My basic attitude is that I'd rather see unique looks for PCs than simply giving them looks from NPCs. I'm far more likely to spend CC or accumulate and spend millions of creds for something original, than to look like a character I met in a quest specifically... unless there is some compelling reason why there might be overlap. There are a few cases like say a "Red Blade" set being worn by an Imp agent where it makes a weird kind of thematic sense. I DO have some NPC-based armor like the Thana Vesh set, but the weird thing is my characters don't use it to cosplay as her or anything, I simply wanted specific pieces in trying to accomplish more unique looks, in the case of that one it was about the footwear. Oh and a couple of weird points for those who want to praise the Omnimessiah for this great wall of text: #1: I think the SWTOR artists need to spend more time on creating good looks for male characters. I won't say there are none, but I think the artists spend far more time on "Space Barbie" than "Space Ken". It seems to me that almost all the good male looks usually involve some pretty heavy armor and such. If you want to make a Sith Inquisitor who is a real pretty boy but still looks like one it's much harder to do IMO than with the female version. Pretty much all of my favorite male characters, including my inquisitor, all look like walking tanks. The exception being my sage healer who wears the Enigmatic hero set (which I used straight up), I love all the details on that one, and it amuses me to have a mask while being extremely non-Sith-like. I switched over to him using it at an appropriate plot point as well (coming out of nowhere to fight the Eternal Empire after being rescued on Zakuul). #2: Conversely I think SWTOR needs to just bite the bullet in making some outright sexy costumes, beyond the dancer outfits and such which I think are fairly ridiculous in many cases. At this point its pretty obvious what people do in this game, and nothing is going to get around it, as the game will need to do more and more to remain financially viable and survive I think they need to produce what people want rather than abiding by whatever weird code was holding the artists back so far. Now I am not going to get into what I may or may not do, but I will say even most of my Sith tend to be good guys (though obviously I've played bad to see things from that side). That said just walking around fleet I can't go a day without seeing examples of "companion humiliation" with people dragging around slave girls or whatever. Love it or hate it, does fit the setting (especially on imp side), and I've seen it done with both male and female characters, and even male and female players. This is part of your player base. At this point I think there would be a market for some late game "companion emotes" allowing people to say make their companion submit, perhaps some kind of modified tuning to put them on a leash, or given the fascination with Vette's shock collar, maybe even a buyable "shock companion" emote or something. We can all guess what would happen here but it would bring in money, and to be honest I don't think you'd notice much difference with what's already going on, it would just be a bit flashier at times.... and yeah, it should be co-ed, because I've noticed female players (unless they fake really well on voice chat) who seem to be amused by the same stuff. I guess the point of the glorious holy text wall is, that as nice as Empress Acina's stuff is, if it's not obtainable already (I get the impression it is right now) I don't think it should be a priority. I think as dev winds down (even if there are going to be more expansions) there should be some focus on what will sell, so the game can go out on as high a financial note as possible and perhaps one day lead to another Star Wars MMORPG, and at the same time give some of the core player base what they obviously wanted in the 11th hour where it will have minimal impact on the perception of the game itself. If what I've heard about the licensing for the game is true, I expect it to be arouind roughly another 2 years (10 year run) I'm not sure if it will survive after that even if it's making money due to the ownership of the rights. I seem to remember when the game was being developed discussions about how the game was not set up to run eternally, when the subject of possible lifetime subscriptions (which never manifested obviously) was brought up. I expect it to be even messier if some of the rumors about Disney selling Star Wars are true (apparently they made money on ticket sales, but actually wanted the merch sales, and have lost even more on that... which is why there is so little swag in mainstream stores, even their own Disney Stores, despite a successful TV show and an upcoming movie... while regional managers of retail stores don't know anything, I found it interesting to hear someone like that say his bosses are telling them that they are moving away from Star Wars and that's why I couldn't find anything)

I should know better than to write when angry. Yes, it's only with the Nautolan, I tested that (as I mentioned in some other messages I wrote on the subject). I looked at the set (preview) with other races, and it does work for them as intended, that said I only have the suit for the one character (I did not pay to unlock it account wide). The Droid being attached to the helmet causing it to not work makes sense, I assume they coded it so the droid is part of the helmet and since all head pieces are invisible to Nautolan the droid is also invisible... if this is the case I'd imagine it should be a relatively easy fix if they bothered to take the time.... part of my anger in talking about it though is that I am very used to MMORPG companies just not caring about stuff like this as I mentioned. It would be nice to see a fix, but I notice I received no official response unless it was very recent (despite several mentions, and a whole topic I created dedicated just to this), and I've seen companies ignore even bigger problems literally from beta until the game closed down. At any rate to fix it I'd imagine it's a simple matter of adjusting the hat so it works on Nautolan, or simply detaching the droid part from the hat so they have seperate flags as to whether to appear. An even simpler fix would be to remove the droid "attachment' from the hat and put it on the chest piece which would avoid the whole issue, i did some experimenting and the Sith Recluse armor DOES summon it's droid properly on a Nautolan and is attached to the chest. However I do not want to put my agent in that armor just to get the fancy gimmick, it doesn't work for the character IMO... besides I spent millions on the suit I already have and am not exactly excited to spend millions more on the Recluse set too (just buying the chest piece for that can cost more than I paid for the whole Covert Ciper set).

