Hello Bioware, Counter to some opinions here I am looking forward to this expansion, even if it does demonstrate a major shift away from group focus that a primarily partake in as a raider. I do however have several questions for clarity based on the back of this information, and I hope you will answer them for me. - When you say no new ops in this expansion, does that truly mean no new ops for a year and a half, or will some or one of the story chapters include ops meaning your comment applies only to the content dropping on launch? - Would you please confirm that NIM mode is truly abandoned from this point onward, or do you eventually intend to launch a NIM for RAV and TOS at any point in the future? I think a lot of progression raiders would like to know if HM is gonna be the highest tier from now on. - Is it only SM that is 50-65, or will this apply to older HM's as well? If not, does this mean there will be two tiers of elder game gear? Thanks

When you out-level content doesn't that basically switch off your xp until the story catches you up anyway? I fail to see the point of this, as you would eventually achieve your goal of zero xp gain by just playing the game anyway.

You are definitely correct, DOB still has outstanding DPS. Our strongest, most progression minded players make up our first team. I tank for our second team, which is more casual than our first team but also has brilliant DPS who rarely miss a beat. We do have very little spammable AOE, and often run with 2 melee DPS (at most), which undoubtedly contributes to our need to run 5 DPS. I can't speak for DOB's first team, but at the moment our team runs 5 DPS for Torque, Underlurker (an absolute must for us there) and Revanite Commanders (just because it's quicker to down running 5 DPS) in HM. Again, I may have been overzealous in my remarks above, and weighed too heavily on my own experience of the fight in judging the capabilities of the rest of the world. However, it remains true for us at the moment, and for the foreseeable future. I hope this explanation as somewhat sated your curiosity.

Well, we need to run 5 DPS to beat the enrage. Perhaps I was overzealous with the 'for most'.

Well, as a Jugg you could reflect 60-75k over 5 seconds per fire (about 30k for Guardians as they were capped at 6k a tick), and if you stacked the fire (you could easily stack 3 circles under your feet if you coordinated it easily) and reflected those stacks with two juggs at the same time, well that worked out just under 500k in 5 seconds using two Juggs every minute, on top of normal damage output. No non-jugg DPS could match that (I heard of one jugg DPS pulling easily over 9k per sec because of it).

This ^^ As a Jugg tank I enjoyed being top of the DPS table, but it had to change. However, the fight requiring 5 DPS (for most on HM) to down I do have issue with.

I agree that this boss is overtuned for SM. I think the health on the adds and boss should be dropped by about 10-15%. I say this as a person who has downed the boss on HM (I play tanks only). SM is supposed to be for casual players/light raiders. HM and NIM is for the more hardcore among the population. Saying that there isn't an issue here is unfair to those who raid SM. I personally feel there is an issue with a boss if the usual team paradigm of 2 tank, 4 DPS and 2 healers must be changed in SM. As I see it, if that is how the group finder sorts it, then that is how these fights are designed/intended. If it is so difficult for groups running with 5 DPS to kill this boss on SM (something I have witnessed doing gearing runs with pugs), can we not agree something other than 'people need to learn to play' is an issue here? Such a high DPS check for casuals/light-raiders makes it virtually impossible to do this boss with 4 DPS for these groups. I say all this only for SM. HM and NIM should be tougher and follow this new tougher design philosophy, but not SM. ---------------------------------------- In regards to advice, I can offer little more than what has been said here already. In its current state, running with 5 DPS should help, as will sonic rebounder (from PT) for the cross. Your DPS need to optimise their DPS output (i.e not wasting big hitting abilities as an add is about to die). You should be placing the boss on an add for extra AOE dps, and try spliting the DPS on the adds. For example, if you hold the boss on the 'middle' add, have everyone stack on top of it (for AOE heals). The damage from the add divides over everyone it hits (I think, or thats what I was told, so grouping shouldn't be an issue). You then have two DPS attack the add to the left, another two DPS attack the add to the right, while the 5th DPS takes care of the add under the boss, with the other 4 throwing an AOE ability or two on the middle one and the boss. Once their add is dead, the DPS move to the boss. Doing it this way, you can find out where your DPS problem is as it will reveal a weak DPS member, especially if there is constantly one add that isn't killed. Further into the fight, the tank can also help out on the middle add, as threat on the boss will be too high for anyone to pull of them. We use the above tactic on HM, there is no reason it shouldn't work on SM.

I agree the drops had to be nerfed, I have no issue with that, but they have gone way overboard with it. It basically just a way to gather rep now. They have increased the chance to fail by a significant margin (too much imo), while making the worthwhile rewards way too low considering this is something that is supposed to entertain. Instead it now feels like a waste of time. I feel a fair percentage chance on the drops would be similar to the following; fail - 29.499% token - 20% green rep - 20% blue rep - 15% purple rep - 5% green mat - 6% blue mat - 3% purple mat - 1% certficate - 0.5% mount - 0.001% I think the overzealous nerf is a knee jerk reaction to the crazy effect had on the market, and may be rebalanced once thing return somewhat to normal. At least I hope so, but as it stands now from 3.0.2a, the new percentages are way to far to make the machine (or any future iterations) worth the credits to buy them on the GTN.

I agree the drops had to be nerfed, I have no issue with that, but they have gone way overboard with it. It basically just a way to gather rep now. They have increased the chance to fail by a significant margin (too much imo), while making the worthwhile rewards way too low considering this is something that is supposed to entertain. Instead it now feels like a waste of time. I feel a fair percentage chance on the drops would be similar to the following; fail - 29.499% token - 20% green rep - 20% blue rep - 15% purple rep - 5% green mat - 6% blue mat - 3% purple mat - 1% certficate - 0.5% mount - 0.001% I think the overzealous nerf is a knee jerk reaction to the crazy effect had on the market, and may be rebalanced once thing return somewhat to normal. At least I hope so, but as it stands now from 3.0.2a, the new percentages are way to far to make the machine (or any future iterations) worth the credits to buy them on the GTN.

