It's a double edged sword. On the one hand I'd say the game makes most of its money from the CM. On the other hand, it means they can just make all their return/Profits off of it rather than trying to make a good game that people want to sub to.

Unfortunately there is nothing you, nor I, nor really any of the playerbase do anything about it. This has been an issue for basically two years now and the Dev's have done nothing to address it. They are clearly aware of it for sure, but rather than actually fix their game they'd rather do the bare minimum and milk as much of the cartel market as they can. I was talking with some friends in discord and they had a theory that the game is so bad because biosword is catering to the space barbie crowd, due to the fact that they eat everything in the cartel market up compared to say us PVP'ers who barely care about that. I think its moreso a combination of that, but also them in general not caring about PVP. The dev's did no player feedback surveys when PVP seasons dropped, I did. They barely have innovated the mode while GS keeps changing everytime now. PVP seasons is literally designed to throw fodder at veteran players. You get these PVE'rs who don't know squad and just want space barbie and so they Q and get thrown into a match where they do any of the following; -AFK at a point to farm medals -Get killed over and over again by vet players. Going back to the point of the topic, Its a combination of allowing 8 man premades to be a thing alongside PVP seasons bringing in players who don't even pop their defensives properly or in general care about getting better at PVP and just want space barbie to show off to their buddies. On top of this they have not fixed any of the current broken meta specs; Jug skank tank, Madness, etc so players just class stack as the meta. Regarding the premades here on Star Forge (which I see you are on also.) The premades are mostly all on impside and to be honest, a majority of them are just people trying to find fun in the carcass that is PVP. The premade situation boils down into two groups; 1. The Friends premade: Most common one, its literally just 3-4 friends getting in a group together to have fun, a majority of the time these guys are not running meta or pocket heals and are literally just wanting to have playing together. I've been in this premade plenty of times with my buddies. We all just play whatever spec we want and Q together. While we don't go out of our way to win matches a lot of the time by playing objectives, we do at least try and contribute to our team. 2. The Egos: These are players who do full 6-8 man meta comps, they get 1-2 tanks and healers with them as well. They have a pocket tank and healer for the group leader. All they care about is DPS farming the entire other team and will sabotage efforts to win. I was on a voidstar once and was planting the bomb on the door and one of these players pulled me from the door just so they can continue farming the other team. These players only care about feeding their KD and imo are massive narcissists. These players know they are killing the game mode even faster but they don't care as long as they get to gloat they got a 53-0 KD by tunneling the entire other team that mostly comprised of Solo pugs. These people don't want fair fights either, I've seen one premade group literally start Q dodging because they started fighting more experienced players rather than randos. All they care about is feeding their Ego's and KD. Honestly though at the end of the day, I kind of stopped caring about PVP and this game as a whole. The dev's have proven time and time again they care more about their Cartel Market than fixing any of the issues. 7.5 is going to be what we expect from them, 45 minutes of story content, new CM stuff, and finding something else to break in this game. But if you are asking what I would do to address these DPS farm issues? 1. Increase TTK, I think we are short of where we should be. TTK currently is too fast and players often die before they can even pop a defensive. It's also insanely easy to meet the DPS check to push the other team back to their spawn. Increasing TTK means players can survive longer, new players will be less frustrated with how fast they die and can actually start getting better, and premades will have a harder time farming the other team. 2. Limit group size back down to 4 for Warzones and two for arenas. It's been state hundred's of times already for the past two years. 3. Nerf the meta specs, literally just tone them down.

Chaff flare is one of the best DCD's in the game. It absorbs TWO force and tech attacks no matter how much DMG they would do. Doesn't matter if its an engi nuke or a force leach, it'll gets absorbed. Add on top of this it increases your defense chance and its something you should be popping when you are about to get hit with big burst. That said you need to pop chaff flare properly and know when to pop it, for madness Sorc I pop chaff flare when they are casting force leach or demolish those are two of their heavy hitters. But ideally you want to pop chaff flare when you see them cast force leach. Did you also use Tech override and concussive round to knock them out for a bit? I use that and its extremely effective at well...everyone (Except specs that have CC immunity periods). Did you use interupt when they were doing really well anything? Use it during force leach or force lightning. Force lightning is what madness relies on to insta cast demolish, interupt them and they cannot insta cast it giving you more time. Also I don't suggest standing in one spot, Mercs are a bit more mobile with thrill of the hunt being given mainline now. Using tracer missile sure you are locked into one spot, but the rest of the time if possible be moving, Id also suggest putting something between you and the sorc (like a wall) so that you can get a reprieve, that sorc can't do anything if he can't line of sight you. The other thing I'm going to ask is are you running the right skill tree setup for Arsenal? I personally run; Signature shot passive at level 23. Power barrier obviously at level 27 Customized warhead at level 39. Chaff flare at level 43. Energy rebounder at 47. Kolto surge at 63. Responsive safeguards at level 68. and finally trauma regulators at level 73. Are you also using your supercharged gas? It's where most of your high DMG comes from. You ALWAYS want to be building stacks of supercharge. I Spam Kolto shot 24/7 when i am running to the next fight to prebuild my stacks of supercharge to have my supercharged gas ready when I engage the next fight. If you are out of combat use your recharge and reload to build stacks or heal back up, sometimes you might even have to bail out of a fight to go heal back up. I also hope that you were not popping them all at once. That is the fastest way to down yourself. It's kind of hard to explain, I recommend watching this old vid by biggs here, it's a bit outdated with the changes to chaff flair, but the general idea remains relatively the same. Given time with Merc/Commando you'll get the feel of when you should be popping defensives and it will come naturally. IO does better sustained DPS and is my go to because its more mobile and has less casting compared to Arsenal. I also just find it more engaging to play. However IO is more strict in its rotation and it can punish you by botching your heat. I highly recommend that anyone learning Merc/Commando stick with Arsenal/Gunnery until you get the hang of how the spec plays. Arsenal is far more forgiving compared to IO. So in short yes, but only if you know how to play it properly. Electro net should be used against them if they are running around like speedy Gonzales or if you are securing a kill on them. Fun way to annoy people is to CC round them, than if they break throw net on them. They can't break it and have to endure our DPS. Honestly though, I think it just comes down to practice and time. Given more encounters with sorcs and well anything in PVP playing as merc and you'll learn how to deal with them.

I've thought about class balancing and have discussed it for a long time. I think its more than just Engi being overtuned/overpowered. It more so comes down to the broken design philosophy biosword has. Same reason Madness sorc is broken, it all boils down to 7.0s horrible design choices. I think there are some team members who do try and make the game better but it all comes down to the lead devs. They basically want a dumb easy game that anyone can play, but in turn made a game that no one wanted to play. I made a post end of last year, basically saying my 5 cents. Where PVP has suffered is that you take a game mode that already had a decent following and worked well enough, and you find out some way to make it worse. That is what 7.2 did, and to be honest all of 7.0. but regarding back to class balancing? Its multiple issues stacking on top of another. -Time to Kill (TTK) is currently too fast giving players zero time to react. -Overpowered tacticals making strong specs even more broken. -Everyone running 2nd Wind implant getting constant health regen -Pruning of abilities made PVP basically become dummy parsing as you use the same 4-5 button rotations over and over again. Classes lost a majority of their defensives, high mobility, utilities, and stuns. -No cap on premade size, letting players form meta comps to farm solo players. -Jug skank tank hitting massive crits for a spec that is supposed to be a tank not DPS. -Horrible Combat Style Trees, with some classes being able to stack crits and other passives while others are poorly designed and get terrible passives or are picking abilities they lost from pruning. The list goes on and on.

