This Was my Last MMO

[MournelitheCalix]

I have been souring on MMO's for a while so I need to make that admition before stating anything else.  Simply put I don't think that any MMO can offer the immersive experience of a single player game.  I was hopeful in ToR and I really wanted to like it.  However after leveling a BH who couldn't seem to heal Hardmodes and now after loving my 50 assassin up to the point where I was nerfed to abject uselessness, my saga is over.

I cancelled today and though I will admit the nerfs drove me over the edge, it wasn't what brought me to the edge.  Here is what my biggest problems with the game are:

1.  Interface Lockup bug.  Every day and 3-4 times per warzone I sadly have the interface lockup bug.  If you haven't had this, your lucky and I am jealous.  This bug results in the interface locking, and you can't do anything to it except reload using Control + U twice.  Sadly I am tired of the reload time and you can imagine what being unable to respond does for you in pvp.

2.  I simply don't understand the game at all.  I tried to min max my character but without actual feedback, I found it next to impossible to understand what i was supposed to be modding with.  

3.  Customer service:  God help you if you should really need them.  My Bodyguard BH got stuck in the class quest where you have to kill two strong rebel guards that healed each other.  Simply put I couldn't beat it, I couldn't leave and I couldn't bring in help.  It was three days before the droid contacted me wanting to close the ticket WITHOUT HELPING ME OUT!

4.  Falling through the floor.  This bug has happened to both my characters, and it happens regularly. I have picked the second body type and for some reason you seem to fall through the world at an alarming rate.  When you fall through you land in this checker floor, where your stuck.  In the fleet (Empire side) you can jump off into space and you resapwn at Zeiost.

5.  I can't successfully access the content.  I almost never have the opportunity to go to a hardmode as my guild is past the first few, people rage quit if they die, and more seriously in my opinion when you do find a group chances are those people aren't as geared.  This leads to inadequate dps and rage timers that go off.  Rage Quitting follows.

6.  Every patch the game seems to get worse.  Instead of making new stuff and quashing the bugs that affect me every day, the team seems dedicated to nerfing me to abject uselessness.  The changes to Raze just destroyed the only build that I was able to find that was both unique and interesting.  It was a fatal blow to the dot assassin that I enjoyed.  Bioware seems to really be pushing Assassins at least into vanilla FoTM builds.  Which of course begs the question why give the option in the first place???

7.  The trees seem broken.  This was ampllified even more this patch.  Despite reading the raze description carefully, I have no clue how you get Raze to proc anymore.  I am not sure why its even still an option for Assassins to get other than developer lazyness.  Deception is full of uselessness throughout the tree.

8.  Did I mention that finding groups is a problem?  Well it is.

9.  Did I mention that I opened 17 champion bags and got nothing.  Well I did.  Conversely on my BH I have opened 26 bags and have 3 duplicate pieces.

10.  With Ilum broke, i can't even enjoy PvP.  I am waiting sitting around cruising forums while online because well I am that damn bored.

11.  Crafting is a joke.  If it was viable, I could at least have fun doing that but as it stands there is a lot of effort and no reward.  In this respect it reminds me of the half ass job Jessica and the Liars Ken did at Turbine with the upper tiers of armor in Asheron's Call 2.


The one thing this game does afford me is ample opportunity to relish on how much nothing there is to do for me.  I just don't see the point in paying for that.  So I am not going to pay for it any longer.  This was the last chance MMO for me as I don't enjoy the mouse wheel very much, so I think it will be SP games for me from now on.  

GL to those still playing and I hope things improve.

[Thrawn]

Investing heavily in an MMO eats up so much time anyways and you miss out on so many good SP games.  I've still got a lot of "hit games" I missed while playing WoW that I haven't gotten around to playing.

Enjoy the angry posts you'll probably get telling you to just go away because you're trolling the STWOR forms.  

[Paelos]

Absolutely not. He's spent a good amount of time playing the game, put in the honest effort, went in with the right mindset, and had legitimate problems with the game.

