Thanks. I'd love to do more of them. If there's someone in particular you'd like to see on let me know and I can see what I can do.

I actually asked a question to Andrew last year at NYC about Ultimate Coms being continually bumped up in value and he game me the same "ask on the forums" response. I never got any insight into the matter. Andrew seems like a really good guy who knows his stuff so I get the feeling it's something he genuinely doesn't know and the forums is the next best place to ask devs stuff.

I forgot to update my post with a map. Here's what A quick sketch of what I had in mind. Hopefully that clarifies things. The high ground issue should be resolved naturally in a few different ways. First, with two scoring platforms teams have 2 different zones to score in so if one team manages to pile into one the other should be more easily accessible. There are also two ramps to the scoring platform so teams would have to split up to guard both sides of the platform. If a team a very coordinated and manages to evenly split 4/4 and everyone is lining up knockbacks there are still several ways to break through, stealth, pulls, leaps etc. While knockbacks would clearly be powerful the scoring platforms could be big enough such that a player could stand in the center and be relatively safe from an auto-knockoff. This would prevent the player from healing or damaging the other platform so there is a risk/reward there. If a player is really fedup with knockbacks they could then play the huttball objective which is more like a VIP mode and doesn't revolve around positioning as much.

Here's the basis for my idea: A new KotH style map with a SWTOR inspired twist to keep it from devolving into teams ramming head first into one another over and over. Map layout is going to be a key for this one so I will add a sketch when I get some free time at work, but basically it's a three tiered pyramid leading to two unconnected scoring platforms at the highest tier. Teams score points based on the difference in number of players in each zone. So if you have 4 players in the zone and the other team has 3 you score 1 point per second or few seconds depending on what the score limit is/how you want scoring to be handled. The platforms are elevated to encourage good use of knockbacks, pulls, physics etc.. The platforms should be around 20 meters apart allowing for some interaction (ranged dps, leaps, crossheals etc.) possible, but getting close to the edge puts you at higher risk of being knocked off. The added facet that makes this more than just a two point KotH is that there is a Huttball placed on the ground floor. A player holding the Huttball gives their team a multiplier to all points scored while they hold it (say double points). If a team is brave enough to take the Huttball into a scoring area they will gain an additional scoring multiplier (maybe triple or quadruple points). This will force teams to balance between going for the Huttball and keeping players in the scoring zones, as well as provides a comeback mechanism that allows teams to go all in on getting the ball in the zone and getting that big multiplier. The close platform location also allows for passing of the Huttball between the two platforms which is a nice side effect. Like I said,the layout is very important since you don't want to make turtling the ball too easy, but I think this is a solid concept to start with. Let me know what you think and I'll continue to make changes as I come up with them.

I think the heal to full debacle is a perfect example of this. Pushback is one of the major reasons why classes with healing off specs can not effectively use their heals in PvP scenarios. If classes are balanced with their entire kit in mind why not let them use that whole kit?

With every major class balance update a new major ability is given 100% pushback protection. It seems like pushback is being slowly phased out of the game. At this point enough of the game's key casts have protection that I think it's time to reevaluate pushback as a mechanic in swtor. What value does pushback bring to the game at this point? Would you support the wholesale removal of pushback from swtor? This topic has been discussed a few times in the past, but I think with the release of patch 2.6 and reveal of patch 2.7 it's time to have this discussion again.

This would be a very noble and a good pr move from Bioware. I wish they would or could do it, the problem I see is figuring out who transferred when for what. Maybe the answer is a free transfer for subscribers.

I see a lot of doom and gloom on the PvP forums but the one thing I don't see is anyone giving metrics as to what qualifies as "failing." What makes you think PvP is failing? I haven't notice an increase in normal queue times in over a year really, I see people complaining about pretty much the same things as they do on any other mmo's PvP forums. Maybe I'm missing the boat here but explain to me why PvP is "failing" (and the fact that you personally don't like something isn't evidence that something isn't working).

Trick or treat?

No worries, I wasn't being defensive I just wanted to let you guys know the context in which those comments were made. You can make of it what you will.

As the podcaster in question I am confident in saying it will be years before we even have a remote chance of space PvE. Feel free to speculate as you will but they had a sizeable team working primarily on GS for a long period of time. They want to use those resources on other things for the time being.

This has got to be a bug. On our kill last night we had the exploding mine once and it was the very first mine thrown out. After that we only got stacking ones, one player ended the fight with 4 or 5 stacks. Something is definitely fishy.

