This time around: - Finally I'm doing the Onderon story. I'm gonna let it slide that there's barely a story there since it's probably more of a daily area or whatever. But the glaring bugs... -> I'm in the sewers and Tau asks for help in the throne room. When I get there, she's not even there. Huh? -> Darth Remote Control turns on a bomb to wipe me out. After the fight in the room... uh, where's the bomb? But it's still gonna go off apparently despite having vanished into thin air because we're scrambling for our lives. Onderon is old news now but I guess so are the bugs. SWTOR still has some of the best storytelling in MMOs today, hands down. Really dramatic cutscenes and a stronger experience of "choices matter". Many new games don't even bother anymore and are still doing what everyone was doing 15 years ago with NPCs standing around talking at you. Or even walls of text to read. Then off you go to kill things between here and the next NPC who's going to talk at you. Almost feels like every game is Diablo sometimes. (Blade and Soul UE4 Update is a real contender though but the story is strictly linear with no choices). So I guess I'm really just disappointed in the industry in general. There's definitely a decline in quality, maybe because of a shift toward pretty graphics and trying to milk you of your money with mobile game tactics. For the very first time I'm actually not sure if I will enjoy the story or the storytelling in SWTOR. Disappearing bombs and ortolans hanging around in a corner for no reason at all or other bugs really detract from that. Plus there's barely any story in Onderon before I get sent to Mek-Sha. There's gonna be some real story in Corellia when I get there, right? I can put up with a lot of stuff in game mechanics and new bugs that never get fixed what not, but if the story isn't worthwhile, playing the game is pointless. Putting down roots and connecting with community there is pointless. Here's hoping I'm wrong and SWTOR will deliver. Sad to say I'm actually enjoying the stories in Hogwarts Mystery a helluva lot more -_-; Recommendation: Instead of diverting money and resources toward overhauling gearing every couple of years, how about settling on something reasonable and focussing on story and other content? Seriously, no other game has such huge changes every couple of years to make me relearn how to do everything.

(1) If someone has done the required operation for a quest (e.g., operation intro quest or Oricon quest), just check their achievements for completion and allow them to immediately skip it. Also, move all quest NPCs out of operations phases. (2) Make all operations available in the group finder all the time and REMOVE the Group Finder bonus. The Group Finder bonus is ruining a lot of matchmaking. People are so obsessed with it that they don't want to do an operation unless there's a Group Finder bonus so it is very hard to get a group for a particular operation unless it's the flavour of the day. I've even seen people immediately Abandon the single-fight Toborro's Courtyard operation just because they didn't get the Group Finder bonus -- they would rather take a deserter penalty than just go through with the short operation because they will only get that bonus once for the operation. It's not even a bonus for filling groups that need filling or to do a "random" op because everyone just declines every op until they get the one that the group wants. They get 8/8 people, drop one to queue separately for the Group Finder bonus -- everyone is circumventing the intended use to get bonus rewards. Putting all operations in the Group Finder all the time would also help all the lazy people who can't even walk to entry points on fleet. Yes, a lot of people are really that lazy and demand a guildship Summons. Of course they could go to the entrance while waiting for a group to form but most of the time that just wastes their time because it can take a long time for a group to be formed -- if that is even successful at all. (3) Remove the daily lockout once an operation is completed (all bosses cleared). There's no harm letting people redo an operation anymore. Not only can they currently switch toons to do it again anyway, but most of the loot is trash except for set gear you can get more easily from Kai Zykken than hoping you win a Need roll.

There's a detailed article about a simpler more common-sense gear crafting framework that is quite long, so I don't want to just repost it entirely here as it would be TLDR. Instead, I'll post the link and talk about some points they examine. https://gq-game-mods.blogspot.com/2020/01/swtor-crafting-proposal-to-simplify.html The article approaches gear crafting from not a mechanics/numbers viewpoint first, but a "mission statement" type starting point: What is the role of gear tiers, what is the role of drops, and how does crafting complement and is yet different from these? The Role of Loot Compared to Craft For Loot drops, The content you are playing should prepare you for the next harder content. You must not need better gear than what you can Loot for the content you are playing now. In comparison to Craft, Loot is fast to acquire, but random. In comparison to Craft, Loot is prefabricated and customizable. One of the maybe objectionable things is that it suggests not everyone will be able to get everything. For tiers of gear, we have White, Green, Blue, Purple, and Gold. It needs to be made clear to players that while there are higher tiers, not everyone needs them for the content that they want to play. This is important! This is necessary to manage expectations of what is easily achieved from both Loot and Craft. If someone is consistently playing at a low tier, their expectation must be that they will not quickly reach the highest tiers of gear, if at all. And that they won't need it at all. Without management of these expectations, there will be pressure for everyone to be able to get everything no matter what their needs or skill. Then this diminishes the achievements of those with the determination and skill and time investment to get those better rewards.

