This game is so new-player (be it new to the game or MMO's in general) unfriendly it's not funny. Anything which makes the UI or community less daunting or working out the best playstyle for your class is non-existent.

No LFG so you can't really do anything let alone progress through runs in the particular order if you're not already geared except stand around spamming. Let the elitists not have to use it and only run with people they choose to, but for the rest of us, let us play with other players when we want to. Why force the players into PVP, or channel them in that direction at the expense of PVE?

No macros to make life easier so to be the best you need to be prepared to be constantly manually doing everything meaning going out and spending money on ridiculously expensive peripherals is required (however, given there is an official range of products to do this I don't see this being improved anytime soon) leaving others who don't play as often or play alts or have smaller hands essentially making the CTRL key useless as a modifier key easily accessible during combat. There is no easy way to set a player or enemy target as a focus, and there is no dual targeting. Don't make us have to have our entire keyboard bound with abilities and forcing players to learn them all and hoping against hope that people we play with have learnt each and every one of their keybinds inside and out off the top of their heads where it's all reflex.

There's no in-game combat log immediately visible with all information you need calculated and sorted so no-one actually knows how they're doing or if another player is someone they can see how they do it and learn from it, or if THAT person giving you crap and "teaching you how to play" is full of it or not, or even if - gasp - you're better than them. When someone's accusing you of not doing something there's no way you can link a piece of information that shows otherwise. With no defense mechanisms it all comes back to ego and how aggressive you are rather than how good, or even how not terrible you are. Let alone learn for sure that what you're thinking is the optimal way to play really is or how accurate the theorycrafters are. When someone's clearly doing something wrong and you're the one cleaning it up (yes, I play a healer) there's no definitive way to make them understand that there actually WERE consequences. And maybe, just maybe it could have been that contributing to a wipe.

No ingame learning tools. Like warnings for people who are tank-spec that they are losing aggro, which while probably not too useful in dungeons if only their target fires, but once a player has specc'd tank and a new warning comes up on screen it can get their attention. As it is, it clearly explains a tank is defensive and takes little damage. But there can be no way for them to have put two and two together and work out (and lets face it - people can come to wrong conclusions) that in a group situations that means THEY take the damage, and those abilities which mention "high threat" etc in the tooltip are important and something to ask about, and that it's their role to make everything hit them and the dps's kill things. Believe it or not, but I have met players new to MMO's and all of this is new. Healer? pretty self-explanatory. DPS? Pretty self-explanatory. But very little way of knowing if you're up to scratch.

No ingame way to learn about a fight and all the mechanics involved in the fight unless someone in the group has done it. No warnings much in combat, no hints, nothing. Not even enabled because it's your first time. No codex entry telling you the mechanics involved so you can form a strategy. Nope. It's ALL out-of-game or finish the run in some way and ask someone later.

OK I can deal with operation frames not changing color or flashing at me to show me who needs dispelling, but seriously, make the debuff bigger than the others or something. And could the buffs and debuffs be separated at all? And do I really need to see each and every buff every player has at all times in the first place? Please, when you implement these healing improvements in 1.2, please, never forget that almost every healer has a unique approach to how they heal and use their UI and peripherals etc. Very few healers have identical styles (although in SWTOR with so few healing spells this is far less of a concern as to be almost non-existent for now) and healing is more of an art.

This whole attitude coming from so many players "It's my way or the highway, if you don't like something about how you play this game apparently for fun go back to your other game" attitude. Of course. Make as many people as possible suffer in-game through bad attitude coupled with an absolute lack of any sort of checks and balances and anything which could bring balance and accountability into the game and leave them absolutely correct in the stance that "Bioware supports us". No wonder they are so against other MMO's. They're all more performance-based than ego-driven. And about having something to do when you log on, even if none of your guildies or friends are.

This game is so new-player (be it new to the game or MMO's in general) unfriendly it's not funny. Anything which makes the UI or community less daunting or working out the best playstyle for your class is non-existent.

My daughter is 10 years old, she has never played an MMO before in her life, she played SWTOR for 2 hours straight & not once asked me a question, she doesn't watch me play because she's usually on her own PC playing facebook games like farmville & other "easy as pie stuff" she's bright but no genius & as a yardstick I'd say a 10 year old girl with no MMO experience picking up a game & playing it for 2 hours straight with no problems is a pretty good indication of it being easy to pick up.

No LFG so you can't really do anything let alone progress through runs in the particular order if you're not already geared except stand around spamming. Let the elitists not have to use it and only run with people they choose to, but for the rest of us, let us play with other players when we want to. Why force the players into PVP, or channel them in that direction at the expense of PVE?

