My summary of what it's looking like is:

Yes! I think they kind of understood this with KOTFE, which is why the huge empire thing is just about family drama at the heart of it, but the problem was that you aren't really part of that family drama, you're kinda shoehorned into it and it doesn't even make sense half the time. Plus the gameplay is set like it is large scale, despite the story itself being very small. The beauty of the class stories is it's often small in scale and the beats are personalized to your character's archetype. Even when doing something that's a big deal for the galaxy, it's still part of your class arc; it is, in the RPG sense, something you are doing, not just something happening to you. A lot of the KOTFE+ stuff is like you have the title of commander, but you aren't really going out and doing your own thing. It's like the reverse of the class stories that way. Superficial power without a feeling of agency vs. little power with a feeling of agency.

Oh BTW, if you're up for giving it a try, I'd recommend setting up keybinds and trying to use those instead of clicking abilities. I used this video to help me with some ideas for it in the beginning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjhuVACT7_8. I'm much younger than you, prob my tremor is not as bad, but sometimes in the past when I've played games like these and I got really stressed in group content, it would be hard to click abilities at all cause of the tremor. Eventually, I decided to give keybinds a try and it took some getting used to the muscle memory of it, but now if my hands are shaky, I don't have to worry about floundering around on a toolbar and I feel much more skilled as a player overall. Hopefully the arthritis would not make keybinds too difficult to try, but thought I'd share that thought with you in case it can be a help. Also, one other thing is I find I'm less stressed in general when I don't have the music on. The combat music makes me way more stressed than I would otherwise be. Idk if that's just me being weird, but for some reason it makes a difference for me and I play much more calmly and clear headed.

I thought it was a whole topic of discussion that stuff has been adjusted such that it takes longer to kill than on live. Whether that necessarily translates to difficulty, idk, but I've read it in multiple places from people who tested on PTS. I distinctly remember something about reportedly with the level 80 gear they hit less hard than they did with BiS 75 gear on live. Like it's being adjusted to a downgrade in power, essentially, while increasing the level cap to make it seem like you're going somewhere. And since it will be harder (if not impossible?) to gear up all the way to BiS as a purely solo player in 7.0, that downgrade will be felt even more for some. I'm not saying whether it's enough it'll be a problem for OP, I don't know, but I want to make sure the details are straight.

I've thought people are way exaggerating when they say BW is employing like 5 people, but jeez, how do you get progress that crippled by one designer taking time off unless their team really is tiny. I've been wondering of late if the credits we see in some of this stuff is mostly padded from outsourcing and contracting work, and it makes their team seem bigger than it is. A relatively small in-house team on permanent payroll with a lot being pulled in from outside for content pushes could explain a lot about the glacial pace they move at and the seeming inability to ever adjust quickly in response to feedback.

Fair point. Here's a screenshot with the unlock name in my game, or what I believe people are talking about anyway... Priority Transport: Personal Starship. https://ibb.co/0GGSqq2 This is on a character I unlocked it on recently under Character Perks (prob a few days ago).

Fair enough. With all the bugs this game has, I wouldn't put it past there being something weird going on lol. For my own part, I've always known it to be something I have to unlock per character like some of the others in this thread. Maybe (and this is purely speculating on how a bug might work if it was one and be rare)... maybe you paid CC to unlock it at some point and that gets it to stick for legacy without really being intended, but since most people would never do that since it's so cheap a credit cost, it's a really rare thing. Just speculating, but yeah, idk. I definitely don't have the kind of CC laying around I'd want to test a theory like that for the heck of it. XD

You don't have to prove anything, but if you made a video of you making a new character and looking under your perks first thing, that would certainly clear up if anything odd is going on.

So to review, you condescendingly claimed the people complaining are a tiny number of players and then admitted you want this change because you are a hardcore raider and you haven't even been here for the last 5 years. Who should BW listen to, a near consensus in the places where they ask for feedback, or 0.01% of raiders who are already a fraction of the playerbase, who just came back last year. How to dunk on yourself in one post or less.

