As a Guardian, I feel my survivability is lackluster. Damage is ok but the defense is not. Most classes bypass our heavy armor and with no viable self-healing we're dead men walking as soon as we drop below 50%. Give us: "Deflection" - Brace yourself for an incoming force- or ranged attack, reflecting it back towards the attacker. (60 seconds cooldown, lasts 5 seconds). "Sensation" - After killing an opponent that grants valor or experience, you replenish 20% of your Endurance over 4 seconds.

If you're a ranged class, you can rank up your kills easily bey joining the zerg. It should take you about 5-10 minutes. Even as a healer you might have more success by "tagging" targets with ranged attacks. As a melee however, going after the crates can be a real alternative. Zerging is pretty pointless for melee since you die almost instantly if you jump into the zerg.

I agree, CC is a bain in this game. Too many classes have too much, some classes have almost none. It's pathetic. You basically get chain-stunned anytime you're targeted by more than 2 enemies anyway. Resolve might as well not exist. I don't care about what fancy implications or mechanics the system has. It is failing to prevent chain CCs and that's why it was introduced in the first place.

Regardless of the mechanics, Resolve is still a terrible system. Getting chain-stunned to death is an epidemic in this game and it's really ruining the fun. I don't care about the crafty details and finesse of the system. It's failing at what it was designed for.

Content: 6 - 3 Warzones is fine, but any less wouldn't be acceptable. Ilum is fine, although it still needs work. Open PvP is encouraged, but not thought through. Balance: 7- Not too bad for such a young game. Sure there are imbalances, but none are game-breaking (if you ignore faction imbalances). Gear scaling is probably the biggest issue. Progression: 4 - Gear is too easy to obtain compared to PvE gear and the best gear is a grind, rather than a proof of skill. Performance: 3 - Low FPS, laggy and unresponsive abilities, horrible hit-detection and netcode. It's playable, but just barely. If I weighed Ilum a little more, it would score even lower. Overall: 5 with the biggest issue being the poor and inexcusable performance by the game's engine.

I just compared, while waiting to queue for a Warzone, me and a mate wanted to finish up the Ilum daily. It took me, the ranged DPS class, just under 6 minutes to attain my 30 kill-assists. My melee friend was still at it 30 minutes later after I'd come back from lunch. And while I got killed twice during my ordeal, he was dying about once a minute.

I'm not looking for tactics advice here. If upwards of 50% of Voidstar rounds end with a team not even penetrating the first gate, something's wrong. The thing is, people are getting better and more experienced by the day. While last week it was easy to lure people to one gate and have a Stealther blow the other, it's something that rarely works even two weeks later.

Thank you Captain Obvious. But I was already fully aware of the differences between a publisher and a studio. My point was rather, since EA has invested so much into this game (apparently anywhere between 200 and 500 Mio. USD), you'd think they'd have invested more into actually sharing cross-studio expertise. DICE isn't the only studio using the Frostbite engine @ EA so why gimp your biggest game in such a crucial department when you have experts right next door?

I see what you mean. I'm not asking them to be different for the sake of being different. Game and encounter design is something Blizzard excels at, and that's something I'd wish Bioware would pay MORE attention to.

I guess SWTOR would be one of the first MMOs to really pull it off. Blizzard already hinted at a DotA-based BG in MoP.

I wasn't even taking Healers into account here. Even with decent gear and heavy armor, I can drop from 100-20% in less than 6 seconds against certain classes. When going up against two, it goes even quicker. On the other hand I've beaten on targets that were near unkillable. I guess it just comes down to gear being overly powerful.

I feel Biowares lack of MMO experience really shines through in the way they designed the Crew Skills. Crafting Skills are generally designed as an alternate pillar of game-play, that influences, but is not directly tied to the other pillars. (Ergo crafting support PvE or PvP game-play, but progression isn't tied to them directly.) If Bioware has any interest in making their Crew Skills a real, long-term addition to their game, rather than something you pick-up and level early on, and then forget about for the rest of you time, they'll have to make some significant changes. 1. People must specialize: Nobody should be able to create a final product from the raw material, right through to the end, by himself. A good economy makes players dependent on others. You have crafters, suppliers and consumers. Their triage is what makes the market. 2. All Crew Skills must create consumables of some shape or form. Great examples are Stims, Medpacks or Modifications (although you shouldn't be able to retain old Mods). Not so great examples are Prototype items. The problem is, Prototype gear may seem desirable for a moment, but becomes obsolete as soon as another tier of gear is introduced or a better version becomes attainable. This makes the crew skill completely unattractive later in the game's life-cycle. Those two principles alone would ensure a more healthy, long-term, game economy. Now I'd like to add that it's ok to add certain perks to crew skills, something that adds a little flavor to the game. But these perks shouldn't be the ONLY reason people even use them later in the game.

