Comparing a sorc vs a jugg is not the right comparison. You should compare a sorc vs a mercenary. Both heals. One wears light armor, the other heavy armor. A sorc has much more survivability than a mercenary by far, despite wearing light armor. The reason for that is, there are a lot of abilities that NPCs use, that completely go through the armor value. That ability will do x amount of damage regardless of light or heavy armor to health, mitigated only by overall damage mitigation abilities or buffs like the Jedi Consular class buff. And of course, the shield from the sorc by far provides a superior damage mitigation than a mercenary's heavy armor will ever net.

Hoping for a yellow response, would represent acknowledgement at least. Talk to us, Bioware.

Editing complete, I hope you guys can read it better. Added a table of contents labeled with points so that the entire post can be followed better. Thanks!

Yeah, it was a sneaky move sticking this in here without even a 'Moved' tag in General. I actually had to hit Back on my browser to answer the posts that were deleted to find its link, because from the time it took to Login to the time it took to get back to Forums > General discussion, it was gone. I was sure it was deleted too, because of the lack of a 'Moved' tag. Ah well, at least they didn't delete it, but I guess they're not really interested in a dialogue. Maybe the MOD had good intentions, who knows how things are going right now at Bioware. Considering the state of things maybe the devs have stopped reading General all-together and they actually meant well by moving this here. Heh, you never know. I doubt it though. I'm also pretty sure the team that's left must be pretty shell-shocked, but they should be more professional. I'll edit it to split into sections since it can be pretty hard to find the suggestion in such a long post, it wasn't meant for this forum. So, hang tight.

What are you talking about? I never ever mentioned SWG in my post. I have never played SWG, and before SWTOR had not ever heard of it. I was happy enough playing WoW, thank you very much. Before you call me some <insert whatever> nut, make sure you have your facts straight. Thanks. I'm a passionate SWTOR fan and wanted this game to do well. I still do. EDIT: Seems my thread was moved from General to Suggestion and some inflammatory posts deleted.

