VM was broken in 6.x already, and because of the new "balancing" it got even worse with 7.0. If a boss is child's play compared to gold mobs, we are talking about a bug, nothing else. If BW thinks that on one hand messing with the overall balance big time is a-ok, but on the other hand not fixing any issues cropping up from that is also a-ok, they are gravely mistaken.

So how would you like it? 3 months minimum? Because the we-want-stuff-now brigade (who is blaming everyone else to want stuff fast) was pretty far already after the 1st week, contrary to the more normal crowd which takes their time with the whole process, plus is not exactly going for the top gear, anyway. That aside, it is not the players fault for the low amount of actual content, and designing a gearing system to slow players down to the point that you have enough time to fix bugs and create new content? Good luck with that. May as well switch to one of these horrible asian grinder MMOs; at least there you know what you are getting into, contrary to SWTOR.

Careful with that. This shared tagging, while often claimed to be good, has a dark side as well: You can start a fight on an open world boss even as a single player and if a big group is around hope on the social effect that they will join in. Slow down on your damage so you won't get ripped to pieces, let them take over the fight and voilá, you get tag + potentially loot, too. In your case that single person will get tag + loot, not the ones who actually did all the work in the end. Or, to say it differently: No matter what you do, there is no technical solution to a social problem. You can lessen the effects, but whatever you do, there are downsides to it. I suppose shared tagging was introduced because they knew they would force more people through the same content, and to avoid friction they had to do something about the tagging and such.

Same for me. Should note that I didn't do it as part of the actual story (stopped right in front of it on the only toon that can do it), but as part of the activity finder, solo run. You are missing a NPC which normally runs with you through that thing, besides the companion. In any case, after killing stuff pretty much everywhere at that Regant boss and seeing no change at all (and eventually succumbing to weird LoS, pathing and whatnot issues with companion + strange aggro behavior of spawns etc.) I decided to quit this garbage and sorted it mentally under "broken". That aside, the voice over for that boss is horrible. What was the idea there? A simple auntie google search got me for something robotic sounding and this is 100x better than whatever is dropped on us at this boss.

Turn the question around: Have you run into a case where you were back to 0 of these medals or are you just constantly hitting the cap? The most expensive thing I've noted is buying a full set of 320 gear, which gets you into ~200 medals in terms of cost, so about 5 toons which you can fully equip with 320 conquest gear that way. All the other things are blocked on whatever else currency is required, with MM FP gear being the worst of it, by a large margin (without drops / upgrade boxes this would be an outright nightmare). All that is assuming you are having multiple alts, because there are also players who don't have any, and for them the medals are a problem. Biggest issue I see currently (personal point of view) is that you cannot claim specific season levels if you are capped on the medals.

SWTOR is by far not alone in that possibility. You could add decorating the SH, but even there , which was published around the same time WoW went to release (autumn 2004), and offers way more possibilities in that regard than SWTOR ever will. The things in that trailer are tame compared to what players pulled off. Yes, you can put plates on tables (or wherever you fancied, for that matter: freeform placement). Nop, no interest. Neither are many others really. That aside, been there, done that (see that link to that old trailer? PvP galore). Aside of the fact I was always more for cooperation than for confrontation, latter being just a waste of resources (including time). Comes as a consequence out of the things noted in (2). That aside, SWTOR having the complexity of a on-off-switch, there is not that much to do really. 4-8 hour newbie sessions like in other MMOs are not really needed. Yes and no. It is about the "mood", and 7.0 was dragging that through a filthy pond really. Not exactly the mood you want to start hunting datacrons with. I tested boundaries a lot of players have no idea of in 6.x already, being new to SWTOR and also being used to having to do that from other MMOs. Was quite fun, now it is just annoying. SWTOR term is "stronghold", and no. I know what you are aiming at, but there is a big problem: Players have to feel "free" to do this. And they don't with 7.0. I see it in my small guild: Activities which were relaxing in one form or another, where you just had fun of sorts, it mostly stopped. Keeping the mood up becomes more and more of an issue/work. These are all red flags that something with the game is broken.