The easiest solution is undoing class Pruning imo. Pruning is the source of all these class imbalances and undoing it makes it far easier to address what is overperforming and what is underperforming. By undoing pruning and bringing classes back in line with where they should be, PVP and the game as a whole will drastically improve.

I want to bump this old post back up again rather than making a new post. I recently did a post asking what people wanted to see in 8.0. From what I could gather from here and on the Reddit was a lot of these common things being brought up. 1. GSF Revamp or Seasons, not surprising to me really. GSF has not had any real updates to it since I came back to SWTOR in 2017, I really cannot recall any updates the Dev's would have done. While I may not play GSF per say, I do support adding a GSF Season or a "revamp" to the mode. I know a lot of players really enjoy it, and I do think broadsword needs to look at adding more content. 2. PVP Revamp or new modes, Going to be honest. Broadsword dropped the ball MASSIVELY on their "PVP Revamp" back in 7.2, it felt so disconnected from what the actual PVP playerbase wanted. PVP needs some massive attention right now, the mode is just toxic beyond belief with 6 man premades farming solo Q's, and is just a massive mess that is causing the remaining PVP population to leave. But generally the main thing players want is actual Quality of life features to be implemented for all forms of content and bugfixing. Obviously they want a more engaging story than the current mando one, but I hope the Dev's can wrap that up soon and get back to the Malgus storyline that 7.0 was basically teased about since 6.0. This is my 8.0 Wishlist. First off, Class Pruning and removing player abilities? That has to go. Levelling a character is so boring and tedious. I have been levelling 3 alts; Shadow, Sniper, and Commando. Each one in a different place, Sniper is just now 35, Shadow is now 43, and my Commando is level 74. I can tell you how tedious it is levelling these guys. It is soooo boring and mind numbing. When you start a new character for the first 30-45 levels it is literally just you hitting the filler ability because you run out of energy/force because you literally have nothing else to use. In 6.0 and past, I never encountered this issue, Abilities felt nice at the rate which you could get them. For example, at level 35 my sniper would have entrench and shield probe. Guess what? I don't have those yet, I just unlocked series of shots at level 35, back in 6.0 I believe you got that at like level 15 or 17. So much of this game is just numb and boring because of pruning. I was in a VC with one of my Discord buddies and he said that the Space barbie players complained that the game was too hard and thus biosword pruned every class since space barbie are the ones buying Cartel Market stuff. Do I think its true? No I think it was just a poorly executed attempt at drawing a single player crowd into SWTOR by dumbing the game down to its lowest level, but in reality it made the core loop of the game so boring and repetitive ( a theme of 7.0) that no one liked it. 2nd thing, If I were to hypothetically say what the guiding principal of 8.0 is, I would want it to be class identity. Basically to simplify it, I want classes to have their own identity again. 7.0 destroyed and ruined it and basically made every class an absolute mess of what they are supposed to be. On top of this, I'd want every class to be useable in any form of endgame content, classes like Marksman or whatever. Players should be able to bring what they want without being held back by their spec. I'd want a rework on top of undoing all the pruning, to make classes feel unique. Burst or Direct classes would be reworked to actually feel like they do these consistent burst DMG outputs, nothing major, but they would lead up to these massive burst windows where they can chunk off an HP bar. For example, going back to marksman as i brought it up, Marksman would do this decent okayish DMG but when it goes into its burst window with ambush whoever is on the other side is definitely going to feel it. DOT Specs on the other hand would do okay ish burst with their abilities, but where they would be shining is with their DOTS. They would be the kings of sustained DPS on a target. You might say, but hey are classes not already this way? Yes & No. Class balancing is all over the place since 7.0, some specs are doing great while others are atrocious. I want to state any class balancing would be kept according to the way the Dev's had stated in their post here. I just want refinements so that classes are performing where they should be instead of this mess where it is all over of the place. I'd remove all these "Finisher" Tacticals and passives (UV blast, Ionic, Madness shock detonation, etc) these break the balancing of the game and need to go. 2nd thing, is that I'd remove the passives that change a DOT ability to a direct burst one, it goes against the idea of what DOT classes should be and it also is hard to balance around. Passives like Pyro making railshot a DOT, are the ones I want to see for DOT based specs, things that make the spec better at what they are meant for. Regarding the CS trees themselves, it should be reworked to have the following; 1. More tiers to help fill empty space for levelling. 2. Each tier should be themed on an idea DMG boost, Defensive, or utility. Do not throw Defensive and DMG in the same tier. Each passive option should be as viable as the other two to make sure not everyone gravitates towards the one option that is leagues above the others. 3. Modifications for the last two class abilities. My last wishpoint idea is a gearing revamp, mainly in regards to implants. I would like to see it changed to be more akin to 6.0 set system. Basically the implant vendor would now sell a crate or set of implants. These sets would be based off sets from 6.0 rather than parts of them. The concentrated fire set would be the actual full conc. fire set from 6.0 with all its bonuses. Basically all the implants would be combined into a two piece set that offers the full set bonus of its 6.0 predecessor rather than a single bonus. However in order to get the set bonus you would need to equip both implants, this means you can no longer run Second wind and one of your class ones for example, if you wish to run 2nd wind you would have to give up your class implant set and run both 2nd wind implants and run the full set to get the bonus. From here it literally works the same way it does currently, upgrade your pieces and once you hit the cap, it becomes half off for buying and upgrading for you legacy. I think this is nice in between ground of adding back the old set bonuses from 6.0, but keeping in line with the implant system. But first let me state something regarding this, First off I'd get rid off a lot of the junk 6.0 sets and not have them come back to this 8.0 idea. 2nd, Yes I am aware that some sets from 6.0 like force bound were claimed to be OP, if those sets were to be brought back they would be Reworked massively to be more balanced and in line. Share your thoughts, opinions, etc.

Like the title says, What would you like to see the Dev's Change and or Implement if and whenever 8.0 drops. Given the current track record of expansions we probably wont see 8.0 till holiday of 2025, however given the current rate of updates and slow pacing of the story, 8.0 might not actually come out until 2026. There really hasn't been a confirmation of an 8.0 as far as i'm aware of, the dev's really only talked about planned content up to 7.6 I believe.

Stating my 5 Cents here. Premades and horrible Matchmaking are both the issue. Premades because the MM to essentially give out and throw newbies and or solo Q's against a 4-6 Man Premade, which in turn leads to the issues players face today. Basically whenever a Premade Q's, the MM struggles to match accordingly, and in turns throws whatever at the wall and that's the team balancing. Another thing that occurs is that Premades abuse the MM system, by opting or leaving matches as soon as they come across another premade. I've seen it happen so many times where as soon as everyone spawns in, the premade bails. They don't want an even fight to fight another premade, They want to farm solo Q's for EZ kills and and to feed their egos. This is not even bringing up the fact that almost every premade nowadays is just number farming, they sabotage their own teams wins just so they can continue farming the other team. Regarding MM, my general theory is that there is just not enough skilled players to balance both teams out. For example, One team will have a mixed of new players and veterans while the other will be all new, or it will turn out that one team is all veterans and the other is all new. It can be easy to say its a premade on the other team, but in actuality its just because there is not enough skilled players actually playing to balance evenly. I know people memed on the Ranked Community leaving, but in reality the PVP community lost a vast majority of its skilled playerbase. This actually has some truth and merit to it, I've been on teams against premades where is was some highly skilled rando solo players (usually ex ranked players) and we were able to fend off a sweaty premade. This is very rare though, as stated in previous point. Regarding how many Premades are active, at least on Star Forge there are 3-4 that come to mind that are infamous for just farming players and being toxic beyond belief. Regarding a solution, its literally an Occam's razor deal, just limit premades back down to 4 for Warzones, and two for Arenas. The game mode even advertises for Warzones and i quote "up to four friends". The dev's clearly know that their 8 man premade idea doesn't work in practice, they just don't care about the PVP Community (or any community that doesn't buy their Cartel Market content). I also want to add an addendum that imo, I think Time to kill should go up. It is currently far to easy to push a team back into their spawn, I've been on the sending end and receiving end of it. By increasing TTK you do the following; 1. Premades have a much harder time farming players, increased TTK means that players will survive longer and have a better chance at fighting back. 2. New players have more breathing room to fight, and are not nuked the moment they come out of spawn. 3. It becomes much harder to push players back into their spawn and will actually punish players for trying to spawn camp as they cannot meet the DPS checks to keep the other team locked in. TLDR; Limit Premade size and increase TTK are my solutions to fixing Premade farms.