To answer the question, it's because PVP is a joke, yet the rewards (via the weekly conquest box if nothing else) tend to be worth putting a couple of hours into it. I freely admit I don't even really try in PVP, because at the end of the day there is no real point to it. The rewards are trivial win or lose for the most part, and they make it so medals/achievements beyond 8 don't matter, and it's typically easiest to just get a handful of them and let the BG finish. The way things are set now to PVP you need to play as a very specific types of characters, select the right perks (or whatever they call them) and of course if you primarily PVE that can mean respeccing if you want to do it "right" so it's usually not worth it since it's a headache. To make things worse even if the entire group is not pre-made, the opposing team just having a few people who queued together and work together minimally and say use voice chat can make a huge difference. While there are exceptions usually the way a BG starts out is the way it finishes, if inside the first two minutes your team isn't winning, chances are your not going to win anyway due to the people coordinating on the other side (as a solo PVPer I am not coordinating with anyone by definition), so you might as well not delay the process so you can get on to your next one to get your 20 done for the week. The way I see it is I'm typically with an uncoordinate PUG swarm, usually involving at least one jerk who exists just to point out that we are uncoordinated and suck, even if he's the same way himself, just to add more misery to the entire experience. Sure sometimes I get lucky and I'm on a team where we have some coordinated people and it's at least interesting (in such cases I try and help) but mostly that's not the case, and other so far as it amuses me I see no point in "feeding" the other team unless I'm goofing off by even trying seriously. If I can stealth it's usually less of a headache to just collect a few metals and guard some conquest objective and laugh about how horribly we're getting decimated, while inevitably the peanut gallery provides constanty commentary about how we're all awful people for not uninstalling the game (seriously these guys who are almost always there do a lot to motivate me to run right out there and die for them....). See, to fix the basic problems with PVP to the point where I might "tryhard" more would involve a game rehaul on a level that just isn't going to happen... and let's be honest, nobody cares what I think anyway, so I'm shocked I'm even writing this. I'm just providing some insights from someone who is very much "That guy" your talking about. I mean if your asking these questions your probably a fairly "serious" PVPer (or think you are), and really with the way your build, and the people your teamed with, why should I, an unoptimized scrub, who just wants my loot box when you get down to it... typically playing a PVE spec, with all the wrong traits selected because I don't want to respecialize to switch back and forth (SWTOR could fix this part at least easily by letting you save multiple builds and toggle between then so everyone can have a PVP and PVE build at least). Plus let's be honest, it's not like there is even much excitement in this really, it's basically a game of stunlocking people and unleashing massive burst damage. There is little in the way of actual strategy or varied tactics, wildly different types of characters are not viable in SWTOR PVP, and indeed not using the "right" builds will get you griped at. Typically when I "fight" it lasts long enough to get a few attacks off, before being chain stunned, and focused down, oftentimes by 2-3 people who are probably at least talking on voice chat, or have worked together before. In many matches I run into the same guys on the other side again, and again, and again, while I'm of course with a new herd of sheep each time..... I don't like PVP in this game enough to want to seriously join a PVP Fleet or anything that could put me on a team myself potentially.... so again, explain to me why I should remotely care at this point? Strictly speaking I think we need a "slacker button" you know where the Puggers can have a team vote to say end a Hutball match as soon as the other team scores and not waste 15 minutes on the inevitable. this would be hilarious and perfectly fitting the joke PVP already is. This way we can just save time, collect our reward, and move on to our next match to get our 20 done.... why bother with the pretensions, it's not like we don't know who is going to win within like the first 90 seconds of most matches (there are exceptions, but they are just that.... exceptions). ... and let's be honest about one final thing, SWTOR is undergoing a resurgence of interest, but it isn't what it used to be. Even at it's height PVP was a complete joke due to poor design and balance, and the simple fact that like most MMOs they would not segregate queues to keep the PUGs in a seperate league from the coordinated groups (either large PVP raids, or smaller teams of partner who queued together. Today the player base couldn't handle such a segregation (especially if it goes down again) and still have PVP matches happening as there wouldn't enough people in all likelyhood.... and it's not like EA/Bioware is going to code bots to pick up the slack. See when it's largely a PUG vs. a PUG it can be fun for me, or when both sides have roughly the same number of coordinated people. I suppose given my attitude if I stuck with it I'd be victimized by it, but I also think we need an anti-MVP button. Basically I get sick of the "that guy" (which I mentioned) you know, the one that does little besides run around the whole BG telling everyone else how bad we all are despite in most cases not doing any better themselves. I think we need a way of showing him all our appreciation by giving him downvotes which can add an increasing "ban" preventing him from re-queuing based on how many they get. So say of 5 or 6 people anti-MVP that guy for being a loudmouth jerk be might have to say spend an hour before he can do PVP again and mouth off to more people. I suppose in theory it could be used to harass people that are just bad (and probably would be, I mean bad players can still have fun, and it's not always their fault) but if used as intended it would potentially shut down one of the most annoying and demotivational things about PVP.... I mean yes, okay... we keep running to the objective and dying and the enemy team isn't any larger or anything, they are just build better and/or more coordinated. Things won't change without the match, we don't need the freaking peanut gallery on top of that.

The thing is that none of the existing MMORPGs can ever be anything but a hilarious joke when it comes to PVP without a total redesign. Even if PVP is just one aspect of the game your building, if it's going to be involved, and actually work and be taken seriously, it has to be the primary consideration in building everything. The big problem is pretty much all surviving MMORPGs with any kind of player bases are PVE games that were designed with PVP as a side consideration and as a result the balance is based around PVE contribution primarily, and how this stacks up in a direct class to class or role to role comparison is at best secondary. What's worse, in an attempt to compensate pretty much all MMORPGs put in skills and selections that are primarily designed with a PVP focus, being underperforming in PVE, but very powerful in a PVP environment. This is used as a justification for many PVE skills conversely being far less useful in PVP. This leads to PVP builds and PVE builds, even in games where you cannot have seperate builds saved for one character and switch between them with a toggle, and need to respec to seriously change what your character can do. Looking at SWTOR for example you can find numerous specs that are fun to play but useless, or at least underperforming in PVP. Like how a heavily DoT focused Lethality Operative is going to always be far inferior to a burse focused Concealment Operative, and perhaps it can be argued Sniper will do better than any sort of Operative based Agent. Simply put when this kind of disparity exists, you are never going to be able to have anything but a huge joke in PVP, as anyone who does well at it will likely be using a character specifically built and geared for it, and anyone else is largely going to be a victim.... or at least substantially less competitive. For PVP to work the "play what you want" mentality must exist there as well as in PVE, making all options at least somewhat competitive and preventing any kind of "dominant builds" from existing unchecked. My basic solution to this problem is to treat PVP as sort of a joke, I have a bit of fun with it, but put a minimal effort into it and do my own thing. I refuse to "tryhard" in a game that isn't even trying from a game perspective... and that means any MMORPG out there right now with PVP is something I just can't take seriously as none of them were designed from square 1 with the right kind of mentality. Rather than thinking "how can these abilities we made with raiding in mind work in a PVP environment" they needed to think "now that we've balanced PVP, how can we build multi-group PVE encounters that employ those tools". To simply