They do have the planets divided up into sectors. I suppose they could do some kind of lesser objective(s) to conquer each of the sectors. Could be fun but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it to be implemented.

Excellent, thank you. Good job Bioware, my apologies for my negative thoughts!!

I assume the set bonus goes with the shells not with any of the mods in the shells. Personally I don't like the look of most of the obroan gear and plan to pull out mods and put them in my current gear that I do like. Bioware should give some thought to letting some of the invisible parts of a set (implants, relics, etc.) contribute to the 2 or 4 piece total needed for the set bonus. That would let people like myself who like the look of a different set still get the set bonus. Not hard to implement and one would think making customers happy would enter into some devs head once in a while.

I have thought of something that might go a long way toward making open world PVP work. You need to be able to whisper / private message/ etc. members of the opposite faction. It takes a bit of communication for people to play a game together. Players can probably do a lot toward balancing things if they can easily talk with each other. And besides, private messages between factions will give NSA something to eavesdrop on!!!

I believe you are exactly correct on this.

rofl!!!!!!

I agree that mercenaries by name should be soldiers but they are a subset of bounty hunters which should seldom be soldiers. Perhaps they need a name change or need to be a subset of a different class. Snipers, likewise should be soldiers mostly and only rarely be employed by what seems like it should be a spy class. Yes, operatives could be attached to a regular or more likely a special forces squad but it doesn't seem to me it would be a primary role for them. We basically agree on the role of knights, a more or less elite warrior class. The sith and jedi with their rather mystical force connection seem most like the religious knightly orders and seem to be portrayed that way in the starwars movies and books. Bioware may well have made an error in trying to make all their classes so symmetrical and making the advanced class names a sometimes poor fit within the parent class. But they did what they did. Much like Lucas with his original movie, they likely never dreamed it would do more than make some money for a couple of years and then fade out and they would go on to other projects.

Rather than the winner getting a bunch of items from the losers inventory, why not award them a % of the losers credits? We get enough useless junk from NPCs, no need to clutter our inventory with junk from other players.

This is why one of the 4 basic requirements I listed id controlling griefing. I am sure it can be done. I suspect the virtual sociopaths who have fun griefing this way are greatly in the minority, thus it is in bioware's interests to build in a penalty for such behavior. First, the griefer gang should get no benefits, as should be true for anyone "winning" a combat when they have an overwhelming advantage. Second if they still persist in making griefing attacks they can be penalized. This may take a bit of creative thought on the developers part but I am sure it could be done.

"So the 2 biggest problems that I see here are 1) Bad, Bad, really freaking bad screw EA for buying this cheap POS engine. 2) Classes that aren't balanced for mass combat. " The first, can only be corrected by EA / bioware. If they hear enough requests for open world PVP along with complaints about lag. If they think can make money off it then perhaps they will. The second I believe is due to the game actually having, as I mentioned a few posts up, a majority of classes that don't fit in as soldiers. Perhaps we need consider what subset of the classes make the most effective soldiers while at the same time having an implied character role as soldiers. Classes that don't fit well as soldiers need to have other kinds of PVP opportunities than mass combat. If, as 1 in the quote above implies, the software is unable to handle open world mass combat we may want to focus on how PVP can work for the non-soldier classes, which may more logically involve smaller PVP encounters. Thoughts?

Open world PVP has great potential for fun but also great potential for problems. At the moment, open world PVP seems to focus on two more or less warring sides (republic vs empire) and certain "every person for themselves" areas such as the outlaws den. One problem with this is that not all classes lend themselves to being soldiers. Bounty hunters and smugglers clearly are a poor fit in any army from an RP viewpoint. Consulars certainly by name, seem like they should be more ambassador than combatant. Agents certainly sound like they should be spies. Snipers and assassins are distinct from each other which makes almost no sense at all. The Jedi knights and sith warriors seem like they should basically be opposed knightly religious orders. Sort of like the knights Templar. Inquisitors make one think of fanatics rooting out heresy, torture chambers etc, but not spending much time on a battle field. Troopers are of course soldiers. So, we have a game that is focused on war between two "nations" or cultures. But only one side actually is fielding playable soldiers ( the republic troopers). Yes the jedi knights and sith warriors are combatants but much more like the knightly religious orders of Europe's middle ages, not by any stretch are they normal soldiers. Essentially, out of 8 basic classes, four to each "faction" only three (jedi knight, republic trooper, sith warrior) are really full time military from an RP viewpoint. That means PVP is going to be a lot more complex than it would be if all classes on each side were various kinds of full time "soldiers" of one form or another.. Because of this, PVP is going to have to be made viable a bit at a time. There is not going to be a quick fix but it can be done. As a start: A. There needs to be some kind of reward for winning. B. There needs to be some kind of risk for losing. C. Griefing needs be controlled. People play the game to have fun, if PVP turns into griefing, the fun stops, the players go away, bioware goes out of business. D. Abusive cooperation needs be controlled. By this I mean: Player A letting player B defeat them in exchange for player B then letting player A beat them so that both gain. Essentially cheating or beating the system needs be eliminated as much as possible. Perhaps we can start by making suggestions for solving these 4 starting problems. I look forward to seeing where this discussion goes and hope that PVP in SWTOR can be made fun.

