I just wanted to create a post to post all of my feedback on the game so far. I'll edit this as I have more. The red areas are not necessarily bad things, but just some things I think are the most important regarding that feature. I don't expect any testing member to actually read this, but I hope that someone from Bioware does and collects this feedback. I have tried to limit my feedback to certain game mechanics or systems that do not seem fun or to be working very well, and have tried to stray away from the wishing of certain content to or not to be in the game such as complaining that there aren't enough Warzones, or there isn't Player Housing etc, although I may have failed at this in certain areas.
Light / Dark Points:
They only appear to have one purpose at the moment. To limit certain gear. I thought the point was that we would see interesting interaction with this? That being lighter or darker would open up additional dialogue options, and that there would be other fun and interesting things. So far it just seems like a really lame way to block you from using certain gear.
Not a fun mechanic in it's current state.
Social Points:
Okay, so I get these for group dialogue options. Cool. It seems you get 2 points per person in the group (assuming you win the roll to speak), so if you're in a 2 person group, you get 4, 3 person group you get 6, and 4 person group you get 8. I don't really get the point of these at the moment though. It seems to be just another way to limit access to certain gear. There seems to be no other reason for them. I would imagine the design intent is to try and entice people to group together by offering these, but the problem is, unless you are spending the majority of your play time grouped, you aren't going to have enough Social Points to buy the gear at the appropriate level. I've done a lot of grouping and I'm still way behind on Social Points by Tatooine - I'm behind from the start to be fair.
The main flaw with these points though is not the system itself, but the way the game pushes you away from people into your own phased areas far too much. Some single player phased areas, quite frankly, are just too big.
Overall there needs to be some change to make these fun. There also needs to be an easy to understand introduction to these fairly early on.
Valor:
Yet another type of points system. Valor seems to currently do nothing. My guess is that when all the PVP gear is in, that it will function like Social Points do, and be a crude blocking system to block you from accessing gear until you have reached a certain amount of it. As you have "Requires Social IV" etc, I expect to see "Requires Valor VII" etc. I hope I am wrong as both systems are dull and uninspired to be fair. In PvP at least, if you plan to block players from some of the best gear - this is not the way to do it, ultimately all this means is that you have to farm and grind, which no one likes. Having a system that rated you based upon your skill in Warzones would be better - you currently get awarded with Badges or Emblems (not sure of their name) when you complete certain objectives in a Warzone, this is a cool mechanic, and limiting gear based upon this system would be far better, as it would simply mean those that play better would get access to better gear, rather than those that can muster up the will to farm the longest. I don't mind Farming or Grinding in places, but remember, it's supposed to be fun too.
This is obviously speculation though, as Valor doesn't seem to be fully implemented as I say.
Warzone Commendations:
In regards to this, I am talking about the commendations you can give to people at the end of a Warzone. When you end a warzone, you can currently select one person to award. Everyone gets to do this (I think), and you can choose anyone on your team apart from yourself. Players can be commended by multiple other players. What do you get for this? From my understanding, you get more Valor and More PvP Commendations (the tokens to buy PvP gear). Perhaps you get more Credits and Experience too, but I'm not sure on that.
There is a huge problem with this. It's just asking to be exploited. I would love to know how you plan to avoid people joining with their friends and simply commending each other for faster gains? It's a cool idea in theory, but in practice it's just a way to give certain people an easy advantage over others. It's bad. Super bad.
This needs to go. So long as it gives you anything worthwhile, it will be exploited, and without anything worthwhile, it will be ignored.
Warzones:
I like them so far, they're cool, but there is something that isn't clear, and worries me a little. Are the rewards you earn from Warzones static? By which I mean, If, for example I was level 10 and did a Warzone, and then I was level 30, and did the exact same, the warzone turned out in the exact same way, would I get a higher amount of Credits, Experience, Valor, and PvP Tokens? I am perhaps not clear with this, but at the moment, it seems the only scaling factor limiting your "earnings" is how well you and your team performs. Here lies a problem for me. If, at level 10, we can perform the absolute best, and get, say, 5000 experience, then at level 40 do the same and again only get 5000 experience, this doesn't really seem fair. I think the rewards should be relative. As the cost of things goes up, and the experience requirements to level goes up, so should the rewards from PvP, likewise with Tokens, I expect PvP items to cost increasingly more tokens as you get to higher levels, but obviously, as such you would earn more from each Warzone at higher levels.
