Some mechanics in TFB 16man HM seem to be missing after today's maintenance: Hypergates never spawned in phase 1. When the regular adds that spawn in the back spawned, there was only 1 instead of 2. No irregularities spawned in phase 2 (instead of many). It was easy.

Subscriber Benefits The primary subscriber benefits are: * Unlimited Warzones * Unlimited Flashpoints * Unlimited Space Missions * Unlimited Operations * Increased XP * Economy - Credit Cap and Commendation Costs As someone who is a subscriber and heavily participates in all of these activities, I am concerned about future development in these areas. F2P players and non-subscribers can generate a lot of revenue and enjoy the game, but in my opinion they do not participate and effectively monetize these activities. As players we don't have any metrics or analytics for how many weekly unlocks get sold, only BioWare does. In a vacuum, my concern is that development efforts could move away from expanding these activities in order to better monetize a broader base. Cartel Packs There is a lot of hate on these for being a "lottery" or "gambling". Having a background in TCGs, I understand and am OK with the business model. The pack-in items (boosts, companion gift, crafting materials) are nice, but generally only results in a small credits savings or GTN revenue (less than 50k, unless RNG grants Molecular Stabilizers). The only real problem I have with these is the RNG of the "rare items." This is all determined by drop rate. The current system results in a glut of unwanted items and opening packs with little to no value at the chance of a chase rare. Having items cross-over between packs exacerbates this, and I would like to see it dissuaded. There is some overlap in the common items between the two existing Cartel Packs. This business model (while some believe to be predatory) is effective and the fluff rewards are rather fun. My concern is that there is a rather limited amount of fluff rewards in the game itself to achieve and collect, and hope that development in that area picks up in the future. Purchasing Space Ship Parts: I don't like slippery slope arguments and this won't affect the core game at all, but I'm not a fan of this. I also don't like having items that are attainable by in-game means being available straight-up in the Market because it creates an artificial floor for the value of the time/materials/investment of achievement. The entire structure of the game (outside of social interaction) depends on overcoming challenges and paying to completely subvert those is a problem. I appreciated the necessary gear progression to kit out your ship and was impressed with BioWare's plan to make it non-trivial and rewarding in 1.6. Minigame progression existed, and it seemed like a fun side note. This was destroyed. Players don't need to spend commendations on upgrades at all. The schematics implemented are pointless due to the very high material cost to create it versus the minimal Cartel Coins required. The one part you straight-up buy with credits would be an OK Cartel Market purchase with me. That being said, they added a medium-core grind to a casual minigame that was probably too steep for most people. In order to get commendations to buy the gear to help, they needed to grind inefficient older missions or complete the new missions (which you can't do without gear). An optimal solution would be to offer blue, somewhat neutered options in the Cartel Store that are inferior to the BIS crafted/commendation pieces, but enought to complete some of the new heroic missions and earn commendations/progress. That way players could take a shortcut to catch up and complete some of the new heroic missions, while working on getting the purple pieces from crafters / commendations, like "Recruit" gear for space missions. That cat is now out of the bag, though. I am strongly opposed to this implementation, and hope that it does not go this way in the future. BioWare will lose people if this becomes a trend, or this model is applied to other game systems. The long and short of it is: Space Mission gear progression is largely irrelevant. It sucks though, because they squandered an opportunity to engage players, all while enraging people who care about the game (and also those who erupt into angry slippery slope P2W rants).

The ship upgrades in the Cartel Market is extremely disappointing. I think cutting the number of Stabilizers down to one or two and allowing them to crit (for an extra) would make them on par, but there probably wouldn't be a huge market/profit for them still.

