Hum, if this means that 8-man premade queuing is still not in the game in patch 1.2, we (our guild) stop the game. We've been waiting for too long for a functionality that should have been in the game since day 1.

You are right. This is the reason why I've added a fourth reason relative to the PvE.

It's true that the melee classes are fun to play. But they are not that efficient. Think about the incoming ranking system.

I understand the meaning of your remark. But actually, there are solutions like those that have been put in place in Rift. For instance, the damage output of some spells in PvE do not scale the same way in PvP.

This is not completely true: assault spec vanguard and commando (and their mirror classes) can deal a huge amount of damage while moving.

Please, find below a list of reasons why all the melee classes need a serious love in this game. You may discuss this list, add new reasons. If you do so, I will update this original post accordingly. Reason 1 When a melee class is rooted, snared, or bumped, it cannot deal any DPS (with the exception of the Jedi Shadow and Sith assassin who can deal some Range DPS). The resolution bar is not growing up that much when you are affected by a movement impairing effect. Even worse: while rooted, the resolution bar starts decreasing. You cannot move, but you are almost immediately eligible for a mez, a stun, or whatever else. Obviously, a melee class is much more affected by crowed control effects than any other class in the game. Reason 2 The melee classes are taking way too much damage. They take so much damage that they have not the ability to put the pressure into the enemy lines. Let's take an example: a 50v50 fight on Ilum. The melee classes, i.e DPS and tanks, cannot rush the enemy lines. If they do so, they get killed in a couple of seconds. The combat is therefore a (Range + Healer) vs (Range + Healer) fight. In such a fight, melee classes are only spectators. This issue has also an impact in the overall PvP game play: since it is not possible to rush into the enemy lines, the fight is therefore quite static. Reason 3 The melee classes are globally dealing less DPS than the range classes. This is a subjective observation as I do not have any combat logs to prove this general feeling or its contrary. But I can also listen to people who have two characters, one range DPS class and one melee DPS class, and who report the exact same feeling. IMHO, a melee DPS class should strike hard when in contact of the target, as most of the time, due to the movement impairing effects and other CCs, the melee DPS class cannot deal any DPS at all. Reason 4 In PvE raids, the melee classes generally take more risks than the range classes. For instance, some bosses can cleave, can PBAoE (not that much in SWToR though), which can be quite harmful for the melee classes. In some extent, there are no added values in having melee classes in a PvE Raid operation at this moment (with the exception of the tank of course). For these reasons at least, the melee classes need a serious love. The suggestions are: - Melee tank classes should take less damage in defensive forms (and deal little damage) - Melee tank classes should be more efficient in protecting (guarding) their team mates. - Melee DPS classes should deal more damage in offensive forms. - Melee classes should be less affected by crowed control effects in general, as they are both affected by movement impairing effects and mez / stun effects.

Thanks for your replies guys. I'll check in PvE tonight.

Honestly speaking, I can hardly feel the effects of the watchman love that came with this 1.1.2 patch: - now increase dot damage by 15% (instead of 6%) - now increase critical chance of dot damage by 15% (bug fix, not a love) when 5/5 in Juyo form I'll check in PvE the next two days if I can notice any real difference. But yesterday in PvP I had the feeling that I dealt a bit less damage than before the patch. Just to make sure: the dot effects are still considered as a force skill and still deal elemental damage, right ? Any other feedback about this change ?

Something puzzles me in the numbers you give: you earned the healer medal, which is an indication that you are watchman spec'd. But at the same time, you also earned the annihilator medal, a 5k blow on a target. Hum, either these numbers are just a fake, either your opponents were really badly stuffed...

This article is very interesting. However, you have a fantastic content from level 1 to 50, with an innovative and interactive quest system that most people really like, and you have tuned the game in a way that your players can achieve it in 2 or 3 weeks. Why ? Don't you think that you made a terrible mistake here ? If this XP leveling part, which is probably the best part in the game in terms of quality of realization and fun, required 2 months or so to be completed by an average player, don't you think that you would have had more time to fix bugs ? Most of the painful bugs are met when players address the high end content of the game, i.e. once they are level 50. Same remark about how fast the players can get their Columi / Champion stuff. Don't you think that it should have been more difficult and longer to get it ? The current problem is twofold: 1. There are still many bugs in the game 2. People have done the content, and are fully stuffed - more content is needed It will be very difficult for you guys to address these challenges within a very short delay. But I sincerely hope you will.

