I suggest the team that designs the cutscenes review cinematography more to get a sense of what makes moving art tell a good story and look beautiful while doing it, because these revisions should've been a step forward instead of a step backwards. The vanilla cutscenes that have been "updated" to have similar feel to KotFE/KotET are of lesser quality than of the original ones: Camera often moves for the sake of moving or moves too much - There is nothing wrong with subtle camera movement. The scene doesn't always call for sweeping pans, dollies, cranes, and tilts...and certainly not all of them in the same shot! Maybe if it's one of those long duration shots, but that's just about the only time they're all used in the same shot. Changes to music selection during a scene change the emotional impact - such as during the Jedi's lightsaber construction scene. It just uses the Tython exploration music now, instead of the RotJ Luke vs Vader final duel, reducing the sequence's significance, unless this is a bug. Changes to action alter the narrative - such as during the Knight's surprise after constructing their lightsaber. It portrays them as some unstoppable being rather than someone that was caught off-guard or confused. Incorrect sounds playing can take the player out of the moment - such as when the Imperial fighter makes a run on the Esseles, the Republic (Rebel) laser cannon sound is used instead of the Empire's. I know this has happened in the movies on occasion, and I don't know why. It always took me out of the moment when I have an association with certain sounds that has been established throughout the movie or the OT/PT. It also never felt like the Empire launched fighters in that scene before. It always seemed like an entirely capital ship affair, being how outmatched a Thranta is against a Harrower. I expected a scene showing the Harrower unleashing its firepower. I was sorely disappointed. This is not an exhaustive list. I only recently created a new character. Readers, please contribute what you've noticed from the revisions that have detracted from the original versions of vanilla cutscenes. There are also shadows that mark where characters will move to, such as when the Knight first meets Satele. This may be a bug though and not intentional, I'm not sure.

Level sync only affects difficulty on worlds where things happen later than when you're originally there. Otherwise, it makes content you've overleveled not a complete curbstomp, but yes, that is how game difficulty normally works: Difficulty slowly increases to test prior knowledge of skills and abilities and proficiency in your newly learned ones. I've edited my post to make sure my remarks are not taken out-of-context. They are about Fallen Order, not SWTOR.

I'm not going to argue over datacrons, because those extra stats are needed for PvP and buffs are rewards for completing content. It would be nice to be able to toggle that stuff per character though. But do you need to run vanilla with BiS gear; do you need to have the best stims and medpacs on hand? (And unless those stims are for tertiary stats, they're being wasted because of level sync.) No, you can choose to forgo those. Those are choices you've made to make your experience easier. This thread is about the things not under the player's control. You are making a false dichotomy. Players just want a choice, not to force their ways on everyone as a certain demographic did. If others decide they want to see if they can hack it in a harder difficulty mode, great! I commend anyone that strives to improve. It is, and I would prefer they would go about it this way. But you should be required to know interrupts, CC, and DCDs, everything except ridiculously high APM, to get through the story, as they are all necessary elements of gameplay as fights are supposed to get harder and have more mechanics. The stats from datacrons only take you so far at the beginning. They eventually level out, if your level remains on par with the world you're on. There is a difference between a player being so skilled that a game is largely no longer difficult and a game that is so easy it is unrewarding. If only the player skill changed, then if the player makes a mistake or becomes lazy, they would be punished or at least threatened but the experience could still be fun in this way. That's not what's happening here. It'd be like . You assume all the skilled players are playing through the story with BiS gear? Maybe some players are, but certainly not all of them. You're using sweeping generalizations. He's using FUD, which has been the tactic of a lot of people against the OP in this thread. And how many would've played Fallen Order if there was only Easy mode? You know there would be reviews panning the game as having no semblance of a challenge. There must be a balance, and BioWare has been pandering to Easy mode players for far too long while forcing all other players to go along with their wishes. Give the players a choice! If you want the game to be more challenging, then why are you using the "love it or leave it" fallacy? You're talking out of both sides of your mouth. Three minutes is significantly longer than the five to ten seconds story boss fights take now. That's about the length of a fight with a champion enemy in some of the heroic areas now. No one is asking for a ten minute story boss fight.

