Wow, I'm famous! I'm not sure how I became "notorious" for using /stuck, as I think I can count on one hand the number of times I've done it in a warzone. Also, I'm not sure doing so has ever really made the difference in deciding a match. But, hey, at least people are watching my videos. In the hypergates example, I'd actually argue that the battle-rez is the "shady" mechanic being abused, rather than the /stuck. I'm not contending that battle-rez is shady itself, just the part where you can use it to bypass the pylon explosion. The same trick would have worked just as easily without /stuck if an opponent had killed me. I just needed to die. It should also be noted that the death counted towards the score -- I gave the opposing team 6 points with that /stuck. For the record, I like to think that any success I've had in warzones is due to strategy, tactics, and execution much moreso than the occasional /stuck. I'd be happy to have BW remove it from warzones. In fact, haven't they changed it already? I think /stuck now only kills you if you're in combat. But either way, I just don't think it's a huge deal.

Here's a couple good ones I saved: http://www.twitch.tv/megastriker/c/1867368 http://www.twitch.tv/megastriker/c/1848778 Also, for "sustained nukage", here's the game where Megatech dinged 50 in a lowbie wz: http://www.twitch.tv/megastriker/c/1955188 I should start streaming again. It's fun to have these moments saved.

Alderaan Civil War can be fixed by taking a note from Ancient Hypergates. Make all three turrets reset to neutral every 4-5 minutes. They need to be recaptured before they start firing again. Also, when the side nodes are reset, the side speeders are no longer available until that node is recaptured. The opening rush to capture the nodes in CW is actually quite interesting. Each team is trying to figure out how to get numbers-up on two out of three nodes. The problem is that the penalty for either bad guesswork up front, or bad execution in those crucial first minutes is that you lose the whole game. By having the turrets reset, then the teams have to repeat the numbers gambit multiple times during the match, each time having knowledge of what happened earlier in the match. This way, even if you lose in the opening, your team has a chance to recoup.

I cant justify more than 15 points in madness, and 1 of those points is wasted. Losing instawhirl is really sad. That was a big part of what made the madness hybrid worthwhile. The other thing that's really bothering me is how hard it is to reach out-of-stealth spike. Spike is so incredibly useful! it's painful to consider losing it, especially when instawhirl is also gone. That said, I'm still looking at a few decent hybrid options. 27/4/15 and 31/2/13 both seem viable as general-purpose builds. Wakajinn is relatively unchanged (now 0/31/15), although I dont like this spec much for rated. Maybe for Voidstar offense, or for a desperation attempt at the off-node on Alderaan. For Huttball, I'll probably run 33/11/2. I might use this in Voidstar defense too.

I've setup streaming too. I'm at http://www.twitch.tv/megastriker . The key to improving the stream quality is to change the resolution. View->Resolution->1280x720 . The default quality is 360p, which pretty much sucks. Even at 720p, I still see a lot of motion artifacts, but at least it's watchable.

I didn't see any of the bugs I mentioned listed in the known issues thread. I have not submitted in-game bugs for these, but I suppose I can. It pains me to think that these bugs are actually unknown to BW, since (as the title suggests) I see all of them every single time I play.