give an opinion before you consider who does the most damage, or who is the most durable, and what spec is "the ultimate", you need to address the most basic issue of MMO PVP that goes back to the beginning, and that is players using crowd control abilities on each other. One example I give for how broken SWTOR is from the conceptual stage is that numerous types of characters have multiple crowd control options, and it's very easy in PVP to get "stunlocked" especially if you have multiple at least pseudo-coordinated people acting in concert with their CC abilities as the CC-breakers will never come back as quickly as you can be stunned. A good portion of my own deaths, as well as admittedly those that I cause, involve some form of CC being employed, and in many cases the target (or me) having very little agency at the end of the day lacking any real ways to break or avoid it. Another point to make is that due to the need to cleanse status effects and such in PVE content, it seems numerous types of characters can bypass them, and survive a considerable amount of punishment from DoTs. This is not uncommon in MMORPG games to be fair, but it does mean that "burst damage" becomes the determining factor and being able to to more consistant damage via other abililities and things like DoTs borders on the useless. As long as this remains the case it excludes character options from viability, and makes PVP a lot more of a limited joke than it should be by forcing people into specific niches. Another problem with PVP in MMORPGs is that PVE requires "the holy trinity" and yet the tank part of that trinity consistently seems to be given very little effectiveness when played as a tank, because in PVP it's damage dealing, not resiliance, that is also king.... healers can still help people survive however. In PVP oftentimes "builds" lead to burse damage so high that even characters with maximized defenses get shredded like tissue paper due to hard coded limits on defenses intended to prevent the trivilization of PVE "Raid" type content by allowing characters to become virtually immune to damage.... the fact that defense gets capped much more severely than attack (as bosses can have millions of hit points where players are far more fragile) makes being a defensive fighter a joke... omitting roughly a third of the characters that should be participating right off the bat. Briefly in the early days of "Champions Online" I saw some really interesting PVP when defense was viable, and you had long fights between defensive powerhouses, and DPS-types were not dominating (too fragile). It lead to a still broken, but amusing paradigm shift, but it didn't last due to the expected complaints from all the glass cannons. It however showed that when designed properly defensive based characters can be made viable... they were however brought down by all the screeching whiners who wanted it all to be flashy offensive wars. At any rate I guess the point here is to say "balance isn't impossible, but nobody is going to redesign their existing games to achieve it". See to "Fix" PVP in SWTOR to the point where I would consider it worth doing more than goofing off with and actually consider putting in an effort, they would have to re-build all the characters basically from scratch, and most of the group based PVE content to be doable with that new design. PVP would have to have design primacy. They would also have to have a sort of "stalemate" idea where say a defense focused and offensive focused character going up against each other would be roughly 50-50 assuming similar skill levels, as opposed to the current situation where the offense will generally make a joke of the defenses, and the defensive specced guy just won't do enough damage to matter to even a "glass cannon" who will burn him much faster in proportion. In the new paradigm CC would either have to be made entirely ineffective agaisnt players (anything that removes player agency is bad IMO) or anti-CC moves would have to be almost always availible, with CC mostly having the function of slowing someone's rotation or breaking a "combo" by forcing them to work in another button, with the actual practical "stun" being a global cooldown in their way after hitting the button or whatever. SWTOR isn't quite as bad as old school WoW (which was hilarious) with teams of AOE fearing Shadow Priests taking turns (so whoever started the chain fear won) but I think the amount of CC thrown around is approaching that level.... you know now that I think about it, I'm not sure if I have ever died in SWTOR in PVP (and I've died a LOT, I don't even try and be seriously good at this) without some kind of CC, and usually multiple ones, being involved in my death. Conversely I think almost every kill I've made has involved me, or someone else, doing something along these lines to the target at some point..... so there you go... probably priority #1 if they ever wanted to fix this (but it will never happen). Priority #2 would probably be to mitigate the primacy of burst damage by making DoTs far more effective against players and harder to bypass or simply heal through.

For their next patch they should consider some modification to the mission economy. One issue I have right now is the payout from this kind of content is no longer where it should be in comparison to expenses. Given the current cost to repair armor, if you die a couple of times in a hard flashpoint you can take a net loss on what your doing. The dings and damage during a daily can very well exceed the payout, or cut into it considerably... and of course I doubt they bothered to consider that "dailies" are supposed to be quick things and shouldn't take that long and assigned the stats accordingly. I doubt it will happen, but it would be nice. Among other things I would say the following needs to be addressed: 1. FP missions need to have a payout in accordance with the new repair metric. I would say making 40k (20k profit if you die once) is not unreasonable for most, and the difficult ones should probably aware 100k or more if one can easily expect puggers to die multiple times. 2. PVP rewards need to be adjusted upwards substantially. The idea is that your rewards, win or lose, are largely dependent on the number of medals you earn. Now don't get me wrong, I think PvP in this game is a joke, and such an unfixable mess that it will never be able to be taken seriously bar a complete game overhaul which will never happen (this would need to affect more than just PVP as all systems inter relate). That said right now medals stop counting after 8, and the rewards for those 8 medals are kind of trivial, the difference between victory and defeat in terms of credit payout seems to be sort of minimal at the level we play at now too. Simply put I think PVP rewards should be based not just on medals, but the actual match type and the amount of time expected to be invested. As Huttball can take a while it should likely pay the best, where since Death Match can be over with REALLY fast in many cases it should have the smallest rewards any way it goes. Medals should also NEVER stop counting in terms of increasing your rewards to add some incentive to keep playing. See, if I log into a PVP match I'm not taking it seriously anyway, I'm there to grind, and this is sort of the right attitude because if the other team is pre-made, or has a few small groups of people in it (even duos or trios) and mine does not it's going to be a one sided mess. A lot of times I can figure out how it's going to go a couple minutes in just based on how people behave.... so I figure I might as well just whack a couple of guys, throw a heal on myself, and then once I get my medals treat the entire thing like the joke it is. If it's a good match I'll be more useful, but mostly I'm just sort of there and run around randomly waiting for it to get over.... on the other hand if youy add more medal types and make them keep counting, even in a totally doomed steamrolling of whatever PUG horde I've found myself with I have some incentive to at least do something, as I will get a payoff at the end.... likewise maybe there should be some payoff to MVP votes (if there is I have never figured it out) in terms of credits and other things added to the total making it so people will be incentivized to be thought of well... I mean right now why do I even care what people in there think? Especially if it's a one sided joke of a match right from the beginning, where even outnumbering the other side 2 to 1 we're basically being farmed in every confrontation? So basically, I'm saying I think both Flashpoints and PVP should pay better. In the latter I think it should be based more on contribution (and there should be more ways to do that and much higher caps). I'll likely never be able to take PVP in this game as anything other than a parody of what it should be, but at least it would make me feel like I had a reason to even try. Right now once I have a few medals why exactly should I even continue to fight the other team in a losing battle? Why not just stand near an objective to suck up defender points and read a comic book on my kindle until someone saps me.... see the problem is for all intents and purposes the way PVP is in this game most of the time it literally does not matter if I do that or set out to be Lebronn James with a Lightsaber.

