This has long been an issue for me and yes, it's rude. Most people who do it are doing what we used to call a "drive by", just killing something for the sake of killing it. It has also been a hotly debated issue on every single MMO I've ever played. Since kill stealing is no longer an issue, the people who do it say that the rest of us shouldn't be concerned about it. My take is simple, every fight I engage in is a personal challenge. If you help, you literally ruin the game I'm playing. The best analogy is solitaire. How annoying is it to be playing solitaire and someone comes up and starts telling you what moves to make. I know it's a multi-player game but that is no excuse for rude behavior. Even if you don't consider it rude, have a little respect for those of us who would rather fight our own battles without interference.

I'll freely admit I'm not crazy about using the crew skills. I collect resources when I run across them but haven't found it to be a money-making venture. I'm just curious if anyone has suggestions for the best ways to build your bank account. FWIW, I was crafting Armstech on one char and when AI hit 25, I was broke. On another character, I took Slicing, Scavenging and Biotech (all gathering skills). I gathered and put everything up on the trade market, mostly at the recommended price. When I hit 25, I had a cool 100,000 credits in my pocket. You decide which makes more sense.

Maybe I shouldn't have played the Beta because the old familiar feeling has hit. You know how it is, you log in, stare at your character screen and can't muster up the slightest interest in any of them. That's when I know it's time to saddle up the old horse and ride off into the sunset. Yeah, who cares, right. It's been fun but now it's not.

Yes, two on the bottom aren't enough FOR ME. I capitalized that for a reason, anyone else's opinion on what I need is irrelevant. It's amazing how many of these type things they skimped on

Is there a point? Is it a requirement that, in order to continue to play the game, I have to love everything about it? The fact that I'm still playing has nothing whatsoever to do with anything I said. If you would like to refute something I said, feel free. If you just want to do drive-by snarky comments, go somewhere else.

I have to agree with most of what the OP says. First off, most of the stories, especially when you consider that only about 25% of the total story time is character specific, is not that great. To be honest, only about half of the character stories are compelling and they tend to break down after act 1. Second, they spent sooooo much time and resources on the story and voice stuff they had to short cut the rest. They even took short cuts on the cut scenes, go play Dragon Age II again if you want to see the EXACT same character models and mannerisms (hand waggling and the three step). Don't start on the development time arguments because I, as a customer, simply don't care. You sell me a game hyped as the next great thing, I expect the next great thing. You sell me a game hyped as an engrossing story, I expect an engrossing story, not some fat Sith running me around the universe on an errand I can't even remember the purpose of half the time. Seriously, am I the only one who, while running off on three or four different quests, can't tell one from the other most of the time? No real point and nothing new here, just my two cents.

When I see posts like this I remember something my old game designer buddy Jeff Freeman said about some game (I think it was Morrowwind) I was complaining about. He said, "It's probably the coolest game I've ever seen that just isn't very much fun." That's the problem with SWToR, fun was a secondary goal. It's like the most beautiful painting in the world, people stop, admire it for a few minutes then walk away. If you make a game where the scenery is the most important design goal, people will look at it for a few minutes then expect something fun to do. SWToR is fun but not for long. I believe they just forgot to put fun first and spent all their resources on the other stuff.

I had been in beta about 2 days when I brought this up. Companions are ALWAYS in the freaking way, they flip and flop around like they have the twitches or something and, like you said, they just stand there and stare at you. I quite often dismiss mine when I'm not going to be in combat for a while.

No, you just try a different tactic. You talk to your team and come up with a different plan. For example, if you are all dying when the boss blasts some big AOE, you figure out what his tell is and run behind a pillar when it happens. All content is designed with a way to beat it and I would guess that none of the designs required downloading combat data into a spreadsheet. Honestly I don't care if people have the data, my problem is that it is what an old game designer friend of mine called "fiction breaking nonsense". It breaks the spirit of the game if nothing else.

I was healing a group one fine morning when we got to a doorway. Without warning, the tank runs thru the door and makes an immediate left (breaking line of sight). He face pulled about a dozen elites and ran back to the group. He died before I could move my mouse from one side of the screen to the other, leaving the rest of the group to face the mobs without a tank so we did what people do in such a situation, we died. My face hadn't hit the floor yet when he started screaming at me for not healing him. As far as I know or care, he's still laying there waiting for me to come res him.

