Where are we going? Honestly, away. Unless they introduce new endgame PvE, the next achievement I get will be the end for now.

7.0 was the most fun I've had in VM operations since 2.0 & 3.0, but 7.0 certainly wasn't perfect. Many classes underperformed severely, while some select classes could push enough to pass the checks on master mode, which seemed to be tuned for 340 gear. One of the biggest issues was the delaying of R-4, which would've brought 340 gear and the game would've balanced out.

100% this. Vertical gear progression only really works, if new content is introduced with it, 2.0 being the prime example: S&V/TFB HM (168) -> S&V/TFB NiM (174), DF/DP HM (180) and DF/DP NiM (186). 344 gear will absolutely demolish most master mode encounters. Already boss kill times are 20% faster than 6.3 for example. You'll reach a point, where players need to hard-stop DPS on certain fights (Master and Veteran mode Apex Vanguard for example, where you already bring fewer DPS to deal with the bad tuning), so they don't break the mechanics. Besides, almost all MM encounters have already been cleared without any healers at all, so the tuning is extremely bad to begin with. The issue with making operations trivial? It's not a rewarding feeling and it doesn't feel accomplishing when you clear an operation that has a storymode flashpoint -tier difficulty. The GAME does not feel rewarding, even if you get yet another shiny mount from 10 years ago. Almost any group can already progress through the legacy operations on any difficulty within weeks, earlier it would've taken months for most groups, due to the tight DPS checks. Now they can do it without even really knowing how to play the game, and operations are supposed to be the most difficulty PvE content. The solo game is already trivially easy (has been since 4.0), to a point where you can basic attack your way through all open world and story content, or just let your companion do it for you. Outside of PvP (RIP ranked), operations have been the only piece of interesting or even remotely challenging content in the game. You have three difficulty tiers for exactly that reason: Provide a challenge for those who want it. @BryantWood If you want to go back to 6.3 gearing accessibility-wise, that's fine. If everyone wants to rock 340s, go for it. Just don't increase the ceiling any more, or if you do, at least revert the 7.1 nerfs to bosses. 344 gear is a bad idea, please don't do it.

To quote Jar Jar: "How rude." Historically the best PvE gear has been available from the newest or the most challenging operations, so this is not a new concept. With 6.0 expansion it was different, but in 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0... All of these expansions had the best gear coming from operations. Usually Master modes, or Veteran modes (or NiM & HM respectively). R-4 providing the best gear is a decent motivator to do the operation. And if you don't want to do R-4, then there are other operations that are very doable with 331 item rating. You only really need/want the top gear for R-4 VM/MM or some of the harder MMs like Gods and Dxun. Realistically, if the group cannot handle R-4 VM, then the struggle will be worse in Dxun or Gods MM, not to even to mention the promised R-4 MM. I don't quite follow. Is it a problem that some groups have been able to clear the operation for months? Clearly it's evidence that the operation (R-4) is fairly balanced and the content can be completed. You don't need elitists to do it, just coordinated groups and talented individuals. True, other master modes are relatively easy right now, at least if you consider DPS checks. Healing checks still seem to be there, and some bosses feel more challenging to heal than before. Tanks also need to think more about their DCD usage than before. I'd say that the groups who could do MM operations in 6.3 would feel they are a little easier. Compared to 7.0 they are a lot easier. If anything, the gear available in R-4 does make the other MMs much more accessible to the more casual raiders. You would need to clear Watchdog and Lord Kanoth on VM a total of 13 times each to get a full set of 340 gear + implants for one character/class. Of course a full 340 purple set would give a little bit more power, but that increase will not make the difference between clearing IP-CPT and Dominique, or not. For tanks it's a little bit more, but for tanks it does not matter what bosses you're clearing, as blues are mostly best-in-slot for now. Although it might be good if MM endbosses dropped tokens, that would encourage running MM operations for other than vanity reasons. Just spare Nefra from a horrible slaughter. How so? Why does content aimed at endgame PvE players affect the more casual players? I've seen more casual groups struggle on content that's objectively much less challenging, such as KP VM, and that has not caused a wedge between players, skilled or otherwise. Frankly, there's an ebb and flow to MMO subscribers. I'd argue the more casual playerbase, such as strictly story players, have less reason to stay subscribed than many of the endgame players. Many leave when the content ends either way. Still, those groups working their way up there usually end up subscribing for years. Still, I think I can guess what you're getting at. So why don't we play with the idea a little and say all operations and difficulty modes were tuned similar to DF SM right now. That'd make all content pretty accessible to all players, even the very casual ones, right? So anyone could just gather a group from fleet and go grab whatever they wanted from current master modes, eg. timers, achievements, mounts etc? All operation titles and mounts would lose the little vanity value they have left, considering all the sales going around the past years. How long would the raiding playerbase endure? I would say weeks, maybe a couple of months tops. And that's not just the "elitist" community. That's everyone who challenged themselves with VMs and MMs. Any VM capable team could crunch through all of the operations in a week, that will get very old very fast and they'll move on. I don't quite agree with this. Most players take breaks, be it long or short, but there are many reasons and often they are personal. Remember 4.0, when BW took their new direction with "Doubling down on story"? That was a disaster and plummeted SWTOR playerbase massively, even with all the subscriber rewards and whatnot. Dumbed down gameplay (you could quite literally basic attack your way through the leveling and chapters) and only chapter stories did not keep the players engaged. MMOs are about balance, SWTOR needs the story, it needs the PvP, it needs the exploration and it needs operations, even challenging ones.

