Honestly from the sounds of things you didn't know how to play the game and BW needed to offer you an extra tutorial for however you missed the stuff the first time.

Did you also hate the game aspect of the game? Because when you literally cannot lose against a champion, because your invulnerable companion can tank and hold their aggro forever, that's not a game. That's not even a trick masquerading as gameplay that they'd try on kids in educational games.

Huh? Source? Or are you just making that up? I was super keen for level sync, because I thought it might actually add a ton of challenging solo content to the game. Instead, everything became impossible to lose at...

Solo PvE players have been left with nothing particularly challenging or engaging. Both skilled and unskilled players can be catered to. The easiest nastiest way might be a buff taken on which lowers the player and companion's power by 35% or something, but gives significantly better rewards from heroics. A bonus quest or something every time a heroic is completed. Players could even have the ability added to their legacy list, perhaps clicking it each time cycles through buff stacks which increase the difficulty and rewards. I love the idea of level scaling and heroic content recycling, but also presumed it would have the difficulty level of Oricon or something, rather than being easier than any content we've ever seen in this game.

Yes and that's what I've mostly done. I've been gone for a year, since 3.0 when it was getting mind-numbingly easy then. I came back because 4.0 looked like a return to form for people who want a good solo play experience, and instead they've gone the other way, hence my feedback now. What's wrong with that? I've put a ton of time and money into this game and really like other aspects of it, like the characters and the story, hence I'm here to give feedback. Because I want it to succeed. Well, yeah? It's meant as a constructive point? Something to be concerned about? And you think this was because it had actual gameplay in it like every successful game does, and taking out the gameplay is the solution? The engine was clunky, the story releases and use of companions after reaching 50 were poorly planned and paced, map design has mostly been a sucky floor-texture-staring corridors experience, ability bloat got higher, and the game's solo end game got borderline mind-numbingly easy with 3.0 compared to the reasonable challenge of Oricon. Look at the google trend stats, there was twice as much excitement at the time of Rise of the Hutt Cartel compared to now. The game was significantly more challenging back then. All the top multiplayer games are. Starcraft? League of Legends? Counterstrike? These all involve actual game play and it hasn't hurt them. Even Farmville had people making up giant spreadsheets and researching stats. SWTOR though? You literally cannot lose now, as shown in the videos, it's worse than a preschooler's educational game. Nobody has asked for more grind. Personally the way the game plays now is the biggest grind ever. You literally don't need to do anything, the companion can do anything. The only reason you're in combat now is to wait it out until it's over. You don't need to think, you're not playing a game. The reason I'm here criticizing is because they turned it into an ultimate grind, and it's boring beyond any comparison. Been gone for a year, so it seems I fit your request several-fold. Hardly been blind. Ever since 3.0 and the borif'ication of the game, the servers have been far emptier. It seems it was such a disaster that they had to rush out emergency 12xp for a year to get people to come back. They've just gone into hyper mode of that mistake with 4.0, in my opinion. A game needs actual gameplay.

Huh? That's the whole crux of what I and others are asking for? You're just going to decide I'm not interested because you set the goalposts at a point which doesn't match our desires and said case closed? Then say you're not interested in hearing any clarification? It's like you're trying to not be worth replying to. I honestly don't know if you're trolling or just a bit off upstairs. The rewards for time and effort are what needs to be competitive to feel satisfied with any handicapping option. I've said this several times now. The gameplay, as the other element, must also be engaging. Or even present, beyond a companion being able to solo everything, as shown in the videos. Where in this thread has that happened once?

I didn't say anything about operations or warzones either? I barely do them. Your previous post asked about leveling, I'm not leveling and am already at end game. The changes in 4.0 (and to a lesser extent 3.0) have taken the fun out of it. Companions aren't even used in operations or warzones so I'm not sure why you'd think that people were talking about that? Those of us here for the solo play, the story and progression and gameplay, are now just left with the first of those, for no clear reason that I can see. Every successful game in history which I can think of has actual gameplay in it, SWTOR no longer does with invincible companions (as shown in two videos now).

I already explained why this doesn't satisfy the requirements? Have you not read the thread or are you just not interested in actually responding to what other people have to say? I don't know if it's even worth repeating the explanation that we want both interesting (actual) gameplay and be rewarded for our game time competitively in an environment where we must bid against each other on the GTN etc with the outcomes. Why make up these straw men? Nowhere have I ever said that other people's feedback is above or below mine? In fact there are people disagreeing with me here literally saying not to post and just play the game as it is, did you mean to criticize them? Or is truth just not valued in your conversation?

I already am at end game, who said anything about leveling? Playing this as a solo RPG as I always have is now mind-numbingly boring to the point I'm just not and have stopped all week. There's no actual gameplay or challenges to put myself against, or progression to be made. As per the video, Nadia is invincible against even champions. This is no longer actually a game. A game involves having to do something. It involves design so that the player is given challenges and then gets reward out of defeating those challenges. Even in Mario, which I played when I was like 5, you had to jump across the hole and avoid the enemies.

That does not solve the problem, and it has been explained multiple times in this thread for why not. Why go in circles? This is simply not true. It's well within my hands to call for gameplay to be added back to this game, and truthfully I do not believe it will ruin it for others. I suspect it will actually save the game from dying when people realize it's absolutely boring to play a game that doesn't actually need to be played and where companions always outshine you, once the initial feeling of power relative to the old system has worn off.

