I prefer some maps over others, but I'd rather keep them all for variety's sake. They're all fun, and any map can seem broken or like it needs to be retooled when a team completely botches its mechanics. For example... That's why you don't let a sorc camp up there. Knockbacks are good for that. Haven't noticed the jitters myself, although op double-rolls sometimes look like black magic on any map. On old Huttball, can they double-roll through the air, or is that a display glitch?

Other people have already addressed why imposing fake-difficulty is a bad alternative. To summarize some explanations, and maybe add one or two more: 1) Fake-difficulty doesn't conjure up the same kinds of psychological responses in the player 2) Having to rely on the suppression of player growth is directly contrary to a major reason people play MMOs--the development of one's character in a social setting is a significant draw 3) Achieving things under false difficulty conditions arguably doesn't make you better at the game, as the only situations you learn to manage are those that aren't actually balanced around any existing player experience 4) The critical element of imposing fake-difficulty--not summoning your companion--effectively means that you can't practice tanking or healing while doing solo PvE content in any meaningful way. Your companion won't be summoned and therefore won't need either. 5) Learning how to better play one's class to cope more effectively with actual in-game situations is a useful endeavor for someone who wants to stick with the game. It's also really satisfying. By way of an example, the first PvP game in which I was able to be an asset after several games of sucking was a really good experience. Learning how to cope with imaginary scenarios is of much less obvious utility. The player who imposes a false difficulty condition on him or herself will always be aware that the false condition exists and could easily be removed. When content becomes difficult only for bogus and self-imposed reasons, it's essentially impossible to conjure up the same kind of psychological response as when the content is unavoidably, actually difficult. If you're a procrastinator at all, you might be familiar with a somewhat similar feeling: Even if you try to impose artificial deadlines on yourself so that you feel pressure to complete things, the background knowledge that a given piece of work isn't actually due will undercut the illusion that the deadline meaningfully needs to be met.

If I'm understanding correctly, you find the gameplay elements of the game uninteresting, yet you continue to play because you enjoy interactive, digitally rendered cut-scenes. May I recommend to you a combination of books and creative writing? I feel like you're doing yourself a disservice when you mess around with SWTOR's overly structured stories and the more-or-less-necessarily repetitive non-class storytelling elements. I don't say that to be a snooty, presumptuous ***** (though invariably it will come across that way), I say it because what you're telling me is that you genuinely don't enjoy the gameplay elements of the game, and nothing in your post suggests some variation will make those elements interesting. If gameplay won't be interesting, why play a video game? Okay, so it's an interactive movie in which you can play dress-up with the digitally rendered doll who most often appears on camera. That's fine and I genuinely wish you all the enjoyment you can extract from a game in which the class stories follow a peculiarly formulaic storytelling structure that ought to shatter anyone's sense of immersion after their first character, but how does a game developer develop a game out of non-gaming? And why in god's name would they want to? You sound like you'd really enjoy playing a pen-and-paper Star Wars game, and maybe you do. But SWTOR is delivered in the medium of a video game. If what it's meant to accomplish or provide consumers isn't tied to the things that make a game a game, then it shouldn't dress itself up like a video game--it's a waste of both the gameplay and the storytelling resources already being and continuing to be devoted to the game's ongoing development.

Quoted for truth. I read through the first couple of pages of the thread and then pages 22-29, which is currently the last page. (Apologies if I missed the killer argument buried somewhere on pages 3-21, but evidently so did everyone else.) From my own impressions as someone who's just come back to the game and from what I've read other people saying, I think it's true that players can get through a huge percentage of content literally without engaging in combat mechanics beyond hitting Ctrl-1 to set their companion to attack. That's a completely ludicrous state of affairs. Like Stradlin said above, that people are trying to defend it is "utterly surreal." A game the mechanics of which revolve around combat that doesn't require the player to engage in combat isn't a game, it's a tour. I mean... It's honestly mind-boggling to me. Gameplay is content, too. Learning to play the game and your character, getting better at it, conquering things that challenged you--that's content. Your abilities and the way they work and the way your class works and the way your class and build and abilities interact with other players--that's content. Rendering that all a triviality until you hit endgame and can do the same PvP and instanced content over and over and over... Do some people really want that? My head is caving in. If you're okay with essentially employing the W key, Ctrl-1, and your right mouse-button to progress through content, what is it you get out of the game? Do people literally just want to watch the story cut-scenes? Do a lot of people play just for that? Because the cut-scenes are on YouTube. You can actually go watch them without playing. You can dodge the screaming monsters in fleet and the inane, lowest-common-denominator political analysis in gen chat on Coruscant and Dromund Kaas by watching someone else play, which is only a tiny step away from walking yourself through it when your companion does all the meaningful work. Something about this game has me hooked so that I keep trying to come back to it, but no game I've ever played has so consistently managed to squander its phenomenal innate potential by completely botching game balance.