And once you play another class, then you realize how useless the sentinel is. Range DPS classes perform much better in PvE, when it comes to deal damage. Range DPS classes are the actors in PvP combat, while the melee DPS classes are the spectators... There is nothing else to say, actually.

For Ilum, I will give a 0/10. For the War Zones, I will give a 8/10.

IMHO, DAoC RvR worked pretty well because there were a lot of objectives to be captured all over a huge map. Therefore, even if one side is outnumbered there is still room for some type of guerrilla. You can regain control of captured objectives, through smart moves behind the enemy lines. This is nothing to capture in SWToR. And therefore, the side that outnumbers the other side is camping in their base. Please, you should also avoid the mistakes that have been made in WarHammer. In this game, the two factions were forced to fight each other along a front line in a direct confrontation. There was no or a little room for some type of guerrilla, leading to situations where, at the end, 100 people were fighting against 100 people in a very small zone => poor client performance, server lags, server crash, no fun. Objectives must be designed to oblige the players to split their forces if they want to control the map. This means that there must be several objectives scattered over a map that is huge enough to force the split. Once under control, an objective must be guarded by some NPC, so as to make sure a few individuals cannot regain control of it too easily. Now Bioware, you know what to do.

Les faits: - 100+ joueurs impériaux campent la base républicaine sur Ilum - Des joueurs impériaux reportent gagner environ 1000 points de bravoure toutes les minutes. Il suffit que parmi tous ces joueurs présents quelques uns tuent les joueurs républicains dès qu'ils zonent dans leur propre base. Alors, tous les impériaux à proximité en profitent. - A ce rythme, certains ont pu gagner un nombre indécent de rangs en une seule soirée - Le FPS sur zone est catastrophique, même avec une config des plus musclées: 5 FPS max avec Core I7 2600k, 8G DDR3 1600, GTX 580. A titre personnel, ces problèmes ne font que confirmer ce qui est maintenant une évidence pour moi: la zone PvP ouverte de Ilum n'était pas conceptuellement terminée quand le jeu est sorti. Tout comme bon nombre d'éléments du jeu, comme certaines interfaces graphiques, l'hotel des ventes, le système de progression d'équipement nullissime en PvE comme en PvP, les groupes en BG qu'on doit refaire systématiquement, pour ne citer que cela... A vouloir sortir un jeu à tout prix, alors que plusieurs éléments n'étaient clairement pas finalisés, et beaucoup d'autres encore buggés, on aboutit à une situation terrible où la perception du standard de qualité que Bioware met dans son jeu est à un niveau des plus bas jamais observé dans tout MMO. Il aurait été préférable de sortir le jeu plus tard, que de voir ce qu'on a vu depuis qu'il est sorti. On est tout près de la piètre qualité d'un AoC à sa release, et franchement ce serait quand même dommage que SWToR ait la même destinée. De grâce, fermez la zone PvP ouverte de Ilum, le temps de proprement la terminer. Cela permettra au moins d'éviter à ceux qui ne l'ont pas vécu le ridicule affligeant de cet Ilum version 1.1. (Et 1.0 par la même).

Did you ever play Dark Age of Camelot ? If you did, did you ever meet such a situation in DAoC ? So many solutions exist to avoid this camping issue, that it's just mad that none of them were implemented in SWToR. There is a simple reason for that: the Open World PvP was not ready when the game was released, and it's still not ready.

Please, have a look to the following image: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/716/lolillum.jpg This picture shows about 100 imperial players camping the Republic base in Ilum. As soon as a Republic player spawns in his / her own base, s/he gets instantly killed. No way to escape. EDIT Important notice to Bioware Community managers and developers. People camping the Republic base are reporting to earn about 1000 valor points each minute, in AFK mode. Every 10 minutes, they can gain one rank, 6 ranks per hour. I do not know if these reports are true or not. END OF EDIT Now, let's talk a bit about the client performance, and server performance, in Ilum. On a brand new PC, Core I7 2600k + GTX 580 + 8 Gb DDR3 1600 + SSD, the frame rate is about 5 FPS, and the server response is very slow. You told the SWToR community that your PvP development team was the best team in the world. I would like to trust you, really, but... The fact is the open PvP aspects of the game were not ready when the game was shipped, and a month after it was released, the situation has not changed. In my humble opinion, you should simply communicate to your customers the facts that the Open world PvP content is not ready, but it will at some point in the future, and in the meantime you should simply close the Open world PvP zone in Ilum. Open World PvP on Ilum is under construction. Period. And stop pretending it is not, because otherwise your customers will have a very bad feedback about your standing of quality.

