HI All, After watching Clone Wars and Bad Batch, I said " Ok, let me check that old, most likely bad and dying MMO" and it escalated quickly. At the moment, I can't find enough time to play fully one character, and I already got 4 more waiting so...you know. I can say a lot of positive stuff about the game, however as a demanding player I wanted to give it a shot and drop some of my feedback about things that in my opinion would make the game a better place. So don't get me wrong, It's not about saying how bad game is and so on, I just wanted to focus on aspects that I think could be done differently. From my background, I was involved in tons of gaming, designing and storytelling, like  helping to develop servers of games like UO/NWN/Conan Exiles etc. Through my experience I quickly learned that PVE is by far, the hardest aspect of the game to keep players online. While PVP and Immersion/Roleplay/call it what you will - two easiest. Quick example is Amazon's New World - Anyone heard about it? Game awaited by many, with best possible, modern, demanded by many, PVP systems that in majority never left the private testing. Things that were present to people broader, were leftovers that still pumped the game hard, until Devs were getting out of that idea because (most likely) someone pushed them to rework the game in a cool corporate way and killed the PVP, which was the game core. In short - What do you have when you build up a PVP game, and take PVP out of it? you guessed it - nothing. What would be my advice if I could stop them from doing so? - Don't touch PVP, if you want to bring PVE people in, build it aside the vibrant PVP ecosystem that you created. Not kill it. Best and most self-sustained player base so far for me, were the ones in Conan Exiles, Ultima Online, Warhammer Online (currently known as RoR and as so it will be referenced below) Alpha/Beta of New World and Neverwinter Nights 2. I probably missed something here but it's late. These players, literally got their tools, rules and had fun. My favorite PVP is RoR, because players know, that even though  the game is damn old, damn clunky and you can get stuck on a brick, has the best mass PVP system I've ever seen. To that old, ugly and clunky game, 500-1000 players still log in daily (casually 700) to put themselves into warbands and fight over terrains, castles, keeps. They fight, have fun and do that daily. This game is 15 years old and people got a good PVP system they still use till today!(they can’t promote the game as far as I remember so they won’t get any higher in online afaik) And finally, the Roleplay, or immersion. You don't have to be a roleplayer to think that your barbarian would look dope with that axe right? or that you need to spend 10 hours of applying proper armor pieces and dyes to them like in NWN 2, or that you want to create a concept of swamp ambushing witch, an echo of the old times in Dark Souls. Can you imagine that best servers of games I've spent years on, had PVP with RP enforcement? It's like writing your own book. Now since the initial thoughts  I wanted to present are behind us, let's focus on the fact that as far as I am aware, and I am writing it to you Broadsword  You are now taking care of the game. Below we got quote from your website: "We embrace our core values at Broadsword™. Our core values guide and frame our choices, improve our culture and help us to focus on our products and communities. These aren't fancy corporate mantras that nobody knows or follows. These values are core to our primary focus - create great games with passionate communities." Values are: Quality, Transparency and Focus So...let's dive into my game experience so far: 1. The Start - First thing hitting me right into my eyes, which I perceive as very negative, is the "Asian" style of pushing tons of stuff into me. I got rewards to claim, I got no idea what they even do, same with tons of skills and useless loot.  It's like guitar riffs - Notes are magical, but if you put too many of them, people will get confused, that magic corrupts their ears. My experience with  this ended up in picking rewards, having not so many equipment slots, getting things I don't understand and I didn't know  - Should I keep, toss them away?  My attention was on that, but I was distracted with skills I had to understand, and more and more came in. 2. Guides - as far as I love guides in games, they just are too heavy and add too much to the first point. I got tons of tips telling me stuff I can't even memorize and if you add all of them to point 1 you are completely lost and discouraged. So what I did - I was selling everything I had, totally ditched skills, tips and nearly all and just went to explore the world, but the weight of it all was only growing. I had to make pauses in the game for heavy planning and thinking, pauses I hadn't make in other games, because their progress was slower and it felt more natural. 3. Payments - I get it that it's an EA game, and all know how EA wants money, and the game tips picked a hot poker and struck it deep into my eyes, discouraging me even more.  