The Ilum daily is a PAIN for melees (just like the rest of the game). A ranged class will have it done in 5 minutes easily, while a melee class can take more than half an hour to get the 30 kills. Especially as a Republic melee. It's really frustrating at times that the only way I can make any progress is by charging and dying repeatedly with the hopes someones else might finish them off.

I remember reading an article that states that at the time (this must have been over a year ago) there where somewhere in the region of ~25 Million Ex-WoW players. Today it's probably closer to 30 Mio. That means that with every major MMO title, upwards of 90% of all players will have played WoW at least at some point in time.

Which damage charts would that may be if I may ask?

Agree, it feels like every ranged class has at least 1 knock-back and 2 stuns on a fairly short cooldown. It's annoying as hell.

Without DoT-Timers, playing a DoT class is "not so cool".

Join the Republik. Instant queues, less frustrated and "desperate" players and we still win 47% of all games. If you consider the amount we start underpopulated, I call that an even 50/50.

For obvious reasons, Jedi Knights/Sith Warriors are a very popular class. Other ranged classes are not. I myself play a melee class. When making groups for HM Flashpoints I cringe at the idea of inviting more melee DPS than myself. I already know what a strain I put on the group and how much harder some fights are being melee. Hell, the idea of a pure melee group is enough to drive off some of the less confident healers. And yet, if I ever want to get a group going, I'm going to have to accept further melee DPS at some point or I'll never get going. Sure, we have Interrupts on a short CD, but most of the time we use them to interrupt abilities that would only hit us anyway. Flamethrowers, Cleaves and all kind of other ******** is all just designed to hurt melees while ranged DPS get to watch their favorite show on TV while doing a boss-fight. Some encounters are more tolerant than others, but most encounters heavily favor ranged. Hell, some are down-right impossible with a pure melee group unless you somehow exploit it. (Battle for Ilum 2nd Boss) I'm frankly sick of being a second choice DPS just because of the fact that I'm melee. I know my stuff, I do my job, but nothing can ever get me to the point where I can say, "this would have been harder without a melee". I do not get why game designers in MMOs insist on continuously making life hard for melee classes. Melees already by design have: -Less overview of the situation -Less flexibility when it comes to positioning -Less targeting flexibility -Are more exposed when dealing damage. Instead of encounters accommodating for these inherent weaknesses, some exploit them. If you then compare to how *********** easy some of these fights are with pure ranged DPS I can't help but vent my rage towards the developers on these forums.

Group Finder: Hell yes Cross Server: No way My server has a community and it's beautiful. People network, people have reputations, people know each other. This is all the good stuff old-school MMOs were made of. Yes it takes ages to find a group at times, even with a server-wide LFG channel our server has going, but that's because level 50s are spread out all over the place. Only about half of all level 50s actually spend time in the Space Station. Most go out questing in Ilum, do PvP or whatever. The key to a successful LFG tool is to get all these people to use it. Every level 50 should be able to register him/herself LFG with just a simple click. Convenience isn't the end-all design goal. WoW went down that path and now it's less of an MMO than even Guild Wars 1. I hope SWTOR doesn't do the same.

The droids are obviously meant to be annoying, just like C3PO in the original Star Wars.

Hmm, I was expecting ****. OP did not deliver.

1. Improve performance (a lot) 2. Fix ability delay and lag 3. Add a few convenience features (automatic daily-quest interface, LFG interface etc) _____________________________________ That would make me sufficiently content.

I'm not sure how powerful they are but they do take me down very quickly when they spam their Lighting Stun + Regular Lightning. I can burst pretty nicely myself but it requires quite a bit of setup and can't be pulled out of thin-air. It's also on a relevant cooldown. Lightning doesn't seem that way.

It's all about striking a balance VO are good for: -Planet Stories -Class Stories They are ok, but not necessary for: -Regular Quests They are absolutely not necessary for: -Daily Quests -PvP Warzones. Just apply common sense and don;t go overboard with the VOs. Saves time and money for everyone involved