Disappointing. (Sorry. Regrettably, I'm being serious.)

I'm kind of surprised by it, really. The Sith are basically an empire of losers. They get destroyed to a man. Everyone knows it. Why do more people want to play the faction that they know ultimately loses? The quests and worlds are better organized on the Republic side. Pretty much the only thing the Sith have are better class concepts -- and then, the only one that's truly imbalanced in the Sith's favor is Bounty Hunter vs Trooper. Trooper just feels lame to me. But that alone doesn't explain the 30% faction differential on most servers.

Yes, I like all of these. I also like these ideas which have been put forth by other people: * Group space missions. * Space raids. Take 15 of your friends and face the death star. (Really? BW didn't even think of this? ...really? I asked about this at their PAX booth last year, and the dev looked at me like I was from Mars! It was very nearly the Jenna Marbles "How to Avoid Talking to People" look.) * Ship appearances being customizable, inside and out. They're effectively player housing from level 17 onward. * Cosmetic professions that do things like customize ship appearances, inside and out. And character appearances, for that matter. I mean beyond the 70s/emo hair styles. I want my Chiss Sniper to get a facial tattoo! * Open "sandbox" style planets. * Repeatable missions, even daily quests, with tangible light/dark side gains, and corresponding rewards for things like "go from full light to full dark" or vice versa. * More battlegrounds. The ability to board factions' ships and PVP there as a battleground. * Guild space stations, where the guild not only designs it, but gets to implement security, and groups of players can assault them. ...and so on. All I'm seeing, in this thread and elsewhere, is whether or not raids should be hard. That's a bit like looking at a real city, asking its residents "how can I improve this city," and restricting the answers to the shape and accessibility of the sports stadium.

I think you missed my explanation about why a casual guild leader is far, far less likely to have the time, money, or interest for a "Guild Summit" than a hardcore guild leader. Re. Negativity/feedback: Exactly what purpose is served by gathering feedback in this way, when even a cursory understanding of human nature is enough to realize "this might be a fundamentally flawed tactic"? Saying "this isn't likely to go well" isn't being negative. That's being realistic. Re. WoW and raids: You can argue the whys and wherefores all you like. WoW's numbers peaked during the expansion all the hardcore players called "too easy". Their numbers dropped sharply during the expansion all the casual players called "too hard". Neither of these is deniable. I did posit, without the data to prove, that I think WoW's numbers peaked because all players had goals they could work on. But that's tangential to the main point I'm trying to make: "hardcore only" equals "no subscribers". Casuals aren't just the majority of the player base, they're where the *money* comes from. (Side note/other tangent: There is a true workaround for this, but it involves the dreaded "microtransactions" model instead of a flat subscriber fee) Re. raiding in general: I'm inclined to agree that "people got tired of doing the same thing" and left WoW because of it. But that "same thing" is raiding. There are only so many ways to make players jump when you say "jump". At some point, the very principle of "large # of people dodging ground effects while one 'tank' keeps the big bad guy's attention and four healers spend their night turning yellow bars into green ones" is going to start feeling tired and stale, no matter how you slice it. Reskinning raids to have light sabers doesn't change anything. The declining numbers in WoW suggest (to me) that it's time to move on. There were hundreds of directions a Star Wars MMO could take; raiding doesn't need to be a sole focus, or even a main one.

Mine looks exactly like a Cenobite. I'll try to post a screenshot later, but if you look at the poster from an old Hellraiser movie (Google it?), you're basically there. Fair warning: Your character's skin loses a lot of the rich blue tone.

Um...all right, can we have a female Chiss romance then? No, I'm being serious. I think female Chiss are hot.

Actually, it does sound like you're trying to pick things apart for the fun of it. And failing badly. And the guy you're quoting sounds like he has a concussion or something, so it's not worth the effort of replying to him. Let's see. 1.) Rapid Fire. Generally agreed upon to be weakest 31 pt talent in the game. There is no reason to bother with it. 2.) Laze target + Snipe should go before Ambush, but I was trying to simplify things for the new 50 who started the post. Shrug. I'll edit that at some point. 3.) Let me show you why Rapid Fire is garbage. Series of Shots basic info Cost: 20 Energy Channel Time: 3 Seconds Maximum Energy regenerated in 3 seconds: 18 (Cover with Sniper's Nest) This is not net energy regeneration. It's net energy loss. What were you saying about *me* being a baddie? You just failed first grade math. SoS does roughly the damage of two Snipes. Under ideal circumstances, SoS is better energy management than Snipe spam; however, fights are rarely ideal. The question becomes whether or not you even have a chance to dump a full SoS channel on all fights, much less 2-3 in a row (as "Rapid Fire" enables). The hybrid build I linked is going to perform well on movement heavy fights for this very reason, which is where SoS dependence falls apart. I'm not sure what your workaround for this is, but "hang on while I respec" isn't going to make people happy with you. PS At no point did I say or imply that anyone was an idiot. I did say that Rapid Fire and Orbital Strike were both pointless single target talents. They are. Each requires keeping a boss still for 6-8 seconds to have a net positive effect. If you have the opportunity, great, more power to you, but "boss stands still" is a horrible assumption to make an entire build around.

