It honestly baffles me how people can compare Ossus grind in this game to grind in Anthem or any other looter shooter... those games are built on rng grind from the ground up and every waking moment you're not grinding away you feel like you're falling behind. Which is why after Warframe I'm not touching another one with a 10 meter pole... and they're seen as the ethical peak of the genre.

Humorously enough it's the same for me, SW is unplayable, managed to log in my JK and experienced zero issues.

Yea I got to a lift an now every time I log in the game starts freezing and then crashes. Can't log the char out or log another one in cos the one crashing stays logged. Ya well, more time to go over the dulfy guide =P

All you need is a set of legacy gear to transfer mods into it and you can store it in your legacy vault. There is one in each faction base on Ossus, near to where you pick up quests. I just park my toons there now And don't worry about world boss fights and your performance. The bug is easy and at the droid about 95% of the fights end up with a lot of people dying all the time, respawning at medcenter and running back to continue the fight. Still I haven't witnessed a complete wipe like ever. Just make sure not to release/respawn when the boss gets down to around 10%, you won't have time to run back in time. You'll get better the more you do it. EDIT: Take a look at this thread. I go by that to help me with what I need long term and what 252 is safe to RE on the spot. All crit implants and the like bite the dust immediately, crystal purchases here I come. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=959289 Not sure why I do it but hey I'm chugging along towards getting decked for content I'll likely never touch lol. If that's not causal I don't know what is.

Perhaps I expressed myself badly but I'm indeed talking about Ossus 10 daily mission quest. Like I said, for my "main" I run it and 2 alts of same/mirror class through it per week. That's 3 252 pieces per week. I never bought any 252 until I had enough crystals to fill the gaps RNGesus left me with and upgrade them up to 258 at the same time. Then I do the world boss quest and the weekly (when it's not bugged) for 2 crystals and buy one for 500 (had a kitty of 6k, but RE-ing 252 that are not what I need (wrong stat implants, duplicates etc) for 175 a pop in addition to everything from CXP boxes I'm still around 3k doing this). So that's generally 3 crystals per toon per week. Which is what it costs to upgrade most 252s to 258 earned per week. Even 2 per week isn't bad, if the weekly is like GSF, which I too skipped on all toons, both weeks. But I would encourage you to join the World boss groups. It's fast and easy crystals each week. Last week I spent all crystals I saved up on all 3 toons at once and bought 258s for my legacy gear set across them, a few pieces on each. I now transfer it from one to the other when playing them. Even went through the trouble to craft 240 augs for it, first time I augmented after 226 lol. Now I just need to finish up with the implants and whatnot on all 3. I do my 3 "mains" in like a day or two, depending on the weekly rotating one, when I get the "progression itch". On other days I run other classes through it if I feel like it but am not really gunning to deck them out anytime soon. So it's super slow in the grand scheme of things but at the same time casual as heck, as a run of 10 dailies really takes no time at all and WB groups are constantly forming. Just a bit of juggling with an alt or two massively speeds things up for 9 out of 14 gear slots (armour+main/offhand) since if nothing else you get a bunch of components for crystals from duplicates and cut down on the need to purchase 252s with crystals.

I can only speak for myself but this update made me play more and I'm actually seeing people in my pre update completely dead guilds. Granted we peaked at 5, but hey, progress. I think the reason is accessibility. Yes it's a grind of a huuge timesink variety (one I mitigate by running 3 alts of a class) but it's easier for me to do a daily run on what is imo a well designed planet and have tangible progression towards BIS. Not that I need it but it hits the spot when I equip it, you know how it is. Hey you never know, maybe I'll get an active guild some day. Whether or not having BIS quite so accessible a near inactive slob like me can pursue it with half an effort is a different question entirely. And even I am sceptical of that and I'm directly benefiting. Welfare gear on steroids. One man's blessing another man's game ruining move.

Honestly it's probably EA that would like out more... Disney is pocketing/pocketed whatever EA is paying/paid them to hold exclusive license - which is probably far from chump change... and Mickey inc. isn't really a gamer, so I doubt they care much beyond that... they washed their hands of it a long time ago, small potatoes for them. Everything EA makes under the IP turns to poodoo so they probably aren't due that many milestone payments... and that is probably a tactic to minimize their losses and run the contract down at this stage - ergo cancelling everything and reportedly refusing BW permission to do another KOTOR (if you believe the reports). After the exclusive licence runs out you'd think TOR would be safe under a new agreement until some other studio/publisher decided to make a new SW mmo, at which point it'll go the way of SWG... Well as safe as you can get being part of the trigger happy EA. They might decide this game is not profitable enough tomorrow lol.

I think the issue is devs being too focused on what a vocal minority on forums think they want. It's one of the thousand cuts on this game. Over the years it has lead to one development dead end after the other and now it has seeped over into narrative. At this stage my only hope is 6.0 reboots the story by going back to faction stories with new sets of companions and NPCs + some longer term coherent story plan. After KOTFE/KOTET discontinuation it all feels like a bad improv as we go. But given how over-sensitive devs are to twitch chat demands I'm sceptical we'll even get off the "alliance" fence properly... as it would "upset too many players".

