Companions are their own class, as far as I'm aware they can wear no class specific armor at all which is a tad annoying. They also use your character's alignment regardless of what their own alignment is.

Yeah we could, there are many ways to implement this. I guess the basic point that started this discussion is that adding the feature I proposed (and which was proposed many times before by me and others) would not necessarily be hard from a technical perspective. Things got a tad out of hand from there, geeks eh At least it didn't degenerate into a flamewar

That's what I meant, I'm sorry if my sarcasm wasn't obvious enough But the armor mod thing is new, I do hope they will either make those drops in raid or make them available some other way (unlock them in the raid gear, for example).

Not sure if you're making fun of the crafters or the above guy, but critically crafted purples (or oranges) are better than commendation/raid gear (similar stats + augment slot). Of course, just buying them from the GTN will probably still be cheaper than all the time/money needed to acquire the schematics and then getting lucky enough to have a crit craft times the amount of pieces you need... Boy, that really sounds depressing if I re-read it...

Because mods more than likely are stored in the same tables as other items (it's what they are after all) and thus (can) have the same properties from a strictly database point of view. You're looking at the data layer through an OO lens, it's more likely that these properties that are common to multiple objects are implemented through database joins than by putting them in the object itself (as columns, which would be a violation of Codd's rules really). In other words instead of using inheritance to decide which restrictions are present on an object they are implemented as properties of said object (which is also how an ORM tool would translate such a link). Inheritance doesn't really translate well to a relational model. I'm not saying this is how it was done, but that seems, to me, the more likely scenario and also the one that makes changing/extending the "gear model" the easiest. In such a scenario adding an additional restriction to an item would be almost trivial. Another fact that points in the direction of an easily extensible/modifiable data model is the fact that they entirely redid the entire mod system in a few weeks during beta greatly reducing the amount of different mod types (which had additional restrictions, so the functionality to do it is definitely already there), if it was so hard to modify that wouldn't have been possible. Either way, we're going way beyond the subject of this thread (and board I guess), I'm also kind of reaching my limit of how much further I can take this discussion without having to resort to drawing diagrams and stuff and I'm not really prepared to take it that far, so I'll just be leaving it at this... Suffice to say that as customers we shouldn't be giving a damn about how it is or can be implemented but only that it gets implemented. Preferably by yesterday! (Hey, that's what customers usually demand )

If that's correct not having communicated this weeks ago to the entire community is a pretty epic fail since we've been asking about this since beta. Other than that it's very welcome news (assuming it's correct...)

Even IF you would know what you'd want to look like getting your hands on the schematics (or somebody that knows the schematic) is a right pain. Once you start slotting epic mods you're sort of stuck with your gear anyway, it takes quite a while for most people to build up sufficient funds to be able to spend credits on leisure stuff, like moving all mods to other gear without going bankrupt...

You're just an idiot looking for easy groups under the banner of being "pro". A "pro" player can do a "hard" zone with the minimum gear required. The likes of you need "gearscore" to make sure the players they group with sufficiently outgear the instance to be able to clear it. Not that I care, I play with people I know are "pros" anyway, they're called guildmates. Maybe your attitude has something to do with you not having the same luxury.

Especially if like 70% of the Inquisitor gear has a high collar that clips horribly with quite a few haircuts... Finding another look that you like is hard as, as you say, there is barely any real variation.

This wouldn't work as being able to farm the first boss in an Operation to get raid quality mods for every gear piece (irregardless of the set bonus) was the main reason for them changing it to how it is now...

There are many ways to implement this, the static way would make extending this hard I guess we can agree on that. It would also be rather inefficient for such a dynamic system as a MMO imho so I highly doubt it's implemented like this (one never knows though). I don't get what you mean by "all use the same model", if your model is this rigid you have a serious design issue. Personally I think the entire thing is highly dynamic, the huge amount of (big) changes they already made to the mod system during the betas only strengthens my belief in this and as such I believe that implementing this wouldn't be too hard. Either way we can discuss this ad infinitum without proper background information on how it is actually implemented. In my mind if it's designed properly adding this attribute should be relatively easy, if it's not done properly they will have serious issues later on anyway. Disclaimer: I've been coding and designing OO applications for the past umpteen or so years starting with Java 1.2 (aka Java 2 which was just released then) but I've also learned that pure OO isn't exactly the answer to all problems (far from it) and have been branching out into other design/programming methodologies (currently mainly looking into functional programming again fwiw).

Doing the dailies on Belsavis has proven to be a pretty good way to get a load of Affection with Ashara (assuming you pick the right dialogue options), I estimate I got well over 400 affection yesterday. And since you want to be doing those dailies anyway (one of the few ways to make cash in the game currently, with 2/5 of the soloable Illum dailies being broken on my server and the economy turning out to be a bit of a disaster...and of course, daily tokens and free epic mods)

This discussion has very little to do with programming and everything with databases, so your petty insult is pretty much invalid. You started by failing at reading, for starters I was proposing this change ONLY for locked mods (so raid/pvp mods that are currently locked, so only barrel/hilt/armor on those types of gear) which wouldn't be much more than 100 items currently which, if you knew anything about databases, you'd realized is as good as nothing. They already have to store that information for other items, iow there is nothing extra to be stored (depending on how their database is structured, which you won't know any better than me I would think), all they have to do is add that property to the item (a capability they should already have given other features in the game). Also there were many more different mod types during beta linked to different gear types etc, so the capability is/was already there. If only done for mods that would otherwise be locked there would be very little confusion and certainly raiders should be able to figure out this kind of stuff: you take it out of an item and are able to put it back into a same type item. (not that this has anything to do with the technical feasibility of the proposal). There also won't be any confusion in the marketplace as those raid mods are BoP anyway, so they can't be traded. tl;dr next time read a bit of what people write before you start posting insults, it helps if you know what they are talking about.

