Well, it appears the community has found it's preferred method of CXP gathering - and it is not what the devs imagined. The constant calls of Bestia farming groups says so. You put this in the formula, knowing player would go the quickest route to points. This basically invalidates any 'Difficult content' points you had - since the easiest will ALWAYS be the go to. Good job. :-)

Decisions, decisions... What to 'main' as? And which side? I'm on Harbinger, and am finally trying to come up with a main class/character to play. Love the light saber combat of the knight/warrior, but honestly kind of want to heal and they only have tank spec. Have healed on a sage, but honestly everyone and their sibling uses that combo. Did try healing with a scoundrel ages ago, but no idea if they are good/desired these days and can't really say I was fond of their style for combat. Commando/Merc look interesting - never used one of those, but played the story as dps. Leaning 'pub side, but if the Empire is where it's at...

Are you all nuts? As the previous story showed, you are irrevelvant - the other characters mean something, you are just an engine to get the story along. Deal with it. Player does not matter, choices do not matter. Play their story and be happy.

I fail at this fight - can't do it. Seem to spend it all running around with a few times I can actually hurt the boss, then dead - looks like no bonus companion for the DvL event for this sap. I play a sage, tried on my guardian as well. Died faster with that.

Since this thread is back up, going to piggy back my own little rant here, since it echos most of what the OP pointed out, and save a forum thread tree. Not quite done with the KotFE story, but I can say I've never been so less engaged by a story in SWTOR (and that includes the cluster that was the last chapter of the Agent). I just don't even feel it is my characters story - it is the . And the companions? If I had a say in the choice, maybe one would be on the ship/in my alliance. One moment I'm making choices that basically say "Heck no, this person is NOT going with us - get out of here", then next scene I'm supposed to be all chummy and nice to them and feel like they have an emotional impact on my life? Thank goodness for T7 - even better if you are a knight, get all that influence back. Speaking of 'my' alliance - it's not mine, it's Lana's alliance, she recruited it and I get to be the figurehead whether I want to be or not. The members and choices are all hers and Senya's, go long for the ride. Sadly, going to be stuck with them for the long haul it appears. And it is a ride, my character is nothing - just a ragdoll to be thrown around (literally in a couple cases) as it fits the story of a troubled force family with daddy issues. You were a powerful Jedi earlier? Not now - everyone is stronger and will toss you around like a used up wash rag. Choices? Make them - it will fit the plan anyway. Rant over - but seriously, does it get any more engaging? I'm at Chapter 11 and with only 16 available...

Apologies in advance - this is going to be a bit long... Well, after reading so many pessimistic posts here before getting to try 1.2 I was already ratehr concerned. But, being a naturally optimistic person, had to log on and give things a try to get a feel for the changes myself. Now, let me get it out right now that I do not have BM gear and was using my old champ set (wasn't going to blow credits on the new stuff until I knew I would even continue). Queued up for three WZ's on my 50 healie Sage - 3 civil war matches is what I got - and in all three we started undermanned: Twice with 4 vs. 8 and one 6 vs. 8. And, not surprisingly, got rolled - but had to play the whole match this way since they don't shutdown now and everytime one would join they instantly left again (I did stay for the entire time all three matches for testing purposes, even though I was extremely ready to drop for sanity's sake). Here's what I saw as a healer with all four of us trying for a node: I shield everyone, check who is going to be first in, and prepare to heal, target the first guy being hit, start casting and 'whoops!' he's dead, so move on and try the next with same results, but this time got a heal off, even though it didn't matter. By this point the imps noted I was trying to heal and smeared me into the ground in the span of a stun. Repeat this scenario way too many times over three matches. And what do I get for staying through these? A total of 40ish commendations, plus valor and 1/4 a credit or so. I just gave up after the third match. Now, I can understand the commendation change - to a point - as a means to solve an AFK issue (even though there really isn't one and won't be until a leaving debuff is in place). So I guess this was forward thinking on their part? Trying to be optimistic, remember? The reduction to healing and buff to damage bonuses via expertise were really poorly thought out - went way to far on the damage extreme. The change to not shutdown WZ's with lopsided teams is ignorant at best - if they were trying to solve server population imbalances by making people all role on one side to compete - this may do it, since this is just rewarding the heavily populated faction. TL;DR: All said and done, PvP is just pure garbage in the current format.

Honestly, not seeing the point to unlocking the races at level 50. You have 8 character slots available, so you level to 50 with each race, go to make an alt, and... no slot left. Besides, by that point you already would have tried most classes to their end game point. So, you make another of the class with a new race to go through the same quests you now know in and out, forwards and backwards? Fun times! The family tree idea is sort of okay, if only from a role play perspective, combined buffs are rather 'meh', same with the legacy abilities you can use once every 20ish minutes. Just good old 'meh' all around.