The only thing I can say in response is that hard modes are a lot of fun when you get people to enjoy them with you and have the time.

[Rokal]

I have been souring on MMO's for a while so I need to make that admition before stating anything else.  Simply put I don't think that any MMO can offer the immersive experience of a single player game.  I was hopeful in ToR and I really wanted to like it...

Not a single one of your complaints that follows has anything to do with your summary of your problem with the game from the beginning of your post. It's just the same list of nerf nerd rage and UI/bug complaints we see for every MMO launch.

I mean, you could have made an interesting post. Then you didn't.

[Margalis]

Not a single one of your complaints that follows has anything to do with your summary of your problem with the game from the beginning of your post.

Constantly falling through the floor has a way of breaking immersion.

Edit: That said, I don't look to MMOs for immersion.

[ShenMolo]

I'm souring on MMO's because after 14 years they have become boring.

I mean really, it is the same thing in all the big money releases  isn't it?

After the initial rush of Star Wars universe novelty, this one wore off after about 3 weeks.

[Merusk]

Re: "Stop trolling"  Yeah, what Paelos said.  Continuing to come in and post the same one-line or one-note posts when the topic veers anywhere near your personal vendetta? Trolling.   Saying "These are my issues, this is why I stopped," and then either leaving or only part in the conversation as it ebbs and flows, not.   It's internet 101, I fail to see how anyone can come at it differently.

That said, I haven't encountered any of those bugs, Morn.  It's weird that you've encountered them all and so frequently. Is there something about your machine that could be causing it? An older rig? A tweaked OS? Odd hardware?

The falling thing is a total cock-up, yeah.  I've seen other complaints about it even though I haven't experienced it.  My Marauder is BT2 and hasn't fallen once, though.  Which is what makes me wonder if it's a processing thing.. like a poly flakes out on a user's PC and fwiip there you go. 

The textures that seem to get blown or flicker quite often are my peeves.  Well, that and the incredible number of clipping problems that seem to happen with Twileks on Republic side.  My consular keeps clipping her chest through her robe for some bizarre reason during cutscenes.  It's irritating and drops you right out of the scene.

Mostly it sounds like you're burnt on the genre, though. I suppose that's why you chose the "last MMO" subject.  The nerf/ buff cycle is inevitable and yes, it sucks to have picked two opposite sides at the wrong times.  I've done that before and it's burned me on a game long before it should have. There's always those who, despite being vets, still don't see it coming and rage when it happens I guess.

As Margalis said, I don't play these for immersion.  It's all about the other people and/ or the loot grind and endgame experiences.   TOR is lacking on the endgame experiences right now and I don't have the time for loot grinding like I did in my late 20's and early 30's.  C'est la vie.

[amiable]

Well, I am glad folks are taking my advice from the predictions thread.  But remember I requested these posts be accompanied by a youtube video of your character dying repeatedly in PvE/PvP with a voiceover explaining why this game is terrible.  Get on that, chop, chop.

[Sjofn]

All my dudes (three of them, and I've played two to 40+ and the other to 30+) ( ) are body type 2 and I've never fallen through the world either, so whatever it is fucking that up, it's proooobably not the body type.

[tmp]

Haven't had a single case of falling through the world either, be it body type 2 or the other ones.

With the mentions of run hacks and such wonder if the character movement isn't left for the client to handle, and so maybe that's a side-effect of the hardware/client falling behind when stressed more than it can handle, or smth.

[Paelos]

I've never fallen through the world once or had a locked ui.

I've been locked up on a conversation before, that's pretty much it. And some error 9000s.

Also for some reason last night, the game just logged me out mid-convo. That was odd.

[Nebu]

Well...