This does not affect PVP at all. The long and short of it is: Space Mission gear progression is largely irrelevant. It sucks though, because they squandered an opportunity to engage players, all while enraging people who care about the game (and also those who erupt into angry slippery slope P2W rants). PVE gear progression is completely broken by crafting, which is fed by credits (obtainable through many means, including flipping Cartel Coin items) and Molecular Stabilizers (that you can get from PvP and space missions). This is a problem on the developers' radar (according to Dev Posts and speaking to them at events) and I hope they fix it with the next tier / Makeb, as it negatively impacts the PVE game greatly. This is the closest we have to P2W and is not a design intent, but a byproduct of several systems that have been iterated on since launch, and accelerated by some unintended functionality. PVP gear progression is fine. It might be a ludicrous grind for BIS, but with 1.6 (and the very marginal power bump from War Hero to Elite War Hero), I think it is in the best shape it's ever been and actually pretty good. The only problem I would have is that PVE gear ratings eclipse Expertise gains, which is debatably the case for 1-2 gear slots.

I don't like slippery slope arguments and this won't affect the core game at all, but I'm not a fan of this. I also don't like having items that are attainable by in-game means being available straight-up in the Market because it creates an artificial floor for the value of the time/materials/investment of achievement. The entire structure of the game (outside of social interaction) depends on overcoming challenges and paying to completely subvert those is a problem. I appreciated the necessary gear progression to kit out your ship and was impressed with BioWare's plan to make it non-trivial and rewarding in 1.6. Minigame progression existed, and it seemed like a fun side note. This was destroyed. Players don't need to spend commendations on upgrades at all. The schematics implemented are pointless due to the very high material cost to create it versus the minimal Cartel Coins required. The one part you straight-up buy with credits would be an OK Cartel Market purchase with me. That being said, they added a medium-core grind to a casual minigame that was probably too steep for most people. In order to get commendations to buy the gear to help, they needed to grind inefficient older missions or complete the new missions (which you can't do without gear). An optimal solution would be to offer blue, somewhat neutered options in the Cartel Store that are inferior to the BIS crafted/commendation pieces, but enought to complete some of the new heroic missions and earn commendations/progress. That way players could take a shortcut to catch up and complete some of the new heroic missions, while working on getting the purple pieces from crafters / commendations, like "Recruit" gear for space missions. That cat is now out of the bag, though. I am strongly opposed to this implementation, and hope that it does not go this way in the future. BioWare will lose people if this becomes a trend, or this model is applied to other game systems.

There's an aggro drop if Sonic Paralysis finishes its cast with the tank stunned. If you don't resist Sonic Paralysis and don't have your CC break up, a second tank spams his taunt button to pick up the boss as soon as Sonic Paralysis is over. This works. All other threat issues can be attributed to DPS not holding back and controlling themselves. I've tanked Dreadtooth at multiple stack levels many times, and threat is completely controllable.

I've crafted a large amount of ship parts in in the past 11 months and never seen one crit.

Still not fixed with 1.6 on the PTS.

I grabbed the relics to do some testing myself. My results support that 2 of them are tech and 2 of them are Force. However, the only outlier is that the Cerulean Nova relic seems to crit about half as much as the other Force relic (I am a tech user). I ran two 6 minute tests and both were 3-4% crit intead of the 8% or so of the elemental one. Testing Conditions: Approximately a six minute test for each relic using Rapid Shots on an Operatings Training Dummy. Powertech with Combustible Gas Cylinder Spec: Burnout + Prototype Cylinders (+6% Tech Crit) Naked + Relic + Blaster Pistol with no modifications No Sorc Buff / No Agent Buff Ranged Crit = 8.38% Tech Crit = 15.55% Dread Guard Relic of Dark Radiance Internal Corrosive Injection 16.2% Crit ---- 68:11 Dread Guard Relic of Elemental Trascendence Elemental Burning Force 8.2% Crit -- 73:6 Dread Guard Relic of the Kinetic Tempest Kinetic Grav Wave 16.4% Crit -- 73:12 Dread Guard Relic of the Cerulean Nova Energy Lightning Spike 4.0% Crit -- 75:3

Trivial, I know, but there are a few character perks that are still purchaseable on the Legacy page, even though they won't do anything. These include: HK-51 (if you already completed the quest) Improved Speeder Piloting I (if you already have the skill) Improved Speeder Piloting II (if you already have the skill) Improved Speeder Piloting III (if you already have the skill) As it stands, these buttons are just annoyances and advertisements for purchasing with credits or Cartel Coins things you already have.

