Oh lol, I can't really tell if OP is trolling or if we legitimately have yet another nerf operative thread with the promises of doom and gloom and saying "JUST LOOK HOW OP THIS ABILITY AND THAT ABILITY IS!!1". If it's somehow the latter, please consider context as already hinted at. While operatives are doing their godrolls and healing, they deal basically no damage. Learning vulnerability windows and counterplays is at the core of pvp, and good operatives require you to be at their skill level to efficiently deal with them in regs. I'm that noob who got stalled by Snave few too many times but that's a great opportunity to learn right there. If to you getting outplayed without an obvious way to match evenly is frustrating, I'm sorry - personally, these encounters surely helped me way more than pressing the same, mostly just PvE rotation every time and kick asses of people who somehow managed to be even worse than me. With all that said, being able to stall vs 2 somewhat competent and 3-4 less so people feels overtuned to me as well. When some 5v5 at the middle turret lasts indefinitely with very few deaths but one sapcap decides the fate of the match... It's a problem. There's a huge connected issue of TTK as well; people give up on turret maps after being behind for a minute or so because a good operative being able to stall a couple of people alone means that 2x2 operatives and 4x anyone can cover all 3 points and hold them for ages without even considering getting help. People just start quitting because of not seeing opportunities to cap vs operatives, juggs or mercs any soon.

Sometimes you get like 2-3 tanks and 2 healers on each side and being a BC is a terribly slow crawl to a goal line where only being knocked down from the rails or into a trap can prevent the carrier from scoring because they're virtually impossible to kill otherwise. Arenas are MASSIVELY different to regs@75, especially with all the HB pops (also, most of the arena play doesn't revolve around mezzes and stealthcaps unlike non-HB objective maps).

What I still don't understand about this whole thing of "ranked is for good players only" is that it's RANKED, you're meant to play with people around your skill level most of the time so that new players would also be pitted against each other... So supposedly matchmaking algorithm (or the lack thereof) is to blame, then? I mean, most regs at max level are 8v8, and even arenas have that clear divide of "actually pvp people" vs "random noobs" in both groups, and more often than not it comes to how many are there on which side (which I imagine to be the ranked issue as well with 7 PvP-experienced people and 1 new person). Probably a PvP guild at this point with some mentors would help learning, because nothing else in the game really does until you eat your share of kicks and whatnot. You don't really learn how to counterplay experienced people by mostly seeing tanks not swapping guard or even not using it (if there's a tank at all, in the first place), healers not kiting and just trying to outheal everything... You name it. Personally, it's fun to try different strategies and seeing if they're viable, but with the amount of feedback I have in regs it's not of much help. General lack of PvP guides on how teamwork works (things like who I should be CCing and how, how helpful is trying to split tank and healer, how you should analyze group comps and your goals when it comes to LoS/kiting, bursting down ASAP vs preparing for a prolonged stand, things like that) isn't helping, either - I just don't really see a way to know if I had the right idea without lots of relevant practice, and for new players that is hard to come by. Just my two cents.

I'm too lazy to quote all the points being made in this thread so far but, in order of importance: 1) Do yourself a favor and check out Logical Increments and UserBenchmark for part recommendation by tiers and expected value (performance/money), respectively. 2) Without digging too deep into details, AMD's doing really great now especially at a mid-high end desktop market, so nearly everyone would (and did) recommend going AM4 socket with something like R5 2600 or 3600 for your case. Again, check your budget against LI - I'm constantly finding myself in need of more RAM/storage than they list but that's due to nature of my work. 3) Personally, I'm currently running a 1070 Ti right now and it's more than enough for most of the games at 1080p, 60hz (resolution and refresh rate matter A LOT when it comes to picking a GPU). If you're not going for something truly bleeding-edge, it's very sensible to settle for something like 1660S or 10xx series, depending on your local prices. You're likely to have better support for 1660S though. 4) RAM-wise, anything DDR4 2666+ would do, higher clocks don't currently matter to most of the CPUs but AMD seems to favor them more. Usually 16 Gb 3200MHz is what most people would go with these days (you need to make sure XMP in enabled in BIOS though to actually achieve those RAM clocks). 5) Chipset is a hard call, you don't really gain much by getting something like X570 instead of even B450 right now, it's more of a hope to upgrade later - but if you're planning on doing so only in 10 years again, don't bother with higher end stuff now, you won't be using that ;p 6) PSU is absolutely not worth saving on, IMO - same as the cooling solution. Grab something at least 80+ rated with a couple hundreds of watts overhead compared to your estimated usage. 7) Liquid cooling... Well, haven't tried it myself yet, air coolers work just great for the absolute majority of CPUs on the market (save for TRs perhaps...). Noctua and beQuiet! are two brands I can personally vouch for; Noctua's only potential drawback is aesthetics AMD actually has usable stock coolers - not great, relatively loud (still much better than those in the 90s, lol), but definitely usable, unlike Intel ones. Oh and also you *could* try running an integrated GPU like 3400G, it's about the same as GTX560 supposedly graphics-wise... P.S. I'm really curious what kind of AI models could you possibly run these days on hardware that old

