I believe it's from the player, but there should be a good test for it. Find a place where you get the empty red circle. Stand still and probe at various locations well away from you. If you still get red circles no matter where, it's more likely from the player. For a final confirmation, make sure you probe at locations you can remember later, like a rock or other feature. After not finding any hits, move to that location, then probe where you were standing. If you ever get a hit, then I think the point is proven.

Until a ubiquitous biometric authentication system is available, expect more and more services to switch to some sort of 2-factor system (of which the OTP is one, the security key system is another). That's not to say it couldn't be improved though, perhaps by extending it to SMS messages at the least. I'm not a fan of needing my cell phone or a dedicated security key though, so I'll just stick with the OTP. BTW, Google's 2-factor system has the capability to generate a number of one-time-use passwords too, so that might be another alternative.

However, that's not entirely possible given how classes (esp. advanced classes) progress throughout the process. The way you play at L25 can be drastically different at 35 or 50, not to mention the fact that people often use "survivability"/soloing builds for the progression, then switch over to others for group/endgame. Given how there's almost always griping about the lack of "endgame" and how a sizable portion of the playerbase view the leveling portion of the game to be a "startup cost" that needs to be raced through as fast as possible, for quite a while now I've thought that perhaps doing levels is counterproductive--the devs have put a ton of time and money on that content, most of which is only ever seen once per character. What if every bit of content in SWTOR were repeatable at a user-adjusted difficulty level? But that said, it's not going to change. It would be a total revamp at tremendous risk (NGE anyone?

Personally, I don't think the 5pts spent in Force Suppression, Rippling Ward, and Mind Ward are worth it. I would rather use those to get either Clairvoyance in the Seer Tree, or maybe Mental Longevity or Inner Strength from TK. Heck, even as is, I think I'd rather swap Rippling Force for Mind Warp

I think the point is that they want people to use planetary comms while leveling and not hoard them for the endgame, where they really want people to transition to so-called end-game content. That said, I have to say that this thread exemplifies why MMOGs do not have a wider appeal--it's all about a gear grind and "getting compensation" to play content, and not so much about playing because it's actually FUN. I'm not sure who's more to blame about this, the companies for doing this because it's become the way to keep people playing (and paying, hopefully), or the players who have fallen into the trap of thinking that's all there is.

While it certainly seems like Google DNS gives you better results than your ISP's DNS, it does seem to show that choice of DNS can play a big role in the throughput you get, though even the google DNS isn't all that great either. This is a bit of a failing of the way CDNs have to currently work, which is by using DNS requests to determine which hosting center's IP address to return on a given request. If your ISP uses some sort of request caching/forwarding scheme that also can fool the CDNs, then similar bad performance can result.

I still don't understand the discussion.... There are no "lost skills" you have to retrain. Some classes got a new skill or two, My L50 Sage had one. My L50 Sentinel has none, but will have one at L52 (I think). Abilities on your tree are, as they have always been, free. You don't need to spend any credits to build your new spec. The respec that was forced with 2.0 was free. I'm presuming that respec'ing is still free for subscribers, so we can experiment and change at will for free. I'm not sure about how it works for preferred and F2P, but it used to be that the respec cost went to 0 after a week before F2P came into being. HOWEVER, just like when you were leveling up, at each level you usually had one or more of your currently trained powers that had upgraded ranks, and this is the case in 2.0. You can choose to upgrade or not, selectively or not, as you wish as you level up to 55. Frankly, the training costs feel like chump change to me. During the Gree event, I had spent like a million on buying unlocks and gear, and a week later or less, I had made it all back--just from quest rewards from the event and other dailies. I haven't been doing any selling on the GTN of late.

Something I just thought of... If anyone is getting slow downloads, and are using a public DNS service like OpenDNS or Google's DNS, you might be running into the issue between such services and CDNs (cloud data networks). It looks like BW/EA uses a CDN for patch hosting, based on the network connections initiated when I start the launcher (it contacts a site hosted by Akamai Tech, a known CDN provider). The way CDNs work is that they try to route your traffic to the nearest (internet-wise) site. However, using a public DNS can defeat the way it tells "where" you are, and can route you to the wrong place. It really is often best to use your ISP's default DNS.

The respec itself costed you nothing, and neither did setting up a spec, as that never costs any money. Some classes did get a new power (e.g., Sage got Mental Alacrity) that needed to be bought if you wanted it. I don't see that my Sentinel had any though. I don't have a Guardian to compare that. However, if you were one of those that leveled up quickly, either by content or by saving up quest rewards, then yes, there are maybe one or two new powers waiting in levels 51-55 (Sentinel gets one at 51). However, just like the levels below, there are new ranks of existing powers you can train up, and if you all of a sudden jumped 5 levels, yes, there's a lot of training to buy. However, those costs have nothing to do with the respec.