While I think there was some repetition previously, I felt like there was enough to do that I was able to make a lot of choices about how I leveled. That kept the game fresh for me across multiple playthroughs. (It helps that I like basically everything--PvP, space missions, FPs, Heroics, whatever--except maybe seeker missions.) Even if I ended up repeating some content, enough time had passed by the time I did that I didn't mind it. The fact that leveling took a while contributed to that, because if it takes a few weeks to finish the class story, the low-level missions won't feel as repetitive when you return to them. Maybe it's a the-journey-is-the-destination thing for me and other people, whereas others like something else. I get why someone might prefer the new system, but I don't understand why the existing XP-buff-with-items system didn't already address the grind concerns of those who like faster leveling. Having said that, I don't really care if it stays as is if they introduce an item to slow XP gain. It might still be a problem for new players who are less likely to go looking for an item like that and more likely to be overwhelmed with having so many abilities so quickly, but maybe since new players won't be used to something else, they won't really notice it.

I'm with the OP, and I'm surprised to see that no one's raised what I feel like is the most obvious problem with a too-fast leveling process: You don't have time to learn how to play your class. I'm trying to come back to the game, and like gsummers above, I just ran a couple of warzones on my new character. Without me expecting it, doing the actual WZs and the associated missions raised me 3-4 levels--so now I have several new or newish abilities to try to get used to all at once. Obviously I can figure stuff out over time (and not pick up the PVP daily, I guess), but the game feels a bit rushed now. What was wrong with offering XP-boost items for people who wanted to speed through the class stories? Why invalidate existing sidequest content when a system already existed that helped people avoid it if they wanted to? A mandatory speed-up to leveling progression feels like such an ain't-broke-but-fix-it-anyway move to me--especially since speeding people up to the endgame content just speeds up the rate at which they'll complain about it being deficient.

I'm a Sharpshooter Gunslinger, and generally I feel like the class is decently balanced for what it should be. If left untouched, I can do pretty good damage, have lots of flexibility in target selection for helping finish people off, and can partially hassle healers. If I exploit range, escapes, and what DCDs we do have, my survivability isn't that bad if moderately pressured. If focused, I typically melt, which seems fair. I think we're meant to be glass cannons, so that makes sense. What can be frustrating are the unequivocally absurd LOS-heal scenarios with sorcs/sages Metthew mentioned above, the death resistance skills of ops/scoundrels, and decent or better sins/shadows generally (but probably only certain specs). I have no experience playing scoundrels and almost none with shadows, so it may just be I'm not as aware of their weaknesses, but from in-game chat and the boards, I get the impression they're both widely considered OP. In the sorcs/sages scenario, I literally don't think it's possible to win that fight 1v1, much the way it wasn't possible for a 50 Jugg to kill my 50 Combat Medic under 1.2. That isn't to say that no slinger/sniper will ever beat a sorc/sage 1v1, just that a reasonably skilled sorc/sage with any access to LOS impediments probably shouldn't ever lose that exchange if starting it with 60% or more health. I think GS/Sniper could be left largely untouched (SS/MM spec, anyway) provided certain other specs are downgraded a bit. However, there is one situation in which I think we're nearly useless: Quoted for truth. I'll concede that, having just come back to the game recently, the 4v4s still feel a bit new, but the nature of Arena fights makes me pessimistic I'll be effective against decent premades. In pugs it's been hit or miss, with some instances of what Arc described mixed in with more matches where I've at least not been eviscerated in seconds. If two sins want you dead from the start, there's about a 90% chance you'll be dead from the start. Or one sin and an op, probably. Otherwise, you're in there with a chance.

I was about to post to report the same issue (also with a screenshot, which I can add if needed). Mine was also on Corellia, as was another mention of this bug on a reddit thread from 2 months ago: Someone there mentions that it happens when someone levels out of the bracket, which sounded like a good explanation... Except that both the OP here and the incident I was going to report happened in 60 PVP. Obviously no one leveled out of the range.

