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There should never be this many abilities for any one class..

...

You lost me. Why not? MMOs are games people are meant to spend dozens to hundreds of hours playing. In that amount of time anyone can get functionally used to a normal, situational rotation with however many keys. But where does it say everyone should be able to master it easily? Why should the full setup be limited to 20 keys (or whatever you think they should be limited to)? SWTOR is tab targeted, it doesn't have active defenses or things like complex range/facing/targeting or combos to manage. Managing keybinds/rotations, CDs, interrupts, avoiding aoes and dealing with cc is just about it for complexity in this game (outside of team coordination and pvp strategies). Dumbing that down, removing situational utilities makes the game slower but not easier (or less confusing for newbs). No new player should be starting the game with more than a few keybinds to pick from anyways, this really isn't about brand new players or people that only have a few hours under their belts.

 

If I have to buy a new mouse with 12 buttons on the side just to play this game comfortably then there's a problem. They could easily condense some abilities together by just adding in combo abilities. Lessening the ability count from 31 to maybe 25 for juggs wouldn't slow the pace of the game, but it would remove considerable ability bloat. Something as simple as removing chilling scream and placing its slow on crushing blow would work just fine. From bioware's perspective, this is all about attracting new players because more new players bring in more income. You still need to keep the old players satisfied, but that also doesn't mean you need 30 butttons per class either.

If I have to buy a new mouse with 12 buttons on the side just to play this game comfortably then there's a problem. They could easily condense some abilities together by just adding in combo abilities. Lessening the ability count from 31 to maybe 25 for juggs wouldn't slow the pace of the game, but it would remove considerable ability bloat. Something as simple as removing chilling scream and placing its slow on crushing blow would work just fine. From bioware's perspective, this is all about attracting new players because more new players bring in more income. You still need to keep the old players satisfied, but that also doesn't mean you need 30 butttons per class either.

I have nerve damage in both hands and I'm no spring chicken. I only use two mouse buttons and have to disable the other ones because my grip has me accidentally pressing them. I do ok in pvp (and master mode fps and ops when I get corralled into running them). I take a little bit of pride in my handling of my characters in this game. But if I can do it most people can. And if it gets reduced to 1.5 bars everything about this game will be joke.

My sentinel on test is losing 8 major abilities most of them given to him in 1.0, not 5-6 fluff ones. He's kept cyclone slash, valor and inspiration which could be deleted from the game or turned into passive procs if reducing "# of keys" is really the main goal.

And again, new players start the game with ~4 buttons to keybind, not 30. Getting from 1 to 75 still takes enough time that they won't be new players anymore when they get there. But mastery is supposed to take time. People who master simple games quickly also leave them quickly.

I have nerve damage in both hands and I'm no spring chicken. I only use two mouse buttons and have to disable the other ones because my grip has me accidentally pressing them. I do ok in pvp (and master mode fps and ops when I get corralled into running them). I take a little bit of pride in my handling of my characters in this game. But if I can do it most people can. And if it gets reduced to 1.5 bars everything about this game will be joke.

 

My sentinel on test is losing 8 major abilities most of them given to him in 1.0, not 5-6 fluff ones. He's kept cyclone slash, valor and inspiration which could be deleted from the game or turned into passive procs if reducing "# of keys" is really the main goal.

 

And again, new players start the game with ~4 buttons to keybind, not 30. Getting from 1 to 75 still takes enough time that they won't be new players anymore when they get there. But mastery is supposed to take time. People who master simple games quickly also leave them quickly.

Major props to you for hanging with this game, and I'm still thankful for the blue mastery crystal you made for me, way back when before you could just buy one. We all know they're going to do this, or it wouldn't have been announced. Something tells me they will back off their vision by restoring abilities after the fact, which is how they've handled most other major changes in the wake of massive outcry and unsubs once the expac hype boils down.

But I think the sad truth is that most developers are not very concerned about our portion of the playerbase. We're old school gamers, people who bit their MMO teeth on games like EQ1, DAoC, etc. You had to really want to play those games, and be willing to put serious time into them to play them well. That worked when gamers were a small, very nerdy, very dedicated market, but that's not the case anymore.

