But they did, the long Post 4.0 became a barren wasteland by how many players left the game. So yes, messing up the core combat system and not rebalancing content will cause another die-off just like those other changes did. However thats just blatantly wrong, Combat keeps the game alive by making sure it's not mind-numbingly boring. Story may be the seller, but combat holds it all together. Good gameplay justifies Story, unless you just want to watch a movie. Bio-ware takes a long time to release story content and Combat is the main thing people do in the meantime, you do Combat DURING the Story, everything in the game revolves around COMBAT. Endgame gearing is COMBAT grind. If Combat gets messed up SWTOR will have even bigger ghost-towns between content updates and need to find even MORE new players to make up for the loss of existing players quitting over this change. First of all, 2 comparisons of fighting target dummies is no to way capture the complexity/player agency when fighting multiple mobs or a boss. That SWTOR player cannot show off Stuns, Defensives, Openers, or Closers which add a whole lot of animations making it feel much more varried. I assume the same of FF14 but havnt played it, but my criticism for that small snippet is it looks like most of the abilities are just spinning the PC with some gfx, maybe that's just a martial arts class lol. SWTOR players who can Leap, Saber Throw, Choke, etc in actual combat look just as varied, if not more. And for SWTOR not justifying it's combat through difficulty, that's the developers purposely putting the Leveling process on ez mode since 4.0 so players are pushed to max level. Taking away combat abilities to supposedly make it more difficult/justified is in no way an excuse since combat had already been in a balanced state with the current sets for leveling but was purposely nerfed. Moreover Casuals have always praised this change, THEY DO NOT WANT the combat system to challenge them, and that's why we have veteren mode for anyone who wants originally-designed challenge. Removing combat abilities will not justify combat, just diminish it and mildly annoy casuals with a slight difficulty increase or notice of flashy buttons being gone/mildly make happy casuals who don't have to go through the so hard effort of not putting abilities in their hotbar that they don't use. But it will greatly enrage everyone else who enjoyed their class and combat, causing them to leave. I main a Jugg and PTS changes for mirror class guardian are just terrible. *Edit- Lol, Sentinel PTS is just as bad.

Here is the real joke, they are just going to nerf NIM boss HP/DPS to compensate. Fight might be similar, you will just have less abilities to play any portion of the game with, Enjoy Seeing player agency removed.

A Combat Styles update that doesn't trim 50% of the ability bar would be better. Still doable, they could make choices 1/2 instead of 1/3. Or even do Combat Styles without trimming anything, just make loadouts save your quickbars and "Advanced Class" 'Combat/Weapon Style'. Oh it will continue on but it will be the death of something Core to SWTOR for the last 10 years. Out of all the simplifications this will kill any player who likes a little complexity in combat. Never said it was the best. SWTOR has an average MMO tab-target combat. However, even with Disciplines, it still gives great freedom in the amount of utilities, unique animations, and abilities a player get. Taking this average combat and making it below-average/piss-poor just diminishes play. Anyone not playing just for cutscenes = Well I mean this Combat Styles simplification is Step 1 towards console release if it really cuts 50% out of the quickbars. Without this it would be mostly unfeasible to play on Console just in terms of game design, without even getting into the technical aspects. Yes SWTOR has good story, but having an at least average combat system attached makes it that much better, without that, what's the point?

Welp, hopefully Bioware rethinks this update. This will be the actual game-killer. If they ruin combat, who will be left? Maybe their banking on tricking new players and releasing on console, who knows? In the end quality doesn't matter, just the amount of $$ that can be squeezed.

Well you see if a good player only had to do a standard rotation at launch with that difficulity-set.... Now we have players who only press AOE and Basic Attack 1 while leveling as thats how easy it is. This is fine because most of these types just want to see cutscenes. However, they then go out to PvP and Endgame PvE group combat and get rekt/kicked from MM Flashpoints.

kill it with fire ahhhhh

Lol I missed one ability, I think that's called intercede on Jugg, if only 1 ability were to be removed thats the only one I would kill.

Yes, how it originally was. Much better for end-game credit sink, companions were actually unique in their abilities and prowess. They got armor from the class quest as gear reward too. Before your companion would actually go through different armor as you leveled same like the main character. Much better connection to them. Now I barely gear them at all and they wear the same **** the entire game. Bioware would never revert back the companion however. Streamlining the companions into literal skins of each other is what allowed them to monetize and sell them to the playerbase. You would need a Classic Server to get the og game back.

Check the PTS to see the real changes

Unscaled to their original level for the early ones would be nice. At least you don't have the issue of needing to purposely NOT do side quests. I wanna stay on level so I have to skip heroics too very annoying.

Bruh, can you really not get below 400, are you a trolling? Account #10,691,840 seems like troll Average human reaction time is not 450ms, maybe 300 but my 60 year old relatives can give sub 300 constantly lol. https://humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime And regardless of reaction time, you don't need top tier DPS from every member to win an OP.

We all do, but it ain't coming back without a classic server so Rip. Losing flamethrower was really doing us BH players dirty lol

What if I want a combat-focused SW [MMO] experience with tab-target combat? It exists right here and I enjoy it and wouldn't want it cut away. I give my final piece in here https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=995367&page=12 hopefully they dont kill good combat

OPTIONAL DIFFICULTY TOGGLES for both types of players is the solution. All unique and fun combat scenario are luckily INSTANCED. Where are the Class Story, Planetary Arc difficulty options for instances. Even some exploration side quests have their own instances that could be difficulty-set.

Yes, if you mean that by SWTOR's thing is making terrible revamps that drive away more and more of its established players. They can go very far in streamlining alot of things in the game, but destroying the essential combat system through combat style pruning is going to kill whatever lite-traditional mmo players are left. I guess you can run an mmo with only casuals in the boneyard of where an actual game stood, but its purpose will only be for the cash-shop, and most trivial gameplay possible. TBF, yes, this makes sense. However in the process they gutted their original design with the simple bandaid less difficulty fix which destroys the content for actual gameplay players. The super-easy cutscene only, 5 ability difficulty shouldn't be the default, it should be an optional toggle, or they should at least add an optional toggle for the intended design difficulty that worked if they want super-easy as default. In the end, the original design is what was best developed in terms of $$, testing and dev team. The rest of the **** we get has been skeleton crew content development and fixes. I'm guessing you didn't play pre 3.0/4.0 but the class story difficulty was in no way as difficult as Wildstar. It just wasn't mindless AOE slam everywhere like we have now. And maybe their metrics show this type of "story" player is more prevalent after they burned everyone away with a terrible endgame and failed content support for traditional mmo players. However, they should still leave a difficulty option available for them and shouldn't destroy the combat system of the game in favor of players who don't use it in the first place. Shoot, instead of the 3.0/4.0 updates why didn't they just add permeant 20xp boosts for those who wanted them, would've been better than burning the well-designed gameplay in revamp, could've done content development instead. Lol, pre-3.0/4.0 was no where close to dark souls design. This game wasn't super-challenging, it simply wasn't faceroll easy to a point it no longer incentivized players to play its gameplay or learn its combat-system. I agree, but good solo content can also be difficult and fun. I enjoy solo content but still wouldn't want it to be as faceroll as it is now. IE Boss cutscenes in class story were more immersive for me when ya know, they felt like bosses in the gameplay instead of 5-secon- mash-button-to-get-to-next-cutscene-machines. Yeah, PvP has always been kinda bad lol. I enjoyed hutball the few times I played it and open-world PvP is a fun immersive gimmick the few times it happened until it impeded my questing. The 7.0 combat revamp would destroy the viability PvP has for those who like it though.