Here's what I've tried running so far. Without a true parser I can't tell you how effective they are, but both seem functional with gear to support it. 1.) Low amounts of Crit/Surge on gear (fresh 50 or stacking Power): http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#400bsrbdMsRZbIbbRo.1 Priority (Bosses): Shatter Shot (if not up) > Explosive Probe > Takedown > Followthrough >= Interrogation Probe > (Laze) Snipe > Ambush > (Non-Laze) Snipe >> Corrosive Dart You don't need Series of Shots on your toolbar for this rotation. Actually, you don't really need it on your toolbar in any rotation, but that's another argument for another day. The extra Crit bonus from Imperial Sniper would be a greater DPS increase than pimping out Explosive Probe on a low-movement fight, but this build is designed around heavy burst (i.e. spamming) followed by long periods of movement (with very little accompanying energy use). The idea is that the loss of damage from Imperial Sniper is made up for by the damage gained by being able to spam for burst damage If you're going to plan around heavy burst followed by long movement, then your priority should look like this: Burst Phase: Shatter Shot (if not up) > Explosive Probe > Takedown > Followthrough > (Laze) Snipe > Ambush > (Non-Laze) Snipe Move Phase: Followthrough > Interrogation Probe > Corrosive Dart > refresh Shatter Shot (if >60 Energy) > Rifle Shot 2.) High amounts of Crit/Surge on gear: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#400bsrbdMsRgZbc0MZh.1 Priority (Bosses): Shatter Shot > Takedown > (Laze) Snipe > Ambush > Followthrough > Explosive Probe > (Non-Laze) Snipe >> Corrosive Dart > Series of Shots (...I guess...) This is my take on the cookie-cutter deep MM build. Notes: * You actually have a free point in each spec since Diversion on bosses has gone **** up as of this morning's patch. * People say about Orbital Strike adds to single target DPS. People also say Obama is Kenyan and his mom flew 22 hours in labor to deliver a baby someplace other than four miles from her house, then bribed Honolulu newspapers by telegraph to run false birth announcements. These two statements are about equally sane. Orbital Strike has a 3-5 second delay from the end of the cast to the time it starts dropping bombs, which means it's good for exactly one thing: Pulling weak crap while soloing. While you check your snail mail. At the end of a very long driveway. * At no point should you bother with Rapid Fire. Rapid Fire is a one skill point tax on people who are bad at math. You are much better served by spending that point in a single survivability talent than you are on an ability that finishes a cooldown on something that isn't worth having a cooldown on in the first place.

The post I'm quoting is a good example of the kind of thing you can expect at a "Guild Summit". 1.) WoW peaked in popularity during the same expansion as the "easy and candy like" complaints: Wrath of the Lich King. Yes, epics were easy to get. The game was also more fun, not because it was easy to obtain gear, but because everyone could find things to do, and goals to achieve for their character. 2.) Making a game hard doesn't attract players. Vanguard: Saga of Heroes was one of the hardest MMOs. Have you heard of it? No? That's because it wasn't popular. Now it's free to play and no further content is being developed. That's what happens when you cater a game to the hardest of the hardcore: 95% of potential players can't even level, so they get mad, so they quit. This approach to MMO design is rather like building a car that takes a Ph.D. in Engineering to understand. Sure, you CAN do that, and for those few people who comprehend its operation, it'll probably feel awesome. But what's the sales forecast look like for that business model, exactly? 3.) WoW began to lose popularity precisely when they decided to make raids hard again (Cataclysm). There's your second counter-example. They're still making hard raids and they've lost around a third of their subscribers. That was even before they announced their "kung fu pandas" nonsense. In fact, this is exactly why you shouldn't listen to anyone willing to attend a "Guild Summit". Leading a guild and being a hardcore player doesn't mean you have the slightest clue about how to make a game marketable (or lend it staying power).