This is overall a great life advice. Also, what happens here is that people tend to somehow hold in-game population to higher standards than the rest of the world. "We don't play videogames to interact with the same mean people out there in the streets, we seek shelter from that and THEREFORE online communities should be nice to each other and on their best behavior". It is not wrong to ask of a game company to ameliorate your experience with the game somehow but it's definitely wrong to expect of the community to be extra courteous - gamers are fairly representative of the general population and yes, while many people are privileged to not have this kind of mean interactions IRL, YMMV when it comes to online communities. Sorry if it comes as a disappointment to you but without a certain thickness of skin, you can't really interact with RANDOM people on the internet - not your facebook friends, not your professional forum acquaintances, not your guildies. People become nicer to each other when there's an incentive to do things together on a long-term basis; make in-game friends to do content together and such. In HS spam filled days, that no longer holds true so SWTOR community isn't seeing its best days indeed - but even at its worst, it's still way better than MOBA communities... For aforementioned reasons.

That's probably the nicest TL;DR I've seen on this topic in Onslaught. Melees are more than fine, it's not that often you are entirely forced to lose lots of uptime as a melee, there are mechanics where it's easier to keep dpsing as a melee than it is for ranged and there also is a certain synergy with buffs/debuffs/general positioning. 3r 1m is a rather safe bet cause one ranged can always assume the role of a melee but then again no real point in passing on melees in most fights.

I just dps on healers in vets anyway... Or spec dps during lvling since it's too bothersome otherwise. It also depends on the people but generally lots of healers and/or low lvl tanks is a major PITA. Is it with dual roles set? Those are always messed up :/ Speaking of roles, I dunno why when we queue as duo premade for FPs, I get marked as a tank (correctly) but the other person gets incorrectly marked as a heal UNLESS they're the lead, both with single and dual roles set. That's very annoying.

Or just expectation management overall. Personally, I get irked easily when people who supposedly should be able to do the content by the muscle memory are nowhere near that. Also, elitism is toxic but it grows naturally when people grow in skills and some things become trivial to them but not the new players. Like, how does it not come naturally to our stealther they're supposed to cc mobs or that people don't knock back packs or... You get the idea. And also also, just remove HS from the queue at this point t_t. I just eat the penalty at this point, not worth wasting time on it :/

It doesn't, but requires a rather peculiar group comp to succeed. We've done it in 4 (2 sorcs phasewalking outside to swap colors + sin), and that's with 2 people seeing the boss for the first time in their lives. Just having 2 stealthers should suffice, sorcs and snipers can swap once now as well. Haven't seen new ops (gods/dxun) yet but suppose at least dxun requires more people. From the rest of the bosses we've done so far, ToS commanders gave us the most trouble with last 2 bosses of SnV being close contenders. As of other MMOs... I've only played FFXIV and difficulty is comparable - storymodes are meant for people to experience story/visuals/whatever, hardmodes are for people semi-casually raiding and wanting to interact with actual mechanics and NiMs/ultimates are for more hardcore prog. As usual, with group content the hardest part is being consistent so that one person messing up one pull out of 10 on average doesn't turn into half of the pulls SOMEONE in the group messing up.

I do expect something of sorts as well, tried to hit/avoid different speed boosts and so on. It's also entirely possible for the achievement to have wrong mission IDs required listed so that for example for it to pop you'd need to hit all the exploding barrels on a horizon run or something of sorts. I've exhausted my options as well and just waiting for a fix at this point.

Yes, and it's suuuper backwards with swoop racing. I also have a pet hate against blue orbs scattered around so that you have to noticeably go out of your way (= slow down) to gather them for a gang which is supposedly all about speed. If there was a semblance of still being on the track on that roundabout and deciding to spend more time showing off than actually completing the track it'd be fine by me but as it is, it just feels broken.

