Le Darth. /game fixed.

Guild Wars 2 has a lot of potential and from the videos I've seen and articles I've read, it looks to be the cream of the crop of existing MMOs and those on the horizon. Kudos to ArenaNet for trying new things with an MMO rather than trying to cram recycled junk from existing games into, oooooh say, the Star Wars universe

TOR will continue to limp along for another year or so I think, but the lack of community feeling in the game will be its death. At the core, TOR is not a terrible game by any means. Max-level is shambolic, but the 1-49 experience of questing and fairly entertaining (if a little thin) Warzone PvP keeps things interesting. Sure they dropped the ball on a ton of stuff, but other stuff eg: the questing system is the best I've encountered in any MMO. What keeps MMOs alive is Community and IMHO this is where TOR fails the hardest. Still not having a proper server forum system is inexcusable. The game world is so wide-open and/or instanced off into little pockets of storyline that you barely even see anyone else. The "fleet" experience is also very underwhelming, most people hanging around either the GTN or the PvP quest giver. Community keeps even the worst MMOs alive, but TOR's complete lack might spell its doom. Time will tell I guess...

Completely agree with the OP and the suggestions raised to fix this issue. Targeting in general and specifically tab targeting in this game is terrible in its current state. I primarily PvP and tabbing through targets is highly unreliable at best. As one person mentioned already, extremely frustrating when you're reflexively trying to tab-target someone defusing a bomb in Voidstar for instance and you're 1ft away with them center screen watching your targeting reticule dance around everyone in a 180o cone with no rhyme or reason. Clicking is equally tricky, I don't know if the hit boxes are small in this game or what but trying to pick one target out of the fray is often nigh on impossible. More intelligent targeting and better visual cues to show WHO you have targeted would improve combat in this game ten-fold.

Vengeance is viable for PvP regardless of posts to the contrary. One of the things I love about Guardians/Juggernauts is that you can go deep into any of the three trees and the build will be PvP viable. At the same time, none of them are OP. I would say Veng puts out more reliable, steady damage and has a little more survivability than Rage does. Rage on the other hand does the obvious big AoE damage, realistically only hitting at full potential twice per minute, so it's quite situational with a lot of setup required. Depends on what play-style you enjoy and feel most useful as.

True, you and I are in complete agreement there. My previous argument was that how does the game determine what is MORE useful to the team, would rewards for assisting objectives as you describe, give focus to fulfilling those whenever a brief window of opportunity arose (eg: Oh wow there's a guy planting the bomb with 10% health, let's all heal him up!" /rest of team dies and planters gets interrupted anyway. I think the easiest Warzone to implement this system in would be Huttball, as the scorer could get 1 medal per goal, carriers get 1 medal per...50 yards travelled (for instance), healers get a medal for every 10k healing on the carrier, tanks get ... well you get the idea. In Voidstar and Alderaan, it's a much more complex scenario for objective-based rewards with more focus on warfare and less "active time" spent actually doing the objectives. I'm not sure how they could track a lot of the stuff that ACTUALLY turns the tide of battle in those Warzones, but really anything to make people try to do the objective would be a start.

I like your ideas, I think some like the above are a little too situational to be practical (eg: CCing someone who just hit your capper is already too slow, need to CC incoming way off the node a lot of the time, etc) but I'm just splitting hairs when it comes down to it The game has objective-based Warzones and the measure of doing "well" and being rewarded should, obviously and logically, be centered around those objectives. The fact that you currently do not get a medal for capping the Huttball, planting a bomb or taking a turret is mind-boggling to me...