The more it's said, the better. Though I doubt biosword will actually do anything, they've proven well nothing tbh.

I'm going to cut to the chase, PVP is dying. This game mode which used to have a healthy population is literally on hospice care at this point. Recently I've been taking a break from SWTOR PVP and SWTOR in general and playing other games. I'm going to be honest, I regret coming back to this game. Like the thing is, back in 6.0 and past, I could play this game and have a blast. Now? Now, I just question my existence and why I torture myself. I honestly get in the mood to play SWTOR and want to have fun, than I boot up the game, play for like 10-30 minutes, get bored or annoyed by broken mechanics and than go do something else. Story of the 7.0 expansion in its entirety to be honest. There are three things that is ruining PVP imo; Toxic Premades, Broken Meta Classes, and lack of meaningful incentive. Regarding Premades, I play on Star Forge and there are some notorious players who shall remained unnamed but are well known in the community for leading premades and being extremely toxic to everyone else. What these players are forgetting, is that by doing this they are driving away players and killing the Q. I question who at Biosword though 8 man premades were a good idea? The experiment failed. NO ONE likes premades except for players who only play in premades to farm solo players. So like 5% of the PVP Population, while the remaining 95% are solo pugs. Basically the vast majority of players get to get farmed by premades because the Dev's literally don't listen to feedback at all, even though we have been reporting this issue since 7.2, so around 2 years now. Dealing with these premades is basically dealing with High School Drama, not to mention these players act like their in High school. I've seen people say Ranked was toxic, but trust me, it is NOWHERE I repeat NOWHERE as toxic as PVP is currently. Regarding Broken Meta, I've said it over and over, these three classes are currently broken. 1. Madness Sorc. 2. Ionic Engis. 3. Skank tank Jug. Biosword has done "Nerfs" to these specs but its honestly pathetic, can we get some nerfs to these specs? In fact lets talk about class balancing for a sec. Pruning imo ruined the flow of PVP and the whole game in general. In a sad attempt to babify the game, they took all the skill based abilities out, and left a bland experience in its place. Most of PVP is literally just dummy parsing, you do the same 4-5 button rotations over and over again until the player dies. There is no substance to PVP or classes in general anymore. I have preached over and over again that undoing pruning will fix literally almost every balancing issue and is the easiest way to do it because if they do, than it becomes just adjusting %'s here and there and adjusting Tactical's and implants. And incentive? There is none, at least of players like me who basically got everything they wanted. Season 2 and 3 of PVP at least had really good looking armor sets, 4 & 5 look like they should've been given to the GSF community. Sooo, if I got everything I wanted and the armor's are not that great, why do I want to PVP? Why do I want to subject myself to being farmed by toxic premades who no life this game 24/7 and ruin the fun for everyone? Why would I want to endure another Proving ground or huttball? If some form of ranked leaderboard or actual ranked mode existed, sure I'd deal with it, but there isn't soooo.... Point being of all of this, Why should we care about PVP or Q into it when it has all these issues that go ignored by the Dev's? This has been the same stuff over and over again for two years?! Yet nothing has been done to fix these issues. I come here into the Forums and the #1 topic I always see in the PVP section is Premades. The Dev's are aware of these issues no doubt, they just don't care to fix them. They'd rather put resources into the next Ahsoka Armor set for their Cartel Market. When this game's support is axed by the lack of players, and I want to state that Starfield of all games has more active players than SWTOR. Maybe take the declining population as a sign that players are not happy? Maybe take the recent frustrations in the unsub forum's that are popping up that players want MEANINGFUL Change! But hey, At least you can cover your armor in metallic gloss for 20$.

I to this day, Think Killing off ranked was the biggest misstep this Dev team took (That and everything else they did that messed up and ruined this game in 7.0). Ranked kept PVP very healthy, Not only were ranked players Qing Ranked itself, but also unranked as well, so you had a steady population of PVP'ers. It kept players sub'd to the game, and was a great incentive to keep PVPing. Nowadays, I could care less, Why should I put time and Effort into basically just cosmetics? Not even good ones to, like Season 2 & 3 were actually really nice, but Season 4 and now Season 5 is absolute joke of cosmetics. I'm going to be honest, I played Ranked in the Post Season 14 time, to try and practice for Season 15. I barely encountered any toxicity, so this myth that it was just a dumpster fire is wrong. I played and everyone was pretty chill, and I even won a 2v1 on Orbital Station on my first match. I'm sure it could get heated, but its nowhere near as toxic as it nowadays. Literal mentally insane people start drama on Warzones 24/7, they no life this game and get into arguments with everyone. Sooo was it really that bad compared to now? The removal of flags and all the rewards given to ranked players was uncalled for, Musco or whoever lead that should apologize to the ranked community and undo it. While there is an argument of who win traded, who cheated, etc. At the end of the day, a lot of ranked players put time and effort into the game mode and for Biosword to undo all that hard work? It's a massive kick in the crotch for the ranked community. The PVP changes if they were to combat "Toxicity" are a joke. 1. The game has never been more toxic. 2. MVP for some reason has been removed, Why? I have no clue, maybe biosword didn't want other players to feel special more than others so they removed it. Srsly why though? I gave it to Tanks/Healers and players who literally played objectives and won the match. 3. Ranked was given the middle finger, same for its community, and any trophies/ Signs of prestige they had are now gone, because PVP is now a literal participation mode. Remember when Ranked PVP weapons were cool signs of prestige? Now they can literally be gotten by PVE'rs AFKing all matches. Compared to how ranked players had to put in a decent amount of time grinding and getting better at ranked to get them. Now I see literally the furious weapons rocked by Space barbie players nowadays and it lost all the prestige it had. Just a reminder that Season 15 of ranked was a confirmed thing they announced but than back tracked it because they didn't want to bother putting effort into their PVP community anymore I honestly Don't think PVP as a whole or this game as a whole tbh are going to get better, not unless different leads take over, or they actually for once start listening to their playerbase. Honestly the best thing that could happen is support is ended, and the Fans take over much like SWG and start implementing fixes themselves.

I want to revive this topic, as I was thinking about why this game is so bad compared to where it was 6.0. I think the answer is over babyification or, like I stated in the post, dumbing this game down to the lowest level. The Dev's are trying to cater SWTOR towards these casual doesn't care about MMO's players, I.E the single player RPG crowd. The problem lies is that by trying to do so, they have removed any complexity or substance this game had. This game isn't an MMO with an in depth combat and story anymore, its Gacha Life. The Dev's drove off their loyal hardcore playerbase. Ranked players? Gone, Hardcore Raiders? Gone, The vast majority of casual players who enjoyed the previous incarnation of SWTOR? Gone. Look at the steam charts and feel pity, this game had a slow rising resurgence before 6.0 than drove off the players to babify it to cater to this crowd that does not exist. The Dev's insistence on their design philosophy without listening to what the players want is killing this game. This recent change to Conquest? No one asked for that but the Dev's did it anyway. Story of 7.0 right there. Dev's want to make a change, Players argue against it, Dev's said "Don't care lol" and do it anyway because they are in the right here, its not like we are customers paying 15$ a month to get a quality product. The best thing that the Dev's could do is revert back to 6.0 Systems while taking the few good systems of 7.0, and never touching it again. Work on the 1/2 hour story updates, and creating Cartel Sets for whatever show is going on, since that is all they seem to care about nowadays.

