Hi Eric, Thanks for posting! Like Damask_Rose mentioned, there was actually already a BIG thread about this exact topic a few months back, started before command tokens had been added to the game. Here's a link, in case you lost track of it: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=906707 There are a lot of great and detailed suggestions there, I hope you will consider some of them! I'd post my ideas for more things to spend command tokens on, but, well, I already posted them in that thread.

I wound up just getting Temple back via the terminal. Who knows when she will be back "officially", and I didn't want to wait. I use the blonde customization for her too, it is quite lovely. I picked it partly because it looks a lot like the one I use for my Warrior's Jaesa, which I thought was funny. It also is similar to Elara's default, which is even funnier. xD It doesn't look like they will add same gender romance for old companions if Aric, Vette, and others that have returned are any indication. It would be nice if they would, though. ^^

As a primarily solo player that enjoys story and PvE, my main beef with the CXP system is how painfully slow progress is (doing chapters, star fortress/FP's, and heroics). I also like alts, so overall the system is discouraging to me as-is. So consider me mollified by these incoming changes! Now, I am by no means a fan of RNG gearing, but don't think I'll mind much if it is sped up. I can definitely see how it irritates the heck out of some folks though, so I hope you do something more to appease them as well. In regards to the crate contents, I think they need some changes. I won't discuss the issue of statted gear (as I feel others can do a better job of that), but the "fluff" needs some work too. Some suggestions: 1. Have cosmetic armor drop in upper, lower, and supplementary boxes instead of as individual pieces. Perhaps even consider dropping some of them as rares in full set boxes. A partial or complete set is more exciting (and, often, useable) than just getting, say, gloves or a belt. 2. Add more cosmetic items. The current variety is lacking. Focus on additions to the top tier as players will ultimately get the most crates from that due to the rank cap. 3. Consider adding full (boxed) legacy armor sets as rare tier 3 drops. Thanks for the communication, and I hope you will consider my suggestions as well as the many other good ideas in this thread.

I agree, it would be a good idea to make disintigration values be a set % to next level rather than a fixed amount. When I first had a character access GC, disintigration seemed like a nice, reasonable way to help alleviate the problem of getting duplicates or other unwanted items in a crate, as you could essentially exchange them for CXP. But as I ranked up I quickly realized that disintigration is of very little help, as even 200 CXP is a drop in the bucket.

I would like to see more styles that are classic rather than novel, and classy rather than tacky. IMHO we have enough "novelty" styles with a comedic, over-the-top, or retro look -- and that's in addition to the many styles that are just plain ugly, but probably not intentionally designed as such. WTB Shae Vizla's hairstyle for both genders! Simple, versatile, not too long, not too short, unisex, already in-game (Shae & Tora) . . . please, Bioware? It would certainly fit this request.

I doubt they'll update the returning companions' appearances. At least, I hope they won't; knowing Bioware lately, they'd probably add a weird amount of detail to their faces and make them uncustomizable (hello, Lana!). As far as I'm concerned, Bioware should lose their "editing/making default companion models" privileges until they can figure out how to make decent looking customization kits for everyone. Besides, in the livestream, when they showed the slide picturing Quinn and Elara, I didn't notice either of them looking different. All the companions that returned in KotFE looked the same as they did in the livestream previews for them, and IMHO the classic uniform look is a good one for both Quinn and Elara, especially with the "choose your side" theme. It would be neat if they added a new customization kit for each returning companion though (as an option for people who want it), maybe give Quinn a few silver streaks and some wrinkles like Andronikos and Talos have. ^^

Theoretically, it sounds pretty neat, and kinda makes sense -- our characters have been gone long enough, and become involved enough with a third faction, to not really be considered Imperial or Republic anymore. My Operative is technically a defector, though she can hardly be a double agent anymore. Given the choice, she'd side with the Republic now. And so she can, great! But here's where it falls flat. She can't visit Coruscant (but is welcome on DK). She still has to pay the "smuggling fee" to get to a Coruscant apartment. Republic NPC's are still hostile. She can't visit the Republic Fleet. She can't group with Republic characters. Outside of the bubble of KotET, she will still be Imperial. At least, if I understand correctly. Actual faction switching would be exciting. What we're getting looks mildly interesting, but also potentially limiting our future companion choices in ways we can't be sure of. I also dislike the idea of characters not being able to get their original class companions back if they choose the opposite faction. I hope it doesn't work like that.

