There could be three moving capture points. I don't like the idea of one big cluster... "on one point" ... or another word... and someone else mentioned somewhere that you shouldnt have to interact with a node or something to cap /agreed. Make it like capping satellites in GSF. 1. Suppose you have a semi-urban map with seven houses/buildings/fortifications. Three of them would be active control points at a given time. Each active control point has a limited number of points to be collected, once depleted, a new control point becomes active. 2. Whoever has more living players inside a control point gains points at a rate of points per time period per player advantage (eg 5 points every 10 sec per player, if its 2v4 at that control point, then the 4 man team gains 10 points every 10 sec). If they can kill or knock back the other players they gain more points per 10 seconds depleting the control point more quickly. 3. The map could be multileveled urban, witjh 2nd and 3rd floors, sky bridges, roof running, tight hallways and staircases. Whoever gets to the new control point first in numbers has an advantage. Divide and conquer is also encouraged. 4. Killing enemy players could grant a low number of points so that stopping to fight enroute isn't a complete waste of time, but not as important as capturing control points. Also, that way points could be gained by a team who is numerically disadvantaged at a control point as long as they are killing off the controlling team.

Sooooo.... yeeahhhh... instead of suggesting that the devs rework/combine wzs they have already done (you just described combining voidstar and huttball with no passing) lets get them to do something *new* please. We're bored with what we have. It's like asking them to re-skin more existing armors and then sell them to us via CC. NEW PLEASE!

This is already being released in the new huttball warzone coming, out... next week? I think next week. If not, then very soon.

This is another reason to incorporate npc defenders. Then whoever is on defense can actually be DOING something (deploying defenses) rather than standing around waiting for 2 scoundrel/ops to knock them down and kill them. When npc defenses get attacked there could be an automated ops announcement or something after like ten seconds.

AWESOME! I would love to see siege weapons and defenses like this. If you think of how tower defense flash games work you could kinda base the scenario around that. What I din' really like is that the teams switch places at 10min... like, how did THAT happen? It bugs me about Voidstar. But I understand if it's a necessary comeback mechanic... I guess ;D But back to tower defense: watch a video of a keep being captured in GW2 or ESO. It's understandable that the engine might not be able to support 40v40 OWpvp, but you could capture the essence of taking a keep with a wz. Have resources for each side, deployable npcs for offense/defense, multiple avenues of attack like knock down the wall, melt the gate, launch two stealth players in to try to open a door... so much you could do with "take the keep." and Im fine with the Voss part, sounds like a pretty backstory. NEW IDEA!!! NEW IDEA!!! What does everyone think of creating a new "type" or category of wz? A lot of the (*good) suggestions I'm seeing involve mixing pvp/pve. Why not a "tactical" form of wz? They could be designed to last longer (30min?) and you choose to Q for reg wzs OR tac wzs OR both. Since they are longer, quitters would be more problemy, so make a 15min Q lockout for tac wz quitters. (I hate quitters).

Forget having a player be the "VIP," use an npc boss. The npc team has fewer players and they have a puzzle or resource mechanic to try and heal the boss or buff it's damage against players. The kill-the-npc-team has more players and maybe buff/debuff mechanics too. Something like managing the colored circles and interacting with control panels like in the weekly boss for TFB. Kind of combining these ideas into one, npc boss, smaller team vs larger team.

I like this idea. My idea was to have one team gathering resources and the other trying to stop them, but fighting over the resources would be good too. @Alex: I would say when you kill someone carrying the canister you can pick it up. Make them fairly small and say you can carry 5. That way you have to decide whether to run back to the drop point with one, two or gamble you wont be killed and go for 5!

