Gabe or someone wants to come out and say "Yeah, we want a more burst-centric game" then I'll jump on the bandwagon. Until then, I've learned after years of going through WoW patches, that the majority of changes from patches, aren't really intended, but are more a reaction to the domino effect that happens when you make alterations to class balances or abilities in general. So many possible consequences from just altering damage on one ability. What happens when you make a hundred changes, or in the case of 1.2 too many for a player to count or even properly list in a patch report? Huge chain of dominos. Like I said just my opinion.

Apologies if this has already been asked. My question is: When can we expect to see the servers consolidated? Last I checked there's what 125 in the US alone, and given the population levels, doesn't it make sense to shut down say half of those, and consolidate the players onto the remaining servers? I realize there are issues, legacy names having to be changed, players having to give up their names, who do you give a name priority to, those moving to or from, etc, but as it stands I'm sure they'd trade a name for more peers.

It's the same old story as the great spit-a-thons in WoW, but it goes both ways, trust me. Maybe you don't see it on your server, but on my server it happens all the time, on both sides. I recently completed a Huttball where we won 5-1, and I was still seeing trash talk from the Republic players right up to the end. Despite the fact they had the stronger team and still lost. For some it's a psychological game, trying to get you frustrated so you'll just focus on them, some because it's an online game and no one can actually hit them in the face, for still others it's just in their nature to be an ***. Don't let it get to you. Personally I have a seperate chat tab for when I PvP and /say's aren't even in it.

Flashpoints are primarily what I'd want to see first. Heroics will be rougher as you'll have to have some kind of gear check to make sure it's not grouping lvl 50's in lvl 40 gear with 50's in PvP or heroic gear, or else the usual complaint fest will insue. Since gear and mods come with numerical ratings, it could be instituted relatively easily I'd think, but then your opening the door to the great gearscore wars. Operations? Well I have my reservations. I didn't really enjoy the raid finder feature in WoW. Not because of the programming or mechanics, but rather it's the age old problem: Getting five people that can work together can be hard at times (4 in the case of ToR), as you expand that number upward the probability of people rage quitting, or booting members, goes up pretty quickly. The rest would be nice but not really all that neccesary except on low pop servers. Anyways, my two cents on the subject since you asked.

You, like many others, so don't take this personally not intending or trying to flame you, but you are approaching this entire concept of feedback wrong. If you're looking to vent, vent however you want, but if you're looking for answers from anyone in a place of authority, the attitude is wrong. Think about it, in the real world, in real life everytime something isn't the way you want it, or even if something is actually wrong with something you purchased, do you go back into the place you got it and get all uppity and start shouting about what was wrong with your DVD player or whatever? Not unless your an ***, and stupid, cause most places will just toss you out. You find someone who works there, and you point out what's wrong and your probably polite about it, if not polite atleast reasonable in the way you approach the subject. So why when we get online, and are talking about MMO communities in general does that disapear? Put it another way. How many posts are made with people wanting answers from Bioware a day? A dozen, a hundred, a thousand? Some will be real problems, some will be imagined problems, some will be personal problems (woke up on the wrong side of the bed whatever). So they're obviously not going to answer them all. They're certainly going to have some criteria on which ones to prioritize, now to me, it seems logical to put the ones that come across as rants, or venting, or are disrespectful in nature or generally are just "you screwed this up" would go at the bottom of that list, if not straight into the trash. Why? Because if someone tells you your a screw up and are going to unsubscribe or whatever, and that's the one you choose to answer, others are going to do the same thing when they want an answer.

You're english is excellent, and I agree with you, it's not the healing changes so much as the TTK (Time To Kill) that is the major factor. Fights just don't last as long as they did before, and so healing is much less of a factor because there often isn't enough time to get any serious healing going. You say your a sage so I'm sure you've been through this scenario: Toss a shield on the target, chase it with a HoT, then go for the strong heal, but the target is dead before you finish the cast My healer chars have become combat medics basically. Hybrid builds supporting both damage and healing, since all you can really do is slap band-aids on people so they live a few more seconds, there is no saving them anymore. I've also mostly moved on to alts in the 10-49 bracket for the time being, where the TTK difference isn't quite as massive.