I would like forums where I can set the style to something basic like white/grey and blue palette. This style has personality, that's for sure, but dev posts are blinding and I feel like I'm squinting half the time I'm reading these forums. The whole yellow text thing is cute as a stylistic gimmick, not so great for actual reading. I guess it's probably inspired by the opening credits crawl in star wars, but it gets old fast to my eyes.

How easy is it if someone only PvPs to get the gear? Do they have to endure being curbstomped to get to an adequate place? Because if so, that seems like the kind of thing that would turn off a competitive PvPer from entering the PvP scene at all. Getting their behind kicked by raiders who come in with BiS gear. Am I missing something here or is that a fairly accurate possibility? I'm trying to be open minded about this cause I don't have the best understanding of all the detail ins and outs for this game's PvP in 6.0, but it's hard to see what benefit it serves in PvP overall, other than allowing some mediocre players to stomp on players who aren't geared properly. But some people like to do premades just so they can stomp others with an unintended advantage, so I'm not exactly surprised if some people like the idea of gearing up for that same reason. As for it being an MMO, check out GW2's design. Very little of that in the same context. Sometimes what is standard in a game is just that way because of what it was modeled after. Idk if this particular thing is WoW's influence, but WoW has shaped the standards of the MMO market a lot over the years due to all the studios that patterned their games after it to try to get WoW $$$. Meanwhile, an MMO like the original SWG, its design choices are almost never brought up anywhere, despite it being an MMORPG too; some of its original design choices are so far different from what has become the standard, it's virtually unrecognizable as the same genre.

If someone has been here for 10 years and put thousands of dollars into the game, that should mean something. If it doesn't mean you're entitled to anything and it doesn't mean your concerns matter, then what does being a customer even mean. I understand that in a vacuum, comparing such numbers to other players is silly, but your interest in the matter seems to be for the purpose of dismissing legitimate complaints from long time customers who have paid for a service. As far as I can tell, that's why OP went that route in the first place, is because of receiving unfairly dismissive commentary.

*shrug* People have their preferences. You got yours on this one. Not like they're gonna go back on that now.

I realize this may be a preference thing, but gear defining strength in PvP seems like asinine design to me. Like I could understand the justification for some minor stat min-maxing making a difference, since it's an RPG, but if gear makes a big difference, then mediocre players with BiS gear start thinking they are gods and decent players with crap gear get discouraged from trying. After all, as can be observed, part of anything sport-like is a mental game of belief and morale, so gear skews that by throwing off the accuracy of judging how you stack up and where you can improve.

That's messed up, blaming it on the pug. Sorry you had to deal with that.

Pretty bold to call somebody else disingenuous on this, while you cherrypick bits of old content to mark down as not being as significant an addition as they look, but don't apply the same scrutiny to newer content, or what's coming with 7.0. Like I can do the same type of thing with 7.0, watch: combat styles? just tricking people into thinking old content is new; loadouts, basic QoL feature that any game with decent infrastructure could produce in a week or two. Weapon designer, QoL appearance feature and is getting delayed. Tiny bit of story- Using value judgments is not an accurate way to compare the quantity of content and the time it takes to produce. It's burying the point by turning things we can measure into matters of opinion, which is to your advantage in this disagreement, cause if it's just a matter of opinion whether the game is getting less content, then you can just say you feel it's the same and nobody can say otherwise. Anyway, I suggest you let this argument go and let this cheeky thread of mine die. We're way off topic of what it was originally about at this point.

Yes, being willing to explain the motivation behind major changes without any PR BS you can smell a mile away should be a given for games like this. And if they feel they can't explain it in a plain way without fear of getting dunked on by the community, then they shouldn't be greenlighting it to begin with. That's a pretty straightforward litmus test IMO. They should ask themselves at the beginning of a dev cycle whether they can comfortably share their motivations without spin and if they don't feel they can, then don't proceed with it. This is assuming, granted, that their motivations are generally well-intentioned when they may be greedy and manipulative motivations to get more money and that's why they don't share it.

