Dear BioWare; Please do an overhaul of lightsaber animations and this time, hire an actual martial artist/weapons expert to advise/council/oversee the new animations. I've practiced traditional Jiu Jutsu for over 12 years, many of that in weapons training, and the martial artist in me convulses and has seizures with half the animations I see, mostly because i consider my Jedi/Sith to be trained warriors and a lot of the combat strikes look incredibly sloppy, unconventional and, mostly, like they're just flailing the weapon. For instance; Jedi Knight Master Strike. No swordsman worth ANY OF HIS SALT would ever spin around and stab backwards in the middle of a fight. The only time you see that kind of thing is in bad movies. Second; Juggernaut "Assault" animation (the basic, focus/rage generation ability). It looks less like an attack and more like an epileptic seizure of flailing limbs. Also, Jedi Guardian's "Blade Storm." I would like to account my disappointment because when I saw "Blade Storm" i thought it would be a series of attacks (kinda like what master strike is) because of the word "Storm." The Marauder ability "Annihilate" where both sabers are flipped upside down and the marauder performs a downward... something. Its not a stab, more of a scooping motion. Inquisitor/Consular double strike/thrash ability. When done with a single hilt, despite the fact that if you choose Sorc/Sage you wouldn't use it, again looks more like the character is flailing around as opposed to trying to hit something. There are a lot of martial arts styles that would greatly benefit the aesthetic of this game for both one handed, two handed, dual wielded and staff based weapons. My suggestion to you is to find experts in traditional Japanese and / or Chinese martial arts/kung fu and hire them to oversee an animation overhaul for melee abilities.

Then tell your friends, get more people to come on this thread, or make similar threads, or both. The more people who put their names on this kinda thing the more likely it is that BW and EA might kinda sorta maybe possible not really but hopefully listen!

The following is a list SWTOR's player/customer basis have not just been asking for, but CLAMORING for: 1) Barber (A vendor that allows you to change your characters scars / tattoos/hairstyle / beard style / horn style / tentacle style / mask style / cybernetics style / .... I think thats all of them) 2) Race changes / Faction changes (paid ability, wish cash OR [my own idea] purchasable with cartel coins, to change your characters race or even faction if desired.) 3) Name changes (paid ability, via cash or cartel coins, to change selected toon's name) 4) Advanced Class Respecialization (a concept I have seen discussed since beta about giving a pre-lvl20 player the ability to switch his/her advanced class [usable only once] so that if they decide "wow I really don't like Juggernaut playstyle, I'll try Marauder" they don't have to spend another 1-3 hours grinding through the monotonous opening planet. This ability would cost credits and would no longer be available after lvl15 or 20, giving the player ample time to decide whether or not they want to stick with the style. Once used, it cannot be purchased again.) BioWare, EA: these are all things I've PERSONALLY seen asked for, ticketed, posted about and conversed about since the closed Beta for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Where are you and are you even paying attention to the desires of your customer basis? Seriously. The following are things I personally would like to see added to the game (besides the above 4): 1) BETTER. RACES. Of all the Star Wars races in the game you chose some of the weakest to put in. Mostly I'm talking about the Rattataki and the Mirilians here. Why choose these when there's races like Kel'Dor, Nautolans, Defel, Kel'Dor, Rodians, Quarren, Togruta, Kel'Dor, Shistavanen, or even Kel'Dor. Seriously, please add Kel'Dor and make all of us Plo Koon fans happy, and you KNOW there's a lot of us. 2) Customizable / Personal-touch armors. Armors thats have slots where you can add a trophy, extra armor, a different piece of armor etc. There's a lot of cool looks in Star Wars, and a lot of cool ones in Star Wars: The Old Republic, several of which I've thought of some very neat combinations for. I'd really like to be able to put some of these thoughts in my head, this would also give you more to put on the cartel market as well as give your players more ways to make their character unique. 3) Saber restrictions REMOVED. Well, for some classes atleast and for certain specs. For instance, add a talent in the Guardian Vigilance spec and/or Sentinel... I'll say Watchman spec that allows them to use a Double Bladed Lightsaber instead of what they can currently use. Why? Cause it would make it so every sentinel doesn't look the same and again even MORE ways to customize our characters based on playstyle. Basically, make it possible for it to go either way. A Vigilance Guardian could use the single hilt or the saber staff depending on where he/she puts his/her points. Same could be said for Shadow; able to use a single hilt and their focus instead of the double bladed (because personally the massive saber staff doesn't really look very stealthy to me...) Or even better, there have been quite a few novels where very skilled Jedi used a Katar style lightsaber. IE wrist-blade-lightsaber. That's pretty ninja right there. 4) More saber hilts! Please please please please please please please PLEASE STOP taking old hilts and adding nifty effects to the blades. Yes now the blade looks all spiffy, but all in all its the same hilt I've picked up and vendored 400 times over. The concept art for both Jedi and Sith alike showed some pretty sick designs for saber hilts I've yet to see in the game. 5) Y'know the Jedi Knight armor thats viewed in the character creation menu? The brown robes with white armour on the back, chest, shoulders, gloves, pants and boots? Why isn't THAT in the game? The Jedi Battlelord set is close to it, but its that sickly noxious green... Really wanna earn brownie points with your customers, add a way for us to color the armor ourselves. Every Armor can have 2 or 3 colors; primary, secondary, tertiary. Give us the opportunity to color each one ourselves and REALLY create our own looks. I ask for these things in particular because you've created a great game that has capitalized on the ability for us to customize our characters. Only one game has done it better, that was City of Heroes and no game has ever had the same customization or even come close because of how in depth it was. But if you captured even 1/10th of that then believe me this game would skyrocket above all others. Lastly, KEL'DOR! Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease add Kel'Dor. If the problem is romance, screw it. I'd kiss a Kel'dor chick. Mask or no mask. You would too, don't lie.