This isn't so much a feature like the rest of the suggestions in this thread, but I've noticed that the subtitles don't always reflect word-for-word what is actually being said in the voiceover. BioWare was lauded for their subtitles in KotOR. SWTOR's are a far cry from that quality. A lot of times it's just a word or two missing; sometimes it's inaccurate, which is common with fillers/utterances (umm, er, uh, etc.,) but once in a while, a whole sentence will be omitted that is in the voiceover or one will be in the subtitles that doesn't exist in the voiceover. It's been like this at least since I started playing right before 4.0, and has probably been this way since launch. I used to send corrections but stopped when I noticed they weren't being acknowledged, and I was basically doing someone's job, as it was very laborious. I know this would be a very tedious process, but correcting these inaccuracies in subtitles should be a high priority for accommodating players with any disability that impairs their comprehension of dialogue.

Hello, Strawman, my old friend. No, the cardinal sin is forcing everyone into easy mode: not giving them a choice. Of course players with disabilities that impact their play should be accommodated for. No one is arguing that. I detest this strawman of accusing anyone that wants a more challenging game mode that they're against adaptive playstyles. If anything, BioWare is, as there's no colorblindness mode, and the subtitles need a review so what is heard is what is displayed, verbatim. There are many times where a word or two is missing, but once in a while, it's an entire sentence. There's an entire thread dedicated to adaptive play feature suggestions that BioWare started themselves. Stick to the topic. The other tactic I can't stand is all the FUD being thrown around. If there is a choice, it should draw in more players, not drive the current base away. I'm going to rank the things BioWare can do, in order of feasibility to solve this problem: Create difficulty modes for all instances - Not what OP is asking for, but it's better than nothing. Create separate instances for difficulty modes - They did this for PvP, so I think it's feasible, and the approach I prefer they take. Introduce an item similar to the White Acute Module that increases difficulty - I don't see how this could be done other than acting as a debuff on stats, but it's more feasible than... Creating servers that have different difficulty modes. I hope this one doesn't get removed by the mod.

This is not a viable solution. It breaks immersion and throws out an important element of the game. I guess those new players shouldn't buy games outside of their usual genres either, as they will introduce new interfaces, combat mechanics, and more. Let's just cater to their every whim. If you drive a car with an automatic transmission and then decide you're going to learn how to ride a motorcycle, are you going to complain about having to learn how to work a manual transmission, how to balance yourself, how you don't have a comfy, quiet cabin, the lack of cargo space; are you going to complain about the difference in steering, handling, and braking compared to a car; are you going to complain about being exposed to the elements and having to wear different clothing to protect yourself in case of a crash, the maneuvers you can perform to protect yourself in the event of a crash? What are you going to do, complain to the manufacturer to make motorcycles more car-like? No, you either adapt to the changes or you don't ride a motorcycle. (You can opt to not wear protective clothing, but you do that at your own peril and if something happens, you'll wish you hadn't forgone it.) Here's an even better analogy: fly a plane. Are you going to complain about the completely thorough pilot's licensing process, how many hours of flight are required to be licensed, conducting pre-flight checks, charting flight plans, learning the NATO phonetic alphabet and all the jargon associated with flight, all the instruments and interfaces you have to learn to use and read, the conditions you have to fly through, how to react to bad flight situations, the costs of flying; the risks, etc. etc. etc.? No, because flight isn't going to change for anyone. You either adapt to the differences or don't learn to fly. I have never seen anyone new to FPSs ever complain that they're too different from the types of games they usually play and should be changed to meet their demands because they're comfortable with a different genre. I've never seen PC players complain console games should be changed to meet their demands because they're comfortable with PC games (as much as those differences suck). Players need to be able to adapt to the new circumstances they find themselves in. There should not be changes to fundamental elements just because they whined. They must adapt to the new environment in some way, shape, or form. Hey look at that, games teaching life lessons! Of course in real life, there are exceptions such as hostile and unnecessarily dangerous work environments but I digress. This is an overly dramatic response. No one is asking for that kind of difficulty. Players just want to be challenged. They don't want everything to be a curbstomp. This is why games gradually teach you new elements: so you understand them for the current challenge and then the later ones, and obviously if you don't get it, you will have a hard time getting past the first test of this knowledge. And you rightfully, shouldn't be able to progress further until you do. The FP droid is nigh unkillable. It takes an entire room full of mobs to take it down, if you can aggro them fast enough. It just keeps spamming self-heal until it recovers enough to continue fighting. It's sufficient enough for escorting the unskilled or the willfully ignorant through an encounter. The devs can just give them that again. You are painting with a very broad brush. Not every skilled player feels that way, and I think you know that. PvE balance should always be prioritized because nearly everyone will play PvE, not everyone PvPs. However, PvP really should be separate from PvE. We've seen many changes over the years to favor the PvP experience that have left PvE players with a sour taste in their mouths, such the removal of stances and certain class-defining abilities being replaced with less iconic, less visually appealing ones. This assumes all players want the same things out of their gaming experiences, they don't. Well, they can't really, because that would make all new story content exclusively single player, and they're not stupid enough to go down that route again...I hope. Flashpoints are instances, not open world. There's no easy way to balance open world content for skilled and unskilled players at the same time. The only way I see them doing this is creating a separate Hard Mode instance, if that's even possible, or a server, and a new server is probably not financially feasible.

