Right now, we're all leveling or waiting for people to level. Raiding hasn't started, and even when it does start it won't be at the Brutallis level of dps checking. So yeah, for what we're doing now we have everything we need. But if the future encounters are to be truly challenging, in order to tune them for a certain level of dps, guilds will need tools to evaluate how close their individual members are to meeting the requirements for the more difficult content. And challenging content will be necessary for people to retain interest. Bioware recognizes this, I'm sure, and will be making the tools available in some form.

I hardly have any use for damage meters in pugs except to measure my own performance and to look for recruiting opportunities. Having said that, I remember there was an instance I noticed a player the same class as me below the tanks in a pug raid (wintergrasp, so it hardly mattered)- I ended up whispering to him afterward and offering to help him get better. He was very new to the game and excited that someone wanted to help. He never got into my guild (we didn't have room), but I eventually helped him get into a raiding guild where he was pulling decent numbes and getting to see a lot of high level content as a contributing member. Meters are tools and they can be used for good or ill. I've actually never seen them use for much I'll beyond mild annoyance, but it seems others have different perceptions or experiencs.

In the military, everyone takes personal responsibility to do their best and is measured often for areas of improvement. I have never withheld loot from a player for failure to perform. I have never made a player feel bad or as if a victory didn't "count" because they were dragging the team down. In my world, a team does succeed or fail as a group. HOWEVR, if it's a guild run, I do a lot of work beforehand to make sure everyone is as prepared as they can be before the encounter, and if someone shows up and does not perform at an acceptable level, that person will not be invited in the future. I guarantee you, no military outfit goes not battle with people they don't have confidence in. Now if I'm pugging, I see the challenge of dealing with players worse than me as part of the fun, the smooth runs of people of equal skill as a surprising break from the norm, and the amazing runs where people are better than me as a chance to be humbled and learn some things.

Holding them back from completing the encounter. Wipeing repeatedly and finally quitting the group without victory is not fun. Neither is having the content tuned for super low dps, because it becomes way to easy (and unrewarding) for a group where everyone plays well.

When someone decides to team up with others to contribute toward a shared goal, that person is taking on a repsonsability for contributing AND is saying that they've prepared themselves enough to be a part of the team. If the person has not done so, then they are being disrepectful to the group. That's the standard I set for myself and what I expect of others. NOT to be perfect, but to be prepared and contribute. Now I've never kicked someone from a group for low DPS. I HAVE asked people to stop raiding with my guild until they learn how to do an acceptable level of DPS, and for those who've been willing I've helped them research their class mechanism and spent time with them at training dummy's. Some of these folks have gone on to become very fulfilled members of the raid team, happy and prepared to play their part and glad we could do the cont t we were able to achieve. Without damage meters, instead we'd have either ended up not being able to do the content, or at worst asking someone we suspect, but cannot prove, is not contributing enough to leave wothout giving them much to go on about how to improve.

Damage meters don't mean degradation and harassment. I actually don't think I've seen them used that way ever, though I've heard lots of complaining about it. I HAVE seen them used to brag, but that doesn't really effect me too much (and amongst friends with whom it's fun to be competitive over stupid stuff, I've used them to brag myself, but never with strangers). Challenging content requires effective teamwork, and creating good teams requires methods of evaluating how individuals in the team perform (including self-evaluation, the most imoortant part). This is how teamwork works in the real world too- the most effective teams, whether for work, sports, or whatever, develop ways of measuring themselves so they can improve and address area of weakness. Without tools to measure performance, this game cannot be tuned as difficult, and the content will be less challenging (which for many means less fun). I have never been a hard core raider, but when I play I want to do my best- and I want the people I play with to do their best too. Because overcoming the challenge along side like minded individuals is why I find teamwork fun. It is hard for people to be at their best if they don't have the tools to measure their effectiveness.

Fwiw, the trick for me was turining shadows off. I can run every other setting at max smoothly, but with everything at low and shadows at low, it is unplayable.

I'll admit we wiped three times on the hammer station boss. We were all around level 16-18. one dps was a bad player, the healer was awesomesauce, and the tank was still trying to figure out how tanking works in this game. Knowing nothing about the fight we had to figure a few things out, and once we finally got the dps to keep the adds from clobbering the healer we beat the boss. In retrospect it wasn't that hard, but with people figuring out their classes and me being a bit rusty at MMOs (left WoW 2 years ago), it took some time to get used to a boss that wasn't a face roll like Esseles was. Man did it feel good to get that guy down. Best moment in the game so far for me. The difficulty jump between Esseles and Hammer Station is dramatic, but Hammer Station is not difficult. It just expects everyone to know what their roles and how to work together (not required for Esseles).

Just today I was wishing for a damage meter and a target dummy so much so I could try out different rotations.

Of course force users are popular- they are just awesome, exciting characters that really tear it up while representing the most iconic part of the Star Wars universe. On the Republic side Troopers come next and Smugglers are way in the back. I'm convinced, though, that the smuggler is the most fun of all the classes. I am just fine being one of the few. Of course if I really wanted to be unique I'd have been a scoundrel, but I prefer the pew pew.

/roll

There IS level 50 content in te game already, so endgame is definitely part of the plan.