If I had to guess I'd say they're seeing an up-tick of activity by a bunch of causals that never really chased for 248s. Ossus is pretty much always buzzing.

I've only ever seen that in shooter games where characters are not as individualized as in RPGs/MMOs. As lame as the current solution is I think you'd rustle a lot more jimmies by auto re-skinning toons into generic templates.

Engine issues contributed to that in a direct way. People were queuing up for stuff at launch in a sense (no LFG back then) it just all had a tendency to turn into a power-point presentation. Even Ossus WBes have issues. TO answer the op... yes and no. Would I pay 60$ to have this game ported? No. Would I play a new SW MMO ie SWTOR II if they made one? Ya.

You can't kill/boot Lana because atm she's about the only story anchor for all the possible permutations left. Everyone else has a question mark over their status. I mean they could give the option, then spend resources to have variations of narration starring companions you still have alive... but even then they'd have to gate stuff in some way to make sure you can't kill everyone sod that one of the red lines carries you onwards... If they're ever spending that much cents per subscription/CC dollar on content production again I'd much much prefer a return of class specific content and some more imagination in the player agency department than a simple kill off option for every NPC I meet.

I'm willing to wager the 8 medals PvP quest will never be returning with it's replacement being X WZ wins. Which will even the field.

It makes a certain amount of sense as it pushes people to do the roles that are in shortage. I know I dusted off my tanking gear. Having said that, even by doing it as a tank and getting 4 pops close to instantly, the effort in the form of time investment required is disproportionate to the PVP mission by a huge margin. But my perception may be skewed as I play a class that can even in dps discipline selfheal and mitigate damage on allies to a degree that getting enough medals is laughably easy even being half scrub, while the general population of certain other classes might struggle to hit the mark consistently.

As far as I remember the question of faction symbolisms was brought up even back at prelaunch and devs at some stage explained the logic behind the mix of symbols (imp crest similar in style to OT galactic republic and imperial crest etc): in their minds at some stage both the warring factions melded together - the victor assimilating the other and both cultures fusing to a degree, which fits together with that and some other OT quirks such as imps generally having british accents - a cultural difference some galactic republic citizens retained from the SWTOR age. Which honestly is one of the dumbest crutches writers keep using in the story and I hope they drop it ASAP. Just come up with another conversation option of why X is late, not say their faction is short on fuel. Two entities that have a galaxy divided between them are hamstrung by a resource crisis cos they had to pay tribute to one planet? The premise that a dude in a middle of a ocean that possesses a desalination machine is short on drinking water is quadruple facepalm worthy.

If I'm BW and I'm watching the metrics that show me that ranked legit died because mat farmers lost the incentive to get stomped I'm thinking it's time to let pvp slide down the list of priorities to where GSF is at.

Seems like we're going around in circles regarding the question of what came before the chicken or the egg... you say what happens may be different but it's the same story and I say it can't be the same story because what happens changes based on the toon that plays it with all 8 having been funnelled into one story... so I'm just going to stop and concede the argument on this passing remark to my point. Crux of my issue is why is player agency so 2 dimensional and detrimental to narrative development of this game? Why does it feel like "kill/spare = effectively erase" is all there is? Why can't we have limited open world environmental changes based on story choices for instance instead? I don't think it's even without precedent, Balmorra space port I think changes visually as reach a certain milestone. So does Odessan with its cracks in the wall appearing after a certain chapter. PVE content of late has been an exercise of who's there sill left to kill to a point we were at 5.9 effectively down to 1 major established NPC to carry the narration - Lana. Which is, imvho, hilarious for a story focused game. I loled when Charles on BadFeelingPodcast commented that he felt even psychopaths would need a reason and he couldn't see any behind calls to kill Lana that's ever only been loyal... But honestly, he can't write in killing her before 6.0 because there will *literary* be no NPC to segue the PC into the first 6.0 mission, discounting Koths surviving crew I guess lol. That's how bad it's gotten. Honestly I have no doubt about that as one solid Blur trailer gets my hype over 9000. I'm just trying to suggest to the devs that there should be other options than just "build them all up just to tare them down and move on" in their bag of tricks.

They co-exist as parallels with suspension of disbelief... Only one of them "at a time" is Commander/dude that did X planet story/did that ops boss story cut-scene. The thing that got me to notice it is how the republic fleet arrives while the same character is engaged in markedly different activities in Pub/Imp stories... I knew that comment will struck some nerves but be honest, can you name a 5.9 TOR character capable of such emotive response from the fanbase as Slyvanas has this expansion cycle for WoW? I don't even play that flipping game and only tune in for the youtube cutscenes and I know about it. Fact of the matter is TOR is poor in character department. Because they keep being offered up as kills to players, which is my point. If it weren't poor the dead would obviously get to stay dead.

