I personally still don't understand the need for it at all. I find PVP to be the most enjoyable in the 10-49 brackets anyway. I kinda hate the 50s PVP bracket. I suppose this is also one of the reasons I recently ended my subscription to the game, along with a few other unreleated-to-pvp reasons....

Completely untrue. At the present an average player on a sentinel/mara can take out a good player on a sin/shadow tank quite easily. The nerfing of the sin/shadow tanks is however completely wrong in terms of PVE - while for PVP a minor nerf may be necessary. Bioware truly needs to make abilities work differently based on the type of battle they are in; i.e. pvp or pve. BOTTOM LINE: PVP is NOT supposed to be balanced the way all you people seem to think it's supposed to be balanced. A healer will survive longer and be impossible to kill. You nerf them and then you nerf PVE ops. A healer keeps 4 people alive in those. You think you should be able to kill them solo? All of you better wake the *&^^ up. A TANK is supposed to ALSO stay alive for a long time, cause they are SUPPOSED to take damage better. Same flipping thing. Get over it. If you play DPS - get help to take those two classes down. SOLO - you shouldn't be able to do it easily.

Yeah, I'm gone too. I have 39 days left on my time.... and today is the day I haven't logged in once. Bioware finally broke me.

For them NOT to raise the level cap and instead use outside the box thinking to increase player utility and abilities. But no - that would obviously be too awesome.

I'm with the OP - I personally hated WoW. The only reason I'm still here is it's Star Wars and some of the people I've met. I play games like this fo rhte PVP endgame content. Which this game has NONE of. Ilum wasn't PVP. Warzones are also, not truly, PVP. I'm beginning to fear that no new game will ever re-capture the intent of PVP like DAOC's New Frontiers did. WoW sucks Bioware. Please be innovative. Thanks.

I always thought of them more as Duck Bills. The thing about Star Wars that the designers clearly didn't understand is that it is a very utilitarian universe. If something is on armor - there needs to be a reason for it. I see no reason for the gloves or the shoulders to have duckbills.

So in theory - everything over 50 is going to be "cosmetic" ??? That's bass ackwards.

Level caps are not the only way to expand characters and advance them. Dark Age of Camelot had the realm rank system and the master level systems. Their level remained 50 for the entire length of the game. SWTOR has proven they COULD do this type of advancement without messing with the iconic level of 50. (50 is iconic. anything else becomes a random number... and then having a "high level" becomes meaningless.... there's always a chance that you won't have a high level anymore.... and be FORCED to "level" more to stay competitive...) City of Heroes added the Incarnate system and exapnds on abilities all the time via means other than raising the level cap. These games maintain the integrity of their current content while adding new content all the time. Meanwhile games like WOW bleed subscribers and intimidate new ones from joining the game by increasing the level cap to ridiculous levels. (Not to mention WoW's current subscriber numbers are padded by the - very smart business speaking - move of offering Diablo 3 for free to people who paid for a year of WOW ahead of time for a "discounted" amount...) There is simply no need to raise the level cap. Just announcing it has already made me not want to stay playing the game.

Nerfing healers in PVP with the current combat engine won't work. You will effectively end all PVE operations contents and hard mode runs. The problem is that they have one engine for two different types of fighting. Solution: make sure your DPS classes are aware of the fact they their primary job is to remove the healer from the immediate combat area... and if nothing else to at least tie him up healing himself.

I believe it's a bad idea for a few reasons. It negates previous content or forces it to be rebalanced. It intimidates new players from picking the game up. It has a ripple effect to all existing endgame systems. And thusly, more issues will need to be fixed. PVP is currently 10-49 and 50s. What will it be now? 10-49 and 50-55? (presuming 55 to be the new level cap) What about the current operations? They'll either need to be re-balanced or they will become obsolete content and an expansion shouldn't negate content. There's more - that's just the stuff off the top of my head. They need a better game plan than "Copy WoW" in my opinion. We have legacy XP. Call any post50 XP the Master Level XP and use that to unlock the new skills.

100% agree. And normally this isn't something I would agree on. I was shocked personally to discover that we didn't take a taxi-tram to the black hole area. The fact that it has it's own instance boggled the mind. Was it really necessary to give it it's own instance and NOT incorporate it into the whole of Corellia - one of the more or less least travelled to planets except for storyline quests?

I'm curious what marketing statistics actually make this a viable business move. It seems like a bad move to me.

It's gonna make people quit imo - maybe not enough to make a difference but there will be people leaving over this.

I'm with the OP - say NO to the new level cap. You can add content and abilities without forcing more "traditional" grinding.