Well, patient zero is a weird opponent. I have a 55 lvl mercenary. No quick cool down interrupts. so interrupting him isn't a good option. Got tired of paying to repair gear so have been experimenting against him with mako and I in our underwear. Oddly a bunch of stuff, like tracer missile still works but seems to do no damage. The no damage makes sense but I am kind of surprised it works at all. Some other things, like concussion missile seem to work perfectly. I have managed to kill him a couple of times by luring him to the room threshold and jet boosting him off the cat walk, to fall to his death. Sadly killing him that way just causes him to reset to his spawn point without his death having registered. If my mercenary is not going to get decent interrupts it would be nice if I could at least get credit for finding creative ways to kill things without them, but no. I'm not sure if there is any way to try and give patient zero LOS problems since there is no cover in his room, he wont leave it unless he is jet boosted out and even then, a few times when he was blown off the catwalk and landed on a lower cat walk instead of falling to his death, he had no problem firing his ranged attack up through the floor of his room to kill mako and then reappear in the room to kill me. Well, back to experimenting.

I like the macrobinoculars, seeker droid and the whole idea. Nice to have something that is not just mindless killing. The game badly needs things that are subtle and give a sensible as opposed to homicidal way to do things. Actually they should be available early on in the game and might be used to provide alternate bonus quests in missions as a welcome breath of rationality to the current, mostly homicidal maniac style of bonus missions. I mostly play a bounty hunter and find the all too frequent "kill X mindless minions for points" to be out of character most of the time. More things like macrobinocs and seeker droids please.

Did this solo with my lvl 55 merc dps with mako healing. Not hard to stay alive, just avoid the isotope 5 droids aoe attacks. Didn't realies that the upper level lasers needed be re-programmed as well to be able to damage the fool thing. Ran around uselessly for about half an hour. Eventually found a spot in the corridor that was just beyond the I-5 droids aoe reach. Went and parked there and googled the problem while the lower level lasers kept uselessly pounding the I-5 droid. Saw that there are upper level lasers as well that need reprogramming. Went back in and reprogrammed the upper lasers. The droids that assist the I-5 droid showed up but all went after mako and couldn't hurt her . No idea why. Just to be on the safe side I killed them but I think I could have ignored them. The reprogramming seemed to reset on the upper lasers a few times but after a few repeats the I-5 droid was scrap. The only problem was that while running about I once lagged into the cage like stair or upper level cat walk support structure. There isn't a way out (since there isn't supposed to be a way in) and before I could get /stuck typed the aoe killed me.

My level 43 merc followed the advice to run around the corner. Worked perfectly. Only Zales followed Skadge and myself. Easiest fight ever at that point since Zales goes to pure defence at around 60% health and then it's just wearing him down. My merc never took a single point of damage and while Skadge did get pretty low he survived until Zales went to all defense. Skadge was back up to almost 50% health when Zales went down. I didn't particularly like getting saddled with Skadge, since he seems to be stupid and would be nothing but a liability in a bounty hunter team. He does provide comic relief and would be a fine addition in a movie but in any kind of real situation, other than as a mine detector (stomp...stomp...boom), he would never be asked to join the team. He does seem to be a bit of a masochist though, since I get affection gains with him whenever I choose harsh or abusive dialog choices in any conversations I've had with him so far. I am a bit confused as to the logic of the whole Zales encounter. His following you around the corner while all his support stands in place defending the spot where he was is odd. Are they supposed to be pinned in place by the empire forces? that is the only logic I can see to their immobility.