It honestly sounded extremely off, Lana especially. Maybe its just the VA's getting older, or its been awhile since they do their voices. But it sounded extremely off to me personally.

I want to state, I'm not surprised with this recent update. The hyped up Date Night, is literally just a 3-5 Minute Cutscene lol. Like I expected a tiny bit more, but no its literally a 3 minute cutscene. Sooo for those of you waiting for Vette or Kira date night, enjoy the 3 minute catch up I guess. Seriously is it too much to ask for an update with some substance in it, like anything at all? Even fixes for the game? I get they have limited resources, and staff. But they can still do some basic changes to the game or QOL stuff to improve it, The new Legacy GTN Droid is a neat idea they added, I still preferer going to my Stronghold and doing my business there but its a nice QOL of change. We need more things like this! More Stuff to improve the player Experiance. For me, I've stated time and time again but I think it rings true, 7.0 drove off a vast majority of the player base if not alienated it. Here is the quarrel though for SWTOR, 8.0 while not announced yet when it is dropping is more than likely a confirmed thing. 8.0 based on the previous track records of past expansions it would not be out until 2025, It would probably be announced spring of 2025 and be out for holiday that year. But the thing is, think of how many games are coming out that year including GTA 6, so why would people come back to a meh game when all these great games are coming out both this year and next year. I'm sure even other MMO's like ESO or WOW, etc will have some form of new expansion released. I'm going to be honest, I think I'm suffering SWTOR Burnout, the game just doesn't offer much to me. It ruined PVP, one of my new favorite modes I discovered many years back after mainly just being a story player, by letting Premades farm Solo pugs 24/7, horrible class balancing, and a lack of incentive for me to put up with playing huttball for the 298th time. One of the massive missed opportunities was using PVP seasons to draw in more players to play PVP and in turn perhaps getting more Players in the door for ranked PVP. Season 4 the last season was the last season I cared about and actually trying, this season not even bothering, the rewards look like something out of Anthem, and overall is just something they should've given to the GSF community same with last season, Who thought Pilot stuff should've gone to ground based PVP combat? Can we get things like these instead for an update? -Undoing Pruning -Better incentive for PVP, by adding some form of Ranked/ or a leaderboard system for those to opt into to get special rewards. -Fixing PVP as a whole by limiting Premades back down to 4 for warzones, and two for Arenas. -GSF Season, and or new reputation rewards. -New Operations -Nim Operations for older ones, including R-4 as well. -New Augments for Crafters. -Added Gear from launch back into the game (I.e something like the Justice Assault Cannon for example) or Like finally fixing Star Fortress gear so players can get Exarch bracers. -Rebalancing Gear and Implants, Like Nerfing Ionic and Second wind. -Cartel Market Sets that players actually want instead of this Cheap TV show knockoff content, Can we get Re-forged/Remakes of previous sets? Imagine a Reforged Havoc Squad set or a Reforged Tulak hord, or a Reforged Reaver (Darth Marr Armor) set. Those are literally Money sitting on the table right there, I know a Ton of People who buy the Havoc Squad set alone, its iconic to this game and would be a massive hit. Even than, More sets based on the 8 Class Stories, Enough with these armor sets that don't even look like they should be in the game. I find it amusing that people call us who criticize the game "Haters" and especially on the sub-reddit, Downvote us to oblivion. Than they get an underwhelming update like this, and complain that its bad, than the cycle repeats and continues. Look at the Steam charts, and in fact look at the games population as a whole, See how long it takes to Q into PVP matches or Q for GSF, or even Qing for something like a MM flashpoint. I think the biggest thing the Dev's can do is two things, one Do any of the following I have suggested above or as others players have suggested in other threads. Two, be more active in this forums and engaging with the community. Host a bi monthly Q & A, where us as players can ask questions regarding certain things in the game. It goes a long way in building their rapport with the community rather than this long periods of silence we get.

I actually forgot to add, That PT/VG's Stealth Scan Accuracy debuff should be removed. It's broken being able to spam that out every 20 Secs. Honestly, What they should've done to stealth scan when they changed it all those patches ago is just increase its radius. I'd rather keep Accuracy debuffs tied to sniper with its diversion. I also seriously think they need to get to rid of the Sorc/sage Stun passive, Reduced cooldown and a 25% DMG Debuff to the target for 10 Secs? There is a reason that never came back at launch 7.0 but honestly I feel that the Dev's only really buff their favorite specs at this point. Agreed, I mainly just wanted in 7.0 to build off of what existed in 6.0 while fixing the issues. The problem is that the Dev's decided to reinvent the wheel and throw everything under the bus because they had their own vision of SWTOR should be. Fans pushed back and the Dev's ignored it saying they know what we want, and well declining player base speaks for it. I've stated it before but launch 7.0 should have just been removing Combat Styles from the classes, and later on in 7.0s lifespan they could add the 2nd Style option. You can tell they were in wayyy over there head. Just focusing on removing the Class tie would've been great for the Dev's focus and balance on one thing, than later get the time they need to polish the swapping system. Instead everything was rushed out, and now Classes feel like a Diet version of what they once were and their goal of making classes feel unique ended up making them all feel the same.

