Hi there fellow forum users and BW, So being a player that enjoys both Ops and PvP, last night I was raiding with our guild'd progression team and we decided to try DP HM (8 man) although slightly undergeared still. During the first numerous wipes on the first boss (we did eventually get her down) I noticed my social tier go from VIII to X in a matter of a few goes at the boss. Now I believe before 2.4 (I may be incorrect and an official reply from a BW employee to clarify this would be nice) came about the only way was to do group content that had conversations and you'd get scores from that and then hand in and receive social points. Now I'm all for gaining social points by just being in a group and killing stuff, as it would allow for faster leveling up of social points, but then I decided to see if being in an Ops group doing warzones would increase one of my alts social scores... and nothing. Does this mean that only raiders are social? I like the change to just being in a group and getting some points, but then shouldn't that apply to all facets of the game? This concerns me...

Alex, I honestly think you guys are shooting yourselves in the foot by limiting PvP options to players. You've decided that removing 8 vs. 8 ranked is a good idea, and most of the more hardcore PvPers (and others) are not happy about this. If you're gonna have a role check for arenas, you could allow solo queuing for ranked 4 man arenas and 8 man warzones, which would increase the numbers of players doing ranked. I honestly think the 2 biggest complaints from pugs is, pug vs. premade, which you could easily solve by making seperate queues for solo's and 4 or 8 man groups, that way pugs play pugs and premades can play premades, and the other complaint I see a lot is a lack of choice. Not everyone likes Huttball, and not everyone will like arenas. Let people choose which warzones they want to queue for, much like FP's and Ops people select which one they want to do. This would drastically reduce the number of quitters before a match even starts.

According to all the information I've ever read or was told about ranked games... the system always existed and was always in place... although from personal experience it never really worked. I remember clearly having 4 teams queuing for ranked, 2 teams of similarly high ratings and 2 teams of similarly low ratings... and guess what matches ended up happening more often... yup... you guessed it... top team versus weak team, instead of top vs top and weak vs weak.

Oh I have no intention to role solo in arenas... I already have my 4 man premade more or less decided on But honestly, if 8 man ranked is not very popular and only a minority play them (I guess this also depends on servers), since its so hard to get 8 man teams to queue against each other, will they be removing 16 man Ops and NiM content in 2.5? PS: I enjoy all forms of this game, I play ranked and do HM Ops... I just find it funny how the more serious PvPers in this game always seem to get the short end of the stick

Oh I know, but I assume that solo ranked queue in arenas will be against other solo queued people. I'm not sure if that means a solo duel in an arena setting, or stuck in non-premades 4 vs 4 arenas. If its the latter, I don't see why it couldn't work for all solo queued ranked players having an 8 vs 8 game (basically, no solo queued players against premades - they complain enough about it in regs as it is)

Honestly I just got home and found one and a half pages of dev tracker to read, so I'm not going to go through this whole post, but just off the first things I've read in the dev tracker, one thing is obvious... the team have dropped 8 vs. 8 ranked in favour of solo queuing and 4 man premades for ranked arenas. Citing the issue that its tough to get full 8 man groups together to face other 8 man groups... well here's a suggestion taken from your own solution to 4 man arenas. How about adding solo queue for ranked to 8 man warzones, since honestly, regular warzones pop every few seconds on The Red Eclipse (a PvE server) and I've never waited more than a few minutes for one. Just let people choose if they want to queue for ranked or not, and add a role system like whats seems to be coming for arenas and is in place for FP's and Ops. So we wait a few more minutes for a ranked pop instead of a regular one while the systems tries to make to even sides... I think it would be a better solution than just throwing it off to the side for now (probably never to return) and possibly lose more subs that actually like ranked at the moment. PS. Although I'm all for new PvP... not everyone is jumping for joy over arenas... some will claim it ruined PvP in other games that will remain unnamed...

You can use your codex to figure out which ones you already have. Each datacron has a Galactic History entry number specific to that datacron... its a bit of work, but I don't really know any easier way at the moment.

