I can't say about the Umbara one, but Manaan, like all the others, allowed you to add 25% to your stronghold bonus, just like all the others. I went from 125% to 150% It is 1/4 of your total completion of the SH (so you have to unlock every room and decorate up to the hook limit in order to get 100% completion and the full +25% SH bonus).

Back in the days of 4.0, exotic isotopes did not drop from Vet FPs, IIRC. We actually cared about getting them in ops. Before this change, I noted in one of guild ops how I'd get way more of them from an FP.

There's only two possibilities for the "number of guild members" you'd get paired with, and is either 2 or 3. If it's 4, obviously you wouldn't have been able to join. If it's 1, then you wouldn't have noted it. Almost all of us in my guild can play 2 or even 3 roles. And just about all the time, we can play DPS or the "other spec" of a class, if it has one. It seems obvious to me that by making sure a 3-person group represents the trinity, that we'd be prepared for any content, even just Veteren Blood Hunt That said, when we queue, we don't generally pay all that much attention in my guild for Veteran, but we would probably avoid queuing with 2 healers or tanks.

Times change. What used to be a "sports car" that could go 60 mph, is now something the cheapest of economy cars are expected to do and more. What traditionally defined the "MM" of MMO back in the mid-2000s does not seem terribly special. Even a 40-man ops (not even sure WoW still does those) seems not terribly large. In my experience, the only MMO that has really pushed the "MM" boundaries is EvE online, with its thousand or more player space battles. Not only that, but the entire concept of the game is around the economy and politics of multi- tens of thousands players. While I have high praise for the concept and execution, being PvP-centric, the game has no place for me. In my opinion, the downward slide of MMOs as a game type is due in part to the fact that it's not evolving, except perhaps graphically, from its roots. From the monetization model (subs becoming a non-starter now), to gameplay, it's not terribly different from 10 years ago. I guess that could be said of a number of genres, but the the difference is now that the playerbase (and more importantly, the potential playerbase) is no longer in tune with what the traditional MMO has to offer. I grant that SWTOR has a difference from traditional MMOs, in having a story-centric campaign that offers not only full voiceover, but regular and constant conversation choices. To the extent that these actually alter outcomes... well, that's spotty at best., but there are few games out there that let you really feel like you've defined your character's personality like SWTOR. But that doesn't make it a great game in and of itself--in fact, I would say that BW's own KotOR and ME series did this better. What I'm constantly on the look out for is an MMO that will break the mold, and offer the concepts of the community driven core of EvE, but applied to a mostly- (or at least half-and-half) PvE experience, where the actions of the players define the ongoing story told in around monthly editions--and not in a grind-alicious fashion of "do this op/mission for 10 rep/alignment/whatever points" and the highest total wins. What does this mean? I have no idea, frankly. It will be hard, and it will probably fail a few times too. But I'd like to see MMOs head towards actually feeling like an alternate reality, and not just a simplistic arcade game.

I'd like to eventually see some QoL improvements in gearing. Mind you, I'm not complaining about the CXP system itself--I've never been in better gear. It's just that aspects of the system itself feel... I guess "punishing" is the word. At times, even though I'm fairly satisfied with the gear I have, I get mightily annoyed at the process. A crate hardly feels like a reward. The low drop rates of purples or golds makes you approach each one like you're dumpster-diving. Yeah, maybe you'll find a gem, but it's 90% trash. Cosmetic gear? Instant disintegrate. Any scrap other than purple? Instant disintegrate. Purple scrap? Yeah, I'll keep the ONE piece I get. Rep Tokens? Mostly disintegrate since I'm Champion with all but the CM-based ones and the two fleet ones. Schematics for static armor/weapons? Disintegrate. Blues or Greens? Disintegrate. Gifts are cool, and I'll keep them. There's just too little of value in the crates. If you're going to give scrap, give lots--100 greens, maybe 50 blues, or 10-20 purples. Gifts are great, but are way too rare--each crate should have 5-10 purples and at least a couple golds, if not more. Cosmetic gear should be bound to legacy, though I'm not sure even that would be enough to make me keep any. And then dups.... Players HATE dups. You luck out on gold gear, only to find it's the one you already have. Yes, RNG is RNG, but you really shouldn't have both low chance and risk of dups. One of those two things should go. Maybe dups should disassemble into unassembled components, so at least it's worth something towards gear you need and not just a few hundred CXP.. Or, maybe at least allow you to convert it to your alt spec, but that still is just a one-time dup use. And other than crates, there's a lot of other annoyances with gearing. Get a new ear/implant/relic? Got to buy/craft another augment kit, and spend 40k for the slot. That's why using green/blue gear isn't worth it--without the augment, the lower rated stuff is better, and if you augment it, you're probably wasting creds on gear that will be outdated in a week. Then there's the annoyances I have with modding. Almost 50k to rip out a gold mod? I'm sure that some will say it's a needed credit sink, but the problem is just how annoying it is. I get a new gold earpiece, and now not only do I need to spend the augmentation cost for it, but also if I then need to rebalance my enhancements, more credits. It's like I said earlier--it sometimes feels like getting new gear is a punishment. It takes the shine off of it. And finally, most of us know to use only bound-to-legacy moddable shells. That way either a) you can pass the gear back and forth between pub/imp mirror classes; or b) you can pass the gear to a character who has the mod you need, without having to pay twice to rip the mod out. But why are mods bound to a char anyway, if the game lets you "hide" these bound mods in a piece of legacy gear? Just make all mods bound to legacy so we don't have to play these "games" doing what we're going to do anyways. And then, for extra brownie points, let mods of the same type and quality stack. Oh, and fix the bug where you don't see the set bonus on an item after you've taken it out of the legacy hold. I've personally lost a set-bonus piece that way... Though if we could pass mods around without this rigamarole, it would be less of a big deal.