There are a couple of large articles online that analyze Conquest and make recommendations. To repost them here would make it a TLDR that no one is really going to read in one go. Instead, I'll post just a couple of examples of what they talk about, and the links to the articles. There is much more but this post is already TLDR length. (1) They make the argument that Conquest in its current form undermines gameplay. It makes it silly to actually play your favourite character(s) because if you hit your CQ target (through, say, doing a few Heroics on a single day), there is more incentive to play a different character for the rest of the week -- why get just one set of Conquest rewards when you can get two? And these mechanics of per-character Conquest points shape behavior in ways that are counter to new player experience when perhaps you want new players to focus a bit more on playing a single character and experiencing the stories; or playing them more in PvP to learn the class and advance their Valor. https://gq-game-mods.blogspot.com/2020/05/swtor-conquest-recommendations.html (2) Conquest doesn't feel like "Star Wars" republic versus imperials invasion. It feels like a rat race of click farmers where faction is irrelevant. The proposal for a "real Star Wars Conquest" features, for example, faction-based planetary conquest instead of guild-based conquest. And all contributing guilds getting planetary conqueror status if they contribute to securing victory over a planet for the faction. If you imagine each Guild to contribute a flagship to a Republic invasion fleet, surely not just one ship is named the "conqueror" when it had to be a team effort for the fleet to win the planet. https://gq-game-mods.blogspot.com/2020/05/real-swtor-conquest.html

Some of these are still in the phased hangars and I can't go in solo. I ask on Fleet Chat and Guild Chat and sometimes I get a response and have to impose on that person for their time. Other times I'm wasting my sub time just hopeful for a response that might never come. Why am I paying to waste my time waiting?

This is why I don't subscribe. - It takes a long time to form an ops group, even in a big guild - Then when I finally form a group I get Travel Failed. - Half the group is gone. We are all glitched and can't whisper each other or group up. - So now I have wasted an hour and have to start over - Except everyone got a deserter penalty too AND IT HAPPENED TWICE A ROW I don't want to pay a subscription to waste my time trying to get things done. ADDENDUM: Now it's no longer in Group Finder and I can't even get dps for one of the easier ops. No, SWTOR, I don't want to pay a subscription just to wait one week to fail again at trying even put together an ops team just to finish an Oricon story quest. Wasted several hours again today trying a different times. Saw even a group struggling to get dps for an ops that is in the group finder that day. For players who don't want to wait days to weeks just to struggle to get the ops they need, I recommend skipping the ops portion, just like the Yavin mission where you have the option to do something solo instead of an ops. In this day and age, solo is the only thing you can rely on even in an MMO. Not even going to start ranting about the macrobinoculars final and how people have had it waiting for literally years because it is such a pain in the *** to get a group together for some easy puzzles. Conquest has ruined this game and the most recent Conquest changes ruined it even more. People used to at least do last-boss-lockout and that could help some people get the ops they need because you could pretty much count on the group finder ops to have groups going. Now you might see just Toborro's Courtyard being farmed over and over.

(1) Move the intro/outro quests for ops out of phased areas. If you have already done the ops before, recognize that and let us go straight to the outro. I believe this sort of thing is already done for the Czerka flashpoint story chain, and I would like to see it for the ops intro/outro quests as well. (2) Make the macrobinoculars and seeker droid quests (i.e., the final ones) solo-able. It is too tedious to try to form a party to do it, even in large busy guilds.

Otherwise I have to check what appears to be a VERY MISLEADING counter on the swtor website account page. On Jun-26 that page indicated "0 days left" , which I took to mean "less than 24 hours. However, over 24 hours later it still read "0 days" and in-game I was still a subscriber. I put in a ticket to notify customer service of this apparent glitch and I refrained from sub-only activities such as operations -- a huge handicap given that this was double-CXP period. On Jun-28 I am still in-game a subscriber and the accounts page on swtor.com now says "play time will be ending soon". Was I therefore actually entitled to those two (2) days of "0 days remaining" subscription?

In the future, perhaps BW could further simplify processes for double XP by: (1) not announcing it (2) not implementing it with a patch (3) surprise-mailing everyone with a special non-stacking triple-XP token instead. This way, (a) no patch needed (b) no expectations set © no anticipation to ruin (d) no complaints to handle The community is getting a freebie which in my opinion should be extremely rare given how quickly levelling happens already with CXP boosters falling out of Galactic Command Crates like snow. And instead of being grateful for the opportunity to have it, is extremely upset when it's a bit slow. The track record of a flawless patch is choppy to be sure but it's par for the course for the live ecosystems of MMOs. Let's recognize that BW surely did not intend for any hiccups and be grateful to have a double XP event at all.

Restoration of Korriban / Tython Restoration of Voss Restoration of the Zakuul

Instead of main fleet hub.

Invest credits into taxi companies via a new Legacy-wide perk that increases the speed at which taxis travel.

Instead of separating Conquest by individual toons, make it a Legacy-wide tiered total. All alts contribute to the total and rewards are given when milestones are reached. There will no longer be daily-per-legacy / daily-per-toon distinctions. Everything will either be non-repeatable or repeatable. In exchange for this convenience, milestones will be harder to reach. Such as: total 20000 points x 1 for first reward milestone. total 20000 points x (1 + 2) for second reward milestone total 20000 points x (1 + 2 + 3) for third reward milestone

Although the point is recognizable one, attempting to balance things in SWTOR have never really worked out well. Level capping was such an attempt and it has failed so miserably that Heroic 2+ are classed as "Solo" content. It is better if they don't make any attempt to balance or make-challenging lower-level content at all because it is likely to do more harm than good, such as in operations and flashpoints. Instead, the onus is on the player to not grind assorted content and inflate their level and gear unreasonably in the first place.

From the 5.9 Patch Notes: Missions + NPCs The “Introduction to Conquests” Mission can once again be completed. Imperial players can once again get the intro Mission to The Black Hole from the Imperial Fleet. Players can once again get the intro Mission to Section X on their respective Fleet. Please continue to restore and/or make more accessible the existing Story Content in the game. Such as not locking Oricon behind a bunch of operations but instead just checking for operation completion to advance the Story quests.