Intro One of the common things brought up here on the PVP side of the forums is that there is a ranged meta, where melee currently is at a disadvantage while range dominates in PVP. I wanted to see for myself if this was the case, and if true what are things the Dev's could do to fix this and while they are at it, adjust classes as needed for PVE/PVP. I highly suggest people read this, I have some interesting ideas on this topic and some decent solutions. The Ranged Side It's pretty well known here on the Forums that I main Merc/Commando so since that is the spec I have been playing the most, I start from there. I ran both Arsenal/Gunnery and IO/Assault specialist. Gunnery/Arsenal either goes into two categories, they either take primed ignition or Burning bright. Primed Ignition offers a bit better sustained DPS on a target, but a majority of your hard hitting abilities come from your High impact bolt using Conc. Fire. So basically better Sustained DPS but less burst. It's an all around solid choice for beginners or players who don't want to work around the finnicky mechanics of burning bright. BB (Burning bright) is an interesting one, especially paired with Gravitating bolt which offers 50% more DMG with vortex bolt on top of the 100% DMG bonus that tactical provides. The highest I've scored so far is 115K crits, which for gunnery/Arsenal is pretty big. However BB makes you reliant on building stacks with boltstorm and making it reliant on waiting for this 1 Ability to come off cooldown, alongside loosing a decent amount of sustained DPS. IO/AS on the other hand offer better sustained DPS, but their burst really isn't there, High impact explosives can offer some more burst, but IO/AS is more "fluff" imo, its really good don't get me wrong but it looses in these fast encounters, it is much better in drawn out fights where you whittle targets down with sustained DOT's. Generally where I think people say Merc is OP is in defensives and Net so lets talk about that. Merc's defensives are actually pretty easy to work around, its just that so many players get caught up DPSing they hit into reflect. There are technically 4 defensives for merc, Energy Shield, Echoing Deterrence, Adrenaline rush, and Diversion/Chaff flair. Energy shield can provide some off healing with trauma stabilizers but if they get focused really hard or they are low on health it can be negated, ED is countered by simply not attacking by the person, Adrenaline rush if they are high enough health will get them back up but can be countered if the person is near death and you just DPS hard into them. Chaff flair absorbs two force/tech attacks, and increases their defense chance. This is where you should not hit them with big burst, like a force leach or an Engi discharge. Regarding Net, its annoying sure, but its nowhere OP as people say. This is why for example when I play Watchman Sentinel i just pop guarded by the force and just ignore a vast majority of their burst DMG. I save that ability for when I'm netted or about to get hit with hard bursts. Overall Commando/Merc are not overpowered in the current meta. Playing as them and against them, I find they are one of the easiest ranged to counter, currently their mobility is very poor and are basically relegated to slightly mobile turrets. They don't output terrifying DPS and maybe its just me, I find their one of the easiest classes to counter in PVP. Snipers/Slingers on the other hand. While I love sniper, I currently think this is the spec that is causing 90% of the issues in PVP. The general issue is that they can easily knock melee back and immobilize them. Marksman and Engineering are guilty of this. Marksman can just keep a target rooted with penetrating blast and knock them back, while Engi can demolish them with slows and roots. Currently though, Marksman imo is the worst DPS spec in the game both PVE and PVP. Let me explain. While it can be annoying with its roots, the problem Marksman has is the same problem Gunnery/Arsenal have. They have to go down two routes, Sustained or Better burst. Agitating energies tactical provides most of the specs sustained DPS but when you run this, you don't have terrifying levels of burst and are reliant on ticking Corrosive Dart for your DPS. B-0 is finnicky, it can hit really hard and up to 120K crits, but it comes with this cost. 1. You have to use one of your defensives to use it. 2. You loose out on a ton of sustained DPS. 3. Sometimes your Ambush will either miss, or be absorbed entirely. Basically when you play with B-0 you are taking a dice roll that you will be hitting massive crits. Virulence/Dirty Fighting feel fine, they can hit hard, but their not super OP imo they feel fine. Engi/Saboteur, this imo is the spec that causes so much pain for melee and generally every class currently. The spec has a ton of built in control, add onto that its covered escape immobilizes targets even further. This spec can be a nightmare for melee players. Regular Engis are bad enough but what makes this spec the bane of all players is one broken tactical. Ionic Discharge. This basically makes Engi a nuke spec, it literally can nuke players healthbars down. I want to add that Ionic is not a very hard playstyle its literally one of the easiest things to learn, and is essentially the crutch tactical. It's unfortunate imo that engi has been reduced to basically this, it used to be the more engaging sniper spec that took some actual skill, and now is just play the nuke playstyle. In short, Snipers problem is that it has a ton of control over melee with its knockbacks and roots, and factoring in the cover system. Melee are going to struggle to kill a sniper who knows that they are doing. Add onto this the broken meta setup that is ionic engi and its just rubbing salt in the wound. Moving on to Sorcs/Sages. The biggest issue imo is that they have too much mobility. The spec essentially can have a 10 Sec force Speed with Root immunity that can knock players back and root them up, add onto this they are one of the few specs that kept their CC's and a good sage/sorc can annoy a player to no end. However Biosword made this worse the addition of torturous tactics passive they added in a patch a while back. A reduced cooldown on their main CC and leaving a debuff that reduces the targets DMG by 25% is way tooo broken. Overall Range's problem imo is not the amount of DPS they output, Playing as them and against them. I find that the biggest issue for melee is they struggle to close the distance and keep that engagement range. So in turn its moreso an issue of mobility. Range can hit terrifying burst yes, but the core issue is that melee cannot close and keep that distance. All a sniper has to do is pop entrench and use knockback on either cover pulse or penetrating rounds. The Melee Side Generally speaking, I have found in General Melee to offer really solid DMG both in burst and DOT. However like I stated the biggest issue is that melee has essentially zero mobility currently, they often have to pick a Defensive over something as basic as mobility, and it can ring true for ranged sometimes. Guardian/Juggernaut feels the more complete out of the melee classes in the sense they were not pruned as hard compared to its peers, but as stated its mobility leaves much to be desired. For the longest time on this spec I ran reflect, but a while back I swapped to blade blitz and its night and Day how much better the spec feels. I can actually move and close the distance, Even if I am knocked its so nice to be able to pop blitz and break it without being rooted in one spot for 5 years. However I loose reflect in turn and If I get tunneled I kind of can eat some of it, but I will have far less survivability compared to if I had reflect. Marauders/Sentinels, this is interesting. Imo this spec has good mobility with predation, but I find it becomes a bit vulnerable when focused more and if predation and Force camo are on cooldown than the spec kind of just dies. The DMG of these classes is great but it can quickly collapse under pressure. PT/Vanguard, this spec is interesting. I found their mobility was never really an issue, this spec is a weird Quasi range/melee spec. Hydraulic overrides/ Hold the line makes this spec terrifying to range, as they cannot be knocked, rooted, or slowed. The only thing you can do is CC them, or throw net. AP/Tactics is basically a glass cannon though, you run in and are kamikazeing your way in. Pyro/Plasma has the cleave locked down and better survivability though its burst is lacking. Operatives/Scoundrels lack survivability imo and to be honest their DMG output is meh. The spec relies on roll for main mobility and getting rooted especially by snipers is just a death sentence for this spec, Snipers are this classes kryptonite. Concealment falls short in its DMG department it can do strong burst but it survivability is basically non existent, it has evasion but having to channel kolto infusion hurts this spec. Lethality is a bit better, has slightly more ranged, and its survivability is better with procing its roll heal, but again both these specs DPS are not really the greatest currently. Assassins/Shadows, this spec just has really fallen from what it once was in 6.0 and past. Deception/Infiltration is tied with Marksman/Sharpshooter as the worst DPS spec in the game, both PVE and PVP. It can do a decent burst window with phantomcraft but its actually burst DPS is kind of pathetic. Its more so an annoyance than an actual threat. Hatred/Serenity can do very solid DPS but its relegated to being literally made out of paper. The spec cannot take hits, and it kind of just dies, it more so is suited for PVE rather than PVP. Overall across the board for both Melee and Ranged, there is pros and Cons to all the specs which there should be. However currently two out of the four melee classes are really bad right now Compared to the three ranged classes. So the next section is my solution of fixes across the board. The Fixes I want to state that as always my number one fix for class issues is undoing pruning. Pruning has brought these discrepancies with them, and makes class balancing even harder. Its far easier if everyone had all their old abilities back, than it comes down to tweaking numbers and gear. First off, all classes have all their high mobility abilities back as mainline, no argument. Everyone gets it by default, this means that these classes have the following back: Shadow/Assassin - Phantom Stride Operative/Scoundrel - Holotraverse Juggernaut/Guardian - Blade Blitz Marauder/Sentinel - Predation, Blade Blitz Powertech/Vanguard - Charge, Hold the line Mercenary/Commando - Propulsion round There is an argument of Phasewalk/Hololocate to be on here, but these are more so teleports, and I'm not sure if they would fall under high mobility. Regarding Class changes, Commandos/Mercs These guys should get charged barrier by default, This frees up a slot on level 27 and I'd move Cryo gernade down there to make level 27 the utility tier. Up at level 68 the player would have the choice between these options; -Echoing Deterrence -Since Propulsion round is granted by default, this is where the smoke screen passive would be. -Suit FOE, but reworked slightly. It would offer the DOT DMG Reduction but popping it would also reduce AOE DMG taken. It would help the spec more in PVE especially and make it more viable. Regarding any DPS changes, Gunnery/Arsenal needs buffs to its DPS, not for PVP mainly but for PVE. Its sustained DPS is among the lowest and it needs better sustained DPS or better burst. I welcome Feedback on this. Snipers/Slingers The overall changes to sniper to bring it more in line would be this, -Evasive Maneuver's removed entirely, Evasion is added back as its own ability. Evasive would instead be replaced with Tactical Retreat, thus adding back in the 10% roll heal. -For Engineering, Targeting beams bonus critical hit DMG is reduced from 20% down to 10%. Ionic Discharge should be removed entirely or reworked. It is too broken in the current meta. -For Marksman, remove the immobilization on penetrating rounds. Replace it with either reduced cooldown on Penetrating rounds, or Reduced energy cost. This spec much like gunnery/Arsenal needs a buff, its one of the worst DPS classes in the game currently. For those who are more technical on the sniper/slinger side of things, once again I welcome feedback on how to improve. Marauder/Sentinel Guarded by the force is now given as a mainline ability. With it and Blade blitz being given as default this is what the level 68 tier would be; -Obfuscate -Force stasis -Leg slash Basically it goes between the choice of, an extra defensive, a CC, or a slow on the target. -With Predation now being mainline, it would be replaced with the force fade Passive mod, which back in 6.0 did the following Assassins/Shadows The changes mainly would come down to this; -Force shroud and overcharge saber are given as mainline abilities. -Force shroud would be replaced with a passive the increases shrouds duration by 3 secs. -Overcharge saber would be replaced with spike for the DPS Specs. For the Sin/Shadow tanks, -Extended force shroud is replacing Overcharge saber. -Buff Deception/Infiltration's DMG, its burst is really poor, and it needs that terrifying burst again. This last change I leave up to others if they think should be done or not, but adding back in a Death Knell Implant that would basically do the following, Operative/Scoundrel -First thing, DPS buff across the board. -Because holotraverse is now given as mainline, I think a passive that makes it so after using roll the player is given temporary immunity to Roots/Knocks would be great for this spec. Obviously give it a cooldown on how often it can be used, but I think it would help this spec quite a bit. -Concealment needs some way it can proc Kolto infusion to be instant, or just general better survivability. Any classes or specs I didn't mention here would just get some passives from 6.0 and past to fill in the blanks. I want to add these two subsections as well Healers Doing some testing, I think Healers need to be buffed to help keep up with the DPS meta. Operative/Scoundrel healer especially needs to be brought up, as currently I rarely if every see players nowadays using it for either PVE or PVP. However I also want the game to do better matchmaking with support classes. One team should not have two healers while the other has none. Tanks There needs to be a DPS cap on Tanks to help counter and prevent the Skank tank meta. So for example say someone is on Jug running the usual Skank tank build, the hardest they would be able to hit would be around a 50-60K crit. This means that even if they run DPS gear and try and go skank tank they are going to hit a ceiling that prevents them. In turn however I'd like to see tanks become more "tanky" with a bit better Defensives and reward players more who are throwing guards, guard swapping, and throwing out taunts to help support the team rather than just skank tank DPS. Second Wind This is going to be majorly controversial but Second wind needs to be nerfed. I would cut its 20% heal down to 10%, and drastically increase the cooldown time. Second wind is currently too strong in PVP, and needs to be lowered. I don't want it nerfed into oblivion, but it has to nerfed in some capacity. Conclusion There is a lot to this topic and I thank people for reading it. I want to state a TLDR for those who didn't. TLDR; The Ranged Meta issue is not caused by Ranged DPS but rather a lack of mobility for Melee classes to counter ranged. Even if you disagree on some or a lot of points, I think there needs to be some major reworks for all the classes. I read a post a while back of some people wanting rated games back, but I think they should Fix their game before they do that. I also want to add a tangent on class stacking. I don't think Class stacking itself is an issue, I doubt a bunch of solo Q's all happened to be the same class, and even if they are its just random RNG. Class stacking is moreso an issue caused by Premades. Premades forming meta comps are whats hurting PVP massively in terms of balancing, as they can get a tank, healer and up to 6 DPS. The simplest solution is literally just limit it back down to 4 for Warzones and two for Arenas. This 8 Man premade experiment has been a failure but Biosword will never admit they made a mistake at all during 7.0. Anyways, as usual love to hear thoughts.