You probably aren't caught up on the latest. AFAIK, the latest is: weapon designer has been delayed (not coming out with 7.0, it instead will allegedly be coming out with 7.1, whenever that is) and on top of that, the level 76+ weapons won't be moddable. So that combination will mean people who do the new level cap in 7.0 to find they can't both gear up and have custom weapon looks, which is a downgrade from what we have on live atm. That's what I was referring to.

Thanks for coming in with the breakdown, Damask_Rose and juliushorst, I appreciate it, I probably wouldn't have remembered where I saw it. Sometimes I see something and the details don't stick, I just remember the gist.

Someone did a breakdown in another thread recently and no, the content amount comparison by expansion is not remotely the same. I mean, you're just factually wrong here, idk what to say.

I have not thought about this deeply or anything, might be misunderstanding something, but it would seem to me that best case scenario would be to make alternative names for each origin that can use them in cases where the names are too specific to the origin (and do the same with animations), i.e. Smuggler's Luck becomes Agent's Edge / Trooper's Tactics / Hunter's Precision or something like that (I'm not proposing they name it those, just trying to illustrate what I'm saying... it will be like that where, for example, each of the tech classes could be gunslinger assuming passing the alignment restrictions or whatever, right?). But if they agreed this was a problem, I'm afraid the way this team works they might just do it the shortcut way and kill the unique characteristics of the class by giving it generic names and animations. That would be worse than leaving it alone, IMO.

I would much prefer it have the capability to trot if not run, but to each their own.

Cool idea and discussion. This sounds nice.

Yeah, something like the jetpack in star wars bounty hunter would be cool. It had a limited airtime before you'd have to land and wait on recharge a bit, but it was still really fun to use. I'm curious about what all it would be useful for other than the pure fun of it. Mechanically, probably what I'd hope for is enough height and speed for some added convenience, such as enough height to get from 1st to 2nd level in the senate tower without walking the steps. Or enough speed to catch an elevator if you just missed it. Maybe even enough height and speed to go some places without needing to wait on an elevator at all. I'd love the convenience and feel of that. Edit: Also, making some jumps without taking the falling damage, using it to slow your fall in bursts so you land without damage, or aiming downward more like a glider. Something like that.

Yeah. Someone might have already said this, but I've been thinking like if it's soooooo hard to do weapon designer, then make all weapons moddable, make it cost nothing to remove mods from items, and boom, now when you get an upgrade you can take them out of the drop and put them in your appearance weapon of choice without much hassle. They could even add a special inventory space sorta like the crafting one, something that can hold weapons so you can have more than one to swap between when you want to, to make it a little more convenient. It's not as user-friendly as a weapon designer UI, maybe, but as I've seen people point out, the design of such isn't exactly a cakewalk to get right anyway. Like should it belong to outfit, should it not. If they are allowing swapping combat styles, then it has to belong to combat style at least, right? All stuff that can be confusing to the user if not done just right. From the stuff I've seen people bring up, it seems like it's probably going to be a disappointment in how it's designed anyway. Honestly, the thing I find most annoying about the current system with weapons is: 1) the ridiculous cost of removing mods, especially on higher level items, or finding the right mods to get a weapon upgraded just right and 2) the pain of dealing with more than one weapon/set, usually when trying to have different weapons for different outfits. Both the inventory and equipping management and the getting all the right upgrades for it again so it's worth it. If those things were addressed in some way, I probably wouldn't care how, so long as it's convenient. Really tho, this is just one of numerous issues this game has with appearance stuff, which supports the idea that it's not just about the CM every time, sometimes it's just incompetence. I mean, stuff like how you can't even sort by items that are account unlocked vs. character unlocked in collections (only unlocked, not unlocked, and all), or how you have to claim a copy of an entire armor set from collections to use any of the pieces and even if you do use the whole thing, if all you wanted to do is stamp it to an outfit, you now have to make space for it somewhere or delete it. Or how the in-game store doesn't even have a dedicated category sort for flairs and tunings. Like even the CM aspect of things does not escape the negligent and half-baked design that pervades this game. It's like they just implement things and then forget them.