As far as I know there's not a single female officer of rank in the original films. Contrasted to the Alliance which is led by Leia and Mon Mothma. There are some references to it in game as well, in dialogue choices, although I'd say they're fairly uncommon compared to anti-alien statements or just murdering people.

I'm having a hard time narrowing down the complaint here. Is it just that the writing isn't as brilliant that it could be? Is it that the Imperial storyline doesn't satirize its own characters? Although I don't disagree that the Empire of the game is horribly racist, sexist and bigoted, it's supposed to be. The different eras of Star Wars are connected by a theme of cyclical history where events repeat themselves and the same kinds of societies rise and fall. Palpatine's Empire is canonically racist, even in the movies (the only aliens they ever employ are the bounty hunters, compared to the rebels who have the Mon Calamari, Sullustans, Bothans and others clearly involved). In the same way, the earlier Empires also display this trait. It's one of the things that defines who the good guys and bad guys ARE in the long history of the SW universe, and in that way I think the games implicitly have a positive message about equality: The bigots are the badguys. I suppose its hard for me to understand what else the OP would have wanted the game to do. Generally, the racist/sexist/etc choices in game are Dark Side choices. The fact that they don't LET you rationalize it is a strength here: You can do these things, but its inherently evil, as judged by the glowy energy that powers the entire universe. Is she upset because the choices exist? If they didn't, why would the Empire exist as a faction? Why would the Dark Side be a player option to exploit? I can understand that having to play through these things could be unpleasant, but isn't this the point of allowing the Dark Side/Light Side choice to be an individual one per character and not a faction choice? I won't say that you can play through the entire Imperial Campaign being 'good', but there are a LOT of quests that have diplomacy or non-violent solutions. And if the Empire on a whole is too evil, even taking the Light Side choices, then why not play Republic? So much of the storyline for the Republic deals precisely WITH fighting against slavery, exploitation, and so on. Jedi have countless opportunities to protect the weak and make the galaxy a better place. So why not choose this option? Anyway, I don't think these concerns are baseless, especially not in the video game industry as a whole, but in this game they seem strangely placed since so much of it is about personal choice.

Although I enjoyed the SW questline a lot, I did feel there were some discontinuities with the companions and their quests. I loved that the main quest, as a whole, supported you playing the character as evil without having to rationalize or soften the choices. It didn't make you pull punches: you could murder people because you felt like it, because it was justified, because they were in the way, whatever you wanted. But the companions go the exact opposite, forcing you to play 'nice evil' or even 'not really evil' more than I liked. For instance (and obviously this is all spoiler heavy): Quinn: Through most of the game: No trouble letting you execute just about any NPC you like. Dealing with Quinn's betrayal? Not even an option to punish him harshly or diminish his place on the ship going forward. I realize killing him is unfeasible (since they'd have to supply you with another companion), but I would have liked to have seen you able to demote him, or heck, even toss him Vette's collar Or perhaps more realistically, give his job to Pierce, since the two of them are opposing imperial officers. With Vette: No option for life as a slave. And yes, its a fair argument that a slave shouldn't be telling you their deepest secrets, but it would have been more interesting to have darkside options all the way (or further) through rather than just having the questline halt. Basically, it seems strange to have a companion for a likely dark side character that doesn't have dark side enabled content. Are there companions that will totally swear off a Jedi who is nice to them? Still, she bothers me less than Quinn, since you can justify her release via the Sith Code (she does fight at your side, and is also very successful if you deploy her on Taris). Jaesa: The opposite problem as Vette. She accepts things too readily, and there's never any resentment from her (or at least from her dark side version) for having murdered her family, etc. Their relationship should have been some really intense love/hate but it comes off as almost gag worthy sweet lovey-dove. And Broonmark is just a big stupid Talz.

