Right it is quite a sad state of affairs, as less and less people find the raiding activity fun and worthwhile, it almost becomes a waste of resources to devote so much development into new raiding content. My personal feelings have always been that raiding should be as inclusive, approachable and rewarding as possible, which is sadly a paradigm that I fear isn't too often shared by people in the "hard core" raiding arena. That's the precise reason why difficulty levels were institutionalized for raid content, and is honestly the only way "new blood" of significant number can ever be injected to this, let's face it; niche portion of the community. Let hard/heroic/nightmare be hard, but fact is without infusion of new raiders and the natural turnover that takes place among the "raider crowd" without good introductory/entry level raiding content the raiders will eventually run out; being insular in that way is a sure path to destruction in other words. I also feel that the poor execution in terms of "building up" the content ingame had a little to do with the problem, the Operations aren't nearly visible enough to the semi-casual player, there's nothing to pique their interest into trying out the activity, contrast that to say, that giant MMO of crafts and warfare where the main villain of each content cycle harasses, interferes, monologues and otherwise impacts the player's online experience through cinematic or otherwise interaction building interest and narrative motivation for a player to experience the content. For a game where the story experience is such a core part of the overall gameplay it's absolutely perplexing, hell I'd go so far as say it's inexcusable, that the current state of affairs exists. And finally when people do actually decide to wet their feet and jump into the pool, they're greeted by an experience that isn't nearly as "in-game" rewarding as it should have been. This was a major, fundamental gaffe they made in terms of T1 and how T1 gear was distributed. Tionese gear had no niche whatsoever (except arguably as companion hand-me-downs) getting the same loot in an Operation that was infinitely more easily obtained through running Flashpoint content, made the extra logistical hurdles involved with participating or worse running and leading an Operation so not worth it. I just hope that they realize the shortcomings of their original design model and make the necessary adjustments to increase participation in an area which this game has so much potential waiting to be harnessed., if they just figure out the right notes to hit.