I wall add this addendum though I have found gunnery and arsenal, do well with chipping through tanks and players with guard especially during supercharged cell windows, But even still it can be a massive pain dealing with either.

Even Even attacking the tank is pointless due to numerous defensive and the constant 24/7 heal they have via a pocket healer. Tank defensives, combined with their control especially a jug skank tank, make them basically god mode that can basically survive anything with a pocket healer. Attacking other non guarded players is less of a pain, but if that healer is well skilled than basically it becomes your team hitting into a wall

I've basically never wanted to play ruins of Nuhl ever again especially with randos. I despise that cliff scaling part with the artillery, literally if you or someone else falls behind than they die because they cant grapple because of the dev's literal incompetence and didn't think that players would run ahead. 10 Year Celebration! How would everyone enjoy the most forgettable story content ever........ Like they advertised Malgus as the big baddy, than punches everyone in the face and says "Nah, this angsty mandalorian is the true big baddie! she is angry, and that means she is evil!" Yup I remember those days when I came back during 5.0, running through multiple loadscreens just to get to and from planets. Even still I would rather go back to 6.0 or any past expansion, at least those expansions felt fun and played relatively smooth.

Look i enjoy tanking, and healing. But pocket tanks and healers in PVP need to be put out. Its a massive pain to kill someone when that person has 24/7 Guard and heals. Its even more broken when a tank can throw guard on a healer and that healer basically has god mode same for the tank. It ruins the flow of PVP, and has to be changed. The simplest idea I had was that in PVP they should increase the amount of DMG that guard sends back to the tank. For healers, put a system in place that makes it so whenever you heal yourself you heal for less compared to when you heal for others. I've had multiple matches where half of my teams DPS unload on the tank and healer, yet they are constantly able to heal back up to full constantly. It's even more of a pain when its Merc pocket healer because than you have to go through guard and than multiple layers of merc defensives. Regardless, they need to rework this pocket tank/healer syndrome this is massively apparent in PVP. IF this was 6.0 we could easily control the healer and tank with things like CC's etc, But now with pruning removing most of the skill based PVP in the game, it literally just becomes try and out DPS a healer through guard. This is not even bringing up the fact that Jug Skank tank is borderline broken OP, yet the devs do nothing (which tbh is expected at this point) with its DPS output.

Even still, Amplifiers as a whole were a finnicky thing that didn't work as intended. Do i miss them, eh. Do I think they should come back? eh not really, like I stated it was a headache trying to get the right amplifiers for your class.

I don't think PVP ruined balancing for PVE, vice versa as well. It was more so due to the fact that 7.0 had to be rushed out the door, and they barely had any time to properly balance classes.

Keep in mind that is from my knowledge of 6.0 which was like 3-4 years ago, but people would sell certain mods on the GTN that had certain amplifications like Armor Penetration, etc. They would sell it for really high prices and this in turn added more to the inflation. This isn't even bringing up Augments which still to this day are grossly overpriced. I do remember the ability to reroll amplifications as a massive credit sink, but overall 6.0 helped contribute to the inflation, I remember back in 5.0 inflation was nowhere near as bad as what it is today.