If it already works like that, then ignore me - I simply haven't fully checked that out yet.
With the actual Warzones. They're good, they're very different from one another. I think the Alderran one, so far is the best. The Nar Shaddaa one has one problem for me, at the edges of the map there are currently barriers, so the only way to get to the score line is to go up along the metal pathways, that's fine, but the Barriers seem a little lame, I'd rather the terrain were simply at a different height there really. I have no reasoning for this, I just don't like it. The map as a whole though, is a little bit confusing, I think there is too many metal pathways at the moment. There is just too much going on in that area.
The respawn point for Nar Shaddaa is a little too far from the action, it should just be at the top of the ramp you have to run up, where the "gate" is blocking you at the start of the game.
Alderran is good, but I can't figure out the point of being able to go under the center capture point - I think it would be more interesting if there was a way to boost power to the turrets, but from secondary objective points. By which I mean, for example, if the middle cannon could be powered up for increased damage by activating something in the tunnel that passes under the central turret. Perhaps it would complicate things a little, but I have seen several people so far, including myself at points, ending up just sitting at a base, waiting for someone to attack it. That isn't very fun, but then you need someone there so someone can't just ninja cap it or so that you can call for reinforcements if people do actually try to take it. I don't have any solutions, but it would be nice if there was a clear gain or reason not to sit around by turrets waiting for people to attack. What I mean is, waiting and defending like that should be the wrong way to play, because it's not fun sitting there waiting others are going and beating up other people.
I would also like to get back into the fight quicker on Alderran, the speeder down is cool at the start, but I shouldn't have to do it each time I die.
The Voidstar is okay, but it's basically the same thing three or four times, and then the other team's turn to do the same thing. you "capture" the first point you "capture" the second etc. It's a different animation, but the mechanic is effectively the same. It would be interesting if there was no bridge over the huge abyss in the second area, and the main objective of that room was to destroy the central pillar which would knock it over and provide access to the other side, and thus the bridge. Obviously it would need a health bar, and the defending side would have to stop the attackers for as long as possible from blowing it up.
Companions:
To start with, there should be a way to customise the hairstyle and "face paint" of your companions. I'm not so keen that I see about 30 Kira's a day, the fact that they just say "<player's> companion" as their unit name is good, it shouldn't show their name in the tooltip though. The main problem though is that despite different gear, they still have the same head. There isn't currently a way to customise your own character after you have made it, but should there ever be introduced a "barber" or "plastic surgeon", they should definitely cater to companions too. There are several Astromech models for example too, it would be nice to be able to use a different one. Use different colours for him too (Perhaps the latter part exists, but I haven't seen any T7 looking different from any other so far).
Equipping companions. Oh my is this terrible. I have several major issues with this, part is in the UI, part is in the gear itself. As a Trooper, the latter part is fine for some companions, Mr. Thundercat uses Heavy Armor, just like me - so I can happily give him my old gear when I'm done with it as I am levelling. This is not always the case though, it's mostly not the case. From a story perspective it makes sense that my Droid of course can't equip pants, but from a gameplay standpoint, it is annoying. Some quests only award gear for certain companions. I think typically people tend to favour one companion mostly, at least I do, so it's quite annoying to see gear for a companion I never use (save to go on gathering missions for me). It's also super annoying that I can't give most companions my old stuff. Secondarily, the interface for equipping items is terrible. There are too many comparison tooltips, if I want to equip my companion, I need to be in my ship, or he needs to be with me. If I happened to have my companion window open before looking at an item, it might show as not being usable for me because it's using my companion as a base - It will also then defaultly equip items to the last character opened on the character window, so it's easy to end up equipping your companion with something you meant for yourself instead.