I either didn't read that in the notes due to the whole burden of throwing a lot of stuff on me, or (and I'm quite certain about it) it wasn't written there, to get some bucks.... - The game tips tell you that you won't have a storage, you won't be able to talk, you won't be able to get better items from drop, you won't be able to use mounts etc. This basically is a HUGE nono to every player starting a game, especially if they know EA. You are literally shooting in your own knee guys because you do get speeders, you do get storage (but not the right to talk, lol) but from the beginning, you tell players in these(most likely old and untouched) tips, that "sorry, you're worse, wanna experience casual things other games have? Pay off or suffer"  - Simply changing the tips to tell the difference would be better 3. Subscription - I am positively surprised, however it should be somehow better explained that people are paying for things that are convenience upgrades and skins mostly, and that you pay for cool content AND on top of that, you get cartel coins. Plus, sub is quite good if you compare prices with skins in GW or POE, however the good explanation is given by people on unofficial discord. I was strongly discouraged because of tips telling me - no, you will suffer, give us money. I had to talk to people on discord and now I regret nothing! 4. Difficulty- As someone told me - it's a singleplayer game. And I fully endorse that. I did every quest I could find in the game, on my Jedi knight solo, when it were elite quests I just popped up pocket healer. I did that and recently finished Hutt Cartel. It doesn't give me right to speak about game as a whole, but IF it's like that later, and from what I heard it is, it's greatly disappointing. I totally agree it's a story game, but why drop the immersion? You do all these beautiful quests, that make you want to stay, buy some skins, develop your own character, but my Jedi gameplay, due to all what  was tossed into my face, was literally pushing 5 buttons, which two were AOE, sometimes I used self heal and I killed everything. Strong adversary?! no one is able to stop him? sure, just spam 1 and move on to another dialogue - it kills it. I know that game is so well written, you want people to experience the story, but having barriers like tons of useless junk, or redeeming stuff daily, or daily quests (which till now I still don't understand if I should even do) it detracts from the story because...the strong enemies, powerful force wielders, Emperors, Jedi, Sith, armies...that's just 11111 spam to kill. 5.  PVP - I have tried PVP as I am a huge fan of RP-PVP. My disappointment was great. First of all, I got into the ball game, and only there all the time so my better alternative was arena. I saw videos showing that you got other PVP  battlegrounds than the ball thingy, which you need to use something on the field? some objectives? that sounds cool - never got there. Anyway, I've ended up and quickly learned that after doing story on few chars I want, I'm not doing PVP  at all. Fights are...not balanced.  For example I can play a 4v3 or you know, simply players are missing and you can try to kill one dude in 3 ppl and that doesn't seem to work. Also...everything is exploding, flashing burning, without macros/scripts/ my best idea was to just  spam AOE whenever I could. I did targeting bind but literally, the effects make me watch targeting more often than animations, movement of enemies...it's quite a bot fight imho. And biggest killer  - No World PVP, but more on that in suggestions. 6. RP/Immersion - I heard it exist, I bet a lot of RP enjoyers after understanding they can't talk until they pay, stays in the game. Jokes aside, that's a strong NO for new players. Secondly, you can't really use objects, or at least most of them(I can't recall any I could) like benches, glasses at bar etc. NWN/RoR/UO and few others are a great evidence, that if you will give players detailed character customization, they will spend HOURS on them. Sadly, here you have strong limitations like - I want to buy a set from a shop, but I would have to combine it with other set...and then I still feel the pain, because dyes aren't like I want them to be, or  I can't dye particular element, or I can't  put more pieces together, so chest sometimes consists of a cape I don't want, or hood I don't want, or a piece I can't dye etc. 7. Builds - I feel that for some reason you can't build under certain thing. What If I would like to have a Sage that uses only pure force instead of throwing earth at people? or the opposite. It seems you use only what's actually in meta. This also means, that most likely(I can read that on discord sometimes) people are banned from certain "raids" because their way of playing is inefficient and I assume it makes them stop playing or stop playing that way. I hope it's not true here. 8. Crafting - Another big pain for me, it looks like Guild Wars and it also affects all aspects of the game, from PVE, through RP to PVP. You literally could delete it, delete enemies, PVP and the game would really be still the same - Story and few end game points of interest.  I am a huge crafting fan and I love the concept of crafting here, however due to lots of things I've mentioned above, crafting is useless, because you progress too fast. You can't say - Ah, I will now create this sniper and be known for assassinating my enemies so good, because I crafted my own sniper rifle and it's amazing, took me days/weeks or I dropped it here or there...because you progress so fast and easy, none of things the game offers really matter, they are pointless and the general idea is to make them not being pointless. 9. Inflation - Well...I never had to deal with shop-in game currency balance, but I think I would be safe to say that cutting off possibility to sell items from Cartel in game would fix the issue, however lots of other things would have to be done before that(imho things I write here in general, because small pieces like that make the puzzle whole and bring more players and make them stay, and this ofc equals to profit). 