- I get the UI locks all the time, but they seem to only occur in pvp. 
- I have also fallen through the world a couple of times (body 1 and body 3 toons), so it doesn't seem related to the body type. 
- I have opened well over 20 bags in a row with no gear.  It's the RNG. 
- Crafting is a joke.  I've decided to quit bothering with anything but treasure hunting/slicing while leveling and biochem at endgame. 
- Ilum is broken and it's a disappointment.  I'm actually more disappointed in the players than Bioware.  Ilum could be fun if the players chose to make it fun.  Instead, they are all chasing a carrot. 
- The UI is fine though I hate the changes that came with the last patch.  Now I can't tell when some abilities are up and it tells me that my channeled abilities are cancelled when they really aren't.
- Customer service is a joke.  Two guys in my guild have had to resubmit the same ticket on 6 different occasions (by CSR request) and the runaround is laughable.

Still... I manage to find the game entertaining and worth the $15 a month.  Yes, the game has some problems. Yes, it appears that Bioware got in over their head by making this an MMO when it could have been a spectacular single player RPG.  Yes, it seems that we're seeing another reskin of tired old mechanics. 

I'm having enough fun to keep playing.  That's all I care about right now.   

[Surlyboi]

I'm sorry you don't like it. I'm still having a blast. Then again, I'm not looking for the same things you are, so that could be why.

I've never min/maxed any game because I never saw the point. I'm not playing to dominate all comers, I'm playing to enjoy myself and min/maxing is just to goddamn much work.

Hardmodes? Never done one, probably never will. Again, I've got better shit to do and people rage quit over the stupidest shit, so yeah.

The only bug I seem to run into consistently is the auto run after a conversation bug and the occasional getting stuck in or booted out of an instance, all of which I can live with.

PvP? Fuck that.

I will agree that finding groups is definitely a problem. I tried to do Maelstrom Prison yesterday and failed to get even one other person to join me.

Again, I'm sorry that this game was the straw that broke your will to MMO and I do agree the genre has gotten a bit stale, but I'm still enjoying my time, so I will end this with the obligatory, "Can I have your stuff?".

[Paelos]

Yeah I'm starting to immediately put the quitting posts into two categories:

1 - They quit over pvp, and I ignore those.
2 - They quit over content lack, and I respond to those.

[Raknor]

Sorry to hear you're having so many problems Mour. I've never had half the stuff you wrote about happen to me.

One of your items listed is about Ilum kills not counting. That was patched this morning and should be fixed although I cannot confirm since I'm at work.  If I'm not mistaken that is only like 24 hours after it being broke. Annoying but not horrible. My guild has a few people that live around the Bioware campus and know a few of the employees there. Although the employees don't/can't talk about the game much, I was told last night that PVP in this game is a very sour subject with them.  They (Bioware) know they got it incredibly wrong and Ilum in particular is getting alot of focus.

Min max thing, yeah its hard with no combat log but there are plenty of posts by people who like math in the forums.  I know my buddy who plays an assassin used a guide in the official forums last night and was loving the spec.

Hard mode enrage timers are a bit tight. That I cannot disagree with. But with just about every MMO I've played, its a gear check. Some fights are healing checks as well. Sounds like your group/guild mates needs to either gear up a bit or work on their spec's a bit. I also get the feeling you don't like the guild you're in? That usually goes a long way with my enjoyment of a game.

There have been several posts about crafting from Bioware.  Changes are coming. You certainly aren't the only one who doesn't see a point to them currently.

I think pretty much everyone can agree this game was rushed to go live.  I would expect some pretty drastic changes to happen to each class as they try and make it "better". 

[Nebu]

Yeah I'm starting to immediately put the quitting posts into two categories:

1 - They quit over pvp, and I ignore those.
2 - They quit over content lack, and I respond to those.

I can understand people leaving for both reasons and I don't have a problem with either.  

1 - Star Wars is a galaxy in conflict.  I was expecting the game to capture at least a little of that given the names working on the design.  So far the pvp has been a big disappointment.  Not really in terms of class balance or gear grind, but in terms that it has been put on rails just like the rest of the game.  Generating an interesting battleground wouldn't have taken much development time and could have kept a decent number of people busy for months. Ilum was pretty poorly conceived and implemented.  Allowing players to only participate in 3 warzones, with no choice in which they get to play, was just lazy.