Thing is, a lot of people are not happy with the changes. Whether they are the majority or not, no idea. They still play the game, but like with other stuff, certain people complain immediately, and for others it takes a longer time before they pull the plug. Like some relationships which are technically already broken go on for a year or even two before the involved people come to fully realize that this doesn't work, while outsiders see it much earlier already. Thing is, BW is already doing a 180° on FP and HC weeklies. They will need to do that on more stuff, because 7.0 feels like someone had an idea, but instead of validating this before actually putting it into place they just did that and declared it part of whatever "vision" they are following. I have a good few books where on the cover you read things like ISO26262 and DO-178C and similar things. In that context you have to make sure that even your design is sound, in fact, unless you are Boeing, even your design is crosschecked and validated in detail, must be, to fulfill the process requirements. Contrary to that, MMO game design is often done in ebony tower contexts where (mostly younger) designers fly high about ideas and whatnot, just to repeat mistake after mistake which people like them have done decades before already. And not only that, these designs are often not even consistent in themselves. Now look at 7.0 and try to tell me how everything fits together. There are some threads which connect the pieces, but there are also many cuts which don't make sense in the slightest bit. Furthermore, you see someone just wanted to run through a wall of concrete and you see how 7.0 worked out in the end: They failed, miserably. Quite unsurprising to everyone who was not sitting in that ebony tower, because quite a few of the ideas were of the type "accident waiting to happen". Now take that and have a look at the players in the game. Start listening to them, and I don't mean the stuff (junk?) on general, but the things said between the lines, the overall mood etc. Don't ask me where the bottom is, but it is certainly not pointing skywards.

If you take all the changes done with 7.0, top to bottom you see many cases of incompetence. Did you notice how fancy animated the "Details" button is in the character view? Also not antialiased (pretty much all changes are not antialiased, are we back in the 80ies?), and this was not done in 5 minutes. Then the fancy animation of the "window" which pops up, which is also used for character titles. The focus on what is "important" is rather telling. Then I've seen a screenshot from PTS showing how the active/selected parts of the action "tree" look like now, and rush-rush job was entirely out of the window as an option for what is going on. Add to that the post from Keith, and there is only one thing left: Incompetence. To me it feels like dealing with a newbie developer where you have to go through all the steps, tell them every little thing they need to do to get things right. Are we getting paid by BW? No, we are paying them plus try to solve all the problems on top of that, exactly the work (and time!) they are paid for in the first place. It is ok if we are talking about single cases, but as it stands it goes from design down to things like the class icons you talked in detail about in your post (and I fully agree with the points) in such a broad scale that at other companies there would have been meetings with (very) high ups about what is going on and how to resolve this entire situation to get things back on track. It is not about changes, but how these were done, which leave a lot of questions. While it certainly doesn't help, but BW currently deserves all the excrement it gets hurled its way.

Ok, we are slowly getting somewhere, but I feel like having to deal with kids, slowly pulling out information piece by piece ... Aside of the fact "everyone" is maybe from your point of view, but many actually didn't. I doubt you did all OPs in 320 unaugmented gear: Which ones we are talking about? And you mentioned farming, so I bet it was the more easier stuff for faster run through, because mechanics heavy bosses automatically drop your DPS because of it. What I want is some assessment of things, including running into soft enrage etc. as 7.0 has been all across the board. You also have to assume that while you may know things by heart and optimize things fast (because you need(ed) to), others are by far not on that level. Do you think a more random group of players would be able to do it in 320 unaugmented gear? I've seen soft enrage on Grob'thok, for example, with a mixed team. Made it luckily through it, but the timer on the wipe was clearly ticking already. Maybe, to give some context here what I'm aiming for: In a different MMO you can create obscenely overpowered toons via equipment. Combined with player experience this can create toons which are as powerful as an entire team of newbie players. From the viewpoint of such a toon a lot of things are "easy", but can be a nightmare for normal players. This is where a more detailed assessment helps and can put things into perspective for everyone involved. For example, if something was "borderline" for experienced players in more normal equip, then a less experienced/able player has to have better equipment than that to compensate for this fact. I checked yesterday with an assassin tank toon, and the difference between 306 + purple/blue augments vs. 320 unaugmented is very small, slightly in favor of the 320 stuff, at least for level 80 content, and only for the tank stats specifically (didn't check damage related things). On my PT tank the boost through better gear + adding augments was substantial, i.e. feels way tankier than in 320 unaugmented gear. This is why I'm looking for better "data" about all that, to get a less subjective and more objective picture of things in 7.0.

VM FPs are role neutral, so anything which requires T/H/D is out of the question. In the end you are facing a hen-egg problem that you cannot solve except for dumping people into the real thing and let them deal with it. Problem currently is that the balancing of MM FPs is all across the board, and like in many other places the already more icky things in pre 7.0 became outright nasties now in 7.0.

Yeah, you are certainly not the first nor the last to stumble over this little gotcha, because the expectation, as you noted, is different. You do get items in your inventory if you are over the weekly cap, but otherwise, hmm. Even the Odessen HQ people get their reputation directly via similar dialogues, so it should be possible. But maybe this weekly cap can be an issue they chickened out of dealing with as part of the dialogue thing, a problem you don't need to take care of when dealing with people/companion reputation/level. Easier to dump the items into inventory and have the generic reputation code handle this. That is just a guess, though. Edit: Or could be the way they dump the things into inventory, because many rep items come as part of mission rewards, and they seem to auto-trigger something which is not done here.

