If I remember BGII correctly there are some interactions that actually require a Charisma check with NPCs or companions to advance certain parts of the story. I know that there are some interactions where a NPC will attack you on sight if you are evil and this can actually be detrimental to the later story if you are playing on the more difficult modes. Also, if I remember correctly, you can be banned from certain stores if you get caught pick pocketing or stealing. But, other than all of that and back to your original post, I do agree with you. The issue is that companies are whittling away more and more of the substance of games. I especially feel that this is the case in SWTOR where they are doing pretty much the absolute minimum to keep people involved. I do not see any real depth in this game anymore and I believe, as other people have said before, that if this did not have the Star Wars name attached to it, it probably would have failed a long time ago. I, like yourself, have cancelled my subscription because of what this game has become. If they want people to return the really need to determine an actual direction to the game and they need to make sure that it actually has some depth to it.

Yeah, the 51 Bs will give you more endurance at the cost of defense which is a stat that PT's will already have more than enough of through enhancements, implants, and ears. On the same note, the crafted 240 tanking ears and implants will give you more endurance than the ones that drop from the crates. This is also because they give that endurance in place of defense.

What tanking class do you run? If it is PT/VG and Sin/Shadow you can just run the 51 B mods for extra endurance.

Shooting a leaping warrior/knight out of the air with heat seeking missile or rail shot. Though the two funniest that I've seen was shooting a scoundrel as they rolled and ran away and my HSM followed them from snow and killed them right before they got to the healing station and then knocking a guardian into the flame with Jet Escape while they were in mid jump.

I'm not complaining about the items that can be bought or crafted but the 234 and 240 set and left side items that drop from the crates not being usable to upgrade to the next higher tier. There is a difference since the crate dropped items have a better stat allocation. You can not use a crate dropped 234 relic, implant, ear, or set piece to upgrade to the next level. Nor can you use a 240 crate dropped item to upgrade to the 242. You have to use the 230 and 236 items to do so.

None of the merc/mando DCDs are heal to full and if you recognize the color of the shield and what to do and what not to do when you see which is popped it makes life a lot easier. Just bashing away when they have a shield up is a recipe for failure.

Yes, blame the classes for the players being bad. I still see players bashing away at mercs/mandos with their shields up instead of just stunning/mezzing them.

Well if the Imp is overpowered then around there someplace there should be an overpower pub since the classes are mirror's of one another. The issue is, more than likely, the pub players simply not knowing how to play their toons and how to play against other classes.

You need to remember that it just isn't set gear and not just left side items. 234 and 240 set items can't be traded in. Likewise 234 and 240 left side items can't be traded in. For the exchanges you have to use 230 and 236 items for both set and left side. So if a person did get to GC level 300 and only received purple items of 234 or higher then they will need to grind 230 items again. Though you are correct in that if a player did receive a purple 230 item then that will reduce their cost since they don't need to buy it again. That is assuming of course that a player actually kept that shell and didn't get rid of it before they announced these changes.

For your set pieces just put them in legacy armor and send them to your imp toon. As long as they are mirror classes of each other the set bonus will still work. Now, if you are talking about the shells and if you are still in tier 1 then you will have to regrind to get them but if you are winning more with the faction change and you are having more fun doing so then it is probably worth the trade off. As for the unassembled components , yeah, they are bound to your pub toon at this time but that really isn't a huge loss if your win ratio goes up.

Actually, I don't mind the blues in tier 3 really. It's an easy way to get a few 240 enhancements that I can send to my alts. But the greens, yeah, they need to get rid of those.

One of the things suggested to the devs was that they have assembled components as rewards for other activities, such as flashpoints, Uprisings, and possibly planetary heroics, but those suggestions were ignored. Now as for the discrepancy between the factions there are quite a few things that influence it. One of the greatest is simply that the imps tend to have the more skilled PvPers. Not only that, but they usually have more of them. The pubs tend to have the newer players and ones that are unfamiliar not only with war zones but with their classes themselves. Not knocking those new players or anything since my first toon was a guardian as well. But you really can't separate out the new players from the more experienced ones. The devs could try to do it by valor rating but then that rating would have to be made legacy wide or else people would just roll a new toon and power it up to 70 and farm new players that way. Of course the other reason why they can't do this is because it would make the queue times extremely long. If they added cross server then it might be manageable but they have already said that they will never do that. In short, there is no clear cut way to actually fix the disparity that you see other than for the players to learn the classes and the war zones. The one thing I would suggest for the future though is to not wait until 70 to start pvping. Start in the lowbie and mid brackets where it is easier so that jumping into 70 pvp is not so much of a shock.

Ok, did you actually read these threads or did you just type in Merc and used what popped up? Not all of them are about mercs/mandos being overpowered and some are really troll threads from players that, in the thread itself, ended up saying that they didn't know how to fight them. Others are, actually, legitimate. One of the underlying issues with all of them though is that the players seem to refuse to change their play style when fighting mercs/mandos. They do the same thing that they always did and jump in, bash them with sabers and expect them to die right off. They don't use interrupts, stuns, mezzes, camouflage, or anything else. Does it suck where there are 6 of them in a WZ? Sure, but point out a situation where having 6 of one class doesn't suck.

