The fact that I am posting in such a ridiculous thread shows how bored I am right now. "Competitive PvE" in itself is a pointless and meaningless pissing match made up by people that feel the need to be respected by the community for their accomplishments, rather than just playing the game for the sake of fun. I totally understand the desire to face a seemingly insurmountable challenge and overcome it. I understand that there is a subset of players that find incredible enjoyment in the toughest challenges and the feeling of being stretched outside the norm, and I think these players should be catered to in the form of massively hard encounters. However, I also think that damage metrics are completely unnecessary for these people, and that they will eventually achieve optimal gameplay through trial and error simply because that is how they play. Obviously Bioware does not agree with me in that aspect and is implementing parsable combat logs. Now people are saying that this style of log is unacceptable because it doesn't show you what other people are doing. Again, I will say that this is completely unnecessary. The people that make the most use of this data are not going to to be staring at meters during a fight. They are going to take the gathered data and do lots of math with it when they are not playing, and then try to apply the results to a live encounter. Some people seem to think that a raid will succeed if you have X dps and X hps and X damage reduction. They think that simply swapping out low dps for high dps will make them win. Unfortunately many of the encounters in WoW reinforced this idea. Raid groups are far more than the sum of their parts and while damage meters can be used to optimize certain aspects of gameplay, you will find over and over again that some players are just better at tough raid encounters and will consistently triumph where others will fail, regardless of what the combat log says.

I prefer a 90 degree FOV, and get really annoyed when I mount and it changes. There's just so much distortion around the edges with higher FOV, especially on a wide screen.

The Jedi are not, and are not intended to be, an absolute standard of what is good. The purpose of the Jedi order is to be an impartial police force for the Republic. They are not forbidden passions and emotion because they are inherently wrong, but because these things make them less effective in the pursuit of justice. Greed, lust, fear, and zeal in a jedi could cause much greater harm and allow them to be swayed from their course. The Sith, on the other hand, are taught not only to embrace passion and emotion, but to give in to them. This certainly includes things we would consider good, such as love, tenderness, and compassion. However, any person who is constantly ruled by their emotions is not stable, and will very rarely make wise decisions. An interesting note is that the more powerful and higher ranked Sith tend to be more calm than the apprentices. I think the intense passions needed to gain power in the Sith hierarchy are less desirable once an individual is needed to rule. This doesn't mean that training hasn't left deep scars in these high ranking Sith, and they have a tendency to be far more cruel and destructive than is necessary. My thinking is that the Jedi are in the right, not because they have moral high ground, but because they have a purpose and their code aids that purpose. The Sith have always been rebels and conquerors, following whatever path and using whatever methods that their emotions dictate. They have no unique purpose in a functioning society and their code is of no use to others. This is what makes them in the wrong.

I'll interject my fairly neutral opinion into this discussion. First of all, you have to realize that many of the statements on this topic are extreme generalizations. The people that honestly want combat logs are usually not the epeen flaunting jerks that spam meters in small groups after every encounter. These people know that the most useful way of analyzing combat data is well after raid night, with lots of math and testing. On the other side, the people that don't want combat logs are not all button mashing morons incapable of contributing to group content. I think something to remember is that WoW made huge advancements in scripted raid content, and damage meters were there through most of the process. We haven't really seen a game with advanced WoW style raid encounters that doesn't have damage meters. Bioware has gambled that players don't really need damage meters as much as they think they do. I'm sure that if they feel that the lack of damage meters is seriously hurting the game then combat logs will be added.

It's really simple. If you aren't having fun playing the game, unsub and do something else. Don't suffer through an unenjoyable game because you hope it might turn into a game you like. Saying, "I'll wait two more months and then unsub if I still don't like it" is completely unreasonable because the development timetable is completely unrelated to your personal expectations. That kind of thinking wastes your money and sets you up for disappointment.

You might want to post in the server group forum as well.

With all the focus the devs have put on levelling and alts, I would be very surprised if they didn't add more character slots in the not too distant future. (legacy related unlock maybe?)

Rift has more endgame content. Of course its been out for nearly a year so that's kind of expected. They have about the same number of small group instances, but Rift has 5-6? raids now, as well as 4 battlegrounds and, of course, rifts. Swtor has more 1-50 content (and much better). Rift's design is such that with one or two characters you can do everything, so they didn't put much into the leveling aspect of the game. As it has been said over and over, Bioware spent much more time working the 1-50 story-driven aspects of swtor because, quite frankly, that has always been their strength. They expect you to level alts and see other story arcs, whereas Rift is focused almost entirely on single character endgame. I played Rift for about 6 months and really enjoyed it. I stopped because I had done all the dungeons and dailies and rifts enough to be totally bored with them, didn't have any interest in pvp, and couldn't stand the thought of leveling a third character.

Logitech Trackman Marble. Thumbclicking FTW! Only problem is that it lacks a wheel, but some third party software takes care of that.

I definitely agree that the current tool could be made more user friendly. I was very frustrated with not being able to read people's LFG comments until I realized you could read it all by mousing-over the LFG icon next to their name. Flagging for LFG and typing in a comment is just as easy as queuing for in a dungeon finder, and groups can be formed with a few whispers instead of chat channel spam.

Based on the number of replies to this thread by people who don't understand how the current LFG system works, it might be safe to say that the majority of the playerbase doesn't know how it works, or how to use it. Perhaps a comprehensive guide (available in-game would be excellent) on how to use the current tool would encourage more people to use it. The only difference between the current tool and something like WoW's or Rift's tools is that this one is not automated (and not cross-server).

It isn't zone specific. It defaults to everyone in your current zone. You can take that out and type in any search parameters (even as generic as "lfg") and it will search your entire server.

There already is a mechanism for people to find other people, regardless of their location or current activity. A LFG tool is for people who expect groups to spontaneously form.

I would knock him back exactly one meter.

By that logic they should remove tanking and healing from the game since their necessity causes fewer groups to be formed.