After starting this thread, I'm glad to see that 99% of the replies tend to agree that this really should be reconsidered by the devs. Regarding the idea that it takes more time to develop these stories, I won't argue with that, but given the size of Makeb (supposedly slightly larger than Tatooine), I'd rather see the continuation of class stories and smaller planets in expansions (these also require a lot of work anyway... might as well put in the effort and add more class stories) than huge planet quests that will be boring after the first run on each faction. Hope the devs take this seriously though... I just have a feeling if they continue down this path, they're just shooting themselves in the foot.

I would like to nominate this thread here. Its gathered 5 pages worth of replies in little over 24 hours, and I feel its something the community as a whole should really be discussing. If you have the time please take a look.

This was announced today: So, if I'm getting this right, Bruce Maclean has basically announced that class stories are done. No more specific stories for your specific class. So the biggest selling point of this game before launch is no longer worthwhile?! I am the only one that is concerned about this?!

Thank you for the reply and constructive criticism. I do see many of your points of view as well. First off, I am well aware that some of the crafting abilities have great use on the GTN and Endgame, but not all crafters run Ops to pick up schematics, although I do agree that high end schematics should be more difficult to acquire than simply going to a vendor and purchasing it. That still doesn't help Synthweaving/Armormech/Armstech compete as a profitable crafting skill at at level 50 or soon to be level 55. Even if I take Armstech out of the equation, that still leaves two abilities that have been literally screwed out of business due to the Cartel Market. Now anyone can just buy a pack, wait and put it up for sale. All I'm saying is I think crafting needs to be looked at again, in a serious manner. Secondly, I am all for the new event. I know Ilum is slated as the PvP planet. All I'm saying is, if they went to such lengths as to create a separate zone inside the Western Ice Shelf, that marks you as PvP, and the other missions that lie outside this area are not marked with a [PvP] tag, the should be some mechanism to protect the PvEers. I'm all for a free for all over those other two World Bosses, but they could have simply put them in the PvP zone. I know the whole idea was to create a new PvPvE experience, but I would suggest that if they wanted to make the whole zone PvP, you should be flagged immediately, as it was before in the same zone. Currently all it does is either drive away certain PvEers from a very nice event, or the few that try have to change their style of play to not hit anyone that's marked for PvP. My opinion is it just needs a little bit of tweaking. About the PvP stats. I'm on the Red Eclipse server. I usually do ranked warzones twice a week. Our server has a very active PvP community, and has our own unofficial forum on a separate website. They try to keep server stats of the top DPS/Heals/Protection etc... This all requires screenshots from people making those claims. I just think it would be easier that the game could keep track of our own personal bests, as I don't think I'm anywhere near the elite PvPers that top those unofficial charts. I do like to improve though, and keeping track of how well/poorly I've done in the past would be nice. Given all the achievements coming in 2.0, I don't think this would be much of a stretch for the devs, and its mainly for personal use, not to show off. Honestly, as an IT tech and amateur programmer, dual faction guilds shouldn't really be that difficult to implement, especially given the alt-driven nature of this game, it should have been more than expected that people would have characters and friends on both sides. Similarly, the character naming issue since launch could have easily been solved, if they had instead opted for a unique ID per character instead of unique names. Last time I checked in almost any community, many people may have the same first name, and some have the same surname, and even on a rare occasion some, usually by coincidence have the same first and last names. Thanks once again for the feedback. Best Regards, Ruthis

