It's not. I am meticulous about things like this and keep an eye on temperatures (CPU, GPU, etc.) at all times. It's one of the first things I checked, along with disk activity (sometimes a background updater or virus scan will slow something down, though it's never caused crashing before).

I'm not sure if this is the same thing you're reporting here, but for the past week or so I will have the game play fine for a while before suddenly stuttering severely and literally freezing up for several seconds before starting to go again. It will usually do this a few times before it just crashes.

Bring back rated warzones and the PvP community will explode. Removing them was the single worst thing ever done in the development of this game and restoring them would bring back a lot of people, including those who haven't played in 10 years.

This would basically be a matter of "grading on a curve" for the ratings, which would come with the same benefits and drawbacks as grading on a curve has in academic settings - the drawbacks being significant (I am a math teacher and so I have examined this issue for my work). Teachers don't grade on a curve much anymore below the college level, and even at the college level they do so much less commonly than in the past. One reason is that there is the potential for pretty significant unfairness. Say that everyone in the class gets more than 90 questions right out of 100 on an exam. That would naturally work out to everyone getting an A or and A-, but grading on the curve might mean that if you got, say, 93 out of 100 correct while most other people scored 95 or higher out of 100, you could wind up with a C- for your grade! Students hate this and consider it unfair, understandably so. The same problem would be at play with the system as described. A player may put up objectively great performances but if enough other players also put up good performances then the player who did a good job could wind up being ranked poorly. Another problem is that grading on a curve does a decent job of comparing a particular individual to others rated around a similar time, but makes it more difficult to compare their performance to an objective standard. A class may one year be one of the most intelligent groups to ever attend the school but the next year that class may be one of the weakest. The students that perform the best relative to each group will each have an A+ on their resume even if one of them is a far, far, far more intelligent student than the other. Once the grade is on the books, it becomes impossible to really know the difference between the two.

Overall the changes look fine or reasonable, but the removal of the knockback from Re-establish Range is awful. Snipers are already in a very rough spot in PvP (the only place this change will matter) because of being the least mobile/hardest to avoid damage class. Is the idea here is to try to buff Snipers by giving them this talent for free now, but to avoid making it too strong by removing the knockback? If so, this won't be a minor or moderate buff, but a pretty significant nerf.

I love Huttball, and always wanted more of it, but I'd say the only truly good Huttball map is the original. Quesh is just awful, awful, awful. The other one is okay. I'd accept another map similar to that one, but not Quesh. Preferably, though, give me something that's a variation on the classic.

There are fewer stuns than before 7.0 and more stun breaks. People have complained about stuns since the game's launch, so while I've always disagreed with those complaints, I can understand them. I don't understand your complaint that the game is worse since 7.0 and stuns are a notable reason for that since stuns are unquestionably less frequent and easier to deal with than they were before.

The most fun I ever had in PvP in this or any game - and it's not even remotely close - was open world but WITH an objective. Back when the Gree event was first held there was a central node that people had to carry an orb to and interact to get some reward - I forget what. On some servers, people lined up and there'd literally be lines of players stretching across the entire map waiting for their turn. On other servers, it became a big PvP focal point where groups of players would "claim" the node as their own and try to prevent anyone else from using it. One night three or four of us from our guild were there honestly, as far as I can remember, just to complete the event and for no real reason beyond that. Then a player from a rival guild came to deliver his orb and so we stopped him. A few minutes later he came back with a few friends and tried to do it, so we stopped him again. This all entirely unintentionally developed into a night where increasingly large groups of players would come to try to deliver an orb and we would fight them off. At first they tried to just kill us. When that didn't work they started trying to trick us. They got pretty elaborate trying to use decoys and basically sending five or six or more people just to try to control us long enough to buy time for one person to deliver the orb, but as I recall we didn't let a single person succeed all night except for one Sniper who actually did manage to make very well timed use of his entrench to get it to work. That was great fun, but if the entire thing was just a fight to the death with no objectives, it would not been nearly, nearly as interesting and fun.

In the 1.0/2.0 - even the 3.0 and 4.0 eras people were always asking for more Huttball maps. You'd see posts about it all the time. There was even a sizable community of players who wanted Bioware to create a Huttball league where teams could form and specifically play only Huttball. In fact, if I recall correctly the Rotworms and Frogdogs uniform armor sets was in part Bioware's sort of half-hearted attempt to give these people something. It was often raved about as something very unique to SWTOR and one of the things that really shined about it. You always had some people who didn't like Huttball, but it was for the first half of the game's life or so a relatively small group. I make no comment on anyone who doesn't like Huttball today because I haven't been a part of the community in a few years so I don't really know what it's like, but at least back then when you'd read posts from people complaining about Huttball they usually came across as pretty clearly not understanding the map or other classes or even their own class and it was obvious they would get frustrated on the map because they didn't understand what they were doing well enough to be successful.