With nightmare mode Explosive Conflict imminent, and myself personally burned out with farming that dungeon ad nauseum I thought now would be as good a time as any to provide my personal feedback on TOR's tier 2, things I think they got spot on and, where I feel they went wrong. Overall T2 was a vast improvement over T1 in terms of design. The key bullet points Bioware continued to stress in their numerous power point slide shows were mostly hit: the utilization of visual cues that actually make sense, more challenging encounter design, epic battles, better tools to form and manage groups finally a group finder, master looter that actually works (gasp!) and hotkeys for target markers better stability and consistency; yup tier 2 for the most part delivered on all that. Have to give credit where credit is due, Bioware came up with a pretty solid experience for raiders of all levels with this batch of content (sparse though it may be with just 1 flashpoint and operation). I'd almost go as far to say that had TOR launched with this design framework and these systems in place we'd have had quite a few more PVE players stick around, better late than never though. Sadly even with these giant leaps in improvement they still fell short in quite a few areas. I thought it might be a good idea to bring them up, maybe they'll find it useful, maybe it sparks discussion or at least some thought. Here's a short list of what I feel needs to be looked at going forward to further enrich the Endgame PVE experience for TOR. This game has STORY! (Then why so many missed opportunities?) I find it quite disappointing that there's no build up whatsoever for any of the operations in this game. The tier 2 wave of content saw the arrival of a new daily mission area, one Operation and one new Flashpoint. What I find puzzling is none of this content really relates to each other in terms of story. It's the same issue T1 had. EV is located in Belsavis, there are a LOT of quests and a huge daily area on the planet, yet none of these tie in with the Eternity Vault itself. This feels like such a wasted opportunity to pump up the player base and get them excited to delve in and check out what's going on. Instead, in the case of the eternity vault we got a short dialogue with some random NPC on our vanguard ships saying "something to the effect of O-M-G gaiz, there's this crazy stuff going on Belsavis, super serial, don't know why you didn't notice while on the planet. Who cares anyway, back you go!" When the Black Hole was first announced I thought for sure that this time around Bioware would find a way to connect it to what's going on in Denova. Nope, not even remotely connected, which is a shame. Denova feels entirely disjointed with the rest of the game, even if it's supposedly tied in through it's overarching plot line with the events of Karagga's Palace. Have to say it didn't feel that way at all. Don't get me wrong what's going on with the larger picture of the galaxy and the Dread Masters is a compelling story, I just wish the game did more to get me excited over it is all. Thankfully Lost Island didn't suffer form these shortcomings as it was obviously intertwined quite well with Kaon. How about more like this in the future? The spectral crustacean says: "bring the class, not the player!" (wait that's not right...) My largest gripe with Operations in this game is buff and debuff distribution. Frankly there's not nearly enough of them to begin with, right now there's what, 2 debuffs that really matter? The current buff/debuff environment where really ArPen is the only debuff outside of the Marauder's Fury spenders that really matters gives little to no incentive to diversify your class or spec composition. While I don't want to see a situation where there's over homogenization or where bringing one of every class is absolutely mandatory it wouldn't hurt one bit to a: spread the wealth around (why do marauders have the monopoly when it comes to group affecting short term buffs?) and b: create a more complex and interesting buff/debuff matrix to increase group synergy. Where's the "takes extra internal/elemental/force/tech damage from all sources" debuff? Where's the "your critical hits increase the damage of nearby group members by 3%" type of buffs and so on? In some cases, especially with the "Legacy buff" system, a class's performance in group play is no different from being solo (say for instance an Arsenal Mercenary)! This is very, very disappointing one of the great things about being in raids is to see how the whole becomes much more than the sum of its parts, that's hardly the case here in TOR. TOR's stats lack diversity: "Main stat" + endurance + crit and surge or shield and absorption + power or defense + accuracy or alacrity. That's it, your stat selection is entirely made for you based on your given role. The mix is entirely predetermined, the weights vary marginally between classes or specs (because of how DRs kick in to prevent stat stacking). I guess it's "fine for now" since the stats for the most part work, though accuracy and alacrity could really use some spicing up, and bosses should use more attacks subject to shielding (what's the point forcing tanks into so much shield and absorption if the bosses will just keep on bypassing them?). Down the road , especially with the talk of "increased level caps" being bandied around stats and diversifying how they interact with various specs really need to be looked at. TOR's gear is frankly, boring... Somewhat a product of the above, but really falls more into stale design decisions. Tier 1 and Tier 2 share the exact same set bonus! Wait what? And it's not like the set bonuses currently present in the game are that interesting either (though admittedly some are quite powerful). How about putting some interesting proc effects on set bonuses? Creative stuff such as, idk, "your Dark Ward has 5 extra charges" or "casting Tracer Missile increases the damage of your next unload by 2%, stacks 5 times?" Those example of course aren't tuned but you get the point add some "oomph" and excitement to the sets. Speaking of procs, the relics are really boring. 30 more damage every 4.5 seconds than the previous tier! But wait there's more! ( What's that, there's nothing more? Oh.) How about diversifying the relics to make them more interesting and dynamic? Say a relic that gives you 10 additional power every time you land a critical hit, stacking up to 20 times? (The ramp up prevents it from being OP in PVP environments) How about a relic that increases your defense by 10 (not 10%, just 10) every time you shield an attack of vise-versa? How about a relic with a use effect that summons a pack of astromech medical droids to heal the 5 closest injured targets for moderate amounts of health? Any of these options would be far more interesting than just taking what's currently in game and adding a 20 to the present values. Bugs. Thankfully Explosive Conflict and the Lost Island have been far more stable and consistent than their predecessors (lol Soa, Jindo, Interrogator Droid). The only real problem is whenever a large issue crops up *coughGiftoftheMasterscough* it feels like Bioware takes far too long to address and rectify the problem. Serious imbalances such as these (or the litany of Soa and Ancient Pylon problems for instance) should never stay unresolved for long periods of time. Rather these are the type of issues that need to be addressed via hotfixing, emergency patches or at the very least through fixes in the weekly maintenance window immediately after these issues are detected. Yes I'm aware this is a tough task, but issues like this should be treated as absolutely critical if the game is serious about presenting a AAA standard group content environment. "Press 'A' for AWES... nothing?!" Global Cooldown misfires STILL happen with astonishing regularity. Either a: fix them or b: at least have the class to remove the patchnote stating this problem has been addressed. I'd prefer "option a" myself. This issue is doubly frustrating when you're trying to run finely tuned content only to see your efforts fail because that taunt you cast on Kephes didn't happen or some such event. Please fix this ASAP, I don't care if you don't give us new color crystals for the rest of the year as long as you fix this incredibly frustrating problem. UI shortcomings: Buff and debuff tracking are next to impossible with the current UI. Please give us filters, buff and debuff timers, the ability to tag operation frames so we know who has debuffs we need to dispel and so on. If you ever get around to designing another fight where debuffs on group/operation members plays a huge part in success and failure (ala Jarg and Sorno) the current UI elements will be woefully inadequate. Also why does it have to be such a pain to know which corrosive dart is mine and which belongs ot my Sniper group mate?! Legacy abilities are fun and neat, but to quite a few classes, there simply is nowhere near enough room to fit all these situational abilities which we can only ever use solo onto our hotbars. I love having the ability to force choke a mook on my Commando, what I don't live is I have to open the freaking abilities pane to use it. Please just give us a "heroic moment action bar" which only appears on screen over the duration of your heroic moment ability. Oh and just give us a stealth bar already FFS, especially if you're ever thinking of adding more abilities that key off stealth in the game in future updates. Hell at this point if you want to stupidly tie it into the legacy system and make it something I have to buy for credits I'd do it. The amount of potential bar space a player has in this game is way too constricting. Oh and still no ready check feature (why?!) In closing There are a few other minor things that could see improvement in the PVE aspects of the game, but those that I listed above are what I'd like to see worked on more than anything. Overall though 1.2 and 1.3 were big steps in the right direction and renewed my waning faith in Bioware to actually deliver on their promise of an AAA MMO. Here's to hoping that 1.4 and beyond continue to build on the foundation currently in place in TOR. TLDR: None, if you didn't feel like reading then don't bother posting either, kthnx.

