So I say "Tone Down" and you say Shock and Awe. This thread was intended to highlight how knights and warriors are painted into a corner against (every) merc pvper due to their resource generation being tied to single target direct damage attacks (STDDA) , when STDDA is exactly what gets shut down when a merc flips their energy shield. I'm not seeing any other threads approaching this specific issue. Hence the thread.

Energy Rebounder would be fine, except that it ties into how often Trauma Regulators enters the equation. As such, it's part of them problem. I don't think the complete removal of Trauma Regulators is going to happen anytime soon.

The utilities Energy Rebounder and Trauma Regulators are so powerful that: 1) Almost every merc/mando takes them for pvp 2) Makes it virtually impossible for a merc/mando to lose a 1v1 against certain classes. Its actually worse than the complainers are saying here on the forums. Some classes and specs have no options to deal with this. Juggs and Mara specifically. Why? Resource generation, and soft stun breakage. Other classes can stun and try and break line of sight, and get their resources back for when after 12 seconds (forever in pvp) they can go back to attacking the merc. But hitting their target is the primary way for Juggs and Maras to gain resources. "Well then, just hard stun them." Lets ignore the fact that no stun is 12 seconds, and ignore the fact that stuns are limited by cooldowns. Vengence Juggs, Carna and Anni maras still shouldn't stun the merc when they flip their shield up. Why? Because force choke is a channel deals direct damage, so their hard stun ends up healing the merc. "Well then, just SOFT stun them." Vengence jugs, Carna and Anni maras, as well as a bunch of other specs, have dots built into them. Some of them are useful, some of them are useless, but they are tied to the primary abilities of those specs. You can't not use them and win in pvp. That means, for those classes, they can't soft stun their main target. Against certain classes, once a merc hits that 1 button for their shield, it's checkmate. A 1 button checkmate is too strong for pvp, regardless of circumstances. There is only one correct answer for a jugg or mara to do. It's to try and break line of sight and run away. Mercs were fine in 4.0. Every class needs continual tuning, but Mercs didn't need the huge buffs. Now they have a single button that will win them a 1v1. What made the mercs and commandos frustrating to play in 4.0 wasn't weakness, but a perceived weakness, which lead to entire teams focusing them first. That perceived weakness isn't justification for making the class objectively better than most other classes in pvp.

Little concern with your theory. Lets say you're the producer of SWTOR, and EA and Bioware are about to cease their time and money investment, and tell you to "prep for maintenance mode" with the last and final expansion, while still making them money. How would you build that expansion? 1) You'd put in a story where the player character now rules the galaxy. check 2) You'd put in an endlessly grindy and random gearing system to keep people occupied check 3) You'd put in a way to help with that endless grind, using real money. check I'm not so sure about a next expansion, quite frankly. So this idea, that all the 242 purple gear is going to be super cheap sometime within a year is kinda dicey.

The boosters, in a literal sense, are not a scam. The scam is paying for a sub, and thinking you have the same opportunities for end game progression as everyone else. The scam, is the pretense that SWTOR is a game of equals, when one group of people is automatically 25% better than the rest of the subscribers. This system has about as much integrity as a mobile game.

How many Wow servers have been shut down due to population problems? None? Apples and Oranges.

OP probably had a smug face when he started the thread, he forgot something though. People have left SWTOR in droves before, and only a very low percentage of them come back. There used to be over 100 servers in North America. Now there are 8, 3 of which are graveyards, even at the 5.0 launch. There used to be an Oceanic Region with its own servers. Completely gone. More of the same in Europe. When Bioware and their EA overlords make short term decisions at the expense of the longevity of the game, yeah, the forums erupt. Then nothing changes, and the game population drops. You keep that smug look on your face pal. If you think Bioware and EA has the best interests of the game as a priority, if you think people aren't unsubbing and leaving, you are mistaken.

Can you imagine, being at command rank 300, missing 2-3 set pieces, and continually getting trash greens and duplicates of items you already have? Can you imagine spending all weekend, farming command points, trying to get an upgrade and utterly, utterly failing due to RNG? Yes. Yes we can imagine that. You could of spent that weekend outside. You could of met a new flame. You could of lived life a bit. But you got ***** slapped by the gods of RNG. But don't worry. For an extra 2 bucks a pop, you can earn CXP faster. So yeah.

Except it doesn't work. It's why utopias always fail. There's always one person who wants more, and takes it. Then everyone sees that one person with more, gets angry or jealous, and the whole system crashes down. How do we prevent it in SWTOR? Publicly shame those who use them? Bioware's command system isn't compatible with logical or reasonable outlooks. It's made to take advantage of the emotional.

I'll agree with you, and complement your healthy outlook on the game, but human nature is against everyone having this attitude. If you kidnap people, and throw them and a pit, and give them rubber knives to kill each other, then they're gonna get frustrated. Then if you offer those same people steel knives, at 500 bucks a pop, I'm guessing you'd have a lot of customers.

You're not good at math are you? I've proven that after command rank 57, the costs are the same for crates. There is literally less than a .3% difference in cost between rank 57 and 58. Not 3%. Not 30%. POINT 3 percent. It's nothing. It's effectively the same cost. Same cost means, that if someone gets 100 points, and someone else using a booster gets 125 points then you literally got 25% more crates. If the crates "cost" 25, then the booster got you 5 instead of 4 crates. Pretty simple huh? Shame you couldn't understand that the first time around.

