So, given we've got 80 pages of comments here and BW are hard at work making a single-server LFG, I wonder if they may be encouraged to tell us a little about what's currently in the works and where they stand on the issue, particularly given the population & participation issues raised with so many of these posts. As I write this, I'm hanging about on the Fleet looking for 1 DPS for Hard Mode BT during prime time. We have an ad-hoc /lfg channel on this server and have been spamming both for over half an hour so far, not a single answer, not even a bite. I see other people trying fruitlessly to get a Mandolorian Raiders and a regular BT going with similar results. Your game may be all sorts of wonderful BW but it just won't let us in.

I'm going to jump in on this again just because it's still alive and likely a deal-breaker for me. If for whatever reasons we don't or can't participate in the game's content, it's worthless. SWTOR might develop the most amazing, mind-blowing content ever but if I (we) can't get to it, let-alone when I (we) want to, it may's well not exist. As it stands, on my server planet and fleet populations are so low it's practically impossible at any level to get people for any group quests or activities of any kind, let-alone flashpoints. We have tanks and healers spamming /1 and /lfg for daily Hard Modes, groups of all levels struggling even to get enough DPS. In other MMO's tanks & healers are highly sought after, so much so that I remember for quite a while in WoW (well after the better implementation of the LFG tool was running) that people would pay quite significantly for them to go on runs, even after extra (and significant) rewards were included in the LFG for Tanks people still offered money, particularly for popular tanks. I don't see how under these circumstances even the most amazing, fully functional LFG tool can help much if it's limited to a tiny population or how it's a detriment to your cherished 'community'... 6 players on a given planet & 60 on the Fleet isn't much of a community. If you're not going to increase the number of players per server, I can't see how there's any option other than allowing cross-server groups. WoW is really showing its age and I think we're all sick to death of goblins & elves, but I'll absolutely go back if it means I can jump in whenever I want, on any character and with minimal fuss be running instances & raids or group / quests while waiting on (reasonable) queues - i.e: playing an MMO as an MMO. I'm truly impressed that finding a functional way to group people isn't considered absolutely critical for an MMO.

I recall several sets of armour in WoW that ended up looking atrocious due to limitations put on detail levels, though the art for them used in development was actually really nice. It's possible it's a similar case here. It looks like there's some nice potential among those sets but even the best, despite the spikes are pretty... uninspired & uninspiring, the Republic sets especially the Sage.. holy * that's bad. The Republic gear in general (sans Trooper) even at their current best in-game are eye-gougingly bland, why not use the gear progression to move on - the Jedi may have strong ideals about attachment but you're taking it way too far; Jedi != Amish or luddite. I'm further puzzled by the drastic differences between the PvE and PvP sets - my understanding was that the stats the respective sets shared would be several degrees further apart than they are now, but not so much that they need to be shown as completely different armour sets. In doing so, it really looks like you've given yourselves a huge amount of extra work for no good reason. The art department doesn't seem to be on the same page as everybody else... or even in the same novel in this case. I keep looking back at them and they do grow on me a bit... but as so many others have said, even allowing that the previews in the dressing room are lower quality than normal, the basic design of those armours really is below par - I actually agree with the person who suggested they could've come directly from an old version of NWN (or its dnd-like peers). Other games frequently have unappealing armour sets (much to their detriment), SWTOR had quite a few really great places to build on from lower levels... I'm seriously surprised that wasn't the original plan. Some of the lower level armours (often not mod-able or have only 2 slots) were fantastic. Your logic eludes me BW.

Ultimately it will come down to participation, innovation and polish. TL;DR - Blizz is no angel and it took them years of denial before they accepted the facts and learned more than a few tough lessons on the way, but they get it now, they've learned *a lot*. BW by contrast is starting from first principles and muddling through. GW2 sports some interesting ways of getting players involved (chiefly 'sandbox' features) and as frequently documented and illustrated on mmo-champ, WoW has managed incredible participation rates in several key areas of the game, not only through the very well publicised LFD and LFR tools (which have seen intense development after years of Blizz almost vehemently being against them). SWTOR by contrast has servers with huge zones and tiny populations and no way of engaging players in the many great areas or game in general other than fancy (and very likeable) quest dialogues. Clearly the level of engagement in solo quests has been very high but there's really nothing beyond solo quests. I did see that BW say 48% of players have been on one or more Operations but that really is an extremely minimal measure of player engagement and participation. WoW's LFD and LFR have seen a huge amount of development and ensure that most aspects of the game, from top to bottom have very high and increasingly reliable participation rates on rigorously tested content and mechanics - i.e. people get on and actually enjoy the content without having to work through ancillary activities to get to the game that they logged on to play in the first place. They've worked really hard to bring down the barriers between players and guilds and get them all involved with one-another. As so often pointed out, SWTOR has started out just like WoW did, with many of the same preconceptions and biases. BW is only starting out, making many of the exact same mistakes and missteps that Blizz made when they first released WoW. WoW by contrast has been through several generational changes (not just incremental but major revisions), it may be mired in old graphic quality and a tired old medieval setting but the technology and frankly science behind it is light years ahead of any other game - pound for pound, on that front alone few companies, let-alone games, are even in the ballpark with Blizz.