From 1.03 Patchnotes: "An issue that could cause the global cooldown to incorrectly occur when rapidly attempting to use multiple abilities has been corrected." Still happening in low lag and (more commonly) high lag situations. Please fix it's been around since at least 1.1 and quite sickening.

^This. Though I would also accept a $300 check from Bioware to purchase a SSD just so I can play their game without suffering extreme loading screen fatigue. While on the subject I thought 1.2 gave us the power to skip ALL Orbital Stations, yet we still have to pass through the Belsavis Orbital station every effing time we want to go to the planet from our ship.

I'm not even going to bother arguing whether auto-attacks mean that the game is playing for you or not, simply put if anyone thinks the existence of an auto-attack = no skill in a hotkey MMO they're totally clueless. That said I personally do not miss traditional auto attacks but it does lead to a potential problem insofar as limiting design options for different types of buffs/debuffs which we're already experiencing in the game. No auto attacks = no attack speed increases, decreases and other slight adjustments that the "traditional auto-attack balancing lever" provides. Remember though that auto attacks do actually exist in TOR in an indirect way (companions), you can even quote Amatangelo on it. Wonder why alacrity and accuracy are such junk stats in this game? A large reason is the lack of traditional auto-attacks to increase their value (granted in a rather artificial way). That's not to say it's impossible to design interesting stats without auto-attacks in an MMO, it's just that they haven't really explored these interesting options yet. This is fine we're still in early Tier 2, but it (interesting stats) is something I'd personally like to see sooner, rather than later.

