Right then, GW2 it is then, and if I don't like it, on to FFXIV. Hopefully the GW2 servers will settle down after a few days, then I'll try the base game out to see how it is. I had heard something about FFXIV's group battles being required for the story, just hadn't been sure about that part yet. Well, it is an MMO, but wish there was a solo option (especially given Final Fantasy's origins). Its too bad, I love FF (and the game looks beautiful and I'm interested in how the PS4 version runs), but I'll try that later maybe. It would be nice to be able to join an MMO at the start, but the timing isn't that easy either. Who knew ARR would turn out so well? I've been playing SWTOR mostly since launch (from KotOR and ME to here), but the last two years have sapped most of my motivation for this game. Thank you for all the answers. Now to see if my computer can run GW2 without struggling too much.

Thank you for the answers. I kind of forgot about this thread after a while, whoops. I play a shadow tank, but while I'll augment the gear I probably won't go for all out min-max. And I'd get slaughtered in PVP os I usually only stick to PVE. So b-mods can only be crafted, do the recipes drop from ops or pvp gear boxes? Haven't seen any of that in the regular command crate drops. Well, guess I can try out a few PVP fights at least. Ok, my next project is to set up a legacy set of armor for my DPS Shadows (even if they are about to be nerfed).

My sub is about to expire, so anyone have good recommendations for another MMO? I'm leaning towards FFXIV, maybe WoW or Guild Wars 2 (all active with new expansions recently or coming). Something that can be played solo a good deal of the time (it'll definitely take me a while to learn the mechanics). SWTOR is the only MMO I've played (well, I dabbled with Star Trek Online years ago, but that sounds like too much F2P and cash shop stuff by now), but hopefully I can adapt fast enough. Mainly I'm trying to find good beginner sites for those games. Like WoW has so much content and most guides are for endgame builds. I'm still trying to figure out which WoW servers are west coast, whether to start on a high population one or someplace quieter (yeah, I'm easily confused). A "good" thing about SWTOR was eventually it was easy to keep track of servers. Well, I guess I can just try their "trial" but just curious if anyone else know any good sites first. Dulfy is great (and has been invaluable for SWTOR over the years) but starting from scratch again in another MMO is kind of daunting.

Not sure if this has been brought up before, or if this is a stupid idea, but... Well, last time they had both xp and cxp doubled for one week, which was relatively fun (made GC grinding a lot less boring, especially with the daily glitch). Actually, I was so busy rushing through dailies, I didn't have much time to level up any characters. Its not like leveling is that hard these days (not like the old days where there were heroics were only repeatable once a week and didn't give any xp if you were six levels above the planet), but its still nice to go through a class quickly for nostalgic sake. It just feels like a waste to do that when cxp is doubled too (but then that's GC grind treadmill trap for you). So maybe next time have them on separate weeks, like first double xp (to get a new character up to 70) then double cxp. Although by then they'll have probably "fixed" the daily glitch so I might not bother with cxp again.

Ah, the good old days of 3.0. It had serious problems (and the only thing they rushed to fix were those credit boxes on Rishi, I think?), but it was the last expansion that felt like old SWTOR... before the dark times, before KotFE. What I especially miss about 3.0 were the class missions. Remember those, when the eight player classes had those supporting characters that called them by their own class title (Smuggler, Jedi, Agent) rather than just "Outlander"? That was the last gasp of the original class stories. Now we barely get five minutes of unique lines (less sometimes actually) if an old companion shows up. "Hey, its you! Was wondering where you went for five years. Now, back to Zakuul." The era of 2.0 was probably higher quality (when new ops and strongholds were added), but I still (mostly) fondly remember 3.0. 4.0 was mediocre at best, and 5.0 was just bad. I hope they don't rush out 6.0, as I doubt it would turn out good, but after this month I'm going back to unsubbed, 5.0 definitely isn't worth keeping this account active.

So I haven't bothered trying to throw together decent gear since before 5.0 but now I actually have a bunch of crates to open and several thousand command tokens. I just have to figure out which equipment to keep or disintegrate, still debating between say higher level blue or lower level purple. I'm not going for hardcore raiding but I might try uprising or flashpoints later (so pve only). So for dps, basically get to 730 or so accuracy, then go crit, then alacrity depending on the class? But are unlettered or lethal A mods better? I think mastery is better but does the difference matter much? As for tanking, the guides recommend bulwark/bastion but all the crate gear comes with immunity/sturdiness. I guess higher level bulwark/bastion only comes from ops gear, so I'll probably just settle for blue/purple immunity/sturdiness 240 enhancements? And no idea where the b mods went (ops gear?), I miss commendation gear. Is Warding or Warding A better? Or is a higher level blue warding A mod with more endurance better than a lower level purple unlettered warding mod with more defense rating? Its probably not worth it to min-max that much, but I like to try and join stuff like the gree ops fight sometimes so I want to fiddle with my gear as much as I can, now that I have enough mods and enhancements to mess around with. And I won't bother trying to mix dps mods with tanking, that's probably beyond me.