I suggest two things. Companions should simply derive their stats, damage, healing etc. from a portion of your own stats - that way, as you get better they get better. It makes it much easier. They should, however, still allowed to be equipped with gear, but have it serve a purely cosemtic function. Then you could only ever show comparision tooltips for your own character, and always defaultly equip items to your character when right clicking on them. Of course there would also then too be no armor requirements for items either, other than their respective slots, so if I want my companion in the heavy armor I just gave up, I can.
It would be nice if my Companion would automatically assist nearby group members in combat too, obviously this would need to be an activated permanent ability, by which I mean like the "Passive" ability, there would be one called "Assist" or something. Something I've found while healing on my Sage so far is that my Lizard doesn't seem particularly interested in helping my friends. There appears to be a distance limit at which you can target enemies from too, so I can't send him to attack enemies that are at a distance from me, it would be nice if this targetting limit was removed.
Companions seem to have a line or two they will say upon entering a certain area, for instance Aric, the Thundercat Trooper companion will state that he has never been insdie the Senate Tower time after time when entering the area just outside it. Having been inside the Senate tower multiple times, this is quite annoying. Having companions say things about certain areas is cool - it's not cool if it makes you just facepalm at how stupid they are though. I think the playing of certain statements should only occur once, having Aric constantly say that he has never been inside the Senate Tower, even despite just coming from there is too much, this should only really play the once. If I recall, T7 says something like he should have had an oil bath before going to the senate tower, this is okay to repeat - every now and again, it's still not fun to repeat it upon every visit there.
Limit the amount of times statements about certain areas are played, and where appropriate make them only play the once.
Commendations (Coruscant Commendation, Taris Commendation etc.):
Wow. This system is a little unrefined at the moment. One thing I really like is that you can trade in old commendations for the new tier at a rate of 2 for 1, that's good - why you can't trade in Esseles for Coruscant ones though, I don't know, at a rate of 3 for 2 would work if 2 for 1 is too harsh or 1 to 1 is too much. There are several problems with the system though. Firstly, they take up inventory space. Why? The inventory space is severely limited as it is, and extremely expensive to expand. They certainly should simply be tucked away on an interface panel somewhere.
Having an interface panel that would store all your "points" systems in one easy to read place would be ideal. Store all commendations as points there, as well as listing Valor, Social Points, Fleet Commendations and so on.
I'm not too sure how I feel about the fact that they do not bind to you. On the one hand it's cool that you can then easily equip an alt, it also makes the argument for my next point a little weaker. I do not like at all that when you are in a flashpoint, when a commendation drops, it is rolled and only one person wins it. This is okay in the nromal world when you are getting world Commendations such as Coruscant's Commendation etc. as you have plenty of chance to get those while playing alone too, but in Flashpoints you are always going to be there with a group, considering you might only run the flashpoint once or a handful of times, you may end up not having enough commendations to even buy anything. This is why they should probably drop for everyone, or they should be tradeable for an equivalent tier of world commendations. I would rather that you simply allow commendations from flashpoints to be traded for equal level or similar level world commendations than making them bind to players and drop for everyone, simply for the fact that it's cool that you can level up alts and gear up alts by playing a little bit with your main - I would also like it if you could downrank commendations because of this too, by which I mean trade commendations of a higher level down to a lower level; to prevent it getting ridiculous, you could allow this to only be a 1 to 1 transfer though, so you don't end up gaining 2 commendationseach time you downgrade a Commendation.
Lightsaber Ambient Lighting:
This is a very minor thing, but I noticed that lightsabers do give off light on surrounding objects, but only if said objects are very close to the weapon. I personally really like this effect, it would be nicer if the fall off was slightly further, just so that the effect could be seen a little more - but by this I do not mean that the effect should be more intense, the light it gives off at it' most intense is just perfect, it should just affect a slightly larger area, as it is very cool. Though if it gets to Clone Wars Dooku vs Skywalker, then we've gone a step too far.
