This problem (or "problem") could be solved by making strafing cause a reduction in speed. With no strafing penalty I can generally strafe away full speed and keep firing at you while I do it -- I'm not shooting behind me, I'm shooting to my left while strafing to my right. If strafing incurred a 25% movement speed penalty, you wouldn't see this being nearly as effective.

I play a BH but my biggest problems are melees and Troopers. So, I dunno what the secret is, exactly, but I can tell you that I have run into plenty of deadly Jedi (and deadly Sith in Huttball).

I love the PvP so far. I have no idea what the OP is even referring to.

I think the problem can be solved with the use of "guard towers". Guard towers should be scattered around in handy areas. The purpose of guard towers is to give the outnumbered team a fall-back point. If it's 2 of you versus 6 enemies, you can fall back to the nearest guard tower and have a pretty even fight. If 20 enemies show up, they will just crush your guard tower and roll over you but the point is to make it so that the underdog team has a place to seek shelter from the typical 1v3 / 2v6 type of situations that are much more common than the 1v20. This is something Aion basically did and it was one of the few things I thought they did that was actually clever. If you're going to have a 2-team world-PvP situation, then you need these "soft resistance" points to help the underdogs. I don't think you want "hard resistance", which would be superguards that are unkillable and do tons of damage -- you just want a fair amount of "soft resistance". You can even do gradients of resistance. For example, suppose you are there in a group of 4. You fight an enemy group of 4 and it's an even battle, so you keep fighting. Along come 4 more enemies. You fall back to your nearest tower, which is about equal in strength to 4 players, so now it's 4+tower vs 8, and it's an even fight, so you keep fighting. Along come 8 more enemies. Perhaps the tower was the entrance to a base and if you run inside the base, there's another spot with 3 towers in a cluster. Now it's 4 of you + 3 towers vs 16 enemies and it's actually an even fight. I think this concept is key to the design of good world PvP -- "soft resistance" points.

Powertechs are true hybrids. Ranged classes will beat them in a ranged battle. Melee classes will beat them in a melee battle. They can beat ranged classes by making it a melee battle. They can beat melee classes by staying at range as much as possible.

"Simulation" vs "narrative" is an interesting way to look at it, but to me "simulation" and "roleplay" are one and the same. The perfect roleplaying game would allow your character to do everything you can imagine doing. Rather than type "/emote jumps up and down" you would simply have an ability to make your character jump up and down. Rather than narrate about how you are going to save the city from the orc invasion, there should actually be an orc invasion which you can then attempt to save the city from. So "simulation" sounds like ideal roleplaying while "narrative" sounds like what you are forced to resort to when the game can't support what you are trying to do. We could also quibble over the definition of "roleplaying". In the context of gaming, I say roleplaying is when you have your character react to the environment around him as if both the character and the environment were real. Take, for example, the following scenario: We are both roleplayers and both of our companions die. Which is the best roleplay reaction to this event: a) You lament the tragic loss of your brave and true friend b) I click the button to revive my companion I'm sure there are roleplayers who think "a" is the better way to roleplay but by my definition, it's "b". My character (not just me, but my character) understands that neither he nor his companion can apparently die. There's always some droid that shows up to resurrect them. So there would be no sense getting worked up over it. Even if you wanted to play "hard mode" and never resurrect a companion who dies, my character would just think your character has gone crazy, since everyone knows it's really easy to resurrect your companion upon death. (Of course, if you wanted to dismiss them for being incompetent, with your character intentionally not bringing dead companions back even though he knows he can, then that would be a valid roleplay response.)