Glad I slept in today. I know they were fixing an exploit, but sad to see the fix is worse than the problem (the game was running fine yesterday). At least Eric kept posting all day, lack of communication has always been one of this game's biggest problems (though they've arguably improved a bit over the last year). Having it happen during a double XP/CXP week is worse too. Just hope nothing else pops up until next Tuesday.

If CXP had been like this from the start, I would have kept my subscription. Still, nice timing with the double CXP too, so I'll play for this week/month at least. And my character suffered from the Section X bug too a few months ago. It took a few weeks to get back to light V, even with the current way lightside points work. It normally wouldn't matter too much to me, but I'm trying not to let my lightside tokens build up too much, and the better stuff on the vendor (relatively speaking) require high light alignment, which made it... annoying to say the least. After that I avoid the Section X weekly, I don't want it reset again. Based on other posts, it might have something to do with doing that really long three-stage bonus mission and logging out while still in Section X or something like that. I know that bonus mission has been bugged for years, but only recently did it reset alignment somehow. The bug might take several days to show up, as if you do the bonus once, the next time it starts at stage 3 or something, which might be related to the reset bug. Doesn't seem like they'll fix it anytime soon, based on how many months ago some other posts were. I do wish CXP dailies were like this all the time, or even 50% of this. Before, a fully daily area barely filled about half a bar. And all only for a small chance at getting something useful. I'll see if I can get a character to 300 then probably give up on this game again.

Well, I'm happy. I was thinking about resubbing but now I know not to resub. Glad I only signed up for a one month sub and removed my payment information after that. CXP is a pain to put up with, they nerfed some classes I like, KotFE and KotET's story isn't worth staying subbed, and now this. I still miss the old cutscenes we had back at launch, where most of our companions had plenty of cutscenes, with romances or gradually expanding background or fun little subplots as incentives to keep increasing their affection (and that was back when getting companion gifts was completely random, I think). KotFE and KotET didn't bring that back, of course, but I was hoping that Lana's and Theron's increasing importance would be interesting. Now I know its not worth it. Now to go find some better MMO to spend my money on. I want to like SWTOR, I mostly fondly remember the first three years, but by now, I give up, at least for another six months (if not longer) after hearing about such a horrible plot development.

Yeah, I miss the old vanilla story companions. None of them came close to, say, ME2's squad of course, but at least they tried. The KotFE reboot threw them all out (after a few of them finally got new voice acting, even if for a few lines in Chapter 1), then we got stuck with Lana and a bunch of mauve shirts. Lana handles everything (special Force feelings, military, intelligence, battles, etc.) Koth complains, Senya angsts, and everyone else is a minor recurring character at best. Technically there's Theron too but he doesn't even show up for half of KotFE, so its always been clear the story favors her. And saw the datamine stuff and... yeah, I'm out. I tried resubbing for a month to see if I can tolerate the CXP thing, but after hearing about this, and with how CXP is still annoying, I'm not resubbing. I'm not really surprised by the direction the story is going, more disappointed. I was hoping for something better, but after KotFE and KotET, guess that was too much to expect.

/signed Yeah, if that had been the rate from the beginning, I would have stayed subbed after December. Its still worse than the old system, but that's nothing new. And its not just about getting BIS gear. The old system was so much better since almost everything involved getting basic comms and we could use basic comms for starter gear, companion gifts, crafting materials, etc. Now we either have to keep rolling lockboxes over and over and over or grind PVP or get together a lot of crafting material (and not like 5.0 launched with a grade 10 material area) to craft our own gear. While its nice to have a chance to get set bonus, I would have preferred to not have rely on chance so much of the time (along with so much garbage mixed in, like reputation items for reps that I maxed out long, long ago). Not to mention it discourages alt play (better to gamble for higher quality stuff). All while the Legacy system just sits there, unused.

