Caution: Fanwankery Ahead. Proceed at your own risk. Possible explanations include: On the Imp side, OSHA had its charter revoked and was replaced by OSHA, the Office of Sith Happiness and Appreciation, which spent all of their funds on birthday cakes and party favors for Sith Lords. As someone else mentioned, on Imperial planets, they believe in survival of the fittest. So: no protective railings, and you're dreaming if you expect warning signage. We play through this game as migrant workers, going where the action is. The locals all know which bridges are out. It's our own fault for not reading the local newspapers' Road Work section before going out adventuring. Many of the planets we visit are war zones. The damage may have just happened right before we got there, and they haven't had a chance to put up signs yet. Plus: they're at war. They have other funding priorities. Since we are at war, perhaps that's what Imperial and Republic Intelligence spend most of their time doing: stealing the opponent's road signs. Espionage at its finest! As for why the guards don't warn you, well, maybe they're just d*cks.

It's the only time my Twi'lek Consular, Fluffy'Bunny of the RabbitHutch Legacy, feels like himself.

Hi, OP! I sent you a Private Message, if you're still looking for someone to RP with. Cheers!

The decimals come in when your pack of 4 selling for 21 credits shows a per-unit price of 5.25. For example.

It means bleep you, bleep your ancestors, bleep your descendants, and bleep the bleepin' mount you rode in on. (It's even ruder in droid.)

It's an interesting topic, and I read through (almost) all of the thread. It occurs to me that there's the game, and then there's the "game." One is the high-level set of rules, objectives, and whatnot. The game mechanics. The other is the computer code that implements the former. If I read the OP correctly, one of his questions concerns the propriety of doing things that the game code allows, that don't necessarily fit with the spirit of the game. For the quality of life things like Quick Travel, I like to think of them as a narrative device. In a movie, they're not always going to follow the hero on the journey back from the quest, unless something interesting happens along the way. They're going to cut to the hero reporting in and receiving a reward. This is just the game's version of that. Truthfully, QT is also part of the game mechanics. It's on a 30-minute cooldown, so balancing your use along with your XP bonus countdown can take some skill and practice. Further, what the game code allows can be divided into intended and unintended effects. Spamming an area power to drag down another player's FPS is actually a clever idea. But I think it could easily be classified as exploiting the limitations of the game, or rather the platform upon which the game exists. Was it intended by the designers? No. Is it against the rules? Not exactly.... Then there are the things, like stealthing past mobs, that are fully allowed by the game mechanics and game engine, but may be considered socially unacceptable by some other players. For those, enforcement of the rules is left entirely up to the community. (Personally, I think the stealth classes are somewhat underpowered, so they are given the ability to snap up an extra chest or two along the way. Someone doing this all the time, or sniping the chest that another player is already fighting the boss for, will rapidly gain a poor reputation or face retribution from other players.) If you've ever been on the receiving end of a fellow player's moral indignation for accidentally selecting Need instead of Greed, you know how ugly things can get. Strongholds fall squarely into the QoL "useful, but threatens immersion" category. Because interplanetary teleportation isn't in Star Wars canon, the ability to immediately bop on over to your house and back doesn't really make sense in the universe of the game. But it can be used cleverly, like the player who used it to exact his revenge. Or even just to prevent running out of space in your inventory. Again, you have to use it within the confines of the game code: you can't teleport to your stronghold, travel to the fleet, and then immediately return to the same place your started. But you can use it as a shortcut to your ship. Overall, I'm not opposed to using any of the features that the game provides, because they are equally available to all players. Or at least to all paying players. (Stealth, while not available to all characters, is available to all players. Just roll a stealth class and you, too, can stroll past mobs!) I would have moral qualms about power-spamming, because it grants an unfair advantage to players with more powerful gaming computers, which has nothing to do with the skill of the player. Thanks for the interesting discussion!

