If playing through Balmora for the 41st time, on a class you already played before is entertainment for you, then that's great. Enjoy your time how you want to. But don't try and sell us this as something new. You're approaching the forums in the same way in the same way you're approaching Balmora. Posting in threat after thread, saying over and over that you like things, not actually looking at the topic at hand or adding anything of value.

Thanks for an actual response, rather than an emotional discharge. It's quite refreshing. It sounds good on paper, but already players who are using a dps spec, on a class with a healing spec, can do this. Often times they are very bad at it. So not only does combat styles double this, but as a secondary class that may or may not get played very much, there's going to be a huge skill discrepancy. Maybe they're okay to do it, maybe they're not. Often times, they just flat out refuse. (Which is good if they're bad at it.) For the vet players that were good at it, they probably already had a max level character of that class in the first place. Using your personal example, do you have a max level operative or not? If you do, you've gained nothing by choosing operative as a secondary class on your sniper. If you don't, how well are you going to be able to heal, on a class and spec you probably have vastly less experience on compared to your sniper? I'm seeing only a very slight benefit in very specific circumstances, and a huge amount of potential pitfalls and community toxicity, especially for new players which combat styles seems to target.

The OP didn't ask if you liked the new combat system or not. The OP asked if this added anything new to the game for Vet players. Over the past 10 years, SWTOR has encouraged, and in many ways required you make alts. Allowing you to switch to a different advanced class, which vet players probably already have, and which is extremely easy to level in the first place, adds absolutely nothing to the game aside from what only amounts to "class cosmetics". All this effort should of been put into something more concrete.

The way you added nothing but semantics and utterly subjective opinions to this thread perfectly mirrors the way in which the new "combat styles" system actually adds nothing to SWTOR. Bravo.

Don't confuse playing an old character class in old story content as new content, or new anything, or an accomplishment. For 10 years people have been asking Bioware for their bounty hunters (real ones, like PT and Merc) to be able to use a blaster rifle/carbine, (just like guys in the movies and TV show, WOW!) and guess what, they still can't.

Whatever it takes to make it look like it's still going to the uninformed gamer is whatever they're going to do. This means low effort "expansions" which have a single homogenized story, very little new content added, a new gearing system because why not break it after fixing it, and a round of puff pieces by gaming journalist websites talking about how shiny the new "expansion" is. All in service to hooking some transient players for a few months, in the hopes that some whales buy some cartel coins before moving on. You can expect they'll keep pumping out expansions under this model for a long while, there's no reason for them to stop pushing the envelope on the "lowest effort for the highest yield". A better question to ask yourself, rather than wondering if 7.0 is the last expansion, is why they bother making "expansions" at all, or why they call them "expansions" in the first place, when very, very little is actually expanded upon. Just google SWTOR Legacy of the Sith, read some articles, realize exactly who they're targeting with this, and then realize, it's not you they're making it for.

Imagine a crazy person walking up to you, grabbing you by the shoulder, shaking you and screaming because you're not enjoying the SWTOR raid content. And they think they're doing you a favor. 7.0 in a nutshell.