I think I'm missing something because this doesn't really make sense to me. Why wouldn't lower level gear just produce smaller effects? In other words, why would lower-level characters be working with the same Crit percentages (or Accuracy or whatever) as higher-level characters? Wouldn't it be simpler if a level 50 in level-specific gear maxed for Crit Rating just had a lower chance to Crit than a 55 in maxed-for-CR gear appropriate to his own level? If there's a slow increase in percentages for all stats as players level and acquire higher-level gear capped by the practical limitation of a finite number of gear slots and also by limited stats on that gear, players can see and understand their progress in a straightforward way. What we have instead is counter-intuitive--my level 55 main, mostly in new PvP gear, somehow has inferior performance as compared to a level 50 of the same class that I mostly use for running Diplomacy missions (geared in a mix of old WH/BM PvP gear and orange armor pieces with Makeb modifications). I'm happy to take your word that that's standard in MMOs because SWTOR has been the first I've played seriously enough to reach end-game content, but I don't think that the approach feels any less arbitrary in its practical consequences because it's common in the industry.

Thanks to all of you for what's been really useful advice. I get so used to seeing the histrionics on the PvP threads that I sometimes forget that forums can be useful. This was interesting to me: For whatever reason I'd always thought you couldn't cap a node while in cover, but now that I think about it, I don't think I've ever actually tried it. I'm excited to give this a go cause I routinely find myself going for nodes knowing full well I'm about to get CCed by a stealther but hoping I'll be able to respond well enough to survive.

Appreciate the replies from all three of you. I'd backed off of Vital Shot to an extent after reading some suggestions here on the forums, but I'll bring it back against tanks. With Flash Grenade/Dirty Kick, basically I'd been running into the same problems with that as with Leg Shot--the CC resistance--but I knew sins had at least one total CC negator, so I wasn't surprised when those weren't working. I had just noticed that Leg Shot in particular seemed to be resisted a lot, which is why I brought that one up by name. I'd been reading about stacking Accuracy so I've sort of had an eye toward that, although I've mostly just been trying to round off the Partisan set. The back-to-the-wall thing though... I'd started doing that when watching nodes, but it can be kind of impractical in other situations, can't it? Especially considering our LOS-dependency. For example, trying to push into mid on Hypergate or approaching a node on Novarre, we're kind of out of luck, right? (And sadly, considering the number of matches in which pubs have been getting steamrolled on my server lately, those are familiar positions--which is why I'm here trying to make sure I'm not a liability in pugs). Although having said that, I could still try to make more of an effort to use walls.

Alright, I find myself lately having a lot of problems with sins in 55 WZs. I don't remember having that many problems pre-2.0 in 50s WZs for one reason or another, but maybe I just wasn't running into as many good ones. I'm kind of working on leveling a sin on the side to learn more about the class, but I figured I'd ask on here for some advice in coping with them as well. I seem have three main problems in dealing with them. First of all, I have a hard time damaging them. I was told they have a lot of DR to weapon damage so I've tried making a point of mixing in more sab charges and grenades, but as a Sharpshooter I don't have a lot of non-weapon damage options. This has always been the case and as a result I tended not to target them in group-combat situations, but obviously you can't just pretend they aren't there. Secondly, and I feel like this is somewhat of a new development (although maybe not), is that attacking from stealth they can reduce me to about half-health, then restealth, then pop back out and 2-3 shot me. I'm not really sure what to do about that--Defensive Screen melts really quickly and as far as I know Dodge isn't going to mitigate Force attacks at all. Even if they don't do the restealth thing, if you're basically starting a fight with a 50% health handicap, you're gonna have a bad time. Finally, the obvious response--to establish and maintain range--doesn't seem to be coming off as well as I'd like. I'm not sure how many CC-resisting abilities they have, but I get the impression that beyond some across-the-board CC-negating ability (like our Hunker Down), they also have an additional way of resisting at least roots and maybe also knockbacks. I could well be wrong here, but I definitely am not having success keeping range on them. Hightail It + Leg Shot seemed like the obvious way to go, but if Leg Shot isn't working, I'm at a bit of a loss. Any advice would be appreciated, although I want to stay as a Sharpshooter spec. Thanks in advance.

Appreciate your work in keeping this up, especially cause it seems to be pretty hard to find live streams of good gunslinger PvP play.

I've been getting repeatedly owned within single WZs by different people depressingly often lately. Somehow I seem to have gotten way worse in the last few weeks, although I'm not sure why. Stealthers in particular are destroying me. Not really sure what I'm supposed to do when an Assassin pops out of stealth behind my Gunslinger (obviously before the stealth detection builds up), reduces me to 48% health with what seems like one attack, re-stealths, then two-shots me on coming back out-- but I'm trying to learn. I'd talk about times I wasn't on the receiving end of repeat-pastings but as I'm basically terrible now, I probably shouldn't.