2v2 and 3v3 on existing arena maps BUMPED

So first of all, think Balmorra. All that delicious war-droid tech! One faction has lost control of the planet and is evacuating and trying to take as much Balmorran arms tech as possible. This works great since both republic and empire have had to abandon the planet at different times in the war. So one side is evacuating and the other side is invading. The map could be based on the Sundari Flatlands just outside the Balmorran Arms Factory, with all of its fortifications and battle damage. On the map example linked below the Empire is invading and the Republic is evacuating (yeah I know the symbols suck, I just used mspaint). http://i1310.photobucket.com/albums/s641/definitlyarider/Balmorrawzmap_zps0b7efbe1.png The faction that is evacuating has the objective of carrying off as many boxes of tech as possible (think running orbs in Ancient Hypergate, but more of them). Each of the black squares represent a supply depot which would have multiple boxes; the north and south should spawn 2-3 boxes and the middle one should spawn 5-6. This gives incentive for the evacuees to focus together to capture the middle point which is easier for the invaders to defend. Or they will have to split up to the two points that are easier to capture. There could be a 2 sec cast to pick up a box so that boxes could potentially be grabbed during a fight, but box capping could still be interrupted by aoe or npc defenses (see below about npc defenses). The boxes shouldn’t slow the carrier as they run it back to the shuttle. The way for the evacuees to win is by reaching a box cap (75?)—there’s a limited amount of balmorran tech to steal, steal it all and you win! The green triangles are defensive spawn points which have air-dropped boxes that can be collected by the invaders and used to deploy npc defenses--like turrets or war droids--at the tech supply depots. N and S can have up to 3 npc defenses and mid can have 4. They should be something like strongs, maybe one elite (possible for one player to kill, but difficult). The way for the invaders to win is by reaching a kill limit (50?)—there’s a limited number of soldiers to steal tech, kill them all and you win! The red diamonds by the evacuee shuttle represent npc defenders with Champion health and say, slightly better than Elite strength attacks. This way, if the invaders attempted to just hold the evacuees at their shuttle they would be repulsed by the npcs’ and the evacuees’ combined strength. The defender npc’s could even be invulnerable, to prevent the evacuation shuttle from being camped. However, their attacks would be weak enough that if someone carrying a box were to have low health and get in range of the defender npcs, the invader team chasing the box carrier would still have a chance to finish him off without being one-shot killed by the npcs. The kill limit and the box cap would need some massaging based on testing. Invaders might want to focus on killing box carriers or just on getting as many kills as possible, while evacuees will have to split their focus between running boxes and defending/healing box carriers. Obviously there would have to be a timer, so whichever team has the higher percentage of their kill limit/box cap at the end of the evacuation window would win. I don’t really have a lot of ideas on making a come-back from behind, other than a switch in tactics if you’re losing. If the invaders are losing, they can try having just a couple of teammates focus on deploying defenses while the rest of them chase kills. As mentioned earlier, the evacuating team can either focus on the middle area which has greater reward if captured or split their forces to get as many boxes from the outliers as possible. Basically adapting tactics like in Civil War, but with more point capture activity. When I say “captured” I mean in the sense that a team might capture mid in the hypergate warzone. Offense objectives could be obtained for the invading team by killing enemy players, defense points for killing box carriers and deploying npc defenses. For the evacuating team, offense for running boxes and killing npcs, defense for killing enemy players. That's all I've got for this wz idea, but mainly, I feel like most of the wzs are missing any relevant empire vs republic "war" feeling. Novare Coast and the Civil War are kinda close. Hypergate doesn't make ANY sense to me story-wise, sorry. Rather than just having a click and hold objective or a capture the flag objective, I think this idea has a more progressive, active feel to it. Managing NPCs is also something I would love to see incorporated into wzs in some way, to give the player more of a front-lines commander feel--think of Jedi Knights in The Clone Wars. Or think of npc management, deployment and depletion in Battlefront. I want a wz with that feel to it!

Do you have any idea how tiresome it is to read negative thread after negative thread of people complaining about how absolutely *terrible* this game is because it doesnt have X minor detail (e.g. hide hood or macros)? If I were a Dev, I would stop reading suggestions. So maybe it would be cool to create a thread with really good ideas about cool things that could be done with the future of the game. Am I saying I want to see this change next week? No. Two years? Three years? Not impossible. Lets stop focusing on the negative and talk about where the game could go with a new faction in the long term and have a positive discussion full of ideas that Devs could read without shooting themselves in the brain and splattering the mess all over their keyboards. Does anyone think its a cool idea or have more positive input?