I like hip mounting as it works smoothly with more force-user themed costumes, especially older ones. I avoided a back mounted weapon for my Shadow-tank because I was concerned it wouldn't work with some of the costumes I wanted. See, one problem with SWTOR is that when they introduce a new idea, they don't update the old content to match it very well. This is why I assume my Nautolan can't properly use her covert cipher armor and pop out the droid when she draws her weapon.... they never bothered to see if the new race worked with the armor properly (yes I've mentioned this several times as it has me pretty upset as petty as it is... I mean I did spend 10 mil credits for that armor ). At any rate I have no problem inherently with the back mounted saberstaffs and pole sabers and stuff in theory, but since I doubt they ever asked "how does this work with all the capes and back ornamentation already in the game" I can see why it's a headache for many people.

Potentially in his defense I will say I came back a couple weeks ago and there has been some adjustment to the SWTOR way of doing content. In most MMOs I play we tend to kill everything, and indeed it's set up that way. In the fan re-released "City Of Heroes/Villains" (several version) I know a lot of groups like to clear all the black from the map and murder everything for points. In ESO avoiding mobs is usually not an option (though there are some places you can speed run). In SWTOR everyone seemed to know every map and have a pattern down and avoid everything, oftentimes running skillfully between packs of trash I didn't even realize at first sight could be avoided... and of course stealh classes knocking out mobs opens up all kinds of options there as well. At any rate I adjusted, learned most of the maps as I played them a few times, and focusing on a couple of my stealth characters (Agent and Shadow-Tank) helped me figure out what stuff could be avoided. I guess things have been this way for a while... I was gone quite a while, and was never into group content in SWTOR until recently (mostly soloed). That said when I first started... yeah, I attacked crap I didn't need to, and some people were nasty about it, and even insulting when I tried to explain why. That said most were nice and helped me figure it out when they realized why I was doing it..... this was especially an issue on my tank initially, as being first in the face of the mobs is what I saw my job as... lol. At any rate, I'm only posting this to say that as a lot of people are returning for a while due to the Mando show, new movie, new expansion, etc.... it might not be that the person is an idiot, they might just not know better. You are doing dungeon content here a bit differently than most other popular MMOs running at the moment.... that's not a bad thing, but SWTOR does involve a different mindset, especially if your group has stealth options. One point I will make though is that when I was leveling to the new cap, I would have preferred killing a lot more monsters in general (though I went with the group) simply for the points. Now that I'm maxxed though, and it's all about tech fragments/item drops/conquest I can understand the desire to speed clear and get on to the next boss/run. Oh and unrelated (for those that read this far) I think they need to retire, or re-build "Kuat Drive Yards". I find that one can take a little while, it has tons of trash to clear, and only one boss. While mahy FPs take as long or longer, they at least have three bosses. The Kuat one should either drop triple loot at the end, or the Elite Defenders should have full on boss loot instead of just low-end rep tokens.

All of these are good points, but a big part of the problem is probably that this game had a rocky development leading to a controversial launch, with stories about how Mythic (the DAOC developer) had to throw 90% of the game together at the last minute since come the initial release date allegedly all Bioware had going for them was pride in their writing and sound design. If there is any truth to this, it explains why the game systems are Spaghetti, and fixing seemingly simple problems might not be as simple as you think as fixing one thing can break another when it comes to code. As this was not "The WoW-killer of legend" and while profitable was not what was hoped I have no idea what their design team is like. See, I have some belief that they could say fix the armor set I am upset about being bugged, but anything major like level balancing or *lol* "fixing PVP" might be nearly impossible from a code perspective. I've done a lot of beta testing, and was a tester at a time before it simply became code for "morons who we can ignore while we stress test the servers" so having talked to MMO coders I know it's not as straight forward as many people think as from a code perspective a seemingly simple fix or change can cause a massive cascade of changes to other systems and break more stuff than it fixes. This is why seemingly unrelated things can suddenly fail when a patch makes a change. Simply put I cannot see any kind of sudden, radical, change in SWTOR, and honestly hoping for more content based around the broken systems in place is probably more practical (and probably better for the game in keeping people playing) is probably more reasonable than hoping for serious fixes to things like oh say... targeting (referencing another message talking about unresolved problems multiple-years old). Besides there is no point to a bunch of content people no longer play due to burning out on it now working perfectly... that can kill the game as sure as anything. As far as the credit sinks in the game, I myself have some issues here. I do not like the idea that my repairs now cost more than I am likely to pull down in your average FP. On the other hand like any other MMO the economy right now is a victim of inflation, this happens in any environment where money is produced limitlessly by just killing stuff. Pretty much every MMO in history has run into the problem that everything becomes unaffordable to "balanced" low level characters based on what high level characters can make in theory, and what proportional value winds up being with most of the game players at endgame. The thing is also MMO companies also refuse to police their game, tragically the biggest victim is allowing cheaters, exploiters, and people who are let's simply call bad sportsman take over. Right below that though is the fact that there are entire tribes of math and economic geeks who pride themselves on decimating fictional economies faster than they would fall on their own to "prove a point", or even just for lulz. I was here from the beginning of SWTOR and from day #1 we had people playing the market and laughing about how they were going to tank things in record time. On my old WoW server (Shadow Council) there was at one time a player called "Azureheart" who basically managed to take over the entire bloody economy and set prices on everything almost single handedly.... simply put the GMs refuse to intervene in PVP, economics, or anything else, they let the players run rampant, and thus these problems exist in every game. If some day we see a GOOD MMO, there will need to be among other things full time PVP refs, and GMs whose job it is to monitor and maintain the economy if nothing else..... that said I do not see this happening in the current era. Perhaps when MMOs die out and "come around again" in some form decades later (I''ll probably be 80) enough