How long have you waited for the Response Wheel to show up? If you're lagging, it could take some time.

Aw hell no! You know who will be made those mods: the forum regulars with their own agendas and axes to grind. BioWare would be foolish to trust this community with that kind of power. It's already clear and evident that there is a small group of people on the forum that wield a lot of power and abuse that power. There's also a strong suspicion someone has the ears of the devs, as we can't make out why BioWare makes such stupid decisions in making changes and adding certain things to the game, such as the Amplifier Panel that you couldn't collapse, or any number of other blunders when there was feedback there were improvements that needed to be made.

I said "offering help" not raging at someone. There is a difference. Helping someone and raging at them are opposites. You could jump ship, but depending on your class, you could be waiting a long time for another pop. Just like real life, sometimes you have to grin and bear working with people you don't get along with. The wisdom is in knowing when to walk away and when to stick around.

They have to find a way to better educate players in forum manners, because a sticky isn't doing it. They have to show by example what is done to duplicate threads (They should be merged.) and scold people too lazy to search before posting. No, it would not. This isn't Reddit. Old threads have a purpose, especially Bugs and Suggestions. All that information would be better to be in the same threads than giving people no choice but to act like this is Reddit and create a new thread every single time on the exact same subject. It makes searching for information more laborious if the policy changed to actually encourage the latter behavior that is already rampant. You solve this by educating members on proper forum etiquette. I completely agree! It was the only way the Bonus Series bug got a working solution finally. The devs don't pay any attention to threads that quickly get buried, but one that consistently and persistently stays near the top will have no choice but to be addressed eventually with a solution. If people post in already existing threads on the same subject, it will also reduce thread clutter, making it easier to search for information. What the mods should do is merge threads on the same subjects, and remind the people that post duplicate or similar threads on the same topic to do a search first for similar threads before posting a new one and if one exists, to post there instead. That's because the forum denizens are treating the forums like Reddit and/or are too damn lazy to conduct a search first. OP thinks he speaks for everyone when he doesn't. Occasionally on other fora, I have seen threads get necro'd and met with admonishment, but they were completely irrelevant, unlike here on a site where old threads can and may still be relevant to the subject and contain valuable information. But--I need pockets! They're all so very useful.

You could also try removing Bitraider. Steam is not your only option, no matter how much its disciples preach.

They can try to, but many people will not be receptive towards them. The best ones though are the ones that are offered advice and they spit in the face of the other person. How dare they offer help at improving! I guess you never played pretend as a child. Someone would always wind up saying, "You can't do that." Guess what happened if the group couldn't reach an agreement on what could and couldn't be done or someone didn't play along the same way: People didn't want to play with that person.