I will strive to be spoiler free, thou the crux of the issue is that if you've seen some of TOR story you've seen it all, so that might be a problem... First of, I welcome the return to pub v imp focus and the story twist. I've actually argued the retirement of "Voldemort" back when the game launched was a giant blunder. The reason I'm making this thread is because I noticed a small thing bothering me with "Jedi under siege" and I traced it back to what I think is a fundamental problem with the way TOR, the self-anointed story focused MMO, does story, that ends up being sub part to say WoW. I realize each of the 8 class stories has to be self contained alternate reality and I'm ok with that. What bothered me with this update is that BW didn't combine the overarching Republic and Imperial narratives into one central and coherent arc but seemingly pursued alternate realities even for both factions. You can't really say "I've seen what happened on the Pub side lemme jump over to the Imp POV", it's two markedly different narratives in the same locations. Events that happen to marque NPC's in one never happen to them in the other and while some can be said to be left to interpretation some are very blatant. Then I realized it is all subservient to what I believe is the fundamentally dysfunctional way TOR elects to do player agency and give the illusion of control/effect/choice to players - get players to the same room and give them the binary choice of kill/imprison at the end of virtually every story arc. And the reason why I feel it's bad is because it is now (when we know that the only difference the choice makes is in the one post event in-game mail or cameo of a character that is at that point written off completely) a rather low pay-off for a shtick that leads to: a) so many permutations that the overall expansion narratives are forced to be shallow puddles and disjointed + b) continuously impoverishes the pool of characters that might have otherwise been cornerstones of TOR lore throughout these years. Now I'm leaning towards the conclusion the writing team is well aware of this and it is being told to keep ploughing through because alternatives are not technically feasible or too resource intensive. But there has to be a better way, surely, considering all the problems... fact is that when you're resorting to digging up names from the website and starter planets just to have someone to elevate for 2 hours to then put to the sword, because hey, that's the template we're using, you're scrapping the bottom of the barrel. And it makes the game less coherent and makes it harder to have real emotional investment in it. Feels like the game lacks a soul. A structure. That it's not a SW "saga" but a collage of Hitman-esque missions. I don't think most of the players care, as so far they even know, who the acting faction leaders are and I'm having a super hard time imagining that for alliance/horde. Which is rather "unfortunate" given the fact we're going back to the very faction v faction narrative. But hey, at least having you know who back gives me hope someone at BW already recognized some of the above mentioned as an issue. tl;dr: BW please look at other ways to do player agency and stop constantly sabotaging your story by killing pretty much all noteworthy characters you ever introduce.

Bummer to hear... Oh the flame wars we used to have re it and this game. Those were the days my friend, we thought they'd never end...

Another year another SWTOR fundamental endgame gearing paradim shift. Sounds interesting story wise. Can't wait to see that.

But we have a recent history and a relationship with her that we can carry forward. All the othe characters you mentioned are either dead or killable, meaning they can't and won't have any narrative weight ever again. Without Lana the next expansion intro quest will start with a random NPC calling you via holocoms and going "Hey I just met you, and this is crazy, but I'm the new pub/imp leader, so call me when you get to X planet maybe". Which is a testament to how badly handled TOR writing has been over the years. When WoW killed Varian it was a big deal and they had Anduin who they built up to fall back on. TOR is just a mess. Because at some stage satisfying the urge of a portion of people to stick a lightsaber into every character took precedense over any quality narrative still left.

You need both high end marketing and content development. Most people that once played or could play for the first time in the future arent sifting through patch notes going "ooh they added a PvP stronghold, I'll jump back in for 2 months to see what happened since last year", their head get's turned by the CGI trailer thumbnail. A game that gives up on marketing and only does "what it can" for the players it still has is a for all intents and purposes a dead game. So yea, I seriously hope Blur is on the case with another kickas pew pew bonanza of a trailer. Cos that would signal this game still has a modicum of ambition going forward.

The issue is that once a character get's the option of being rubbed out he's effectively killed for the purpose of future narrative no matter if you choose to keep them alive. Their role going forward equates a half hearthed cameo in a scene or two, at best. And like her or not, at present, Lana is one of the very very few fleshed out and memorable characters TOR still has. Don't think they can exactly afford to cut her loose just for the sake of it. I'll be very interested in how exactly they plan to tilt the story back to pub v. imp in the future, when there is scant relatabe still left for us in those factions. It's hillarious to me just how, when TOR is supposed to be the narrative driven MMO, WoW has treated it's lore way more carefully and thoughtfully, having a plathera of strong characters to naratively fall back on.

Both factions could use characters/leaders you actually care about. For a story centric game this has been an issue from launch as vanilla had killed off both the sith emperor & republic chancelor and crippled itself going forward. And since then it's just been a shooting gallery. Pretty much every character that gets established they rub out the next expansion. Or better said story addition. Not even heavy carriers ala companions are safe, nvm faction leadership. Must be hard to get VO actors to come back or something lol... So if you dislike the current regime fret not, they'll soon be dead and the next "who is this again" will be in charge.