Yeah, the frustration thing with hugely imbalanced kill tallies is very real. Someone brought it up on a nerf-heals thread too and basically took the position that if you're in a pug with no healers against any team with 2-3, you're gonna have a bad time.

I think I agree with pretty much all of that. I suggested in an earlier post doing a flat stat allocation thing for PvP (or basically like saveable PvP specs for both skills and stats) and make armor just a cosmetic choice almost jokingly but it's starting to sound better to me. MAYBE consider giving small stat bumps for getting achievements? I dunno. I think balanced teams would be worth the longer queue times. Not a lot of things are to me, but that would be one. My impression has always been that player-level isn't actually that huge a deal, especially with the new (and welcome) 3-tier system, so queues shouldn't be completely terrible. Only thing I'd say in partial disagreement is that I feel like fixing Bolster stat-shenanigans should be easier because it wouldn't involve implementing a new system, so it can be prioritized. Having said that, with a ground-finder already in the game, getting teams balanced at least by class shouldn't be that hard, right?

I haven't really figured out yet how I feel about the healing changes, but I gotta say, the bolded part is very true on Harbinger as well. Lots of massively imbalanced kill tallies. It's pretty discouraging when you're on the losing side.

I don't know that I've seen that many people saying that Bolster needs to go. We had Bolster before the patch--it was just different. 15s and 45s could be in WZs together and though the 45s would have quite a few advantages (more abilities and allocated skill points, implants) knowledgeable 15s could still very much be competitive. My impression has been that most objections are to the way the new form of the system has been implemented, not to the idea itself. That's definitely my position. The reason people are saying to "roll back" to the old system is just because the new one screws up stats so badly that it's frustrating to play. It needs more work.

For this: Please read this: I don't like the new Bolster system because it's a sloppy, semi-arbitrary mess. I'd been saving up Comms prior to hitting 55 to splash out on a Conqueror main-hand. Then I went into a WZ and compared my stats with the Conqueror to an orange with Makeb purples and discovered that the orange with inferior components was superior in every way (actually, the Conq gun may have given me literally two more points of Expertise--can't remember which had me at 1999 and which had me at 2001). Then I removed the mod and enhancement from the PvP weapon and suddenly it was better than the orange, although I did lose a little Expertise. That's completely absurd. Like fungihoujo, I can't understand how people are defending something that's demonstrably broken. And calling the Bolster situation 'bugged,' as a lot of people seem to want to do, to me strains the definition of a bug. Right after 2.0 came out, sometimes I had to /logout to exit the WZ scoreboard screen. Okay, fair enough, that's the kind of random bug that you can expect in the wake of an expansion. Spotting the statistical chaos new-Bolster has created takes literally a minute--all you have to do is pop a WZ and screw around with your gear. It was a designed system. That system doesn't work. You might like the aim behind new-Bolster (I'm indifferent--I like more equality for fresh 55s, but I also like having something to strive for), but in its present state it's a mess. It's indefensible. If they want to do something like give everyone in a WZ a flat number of Stat points to spend however they like and just make the gear cosmetic, I'm okay with that. But then they need to start spamming out lots and lots of new armor sets so people have goals.

I came into this thread with no opinion on the subject, started to be persuaded by the PvP-objectives argument, but then watched that video. Can't see the problem with it anymore. On the Voidstar thing, it's always been the case that sometimes a combination of bad defending and unlucky (unskilled?) deaths/respawns could result in attackers walking to the datacore. "Bad defending" is the main thing there. I could maybe see it being OP on Alderaan if they LOS the pillar properly. Maybe some ACs really couldn't interrupt the cap? Although you could probably cut the roller off, couldn't you? In Huttball, it could sometimes be awesome with well-coordinated use, but coordination deserves to be rewarded and usually is, one way or another. I can't come up with any way it could be a game-breaker for the other two.