old fogeys will remember to finally do it right.... simply put an MMO is a playground, and as teachers learned from the beginnings of schools, the adults need to supervise. The ability of a handfull of people to have a tremendous impact on a server in an MMO should be well documented right now, as is the fact that mostly those people will act to annoy all the other people for "lulz" just because they can. As far as fixing Operations, FPs, and other things... I've returned over the last few weeks, and I like what they are trying to do, but simply put they need to tweak almost all of them if they want to have a true "looking for raid" mode where a bunch of casuals can wing what was formerly hardcore endgame content. If nothing else your average PUG does not have the patience or capacity to learn. For example I was running "The NEthema Conspiracy" I think it was called, I plowed through to the last boss, replacing people who gave up all the way... we got to the final boss, and eventually I simply could not find people who were willing to put in the effort to learn it. The whole "wipe until we get it right" mentality that caused me to be one of the hardest people on my server in my era of WoW just does not exist with this level of player. Of course when your looking at the current repair bills (20k per death on average) I suppose that also prevents people from being willing to learn when it could take 120k credits just to wipe half a dozen times trying to figure out mechanics and try different approaches. I think one big problem is to make the FPS and Ops all "puggable" they need to not just change numbers, but also code things so mechanics change based on group content, and disappear entirely or become more forgiving when on " casual mode". They might do this to some extent already ( am new to SWTOR endgame, I never cared before, and really being a filthy casual nowadays the LFR-type stuff is the only reason I bother) but if they do, they do not do so sufficiently. What's more there are no clues to what the mechanics might even be in some cases.... for example when I started that NEthema Conspiracy thing (I think I aced a single player version before my latest absence) nobody knew anything about it in the initial group, and none of the bosses gave ANY indication of their mechanics that I could see.... that is broken design. I am still not entirely sure how the final boss was supposed to work, and suspect it might have been bugging.

Yeah well, I paid 10 million credits for Covert Cipher Armor (other posts written about it) only to find out it won't do the "Droid summon" thing with a Nautolan wearing it, which irritates me to no end. Realizing how bad they are at taking care of the game makes it seem unlikely they even noticed my message, or care about it, if they did. As far as targeting goes I agree it's a mess in general, especially in PVP. I mean I can literally click on one guy (as opposed to tab targeting) and then have the game arbitrarily decide to attack someone else. So I can be trying to execute some guy right in front of me who is nearly dead, and then have my attack hit some guy 4 steps over to the left without any prompting from me at all... Lol. It's a big part of why I insist PVP in this game is a huge joke and cannot be taken seriously, and why I don't even put in any effort when I do my grinds (I grab my medals and then usually goof off... with rare exceptions... I mean with the tight caps, and crappy rewards even with max medals, I'm not sure why i should care especially if there are pre-assembled teams on the other side and none on mine. I can literally do a dance routine at my goal line in Huttball and get the same things I would by fighting beyond a certain point). PVE targeting mostly works, but the problems you guys point out still indeed exist, however PVP is where it becomes comedic. Of course the worst targeting ever is PVP in ESO. In that game with have this laser-type templar attack we jokingly call "the Jesus Beam" as melts people below 50% health pretty quickly if built right. At any rate ESO tries to do "real time combat" where you actually aim as opposed to tab targeting and stuff.... that beam is like having tracer bullets, even more so than say lightning in SWTOR. It's utterly crazy to say have your target dead on someone and then watch the beam got out at a jaunty angle and hit someone's pet that is over and to the left ot whatever, same thing as SWTOR, but more jarriing, because at least SWTOR can blame buggy auto targeting, in ESO they are trying to say that is where I am aiming even if it's glaringly obvious the attack is going nowhere near where it's supposed to. ESO and SWTOR are the only two games I PVP in at all right now, and I take neither seriously, and I know a few people who play both games. We have some long standing jokes about which is actually more pathetic... especially in light of all the "Serious PVPers" that think these are good PVP experiences. I can't see even thinking about being a so called "Tryhard" in a game where the code is such a mess of spaghetti that even the game itself isn't trying anymore.

Well as things stand now I believe they already released too many things to the general player base. I for example think the "Shroud Of Memory" mission should have remained exclusive to subscribers. Making things more expensive than the sub doesn't exactly equal the point that these things were supposed to be EXCLUSIVE to those who maintained a sub at the right time. I think having HK-55 return and getting ZO-OM is something people now should not be able to acheive for any price.... of course I suspect we will have to agree to disagree. If you make subscriber rewards obtainable later there is no point to maintaining the account for the long term which is the idea. The idea is someone might not just pay for one month for a reward (giving the reward a $15 value) but keep it running just to be sure not to miss anything, which I, and numerous other people did. To even use the logic your using you would probably have to make every reward cost more than the computer most people are playing on... and see part of the appeal was always "exclusive content" if it ceases to be exclusive it's no longer special. The only thing that would cause me to object is if the stuff they gave out as sub rewards (which I still maintain should come back more frequently) provided more of a substantial gameplay advantage.... for the most part it doesn't. The exclusive companions were brilliant because people both wanted them (and still want them) and at the same time they don't really upset game balance. Also let's be honest, there is a certain feeling to any new character I create getting like 46 pieces of mail with attachments (mostly items, many of them unobtainabe any other way) based on my support of the game. This is one of the few games where being a founder and long term supporter seems to have actually mattered, and I feel like putting most of this stuff in the cartel market would diminish that. I for example feel the HK mission should be *MY* mission and for people like me, I don't think anyone else should be able to have it or ever see it for any price.... there is a certain appeal to the idea that if say Trump took up SWTOR and offered billions and presidential favor he still couldn't play the mission... (although in reality EA is corrupt enough they would sell out in a heart beat, I'm pretending there was a principle involved... and by putting it up for CC they sold out for a lot less).