The world has changed. They can distribute to massive numbers of people, so they focus on the "average gamer" of that market, which is very different than most of us are. They're focused on quick cash, so they want games that anyone can jump into on the tail end of a hype wagon, pour some money in, leave for another game, and then come back when the next hype wagon arrives. So the model is "simple systems, maximum throughput (of players)".

Even with all of that, I don't think these changes are as sweeping as most of you seem to think. I lost 6 abilities from my def guardian. I'll miss all 6 of them, but it still feels like a guardian, and since I play PVP rather than PVE, everyone will be in the same boat as me. That won't be true for higher end PVE, so I understand the NM raider frustration, but I think they'll find ways to beat those encounters regardless, and if not, the encounters will be re-balanced.

If I have to buy a new mouse with 12 buttons on the side just to play this game comfortably then there's a problem. They could easily condense some abilities together by just adding in combo abilities. Lessening the ability count from 31 to maybe 25 for juggs wouldn't slow the pace of the game, but it would remove considerable ability bloat. Something as simple as removing chilling scream and placing its slow on crushing blow would work just fine. From bioware's perspective, this is all about attracting new players because more new players bring in more income. You still need to keep the old players satisfied, but that also doesn't mean you need 30 butttons per class either.

First, you can click like the majority do. You don’t have to keybind. If you do want to keybind, that’s up to you and you can choose to buy a 12 button mouse and then use shift or Alt as a modifier. Or you can just do what many do and use your keyboard.

As for culling useless abilities, most classes only have a maximum of 1 ability thats useless and some have no useless abilities. Freezing Force might seem useless to you in pve world. But it’s very useful in objective pvp situations like Hutt ball, Void Star and Hypergates. And when you consider there are 3 HB maps, it means Freezing Force is extremely useful in more than half the object maps.

If you want to suggest the most useless ability on a guardian or sentinel, then try cyclonic slash AOE. It’s completely useless in pve and pvp. It does relatively low damage for high resources and has no utility to it. It’s a wasted ability.

I keep hearing this from people on the forums, but is that really how new players feel? I'd love to have some statistics.

Hi, I'm technically not a "new" player, but I'm very casual: probably the most casual person posting here. In fact, I dare say anyone more casual than me probably hasn't even bothered to find out this forum exists at all. But I did bother to find this forum, for the singular purpose of complaining this game has TOO MANY BUTTONS.

In order to establish my "casual credentials", such as they are: I've completed most of the class stories by mashing a small number of my most obviously effective attack powers over and over, and sometimes MAYBE pressing another button to recover from being stunned, if I can bother to find it. On the rare but annoying occasion that I meet a boss with an insta-kill mechanic, I have to google what obscure power I need to use, probably for the very first time, to interrupt it.

Suffice to say, when try-hards rant about how terrible it is that you can complete the class stories "without even learning how to play the game", I assure you, they might as well be talking about me personally. But if you are asking for statistics, here are the last three achievements I earned according to Steam:

• Completed Chapter 2 as a bounty hunter (4.9% of players have this achievement)
  
• Completed the story missions for the bounty hunter on Belsavis (4.7% of players have this achievement)
  
• Completed all story missions for the bounty hunter on Voss (4.5% of players have this achievement)
  

I'm probably the laziest, least-skilled, most casual player who has bothered to log into this forum to express my opinion at all, but by the standards of an actually NEW player who decided to try out this game on steam, I'm a *********** elite veteran.

A lot of these new players try out the game, and decide not to stay. They generally don't log into these forums to explain why, but I don't think I'm going out on a limb to say their reasons fall into two broad categories: they get bored of the content, or they get annoyed by the gameplay.

As a ten year old game, SWTOR has content for miles, not to mention it's pretty much the only game in town if you want to play a Star Wars themed MMO. That leaves the game-play, and that's the part where being a ten year old game ISN'T such a great advantage.

As I've said, I've gotten pretty far in this game without "actually learning it", by the standards of try-hards. When I toy with the idea of "actually learning it", I get turned off by the fact that there are just too many buttons to keep track of. It's so completely obvious and self-evident that this is the biggest barrier to entry in the game, when you're looking at it from the perspective of someone who hasn't ALREADY HURDLED IT.

