This. The DPS requirements on the Kephess bomb carriers is very, very harsh. You can know the mechanics to the N'th degree, but if you don't have the DPS to down these in the time limit, then the ops will fail. I agree that at least the DPS need to be in full rakata or else be extremely skilled players in order to beat this time limit. If anything needs to be relaxed in story mode EC, it would be this single DPS check.

Hmmm, I wonder why some folks called him a liar? The following is from the Darth Hater interview he gave after the guild summit, but before the 1.2 patch notes were revealed.The snippet is his quote from a discussion about class balance: Ask how many Sage/Sorcs felt like there were *any* improvements done to that class in 1.2 -- the only thing that happened to Sage/Sorcs were bug-fixes and nerfs (bug-fixes needed to be done, some nerfs were deserved, some nerfs were not). The above statement by Zoeller about 'improvements' was simply not true. You can either call that a lie or a mis-statement, your choice. I don't miss him at all. I felt that he was arrogant and misleading.

Are the sound issues caused by 1.2 going to be fixed in 1.3? (Background: In operations, after you have been playing for 'awhile', you begin losing sounds until you lose nearly all audio -- 'awhile' depends on the player but is typically 1-2 hours. Quitting the client and re-entering fixes the problem. There is a large thread on this in the CSR forum).

I agree with this analysis -- good job.

This. We started getting cocky as well on Soa and people starting getting far ahead attacking these things out of order and we would get the AOE as well.

It does not make much sense to not allow operation hard modes when Denova story mode is tougher than EV/KP hard modes.

I don't see how firing the community manager solves anything. Oh well, this explains why no patch this week -- they were too busy firing folks. I am not leaving anytime soon, will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

Please, leave ASAP for GW2 or Diablo 3 or TSW or whatever else you think the next great game is going to be. 1.2 had plenty of stuff in it. K, thx, bye.

From "Known Issues for 1.2" in customer service forums: From Q/A post: Too bad this does not work for hard mode flashpoints or ops as via the "Known Issues" and multiple threads complaining about this. My question that I submitted last week was "When was this going to be fixed" and it seems we are still waiting on that.....

The game is easy enough as it is. The act that the devs would give groups some bias for loot is something not many other games at this stage of release EVER did. QQing whining and then insulting people who have a reasonable reply to you or try to help point you in the right direction makes you look small and brattish. Oh, thanks so much for including that oh-so-informed reply by "David" in the latest Q/A. Too bad that "David" did not read the "Known Issues List" for 1.2 from the Customer Service Forum: Ooops!!! The Q/A responders don't even know what is in their own game. The issue is that the 'bias' that has been added to loot drops for hard modes, especially for ops, seems to be a bias to classes not in the op! The code is screwed up, Bioware has admitted that it is not working as they intended via the "known issues", and players have a right to complain until it is fixed. For reasons like this, I really believe nothing that is posted by Bioware about game changes until I actually witness its effect in game. Players are pretty smart, and they know when something is not right and will complain about it, and they have every right to since they are paying for the game. To their credit, Bioware does eventually *slowly* fix problems and complaint posts die down (not many SOA complaints these days since they fixed double ticking lighting balls, the pylons work correctly now, very few complaints about normal mode loot drops now, etc). When the hard mode loot drops for ops and FPs are fixed, the majority of the threads like this will go away (there will always be some that are not happy). All Bioware needs to do is actually implement what they said they were going to implement in 1.2, i.e., loot drops that take group composition into account for hard mode ops/fps.

So, you don't think that it is even a remote possibility that Bioware changed the loot code for 1.2 (because they said they were going to group composition into account!) and that the code change they made actually skewed loot drops to classes that are not present, instead of those that are? Oh no, I guess that could never happen, because Bioware always writes perfect code and always tells us exactly and in great detail what is going on behind game mechanisms. And BTW, these skewed loot drops are happening in hard mode ops as well, not just flash points, which can only be run once a week, and it is hard mode ops that I am complaining about. My ops groups experience since 1.2 for hard mode ops has been 70% smuggler drops (no smuggler in ops), 20% trooper, 10% split between counsular/Knight. Last kill of Karagga dropped two smugger main hands, and some exotech smuggler, woot! We have been running hard mode ops for about 2 months, and the consulars in our group (4) are still missing a lot of rakata gear -- wunderbar! A sub group has started farming long island hard mode for the rakata chest -- cleared five times, five trooper chests --- double woot!!!!! Yay for Bioware's loot system!!! Means we get to run it a lot more ! Hooray!!! Got a bit sarcastic there towards the end....