Character slots have been going up since September. I'd say they've had the biggest increase in price out of anything...and practically everything has gone up since then.

Yes, healers should be prioritized, but in the absence of healers it's: Weak Standard Strong Elite Champion Too many DPS don't know this priority and just target the strongest enemy. That's the tank's job! The healer then gets targeted by the standards and weaks until the tank gets around to giving them a whack (or if this is vet and there is no healer in the group, the tank themselves is targeted)! This essentially forces the tank to play the role of DPS except in boss fights. It's a sure way to anger a tank. I agree with everything else you've said. I think it's pretty clear by my response that I don't exactly agree with what you said. What I'm saying is you can't just play in a way unintended in a multiplayer game unless the game is moddable in a way that fundamentally alters gameplay or you have a group of people that have agreed to play with you in the same way you want to.

No, it's "they don't learn to play the game the way the game and devs expect them to play." In real life, if one doesn't follow the rules of a game, no one will want to play with them, because they ruin everyone else's fun that plays by the rules. Even if someone doesn't play by the official rules and they come up with their own mode of play, their version still has rules or it's just chaos. In regards to video games, this would fall under modding. MMOs don't allow modding in this way. In most cases of games, you have to be able to mod the game or find a group of like-minded players. The best examples of modding are FPSs: Counterstrike was originally a mod for Half-Life as was Team Fortress. Another famous example is Defense of the Ancients, which began as a mod for Warcraft III, created the genre of MOBAs as we know it, and lead to the development of League of Legends: the two most prolific games in the genre.

Doubtful, those ToS are like iron-clad contracts. You'd need a really good lawyer to even attempt to find a loophole.

You're one of the few that actually put effort into learning to play the game then. We see that your journey from newbie to veteran is unfortunately the exception, not the rule. Maybe if others were compelled to learn the game, that would change. Thank you for confirming it still works.

Well said! Sadly, money is the only language many people understand. If someone sued over that, then they obviously have plenty of money to spend on CC and are being a miser. The purpose of the sunset is to gradually let people down. You see the outrage in this thread over that alone. The speeder and pet rewards should've stayed, but the grandfathered CC rewards should not stay for long.

Not my fault you interpreted my post as meaning I had checked it recently when I said it was "a while ago." I never stated it was a definitive fact that was verified recently.

I checked it years ago. I don't have proof, because I did it for myself. I don't have time right now to create a new character and take comparison screenshots

I tested it myself, it worked. The question is "Does it still work?"

It's been a while but when I last checked, the WAM also applied to XP outside the event. This brought XP rewards back down to pre-4.0 levels.

I cannot blame them from a business point-of-view for their reaction. And I have no sympathy for the people whining about the termination of the program. You can't shame me. I'm not paying anyone for a referral, and at least I link to all the information about the program. Nearly everyone just puts their referral link in their signature, that's deceptive.

Guess what? That happens in real life too: A few bad people ruin it for everyone. I welcome the end of the Referral Program. At least they came to their senses and are finally doing something about it. In this case, it's important to stop the bleeding. It's not the best solution but appropriate, given the circumstances. Too many are abusing it and have an obscene amount of Cartel Coins because they figured out how to game the system. That needs to stop immediately. The fact it took is more evidence of how understaffed the SWTOR team is. Tough. Just because you can do something or don't have to do something doesn't make it right. And then you even have the audacity to sell your referral in your signature.

I've never seen any referrer be honest about what they get in return. It's not in their interest. And even after being warned, a lot of players don't care, because they're new and don't know the value of CC. It's guaranteed to start a fight in Gen chat though. There's no need to be hostile. BioWare has had plenty of time and evidence from reports and chat logs to go after referral spammers and scammers, if they ever did punish them, they were quiet about it. It must've been bad enough that they determined it was better to just halt the whole program. I agree though, they didn't think it through enough when they added CC to the rewards without abuse protections.