So, I've been playing Star Wars for a while. And I like it. Most of it, but after a month and half of playing, I'm starting to see more of what I don't like. And it's hardly enough to keep me from playing, but it has made me drop out of the Civil War.

1. Temporary Enemy Flag (TEF) & Covert Factions
The most glaring problem with SWG without a doubt is their attempt at compromise with PvP Factions, namely, the Galactic Civil War that is at the heart of the story line. The designers obviously wanted to include options for consensual PvP and came up with an interesting idea. Anyone that has chosen a side can still be perceived as neutral by others not in their faction, thus remaining safe from attack, and likewise, remaining unable to attack players of the opposing faction. They call this "Covert Faction" and it is the state of which all players are defaulted to once they join a faction and every time they are brought back to life via cloning. (ie, not revived by a player)

However, the loopholes present in this system are obvious: could a covert Rebel could still heal their combat brethren in battle against the Evil Empire, and remain invulnerable from attack? Well no, because of the TEF system, that makes a Covert member of a faction open to a first strike by an overtly declared member of the opposing faction. Under TEF, any covert that attacks a fractioned NPC, heals an overt member of his own faction, heals a TEF'd member of their own faction, or sneezes around an overt member of their faction can be attacked with impunity by an opposing faction member, yet cannot attack until engaged. The best thing: there is no way a player will know when they are TEF'd short of being attacked.

With attacks in the game that can incapacitate a player in one strike, however, it opens the door wide open towards griefing. Dedicated healers are often the people that suffer the most from the TEF system, as there are no safe zones for healing (outside of perhaps a player structure or a faction base), and the people they're healing are often not in well enough shape to defend against someone attacking the medical center... over.. and over... and over...

What TEF ends up adding to the guerilla war is an endless cycle of griefing and revenge. At least it's realistic.

The solution? Improvements on the TEF system will make people feel a bit safer about being covert, not like random targets. Make players aware of their TEF status; first off, the restriction is silly, especially given that healing an overt imperial 15 minutes prior in the middle of the Dune Sea without a soul around for 4km in any direction allows a person to be attacked by a passing enemy. Make TEF require visual confirmation; if you don't see someone healing that Imperial soldier, you shouldn't be able to attack. Make medical centers "cease fire zones" with countdowns to safety and peril in both directions. Make attacking a TEF give a TEF to coverts so that covert members cannot be picked off one at time with no ability to defend their allies.

2. PvE Dependence on Creature Handlers:
The old motto of PvE design is if you want to make things harder to fight, you just jack up the numbers. Higher end MOBs are thusly, harder to kill, and are better at killing you. Star Wars takes this to an entirely new level: some of the highest end monsters can deliver one shot incapacitations to groups of players at once, making the need for healing a frantic race against time, and more importantly in terms of balance, making the Creature Handler the supreme PvE force in the game. Player tanks are unheard of in Star Wars' PvE game, making the defensive character only suitable for situational PvP. A top level Creature Handler can control pets with Health/Action/Mind (HAM) bars in the 9000s, with better natural resists than most armor can provide. A novice in the Creature Handler department, with a paltry 16 points into the profession, can control a critter with damn near 5000 HAM, 5 times better than an unbuffed player's HAM. Docter buffs can top a player out around 2000 in the Health and Action pools. No long term buffs exist for the Mind pool (see below).

What this does is make the Creature Handler profession an almost necessity for any combat profession that wants to solo (and since there are no true group missions, every combat profession will want to solo at sometime or another for money), and an absolute necessity for group hunts, which, while admirable, waters down the 8 pure combat professions (4 melee elite professions, 3 ranged elite and the commando class) to simply being different means of delivering damage. Combined with the interclass lack of definition between melees (see below), this makes CH a needed support profession for anyone that still thinks cutting things up is the best way to give them a case of dead.

The solution? Tough call on this one. Maybe give melee professions a bit more love in the defensive areas, allowing them to perform special "riposte" maneuvers that creatures do not have. Reduce the cost of melee special maneuvers and give melee attacks a chance to knockdown or force posture. Make being within the range of someone with a 6 foot long pike something to be avoided at all costs.

3. The AFK Entertainer Problem
My pet problem. The Entertainer professions, more specifically the "Performer" subclasses, Dancer, Musician and aspiring Novice in those professions, are without a doubt one of the most revolutionary new ideas to force socialization between players, and alleviate the doldrums of downtime. Mind-related wounds can not be directly healed; it requires the presence of an Entertainer in a cantina or campground to regenerate these wounds. The higher the skill of an entertainer, the faster these wounds are healed. It makes no difference how many people are watching the entertainer, either, a performer can heal 1 or 100 people at the same rate. The hope of the developers is quite obviously that the professions will attract the more social players who will use the given animations, musical effects and visual effects to provide a truly entertaining experience for others.

Oops. The only problem is that an Entertainer is just as effective, from a game play perspective at least, away from the keyboard using the built in macro system to provide flourishes (which only serve to give experience to the entertainer) and even to attempt (given the increase in hostility from "live" entertainers) to pass the Turing Test by throwing in emotes and catchy jingles.

This has had many effects: the most glaring is the instant division of the Entertainer community on the issue, the most serious being the reduction of two of the most interesting professions of the game into nothing more than wound healing bots, with no rewarding game play experience for all but the most dedicated. The former has reached levels of cattiness that would make even the most bitchy diva cringe, the latter bodes poorly for a game that many fear will simply descend into a rotten hive of Bounty Hunters, Commandos and Creature Handlers and their Doctor/Dancer bots. Solution? Give live Entertainers the means to buff mind stats with a bit more permanence. Bots might always be around, but give them something active to do, and the life span of live entertainers will increase to match that of the other support classes.

4. PvP Balance: Mind Damage
Out of the three pools of damage, only mind damage cannot be healed directly, it must be regenerated naturally, or for Zabrak players, increased via the once-an-hour special ability Equilibrium. The mind pool can also be targeted, meaning that snipers, heavy swordsmen and Bounty Hunters (and especially Bounty Hunters) can with ease incapacitate people with no way of their targets being healed. For riflemen, this is balanced by the poor accuracy at all but the longest ranges, slow rate of fire and the fact that rifles take more than double damage at close ranger. For swordsmen, it's extremely difficult to land a melee attack anyway, and closing the gap is more than half the fight.

However, for Bounty Hunters, the attack can be made with a pistol, the most versatile of all weapons in the game, with a fast rate of fire, decent damage and little to no accuracy penalties except at the most extreme of distances. The almost-aptly named "Eye Shot" is perhaps the single most devastating attack in PvP, fast mind damage that's almost impossible to counter if you're not prepared for it, which, given the number of Bounty Hunters there are, isn't a bad idea, really.

Solution: I'm not one to say this often, but nerf the hell out of Eyeshot. Give it an accuracy penalty (hell, you're shooting the guy in the freakin' eye, even against a Mon Cal this should be extremely difficult!) and make it just as difficult to hit as landing a rifle shot at less than 50m or a sword strike.