I speak from experience as a 50 Sniper with 400 Armstech: Armstech is garbage at 50. You can get a better barrel than anything you can make just by doing half a dozen quests on Ilum. (8 daily tokens = #23 epic barrel, your crafting stops at #22) Then you'll find even better than that on HM False Emperor (i.e. the second easiest HM). I leveled Armstech using epic barrels, and it was awesome right up until 49. Then its brick walled permanently. If you aren't a "gun" class, I wouldn't bother.

I'd say Armstech is second only to Armormech for "worst endgame profession". Armstech exists for exactly one purpose -- making sure you have updated barrels in your orange gun from 11-49. It instantly and permanently becomes useless at 50, and has no other meaningful function. The green and blue guns crafted via Armstech are complete rubbish. You can always get better by sticking barrels into orange weapons. There's never a time when this isn't true. The melee gear crafted with Armstech is garbage, and you CANNOT RE it to get blue patterns -- I tried RE'ing several green vibroknife patterns, in some cases doing more than 20, and never got one discovery. So, the way to use Armstech is this: Every other level, RE green barrels until you get a blue one. If you get epic materials from missions, RE blue barrels and make an epic. This becomes useless at level 50 because you can get an epic #23 barrel from doing Ilum (or Belsavis bonus) quests for 90 minutes, and you can only make up to #22. You can also get a better gun than anything you can make from a single run of hard mode False Emperor, which is cake, albeit long.

(Preface: Long reply incoming.) With all due respect, I must point out that this feels like a complete disaster. There are better ways to gather player feedback, and far better ways to choose the game's direction. First, you're only inviting guild leaders. Guild leaders don't necessarily represent or even know what players want from the game. In fact, having played 8 MMOs, and been a guild leader in one, I'll posit that you're *extremely* unlikely to get a statistical sample of what players want just by surveying leaders. The reality is, such a conference will be dominated by one group: Hardcore guild leaders. By definition, casual guild leaders take games less seriously, and are thus unlikely to even hold strong opinions on the endgame. In fact they're unlikely to even attend, as most casual players (including guild leaders) have other things to think about, and can't (or won't) plan gaming-related trips on only a month's notice. So what you're actually doing is calling out for hardcore neckbeards to show up and seethe with nerd rage about why the game isn't micromanaged in their favor. That's exactly what's going to happen, and exactly what you're going to hear. I can even predict what they'll tell you. The reality is, hardcore guilds, and hardcore guild leaders, want exactly one thing: Raids, raids raids. If you listen to their guild leaders, that's all you'll ever wind up making. They really think that gaming is about gathering a huge number of people and standing around dodging ground effects, and many are so detached from reality that they think this grants them a sort of real-life prestige. There's no evidence that *most* players even *want* a raid-focused endgame in a Star Wars themed MMO. If you think that a majority of your player base sees Star Wars as "group up tightly on the Rancor's arse while dodging acid pools", you're sorely mistaken. You will hear that at your conference, certainly -- but that doesn't make it true. To be blunt, Bioware, this idea completely ignores human nature. Casual players don't have time to go to a guild conference, most players don't have the resources, and the players who have both time, resources, and interest are exactly the sort of grognards designers shouldn't listen to. Expect precisely this: a bunch of Mongos with trust funds and personality disorders who live in mom's basement, demanding more raids, more tiers of gear accessible only to them, and possibly arena systems. If you want meaningful input on game direction, don't ask the Mongos. Ask ALL the players. Look at what other MMOs are doing RIGHT. Find out what people want SPECIFICALLY from a Star Wars game. There's no shame in asking your player base for suggestions via. surveys, or even putting such requests in Account Management. An optional survey on "what would you like to see?" is a great idea. But don't do a "Guild Summit". It'll lead to exactly the same mistake that Blizzard made with Cataclysm -- thinking a few noisy neckbeards speak for the whole of the player base. They don't. Listening to them means creating stinking turds of content that most people never see, and then players simply get frustrated and leave. And that costs millions of players -- a mistake you can't afford to make with a game two months old. I don't mean to sound like such a pessimist, but consider this fair warning given. This won't have the result you think it will. There are great ways to go about asking what players want. This is the opposite.

...if I knew you in person I would buy you beer. Wow. Thank you. My Sniper will soon be running hard modes dressed like sand people.

Thank you. These are brilliant changes. Might I also suggest reducing the quality of the mods from Ilum dailies? It really burns my *** seeing things available from daily quests that are better than anything players can make.