This is something like where I see the current system going, but where is the line drawn? Would this encourage a different type of cheeseball play (for instance, healing someone who is capping an objective to "get medals" while it might not necessarily be the best use of your healing in that situation). For instance, on my Juggernaut I often protect someone capping an objective by CCing any incoming enemy with backhands, slows, charges, force pushes and force chokes. It's amazing how often I buy a few valuable seconds to CC the enemy just long enough for us t score a cap which turns the tide of battle. How would the game even begin to track that, though? Is that somehow less valuable than standing idly by with guard up on someone capping the objective instead? Should I get a medal for "CCing the enemy in the general area of an objective, while channelling was going on" ? Objective based medals are definitely the way to go, but I'd like to see them mixed in with the current crop of medals too. Perhaps take away some and have 2 of each damage/healing/tank medals, then make the rest objective based with an overall cap of, say, 12.

What a PRO thread...

I'll never understand the QQ about Rage Juggs/Focus Guardians - it's a one-trick pony. Against good players it's as effective as a wet noodle as there's so much obvious setup to pulling it off required they just stun you and move out of the way. OP - if you're fighting a "zomg aoe killer tank" again and you see them CHARGE at you, then for the love of jeebus, STUN them and get some distance. 99% of the time, a big ol' AoE smash is coming after that charge. Also the amount of utility and survivability you lose by going deep Rage is just silly.

Greetings Brewberry! My understanding is that you're describing a Bolster-like system for the level 50 bracket, correct? Or are you talking about reducing effectiveness of level 50 geared folks as opposed to boosting that of fresh 50's? Either way, I have to say I would probably not support this idea. Gear progression is a great draw for MMOs and is (arguably) the primary reason people keep playing. If you reduce the benefit of gear then you reduce the demand to acquire it, and ultimately that would negate a lot of the "point" of playing Warzones for some folks. I think the rocky amateur-esque start with PvP gear has given people an improper impression of how things will be. For those who levelled quickly, they either had great random luck and were geared extremely fast, or terrible luck and got no gear whatsoever. Either way, the current system of regular commendations is a much better one and will hopefully even things out over the next few months in the 50 bracket. ps: as an afterthought edit, let me say that I am a huge champion of Skill > Gear gameplay, but I'm also realistic enough to understand WHY a lot of people PvP in the first place...

And as an edit to the above, I too am a fresh level 50 (Sniper no less) and experience the same drubbing at the hands of Battlemaster 50's as you guys do. But stick with it! Things get better

The gap that exists between a fresh 50 and a geared 50 is already easily bridged thanks to the recent changes to Commendations in Champ bags. I'm not flaming or belittling you here, but I do feel that there needs to be some challenge remaining in getting that level 50 PvP gear. As it stands you can already grind out a set of Centurion/Champion gear in a week or two. If it were made any more new-50 friendly there would be almost no sense of achievement when you did get some gear, which pretty much removes the point in playing and puts everyone on a conveyor belt to purples.

Completely agree. That, and they should have a more obvious visual cue as to WHAT you have targetted. Right now all I get is a little red circle under someone's feet which is next to useless in the heat of battle. If people want to either tab-target the center of their screen or closest enemy, it could be a flag you can swap in options somewhere.

I would love to see some improvements to targeting in this game. As a melee character in PvP, I often point my camera towards the enemy I want to target and hit "Tab". Rarely, however, does this select my intended target. Many times I end up selecting a person behind me or it doesn't change targets at all. Example from a Huttball last night on my level 32 Juggernaut. I had the ball, running down the middle ramp towards the enemy end-zone. Firstly, I line myself up between the zone and an enemy and use "Force Push" with the intent of charging him again to get to the end. Unfortunately, my Push sends him flailing off-screen at a 90o angle to the right (but that's another story). No big deal thought I, as I noticed another enemy drop down from their spawn. Instinctively, I centred my camera on that person and hit Tab, then charge. Unfortunately my Tab did absolutely nothing and I was still targeted to the person I had pushed earlier...so now my Jugg leaps 90o to the side too and straight into the pit below. Secondary to this, it is often very difficult to see WHO you have targeted if you play with all the name-plates up. I would love to see some very obvious graphics added to the nameplate of whoever your target is (big red border, flashing arrow, anything to make it obvious would help).