Hi Chris/SWTOR team/Whomever it may concern, I've played the game on and off since launch, in part thanks to real life and in part thanks to the state of the game at the time, or combination of the both. I'd like to say I've seen the good, the bad, the ugly, and the great of SWTOR thus far. Relating to this post specifically, I applaud the choice to investing in new coding and easier maintenance. It's important for most applications to be as scalable as possible. At this point, I'd like to refer to an older post regarding design philosophies of class balance: https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=9333043#edit9333043 How do you think the class balance listed in the above post entails to the current iteration of SWTOR? According to 3rd party sources, such as Parsely, IO mercenary at least is vastly underpeforming compared to the "target DPS percentile" as shown above. And based on personal experience, the gameplay of IO mercenary has also degraded significantly from 6.3 expansion (even at full 330 gear). I would like to ask can we expect class balancing and perhaps tweaks to improve the gameplay experience of these underperforming classes (there are more than IO merc)? And if so, when could we expect them? I know many teams who were progging MM Dxun towards the end of the previous patch, and many quit due to the current state of their class or game balance. I'd also like to ask if you think you have correctly balanced MM operations to 330 gear? I recall seeing a post where someone stated that amplifiers would be gone, because players would already be "more powerful than ever before", but realistically I'm not feeling this effect, not yet at least. Perhaps when we move on to R-4 gear?

My problems and questions I'd like answered: 1) The grind is too long. Why grind for a hundred hours just so I can start getting some HM gear to do the content we've all done dozens of times already? The amount of grind ahead of me just keeps me from even starting, especially when there's no goal to getting the gear. 2) RNG coupled with the slow rate of packs being handed out. I don't want to run Black Talon in tactical (veteran) mode 800 times to start getting good gear. I'd much rather do a few operations and start earning my gear the traditional way, but that'll barely get me to level 30, if I run them all on SM and HM. 3) Gear isn't enough to be all the replayable content for an entire expansion (again), Uprisings aren't that much fun in the long term, and replayable chapters are cute at best when they're tuned for the gear you need to grind a year to get. I, we, need to start seeing some real commitments here. "Maybe we'll say something in the general direction of group content in January, this isn't a promise of anything hint hint wink wink" is not an acceptable answer anymore. 4) Why was this even created? Why take away the other gear from the original sources? Was it only to retain subsmium players? Was it to slow down the gearing process until you had something solid to present? What's the real intention here? How is this better for me, as a player, than 4.0 was? Communicate. 5) Did you really forget the PvP bag fiasco of Vanilla? Or NiM loot issue of 4.0? You really couldn't have. I'll end with a quote.

Oh, you mean 1.1.2 Bag Changes. There were probably more before that, but with the dev tracker going only back to 2013, that's the only thread with developer responses on it. But here are the important developer responses in chronological order:

I feel like we've come a full circle with the Galactic Command, so bumping the thread about this important lesson I thought we learned with 4.0.