The OP here is definitely speaking loud and clear to me as a fellow sharpshooter trying to get better, although post-2.0 numbers have shifted up. I was working on a bigger reply looking for more specific advice, but instead I figure I'll try applying some of the stuff in here first (I could definitely throw more Sab Charges and use Flourish less). One thing I was hoping to ask for though was advice for situations when you're getting destroyed in a pug (since I mostly do pugs). I hit 55 last night and got rolled a few times over consecutively, enjoying the attentions of Assassins and Maras far more than I would have liked. The Maras thing is funny cause I feel like pre-55 I usually destroyed them, but not last night. On the plus side, I learned that Maras can hit you even when they're CCed; on the downside, I felt like a liability. Okay, granted there are matches that basically are lost causes from the start--but I really don't want to be one of the players who's rendered completely ineffectual in those kinds of WZs. So, any advice on how to keep your numbers up (and by extension maybe make those matches less lopsided) when you are getting hassled by superior opposition?

Never seen this but hope you reported it. Are you sure the players aren't actually just dying? Melee DPSers pretty frequently run around their targets in seemingly crazy ways. I believe it's to make themselves more difficult to target, though I've mostly played ranged/non-stealth characters so I'm no expert. I kill people in just a couple of hits pretty frequently--it's the perk to having high burst damage. The point of a tank is to be able to take a lot of damage and to that end they obviously have some potent defensive cooldown abilities that reduce damage taken and make them more difficult to hit. Heal-spamming is easy to counter-- use interrupts and CC that isn't broken by damage. And frankly, I'm sorry, but if it's just one healer and it takes four people to kill him, that suggests you aren't using enough of your attack abilities. I'm sorry to hear that, and I can kind of understand where you're coming from with the matchmaking stuff, but what do people who take it more seriously do? Please spare me your condescending "ego boost" stuff--for me, the time I invested to try to get somewhat better is part of the fun. It isn't that hard to get halfway decent. If you watch a couple of youtube clips of people playing who are good you can learn a lot about how to get better at your class. And you know what? It's massively frustrating to see people swing only 50 or 60k damage in Voidstar, and also frustrating to sit in a queue for twenty or thirty minutes waiting for it to fill. There might be something to more intelligent matchmaking, but it will come at the cost of a longer queue, and I'm not sure that cost is worth it--for me, anyway.

I haven't heard of this, but I hope you sent a report about the location on the map. When Novarre came out you could cap through the walls behind the terminals. I submitted a ticket the first time I saw someone doing it and got an individualized reply within a half an hour. That exploit has since been fixed (I think, anyway). Not sure if the customer support would still be as quick now, but I think there's a lot of evidence that BW has been taking "meaningful action" (see also bans and their ongoing efforts to prevent people from sneaking out of start zones). This is why people don't take hacking accusations seriously--or why I don't, anyway. In lieu of evidence (and I understand completely the various reasons people aren't providing it on the forums), hack-accusers have to rely on arguments--but typically those arguments are seriously flawed. Here, you provide no support for the assertion that it's "most likely" cheating as opposed to glitch- or lag-based. Slinger cover mechanics are screwy and floor-drops happen to all classes anyway (read the 5th post/1st page in this topic for an example of someone dropping halfway into the floor). Also, are you sure he didn't get killed and you weren't automatically switched to the next target? With what sounds like at least 4 people targeting him, it's entirely possible that his 75% health dropped in a spike--slingers don't last long when their defensive cooldowns are spent. I think that's a completely reasonable explanation for not providing video evidence, but cheating's only been proven to happen occasionally. What people are objecting to are allegations of widespread cheating. People who work hard to get good at PvP are going to be pissed when someone accuses them of cheating just because they're good at the game. Why can't you stun that Gunslinger? Because he used Hunker Down. Why can't you hurt that Mara? Because she used Undying Rage. How did one player do 200k more damage than another? Because the second player isn't using his full complement of abilities. Maybe these aren't the types of problems you personally think are going on, but many accusations of hacking betray a lack of knowledge about player abilities ("resolve hacks"=defensive cooldowns, "speed hacks"=Force Speed, etc.). It doesn't make sense that people who play lots of lots of PvP, who focus on it and get good at it, would be the ones who almost never see it happen. I agree that the automatic response shouldn't be to start shouting "noob" at everyone who makes the claim, but people who want to make the argument typically do a really poor job of making the case for their position and frequently seem wedded to their conclusions. That obstinance makes conversations about hacking really frustrating.

I suspect you might be a hacker and your "Scripts in PVP" thread is merely a cunning trick to cover your tracks by making your behavior seem like a game-wide epidemic of which "your friend" was guilty but you, naturally, were not . Your reply better be an admission of guilt. Otherwise, your own "analysis" convicts you. Well, unless you're dealing in some very high-level, labor-intensive irony, in which case I'd owe you a salute.

Because I was quoting your post, which takes the stance that to disagree with accusations of hacking is to be guilty of hacking.