It would be nice if the CXP buff lasted longer, but at the moment I don't really have an understanding of much slower regular CXP grinding is. I only resubbed a week or two ago in preparation for this double CXP week and I'll probably let my sub lapse again later. If it had been like this from the beginning of 5.0, I probably would have hung onto my sub, but then again its the short time is another reason why i played so much this week (haven't done this much dailies in years).

The sad thing is that it didn't used to be like this. Back when 4.0 started, we still got gear according to the location, then they changed it to match our level. At least I think that was one of the many things they fiddled with? So now we're mostly just stuck getting max-level trash all the time, which is a shame as after they changed the heroics we now had (another) good reason to go back to those planets. But guess that was too... useful for us. I think that's around the time they got rid of all those gear vendors on the fleet too. I forget if they bothered to warn us about that either.

Oh good, I was afraid it was just me. I haven't bothered to sub since January and had been giving the game another chance this month (though regretting it a little bit after nerfs and still poor communication, even if it is a big improvement from before) and thought I had misunderstood something or missed some announcement. Having it stuck on ops for this week is really annoying. I'd been holding off on heroics hoping it would come up. I wonder if is it bugged or if they did it intentionally to slow our CXP.

Yeah, technically this is mostly a minor annoyance... but as usual its another epic fail on the part of Bioware's public relations department. I understand that when it was crystals it wasn't that big a deal. I kind of wish they had kept the tunings collection thing until 5.4, so that they could have released it all at once- that tunings can be unlocked in collections and they closed the legacy weapon "exploit" to prevent losing money. At the very least, if they had made this post on Monday, highlighting that part of the patch notes and explaining their reasons, then the reaction wouldn't have been quite as negative. As they consider the tunings thing an exploit (understandably), I can see why they didn't post about it on Friday or something. Compared to last year, posting about it on Wednesday actually isn't that bad, by their standards. That's not saying much though. Something like this keeps me from getting a multi-month sub again though. Its not that much, but with how GC still isn't that fun, I was wavering so something like this does push me solidly over the unsub line. I want to play this game (I subbed almost continuously for four years at least), but not with how... annoying so many parts of this game have become (unnecessarily so, compared to just last year even).

Well, I had been checking out the game again for a bit to see if it had improved since 5.0... but a move like this means I'm unsubbing again. I know this game has a long, long history of idiotic design decisions (I still remember the crowds on Coruscant waiting for the stage 3 elite mob), but every time they pull something like this . I had already unlocked my favorite CM color crystals during the sales, for the sake of convenience, and I had wondered about this occasionally, so of course it was too good to be true. What really annoys me is that there was no warning, absolutely none. Not like everyone would have spent the weekend moving legacy weapons and crystals, but sneaking it into patch notes on a Monday is insulting. And they know its insulting, otherwise they would have mentioned it beforehand. They know 5.3 is not going to be a popular patch, between all the nerfs, but adding this on top is just, ugh.

The moment I saw the CZ-198 token in the livestream, I knew it was pointless. Yes, I know that reputation token doesn't take the place of higher level gear, but it seems like such a useless thing to include. Its not even the limited time events like Gree or Rakghoul, but the fact that they included rubbish like that shows how worthless the crates are. The Alliance crates from heroics aren't too bad by comparison. Yes, they aren't used for gearing, but they reliably drop companion gifts and legacy gear from no longer available sets, and they're easy to get just by running some heroics, so they feel decently rewarding (companion gifts are always useful and at least you can vendor the gear). Instead CXP crates drop empty shells that are bind on equip (so are useless and ugly), schematics for crafting I don't have (already have several schematics for my alts, but as it feels like a waste of time to level up alts now), reputation tokens that I could get in five minutes from years-old daily areas, and jawa junk. Most of it doesn't feel like a reward, and even disintegrating it barely gets... maybe 10% towards the next crate. So its lose-lose. Even aside from the RNG punishment, if they at least rewarded a good deal of credits or other goodies it wouldn't feel quite so bad. I barely made it to rank 10 before giving up. Its not like I'll reach another level soon by doing regular daily stuff.

