This is me. Was going to buy anyway, but my hands didn't start shaking in anticipation until I saw the XP bonus. Easily the best $20 I've spent in the last 5 years.

1st world problems, OP. Seriously, if your logic were valid, any improvement in the user experience would be an insult to the people who played before the changes. It's like claiming it's insulting for Ford to develop cars that get better fuel economy because there are people who bought previous cars that got worse fuel economy. That's idiotic. You need to stop looking for reasons to complain and actually enjoy the changes... I'm having a ball, and I was here on day one.

This was heavily debated before launch, when the exact role of the alignment system was still up in the air. They decided, from an RP standpoint, that it was inappropriate to have the powers switch because a light Sith is still darker than a dark Jedi. Whether or not I agree with that rationale, I do agree that for practical reasons it is a bad idea to switch the powers around.

People don't like losing advantages in PvP games. More at 11.

This is me... role and skills are fundamental defining characteristics of each of my characters. I have never voluntarily respecced a character, if I recall correctly.

I'm level 40 and so far no problems with gear. I am rolling in credits even though I'm only doing class quests... the free skills open up quite a few resources to address possible gear issues. Plus, if you get stuck, just remember that half the classes out there can run the Ord Mantell heroics in no time flat to get Planetary comms.

+1. I was very pleased with what I have seen so far. Sounds like a blanket improvement all around, from the greenest new player's experience to the ease of respeccing for veterans. Even - dare I say it - the elimination of hybrids should be a good thing. That plus faster balancing/design iterations... well, it all sounds great. I'm hoping (out of spite) that they nerf the ever-loving crap out of sorcerers.... the tears of the PvP underhive would be glorious.

I've been using quest reward greens and world drop greens, but I have to say, it's a lot harder than I expected in places. I actually died four times trying to complete the class story for my Consular on Quesh... Qyzen just couldn't tank the damage the mobs were putting out, and only some pretty embarrassing kiting on my part actually let me finish it off.

Another hating Alderaan here. I actually have abandoned toons before because they got to Alderaan and I couldn't bear to go through the planet again. The fact that you're skipping planetary quests with the 12X bonus makes it feel like travelling is worse than it really is, but it's still awful regardless. I don't know what it is about that place... Hoth is huge and it never bothers me.

Guess some people are hard to please. I was tickled pink.

I wasn't sure I was going to pre-order the expansion, seeing as I haven't even finished the existing Operations. When I saw this bonus, I couldn't give them my money fast enough. I think the OP is simply out of touch - I've got quite a few class stories still to get through.

Actually, it's a good deal less ethical than charging a higher price for an item that has greater demand than supply. That is a mutually-agreed transaction where both parties know and understand the terms of the agreement. What you're proposing is deception, such that both parties have dissimilar knowledge of the transaction. You design things so that people think the arrangement is one thing, when it is, in fact, another. That's a scam by definition. The fact that it can be caught be careful observation does not differentiate it from other scams - almost all of them can be caught and avoided by careful observation. That makes you no better than the people that call up elderly citizens posing as workers from the Social Security Office, trying to get their personal information. This is what happens when you try to teach relativist morality... you get people who actually believe it.

This is how I level almost all of my toons. Greens are just fine until endgame, no point worrying about gear til then.

Conquest crafting is limited by credits, essentially. I have no problem with people dumping hundreds of millions on crafting mats if that's what they want to do... it stimulates that section of the economy and makes simply running missions and selling the results (or actual node farming) more worth the time and effort. I think the people who blow huge chunks of money on mats are a bit crazy, but to each their own. Winning just isn't that important to me, given that Conquests will go on forever...

I have several classes that I've finished the story for and I still don't have those unlocked. Only one of the 5 actually is unlocked.

Oh, I understand what you're getting at. It's just VERY weird for someone who played Privateer, Freelancer, TIE Fighter, Freespace 2... Even EVE Online has animations that match up, even if you don't manually aim. Throws me for a loop, but I'll get used to it.

I see where you're coming from and concede that such things are possible, but the results I've been seeing support the general correlation of ship count with skill. Moreover, the match results and my observation of obviously-standout players show very very significant disparity in player performance that would make an Elo system freak out. If there IS an Elo-based matchmaker, the parameters are set so broadly as to be useless in modulating player experiences.

See, stuff like this is why so many people try GSF and quit. IGNORE THE ANIMATION THAT SHOWS THE PATH OF FHE PROJECTILE. Just like the tracking penalties that are pretty opaque, not explained, and are unintuitive. It's like BW wanted the barrier of entry to be stupidly high on purpose. Still, thanks for the tip. I'll use my lasers like tracer rounds and totally ignore the rocket animations from here on out.

Interesting discussion. As a GSF noob, I have a few comments: 1) Based on my limited experience, there is no matchmaking. It is extremely common for me to see a Pub lineup of mostly 2-ship players with the occasional 3-4 shipper. Opposing this are Imperial teams with 3-5 ships each. The ensuing slaughter is pretty unavoidable. Why there are more Pub noobs than Imps on during the morning EST is anyone's guess. 2) I'd have to agree that Conquest is contributing to GSF queue pops. I wouldn't be doing it without that motivation. 3) Upgrading all defenses or all weapons first seems illogical to me. Since the price of upgrades seems to increase beyond T1, I am getting everything to T1 first, then T2, etc. 4) Giving the Novadive as the default Scout and NOT giving it the ability to mount decent dogfighting missiles was a totally boneheaded design move. Rockets are fine against defense turrets or the occasional stationary gunship, but they're useless against 75% of the targets on the map.

People of all preferences and play styles enjoy this game. I'm not sure trying to nail it down is actually a productive endeavor.

The biggest problem I have is actually hitting other ships with my lasers. Not necessarily keeping my aiming reticle over the lead indicator, that's easy... but for some reason a VERY significant number (say, 80%) of my shots miss even if the target is flying straight and unswerving... nothing like that ever happened in my other flight games like TIE Fighter or Freelancer. Am I supposed to lag-shoot in this game? As it is, the only way I usually ever get hits is if the target is moving mostly towards me or away from me.

Ran this FP with guildies and one person dropped. We didn't notice, really. I liked the content, but I would have liked to see the boss mechanics made a bit more meaningful. They were so meaningless that I didn't even really notice any except when the Rancor smacked me across the map. I'm pretty sure there was some kind of swapping mechanic on the last boss because there were VOs that sounded like telegraphing, but I never figured out what was going on. We just tank/spanked...

Wasn't aware SWTOR needed saving... OP should stop worrying and just go play

This would be great. It wouldn't much mitigate the obnoxious headache of hemorrhaging credits that droid gearing is, but it would help a bit.

I agree, which is why I never made a suggestion thread about it. I believe the current system, given its possible flaws, is probably the best choice. A possible variation might be that a negative modifier be applied to earned points for guilds over a certain size, scaling with population... or inversely, a positive modifier could be applied to earned points for toons in guilds under a certain size, decreasing as certain thresholds of population are met. I would be hesitant to implement such scaling without at least a few months of pure Conquest data though.