It depends on what you want to do. Jugg has a few less buttons to worry about and is more versatile, as you will have the option to change your spec between DPS and tanking if you ever change your mind and want to (such as if you get into a fleet that wants to run a lot of ops or whatever). If you go Marauder you will always be a DPS, and have no choice about being anything else. I do not think highly of SWTOR PVP, although I do participate in it to some extent, in fact I think it's sort of a joke, which is pretty much what I think of pretty much all MMORPG PVP. It's sort of like the nerd meta-joke about how comparing ESO PVP to SWTOR PVP doesn't matter because whoever wins the gamers already lost. (I can't remember how it was originally phrased, but it's quoted on a few MMORPG sites once in a while). That said for what it is, I do not think you will notice a tremendous difference between a DPS Jugg and a Marauder unless your a very high end player, and even then it can be debated... I guess your ultimate choice should be about versatility and whether or not you'll get bored from simplicity as the Jugg has less buttons to push last time I checked. Two other very personal reasons I will suggest Jugg is that I think a single light saber is more iconic than dual wielding. Simply put in Star Wars not many people actually use two light sabers as a full time thing, the closest thing to a Canon character who does so (via Disney) is Ahsoka Tano from the cartoons (and my current Marauder is a satire on her actually), I mean Anakin and Obi Wan have both used two light sabers on a few occasions, but it's not a default thing. If you look around "Legends" deeply you will find dual wielders, but as I said, I think single saber or saberstaff fits better..... the second reason if you read all this is that the drawing animation for paired weapons in this game is terri-bad as it involves the Jedi or Sith literally crossing their arms in front of them to pull a weapon off each side. This can be somewhat excused since the sabers aren't ignited until fully drawn, but if you use side-worn solid blade weapons like vibro blades or the Sith Warblade you are literally watching a giant "don't do this" animated in a professional game as a combat animation... think about and watch what your guy does. It might not bother you the way it does me, but I can't help but mention it when the subject comes up. There are various ways of drawing various waist-worn melee weapons that avoid this awkwardness and potential problems, but I'm not going to write a treaties. Simply put they will not change the weapon and drawing animations so it doesn't matter.... I will just say I loathe SWTOR dual wielding melee even more than other MMORPGs that do the same thing because I personally feel the moment between non-combat, and combat stance when you draw is unusually bad here.... but if that doesn't bother you, it's no huge deal. Simply put I feel that a dual wielding melee character should either draw one over the shoulder and one from the side with solid weapons, or keep one weapon horizontal accross the back of the belt to draw sideways (I could show you example of what I mean here but I doubt anyone cares) while the other weapon is drawn normally. This way your not tangling your arms for a moment the same way, and avoid the whole problem of slashing the inside of your own arms if something goes wrong (less of an issue with an ingnition blade like a light saber, but really bad with physical swords... and I still can't believe a Jedi or Sith would cross their arms like that to draw them.... if nothing else that's the moment to put a blaster bolt between their eyes while their arms are crossed awkwardly.... and personally I want to see the Padawan and Jedi with two bionic arms since inevitably someone is going to hit the button too quick in training, or in the head of combat and wind up literally simultaneously cutting both their arms off....

I'm also a legendary player and will say I agree with what you've already been told. Having played a lot of different classes and specs I will say that I do not think either side has any real statistical advantage. The classes are mirrored in such a way that most differences come down to cosmetics and animations rather than different powers and capabilities. PVP is generally not segregated in terms of Rep vs. Imp as if you queue for unranked you are going to see teams made up of a mixture of Republic and Imperial classes, as the finder does what it can to fill the matches so PVP will happen. It used to be segregated a long time ago if I remember, but it has not been for a very long time. Any disparity that is perceived between PVP capabilities and one side being "better" than the other is in many cases just "The Horde Factor". That is to say that those who want to murder "people" and PVP oftentimes gravitate towards the evil faction, so you see more people on that side who are "into it". In reality though PVP is just generally a mess and most people are scrubs, it's such a broken mess I mostly just farm medals when I do it and then goof off and don't even really try. I am not going to give a full analysis of the situation, other than to say that there seems to be no segregation between pre-made groups and solo PVPers, thus a side that even has a few coordinated duos and trios will have an overwhelming advantage, and yeah there are probably more people who are working/queuing together from the imp side/classes on average. HOWEVER long experience accross numerous MMOS has lead me to realize they likely dont have any real skill, one reasons why they don't segregate queues is if PVP "teams" kept slamming into each other most would quit as the best teams would dominate, and in reality the people who do this want to win, and that means farming uncoordinated pugs.... establishing segregation into an established PVP environment is generally feared as chasing away the most dedicated PVP players. I know a lot of people will disagree with the above, but that's my analysis, and I've been doing this since MUDS and things like "Dark Sun: Crimson Sands" which predated Ultima Online (which I was a terror in, and I consider it one of the few ACTUAL PVP MMORPGs to actually exist in it's original version... that game and things like Shadowbane would have bought your current 'hardcore PK' to tears). At any rate as I generally don't take PVP seriously I won't say any more about it, I don't build for it, I don't respect the PVP system here, and feel it cannot be fixed without re-making the entire game which will never happen. As a result I just goof off for the benefits, and usually just click down 20 losses or whatever when I bother since it's not worth the frustration to make any real effort in SWTOR... that said some people do swear by it, and consider it the best part of the game, I generally don't take those people too seriouisly either. Unlike some I