With the coming of the most recent patch, I'm very concerned with the direction that the game is taking.
I like the small changes, like the new Cosmetic Items vendor and changing the opening theme back to Clash of Destiny. Those are great. I even don't mind the ability prune, at least for the Trooper classes. But the big, important things seem to be getting less effort than they need.
The UI and character creation screen got a complete overhaul. Why? I liked the old ones. Was anyone complaining about them? This looks like it took a lot of time and effort, but did we really need it?
And the story is suffering. I've only played the Republic side of the story, but it feels like it was added as a token, as an afterthought. The stakes don't feel as high as Onslaught, and the new character like Gallo are bland and unlikeable. All the past SWTOR expansions had great dialogue and unforgettable story, but this reads like a first draft of a fanfiction, like not enough time was put into it. Not to mention I had to stop playing and wait a day for them to fix a bug that was preventing me from progressing. Twice.
All I can infer is that all the time was spent into making changes the game didn't need and very little time was spent on things the players actually wanted. This makes me very worried for the future going forward. I love this game but I don't like the trend I'm seeing. It makes me nervous about spending any more money on this game.
P.S. I seriously believe that this MMO could get the player numbers that FF14 and WoW get if EA just put a little more investment into making more content (more ops, flashpoints, and PvP arenas), and adding some basic QoL stuff like a Guild Finder tool. However, this expansion makes me think that won't happen.