This isn't true at all. If expertise were implemented such that the stat only took effect when in a warzone, pve and pvp players would be on fairly equal footing in an open world setting. From what I could tell by comparing stats, pvp gear gives up very little over pve gear while still gaining the expertise stat. In addition, the argument that pve players would then have an advantage in pvp [warzones] couldn't be made since expertise would be in effect and players with pvp sets would have an edge.

This. With the space xp perk maxed out and running a 25% boost buff, you'll easily clear 20 to 30k at the completion of a daily set of space missions. This does not include any xp gained through blowing things up in the mission, nor does it include the regular xp reward for completing each. Since most of the space missions are roughly 5 minutes on average, that's about 4 to 6k xp per minute not counting ANYTHING from the missions themselves. This average goes up considerably once you start taking xp for fighters, turrets and bonus objectives into account. For perspective, with full xp bonuses rolling, each fighter is netting you 21 xp and each turret yields as much as 60. It seems like small potatoes, but it adds up fast when you're popping 60 to 75 at a time for the bonus objective, which hits you for another 8k or so. And at roughly an hour to do them all (not counting heroics), what do you really have to loose? Bear in mind, however, that this amount of xp is only rewarded if the space mission is anything but grey. Grey space missions generally only yield kill xp. Completion xp is very little.

The only mods that bind to specific items are top end armorings (tionese and up). And even those are only restricted to the location of the item (head, chest, legs or feet). Everything else binds to your character. So while you could buy the blaster and remove the crystal to put in a saber, you couldn't buy the blaster, remove the crystal and then send it to your alt for their saber. Even this can be circumvented with items that are legacy bound, however.

Would be better if, instead of moving the mailbox, they simply allowed us to customize placement of perks, items and minions (or have minions wander).

We knew this as soon as the same thread got a dev response in the cartel suggestions thread. Sadly, EA seems content with blatently milking its customer base yet again. Honestly, while I'm disheartened to see it go this way, as long as it's a full character recustomization, I wouldn't mind paying A COUPLE bucks. More than that, and I'm just gonna start deleting characters.

This is true for the most part, however I'm not sure I'd go so far as to claim they're doing it just to grief you. Some of them might be (although I would hope they're not doing it specifically for you), but for the most part, it's an Epeen flexing contest. And rightfully so if you look at it from the perspective of something like racing. In that context, each team (player) wants to build the biggest and baddest race care (character) so they can dominate their particular division (bracket). It works out well from a competative standpoint, but not so much when you start throwing casuals and youngbloods in there. At that point, it can feel like griefing, but the reality is, the requirement for entry just isn't as accessable. From this perspective, think of it as open registry weekend time trials at the race track versus an actual Indy or formula 1 race.

/gesture There's nothing to see here. You may go about your business. Move along.

I would like to agree with this idea, but I simply can't based to the fact that neither the valor or social systems are complete yet. Currently, both simply function as a gate to new (more powerful in the case of PvP) gear. If memory serves, they've (BioWare) stated that they have plans to expand on both systems. If that ends up being the case, you have PvP players with the ability to earn potential PvP and PvE rewards. Regardless of the "fairness" involved, it's simply a precedent that BW has so far been unwilling to set. Should that change, I would hope that the street runs both ways. If PvP players are earning social points for "grouping" in warzones, then I would hope PvE players start earning valor points for downing bosses. The gains needn't be large in either case, but I believe you can't have one without the other. For what it's worth, I agree that, based on the way social points are and have been distributed, it makes sense that they should be available for PvP players. I just don't think BioWare wants to open that can of worms yet.

I would honestly support the removal of the CE vendor if, and only if, I were the last person in the world to own a copy, thereby making it cost ineffective to continue it. On second thought, who am I kidding? I paid for the damn thing, gimme my vendor! I call shenanigans on the OP and his post. I'd certainly be inclined to waive the "updated (on occasion)" part if the number of CE owners dropped to next to nothing, but it's still something these people paid for. Only when the last CE owner cancels their sub would I feel dropping this vendor is justified.

I dunno. I actually bought the carbine from the first pack to go with my operative. I imagined it simply had some sort of silencing mechanism built in to go in line with the whole stealth theme. You know, since I can't use a pistol, I might as well use a silenced rifle... Yeah, I went there.

I guess what I don't understand here is why. Why don't you want the double xp? What does it really matter what level you are when you enter or leave a planet other than how hard or easy the content is going to be? And if that's the case, the longer you're on a planet, the less xp you're going to get until returns are effectively zero. You'll definitely be outside of the challenge range for the content, but you can still do it. In fact, it's almost better that way. You ramp up your character quickly on the planet, then spend the rest of your time not earning xp, but rather collecting gear, comms and cash to prep yourself for the next planet. Unless you PvP exclusively. Then I can see you leveling too fast and not getting the most out of your PvP grind to 50.