Salient point - content is worthless if we can't / don't participate in it.

Oh, hello there Mr.Mac thread; Nice to see you! I've already said here that I'd very much like to see SWTOR for Mac so count this post as a bump.

No. There is a lot to like, there's a lot of really great work in there but they've simply not learned any of the lessons that other MMO's have learned. BioWare is way, way behind other MMO's on the technical front, they may boast a large staff but aside from huge and rather pretty environments, it's tough to see how they're getting much done. It's choc full of annoyances and *bad* design decisions - not decisions you might debate, we're talking absolutely basic, critically simple and extremely important design features which are textbook example of what *not* to do. I have no faith that the people in charge will make the necessary changes, they're dogged in their 'old-school' views and practices. Add-ons saved a certain other MMO for me, without the features they provided (many glaringly obvious, key features which the game lacked and the devs CBF working on). I'd have only played that game for months without them - but they were always a bandaid. MMO's have generally come a long way, several have tried to be innovative in their own ways but have gone off the rails for, yes, not learning the mistakes of their predecessors. SWTOR is a WoW clone - you're in denial if you choose to believe otherwise, the Hero Engine was reverse engineered, a great many of SWTOR's subscribers came from that game and over the course of years, along with Blizz, learned a great many lessons - all of which have been ignored here. There are so many really good lessons the entire industry should have learned from other games / MMO's, it's a tragedy that BW seems to've had its head in the sand (or more reasonably, were really hard at work on their own projects - but same result) the entire time. They stated during Beta that the game would be wildly successful even with a pretty moderate subscriber base. They're not trying to be the best, there's no desire to innovate, they're happy to just have the franchise chug along - which is fair enough really, lots of people will love it for years but ultimately it'll end up feeling like any favourite series of games or movies, strung along and milked for as long as they possibly can, for every cent they can squeeze out of it. I would love to be proven wrong (no, not by debate - by how the game develops). Ultimately though happy subscribers vs unhappy subscribers is an irrelevant distinction - either way the company gets its money. We're just a few months in and I appreciate that making a game like this is a truly mammoth undertaking so although I'm not happy with the current state (and also because I'm holding out for server transfers, and am very grateful for Aussie servers), I'm going to hang onto my subscription for a while longer. I really would love to see SWTOR become the game it should be and I'd like to see BioWare be the ones to get it there. I'm really not filled with confidence though.

Hi Bioware, please quit screen shakes, they're incredibly annoying - particularly while guarding the turrets in a certain warzone with those guns constantly blasting out a high-pitched rhythm at top volume (which is what big guns do, I get it) - there must be some other way of impressing upon us their awe inspiring power. I appreciate that we're supposed to understand that the space ships are supposed to impress us, but there's no atmosphere in space - else it wouldn't be 'space' - but that's not my gripe specifically - I really don't mind the intention or that we can hear in space (yes, it's in a great many sci-fi movies) - the screen shake is just too much. Please quit using screen shakes. On similar note, can we *please* have click-through companions. I do love the fact that our companions have voiceovers but I'm patently uninterested in anything to do with my companions when I'm trying to say click on a vendor or quest dude or even a mailbox or other player. The only place we can speak with our companions is in a cantina or on our ship, the cantina conversations are the only occasions in the entire game that there is ever a need or reason of any kind to click on a companion and even then it's a low priority. The ship robot I know many people complain about, I'm starting to agree with them. The high-pitched voice of our snivelling malcontent needs an option to be shut-up or shut-down. With all our money, contacts and power - can we possibly replace it with a droid which doesn't whine like a spoiled 12yo girl? I'm told you're doing something about the Crew Skills return window - the one which pops in on some super high priority to splash the words STAR WARS over half the screen and instantly closes any other windows that may have been open. Doing something so intrusive, so often with your name / brand spread all over it is pure genius - whenever I think of inept, clumsy, egotistical user experience I associate it with BW and StarWars. Thanks for reminding me again and again and again, I get the message. The minimap in Voidstar obscures buttons on the right - every class has more than 24 base abilities which need to be hot-keyed; Why would you deliberately obscure button frames? How can that minimap possibly be worth more to us than abilities we've stuck in those precious few frames? The inactivity log out message lasts just a couple of seconds - show a timer once we're flagged AFK with a countdown. Scrolling Crew Skills window - wow... really? This was your best solution? Zoom levels - please stop adjusting the zoom levels. I can't fathom why so many taxis and even our own mounts adjust zoom levels or why you think inconsistent zooming if you just have to have it is a good idea. Don't change my zoom levels, ever; There's never any value in you changing my UI settings, particularly if you're not going to set them anywhere near useful. Whoever's in charge of this - please stop it, seriously just go for a walk, play a crossword whatever just please stop 'helping'. Camera position on vehicles - I understand that you need to place the camera with the players character but the characters are invisible. Can you please place the camera so that we can see something other than the boot of a vehicle taking up the entire display? There's a lot to like in the game but the things which detract from it really ruin the experience and the vast majority of them are just *dumb* - you need to understand BW - a bad user experience is a bad user experience. It's not rocket surgery, figure it out.