I don't think anyone should shoulder the blame for not liking a game. Just don't be surprised that a lot of other people DO like the game as designed. I am certain that there are going to be some great raids by the time I hit 50, but I'm not rushing to get there. But if it's not something you want to do, move in, No harm, no foul.

Actually, I don't know why someone hasn't created an MMO that is only endgame with no levels. Just dailies and massive dungeons that you grind for gear in raids and a lot of pvp.

There is a lot of game pre 50. If you choose not to play it, that's your choice, but don't blame Bioware- they made a fun game, even if it's not the game you want. To say the game begins at 50 just because it's an MMO is faulty logic. Clearly BW intended leveling to be the main focus initially so if that's not your bag, then don't bother. However, it looks like they'll be giving endgame a lot of effort, which I'm happy about because I prefer endgame to leveling. But I also understand that leveling was the focus to this point, so I plan to enjoy it while I can. I'm glad I have the capacity to enjoy both.

Oh man, the constant whine on these forums for less than necessary features has been terrible and I really love the game, but this is pretty bad. I've even gotten annoyed with people assuming features are easy to develop when it's hard to know the difficulty or complexity added by a change, but if this is difficult to add, something is really wrong with the code base. This needs to be in before serious raiding happens.

No- poisoning customers and using the "we just opened" is analogous to SWTOR giving your computer a virus upon install and claiming that it was launch day as an excuse. Forcing people to wait in queues because there are more people wanting to play than the servers could handle is analogous to people having to wait in line to get a table at a new mega popular restaurant that just opened. And to further that analogy, people complaining about the queues are like the customers waiting in line complaining that the new restaurant didn't build big enough, even though after a month they'd never be able to fill the place at that size once the initial rush wears off.

Wanting to play a game with your friends is not instant gratification- when I log on it's because I want to play a computer game, not chat. If chatting g was what I wanted, I'd get on AIM. What about people who can only spend an hour at a time to play a video game and want to play with their friends? How is it good for a large portion of that time to be wasted on virtual travel? I absolutely hate not having summoning stones in this game- I spend a lot of my entertainment time waiting. That isn't fun or productive.

The logic is that it's a problem that gamemakers have struggled with before, so it isn't surprising to see this game struggle with it now.

If you are not a software developer, please do not assume how difficult something is to add. It's never as easy as copying and pasting existing code. Even if the code itself is simple, you have to contend with QA effort and the added complexity to the game that any extra feature adds. I'm not saying this change isn't worth it or relatively simple compared to other changes, but code is never as easy to change as people (even software developers themselves) believe it to be.

Fwiw, I got terrible framertes with everything on low. I turned off shadows and maxed everything else and it runs smooth.

I think all mounts should scale, and having them not do so definitely reduces the value of paying the extra $20. I'm not super mad, but it's disappointing that the one aparently useful thing in the package isn't actually useful. And having mounts scale is not a pay to win advantage, so stop calling it that. It weakens your position to jump to that kind of extreme when making your point. All OP wants to do is use what he received from his purchase.

A+ Had fun, no problems.

So I got in last night, despite not pre-ordering until December. I thought I'd get 1 day at best, so I thought it was great to be able to log in and play last night. No queue, no lag, no problem competing with other players for mobs and quests- I enjoyed the four hours I got to play and was glad two of them were not spent waiting in queue. I know different people have different values, but for my money I'd rather have an enjoyable few first hours later than a crummy few hours at the same time as everyone else. This was so much more fun than the WoW expansion launches I've experienced (I wasn't in for WoW vanilla). And if Dec 20 ends up being a rough time, I'll just log and give it a day- I'll probably need a break by then anyway. I know I'm not going to change the minds of the people who are mad they didn't get in with everyone else, but I'll say this anyway: if you allow the good fortune of others to damper the enjoyment you get out of something, the only one being hurt is you. If you can learn to live with unfairness and consider the deal you get on its own merits, you will be much happier in life. This is true for so much more than video games, so for your own sake think about it. If you some day end up with a 100K job you'd do for 75K, don't get upset when you find out someone else is getting 110K- that kind of stuff will always happen because life isn't fair, and no matter how angry you get it won't change the way the world works. But if you change YOU, then you'll be content whatever the situation. A pre-order costs the same as buying the game after the 20th. Getting to play even one day in advance for simply putting down a down-payment of $5 is a pretty good deal- you aren't giving up much and you are getting a lot. If some people got a better deal, that doesn't change that you still got a good deal.

This launch concept has been tried before, successfully, for software outside of the gaming industry. It worked there and it appears to be working here to. The onlly issue is people looking at their neighbor and allowing what someone else is getting to affect their fun factor. That's a bug in the player that should be fixed if that person wants to win at life. As for "Your hadware should be read." Well guess what? It just isn't that easy. Absolutly no one is good enough to make sure everything is going to work right out of the gate when you dump hundreds of thousands of users on it at once. There's just no good way to test and be certain of the results (though stress tests in Beta were some good steps in that direction). You can claim all day long what SHOULD be true, but in the real world it isn't. Software development is just too non-deterministic to know these things, and the safest way to deploy a massive user product like this is carefully in stages. As a software developer, unrealistic expectations about how things SHOULD work from users who just don't understand my world is one of the most frustrating aspects of my job. I don't tell my users how their jobs should work, so why should they tell me how mine should? If I tell you I'm doing things the best way I know how to deliver the best product possible, either trust me and go with it or find a different developer/product.