2 - If you're quitting over the lack of content, you're not experiencing the content.  I've made this complaint in the past and I've had to re-think it.  There is a ton of content in this game in terms of the class story lines.  The only downfall is that you have to repeat quite a few quests in order to experience it.  The addition of the space combat was also a nice diversion for players.  The endgame flashpoints do get old rather quickly, but the raids can be quite fun if you have the bodies to complete them.  Short story: There is plenty to do if you seek it out.  If you're unhappy with your choices, then quitting the game is a good call.  Noone should pay for a game that they don't enjoy.

  

[Mrbloodworth]

I know I'm burnt on MMO's, especially those of the same type. But it has nothing to do with the idiosyncrasy or the buggy state of each title, but more to do with the commonness and sameness of those titles.

That's all I really have to add.

[Sky]

I have been souring on MMO's for a while so I need to make that admition before stating anything else.  Simply put I don't think that any MMO can offer the immersive experience of a single player game.  I was hopeful in ToR and I really wanted to like it.  However after leveling a BH who couldn't seem to heal Hardmodes and now after loving my 50 assassin up to the point where I was nerfed to abject uselessness, my saga is over.

I cancelled today and though I will admit the nerfs drove me over the edge, it wasn't what brought me to the edge.  Here is what my biggest problems with the game are:

1.  Interface Lockup bug.  Every day and 3-4 times per warzone I sadly have the interface lockup bug.  If you haven't had this, your lucky and I am jealous.  This bug results in the interface locking, and you can't do anything to it except reload using Control + U twice.  Sadly I am tired of the reload time and you can imagine what being unable to respond does for you in pvp.

2.  I simply don't understand the game at all.  I tried to min max my character but without actual feedback, I found it next to impossible to understand what i was supposed to be modding with.  

3.  Customer service:  God help you if you should really need them.  My Bodyguard BH got stuck in the class quest where you have to kill two strong rebel guards that healed each other.  Simply put I couldn't beat it, I couldn't leave and I couldn't bring in help.  It was three days before the droid contacted me wanting to close the ticket WITHOUT HELPING ME OUT!

4.  Falling through the floor.  This bug has happened to both my characters, and it happens regularly. I have picked the second body type and for some reason you seem to fall through the world at an alarming rate.  When you fall through you land in this checker floor, where your stuck.  In the fleet (Empire side) you can jump off into space and you resapwn at Zeiost.

5.  I can't successfully access the content.  I almost never have the opportunity to go to a hardmode as my guild is past the first few, people rage quit if they die, and more seriously in my opinion when you do find a group chances are those people aren't as geared.  This leads to inadequate dps and rage timers that go off.  Rage Quitting follows.

6.  Every patch the game seems to get worse.  Instead of making new stuff and quashing the bugs that affect me every day, the team seems dedicated to nerfing me to abject uselessness.  The changes to Raze just destroyed the only build that I was able to find that was both unique and interesting.  It was a fatal blow to the dot assassin that I enjoyed.  Bioware seems to really be pushing Assassins at least into vanilla FoTM builds.  Which of course begs the question why give the option in the first place???

7.  The trees seem broken.  This was ampllified even more this patch.  Despite reading the raze description carefully, I have no clue how you get Raze to proc anymore.  I am not sure why its even still an option for Assassins to get other than developer lazyness.  Deception is full of uselessness throughout the tree.

8.  Did I mention that finding groups is a problem?  Well it is.

9.  Did I mention that I opened 17 champion bags and got nothing.  Well I did.  Conversely on my BH I have opened 26 bags and have 3 duplicate pieces.

10.  With Ilum broke, i can't even enjoy PvP.  I am waiting sitting around cruising forums while online because well I am that damn bored.

