So right from the get go I'll be getting into what has aggravated me with the horrible development decisions made this expansion but excluding a lot of other known issues as these I would still tolerate if my main concerns had not been so infuriating/severe. Those main aggravations being 2 primary things;

1. The Story

The complete either laziness or inability to actually develop story that this game deserves. The golden age of Story for this game has been KOTET and KOTFE. Since those, there seems to have been just a complete lack of interest in good story telling or whoever was hired to create these stories has since been fired or left. Not only have the past 2 expansions story been utterly devoid of any reason to get emotionally attached to what I'd hoped would be good stories. Characters have no real character building, hard to do that in story that is a total of 2 hours (an hour for imperial side, an hour for republic). The story itself seems like a high school kid in theatre is writing it, kind of no real direction or vision of what he/she wants. And the fact it's so short is rage inducing having been so excited and hopeful for what it could have been. There is seemingly no effort or ability to put in the effort for a fully fleshed out, cohesive, captivating story....

WHERE IS EA why are they not investing in this game??? DO THEY NOT UNDERSTAND PLAYERS SUPPORT A GOOD PRODUCT. Of course you will feel the product isn't worth investment when you continually shaft the game and players know there isn't any real support being put into the game. This game has such potential but it is utterly squandered by EA's lack of interest in making it great. A perfect example of a game that 180'd since leaving their producer who was in contract with them in my opinion is Bungie's Destiny 2. Since leaving Activision, the priorities in what the product needed was shifted from financial to the product itself. And over time you can now see that investment away from financial gain has not only given the game new life and content worth while, it has by proxy been a huge financial win for the company who does not need Activision to fund the game because the product is now GOOD. The disdain I hold for EA (And Activision frankly) is beyond words and is an entirely separate topic of discussion, but my disdain certainly, CERTAINLY is here for good reason.

2. End Game Gearing/Progression

With the changes that were made in 6.0 I believe with the gearing system being mod upgrades over time until you reach the cap (306) and then investing in set items with beneficial buffs coupled with a new item called a Tactical. Now the tactical's still remain, but the set items and progression system are completely ruined to what they had been pre 7.0.

Development could have built off the gearing system they already had (for the love of GOD DO NOT FIX WHAT IS NOT BROKE). Adding more new sets for 7.0, new tactical, maybe the ability to mix and match sets to create unique builds. The set items in combination with tactical and the path's you can take to increase your character level (Power) being able to do whatever content you liked was already perfect (imagine how much better it'd be with regularly released new FP's / Raids on a 3-6 month basis and expansion yearly. WOULD BE SO GOOD). I commend developers who want to take risks and come up with something new/better, who are wanting to make improvements to the game in new ways. But honestly the "new" gearing system seems lazy, not revolutionary. Not even slightly worse or better. Unequivocally worse and bad to what was there before 7.0.

I am dumbfounded by the changes that have been made and how poorly those changes are. There are good additions to 7.0, but those are completely overshadowed by the failures, and those failures frustrating players are multiplied by the lack of content and investment the game is getting, shafting the game and its player base. Your Fans. Your support.

I PRAY this game can make a turn around and get the investment needed to make this game great. It still can be and not doing so is so foolish of EA. They are blinded by quarterly earnings and either have no interest to begin with or have no ability to understand "A Good Product Means Customers Means Profit." because the financial department is running the company and the product has slowly degraded over time. Seemingly their Motto is "Most profit for Least Amount of Effort". My brother and I loved this game, the memories we had, and the time invested in it while it was good/okay, knowing the games potential and where it could go kept us playing. Now we have both lost all hope. This is year 5 of a severe content drought now coupled with absolutely horrible game changes. I cannot believe there are more then 5 people in development working on this game. And if the developers are purely only able to do what EA allows them to do and their hands are tied then I truly feel horrible for them and my hearts go out (I hope for their sake that is the case).

The story was best in vanilla game, and got slowly worse as the various expansions were released.

Agreed. When they merged all the stories into a single story is when it really went downhill. To me most of KOTET and KOTFE doesn't even make sense for non-force users.

kotfe was the beginning of the bad writing

Really? I thought it started with RotHC. Class-specific storylines stopped with the first expansion, it was just one universal narrative, and Makeb's storyline only took me two hours to complete. Hutt Cartel was a pretty sorry excuse of an expansion for how little we got out of it.

Shadow of Revan was better, though I feel like it damaged his character lore quite a bit.

Really? I thought it started with RotHC. Class-specific storylines stopped with the first expansion, it was just one universal narrative, and Makeb's storyline only took me two hours to complete. Hutt Cartel was a pretty sorry excuse of an expansion for how little we got out of it.

 

Shadow of Revan was better, though I feel like it damaged his character lore quite a bit.

Length =/= quality. RotHC had a cohesive story that, sure, deviated from what we had beforehand, but it was an already planned continuation. A well executed one at that, though them leaving the gay planet alone since has always bothered me. I'd love to return. There was never, as far as I am aware, long term plans to maintain 8 different class stories and pinning that on -that- expansion makes no sense when damn near everything else barring a single mission on Rishi has done the exact same since. Also, Makeb was only 1 part of the entire expansion. We also received Oricon, Dread Fortress, Dread Palace, Macrobinoculars and Dread Seed questlines, CZ-198's 2 flashpoints and actual attempts at class/content balance. That expansion is a dream compared to now and trounced everything that came after in terms of content imo because they didn't have to worry about scaling as much back when cap was 55.

