Health in open world mobs was reduced (primarily to reduce the slog) but they didn't fundamentally change their abilities. I don't believe they reduced the health of any "bosses" or champs (maybe not even golds) except for what Level Sync might be doing. More the universality of companions than their actual strengths. The JK got a healing companion early because they were weak defensively while the trooper got it late because they were strong defensively (the healer companions were generally weaker offensively to compensate). Part of the reason the comps got a boost was so solo players could solo Heroics since they were a big part of Conquest at the time (really the only content you could do once you hit max level). Fast xp also plays a role and the result is over-levelling. The underlying base mechanic is still there when you over level. If you are 6 -10 levels above the opponent they do little to no damage to you (Level Sync actually doesn't do anything to this). Level Sync is also a bit of a misnomer in that high level characters synced down are still much more powerful than characters actually at that level. They get to keep all their abilities (and have more of them so you don't use the basic attack - which is pretty weak overall - much), some of which the original content was not designed to deal with. Saber throw is actually a good example. It does a lot of damage. 5% is a pretty solid buff considering most high level utilities are 1% buffs and as I recall, the class buffs are added on after the level sync reductions.

I'll have to follow up with you on that. I'm not on my gaming rig right now. After I log in tomorrow, I'll respond to your post. One thing that does impact things a bit are class buffs as well. Having all 4 class buffs is a pretty big boost.

It doesn't really other than being a response to someone who said SWTOR didn't have as much end game content as other MMOs and that was why people left as opposed to the grind the game was in the first 6-12 months.

The point simply is that there is a massive difference in power between brand new players on their first character and "professional" players on their 20th character after playing 10 years and accumulating all the bonuses associated with playing that long. Your experience is completely different from what someone on their first character experiences (they aren't one or two shotting anything). So when I leave the mailbox on Tython and my character is as powerful as a new player's character leaving Taris, the game should be balanced around that instead of the much weaker character that the new player is going to have. That is a recipe for a game shutting down. The game never was difficult, just tedious and it was end game players that complained the most about how long it took to get their second and third alts to "endgame".

SWTOR launched with 2 Operations (5 bosses each). WOW launched with zero. Rift launched with no raids. Warhammer Online launched with 1 raid. Age of Conan launched with 1 raid. Everquest launched with 1 world boss. Final Fantasy 11 launched with no end game content. How exactly was SWTOR different in end game content than these contemporary MMOs

A return question. How many datacrons do you have collected in your legacy? What are your total legacy based bonuses to your stats (particularly your Mastery and Power)? What level were you? Sounds like a lot like a lucky crit or a massively overlevelled character. I've played that fight dozens of times (even with a nearly complete legacy) and don't recall ever one-shotting the Sith (and with a Knight character Force Leap is just about a universal opener - until you get one of the saber throw abilities). Boosts to your stats from datacrons are exempt from level sync (except for crit which seems to have a hard cap). There is a big difference between playing a new character in a legacy where you have legendary status and someone hitting that fight on their first character.

This was only a small percentage of the players playing the game. There were no where near enough players leaving the game for this reason to have any real impact. Most players left the game before they even got to endgame. That waves of people left because there was no endgame is a massive exaggeration.

wrong, most players quit before they even got to endgame. "They quit because there was no end game" is a fantasy built by some end game players.

yup, this is exactly what happened at launch. Players logged in found it way too grindy and quit. Works both ways.

The door you are supposed to blow open with the explosives you pick up is already open when you arrive.

What time of night. I just left Tython a few minutes ago and there were nearly 100 people there. Seems reasonably active to me.

Beyond the Discord channels and gamer forums, just about any site that offers to bring buyers and sellers together to buy virtually anything. Some are dedicated to gaming items others are not. It's pretty easy to tell the pros from the amateurs on those sites. Not that long ago, someone posted their credit balance in a screenshot (which was either from their legacy bank or a guild bank based on the amount) too show how much they had available to sell, but weren't really careful with what they cropped and ended up posting a portion of their open in game mailbox which contained mail that would be unlikely to be found with a professional credit seller. Perhaps not ironclad, but very suggestive of a "wealthy" player attempting to sell credits rather than an actual professional credit seller.

They aren't all credit seller websites (in fact most of them aren't). Didn't see your name, though I think you are too smart to go that route anyway (You don't strike me as someone who would sell credits, but others do).

take a look at some of the sites that have credit seller info. Some people are too eager to make a profit they don't even hide their identity (lots of in game names and how to contact information). You just don't want to acknowledge it is happening.

With the number of people bypassing the GTN now, it has lost a lot of it's effectiveness in controlling the economy (you could cut in game rewards to zero and the game would close before it had any impact on the prices of items currently selling off-GTN). The development of alternate currencies (hypecrates and cartel packs) just makes the situation worse as it devalues the credits even more.