I find it mind boggling as well. These skewed loot drops were happening before 1.2, it seems that 1.2 made it worse. The ops group that I run with that does HM ops is totally frustrated by this. There are two possibilities: a. Bioware is incompetent and just can't get it right. b. Bioware is doing this purposefully to slow gear entry into the game. Option 'b' requires wearing of a tinfoil hat, and generally I would not go that route, but.....I am starting to lean towards 'b' more and more as this persists.

Yep.. Lets see, took me actually about 90 seconds to test this: a. Log in, note companion's hit points which is lower than they should be. b. Unequip implants, earpiece. c. Equip implants, earpiece. Notice hitpoints are now what they should be. d. Mount speeder. e. Dismount Speeder. f. Companion's hitpoints are back to 'a'. Sigh. Bioware has the absolute WORST testing that I have ever seen in an MMO, and I have seen a lot of them. This is comical. If it was just one time I could understand, but this keeps happening. Still waiting for the patch notes to say they have fixed the issue with hardmode loot drops in ops/fps not taking group composition into account. That is equally ridiculous.

When you are going to make hard mode ops/FPs drop loot appropriate to the ops/group composition? This was supposed to be in 1.2, and is now listed as a 'known issue'. Loot drops seem much worse now in 1.2 in terms of dropping anything useful for the group for a hard mode ops/fp. It is ridiculous that you ask players to invest so much time in hard mode ops/fps and then drop loot that nobody in the group can use.

Karragga kill on Hard Mode -- dropped two smuggler main hands, two pieces of exotech for smuggler as well. No smuggler in ops. This is C R A P. It is way past time that this is fixed.

The turrents can be tough -- our tank leads the raid in single file to the right hugging the wall, run around the right ice pillar, and take down the right turrent first (many will be out of range of the left turrent), followed by the left turrent.

FYI, from the known issues page on the CS Forum updated today (Apr 20th): Flashpoints and Operations Hard Mode Flashpoint loot does not currently take group composition into account. At least this is now acknowledged in some form (I assume they also means 'ops' as well).

FYI, from the known issues page on the CS Forum updated today (Apr 20th): Flashpoints and Operations Hard Mode Flashpoint loot does not currently take group composition into account. At least this is now acknowledged in some form (I assume they also means 'ops' as well).

Agreed -- it was in the patch notes, it is not working, fix it!!!!! The current loot drops are ridiculous -- it actually seems to me like drops in EV/KP on both normal and hard are worse than what they were before 1.2 in terms of class distribution. The percentage of smuggler drops seems even higher now. It is almost like the drops are based on the class distribution stats for a server, and they are dropping loot for the least played classes to encourage more players to roll those --- which is stupid. Some folks had speculated the loot changes were only for new FPs/OPs which would also be stupid. It is not like people have quit playing the old FPs/OPs !!!!

Ops loot drops seem to be more imbalanced than ever after 1.2. I have run both normal and hardmode ops, and in both cases a ridiculous amount of smugger loot has dropped (more than 70% of the bosses dropped at least one smuggler piece). In the hardmode ops cases, there was no smuggler in the group, while in the normal mode case, there was only one smuggler. How hard can it be to drop loot appropriate for a group?

Nothing has changed, it is the same c r a p drops that existed pre 1.2. On seven hard mode ops bosses we killed, five of them dropped smuggler gear (no smuggler in ops), only one drop was consular (four consulars in ops), and the rest of the drops were trooper (two troopers in ops). The majority of the drops were for a class not in the ops, while the class with the highest representation in the ops got the fewest drops. This was the same type of drops that we saw pre 1.2.

Oh please, that is not what it meant, that is just how you are interpreting it based on their vague wording. If that is what it meant, they would have said "higher chance of a drop from the classes represented". Just saying. Regardless of what they MEANT to say, if they had made a significant change to the way loot dropped, it would have been noticeable. We killed 7 hardmode ops bosses the other night, five of them dropped smuggler gear (no smuggler in ops), and only one of them dropped a consular piece (four consulars in op). To me, it looks like NO CHANGE has been made to the way loot drops, and that it is the same bugged up drop mechanism used before 1.2.

Link to 1.2.0b patch notes is currently bugged. http://www.swtor.com/patchnotes/1.2.0b/4172012

This. If you need rakata gear from EV/KP HM to complete story mode EC, which drops rakata, then tuning is off. You should only need columi gear to complete story mode EC. Of course, I don't know how you actually do this because if a group in all columi fails, you can always argue that the gear is right and they just need to L2P. I guess long-term metrics will tell if more tuning is needed or not. I am fine with the current difficulty, but then our ops group has a mixture of columi/rakata. I can't tell if base stats have changed or not.

Yeah, did EV hard mode last night - lots of smuggler drops (including chest), no smuggler in group, wunderbar! The smart loot system in 1.2 needs more smarts.