Intro So here we are, Two years since 7.0 dropped. I want to make this post, critiquing the current status of the game. I'm going to be honest there is a lot of bad unfortunately. I have made several posts in the past stating my distaste for the current status of the game. I want to clarify that me and other's who do so don't do it out of spite or hatred for the game. We do it because we just want the dev's to set aside some time and fix the issues they brought with 7.0. Speaking of which, a lot of the changes they've been doing in 7.0 have been unnecessary. The dev's tried to rewrite the whole game from the ground up, but the problem is that they are changing 10+ Year old systems that all of us were used to and thought worked fine. The GTN changes for example were called out by much of the player base as unnecessary and would make the game even worse, while it didn't destroy the game it felt pointless for the fact that the GTN didn't need to be changed but more on that later. SWTOR's issue for all its lifespan is that it suffers from a lack of cohesive identity and roadmap. The game has had multiple project leads, each telling where the game should go. 6.0 was enjoyed by many as it just built off and improved systems from 5.0, it added more to the game and added more QOL features and content. 7.0 however missed the mark due to the fact that it removed massive amounts of content, and tried to remake the game from the ground up. It sounds nice on paper rework the whole game to be more modern, including updating graphics and systems. However they bit off more than they could chew so to say and 7.0 had to be delayed than rushed out, thus we get to where we are today. Combat Styles Combat Styles and the reworked levelling tree alongside being able to swap between Styles was the main highlight of 7.0. It was something that got the whole community excited the fact that now Classes themselves were no longer tied to their class stories and any spec could be played opened up so many possibilities, add on to that fact was that we were now going to be able to get a 2nd class option added further to the hype. Players would now be able to make for example snipers for the trooper story, or juggernauts for the Inquisitor story. While I do see the argument of that it took away from Classes themselves and their identity like Vanguard/Commando being tied to the trooper. I think overall it was a nice QOL thing, it means if players want to roleplay as captain rex with the trooper armor and dual pistols, they don't have to make a smuggler character just to do that. However come to the PTS, we find that a lot of our abilities are being removed entirely (like obfuscate for mara's) and that a good portion of our class abilities are now locked in a tier which we can only pick one from. Much of the playerbase pushed back stating that this change was not good for the health of the game but the Dev's insisted that this is what the players want and followed through anyway. While the dev's did listen to feedback on some of the classes and made small improvements, overall the testing had to be cut short. 7.0 was delayed because of technical issues with the 2nd CS. Players were initially told they could swap their main for free, however due to technical issues this was later removed and only force classes could do so to swap to their mirror spec. Later on 7.0 was pushed back to February where the Dev's had to release the update the way it was, which leads us into our next topic. Class Pruning As stated in the previous topic, much of the classes in SWTOR were gutted. Many of their abilities were outright removed or locked into the CS Tree itself. The general problem though is that the CS tree as it stands than and now is not very well designed. The philosophy of the new tree was play how you want and build your character the way you want. Essentially much of the classes were gutted to make it more simpler and casual for players especially new ones to try and draw a more casual crowd into SWTOR. The issue is that much of the tree's are picking between Defensives, Mobility, and DPS often in the same row. This is not to mention that some passives are leagues above others, same goes for abilities thus the problem arose that everyone is going to pick the meta and go the meta route. Thus the idea of more unique builds rarely happened, and in turn most classes lost what made them special and they were reduced down to 4 button rotations. Some class trees got it better than others, Some trees lets players pick Crit stacks and bonus DPS, while others like Mercenary for example are mainly picking their lost abilities. Some classes lost their hard stuns while others got to keep theirs for free. The biggest point of contention though was levelling, much of the levelling process will have players going multiple levels without getting anything. The goal of having a character level in any RPG is that you want it to feel rewarding, they hit this big milestone and they get to become that much stronger usually with something like a perk point or in an MMO in this case; a new ability. In 6.0 and past, the old Discipline system had the player getting a utility point that they could spend on passives, while some were a bit better than others the overall system worked well and made it so players felt like they were getting rewarded for levelling. Adding on to this, much of they key passives were locked until the level 60 range, a good example would be AP PT's ionic accelerator, this is the key passive that lets the spec build its energy loads via resetting railshot. However AP PT gets Energy burst at level 35 and it doesn't get Accelerator until level 68. This means for 33 levels, AP PT is going to struggle to get its energy loads. The overall point here is that, even if players were pro pruning, the overall system is a mess that while some work has been done to alleviate it, it needs massive reworks. Gearing While gearing has been much improved since launch 7.0, it still feels needlessly complex so to say. The multiple currencies of Flashpoint, Operation, and PVP feel unnecessary. The implant system was an interesting idea but it falls flat in certain areas. The first part is that some implants for classes are better than others, Gathering storm for example gives 20% more DMG while under polarity shift and force speed. While most of its DPS does come from Polarity, getting 20% extra DMG every 10 secs or so is pretty substantial. Compare this to say Force training package for sins, which is just 3% DMG to force and melee. The other part is balancing issues, this is something that more so ties into PVP, but is a cause of the gearing system itself and it is one implant everyone can get. Second wind. Second wind by itself doesn't offer much in PVE, very rarely would it actually be useful. But in PVP Second wind is kind of borked. 20% HP Regen every 8 secs leads to some massive imbalancing issues, this can be further added by throwing 2nd wind on a Skank Tank Jug for example. Massive DPS, Tank Defensives, and constant Regen with how strong they are, basically means you are impossible to kill if you know what you are doing. Ignoring the balancing issues, the other issue I see often is that players are running bad setups with their implants, they will be running generic ones that do not benefit their spec at all. Going back to gearing, at first the Dev's wanted to do away with mods, but than later back tracked due to feedback saying how much of a slog gearing was and now it just comes down to get gear piece to high level and break down for mods. So in the end much of the endgame gearing rework was pointless as we are back to 6.0 with mods. I want to state that 6.0 gearing wasn't perfect. Amplifiers were a massive pain to get the right ones for your spec, and having to spend millions of credits to get said mods and have right amplifiers were a massive source of inflation for the game. 6.0 was more grindy, but 7.0's is more of a mess. PVP Oh boy the big one, here we go. PVP at launch 7.0 was promised that in 7.2 we'd receive a massive PVP Rework. Come 7.2 they announced the following, -Warzones and Arenas now have separate Q's and are no longer bundled together. -New Onderon Arena map. -PVP Group sizes are now increased to 8 in warzones, and 4 in Arenas. -Ranked is being removed and replaced with PVP Seasons. This drew some massive controversy from the PVP fanbase. The separate Q's and new Map were welcomed, but the new group sizes and especially the removal of ranked divided the community. The removal of ranked imo looking back at it now was a massive misstep for the PVP community. While the ranked community was teased and memed on for being a toxic place, and don't get me wrong some ranked players are extremely toxic and egotistical, the few times I played ranked in the post seasons before it was removed, it was just some chill PVP'ers who wanted skilled players to play and some good matches. On my first ranked match aboard orbital station I pulled a clutch 2v1 and won us the match. It was definitely one of my most memorable PVP moments. The removal of ranked drove away a vast majority of the PVP playerbase, whether players want to admit it or not, most of the hardcore PVP'ers who were active were the ranked community. With them gone matches became more empty, alongside a vast majority of the more skilled players. This is why to this day, there is often more one sided matches than others, not enough skilled players to balance both teams evenly. Regarding ranked itself, it had issues. The biggest falling point for ranked was the fact that new players were often discouraged or felt that they were not good enough to play ranked. The game needed to have unranked arenas as an option to let players practice and get comfortable with the systems than work their way into ranked. There needed to be an entry level for newcomers to join. The other issues including wintrading, cheating, who was actually top 3, etc were legit issues that came up, there are stories you can look up and see players getting reported for wintrading not getting banned, etc. It was a whole debacle on actually moderating ranked. There are multiple stories of why ranked was removed, but I believe it's been stated by the Dev's the main cause was that they could not work the ranked system around the new 2nd CS System. More proof that 7.0 was rushed out the door. Do I think ranked needed to be removed? No, removing content should be a last resort. Do I