The funny thing about this is that most of the content played is PvE, so this will come back to them full circle. And yes, I also have the feeling some of the changes were made specifically because of PvP, causing problems then in PvE. I mean, ok, but then fix up PvE accordingly. Oh, too much work? One death they have to die, some are just more gruesome than others ...

I get reputation items in my inventory after handing the plans in, i.e. have to right click the things in inventory to actually get the reputation then.

The games with better crafting systems are usually also more complex to begin with, which means the concept of "BiS" often becomes a "depends on". The complexity is also a factor which prevents more normal players to ever pick this up, aside of knowing about them in the first place. Look at Ryzom, for example. Is as old as WoW, btw.

Yet it is you who is very slow on the uptake. And no, conquest gear cannot be had in a week. If you want 326 from conquest alone you need minimum 3 weeks for that, for a single toon. Funnily enough, the "you don't need the better gear" should be pointed back at you: Make a team of people just in 322 green SM OP gear and tackle all the SM OPs then. Without augments to start with, and then you can try with purple augments to see how it ends up. If you are so ubar you should be able to properly assess whether the gear is truly enough. Now hush hush, make it happen, so you can prove you are right. Otherwise ... shove it where the sun doesn't shine. In any case, it is way more complex: One more point about the new items: Look at the iR distribution. SM OPs give you green 320/322 gear, while VM FPs can drop blue FP gear which goes up to iR 326. Upgrade cost is also very weird and rather extreme for some stuff, while weirdly cheap for other things. This is just a big mess, nothing else.Limited access to existing content. HCs, FPs, and also OPs, if you want additional bonuses, are limited down to a specific subset each week. They replaced an optional grind (HS + TC) with a forced one, which doesn't solve anything. Now they are backpaddeling already on HCs and weeklies, which is too funny. So much wasted time they could have used for more useful things really.Reputation nerf. Except for the Voss weekly, all others are enabled/disabled according to the BW defined schedule. Unfortunately, these weeklies are not new missions, but they recycled the existing one which contains the purple reputation item, giving you 1.4k rep (base). If you want to level rep during "off" times, you now have to put a lot more effort in, pretty much run all missions twice to get the same reputation as with running them once + weekly. Luckily, it hits only few places that heavy, but it is a "stealth nerf" like so many other things. That will hopefully get fixed with the next patch as well.Level scaling. This is broken, nothing else can be really said about it. My 80 PT tank toon runs around with something towards 3.7k HP on DK while a level 60 whatever in leveling equip has almost 4k. As a hardcore raider you certainly remember the HP values in OPs in 6.x, scaled to level 70. Check the HP stuff nowadays in level 70 environments. It is all across the board, and often less than what it used to be, which also means everything else is potentially nerfed alongside. Be happy they moved the OPs to level 80 only, otherwise the likes of you would have stormed the barricades already.Companions. Presence is being scaled, and that impacts the performance of the companions. Add to that a truckload of technical debt, as in already existing bugs with companions, which now through all these nerfs go from small annoyance to actually broken. I often played with comps as healers (is also default setting), so I was aware of a lot of the issues pre 7.0 already, and dealing with them has become paramount even in "simpler" situations now because of it.Conquest. Big nerfbat has been applied here to make this entire process much slower. If you don't do commanders, this is one of the sources for flagship plans. Small guilds have only so many active members, and you certainly cannot assume each and everyone having 20+ alts. Opening a new room on a guildship costs like 3-5 or so purple plans (aside of other things), each made from 50 blue ones, and conquest gives you 1 blue plan, per toon. This is clearly a longterm project by any means (not "you want everything right now!"), and now with the conquest nerf it becomes a crawl, also because people drop conquesting on many alts altogether.Leveling experience. There are periods of nothing where you play with the same set of actions for multiple levels. This is maybe fine towards higher levels, but at low levels? Not exactly a nice impression. Already seen players wondering about this, although not many. No idea about the current influx of new people. A lot of all that spells "play SWTOR our way" instead of "play SWTOR in whatever fashion you like", combined with more grind, forced repetition (wasn't the idea to get rid of repetition?), and an insane new item system which has some really weird quirks as far as I can tell. Top that off with a mere beginning of new story stuff and an exhaustive list of bugs everywhere. The icing on the cake is that we get some management blubber from someone like Keith stuffed our way, "grand vision" and "look at all the bugs we fixed!" (many of them shouldn't have even left the developers desk in the first place), or things like "oh this wonderful shared tagging!" (which was a must if you push all the players through the same areas, and existed as a technical solution in games 30 years ago already, nicely done!), so players pull the plug. It is a game, and you play them to have fun, simple as that. If it stops being fun you can either start making a lot of ruckus, or you leave, and many have opted for latter option, because BW time and again has shown ignorance (as an entity, how this comes to be is another matter, the result is what counts in the end, though).