I just don't think anyone at Bioware actually has a clue as to what they are doing at this point. We get nerfed across the board and marauders and sentinels get buffred and turned into dps machines. I don't know about the rest of you but before the nerf a good mara would rock me, after even the bad ones just laugh while I get mauled and sent back to the spawn point.

So when I went to cancel my account today I picked "imbalanced play" for my reason and a little thing popped up that said "Every class has unique advantages and disadvantages in terms of balance." That got me to thinking, and with the current state of our class I'm hard pressed to see any unique advantages so I thought I'd break some stuff down and get opinions on it. I'll be strictly speaking as gunnery as I don't consider assault a viable spec in either pve or pvp given it's lack of burst for a small tradeoff in mobility. 1) Commandos have no interupt. Every other class gets an interupt. 2) Commandos get one knockback and the ability in gunnery to talent a second smaller kb. These function as an interupt unless you are either a flashpoint/operations Boss or your opponents resolve bar is full. In addition, unlike an actual interupt, they fill your opponents resolve bar and provide no delay on the recasting of the ability.. Which makes them both far less useful in both pve and pvp then an actual interupt. To my knowledge we have never been given a reason why one of the most important tools in pvp has been denied to our class. 3) We lack mobility. Almost every other class recieves a leap, a pull, a charge, force speed, etc. We recieve nothing at all. We have the poorest mobility of any class in the game with the possible exception of snipers. 4) We do have a cc, it works on everything, it breaks on damage, it's usable in combat. Sages have the same cc, theirs is both much more recognizable as well as talentable to be instant and cc more then one mob. Other dps classes have cc's as well tho they can be limited by mob type and whether they can be used in or out of combat. 5)Our only slow requires talenting, 2 points high in the gunnery tree for a 2s slow on full auto. Every other dps class gets a slow or a snare. Sages get one built into their primary attack and an additional, actual slow, every 15s with the ability to talent it for faster refresh. 6) Coupled with our poor mobility we get one cc break. The standard one everyone gets. Period. Other classes get immunity to cc's off of abilities, or immunity to cc buttons. Plus a cc break. My shadow can clear any movement impaired effects with force speed every 20 seconds(talented), plus Resilience, plus his cc break. 7) Channelled attacks. All my primary abilities require a channel of between 1.5 and 2.5 seconds. Easily interuptable. Easily shut down by any decent player with an interupt. Furthermore to use other of my abilities it is necessary to first use one of my easily interuptable abilities. No other class is so limited in their rotation or as easily shut down. A marauder doesn't have any interuptable attacks, the one attack they had that was interuptable was made noninterupatble in the patch. 8) Aoe. Mortar volley's range was reduced. Sorcs equivelent ability, Force Storm, has kept it's range (the same as mortar volley pre nerf). In addition, force storm has no cooldown making it's huge aoe spammable. If moratar volley, which has a significant cooldown, was unacceptable why is force storm left alone? Snipers also have an aoe whose size was left alone. 8) Damage. We are no longer anywhere near the top in regards to dps after 1.2 Marauders are easily 300-400 dps higher. Snipers are higher. Parsers have us coming in at the bottom or next to last. Either their math is messed up, they don't know what they are doing or they just didn't want to announce how hard they were hitting us but our demo round "buff" causes me to do at least 2k less a hit. I'm gonna pick on sages for a second. I don't want them nerfed, I like my sage. I just want to make a point. Sages get EVERYTHING. They get mobility, cc, snares and slows, aoe, two viable damage trees, an interupt, an awesome shield they can cast on themselves and others, Rescue/extricate, self healing, instant not los'able attacks, and damage at least on par with troopers. They seem to be distinctly and very obviously missing any significant disadvantage. I must just be missing it since "Every class has unique advantages and disadvantages." So Bioware. What's my unique advantage in playing my commando? The ability to both do less damage and have less utility then any other class in the game? The current trooper is, in my opinion, a detriment to an ops group. With enrage timers as tight as they currently are a raid is much better off bringing a class that can either do more dps or bring more utility to a raid. Pvp currently no class is as bad off as a gunnery trooper, horrible 1v1 vs an equally geared opponent and almost sure to lose against any quality opponent that understands how to use their interupt and play their class. My subscription is already cancelled. I have 42 days until my play time is expired. That's how long you have to make my class viable in both raids and pvp. P.S. No, you can't have my stuff.

I appreciate everyone's feedback. I'm aware that I can always reroll on another server. Unfortunately that simply exacerbates the problem. The point of my post was simply to attempt to illuminate to Bioware that they have a serious problem that will simply continue to escalate until they do something about it. In the chorus of people complaining about queue times, or Ilum, or Imp / Republic balance I simply thought someone should bring it to their attention that there are servers where 50's cannot get into a warzone at all and that is causing people to stop playing which simply begins a cycle that doesn't end well for the server or the game itself.