For anyone on the "stealth in the endzone is OP" side, this is all correct. Even in the days of rated warzones with perfect team compositions and teamwork, do you know how Huttball was played? By sending ONE ball carrier to the end zone, usually sortof/sortof not accompanied by a sorc healer. Everyone else fought in the middle to try to control the ball spawn. If the opponent's ball carrier got past basically the acid pit, you ignored them and let them score unless it was going to be the winning goal. The top priority, no matter what, was the middle. You won these games by wiping the other team so they couldn't get the ball. If you were the ball carrier and you got to the end zone you didn't score until your teammates told you they had control of mid. You would hide behind the grate to make sure you couldn't get fire-pulled and then only score when you'd either wiped the opponent out of mid or had got it down to a player or two that you knew you could control. A stealth player in the endzone really should be a detriment to a team BUT I will say that unfortunately it often isn't because people overreact to it or otherwise don't know how to just play for the ball. Still the solution is not to nerf the stealth: it's for people to get better at playing the map.

Ok, so I do agree to a large extend here. <hysteria> easily ignores objectives more than any other group I've ever seen, even ones going full in on damage farming. In fact, there's something about the way they do it that actively makes your team worse in a way I've really never experiences before. People complain about premades all the time but I half laugh because at least on SF almost all the premades I encounter lose the match. For a couple of these guilds, I don't think I've ever actually been in a match where their team won. I also sympathize about damage farming. I will usually do what I can to help the team win but at a a certain point all hope is lost so you just join them. I agree with arenas BUT only if we're talking about the 3 or 4 meta specs. On almost anything else people just get immediately annihilated. In any case, maybe it's personal preference but I just don't find a 4 DPS arena match fun no matter how competitive it is. I've got to have a healer in an arena or if just feels like a waste of time to me.

Very hard disagree. If I'm honest, I think arenas have never really been worth it. The game has never been balanced for them and they are really just an extremely simplified version of the game that reduces a lot of interesting and well designed mechanics to DPS. I think they went a long way to ruining PvP in the game because of the mindset they promote. Do I take it from this comment that you are one of the people who goes into warzones and ignores the objectives and just fights in some corner somewhere as if it were an arena?

As I said in another reply, stuff like this needs team support to survive and always has. Yes, you often don't have the right team composition for this these days because of the population, but I really do not think it would be good to mess with the basic "infrastructure" of combat to account for that. You don't fix one deficiency (in population) by adding another (in game depth). I have to say that this is easily my favorite PvP experience in any game over the past 12 years but I'd probably stop playing if they changed the way the whitebar works: it's just one of the defining characteristics that makes the game what it is, and I suspect that even if they wouldn't specifically recognize it a lot of other players would also start to find the game less enjoyable if changes were made to these systems. It's probably not something a lot of people want to hear, but I think arenas are just for the most part not worth playing. You really do need a solid trinity composition for them to make sense, but the population is such that you can't always get these. This is probably part of why BW removed ranked arenas in the first place. It's unfortunate and sad, but I think it's true.

This is how it's always worked. The fact is that it's a team game. It can be hard when you solo queue - trust me, I understand as it's all I've done for years - but the reality is that surviving this stuff requires team support. I think changing it would be a net loss for the game, which has already moved too much away from team play. Short stuns do add resolve. Roots have never added resolve and I'm very happy for it as it's a layer of depth to the tactics in the game. Using Creeping Terror or a Juggernaut leap, for example, to catch a ball carrier at just the right instant to kill them in the fire trap is just one of the things that makes the game so much more interesting than a mindless button smashing/damage-fest. If you aren't a fan of premades who just farm damage and ignore the objectives (and most people on these forums seem not to be) then little subtleties like this are the sorts of things we should want more of, not less. They're what makes the game more than just that farm. The strongest slow will take precedent, but slows do not stack. I think this is good. This is how it is supposed to work but there are a few bugs which cause debuffs to sometimes persist through defeat.