I'm glad to see Quinn's return too, he's one of my favorites! I don't play my Warrior much anymore (not my best playstyle), but I am really looking forward to getting Quinn on a character that I actually use. I seem to be the odd one out in that I haven't done Quinn's romance, but I really liked him anyway. I am a bit worried how the "choose a side" thing will affect future companion recruitment, but in the stream they made it seem like it would only be the more faction-dedicated/diehard companions, so I'm not too concerned. Quinn is on my short list of favorites yet to return though, so aside from Lord Scourge being Republic-affiliated only (which I don't see happening, it would make no sense), there really isn't any other companion that I'd prioritize over him, at least on the character I want him on. Gotta get Elara too, but that's what alts are for! <3

Wow, I think this is the first time that you guys have deigned to acknowledge the desire of players to customize the KotFE companions! Better late then never, I guess. I sincerely hope you will implement this sooner rather than later (or worse, never). However, in regards to Shae, this statement makes no sense. You DID implement customization for her! It isn't a matter of if you could implement it for her or not, because you clearly CAN. And it must not have been that hard to do, considering that you did it on accident, and all of the (applicable) vanilla companions have this functionality. I understand that it won't be so simple for characters like Lana that have a unique "my-armor-is-my-body" model, but surely you have the dev-power to make some new customization kits for the KotFE companions that use standard PC body models? Issues like this make it difficult to have much faith in the competence and intentions of whoever is in charge of decision-making on the dev team. I just don't understand you guys sometimes.

I am utterly baffled as to why they "fixed" something that was liked by players, purely cosmetic, and not in any way detrimental to the game. They are surely well aware of the fact that most players prefer customizable companions. Also, I am confident that skimpy gear had absolutely nothing to do with this decision. They could have simply given her a built-in bodysuit/long underwear under her clothes, instead of a skin texture. Non-playable race alien companions such as Aric and Qyzen had this for a long time before they were given actual skins (and of course, there were the bugged ones like Lord Scourge and Ashara).

I suppose these changes are a step in the right direction. Overly complicated, IMHO, but it still sounds better than what we have now. Also, thank you Eric and the devs for admitting things didn't turn out as you'd envisioned and trying to make it better. That said . . . as someone who doesn't do ops and dislikes PvP (yes, including GSF), I see these proposed changes as a paltry, pitiful offering. The character perk for increased CXP sounds like a good idea at first, but if it is as expensive as I fear it will be, it will just tick me off because my CXP gain is so slow that it will be something I feel obligated to get for each character. Sorta like how "speeder piloting 3" was very expensive back in 1.x, and though you could choose not to buy it, it was kinda expected that you would. Regarding CXP boosts for command tokens: I am not impressed, or even particularly interested. I prefer not to play with expensive timed boosts, as I feel I have to rush, and not stop to do no/low XP things things like check the GTN or craft. Besides, 15% is pretty low -- and as has been mentioned, it won't even up the CXP for gold mobs. And are these CXP boost the ONLY thing you can buy with the tokens alone? There was a big thread of suggestions; did you really decide not to add any cosmetic/fluff items that could be bought for tokens? I feel that could do a lot to help make crates feel more worthwhile for some of your players. I may not need (and do not expect) the best gear, but don't you guys want players like me to enjoy the GC system too? I spent a few evenings taking my GC rank 20-ish Sorcerer through chapters 10-16 of KotFE for the first time. I didn't rush, but nor did I dally, and do you know how many GC ranks I earned in all that time? Not even one. And today, I ran my GC rank <10 agent through solo FP's a few times in hopes of getting cosmetic drops. This took me at least an hour, and do you know how many command crates I got? None. Given how slowly my characters (I play 3-4 about equally) gain ranks past the very early levels, and how unimpressive the contents of the crates are, I find the GC system very disappointing and discouraging; these are not things that one should associate with anything intended to be fun.

Sorc healer: Lord Scourge (tank), Andronikos & Vette (DPS) Shadow tank: LS Jaesa (heal), Xalek & Aric (DPS) Op healer: Pierce (tank), Master Ranos & Quinn (DPS) Erm . . . Quinn, Pierce, and a Jedi . . . what could possibly go wrong? See, now this must be why we only get one out at a time, so our companions don't "accidentally" kill each other!

Same issue here. Very annoying, especially as one of my mains is Sorc and I like to bubble my companion on the run, but now I often get the vexing "target not in range" message and have to stop and wait for them to catch up. I've also "lost" my companion a couple times. Like, they should be there behind me, and their nameplate is still showing them summoned, but even after I've stopped for a bit they just . . . don't show up. On another possibly related note, I have also noticed my companions attacking other mobs that are out of aggro range lately. The other day I was doing the Czerka dailies, and while I was on one of the ramps fighting the mobs at the bottom of it, Andronikos grappled over the nearby champion droid. It had definitely been out of range for me, and was even engaged by another player already!