I can't tell if this applies here, but note that you have to login to each of your characters to get any achievements attributed to them processed.

Folks, you gotta understand how internet technology works... There's not a direct line between you and any service provider. There are a series of forwarding hosts (not sure these days if they are actual full computers or just big hardware routers) where packets get sent and then forwarded. Any sort of congestion at or in the the network links to/from these sites will affect users who happen to be routed through them. This is further complicated by the fact that BW/EA is undoubtedly using some sort of cloud service to provide these files. Any site that depends on high-volume high-throughput file serving nowadays does, so even the source system is probably not actually any BW/EA hardware. These cloud systems are generally hosted by the internet backbone providers (the ones that maintain the core "highways" along which most long-distance internet traffic runs). My point is that by contracting a cloud services provider, your files are likely distributed across the world in various hosting centers. By looking at my network connections when the launcher runs, I'm seeing that they use Akamai Tech for at least some cloud services, for me. The fact that I and others got pretty good download speeds (I got over 2 MBytes/s, which is pretty much my ISP throttle limit) means that my cloud provider and all intervening network hops were performing well. The fact that some did not means the reverse. Just from saying that, it is impossible to assign "blame" on the poor performance. It could have been ANYONE, from your ISP's internal routing systems all the way to Akamai/other cloud provider. About the only clue one can have is to use a traceroute utility to measure the latency between the various hops in your network path. If you've never done it, it's also instructive to see just how many times your packets need to be forwarded. In my case, it seems that I am 10 hops away from the cloud provider I just indentified.

FYI, as a programmer (not of games), finding and fixing memory leaks is often a huge challenge. So while I applaud them for finding one such and fixing it, I am under no illusions that a) it's the only one in existence and b) there won't be any more. Also, the idea that the memory footprint of the game will drastically change is probably false. Depending on their memory management system (which is maybe just Windows' system), it might not actually "give back" much memory to the system. However, it might utilize the memory it has more efficiently, and in a way that won't cause the system to thrash.

Here's my perspective, the idea that MMOs are really multiplayer RPGs is somewhat false. I think that in some very fundamental ways, MMOs have more in common with FPS games than RPGs. MMO endgame is really not so much about story than it is about form of "competition", whether it be directly in PvP or in some form of "beating the game" to complete ops, gain money, etc. And it is the RPG elements that seem to be poo-poo'ed by the hardcore gamer. I have a friend who has played through KotOR and ME2 probably on the order of 20 or more times. And with ME2, never on a difficulty higher than normal. I feel I have more in common with him than with where MMOs are heading. Frankly, if it wasn't for the SWTOR fully voiced RPG leveling game, I would not be here. I admit I strive for a little more difficulty than he does, as I have played ME2 on hardcore, but that's my limit. I have no intention on playing at insanity, and I do die a lot at hardcore even. The MMO recipe of "grind for gear so you can grind for more gear" is completely disinteresting for me, as is directly competitive play (PvP). And if that wasn't the case, the IP used for it would be much less important than the gameplay polish, which is probably why no one has a lot of hope at dethroning WoW for quite a while, at least until they stumble.

By the way, you generally don't want to "re-seed" your RNG from something that you "think" is random, like the time of day. If you're using a good RNG (and there are plenty in various runtime libraries), nowadays they generally are designed on sound statistical principles, and provide a uniform pseudo-random distribution. If you think you "know better" and try to throw what you think is more randomness into it, you are probably making it worse, not better. And to reiterate what I said a few posts back, if you roll the dice a million times, you will almost always find a string of 50 or more failures in a row. So... think about it. Let's say there are 100,000 players RE'ing each day. If they each roll about 10 times, that's a million. So roughly speaking, that means EVERY DAY, someone in SWTOR fails on 50 tries to succeed on a RE'ed item. Yes, the odds of failing 50 times in a row is miniscule. You'd never bet on it... but when you have a sample size the size of SWTOR, it happens---REGULARLY.

Almost a year ago I did some analysis on this. It turned out that for a 20% schematic the 90th percentile of trials is at 10.5 rolls, and the 98th is around 20. In other words, 1 out of 10 times it will take you more than 10 rolls to succeed, and about 1 in 50 times (actually, it was 1 in 45), it will take you 20 or more. If you roll the dice a million times, you will almost always find at least one streak of > 50 failures, and it's about 50/50 that you'll find one taking over 60.