Are you serious right now? Sorcs and Sages are two of the most OP classes in the whole friggin game! Hardest to kill in PvP thanks to your assortment of ridiculous damage dealing abilities coupled with shields and heals that keep you afloat allowing you to outlast your opponents. As for PvE, you're ranged. You have the advantage of not having to move as much as other classes while also having *****in AoEs, DoTs and direct damage attacks that demolish. QQ

Right now Guardian rotation consists of using the sundering strike ability throughout combat. Usually its used (for me atleast) when everything else is on CD so then I don't have to use "Strike." Also, while its not a huge damage dealer, my sundering strike crits for about 1.6-1.9k which is a pretty decent crit. Taking that out of effect reduces the amount of damage I can deal. While the Saber Reflect thing is nice, its VERY likely to have a super long cooldown, I'm expecting probably 4-6 minutes. Is that huge IRL? No. In PvP or Raids? Yeah. 3 seconds of damage reflection followed by anywhere from 3-6 minutes of not being able to use said ability doesn't exactly make it worth while because after those three seconds, the gang-bang will resume. And for DPS guardians in raids or heroics, its absolute bupkiss because we shouldn't be getting hit to begin with so its just another power to log away. AND since it only reflects single target attacks, that gets rid of it in raids as a nullifier for when bosses do a big ol' AoE to hurt the damage dealers. Bottom line? I might get to use it once a day, if I remember its on my quickbar, if I put it on my quickbar, if I get threat.