I think there are fewer slows and roots than there used to be, too, and honestly I can feel it when I play. I know intellectually that there are fewer stuns, and sometimes I notice it, but I always feel like I'm slowed a lot less. I also think that the impact of these slows are overestimated and often there's a pretty significant tradeoff to them. For example, it's true that Engineering Snipers can put that slow out BUT... the best way I can explain it is to say that the experience of playing Engineering is brief moments of hilarious burst surrounded by an overall existence of overwhelming, suffocating mediocrity. You can blow someone up if you get the right set up, sure, but the rest of the time it feels like you're playing on a starter planet where you don't have all your abilities so you just use random skills in a way that doesn't really make sense. In other words, yes, you get that slow but even with the awesome burst the whole spec is still, in my view anyways, very mediocre. Similarly, look at sorcerers with the broken Deathbrand. Obviously this should be fixed and it is annoying, but with sorcerer being one of my more played classes and I just never take this. The loss of DPS from Deathfield is just way, way too much. In a duel I'd take the Deathbrand slow, but in a warzone or even an arena I just think that if an opponent is playing with this, hey, good - they're being way, way less effective than they could be. They'll have an easier time surviving against a single melee that focuses them, sure, but while they're kiting that one guy they could be killing the entire enemy team instead. So honestly even the more annoying slows don't bother me that much. I think there is a little work to do in getting the balance quite right between all the classes, but overall I'd say most of the most annoying slows represent pretty significant tradeoffs right now. Pulls and jumps should absolutely be allowed with the ball. They've always been a huge part of the strategy and they're one of the main things that makes Huttball what it is. Some people hate Huttball, but honestly my experience over the past 12 years has been that this is at least often a matter of players who aren't all that good and don't know how to use the various movement skills well or to counter them, or players who don't like playing objectives. I agree that full on warps shouldn't be allowed. At least in the past you would drop the ball if you used these. If any of this has been changed it should be changed back. Eh, I've been on the short end of that. It's not that much fun, but I think the reality is that sometimes you're going to face a team that's just better than you and more than just a game, that's just part of life, honestly. Sometimes you have a really rough time of something and you need to move on and try again.

I really don't understand reading so many complaints about things that have been true of the game since 2011 as though they are new since 7.0 or some other recent time. Stealth players waiting in the endzone for the Huttball has been extraordinarily common since day one. The stun/resolve system functions exactly the same today as it did 12 years ago when the game launched. Premades winding up on the other team has been a regular feature of the game since the beginning. People have complained about balance since day one, and over many balance changes and paradigms. In fact, this is not unique to SWTOR: people saying a game is imbalanced is par for the course in any game with any kind of PvP element. One thing I will agree is that damage farming is a lot worse than it ever was. I've played since the very first year of the game and damage farming premades have always been present, but something about them is a lot worse today. The degree to which some of these guilds are ignoring objectives to farm damage is something I've never seen before in spite of having thousands of hours in PvP in this game. Sure, groups always did it during Huttball, but for instance in a Civil War they'll clear a node and run off somewhere else without a single one of them capping it. It used to be that they'd kill everyone, cap the node, and abandon it, undefended, but at least they'd actually cap it before abandoning it. I can't really agree with some of the other stuff, though. I don't intend to be rude and I hope it doesn't come across that way, but I think that today as it has been for 12 years people who say the whitebar system is broke and you just sit there stunned forever are players who don't really understand how it works and who waste their stunbreaks at the wrong time. In fact, if anything stuns are a lot easier to deal with today than they've ever been before, not only because there are significantly fewer stuns in the game today, but many classes have extra stunbreaks available or other abilities that can be activated while stunned. The degree to which you spend less time stunned in the game versus even just a few years ago is not even remotely close. It's waaaaaaaaay less today. The bottom line for me is that I think that the whitebar system in this game is one of the few things in the game which is truly mechanically interesting or unique (although maybe not anymore) about the game and I think altering or removing it would be a real loss. The way it is now there are some a very nice layers of strategy about how to use your stuns, your stunbreaks, etc. (though it may not be as deep as it was in the past when there were more stuns available). Changing this would remove one of the most tactically interesting parts of the game. I also have no problem with stealths in the endzone. Again, this is just a matter of strategy. Also, I can't understand complaining about tanks carrying the ball. Of course tanks carry the huttball. That's how it's always been and that's frankly the way it should be. Sure, a non-tank can carry the ball sometimes in a match that doesn't have good team compositions, but if your team has tanks then of course giving them the ball makes sense. Some of the other stuff may be good complaints. I have no opinion about the tokens. I don't play the game to earn stuff - I play it for the intrinsic reward of competition - so I don't know anything about that. Maybe to those who do care the rewards aren't well balanced. I agree there are some things thast should obviously be fixed like the scoreboard or abilities that are bugged in some way or another. I agree matchmaking could be better, but it's always been a little rough just by the nature of trying to make matches with the population that's available. Even back in the day with more people in the queue it was not always the best. I agree it can be frustrating, but at the same time I'd rather have matches popping even with imperfect team balance than have to wait forever for something more perfect. By the way, something to be aware of in the "be careful what you ask for" category: at least in the past, the system used a kind of "hidden ELO" for matchmaking. Nobody ever saw it, but the game matched you up based on your past wins and losses. One problem with this is that it could become very easy to get stuck in a certain tier so that if, for instance, you had some bad luck with matchmaking early on, winding up with some poor players, you might get stuck being in the "tier" without a clear way to get out of it.