I don't think the try-hards actually "doubt" it is a challenge, they just judge anyone who fails to RISE to the challenge. I'm glad to see the Devs have enough sense to realize this "GIT GUD" mentality doesn't create an inviting environment for new players. And the new WALLETS that come with them, not to put too fine a point on it.

Suffice to say, when try-hards rant about how terrible it is that you can complete the class stories "without even learning how to play the game", I assure you, they might as well be talking about me personally.

Personally, I love the complexity we have with all the abilities at our disposal, but more than anything I want more people to play this game. I am in the crowd that wishes leveling content was more difficult, in particular stuff like heroics, which were originally designed as group content. With a nerf to all the classes, that wish may be fulfilled, which begs the question, if the game used less buttons but in turn required you to better utilize those buttons, would that be better for most casuals? In other words, would casuals be more likely to stick to the game if they had to learn how to effectively play their class while leveling but that learning process was easier than it is now?

Personally, I love the complexity we have with all the abilities at our disposal, but more than anything I want more people to play this game. I am in the crowd that wishes leveling content was more difficult, in particular stuff like heroics, which were originally designed as group content. With a nerf to all the classes, that wish may be fulfilled, which begs the question, if the game used less buttons but in turn required you to better utilize those buttons, would that be better for most casuals? In other words, would casuals be more likely to stick to the game if they had to learn how to effectively play their class while leveling but that learning process was easier than it is now?

Good questions...

Personally I would rather have lots of buttons and not need to press a few of them because either idkwtfreighter or they're simply not needed in a particular moment vs. having DCD attributes made passive and consolidated into Melee/Ranged ability buttons that if I press one moment and start a cool down, but am then targeted by the Boss and can't Defend because I blew the ability with the integrated DCD and am now screwed because of it.

I'm down for of course player agency and only stat tweaking what we have now.

To dove tail to your post, my question is: Will there be any PVP related damage reductions commenserate with the loss of Active DCD's?

As well as a updated Match Making to prevent a Damage only Meta. (We see this in some Unranked 4 v 4 where there's no healer or no tank on one team - or just 8 DPS all fighting each other.

People follow trends when the meta changes, and if they've been playing a Darkness Assassin in PVP as a Skank Tank as I do, but then don't have the ability to mitigate the insane amounts of damage output, then you've turned my 'Steel Brick' into a hollow concrete block full of a match of sledge hammers.

Personally, I love the complexity we have with all the abilities at our disposal, but more than anything I want more people to play this game. I am in the crowd that wishes leveling content was more difficult, in particular stuff like heroics, which were originally designed as group content. With a nerf to all the classes, that wish may be fulfilled, which begs the question, if the game used less buttons but in turn required you to better utilize those buttons, would that be better for most casuals? In other words, would casuals be more likely to stick to the game if they had to learn how to effectively play their class while leveling but that learning process was easier than it is now?

That's pretty much how I feel about it. I love the game as it is, but it's hard to ignore the fact that it's shrinking every year. If we could get some bodies back in game, and better yet keep some of those bodies longer than the time it takes to run a few class stories, I'd be willing to trade some complexity for better pops. I'd be even happier if in the process the base game reverted to the difficulty levels we had the first couple years. I won't stick with a game that's too easy, so I tend to think more challenge = more satisfaction = people staying longer.

Making the game simpler doesn't bring in new customers. It doesn't keep the new customers they get. And it definitely won't keep many of the experienced players.

4.0 had a tutorial interface for new players. That included toolbars with a small selection of abilities for new players to start with if they were just starting at 60. 4.0 got new players because it had great marketing (Blur trailer featured at E3 that year, there were tons of producers selling the new xpac, The Force Awakens had people excited about Star Wars again). Solo content was suddenly everywhere with bolster added to all planets and heroic 2s being able to be teleported to. It was all easy for solo players and groups. The new players left shortly after 4.0 released; they didn't stick around for the chapters.