don't knock them (fun is fun, do whatever is fun for you) it's just that having experienced some actual well designed PVPRPG type games I recognize this is not one of them, and personally can't bring myself to find it worth serious effort. Fix the game (which will never happen) and then maybe I'll care enough to try and "git good" again. Nowadays I just sort of laugh at the whole thing, like most MMORPG "PVP". At any rate, if you read this far I will say the biggest difference between Pub Side and Imp Side from a practical perspective is probably going to be the quality of writing and content. The thing is in this game it's not an evil vs. good factional divide as all classes can be good or evil. You can play your Jedi as a complete psychopath and the stories provide chances to display that, and you can make your Sith the nicest guy in the galaxy for all intents and purposes... that's the beauty of it in practice. The thing is the original devs and writers were not shy about who they favored and where they were putting their effort. Simply put the Imps have much better writing and story content in general, I think more effort went into the animations, costumes, stories, and well... pretty much everything. People being people opinions are going to vary but if you ask around on fleet among legendary players who did ALL stories you will find a general consensus that the Imps simply have better content for all styles of play. You will hear more people talk about how awesome the "Slave to Master Of the Dark Council" story for the inquisitor is, and how dull the political slog of the Jedi Counslar story is and how bland the antagonists are. You will hear people praise NPCs like Jaesa and Vette, while rolling their eyes when characters like Kira or Nadia are mentioned (comparing mirrored love interests here).... If you are new I suspect starting Republic first, you will want to see all 8 stories, and chances are you should see the Republic ones first, because otherwise they will seem unusually bland and terrible when you compare them to the writing on the Imp side. Likewise early on the "universal" content has the imps immersed in the stuff people actually cared about from KOTOR and dealing with the Revanites on Dromond Kass, in comparison the Pubs are fixing cranky old machinery under Coruscant..... Given that this game is VERY story based, and the stories actually cross over in some weird ways (I will leave you to discover how on your own) I actually suggest picking your favorite character type out now... and then playing that one LAST and making it your main hundreds of hours later. This is the opposite of other MMORPGs, but it's how I think most people will be happiest if they are in for the whole experience.... this way you can gloss over the side stuff and major grinds while experiiencing the story with most classes, and then do things "perfectly" with your main when it comes to overlap content and not burn yourself out by doing the grinds a bunch of times.... of course few people ever seem to listen to me, and that's fine, I suppose whatever your comfortable with will work. Oh one other thing I will point out again is the difference in quality beyond writing. See when it comes to animations and executions the Imps just have it down all over the Rep classes. This ranges from the spectacular lightning effects vs. the lackluster telekinetic rock throwing (pebble beam!), to weird things like Jedi Knights doing an "ultimate move" that has them stupidly present their back to their enemy. I've heard all kinds of analysis over the years going back to day #1, and while again, not everyone agrees, it seems to be a general consensus that the Imps are just cooler. Even beyond moves and animation, they went all out with some of the crazy Sith costumes and Bounty Hunter Armor and all of that (though Agents are sort of a loser here), in comparison the Rep side looks tend to be kind of "meh". They could have gotten creative with the Jedi at their height, but rather they basically came up with what seems to be 4700 variations of undyable brown robes and "well it's Storm Trooper/Clone armor but for the good guys!"... the one edge I do give them is that I think the Smugglers tend to be more fashionable than the agents, but that's only qualified when looking at armor specifically designed for them. Much like PVP the problems I mention are not fixable without re-doing the entire game, which is not going to happen. Truthfully me (and a few others) who had an eye on things pre-release and were in towards the end of beta saw this coming. I was one of those people saying that if they wanted to balance things the first thing they needed to do was either make the Pubbies cooler, or the Imps less cool.... I mean the game wasn't even out and people were commenting about who the awesome faction was likely going to be. Unless your intent on being "the good guy" go Imp.... (and this is coming from a guy posting as his Jedi Counslar, who he just knocked you might notice).

I do have a similar issue I just posted. I spent millions on a set of Cartel Armor (Covert Cipher Set) and the droid doesn't appear when my female Nautlan Agent draws her rifle. There was no indication it would be broken this way, and I tested it via preview on other characters and it seems to work fine for them. To say I am rather angry after spending millions of credits (and someone paid real money for this... not to mention the CCs I've otherwise bought... and recently too) with no real recourse. I posted about it last night, and I think it says a lot that we haven't exactly seen someone from the company talking about getting on this... after all they are literally selling a defective product in their store. Simply put they will take your (or someone's money) but actually giving you what you paid for? Heh... well, that is apparently not a priority. Now I understand fixing stuff takes time, and I am reasonable, but someone should at least say something and make a point about how they are going to fix it. Just imagine someone who paid for Nautolan (as opposed to getting it for subscribing the way I did), and then this agent set, and found out this did not work. I'm not in that position, but I actually sort of hope someone with anger management and impulse control issues buys this combination of things and has a crooked lawyer on speed dial to harass them. I betcha even the threat of say a 10 million dollar civil case (winnable or) not would get them to send the local overseer to the cubicle farm to slave-drive a coder to the proper station to fix it. Speaking of which (I'm in a weird mood) what do the SWTOR offices look like? I sort of envision "Scumsoft" from "Space Quest 3" (yes I'm old) with whip wielding overseers striding over cubicle farms on cat walks, lashing anyone who looks up from their screen. Sadly I suspect this vision isn't true as it would be too productive an environment.