Reported this bug both on the forums and in game within minutes of 1.2 launching. We've had 2 maintenance periods since then AND have an upcoming emergency maintenance tomorrow (the 19th). If this bug persists through this upcoming maintenance (which would have been 3 since the patch has deployed) I really have no idea what their QA team is doing. To be fair it's not like I have any faith whatsoever in Bioware's ability to squash bugs, hell just take a look at Jindo, Interrogator Droid, Soa, the Ancient Pylons (do I have to go on?). I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong by an actual show of competence from the Bioware support team, don't think I'll be holding my breath though.

Can we please have a new, separate action bar that pops up only during "Heroic Moments?" I dunno about the rest of you but every last slot on my 4 action bars were already filled prior to 1.2 meaning I don't have any room for the new Legacy moves. Besides you don't get to use them so often, and there's potentially so many of them that currently it's too unwieldy to make any practical use of these "neat" little abilities. Oh and can we finally get a stealth bar too? While you don't *need* one as of yet, the absence of a stealth bar leads to hotkey bloat, and has scalability issues for whenever characters end up getting new Stealth based moves. Gotta use some forward thinking you know, unless of course we're all resigned to this game not getting any expansions, etc.

With 1.2 now upon us I thought now would be the perfect time to look back on how tier PVE 1 end game content (HM FPs up to Kaon, EV and KP) turned out from the point of view of your typical "hardcore" raider. For the curious I play a Concealment Op (yes there are some of us who use the spec to PVE) and have cleared every last bit of instanced, empire side, PVE content available up to this point (including both timed Nightmare runs). I'm not stating this to say that it was a remarkable achievement in any imaginable way, rather to point out that I have first hand experience in all the fights, so I'm not pulling any junk out of my rear end when I say something behaves irregularly in a certain fight and so on. To save everyone's eyes from getting completely smacked by a giant wall of text I put each section inside a spoiler tag. Anyway let's get down to business shall we: Bugs: Gear Gating/Pacing: Encounter Design (Or why the Off-tank is just "off"): Stats: Raid Management Tools Raid Compositions, Class and Role Synergy Conclusions, and T2 and beyond: So yeah those are my thoughts and concerns regarding end game and what we've seen so far in TOR. While on the whole it's tolerable when things are working I feel like there are some design decisions holding the experience back as a whole and contribute towards making it feel like there's a significant lack of depth with the content. Overall I'd have to give the T1 experience a poor rating of 4/10, and while there were some signs of improvement over the course of tier's life cycle (G4 and Karagga were done pretty well) taken as a whole T1 still leaves a poor taste in one's mouth so to speak. Sadly the little I've experienced in T2 hasn't really been that encouraging either. Toth and Zorn for instance feel needless melee unfriendly (PBAOE + a Patchwerk type "soak swing that stuns?!" Really?) and the decision not to add a new set bonus comes off as nothing short of pure laziness. I'm truly hoping that you guys on the Dev team actually learn from the shortcomings of your previous work and get things together so to speak, but really nothing that's come out so far outside of anyone but Daniel Erickson's mouth has sounded too smart or thought out. I immensely loved everything from levels 1-49, and I really want to see the rest of the game improve and actually match that experience, but sadly to this day it hasn't. I'm hoping that comprehensive feedback like this thread might give some insight as to what went right and what (mostly) has gone (terribly) wrong so far. Thanks for your time.

If I see another console "clicky" in any new boss fight in future content I'm just gonna /lol and /facepalm at Bioware. Think about it Jindo and the Ancient Pylons are notoriously buggy encounters, both centered around the use consoles. I hope they get a clue and learn to code these things properly before forcing more bugged to hell content on us. Then again it's not like they do much better on encounters that don't involve clickies *coughSoacough*

Correct, this is an old, easily reproduced bug that I've personally reported at least twice. What happens is if 2 (or more) of the Power Sources (pylons) are destroyed at the same time they will fail to remove Soa's buff and any subsequent Power Sources destroyed during the transition phase will have no effect on Soa's buffs either. Thankfully this is a very easy bug to work around, especially in an 8 man setting. Just have no one running ahead of the group and the power sources will fall one by one thus avoiding the issue altogether, as an added bonus it makes it easier to top off everybody since you're all together for AOE heal spams. Just one of the many Soa bugs around, don't worry the more you fight him the more you'll run into them, you'd think that after 3 months of the game being out they'd finally have this crap sorted out. Should've known better than to believe in this particular dev team.