The most successful MMOs by far right now have much more populated toolbars than this game is going to have in 7.0. The successful games with smaller toolbars have other things to complicate combat, keep it moving and to keep players focused.

My sentinel on test is losing 8 major abilities most of them given to him in 1.0, not 5-6 fluff ones. He's kept cyclone slash, valor and inspiration which could be deleted from the game or turned into passive procs if reducing "# of keys" is really the main goal.

This is something I don't understand at all. The devs clearly want the game to be easier to learn and be balanced more around casual players who will never play hard mode content or ranked pvp etc, so why are they keeping the raid damage buff on a 5 minute cooldown and valor, another ability with a very long cooldown? (albeit shorter with one new ABC passive combat sentinels get)

If anything, those two abilities should have been the first on the chopping block, but instead key abilities that make the sentinel what it is on live - force camouflage and 30s cooldown transcendence - are gated behind ABC "choices". At the rate things are going, all sense of class identity outside of doing damage is going to be gone. There'll be a melee class with one lightsaber, a melee class with two lightsabers etc rather than a guardian and a sentinel. The utilities, dcds and mobility abilities are what define the class identities more so than damage abilities imo (though ofc there is a massive difference between a gunslinger decimating an area with aoe firepower while an operative throws a few knives).

I've been taking the time to play the classes on live that have been shown on pts, levelling a new guardian and playing my marauder more. It's frustrating to see just how many things I won't be able to do anymore if all the changes go through. Simple things like using blade blitz and guardian leap to just move faster in areas where I can't use a mount and rocket boosters on cooldown, things that won't matter to the new casual player who doesn't care about min-maxing their gameplay, but means something to me. Other players might never care about some abilities and won't miss them when they're gone while others will miss them dearly having used them for up to 9 years now.

There are definitely things the devs could do to completely alleviate our concerns by changing current abilities or passives to incorporate the abilities that are going away.

Freezing force for example, it's purpose in pvp is slowing targets and popping stealthers. What if instead, force sweep/smash slowed targets over a larger radius as a passive and the Guardian just flat out gained a higher level of stealth detection considering they are you know, a "Guardian"?

Guardian leap could be combined with force charge and gain two charges baseline. This would solve three issues in one:

1.There would be one less key to use, exactly what the devs and casuals want.

2. Older players/ anti-pruners would still be able to use guardian leap as the ability would function differently on different targets. Further, with the loss of mobility tools through utilities and blade blits, Guardians would instead have two charges to make up for it.

3. Two charges also means for those who don't take saber throw, you'll build the same amount of focus in the same amount of key presses (the minimum range would also be removed allowing you to charge to gain focus within 10m - exactly how you use saber throw in some instances to build focus).

Another option specifically for raiders is to add a temporary ability bar - something we know the devs can do - that holds raid buffs. That way players outside raids (maybe flashpoints too) never have to care about their existence, but the players who use them actually get to use them. I'd prefer keeping everything as is, but this would still mostly satisfy the parties who care most about it. Final Fantasy 14 uses something akin to this - it's called Limit Breaking. Over time your party builds a meter by dealing damage, then one player can press their big limit break button to do a raid/dungeon specific ability that isn't used outside of raids and dungeons.

And these are only a few examples!! There are solutions to everyone's issues that would reduce ability "bloat" while also still enabling players to play they way they currently do. I might make a separate thread with all my ideas who knows, I have a lot of thoughts lol.

I have nerve damage in both hands and I'm no spring chicken. I only use two mouse buttons and have to disable the other ones because my grip has me accidentally pressing them. I do ok in pvp (and master mode fps and ops when I get corralled into running them). I take a little bit of pride in my handling of my characters in this game. But if I can do it most people can. And if it gets reduced to 1.5 bars everything about this game will be joke.

 

My sentinel on test is losing 8 major abilities most of them given to him in 1.0, not 5-6 fluff ones. He's kept cyclone slash, valor and inspiration which could be deleted from the game or turned into passive procs if reducing "# of keys" is really the main goal.

 

And again, new players start the game with ~4 buttons to keybind, not 30. Getting from 1 to 75 still takes enough time that they won't be new players anymore when they get there. But mastery is supposed to take time. People who master simple games quickly also leave them quickly.