To sort of defend my long post, and why I believe this I will point something out. What is a success for another company is NOT a success for Disney. Disney is not really concerned with short term success and things like initial product sales, early subscription numbers, or movie ticket sales. It is exclusively interested only in IPs that can keep rolling in truck loads of money for decades without them having to continually put much into it. For Disney it's all about the Merchandising, not about the movies. This is why there are a bunch of "Toy Story" movies, and only one "Wall-E", one moved a ton of merch, the other did not. It also looks to things like it's "Princess" line and how much the classic movies and princesses make as an example of what everything should make. On the surface the long-term sales of toys would seem to make Star Wars a perfect fit for Disney. The problem is they did not understand the franchise, it's fans, or the realities of the current market. I do not want to start an argument about social justice because I really don't care, I'm simply going to focus on the marketing realities. Disney gambled that there were legions of young, new, fans who were heavily into activism and having a strong female hero with no weaknesses and the right demographics and messages would bring them in, in greater numbers, than the old fans, they would embrace it, make it theirs, and spend even more money than something that already made a bundle over the decades. This simply put failed whether it's because it is true those people have no money, or no actual interest, or simply the ones that did were already included in the existing fan base (which is why it was so huge to begin wtih), is beyond the context of anything I have to say. At the end of the day they did not come running to the Them Parks, did not buy 36 vaction figure variations of Rey and Kylo Ren, or otherwise support the merch. There is a lot of evidence showing these products all failed, despite moving a huge number of tickets and a one time payoff, causing Disney to take a bath on it overall. This is supposed to be why unlike any other Star Wars IP there was no heavy merchandising push for "The Mandolorian" which caught them unexpectedly with it's success, and why the stores are virtually empty of Star Wars stuff despite a successful TV show and the latest installment in the now damaged movie franchise.... go to Wal Mart, Target, etc... and you'll see what everyone else does. The same applies to things like "The Disney Store" itself where at one point there was a ton of Star Wars stuff, now it's minimal, and this is the time you'd expect a major push.... this is why I give some credit to what I was hearing. Disney does not tolerate either losing money, or not making enough money. To sort of justify why I suspect this might be true (understand I actually know nothing) I will explain something that illustrates the pattern for those who made it through that text wall. Disney used to be heavily into MMORPGs. It had MMOs ranging from "Toon Town" to "Club Penguin' and things like "Pixie Hollow" and of course "Pirates Of The Caribbean Online". All of these MMOs were making money, and some like "Pixie Hollow" were connected to large, multi-product product chains involving everything from statuettes to action figures and direct-to-video animated movies. Disney lost money on none of them, but when they simply saw their profits fall they decided it was not worth maintaining them, and it axed all of these product lines while they were still healthy just to avoid them simply making too little money to be worthwhile. The figured the fans, and smply making some money, was not worth it. This is the true face of "The Mouse".... and everything here is easily verified. Club Penguin was the last survivor (as it made the most money for a while) but even it fell a few pennies too short and got axe-murdered by Mickey before it actually had a chance to die a proper death from fan-loss or lose money.... not making enough money safely enough is exactly why Disney quit video game development and leased the rights to EA. The point with Star Wars is that if all evidence (and comments from people in the business are accurate) it now resembles EXACTLY the kind of product like Disney is going to cut. They always go in big, but then go running out the door early at any hint of not getting convoys of trucks loaded with money driven up to their door... or if there is not enough money on the trucks when they arrive. Disney doesn't care about the movies and how many "woke" people critically praise them, and things like that, they care about how this is going to make them truckloads of money decades after they aren't producing things, and they evaluate that by looking at merchandising. They didn't want to sell movie tickets alone (which they did well with, bar solo), they wanted to sell 20 different Rey action figures to Millennials and Generation Z who they are guessing are an untapped monetary source (I have no idea how true their overall financial state might be). They couldn't do that.... so they are likely to cut and run. The Mandolorian came along and WAS successful, if this was the first thing they did, it would have been huge for them, *BUT* it comes after their major failures and with them totally unprepared to capitalize on it which is why you can't even buy an action figure for it at Wal Mart, when up until this point there would have been Mandolorian everything months before the show arrived in preparation for the hype.... that there was not, reinforces what I was told that Disney feels the franchise is dead.... or at least not profitable enough for The Mouse. As I said, when they are done hemming and hawing let's see if Mandolorian inspired stuff shows up in SWTOR. It might but if it does I expect them to take so long in doing it that the bubble will have burst. Simply put if they had the interest we'd have Mandolorian-everything poppping up everywhere. I shouldn't be able to walk into an underwear aisle without seeing tighty whiteys with his rifle on the front in every department store.... the fact that this is not the case shows what Disney thinks of Star Wars, and their lack of acting quickly to capitalize on the surprise success does not bode well, as it shows the executives have no faith in Star Wars even when something is finally succeeding for them. As I said initially, I actually want a "Baby Yoda" companion, and I'd pay money for a quality product (if EA/bioware doesn't believe me, check my account, I've bought a fair amount of CC recently... I'm yer bloody potential whale here so allegedly you should listen to people like me... of course I bought this just to support the game and because you finally made a new expansion, and I hope it will encourage further actual development rather than more CC garbage... but well... now I'm suggesting a product I might buy there even if I am POed over you screwing me on a suit of Cartel armor ). That said in six months I might not care anymore... so I guess you have to race the bubble with the people like me who will pay and actually do something. Also maybe an unprecedented 4th spec for BHs that can equip a rifle might help as well, since we know where the interest is coming from.... but hey, who am I to talk common sense?

I suspect the problem is kids nowadays (queue the chorus of "Ok Boomer") To explain that if you look at the animation style of recent cartoons like Rebels you will notice the slimmer blades on the light sabers than most portrayals, and I suspect this is what they were trying to capture, under the expectation that this is what people expect now. Right now the people running Star Wars (all aspects) seem to have some major issues, namely that they produce content for the "new generations" not realizing that Star Wars was a multi-generational property before they got there. The core audience for Star Wars is not people being newly introduced to the franchise as they release things, but a mass of people, young and old, that have been there as a consistent presence. "Youth" that likes Star Wars was typically introduced to it by their parents, they didn't discover it themselves, and for decades now there have been long discussions about what the best order (release or chronological) is best to introduce a kid, or new fan, to the universe. While exceptions do exist I'm sure, the typical "target" for Star Wars is not going to be someone who was introduced to it by say "Rebels", rather people who enjoyed "Rebels", even kids, likely were introduced to the movies and other material first by their parents. This is a big part of why I think the newer Star Wars movies have gotten such a huge backlash, the "new fans" they wanted to bring in and introduce didn't exist in any real numbers. One thing Disney and other Star Wars rights holders don't seem to get is that the criticism isn't angry boomers and gen Xers, but everyone, including the majority of the "progressive youth" they were aiming at with the assumption this would be new to them.... the majority of the audience already knew it, and had expectations that were being betrayed. This is why the reaction can be so vehement. At any rate, I've noticed a lot of "slim saber" stuff and it all seems to go back to the cartoon they currently think was the backbone of interest, and they seem to be aiming the aestetic at kids familiar with that, and the SWTOR slim sabers seem to follow the pattern set by that particular stylization of the artwork. I myself think they need to go back to the more "traditional" saber thickness which made them seem far more weighty and impressive. Perhaps even re-doing the artwork on some of the current blades. To be fair while I've heard a number of the sword fights in "Rebels" be praised for the animation and choreography, not to mention the attention to detail in following the "Forms" properly and the genius of things like the final Obi-Wan / Darth Maul fight which was a giant flash back to the original confrontation in the live action movies right down to the stances and body language, the artwork of the sabers themselves is something I have heard continual criticism from... namely because even kids typically saw the movies first.