People use the general chat to form groups in the absence of a robust LFG tool, it's limitation being the planet you are on only, but the only other place people in your level range could be is the fleet, there is a method for flagging yourself LFG but it's up to players to put it to use until a better tool is made. You aren't forced into PvP, unless you chose a PvP server. If you want flashpoints you'll go to the fleet as that's the flashpoint hub, anyone wanting to do grouping in your level range will be on the planet you are. Gear is ridiculously available, you can make it yourself, buy it from others selling it, earn it from quests.....

No macros to make life easier so to be the best you need to be prepared to be constantly manually doing everything meaning going out and spending money on ridiculously expensive peripherals is required (however, given there is an official range of products to do this I don't see this being improved anytime soon) leaving others who don't play as often or play alts or have smaller hands essentially making the CTRL key useless as a modifier key easily accessible during combat. There is no easy way to set a player or enemy target as a focus, and there is no dual targeting. Don't make us have to have our entire keyboard bound with abilities and forcing players to learn them all and hoping against hope that people we play with have learnt each and every one of their keybinds inside and out off the top of their heads where it's all reflex.

What is it that you want to macro, combat abilities?

That's lazy, just go buy yourself a big button that buzzes & glows & has "I WIN" printed on it. Macros for emotes/roleplaying stuff I got no issue with, but "automating combat" really? how much more Fisher-Price do you need the game to be, would you just rather have a bot-program go get your gear & money for you while you sleep?

There's no in-game combat log immediately visible with all information you need calculated and sorted so no-one actually knows how they're doing or if another player is someone they can see how they do it and learn from it, or if THAT person giving you crap and "teaching you how to play" is full of it or not, or even if - gasp - you're better than them. When someone's accusing you of not doing something there's no way you can link a piece of information that shows otherwise. With no defense mechanisms it all comes back to ego and how aggressive you are rather than how good, or even how not terrible you are. Let alone learn for sure that what you're thinking is the optimal way to play really is or how accurate the theorycrafters are. When someone's clearly doing something wrong and you're the one cleaning it up (yes, I play a healer) there's no definitive way to make them understand that there actually WERE consequences. And maybe, just maybe it could have been that contributing to a wipe.

I guess you really don't pay attention to what goes on in the SWTOR circles then, combat logs are coming, along with a restructuring & rebalancing of the underlying values so a good portion of the existing theorycrafting that has been done so far will need to be retooled, but will be easier to do with the logs.

No ingame learning tools. Like warnings for people who are tank-spec that they are losing aggro, which while probably not too useful in dungeons if only their target fires, but once a player has specc'd tank and a new warning comes up on screen it can get their attention. As it is, it clearly explains a tank is defensive and takes little damage. But there can be no way for them to have put two and two together and work out (and lets face it - people can come to wrong conclusions) that in a group situations that means THEY take the damage, and those abilities which mention "high threat" etc in the tooltip are important and something to ask about, and that it's their role to make everything hit them and the dps's kill things. Believe it or not, but I have met players new to MMO's and all of this is new. Healer? pretty self-explanatory. DPS? Pretty self-explanatory. But very little way of knowing if you're up to scratch.

I played EverQuest for 8 years & they had no "aggro meter" when the mob is not hitting you, well that's your meter, I'm not totally against threat meters but even in WoW I didn't use them & I never had people hating on me for losing aggro, the problem with your line of thinking is that when you create so many different mods & tools & meters & bells & whistles to do all the things YOU should be doing, you detract from what is going on on your screen, you are NEEDING to have macros because you are watching the 30 bloody meters you have, the more mods you have the more you need to have, but then the game gets crippled by requiring them to play I think SWTOR has done well in it's "telegraphing" of important information, I think watching the game on the screen should be about enjoying the graphics of the world the characters the mobs, not blurring them out from watching a bunch of little boxes all over the place. Adding some graphical effects to the mobs I could live with to reflect aggro, or even the portrait window being "animated" smily face = it's not hitting you (if you are dps) & the more threat you have the angrier it's face gets, or the more "red mist" it has round it.

No ingame way to learn about a fight and all the mechanics involved in the fight unless someone in the group has done it. No warnings much in combat, no hints, nothing. Not even enabled because it's your first time. No codex entry telling you the mechanics involved so you can form a strategy. Nope. It's ALL out-of-game or finish the run in some way and ask someone later.

you are not paying attention, there are hints & "telegraphs" perhaps all those years of playing mods made you blind to these things, as for "learning about a fight" how about , oh I dunno, actually playing the fight & learning by doing, or are you so spolied by youtube videos that you became clinically wipe-aversive?