Table of Contents: A - The Past Year, and reflections. B - A divided community C - The lack of communication D - The pricey cartel shop and regards to the latest blog (second entry) from Jeff Hickman E - A proposed olive branch towards the community F - Why, the Fireworks, of course! A - Reflections regarding The Past Year (and moving forward) You know there are a lot of problems with the game. You know we have bugs since launch and new bugs that have come up and no end in sight to when they will be fixed. You know we have a lot of unhappy players. You know there is actually a lot of anger directed towards you and Electronic Arts for decisions made in the game and the general direction the game is heading. You know basically this whole year has been a year of broken promises. The community basically feels like you tanked the game and are now making us pay for its expenses. Statements that went out from the dev team, and something completely opposite materialized both in game, and for the community. It's time to alleviate some of that community frustration by extending us an olive branch, similar to the free game time given in May (I think? been a long time) to subscribers before the game went F2P. I'm not asking for free game time as that would not really cover the same state of the game now, and it was hardly something that worked before as people were leaving in droves. They were leaving not because the game was too expensive but because there were too many core issues and 1.2 created such an exodus over class balance that at least I, myself, could hardly muster the will to log into the servers. Show us a gesture of good will, Bioware. Show us you still care about us, players, and the game as a whole. Jeff Hickman talks about the future of SWTOR as being incredibly healthy and very strong. From past experience, that seems to be the opposite to what is actually going on in game, as history has shown, from statements from the developers to the community, and the result a short time later. B - The divided community and its volatility We have been your customers since day 1, and all we have felt throughout this time is that you pretty much seem to hate us and blame us for 'not liking the game' and 'not getting the vision' behind the game, to the upheaval that then resulted at the company, layoffs, and EA taking over management of the game. We are your consumers, your customers and your fans - and you treat us contemptuously. You don't fix bugs. You say one thing and do another. You say there are things you would never do and then do them. You tell us things are going great and then the next month most of the developers get fired. It's like we have been giving money to you since day one and now with the induction of the cartel store, you expect us to keep giving you more, and at a higher rate - for get this, things that were promised since launch. The worst offender is the Jedi Hood Down robe. People were asking for a hood down robe since Christmas -last year-. The development team acknowledged the backlash to the game's ugly end game sets and promised us that changes were coming. And what a way to reward those people now than by putting a hood down Jedi robe in the cartel shop for a whopping $15 dollars, or a month's cost in subscription, that gets bound to a single character. Enjoy. It's behavior like this, Bioware, that has the community so flared up and angry with you. You treat us with contempt, dishonest practices and ignore even the most passionate of attempts at communication with you. The guild summit was great, I suppose. But that was last year. Last year, there used to be a weekly or so column where a developer would answer questions from a question collection thread posted in the general forums. What happened to that? It's just a block of silence now. C - The lack of communication You only come out to talk to us when you want to sell us something and that's wrong. And in the rare occasion when you DO say something to us about a relevant issue, we then have analysts trying to decode and translate the few lines you had to say because it's PR talk and not a lot of people understand what you had to say because it reads like an advertisement at first. I, myself, have had to read things multiple times to get answers to 'what is actually happening to class stories' with Makeb, because the language used seemed to hint at 'maybe, sure, yes, why not', while the main tone of the message was a clear 'No'. It is not coming with Makeb. Things like that, are annoying to me, as your customer. I shouldn't have to hire a lawyer, or consult an analyst, to figure out what you're actually saying behind the double talk. Or between the lines. I shouldn't have to read threads and threads from other people, about what you said, may have said, and said in the past, and how that might correlate in the future. This is YOUR game, Bioware. Take control. D - The Cartel Shop and future of the game The cartel store is very pricey, and as a subscriber, all I really have now that I have been back to playing a month, is the same game I bought and paid for last Christmas for $60. All the cool new toys are in either random grab bags (what is this a lottery) or overpriced, fifteen bucks a pop, per character iterations of things I remember the old community team promise us long before there was even a F2P announcement. The new statement from Jeff Hickman addressed some problems, at least gave us something new to read, but while he admits that the state of the game is not where it is desired, he doesn't exactly say what that state is. What do you want TOR to be, Mr. Hickman? What is your vision for the game and where it is headed? We know how it is now, but can you tell us anything about how it will look in the future? Right now, I don't feel being a subscriber is really worth it. I feel like I'm actually getting robbed of the $10 dollar difference in cartel coins were I just to buy cartel coins instead of a subscription to the game. Game time is fleeting and all the actual material things that people play the game for, whether it is to look good, or have the best gear (see ship parts in the store), -are- in the cartel store! So what am I paying for? To level faster? To not get those annoying messages about how I am not a subscriber? To carry more credits? I don't really get it and I don't really like it as a whole. I feel that the best way to actually play TOR right now is to have a subscription and then set aside $15 bucks monthly on top of that, for the cartel store. Because there are no additions to the game coming, let's face it, that say, crafters can get, or new crystals for them, new schematics, it's all being funneled into the cartel shop. I can see that, and I'm sure others can see that too. The game is overall, per user basis, more expensive to play than, say for example WoW or even LoTRO, which offers a similar cash shop. However, they allow you to earn cash shop currency in game. Something that TOR does not, and that scares me. I feel this game will bleed me dry if I so much as make one wrong move. Like living with someone who waits for you to fall asleep before stealing all your furniture. I don't know if that's fun. Thrilling, that's for sure, but not fun. And being a player of TOR has really been like a roller coaster this past year, with no end to the ride. E - A proposed olive branch to bridge the community divide So give us an olive branch, Bioware, either allow subscribers to earn cartel coins by some activity in game, or something that will silence all this old, and new, anger. That way, F2P players can realize that the best way to play the game (and it is, F2P players), is to subscribe to the game, and then not feel bled dry by the cash shop because they can think - hey no matter how lame my chances to get Revan's mask from a pack in the cartel shop, "at least I can work towards it!". This will keep them subscribed - which is a better source of income long term, and additionally if they have extra money, spend it on your cartel shop. But NOT BOTH. Subscribe + pay pay pay in the cartel shop. Which is what you currently have, Bioware, not sure if you see that or not, though I suspect you know what you are doing with your finances. If things don't alleviate with the shop, considering the buggy state of the game, I myself will probably drop the game all together because I can't afford the 'bleeding you dry' model. I honestly don't know how you can ask us for so much money considering how little TOR has changed since launch, no class stories added, bugs bugs bugs everywhere and just very little content releases which are not even what the community desires. All this leads me, as a consumer, to believe that the development costs for SWTOR were like the Titanic, and the average user is still paying for the original costs, and will likely keep paying for it for a long time to come, and for that reason alone I'm out if you don't provide the user with a distraction (such as earning your own cartel coins in game), while the profits roll in. I don't mind giving you $10 for Makeb, as long as I see the main content of the game, which I subscribe to, not nickle and dime me as the term has become popular on these boards. I mean, I would turn a blind eye, as long as my subscription felt like it was sustainable long term without an even more sizable additional cost on top of it, and no end in sight, with not really much communication to justify what I'm really spending all this money for - the direction of the game, where is it headed, how much more additional revenue do you need to develop new, class and companion story content. I don't really care about planet content being voiced, I would get just as much enjoyment from accepting terminal type quests as these planet quests are not dynamic. Even if part of a larger arc. The class quests don't vary that much either, but they have the illusion of influencing your story outcome, and being a personal touch, and most of all, differs from one gameplay experience to the next, so it is worth voicing/investing in. Planet content is not worth voicing/investing in. In Conclusion: This is a Social game. This applies to Bioware's management of it as well as its MMO aspect. You have to be transparent, you have to keep an ongoing dialogue with the community from a developer to user aspect. This is a long term investment for many people, and to keep them in the dark is not the right way of going about it. There has to be a meaningful relative component to subscribed game time as it relates to the cash shop, other than a static, paltry handout that does not scale with the lottery type nature of some of the more important items in the store, or otherwise overpriced items in the store. 500 coins is nothing. It's padding assuming you are buying coins on top of your subscription. F - As for the fireworks, of course! Lastly, I honestly urge you to reconsider your stance on fireworks. I propose that the current fireworks model should be made available to an ingame vendor for credits and new fireworks models be added to the cartel store as a permanent (on use) item with a cooldown, and much more different effects that differentiate them from regular fireworks puchasable for credits from a vendor. These can be so cool to own and ideas can flow on particle effects for this if the cartel team really wants to get creative! But unique should be a permanent item, think like the Holotree, and generic, one shot a pop and buyable with credits.