I feel like it's getting worse. I used to have to do it every 3 or 4 days, but the past several days it's been every time I log in.

Not sure if it's related, but after I finally got the game to actually complete the download and run tonight, many of the animations are just sortof... "missing," For example, on my Gunslinger the Aimed Shot will fire, but the character won't do the actual animation of raising his arms and firing.

I tried the "change language" thing and now all of my in game text is missing and replaced with strings like, "loc:263:portraitbar". The menus have no text, the character abilities have no text, the maps have no text, etc. I couldn't even quit the game without alt-f4ing because there was no button to quit.

I also have the problem. I've never had the game log in and tell me the server version doesn't match - it will just redownload the whole patch about half the time when I log in. The other half the time it will work as it should.

The importance of gear is definitely true right now. People used to joke about how bad Recruit Gear was back in the very early days of the game, but in my view a good PvPer could still take a fresh max level character in recruit gear into a warzone and put up the top numbers. When I returned to the game in the post 7.0 era my damage was really pretty pathetic until I managed to get almost a fully geared out character.

This is true BUT the thing is that really dedicated PvPers are more likely to be investing time in PvE to get the better gear. For instance, I spent a week doing flashpoints over and over to be able to unlock Hyde and Zeek so I could get higher tier gear to PvP. I also spent billions leveling three different crafting skills and discovering recipes to craft the purple augments (I'd love to get the gold but that's crazy expensive even for trying to craft it myself). More casual PvPers probably don't put this kind of effort into gearing.

Think of it this way: imagine you are in a 12 minute long warzone like a long Voidstar or Novarre. If a player managed to hit an attack without missing a single global cooldown the entire match and averaged 40K damage per hit, that would be over 20 million. Now people won't come close because nobody can ever miss NO cooldown the entire match. Some are used on defensive abilities, or on moving between targets, or on respawning, or on just getting from the spawn to the battle the first time. Also, people usually won't average 40K per attack, but you can probably get at least somewhere between 30k - 40k. The point is that if you can reliably do damage as often as possible, you can get high numbers. Therefore, another really important aspect here in addition to what has already been said is having a decent enough team - usually with a good healer or two - so that you don't die and can keep doing damage! Related to this is learning how to survive longer by using positioning and defensive cooldowns well.

I'd generally agree but add a few things. One is a technicality that I have to point out just because it's weird. I agree: keybinding is essential, and mouse turning is pretty important. Nobody should take what I'm about to say to justify not learning these things - BUT one of the best sages I ever saw play was a full on clicker. I have no idea how he managed it and we all used to give him a good-natured hard time in the PvP community of our server, but he was excellent. Now he wasn't to the level of the top of the line sage/sorc on our server, BUT that guy was easily the best MMO player I've ever met or encountered so that isn't really much of a knock! This clicker was just really something else - but again, what was so odd about him is that you normally will never see anyone do anywhere half that well unless they keybind. Two: I can sympathize with learning mouse movement. I never clicked abilities - it was always obvious to me that this didn't make sense to do - BUT I did move with the WASD keys for the first year or so I played the game. I was actually pretty good considering I wasn't mouse turning, but it reached the point where I knew I had to learn. It was really hard at first, but I'd encourage anyone to not give up and to consider trying to learn by means of small steps. For example, one of the first things I did to learn it was just to turn with my mouse when I was in the corner by the health boost in Huttball and I was all alone. It was too much to try to mess with learning it when I was trying to deal with opponents as well, so I started just with those empty corners in Huttball. Then I started doing it in empty parts of other maps, and eventually started doing it while in combat/ It can be learned! Three: I think it's not unusual for a top DPS player to also be playing the objectives, at least sometimes. Yes, there are a lot of players who just farm damage these days and ignore the objectives and an someone playing objectives will usually not beat them, but it is possible and certainly in a match where everyone is paying attention to the objectives you can still put up very high numbers while doing so.

I wouldn't say that learning to get a single big hit is great for PvP, either. Certainly it's worthwhile and a good thing to do! - but at the same time, getting a big hit is more about having good gear and figuring out a specific sequence of skills that work. Improving in PvP and getting better so that you can do well over the course of a whole match is more a matter of experience and getting more comfortable with how your entire set of skills work together, what rotations or priorities to use them in, positioning, etc. A person can go into a PvP match and get an enormous 130K hit - and still have very low numbers for the whole match because setting up a single hit is not what PvP is about.