I noticed this in 5.0 too. I think it looks terrible! I don't doubt that the extra facial wrinkling can look good, under the right conditions and with certain character looks, but dear stars it looks awful (and a tad ridiculous) to me. My characters have perfectly smooth, flawless, youthful looking complexions . . . until they frown. Or smile. Or even talk! Then, they magically have the wrinkles of a 40 year old, but only in certain places. And did I mention how off this looks on the likes of Mako and Nadia? Maybe these expression "enhancements" look great in KotET, but I've been through most of KotFE and a bunch of other story content post-5.0, and have found them to be nothing but an aesthetic blight upon my cutscenes. Mind you, it isn't that faces wrinkling like that when they show expressions is bad or unnatural looking in and of itself, but on faces that are otherwise flawless, youthful, and smooth? It is simply too much, IMHO. Needless to say, my enjoyment of taking screenshots has decreased considerably. >.< Good think my main is a Miraluka that always wears a hood . . . and now the hood is good for more than just hiding ugly hair!

Well, you know how some folks can be about romance options that don't appeal to them personally. It's like how if you make a thread requesting, say, Pierce or Zenith to become romancable, someone is gonna come along ask for Khem or Blizz romances too because LOL why not, a dashade or a jawa is just as appealing! I think they were just trying to lighten the mood. ^^ Last stream I watched they started laughing about suggestion in chat for a body type 4 male Twi'lek as a mount, or something.

I had hoped that Bioware would alter the command crate/cxp system in a way to benefit players that don't do PvP or Ops, too. But here it looks like they are completely ignoring the concerns of players that don't participate in those two activities. CXP gain needs to be better balanced for both difficulty and time spent. For example, an easy task that takes 15 minutes should not earn substantially more cxp than an easy task that takes 25 minutes. Command crate rewards should be looked at. They are, quite frankly, rather uninspiring; the cosmetic stuff is neither varied nor special enough, and chasing after the very rare set bonus pieces is not that enticing for some players. Having a stellar selection of fluff that you can spend tokens on would help a lot, here. And yes, yes, I know, "solo players don't need the best gear!!" Honestly, I am ambivalent on the matter and don't care to be persuaded either way. However, I would like to point out a few things: - Master mode chapters are said to be very, very difficult solo content. - Many solo activities such as solo FP's and story content are quite slow for cxp gain. - Unranked PvP is neither hard nor time-intensive, yet is one of the fastest ways to earn cxp, and apparently both deserves and requires rewards on-par with Operations. Honestly, I don't know how to properly fix this mess, and I am certainly not advocating top tier gear being handed out like candy, or nerfing PvP rewards. I am simply trying to make the point that the fix they are proposing is not enough because the system's flaws run deeper. To those that would say, "If you don't need or want the best gear, just be happy with your 228's/230's and just don't care about the CXP system!", I would ask: do you really want a large chunk of the game's players to be uninterested in a premier new feature of the latest expansion?

True enough I suppose. I guess I just saw all this discussion about how non-PvP and non-Ops players don't need access to the best gear that I wanted to mention that even if that is the case, it doesn't mean that the current system doesn't still need some form of fixing for the non-Ops and non-PvP players. Sounds like we are pretty much on the same page though. ^^ More on topic: I will say that one big selling point Bioware pushed when telling us how great GC is was that it let players earn endgame gear through ALL activities, even things like GSF and solo play. Though currently true, relying on RNG to get the top gear can be very frustrating, and I can understand how players like the OP -- who may have liked this selling point -- are annoyed that players of only some types of content will get to bypass this particular RNG bane. I am largely ambivalent on the matter myself, but I can understand the OP's sentiment.

There are quite a few Gree items I'd like, but I don't want to group or PvP to get them. I'm a terrible PvP'er, and I doubt anyone would even have me in their Ops group because I've never done it before and have pretty average gear. It bugged me at first, but I have simply accepted that the Gree event was not designed for players like me, and I mostly ignore it now. Mind you, I'd really like it if they made it more like the Rakghoul event in terms of rewards (the main event currency can be obtained through solo quests), but it is what it is. Not poorly designed, so much as designed for certain play styles more than others.