This is pay to win. After getting to command rank 57, each new rank of command takes 10 more cp than the last. (3530 for 57, 3540 for 58) After rank 298, there is no increase. Tier 3 gear command crates begin at rank 180. Tier three gear will be received first by people who use command boosts. People using boosts will have 25% more command crates than people who don't. You're either using command boosts or you're not. Command boosts are gated by the cartel market. They only appear in the game when someone has spent CC on them. Right now, we're at the bottom of the cost curve when it comes to getting command ranks. So it actually seems more reasonable then it really is. Boosts aren't really necessary now. When you hit rank 35 or 40, and things have slowed to a crawl, that 25% is going to be huge. Keep in mind MMOs are multiplayer, competitive games. This is literally pay to win. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either a troll or doesn't have the perspective to see what's going to happen in a couple of weeks.

The lack of rebreather on the Malgus armorset is really weird. It's like they didn't want to deal with clipping issues, so just decided not to do it.

I painted with facts. There were people who were level 50 in two days after the EA launch in vanilla. General population reach 50th on their first character within the first week. Exp was not a problem. Simply, the large part of the supposed advantage gained by doing operations with multiple alts was negated by the fact that you had to gear those alts. Not doing so would force your team mates to carry you, and they suffer from the same lockouts that you do. The advantage, when all is said and done, was minimal. I'm judging it one way. You're comparing something unnecessary and finitely useful for leveling with something that is necessary and infinitely useful in terms of competitive end game gearing. It is not the same.

No, I don't agree with "getting those alt characters to an end game ready state in as quick and easy a fashion as possible is what it is/was all about" because it happened quickly, easily, and inevitably. I was clear in stating that the game actually begins after you're done leveling. Even at vanilla launch, people were max level in a few days. If you had trouble leveling back then, that's on you, it wasn't the general experience. At the 4.0 launch subscribers were all given a free level 60 token. Then exp boosts were given out for people completing story chapters. I literally don't know anyone from 4.0 that didn't have at least 3-4 65th level characters. As it has been pointed out earlier in this thread, even if exp boosts were a major advantage, their usefulness is finite. You're going to hit max level, sooner than later. Command boosts are items that you'll need to continually buy and use, even past command level 300, in order to gear up competitively. Don't compare apples to oranges and then use that as a foundation for further arguments while not expecting some "tone". But I will leave that there.

You seem to be confused friend. Let me help you. MMOs don't start when you make your character. An MMO really starts when you hit max level. Yep. That's when you actually start doing stuff that matters. Everything before then is fluff. In an mmo, a veteran players generally spend about 5% to 10% of their time leveling their characters, and the remaining 90%-95% of their time doing stuff at max level. There are exceptions, like people who just make alt after alt, or people like myself who intentionally make lower level characters who avoid exp and enjoy the game that way, but they are the minority. The grind begins at max level. That's the truth of an mmo. SWTOR is especially geared toward this philosophy. They give you free character tokens for level 60 and 65 characters. They have 12X exp days. The legacy system has 25+ passive perks to increase experience points gains. Joining a guild increases it even further. In case you haven't figured it out yet, here is the simple truth. EXP IS NOT A PROBLEM IN SWTOR. You can take a toon from level 1-70 in a weekend. Right now, COMMAND POINTS ARE A MAJOR PROBLEM IN SWTOR. You see the difference between a exp booster and a command booster yet?

Lets all play chess. Except we'll just take away from you a pawn, a rook, and a knight and a queen at the start of the game because the guy sitting across from you bought a booster and you didn't. Now lets talk about the integrity of the game. No? Don't want to play chess anymore? When the integrity (fairness) of a game is compromised, it drives people away, which kills the game.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=9149760#post9149760 I give your copy paste a 3/10. The good news is copy paste is so easy you didn't waste any time or effort.

Valor was pointless other than for cosmetics. Exp is the easiest thing in SWTOR. You can't avoid it unless you stay very still. Command points are the ENTIRE ENDGAME GEARINGS MECHANICS. I do hope that clears things up for you.

Told you guys. It was a slippery slope, and you, as EA/Bioware customers, didn't put a stop to it. Now look what you did.

You're not buying the gear with CXP boosts, you're buying the currency it takes to buy the gear. There is no difference. It's pay to win.

So you'd divide an already small population even further, despite there actually being little or no problem to begin with due to bolster. Move along. Move along.

Getting a toon to max level in SWTOR has been extremely easy for a long time, and valor never really affected anything other than cosmetics. Now there are CXP boosters for sale, which literally gets you end game gear faster than those who don't use them. I warned about this back when the reputation system got hijacked by the cartel market. It's a slippery slope, and EA and Bioware Austin have now slid to the bottom.

My solution in the OP handles the bot issue quite well, so I'll stick with that. Grinding is not fun, we'll both agree. But grinding the same mobs, over and over, not moving from the area. That is cancer to the enjoyment of the game, and if that meathod ends up being the best way to earn CP then you've killed the player base population. The mechanic needs to be fun with some variety, or at least encourage it. Lowering the cap only encourages people not to play their favorite character as much.

I was worried about the tech for this as well, but then I remembered it tracked kills and other stats in WZ. If it was too much work, they could have it affect an area instead of a player. As in, this area is being farmed too much, reduce cp and keep reducing it until the elites no longer give CP. Move on. edit: added a o to "to" to make it "too". Too Too!