10. Quest markers - Sometimes I was struggling to spot the npc that has the quest, making it shiny and bright like in WoW would be a bad idea, but certainly there is something we could do to make them a bit more visible. 11. Minor thing but it still confuses me to today so it's more private thought than any "it will improve the game" but I am really getting confused when stats of new item, are shown on old item, so I am constantly thinking that equipping this rubbish item is better, because my better pants show the minuses xD 12. Alignment - Please let it have any impact on the game, being able to turn to the dark side/bright/ do hardcore reaves with Revan you know, more dialogues, options like violence or sparing someone, that's a powerful tool you aren't using. This could grant access to certain places in game, quests etc. Just imagine being kicked out of Jedi order and continuing in the Empire. Hope I didn't miss anything but how all that influenced my gameplay:   My idea of the game before I've started it:  I thought I would create a cool trooper, totally rip off of Clones, and I had this thought that if both of the games WH Online and SWTOR were under EA...this will be amazing experience! Because they for sure made the same PVP system WH Online had! So I've started the game and got smacked by tons of tips which I didn't process, tons of junk items used only to sell, skills pilling up quickly, no difficulty, no world PVP and messages telling me that I will be limited, I can't talk, can't store things, can't hold more credits etc. Game killers from every side, literally. If I wouldn't be so much into Star Wars after watching shows, I would totally abandon that. Story kept me, and still keeps me here, but that is the only thing. I thought I will be taking part in battle groups, crafting my own cool gear to gain advantage over players or exp zones, doing ambushes on people, grouping vs bosses that drop things I need , building myself into a <input any trooper spec here> with that pro gun crafted, and building my own legend around that, you know immersive gameplay. Yet, I was spamming 3 buttons so I've decided to switch to Jedi to spam 5. This is truly a single player game. I really wanted to get my friends here but I couldn't, because there is nothing to do in group until late game. So what this tells me: You skip, unnecessary content that tries to fill the world to not look blank like New World After sucking out the PVP from it, to actually then test, if what the game offers later is enjoyable. I've watched videos, asked people...well end game is not for me. I mean it would, but stripping off all around it...just kills it. I am sure right now, I am for the story only, and then a bit for end game PVE but just a bit,   This is what I think would make the game flourish and revive it, because I see it is in stagnation. I've seen this before and I'm afraid to deep dive to verify if that's true, but some games ended like that(for example DDO) that people don't want to develop it further as they think it's over, so just suck some bucks, do update here or there but not too ambitious, because it is expensive. And I can see it online because not many videos on YT are up to date, so a lot of questions are unanswered, no up to date guides and talent calculators/builders, no vibrant community to build content doing skill/places/lore showcase etc. I hope, that the quote about you Broadsword was right, and you plan to break out of this "Corporate" routine and want to make this game top notch again, because you got all the tools to do so, this game is a box of wonderful legos, just messed up a bit. Finally -  Suggestions:   1. Totally rework difficulty to actually be more like WoW Classic, or current best known to me version - Turtle WoW. If you're too stuck with the thought that it's too much work, undoable, what would current players say...at least rework it on side and add it as optional mod, and just promote it as totally new experience. Slower leveling and harder enemies (and all that comes around it) would make crafting and "instances" useful, instead of useless and skippable till endgame. This also makes immersion and the plot(which is naturally a part of it) better, because the enemies, actions and all that happens...would mean something more than facing this adversary everyone is afraid of and just doing 11111 to finish him. 2. Lower drop rates of junk/remove lots of junk - I get the idea of looting, but things are interesting if they got some purpose. I'd rather loot credits or a small thing people could carry with them, than tons of junk I use my companion to auto sell...which leads to 3rd point 3. Cut off the possibility to sell items from Cartel  in game, because why would you even drop these pair of useless pants x30, when you sell them for nothing in compare to market prices of items. 4. Change tips in game. Let people know they are not cut off from storage, mounts etc. People will buy subscription because of plot and even if not plot, because of quality of life features it offers, don't worry about that. You're hurting yourself more than helping. 