You illustrate my point completely. To beat the pug GS wall (I like your description there ), you need a well coordinated assault group. There is something wrong when that is the case.

Is the learning curve too steep to get into? No - but its not really that relevant. New players can be amazing pilots and still get turned to paste by the 6 gunships waiting to eat them for lunch. It’s less of a learning curve and more of a “the only people left are the masochists that suffered through getting a ship geared to make it survivable and now want to make you suffer like they did.” After about 5 matches I got really good at evading, but I was never able to kill anything. After 15 or so matches I figured out that “flying” was not part of GSF. After 30 more I had a pretty well geared gunship and was actually killing things. After 30 more, the shame of snipe camping overcame me and I swapped to bombers (I even had a short stint in an anti GS scout… but no one can survive a pair of GS’s covering themselves. Add a 3rd and there is no way you will even get close.) So if your new, don't waste time with anything else, get a GS and learn to use it. Is ship balance preventing you from playing? Yes - completely this. You have 2 options for ships in this game. Bombers or Gunships. Even on a fantastic scout you still can’t out maneuver the fleet of gunships that everyone seems to swap to. Also - gunship deployment makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. You can have a whole team of GS's facing a whole team of GS's for some of the most boring “who will catch who at less than 15k 1st ‘dogfighting’" ever imagined. Gunships are too mobile, too well armored and need 0 support. If you get caught with your pants down in a GS, it should cost you. Right now, it doesn't. You just boost out, and pull your pursuer into the field of other GSs greedily waiting to pounce and watch them get vaporized while you find another spot to snipe from. In almost every match I have played recently, we start off with a mix of ships, each side figures out that the “fun” ship they were going to play isn’t going to work and they swap to a GS or a bomber. Bombers are a lot more fun to play (IMO - ymmv), but they shouldn’t be your only viable choice to stave off GS Armageddon every match. Are you not playing because you feel GSF needs something new to bring you back in? It would be great if there were fleet events, or invasion events where you were called to support. You know what would be awesome? The ability to call in support bots or drones from your flagships – Like calling in scout support to swarm GS nests. Or giving strike fighters HARM missiles that can fire and forget on ships that are actively tracking them (like say… a gunship painting them -or anyone else- for a free-kill snipe. Force the GS driver (yes, driver… tanks don’t have pilots, sorry) to think before they sit back with their gun charged up ready to pounce on whoever comes into range). It seems I have an issue with gunships… Microrant incoming – My biggest problem with the GS isn’t even that its ridiculously configured, it’s that I HATE driving one. I just can’t stand it. But for a long time, it’s all I would play because it was the fastest way to collect medals. So, I hate driving them and hate flying anything else when there is a fleet of them in the air. So yeah, just delete the gunship altogether and I’ll be happy =) Companions - It would also be cool to be able to take your GS crew members as companions. I'd love the chance to get companions you can only earn by GSF achievement. Matchmaking issues? Considering it seems like only the same 20 or so people ever play, it seems like when they want a match, they get one. And if you are one of those guys, you already know who is new and who isn’t, so you know who to focus on from the word go – further punishing the new players. It would be fantastic if you didn’t see who you were fighting (how does it make sense to know the loadout and name of your enemy pre-match??) The fact that GSF is character based and not Legacy? A legacy hanger would be fantastic. I’ve kind of created this for myself already – setting up individual alts with their “favorite” ships. Sadly, most of them are now favoring bombers… or I don’t play them at all if I loaded out a scout or (le gasp) a strike fighter. It would be very cool to have a GSF stronghold where you can actually interface with and show off your “fleet”

Did you read mine? Guess not, I'll shorten it. How to kill gunships /rantoff version: Think outside the box - your bomber may be your best friend. What if GS+X? Run. What if mistake? Die. Better?

I make it a point to kill every gunship I see. I hate em. Frankly, they do more to ruin gsf than anything else. Also, and this may seem odd... but I kill/run off more GS's in my bomber than any other ship. It seems quite a few GS drivers don't know what to do when you drop a minefield around them. Any other ship, engage and dogfight. Make a mistake? Run away or burn a CD and have another go at it. Make a mistake in a GS duel? Congrats, you're ash. What is that you ask? What if there are *gasp* multiple gunships? (like there always seem to be?) Well, you are in for a boring match of hide and seek where you will get "you are not contributing" warnings while you run for your life. They either need to get rid of these ships entirely OR give them all the vulnerabilities of mobile artillery (make them slow and give them no armor/shields - a small price to pay for the ability to one shot an opponent).

I think you made my point.

Or you could have a tier system that lets new pilots fly against new pilots? Have "levels" based on how much ship req you have earned and/or ships you have purchased? The absolute worst part of GSF is coming in new and getting one shot by fully upgraded ships. You know as soon as you load in and see a fleet of gunships coming at you that all you are going to be doing all match is counting your deaths. There are a lot of ways to make GSF fun to play, but until you address the huge learning curve and allow new pilots time to mature, you will be stuck with the same long queues, blowout v. nil turkey shoots, GS standoffs that put you to sleep and/or afk conquest farmers that don't care about the outcomes anyway.

I still don't understand why you can't just have the option not to queue for them. I know a lot of folks that enjoy objective based pvp but can't stand deathmatching. Why not give people the same choice you have with FP's?

You should really go back and read your own response. It isn't terrible... except that it is. You can't get one shot, except that you can. "Just hang on it gets better" except that it doesn't. Unless you are on a team, have been playing for a long, long time and/or really are a glutton for punishment, you should stay far, far away from GSF.