Hell hath no fury like someone soloing an MMO. At least in my experience. People can be total ____s if you help them. And yet, if I'm playing a LS Jedi, I'm gonna help. If you don't want the help, don't play an MMO. You can ask me not to help, and I will comply, but don't assume that everyone around you knows your play style. If that pisses you off, then just chalk it up to another of the aggravations of living in a society full of people. Traffic. Overcrowding. Trouble finding parking. And all those damn people helping you all the time! What is our world coming to?

Talk to her. Maybe if you ask nicely, she won't mind if you flirt with and kiss other guys.

The way I see it, stuff costs different prices at different times. See Black Friday and After Christmas Sales for two seasonal examples. Or my go-to example of Action Comics #1. If you bought it for the cover price when it was released (and kept it in mint condition), congratulations! You won at life. But you can't expect to buy it at the cover price today, because it is an extremely rare collector's item. (One sold in August for $3.2 million.) Another way to look at it is: it's a game. Or rather a mini-game outside of the game. Those people who held off training during the first week of early access took a chance, and it paid off in credits. Those who wanted to play rather than wait took a chance, and it paid off in getting to level 60 before those who waited. The way this particular mini-game turned out, it wasn't possible to get both rewards. If you're not happy with the choice you made, you can't always go back. Same as with choosing your advanced class. Or buying something on the GTN. Or making a bad move in chess. Once you remove your hand from the piece, the move is over. You deal with the ramifications.

Do you know what's fun, in a completely immature way? Go back and read this thread again, but pretend like you don't know what "chest grinding" is in-game, and instead interpret it to be one of those acts consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedroom. Well, I found it entertaining, anyway.

Ahem: W00T!!!! Thank you. We now return you to your regularly scheduled forum. (And thank you!)

Good to know, thanks! I'll have to hunt around for where the unsubscribe option is. The other night I couldn't find it. Cheers!

Instead of responding to this, which would only continue to make me an accessory to the hijacking of the thread from its stated topic, I will instead ask if anyone knows of any other method of registering a complaint about the double-billing for skills, besides posting our displeasure on the forum. My own subscription is paid for several months in advance, so I'm concerned that my cancelling in March will not reflect what drove me away after being a subscriber continuously since early access. Obviously they won't care about one subscriber, but if there is a proper way for us to show our numbers (that doesn't involve a petition--I doubt they ever take those seriously), I'm up for it. I don't want to spam anyone or do anything in protest, but if there is a way for my voice to be heard, I want to make sure I follow through. Thanks!

I'm disappointed we let you hijack the thread from a topic I care about. I'm not blameless in that myself. Cheers!

I know this is merely anecdotal evidence, but I did not cry about any of the things you listed here, and yet I am bothered by being charged twice for things I already paid for. I suspect there are others like me. Dismissing our concerns based on the argument you present above is therefore invalid. You are, of course, still free to dismiss our opinions via some other argument. And I believe everyone on this thread knows where you stand on the issue. What exactly do you have to gain by continuing to argue, being unpleasant and disrespecting people and opinions you disagree with? Surely you have made your point by now.

So on one side we have people saying they feel the double-jeopardy skill payments introduced in 3.0 are unfair. On the other side, we have people saying it either hasn't been a problem for them, personally, or that the payments don't bother them. What I don't get is why so many people in the 2nd group are so angry at those in the first group. I mean, if it's not a problem to you, fine. Go play. Have fun! Why rant over the first group's concerns? What does it matter to you? I just don't get it. Is it one of those, "Oh noes! Somebody on the intertubes disagrees with me!" things? Or what? People have a right to be upset over what they perceive as unfair treatment. In fact, it could be argued that people have a responsibility to work to correct unfairness. Calling each other crying babies isn't going to convince anyone you're right. It's just going to dilute the message we want to send to the people in charge. TL;DR - Don't feed the trolls.

