The thread has been removed. I did a search on google and confirmed it once existed in cache, but could not see the entire content. I must resist being baited into discussing what happens when you interrupt or throttle either incoming or outgoing packets, so clever sporadic use of the effects could really be interpreted as convenient lag that coincidentally happens mostly in beneficial ways.

This is exactly my view on the issue as well. I believe current game mechanics greatly benefits a certain type of exploit that is very difficult to detect automatically and hence it's abused in this game.

Even if it was the case the "changes made accordingly" contradict completely "working as intended". My opinion is again BW did overreact to player feedback.

^^ This!

This isn't just as simple. Look on the boards you'll see lots of posts wanting a head on plate. And stakeholders demand answers and measures taken. I am really interested in seeing how BW will handle this particular issue. We probably won't ever know about it. Anyways I hope this is the last drop and things change from now on. Since launch BW has been overreacting to the community demands, without further research to back up any action taken or to grow a spine. I can imagine something like this could be caused by some doomsayers reading the boards then reporting to a hysterical boss that demands immediately an action.

Well I was playing there... What shocked me most was that Nerf was welcomed by many Sorcs/Sages that were mad because Hybrid Specs were outperforming them when they have spent all talents in a single tree.... IMO it's not as bad as people claim, they have tools yes but OP? Hmm there are a couple of classes enjoying their low profile atm... Mercs/Commandos on the other hand need some help with survivability, I'm fine with the damage output but I am worried the buff will come with a trade off in damage output...

LOL One could really interpret from the amount of defensive or derailing posts that it seems macroing is very popular among forum users.

Epicly failing again at dealing with "supposed" game issues, and definitely adding bigger problems. The Slot Machine situation could have been handled in another way that could actually have benefited the game. For instance a new set of upgraded crated item modification recipes could have been added with slightly better stats that requires mats the Jawa's still can't handle. This would end complaints about the best gear being easily available. So when the new gear become obsolete the Jawas could trade the material. Previously ultra rare mats like grade 8 could have been added. With this system the game still keep previous content easily available to new players. And then rework the crew mission system to be able to compete with this, and perhaps be useful on the highest tier of equipment. Like dramatically reducing the time to complete, increasing crit chance as a legacy perk and allowing all missions to crit. But now problems remains: I do sincerely believe some players only bought or used the slot machine after BW assertion that it was working as intended and using them wasn't considered an exploit at all. This created a bigger problem and now involving money since the machines come from a cartel pack. I do believe in fact due to how it was working some players felt compelled to do as not using them would be a disadvantage. There is "damage" to players finances now since there are many players with an astonishing stock of Jawa Junk that isn't available to players who did not overuse the system. And crew skill missions remain lackluster, unappealing or "broken" at viewer's discretion.

But really a good troll post can trigger mass hysteria. The lesson that should be learned since launch is that people with decision level that manage this game are like correction facility managers that cater prisoners regarding their wishes and desires.

Dude you're amazing!!! Keep playing like this!

Yes it's improving a lot. It's becoming a little more blatant the abuse of lag switches. Today for a couple of matches in Huttball I've seen different players turning on packet drop, turning on speed increase cheat, crossing acid pool, turning off speed cheat, turning network packets back on. I believe this is bypassing any speed check in game. I don't know why match people with such packet network discrepancies with others with more statistically normal packet behavior. Put them in a special and totally secret queue and only match them together. Cheaters must play only versus cheaters.

The first option is even more unlikely.... Most probably it will be nerfed for Sages if possible. Since launch I really was already convinced these differences between the factions aren't mere accident or bugs. The first time I saw I couldn't LoS Sorcerer's Shock while I had already mastered LoS Sage's Project I realized that.

Well it's understandable and commendable to correct the proper use of concepts but it's not the case in this case since we all know non IT people generalize the "hack" term. So, yes, you're right , "hacks" from technical stand point aren't common occurrences and are usually very quickly dealt with. But the abuse of exploits is very high in this game, and not abusing exploits doesn't make anyone baddie. It's exactly the opposite. People denying it have no clue whatsoever about the matter or are either exploiters themselves or trolls trying to bait someone into revealing them in the forums and then getting that person banned.

I believe this is the reason behind the original post. Some exploits are insanely easy and do not require hacking at all it's the use of Lag Switch. Some others are in place like fast turns and such in Galactic Starfighter, you know it's not possible for scout ships to do that 180 degree turn maneuver every 5 sec because it has a normal CD longer than that. Short teleport jumps are also becoming more often.

Or with much lower consequences for the gaming community is to design different systems for PVP and PVE. Keeping them both equal is beyond stupid laziness because very often changes provokes the need for more changes to keep both systems balanced.