I don't understand much the gear progression system implemented in this game. Let me explain what's weird in my opinion. I recently did a few days of PvP war zones after I reached level 50, and I could loot a very nice laser saber for my sentinel (a champion one, therefore a T1 PvP item I guess). I now have 3 pieces of T2 armor, one laser saber, and two implants. Now, when I look at the laser saber I can get in PvE, it does not look really better than the one I could get in PvP. Except that it would take weeks before I can get the PvE one. I don't feel very lucky, as my friends also managed to get their weapons too. I can see many issues here: - The PvP gear is way too easy to obtain, and quickly trivializes the PvE challenge. - Getting T1 tokens is worthless, since one can get directly T2 gear and be full T2 before she or he gets all the required T1 tokens. This issue applies to both PvE and PvP. Didn't you break something in the gear progression system ? Or is there anything I did not catch up ?

Si cela peut contribuer à la réduction du lag, je suis pour Plus sérieusement, de pouvoir jouer avec les partenaires avait un effet qui n'était pas très positif sur le jeu à Ilum. En effet, les joueurs finissaient par faire des binômes pour avoir chacun leur compagnon, puis plusieurs de ces binômes jouaient ensembles sur le même serveur vocal, créant ainsi soit: - une situation de 2 contre 1 - ou une situation obligeant l'adversaire à en faire autant pour ne pas briser l'équilibre. On se retrouvait donc sur une zone RvR où pour 100 joueurs sur la carte il y a 100 partenaires de plus à gérer pour les serveurs. Bon, si on peut enlever cette charge de calcul inutile, tant mieux !

Je vais être franc et honnête: cette annonce va dans le bon sens, et elle était très attendue. Malheureusement il manque selon moi un élément capital: la résolution du lag et du fps qui sont catastrophiques sur Ilum. Je m'explique: j'ai un Core I7 2600k, une GTX 580, et 8 Go de DDR3 1600, ce qui est presque le top du top en matière de PC pour gamer exigeant. Et bien avec une telle configuration, je reste à 5 FPS et un lag effroyable sur Ilum, là où je suis à 100+ FPS sur toutes les autres zones. Je joue une classe de mêlée DPS. C'est absolument injouable dans de telles conditions: mode diapo, l'impression que tout le monde se TP en permanence, les coups qui partent 2s plus tard et qui ne sont plus dans la hit box de mêlée, etc... Et j'avoue que je ne sais pas par quel miracle ces problèmes seront corrigés dans des délais extrêmement rapides, condition absolument nécessaire selon moi pour que les joueurs qui aiment le PvP ne soient pas dégoutés à vie du jeu. J'observe également que les butins vont être implémentés en PvP ouvert. C'est bien. Mais comment a-t-on pu prendre la décision chez Bioware de sortir le jeu sans cette fonctionnalité et bien d'autres fonctionnalités encore du même type, c'est à dire basiques dans un MMO ? Sans parler de bugs inouïs. Exemples de bugs, fonctionnalités manquantes ou mal ajustées: - Groupe dissous quand on entre dans une zone de guerre - Impossibilité de rentrer à 8 dans une zone de guerre - Équipement et rangs PvP trop faciles à obtenir - Barres de vie qui ne se rafraichissent pas - Joueurs qui en entrant dans une zone de guerre ne sont pas groupés dans le raid de cette zone - Joueurs qui en sortant d'une zone de guerre se retrouvent n'importe où, parfois même dans le monde de la faction adverse - etc... Avez vous seulement la moindre idée de l'impact extrêmement négatif qu'à eu cette décision de sortir un jeu qui n'était pas prêt techniquement sur le regard qu'ont maintenant les joueurs sur l'état et la qualité du jeu en général ? J'espère très sincèrement que Bioware a pris conscience de la gravité de la situation, et j'espère également qu'ils sauront rapidement remédier à tous ces problèmes, car si vous voyez autant de vos clients être très mécontents, c'est tout simplement parce que vous en avez fait des déçus. Ils sauront être patients si vous communiquez bien sur les problèmes et leur résolution proche. Sinon, ils partiront, définitivement.