When you think about the effort for putting in combat styles vs the effort for making new animations, it's a pointless direction to take. They could of simply let any tech character equip any gun, and any force user to use any lightsaber. They could of put in little bonuses too, nothing game breaking, just adjustments that reflect the nature of their weapons, like a 1% accuracy to sniper rifles, or a bonus to aoe damage with the assault cannon. Heck, if they could actually balance stuff, each weapon style could come with it's own ability, regardless of class. So the premise here is, if you're a new player, does the new combat style system help you? If you don't have alts, does a system that bypasses alt creation do good for the community? No. A major issue with SWTOR is how quickly someone can level a character. It's great when you're making your 30th alt, but it's not great for new players, who reach max level way too quickly and then barely know how to play. The companion system, and the ease of solo content compound this issue, but the real root of new players being almost clueless about SWTOR, even at max level, is that it took almost no time and effort to earn their levels and abilities. So what's the result? After 7.0, new players who would of had X amount of playtime on their class are going to have instead X-Y=Z amount of playtime on their class, where X is their total time played, Y is the time played of the class they aren't currently, and Z actually indicates how much expertise they're bringing into your group, guild, or warzone for their current class. You can expect even worse new players in 7.0, which by itself is not the end of the world, but it will bring extra issues, which will lead to extra toxicity, extra confusion, and an even more unfun community experience for new players. ...and before some idiot tries to bring up FF14, and how their job system doesn't attract toxicity, every player starting in FF14 has to slog through ARR story content, which gates literally everything, and when doing so, getting new abilities is agonizingly slow for the first 40+ hours, until you get more abilities some of which are off their 2.5 second global cooldown. Not the best way to do things, and they've got their boost too, but in terms of new players learning their class it's better than SWTOR. TLDR:: The new combat style system doesn't actually do anything for veteran players, and gives only the illusion of helping new players, which will only lead to an increase in negative community interactions.

Solo pve casuals: "Look at all these bloated, niche abilities, get rid of them! The game is too complex!" Pvpers: "We use those abilities in every match. They're useful in every situation where you might actually lose." Sole pve casuals: "Well, we never had to use them!" Pvpers: "Exactly." PVE in this game isn't even up to Wow classic standards. If you could imagine a game where npc's moved out of enemy aoe, or they tried to run away, or actually had a chance to win against a player, then you might actually be able to imagine a situation where all these "niche, bloated" abilities would be useful. Stop trying to drag SWTOR down to your level. Thank you.

From that very website being quoted: "It's difficult to track hidden MMO subscriber numbers, but we do our best! By combining online social activity, sentiment tracking, public statistics, rankings and more MMO Populations estimates the total subscribers, players and active daily players for the top MMOs. Above is the total number of tracked players by the site." In other words, they've got an algorithm, one that tracks social media. Okay, fine. But what's one thing SWTOR's got that alot of mmos don't? An intellectual property that sparks social media activity and sentiment. That means SWTOR's numbers are probably inflated, comparted to an mmo that's not part of an established IP. SWTOR has the crutch of being Star Wars. The same algorithm that tracks "random mmo" isn't going to work for a Star Wars game. Are you actually going to trust a site that still says, in 2021, that there are more active Wow players than FF14 players? Cause every other site says FF14 has a larger active userbase. This same site also says Otherland had 622 active users in 2020. Anyone who's seen the Josh Strife Hayes videos knows that's basically impossible. This is a game where getting past the tutorial area puts you in the top 1% of the "playerbase", only has one server, and even though he played for weeks he only saw a couple of people, who were fans of his and downloaded the game for the memes. So what does this 622 people actually mean? It's not people actually playing it on a regular basis, and it's not people paying money into the game. It's 622 people stupid enough to download, get frustrated, and not play Otherland. Via Steam. Which is exactly where SWTOR became downloadable last summer. The site MMO-Population.com site is trash. It's "okay" for getting a general sense of things, but insisting that the hard data shows SWTOR got 58k extra active subscribers is disingenuous at best. Summit1G and Shroud playing a little bit of SWTOR on twitch for a week probably causes some social media activity, which mmo-pop used as reason why they think the population of active subscribers went up.

So I've got my quickbars memorized, and a good feel for when my dcds are back up. I've got a special UI configuration, that minimizes or eliminates almost every element, mostly just showing my HP. I switch to that UI, and zoom into first person mode. Feels like a completely different game, visual details pop up, fun to walk around cities or ships/flashpoints. Combat is kinda weird though, since your character won't render at all, so no animations from your toon render from your own perspective. When you get confident enough in your rotations and muscle memory, give it a try. Another good mmo to try that in is ESO, which actually still has watchable animations from the player perspective.