This and several other comments show that people in general are becoming more aware that a quantity of features, if not thoroughly thought through, tested, polished and implemented *cause* problems and degrade the overall experience. It's not enough to pull a solution together and whack a label on the box anymore. We use features of our games repeatedly every session we play and every interaction shapes our opinion and experience. Where something doesn't work well or worse is annoying or even worse gets in the way of other functionality, we don't judge that feature in isolation - no matter how good everything else is, if say every so often no matter what you're doing a window pops over a portion of the screen with advertising or information of a low priority, we're left with a poor opinion of the game. The Crew Skills windows are a great example of this - they're required features but their structure, function and implementation are terrible. On top of that, every time that window splashes a huge logo over my display I'm insulted. Think about that BW, many times every game session you're not just intruding on my game, you're insulting me. F' knows I'm aware which game I'm playing, quit waving your fat titles in my face. The UI as mentioned is absolutely critical - we're looking at it every second of game time (ok, not during cut scenes) and it also conveys extremely important information which we also need to be able to discern when our primary focus is (more generally) the centre of the display. Where a UI lacks, the entire game experience suffers. I'd love to see TOR continue to be successful and most importantly to evolve but there is a huge amount of work to be done just to meet the bar of the competition and current expectations, particularly on the (more) technical side of things and of course on making sure that feature's aren't just plugged in but done well. To their credit, BW has said they're making significant progress on most of the things the OP has listed as shortcomings and which need serious attention.

What's not to like... he's a violent, insecure, emotional wreck; A latent psychopath with a death wish and a growing megalomania, gifted with the power and inclination to force anybody to do anything, anytime, anywhere or slice them and everybody they've ever known to ribbons on a whim. Padme's just a well brought up girl who (not unreasonably) fell for one of the most talented and highly regarded young Knights of the Republic and apparently just assumes that any association with violence is purely in the line of his work. Anakin just happened to be in the right place with the 'love' switch was toggled in her head. Sometimes people are like that though... just going about their normal lives and *thok* there goes that little switch to unquestioningly love or murder. No wait.. that's not right... unless it's some kind of competition to see which of them has the more potent mental disorder?

Thanks for the thoughts & suggestions. It's very difficult to get groups for anything on my server, so many people are 'under geared' in terms of Hard Modes, it's entirely possible the healer was struggling. Even if he was though I still find the sudden big drops quite a surprise - perhaps it is more common but we don't see it because healers are keeping on top of it and with better gear, it's less noticeable for them. I have been favouring Defence over Shield, I might see about trying to balance that out more. I agree of course that without a combat log, it's all just guesswork. I was originally not going to post the query because I had no data to work with - but for the same reason figured I should ask if anybody else had encountered a similar situation.

Just ran Hard Mode Black Talon and found that my health quite frequently shot down to half, even on non-boss fights. I know Assassin tanks aren't known for great mitigation (though I believe the general intention is that all tanks should ultimately have similar mitigation, overall). Before you say it, no I wasn't standing in fire or pulling five groups at a time and my gear was repaired after each death - yes, we wiped a couple of times after I suddenly lost a huge chunk of health. Stats follow: (buffed with what I've got on after just finishing the run, Mark of Power and Coordination) Health: 17520 Armor: 6490 Damage Reduction: 39.53% Defence Chance: 24.81% Shield Chance: 30.06% Shield Absorb: 32.59% This really shouldn't be happening, not on an early hard mode, surely.