Your problem is pretty normal. Warrior-like classes suck to level in most MMOs, and SWTOR is no exception. Gameplay becomes unreasonably hard in the mid 30s onward if you're not using Quinn, and some content that other classes would laugh at is extremely challenging (like 2x strong jedi mob pulls in storyline areas on Corellia and Ilum) Ignore the braggers (like the one a couple posts up) who are likely either leaving out a lot of important context (how many times they've died on the content, how many stims they're buying, how often they're taking 20 minute breaks to use CotF), or are outright just making things up. Its hard, and basically we just have to suck it up until we have gear. Heck, I found a supposedly solo pull on Ilum with 2 strong mobs of a particular type that I simply /could not do/ (not due to damage, but due to their healing and the lack of a long cc).

Its interesting, I had this similar sort of gut reaction to the zones in TOR as I was leveling, but I couldn't put it into words exactly. There is a feeling, with every planet a separate instance, that things are 'disconnected'. However, to some extent, I think this is psychological. WoW zones certainly limit things by level, and many of them have physical features that routed movement (at least for pre flying content). While WoW has continent-sized instances (with 60 levels of content in the originals), there were still plenty of 'separating factors: 1) Zones generally border similar leveled zones. This means your play is still a bit linear and you're going to meet people around your own level. However, the game did break this rule a bit, by occasionally putting low level zones next to high level ones (like Loch Modan and Redridge). 2) Even if you end up near a high level zone as a lower level character, its unlikely you'll be able to enter and explore it due to the combat effects of fighting much higher level mobs. On the other hand, WoW has mechanics to encourage people to move actively through zones of different levels, 'weaving' these zones together: 1) Travel is (or was) a bit of a patchwork. It was often the case that getting to a high level zone meant taking a boat to A, flying to B, then riding to C. Its worth noting that this feeling mostly existed at level 60, and the later expansions diminished it (the Cata zones are adjacent, but flight means you rarely interact with lowbies down in the dirt). 2) High level content was spread around the world, rather than accessed via a central location. This, combined with point 1 above, meant that high level characters would be moving around the low-level world more. How does TOR stack up? Higher level characters will encounter lower level ones while pursuing Bonus Series missions and the occasional class quest or companion mission. These are basically one-time events per character, however, so they will eventually run out. Characters will almost never encounter each other during casual travel, however, given the ship/planet/space system. I think one area where the TOR developers missed the mark was with the world bosses. I don't really understand the point of raid difficulty mobs at sub-max level: these are ultimately going to be done by higher level characters anyway, but only for novelty purposes and not regularly killed/farmed. If these bosses were level 50, that would create incentive for higher level groups to visit the old zones on a regular basis. I suppose the one conclusion I draw from this, is a desire that as SWTOR grows, the developers consider expanding existing planets as well as simply adding new ones. These don't need to be large new areas, but adding mobs or instances could bring life back to 'old' planets.

I'm curious as this was brought up on the warrior forum and I wonder if its a related issue, or simply another issue compounding this one: Several people have noticed a phenomenon when defense actions (parries, deflects) cause the GCD to reset. This can yield, on high defense characters faced with multiple attackers, to a situation where you literally get locked out of your abilities and land up jamming on a button for 3-5 seconds without any kind of response. I'm not sure if this is the issue that causes all the 'responsiveness' problems for me, or if its this + the issue in the thread, or if they're really two sides of the same issue.

Yeah, I notice this as well. We get stunlocked by being good at our class. Yay.

How is pointing out how the Warrior plays vs the Warrior a worthwhile commentary on Warrior issues in comparison with OTHER classes?

I'm pretty sure I could give you some analysis that isn't invalidated by one of those bullet points above, if you actually care That said, I'm sticking with the class too - in fact, its a familiar experience. If you've leveled a heavy armor melee character in any MMO, you're used to facing certain handicaps like a lack of CC, healing or utility, and used to dying when you underestimate a fight and just don't have the health to slog through it. However, the fact that we're willing to play it through doesn't mean they can't look at problems and address them. SWTOR is a modern MMO, it should be learning from lessons of prior games and innovating. If the Warrior/Knight classes aren't dynamic, if they don't have a proper skill-to-outcome curve (I think this is actually one of the bigger problems, quite the opposite of the 'wah too many buttons'), if they aren't competitive in all relevant areas of play, then that is an issue. And to continue with my main complaint that I try to work into most posts: Force pull plz.