Dear BioWare, Having just read patch notes for 2.0 the only thing I can really say is this; really? REALLY? What in God's name compelled you to put any of this in the game? For one, thank you for once again nerfing Guardian, a class that already is behind other DPS classes due to the fact Vigilance requires the proc for Master Strike which, with a 30% chance, doesn't actually proc as often as it would seem like it would. You've basically turned Sundering Strike into Zealous Strike and not only removing this ability from our regular rotation and making it something we have to wait to use, but also taking some of the uniqueness out of the play style. Now I'm just a Sentinel with less dps and a single saber. While I did not see the following change on the patch notes, I did hear a very large rumor going around general chat that the Proc chance for Master Strike/Ravage reset will be reduced roughly from 30% to either 20% or 15%. If this change IS in fact on the list of things to come in 2.0, I must seriously ask WHY?! Why, why, why do this when we already only have a 1 in 3 chance of resetting our primary damage dealer? Without those procs our DPS blows. You're also giving Operatives/Scoundrels a 12 meter dash with NO CD and an Immunity bubble to Sages/Sorcs with a channel. Two of the classes that do not need additional buffs because killing them is already a chore and a half. Doable, mind you for those who are pvp savvy. But now it will be increasingly more annoying. All in all, I'm not angry that these were given to them but instead angry that they, an already OP as heck class, are getting more OP while other classes (like Guardian/Juggernaut) are getting another nerf instead of a necessary buff so we can KEEP UP. Please stop nerfing Class A because its better than Classes B&C and just buff classes B&C. it works better for everybody! And ANOTHER thing; if you're going to increase the level cap to give us more content, plan more than one operation! Remember how you lost so many players in the first few months of SWTOR because there was only EV and people got bored after beating it and then left? Yeah, thats bound to happen again cause there's only ONE RAID. And the Hard Modes? Really? Just harder, higher-level versions of Flashpoints we did while grinding through the agonizing level-climb? Granted I enjoyed these FPs, but atleast give us some actual NEW content, something new to look at. And why are you removing Opportune Strike from the game? That awesome back-hand provided me, and plenty of other players I know, with endless entertainment as we flew threw the air and back-handed the first normal mob we saw. It wasn't OP because it can't be used in raids or PvP so it basically just provided a convenient way to 1-shot annoying-normal-mobs that got in the way so what exactly was the point of scrapping it? I understand you're really "proud" of your Legacy system, but honestly the design for it isn't anything jaw dropping. Instead of making every player pay roughly 1.4 million credits to get all the XP boosts, why didn't you do what successful games did and just put a general XP boost on the legacy armor, that way there would actually be a point in purchasing them aside from the aesthetic. The family tree thing is cool if other people could actually SEE it, as such its basically pointless cause only you can see it. Rocket Boost on all characters, well done (honestly), Reputation the same for all characters, well done (honestly.) Field Respec, nice but since its not available on every toon that means I gotta save up 200k per toon i want it on, and STILL requires me to basically manually put in every single talent point myself as opposed to, once again, doing what successful games have done and give us dual-spec. But I think you're still missing the primary point that keeps people playing an MMO: END GAME CONTENT. The people that will pay through the nose to play your game aren't the ones spending hours grinding up new toons. Its the people who want to nuke your end game and THEN level up new toons so they can nuke it more often or when their raids are on cooldown. Another point, the fact this game has been alive for over a year now and is nearing its expansion and there is STILL no way to recustomize my character, no barber, no paid character recustomization or anything remotely like it, despite the clipping issues with Bodies 3 and 4, is vastly perplexing. People have been asking for this since beta! I remember having a conversation in beta about it. This can't be THAT hard of a thing to implement. As far as Cathar go, whoo. Cat people. Now we can play a race based off of a socially reclusive creature that poops in a box and is probably genetically bi-polar. Some people like this, I couldn't care less. What I DO wonder however is why aren't there races that are FAR more iconic and riddled with not only excellent but fascinating lore. Such as Kel'Dor, Nautolan, Togruta, Rodian, Kaleesh or Defel? I mean heck, make every Plo Koon fan happy (and there are a lot of us) and allow Kel'Dor cause I KNOW your art team would design some seriously bad *** Kel'Dor masks. One reason I heard was because you only wanted humanoid races to showcase the emotion-settings to which I respond; then whyyyyy did you give us things like Revan's Mask, the darth vader/mechanical T-Rex helmets, awesome trooper/storm trooper helmets, wannabe Boba Fette hard hats and smuggler-cowboy-face masks to cover alllll those things up? Its a bad reason would be my point here. All in all, I love this game. Truly. I am a Star Wars fan to the bone, but seeing these changes, the LACK of progress and lack of things that in all honestly should've been in this game from the get go, as well as not seeing them put in place a year later, makes me wanna un sub and leave. I've watched my favorite class get repeatedly nerfed and still I play it and do my best to dominate, even knowing that I could do almost double my dps if I played a Sentinel/Marauder. I say all this not because I want to scold you or because I want to stop playing this game but because I hope you actually listen to the complaints of your players and carefully consider the things you have and have not put into your game. Seriously. Take notes from the games that lasted. Like City of Heroes. I would say WoW, but honestly I believe the only reason WoW still exists is because when people go to one game and realize it sucks they just default to WoW. Much like they did when SWTOR was first released. They got on, burst to 50, beat all the end game cause there was only 1 raid, realized there wasn't any more content or anything else to do cause they couldn't even so much as change their hair style, and then defaulted to WoW. Please don't let more people default to that game. Be better, be stronger. Be the game every Star Wars fan had hoped for when the cinematic "Deceived" first came out and we all wet ourselves with excitement and anticipation. BioWare has brought us endless hours of awesomeness through KOTOR, KOTOR2, Dragon Age and Mass Effect. I want SWTOR to STAY on that list of awesome things I've grown to love from BioWare. Sincerely, A player who is highly considering unsubbing but really doesn't want to.

Aah ok, I've only done normal EV and KP so far cause people can barely get past some of the fights in them >_<

Wait what? How do you roll real dice? Even when the loot isn't assigned to Master Looter the game just seems to automatically hand out token loot in EV and KP, regardless of who opens the chest. How the heck do you guys get it to assign the loot to the people who win it? o_O

I've had this discussion with a few people who are constantly PO'd about not getting the right loot in raids, due to not being able to roll on token pieces. I've only been in one raid and I did notice that there's no roll, the system just gives someone who can use the token said token. What I wonder, and what I've been fighting with a friend over, is whether or not BioWare is using RNG to decide who gets the loot? I would imagine that they do use RNG, even though my friend insists that because she got t2 boots and a guardian got the t2 mainhand immediately after, that it was not RNG. More that it just gave someone the loot and someone else other loot if they got nothing. I've been sorting through developer diaries and even trying to look through to see if theres samples of coding used in tOR (I'm a programmer so I can generally read the stuff) to try and discover whether or not it's RNG. Thoughts? Comments?

Dear BioWare; I understand that as a tank I am not going to be out DPSing Sentinels and Gunslingers. However, when my lvl32 Sentinel in good gear is critting harder than my lvl50 Guardian in almost full heroic gear I think there's a serious problem. Sincerely, me.