Cyclone slash cannot be deleted. It is extremely useful in pvp since it spreads trauma and its cleave potential allows for tanks to pull 8k+ in warzones.

From what I saw on sentinel they removed obfuscate and awe intentionally. The removal of force choke was confirmed to be a mistake, and undying rage, predation and force camo will be optional depending on the spec. Some specs like carnage will not need predation due to the fact that they get a passive that acts almost exactly like predation except for increased crit chance and the movement speed buff only applies to them which I think is fair.

At most all they need to do is bring the number of bars down to 2.5 maybe 2. It really wouldn't be that difficult. For classes with alot of abilities like jugg tank, bring it down to 2.5. For classes with less abilities like sentinels, bring it down to 2.

First, you can click like the majority do. You don’t have to keybind. If you do want to keybind, that’s up to you and you can choose to buy a 12 button mouse and then use shift or Alt as a modifier. Or you can just do what many do and use your keyboard.

 

As for culling useless abilities, most classes only have a maximum of 1 ability thats useless and some have no useless abilities. Freezing Force might seem useless to you in pve world. But it’s very useful in objective pvp situations like Hutt ball, Void Star and Hypergates. And when you consider there are 3 HB maps, it means Freezing Force is extremely useful in more than half the object maps.

 

If you want to suggest the most useless ability on a guardian or sentinel, then try cyclonic slash AOE. It’s completely useless in pve and pvp. It does relatively low damage for high resources and has no utility to it. It’s a wasted ability.

Also another note, when pvping clicking any buttons at all is universally considered a loss in efficiency, and when you're pvping you need every millisecond. Clickers universally have almost always performed worse than keybinds in pvp scenarios. It may be different in pve due to less movement requirements. Freezing force could easily be integrated into cyclone slash, and the force cost of cyclone slash could just slightly increase.

Not to mention for some classes like skanktanking, there is simply too much going on at any given time in a 4v4 match for the tank to be clicking. I would bet on a keybinded tank against a clicking tank any day of the way.

Removing the number of buttons doesn't have to mean removal of abilities. For example you could make every 3rd sweeping slash apply freezing force. You could make every 3rd taunt an aoe taunt and change the icon when it is ready. Many other games have done this, and its how games can have multiple abilities in one keybind. Would it really be that difficult to combine abilities such as force scream and vicious throw into one ability and have the icon change depending on which one is ready?

if the game used less buttons but in turn required you to better utilize those buttons, would that be better for most casuals? In other words, would casuals be more likely to stick to the game if they had to learn how to effectively play their class while leveling but that learning process was easier than it is now?

Another game I play is Elder Scrolls Online, where you have two swappable "power trays" with six powers per tray (five "normal" powers, plus one "ultimate" power.) Thus while you're in combat you only have six power buttons plus a swap key to keep track of, to access twelve slotted powers. I wouldn't wildly overstate how amazing I am at that game, but I didn't struggle to learn what "all the buttons" do.

The class I'm closest to being half-decent with in SWTOR is Sith Sorcerer. I used to mostly just spam "force storm" over and over, but then I noticed it procced instant casts of "lightning bolt" and "chain lightning", and I took advantage of it. The list of buttons I found worth pressing expanded, and by now I'm thinking of actual strategies, like: if I've procced an instant lightning bolt, but chain lightning is ready to fire, I'll start the chain lighting first even if it isn't an instant cast, because once chain lightning is on cooldown the instant lightning bolt might refresh it, giving me two chain lightnings for the price of one.

I'm sure that's all very basic strategy by tryhard standards, but the point is that I started out by mashing a few buttons, and noticing the synergies when they happen. It's hard for me to notice the synergies that never happen, from buttons I never press because there are just too many of them.

That's how I can "learn to play", and still have fun. And if it isn't fun, don't count on me getting deeply invested in "doing it right", because I play games to have FUN.

Another game I play is Elder Scrolls Online, where you have two swappable "power trays" with six powers per tray (five "normal" powers, plus one "ultimate" power.) Thus while you're in combat you only have six power buttons plus a swap key to keep track of, to access twelve slotted powers. I wouldn't wildly overstate how amazing I am at that game, but I didn't struggle to learn what "all the buttons" do.