This is something I definitely want to see implemented in the game in some manner, possibly through the use of the legacy system itself (for instance all characters in your legacy have their social tier match the highest available among all toons on that server). Other quality of life things they should consider tying to the Legacy system could be map sharing (so your new characters don't start with "blank maps") and datacron sharing (with certain stat caps which increase as you level so fresh characters aren't rocking +40 to all stats right away). I wouldn't mind a "Legacy bank" either so the extreme packrats among us don't have to create a guild just to support bank alts and to ease item sharing between characters.

See this is what happens when the game lacks transparency (read: combat log). The player base, effectively all of us, were lead to believe that by design all classes would be able to perform their designated roles (in this case PVE damage) within a small enough margin that class choice would boil down primarily to player preference. That's great design objective. The nerf was implemented specifically to address PVP imbalances (which existed) though in doing so they chose a method which had a significant impact on PVE performance (20% less ArPen, which is a 40% relative difference: translation this is a pretty freaking huge deal). Now, the player base operates around the fact that prior to the nerf, Operatives were performing as intended in PVE environments due to 1. the design objectives laid out by Bioware at conception, and 2. because no statement was made to otherwise claim that Operatives were overperforming in PVE. So players go from a working assumption that the 50% ArPen on Acid Blade rounds was needed to keep Concealment Ops/Scoundrels competitive with their contemporaries, and with the severe reduction to the talent effectiveness there is no evidence remaining that this continues to be the case. Without a combat log to parse numbers to give players truly objective, numerical evidence we're left in the state we currently find ourselves in, that of a fairly large amount of players seeking explanation and justification for the nerf and why it was approached in such a manner. We're in other words left with 2 options completely reliant on the dev team, or listening to heresay regarding whether or not the spec functions adequately in PVE situations. The silence from the devs is certainly not helping matters at all and we're left with a cloud of uncertainty and frankly it's gotten to a point that I'm pretty sure a lot of the class player base is like myself: completely pissed off and disenchanted with the current game balance decision makers. Really at this point I'm starting to wonder why none of the balance team have stepped to the plate to answer the myriad of rational, constructive questioning presented to it by the community, this is setting a disappointing precedent and if anyone thinks this is bad now (I mean just look at the number of views on this thread) imagine how bad it will get once another set of questionable nerfs hit the game environment and on a more highly represented class/spec (it's an inevitability in an MMO, it's a question of when not if it will happen) and that affected parties are treated with the same level of indifference. Extremely disappointed that it had to get to the point where the community has to beg/demand for a response that the design team is if not obliged, at least strongly encouraged to give.

Simple question, When will anyone from the balance team formally address/respond to this: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=274261

Thread title says it all, just posting to give it a much deserved bump. Thanks for the comprehensive work and all the effort you went though OP. Though really, does anyone believe a Biodev would even glance at a topic that doesn't have anything to do with some RP nonsense? That's all they seem to care about. Signed, One totally fed up player.

Short aside but this is unfortunately not quite the case. The healer and especially the DPS type companions benefit more from end game gear than the tank ones do. The reason is simple really, tank companions don't have an always on "tank stance" to boost their armor to "expected levels." Just look at the armor contribution of any of the tank stances (Ion Cells, Dark Charge, Soresu Form) they're massive. Using Kaliyo specifically as an example in full Columni gear (T1.2) she'll have 60% less armor than an equally geared, AFK Powertech using Ion Gas Cylinder and this is before any other talents are figured in. Defensive blast helps for sure but the still "40% bonus differential" is quite noticeable. It's the same story with all the tanking companions, not having the tanking stances really hurts them especially if soloing Champions/Heroic 4s with them is the idea you had in mind. That said it doesn't hurt having them in full Tier 1 (or T1.2 or T1.3 for that matter) and for the curious yes Kaliyo does benefit from the 4 piece Supercommando bonus.