Hehe - yeah, how objective points get awarded I've no idea. I've scored in huttballa couple times in a game while being around the ball as much as I can and gotten less objective points then just hanging in the middle healing/damaging the ball carrier as they go by. Same in voidstar, planted two bombs that opened doors and extended a bridge, zero points. At least civil war makes sense in the points mainly.

How about throwing the ball away to get it to reset and having it 'intercepted' by an enemy standing behind you?

Well, things I found a bit humorous in the last few games. Carrying the ball on my sorc, was being stymied at the top ramp fire pit by most of their team and about to be killed when here comes a BH from their team who grapples me to him on the lower level away from the danger, where I proceeded to just speed by the fire pits on that level since they were off and score. Gave him a nice wave and thanks for the save and goal. The times you get to be halfish health while escorting your ball carrier, so drop off the ramp to maybe heal up, only to have four or five members of their team follow you to get the kill - they chased me for about 30 secs to get that kill and ignored the ball carrier who waltzed in to score. Seems getting half health and running the opposite direction/off ramps from your ball carrier is the best peel in the game since this has been the case quite a bit. Last one was being used as ping pong ball by some enemy players. Get grappled to a BH, force pushed away by one of his team mates who did the followup leap, only to have me be pulled away by a different BH who killed me. All while not being able to do a dang thing (yay for resolve bar working as intended, not that it would have mattered much) - it was a bit frustrating but funny as heck at the same time watching them fight over who would get the killing blow.

Hello all! Posted this idea over in the suggestion forum, but thought I'd get some thoughts here too since it is PvP related and more visit this forum by habit. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=370092 The idea was possibly combining Huttball teams between Republic/Imperial instead of each being exlusivly made up of one or the other - would give it more of that 'random draw' feel in my opinion, and maybe assist in getting teams faster on lower pop/faction dominated servers. Granted they would be matched for Huttball - but a match is a match.

Personally, I would like to see a little more breakdown for brackets then 1-49 then 50 as well. Honestly, I think you only really need to break it down one time further then it currently is; i.e make a 10 - 29 bracket and a 30 - 49 bracket. I say this because even with bolster, the skillset available after 30ish give a huge edge vs. those using the basic starter skills. This of course assumes a cross server matching system.

Just thought it might be an interesting time if teams in Huttball could be made up of both Republic/Empire players, instead of each team being all of one or the other. Then it would truely be the 'random draw' as advertised by the game announcer. I do know such teams could cause players to grief their own team mates, but such people already do this to their own faction anyway as it is. Considering the 1.2 changes to how points are awarded, I think the desire to win would (mostly) negate that behavior. Possible bonus is it would help some faction heavy or lighter population servers get a game going faster, since it would pool all together. As an example, say at one point in time you have 5ish Republic queued up on an Empire dominated server - instead of those being stuck lying around waiting for enough to queue for a whole team, they would be in the pool of the random draw and could actually get a game in that day. Granted it would be Huttball, but at least it's a pvp match! Only see this working with Huttball, due to it's nature of being a 'game' versus a 'contested warzone'. Just an idea!

So, just want to be sure I get something straight here. I was under the impression it was made so AoE attacks no longer flagged you for PvP. Now, was just questing in a non-pvp area of Ilum and an imp was able to make me flag even though I never touched him or his companion while I was fighting a group of mobs. To make it even more interesting, I never used an AoE attack and neitehr did my companion. My only guess is he was able to do it by leaping to the npc's defense (he was a juggernaut I believe). So, is this still a perfectly legal way to get others flagged these days?

I'd get on-board an overhaul of the mission selection choices as well. Not only do 'metal' and, to a lesser extent, 'fabric' mission show up less often (at any level/quality of mission) - when you do decide to go and have those gifts collected the end result seems to skewed to return certain types more than others. As an example, I have sent the crew out on 'gift' missions quite a bit (probably in the hundreds by now for this type alone), and I invariably get underworld goods/trophy/courtship/tech (in that order of frequency) gifts back. Rarely do weapons/republic memo/imperial memo/military/cultural/luxury items come back. And those are the types my companions want to have given to them. Maybe it the skill that determines the type of gifts - I've mainly used UT and TH, no extensive testing of the other gift mission skills - yet. But I have a cargo bay full of mainly trophy/underworld gifts - finally started a character that has one member who likes the UW stuff, so at least those have a home now!