Here's a short list of bugs that I consistently hit. I'm not going out of my way to break the game -- these bugs are all seen in regular commonplace situations. None of these are gamebreaking, but the repeated exposure is really getting annoying. And, while I have no knowledge of the game's code, I feel like many of these bugs shouldn't be too hard to fix. Offline members shown in the guild list. Every time I log in a new character, when I bring up my guild list, I see all offline members. I do not have the "show offline members" box checked. I have to check and uncheck the box in order to see only the online members. Missing chat channels. Often when switching zones, the chat channel that should be active becomes unavailable. Most typically, this is the ops channel in a warzone. But, I've also seen it happen to the party channel, and (more rarely) in general, pvp, or trade channels. I know that ctrl-u-u fixes it, but why am I forced to continue doing this manually? At the very least, can BW just automate reloading the UI on every zone load? Missing ops frames. I think this is a corollary of the chat channel bug. Sometimes the ops frames do not display. Again, ctrl-u-u fixes it. Again, I shouldn't have to do this. Inspecting other players. When I inspect another player, sometimes I see that player's character sheet. But just as often, I might see that player's portrait with MY items equipped. Sometimes I see the target player's stats superimposed with my own stats, resulting in a very ugly text display. And always, when hovering over a player's stat (e.g. critical chance), where I should see the breakdown of contribution from base stats, skills, and bonuses, I instead see the breakdown of my own stats. My suggestion here is to make the inspect target sheet totally separate from the personal character sheet. Then there should never be any confusion between the target and myself. Even better, perhaps then I could have both sheets open at once, and actually compare the target to myself! Item tooltip info off the edge of the screen. When I hover over an item on a character sheet, sometimes the item info extends off the edge of the screen. This only happens on the first item I hover over, and moving the cursor away and then back to the same item always fixes the problem. It's usually the item equipped to the head slot, and usually the tooltip extends above the top edge of the screen. I consider bugs like these, "low hanging fruit." That is, something that shouldn't take a lot of time or cut into the budget for other larger work items, but still has a noticeable positive customer impact. I'd love to see some of these fixed in an upcoming patch.

I think everyone can agree that the biggest problem with rated warzones is that there just arent enough people playing. I have some ideas that can help address the problem. Hopefully some of these suggestions are simple enough that they might get implemented. If you don't care about the reasoning and just want the suggestions, scroll down to the bottom of my post. As I see it, the single biggest reason why people don't play rated is that they don't have the proper motivation to play. The reward model is just screwed up. While winning a rated warzone does yield more commendations than unrated does, losing a rated warzone is not a clear win over just playing unrated. Not only are the incentives for ranked inadequate, but there's actually a penalty for losing! I have a number (my rating) that actually decreases if I lose. Regardless of the fact that the rating means almost nothing, it is still a visible number, and MMO players generally do not like to see numbers decrease. These factors result in a game that is only worth playing if you can win. When you have a game like this, where playing the game is only worthwhile if wins are likely, you get a host of negative side-effects. The first thing that happens is, most teams quickly find out that they are not likely to win, and they immediately quit. Then, the remaining teams realize that they need to arrange circumstances to achieve the best odds of winning. They start by ensuring that they have the best possible lineup among friends/guildmates, and thus alienating anyone in the guild that isnt "a-team". Soon after that, they will start to recognize the other opposing teams, keeping track of who is likely to be in the queue at any given time. As soon as one team realizes that they are the worst online, they know they're no longer likely to get any wins. This further degenerates into recognition that they are the worst team that ever queues, and that any game ever obtained will be against a superior team. At this point, that team never queues again, and then the next team slightly better will soon find that they are now the worst. Here's a slightly off-topic note: Cross-server queues does NOT fix this problem! In fact, it only makes things worse. By enabling queueing against other servers, we only increase the likelihood that a team realizes they are no longer among the best and stop queuing. In order to fix the problem, we need to change the motivation for playing. We need people to want to play rated warzones because they are fun (and rewarding), as well as challenging and a higher level of play. It needs to be the case that players will try their best to play rated, and that they will only settle for unrated if rated is somehow not available (e.g. they cant find 8 players). So here are my ideas for how to improve the situation: Eliminate the rating. I expect that the original reason for the rating was to improve matchmaking, enabling the better teams to play against each other; the weaker teams also play against each other. This is exactly what ELO was designed to do for chess. The problem in SWTOR is that the rating can never be used for matchmaking because of the queue system. Each team is either the first or second team in the queue -- as soon as there are two teams in the queue, a match begins between those teams. So instead, the rating in SWTOR is just perceived as another number that progresses, and it's even used to unlock some vanity items (which I maintain nobody cares about.) As I said above, the net effect is that the visible rating is merely a deterrent. Increase the commendation rewards for ranked. It should be a slam-dunk certainty that any rated match won or lost will yield more commendations than any unrated match. Also, the variance between a win and a loss should be small. I'll suggest that a rated loss should always give a minimum of 100 rated comms, and that a win should give the current amount of around 130. If the devs are paraniod about warzone idlers, perhaps players need to earn at least one medal to receive the rewards. The group-finder should be usable for building rated warzone teams. I'm still a little shocked that this was never implemented. Clearly, one of the barriers for forming a rated team is attaining a reasonable class composition (need two healers). This is no different than flashpoints or operations, and we have a decent tool for tackling it! With these changes, I would expect to see a large influx of people in the rated queues. In turn, I'd expect to see those players have more fun, and raise their levels of skill at the game at the same time. It seems like win-win for everyone.