And it requires no software at all... Sometimes when the guy keeps it on for a long time it appears to be a teleport or a speed hack. Currently there's very little game companies could to try to keep this behavior at minimum: designing slow paced combat and secretly matching people with frequent outgoing traffic lag together, so that players will match with others with similar behavior. By not outright banning them and keeping them facing each other they will surely start abusing it making it much easier to apply the proper action later.

Seriously I've never seen such shameless abuse of Lag Switches in any game before. The problem is there's very few to be done since it's not easily detected and any action taken would have to be based on behavior analysis which requires some work. The fastest the combat is the shorter the period of time the offender needs to interrupt the outgoing traffic to benefit from it and the harder it is to tell it apart from ordinary lag spikes.

I believe Bioware think it's ok because on a 3x8 game most players are happy with the situation, and since starting shorthanded almost only affects the minority of the players, BW is trying to keep most of their customers happy.

I agree. But in my opinion 2x isn't a good figure. On my server it seems 3x+, 10x+ if you only play during primetime because the underpopulated faction sucks during primetime. No, I don't agree with that. The faction imbalance was promoted by design. Faction imbalance can always exist but instead of adding restraints to prevent one side from completely dominating another, BW chose to reward it even more, causing even more players to defect. I am not proud, on the contrary, but I admit having done that after having spent too much time dealing with undermanned WZs, outstanding average gear difference and skill.

We've noticed after a couple of huttball games. Quick wins are bad now. So what we do now is to score 5 points, farm opponents till everyone is 3+ and then score the last point. I find the farming part so lame but now we're forced to do it. Shame on you BW.

I thought PVP was less unbalanced pre 1.2. What in my opinion was the major flaw that got aggravated with the Ilum Fiasco was the insane faction favouritism. So min/maxers and those wanting a PVP advantage rolled Imps. The ending result from this is that on many servers, where Empire is the overwhelming faction, Imps vastly outgear Pubs. There is no penalty as queue time playing the highest population faction because of same faction PVP that was Huttbal. On the contrary, on the majority of the servers playing as Republic on WZs is a nightmare, the minority faction face queue times due to lack of players and more often than not the game started with more Imps than Pubs (not even counting that bug that allowed teams with more than 8 players on one side). 1.2 did not yet address this issue which is going to be minimized with cross server queues. But the damage is already done even before the patch, as on average Imps will continue to outgear Pubs. Premade rep groups did very little to overcome this as you could only queue with groups of 4. When you had a group of 4 players, players that solo queue solo prevents another full group from filling the WZ, due to the lack of enough players solo queueing. After patch 1.1 I resisted the temptation of defecting to Empire for a while, but after sometime almost all players that cared about PVP had already stopped playing on Rep side, leaving behind only those that did not know it better, or did not care enough about PVP playing. WZ matches became unbearable. So that after 3 consecutive days of losing every WZ match due to overall gear unbalance, games starting with less players than intended, and the vast majority of group mates not caring about objectives I created my first Imp character. Yesterday after 1.2 patch I tried to PVP back on my BM Jedi Knight. I thought the new recruit gear would at least make Pub groups more competitive. Big mistake. I really tried hard for a while but Imp PUGs on BM gear are destroying players in recruit gear even faster now. In the majority of the games most Rep players couldn't even score 3 medals to receive any reward from the WZ, so they would not be able to upgrade their gear for a long while. I switched to my Imp char and the experience was bad but not remotely as terrible as it was for the Republic. Even Imps vs Imps with only PUGs on my side against one or two premades on the other side most players were able to achieve at least 3 medals on a lost match. Every single PVP change so far since release seems to be on the wrong direction. And I don't know what can be done to counter the damage that has already been done to PVP regarding faction balance. But I think that more of same faction PVP warzones just makes the problem worse.

After so much complain from commandos BW decided to make DFA equal to mortar volley. But of course Republic could never ever have a skill like it was old DFA.

Healers got shafted because most players did not bother about shut them down. Before 1.2 I often noticed when focusing healers I was the only one interrupting, or to realize that there was a second healer supporting the one they've been dpsing like a raid boss and ignoring the tankbot. I've noticed on the first match after 1.2 that guarding became insanely dangerous against BM players, and taunts do a lot of difference for 6 sec. I feel sorry for pub PUGs now on my server. Yesterday it was feast as Imp PUGs were destroying pubs trying to gear up, very often we scored 1 min voidstar wins, and I don't remember we being able to 3 cap Alderaan so easily.

Really, really terrible.

And it doesn't stop there regarding those 2 classes. Unload also starts applying its damage much earlier. Commandos may lose the last damage tick when attacked during the channeling and can be interrupted before any damage is applied. Not really a big deal since it potentially affects only PVP and almost all Rep players hardly use any ability besides grav round, explosive round being an exception if they have more than 3 ammo or they're on the move or if somehow they noticed their grav round has been interrupted. Since grav round and commando's bread and butter explosive round doesn't have animation issues if BW ever normalize the animations it would hardly have any significant impact on overall Republic PVP performance.