😛
NPC AI:
Most NPCs exhibit typical MMO behaviour at the moment. They are linked into groups so that if you attack one, the rest of that group will come, but others, not linked to that group will not engage with you unless you enter their aggro radius. They often wait around in predefined positions and wait to be attacked. Some have patrol routes that appear to also be predefined. Having some NPCs linked in groups is fine, and having some static is fine, why are they all standing around though? If we are pushing story, it would make more sense that they would be doing jobs. I see occasionally a Droid that appears to be fixing a computer or picking up rubbish on Coruscant, this is cool, guys Scavenging things, I want to see more of this. It seems though that most of the enemy NPCs are just sitting waiting for you to come. I cannot fathom the purpose, story wise, of having so many people waiting around and spread around an area. If they're going to be there, there should be a logical reason for it. Even if they are just sitting on benches slacking and talking, they should look like actual people, and not just big red targets.
If I attack an enemy, and there is another guy that can clearly see me, why isn't he helping? Why don't the patrols call for backup? They're patrollers patrolling an area, doesn't it make sense that they would call for backup? Of course there needs to be a limit, but at the moment it's far too common NPC placement. Grouped up packs of enemies in groups of 3-4 littered around with the odd Patroling enemy in between them, and it hasn't changed much so far in my experience.
There are certain areas that feel alive and work because you have friendly NPCs that are walking around, looking busy, you have some talking to each other, lounging around on benches and so on, and then you have enemies working on machines and other neutral NPCs scavenging for scraps and so on, it makes it feel alive, but then there are other areas where the friendly NPCs are just stood in positions, doing nothing, they are just standing there, and then the enemies are doing just the same, clumped into groups of 3-4 spaced nicely apart.
NPCs need to feel alive. Give them something to do when they aren't being mauled to death. Having lots of NPCs doesn't make the world feel alive if they are all static and lifeless.
Combat (AI & Animation):
The combat AI so far is pretty good on the whole - I like that ranged enemies often seek cover in all sorts of objects, some times this bugs out and they run so far they can't even attack me, but it's a rare occasion that this happens. It feels strange though when I jump in and am hitting a guy with my lightsaber and he's just standing there shooting at me with a blaster, It would be nice if they either attempted to continually keep at range from me, or if they would simply switch to a melee weapon. Likewise it feels strange when I'm shooting some guy that runs up to me and is trying to hit me in the face, though I'm not sure what solution there is to the last part really.
The Combat Animation is good, although it does have a major problem at the moment. This is primarily with melee attacks. Some attacks will cause you to slide along the floor into the correct position for the animation to play out, this is really jarring, and I don't like that it moves me. I don't know how to deal with this, but this particular aspect could do with some refining. It's the only real part of the animations that stops me from being immersed in the game to then focusing on the fact that it looks strange.
Phasing:
When I first started playing, I thought this was a pretty cool idea, no need to sit and wait for the quest mob to respawn. In experience though, what you often find is it isn't just a quest NPC, it's a whole area that is phased. Some of these are really huge and expansive, a large amount of them taking over half an hour to go through, and there is quite a lot of them. Add in all of the smaller areas and your class quest areas, and you spend an awful lot of time in phased areas, segregated from other players.
My main problem with phasing is the extent to which it is used. There are a lot of group quests where there are a few Strong and Elite type NPCs in an area that leads into a phased group area that is several times larger. Often there will be little to no objectives in the quest for the non-phased area, and the majority or all of the quest will take place inside the phased area. Often this entails killing a lot of enemies enroute to a final location, perhaps shutting off some computer terminals or something like that along the way, occasionally there is an NPC to talk to, before some final showdown with a boss. A lot of this could be unphased, bonus quests would likely have to be reduced somewhat, but a dynamic respawn rate would be far better than phasing so much of an area. If there is an NPC dialogue at a certain point, why not have a phase entrance to phase into that spot, then phase out of it on the other side into a shared area, you could have a single group phase area then split into multiple shared world areas with occasional small phased areas for important parts of the story such as the bosses or other objectives. This wouldn't necessarily work in all cases, but it would mean that while you are in your group you might see another group and it would make the world feel more alive than making you feel so very alone.
Phase resetting is a huge issue too. Some group areas are quite challenging and they reset the moment you all leave, so if you all die, someone has to wait inside the phase to keep it active. This is not fun. It forces everyone to just have to wait longer, either that or have to clear through lots of enemies again. If phases were much smaller, this would be less of an issue, if phases are to remain as large as they are, they should not reset until perhaps 30 minutes of no one being inside it, or if specifically set to reset from a UI menu.