I would definitely prefer more fluff rewards or additional incentive to PVP other than gear, but the bottom line is that vertical gear progression is effective at getting players in warzones and is the traditional model for these types of games. Participation and numbers are key. If you made it to War Hero before 1.6, you already have a leg up because you can start getting Elite War Hero instead of getting War Hero first. If you never made it past Battlemaster (which has been in the game in some state since Dec 2011), then you would feel like starting over. In addition, the power gap between War Hero and Elite War Hero is pretty small (or at least much smaller than it has been in than in the past). In my opinion, the initial gear progression works fairly well, but starts to get painful when you get into the pieces that require ranked comms due to the amount of commendations necessary: * fresh 50 * Get recruit gear * Get your feet wet in normal WZs and acquire basic PvP gear for viability (previously: Battlemaster, now: War Hero) * Grind for BIS gear tier (previously: War Hero, now: Elite War Hero) in ranked or normal WZs. * Optimize Mods for BIS * When a new gear tier releases, trade in shells to skip the basic gear tier, then start grinding new BIS optimized gear. Getting basic viable gear (BM/WH) is a bit of a commitment for most, but not insurmountable (and can feel rewarding). As it stands now, getting optimized BIS PVP gear is a rather arduous grind, and results in only a few having perfect gear, or a short period of time where most dedicated PVPers are on an equal gear footing before they release new gear. The risk of changing this model is that it would de-incentivize PVP for many players. One reason that the gear grind is long is that there is no gating effect on commendations for BIS gear (you can grind all day - although comms from dailies add efficiency), so the costs need to be rather high or it is trivial. However, the major reason that gear progression seems bad is that the costs are tuned for playing in Ranked Warzones, which do not have heavy participation at all for various reasons. With a limited pool of 8man teams (server only, full premade only, no unique rewards besides very difficult to obtain Rating moddable pieces and a mount), matchmaking is almost useless and hinders participation further (a vicious cycle of people not wanting to queue for ranked because they get trounced by a few high rating teams because of a small pool of teams to play against).

Vehicles - BOP Gear: Rakata earpieces - BOE - Can be sold / traded / used for companions Campaign Relics - BOP - can be RE'd by Artifice for a chance at the pattern Dread Guard Relics - BOP and BIS - can be RE'ed by Artifice for a chance at the pattern In 1.6, new BIS Spaceship Upgrades will be added. Schematics: Biochem adrenals (BOP) Artifice crystals (BOP) Cybertech Droid Parts (BOE) - Can be sold for credits In 1.6, Cybertech Spaceship Upgrade (BOE) - Can be sold for credits If you have all the mounts, 2 PVE Dread Guard relics, enough Comms for the new Spaceship Upgrades, and relevant schematics for your Crew Skills, I would buy the Cybertech schematics and sell them for credits to stay under the cap until they add more items (which they have been doing regularly). 2 Relics and the new Spaceship parts in 1.6 cost 900 Daily Commendations alone.

The new GTN deposit is a completely negligible amount of credits, and is detrimental to the GTN economy. As it stands, there is little to no punishment for canceling auctions and re-posting, rapidly undercutting the competition. I believe this was changed in 1.5 to probably avoid players with credit caps smuggling credits via deposits and mail, but can it be looked at?

I don't want to derail the thread, but what is the proper way to say aluminium?

16m Vorgath (and 8man) is completely undertuned. Lootship.

This gave my group a temporary buff that reduced damage taken. I think it is working as intended (at least it was on Saturday).

Incorrect. The skin on the Taunta on the CE vendor is unique. He's a dark brownish color.

I believe that is inaccurate. TMK, it can only be obtained through the nodes on Belsavis or randomly in a Cartel Crime Lord's Pack.

