Like really, you still get all of your level 60 abilities, the only way you could die to a level 15 mob even with the downbolster is if you AFK. But then again only way you can die to a level 15 mob while you are at level 15 is if you AFK...... The people in this thread are going to be in for a rude awaking. Numerical character progression is a dying design. It's fundamentally flawed from a design standpoint and the only reason it existed in the first place was as a easy way to control player movement (force players to consume content in a specific order by setting content at different levels) Within the decade we will begin the see the first major title MMORPGs that completely abandon numerical leveling in favor of alternative forms of character progression.

PvP thread. Threads about PvE builds are that way ----->

The problem with no RNG is at extremely high levels of play, is that at high levels of play players don't make mistakes. If players don't make mistakes and there is no RNG, then it becomes difficult to overcome things like first-hit advantage, and moreover it causes differences in ping to have a larger effect on outcome. Additionally I would argue that at high levels of play, RNG defensives and offensives actually introduce a new level skill: Mitigating RNG. Going back to the Sonic Defense example, I would argue that the biggest skill requirement of Sonic Defensive is learning when to use it, but more importantly learning when you can risk it. Basically there are some situations where I might deem the RNG unacceptable and opt to use Reactive Shield. There are other situations where using SD over RS might be advantageous. Well yes, but this assumes that you want the outcome of a match to be completely and totally baised on skill. Which isn't something you necessarily want for a PvP game, especially in a game where you want to have as many players as possible. (and this time I checked to make sure it was the video I wanted)

Level synch by definition has to be mandatory because there is nothing useful you could ever do with it if it wasn't. It's like when they permanently shut down analog TV broadcasting stations to free up bandwidth. If people where able to "opt out" of that change it would have defeated the entire point of the change. Yes the removal of analog screwed over a (tiny) portion of the population, however change was beneficial to the majority by freeing up huge amounts of air bandwidth And lets be real, how many people ever bother to go back to do gray content that gives +7 exp.

Except the sub-cycle is entirely dependent on what day of the month a player subbed, and on what subscription option they are using.

That's kinda funny considering I just vaguely remembered the existence of that video and posted it without checking it's content. It's actually pretty off-topic since it's focused more on minimizing RNG in tournament matchups.

No, although I actually picked a poor video I seem to have lost the one I was looking for. RNG is good in moderate amounts because it allows the unexpected. As long as the RNG is done in a way that can be minimized by a skilled player. For instance the VG's Sonic Defense. If it was 100%, I could effectively guarantee that I always win certain matchups. By including a chance to fail, it means that situations that would normally be set in stone, become varied.

Source This game's community refers to abilities that remove movement impairing effects as "root breakers" since they are primarily used to break out of roots.

Drop the elitism. It doesn't suit someone that is consistently misinformed.

It's about people sharing there experiences in PvP. Or in other words it's the same as the rest of the PvP forum.

They had a spot on 8v8 teams during the reign of hard bubblestun. And bubblestun was the only reason they got that spot.

Chaff flare is not nor has it ever been a cleanse. Unless you are referring to the 2.0-2.4 version of degauss where it removed movement-impairing effects.

Please stop, this is dead wrong. The only thing that putting a heal block on barrier would do is force Sorcs to use barrier proactively rather than reactively. Or in other words sorcs would have to use it to block damage before it hits, rather than current where they just facetank everything and then barrier+H2F at 1% health.

Net, and really that only necessary if the sorc reacts fast enough, which in my experience they often don't. He could break and barrier which would technically by him time, but really he is just going to get globaled the instant barrier ends.

I'm hardly a defender of sorcs, but come'on that's a 1v3. Besides 3 commandos will zero a Sorc way faster than 3 sorcs will zero a merc.

When they keep trying to sell us how impossibru these quests/FPs are for any lesser being, having it trivialized makes no sense. As someone who spends a lot of time delving into game design, I can't see any reason why you wouldn't support it. SWTOR uses numerical (and linear) character progression. The problem with this model is that it leads to massive content loss as old content becomes irrelevant as the game progresses. This is a huge developmental fail because it means all of the money spent on developing the old content is basically getting thrown out the window. It also means that players below endgame have difficulty doing any form of group content because there just aren't enough players in a given level range to support queues. Downbolster is basically a tourniquet on this. It keeps older content relevant thus preventing content loss, but since the high levels are getting lowered it means that lowbies wanting to do content at level have a much larger base of players that they can pull a group from. This is like the one viable reason against it. But really this is only because the game didn't launch with downbolster in place. Realistically Bioware is going to have to bite the bullet and do it at some point, and it's better now than later.

This. They aren't going to strip skills, so you will still have all of your lvl 65 stuff, you just won't be invulnerable.

Mass effect runs smoother because it doesn't have all the server crap that a MMO has to deal with. As for 64bit, please note that this game began development in 2006, Vista (the first mainstream 64bit OS) didn't launch till 07. Now converting a 32bit to 64bit is totally doable but there are a couple major issues 1) merely converting to 64bit won't net any of the benefits of using 64bit. To capitalize on 64bit capabilities they would need to start back at the beginning and rebuild everything. Plus converting to 64bit invariably brings lots of bugs. 2) Converting to 64bit would change the minimum system requirements, which can lead to some legal trouble. There was a major shift in how they did PR around 1.3. Not sure what prompted the change but they clammed up after it. In the early days of the game BW was fairly active in the community, and we actually saw posts from the devs and not just the community team.

Tactics is getting nerfed. It's getting a 15 second increase on the CD of HTL. Gaining a leap does not equal the 15sec lost on HTL, especially since using Storm to close with a target is a DPS loss not to mention a increase in telegraph. Jet Charge only has use if you are trying to move in the Z direction, but as of now Huttball and Queshball are the only maps in the game with any real amount of Z direction movement.

Honestly I think it would be good if SW:TOR had a equivalent site to GW2's meta site. It doesn't solve the initiative issue but it is a community effort (with oversight from a admin team of accomplished players), and moreover it archives outdated builds, which is important since it allows a player to look back and see how the meta changed over time, without having to sift hundreds of pages of forum detritus.

Well given the responses that post brought, the poor devs probably got traumatized.

Technically people have a choice, in practice - not really. Humans by nature always default to whatever the most efficient way possible. If you give someone two ways of doing something they will always pick the more efficient one, even if they might otherwise enjoy the less efficient way. This is why all non-story mission lowbie content is dead right now - it's not efficient so people don't do it. If doing heroics and flashpoints was the most efficient way to level then people would be lining up to do them. Not convinced? Look at daily areas, Currently we have Belsaivs, Ilum, Black Hole, Section X, Makeb, CZ-198, Oricon, Yavin, and Ziost as daily areas. But typically 60s only ever bother doing Yavin. Why? Because Yavin has the best credits to time ratio and is thus more efficient. There is no choice if one way is more efficient.

The beta/alpha starting point is meaningless. It's where they went from there that matters. ArenaNet had certainly already decided on focusing on large scale events when they began development which means that they where designing the engine to be as smooth and efficient as possible from the very beginning because they knew their game depended on it. Bioware on the other hand focused on giving a Mass Effect cinematic experience, an probably never really put much into optimizing the engine's performance for large groups. Also see this post.

The problem with this is that it basically makes Vitiate into a Star Wars Cthulhu, and Chulhu makes a terrible videogame antagonist becomes it's beyond anything we can relate to. Basically at this point Vitiate is soo powerful that giving him more power is meaningless plotwise because his power is already beyond anything a player is going to be able to relate to.