I don't know if wow is the only game to raise it. If it is, it soon won't be if BW goes through with these plans. As I stated before - the odds are quite good I will quit playing if they do that. DAOC was lvl 50 - but they added Master Level Abilities from the Atlantis expansion and through PVP you gained points that in turn gained you realm ranks from RR1 to RR10 - within each RR was 10 steps and each step granted you a point to spend on skills. Some skills cost 1 point and some cost more - there were skills that cost 8 - some were incremental steps requiring the first tier to cost 1 the next 3 and so on. It was a great system and not entirely overpowering. It also took a good amount of time to attain those skills so you know if someone was using them that they earned them. Unlike SWTOR where we had lvl 50's four days after release. Bottom line in DAOC - they did NOT add additional levels. Anarchy Online was lvl 200 at release more than 8 years ago and as one of the first Sci-Fi genre MMO games it is still going strong. I played it. Doing some research they apparently have added 20 more levels to the game so now the level cap is 220 if you are a paying subscriber and 200 if you are a free player. City of Heroes is another game that I know intimately. And it is still a fantiastic game, despite the rather limited AI of the PVE opponents compared to SWTOR. They didn't increase the level cap there either, instead going sideways and creating a new sub-system for adding abilities referred to as the Incarnate System. It's a story-driven device to add abilities to the characters in the game. It requires a grind but it does so in a fun way most of the time. The added powers are modular as well, so you can swap them out at will in your power system once you ge them completed. I believe there was a 2 minute cool down from a fight before they could be swapped out to other abilities tho. Another example of successful and innovative additions without forcing a traditional grind. SWG is not even worhty of the conversation as it was at first a levelless game. But then Sony got weird and worried about WOW and ruined it by converting it as best they could into a copy of WOW. This lesson alone shows us that copying WoW is not always a good thing. SWG had a strong and dedicated following - the massive exodus from that game when that happened and subsequent attempts to lure more players did little to save it. They even had to refund a large quantity of players the money they spent on an expansion pack that they released 3 weeks prior to the bombshell that they were doing this. I got my money back. Did you? I have little experience with other MMOs. I played WoW for a month when it came out - I hated it and never subscribed to it after the 1st free month was over. I found it trite and insulting. The quality was fine but the content was not to my personal liking ultimately. To each their own.

My pointers were more of trying to stress that they should do something less akin to "stealing from Blizzard" and more akin to being "revolutionary" and "ground breaking". This game has it within itself to be so much more than it is.

Very arbitrary statement. As truthfully, was my original statement. So allow me to elaborate. They have it within them to completely balance PVP in our game by balancing the abilities to work differently versus players than they do versus mobs. However they do not go this route. I'm not aware of any game that takes the time to have two different types of combat engines yet, and when there is one it will rule the PVE and PVPers with an iron fist... but that aside.... The "level cap" increase is a red herring if you will. First of all, from a marketing stand point - those people seem to think more = better. This is NOT true. First point. Banked Experience. We have not been banking experience that we should have been getting since we all reached level 50. There are plenty of reasons to think this will be a stink point with a lot of people. Especially with Legacy XP as a draw to show that we still did in fact get XP. Assuming XX is the new level cap. A large majority of us just want to play and NOT have to level more. The ripples in this pond are as follows. Now we need to get XP again to reach whatever arbitrary level they plan to set it at. All of this is in the name of "adding new skills." Will level 50 dailies be adjusted to lvl XX values right away? Or will they become cake walks to those of us at lvl XX? Thus feeling like a waste of time but unfortunately still necessary for us to waste time doing because there is no other way to reliably make money? If they do alter the dailies, how long will it be before we can start to do them again? How much cash will I need ahead of time saved up to support leveling to the new cap? The price differences from lvl 40 to lvl 50 were astoundingly different. Assuming income scales as it has for the new levels if the average for a daily mission on Ilum is 10.5k credits per daily, will the new planet keep to the curve or will it undercut the value of it's daily missions? Let's face it. There has to be new dailies with a new level cap. It wouldn't make sense to not have them. Especially with a new planet. And honestly - with all the dailies I've run - I should instantly be at the new cap already. Hell, my main could be level 90 by now. Pick a level cap and stick to it. Now that said, PVP relies on gear. And honestly, the skilled players are not always the geared players and viceversa. Essentially this game seems to follow a PVP model of - "the first one to the top wins and will keep winning -- all else who follow will never be as good." This is purely a result of the "expertise" gear mechanic. It's entirely possible to PVP wihtout it. But someone some where in some game that the Dev's at SWTOR un-originally copied decided to add gear that changed PVP - in what seems like a bad way to me. Expertise is 100% unnecessary. The level 10-49 Warzones bracket PROOVES that. However this mechanic is added - as near as I can tell - to be another timesink in the game to make us grind more. Especially those of us who like to do both PVE and PVP. It has nothing to do with skill. It's who gets there first. The PVP models they keep poorly implementing in the "real world" pvp area is a pure example of that. That wasn't even a design. Ilum was an after thought. If any investor played this game and was a hardcore PVPer he or she would have been wretchedly embarassed by Ilum. If the guy who designed that wasn't fired - he should have been - especially if it was his only job. (I will maintain to this day that DAoC was the best RVR/PVP of all time and why no one blatantly rips off the New Frontiers addition of DAoC for their own game is beyond me... especially Bioware who supposedly had Mythic people workign on this game ./ugh) But PVP is 100% controllable - new side abilities that they add to your characters are 100% modifiyable to NOT work on other players if deemed too powerful. Heck you may not even know it but you probably have several skills that you don't even realize do NOTHING in PVP (which brings up a completely separate issue about the UI - but that is for another thread). For example, there is a Knight skill that allows you to backhand a target for an extremely large amount of damage, that is dependent on stunning or slowing the target, however it will NEVER work in PVP jsut as it doesn't work on certain mobs in the game. PVP targets are essentially "strong" mobs with certain immunity buffs (not really but for the sake of our arguement that's how I will desribe it...) So if they added abilities by using say, a second XP bar - let's call this one Black Hole XP - then progressing up that new XP bar gives you all the added "levels" without changing your official level. And the abilities that they add - however they do add them, will have to be balanced into PVP to begin with so whether they do it horizontally by being relatively original or by copying another game that I personally believe to be horrid, either way is going to hvave to be integrated into their new system. The proposal of going sideways and keeping 50 as the main level cap is in my humble opinion, a great way to NOT break the currently working game systems. Bottom line is that PVP is something they will have to balance regardless of them doing it the "copy WoW" way or the "more original and much less current end-game breaking new XP bar" way (which quite frankly is very similar to the way legacy works and might even make the use of legacy better....)