I think the game needs to be expanded to include a new faction: The Galactic Criminals (or some such). The different class stories could follow working for different organizations, i.e. Czerka, Exchange, Black Sun and the Hutt Cartel. The new class builds could exactly mirror what already exists, but create awesome new stories to keep people interested once they are bored with the elder game dailies. Let's be honest with ourselves, how long are we really going to stay interested in doing half a dozen "new" daily missions for lvl 50? Another cool feature this could bring in would be the ability to make story changing choices beyond simple light vs dark. I want to choose in my story whether Im going to support the republic or the Empire, but I dont want to decide this before my story even begins. You could be able to do all the pub AND imp side missions on all the planets, each one building on the new reputation system to decide which faction you aare "with". For pvp'ers, every time you queue you could decide which faction you are fighting for with reward bonuses from pvp'ing with the faction you have the most rep with. Perhaps this should be the "freelance" faction? I also want to be able to purchase and choose my own ship. This new faction could use all the existing mechanics of the game, all the existing planets etc. It could even have a restriction to where only people with sub status and a lvl 50 char can create a char in this faction, the way STO restricts entry to the Klingon faction. Every Star Wars fan wants to choose their own destiny. This is an awesome game, but choosing your own destiny is a big piece that is missing. What do ya'll think of my idea for a new faction? What are your ideas for class names or stories? How could this work with the legacy and reputation systems? If they added a starting planet from the canon planets, which one should it be and why? please stay on topic and avoid whining about other problems with the game, for which you will find countless threads in which to do so. Lets stay positive and be creative, hoping the devs read this thread and are inspired. Thanks for reading!

This. Thank you for defending the obvious intention of the game. When they said "we never expected PVP to be so popular", they meant that they didnt design the game to revolve around pvp, and so it shouldnt. PVP is fine and great as it is. Sure we could use some more warzones, but how about a little more content first, rather than making devs waste time tweaking and retweaking things that work fine the way they are?

Keep in mind it could be said that a lot of players are more interested in the RP facet of the game rather than the mmo. Personally I have no interest in playing alongside a bunch of random strangers, and many swtor players feel the same way. I think it's great that I can play with my RL friends when they are online, but I dont want to have to stop playing and wait for a friend to come help me and I DEFINITELY dont want to be forced into MP with people I dont know or like or care about.. The game is nicely divided between RP and MP content, I dont want to be excluded from RP content I think most of the fanboys out there would agree with me on this, the stories NEED to solo-able. On the other hand, I'm all for an increase in the level cap. I would like to see more RP content before I see more high level MP content, but if it would make the mmo-ers like you happy, I would be fine to see the devs create some higher level, more difficult MP stuff. Although I think they are already addressing that with Operations and such... but in any case, I think its fair to say a lot of people are happy that they can solo so much of the content.

In some sense this is probably true, but I dont entirely agree. People were driven away, not by the subscription itself, but because they were tired of paying for the same-old-thing. Not enough new content was being released. Does going f2p fix this? No. But f2p is obviously intended to stall the decline in active players so that all subs are not lost. It's a good business move and makes perfect sense that they would put so much dev power into making it happen. What I want to know is this: is BW just stalling us by creating f2p with the intention of soaking as much $$ as possible before the vast majority of players give up and move on? Or is BW really actually going to deliver more content? The best way to keep people happy and paying money would be new story lines/classes/factions/planets/wzs etc, not just perks and tweaks. Going f2p has bought BW some time to do this. Will they? BW: please focus your dev power on creating new content with as much zeal as you did to launch f2p! I'm a relatively new player, so I'm still willing to pay, at least until I finish up all the story lines. But after that? No way will I pay just to grind the same old stuff over and over again. So in a sense, BWs story about subscription costs driving away players is true, but only to a point. F2p is a temporary fix and I believe they should come out and say it. I would feel really reassured if they did. Acknowledge your weaknesses and then improve! Thank you for the state of the game article, looking forward to the next one.

I'm in favor of the sliding scale (above) or of receiving "unlock points" with each legacy level. At least some benefit from gaining legacy levels and a reduction in the credit sink properties of legacy perks. /sign