11.  Crafting is a joke.  If it was viable, I could at least have fun doing that but as it stands there is a lot of effort and no reward.  In this respect it reminds me of the half ass job Jessica and the Liars Ken did at Turbine with the upper tiers of armor in Asheron's Call 2.


The one thing this game does afford me is ample opportunity to relish on how much nothing there is to do for me.  I just don't see the point in paying for that.  So I am not going to pay for it any longer.  This was the last chance MMO for me as I don't enjoy the mouse wheel very much, so I think it will be SP games for me from now on.  

GL to those still playing and I hope things improve.

Can I have your stuff?

[Threash]

Even with all the extremely valid complaints the "nerfs wah!" whining always gives me a l2p noob visceral reaction.  If nerfs bother you then yes you are better off staying away from MMOs.

[Khaldun]

For me the issue is less what's not working (though for the record I've had most of these issues except for the UI lock myself at some point) as I honestly do accept the usual fan-defender trope that all MMOs or in fact any multiplayer title is buggy at launch and will need six months of patching. On patching and fixing, all I ask is that it go in the right direction--when an MMO starts to break more than it fixes or when fixes betray that the live management team doesn't even remotely understand the cultures of play that have sprung up within their game--then that alone is a reason for me to quit, as it tells me that there is no future to the game. I don't feel I have a sense yet of whether the SWTOR team is going to get their sea legs and move things towards technical and design improvements.

The real issue for me is more what Bloodworth points to: the underlying mechanics and design premises of DIKU-derived MUDs are unsalvageable even if Jesus, Zombie Steve Jobs, Brainiac 5, Christopher Nolan, Leonardo da Vinci and 10 quadrillion dollars were involved in designing one. There is just something fundamentally off about the whole idea--and I say this as someone who has played virtually every one ever produced and enjoyed many of them. But I consider myself like an aficionado of sumo wrestling or curling or John Cage music in this sense: it's a weird, broken art form, an acquired taste. It's a thing I do but I don't ever expect that more people will do it in the future and I honestly don't think they should. In many ways, it would be best if they died out so that something potentially better at scratching this itch could rise in their place. I think that as far as subscription games go, SWTOR is not just Mourn's last MMO, it's the world's last MMO. Maybe Guild Wars 2 will be, if you decide that the sub fee is just a business model rather than an intrinsic feature.

I'm a bit of a broken record on this point in my crowd of game-studies neckbeards, but you have to think back to when people were playing UO, AC, EQ. Remember how we used to talk lovingly about "second generation", "third generation", etc. MMOs to come? The expectation was that somehow they'd leap the fence of the DIKU-derived mechanics and we'd be "living in a world"--that the relationship between play and setting would become more seamless, the environments more richly appointed and boundless, the AIs more complex and lifelike, the combat more twitch-like if not fully FPS in its design, the affordances for organizing guilds and groups better, the ability to build in and affect the terrain and the world would expand dramatically, and so on. Some of the "next generation" of MMOs feinted or stepped in one or more of those directions and generally fell flat on their faces, sometimes because of the fecklessness of designers or live management, but always also because DIKU mechanics simply do not support any of that evolution and they never could. Nobody can fix PvP in a DIKU because it will always pit people whose primary skill set is "I have a lot of time to dump into playing this thing" against "I have good reflexes and understand tactics" against "I just want to have some fun". That is not just Bartle-type differences in player psychology, which is what Raph has inferred at times--it is an active creation of DIKU-styled mechanics, a playstyle Frankenstein wandering the moors looking for children to push into a lake. Nobody can fix balance: it is broken by design. Nobody can patch in a changing, interactive world: the move to extensive instancing is a natural, sensible response to the design paradigm.

