No, I'm a "if it's a team gorup, it's the team who won". If you want to know how good you are, go solo him. Then you know how good YOU are, not your group.

Some of you also forget that a lot of people played the Beta. I leveled to 41 on a Sage during Beta, and I play a Sage now. Story hasn't changed, nor the have the missions. So I sped through them until I got to new content.

No, but DURING combat, it DOES give an unfair advantage, say if someone removes your buffs.

As someone else has said, All I have heard as a justification is the desire to punish players who aren't as good. No talk of, say, helping group mates improve. Just the desire to punish people for not dedicating an inordinate amount of free time to a game. In short, further proof people want these additions in order to be jerks.

If the boss dies, again: Who cares?

Another was SWG. I had a macro that was perfectly timed to use my abilities exactly to perfection. Allowed me to focus on nothing but positioning and communicating.

Simple, you said, in short, "how do you know if you're doing well". The boss died. They did well. What more do they need to know?

Good threat means that he's holding aggro. It doesn't matter by how much, or how fast he stacks it. If he keeps the boss off the party, who cares how much? As long as the boss dies, why does it matter the details? You beat the boss, you get your reward. Who cares if Player A was 10% below your "expectations".

This. WoW-clones fail. It has been proven time and again. Trying to recapture WoW's success is pointless, it was a fluke. It took something, and more or less perfected it. And the MMO genre has been stagnating ever since. No one is willing to risk change, they are content with their MMO lasting 2-3 months until everyone realizes that they've played the game before, and it slowly dies off. Bioware has the chance to do something new, something to revitalize a genre that hasn't changed much in YEARS.

Why does it need to compete with WoW? Why not try to do something NEW, something that isn't about turning the game into a glorified spreadsheet?

So what you're saying is, you want this to be just like the game you just stopped playing? MMOs do NOT need to be WoW. Seriously. Stop trying to replace your old addiction with a new one thats the exact same.

Also, just for the record, I love the fact some people are assuming if you aren't in favor of things like a damage counter and such, you are a bad player. I'm playing a Sage, and I have my talent spec done just about perfectly. I never run out of Force Power, in PVP I ALWAYS top the charts as a healer, usually outhealing everyone else by 2x, and have never wiped in a Flashpoint(Except for the one with the turret intro, which once I stopped getting into the turret and just healed people in it, we did it with easy)

I think you're missing the point of video games as a whole. They are meant to be entertaining. Fun. Not a way for someone to feel superior to others because they googled a talent spec online.

Bad analogy, although it shows that you take video games way to seriously. It's like telling someone they can read a book, but criticize them if they don't read it sitting at a desk, instead of laying in bed. One might be better for you, but they are both doable.

Again, someone who started out with Themepark MMOs. Look at SWG. It had over 20 professions. And you could take multiples. Did people need to min/max? No. Sure there were combinations that were stronger, but everything was viable if you took the time to learn it. I say they need to rework the talent trees so that any combination is viable(to a certain extent of course. I'm not advocating, say, putting 1/3 your points in each tree)

You're proving a lot of people's points about the people who have such a need for e-peen rubbing add-ons are elitists, who need to feel superior to others in a Video Game(Aka something meant to be entertaining, and fun. Not a 2nd job)

So by that argument, why have talent specs at all, if players should ONLY be allowed to use a few of them? Why not make every character the same, with no variation or personality? This is why Themepark MMOs need to die. I remember SWG, with the 20+ professions, with dozens and dozens of combinations, all of which could be made viable with enough skill. I'd love to see some of the modern MMO elitists try that system out.

I have a feeling you're the type who played *that* mmo until they realized how much of a horrible business model it was to have content only 5% of players got to see. I love raiding, I love PVP. I'm not a casual as you claim, and I tend to raid and PVP competitively. I just don't think that it is fair to force players who AREN'T competitive into playing MY way. Which add-ons do, like it or not. Most groups won't let you join them unless you have Add-on X, Y, and Z. It's unfair to players who pay just as much as you do.

Or it's because they are unneeded. I proved this to a guild back in *that* mmo that claimed you NEEDED a mod to survive some boss fight. I video taped the encounter, which I did without a single add-on. Unlike some of my guild mates, who died despite having an addon to tell them when to move and where, I never messed up once. Add-ons are a crutch, plain and simple.

I love how you switch to personal "insults". If you want to chase after the carrot while running on a treadmill, go back to that other MMO that caters to people like you. Let TOR be something NEW, other than a 2nd job that you pay to have.

I've done every flashpoint so far, and I can tell you they are ALL tank and spanks, minus a few exceptions that can usually be summed up as "dont stand in the aoe" or "run from this".

I wouldn't mind. Because it's a game. It's meant to be fun. If my group can still win even with little billy only doing 1/10 the damage of the others, why not let him? This is what I meant, it turns PVE, which is supposed to be about cooperation, and having fun with others, into a bragging contest and elitist haven.

I've either played them or watched the video leaks for them. Every encounter is a basic tank and spank for the most part, and some bosses may have a single mechanic thrown in. Difficulty does not change mechanics either.

The bosses are tank and spanks anyway. Besides, in theory, that's what they're used for. In reality, its so player A can brag how he is "ubr l3t deepz" because he had a .01% higher dps than the others in his group.

What some people aren't getting is that the "if you don't like them, don't use them" approach doesn't work in this case. Macros and add-ons can give a clear advantage over players who don't use them. Should Bob be punished for wanting to play vanilla? Also, anyone saying they're NEEDED doesn't understand what needs are, even in games. Bugs need to be ironed out, classes need to be balanced, servers need to be optimized. Flashpoints need expanding(More like Esseless). More content needs to be delivered. Add-ons are a WANT. They make the game easier, they simplify content. Old MMOs had bosses with interesting mechanics. Did it make them impossible to do without X mod telling you when and what it was, and how to avoid it? No. You learned through experience.