Had enough of your rant, so I won't respond to the rest of it, I think you need to examine what you want from SWTOR because it sounds like "I still want to play WoW, but with the SWTOR theme to it.

Hint: nobody HAS TO BE Blizzard except Blizzard.

Superb answer Skuzbukit. Sounds like OP needs to find something else to play. If I moaned that much about a single player game , I would trade it in.

If it bothers you that much , turn off.

I can agree with one thing from OP. I liked the LFG tool in WoW. It was easy to use. DO I NEED it here. No! Would it be nice, Yes!

Now, elitist thing that you mention. It sounds as if you are, or want to be one. I am happy just tooling along and making my way through the game without having to worry about formulas or correct specs for my toon. That is why I like this game. I have options on who I WANT to be, without some "elitist" A@@ telling me that i am doing it wrong!

This is MY GAME that I pay to play. I HATED WoW for the fact that there was just to many "greater than thou" additudes in the game.

This game is begginer friendly.

Now for the shocker!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I use my mouse. That is why i have it. I am okay hitting the action button on the screen. It works for me. I do not memorize the keyboard. I havent yet, and I wont! I refuse to. It works for ME.....

Remember this statement before you blast!

MY GAME and MY way to play. Not everyone needs this game to be like WoW!

PS....Love the hey, if hes hitting me I must have aggro statement! LOL.....Yeah that is a pretty clear indicator!

I read the top part, nothing else. But I'd have to say. Not everyone is like this, bud. Not, really sure where you got your information from. I'm a pretty nice guy, helpful, and all that, and a bunch of people I know are the same. So, ya. I'm not sure if I know where you're coming from. Every mmo has it elite people element, just as it has your average joe's type of crowd. the elitists do not outnumber the normal people, never have, never will. Maybe you should give it another go. Not sure what else to say, hope it gets better for you.

So, I read the second stanza, paragraphy type part. I'm fairly sure most new mmo's don't come standard with third party configurations. Be patient, I doubt they don't know we want an lfg and recount, and all those other add-ons. Patience, and tolerance will get you far in a brand new mmo. That is all.

I was thinking, about what I said in the second part, the bit right before this. I don't want that crap. I never liked it, it stressed me out. It made me feel like I had to measure up to someone elses standards, and that's not fun. I'm here to have fun. Do I want the LFG, yep. Do I want to Know the exact amount of DPS i'm doing so I can be put in a corner based on numbers that mean nothing at all? God No... Don't ruin this game by bringing in recount and battle logs and all that crap that takes the mystery out of this game. It's a means of segregation, it's not anything good at all.

If you were a melee or ranged dps in WoW, and your dps numbers were'nt what the raid leader wanted them to be then you didn't get to do the raid. heck with that man, that's not fun, noone should be able to tell you you can't play in something just because of some random numbers that don't mean diddly, so please and thank you, ignore most of what I said in the half paragraph above this. thanks.

but ya, LFG for server, i'm so 100 pct for that. as it's such a chore finding people to do hard modes sometimes. k, thanks. sorry I had to reneg what I said. Not gonna erase it, because I guess it shows me that sometimes I don't think about stuff before I write them. I hated all these computation third party addons. No more of that stuff, we don't need it.

LFG and too easy raids killed WoW for me. So kuddo's Bioware for not putting it in.

+1. So +1.

Same server LFG is good. Cross, terrible

My daughter is 10 years old, she has never played an MMO before in her life, she played SWTOR for 2 hours straight & not once asked me a question, she doesn't watch me play because she's usually on her own PC playing facebook games like farmville & other "easy as pie stuff" she's bright but no genius & as a yardstick I'd say a 10 year old girl with no MMO experience picking up a game & playing it for 2 hours straight with no problems is a pretty good indication of it being easy to pick up.

 

 

 

People use the general chat to form groups in the absence of a robust LFG tool, it's limitation being the planet you are on only, but the only other place people in your level range could be is the fleet, there is a method for flagging yourself LFG but it's up to players to put it to use until a better tool is made. You aren't forced into PvP, unless you chose a PvP server. If you want flashpoints you'll go to the fleet as that's the flashpoint hub, anyone wanting to do grouping in your level range will be on the planet you are. Gear is ridiculously available, you can make it yourself, buy it from others selling it, earn it from quests.....

 

 

 

What is it that you want to macro, combat abilities?

That's lazy, just go buy yourself a big button that buzzes & glows & has "I WIN" printed on it. Macros for emotes/roleplaying stuff I got no issue with, but "automating combat" really? how much more Fisher-Price do you need the game to be, would you just rather have a bot-program go get your gear & money for you while you sleep?