While this is only a game test, I often find myself feeling like I am playing a single player Bioware RPG with a chat box. The group quests feel more of a nuisance at the moment than something to look forward to, and with everyone being put into their own phases so often, it's not really surprising that I don't see many people outside of the quest hub areas.
Space Combat:
Isn't it a little too hard? I know I'm not the only one that thinks so based on the threads I've seen so far. This is my main issue with the Space Combat at the moment. It's too hard and not rewarding enough. There is also no tutorial. It's not hard but it would be nice if the load screen at least would be unique for Space Combat and would show a basic mouse / keyboard image showing what keys do what. It should also be more rewarding than it currently is, generally more experince from it, consdiering the length of the combat, and certainly it should start out at a much easier difficulty.
I noticed the galaxy map shows the difficulty of the mission. Why not allow you to choose the difficulty yourself of the mission on the Galaxy Map before flying to it - it would show how many commendations, credits and experience you would get for the selected difficulty, and obviously you would get increasing amounts of each for harder and harder settings. This way, you could have an easy mode that gave a relatively low amount of rewards, but for those more skilled, you could give more rewards. Adjusting the amount of damage enemies do, and their health to adjust the difficulty shouldn't be too hard.
Cantinas, Capital Planets/Cities, and the Living World:
At the moment, there seems to be little reason to go to Cantinas, or even to your Capital World after you have completed your questing there. You can collect mail from other planets, post and collect auctions, train, and you even buy level appropriate gear with commendations on other planets.
While having people always just sitting around in Cantinas and Capital Planets would perhaps be a step too far - it would be nice if there was a reason to regularly visit the Capital Planets and to "hang out" in Cantinas.
I'm not necessarily suggesting this idea, but would there really be such an inter planetary postal and auction system? It would seem to make more sense to me that auctions would make more sense planetary bound, and as such only on Capital Planets, and that mail with items could only be collected on Capital Planets too - while mail without items should simply be sent to your ship's communication device. This would force people to regularly go back to Capital Worlds. I think most people will not like this idea, but I think that is mainly due to how annoying it is to go from one planet to another, having to often run for a long distance through a spaceport then into a lift, and some mroe to your ship, to then have a load screen, run to the galaxy map, select another planet, have another load screen, then have to run again to another lift, have to run some more for a long time etc. It takes a little too long - there certainly shouldn't be any need to have to load TWICE to go to a different planet. Anyway, I'm going off on a tangent. This suggestion is perhaps not the best, but it would give purpose to Capital Planets. Right now Coruscant feels so pointless.
It would be nice if Cantinas provided an increased rested experience rate while you are in them and logged in. By which I mean, if rested experience ticks at 1exp per minute while logged off it should tick at 2 exp per minute while logged in inside a cantina for example. There should be mini-games in cantinas, and it would make more sense if Social Vendors were in cantinas as well as Companion item vendors.
Most of this is requests, I'm sorry, but there really does need to be an improvement here some how, Cantinas and Capital Cities just feel pointless and lifeless, rather than hubs that I find myself often drawn to and often having to visit.
Looking For Group / Guild Interface / Who Interface / Friend Panel:
The Looking for group system really should have it's own interface area. It's cool that people are tagged as LFG in the Who window, but there should be a unique LFG window. You should be able to more easily search people LFG, you should be able to LFG any quest or multiple quests, flaspoints, warzones, planets etc. You be able to run a search for people that are looking for a group for a quest you want or whatever.
People still need to interact with one another and people should still have to form groups themselves, talk to other players and find their way to the locations themselves, but it should be easier to find other players that are interested.
When you pick up a group quest, it should ask you if you want to tag yourself as LFG for that quest, so you don't have to worry about doing that right now - who knows someone else might be actively looking for people and see you on the list and ask you then.
Camera Controls:
The camera could be a little easier to use. It currently doesn't have a very far maximum zoom option, the maximum zoom should be at least twice as far as is currently available. The changes to Camera Height and Field of View are cool, but there should be a way to reset them. I'm not sure why you can change your Field of View though at all, it distorts things a lot, and it feels quite strange when being on your "mount" and then getting off and having the FoV suddenly change. I think the FoV changing should probably be removed in favour of a much larger Zooom instead, combined with the Camera Hight options, it should be more than fine to maintain a decent visibility on "mounts" too.
