Hello Bioware. This letter is coming from my heart. I want to express my views on a few thing regards to this game, MMO players in general (not the swtor community) and the fundamental lackings of this game. That u simply cannot change. I believe you are aware of them already. However allow me to address them here. Topic 1. MMO players in general Ok this is one of the first reasons why you will fail with this game. It is sad because it has nothing to do with you it's just the nature of the beast. However some of it is your fault too and i'll explain later. In every mmo i have played since Wow ( I played wow when it first came out so this is 7 years of testing new mmos....and by the way this line is very important because at the core of the mate this is why you are going to fail) Players have always complain intensly about the U.I. With some games they had a point. Examples being FFXIV. However with most games i personally have always just been amazed at the instensity of the anger about the U.I. I have always felt it was simply unwarranted. In this game on my server frostclaw EU. I am one of the best pvper around. I have been that way since the start of the game. I have been able to play the game quite well and too a very very high standard with the U.I you provided. Now people will say ok it worked for you but not for others. Well In warhammer online,age of conan, aion, FFXIV, champions online, city of heros, and many other i can't remember the names of now i have always been able to use the provided U.I quite well and to be honest they have all had very different U.I. This is because i am an orginal gamer. I've been playing games since 1985. When gaming was about adapting to a new enviroment and accepting the new rules of a game and seeing what the developer intended you to experience. Back them alot of these casual players were laughing at us gamers for being geeks with no life. now our industry is one of the biggest in the world and everyone wants in. However everyone wants everything handed to them on a plate. Blizzard realised this and allowed players all sorts of U.I options Now you might ask well that was Blizzard what does this have to do with Swtor well let me explain World of warcraft was infact many many mmoers first mmo. Yes there are many hardcore players who can rattle off a list of mmos that came before wow but no other mmo has had the immense impact World of Warcraft had. Like dainel erickson said they created the mmo space. However he forgot to mention they have also closed it. This was the reason you choose to go with World of warcraft combat system which was a huge mistake. I realise you are a fan of the World of warcraft combat system seeing as you used it in Dragon age 1 and 2. More on this later They closed it because Wow allowed people to mod their experience to an almost unbelieveable degree. So much soo it was shocking. They allowed them get stats on positioning of players around them, what's happening with dots and most importantly marcos. Yes marcos. The marcos in World of warcraft allowed people automate major aspects of gaming that have been tradiationally reserved for the best players. The addition of such instense use of marcos have lead players to believe that they need marcos to play. Let's examine this belief. They "need" to automate their game play experience because they can't carry it out themselves. Now i understand from a business point of view when someone can't win as much as they want to they will just quit you game because everyone wants to be a winner. Players don't like to play games they are not good at. However this was not the case. Wow Was easy to play without marcos however players wanted to win so bad they would use marcos to perform tatics and chains of ablities in record time with 100% accuracy. This led many players without the phycial skill or dexeterity (something that has been at the core of gaming since it's inception and the reason why orginal gamers like me played games) to be able to perform at very very high levels. The funny thing about this is that well alot of players who were "PRO" were not acutally playing the game. For years they haven't actually been playing wow. In most cases they didn't even write the marcos themselves. Some actual pro wrote the marco and they copied it from a forum. Meaning they are not actually playing. Some pro player has pass on his excat skills and they are just activating his skills in combat and winning. I am a player that gains joy out of winning by my own skill. For the 27 years i've been a gamer it has always been something that meant the most to me. however Wow has taught me that i am actually very unique in the mmo gaming world. As most people only care about winning. By what ever means necessary. The funny thing is they gain the same belief in themselves as been good as i do when i use my actual skill to play. If you ask them about it of cousre they will shout and claim that they are skillful because they can press 4 marcos and win. Much like the trooper pre-nerf. They feel they are skillful because they can press 1 button and win. Now as i am going on about this you might be asking yourself well we haven't included marcos so why are you going on about this. Well it does affect you. This is why alot of player are complaining instensly about the U.I because it doesn't have elements that can play the game for them. It isn't giving them all the help and information that plays the game for them. They aren't as good as they were in World of warcraft. They can't get to the god like levels they were because they were never that good to begin with. However telling them to accept the fact they aren't the best is a lost battle. After all they have just spent 7 years being gods so they aren't going to change. This leads me on to my next point about players. Because so many extra things have become necessary to play. It has lead them to produce cookie cutter builds. Example is one player demanding at the guild summit that you need to put in a combat log. I have spoken to a very dear friend of mine. Who i respect alot and he argues that you need to have a combat log to improve and optimise you game play. Well that's not what it's used for. Players were able to optimise gameplay into the 1 button trooper just fine without any help. And that's what players want to do. They want to get the perfect rotation. They want a rotation that does max damage for their class and spec. Once the "pros" have "tested" and "proven" one rotation is better than the other. That's it. In raids guild officers will insist that players use proven specs. Who can blame them In a raid they do need the most amount of dps to down the boss. However it just means that players who want to play and participate differently are shut out. Experiementation stops and people will just follow proven builds and tatics. The funny thing is that it's not always about doing max this and max that. alot of the times different game play styles can bring alot to the table if used properly. 