As long as they spend less CC than they earn via GS, then it's really not monetized is it? For veteran players, who want to skip a few days of GS here or there, they'll be looking at the credit vs Cartel coins, and noticing that it's always 100 cartel coins to buy a level but a variable amount of credits, depending on the reward. So yeah, it makes sense to "spend" CC to skip the more credit heavy GS levels. That being said, veteran, non casual players are more apt to spend either time or credits to get through GS, not CC like an actual casual player would.

So someone who posts everyday on the forums for the past 4 years or more says that casuals should have no problems getting galactic seasons done because she got it done a few weeks ago. It's not just you, probably anyone who bothers to post on the forum is a bad example when talking about "casual" play. We're all on the opposite end of the spectrum from casuals, on the "time spent on the game" metric. But I'm waiting for the next gold saucer event, so lets break it down. The average adult gamer spends 6 and 1/2 to 7 and 1/2 hours per week gaming. That's it, between all their games. Casual #1: Only plays SWTOR, is subscribed, and plays 1 hour per day. Probably getting GS done. Casual #2: Only plays SWTOR, is subscribed, but only has time on their 2 days off a week. Might not get GS done. Casual #3: Plays 2 games, one is SWTOR. Games 1 hour per day. Probably not, but might barely get GS done unless they get distracted by a new game. Casual #4: Plays 3+ games, one in SWTOR. Only plays for "fun", doesn't grind. Not getting GS done without CC. Casual #5 Plays 2+ games, Hates pvp in all forms, and won't ever do it. Probably not getting GS done without CC. Casual #6 Plays 2+ games, hates pve because it's lame/boring in SWTOR. Probably not getting GS done without CC. And blah blah blah, it devolves from there. The only casuals who are likely to get it done are the ones who don't really play any other games, and spready their gaming time more evenly through the week, and don't mind both ops and pvp. That's probably not even 25% of casual gamers who play SWTOR. Galactic Seasons requires a certain amount of consistency. It's not difficult, it's not unfair. Most casuals are not going to have that level of consistency to get it done naturally, however. I like the idea of credit sinks as well, especially since the removal of refer a friend has skyrocketed prices. However, the target of purchasable levels (aka casuals) are more likely to have money for CC rather than billions of credits to burn in game.

The monetization of Galactic Seasons isn't for people who play the game on a daily basis. It's geared toward people who don't play the game on a regular basis. Fair enough right? Until you realize the greater implications of why they'd monetize a system like that in the first place, and what that means for future "content". SWTOR is shifting to a game that's only meant to be played casually, at best.

The reason you don't use awe in solo pve, is that you were going to win the fight anyways, and the enemies are so weak you can just instantly aoe them down. The reason you don't use freezing force in pve, is that enemies don't even bother to try and run away. It's not that certain abilities being restricted or removed are niche, it's that pve enemies in SWTOR are stupid, weak, and built to fail instead of challenging the player.

EA/Bioware is banking on the idea that it'll take a couple of weeks for new players to learn how boring/tedious their characters abilities are, and how switching classes or loadouts doesn't really help. They're hoping that the story will distract from the simplistic gameplay. By then, they've subbed and bought an outfit or two from the cartel market. By dumbing down the game, they're casting a wider net that'll maybe catch them some bigger fish, and a whale here and there. That's the improvement.

It's because the AI in pve is more A than I. When I think of swtor pve, I think of a hallway where you're killing a group of enemies while their 5 buddies 20 feet away just stand and watch. Literally zero tension, zero chance to fail. If you fail in group content, 99% of the time it wasn't a skill or difficulty issue, it was an issue with a group member's personality or motivation. So yeah, to each their own, but at least Pvp doesn't insult you with content. To scratch the same itch with pve, you have to at least unsummon your companion, or solo mm flashpoints. Nim ops. Something. Anything. Just like you can't understand why people take pvp seriously, I can't imagine anyone taking solo pve seriously either, but at least with pvp there's multiple factors, both within and outside your control, that decide the outcome of the game. With 99% of pve, the outcome is already decided.