There most certainly should be an option to adjust how the camera controls itself. The camera by default will automatically rotate itself to a position behind your character whenever you move, while some people may like this, it can be quite disconcerting to others, especially those that like to look around the combat area. I'm thinking here of being a tank at least. With the current camera controls a Melee tank that wants to watch out for adds or take care of his ranged friends will want to rotate his camera so he can see them occasionally, but it always snaps back behind him, some times rotating around enemies to be able to see your group isn't an option.
There should be an option to define camera snapping. Always on, Only when Moving, Off always.
Another minor thing, but in a lot of cases when you rotate the camera to face upwards, a lot of the time it may partially submerge itself below the ground, this is particularly noteworthy on hills or areas with water, where the water seems to disappear, I think the pixels are only drawn on one side for water, I know Water is a minor thing, but either the camera shouldn't be able to pass the surface of water, or water should be drawn on both sides.
Group Coordination:
At the moment, coordinating in groups is not the quickest or easiest of tasks in the world. Assigning CC to packs can often take a while, it would be nice if there were a simpler way to do this, being able highlight an area, object or NPC would help greatly with coordinating people with one another. As an aside to this, possibly this is too much, but it would be nice if AoE effects did not hit NPCs that are afflicted by long duration CC's such as the 60 Second Force Lift. Troopers have a lot of AoE abilities, while I feel some of them don't spread far enough, it's often the case that CC will get inadvertently broken by AoE damage. Having to line-of-sight enemies is fine in some cases, but in others, there aren't readily available corners or objects with which you can get out of line of sight to force the non CC'd enemies to come closer, away from the CC'd ones.
Options:
While I have no doubt that most of the options regarding Graphics are not currently available, it would be nice if there were additional sound options, these may or may not be coming, so I wanted to make this point. It would be nice to choose which sound device to output sound from. At the moment I currently have a sound card and my on board sound, I use my sound card for my speakers, while I use the on board sound for my headset. Why? My headset uses jacks and my girlfriend and I usually watch things on my other screen while playing, so we have sound from what we are watching from the speekers, and sound from the game in our headset. I'm sure I'm not alone in this, and it shouldn't be too much of a complicated thing.
It would also be nice if there was an option to choose which Monitor to start the game in, a lot of people I know these days use multiple monitors, it would be nice if the game would automatically load up into the one I want, or possibly be able to spread across both.
Character Creation:
It would be nice if you could select and lock "face paints" to have multiple different ones active at once. Eye Brows, Eye "face paint", lips, and then all over "face paint" should have separate options. Color choices should have a colour wheel that opens up allowing you to choose any colour you want, perhaps for the eyes have the colour wheel a little more limited, so normal humans don't have purple eyes for instance. This really needs to be done for hair though, as Bioware never seems to get Blonde hair styles right, they always look like some dodgey yellow coloured sick on your head.
It would also be nice if there was a little more customisation to hair styles, it seems a lot of hair styles are built upon multiple components, such as something on the back of the hair, something perhaps on the front as a fringe of sorts or something, some thing on the sides, and the base hair style. For instance, you can have a Leia type hair style, or that can easily turn into a pnytail. It would be nice these were separate and you could pick and choose, so you could get the fringe that is available in one style, and the leia buns and make something that doesn't currently exist.
Weapon Slots:
Another minor thing, but something I always wish would be in games is, why can't my character be left handed?, if only there were a little button in between the main hand and off-hand to swap them, making your character left handed instead. It's purely a cosmetic thing, but again it would make characters seem a little different, something that is always good in MMOs.
General Interface Issues:
- UI Scaling, specifically text, subtitles and the chat window font. There really needs to be an option to change this. I would like the Subtitles to be twice the size they currently are, my girlfriend isn't English and needs subtitles to fully understand what is being said when people talk fast, even still some aliens' subtitles skip past a little too fast as well, being bigger it would at least make it clearer and easier to read. To read the chat window I have to really move much closer to my screen, without any background I often have to adjust my camera so there is something dark behind the text so that it is clear and even then, it's far too small for my liking. There certainly needs to be scaling options here.