I know how to play my toon. And I don't like opening my powers window to have to access my vehicles and pets. There are some classes that have enough room and some that do not.

Please for the love of all that is good and just in the world. There are plenty of ways to promote growth and development in a game and raising the level cap is NOT one of them in my opinion. Go sideways. Add bonus skills via a new experience bar but keep the level cap at 50. Try to be less of a WOW clone and more original. I personally HATED WOW. I love Star Wars so I'm over looking it for now. Increased level caps are intimidating to players who want to start playing a game who've never played that game before. I wouldn't start playing a game largely into it's life if the level cap was too high... I'd feel like I would never get there. This is the kinda thing that has ripple effects on the rest of the pre-existing content. PVPers will be complaining about imbalances again. Which adjusting for PVPers always screws up the content system for those that like PVE. Seriously, go sideways. Add the new abilities to a separate tier of abilities that are only accessible after 50. Look at the highly successful City of Heroes for inspiration. They didn't raise the level cap. They did a master level and then the new content accessed hidden modifiers associated with the advencement. Ripple effects. This will screw with current end game content. But it actually screws with all content. Go sideways. I can't say it enough. Don't be a WOW clone. Honestly, this is the kind of thing that keeps me from starting a game. And I know I'm not the only one. You can "add extra levels" without actually ADDING extra levels. Think outside the damn box for once. Also, as a side note, you don't give us enough quickbars in the game already and you're planning to add more abilities? /foreheadslap

Shadows/Assassins and Scoundrels/Operatives already need an extra bar.

This happened to me for a while on my Op. Specced out of the tranq skill and it was fine.

Add an option for this - sure. But there's a few things tied into conversation. Social. And light dark alignment. That said - an option would be needed, at a MINIMUM, to choose the dark or light outcome for your personal character. HOWEVER... Forcing YOUR preferred method on everyone still playing - no. What you don't realize is that even more people might quit over that. Are you a politician? Cause they're usually the ones trying to impose their personal agendas on me.

Assassins and Sorcs are HUGELY different classes - melee/tank vs force thrower/heals. The fact that there are people here that want to change their advanced class is nothing new. And you are specifically warned that when you chose your advanced class that there are no take-backsies. Say the real reason you want to change your class if you're gonna ask for it. I'm going with this one. "I didn't think it was going to be like this - so now I want to try the other thing that I could have chosen without putting all the time in to get it." And this will result in this one. "You need to give us more than one chance to respec our Advnaced Class. I switched and realized I liked my original choice better." Which will lead to: " Just let us respec our advanced class whenever we want." Which in turn would lead to: "Wah! I wanted to be a tank mage! Why can 't I be both an assassin and a sorcerer at the same time?!" The REASON they shouldn't let you have the ability to respec advanced class is simple in terms of the game. YOu haven't earned it. The people talking about leveling thru story saying they didn't want to do it again? Use your bloody spacebar during the cutscenes. Problem solved. The REAL reason they shouldn't give anyone advanced class repseccing is that it is the proverbial snowball at the top of the hill. It's nothing but an avalanche waiting to happen.

Actually what I do right now is delete the toon when he hits 50 and re-roll him. It's about fun - not about twinking and staying in the WZs. Any solution to allow a toon to stay out of the 50s PVP is all I'm asking for. I don't care as long as it works. All you naysayers appear to be just trying to be negative about this and I wonder why... also you're making assumptions that I want to stay "twinked" and roll lowbies with my "super" ultiity that I have from having nearly all my skills. - I assure you it's not the case. How about offering up alternatives and logical reasoning instead of the "like no - it would be overpowered dude - i'm gonna accuse you of trying to stay and roll newbs"...? As to an earlier comment about just focusing on killing and not objectives... that's also untrue. I'll take a level 12 on my team who is trying to play the game and win objectives over the lvl 47 PVPer who just wants to "pwnjoo" anyday.

Huge topic for me. Armor pre-50 is fine. End game armor is a disaster. I am honestly wondering who at Bioware thought it looked good?