I think PvP popularity is greatly underestimated. Consider that console online play is almost 100% PvP. There are some co-op console games but the overwhelming majority of it is driven by PvP. So I think the real situation is this: Of people who play games, most prefer PvE. Of people who play games online, most prefer PvP. That is, 10 million people buy Starcraft. 9 million of them play it entirely offline and that's the whole game for them. Zero PvP. They don't even log in to battle.net. 1 million go online and out of those, 900 thousand will play head-to-head versus 100 thousand that play co-op versus the computer. So why someone makes an online-only game and offers almost no PvP is a mystery. If SWTOR was a massive online wargame, would it be more or less popular? I think it's pretty debatable. There is a vast untapped market of people who like competitive games who simply do not play MMORPGs because nobody makes competitive MMORPGs. Lots of competitive gamers have completely ditched the PC gaming platform because it's too hard to fine competitive games for it anymore. It's all consoles. And I think it's a big factor in why PC gaming as a whole is dying out -- the PvE market alone can't drive it.

If you REALLY want to roleplay, there should be "RP-FFA". That is, I should be able to kill people on the same team, too. Everquest had one server like this and it stayed as a popular option even after they introduced team-PvP servers as an alternative. Just today I wanted to kill someone because he took my quest item after I'd killed all the stuff it spawned. I had to kill it all again. What a jerk. If it was an "RP-FFA" server, I would have put my flamethrower up his nose. But yes, anyway, I agree. "RP-PvE" is not really roleplaying. It's not really roleplaying if a Sith and a Jedi come face to face and they don't fight because the Jedi doesn't feel like it. Qui-Gon did not get to tell Darth Maul, "Oh I say, old bean, not quite ready at the moment. Going to have a spot of tea, I think. Maybe we could do this later? I'll just pencil you in for Thursday." Anakin had a real choice to attack Mace Windu or not. It wasn't like there was some invisible barrier preventing him from attacking. So really I don't know how roleplayers can stand PvE servers. There you are, a deadly Sith Warrior, scourge of the galaxy, dedicated enemy of the Light Side, and here's a Light Side guy right in front of you, and you can't do anything except wave at him because you didn't pick a PvP server? That's not roleplaying. That's just shackling yourself with unnecessary restrictions. I realize the concern is that "people will ruin the game" but without the ability to act freely, you aren't really roleplaying at all. (The ideal setup would be free-for-all with consequences...)

I don't know what the end-game is going to be like, but I'm worried because Bioware has largely mimicked systems used by other MMORPGs. So I imagine that the endgame is going to consist of a lot of "boss kill" type missions which you run over and over so that you can collect all the tokens, so that you can get all the loot, so that your stats will be high enough to advance to the next "boss kill" type mission. As a roleplayer, I really really really hate this aspect of "MMORPGs". There is no way to roleplay killing the same boss 20 times. Even if he's a horrible zombie, at some point my character would say, "You know what? We clearly can't kill this person. Let's just go to the cantina instead. Eventually the death star will be invented and that'll probably do the job." Bioware has built a real roleplaying game here, though -- far moreso than most other so-called MMORPGs, most of which should really be referred to as "MMOFAGs" -- Massively Multiplayer Online Fantasy Action Game. (Hmm, maybe that acronym needs more work.) There's fantasy-action but really little or no story -- you're basically just killin' stuff. So I hope Bioware has been thinking of a way to have a roleplaying end-game rather than resorting to "fantasy action". Endless boss kills. Doing the same scenario dozens of times. That just kills the whole "roleplay" concept for me and would leave SWTOR as no better in the end than every other fantasy action game out there. A couple ideas: * Warzones. These can be PvE or PvP. A PvE warzone is a very large (multi-map?) area where enemy NPCs are scripted to take over the map. They spawn at certain rates, clump up and go try to advance to the next camp, kill everyone, and take it over. The players are pushing the other direction. It's sort of like a large RTS. This could also be done as a form of PvP but I see no reason it can't be purely PvE (each side is doing this sort of thing on different planets). I could talk a lot more about this but you get the idea -- whenever you log into the game, the war is in some new stage and you are never doing exactly the same thing twice. * Random elements to missions. So when they develop an end-game boss-kill mission, they will develop a few branches to it. Nothing major, necessarily. Maybe the mission starts with your ship hyperspacing in somewhere. So rather than 1 set background, they create 5 backgrounds and you get a random one. Maybe you kill "Sergeant Jimbo" as the first boss. So they create 5 first bosses with different names and slightly different characteristics. Maybe sometimes this corridor is clogged with debris. Maybe other times it's open and some other corridor is clogged with debris. Just enough randomness in the mission that we aren't doing the same exact mission every time, over and over and over. At least if there are cosmetic differences, I can roleplay that this is my 4th mission against an enemy ship, different each time, and not simply me killing the exact same people 4 times in a row because apparently Star Wars is actually populated with unkillable zombies. ("Say, didn't I just kill you last week? Congratulations on being resurrected and put in command of another ship. Those wacky rebels! Will they ever learn?") I hope the endgame is not as anti-roleplay as it is in every other MMORPG.