UI Scaling in general should be here to be honest, in contrast to the text, I find the action bar buttons are far too big and I would be more than happy if they were even half the size they currently are.
The quest log can overlap the right action bar, often it does, with as little as three quests the top few buttons are overlapped. It's really bad.
All frames should be movable, by which I mean Inventory, GTN, Character, Bank, Trade, Mail etc. all of these windows should be movable. Separate, but related to this, the persistent frames, such as the Minimap, Action Bars, Unit Frames should all be movable and positionable, similar to how you can move the raid frames about and then lock them. Action Bars should be customisable as either horizontal or vertical bars.
Unit Frames should have a bit more customisation, and there should be additional unit frames that you can enable, such as target of target, party's targets, companion's target. You should be able to set the height and length of the bars, as well as choose to display text on them showing either current health, defecit health, current health/maximum health or health percentage - the raid frames can currently show current health on them, but there should be at least all the other options I listed too, and you should be able to set these for all unit frames. You should be able to disable portraits. Finally, the target unit frame should disappear when you don't have a target, it's just wasting space without a target.
Certain keys cannot be keybound or bound to different things. I should be able to bind the key to the left of 1, \, and the middle mouse button. No idea why the middle mouse button makes you walk backards, when ever has that been the case? Let's stick to keeping things similar shall we please? We already have the S key, do we really need to be forced to use another one? Seems like you guys really want us to Backpedal in this game!
Chat Window - while I went over text scaling, there is far more that needs to be said specifically to the chat window. The whole frame should be movable. At the moment, you can move an individual chat tab around (not that it saves it's place), but you cannot move all of the frames, there will always be at least one frame stuck up there. Each and every frame should be independant and be able to be moved anywhere. Any frame should be able to dock into another, allowing you, if you wanted, to have one chat window with two tabs, and then on the the other side of the screen, another chat window with two tabs. You need to be able to create and delete chat tabs, and customise what channels are displayed in them. You should be able to customise text colour too with a colour wheel. Why are a lot of the channels surrounded by speech marks? It's quite disconcerting, remove that or add an option to remove it. Time Stamps would be nice too. Optionally disabling the combat log entirely should be possible too.
The top center menu should collapse out of view unless your mouse is there. There should probably some small arrow indicator showing that it is there, and some way to notify new players that it's there. The phase owner can still be displayed there, but also collapse up with the menu.
The Actionbar, binding and (lack of) macro system really need to be changed. There are many people that like using modifier keys for multiple abilities, as in having Q, Shift-Q, Ctrl-Q, and Alt-Q bound for 4 different abilities. While some people may like the option to have 4 separate buttons on screen for those, there are also those that would simply prefer a macro that would allow them to do the same thing, but have it only on one button space. Personally I find it easier to keep track of abilities when they are like this, rather than when I have all the buttons spread out across four action bars.
Macros in general really need to be in, not just for assisting in key binds, but there are many useful features of macros. For instance, having a macro that has a predefined message can save people a lot of typing, such as giving out your guild's Ventrilo information (yes I realise no vent during test, but I am making an example for retail). There are also other similar uses such as you could create a macro that when pressed will automatically reverse engineer a specific item, for instance, if you are crafting a lot of a similar item, you could create a simple macro to just press over and over to reverse engineer them. It would be easier than finding them in your bags and right clicking. Convenience more than anything is the name of the game with Macros, I'm not suggesting we should have macros as they are in other programs where they record your input and play it back automatically, allowing you to automate playing the game, I'm talking about simple commands, as seen in WoW's macro system.