I agree but it makes sense in a real world sense. For example, adding a silencer to a pistol cuts down on muzzle velocity (or something like that) which lessens it's range by 10%. It's easy to extropolate that to any skill or enhancement and it's an easy, understandable way to communicate it. You see it when you add it then forget about it. There are no real world examples of damage numbers. The system uses them in the background for obvious reasons. Bringing them to the forground turns an RPG into an accounting exercise with everyone having to stand audit at the end of every battle. Like I said, it turns play into work. It's also mostly unnecessary simply because MMOs went without it for a very long time. If something doesn't work, try something else. That used to be fun...

There is a big dfifference in choosing a skill tree based on "doing 10% more damage with Saber Swing" and dumping combat logs into a spreadsheet for analysis. The difference is between playing the game or playing the system. They are two very different things.

I would say that when you start crunching numbers to determine how to "play" your class, you are no longer playing, you're working.

Seems that they all missed...

till I took a shot in the ribs... Anyone else notice that every single wounded character in this game is suffering from what looks to be a broken rib. No head injuries, no broken arms or legs, no hang nails or ingrown toenails, just broken ribs. Oh yeah, every cut scene that devolves into a speech of some kind also has what I call the three step, three steps to the left, three steps to the right. No real point here, just saying...

MMOs are unique games, they offer things you simply can't get in other games. The fact that you can group with other people is one aspect but not the only one and, not even the most important to some of us. As for me, I'm a tourist. I like to explore, see new things, hear new stories, fight new creatures, etc. I don't group much because generally, the second I get into a group, my nice leasurely stroll turns into a race. I barely have time to loot before my group mates are a mile ahead of me. I simply don't want to play that way and I don't want to make other people wait while I admire the scenery.

I would submit that one of the roles of the more experienced player is the teach the less experienced. I know what a lot of you are going to say, that if someone buys the game, they should know how to play it but that is simply not the case. Modern MMOs have thrived for one reason, new people have started playing them. Most "bad" players just don't know. Help them and there will be less bad players for you all to whine about.

The only time I'll accept a blind invite is when I've already engaged a quest mob when someone else runs up. I generally solo because I'm a tourist. I like to wander around and take my time, see the scenery, you know, be a tourist. It seems that the second I group, everyone expects to run at full lightspeed and I don't like to play that way.

I got stuck on the edge of a plant a few days ago. I was just hung on the air, unable to move. I've been stuck trying to shortcut down a mountain on occasion but there was not way I could have prevented this one. I don't know what the lesson was here, don't go near the plants?

The chances you are going to be hacked when you have a security key are very slight simply because there are plenty of people who don't have one. Anything is possible, security is quite often about making yourself as small a target as possible. It's like locking you car door, chances are a car thief will try yours then move on to one that isn't locked.

You'll also need to play groups kind of differently than you play solo as a tank. When you're solo, you want to try and cause as much damage as possible. The quicker you kill, the less likely you are to die. When in a group, you want to cause as much threat as possible. Taunt generally doesn't do any damage but it forces the mob to attack you instead of someone else. There are also probably a wide variety of attacks that do relatively low damage but cause a lot of threat. Tanking is also a bit more difficult than any other role. You have to watch the entire battlefield as one break away mob that takes out your healer can mean a complete wipe. Healers just have to watch health bars, DPS can just pick something and shoot it but a tank has to watch everything and more importantly, control it.

Tanks are pretty specific, you need something to build a lot of threat so you can keep the mobs beating on or shooting at you instead of your squishier group mates. Gear might make you feel tanky but if all the mobs are running around beating someone else, it doesn't do you much good. You're probably dps more than anything else.

The cost to produce sellable goods with crafting is enormous. Most of what you produce, you have to consume in reverse engineering to get the better recipes then consume them to get even better recipes which require ingredients you can ONLY get by either buying them off the market or paying for your companions to run gathering missions. The purpose of selling stuff is to make a profit, I would say that no one could possibly turn a profit while they are leveling crafting. There is no overhead with gathering. You pick stuff up off the ground while you're out killing rats and sell it. Which one is the smarter option?

I play most MMOs at launch, they are all fun for a while. Star Wars or flying fairies, it doesn't matter much to me.

No. It's expensive and you getting anything worthwhile out of it is pretty near impossible. Take all gathering skills, sell them on the market and use the money to buy what you need. Of course, hoping that someone else is dumb enough to do crafting and put stuff on the market for you to buy.