To make it visually clear what is wrong with the game at the moment, here is a video. Rank 12 Nadia is able to solo and hold champion aggro forever. There is literally no challenge here, except not dying of boredom. The only way to lose at this is to sabotage yourself. Even kids games are more involving than this. If there are players really are so bad that they somehow even fail at this unfailable scenario, then I think that SWTOR needs to offer an option to play at an increased difficulty level with better rewards, so that players don't feel like they're just gimping themselves to get around Bioware's broken/non game design.

Any multiplayer game is a competition, taking on harder challenges has to give better rewards. Breaking the game design seems a worse option than just giving feedback so that Bioware can fix the game design. I really hope they don't actually intend this, for companions to be invincible against champions etc. No successful game is one which plays itself, board games or computer games, at least not a single one which I can think of. The most successful games all contain real competitive challenges.

I don't know where any champions are on Ilum, but I tried an elite, no damage to companion at all.

Because currently they play the game for you and suck all sense of fun out of it, see the video. They already do it at rank 12, people who've played through the regular story have said companions are something like rank 15 by the end of chapter 1 from regular conversations. Just going through their companion conversations would probably raise them higher. I'm here for the story and fun too. Currently there's story, but no fun, a game which plays itself isn't fun. Boring is worse than just not playing. Why not just turn chess into a game where it's an empty board and you just slide the pieces across, is that really what anybody anywhere considers fun?

I love the story, but this is a game, it needs actual gameplay in it too. Pseudo gameplay which offers no challenge at all is worse than no gameplay and just watching a movie, it's outright boring.

That is simply not true. My companions were always in blues or purples with augments. Companions could never solo champions at any comparative level.

I'm a casual, not really into group content. I'm not sure on what logic casual = wants the game to be played for me? I still want an actual game here. You're saying "just enjoy it" <- How? It's not fun. Hence why I'm posting that. It's not really a claim at this point, that video proves it's an objective fact. Companion was soloing a champion without even dropping health. Not sure how the straw man at the end is even supposed to make sense. We've been playing for years and know how the game is without OP companions, involving actual gameplay, hence why we're the ones asking for it back for the game we signed up for.

Can people please stop suggesting that people break the game and gimp themselves with no improved outcome as a solution to the lack of any actual game design in 4.0 combat? It's a multiplayer game, people want to be competitive in their gains. It's also (meant to be) a game, so people want actual gameplay too. According to Google trends, SWTOR had twice the interest when Rise of the Hutt Cartel came out when content actually required thinking and effort, like a game is meant to, which it seems somebody at BW forgot with 3.0. I always geared my companions in blues or purples, with augments. They could never solo champion mobs, especially eternally without taking damage.

I actually wonder if it might be because companion abilities still scale with weapons (according to the tool tips), and if those of us noticing they're invulnerable have better hilts/barrels on our companion weapons. But then again, people have mentioned similar behaviour with their T7s at level 15, even new players, so it's probably not that.

To make it visually clear what is wrong with the game at the moment, here is a video. Rank 12 Nadia is able to solo and hold champion aggro forever. There is literally no challenge here, except not dying of boredom. The only way to lose at this is to sabotage yourself. Even kids games are harder than this. If there are players really are so bad that they somehow even fail at this unfailable scenario, then I think that SWTOR needs to offer an option to play at an increased difficulty level with better rewards, so that players don't feel like they're just gimping themselves to get around Bioware's broken/non game design.

To make it visually clear what is wrong with the game at the moment, here is a video. Rank 12 Nadia is able to solo and hold champion aggro forever. There is literally no challenge here, except not dying of boredom. The only way to lose at this is to sabotage yourself. Even kids games are harder than this. If there are players really are so bad that they somehow even fail at this unfailable scenario, then I think that SWTOR needs to offer an option to play at an increased difficulty level with better rewards, so that players don't feel like they're just gimping themselves to get around Bioware's broken/non game design.

The differences are so minor that saying that the stories differ is just pedantic, they involve going to meet and fight the exact same people at the exact same places for the exact same reasons, Theran and Lana just seem to slightly modify their dialogue depending on imperial or republic, but it's still the same story for all intents and purposes. I was interested in playing, I went through the same bland content 4 times in an effort to get to the actual unique gameplay on each class. I couldn't bring myself to do it 8 times.

Damn, I went solo thinking it was the same story wise, maybe that's why the expansion felt like it fell so flat for me. Yavin IV was just doing mind numbingly easy thoughtless dailies before you'd even completed the story, and then suddenly a Revan fight. It seemed like Bioware completely phoned that planet in and just gave up on story, but now apparently there was other stuff which they expect you to be playing with 8 people during that part of your story to see? I mean it's not some side thing like oricon, it's literally the end of the expansion's main storyline. They never did anything like that on the first 3 chapter stories or the makeb story.

That's definitely not a good argument for this expansion, since they used the exact same story for every single character this time. There's that 5 minute side quest for each class halfway through, which are a bit better written, but getting through the same stupid pirate fights and jungle navigation to unlock got old fast, and I ended up just youtubing the last 4 class cutscenes...

Forged Alliances had some KotOR planets, but SoR didn't have any. I think the closest you could get to Yavin IV in KoTOR was a space station above it.