If I remember correctly SWTOR uses "single roll determination", not multiple rolls. Defense subtracts from accuracy, and is not a separate roll. While not mentioned here, crits are determined with the same to-hit roll, and is not a separate one as well.

It's PvP, so I'll have nothing to do with it just like all other PvP. Note, I'm not saying it shouldn't be in the game, but just saying that there are those of us who don't play PvP at all.

I guess this is something that must be said: I loathe PvP. There is nothing they can offer me in-game to EVER make me PvP--ranked, unranked, open world, GSF, you-name-it. And it's not just this game--I NEVER PvP, anywhere. I played Eve Online at launch for 2 or 3 yrs and never PvP'ed, that's how much I won't do it. Some of my guild is PvP'ing more, though it's still a vast minority among the officers. And those who do it are purely doing it for gear, not because they actually enjoy it. I am sure that there are many who love it. I have nothing against that. But I want as close to zero influence on the PvE experience from issues of balancing PvP. PvP Bolster doesn't matter an iota to me, as I won't enter any place where it matters. As for expertise gear, I only care about it to the point where I could be put into situations where not having it affects my play--for example, it used to be the case where you could get flagged by inadvertently hitting the opposite faction who were stealthed and flagged near a WB, but luckily that is gone now. But areas like Iokath worry me that the devs are thinking to widen the occurrence of world PvP. But still, I like the idea of all gear being equal.

I just noticed that all the guild conquest leaderboards are blank.

As someone who never PvPs (OW or WZ), I'm fuzzy on a lot of the current mechanics. I think I understand your reply, but it presumes that a group is formed first. How does a Imp-loving Imp and a Imp-loving Pub communicate initially to find each other and form a group? I suppose you can whisper (not sure because I've never tried to do a cross-faction whisper). Even if you can, wouldn't there really be a need for some sort of story-faction-based channel so people can shout "The Pub base is being attacked!", and maybe even when chars are on the PvE instance doing dailies so that they can switch and participate? Won't really matter any to me, as I won't do any of this, mind you, but just wondering.

I just had a thought, for those who will be particpating in OWPvP (which will most definitely NOT include me, as I loath PvP of any type): how will chat work? If the game still restricts most chat to your class faction, how are players supposed to communicate for PvP, and not hear side chatter for your opposing story faction? EDIT: Ah, I see this was already answered--Gen chat is by class faction. So "traitors" would be able to see any planning being done by "loyalists" (or vice versa). I guess I'd have to see how that will work I'll have to see how it's presented in the story, but I have characters that would not really want to support either faction, in-character. So, being forced to do so will seem rather disconcerting, unless it was handled very carefully.

I'm not exactly sure that that means because there is no more concept of "flagging"--you're either in a PvP instance or you're not.

I loathe PvP in al forms. No matter what incentives are offered, I will not participate in any of it. I stopped at Eternal in DvL because there was no way I'd try to get any Valor. I'm at Valor 0 on all my chars, and I've never even queued for a WZ. When I happen to be in a PvP instance (for PvE reasons), if someone attacks I generally just sit back, wait to die, res back at a med center, and continue on doing what I was doing (or decide to change if there's too much PvP going on to avoid it). SWTOR is not alone in this regard. I even played EVE Online for about 2 or 3 years and can probably count on one hand how many times I fired at a player ship.