Nope, not subscribing again. I wish I had timed my sub better so that it would have expired after KotET rather than renewing just before, but I was hoping it wouldn't be as bad as we expected. I used to have a three-month sub, as it was better than one month of course, but I changed it as I didn't want to be locked in too long. And I still haven't had time to get around to playing KotET, so it gives me more time to procrastinate on that. We all knew this RNG CXP system would be painful and evil, and BWA is apparently so deaf or stupid that they ignored all the warning signs. Unless they want the game to crash and burn, hm. Anyway, crazy conspiracy theories aside, the extra nerfs in the weeks after (gold mobs from 10 CXP to 1) was them just adding insult to injury. The lack of new content (don't care about uprisings) is just another major problem. There's not even a new daily area to gather new crafting materials, they just reused old Zakuul space. I probably would have let my sub expire months ago, but I was holding on for the HK-55 mission. It was fun, but not worth the 10 months, but I was hoping it would be a good sign for the future (the droid moveset, the fun nature of it), but guess it really was just an outlier.

Um, I guess its good that they're doing something? Still not renewing my sub, but I'll at least keep following the news to see how this turns out. Still miss the old vendor system and sounds like even raiders still have to put up with a horrible grind. Its good that ops will actually have a reward (more than just some minor CXP), but not like I have time (or the patience or the guild or the skill) for ops. Still seems more complicated than before, when we just had commendation/data crystal vendors as a good standby for anyone looking to get into ops. I don't like ops or have time for them, but I did like to go for the gree ops boss occasionally at least, which is one reason I tried to get ops-level gear (as well as I just like keeping my characters in decent gear at least). Not much point to try that in 5.0, the amount of time required compared to possible reward is way out of balance. But guess they're just trying to waste time these days.

The thing is that these complaints aren't new. From the day the RNG system was announced, something like... 90% of the forums erupted in outrage (with a few defenders). We all expected this painful system to turn out like this, and what do you know, it did. Slow grinding just for pathetic rewards, and no way of getting great gear without trying again and again and again (crafting still doesn't really approach that level either, and not like they added any new areas with exclusive grade 10 materials for us to gather). To add insult to injury, they rushed to nerf the 10 CXP from gold mobs. I'm only around rank 8, and 10 CXP is barely a drop in the bucket on the CXP bar. At even higher levels 10 CXP would be nothing. When that's the only action they take for the CXP system for this year, its pretty... frustrating, to say the least. And no, I wouldn't count it as an exploit- before launch they said the weekly cap was there to prevent this kind of thing, and it would take a ridiculous amount of farming to reach it even with the 10 CXP per gold rate, yet they still overreacted, which is typical for them. So basically, I didn't expect them to do anything, as they usually take most of December off. The one change they enacted just made the grind worse. Its ruined the game, they refuse to admit the system is annoying, so not much point sticking around.

That was a pleasant change to discover, especially with how many extra companions I'm stuck with after KotFE, and how long we've been stuck at only 6 companions. Especially with the rush to get the new tier of crafting to work through. I do wish they had announced it, or was it in the patch notes? Honestly, if they had announced something like this, or highlighted this as a new feature of 5.0, it would have been nice to have some good news about a quality of life improvement for once, rather than, well, everything else going on. Then again, if their PR was that good, there would probably be a little bit less raging on the forums. At least we have fast confirmation.

You're thinking too logically. The point of the system isn't to gear up, its to delay the players as long as possible. It would be nice if like very set gave us a token, and 10 tokens would allow us to buy a piece, and maybe 20 tokens for a set-piece. Maybe even call those tokens a nice name like commendation even. But after all these weeks I doubt it.

Ugh, I'm too busy to play for a few days (and not particularly in a rush to reach max level due to not being that interested) and of course they rush to nerf something in less than a week. Given their track record (like with some exploits when SoR launched), I wasn't expecting that. Well, they do rush to nerf things sometimes, but it just makes a bad situation (the whole GC system) worse. Oh well, I was probably cancelling my sub by next month anyway. Thanks for adding another reason for me not to regret that decision.

There still would have been lots of raging, but not telling us beforehand just makes it worse, yeah. As mentioned, apparently they feel we shouldn't just buy the gift we want from vendors anymore too, hence the markup. A ridiculous markup, but not surprising, considering their typical level of competence and respect for the players. Which is why I used up several thousand comms in the last week. Funny they bothered to change the name from commendations to data crystals after years (a purely cosmetic change, and unneeded), then just got rid of them all together, shows how much they plan. I was hoping for maybe a 100k per grade 6 gift, but I knew that would be too optimistic. If it had been a straight conversion (15k), no problem, but not in this game.

Still downloading the game (so haven't seen it myself), but... wow, that sounds like a really stupid conversion. I expected them to raise the price (just because they can), but this sounds particularly poorly thought out. Oh well, as expected, this is why I used up as many of my comms as possible in the last week.