The very pricey cartel coins cost, coupled with the gambling style lottery boxes really are too much to ask for a player that already pays you a monthly subscription to pay you more money to support a F2P population that may give you no money return at all. This is bad for your current customers. Giving them base access to everything in the game is not giving them anything since that's what they were able to do before, anyway, but taxing them through an in game store that they are only encouraged to gamble in or save up coins in for one item - per character - if they want to buy an outfit over the course of at least 3 months, is very greedy and not sustainable long term. The stipend is just a small handout that does nothing to alleviate the high cost of the cartel shop. Before players argue that you don't need the cartel shop as a subscriber - Life Day event items, which I'm sure would have had an event attached to them had the game not gone F2P, show why the system as a whole needs to be made more accessible for everyone. MMO players love to get as many holiday goodies for all their toons as they have time to deck them out during any event, restricted to a cash shop or not. But there are always some items you can earn in game if not the entire set themselves with said event. This is just not possible under the current system to attain as 20 dollars times say 8 characters a subscriber would want to deck out comes out to 160 dollars for this cartel iteration only. That's not really reasonable to ask, and since there is no event, and these subscribers are ALREADY paying you money, do what Lord of the Rings does, allow your consumer to earn the cash shop currency through in game means alongside the ironically identical 500 a month point stipend that both games offer to their subscribers. The Cartel Shop seems to be very closely copied from LOTRO's in game iterration price wise. Which is to say, they are very pricey, with EA/Bioware not copying the rest of the system, which is dependant on every user being able to earn store currency through playing the game at a slow rate. Subscribers are offset this grinding with a monthly stipend and free to play characters are not, but everyone is playing the game and working together. That's why it is so successful and successful reads profitable in the end. Profitable does not equal gouging your customers for the holiday season. So, something to allelivate the gamble box means of attaining the item a player wants (which ends up bound to a single character) is absolutely needed in your current cartel shop iterration, Bioware. Whether you choose to open it up to a single subset of players or to all, is up to you Bioware, but it is needed. To offset this high cost, you should allow subscriber accounts to earn cartel coins in game by playing the game, akin to how Lord of The Rings awards all players Turbine Points (its in game store currency) by completing gameplay activities. Lord of The Rings has a very successful (read profitable) F2P incarnation. What I propose is something along these lines: 1 cartel coin gained from completing a regular mission 2 cartel coins obtained from completing a class mission 2 cartel coins from completing a Heroic 2 mission 3 cartel coins from completing a Heroic 4 mission 2 cartel coins from completing a group finder flashpoint. 1 cartel coin from completing a regular space mission. 2 cartel coins from completing a Heroic space mission. 4 cartel coins form completing a story mode operation. 3 cartel coins for defeating a boss in Heroic operations. 4 cartel coins for defeating a boss in Nightmare difficulty operations. 1 cartel coin for defeating a world boss the group. Just a simple outline, gives everyone already paying a chance to work towards something expensive in the cartel shop by playing the game, which is offset by a generous monthly stipend considering what they can earn in game. Your incarnation, Bioware, feels more like gouging and a F2P demo without the ability to earn coins in game, even at a very slow rate compared to actually buying the coins or the monthly stipend.

Ah thank you, a voice of reason, and yes it does have its cooldown for a reason. It's 1min, though, btw for DFA/MV, not 45s. I just completely wanted to re-iterate your last point, "All not-spamable AOE should have their radius of 8m, while spamable like "explosive surge" should be kept at 5m." That is the way things currently are. All non-spammable AOE is on the 8m mark, and every spammable AOE is 5m. Why they felt they had to move away from that with Trooper/BH is not a good sign of things to come in this magical world we call balance. Although to be fair they are just giving the Trooper a heavy gutting on every front in this patch. They have forgotten the 'standards' that the game currently employs.