This is why I fear and loathe Arena - the nerfs and continual class adjustments reduced the whole thing to a homogenous mass - which for competitive PvP is precisely what you need. WoW already has Arena's totally covered, League of Legends and other purely PvP games are really great at what they do - what possible gain can there be in trying to compete with them by copying them? If you do choose to go the Arena route and don't prove to be a better PvP game than the other offerings, your precious subscribers will simply transfer to the better Arena game and I'll bet any money you like that those Arena games will become ever more 'flavour of the month' as they forever tinker with balance and features. Aside from that, SWTOR is still in it's infancy, only just out of Beta and very obviously so. Tacking an Arena system on top of getting even basic PvP to a reasonable point (which it is most definitely *not* yet) would be a complete disaster. (edited to correct autocorrect incorrectly second-guessing me)

I have to know.. how exactly do you 'feel the connection' - literally, tell us how the game conveys to you the sense and feedback that your actions are not only achieving your goal in general but in specific. Are your bleed attacks more effective than just repeating your default attack? Do you need more Accuracy rating? Is Alacrity giving you an edge over Crit, did many of your attacks miss, which ones? What exactly killed you that last fight, was it the aoe, an extra attack from the boss or did you stand in fire? Is it worth some portion of the group standing in fire to avoid another attack that presents a greater risk? Who's being targeted by the mob you're targeting? Are you healing efficiently, are multiple people healing the same person at the expense of others because they can't see incoming heals? People don't often make good decisions when they rely solely on feelings, maybe you're just one of those people with a great 'gut instinct'... for all I know, you can drive with your eyes closed. Without mechanisms in play to give us appropriate feedback it's all just guesswork. I've mentioned it before but I'll mention it again - I'd much rather have the tools within the game rather than having to rely on third partials. If third parties it must be though, I'm quite prepared to work with that - there have been some truly excellent game mods made that the game company I'm thinking of had absolutely no interest in.

Forced anything is bad. Intuitive, comprehensive and effective game mechanics which enable players to enjoy the game however they like is/are good.

Where add ons become a requirement, it speaks more of a game developers failing to recognise and deal with players and the games needs. I would have been quite happy to never use them in WoW but the provided facilities simply were *never* up to scratch - they had years to learn from what the independent mod makers were doing; The very few times they did try to take those mods on board, the attempts were either a complete failure or greatly misunderstood (by the Devs). The base UI was vastly insufficient and equally bloated, threat management and 'dps race' fights were integral to many, many encounters but without add ons, there was no feedback available - it took them over five years to get around to the consideration of making procs more noticeable. I would *love* to not need add ons but Developers have shown complete disregard and often times total disrespect for their own work and that of the community - and so independent devs try to fill the gap, without pay or any real recognition, working often quite hard to build and maintain additional software (sometimes in dedicated teams, for years on end) which the Game's Devs should have taken care of in the first place, *in* the game. Any system that fails to provide appropriate feedback is itself a failure - and I'll restate this, wherever an encounter relies on a particular mechanic it *must* provide appropriate feedback or the Devs simply haven't done their job. Addons are required where game developers fail.

Just an observation, but after what transpires (arguably a pretty disturbing situation / choice for which our character bears some responsibility) it seems somewhat incongruous that when leaving, we go right through the hangar, past the perfectly good stealth-enabled ship that our Watcher used to get there and instead walk out an airlock. Not a big deal but... it feels like somebody overlooked that little detail.

So.... any word on progress? It's a great shame that it's such a chore to get people together for group content in an MMO...

What a wonderfully intuitive and sensible approach, nice to see they thought this one through /facepalm

Nup... magic attacks simply ignore my armour and my dps isn't in the ballpark. I get him to about 30% chiefly with Shock (for running around LoS) but a couple of knockbacks clear him to cast & it's over.

Even at level 47 Thanaton absolutely smashes me without breaking a sweat - and I'm a reasonably well geared & experienced tank. (Yes, I do everything mentioned, though I'm going to try again & really focus on LoS).

This. The skills, missions and training are very expensive and the way to cope has been via Slicing. If the GTN were less of a chore to get anything done with, it may've been some real help. Altering Slicing to break-even doesn't fix the issue, it simply removes the (rather broken) bandaid that had earlier been applied. Now that Slicing no longer acts as a monetary 'faucet' (albeit a leaky one), the 'drains' are simply excessive.