For roughly a month now, the lag in this game has been really frustrating. I dont know what changed, but there has been a marked difference in behavior. Bioware needs to take this to heart -- I'm talking about a regression in game quality. I've been playing SWTOR since launch day, and I really love the pvp. I have an elite warlord assassin, along with some other alts. All told, I've probably played around three thousand warzone matches. These days, I'm the guildmaster for <Full Resolve>, one of the top pvp guilds on The Harbinger. I like to play ranked because it is the venue for me and my guild to exhibit the highest level of strategy, tactics, and execution. I even record most of our games and post the videos to youtube. But lately, the game has changed. I'm no longer winning or losing games based on whether or not I can apply my knowledge of the game better than my opponent. For example, it's not enough for me to mentally track my opponent's usage of key abilities like stunbreak, undying rage, force shroud, or unstoppable. Now, in addition, I also have to hope that what I see on my screen isn't a lie, and that my precisely-timed actions actually execute when I perform them. This isn't the game that I love. This game does not make me want to come back and play every day. At this point, I've lost all motivation to play ranked warzones anymore. The lag prevents me from playing the game the way it was meant to be played, and I can't stand to see such tarnish on the game I've enjoyed so much. Here are a couple examples in video: -- Watch closely the duel beginning at 0:45. At 0:55, the shadow uses force cloak. Then at 1:12, he disappears again while still attacking. There's also a sharp stutter at this time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqbuwUH_p_g -- Watch the sage at 9:57 ehibiting the behavior where he repeatedly falls on his face and warps around. If it helps, I can compile more video evidence, but I'm hoping this post gets the point across. These types of behavior are not rare. Please Bioware, spend some time investigating the root of these lag issues. Restore the game's playability to where it was around a month ago.

I've been noticing it for about a week now too. I see small spikes between 200ms and 1000ms, when normally my pings are under 50ms. Usually when I complain about it, everyone else in my mumble chat also agrees. This seems to indicate server side issues, or at least internet infrastructure near the servers. That said, I havent done any tracing or diagnostics like some of the above posters. The behavior usually manifests itself as a delay on using abilities. I'll press a button and nothing will happen. After a short pause, my action may or may not happen, but the behavior isnt predictable. Sometimes I also see other players warp around. More than once, I've seen a player look like he's knocked down, then stand up, then warp about 10 meters knocked down again, then stand up. I expect in truth, he's just running normally, but somehow I only get this slideshow replay of his actions. And I have no idea why he tends to always be knocked down. In any case, all of these things make it difficult to play -- especially when I want to use position based attacks like Hidden Strike. On nights where I notice the lag, I've been hesitant to queue for rated warzones. There are a number of situations where precision timing of abilities can win or lose a game. For example, I had a game earlier today where I was trying to delay an enemy node capture on Alderaan. I got sapped shortly before the cap was started, so I need to just wait that out and interrupt at the last second. I also need to be prepared for the second stun, which I can break immediately. But I'm probably only going to get about a half-second window to stunbreak and interrupt. That should be plenty of time, but not if my actions are delayed. When the top teams play each other, a mistake in this situation costs you the game. Nothing would frustrate me more than playing correctly, yet still losing because the game couldnt register my actions. I hope they can do something to improve the lag.

My operative hit 50 last night. Here's the video of me putting all my WH gear on for that last lowbie game. Enjoy it -- I sure did! -Mega

Bumping this thread as it's fallen to page 3 -- oh noes! I'm still regularly posting videos of our ranked games, including a couple good ones from last night. Here's the link again: http://www.youtube.com/user/strikertron -Mega

Here's my video channel link. These are mostly ranked games from The Harbinger server. http://www.youtube.com/user/strikertron Enjoy! -Mega

Sorry about the late RSVP. I'll be there with Danix.

A weeknight after 10pm actually sounds best to me. That's when most of us are on. Not sure who our team(s) would be though.