Really it's just a shame they tied this system into rewards. If, in the end, I am Light 3 and you are Light 5, that should just be an interesting facet of our characters. When the Super Blaster of Jedi Slaying drops and it's "Light 5 required", well then I have just screwed myself by roleplaying. The "gray" option I'm not sure about either. So in my example above, I am not "gray". I am "light 3". I have a lot of light points and some dark points. It's just how my decisions played out. If I'm forced to perfectly balance my light vs dark, then we haven't really improved much: "Whoops, sorry lady, I wanted to let you go free but I'm afraid I have to shoot you in the face because otherwise I'll go Light 1 and won't be able to use my pants anymore. I'm sure you understand. Now hold still." Really my suggestion would be that light vs dark should never be anything more than appearances. Is it? Because if Light 1 gear is just a slightly dingier version of Light 5 gear, with the same stats, then hey, no problem. If the Light 5 gear is hands down superior, then I don't like that.

Just saying we should have 3 options for loot buttons: Need > Pet Need > Greed With pets (companions, whatever) being such an integral part of this game, it can make sense to roll on loot for them, but it should have its own "need" classification when rolling on loot: greater than greed but less than need.

One actual mission was to go stop this hunter who was killing natives. Literally he was a serial killer, murdering intelligent beings for fun and I was being paid to deal with him. Light side option: Let horrible serial killer go free. Dark side option: Kill him. Sometimes the morals of light vs dark are a little debatable. And I do think there's a big difference between a Dark Side bounty hunter who kills even when it's totally unnecessary, and he's not even being paid to do it, and a more neutral BH who only does it for money. (So it's evil but it's not completely psychopathic. 100% dark side = total psycho.) Problem is this: 2500 dark points = access to dark 2 gear 2500 light points = access to light 2 gear 1500 dark points + 1500 light points = access to absolutely nothing In a game based strongly around character stats, I'm afraid I'm giving up some good (or at least, cool looking) options by not picking a side. I hate to feel like roleplaying is turning me into a 2nd class citizen.

I like roleplaying in the sense that I want to get into my character, whatever that is. That is, I have some persona in mind and am making what decisions I can based off of that persona, rather than simply "min-maxing". I don't like to go examine quest rewards and base my decisions around what the rewards are. ... to an extent, anyway. This may be a roleplaying game but it uses standard computer RPG mechanics, which are heavily based on stats. I don't care what your roleplay philosophy is, if you want to actually have some success and intended amounts of fun you are going to sell your old armor worth 200 armor points and wear the new armor worth 400 armor points regardless of sentimental value. If one quest option gives me The Lightsaber of Killing Everything All the Time Regardless of Circumstances and the other quest option gives me a worn out old shoe, I will feel forced to go with the better loot. I hate it when roleplaying ends up losing me a lot of good or fun options. And so it is with the Light/Dark system. My original character persona idea: a Bounty Hunter who "always gets the job done". Whatever job he takes, he completes. Save the orphans? You pay me, I save them. Kill your daughter? You pay me, I kill her. I take no bribes. I don't change my mind or the mission. You pay me for X, you get X. Problem is that doing this was making me flop between light and dark options. Sometimes doing the mission as-is is the light option; sometimes it's the dark option. Consequently, going all-dark or all-light makes for either a psychopathic or wishy-washy Bounty Hunter, both of which should quickly pick up a reputation for being highly unreliable. A Bounty Hunter who always "gets the job done" will never get out of Dark or Light 1. In conclusion, the Light / Dark system, instead of being a part of roleplay, is actually detrimental to it. If I roleplay, then I will be a second class citizen, never getting any of those neato rewards. (And really, what was Jango Fett? Or Boba Fett? Dark side? Went around massacring people for kicks? I don't think so. Light side? Definitely not. He was, in RPG vernacular, "True Neutral". And if he played SWTOR, he'd never get anything good for that.) You can be a total psychopath or a dainty little angel but if you're anything in between then you miss out on a lot of stuff.