I'd make simple changes. Such an elaborate list is nice, but it'd never happen. Too many things on developers' plates at the moment, sadly. (1) Give Snipers stealth and a "vanish" move. Add a debuff associated with stealth that causes ranged attacks from stealth to do half damage (in addition to breaking stealth when you attack). In this way you can't open from stealth with a huge Ambush crit from 35 yards away. (2) Double the damage of Series of Shots. It's literally not worth having on your toolbar in its current state. At best, it's a low-dps energy refill that full MM builds can use -- but, to the same end, 25 MM/16 Engy provides better energy management with far more DPS thoroughput. (3) Add a proc that can reset Ambush and make it free when you take damage. This doesn't have to be something with high uptime -- maybe a clickable cooldown, or a special condition. It'd actually make MM builds viable against melee in PVP. (4) Stop making cover so easy to break in PVP! This requires nerfing other classes or buffing our ability to stay in cover, but being able to chain anti-cover moves is exactly the same as the days in WoW when one could chain disarms. No other class can have 80% of their offense taken away for 12 seconds at a time. None. Why should we?

You mean except for the entire world where she's unavailable , right? See, this is why you shouldn't lie about your experience in the game. People who've actually played the game just catch the obvious error and call you out on it. Then you look totally stupid.

That's a pretty clumsy workaround, don't you think? I agree with the poster who said that torpedoes should use a hotkey toggle. Yes, you can make the mission work, but it's a pretty bad design flaw when buying a ship upgrades makes several missions significantly harder than before you had it.

Error is still occurring. Had to Google this because I got exactly the same problem tonight (02/01/2012). Error was 100% repeatable. Ticket #3364252, if any one from Bioware can see this. Note that this mission alone is affected. All earlier mission shield generators on capital ships can be destroyed with gunfire alone.

Actually, the ending that you flag as "Neutral- leaning Light Side", I just got exactly at Dark IV.

This is crap. You're saying a polite version of "l2p nub". You're not just hostile and condescending, but you're *********** wrong. Try DPSing with a tank companion. How long do you last? Snipers have to do this. Not one elite fight ends with Kaliyo up -- even when she's fully geared up. The moment I got Doctor Lokin, every elite fight became a cake walk. The only fights where I died were crap-tastic Taris add-fests ("elite's at 33%, hey look, pull behind him respawned and added"), or fights where I started against multiple strong mobs with no Droids to slice and my CC's on cooldown. Literally *no* fight took more than two tries with the pocket healer -- and my Sniper is now 48 and finished with his class quest. I soloed the last couple planets of it at level 47. So, from a voice of experience: It's not that he's new, it's that you don't want to admit that you're being coddled in easy mode. Unlike you, I've taken both approaches. Healing a tank companion (or tanking with a heal companion) is 20x easier. The sooner you own up to THAT fact, the sooner you can join me in encouraging Bioware to give snipers DPS appropriate to their survivability...and soloing power.

Yeah, it was the second objective of that series. Problem was the object had the right color and a mouseover tooltip, but clicking did nothing, at any range. It eventually fixed itself, but took multiple client restarts.

So, I'm utterly stuck on the second objective of the quest "Eve of Destruction". I go to the point where I'm supposed to "Mark the Aegis Base Generators", but there's nothing to interact with, and using the flare results in "You are not eligible for this conversation". I've cleared the entire area. I've restarted the game. I've logged and relogged and relogged some more. Can someone explain this to me like I'm an idiot? I'm so frustrated here that I'm ready to cancel this damned game, SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO damn sick of game breaking bugs where you have to consult six different forums just to find an answer!

I'm really surprised by this post. I killed him in one try just now, and barely used my interrupt. Level 46, build 24 MM/13 Engy. The fight must be some kind of a gear check. Is your companion geared? Are you? I have an epic level 45 barrel in my sniper rifle and Xanar healed so little compared to my DPS that I was Snipe spamming freely.

Yes, he is bugged. I'm surprised there's not a sticky on this. Here's a workaround I used successfully. 1.) Sic your companion on him. 2.) He'll start to melee. Put your companion on "passive" to make it retreat. He follows your companion onto the stairs and becomes targetable. Because the fight's a DPS race, I ended up having to kite him for the last 15% or so on my Sniper (Kaliyo took too many hits getting his buggy *** to the stairs). But I fought him three times that way and I won with no great trouble.

...so what? It's not a matter of time. It's a matter of tedium. In a game like World of Warcraft, you click on a compound flight path and go AFK for 10 minutes. In a game like The Old Republic, you click a doorway, run down a hall, click a doorway, run down a hall. If travel times are going to be non-negligible, the mere power to do *other things* is infinitely preferable to running down a hall, clicking, running, clicking, etc, etc, ad nauseam. Interactive tedium is tedium squared.