I agree the drops had to be nerfed, I have no issue with that, but they have gone way overboard with it. It is basically just a way to gather rep now. They have increased the chance to fail by a significant margin (too much imo), while making the worthwhile rewards way too low considering this is something that is supposed to entertain. Instead it now feels like a waste of time. I feel a fair percentage chance on the drops would be similar to the following; fail - 29.499% token - 20% green rep - 20% blue rep - 15% purple rep - 5% green mat - 6% blue mat - 3% purple mat - 1% certficate - 0.5% mount - 0.001% I think the overzealous nerf is a knee jerk reaction to the crazy effect it had on the market, and may be rebalanced once thing return somewhat to normal. At least I hope so. However as it stands now from 3.0.2a, the new percentages are way to far to make the machine (or any future iterations) worth the credits to buy them on the GTN.

I think the single biggest thing that would greatly help armstech, artifice, synthweaving and armortech at all levels and tiers is the addition of craftable, modable armours and weapons that have unique looks in which these crafters are the only source (I'm sure this has been mentioned before by many others). They have some already sure, but if you were to massively expand the options here, it would give crafters something to add other than augments, armour and weapon mods and colour crystals. Imagine if there was a orange modable armour of every possible design in game, the majority of which are craftable? There would be so much more value in these crew skills. You can still keep the cartel market and raid/pvp armours separate (although giving all of the old, removed pvp and raid armours to crafters as recipe rewards for said content would be awesome as well - you know, instead of milking the desire for them in the cartel market just saying).

I like the idea in principle, but there would be some issues with fitting this idea into SWTOR, especially as the idea was allowed by CBS for STO because they are only really interested in the new movie universe, not the universe that the TV shows (and STO) reside in. Firstly, almost all content in this game has a lot of voice-over work. It's a major component of the game in general. How would such a feature be implemented in PCC? Not well or not at all I would imagine, but it is not impossible. Getting it to the standard of the rest of the game would be difficult. Linked into the game along with NPC voices is Cutscenes. How would this be implemented? Through a cutscene editor? This would likely take more work than the level editor, but again is not impossible. Finally, and the biggest hurdle to this idea in my opinion, is that the story in this game is a 'core' of the design, meaning it is very controlled by Bioware and the Lucasfilm Story Group. While I love the idea of exploring more of the mythology through the eyes of player creators, there are some wrinkles to allowing players to create story. A reason some my not care for is that SWTOR resides in a grey area canonically. While the official line is that it fits into Legends (although recent evidence suggests otherwise http://dulfy.net/2014/08/15/swtor-gamescom-2014-cantina-tour-fan-flash-drive/ - the featured comment), any new content created after the transfer of rights to Disney is to be considered canon. As SWTOR is being continually updated, it technically also resides under this new official canon stance. Add to that the involvement of the Lucasfilm Story Group in the game since they began, as well as very unconfirmed rumblings of a very small link between SWTOR and the new movie , and it looks like they wish to remain in complete control of all of SWTOR's story, at least in case they go that route. I may be (and I am likely) completely wrong on this, but due to these reasons, I don't believe they would be willing to condone the creation of player-made stories, no matter how insignificant. I'm sorry to say that Bioware and Disney may not be willing to allow players to create story. That being said, they may be willingly to allow the creation of non-story driven missions that would over-ride these possible roadblocks, but building an editor for that would be unlikely in my humble opinion. A shame, as I've dabbled in the player made missions for STO, and some of them are TV episode quality. Would be interesting to see what such people could do in the TOR universe.

Thank you! I agree the idea is rough around the edges, especially the way the bounty is started. So many flat out reject interesting ideas due to various arbitrary reasons (not wanting to force PVP and griefing being the main ones here as far as I can tell), which makes me a little sad when I think of untapped potential in the idea. I like to try and see if there is at least some way to theoretically make it work taking those concerns in mind. It would be cool to have class based systems such as this unique to each of the 4 classes, making each class more unique and possibly giving unique rewards and armours or something (like old raid gear orange-custom shells or something I dunno).

Personally, I would love to see something like this. While I know it will never happen, one can dream. I would make it BH only (and create separate systems for other classes to make it fair - Trooper could be similar to BH only its 'Arrest Warrents' or something instead of Bounties). Don't auto-flag for PVP, as that tells the person they are targeted. Also, why does everyone assume that the only option is to kill the other player? Make it so that a Bounty Hunter has to find said player, and use an ability on them called 'Claim Bounty'. Make the range of this ability high (40-50m), so the marked player cannot see who is trying to claim them as a bounty in crowded areas, making it difficult to assess an opponent (i.e, no checking gear etc). This marks the targeted player with a buff/debuff/whatever and gives them the option to 'fight-back' or 'surrender'. Fight-back is a duel to the death and both parties are auto PVP flagged, if the bounty hunter wins he gets an item ('#Bounty Name#'s Remains') that other BH's can fight them for until they can hand it in. Surrender allows the targeted player to opt-out (i.e. they cannot be directly attacked), and the BH gets to 'carbonite the target', i.e. they receive an item ('#Bounty Name# in Carbonite') that PVP flags the BH and leaves him open to attack from other BH's that want to claim his bounty. The Surrendered player is completely unaffected and goes about their business as normal. Returned bounties earn the credits for the bounty regardless. This way, we get the bounty system, the pvp aspect is entirely opt-in, and it basically eliminates griefing.

If I recall there was a random spike in quest level on Taris (empire side), but it wasn't as high as 5 levels.