Dear EA/Bioware, I would like to start off by saying thank you. Thank you for providing us with a game that a good majority of us truly enjoy! The reason I write this is basically my attempt to help out with some ideas I've had over the past year and a bit, but they are just my personal opinion, and I encourage constructive criticism as one should always strive to improve. My first concern which has been growing over the past 6 months or so, is crafting. While all the other areas of the game have been getting attention on a regular basis, all crafting really gained was augments. Now I'm sure part of this had to do with the launch of the Cartel Market. I have nothing against paid in-game shops, as the game has to make money to keep funding development of further content. What I can't understand is the fact that with the launch of new tiers of gear, previous tiers were not made available to crafters to make. A good example of this is Rakata gear. Currently only belts and bracers can be made, and they're still bind on pickup. There is really no point to this any more. I could see the reasoning at launch when Rakata gear was basically the best you could get, but currently it can be leap over by grinding dailies for Black Hole commendations to purchase Black Hole gear. This problem is compounded by the fact that it seems from what I've seen so far in the PTS of the expansion that even more gear will be added and a whole bunch will be “retired”. A whole bunch of posts shot up over certain gear retirement. How about making the retired artifact and/or custom gear craftable? I think this would breathe some life into Synthweaving/Armormech/Armstech. Speaking to a few people in the past, and given the alt-creating nature of this game, most people are only currently thinking of Cybertech and Biochem as crafting possibilities for future characters. There is very little incentive to roll the others in endgame, as those two bring distinct advantages to PvE and PvP. I have noticed that crafting seems to be increased to 450 in the expansion, but unless this brings some added interest to the crafter, I don't see how the above mentioned trend will change. From what I can see, at least from a crew skills vendor, Synthweaving/Armormech/Armstech are still in the same boat. All thats been added of any real value are the improved augments. The rest is still the same. The biggest concern I have, and is shared by many people is the lack of class story extensions in the coming expansion. I think it was probably the biggest bombshell that left people puzzled and concerned. One of the biggest driving forces behind this game, and what marks it as different to many other MMO's is the RPG factor. I know many people that joined the game specifically for the story, as it was one of the selling points of the game. I'm sure many were basically hoping SWTOR to be KOTOR III with multi-player attached. I'm sure certain people expected more... I for one was happy with the original effort of 8 class stories, which I can imagine is a lot of work. Its kept me busy for the last year, and I'm still only about halfway through my class progress of all 8 stories (4 finished at some point in the last year). The problem is my main character is getting rather bored with nothing specific to do. He gets to see the same loading screen for months on end, and although endgame content helps, I'm sure like me, most people want to see where their character is going from there. I'm sure its too late for this to added to the expansion, but I would seriously suggest this as a major priority for your next expansion, if not the most important. My next concern was commendations... but I see one change already that I like on the PTS. I think moving the individual commendations from each planet to Planetary Commendations is a very good idea. Some people might not see it this way, but as a person with multiple alts, I find myself very over-leveled at the end of each planet, with generally an alt that can craft better items that I will get on the missions/commendation vendors, and end up having no use for many of the commendations that I pick up on certain planets. In regards with the other types of commendations, from what I've seen on the PTS, I'm not entirely sure capping things with a weekly allowance is a good idea. I don't mind a cap on how many you can stack at any one time, but giving weekly allowances seems a bit heavy-handed in a way. Its like you're telling us you can only do a certain amount of this content and a certain amount of that content, which in a way is telling us to do certain things. Most people don't like being told what to do, or how to spend their time, and given that a good portion of your gaming audience are adults, I think its a decision most won't appreciate. I understand the reasoning behind it. I believe you're trying to help prevent people from burning through content too quickly, but at the end of the day, that really should be up to the person to decide, and not dictated by some new policy. Another concern is PvP. I was very happy with the whole relaunch of Ilum in 1.7. I like the fact that you've given PvPers something else to do besides warzones. I think its good that those missions are labeled [PvP] in the mission logs, and that the PvPers have a specific area for this to occur. My concern lies for some of my PvE only friends. People that are marked for PvP appear in a different colour, I assume to warn other players, but the thing is, if you aren't marked for PvP and are doing some PvE stuff and accidentally target one of them and fire, you suddenly get flagged. Some people use the auto-targeting feature. I've also heard that many PvEers are now being careful with AoE's as well in that area, mainly because PvP marked players are just riding around waiting for something to happen. I'm all for PvP on Ilum, but in its own area. The moment a PvEer has to change their style of play because a PvPer is running around their area, its not really fair on the PvEer. I have enjoyed the PvP zone though, and I find the whole PvPvE environment entertaining and challenging. I think it was a very positive move, and a breath of fresh air for