NGL, it's entirely down to the animation and sound effect. Nothing beat getting leaped at by a Sith Warrior while you were hanging back, and just no-selling his Dark-Side-powered tomfoolery with a swift kick to the nadgers.

Apologies in advance, because I'm definitely retreading ground everyone has gone over before, at length. After messing about at max level since the Zakuul content ended, then promptly setting the game aside for a good while, I recently decided to try some of the class stories I never got around to. So, for the first time in years, I'm leveling new characters through the original content. It's changed. It's definitely changed. It's changed, and to be honest, I don't think I like it very much. Yeah, yeah, I get it. "They changed it, now it sucks" is a common fan complaint on literally everything, but bear with me. Their attempts to 'streamline' content, and 'make classes more distinct' have, in effect, ruined leveling for me. I might be the odd one out, but I actually liked waiting until 10 to pick up an advanced class. It let you get the hang of the basic class mechanics on the starter world without worrying about adding more onto it, and made your eventual choice more impactful. But what's worse is that in getting rid of it, they also got rid of a lot of the universal abilities from the base class. Now, my main's an assassin so losing some Sorc abilities isn't the end of the world (though losing Phase Walk hurts...) but it's made my Powertech downright unfun to play. Unload is gone. Death From Above is gone. Flamethrower is gone. Power Shot is gone. It turned what was a super-fun melee/mid-range hybrid class into a downright boring melee-only one that in my opinion completely loses what made the class fun and thematic in the first place. Using a blaster as a skillstick just seems wrong for a Bounty Hunter, but yet the only ability it's used for as a powertech now is the default attack. And Gunslingers lost Dirty Kick which is just downright obscene. It seems if you so much as look at a sidequest you're immediately overleveled. And yeah yeah, it fixes your level to the planet, but that system is wonky. A 25 running around Dromund Kaas is still orders of magnitude more effective than a 17, despite them ostensibly being the same level due to the planet scaling. At first I thought half the sidequests had been removed, until I discovered that 'exploration missions' are now a toggle that's off by default, hidden in a very unintuitive place, and not mentioned or referred to as an option at all. Granted some of it's basic 'fetch me ten bear asses' sort of stuff, but there's some actually great quest chains and lore information in some of those quests that people now don't even know they're missing. And, again, even if you do toggle them on it just makes the overleveling problem worse. Which brings me to the difficulty. Or, more to the point, the utter lack of it. At launch wiping on bosses was a very real possibility. Combat actually required you to know your rotation and what you were doing. Now you can basically just faceroll everything without thinking. It's become mindless 'tap number key to win' for every class mission. There is no challenge. You can't even develop new tactics or really even learn to work with different specs because you kill everything so rapidly it doesn't matter anymore. Well, at least until you get to ops and veteran instances. You know, the thing solo content should be preparing you for? It’s like the whole system is brainless right up until endgame where everything suddenly gets really complex and the game tries to shove all these new tactical mechanics your way. For people that actually played their class since before the changes hit this isn't really a problem, but new players are going to get rolled repeatedly. I loved this game. I still do love this game. But I just feel like a lot of what I enjoyed about it just isn't there anymore. If I were being uncharitable, I'd think this is all just designed to get free players to the end of the class story as rapidly as possible so they hit the point where they have to spend actual money. I hope that isn't the case. I like to think the people working on this have actual passion for it, and I'm excited to see where it goes next, just... The more I play the more I can't help but think how much more fun I'd be having if these changes weren't made.

This really should have just been in General, so if a mod could move it, that'd be great.

Wrong Forum; Please Ignore. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=9874994#post9874994

For the longest time I was irritated because it seemed like a lot of the sidequests I remembered from playing the game years ago had vanished or been dummied out. The areas and NPCs were still standing around, but the quests themselves were unavailable. Lo and behold, in BW/EA's drive to 'streamline' everything they essentially were. But not entirely, as they're now 'Exploration Missions' and there's a toggle for them. A very very unintuitive, hard-to-find, and easy to miss toggle if you don't know exactly what you're looking for and where to look. I get it, they probably want to shove new players through the 1-50 content as fast as possible so they can get to the point where they actually have to spend money to continue. But could they at least make the fact that these missions exist and that there's an option to turn them on more visible? As it is you have an influx of new players due to steam that are missing a lot of content because somebody decided it wasn't 'relevant' enough. I get that a lot of them are 'fetch me 12 random item' quests, but there's some good stories and valuable lore content that's now essentially hidden to a good chunk of the playerbase.

This has probably been done to death, but can we PLEASE eventually have a way to opt-out of the LS/DS dedication? I don't care about my endgame toons, but it takes a lot of the fun out of leveling a character. At least give the option of a character's alignment actually reflecting their in-game story choices and not a kriffing button-press. I hate how if you want to do a Neutral playthrough now, it’s less about your decisions and more how well you can micromanage the counter.

Got a problem with this as well. This isn't intentional, is it?

Playing chapter 1 of KOTET. Killed a major character. Decide I DIDN'T want to do that, so when chapter 2 rolls around (because I can't reset for some stupid reason) I go into the Chapter menu and restart Chapter 1 and take the other choice. Save them this time. However, when Chapter 2 comes around again, the alliance screen tells me I killed them. Is there a way to replay and make the second choice carry over, rather than the first, or am I stuck with having killed them for the rest of the expansion.

I have a distinct impression the answer is 'no', but I might as well put this out here anyway. Cathar (and I suppose also Zabrak, Rattataki, and Twi'lek) seem to have gotten the short end of the stick when it comes to increased customization options. Think we're ever going to see anything more? I'd definitely like to see more hair options, face styles, and patterns. At the least, I would like to have the option to make a character that's a dead-ringer for some of the NPCs you see, at least prior to RotHC. They definitely look cooler than the character options we actually got, in my opinion.

Heck, even my DS warrior gets annoyed by Dark Jaesa. She's just so...One-note.

Whatever the event, I would say the Empire needs a big 'win'. The Ziost idea posted upthread was perfect, I thought. The end of the JK story took us to Dromund Kaas, so I have to wonder...Would anybody be on-board for an event that had Imperial players taking part in a sort of covert action on Coruscant? Granted this is mainly based on one of the things I actually enjoyed in my brief time with Warhammer Online. A faction that did well enough had the ability to sack the opposing faction's capital city. This wouldn't be to that extent, mind. Just a suitably epic conclusion for whatever comes.

It makes no sense whatsoever. Why throw out the main draw and strength of the game?