I've been blabbing away
I was playing a Jedi Shadow. My friend was playing in the previous beta weekend a Sith Infiltrator. We both ran into the same issue. Basically the stealth classes SUCK in this game right now compared to all other classes. Stealth is such a joke. Normal agro range is about 20 meters if an enemy is looking at you and about 15 meters if the enemy is facing away. With stealth on the enemies can still see you. For equal level enemies and from what I can tell up to 4 levels below you, the enemies can still see you up to 10 meters away if they are facing you. Now stealth works great if you approach from behind. The enemies, regardless of level that I could tell, will not see you if you approach from behind while stealthed. There is a problem though as most spawns of enemies are 3-5 in size with them facing always in opposite directions. Which means it is impossible to approach from behind a group of enemies undetected. Not every spawn is like this, but the vast majority are. And forget using stealth in groups. By the time you get anywhere near the action it is already over.
Well since Bioware seems to know that stealth is a bit crappy at this point, there is nothing that really depends upon it. Stealth is just good for moving through an area where you don't want to fight everything that has spawned there. However, as a stealth class, we get a back stab ability that doesn't require stealth. To bad this ability is completely worthless. As I stated as response to someone else's post before. The damage it does for the cost and setup time to use it is way less than any other ability that could be used. The only reason to use it is because of the agro generation it does which is way off the scale of any other attack.
I pretty much summed up the game in my previous post as a review. Which is that the game has some great points, but still needs more polish. As it is, I will buy the game and play it. My only caveat is server stability. If the next beta test doesn't go smoother, I'm going to be inclined to cancel my pre-order. Shitty launches auto turn me off from a game. Massive game changing patches to game mechanic changes in the first month also put me off towards a game. This is why I bought Rift collector's edition, pre-paid for 6 months, and then only played 2 weeks after it came out and never went back to the game. Don't ever plan playing Rifts again either because of the stupid massive game changing patches they were doing in the first month. Get balance done as close to possible at first and then if tweaks are needed do it slowly and in small increments. I hate massive sweeping changing to balance and game mechanics. Especially if done every patch. I'm not saying Bioware will fail hard on either of these. I am saying their last beta weekend made me starting thinking twice about my pre-order due to server and client instability. If that is not addressed the next beta weekend at some point you won't see me playing this game at release. Sorry had my fill of games promising, "Oh it's just test code running in the background that is causing all this. That will all go away when the game is live. We promise!" The history of ALL MMO's will disagree with you here. There has not been a single MMO that was in shitty stability shape during beta prior to release that wasn't still in shitty stability shape once the game went live. Actually in all cases it was worse with Vanguard taking the crown for the absolute worst offender for claiming "test code" bullshit.
Last item up for discussion that needs to be massively worked on and revamp. Space flight. It's a FARKING SIDE SCROLLER! I feel like I'm playing starfox. It's just bad. If space flight is going to be in the game then don't put it in as an after thought. At least SWG had open flight areas where you could go where ever you wanted (within the zone that is). Sure it was silly in the way it had static spawns in space of groups of enemy ships flying tight circles around a spawn point. But it is was by FAR much better space flight system than the steaming POS that Bioware has currently implemented for SWTOR. They seriously need to redo this aspect of the game. I'd even go so far as to recommend removing all current aspects and not bothering with space flight until an actual good system can be put in place if ever.
At least this game is balanced per sides in pvp from what I could tell despite not doing pvp. That will go a long way for this game.
I know it feels like I'm harping on the bad points. It is not that I don't like the game. I really do like it. But it's easier to pick out the few bad things I've come across. The game has a lot going for it despite the bad things. Char development, music, story, combat, companion system, and questing system are all top notch. Graphics could be better, animations could be better, and UI could be better. Space flight needs to be tossed. Server/client stability are my only real hot button issue with the game which I hope was only an affect of whatever they were doing during the beta weekend I was testing and not something indicative of a real problem.