Thanks for ALL of the Replies. They were ALL thought out and gave supporting details for their statements and accurately represent different segments of the PvP community. I have been monitoring this forum for several months now and some of the common "..this is a problem with SWTOR-PvP..." themes which are frequent and reoccurring are as follows. - Warzone Queue Times are too long. (We don't have enough members to do what we want.) - The talent of those playing warzones is sub-par. (We aren't achieving our personal goals with who we have.) - Technical problems which are BioWare controlled (Class balance, exploits, rewards, ability lag, etc). - PvP participants who are cheating/Trolling and not being stopped. These four problem-themes are common with most organizations which are made up of folks who are spending time and resources to be apart of that organization. Examples of these type of organizations would be: Softball/Bowling/Golf League, Boy/Girl Scouts, Church, Fraternity/Sorority, SWTOR PvP. The first two problems are mostly influenced by the organization's membership, the last two by the leadership. I tried to be neutral in writing my case study in the original posting (one of many different stories that could be told), but now I am making my points. The strength and health of an organization is based upon its membership & the process for a healthy organization is when the members progress through the stages of Recruitment - Development - Maturity - Mentor. We have all been in, or have seen, organizations which are solid, healthy and thriving. Why thriving? Because the members like what is happening and are telling others about it and those hearing, want to be apart of it also. Now, there are many healthy guilds and individuals out there who are using the process and are adding productive PvPers to the community. But if we want the first two problems mentioned above to become smaller, I think we need to be thinking of the Recruitment - Development - Maturity - Mentorship process. Here are some Brainstorming ideas to help the process (in addition to the ones I listed in my original post): - Mistakes are made by developing players, not mature players. If you see a character making mistakes, mentor. - Realize that Mature players are going to be able to handle Chat better than Developing players. Just because there is no reply to your mentoring, does not mean that every developing player in that WZ did not see and consider it and appreciate it. - During the Wz Pre-start, when there is a minute to chat and see who is there, ask if there is anyone new to this WZ. Tell them to follow you and watch your back. Follow up with a whisper after the WZ for their questions. That would be HUGE to the developing person. - If Queue is not popping, put out a call on General Chat asking if anyone wants to group up with you and try a WZ. - Challenge someone to a duel and force them to enter a warzone if they lose (Sith side suggestion). - Need more ideas ........

Hi. If a person has replaced their HDD with a SSD and doesn’t say “Wow!” after doing it – Then something isn’t working right. I have replaced the HDD with SSD on three different computers and it is like I have bought a new computer. Based upon your wording, I am going to speculate that you are using a SSD for storage and your OS is on the HDD. If this is the case, you are not getting all of the benefits of the SSD. When I watched Windows Task Manager (with HDD & with SSD) it made me realize that the HDD was THE choke point for my PC. With the SSD, I see CPU usage running at a higher % for a much shorter time period when it needs to process chunks of code. Using my older Windows XP computer with a Dual Core and SSD as an example, I feel that I got at least a 33% benefit to SWTOR when switching between characters or changing instances with a character. To get the full benefits of a SSD, a person would need to “Clone the Image” of the HDD with the OS to the SSD. Then run the SATA0 cable to the SSD to make sure the PC is booting off of the SSD. When cloning my HDD/SSDs, I use Acronis.

This thread inspired me to tell the F2P-WZ story of My sons and myself. I posted my story as a new thread because I hope it will generate brainstorming ideas for how to recruit F2P to Warzones. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=8395755#post8395755