1) Galactic Command, by design what's the goal? In your traditional MMO, and in SWTOR before the launch of KotFE, the general design philosophy behind gear is fairly simple. You acquire your starter gear(be it crafted, from flashpoints, leveling etc), until you have enough to tackle the harder group content, in the case of SWTOR, operations. Once you beat the hardest operations, you kept doing them for the loot to be prepared for the next set of content. Maybe you did it on a number of characters, so you'd have multiple options in case they were needed by your group. Either way, the "gear grind" was to keep players busy as new content was being created and polished. With Galactic Command, there doesn't seem to be goals for players, or something to strive for. It seems to be simply to get gear, so you can have gear. Why would I, as a player, want to get the best gear in KotET? What challenge am I preparing to tackle? 2) Could you incorporate some challenges and incentives to veteran/master mode chapters/uprisings? We used to have titles and achievements for clearing NiM (master) operations in a certain time, and some for not dying in the process. Perhaps you could add achievements and legacy titles for doing timed runs through chapters, and some for not dying in the process? And perhaps a mount (something cool that's not a CM reskin or exists in the game currently) for getting all those achievements done? A little like reaching legendary level of DvsL event, just with chapters. You could grant the mount via legacy, as is done with the star fortress mount.

It's really quite simple. This is the move of a desperate developer. 4.0 didn't manage to retain subscribers in relevant numbers (just like pretty much EVERYONE except for BioWare knew and said it wouldn't, so yes, we told you so), so what do they do in 5.0? A subscription-gated, RNG-based gear grind where even Diablo III pales in comparison (even Diablo has bad luck protection, pretty sure these RNG boxes don't). And I can almost guarantee you the nightmare (master) operation DPS checks will be tuned for the BiS legendary gear, so enjoy farming those SMs and VMs the next 6 months. Sorry BioWare, the move just reeks of desperation. And it'll backfire. No one wants it in this iteration, and everyone told you so from the start. You need not re-invent the wheel here. Keep the RNG system if you want, but give loot where loot is due, as in operation bosses, and lesser tiers from flashpoints/uprisings. And the important part, give players something to look forward to. A reason to gear up. Give your endgame a future. Maybe in the summer you'll launch a new operation? Two even? Maybe these could drop a new tier of loot? That's all you'd have to do to make a wheel out of the square you made. Two new operations, and a promise of more later, with advancing tiers of gear. Then add some flesh to the bones and make a daily area or two.

As title suggests, add non-CM mounts to collections (and unlock them automatically for account). Why? Well, in a galaxy where everyone has 20 alts, it'd be nice to show off your accomplishments on your other characters as well. I for one have run endgame nightmare/master operations on over six characters with mounts to show that spread across them. Same with some of the event mounts and token grinds, Ilum's Gree Sphere for example.

I assume this only means the July 1st early access one? Are you going to completely ignore Ben's original post and people who subbed before 28th of July to get early access as well? You maybe made a mistake, but you corrected it way too late to pull out (after people subscribed and chapter actually launched...). What will you do about that?

Does it not count as a scam/false advertising/fraudulent marketing?

I subscribed before 28th, because of that post. I was somewhat dubious about it due to weird wording, so I checked in with the customer service and they also said I'd be eligible for it. So, if BW promotes early access, then doesn't provide after the fact(because oh lol typo), isn't that false advertising/borderline fraud? It'd be somewhat acceptable if they said it was a bug/it'd be fixed, but completely brushing the issue aside? I hope they'll have an actual post up today regarding this issue. Yes, it's "only" two days, but it's the principle that matters here, and lip service doesn't cover false advertising, even if it was a mistake.

So, we subscribe before July 28th to be eligible for the Early Access (as per your words), then comes the launch day and you retroactively take back your offer? Can I retroactively take back my money? I did suspect there might have been a typo there, so I literally checked in with the customer service in regards to the issue, and yesterday they told me I would be eligible for the early access, however I am not, apparently. (See ticket 29152156). That's the same as saying "Hey guys, subscribe by July 28th and get 500 CCs and the chapter on 11th of August!", but then never give out the CCs. I hope your team is working on a fix at the moment, otherwise I see some problems.