Hello dear SWTOR devs,
ive been joining the SWTOR community lately and fell in love with the game. You did a great job there and i have to admit ive never had that much fun playing an MMO since the launch of WoW. Thumbs up
Now there are some hiccups that ,in my humbly opinion, keep players away from playing swtor:
1. Macos:
I`m pretty sure this topic has been discussed many times before, but me and a lot of other people would love to have a macro function added to the game just to simplify the monster called UI.
I dont want to tell you how to do your job, its just a really bad designed UI for a game launched just 3? 2? years ago.
A macro function would reallyimprove effiency while playing this game peroid. A good example are the tons of abilitys i have to activate during a fight.
Iam playing a Bounty Hunter (PT/Pyro) lately and i find it a struggle to handle all the buttons effectively, there are imho way to much things to press.
Case 1: I have to apply 2 dots, Thermal detonator, and incendinary missile, that already eats up 2 buttons. Now a macro could merge those 2 abilities into 1 single button.
If we could create a macro like this:
#showtooltip Thermal Detonator (since this is the ability that has a cooldown added to it)
suppressmacrofailures (to surpress the error message if Thermal detonator is on CD while using the macro)
/cast Thermal detonator
/cast Incendinary missile
This macro would cast Thermal Detonator first, if pressed again, it would cast Incendinary Missile, and it would continiously cast IM until TD comes off CD.
This macro could be adapted to any other ability like this:
#showtooltip Rail Shot
suppressmacrofailures
/cast Rail Shot
/cast Missile Blast
or
#showtooltip Abilityname
suppressmacrofailures
/cast @focustarget Abilityname
this would make me having 2 instead of 4 keybinds for 4 abilities.
I know this is pretty obvious iam just saying.
You could limit the macro`s to 2 abilities if you dont want people to tie a full rotation into one macro. Its a quality of life thing and I know there would be way more people playing this game if there were macros with at least 2 abilities tied to them.
I can speak for myself and friends that the simple lack of macros is keeping SO MANY people away from playing this game. There could be a much bigger pvp community if you guys would add macros to the game. I mean you would ear a lot more money for a small investment of whatever it takes to implement macros,i think you are really wasting potential and income by not adding macros to the game.
2. Interface improvements
The next urgent improvements that are bloody needed is a better system to keep track of cooldowns and debuffs on the target.
There should be an option in the Interface preferences to display debuffs (optional set to show only your own debuffs applied to the target or any debuff from any source applied to the target) over the enemys nameplate above their heads.
I cant stress how much this would improve the personal effiency in combat, since u dont have to drag the targets frame into the middle of the screen blocking your view.
You could see the remaining duration of your debuffs on your target, that would make it easier to reapply them properly without having to look anywhere else during a fight except for your target. You wouldnt have to look down or at the frame which blocks the view if it was dragged to the center of the screen, you could play better, with less distraction, it would also make it easier for people to participate in pvp since this would lift some weight of the shoulder off a player.
It would make the pvp experience more fluid, less stressful or clunky.
The other big issue is keeping track of cooldowns. Its really a pain to count 30 seconds in your head while pvping or having to drag a quickbar scaled down to the middle of the screen to be able to keep track when stuff comes off cooldown. In germany we call this "a block on your leg" its handicapping players.
You should really tie a funtion to the game that displays abilities coming off cooldown. A flashing Icon of the ability in the middle of the screen (adjustable to own preference in size and position and visibility fading/alpha).
OR let people use addons like people use in WoW or Rift, u dont even have to do it by yourself then, the community would do all the work by itself.
THere are great addons for World of Warcraft called Dooms Cooldown Pulse http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/doomcooldownpulse or the awesome WeakAuras http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/weakauras-2.
Those two addons in addition to the above mentiones nameplate changes would make playing this game way more attractive to pvper`s and raider`s aswell. It would make the combat experience better all over, it would be less struggling for new players to get into it and a priceless quality of life thing for veterans.
I know there are people that dont like using macros and mentioned addons (for whatever reason, they must be masochists), they simply dont have to use it then.
As mentioned above, im pretty confident that those simple changes/investments would grant this game (EA/Bioware) a lot more players, a bigger community and thus more profit for the publishers/devs aswell.
I can assure the subscriptions will rise by another million at least or evenmore, iam not familiar with those dimensions tho.
I`d really really appreciate if you developers would consider such changes to the game, those are reasonable, rationally and intelligently changes to a great game. Use it to its full potential.
And I call all the people to /sign this, make your point, vote for those changes if you like them. Stand up for it
Sincerely
Shinryo, Bountyhunter on ToFN.