There is a good reason the queues are long. GSF is terrible for new players and many that try it, never come back. New players are put against fully upgraded ships, they have no access to gunships, enemy gunships one-shot them as soon as they are in range (microrant: The GS "fun" is usually something like a competition between a swarm of GS's competing to one shot new players, who are easy to ID by their lack of a GS on the load in screen - Also the solution to this is NOT to give everyone gunships... frankly I think GSs do more to ruin GSF than any other factor, take them out and people can actually dogfight instead of dodging well armored, mobile space artillery all match). For a new or novice player GSF is like starting out PvP in rated matches with no gear. In short, if it didn't suck completely for new players, more people would play it and queue times would be shorter. They could also decouple GS from WZ queues so you would not lose your place in a GS queue while you run WZ's. At least that way people that have gotten over the initial revulsion of GSF to it will have the option to join over sticking in a WZ they may not like.

Agree completely! It is sad that it's necessary to say it though. In every objective capture game ever the manta is always "FIGHT ON THE FLAG!" You would think that it would be automatic by now

Seems like I struck a nerve. First of all, everything in your post is nonsense. Exactly none of that is true. Second, I have no "vendetta" against GS's, in fact, I use them regularly. Why? I use them when I am in a bad pug and I want to be sure I get some kills. Why would I do that? For the same reason every single other GS driver (including you) does it... 'cause its easy. Nowhere in my post did I "denigrate" anyone skills or sling any mud. I stated a fact. The GS gets hate because it is so ridiculously easy to "fly" (if by fly you mean park and wait for some poor sap to stray into range) and it's all to easy to score kills. For a beginner pilot, no other ship allows you to get right into GSF and feel like you are contributing. Also, if you re-read my post I even recommend you use one to start out on!

The problem with the GS isn't that its overpowered per se, its that it takes almost no skill to play one. Every other ship requires you to actually fly. If you have no idea what to do, jump in a GS, hang in the back and pick people off till a scout that actually knows how to play comes and turns you to paste, then rinse and repeat. Before you know it you will have several kills, several medals and enough ship req to start making some upgrades. If you want to fly, however, and actually dogfight (as per the OP) then the GS nothing more than an annoying distraction. If don't like GS's, get a scout, practice a bit, and then make it your personal goal to punish every GS you can find.

Sure it's worth it. If you want to get an easy start, get a gunship and start killing stuff. It takes 0 skill and you will get points for upgrades pretty quickly (you don't even really have to fly the thing, just hang back and snipe). Once you figure out the piloting, you can move on to more difficult ships. I personally have the most fun in a scout, but you have to be ready to take a beating when you first start out on one. m2c

Been here from the start, but still play other MMO's too. This one is by far my favorite though.

The pre order has nothing to do with the actual content of the xpack. It is for the people that already like the game and will play it regardless of the details of the new content (like me). If that is not you, don't preorder.

lol complaining about game maintenance as if it should not happen. -1 to you sir. Bad form.

This reminds me of the old threads (in other unnamed games) about keyboard turners. omg I mouseturn! Noes you should kbturn! Noes you should have a gamepad to turn! Really? People play how they like, get frustrated either way and complain about it regardless. Your method is not better for me or them, just like my method is not better for you. So get over yourself and go back to playing... how you like.

It amazes me that so many people are willing to let EA off the hook for this. If EA knew it was wrong (and they did), they should have pulled it out of the game. Period. Instead, they left it in and gladly accepted real cash from people that were buying it. If you are selling an item, you don’t get to point to some dev tracker that may have been updated months ago on a website that the in game purchaser may not even be aware of as a defense to the "mistaken" sale. If you are selling an item that is known to be defective, you as the seller have an obligation to withdraw the item from the market or to otherwise proactively inform (read: at the time of purchase) the potential buyer that what they see is not, in fact, what they will be getting. They need to change it back and offer the “new” look as a separate item for people that actually want to acquire it.

Yellow? Like any soldier would ever be caught dead wearing that? Yellow is the color of the stain a coward leaves in his pants when he sees a trooper, not the color a trooper wears. Please pick something less... offensive. Thanks

/signed

So it's been a year (just about), and there have been exactly 0 changes to the CE store. I would love to see some of that rotating stock or even... well... anything.

I'd like to see this too. I got an electrostaff off a champion on Voss that looked pretty cool, and I remodded it without realizing that equipping it blacked out a bunch of my spells. Now it's rotting in my cargo hold. It would be nice to see a bit more variety in the weapons that players can use - and to be able to actually use the one I already have.

I'll take a 3 person team over 8 randomly geared pugs any day. You know a well geared 3-4 person team can own 8 disorganized randoms.

Don't know if its been mentioned (sorry, only got through a couple of pages of posts)... but if you blocked premades from fighting pugs, you would get a lot less quitters all around. I like that answer a lot more than the crazy point system the OP lists.

I think its fair to compare them. I've played a lot of MMO's, many of which are still open for business in one state or another. I choose to play TOR because, while it is a grind (all mmo's are) and has some bugs (all mmo's do) I love the aspects of the game that make it interesting and unique. I've capped 4 toons, pvp like a crazy person. Hate huttball, then love it, then hate it again. But I play here and not there. Why? My only comparison is which is more fun and so far, this game beats all the rest hands down for diversity of fun. Maybe I got lucky and have a decent guild. Maybe I don't mind some of the smaller things that others seem to rant for pages about (honestly, if a game ever pushed me to the point of ranting I would talk with my wallet and just leave) but so far I'm pretty happy here and plan to stay. When it stops being fun I'll go spend my money somewhere else.