5. With slower leveling, people should also be introduced to game slower so more time to enjoy the world than thinking what to do with all these junk items, tips, quests from weird machines and skills that fill the bar quite quickly, however, skills could be slightly more spread across the levels as well, because there is still too much to worry and think, which is discouraging because of the pace you are getting all that. 6. One of the hardest things to do - Rework wearable items, so that either you can combine more elements(like shoulder from one with another) if not possible at least make more dying options. For example Revan Reborn set has this chest that is untouchable so it quite kills the concept if I want to have the set and let's say do black-red fully. More dye combinations also would be a good thing, and if possible, more dyeable spots to choose instead of two. Remember, the more time people will spend on most important thing in the galaxy - Fashion, the bigger the online, the bigger the chance they will buy something from Cartel. 7.  Hardcore opt in mode - With reworked difficulty, boy oh boy. Hardcore fashion is bigger and bigger nowadays, for example Turtle Wow has 5-6k online, from which 1-1,2k is hardcore. People polish their skills, talents, farm items here, craft them there, trade between themselves. If the difficulty is done right - this is a good thing. 8. "Leagues" or Challenges - Hardcore could be one of them. You complete it and receive rewards account wide, like title, dye, something fun. Lots of such challenges build online. For example from Turtle Wow - They got a challenge where you can be a hardcore, exp 50% slower, only gain exp by quests, only gain exp on boars, don't get rested exp, only use grey/white items etc. And you can combine them so a lot of players wanna do that. 9. RP....it would be great if people would be able to talk without premium and if  objects could be usable, a RP pack type of expansion could bring that. Use campfires in woods, drink in the bar, have joy with lots of free emotes of basic type, sit on things etc. 10. The second hardest to do thing, and my bread and butter - PVP. I've said that RoR has one of the best PVP, but generally what keeps people playing PVP? Rewards, competition etc. sounds normal, you can do battle passes rankeds, all that crazy stuff, but first of all let's think about what is the most enjoyable PvP - World PVP. Why? Because it's the most natural. For example BGs and Arenas are usually places where if let's say in a perfect scenario, all  are equally geared, they log in and do the same activity for a long time and get bored for some time, because it’s  not in motion, it’s a stale state that resets with every end of a match. Of course you can make these more enjoyable but  I think enough games provides enough evidence(as my own experience) that the most natural PvP is the most fun to play. Greatest examples are  Souls games or RoR - You enter arenas, with the same meta builds, and you get bored quickly. Why these people play only 4-5 builds when game offers tons of them? Because immersion stays in the world, not on these arenas/bgs. Before you will tell me - Well, not everyone wants to get ganked 10 times in a row while just walking around - Yes, I totally agree, but we got other possibilities. This can be solved in multiple ways, I'll just drop one and stick to it because damn, if you are still reading, I admire you. It's a screenshot from Warhammer 40k Soulstorm if I remember correctly, basically planetary attacks. You could attack zones on a planet to capture it, then, depending on what zone you were, jump to invade another planet. If Star Wars would only be in space and have a background for planetary wars...oh wait     My idea is: Create end game PVE content or any sort of additional reward (because the main reward is fun!), available only if planet is captured to one faction, to empower opt-in PVP and split planets like RoR did with zones. This means, that you are full world PVP ONLY on sectors made for it(in RoR maps were split in a way that if you had any zone in the game, it had half of it for PVE and half of it for PVP) so it could be done that way, or  simply if you choose a planet, you could see the zones as now, and Warzones aside of them, or perhaps totally separate planets for warzones only. Concept: Players from both factions fight over them in a structured way(you could copy paste the rules from RoR and that would be enough, but I'll make a simplified version) So, planet has main base of both sides, and both factions fight over zones to capture it.  The middle zone is the conflict one, factions fight over points of interest to keep them, generate resources, bring them back to their bases which would produce resource for the faction to use on siege weapons to destroy opposite base, capture it and move the supply line further. That is very raw concept, read about RvR on RoR wiki, watch it on youtube or ask me in the comments to expand the topic here. But the main idea is that it could be enhanced in Star Wars way. How? Well...what if bounty hunters on both sides, would be neutral in this conflict? They would have bounties put by players of each factions, and some clever way to track their victims, for example one player is a ranger-assasin type, he scouts to see incoming enemies from a good position and he notoriously ambushes single units(zergs), let's say empire is mad, they know who is that so they put a bounty on a board and a BH can be like - nah, today that faction pays more, I'm with them.  