The game is so easy that people are conditioned not to group up with people, outside of flashpoints, even if grouping up considerably expedites grinding through heroics. Kinda sad really.

It's not the abilities, or the amount of them, that causes issues. It's the environment that surrounds the abilities that causes the issues. First problem is how quickly people level. Even a brand new player can get a max level toon in a couple of days, with consumable boosts and/or double exp events. Then they're "stuck" with a max level toon they don't know how to play. That's their choice. Second problem is that npc's have no AI, no tactics or strategy, and almost no chance to win the encounter with the player, or survive. You might/would actually have to use a dcd, if NPC's called for help or ran to a set of friends to try and survive. Most normal strength npcs are little more than speed bumps to player characters. Third is companions, and how they turn already easy fights into automatic wins in solo pve. The typical player character dpsing while the companion heals means that there's no reason for players to actually learn their class. The solution isn't to dumb down the game. Give npcs a fighting chance. Nerf companions more, or even add a mode where extra rewards are given out for missions when you choose not to use your companion. Suddenly, all those dcds and unused abilities are going to matter a heck of a lot more in pve, and when you learn how to use them effectively it makes for some pretty satisfying gameplay.

When the Devs go to Vegas, they don't see any shows. They don't bet on races. They don't play blackjack. They don't play poker. They go straight to the source of the most fun you can have in Vegas, the slot machine. Because there's no other place in the world where you can experience the high flying action and excitement of pulling a lever over and over again for hours on end. Maybe they're doing us a favor though, and trying to condition us against gambling in casinos. Better save your money and gamble on loot boxes instead.

Why elevate PVE to match player character potential, when you can just dumb down all the abilities? You don't need those abilities to watch cutscenes. Is it really "combat" when you know you're going to win anyway? Alot of mobile games have an autoplay function, where you can sit back and relax while the game plays itself for you. Those games do really well, and people really enjoy spending money on the cash shop to make their characters look even better while they watch the story unfold. Lots of people download them so they must be good games. SWTOR just needs 3 buttons, and an autoplay function for those of us who want to play FF14 at the same time. Star Trek Online does something very similar, because you can configure your ship to automatically attack/respond, and you really only need 3 buttons because it's on console anyways. We should be able to set up our characters to autoattack in SWTOR as well, because both Star Trek Online and SWTOR are both science fiction mmos. /s

It's exactly this. If you owned a SWTOR based website, with advertising, then you're going to be seeing more traffic, especially on articles and content about major changes in SWTOR for upcoming expansions. Your articles are going to be based on an overall positive reception to the changes, regardless, because giving people hope for SWTOR will bring them back for the next article. You're going to want to be featured in SWTOR's social media for the launch of the expansion, so you can't afford to get culled from the content creation program. It's less about "propaganda" and more about not missing the hype train. There's a solid difference between sugar coating and being a absolute shill. Under that sugar coating, Xam Xam has said some pretty critical stuff.

Best case scenario, they give you the option to make any weapon. Middle ground and lazy fix is to nerf the fight. Probably the most likely choice Bioware makes. Worst case scenario you're stuck making your original story class weapon, and switch to that class for the fight. I just think it's funny how often my vanguard or commando pulled out a pistol to execute someone, but in all other situations they don't know how to use the most simple of firearms.

So now I'm a "liar", yet you can't even prove I'm being hyperbolic, which is clearly a lesser degree than being a liar. So what exactly did I lie about?

FF14 has the Gold Saucer, where you get to gamble against other people, participate in timed events, do stuff that involves strategy and or skill. You know, things that could theoretically be fun. SWTOR lets you put chips in machines, so you hopefully win a chip to put in a different machine, and hopefully win something with a very small percentage chance. It's stuff like the Nightlife event that makes me think SWTOR is just a big lab for EA to see just how miserable gamers are willing to be in order to get cosmetics. As it turns out, pretty miserable.