 

The class I'm closest to being half-decent with in SWTOR is Sith Sorcerer. I used to mostly just spam "force storm" over and over, but then I noticed it procced instant casts of "lightning bolt" and "chain lightning", and I took advantage of it. The list of buttons I found worth pressing expanded, and by now I'm thinking of actual strategies, like: if I've procced an instant lightning bolt, but chain lightning is ready to fire, I'll start the chain lighting first even if it isn't an instant cast, because once chain lightning is on cooldown the instant lightning bolt might refresh it, giving me two chain lightnings for the price of one.

I found that the hardest part of ESO is remembering what's on your backbar buttons and keeping buffs up, but you develop the muscle memory fairly quick if you don't change abilities all the time.

I don't mean to sound belittling or anything but did you look at the combat proficiency window and read what the passives do as you levelled up? Or did you learn purely by playing your way and occasionally seeing that what you did caused a new thing to happen?

If you went more so with the latter, it's probably worth developing a better tutorial system to guide new players through the game - maybe even a "rotation guide" that gives a repeatable rotation you can play at different level milestones. If the devs don't know what to write, there are plenty of good players who would be happy to do the work for them so long as it gets put in game. The new ABC system seems better in theory as you have to actively contemplate and choose each new passive/skill you get, but there are also a lot of hidden passives that have been baked into the ABC styles on PTS and I don't know how they are going to be implemented in 7.0.

it's probably worth developing a better tutorial system to guide new players

They should just get rid of those ability trainers, and make it so when you get a new level you see a BIG notification in the middle of your screen like "Your level is now X, press K to choose your character progression" and when you press

it, you will get an updated combat proficiencies window where you can choose your ABC progression, see what abilities you already have, what abilities you haven't earned yet, and at what level you can get them, so even if you never played the class you will have an understanding of what it looks like and actually start thinking about how you want to build your char. *Yes that will make Satele and Malgus holostatues useless, surely this isn't a big deal, right?)

I don't mean to sound belittling or anything but did you look at the combat proficiency window and read what the passives do as you levelled up? Or did you learn purely by playing your way and occasionally seeing that what you did caused a new thing to happen?

I'm working my way through the original story content on all classes, to unlock Legendary status. That is my goal, and I'm pretty good at achieving it efficiently. I've got orange customizable equipment for every slot account-unlocked in my collection, a well-equipped stronghold with account storage I can warp to right out of character creation, and Shae Vizla as a companion (unitl I ditch her for someone who doesn't constantly yell "clean up this mess!" and "this was too easy!")

So please understand, I'm not stupid, or unaware of how I could learn more. I'm just LAZY. When I'm starting each new alt with perfectly customized equipment and a level 20-something companion, I could probably finish the game using just the attack powers I get at level one. it's nice to have a good AOE on top of that, but it's hardly "essential", and learning how to interrupt enemy attacks is even less important. It won't speed up the rate I complete story content nearly as much as space-barring through the more tedious conversations, ignoring side-missions entirely, and keeping up my XP buff.

I have a portable skill-training hologram in my collection, and I STILL can't be bothered to check for new skills every level. When I do check, I usually have a dozen waiting for me, because if I haven't said it enough yet there are too many frikkin' powers in this game. I might take a cursory glance at their descriptions, but unless I notice a giant, high-damage AOE attack with no cooldown, why should I get exited? It's just a few more powers, in a game that already gave me too many. Time to tuck them away in a less-used toolbar, and promptly forget about them. I've got conversations to space-bar through, people!

I've always had some vague notion that once I've finished ALL the class stories, I might go back actually pick one of the classes to go back and actually learn to play it "properly". Probably sorcerer, because I've already stumbled into being half-competent at it without really trying. But even with Sorcerer, when I take a closer look at ALL the powers I could be using, it just fills me with inertia. Now that the devs are talking about changing everything soon, I'm definitely holding off on studying details of how it currently works.