Hi. I think I am a good case study for some of the issues of why don’t more F2P FTP Preferred Players play PvP Warzones and I am going to tell my story. I am a father of two boys, 15 & 20. We started playing 2 years ago as a way to keep doing something together with my son in college. He started on Jung-Ma and liked the PvP, even though he was constantly ganked . - I had a friend from college who was established on Jedi Covenant so we all ended up there and he helped us with his resources. My oldest was a master at Mass Effect & also PVP-Call Of Duty. My youngest was a master at Minecraft PvP. I was a board gamer in college and had never done anything like SWTOR. We are Preferred and we are believers in capitalism and have paid at least $200-$300 in buying Unlocks & expansions, etc. We understand that we should NOT get unlimited WZs unless we pay. Still, I think SWTOR is being very generous to us. We get 5 WZs for EACH character Monday-Saturday. We get another 5 WZs for each character for Sunday. For more about F2P & WZ logistics, see my post here. One evening my youngest had figured out how to get into a WZ. I watched him play. We were both excited about the PvP aspect. We had no idea what we were supposed to be doing, but that did not matter to us until….. The third warzone was Huttball. Everything was great until somebody passed to us. We did not know how to pass and we went the wrong way into the dead end alley and the only way we got rid of the ball was by getting killed. As you all know, the Chat lit up, there were NO words of encouragement or coaching (we were playing Republic side, not with the Sith). I had to press him to play out his remaining two WZs but it was because I wanted to enforce a life lesson that you have to keep going even when people are angry with you. My younger son would not play WZ again for at least a year. I would press him too play so I could watch, but he did NOT want too. When my older son came home from college, I asked him to play a WZ for us to watch, but he did not want too either. He said he had played already and didn’t want too. I was shocked because he is a football player and competitive and always goes around open world flagged for PvP. I pressed why and he would not tell me, but now I know it was because he took his main upper level character (mid bracket) went into a WZ as a beginner and, well, “You only put your hand on the stove once.” I was bitten on the other hand. I took my character into WZs and got spanked and made big mistakes and got yelled at, but I was resolved to become at least a solid average WZ player. The road has been long and the learning curve steep. Let’s talk about the learning curve because I think that is the biggest barrier to more people playing PvP. 1 What am I supposed to do? I have spent tens of hours browsing the internet and YouTube just to find out what each WZ is all about and the physical layout of the warzones. Even after all that time, I never found a “…go here and you will learn all you need to know…” place I could point somebody else too. 2 From PvE class story to Warzone!! This is the difference between driving to work and driving a NASCAR. I had to rethink and relearn my keybindings, attacks, movement, Defenses, LOS, all the things that are not that important when doing PvE class story. The best thing I did for myself was to start running the Kuat Ship Yard Flashpoint to get me to the player level where I could even operate in a Warzone. 3 Do NOT start in the Mid or Upper bracket. That was the mistake all three of us made. Of course we had no idea there was even different brackets. Our characters were in their mid 30s when we first did a WZ and we all know how well that works. 4 If your driving in Nascar, you had better be in a NASCAR. Expertise, Augments, the level of your inserts. I can tell a notable difference in my performance as soon as I put in my next level of inserts, especially at the 40 and lower levels. In PvE the rule is – Loot it and Wear it. 5 OK, now I can survive and kill, but am I helping the team? Back to YouTube and watching tens and tens of hours of video of same class players in Warzones to determine what works and is helping the team. 6 I need some breathing room to flex my new wings. I rolled new characters and focused on playing in the Low bracket. Once I moved up to the Mid bracket, I went back to the low bracket with a new character. 7 Yeah! I am now an average player in the Mid bracket. I want to re-emphasis. I think the BIGGEST BARRIER to new PvP players is the LEARNING CURVE – Therefore, soften the learning curve. Just to Brainstorm some Ideas here. 1 Unlimited passes to WZ when a character’s valor is between 0-##. Just when a person might be starting to figure some things out on WZ number 5 for the week, they have to wait days and start again. 2 Knowledge. Need a “…go here and learn what you need to know…” website location for new WZ players. 3 Understanding. Just being able to go into an empty warzone and run around and explore would be huge. Putting droids in there to protect nodes would be gigantic. See this post I made with suggestions on making minor changes to the Home World Training grounds and leave a favorable reply if you agree. 4 If a character is in their 30s but does not have any valor, they get queued to the Low bracket. 5 Characters in warzones with less than ### valor are somehow marked so that older veterans can take them under their wing and help coach them. 6 As soon as a character with 0 valor clicks on the WZ queue button, a cut scene launches and a NPC grizzled veteran gives the character the basics. They get 5 WZ medpacks & adrenals & Hutt ball and the time to get them on their bar and setup keybindings. The good ending to my story is this. Once I started to understand Warzones, I was able to prepare and coach my two sons on what to do and expect once they entered the warzone. Once they got the feel for things, now they don’t hesitate to queue up when they have the time to goof off. If it had not been for me getting bitten by the WZ bug, I suspect they would never have queued again. The sad part of my story is that they are now 2x’s better than me in a quarter of the time. PS. I bought the Raven expansion for my youngest son off of Amazon and got a 60 day subscription included. That is why I am able to post here.

I agree!

I agree.

I strongly agree!!

A lot of good ideas in this thread.

I agree with the OP.

Although it does not bother me, I agree. Companions should not be staring at us 100%.

Me too.

On Coruscant, just west of the Senate Tower, is a target dummy training ground. I have used it to try to sharpen up my mobility and attacks for PVP because it is a wide open area and I can practice switching targets and attacking on the run. This training ground is easy to access from the Coruscant Stronghold. There are 5 training dummys from Level 10 to 50. This area would be greatly more helpful if the following changes were made. - Move the dummies away from the wall. They are only 2m from the wall. This is counterproductive when working on mobility - attacking, especially if you are trying to backstrike/ShadowStrike/Maul. - Make the dummies Warzone dummies which scale to the person attacking them. - Add more dummies. Keep dummies on the outside edge and also sprinkle dummies in the middle for melee practice. (I am dreaming now, but if you don't ask you don't receive...) There is another wide open and unused area to the west of the above mentioned area. What would be really helpful would be an area similar to the combat simulators around the Jedi Temple. A character activates the simulator and a droid shows up for combat. Droid would be same level and would simulate one of the player classes. We would need the droid to be more sloppy on their movements so we could out maneuver them if we were doing our movements good. Thanking you in advance for considering this request.

The default sorting of crafting schematics is "difficulty". That was nice when I was leveling up, but that was just a small portion of the total time I have spent looking at my schematics. Now, I sort my schematics by "level" 99% of the time after leveling up. Can "level" become the new default sort of crafting schematics. Thanking you in advance for considering this request.

I try to build up an inventory of crafting materials, then when my guild plays and level up, I make what we need for several levels at a time. With me trying to build up a stock pile of materials I am always fiddling with my cargo holds trying to determine what I am short of. If we had better sorting options, I think maintaining a stockpile will be a lot less painful. Compact(request): Move everything to the top of a cargo hold. Sort items in cargo hold by grade/level, then Alphabetical. Combine like stacks until maximum stacking achieved (ie. stack of 99). Alphabetical(request): Sorts items by their name. Level(request): Sorts items by their level/grade then alphabetical. Thanking you in advance for considering this request.

Thanks much for the definitions and also for the tips.