the game as a whole. My only other concern is how sporadic will this event be? Will it return once a month? Maybe with each major patch update... Its just that at the moment, it almost feels like a dailies area, so I find it hard to imagine that it won't be around for a while. I will avoid commenting on PvP balance between the classes at the moment, as I assume part of the new PvP system on the PTS has to do with this, but as its currently bugged, I shall wait for further information before commenting on this. A few more warzones would be nice, but I know content takes time. Is it me, or is Huttball something unique you won't find elsewhere?! Also some PvP stats would be nice. I assume you log the data to generate those tables at the end of a warzone. Don't think it would take much to update a player's personal stats to include his/her highest damage/heals/protection, objectives and medals. They'd only have to be updated if those best scores are surpassed. I'm sure its something most PvPers would like, and could be tied into the achievements. Maybe a reward for breaking 500k/1M in a certain field, or 15k objectives or more than 15 medals, etc... Next on my list of concerns is World Bosses. Now I really do like the challenge they present, if you tackle them with an appropriately leveled player, but in my experience, the respawn timers are rather long, and usually it takes time to get a random Ops group together to go and hunt one down. More frustrating is running around trying to find one that is up when you finally get a group together. Worse yet is almost getting your group ready, and starting to gather when you finally find one, to see some level 50 (yes I have at least 3 level 50 characters) just run up and try to solo it. I have nothing against people that are looking for that individual challenge of defeating a World Boss solo, but its not very nice when you see a group gathering to attempt the same thing. I think an easy solution to this whole situation would be how Xeno Analyst II has been set up. Place all the World Bosses in a phase, so that people can go and challenge them when they like, with or without a team. You can even have a lockout, like with Xeno Analyst II so that people don't farm them over and over again. A few quick things before I get onto my final concern. As I recall, there have been complaints about the codex entries since launch... maybe its time to fix that. It shouldn't take too long, and with the new achievements system on the PTS (which seems to have some relevant things in regards to codex entries), a full planetary codex could give some nice rewards for the completionists among us. The other little idea I had was making map unlocks legacy wide. Its a bit of pain having to explore planet A, B or C for the hundredth time. The experience gains could be granted when the planet codex entry is unlocked when you first land on the planet. The other thing is guilds and factions... Dual faction would be a huge step forward, so that we could communicate with our guildies when they swap factions for whatever reason. There are plenty of posts and suggestions to improve spare time for guilds, so I won't delve into that. The other thing is a third faction. There should have been a neutral faction for Smugglers and Bounty Hunters. I don't think they've ever really had any allegiance to any side, unless they have more credits! One last thing... Memory leaks!! Anyone with a resources monitor will notice that, while playing SWTOR, ones memory usage will keep climbing, especially planet hopping, or changing environments. It seems some things aren't being removed from memory at these changes, and start to pile up. I'd even go so far to assume that many reported crashes have to do with exactly this. I have 8Gb's installed, and notice two things while playing. The first is my lag increases once memory usage gets over 65%, and believe me, I've tried many things to improve performance (fullscreen windowed mode made a big difference, and putting the processes to high priority helped a little as well), but I can't stop the memory consumption. If I decide to struggle through the increased lag, I find that the game will almost always crash (time varies) once it gets over 80-85% memory usage. I assume the two processes are to access more than 4Gb's of memory. That seems all fine if everyone was still running Windows XP 32-bit, but I'm sure most of your users are now on Windows 7 64-bit. Mainstream support of Windows XP ended in 2009, so I think a 64-bit client wouldn't be too much to ask for. Windows 7 market share has already passed Windows XP, and the gap between the two will only get bigger in the years to come. I am by no means saying to not cater for other OS users, as I'm sure some Mac fans would love a version as well. Best Regards, Ruthis

All I have to say about the transfer system is... this pre-selected server nonsense (even though I understand why) does not work for everyone. Some of us moved servers (a while before we knew this would be a possibility) and have created new characters (personally, on level 40 now) and no intention of being moved to some random server!! Given that I have no intention of leaving my new server, where I have found a new guild which I like, I find it rather stupid that I now can't bring my older characters to this server. What I find even more hilarious, is that I wrote a ticket, hoping someone would help me sort out this issue, and when I logged in today the ticket had vanished (I assume someone at Bioware just deleted it and didn't have the decency to reply as to why). I already have my next month paid for, but if this is how you treat paying costumers on a regular basis, I will seriously be considering whether or not I'll be renewing my subscription in the future. I really can't justify the wasted time on building up 5-6 characters on another server, which then had a drop in interest all around, and then my guild fell apart, so I actively searched out a better option for myself, which I found, only to then realize that Bioware won't even help me try to save my characters that I spend a few months on... PS: This does involve cross regional transfers...