Why purposely dumb down the game for casuals and cut off that (the number you pulled out of your ***) 9% market share when you can have a game with depth that accommodates both types of players. Defining terms in strict sense as casual and hardcore is pretty meaningless without context. I started out as a casual gamer. However, the game I played was complex enough that there was a sense of mastery that I could achieve, and eventually became more hardcore. However, then I got more real life responsibilities, and became more casual again, but still had the competitive attitude. Players are extremely amorphous. The sign of a good game is that its easy to get into, but you can learn and be hardcore if you want to. Someone could make an MMO based on tic tac toe, to appeal to casuals, doesn't necessarily mean it will appeal to casuals or hardcore players.

Its an MMO. There is gear. Thus there is progression, there has to be, otherwise there is no point in gear. If you guys are arguing that simple fact. PLAY ANOTHER GAME. If you can't handle the fact that someone who puts in more effort/has more skill than you has better virtual rewards than you, you're completely missing the point of a gear based game which is to have a sense of progression. Yes, flaunting your epeen and big sword is what builds the foundations for these types of games. Now that doesn't mean the current star wars model is fine or there aren't issues with gearing. If you have issues with the following: 1) How hard it is to get the gear. 2) How big the difference is between the gear. Then you have something to argue. But if you're just saying everyone should get the same gear with no effort, then again, PLAY ANOTHER GAME. For me, there needs to strike a balance between casual and competitive play and incentives. At the moment, star wars is just completely meaningless because getting to valor 60 is nothing but a grind, and getting gear on top of that is not skill based, but RNG based on completing dailies. Once rated warzones come into play, then I believe you can start to have a gradient in the types of rewards and game styles you can cater to. This is how I think it should be: BASE GEAR ACQUIRED GEAR SPECIALIZED GEAR Base Gear - This should be gear that you start off with. This gear should be gear that is practically given to you. Maybe after finishing a tutorial that teaches you basic pvp skills, you're given a complete set of this gear, that has a base of 10% expertise. There really shouldn't be a grind to earning gear that puts you at level where the game designers expect you should already be at. Its just cruel to be blown up so quickly. Acquired Gear - This would be gear that you can slowly earn by participating in casual solo random play. This would be like 4% increase in the stats. Essentially any idiot, who even moderately tries to play, would eventually get this gear. Because this gear is such a small increase in power, yes people would have an advantage, but it wouldn't be the difference of say someone who is a fresh 50 with no expertise versus fighting a person in champion gear. Specialized Gear - This should be gear that is reserved for people who participate in rated group play. Again, the increase in stats should be VERY tiny. Like another 4%. So, while someone who has this specialized gear fighting a fresh 50 with base gear, you'd feel a significant but small advantage, it's not completely game breaking. Once that fresh 50 gets acquired gear, that 8% advantage shrinks back down to 4%. Basically rated play will give you a rating which will determine how fast you get specialized gear. The better you are, the faster you get the gear. However, EVERYONE who at least tries to participates in group rated play will have COMPLETE access to the same gear, although at a slower rate. This stratification will encourage people to play rated play, which is what the game ideally should be played. Organized groups working together against other organized groups. However, if one doesn't want to for whatever reason, at the very most, they will only be 4% behind in stats to the people who actually participate. What people fail to realize is that competitive play CAN be REALLY fun. However, if there's no incentives to do so, people unexpectedly miss out on a type of game style they might not know is more rewarding. And again, if you like playing in unorganized, bad pick up, random yelling, with no sense of team work play, you can still do so without feeling a huge penalty. But the offer of better progression in rated play will at least encourage you to try it for some pretty easy rewards. And if you're still advocating to be on completely even footing for people who are willing to put in more effort than you, even when the difference is tiny. PLAY ANOTHER GAME. There are plenty of great games that don't have gear.

LoL, and you think it was worth anything before? Especially with the joke that is Ilum? Battlemaster is nothing but a grind. The fact that I happen to be a sage and can get more medals than my healer friend or dps friend, and less than my tank friend consistently, even though I have played with them for YEARS and done very well in the games we've played together, doesn't magically mean they are more or less, scrutinized by this awful medal system.

This kind of logic is always quite flawed. As if I need to know choking a puppy first hand to know that its wrong. Guess what guy, humans have an incredible capacity for this thing called empathy, and if that utterly fails, we have a back up called, knowing what its like to be a victim. Guess what the designers themselves, probably one of the more knowledgeable subset group of people, probably don't play all classes simultaneously, neither does a person need to have trained in China to know that Panda Express is not the best.

Its about time. The medal system is completely meaningless without specific context. Context that is nearly impossible for a program to discern even with thousands of if/then statements. Play to win the game. Its really as simple as that. If you honestly believe that you're some hot **** in a warzone from medals that may or may not have contributed to a win, you're quite delusional. A person trying to get more medals past 4 wasn't trying to win, they were just trying to get more medals. And also, the person who keeps misspelling medals as metals, I weep for how bad your education was.