Certainement, mais de là à sortir un jeu avec une liste de bug si longue qu'il faudra des mois pour tous les corriger... Même une simple fenêtre qui affiche les joueurs d'une guilde est buggée. Même ça, ils n'ont pas réussi à le faire sans bug... Au niveau 50 essaye Ilum: avec un core I7 2600K, une GTX 580, et 8 Go de DDR3 1600, c'est du 5 FPS, et un lag de folie... Sans parler des opérations qui ne fonctionnent pas correctement à 16, et voire pas forcément mieux à 8. Si je devais faire une liste exhaustive de bugs, j'en aurais pour des pages et des pages. Dans deux semaines, leur jeu est mort s'ils ne communiquent pas rapidement sur le sujet. Et si le jeu est mort, cela aura été la plus incroyable des arnaques de l'histoire des MMO.

Pas de bol pour toi, il s'avère que je suis développeur, architecte en développement logiciel, depuis 17 ans. Je sais reconnaitre un produit quand il est finit d'un produit qui ne l'est pas. Et SWToR ne l'est pas. Sortir un produit avec autant de bugs est une erreur fondamentale, voire même inadmissible. Oui il est possible de corriger des bugs, et fort heureusement. Sans cela, ta voiture, ta télévision, ta machine à laver le linge, ta machine à café, et bientôt ton grille pain, ne fonctionneraient pas très bien... Et de façon plus terre à terre, tu serais probablement incapable de lire ce message et d'y répondre si ton Operating System avait des bugs. Et je peux t'affirmer qu'un OS est à peu près 100-1000 fois plus complexe qu'un client de jeu.

En même temps, il faut bien faire passer un message. Et le message me semble important: attention, vos clients sont très déçus par la facilité avec laquelle le contenu a été déjà accompli, par les bugs, et par l'absence de progression et d'objectifs qui pourraient donner aux joueurs l'envie de rester longtemps sur ce jeu. Alors bien sûr, on peut se contenter d'y répondre en disant aux joueurs: et bien partez puisque vous n'êtes pas contents. Sauf que c'est alors une stratégie du perdant-perdant. Non, ce message doit être remonté. Il doit être fort et clair. Et il demande de la part de Bioware une réponse sans équivoque.

If people were actually doing what you suggest, i.e. cancel their sub just right now because currently the Open PvP sucks, then about 50% of the gamers will just quit this game Apparently, you're not seeing the point. When a company claims to have open PvP content in its game, and moreover when it claims to have the best PvP developer team on the planet ever, then we can expect to have top-level-quality Open PvP. And the facts are we don't have that PvP at this moment. On the contrary, we have the feeling that this game was released while it was not finished. Well, it's still time for BW to react, but they must react before it's too late. People who cancel their sub rarely come back in the game afterwards. Once again, I wish the best to this game and to BW.

I think that the future of MMO is to propose both PvE and Open PvP content of good quality. -A. If you are a PvE fan boy, and your weekly raid is done waiting for a reset of the instances, then you might enjoy some Open PvP content. -B. If you are a PvE fan boy, and you've completed all the PvE HL instances of the game and therefore you are waiting for new instances to be released, then you might enjoy some Open PvP content. -C. If you are a PvP fan boy, then you surely expect top level quality Open PvP content. -D. If you are a casual gamer, then you will surely enjoy having the possibility to play both in PvE and in Open PvP. In short, having a high quality Open PvP content in a game is always a mean to offer the players something pleasant to do. And I'm pretty sure that a PvE-only MMO, or a PvP-only MMO won't attract as many people as an MMO that offers both. There is an opportunity for SWToR to be that MMO, and I hope it will.

Minus: - The spells, - The talent points - The stuff Yeah, for sure a lvl 10 character can decently compete with a lvl 50 character...