SoR was the beginning of the end. You say RotHC was bad because of universal stories but SoR literally did it worse lol Flip Tython and Korriban's orders and the in-between conversations on fleet during the Forged Alliances storyline and its the same. Manaan? Same. Rishi? Same. Yavin? Same. Yeah, a little flavor that makes Theron or Lana be your main lean, but it literally was the exact same for both Republic and Empire. I don't even think SoR was bad content-wise. I played every day, made a lot of new friends, and it felt fresh to do things. But my god was the story bad. They effectively sh*t on the character that solidified their place in Star Wars canon and only made up for it with Echoes later on, which is still plagued by other choices imo.

Yeah, 7.0 was even worse than Shadowlands in WOW.

Took a lot of effort to accomplish that.

While I also found 7.0 ruined the game for me, I think the death knell to story was KotFE/ET. The story was incredibly uneven and extremely trite. (The time jump, sidelining companions, focusing on cartoon villains instead of our characters, ham-fisted retcons, and all-round silly nonsense!) There were bright spots, but too much was a boring slog to make me want to replay it. The story after was no better and suffered from the same deep flaws, and the traitor arc was just disastrous. Ossus went bad in new ways. I hate the way they fractured the story into multiverses. The recent story has been so boring and inconsequential, it's hard to remember what happens from one "beat" to the next. Even capturing Malgus was completely meh.

In sum, the story has been pretty bad for awhile now and getting worse, but I still love and replay the earlier stories. The kick in the teeth is the way 7.0 damaged the non-story parts of the game I enjoy.

I liked conquest the way it was, now it's so painfully slow for solo players, and the rewards are so neutered, there is no point in trying for it on more that a couple of characters a week. Old conquest motivated me to play a daily here, a weekly there because they were rewarding enough that they were worth the boredom to receive a noticeable amount of conquest points. Now? I'm not going to waste my time for a drop in the bucket.

I love collecting thigs. Runaway inflation has made it impossible to get the handful of cartel items I lack on the GTN. End game looting is the most boring in any game I've ever played. 6.0 gear sets are ridiculously had to collect now, and collecting them competes with getting new gear. And to add insult to injury there was a whopping one new style added, and even that can't be dyed. (I am looking forward to the planetary gear vendors in 7.1, but they didn't add in the old starter planet sets which were what players were actually asking for. They forgot about Quesh, and they left off the tank variant sets. Once again a half-assed job that Bioware will consider good enough, but at this point we have to be grateful for any crumbs tossed our way.)

I like making outfits and documenting gear for Tor-fashion, but they broke the item preview and STILL haven't fixed it! I can't fully zoom in on details or re-position so I can see helmets so I can't take proper screenshots for the website.

In sum, the story has been pretty bad for awhile now and getting worse, but I still love and replay the earlier stories. The kick in the teeth is the way 7.0 damaged the non-story parts of the game I enjoy.

quoted for truth.

I don't think anyone expects great story comparable to the original class stories (not the writers fault, just a time/money commitment that vanilla got and no expansion since has had).

Still, 6.0 was in a decent place for endgame, for all players, and classes were balanced well enough that every class and spec was, if not NiM/Ranked viable, at least HM capable.

7.0 ... someone needs to remind the dev's that a player who doesn't do operations or pvp is not always bad at the game. Some players notice when the gear you give our dps/healers is high endurance garbage geaer.

I refuse to spam GSF or NiM Nefra just for decent gear when I don't care for either activity, and MM flashpoints, the group activity I find the most fun, are in a terrible spot compared to 5.0 and 6.0.

TLDR: the current endgame is not enjoyable for me. I subbed for the end of GS, but can see no reason to continue subbing after my month is up.

The story was best in vanilla game, and got slowly worse as the various expansions were released.

In terms of the Golden Age of storytelling quality, I meant KotET and KotFE were much higher quality at the very least you can tell at least there was time investment where the original class stories, which I do love, were about the same in story quality save for whichever of the classes you subjectively liked most (I liked Agent and Inquisitor the most myself). If the original stories writers also wrote every story after, with the quality investment similar to what KotET and KotFE were (in terms of theatric quality being more cinematic like and great for the story telling imo). At the end of the day what you like and don't like for story is subjective, but i feel it gets to a point where everyone can agree how lazy the investment for Quantity/Quality was for RotHC, SoR, Onslaught, Legacy of the Sith the only ones that showed effort were originals and KotET and KotFE. In my opinion. It's depressing because ultimately, if the story is somewhat bad, like i can forgive that if they are trying to give in quantity/quality, but that's also nonexistent. And even then, if the story is not sensible, and cohesive, with proper character building so you actually care about the characters similar to companions in the base game, then even bad story telling can only be tolerated for so long even if quality or quantity existed. Professionals should have their **** together though and be able to meet all of those expectations imo. It's a damn shame.