I might be repeating others' ideas here--sorry but I only skimmed posts... Gear drops: I would ditch specific items that drop. Every crate should drop unassembled components (like PvP). This way, every crate works towards a piece of gear you want. Also, there could be unassembled gear drops. This way, you can decide if you want your healer/dps/tank set-bonus without having to be in that discipline when you open the crate. If you get a dup hand/etc. piece, you can use it for another spec. If you get a left-side item, you can decide which variety fits into your stat allocations. More importantly, both of these changes allow you to gear alts. I don't think that blues need to disappear entirely, if these changes are made. If components are added, valor requirements would have to be removed to use them. Schematics: really, does anyone really want/craft static gear? I disintegrate all schematics for static armor/weapons. Gifts: IMHO, just hand out multiple legendary (rank 6) gifts like candy. Given how many of these you need, 5 or 10 gifts per crate would be appreciated. Cosmetic gear: I don't think there's any reason to eliminate these, however, these are instant disintegrates for me. Maybe if they could drop bound cartel items like what the DvL crates dropped, it might make them more desirable. Rep tokens: not a big deal, but drop lots more of them, not just a single one. Jawa Junk: I only keep the purple stuff, but even that is somewhat useless until grade 10 mats are added to the vendors (will they be added, Eric?) I don't cmpletely mind the green and blues--they are good for a good chunk of CXP

I do ops (SM at least) and so while I appreciate being able to get gear a bit faster this way (though I ran two this past weekend and didn't get any of the 6 tokens that dropped...), I personally feel that it's not a bad thing that you can't just play one narrow aspect of a game for all the rewards. I don't support a huge grind either, and I do hope that BW mitigates that on GC as time passes. And I think they are increasing ops rewards somewhat, so getting some ranks while doing them will come naturally. And I figure most ops players do some heroics as well for cash and/or conquest, and those are pretty good now for CXP too.

Thinking about my simulation some more, I decided to simplify it further. Let's face it, the only thing one really, truly wants is set-bonus armor--most everything else can be very nearly obtained via crafting (not sure about T3 stuff though?). I haven't looked extremely closely at the stat distribution of crafted left-side gear, though. So, let's just say, how many set-bonus-gear drops does one need to get in order to fill 6 of the 7 slots (since 6-piece is all you need, and getting a non-set-bonus armoring seems easy to me). The short answer is: avg = 11.1, median = 10, max = 45 Remember, this is now only counting drops for one of the seven armor slots, no weapons or left-side (excepting the wrists). From my current experience, I've gotten 3 drops in my 50 ranks, including one duplicate. So, if we say the avg is 1 drop per 17 ranks, it would on average take me about 187 ranks to get my 6-piece. This means I'll be almost getting T3 gear before I'd finish my set. Of course, it's hard to say what the chance of these drops is. My 1/17 may not be the average drop rate at all. Oh, that max = 45 means that in at least one trial, it took that many drops to get a 6-piece. So at 1/17 drops per rank, that poor unlucky sap would have taken 765 ranks to have finished their set.