5% less dps from on player does not equal a 5% drop in overall raid dps. Far from it. 5% drop in one players dps might mean he picks up other skills that could help the raid win or stay alive or even help the player stay alive. After all death = 0 dps However this isn't the nature of players. Now i've talked alot about players and given you my view on how players play. Now here is why your game is outdated I have just played Tera online open beta. First of all let me just say this to you. Your story in this game is amazing. the sith inquistor story is one of the best stories i've ever played. And i really mean that. It's great. Your setting is great. The voice acting really adds much need personality to the game. However at the end of the day this is a game not a movie. And here is where you fail. Your core game play is World of warcraft. Which people have played for 7 years. People know your system well already. some of your classes are just like their world of warcraft mirrors. People are already burnt out on world of warcraft. My first mmo was FFXI. When i played World of warcraft i stayed with World of warcraft because it was a new game play system. Your biggest japaness rival Square enix. Have always prided themselves of reinventing their combat systems. Thats what keeps fans coming back again and again. The system is new. The system is something they can explore and it has mystery. your game play has no mystery. It's just Wow. It's the reason people are just buring through ur content so quickly. They have played your game for 7 years already and they will get bored quickly. In 2008 when u first annouced old republic i made a post about the need for you to do alot of things but i also talked about making a dynamic new combat system. You did not. Tera has a very new GOOD combat system. In tera when u pvp u don't just start spaming until one person drops dead. you have fight for position and strike at the right moment. In fact in tera even if you are at 10% and your oppoent is at 100% you can still win. Because it is possible to avoid,dodge or block incoming attacks. That adds a level of excitment and intensity your game simply doesn't have. In a duel i have duel the same person 10 times and sometimes i might have a good fight and win. sometimes i'll have a hard fight and lose. That doesn't happen in this game. If someone is beating you in a duel. your dead. Your not going to beat that guy. simply because the system is not a fight per say. It's a race to hit each other as fast as u can until someone drops dead. If the person can bring your health down faster than you can theirs in this dps race. you've lost. Not so in tera. You may have more dps or healing than me. But if i avoid your attack constantly it's all for nothing. This introduces a huge part of actuall player control of they character and postioning and timing and positiioning. All things that are important to any good fighting game. People might argue you get that with this combat system. Let me just say with tera this effect is performed 200% better. My point is because you failed to innovate in your combat system you game will get boring much quicker than you intended. Due to no fault of your own just due to player fatigue with the world of warcraft system. There is simply nothing you can do about it. Now before tera i would have settled to play you game because in my opinion despite your flaws you were still hands down the best mmo on the market. However with tera introducing a new good combat system. You are now outdated. Another thing tera beats you on is the graphics. Dear god the graphics of this game. It is my belief tera is the most beatutiful game i have ever seen. There is also another aspect tera destroys you on. Client stablity. Tera is a world like World of warcraft. It is not zoned like you game. However it not only has 1000% better graphics and art style than you. It runs on max specs on alot of older machines. It is 500% more stable than you client. The loading times or so small. The largest loading time i've had on tera is 10 seconds. And this game is completely open world. In your game dear me. Every time i want to go any where. I have to put up for at least a 45 sec load time minium. And thats on a good day. Many people on here scream and say it's my computer. In fact i had a forum post where people where aggrogantly claiming for me to give them the specs of my computer so they can solve the bottle necks. They were agrogantly claiming i should buy a new computer. Well actually i'll just buy a new game. Tera loads super fast on "MY" computer the same one i used for this game and it has 1000% better graphics and is about twice the size of your game. There was nothing wrong with my computer like i said (even though you were foolishly not listening and giving me infractions for trolling...Thank god i won't be getting more infractions from you now that i'm leaving i really hated the moderation on these forums) Their client doesn't crash any where near the amount yours does and plus when it does freeze it will catch up with itself and carry on the game. (JUST AMAZING) with your game. Once the game starts to freeze. Game over Your going to crash. And when you do crash it isn't going to be pretty. It's going to take at least 10mins before the client gives you becaus control over anything in your computer and another 10mins before you log back into game. When tera does crash (it's crashed once in 5 days of solid play) it crashes so quickly. Meaning the program closes instantly and you are instantly taken back to your desktop with full control and can reload and enter the game in secs. The user experience of tera is sooooooooo smooth compared to yours that i'd be a fool not to leave here. In conclusion because of the hero engine's really really bad performance and the fact you choose the wrong combat system (i have played your game for 3months solid and trust me i really mean when i said for those 3months you were the best mmo on the market and if tera hadn't come out and so badly destroyed your experience i would still be playing your game) i will not be playing your game anymore. Good bye bioware. Good bye everyone. Take care and i wish you all the best