I do them too. However, I would like to highlight that some of them also seem to suffer from the difficulty/tuning issues arising elsewhere in the game. Some missions are a breeze, some I've written off as completely impossible at the suggested upgrade level. Anyone else epxerienced this? (notable offenders, Taspan Ambush, Sullust Interception)

Pretty much. Some kind of second, limited taunt would be great, as would force pull. Heck, make it one ability if you want (like the Warlord/VK taunts in RIFT). Another thing that occurs to me with the taunt issue, with it being non threat equalizing is that it prevents or complicates a lot of potential endgame raid options. Without an equalizing taunt, a tank-swap boss would require very very very precise aggro management (and a threat meter). Especially because the 2nd tank would be rage starved from the lameness of Soresu and threat-starved from not getting Retaliation.

I also feel the Jugg tanking is pretty anemic, and at least looks weak compared to the other classes while leveling. I played a bit of BH during the test weekend and even from that comparison I felt a difference. Not that its anything new but I'll list through most of my specific issues/thoughts: - Few tank abilities. Sorry, but despite it looking like WoW Sunder, Sundering Assault ISN'T a tanking ability. Its just a generic class ability. It has no added threat component and is used just as much by DPS. The same goes for Retaliation- it might look like Revenge but it's not. This leads to very shallow play and few options in how to execute pulls (jump in and smash!) or what to do once you're there (bang on your dps buttons really hard). Its pretty amazing when I watch a Powertech tanking, and he's using DFA, pulling mobs to him, CCing, etc. - Poor threat generation/aggro management. Aside from Soresu, you really have no 'added threat' abilities until backhand (and backhand is on quite a cooldown). Threat is heavily damage based and it seems easy for DPS to pull aggro, especially healers vs aoe pulls. The fact that this can happen with both the 50% boost from Soresu and the 25% reduction from Guard says a lot about how awful the Jug threat/damage is. Your taunt is also on a very long cooldown and it's not threat-equalizing. So if you do lose threat, often you have no strategy to employ but standing there beating on it like the gimp DPS you are, hoping to re-establish threat. - Knife to a gun fight. A lot of us are ex WoW players, and any tank from a WoW-style MMO is familiar with the basic challenge provided by ranged mobs. Casters won't move when you aggro them unless they're interrupted or moved with an ability, and ranged mobs without cast bars generally won't move at all. Well guess what? This is Star Wars and everyone has GUNS. So frequently, the Jug finds himself in the position where there are multiple mobs standing there shooting and he has no way to get them where he needs them to be. Sometimes LOS pulls are viable, but they aren't always. Its sort of hilarious to me that the ranged tank (Powertech) gets a pull ability very early in its career, while the Melee tank... gets Force Push? Yeah, just what I want to do, push the enemies out of melee range so I have to blow jump to get to them again. - Rage as a resource. Jug has to spend a lot of effort getting rage, and before Enrage its basically impossible to execute pulls if for some reason you can't jump. Soresu makes you work hard for your rage, and if you get starved, its very easy to get into a position where you stay that way. This is compared to the other tank classes that start with their resource at 100% and only have to worry about over-spamming. Ultimately, it seems like Jug has recreated the basic tank template from other MMOs, but stripped it of typical abilities (threat buttons), while weakening others (Jug taunt has to be the longest basic taunt cooldown in any game I've played - and its a weak taunt). At the same time, it maintains old tired design practices (like its resource system). Its especially noteworthy when you compare it to a somewhat more innovative tank class like the Powertech. Its not that Jug is unplayable, and I'm sure it will be an important class for single target tanking in end game due to its strong cooldowns, but it does seem severely lackluster especially during the leveling process.