think Ranked had problems caused by neglect from the Dev's and could've been fixed to improve ranked and draw new players in? Of course. Going to the group size topic, that has been a long running point of contention for the community. For those unaware, grouped players or premades have been a long issue since 7.2 dropped. What these premades do is they form a meta composition of the strongest specs, this will often be a Skank Tank Jug, a sorc healer, and two or more DPS. This meta composition is done to farm solo players to feed the premades KD. Very few premades will actually play objectives and win the match, moreso they will just form a death ball and just focus down players and kill them very fast. This in turn leads to solo Players actively avoiding PVPing the other team, and just playing ring around the rosie with objectives, or hiding in stealth from the other team just so they don't get farmed. The dev's claimed to have improved the matchmaking by throwing premades against other premades but very rarely does this actually happen. Combine this with poor class balancing and meta stacking, alongside the exodus of most of the PVP player base and PVP is dying a slow death. I also want to add an addendum that the GSF community is basically a ghost town, the Devs neglected that community as well. While I don't play GSF I know there are some hardcore players who do, and with the games low population, getting actual matches is a pain for them. PVE PVE on the other hand isn't faring so great either. The biggest problem facing PVE is the lack of incentive to actually run through the existing content besides getting gear for mods. Why would players to run through the same flashpoints they've already played while levelling? Operations is nice, but most people just resort to just doing Nim Nefra to get gear. Combine this lack with a lack of Nim versions for a good amount of raids and there really is not a point in doing any of the more skilled endgame content. Why run an operation when a MM or Vet flashpoint will get you the gear you need? When it comes to endgame for both PVE & PVP, it boils down to just grinding them for gear and tech frags, that is it. Saving SWTOR I've been pretty doom and gloom all this post. I have basically critiqued the Devs on everything they have done. I want to offer some constructive advice for the Dev's though. I want to offer something besides complaining all post. There are ways to bring life back into SWTOR. The first piece of advice is this to the Dev's. Don't simplify the game more, a simpler game sounds better in concept but making systems boring and grindy is not fun for players of any type. Players would rather learn systems that way it feels more rewarding when they master them. Second piece is stop trying to make SWTOR this hybrid Single player KOTOR like game mixed with an MMO. SWTOR's strengths are when its MMO parts are at its peak. When those are working great, everything else falls into place and you get player retention alongside newer ones coming in. Regarding the points I brought up earlier. -CS trees need to be redone and pruning undone. Players should get every ability back they had back in 6.0 back as a mainline. This would help fill out the level gaps, and make players feel like they are getting Rewarded. The CS trees need to be reworked to be more consistent. Each tier should focus on a specific idea; Utility, Defensives, and DMG. Each passive in those tiers should be all equally as viable as the other, there should not be ones that are obviously leagues above others. I'd also add additional tiers to the tree to help fill out the gaps between levels ideally after level 15, every 4 levels after getting an ability, the player is able to pick something from their tree. Reworking the Classes, key Passives and abilities should be granted earlier to help smooth out the experience of levelling. Players should have all their basic attacks, and at least one defensives, and one of their Stuns by at least level 15. -Gearing, This is going to be a point of contention but here me out okay? I suggest the removal of Legendary Implants all together and reverting back to the 6.0 Set system. let me explain. Going back to the 6.0 Set system would offer multiple things. One is that the sets would be much stronger than the current implant system, this means that classes overall would feel much stronger. This is due to the bonuses that set's provide and that some sets were not made into implants for 7.0. Two, its far easier to balance sets for classes than it is to try and figure out which implant is making which class overtuned and what combo of implants is making which class too strong. Three, It would make gearing for players much easier as all they have to do, is get their set for their specific class. No worrying about which implant combo they need to run, just get all your set pieces and that is it. Now you say, "I already have the old spoils of war sets from 6.0, I don't need to buy them." Here is the changes I would do to the set system if the Dev's were to bring them back. First off, any 6.0 Set that existed prior would still exist, they would just be modified to go up to level 80 now. Secondly, I would remove a vast majority of the Fodder sets. Leave only the class specific ones in. Thirdly, any class set like Apex predator for example, are all now buyable and players dont have to grind content to get them. Fourth, The old implant vendor and SOW Vendor would be removed and replaced with a vendor who sells pieces specific to your class. Should the player already own all the pieces, or unlock them all than the prices will be cut in half to help with gearing alts. Regarding gearing as a whole. Flashpoint, Operation, and PVP Tokens are removed and replaced with one generic currency. Conquest Matrixes, these are obtainable in any form of content at endgame. Flashpoint and Operation Vendors would be removed and replaced with a PVE Vendor who sells up to the max 342. R-4 and its vendors would remain untouched. PVP Vendors would sell their same PVP gear up to 336. The generic gear can be than upgraded to break down into mods for putting them into sets, or be used while newer players are still collecting their set pieces. It's not a perfect system, by any means. It would need to be cleaned up a lot and refined more, But I do think overall the game should go back to the set system. -Regarding PVE, The game just needs to add Nim raids to operations that do not have it to offer harder endgame content. Another refinement they could do is that final bosses in Op's or FP's will drop higher than average gear. Basically say you have 336, instead of just farming the first boss to get 338, there is a chance you might get a 340 piece from the final boss or perhaps even a 342 piece. It encourages players to play through the whole mode rather than just farming the first boss. The final obvious thing is overall more endgame PVE Group content. -PVP, there is a lot to be said about what needs to be done. The big thing though that must be done is limiting group size again, 4 Maximum for Warzones, and two for Arenas. There is numerous reports by players that Premades in their current state are killing PVP for them. The Second thing they need to do is add some sort of rated game mode back to PVP, I'm not saying bring back ranked Arenas but there needs to be something for the players to push themselves towards. I think Rated Warzones and Arenas would be great. Basically at the start of every PVP Season, players have the option to opt into a rated Leaderboard for both WZ's and Arenas. Depending on how well they perform they can get on and rise up in the leaderboards, and in turn their ELO would adjust and throw them against players of their skill. Grouped players would receive half their Elo points to compensate for being in groups compared to solo who earn the full. At the end of a PVP Season the players who made it onto the leaderboard are handed extra rewards based on their performance and are given a flair based on their position. Bronze, Silver, and Gold. This system would in turn bring back some of the old PVP'ers and give them cause to start PVPing again, alongside giving some more motivation to contribute to games rather than AFKing all match just to get rewards from seasons. Players who just want to do seasons and get those rewards and not opt in to rated games are still free to do so. Regarding the GSF Community, they should get their own Seasons with their own rewards to help bring some incentive back to players to do GSF. Conclusion There is a lot to this post and a lot I had to say, but I wanted to share this with everyone. I want and hope the Dev's read this, There is a lot of info dumping I did but I had to summarize the current status of the game. To the Devs, if you read this, please, take the time and look it over. Implementing my idea's/fixes is not something I'm holding out for, but addressing the core issues of the game and fixing them are and for a vast majority of your community. While adding new content gets that serotonin of players for a bit, they all leave because the overall game is not fun. Fixing the core issues of the game and improving them will pay dividends in drawing players back to SWTOR and fixing the population issue. This post is basically an essay itself in size, but I had to speak my mind. I am not going to make any more posts about SWTOR and breaking down its issues, I've done so numerous times. This is the biggest post relating to issues about the game but a lot had to be said and I wanted to tell people why I and others are not happy with the way SWTOR is. If you have any thoughts, ideas, etc. Post them, I love to read them and hopefully the Dev's take some feedback from us.

I agree, Last few days spent fighting nothing but Imp side premades on Star Forge. I get wanting to play with friends, but it ruins the balance when you have an entire guild against solo pugs. Most Premades nowadays are not even trying to win, they just want to do the meta comp and farm solo players. How is a solo player expected to kill a player, when that person has 1-2 tanks and a healer with them 24/7? And like Cease stated, The wait times get ridiculous because the game cannot match evenly. I shouldn't have to wait 15 Minutes just to get into a match because a 6 man premade is on the other team. Not to mention the final point, when you Q Warzones it literally say and I quote "Up to four players", so having more than 4 is overkill.