I just resubcribed. Because i prove of the direction of patch 1.2 and the direction bioware is going now. Carry on Bioware icecoldone out

I'm sorry but the OP doesn't understand the class and sees one aspect of us an cries op op. Let me explain a few things about darkness They can't do that burst damage all the time. That kind of insane damage showed in the video can only be performed with recklessness up. That's on a long CD. Does Darkness have good burst. Yes it does. but no all the time. before the buff we couldn't kill anyone. We aren't DPs nor can we do any where near the damage as dps classes. I have played both. Deception can consistently do high damage. The word you are looking for is consistenicy. So can Operatives. There is an operative on my server that can take me down from 20k to 0 in 8 secs. Every time. We can't do anything like that. That is dps. That is true dps. YEs darkness is very powerfull in the hands of the right player but that's only cos it allows for dynamic fighters. If you understand our class we can be beaten. you don't seem to understand how we work. I have given you proof. We can't do that burst damage all the time. It's in stops and starts. We need those moments of burst damage to actually kill. Don't tell me tanks should always have low damage. That's as good as telling me tanks shouldn't pvp Why ? cos in Wow they didn't? So there for that's the rule. All that is happening here is the wow veterans angry that their tried and test notion of tanks being crap in pvp is wrong. So they say the game is broken and try and use half truths to prove it. Not all darkness assassins can be good. Not everyone can play it. And the last video you showed. of that guy playing. Trust me. That's NOT how i would have handled those melee. That guy didn't win cos of damage. You've again failed to mention. He won cos he used his stuns and strength to good effect.