So I play on a release server and prior to patch 1.1 it was doing pretty good. We were steadily gathering 50's, pvp was occupying our time while we got ready for enough people and gear to do hard modes and ops. Our server population has always been normal and the zones always a little empty but I felt like we were actually building a pretty cool community. Unfortunately, this all changed with patch 1.1. While I don't disagree with the 50's bracket in principle, it's killed our server. Last night there were no warzones at all. Tonight I actually got in a warzone. We were outnumbered 5 to 7 and it ended after 120 seconds. Then I got another warzone an hour or so later and we were outnumbered 5 to 7 and it ended after 120 seconds. People I saw on the server every day aren't on today. In the last two days I've gotten numerous tells from people who decided to either switch servers or retire. The Republic Fleet is half as full as normal. More importantly, I'm bored and for the first time since release I actually don't have any interest in logging in. This isn't about pvp. I didn't pvp at all until about a week ago, and while I was having fun I was mostly doing it because at 50 there are 3 things to do: Hard mode FPs, PvP and Ops. Ops require gear you acquire in the first two and because of their difficulty and the low numbers on our server it's rare to get people together for a hard mode. That left pvp as the only accessible entertaining thing to do at 50 and it's completely disappeared the last two days. I don't know whether the answer is cross server warzones, character transfers, or server mergers. What I do know is that if people can't pvp or get groups at 50 they will quit or reroll and new people at 50 will be in the exact same position as it continuously spirals until the server dies. For those people who think this has anything to do with rolling over people in pvp I'll state the following: I would gladly allow the removal of any and all expertise bonuses on my equipment if it would actually allow me to enter and play a warzone on any regular basis whatsoever without it ending prematurely do to a lack of players.

Whether early access actually accomplishes Bioware's stated goals of helping to maintain server balance sometime in the future, I believe its current effect is detrimental to the growth and success of their mmo. I'm going to be a little snarky, because I too would much rather be playing, but the truth is I would really like this mmo to succeed and I currently am questioning some of their choices. What expert thought allowing 15 percent of the player base to log in and enjoy the game while the other 85 percent check their email every fifteen minutes was a good way to instill trust and good will for the launch of their brand new mmo? I'm neither a game designer nor a rocket scientist but it seems fairly obvious that if everyone preorders and pays the same amount for your game but you only allow a small percentage of them to actually play it, some people might get upset. This leads to bad blood and feelings of inequity which are good neither for the short term health of an mmo nor the long term. Names, names and names. In a normal server launch there's a mad rush to get the name you have envisioned for your character. Server choices are often made by which server the name isn't taken on. Multiple tries for all your favorite names til you get one or give up. You don't always get the name you wanted, but at least everyone got the same shot. Oh wait. Bioware early access, where some players got days to make and save their 8 names per server and you couldn't even log in. It's a lot easier to retain players who are connected to their characters then it is a player who had to name his character Asagbhsdkjfhd because everything good was already taken. Even better, let's couple head start with a legacy system that is level dependent, virtually guaranteeing that those who start later in the week will be far more likely to not only not receive the first name they wanted but will also be denied a surname not requiring special characters and clever hyphenating. Slightly off topic, the absolute worst thing Bioware could have done was tie the legacy system to the levelling system. The entire game encourages story and now a large segment of the population is going to rush the entire early game content in an attempt to get their surname locked down. MMO's are, by their very nature, competitive. They encourage competition in gear, levels, server "firsts," unique titles, etc. The Early Access gating system marginalizes or negates this competition. Any player starting after today is already "behind." This devalues and demoralizes a certain segment of the player base. These players are more likely to either cancel their preorder or simply not resubscribe after their first month. The hardcore, competitive mmo players are a substantial percentage of the player base and should not be ignored. Further while many will argue that the server community is better off without these players, their playing isn't the point. The point is that every segment you alienate directly affects how many and how early players quit, causing the very server problems they are attempting to avoid. A significant factor in mmo retention is social connections. I would argue that Bioware's early access gating for server health actively discourages preexisting social connectiions. The early access gating system creates level disparity which discourages grouping with people that get in on a different day. It further encourages new players to select new servers rather then servers their friends are on due to level disparity, name selection, pvp concerns, server firsts, etc. This in turn either seperates individuals onto different servers (thus lowering long term retention) or causes those who started earlier to create new characters on the new servers as well, nullifying all the positive effects of gating for these individuals. My concerns also include pvp balance, the recent exploitation of warzones due to a lack of players. and perhaps most importantly the lack of communication and transparency throughout this whole process. While communication has been much better today, I cannot stress enough that as important as fixing the problems that occur are, it's equally important to let your subsribers know that you are aware of those issues and are working on getting them resolved. For instance, I personally would still like an answer as to why exactly gating is necessary and what specifically it accomplishes. How does allowing you to control population over a seven day period lead to better retention and remove the necessity of server mergers. Perhaps if you were clearer on how not allowing people to play now benefits the game and community in the long term you'd receive more support. In the end I'm simply not sure that the advantages of gating outweigh the disadvantages, and quite a lot of that may just be miscommunication. In the long term I have faith Bioware will get it right, I just wonder at the short term consequences and whether or not the end will justify the means.

Double Post