As a player that does mostly solo things, I feel that overall the GC system offers largely unenticing rewards while also being very grindy. At rank 20, my character has gotten one set bonus piece and is otherwise decked out in 230 blues; just a little better than I could have crafted myself (228's). To be honest, I haven't had a proper set bonus since Columi gear, and I don't really care about getting one now. I think it is good that characters can get into entry level high-end gear at a reasonable speed, but IMHO the cosmetic or "fluff" items in the crates are not interesting, unique, or varied enough to offer a sufficiently enticing carrot to those that are less motivated by set bonuses and top tier gear. Looking ahead at the next 70(?) levels of crates filled with items of little of use or interest to me until I hit tier 2, and also noticing the depressing 200 CXP I get for a story chapter when I now need around 2500 for a level and will need more and more with every one . . . is somewhat depressing, and does not inspire me to play. Heck I probably got more cxp from throwing snowballs at allllll those sky troopers in chapter 10 than I did from the chapter completion itself. xD Yes, exactly. I'm no game designer so I can't say how they should fix it, but somehow I don't think they hit the mark for the non-Ops and non-PvP players, either.

If they ever did something like this, it should be 100% optional, and not in the "well, you're definitely having a kid, but don't worry you can adopt if you want!" way. And given Bioware's aversion to fleshing out multiple outcomes for a choice, if your character ever did have a child you'd probably only ever communicate via letters. xD On a more personal note: no thank you to the in-game kids! I do love little ones, but I am aware that childbearing is no romp in the park, and that having a child would basically end one's adventuring career for years to come. Unless, of course, your character carries on their adventures as before and has someone else do the bulk of the child rearing. Though I admit, it is cute to think about our companions who said they'd be there to help mentor/raise our potential children. I don't think letting some of them babysit the younger ones would be a good idea though. "Akaavi, why does my daughter have a flamethrower? Is that safe??" "Of course. I turned it down to a lower setting, and have shown her how to use it safely." "But she's eight!" "The age of my first kill. I know, I should have done this sooner."

I agree, there are a few heroics that really could use tweaking. Before 5.0 I just didn't bother to do a heroic if it was being "difficult" -- no irradiated rakghouls to be found? No problem, just skip it, or come back later and try again! But now, with the big cxp reward for heroics tied to doing all or most of the heroics on a planet, it is far more inconvenient. You can only have one "planetary quests" mission from the GC interface active at once, so it is either finish That One Annoying Heroic or give up on the planet so you can do a different one. With the irradiated rakghouls quest on Taris, I think they need to drastically up the respawn rate, and partially instance the area. Unfortunately, I don't think they can't instance the entire area, as there is already an instance for another quest in that building. The Face Merchants is actually the least annoying of the annoying heroics, to me. I find if I just stand in one spot for a few minutes to wait for a respawn I can get my keycard without any trouble, but I do think they should either instance it or remove the bonus quest.

I haven't gotten the chest from that set, but I have gotten most of it. I can easily believe that you opened 60 crates without a single piece from that set. I just opened 40, and I only got one Resurrected piece (the Trooper belt). As far as I know, heroics and the occasional one-time quest are the only ways to get the crates, though as a tip, you do get double crates from heroics from level 61-65 (last I checked, anyway), so if you have any characters in those ranges you may want to focus on heroics to level them. I wish you luck finding your desired armor!

That happened to me too! It was on (Imperial) Belsavis as well -- the quest where you have to kill Jedi Master name-starts-with-an-A, I think? I completed it and it just didn't count. It happened on (Republic) Taris too, which is super annoying 'cause it forced me to do the one quest I was trying to avoid, the one where you have to kill open world mobs that are waaaay too scarce. You can often choose not to do one heroic though, like on Voss and Corellia, there's 4 but you can do any 3 and it will count (I tried it Imperial side). I guess a couple are just bugged.

Thanks for pointing this out, OP! It is not immediately obvious in the game, especially if you were looking to do a particular planet. As someone who loves stealth characters, I understand why they decided to make most of the cxp gain from heroics be tied to doing all/most of the ones on a planet, but IMHO they really, really needed to instance a few of them. That one guy on DK, the irradiated rakghouls on Taris . . . probably a few more too. I just skip planets if there is a high chance that I will get "stuck" on a particular heroic due to respawn issues. Oh, and I agree, Ziost is very quick! It is probably my favorite place for dailies on non-DPS and non-stealth characters, as there are no trash mobs to wade through.

Well, to be fair, I think a wampa would be about as good at diplomacy as Broonmark is, and probably on par with Skadge when it comes to synthweaving. Teasing aside, I do understand why the combat only companions are that way, as many of them are, well, animals. I've bought several of the animal companions, but haven't been able to bring myself to use them, since they take just as much to max influence with as a normal companion while lacking much of the functionality (though I suppose I could be mistaken in how much it takes to max their influence, as I haven't checked myself).