I play my 50 Sage as a healer/DPS hybrid because I find that fun. But not to worry as I almost never am involved in group play so I'm unlikely to run into you in these situations, and even if I did, I would advertise myself as a hybrid to set expectations (I'm really "only" missing the area heal, but of course that can be a biggie in certain situations). However, my best method of force regen on this character is through DPS (TK throw), so I do that a lot since it has 0 activation and CD and is thus my spam ability if I'm not needing to do anything else.

The trick is this: Do not try running jumps. You do standing jumps--hit the jump key, then the forward key. Depending on whether you have sprint and/or run on, you will jump a different amount. You will not jump further by running. You will likely jump less, and if you are actually trying to jump across a gap, you will more than likely try to start the jump too late and fall. With practice, standing jumps can become very predictable. They are also less impacted by lag or choppy graphics as you are not depending on any visual feedback. The jump/forward/release key sequence is to be done in rapid order, and gets typically executed fairly consistently.

Software development fail. I trust your day job isn't to manage a real software project of any kind. No organization would dare release ANY kind of software without a public beta program. No QA division for anyone would ever say that they can put an application through its paces better than real customers doing real things.

Counting only my Cybertech REs of green to blue, since 1.2 I am 10 for 41 for a 24.4% success rate. If I only count my non-mod items (earpieces), I am 2 for 9 for a 22.2% success rate. That's why I say that my results fall right along the norm that I would expect. I believe that if I count all of my REs across other skills, then I have about a 21% success rate in a total of 150+ tries (I'd have to recalculate it to be exact since I didn't save my results from the last time). BTW, one thing I don't do is to produce a stack and then RE them one after another. I produce one at a time (or sometimes 2 if I crit a mod), and RE it immediately. Thus, my attempts are spaced at least a couple minutes apart. Could there be a bug dealing with very closely spaced RE attempts? There's always that possibility. But overall, I can't find fault with the results from my experience.

It's not required. Make sure you don't pick Rarity = Any, because that's the bug they worked around by defaulting it to Rarity = Standard

The way you said that, it sounds like you're looking for a purple? If so, then that is probably a 10% success rate. According to my analysis, about 93% of the time you should have succeeded by the 25th. While that seems "very likely", it's still only happens about 14 out of 15 times, or in other words it'll take you at least that many tries every 1 out of 15 times you go for a success. You'll only cross the 1 out of 20 level at about 29 tries, 1 out of 100 is at 44.

True, computers use pseudo-random number generators. But that said, there are library implementations of such that generate statistically valid random numbers. In fact, computers are used in real-life design and analysis utilizing monte-carlo simulations where the basis of the results depend on the RNG. So, are RNGs useless? By no means NO. Can RNGs be used incorrectly? DEFINITELY. A few weeks ago, I was THIS CLOSE to filing a bug because I thought the number of long failure strings were unrealistic. That's when I wrote my simulator and eventually did the analytical estimate that proved to me that my results were well within the expected results (at least from an eyeball look--I only know enough statistics to be dangerous ) Luckily, because I DO keep exact track of each and every success and failure, I was able to do this. So if you are claiming a bug, do the same, and when you have enough results (100 or more rolls), you can be more convincing. Maybe there's a bug with certain items. Maybe there's a bug between the single- and multiple-schematics items (i.e., mods vs. other items, I mostly do the former).

By keeping an accurate record of attempts and successes (and remember to count the 10-vs-20% separately). With enough rolls, that should approach the stated success rate. It does for me (actually, better, around 21% for the 20% items after about 150 rolls so far).

FYI, I keep accurate records of all my RE attempts, and I can say that out of 150+ rolls I have gotten about a 21% success rate. So for me, their random number generator is operating pretty much on-target.

Maybe it's just me, but from day 1 when they announced the total voice-over design, I thought "Cool, it'll be a multiplayer Mass Effect with the KotOR setting". And as far as I can see, they nailed that exactly. Thoughts that it would bring a new level of PvP, or be the next SWG, are, in my opinion, wishful thinking based on what players wanted rather than what BW was talking about. So maybe I just lucked out and got what I wanted myself... But in any case, I play SWTOR for the storyline, period. I don't PvP or raid (and yes, I have a L50). I don't really need any of the features that the OP wrote about. In particular, I find day/night cycles annoying. And the lack of "crowds" of NPCs is probably more due to performance reasons than anything else. (FYI, I didn't find myself really enjoying either Fallout 3 nor Oblivion, so I don't think I'd find open world exploring all that interesting either.) The only thing I'm looking for over time is more story content (note: not ops, not flashpoints, not heroics). I don't even particularly care if they raise the level cap.