 

 

 

I guess you really don't pay attention to what goes on in the SWTOR circles then, combat logs are coming, along with a restructuring & rebalancing of the underlying values so a good portion of the existing theorycrafting that has been done so far will need to be retooled, but will be easier to do with the logs.

 

 

 

I played EverQuest for 8 years & they had no "aggro meter" when the mob is not hitting you, well that's your meter, I'm not totally against threat meters but even in WoW I didn't use them & I never had people hating on me for losing aggro, the problem with your line of thinking is that when you create so many different mods & tools & meters & bells & whistles to do all the things YOU should be doing, you detract from what is going on on your screen, you are NEEDING to have macros because you are watching the 30 bloody meters you have, the more mods you have the more you need to have, but then the game gets crippled by requiring them to play I think SWTOR has done well in it's "telegraphing" of important information, I think watching the game on the screen should be about enjoying the graphics of the world the characters the mobs, not blurring them out from watching a bunch of little boxes all over the place. Adding some graphical effects to the mobs I could live with to reflect aggro, or even the portrait window being "animated" smily face = it's not hitting you (if you are dps) & the more threat you have the angrier it's face gets, or the more "red mist" it has round it.

 

 

 

you are not paying attention, there are hints & "telegraphs" perhaps all those years of playing mods made you blind to these things, as for "learning about a fight" how about , oh I dunno, actually playing the fight & learning by doing, or are you so spolied by youtube videos that you became clinically wipe-aversive?

 

Had enough of your rant, so I won't respond to the rest of it, I think you need to examine what you want from SWTOR because it sounds like "I still want to play WoW, but with the SWTOR theme to it.

 

Hint: nobody HAS TO BE Blizzard except Blizzard.

Auto attack is a most to make this game stable in balance seen the fights lately a ranged shot 3 times before a melee class even manage to hit em twice! thats very unbalanced and unfair!

LFG too I definitely agree about. The current LFG tool (if you can even call it that) is inadequate and spamming the General channel for members is hardly progress in MMO gaming. The game is mostly solo and does not naturally bring players together and a properly designed LFG tool would help with this.

Macros. Personally I think they've ruined many a good MMO. You don't need expensive gaming keyboards and mice to compete. Just a bit of thought to how you arrange your keybinds. I've got short fingers too, so I rarely use CTRL and ALT modifiers, I prefer to memorise a wider range of keybinds. If you stick to putting certain types of abilities on the same keybind from character to character it makes things easier. For example, I always put my main attacks, aoe abilities, channeled abilities, heals and interupts on the same keys on every character.

Tanking flashpoints for the first time I TOTALLY agree. If you are there for your first time it is really hard to know what to do, especially because everyone looks to the tank. DPS can sit back and react, Healers can wait until they need to react. Tanks need to lead. So there's a dinstinct advantage for players who have done it before on an alt, or played beta etc. I agree there needs to be a codex entry for each boss which at least gives some hints on tactics.

Threat meters I'm ambivalent about. I never use them when tanking, I prefer visual cues from the mobs as to when I'm losing threat, not some flashing light or sound effect. But no reason not to have them for those that would like to use them.

Seperation of buffs and debuffs, definitely. It's very lazy design to not do this.

I'm not so sure that these things are elitism though. They are mostly the result of lazy design. Things that a competent dev team should have included from launch but couldn't be bothered to.

My daughter is 10 years old, she has never played an MMO before in her life, she played SWTOR for 2 hours straight & not once asked me a question, she doesn't watch me play because she's usually on her own PC playing facebook games like farmville & other "easy as pie stuff" she's bright but no genius & as a yardstick I'd say a 10 year old girl with no MMO experience picking up a game & playing it for 2 hours straight with no problems is a pretty good indication of it being easy to pick up.

I'd be damn proud if I were you. That's awesome.

In general, the community in this game is terrible when you can even tell that there is a community. The best choice, in your case, may be to play the game as single player the way Bioware envisioned.

Varies wildly by server. Mine is actually pretty good. Yours must be pretty bad, from the sounds of it.

Unless you're talking about the forums. Because MMO forums are, in my limited experience, anyway, a cesspool of stupidity and whining.

As far as a LFG tool, a lot less needs to be done to it than people think. People are just too lazy to use it, and it require everyone to be very attentive to it. There are certainly some ease of use things that should be added (Don't reset it every time you change areas, more keyword based, notifications on people changing their LFG status to a matching keyword, perhaps), but if everyone would just use the thing, they'd find it would actually work reasonably well.

seen the fights lately a ranged shot 3 times before a melee class even manage to hit em twice! thats very unbalanced and unfair!

Sounds like the melee players don't know what they're doing if that's true.