i think this is a very sad thread

Hello again bioware I would like to comment on a few things that have caught my interest in the past couple of days. I'll start with the more neutral comments. Alderaan and Voidstar They need to be changed in the following fashion. When capturing an objective. The player needs to be damaged by 20 to 30% before his attempt is broken. This is desperately needed. at the moment one player can deny an entire team of an objective. This doesn't happen in huttball because the ball carrier has to die before the objective is taken. Meaning auto attack can't save the day. This is a neutral suggestion that everyone can benefit from I know some people might be thinking but what if the whole team gets on the objective and then the defenders can't kill everyone clicking in time. That's just as bad. Good point i'd say cos that's why i said only 20% to 30% however an even better way of doing this is as follows. Make it so that only one player at a time can click the objective. And then you can make sure that that player must be dead before he can be interuppted. This is the best way to balance it. So to conclude on that point Make sure that only 1 player from each team can engage the objective at a time (first player from team to click will do) and make sure that player can't be interuppted until he's dead. also you might want to extend the bomb planting time somewhat to make up for this. or even put a health debuff on the bomb planter to make sure he can actually be killed in a timely fashion. Kinda of like the debuff you put on the ball carrier in huttball. This suggestion applies to voidstar and alderaan objectives. OK point 2 Let's go back to alderaan for this one. If you implement point 1 above this isn't such an issue anymore. But currently left as it is is really bad. The 2 side bikes when you capture the side turrets. That's just aweful really. I don't understand how your testers didn't catch this. Those side turrets are too difficult to capture when you have lost them alot of the time your only option is to ninja capture. No it's not cos we can't kill the opposing team. In fact the major problem i face is we kill them too quickly. cos they keep respawning so quick even if you wipe out all members that are there. they are back before you can even capture the damn turret. I'm sorry if i've wiped your team out. I should be given enough time to capture the turret. The same applies to the opposing side. altogether i think the game will be more fun with out those 2 side bikes. Cos those turrets will actually switch hands. and bad players can't just hide behind respawns. Ok that concludes my suggestions Now onto my comments. I know this has been mentioned before but bioware you really have to do something about this. There are classes who have no stealth going into stealth with either bugs of cheats. I've seen this happen on a number of occasions and not said anything assuming that it will be fixed but now you have sages who can heal in stealth. It makes sense they can do this because however a sage gets into stealth and no i don't mean operative aoe stealth which lasts 15secs. i mean this class is in stealht for over a 1min and is carrying on functioning as normal while invisiable. Anyway how ever a sage goes into stealth they are not programed to be in stealth so there are no intentional restrictions on what they can and cannot do in stealth because they weren't meant to be in stealth in the first place The funny thing The person i saw doing this has already been reported by others for exploiting wall hacks in aldeeraan and is a known exploitor. Before the trolls come in and say you can't hack the servers. lols I've seen people on a regular basis teleport from the bottom of the middle circle in alderaan to the top stairs. You see them they run underneath the spot they want to teleport to they start shaking like they are lagging and bang they are up at thte time. same thing happens with people over fire pits. In fact i've seen empire side do this quite alot. ( i am empire). They will be over the pit and bang they start shaking and before you know it they have moved 10 meters forward. I love you guys you claim lag. how come they only lag over fire pits. As a pvper you tend to watch players alot. cos you need too. to know who to attack and who to ignore. And you see the same players over and over again "lagging" over the fire pit. Another thing that happened to me in huttball. I was on the frogdog team. And the ball carrier for rot worms was in the middle of the areana. close to where the ball is picked up from. half a second later. they scored. From middle of arena. to our goal line in 0.5 secs. and no i mean litterally. I saw the ball carrier i was walking towards him. He disappeared and they had scored. lols My guild master (My guild master runs a highly highly organised guild and he chooses his words carefully) was there and even he had to admit they cheated. So Tbh bioware none of the thing i've mentioned are game breaking. They are not tbh. All the cheaters know they are cheating and by the fact the cheat have declared themselves failures if you ask me. However you need to enforce the rules of the game if not everyone will start doing it. At the moment it is only being carried out by a few who know how. Once this starts becoming common knowledge. trust me people will stop having fun with you game. And that's what matters the most. If people are having fun. At the moment the problem is not servere. At least not on my server anyway. But you should act now and take a tough line with these guys. Perma ban for alot of people is in order. you might not want to lose paying customers. however your going to lose alot more if you don't put an end to this quickly and show people you can hold a reasonably fair game play session. I'd like to end this thread with a note to the cheaters. I'm going to quote what someone said on these forums that really struck a note with me. When there are no more mmos to play because you ruined all of them. you'll go back to playing single player fpses and googling for doom and quake hacks on god mode cos you know your no where ever good enough to complete it normally and nor will you ever be icecoldone out