The only way MMOs will grow from their senescent, Alzheimer-y sickbed is to start over. EVE, for all that I really just can't get into it, has better lessons to look at. Or Wurm. Minecraft has things to teach, so does Dwarf Fortress. Skyrim and RDR have lessons too. Maybe even Zynga, though I think most of the lessons are the "Do not go to Z'ha'dum" kind there. Somebody is eventually going to figure out how to scratch our itches in a way that feels a lot better, and maybe not just those of us who actually like sitting around picking at the scabs.

[Crumbs]

Ok if Sky can do that one liner then surely I can do my derptastics:

We're burning out on MMOs because we need a duck whistle.  Remember in the SNES Zelda, when you spent enough time walking around you got the duck whistle.  "You've done this walking around shit for long enough.  Fly from place to place now so you don't die of boredom." 

MMOs in general need to achieve universal duck whistle.  Even with new games, we've fucking explored the map.  We've leveled.  We don't need to do these things again.   Developers should know full well what has produced longevity and customer satisfaction.  Car manufacturers don't sit around and say, "Sure, the windows roll down in Chevys.  Do ours need to though?  Can't we wait a few years to roll out that feature?"  Study the fucking genre and streamline this shit. 

I agree with Mourne's post, but I still hold out hope that someone is going to give the genre a duck whistle.

[Threash]

The problem is people continue to blindly copy WoW and missing the point that WoW was a massive step forward from what we had previously.  Voice acting doesn't give me the "this feels so much better" feeling that just going from griding to quest based leveling did, or flying on gryphons from place to place instead of getting sodomized by a wizard for a port.  There was a sense of wonder and newness when playing WoW that made it feel "next generation" compared to all the games i'd played before that everything since then has completely missed in order to be just like it.

[Hawkbit]

achieve universal duck whistle

Has meme potential.

I'm very burnt on MMOs; but I'm not ready to be done with them.  I have only been subbed for a month to various games since the mid-WotLK period.  Prior to that, I was constantly subbed.  

I have hopes that GW2 will break the cycle for me.  If not, I don't see another potential contender.  I might start getting into CCG/LCGs more instead.  

[Nebu]

We're burning out on MMOs because we need a duck whistle.  Remember in the SNES Zelda, when you spent enough time walking around you got the duck whistle.  "You've done this walking around shit for long enough.  Fly from place to place now so you don't die of boredom." 

I'm hoping that the legacy system is a means of obtaining the duck whistle or at least a way to freaking holocall in some of the quests.  The running, particularly below level 14, seems like a really unnecessary timesink.

[eldaec]

Quick travel needs to drop to a 5 minute resuse or less.

Your ship needs a quick travel terminal.

From the ship you need to be able to quick travel to any planet.

[Lantyssa]

- Ilum is broken and it's a disappointment.  I'm actually more disappointed in the players than Bioware.  Ilum could be fun if the players chose to make it fun.  Instead, they are all chasing a carrot. 

The psychology behind this is why PvP should not provide more power as a reward.

[Malakili]

- Ilum is broken and it's a disappointment.  I'm actually more disappointed in the players than Bioware.  Ilum could be fun if the players chose to make it fun.  Instead, they are all chasing a carrot. 

The psychology behind this is why PvP should not provide more power as a reward.

Couldn't agree more.  Particularly in gear centric DIKU type MMOs.  I've been burned too many times at this point to expect it to ever happen, but if someone manages to put together a good system, I'll dive back in head first.

[Paelos]

- Ilum is broken and it's a disappointment.  I'm actually more disappointed in the players than Bioware.  Ilum could be fun if the players chose to make it fun.  Instead, they are all chasing a carrot. 

The psychology behind this is why PvP should not provide more power as a reward.

But the problem is that when you win you get more stuff. Otherwise, nobody would have ever tried to conquer anything.

The problem is that nothing gets actually conquered, and that everyone can move at all to the winning side.

[DraconianOne]

The expectation was that somehow they'd leap the fence of the DIKU-derived mechanics and we'd be "living in a world"--that the relationship between play and setting would become more seamless, the environments more richly appointed and boundless,

Quick travel needs to drop to a 5 minute resuse or less.