I spoke with Andrew Horwitz at the NYC Community Cantina and I asked him, "I am very pleased by the decision to leave operations gear drops as is, but why did BW then decide to bump up Ultimate Coms and allow them to purchase the generic 78 level gear?" He said that he was not sure of the exact reasons himself and that posting on the forums was the best way to get the question to the right person and to find out an answer, so I'm hoping he or someone else at BW can pick up on this and discuss the design philosophy behind the change. I understand that commendations are a pretty unpopular thing to begin with at BW, so why not leave them as they were and move on with something like reputation as you get to higher and higher tiers of operation? I hope we can have some clarifications to this issue as I feel the change sends mixed messages as to BW's intended PvE progression path. Thanks and I look forward to hearing a response if I can get one.

My opinions on each subject: 1. Ranked Warzones: I agree with this point and I made that clear in several of my early podcasts. People still PvPing in this game are doing so for the 8v8 and removing ranked and shifting focus to 4v4 is a huge risk. I think they started working on arenas over a year ago when it was a more in demand feature. They got to a point where they couldn't afford to let it die and thought it would work better than the current 8v8 ranked which, like it or not, was a failure. You can site all the circumstantial evidence you want about getting tons of ranked match pops but BW talked about that stats and the average queue times were abysmal. Will this be any better? No one knows but this is a high risk, high reward move by BW and they obviously think it will be a smashing success. 2. PvE Operations and Bosses: I agree with some of these points. Nightmare needs to be harder, but should have a progression curve also. Boss 3 harder than boss 2 harder than boss 1 etc. I also think you're putting way too much stock into what gear you have versus what bosses you should be able to complete. While gear should be a factor, I think skill should have a much larger influence. Setting arbitrary gear levels for bosses is silly. Hardmodes probably should be a little harder, Styrak was a very well done fight, hard mode ec was pretty awesome. They can do exceptional fight design, they just need more of it. I think it's more important for BW to keep its ops progression for hard modes. Stories should all be on one level, hard modes should progress from Tier 1 to 2 to 3 and Nightmare modes should be the achievement/title/epeen boosting mode. 3. PvP Rewards and Missions: The daily and weekly rewards should have some decently large credit rewards. PvPers do nit have repair bills though which needs to be taken into consideration. 20k for a daily and 100k for a weekly maybe? I was initially put off by the no quest rewards for arenas but the more I thought about it the more I agree with BW. Ranked should be a place where players compete to the best of their ability, not a place players go for quick losses to get the their PvP quests done. That being said BW needs stop going halfway. If you wan to give ranked coms for wins that's one thing, but ranked losses should not be reward. This is why I'm in favor of a three com system over the current two com one and ranked coms need to be renamed. I did a whole podcast on that two if you're interested. 4. Rejoining a PvP Match: this would be nice, but may be a technical limitation of PvP instances only being accessible while you're in them or some. Would like a BW response to that end. 5. Friends of SWTOR: I was unaware of this issue so I was happy (unhappy) to find out that this has been happening. Agree with the post 100%. 6. Subscriber Benefits: I believe when you subscribe you are paying your money knowing exactly what you are signing up for. You can hope for more, but expecting any more is ridiculous. If you do not think you are getting value for your sub then don't continue to sub. This does come with a few caveats, if BW says they are on an 8 week content cycle and they go over you have the right to be upset. If servers are down for an inordinate period of time you also should be upset. Other than things like that, I pay 15$ for everything BW lay outs and nothing more. Extras are nice, but far from required. 7. Class Balance and Bugs: I agree, BW needs to do smaller, more frequent class balance changes. 8. Public Test Server: I agree BW needs to improve how they handle the PTS. Right now it feels more like a preview patch. Plenty of bugs that were widely and explicitly reported have gone live with zero acknowledgement. I actually suggested to Amber Green via twitter that they post a final Known Issues post when the PTS goes down so we know what is being worked on, she said she'd kick the idea around. 9. Ability Delay, Frames Per Second and Lag Issue: Not much to be said, may be an engine issue that won't ever go away but I'm holding out hope. 10. Forum Interaction: Moderation is always in the eye of the beholder. When you have negative opinions it's easy to cross the line into an infraction, this is usually why it seems like infractions are being given out for negative views when really it's for other reasons. Maybe more examples would be helpful.

May I suggest that you change the polls to be a ranking on a point by point basis. On some points I strongly agree with you, others I strongly disagree and others I'm indifferent on. I was someone who was competely turned off by the tone of the last post so thank you for reconsidering because you do have some valid opinions and hopefully this way people will focus on the points made in the post and not its tone.