Pet topic: Roleplaying vs make-believe or as I like to call it, "Roleplaying vs Making S___ Up". Let's say you are in a sit-down pencil and paper medieval fantasy roleplaying game. The GM says, "You come to a door. It is barred." A roleplaying answer might be: "I lift the bar and open the door." Obviously you are roleplaying as someone who is facing a barred door and would like to open it. Someone who is making s___ up might say: "I pull out my laser blaster! [his character does not have a laser blaster -- this is medieval fantasy] I blast the door to pieces! There's treasure behind it! I take it! I am now rich!" *writes 500,000 into the gold slot on his character sheet* "Roleplaying sure is fun!" At this point the GM facepalms and has words with whoever invited him to the game. This example might seem silly but things similar to this happen a LOT on roleplay servers by people who believe they are serious roleplayers. Let us take, for example, an exchange between a Smuggler, who is roleplaying, and a Bounty Hunter, who thinks he is roleplaying but is actually Making S___ Up. Assume this is on an RP-PvP server, but they are roleplaying people who don't want to just fight for no reason. BH: "I've tracked you down at last. Jabba has a big bounty on you." S: "... no he doesn't." BH: "You can't use any jedi mind tricks on me, smuggler!" S: "That wasn't a mind trick, I'm just telling you Jabba doesn't have a bounty on my head." BH: "Yes he does, and I'm going to kill you and collect it." S: "No, I'm entirely certain he doesn't, and you're not going to collect anything." BH: "/ooc dude I'm trying to roleplay here." S: "/ooc You're roleplaying a psychopath who uses lies to justify his kills?" BH: "/ooc No! I'm just trying to provide some good context for us to battle!" S: "/ooc Well that's fine but I know there's no bounty on me because there's no game mechanic for that, ergo, your character is lying. You are roleplaying either a liar or someone that's delusional and off his meds." BH: "/ooc Fine." BH: "I hate rebels." *shoots smuggler* S: "/ooc Much better!" *dies* I do wish games provided real, in-game, supported, contextual reasons to want to shoot each other, but this is almost never the case. If the smugger really had a bounty on his head then the BH could roleplay that he is tracking the smuggler down for that reason. If there isn't really a bounty, then the BH is no better than the poor misguided person in the first example who pulls out a laser blaster from thin air in a fantasy game. He is not roleplaying within the context of the game. He is Making S___ Up, or else he is roleplaying a liar or a delusional person. Learn the difference!

You seem to be implying that RP-PvP means we see each other and decide to chat it up a bit before deciding to fight. "Stop, rebel scum!" "No you stop, imperial scum!" "I wave my lightsaber at you in a threatening manner!" "No, I wave my lightsaber at you in a threatening manner! If these tensions escalation, we shall surely fight!" (or some slight variation thereof) In fact, if I decide to beat up some rebels, I will typically do so without warning because to me, that's "RP". My Sith isn't interested in chit-chat. You are clearly an enemy of the empire and there's no sense talking to you about it. RP does not necessarily mean "chat".