Correct. People who don't have those credits go to credit sellers which pumps more "out of the economy credits" back into the system. Credits sitting in credit seller banks don't cause inflation because they are out of circulation. When a "not super wealthy" player buys those credits, they pump them back into the economy directly into the "super wealthy player's bank account". It is a forgone conclusion at this point that at least some of those super wealthy players (and guilds) sell their credits back to credit sellers (since it is now a lot more profitable to buy credits from players than to farm them now) creating a loop that buries the economy.

That may have been the issue in the past (and may be in the future if Bioware is actually able to drain credits from the game) but right now the issue is the amassing of huge amounts of credits through player to player trades that bypass the GTN. If all trades are taxed at their value, the economy quickly comes under control. The amount of credits you can generate as a player is tiny compared to what is already in the game and the credit sellers keep filling in the holes that legitimate GTN trades take out of the system. As to the argument that the number of credits in game doesn't cause inflation, when the number of players holding those massive numbers of credits shrink (they accumulate the credits from everyone else) they have a monopoly. They can buy out any specific item and re-list it for whatever obscene amount they want to (and someone will pay it eventually - buying credits from credit sellers if they need to). That is what drives up prices not the couple of million credits a player gets from leveling their character (daily areas are as different story but that is a whole different argument as several of the daily areas over reward for the time investment - like CZ)

I picked a week to make it affordable for smaller guilds. It would have to be pretty high to somewhat compensate for the fees that aren't collected (we are still trying to pull credits out of the economy after all) if it lasted a whole month. You could run a lot of stuff through a guild in a month and having to pay for "free trading" might cause a little hesitation for people setting up trading guilds designed specifically to circumvent the fees (which guilds are already discussing).

Doesn't really matter if your guild would do it or not. I don't buy credits from credit sellers but that doesn't mean other players don't. All it takes is a couple of guilds set up specifically to do this and you undercut the entire initiative (again, making only the honest players pay the fees). I would much rather see a guild perk you purchase with credits allow trading between guild members tax free for a limited time (1 week for example) rather than an all out as long as the trade is between guild members it's OK, That's way too easy to abuse (and people will abuse it guaranteed).

Perhaps Bioware could institute a "Gifter" status that cannot be obtained in game and only awarded by Bioware that allows gifts without taxes from a specific character (something that can also be taken away if abused). Perhaps they could also create a guild perk that lasts 1 week and costs 1 billion credits that allows free trading within the guild (at least that would pull a billion a week out of the economy in lieu of the missed fees)

Hopefully they will monitor this closely and if there is a lot of that type of activity, punish guilds doing it severely. Up to and including permanent bans of those involved. This is clearly going to happen if guild transactions are not taxed in some form or another. It is very easy to set up a guild to launder these items.

One more was the mailbox credit exploit that came with the latest update (that was supposed to help curb inflation). That combined with all of the big transactions being off the GTN (eliminating the only substantial credit sink in the game) resulted in credits not flowing out of the game as intended (supply of credits drives up prices). Together, the exploits and off-GTN trading have ballooned the number of credits in game ("inflation" has gotten worse as more things moved to off-GTN trade even while influx of credits into the game has been cut massively). Now Bioware has to spend time that could be spent dealing with other things tracking down the exploiters (which if they catch 10% of the people who used it is a big success leaving hundreds of billions of new credits in the game from the exploit). The QT tax was more likely designed to change the way people played since it has no effect whatsoever on credit generation (the amount it draws out compared to what goes into the game every day is insignificant). The most effective credit generators don't even use QT. It is aimed at people playing through the RPG content to slow them down so they aren't asking for new content.

They did "fix" it. That was what resulted in the big credit exploit that undercut the "economy initiative". It now only takes out of the mail as much as you can hold and leaves the rest.

It would be nice if we knew a little more about why these particular levels of "taxation" were chosen. I could see making them more punitive if the goal was to force the items back onto the GTN (assuming GTN fees aren't going to end up with these same modifiers). If Bioware could share the formula they used to come up with these taxes, it would go a long way toward them being more acceptable to a larger part of the player base. The concept is fine, but like the QT costs, the implementation seems flawed.

No, but the number of bugs introduced by even a small update is pretty telling. You can either assume the coders are incompetent (which isn't the case) or the code is so complex (or buggy in its own right) that they don't fully understand it (most likely the case). The revolving door at Bioware makes it pretty likely that no one really understands the intricacies of the code and that they are just piling new code on top of old (that's generally what happens with MMOs anyway). It's also pretty standard for games nowadays to have lots of "inactive" code still in them at release (or built up over time). All it takes is setting the wrong boolean to true (or a mistyped redirecting statement) and you reactivate that code and whatever it does without even realizing it. It might be a minor inconvenience or it might be catastrophic once you trigger it.