I don't think you guys understand how many players you're alienating. Or maybe you do, and you think the number of new players will make up for us legacies you'll be losing. I don't know enough about your business to tell you how to run it. I only know I don't like being treated like this, and I will put my money where my mouth is. What doesn't make sense about this is, if they're charging for "new" abilities that are very much like old abilities, then why are we not also being credited for the old abilities we lost? Ideally (and what we all expected was) it should be a zero-sum respec. None of us asked for the skill system to be changed, so why should the customers have to pay (even fake in-game money) for something they forced on us? My sub is paid up until March. If they don't go back on this by then, I have a calendar reminder set to cancel. I suspect I will have stopped playing long before then. Again, not rage-quitting, just disappointed to be treated like this by a company and game I enjoyed and even defended in the past. Still, all good things must come to an end. Anyone for STO? I still have a lifetime sub there. Cheers!

My lord, you are the voice of reason in these troubled times. Thanks!

So now it's "entitlement" to expect things not to be taken from you without compensation? I'm really glad I don't live in your neighborhood.

I haven't seen that one since the patch, but I did have an interesting one last night. There was a man just standing around in my SH in his underwear. I couldn't select him, and he wasn't one of my companions or NPC decorations. And then after a few moments, he disappeared. It was like he was "bleeding through" from another instance, or maybe from a parallel universe. It might have been Malavai Quinn, but I'm not sure. (I've seen the phantom Hutt trainer before, but never a semi-nekkid man.)

It would be awesome to get some followup on Eric's message, to clarify whether or not this is a mistake, and how it will be corrected. I'm not trying to be dramatic here, but if they do intend for us to pay again for stuff we already paid for, I'm probably going to unsubscribe. It's the principle. I just don't like giving my money to companies that treat me like that. And if they do this once and get away with it, they will do it again. Their response to this situation will greatly affect my opinion and the level of trust I have for the company. Meanwhile I'm taking a wait-and-see attitude. I hope they know that every day I'm not playing due to this problem is a day I might find a different game to get hooked on. (Or, heck, I might even decide to go out and get a real life instead! Nah...) So if it comes down to it, no more sub, no more cartel coin purchases, and I'll choose my favorite couple of toons to maybe come back and RP with once in a while as a preferred user. I know I'm only one subscriber (since early access) in a sea of subscribers, but if the only way I can vote is with my wallet, then that is what I will do.

I think you'll find it's the principle of making people pay twice for something that bothers us. Even for those of us who aren't whining and crying about the change change to the abilities system, making us pay to get back something we already paid for is just ... wrong. There's a word for that when it happens in the real world: theft. Or ransom. It's not unreasonable to expect a change in the way abilities work would be accompanied by some sort of mapping of old abilities to the new system. It is also not unreasonable to expect that, if there is no direct mapping, some means of crediting us for previously spent training points would be provided. Sure, it's "fake" money, but it's my "fake" money, darnit! (BTW, do we know that our pre-3.0 training credits haven't been refunded? I have not logged in yet, and I only have an estimate of a couple of my characters' bank balances.) Ah, well, if that's what you think, allow me to introduce you to a little something we like to call the GTN....

Thanks for the tip! I got mine, and it didn't charge any tax or handling. (In Colorado.) Cheers!

It's impossible. The world keeps coming up with better, more advanced idiots! Wouldn't it be funny if the devs decided to fix it by changing the decimals? Then they added a decimal place, instead? I can hear the screaming already, projecting backward through time.... Just try telling the difference between 374.325 and 374,325.

Technically the people who are getting their skills for "free" had to preorder the expansion. They paid in real world currency. So what are you complaining about? You got a deal, paying for those level-ups with fake money. You even have the option of not preordering, and instead using that real world money to buy cartel coins, use those coins to buy packs, selling those packs on the GTN, and making even more in-game money than you ever spent leveling up (probably). In any case, I assume you know the answer is no. Your question is a little like saying you should be allowed to buy Action Comics #1 today for the original cover price. You paid the going rate at the time you paid it. So did the people doing the 12x thing.