Your ship needs a quick travel terminal.

From the ship you need to be able to quick travel to any planet.

 

[Xuri]

I'm a bit of a broken record on this point in my crowd of game-studies neckbeards, but you have to think back to when people were playing UO, AC, EQ. Remember how we used to talk lovingly about "second generation", "third generation", etc. MMOs to come? The expectation was that somehow they'd leap the fence of the DIKU-derived mechanics and we'd be "living in a world"--that the relationship between play and setting would become more seamless, the environments more richly appointed and boundless, the AIs more complex and lifelike, the combat more twitch-like if not fully FPS in its design, the affordances for organizing guilds and groups better, the ability to build in and affect the terrain and the world would expand dramatically, and so on. Some of the "next generation" of MMOs feinted or stepped in one or more of those directions and generally fell flat on their faces, sometimes because of the fecklessness of designers or live management, but always also because DIKU mechanics simply do not support any of that evolution and they never could. Nobody can fix PvP in a DIKU because it will always pit people whose primary skill set is "I have a lot of time to dump into playing this thing" against "I have good reflexes and understand tactics" against "I just want to have some fun". That is not just Bartle-type differences in player psychology, which is what Raph has inferred at times--it is an active creation of DIKU-styled mechanics, a playstyle Frankenstein wandering the moors looking for children to push into a lake. Nobody can fix balance: it is broken by design. Nobody can patch in a changing, interactive world: the move to extensive instancing is a natural, sensible response to the design paradigm.

The only way MMOs will grow from their senescent, Alzheimer-y sickbed is to start over. EVE, for all that I really just can't get into it, has better lessons to look at. Or Wurm. Minecraft has things to teach, so does Dwarf Fortress. Skyrim and RDR have lessons too. Maybe even Zynga, though I think most of the lessons are the "Do not go to Z'ha'dum" kind there. Somebody is eventually going to figure out how to scratch our itches in a way that feels a lot better, and maybe not just those of us who actually like sitting around picking at the scabs.

+1

I really do wish someone would take a step back and create something that is an evolution of UO in the same way WoW was an evolution from EQ, instead of trying to evolve WoW into ... well... better/different WoW.

[Morfiend]

For me right now all those problems are secondary to the "OH MY GOD MY EYES" GCD thing implemented last patch. It really makes playing the game unenjoyable for me, and also makes my eyes get really sore quickly from constantly looking through that blue haze to the very dark grayed out skill behind.

I fucking hate it with a passion. Two other people in my guild are refusing to play anymore until its fixed. I have been playing less also. The UI should fade in to the background not distract and obscure the info you need.

[Ingmar]

2.  I simply don't understand the game at all.  I tried to min max my character but without actual feedback, I found it next to impossible to understand what i was supposed to be modding with.  

I don't get this one, at all. Yeah not having a way to parse dps or whatever is annoying, but it sounds like your problem is a little deeper than that.

[amiable]

For me right now all those problems are secondary to the "OH MY GOD MY EYES" GCD thing implemented last patch. It really makes playing the game unenjoyable for me, and also makes my eyes get really sore quickly from constantly looking through that blue haze to the very dark grayed out skill behind.

I fucking hate it with a passion. Two other people in my guild are refusing to play anymore until its fixed. I have been playing less also. The UI should fade in to the background not distract and obscure the info you need.

You know some folks form my guild say the same thing, but myself?  I didn't even notice they made a change...  (I play a Medic IA and rarely look at my bar because I have no reactionals and I have a good sense on my 30 and 60 second cooldowns).

[Ingmar]

I find it completely awful and distracting on my JK, but don't really notice it on my smuggler. Probably down to how spammy they both are and the relative numbers of things-with-cooldowns.

[Paelos]

I find it completely awful and distracting on my JK, but don't really notice it on my smuggler. Probably down to how spammy they both are and the relative numbers of things-with-cooldowns.

Yep, it's nightmarish on my JK as well.