What if all that Star Wars mambojambo can be brought to this PVP and for example, battlefield objectives could give radars, vision over certain places to note when enemies are coming on map? not just a plain building to see players, but a real map dots when you control certain sensors? wouldn't it be more exciting that missions you made on PVE that included recapturing or sabotaging such sensors, would actually help you forge the faith of the planet vs other players? What if you would have to keep droid factory to build them as valuable guards and put them in your held positions?, what if capturing enemy base with a satellite could make new commers to planet, not land at the end of the map, in their faction base, but instead, closer to the conflict? or landing behind enemy lines? Now let’s think about all these cool immersion concepts that were done in all games I've played so far and just translate them  to SWTOR - Imagine that players, would create guilds or divisions in these guilds, for example of desert troopers, all got bought banners(and lots of more cool cosmetics just for PVP expansions) from the market that show their coats of arms, or other symbols, all using trooper armors made for desert to have a better camouflage(so nicknames could not be so brightly visible as well), and they would be specializing in shock attacks, while other part of players would like to cosplay desert people, wearing their armors and any sort of outfit and just ambush them for funzies? People would be able to pick any part of the lore, and enrich it with their  concept, not just plain fight.  People would be storming bases as troopers or will get tasked to sneak to destroy a radar or kill a group leader from behind, but they got stuck in a lightsaber fight etc.   Sounds quite impossible to force players to do so right? well, no one would be forced, if old games still driven by people doing so, are played, with these changes people would gladly do the same. Imagine just showing on YT that faction A consisting of troopers of any sort is tasked with defending the base as long as other groups are keeping enemy forces on other planets, the first one to win by a deception or force, would move somewhere else to push another line, but while doing so is ambushed on a swamp by weird force wielders protecting it as own.  Some could build their renown as most ruthless Empire commandos, or brutal Sith ritualists, you can write as many stories as people have ideas, give them tools to look as they want and just watch them repeatedly fight, conquer, defend and have fun. Relive Star Wars in a way they watch in the series. It's fun to fight in wild terrain instead of setup arenas. To ambush people, to build a cool concept around it while not forcing PVE players to it if they don't want. People would stream it, do tournaments and so on. And all these pieces I wrote above, are small puzzles that if you will put them together, people will promote the game on their own channels and game would boom again. Because why not use strongholds to defend planets from these blood demanding empire agents, or against those shock troopers or Jedi. Why do waste time on modern corporate type of games, when you could actually have meaningful crafting whole way, and instead of inflation, have more immersion, knowing that you want to earn these credits from this or that, because you don't need 50000 millions more to buy some stuff. All these pieces fit and make a stable environment which brings players    

That is an upgrade for later, press B that opens the crew skills window then click on diplomacy, there should be a few level 1 missions to send your companions.

It's hard to be disappointed when you expect very little. Story content has been dragged out so far that you have to play a new character through the "old content" just to understand what you did the last time you played. Overall, the amount of content added has been embarrassingly sparse and even the GS add-on, that had at least been interesting when it was launched with seasons 1 & 2, has degraded to the point, there is almost no reason to participate in it. What needs to be done is for Broadsword to have each update focus on one of the gameplay modes and do a good job of providing engaging, relatively error free content (once per year everybody gets something substantial). They should define in advance, which aspect the incremental updates will address and then stick to it (so people know when their favored mode will be addressed). There is no real need to modify base game mechanics with a population as low as it has sunk.

Just started a new skill, Diplomacy, on a new character and the only available mission is level 600. Same happened with Investigation, only one mission available and its advanced. 

Kessan's Landing story update is almost fine storyline for me. Only things what i don't like is normal cinematic cutscenes are mixed with Kotor style ones. This is just stupid and it's driving me crazy when important choices can't be speaken from my character. And this Mandalorian conflict should ended long ago, it's already 2 years or more (spirit of vengeance story was 3 and half year ago .......) I wonder how this happened, with such epic and most popular marka in the whole galaxy - what is Star Wars - game can't be as great as this whole created uniwersum. As Guild wars 2 for example what have 4-5 story updates per year. Wasting potencial here when game with every story update have only tiny progress and on Old Wounds story more than half cutscenes are Kotor style ones. Game with such greatest marka should at least deliver such epic story like Kotfe/Kotet, Onslaught, Echoes of Oblivion or Ruhnuk once per half year, every year. I hope i will don't see ANY Kotor style cutscenes on 7.5 main story update. ~ Tsukito, Alliance Commander