Can you please stop the abuse of the term 'elitist'?

Thank you.

I am an elitist.

As a healer, I ask people to run OUT of red circles of death during boss fights.

Or, I ask Tanks/Dps to Interuppt cast bars.

I still will play with you, but don't get angry at me for telling you to do things that will help you succeed.

This game is so new-player (be it new to the game or MMO's in general) unfriendly it's not funny. Anything which makes the UI or community less daunting or working out the best playstyle for your class is non-existent.

 

No LFG so you can't really do anything let alone progress through runs in the particular order if you're not already geared except stand around spamming. Let the elitists not have to use it and only run with people they choose to, but for the rest of us, let us play with other players when we want to. Why force the players into PVP, or channel them in that direction at the expense of PVE?

 

No macros to make life easier so to be the best you need to be prepared to be constantly manually doing everything meaning going out and spending money on ridiculously expensive peripherals is required (however, given there is an official range of products to do this I don't see this being improved anytime soon) leaving others who don't play as often or play alts or have smaller hands essentially making the CTRL key useless as a modifier key easily accessible during combat. There is no easy way to set a player or enemy target as a focus, and there is no dual targeting. Don't make us have to have our entire keyboard bound with abilities and forcing players to learn them all and hoping against hope that people we play with have learnt each and every one of their keybinds inside and out off the top of their heads where it's all reflex.

 

There's no in-game combat log immediately visible with all information you need calculated and sorted so no-one actually knows how they're doing or if another player is someone they can see how they do it and learn from it, or if THAT person giving you crap and "teaching you how to play" is full of it or not, or even if - gasp - you're better than them. When someone's accusing you of not doing something there's no way you can link a piece of information that shows otherwise. With no defense mechanisms it all comes back to ego and how aggressive you are rather than how good, or even how not terrible you are. Let alone learn for sure that what you're thinking is the optimal way to play really is or how accurate the theorycrafters are. When someone's clearly doing something wrong and you're the one cleaning it up (yes, I play a healer) there's no definitive way to make them understand that there actually WERE consequences. And maybe, just maybe it could have been that contributing to a wipe.

 

No ingame learning tools. Like warnings for people who are tank-spec that they are losing aggro, which while probably not too useful in dungeons if only their target fires, but once a player has specc'd tank and a new warning comes up on screen it can get their attention. As it is, it clearly explains a tank is defensive and takes little damage. But there can be no way for them to have put two and two together and work out (and lets face it - people can come to wrong conclusions) that in a group situations that means THEY take the damage, and those abilities which mention "high threat" etc in the tooltip are important and something to ask about, and that it's their role to make everything hit them and the dps's kill things. Believe it or not, but I have met players new to MMO's and all of this is new. Healer? pretty self-explanatory. DPS? Pretty self-explanatory. But very little way of knowing if you're up to scratch.

 

No ingame way to learn about a fight and all the mechanics involved in the fight unless someone in the group has done it. No warnings much in combat, no hints, nothing. Not even enabled because it's your first time. No codex entry telling you the mechanics involved so you can form a strategy. Nope. It's ALL out-of-game or finish the run in some way and ask someone later.

 

OK I can deal with operation frames not changing color or flashing at me to show me who needs dispelling, but seriously, make the debuff bigger than the others or something. And could the buffs and debuffs be separated at all? And do I really need to see each and every buff every player has at all times in the first place? Please, when you implement these healing improvements in 1.2, please, never forget that almost every healer has a unique approach to how they heal and use their UI and peripherals etc. Very few healers have identical styles (although in SWTOR with so few healing spells this is far less of a concern as to be almost non-existent for now) and healing is more of an art.

 

This whole attitude coming from so many players "It's my way or the highway, if you don't like something about how you play this game apparently for fun go back to your other game" attitude. Of course. Make as many people as possible suffer in-game through bad attitude coupled with an absolute lack of any sort of checks and balances and anything which could bring balance and accountability into the game and leave them absolutely correct in the stance that "Bioware supports us". No wonder they are so against other MMO's. They're all more performance-based than ego-driven. And about having something to do when you log on, even if none of your guildies or friends are.

I don't experience any of the problems you just stated. I wasn't in beta. I picked this game up on release, logged in when I was allowed, and picked it up really easy.

You have problems knowing if you've lost aggro? Really? The mob you're hitting suddenly turns its back to you and goes after somebody else, and you're not quick enough to realize: "Hey! I lost aggro!" Come off it.

Checks and balances? Political Science 101 is that way >>

There is nothing elitist about learning the ropes, buddy.

You need to examine yourself closely and reconsider what you want out of life.

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