As I said before, I am not totally opposed to RNG in gearing. However, a system has to be able to mitigate the issues that RNG has. I just wrote a VERY simple gearing siumluator. I take the 14 slots, and pull from a pool of N items, and count how long it takes to fill every slot, discarding (but counting) duplicates. I do not take into consideration that the 2 implants might be 2 of the same, and currently, I don't count that there are variations of gear that one might not want, e.g. ear and implants come in 2 varieties for a healer, or 3 for a DPS, and both DPS and healers really only want 2 types of the various varieties of relics. I also presume that each item is equally likely to drop. Another caveat is that I am only counting the "token" drops, ignoring how often one gets this out of a crate. So, in other words, when I say it takes N rolls to fill all your gear slots, I am ONLY saying it takes N crates THAT DROPPED TOKEN GEAR, I am not saying that by rank N you will have filled your slots. Also, here, I am ONLY counting "token" drops, which is gear at the top of the tier, which at T1 are called, I think, MK-3 and are purple items at rating 230. These are armors with set bonuses, and all such gear typically has the desired itemizations (for DPS and healers, non-lettered mods for gear, highest power for left-side static items, etc.). Also, I am ignoring the fact that you probably only need 6 of the 7 armor pieces to drop--you can probably easily pull together that 7th piece in reality by using a blue armoring you get dozens of (which aren't slot-restricted), and mods and enhancements from duplicate gear. So, on to the numbers: Trials: 100000, # of possible items: 14 Rolls: avg = 45.6, SD=16.3, max = 188, min = 14, median = 42.0 Dups: avg = 31.6, SD=16.3, max = 174, min = 0, median = 28.0 This is a simulation of 100,000 characters rolling for gear, with the presumptions I stated above. The average number of token gear crates it takes to fill all your slots is 45.6 and the median is 42 (the median is the 50th percentile of the results--meaning that half the characters took 42 or less crates, and half the characters took 42 or more crates). So, let's talk about this. It seems to me that after getting 50 crates, I've gotten 6 or 8 token pieces. So, the rate I get them is one in about 6-8. Thus, it could likely take more than 300 crates to completely fill my slots, from the simulation. Is this accurate? I have 6 slots filled with token gear, but I can't recall precisely if my main/offhand slots came from a drop I got, or one another char got them where I just stripped the mods and used legacy gear to transfer it. I just quickly made a modification to my simulation, and asked how many rolls would it take to get my 6 pieces, and the average seems to be 7, which is somewhat in line. (As you can expect, the more pieces you have, the more likely are dups). So, talking about dups, the above suggests that on average, you will get around (or more) than twice the number of dups as usable gear (31.6 avg., 28 median). So, in my opinion, the current system does not seem "rewarding" enough--irrespective of the rate of advancement through the ranks. My expectation is that the average character should be able to complete their gear tier before advancing to the next, or at least maybe close. While my simulation isn't designed to answer this question, it seems that if one assumes that you will get somewhere like 14-16 token drops in a tier of 90 ranks, then the number of unfilled slots will be around 4-5. Also, since there will be so many duplicates, it is not surprising that people will feel shafted as they get more and more, which gets worse as slots fill. So, based on this, it would seem to me that the rate of token drops has to be increased, if nothing else changes. If you got one every 2 or 3 crates, then at least it feels like if you have a duplicate, the next chance is not so far away. But even still, I have to wonder if crates should just use the PvP system where they drop unassembled components so that nothing is ever wasted--and maybe augmented by the occasional unassembled gear token that ops drop.

We can argue about the exact motivations. But I still maintain that the previous end-game gearing based around ops and separately for PvP did not engage more than a small minority of players, and I would bet even money that it didn't even engage a majority of the subscribers. Our guild (on the EH, a fairly active server) had around 80-90 qualifying accounts during 4.0, and the active ops players numbered about 10-12, and PvPers maybe around 5-10 (if even that). Obviously, I can't speak for the population at large, but I don't have any indirect evidence that ops were wildly popular. The few times we tried to find a replacement for an op in progress or when we were down one, advertising on fleet and/or the Allies channel was very hit and miss, which is not indicative of lots of people being interested in it. And I won't argue that the point was to increase subscriptions--I'll only say that I'm less cynical about it, in that they hoped that opening up the gearing would get more subs, and they were short-sighted on the drawbacks. I'll say this also: I'm old (over 50) and I've been in the software industry (non-gaming) for almost 30 years. And I can say with certainty that lots of people in charge (as well as developers themselves) make ill-formed decisions all the time. I find it amazing at times how little foresight goes into predicting the outcome of a process change. Unintentional consequences happen, a LOT. As for RNG gearing, I'm used to it playing other games, like Destiny on consoles, where gear is not "just stats" or even set bonuses, but where everything has combinations of stats and abilities that make or break that piece of gear, and where rewards are not guaranteed either. My ideas are centered around improving the system for casual and alt-aholic players. They can be used in combination with other changes, but the point is to put the rewards on a curve.