This. There are enough orbs, it's that you get the reward for both bonus missions and the game seemingly thinks you hit an obstacle or something. Afaik there's not enough exloding barrels though - you still can get the bonus going full speed ahead without backtracking; some targets give you ample time to be exploded twice. Also, Dantooine rings. More on that note - tuning is wildly different, too; some tracks you finish hitting literally every objective on the way and still have 25-30s to spare, some tracks it's hard to consistently go over 15s left. I'm convinced that by the time I did each track 10 times, I've done it far more than whoever on dev team was designing bonus objectives. It's impossible not to spot all these issues if you actually try the content you're making.

My bad, sorry. Thing is, a customer normally won't bother figuring out which of the teams/who in the management behind the product is to blame. I'm roughly using "devs" as an umbrella term here while in reality it should be the entire company selling the product - in this case, EA. They are commonly and, in my opinion, rightfully blamed for being greedy as in having very strict financial policies at a harm to the product itself and trying to squeeze everything out of the "existing" playerbase instead of taking more risky path of growing it over the years. And yes, to them the fraction of the people dropping due to the high ping is surely not worth moving servers physically. Also, good point about taxes. Oof that's steep. I'm using VPN anyway because of internet regulations and it costs about $5 a month. Paying twice a sub cost for the game is a no-go unless you absolutely love the game and willing to go through hoops just to play it. I know the feeling, there are lots of things to be liked about it but production and support are not among them

You play SWTOR, so you MUST be into gambling /s

Well no, I realize it's the case but the argument "this is how it's always been and now it's late to complain" does little to people seeing the entire situation as "I have problems with SWTOR but not say FF14 who placed their EU servers in Frankfurt so the devs have at least some degree of control over it". The complaint is very much valid but, indeed, it's unrealistic that something gets done about it. I'm having some 150-200 ms ping which is high for an online game by modern standards but still playable. With 2s+ spikes off-prime times, constant jitter and so on a VPN might be a solution (still, that's added costs to play a game). I'm not sure if something can truly be done about lag during prime hours and in 16+ people content. If ~200ms is too bad for you, there's little that can be done about it cause BW won't be moving servers.

Oh please spare us. Not only you spend lots of money in the game, you're likely to keep on spending while stating you're displeased about the game and, on top of it, buy CM stuff exactly out of boredom. People playing a lot are rather loyal customers. Devs can abandon them for literal years and still get nice retention from that subgroup. For one blaming others for the lack of the business sense, ironically, you turn a blind eye to that. Now, a good business with long-term goals won't do just that, but they won't be going out of their way to accommodate someone who is already invested into the product enough to keep them on hook for a good while.

Now it's too late for this but arguably, it could make sense at launch. Sub-only games with a free trial are a very sensible thing, and F2P means Cartel Market and microtransactions everywhere... Which wouldn't be too bad if the universally accessible content like story got more love from the devs. People vote with their wallets I guess.

Honestly, I think they didn't really care about having a small yield planet at all. I wouldn't expect so much drama if I were a dev, most likely. I'd probably showcase some rewards and tell where the rally takes place, maybe highlight rep quests but how much people care about having small cq, and cq overall, was very puzzling to me. The lack of communication is chronic but it also seems they don't know enough about their playerbase, not much more than me . And that's with having access to stats and whatnot.

This, this is exactly what people are unhappy about. Placing EU servers in one of the most remote locations in Europe so that players would "learn a thing or two about IT/routing while they're at it" is... Not great. Personally, I understand just enough about routing to get a lower boundary on time/effort investment so to (possibly!) get better experience playing ONE game that I'd rather put up with it and, at most, connect via proxy. It's fair to say that you either try to fix it or make a decision to let it be and in both cases there's little point in complaining, but we're on forums

I don't mind Hutta but I sure do mind Quesh, although they're similar. It feels like it could be an interesting planet, but for the most part, it isn't. Not too bad for IA, though...

So much for #choicesmatter. Given how the stories are already mutually inconsistent between playthroughs, even including the main plot, BW either has to deal with combinatoric complexity (it would be great if they could make vanilla-like storylines where you commit to some branch on each character and see the whole story from different perspectives but alas), write plots making no sense in some combinations of player choices or just write it off at some point, introduce something stupid which overrides everything before and start anew. Companion-wise it's most likely the second option, with the best case scenario is writers making 2 dialogue options if certain companion is dead and 3 otherwise for tiny interactions and Lana doing all kinds of stuff she was never equipped for just in case the player has killed the NPC who actually could do it.