 

Freezing force could easily be integrated into cyclone slash, and the force cost of cyclone slash could just slightly increase.

No, cyclone is useless as stealth popper it's range is worse and it's just a cone in front of you while freezing is a 360 around you, why would I accept a worse ability with an added rage increase to do what can already be done?

The result would be that it wouldnt be used and yet classified as another useless ability when it wasnt before it was frankensteined.

No, cyclone is useless as stealth popper it's range is worse and it's just a cone in front of you while freezing is a 360 around you, why would I accept a worse ability with an added rage increase to do what can already be done?

The result would be that it wouldnt be used and yet classified as another useless ability when it wasnt before it was frankensteined.

That or change cyclone slash to become a 360 degree attack (you're already forced into melee range, why should your aoe also be garbage) that also slows all targets hit with the freezing force effect. That way you get the best of both worlds and cyclone slash becomes a half decent ability.

It isn't my rotation, it's the totality of the gaming experience.

 

A barrier to entry, we'll have to agree to disagree on that one. There are very few things about swtor in its current state that are hard to grasp. The rotation for Fury is 12-13 inputs max. You can buy a mouse with 12 buttons on the side, literally bind your abilities 1-12 and press the buttons in sequential order. I fail to see how that's too difficult for a person who's able bodied and of sound mind.

 

Also for OP, this could help you out with Fury Mara if you haven't seen it already.

 

https://vulkk.com/2020/01/12/swtor-6-0-fury-marauder-guide-by-anatessia/

Yeah but that's not fun though, it's not playing a game in a visually rich world anymore it's a hotbar game. I can play it too, but all gameplay involves the rotation vs actually enjoying class fantasy.

Yeah but that's not fun though, it's not playing a game in a visually rich world anymore it's a hotbar game. I can play it too, but all gameplay involves the rotation vs actually enjoying class fantasy.

This is a tab targeting mmo game, it's always been about the hotbar. If anything, it's become more of a visually rich world in recent years because with the buffed companions and ease with which you out-level planets, you don't need to use all your hotbar. The game used to be way harder for casual and solo players and you needed to know rotations etc to do some of the things you can just afk for now.

This is a tab targeting mmo game, it's always been about the hotbar. If anything, it's become more of a visually rich world in recent years because with the buffed companions and ease with which you out-level planets, you don't need to use all your hotbar. The game used to be way harder for casual and solo players and you needed to know rotations etc to do some of the things you can just afk for now.

It's a new era, for a game to be competitive or get better it has to change. Again people have different preferences but to capture subs like mine you can't stay 1999 everquest forever.

This is a tab targeting mmo game, it's always been about the hotbar. If anything, it's become more of a visually rich world in recent years because with the buffed companions and ease with which you out-level planets, you don't need to use all your hotbar. The game used to be way harder for casual and solo players and you needed to know rotations etc to do some of the things you can just afk for now.

Yeah, the FIRST time I tried out this game was a long time ago, I think maybe it was even back when it was still a subscription-only game, and as you say the progress was slower and harder. This did not inspire me to rise above my slacker attitude and "git gud", it inspired me to lose interest, and find something else to play. And that was back when the "git gud" mentality was unquestioned and inescapable monoculture across the entire MMO industry: Modern casuals have a much wider variety of casual-friendly games vying for their attention, if this game rubs them the wrong way.

Much more recently, it occurred to me that my ancient account I hadn't looked at in years might still technically exist, and maybe I could give it a second shot. I was thrilled to discover that not only did the account exist, but it had been accruing a monthly allowance of cartel coins for having a security key the ENTIRE TIME, so I had a lot of fun spending those coins to kit myself out. If the game had not made the improvements they needed to retain me on my second try, I would not be here now answering grognards who ask "how do we know anyone ACTUALLY leaves because there are too many buttons?"

I think a lot of us agree that there are too many buttons. Most of us are just kind of upset over the choices they're having us make because a lot of them conflict with each other in terms of importance. Like choose between A and B, but both abilities are core Jedi Guardian abilities and you should get both of them.

 

I don't speak for everyone, but that's my consensus. I want less buttons, but I think they went a little too far.

That means there aren't too many buttons.