I don't understand why you can't be bothered to work for your gear. This is end game. You have to earn your place amongst the best. Just get a full set of champion. Which isn't that hard these days and your can compete. I can't understand the need for everything to be handed to you on a plate. Having gear to look forward too means your character can continue to grow. You are encouraged to keep playing to gain more power. As a battlemaster i can tell you that once you get over 250-300 expertise you can be very useful to any team your on. Also maybe the people you were playing from 1-49 weren't that good compared to have good some high level players are. Don't assume it's just gear. Even though for you that may be your major concern but trust me some of these guys can really blow you away. However why are you quiting 1 week before bioware nerfs expertise like they said they would. Cos of posts like this. Ah i c what your doing.... carry on sir

very funny. certainly cheered me up

i didn't mean your target i meant you

ok i can only speak on shock and project. Because i am an assassin. I also use shock quite alot. I am also sith and have played against my mirror spec in combat. Honestly if you think the difference in shock and project is going to make a sith win over a jedi then your not playing well at all. Remember one thing. Once project has been summoned it's going to hit. Even if the projecter dies. Also it's pretty quick too. So i don't think the difference in time will make a difference to the outcome of battle. Also I want to also complain about one actual advantage you jedis have over sith. While force lighting and what ever your equal is slows the target. Yours actually causes me to go into an animation where i am sort of trying to fend of the pebbles. As a result my animation is also a bit interuppted. Force lighting doesn't do that it just slows the person down. If you ask a sorc or assassin if this is important they will say hell yeah. Also you said that the BH heats give 3.125 ion cannons while the trooper only gives 3 ion cannons this is a difference to you yeah ok well tell me how you can do 0.125 of an ion cannon if you want to do math you'd round both numbers down to 3 and see that in pratice they are even. You are the reason why bioware doesn't want to give out a combat log and to be honest i SUPPORT THEIR choice 100% all that will come out of it is people who can't separate theory from practice and come up with funny numbers then start a war. In anycase I'm sorry if the differences bother you. The best scoudrel/Operative on my server is by far republic. If you want to win and be good. I'm sorry these differences you mentioned are not going to decide the outcome of anything in a serious match If this is just an excuse to complain why republic lose then i say carry on. but if your actually trying to make a point about this then sorry i don't agree with you

Its working as intended. No need to worry about it mate

no fine they've changed their statement i don't agree with it and we'll see the future. Fine since they've changed their statement haveing "tested" it then i wonder how it goes from a known issue to working as intended. Anyway Fair enough if they want to change what they are saying nothing i can do about that

1. One i'm not speculating i was reading from what was given out by bioware. 2. Their guy knew it was a known issue now all of a sudden it's not doesn't really make sense that's not fact that's just damage control

we're not going to agree here. let's agree to disagree on this one ok?

And i'm asking you why you don't ask them as well. Ask everyone who posts what they are trying to achieve with a post some are trying to be heard. some are trying to discuss need i go on I've made a post about an issue i think it's important. do you guys really need to be spoon feed info 24/7

Well to be honest it just seems like as usual u guys try your hardest to ignore what's right infront of you. Many reasons why this is the case but none of them change the fact that It is broken. none of them do