Ultimately, this all leads me to: Addons. At my last check, the only information regarding the allowance of addons was "
not at launch". The UI in it's current state lacks many features, a lot of which I haven't yet mentioned, but will try to get to with time, but ultimately, with such a game, there needs to be UI customisation. Not everyone (particularly me), likes the Cyan colour scheme for instance. Giving people the tools to create their own UI that suits their needs would be far easier in the long run than trying to provide all of those tools. Especially if TOR becomes popular. While many people deplore addons and believe that they are terrible things, because they were harassed by idiots with damage meters, or forced to use boss mods that provide them with useful information (I don't understand that, but okay), I still believe that ultimately, it is easier to give people the UIs they want by providing the tools to create those UIs. There is one major thing that everyone needs to remember here though. Bioware has the ability to limit access to any data they see fit, or expose only the data they want to, so if they think that boss mods make the game too easy, it wouldn't be too hard to ultimately not expose the data that would allow Boss Mods to work - In WoW at least they look for certain events, a lot of the time events related to the boss, it wouldn't be too hard to mark these events as protected and disallow addons from reading these events.
Addons ultimately allow users to get the exact UI that they need. Tanks want different things to Healers, and DPS will find most of the things Tanks and Healers want absolutely useless. While the Base UI is currently more than fine for the average (Non-PvP) DPSer, it is severely lacking for PvPers, Healers, and Tanks. Sure, they open the possibility to bad addons, but it's your own choice ultimately to or not to use such addons. Many complain that they had to use such addons, but why? If you find certain addons so annoying, don't use them, and if you're playing with people that force them, find a group of like minded individuals (there are certainly enough of you), and form your own group, and don't use them. There are so many addons out there that improve so much upon the base UI, from adding little features of searching your inventory to totally customising action bars, unit frames, minimap, chat windows, everything cosmetic, and they often add many unique features that some people love and feel lost without, while others can't see the importance of. Ultimately Bioware only has so much resources and time to spend on UI Development - which features do they implement and which do they not? How do you justify implementing one thing over another? Ultimately not everyone will be happy, and for some the UI will be a dealbreaker, but allowing addons, giving tools to create addons can allow a whole plethora of possibilities, allowing many more people to be happy and get all of the features they want out of their UI. Let's not forget there are also those that want even less from their UI than is in the stock UI, having an ultra "minimalist" UI.
Ultimately there are so many benefits to allowing addons, while any of the negative aspects can easily be limited and controlled by Bioware if they are worried of certain addons or if there is evidence that the majority detest the idea of specific types of addons like Boss Mods.
I also have a few bugs to note:
Chat, typing and casting:
At the moment I am currently having the following bug occur. Let's say I have an ability bound to the 1 key. If I open the chat edit box to write a message, and the first thing I press is a key that is bound to an ability, in this case 1, it will try and cast that ability. No, I am not being special, it does this only on the first key press after opening the chat edit box, and does it every time you open it, but as I say, only on the first press. So If I open the edit box and press 1, then 1 again, it only tries to cast my ability once. I should point out that the first key press does get entered correctly into the chat, so pressing 1 once will result in a 1 in my chat box too, as expected, it's just not expected that it try to cast an ability.
I have repeated this bug multiple times and it appears to affect letters, numpad keys and the number row above the letters too, I haven't checked about other bindings obviously such as pressing home or anything.
Chests:
This is more of a bug than anything. Some times I would notice that after looting from a chest, and everything had been looted, I could loot it again and it would have more, new loot in it. After testing it out, I believe the key to making chests generate more loot is as follows:
1. You must be in a group.
2. The chest must have an item that can be rolled on (green etc.)
3. Open the chest, select Take All to initiate rolling for the item(s).
4. Before everyone has rolled on the item(s), exit the looting window and hover over the chest.
5. The chest should light up again indicating you can open it.
6. Start Opening the chest before everyone has rolled on the item(s).
7. Make sure that before the cast to open the chest has finished that the item(s) have been awarded.
8. If you did it right, you started to open the chest again before all the loot from it was given out, and so when you open the chest, you will now, instead of seeing an empty chest, see a chest filled with new items.
I have repeated this process over and over. I have managed to repeat it on the same chest up to 6 times so far, after a certain point I get unlucky and only have grey/white items in the chest, or I open it too soon before all the items are awarded.
The key is starting to open it before the last green item is given to someone, but making sure that the cast ends after that point. To ensure this, you simply wait till your whole group has greeded, you start opening it, then you immediately press greed on the item yourself, forcing it to be immediately looted to someone.
This severely needs to be fixed before Retail or it will be exploited loads and gold sellers will be loaded.