No. 1.6 with the Ancient Hypergates warzone and the rest of the Elite War Hero set has been confirmed as targeted in 2012. Hopefully, this will have additional content and a full balance pass on classes/PvP stats. There was talk of adding Bolster to level 50 warzones, but we don't know if that's on the docket for 2012. Things that are confirmed as being in the pipeline that may or may not ship before the end of the year: * New event in January revolving around Ilum (from interviews) * New Life Day event (from datamining) * 10 new heroic Space Missions * Cathar race (via the Cartel Store) * 3 new Cartel Packs with items already in the client (from datamining) - this can likely be launched without * Additional Cartel Market features like character slots, etc * Server Transfers * Makeb - level increase and new story areas - probably not until 2013

The GTN is the Galactic Trade Network (auction house). There is a timer on every item you get. If you don't perma-bind it (by consuming a pet/mount or equipping a gear item), it will unbind on a timer. You can then trade or sell the item. You can also buy specific items from other players using credits or trade.

All crafting professions have recipes that are useful while leveling, but these items peter out at endgame. The market and profitability for leveling gear is rather limited. However, Artifice, Cybertech, and Biochem are itemized well, are not just valuable, but crucial to the endgame experience. The remaining crafting Crew Skills need serious love, with or without the Cartel Store offerings. Armstech, Synthweaving, and Armormech are poorly implemented and not useful at endgame (with the singular exception of Armstech barrels) with or without the Cartel Market offerings. Enhancements, Mods, and RE-ing extra mods for stabilizers are critical to PVE endgame and profitability right now. Hilt and Armoring recipes, while rare, are extremely valuable and useful. Artifice can also learn/craft Relics, Cybertech earpieces, and Biochem implants. Biochem also gets to make much-needed consumables (currently the market is iffy because of a reported bug/exploit I won't detail here, but should be fixed in the long run.). Unmodded belt/bracer recipes for endgame are inferior to getting an Armoring and a Mod. The creation of Augment Kits do not play into player power progression across tiers, is a split market between these three skills, and do not need to be replaced ever if one is satisfied with their moddable gear look. The orange shells available for Synthweaving or Armormech are not unique or highly desired. PvP orange schematics are moderately useful to craft (especially if tiers like Battlemaster get removed from the vendor), but there is not a lot of variance and the looks are easily obtaining with commendations currently. Campaign and Dread Guard shell schematics are ludicrously difficult to obtain, while the pieces themselves are not, so there is not much of a market there. Many schematics implemented via Underworld Trading crits are incomplete or have the incorrect model / texture on them. For example, the feet model that matches the Vagabond set properly is only available on the Dark Side vendor or the Hunter's Renowned Legacy boots. The Vagabond boots are simply copies of the Chanlon Onslaught model that does not appropriately match the aesthetics of the Vagabond pieces. Augments, while important and useful, only need to be obtained once per character, since there are no new "tiers" of augments and the removal/replacement of augments is much cheaper than getting new ones made.

There are many items on there that were datamined but probably don't come out of the pack, but future packs. Also, it includes Life Day items that are probably for a world event, as well as loyalty rewards like Heroes' Banner and Party Jawa. The following "super rare" items have been confirmed to drop from the Cartel Crime Lord pack: Advanced Pink-Purple Eviscerating Crystal Advanced Pink-Purple Hawkeye Crystal Advanced Pink-Purple Indestructible Crystal Advanced Pink-Purple War Hero's Crystal Advanced White Eviscerating Crystal Advanced White Hawkeye Crystal Advanced White Indestructible Crystal Advanced White War Hero's Crystal Mask of Nihilus Red-Black Gizka Ruddyscale Kowakian Monkey-Lizard Sablefur Kowakian Monkey-Lizard Title - The Crime Lord Darth Malgus Holostatue Satele Shan Holostatue Lhosan Manta Overlord's Command Throne The other packs are datamined and may or may not be able to launch without a content patch. The following upcoming packs seem to exist: Blockade Runner Skip Tracer Space Pirate

Melee weapons don't really make sense for as the primary weapon for Bounty Hunters/Troopers. However, Retractable Blade / Gut is a cool effect and ability in the Advanced Prototype tree. I would fully support the option to use blaster rifles on my PT. I've been wanting that since launch, but understand it would require a lot of animation changes. Death From Above still uses a phantom second blaster in the offhand, as well.

Thanks for the list. Are there strings in the datamining that say whether or something is super rare (vs rare)? If not, what are you going by?

No. 5char