I don't care that much as long as it has a very different feel in terms of the climate and architecture than the planets we have already.

Actually, there is something Bioware could do. Besides LFG tools, they could increase the communication tools available in-game and here on the forums for guild leaders, as well as just other players. It isn't that easy to find threads of guilds recruiting within the Server Forums. The other thing is in game, we get the smallest boxes for messages of the day. It would be nice to have a page that is viewable by everyone where the leader could write up some basic information aobut the guild's policies, and whether it is reruiting or not. So instead of having to spam LFG as a recruiting tool,, players could maybe access some kind of "guild database" like the GTN is a database of items, where players could get a list of guilds on the server with basic facts (like how many players, a mission statement for focus (levelling, pve ops, pvp, everything), maybe even a short statement of activity times, and needed classes/crafts or something.

Too many players think PVP in warzones is about kills as if it were a duel, instead of of seeing the larger game. Healing is defensive--and any healer putting that much time and effort into keeping themselves alive, isn't putting much into killing off your side or taking an objective. If they are on defense, maybe they can stop your caps til reinforcements arrive--but will be much weaker at taking nodes. The problem is, DPS want to just treat healers as squishy, low dps speedbumps that can be taken out of a fight fast, rather than having to think strategically about how to fight them. I think many players aren't actually good at using interrupts, because even if they do interrupt, they don't always use it on the right ability at the right time. They will in PVE encounters for example, use an interrupt on a low damage attack then it is not up for the high damage attack. And that translates too for healing.

What I found fun: New Pets Quests that players of multiple levels were in the same area doing --so you could interact for once with guildies lower down the level curve the incentive to take down world bosses (though they should not be tauntable by a player who is not in the group that tagged the boss--especially if said player then repeatedly drags the boss to an evade/reset point) the newscasts and general sense of "something is happening" The continued story and flavor from Taris, Kaon and Lost Island What I did not: Having to spend money on vaccine at lower levels when money is tight Getting flagged involuntarily for PVP on a PVE server by someone of the opposing faction exploding with the virus while you were standing around using the vendor for the event Having the vaccine not last through death (and getting infected repeatedly in PVP warzones) Having only one vendor for both factions on a PVE server--might be ok if there were a vendor with exclusively expertise stat items that the factions share, but don't force PvP on those who don't want it the short time frame, daily quest progression that penalized players who can only play weekends lack of notice of the event start and end date--in game email is better for many players or launcher messages One thing they could have done is make quests you could do for experience to get vaccinated if you were low level, or you could pay the 2k by the time that is a trivial amount of credits to earn. Players want to have control in the game, so anytime you take that away, it is less fun. Give people options, challenges and incentive to work together (especially across levels) with these events. For example, you could have an event of some kind of swoop relay race where the bikes are supplied by the game, so even a level 30 could particpate.

Griefing should be intentional. A lot of players are pretty casual, and may not even realize there is a vaccine on offer or have even known there was an event--if you are the sort to log in once a week for a few hours for example. There probably are players who are deliberately keeping it alive--but if you tell everyone you know to vaccine it up, it should die down soon enough. I still have stacks left over from the event of the vaccine, and I haven't had anyone refuse to use it when I traded it to them. Maybe if you find someone who does refuse--then you can get upset at a griefer.

When you have group mates dueling, and you start to try to heal them.

I agree with this. Sometimes the problem with these " heroes," is that they aren't great at playing in groups. They expect everyone to adjust to their tactics but never communicate what those are. They also don't give enough credit to the enemy. They just assume that you lose because you are bad, and if you were good, you would win. Well, sometimes the enemy is just as smart, plus they also have a better mix of classes and gear. Things that make groups work better in PVE apply to the PVP zones--you don't want too much or too little healing and tanking, you want to coordinate attacks and CC based on the abilities of those in the group, and you want a leader to communicate a basic plan of attack, with the ability to adjust on the fly through communication should something unexpected happen. If you ever PVE pug, you know it's likely to be a bit of a chaotic mess, and the same is true for PVP. Sometimes good enough players can adjust to each other, but some classes and players compliment each other better. I hope they bring in the ranked warzones sooner--it will weed out a lot of these "heroes".

Cleaning a kitchen as an MMO....assign point values to the tasks, gear up with better sponges and cleaners, and grind your way to a clean kitchen....surely better than epic loot. And healthier.

This is my biggest problem with the game. It is, for the average gamer, much harder to line your schedule up with 7 others of the right classes than with 3. Yet most players are either not geared up enough to do the hard modes, or they are over-geared for them because of OPS, and now they have no incentive to run them. We need some daily, PVE repeatable group content that feels challenging, varied and dynamic, and provides steady but slow loot progression. That is why many people who normally do not PVP are doing it in this game--there is nothing else, and they otherwise like the game's setting and mechanics. But it feels too isolating because we frequently have level 50's with no where to group up and play together that provides that ongoing sense of progression. It's either run an instance where nothing drops that anyone needs (except for fluff, maybe) or realize you don't have enough people (or enough geared people) to run the next tier of content. There is a big gap in the middle.

If Bioware wants people to do the flashpoints more, they will have to fix a lot of things in the game, to make it more like the PVP system. You queue up, know your time commitment, and have a fairly simple goal to accomplish as a team that doesn't necessarily require a fixed mix of classes. When its over, you are put back where you were and can go on your way. And most of all--everyone is working towards a goal of progression and gear that made it worth everyone's time even if you failed, but even more worth it if you win. They already have "heroics" in the game, but the travel time/communication issues kind of make it hard for people to get together. Once people are grouping in PVE more regularly for the "heroics", it becomes easier to get to know other players for trying the more traditional, longer style flashpoints they already have in the game. But it feels to me that unless you were lucky enough to roll on a populated server or were levelling with a rush of other players, you're off by yourself and no one trusts each other to even try half the content that is out there. People re-rolling aren't always as motivated to repeat every flashpoint as well, so Bioware may have overestimated the degree to which different storylines and classes encourage replay of group content in PVE.