First off you're pvping, that's why I aint getting loads either until going for weekly MMFP or some ****. A few weeks from now I'm starting to get capped probably though so if people started playing the expansion from launch and never took breaks it's expected they're capped for a while. No clue; deconstructing half of inventory of 306 pieces usually nets you a couple embers at least. Also, OP, do you REALLY want to see some 310 gear which is basically the same as 306 but with a tiny bit more stats and go over rerolling amps again?

Initially, I wrote a huge rant about how thinking that 3-6k frags a week and having just 306 with tacticals is indicative of how the game pushes you towards not really caring about gearing; how FFXIV got the token system better and how utterly unbalanced rewards are but it's an unproductive argument. Instead, let's talk this set of issues more broadly. "There's plenty of content, do whatever you want and don't feel like you're at a loss because you NEED to do this specific thing to get rewards" is a great approach to the current state of SWTOR but it's also dangerous (I'll expand on the dangerous part later on). The glaring issue here is that the current implementation is not the case. Devs should've made a huge list of every possible activity they slap a reward on, write down the estimated completion time, adjust rewards accordingly, release... And watch for players gravitating towards some specific activities. Adjust numbers in their list, adjust rewards - you get the idea. The reason for this, of course, is that that's how players view the game, basically. They make a list of rewards vs effort and start comparing them, in some cases effort factors in additional penalties (spamming HS is not exactly fun), but in general that stays the same and even expands to the real life. So they go like: BiS gear + being drained out - 1 week of HS/TC spam Sensibly good gear (set, tacticals, unlettered low endurance mods) while chilling - 1 month of doing whatever Brontie wings + the sense of accomplishment - 3+ months of finding a group, getting gud and so on Brontie wings + a sprinkle of shame - 300 mil credits 300 mil credits - a month or two of crafting and so on 300 mil credits - 2 hypercrates = about $100 CM mount - 1500 CC = about $10 And pick whatever has the best estimate of reward and the least effort. Sure, the reality is bit more complex than that but the base idea is here. By that measure, easy&fast content rewards are overtuned while hard content rewards seem to be undertuned. Now, on to the incentive and sense of direction. Currently, gear doesn't provide much in this regards, despite the discussion in this thread being almost exclusively about it. I can feel more progress while grinding planetary achievements (yes, those horribly over-scaled ones) and that I did more when going from 2500 enemies killed to 2800 than from getting a toon from being ilvl 119 at 75 to 306 with set bonus, augs and other good stuff. The reason for this? Aside from very old rewards like NiM mounts which I don't need that many more at this point and am seriously considering just buying that damn hyperpod despite TfB being rather easy... Absolutely NOTHING aside from doing content being a reward in itself pushes you towards this stuff. I really feel PvPers on that one. This is a huge problem, the largest one, perhaps. Before, we've had this message from the devs saying "doing ranked pvp is good, you do it and your toon looks bad*** as a result. Doing NiM ops also makes you look bad***. Also, you can get good gear and carry some noobs if that floats your boat". When this message gets mixed up with "do whatever content and not miss out", there is this big question - what are the rewards, then? Better gear? How is having 306 gear different from having 252 gear? Does it change anything in my current routine? Do I feel more accomplished by killing this mob in one GCD less? Come next patch, will I still retain something to show for all the effort put into gearing? If CM stuff provides much better satisfaction than anything else, that encourages people to take on some extra jobs, not to play the game

Electronet is a very special mechanic, Plasma Probe or even specced affliction are probably better examples. But yeah, in general it all comes down to dealing damage while avoiding some by the virtue of being outta melee range :D

Yeah... THIS is largely why SWTOR actually has lots of content all of which is abandoned. No clear direction, no tiering, do whatever... And get whatever. FFXIV gearing system is as it should be in an MMO but there's a reason SWTOR devs are unable to adapt it. Compare how much time does a patch cycle take in FFXIV and how much does it take (and how predictable that is) in SWTOR. With that said, in FFXIV you do feel like a hamster in a wheel after a few years and it lacks Star Wars flavor (which is why I personally came back) but gods I wish SWTOR had FFXIV-like production treatment and level of engagement with the community.