Classes will get x skill when developers feel they NEED it. Not how that ability should fare in relation to other classes. I kill faster on my jump happy tank Jugg than on all my Bounty Hunter alts, with all their fancy tricks. No interrupts on channels, mad gap closer, and lots of unleashed burst. I don't for one second feel I under perform because I don't have Death From Above as it currently stands on live. And you know what, I have better single target dps too, but that's just what makes classes stand out from one another and makes the levelling enjoyable. By getting all these abilities at different levels. It doesn't mean that one of a particular type of ability should suck at 50 because you got it early. Perhaps they should have kept its current radius - and honestly who even complained about it - and have them learn it a few levels later - I wouldn't honestly care either way, it's situational at best and just adds to the flavor of the class. It should still scale well at 50, because you know what, Trooper/BH doesn't get another AOE to replace it at the 1min mark. That's a different can of worms, and honestly I didn't say it didn't? But the game isn't balanced for level 10s, 20s, or 30s, for that matter. It's balanced for 50s. That's all I said. It doesn't need to be balanced for 10s, 20s, or 30s, because that's what groups are for. In a group, you are supposed to substitute whatever skills/abilities you got early that your other group mates haven't gotten yet, thus creating BALANCE. This all goes out the window at 50, so it would be nice if the abilities were competitive with each other, yes?.. Yes, BALANCE. Good word. Requires proper context. This just proves how much Bioware LIED. There were podcasts at the beginning stating that Smugglers would get their ship right after leaving their starting planet. 'You would die, but you could explore all these other planets', they said. Bioware is good at that. I'm shocked that Smugglers DON'T get their ship after leaving the starting planet, ahh the lies! It's too much! I'm actually sad right now.

Badly needed, any type of dynamic event system in PVE. The worlds feel dead, nothing you do matters, worlds don't change with any missions you do, not that I'm suggesting phasing, but it's downright boring and lifeless with no interaction and everyone going about their own story driven way. There has to be something dynamic that happens that gives these Republic and Imperial forces a reason to still be there.

Your sarcasm implied there existed an issue, which did not exist to begin with. All the players expected was that Mortar Volley animation be fixed from a point of view of cast time, not radius, or anything like that. If my <insert imaginary class> AOE is learned at 50 does that mean it should be DOOM compared to other classes? What does level it is learned at have to do with balance, when it pretty much is classified as the same type. Classes learn CC at different levels, does that mean one should be 30s if learned early and the later ones 60s if learned late? Smugglers get their ships at level 10, does that mean their ship should suck? I tire of arguing with you. The game is balanced for 50s anyway, if you don't know that, you haven't played many mmos. No one cares when you trained x skill at, the levelling curve doesn't matter. And no, it's not in line with the rest of the classes' AOE skills, which is what I outlined earlier.

The way Bioware makes their games, they always use sliders in their character creators and are usually quite advanced in their creation options. See DAO toolset. Mass Effect 2 character creation, list is long. No doubt they have a character creator where they use sliders to create various facial shapes and have used it to create presets. Do you honestly think they hand modeled each one? That's not how it works these days. The only thing that is different in what tools they are using now, is that they are using Hero Engine, and have no idea how that works, but they obviously made it work for them and heavily customized it. Of course they have a character generator with sliders, with which they built all the NPCs. That's why you see some similarities but not the same face entirely. Because they use sliders. They just didn't give the player enough 'normal' looking presets or 'nice' looking male presets, not nearly enough for a normal variety. I said normal, not circus variety.

Stop spreading mis-information. There was never an 'issue' with Mortar Volley radius or Bounty Hunter Death From Above. The only 'issue' there was, was that Mortar Volley only began its animation 2 seconds into the channel. Let's compare. Agent Orbital Strike: 8m radius. (1 minute cooldown) Sage Force Quake: 8m radius. (no cooldown) Knight Force Sweep: 5m radius. (15 second cooldown) Trooper Mortar Volley: ..5m radius. (1 minute cooldown) Not to mention, the ability animations on live are for 8 meters. Just ridiculous. Standard AOE range is 8m radius. Spammable AOE range is 5m. Unless you're a Sorc/Sage, they got no cooldown but 100 force cost so they can't technically spam it but they can 'dump' it. Trooper change, makes no sense, is out of line with the rest of the classes, and out of line with current animations - or is it (!) - only Bioware really know.

That may be true, but we don't have the sliders. We just have presets we can use which seem to be facial structures that no one wanted to use on in-game NPCs.

That's because Mortar Volley has already knocked everyone out of position by the time you use Hail of Bolts. You need much better placement and estimation to try hitting everyone than when you started with Mortar Volley. If anything, the radius of Mortar Volley should be left as is, and Hail of Bolts increased by 1m or so. But that's not gonna happen.