When you calculated this, were you taking into account talents for and the relative value of alacrity, crit and power for the two classes? In another thread, you mentioned that commandos have more HPS per person (you were comparing both to Sages, who are highest, but commandos were roughly half as good, scoundrels 1/3). Now maybe, the difference is not as big on a single target, if the fight is long enough, and the incomming rate of damage is slow enough for all the heals to land, be useful and not be overwritten. The trouble is, burst is king in this game right now--and with skillful play, front-loaded healing classes don't have problems with the few endurance fights that people encounter. But skillful play can only increase a class's burst so much--and cannot increase and scale the way 10% (yes, I know it is being nerfed to 5) migitation can. You mentioned also, that Scoundrels have to keep up hots to help proc UH--it's almost like we have to overheal by design, which somewhat can undercut our actual useful healing. Then there's this--perception is important, as very few players sit there and think about the differences between the classes, and the encounters, and even fewer adjust how they play for how the other classes play. So all they have to go on when judging your performance as a healer is their perception of how close to dying they were or how much output you had on a meter. And meters, and maybe you will agree with me, are misleading because they don't measure "useful" healing. Even if corrected for "effective healing" as heals less overheals, it's still missing whether a particular heal was needed to ensure enough life to take the next rounds of damage or was serving some other purpose like generating procs to do more heals, or part of a "dumb healing" AOE, or whatever. The game runs on numbers, but numbers can mislead out of context, and players will be somewhat biased in how they interpet things. They tend to attribute far more to "player skill" than they do gear, encounter design, class skill.

Yes! I think expecting healers to heal, and only heal, should be left in old-school PVE MMO dungeons, and definitely not part of PVP. I do like healing, but I see my role more as "defense" than just mindlessly filling up life bars for the heck of it--or for some big number on the healing meters. Even in PVE, actually, I'd rather heal fewer people and keep them alive, or completing objectives (or help myself), than just spam or snipe heal wherever I can , just to get my output numbers to look larger. But what a lot of healers won't tell you is, they don't care about team play either--they just want to drop some big numbers (perhaps the same as they would playing a DPS toon).

I kind of feel it forces me to plan ahead, actually, because I have to make strategic use of the cooldowns, and even DS when I can on some fights in order to keep my energy in the safe zone for as long as I can. So I used to just think "is the heal needed" but now I kind of think " how cheap is the heal and how necessary is it?" The cheaper it is (b/c my energy is high) the less "necessary" it needs to be. I put necessary in quotes there, because I feel part of the Scoundrel/Ops healing style involves keeping UH/TA proc'd, and healing more frequently, rather than having long pauses while damage accumulates and your resources regenerate.

It is hard to truly track a healer's real effectiveness. As you say, what we want is preventable deaths avoided, but not all preventable deaths are equal in terms of strategy. Maybe I let 3 people die so I can heal the ball carrier--or maybe I do this so I can get an attack off on someone tapping a door. Or maybe the person I 'Let" die was standing in area damage, and I had to triage because I only have so many resources available to me at any time. As a Scoundrel, I actually heal people below 25% a lot, since I have an ability that is instant and free if the target is below 30%. Are you suggesting that it is always pointless to heal targets this low, or always a sign you are helping "avoid" death in such cases? It is neither. Some of the time I can keep someone up long enough for them to kill the thing attacking them, cross the goal line, or escape, or even, receive a larger heal from another player winding up a big heal--whatever it is, other times, that low health target just takes exactly one GCD longer to die and does nothing in that time. I do appreciate tanks, and agree it is often not said enough--but I also appreciate good DPS and that is not said enough. DPS who know how to pick the most effective target to kill, to use their defensive abilities. DPS who do not expect me to always be perfect, becasue they realize, they too make mistakes. Scoreboards can undercut good team play, but then again, some people are more into competitive play than cooperative, so they want to see that they 'beat" someone on something and would be unhappy without a nice big scoreboard to point out how much better they are than everyone else.

I don't see this as being difficult or impractical at all. People ask "how long" something is all the time-and right now players have to guess based on personal experience. The developers, I'm sure, have the kind of information this poster is asking to know, because if the developers did not have this information, then how did they know how to tune the encounters? You think they just randomly threw a level number on it, and rolled the dice as to how many enemies to put in the encounter? Yes, some groups will take longer*, some shorter, but there is a target time, and they could add some padding to that, then add this information in the mission logs. Some of you may have hours and hours to play the game, but I know plenty of people who do not, at least not every time they play (for example, they have three hours between classes or a 40 minute lunch break at work, or half an hour until bedtime). One thing that makes instanced pvp a fun grouping event is that games are timed, though they can end faster, there is a limit at the uppper end. Why should this not be the case for group PVE? Finally, to the peple saying that casual can mean short on time as well as attitude to the game--as long as everyone you play with is having fun playing with your level of skill, then you are not a "bad" player. Of course, there are plenty of "hardcore" people who would NOT have fun being grouped with someone unless that player has the perfect gear, plays with the same strategy as they do (which may not be the only one, but they'll assume anyone who doesn't do things their way is stupid and they'll say so). I think such players are "bad"even if they are not casual. Bad, because they are not fun to have in the group. Of course, I'd also prefer to group with someone who does sort of know what to do without triggering a wipefest, but sometimes that's how players learn and get better.