In order of preference: Onderon and Dxun Kashyyk Dantooine Telos Malachor V Manaan Also the station orbiting Yavin. Yeah, it's not a planet but it'd be cool to have.

I would hazard a guess that having 3-4 of anything tunneling you is no fun.

This is true. However, in every other them park MMO, they actually add content that requires the new gear level. For this one though, it is grinding a new set of gear to do the same 2-4 year old operations. You are actually grinding new gear to do the same thing that you were doing before. If they had actually added content that required new gear, then yeah, this grind might be a bit more tolerable but they didn't.

I'm sorry Eric but I feel that your development team approached the issue from the wrong direction and that this shows a very large disconnect between your team and the players. Most of the changes that the development team has made have been centered on the speed at which command crates are rewarded. Either by decreasing the cxp reward from mobs to the current plan to greatly increase cxp gains but these do not address the biggest issue for the players which is the actual content of those chests. It's fine if these cxp gains allow someone to speed rush to a galactic command level of 180 but if that player gets very little, if any, useful gear out of those boxes then they aren't going to be a player for very long. By the time I reached GC level 180 I had 5 duplicate belts and 2 duplicate legs. I could have been given all 180 crates from the very beginning and I still would have cancelled my sub if I had gotten those items. The first issue addressed should not have been the speed of the cxp gain but the content of the boxes.

They should replace the purple items with a purple token that could be used for any item and guarantee those every 10 levels for tier 1. That way, if someone did nothing but say FPs, Uprisings, or planetary heroics they would have a full 230 starters set plus MH/OH when they hit 90. There would still be a chance to get tokens in between those levels so that they could pick up implants/ears/relics or, if they do OPs, start working on an off set. After they started on Tier 2 though I would remove the guarantee token drops but I think the 50% drop rate you suggest is a bit high. I think 20-25% woudl be better with 10-12% for Tier 3. To counter act this lower drop rate I would have the big planetary heroic mission, uprisings, and flashpoints drop components like PvP and GSF. The component drop rate would not need to be huge, but significant enough that it makes doing those other aspects of the game worthwhile.

You should probably stop hitting them when their shield is up.

If you really wanted to min/max for PvP then you actually do need a separate set of gear from the one that you use for PvE. The only people that can, honestly, get away with 1 for both are healers and even then it is somewhat questionable. For dps you definitely don't need the accuracy and in some cases, the alacrity that you need in PvE. For tanks, that actually run as tanks and not skanks, are going to be running with far more endurance than what they would in PvE because in PvP endurance for tanks is their best tanking stat.

On use relics of all levels do not work in PvP. However all of the other relics do work until you get to the 240 at which point they stop. Not really sure why BW decided to go that route though.

Whether or not you have seen, or not seen it is irrelevant. Snipers have better burst and not just in pure damage but actually being able to control it. As I stated before though, heavy armor means next to nothing with all of the abilities that bypass it. That puts you in the exact same boat as everyone else, even mercs/mandos. You have to know when and where to use your CC breaker because, honestly, some people use it when they shouldn't be. They pop it too early and just get restunned and they've wasted it. You also do not have to use your CC break if netted. Link the quote please because, as I've said, other classes in the game can dps higher than mercs/mandos. That's because a lot of sorc/sages do not know how to counter it. As for shadows/assasins and sents/maras, those are some of the best counters to mercs/mandos. Not only can the shadows use their CC break to get out of a net, but their Force Shroud will block it completely if it is timed right. But that comes back to knowing when to use something and when not to. I've watched mercs/mandos use net too early while an assassin had it up and get owned. I've also seen the reverse happen with an assassin popping it right away with the merc waiting for it to wear off before netting. Now, don't get me wrong, e-net is a powerful ability but it can be countered by players that are smart and are doing more than just mashing buttons in a dps race.

1: With OPs gear you never had to turn in the weaker version if you got a stronger upgrade. You kept both and could transfer the weaker to a different toon if you wanted. 2: You could always do this. It wasn't until the current GC gearing that you were locked, for the most part, into what set bonus you got. Previously, if I was running as dps and had the dps set bonus but I wanted to try healing, all I needed was another unassembled token to start getting the healing set bonus.

1: They aren't the highest dps in the game. A sniper/slinger can out burst them and an op/scoundrel actually parse higher as well. 2: Their armor is no better or worse than a juggernaut/guardian. Heavy armor is heavy armor and people that pvp a lot know that heavy armor actually counts for very little considering how many thing bypass it. 3: Your CC break removes the hindering effect of electro net, just not the dot. However, with that being said, there are also numerous skills in game that can be used while netted. 4: If you think that the only 2 tier 1 dps are the 2 merc/mando specs then you really need to pvp more. After rereading your post, I am going to assume that you play a sorc/sage and that you are aggravated that net keeps you from bubbling. Refer to #3 to learn how to bubble with e-net on you.

Masterful or Veteran or whatever the hell they are calling the stuff higher than story mode now. The relics are dropping off of Karagga so unless they aren't going to have T3 relics be available from OPS then they have to have a Masterful/NiM KP.