You must know a lot more than me about SWToR's code, because storing that information is perfectly viable from a purely technical point of view. In fact they would only need to store as much information as they do know, just different information. The easiest way is to just make an epic mod, say a boots mod, BoP and only usable on Boots and unlock the armor slot. They already store this information for other gear (othewise you'd be able to wear your helmet on your feet...) and I assume they store mods together with the rest of the gear, so the option to store this information should already be there. That and moving the setbonuses to the armor mods would solve most of the orange gear issues except the lack of an augment slot which I think is also reather easily remedied.

FWIW In my country it's forbidden to sell at a loss (this is to keep big corporations from killing small ones by selling at insanely low prices until the small corporation goes out of business and then racking up the prices again to compensate for the loss they made earlier and of course because they are now monopolists on that item so they can ask whatever they want). A similar system ingame wouldn't be bad imo and at least protects people from their and others' stupidity. As stated elsewhere in the thread, once you go past a certain Affection level the gifts gotten from missions are the only ones that still give Affection.

A lot of us at lvl50 are struggling to get around, so yes, it is as good a time to get worked up about the economy as any. Or at least about the lack of options to generate any meaningful amount of credits without being glued to the GTN. A heroic run easily costs over 20k (more often 40k and up) in repairs (depending on the heroic, the experience the group has with it etc), and as many of them are horribly tuned (eg. piss easy until the last boss that then turns out to be undoable with your team so 0 credits back from the quests, no tokens etc, so a net loss basically) The gifts would have been a nice way to make a little profit at least, or break even on those missions at the very least. Instead I have to scour the GTN for underpriced items etc that I can be fairly certain I can resell at higher prices but it seems there is very little that actually sells and even less that sells at a decent price (taking time/effort to acquire the item into account which ofc isn't an issue if all you do is buy/resell but obviously IS if you craft yourself).

Except that the affection gain from low level gifts goes WAY down the higher your affection with that companion already is. Rank 1 gifts are worthless once your affection is at a relatively high level (got like +5 from one with Ashara yesterday, and she's "only" at 50% or so).

Force Storm + instant chain lightning is pretty friggin' awesome and tends to result in tanks having a really hard time holding aggro. If Mercs do that much better they must really spend a lot of their time dead...

I couldn't afford my speeder at lvl50 and thanks to people that think selling at a loss is a good idea I won't be able to make any money from the GTN with my chosen professions, so I guess I'll be using the lvl40 speeder for quite a while still. Judging by the insane repair bills I probably won't be able to raid because one full repair is going to take away around 40% of the money I have now (40K repair bills are FUN) and yes, at lvl50 after buying my skills I only had a bit over 100k left which, judging by the rest of the guild, is the rule rather than the exception. I can forget about ever making enough cash to buy my last inventory expansion or a 3rd Cargo Bay for my ship (200k and 400k respectively). In WoW I managed to get around without being forced to bother with the AH (during all of TBC I sold like 6 enchants or so...and I had some rare ones...). I'm not interested in "playing" the GTN or becoming filthy rich, I just want to make a reasonable profit on stuff I make/acquire so I can get around. Of course, if everyone sells their junk at rock bottom prices... Doing all dailies nets around 100k I hear (will be forced to do them today for the first time, I HATE daily quests, they're a horribly boring and uninspired way to earn money and I doubt SWToR will change my mind on that), that's just enough for 2 full gear repairs, probably 3 if you count the drops from mobs. And since I can barely afford the stuff I need I definitely won't be buying stuff from others. The circle is complete. I'm obviously dramatizing a bit but this is what it's like to be a lvl50 PvE player for a lot of people. Enjoy.

Selling items AT their price is by no means "being greedy", underselling because you manage to make loads of cash someway and want to annoy people having more trouble keeipng their cash balance right otoh IS being selfish.

After Act I (or rather, with the end of act 1) it gets rather fun (and totally wacky, but what can you expect if you muck around in the depths of the Force?), though tbh it seems to taper off again towards the end. I think I'm on the last mission now (which is conveniently named to spoil the surprise you could/would otherwise get) and unless they have a surprise for me I'll have to say that after Voss it goes downhill again (which basically means Corellia), though I expect the ending to be pretty awesome. On that note, anybody else notice how sometimes (quite often, in fact) the loading screens get the stage you are at in the chapter you're on wrong and tell you more than you should know at that point? It's quite annoying.

You forgot the super high repair bills for dying to buggy bosses

It's also supposed to increases critical chance and success rate.

For gifts is's around 30minutes for the max level gifts. Still it's stupid that they're this cheap. It's about the only thing I could make money on as Synthweaved stuff doesn't exactly seem to sell. Guess I better get used to being broke.

The issues I have with the player models have more to do with the insane amount of clipping on some characters/gear and as such with the gear/character models than with the engine. If you're expecting to play a Crysis looking MMO, yeah well,...I don't know what to say really.