The nerve of some of these people. Players trying to work together in a team game. Although both could be more tactful, making broad generalizations without evidence makes you look douchier than the person who actually has evidence about specific flaws in your character based on the posts you've made. You made a generalization about people you can never prove. People call you out on that generalization. Guess who made the error in tact first. Here's a thought, don't say stupid things, people might not attack you?

As I said, its not all it takes to win. And, no there's always SOMETHING I can do. And I think I'm starting to get the picture and your attitude with that kind of point. You're just not very good. You're insecure and try to create these outside factors to try to quell that imbalance as a defense mechanism, while most people who have problems deal with it based on inside factors. If EVERY single one of my team mates is bad, yah it can be near impossible to win, but honestly, how often does that happen? Even when I get beaten by premades sometimes, there's usually at least one or two other competent people, and I can get close games. If I can solo queue and win against a premades sometimes, why can't you? There are so many factors. Being in a preamade is just but one of them. Everything is left up to chance to a degree, thinking you can create players out of thin air to suit your needs is again delusional.

These pro vs amateur team analogies are awful. Simply because the amateur teams are still teams they're not singles being mashed together, they still know each other and practice together, unless you're talking about a pick up game at the YMCA. Also, no one is a professional in this game. Premades don't even win all the time. I mean its hard to even call anything a premade because you can only queue 4 players. I queue solo at least half of my time playing. Yet, I still somehow manage to win at LEAST half of those games. Sometimes I will get paired with other premades, other times I will play against a premade and win, and sometimes the opposite. Its actually quite uncommon for me to get downright owned queueing solo when its not due to unbalanced teams/leavers. And when it does happen, I just chalk it up as a bad game and move on. Expecting every game to a perfect match is quite delusional. And if you are CONSISTENTLY losing, I'd look to yourself and see what you are doing wrong because its not normal, premade or not. I also do find it hilarious that you're comparing entitlement to the person who doesn't want to work at trying to find a team versus a group of people working together. There's obviously a huge disconnect in your sense of entitlement if you're putting those on the same level.

Yah, I don't particularly "enjoy" beating on pugs (even though I'd hardly call a 4 man a "premade"), but I have zero sympathy for people who solo queue, and refuse to ever even entertain the thought of grouping up in a multiplayer game. Soloing is nice. It's very accessible, its not restricted to schedules or strict requirements. But, its also just that, its soloing, and to think that is going to yield the best result in an MMO is kind of delusional. If you want to solo, that's fine, but live with the fact that you might be put at a disadvantage to groups that might, gasp, want to work together, in a gasp, a team game. When I queue solo, I full know this, I don't whine when I get beat by premades, because one, if they're better they're better, and two, I beat premades enough to not feel like it shouldn't drastically affect me from finishing a daily. The OPs logic is pretty true though. Even while soloing, the liklihood of you playing AGAINST a premade, is about the same as playing WITH a premade that should counter some of the effects of premades. If you're consistently losing solo, all that really tells is YOU consistently lose. And if you refuse to group, even when you CAN, all that really tells me is you're an awful team player who tries to cover that insecurity by using the ploy of "I just don't like it" as a defense mechanism.

Shhh stop talking out of your ***.

As I said, even when the guy starts the animation he's 1) pretty far from the target, 2) never even goes to the right side to angle that kind of knockback. If what you say is true, he should have a) never even got knocked back because he's too far b) if he was close enough in range, it should have knocked him BACK not to the left. So your example doesn't prove your conclusion either. And what the hell are you talking about his own lag, the server doesn't synch what shows on your screen versus where it thinks it is correctly all the time, all that shows is something was off. There's no ownership of lag that makes this more or less right.

Yah the many people in this thread are just talking out their ***. They just enjoy using their abilities getting shut down and not finish so we can lie to people like you.

Well you're wrong again. You can stun the animation, its obviously hard to unless you have a super fast reaction time and have a free gcd. If you'd just use a GCD, you're probably already too late. However, moving isn't limited by the gcd. Just go play a consular for a couple of hours, you'll soon be screaming how unreliable force wave is. Coming from wow, and playing with and against elemental shams in that dreaded eye of the storm, where instant is actually instant, there is indeed a cast animation that requires for the spell to be cast. You constantly screaming that it is won't change the fact what many people have already stated in the thread. YOU ARE WRONG.

LoL, man did you even watch the video? The guy never even gets on the other side even when he starts the animation. If what you say is correct, the knockback wouldn't have even landed because he would have been too far away. What you just linked is probably a case of lag. I played a game today where I had actually knocked an enemy towards an ally that was capping a flag because where I started the force wave and where he ended up were two different things. You can definitely reposition yourself in the second it takes to land for a more favorable knockback. You're just wrong. If I'm in a cast animation for force wave, and die, no one moves, which means that the animation is required to finish the move.

How lovely, mine doesn't. Make sure to "test it" lol.