First off, in principle I have nothing against GC and CXP, and even randomized gearing. And I say this even though I do ops with my guild (though we're only at the SM level of things, and haven't even cleared them all). I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark, and guess that only about 10-20% of the playerbase does raids even to a small extent, and probably no more than that do PvP too (I do zero of that--never been in a WZ, and will *never* go into a WZ). So, when this first came out, I kinda felt like the new system was acknowledging these facts--SWTOR's playerbase, and probably most MMO's as well nowadays, no longer have the "raiding/PvP" demographics of the past, if it ever did. So to this, I am looking at this from the perspective that SWTOR wanted to make gearing accessible no matter what you did in the game. But this is obviously tricky--as much as people complain about the slow grind, there are already a number of characters at 300, which shows how dedicated some can be at the grind... Personally, I'm a little under 50 on my main, with 5 other chars averaging about 10 ranks apiece. My main has 2 set-bonus pieces, an earpiece, and main/offhand. I think I got at least one dup, if not 2. So, I'm getting roughly one fully usable "token" piece per 10 ranks or so. So, that is one problem--the rate one obtains set-bonus gear seems too slow, and particularly if you want to gear up both DPS and Heal/Tank, if you have that option. I would certainly approve of having this gear be dropped as tokens, so that you could pass it around to either a different spec, or an alt. Token gear is too valuable to waste on a dup, or a stat-itemization you don't want. The alternative to this is to have it drop almost every other rank, so that you wouldn't feel bad at disintegrating it... The new ops drops help out a lot here, for me at least, but remember, I think the ops/PvP playerbase is extremely limited. But the other thing I see people struggling with is the "very casual player" and the "alt-aholic"... At first, I thought that legacy-base CXP was the way to go (along with token drops, rather than specific gear). But I saw a comment from Eric (?) that it had its own problems. I'd love to hear what those are, but if I had to guess: 1) it doesn't help the very casual and 2) it probably only helps out alts at maybe around the 4 or so number. So, I've been toying around in my head for a solution that mitigates these issues, without ramping up CXP generation to rediculous levels. I've seen some folks talk about making more weeklies, and making them be worth more, or maybe tying this to a large conquest reward, but I think there are problems here as well, depending on how time consuming this is (FYI, it's not extremely easy for a non-guilded primarily PvE player to make conquest, especially if they don't have a 125% SH bonus, given the limited number of infinitely repeatable PvE objectives, and the ones that are repeatable are time-gated, like the GF FP ones). So, my idea has revolved around the idea to have CXP be rewarded on a sliding scale. And SWTOR already has something like this--rested XP. It rewards chars who haven't been played for a while with extra kill XP. My thoughts so far would be to have this work in two ways. One, characters get rested CXP based on how long it's been since one last logged into it, very much like rested XP. Two, every character in a legacy earns some fraction of the CXP earned by a character being played as rested CXP. And three, there is a limit to how much rested CXP one can bank. When a character earns CXP, they transform a portion of their rested CXP to real CXP. Also, while only L70 chars have rested CXP, missions performed by any level character add the appropriate amount of rested CXP to any L70 char. This system helps casuals as the little bit they play gets their CXP magnified. It helps alts, as play helps boost the CXP gained in the legacy. It's not really "free CXP" as you have to earn CXP to convert the rested CXP. And even if you're leveling a char, you are contributing to your other char's ability to get more CXP later. The limit on rested CXP I think limits exploitive farming. I might also suggest that F2P/Preferred players be able to accrue CXP "in escrow". This would give them an incentive to sub at some point--maybe for only a month every few, or less, but to me, I don't think that GC and CXP in itself will "force/convince" them to sub otherwise. But seeing a pile of 5-10 ranks or so available to their chars might be. I could see there being a limit on the escrow, however. I'm sure my ideas have issues too, but I think it mitigates a lot of the worst aspects of how alt-unfriendly GC has turned out to be.

Yes, they said that on the stream.More than once, I believe.

Maybe. It's unclear if you can trade in an unassembled gear piece with a token to buy gear for any advanced class or just your own. The statement was (paraphrased) "that they want the character who gets the gear to have played the op". Eric, if you're reading this, maybe you could clarify. Because this was how we geared alts (sometimes) pre-5.0. My Sage Seer (for example) would get the gear token, and go buy a Sentinel piece of gear with Sentinel set-bonuses. Also, I have a question about how "trading in gear" for the PvP path will work. Because I very much doubt that anyone uses the set-pieces directly. They yank the mods out of it, and put them into the gear they are using, and usually not even putting all three into the same piece of gear.

Personally, I don't mind them at all. Probably wouldn't buy any though. I don't really care if people who have more time or money can get their gear faster. Doesn't affect my play at all.

Not everyone. I don't really care about any achievements, personally, in this game or any other. Probably why I've never "platinum'ed" any of my games on Playstation, or even come close, actually. That said, I was surprised they did this, and agree that they should be restored for those who do care.

Personally, I always thought that what should happen is that while the event has ended, players could continue to strive towards the achievements, though with very limited rewards (e.g., no packs, though *maybe* the companion). To me, it just doesn't make sense to *ever* bring this event back in a way where you would be required to make new chars to do it again. And I say this as someone who did not object to the event in the first place. But bringing this back again in a year would even to me be too much. Just let everyone, and all new players, work towards getting the them as part of the core game.

Those areas are absolutely littered with resource nodes as is, more so than just bout any other location. I think it's fine that they share the spawn. The problem is that there's no open world area to dedicate to grade 10 in this expansion. FYI, if you're collecting grade 10 mats, make sure you don't just collect those, but also the grade 9, otherwise the respawn of the node will have a chance of being grade 9, and thus you will eventually find almost no grade 10 any longer, until someone comes around and collects all the grade 9 nodes.