I agree here. The consular and sorcerer can be spec'd out to provide a lot of utility to a party and still function decently at their given role. Even smugglers and operatives can. This isn't so much the case for sentinels and commandos, but they still have their tricks. Suffice it to say that I don't want to see any class in the game that can't hold their own against at least one strong enemy when in a full party. At that point it feels like I'm carrying that player, especially in a 4 member group. It's one thing to be undergeared or off rotation. It's quite another to be ineffective. It doesn't matter what buffs they give and how powerful they make me or the rest of the party. The fact is, I'm (we're) doing all the work and they're getting all the rewards. To a limited extent, this may not apply to the operations level of play, but that would require some fairly exacting balancing. And even then, the class may be highly sought after for that level of play, but completely useless anywhere else. At the very least I can see a pure support class being extremely boring to solo and fairly disappointing in PvP. And you really still haven't solved the issue of one member of the group being supported by the rest of the party even though they're playing their role as (ironically) support.

Again, I feel dual spec would be too restrictive. I like the idea of completely swapping how my character plays (depending on class, that is). But having the option of a couple (or more) presets would be an ideal situation. In that way I could set up a couple "default" specs that I use often and still have the flexibility and option to adapt my spec on the fly if need be.

I almost wish it didn't bind if you just opened it to check the contents but didn't take anything out. I mean, I can see it from both perspectives, but it would be nice to be able to buy a pack, check what's in it and then be able to sell it if there was nothing inside that you needed or wanted. At least then you could recoup something from it. On the flip side, it's sorta shady to put something up that you know to be full of useless crap. But like they say, one mans crap is another mans rose garden.

While I agree with you that it kinda sucks, I don't think it will be as big a deal IF more brackets are provided. The guys that are sitting at 49 with fully augmented gear still can't purchase their level 50 PvP gear. So essentially, the only thing that sets them apart from everyone else is that 200 expertise (which isn't really a whole lot). Especially when you consider that anyone serious enough about it is going to have access to 82 expertise from 2 cartel crystals by the time they hit level 10. You also have to consider that level 49 players are going to become slightly smaller fish once the level cap is extended. Once that happens, there's an option to bypass that bracket (or the bracket will be extended to 54 and they wouldn't have the top end gear anymore). This assumes that the level 50 PvP gear isn't ramped up to a level 55 requirement. I have yet to see any information about bracket restructuring, but it would not surprise me if they broke it up into slightly more manageable chunks. Something like the OP suggests is a reasonable assumption. And once players have access to custom gear and mods with expertise, the field becomes a lot more even. Higher brackets (50+) become more of an aspect of skill level since I don't really see the stats changing too terribly much in 4 or 5 levels based on available gear. Maybe at level 55, but I expect that to be its own bracket anyway.

Honestly, I'm not sure what to think here. I know from my WoW days that xp gains were not only introduced to appease the pvp only crowd, but to a lesser extent, to remove the so called "twinks" that would dominate one bracket forever. PvP in swtor is a bit different with regards to the way their system and rewards work, but suffice it to say, I can see it going that direction were they to give us an option to lock down xp. Ultimately, I'm not sure that it would be a big deal here, however. With the bolstered stats and the way the PvP and reward systems work, it doesn't seem like it would negatively impact play. I mean, someone could obviously lock themselves in at the top of their rank and just farm comms for the best gear until they're blue in the face, but that's the point of twinking. The only negative that I can see is that behavior becomes a barrier for new(ish) players. If everyone's twinked out for that bracket, new players are simply going to get slaughtered unless they go in close to the top with already impressive gear. And that's not fun. WoW fixed this by segregating the locked players from the unlocked ones, but it was discovered that no one wanted twink on twink matches (what a shock, I know), so the queue times were horrible and everyone. I'm not really a fan of gaining xp through arena pvp anyway. I believe it detracts from the game. However I can also recognize that players may only be interested in the game specifically for pvp and, in that regard, they need to have a way for advancement doing what they want and like to do. Perhaps having an xp on/off selector would be an asset in this regard.

The only thing I would add to this is, while I agree with you that field respec is a better option in terms of multi spec options, it's still not free to f2p customers (so, in effect, not really a multi spec) and has the slight inconvenience of not having a number of presets to choose from. I think perhaps an option down the road would be to offer free respec unlocks and skill tree preset slot unlocks. In this manner, all players would be able to fully realize the power and utility of a true multi spec. Some just might have to pay for it.

Once you open the hypercrate, the packs are just dumped into your inventory. However they're also on a bound timer and this timer doesn't start until you unpack the hypercrate. The same thing applies to upper, lower, and auxiliary armor boxes hat you find. You can wait for the timer to end and sell them in the box, or you can piece the items out, but in either case, the timer for the items starts from the second each respective item hits your inventory. In other words, think about how you want to break it down well in advance or you could end up waiting an extra day or 2 to move your stuff.

Like a sir, EAWare.... like a sir...

The stories do intertwine on occasion. Without giving too much away, one of the SI companion characters makes an appearance in one of the Knights' companion stories. Another example is one of the consular companions mentioning and calling in a favor from one of the bounty hunters' companions. These are only a couple examples, but I've caught other class companions mentioned in various other parts of different class stories. The player can't truely interact with these crossovers other than the various dialog options, but they're there if you look for them. And obviously you won't catch the references unless you have some exposure to the class companion story referenced.

Commendations will likely not become legacy wide, however they are doing away with the cumbersome individual planet comms in favor of general purpose ones. So on the one hand, you can't just farm them up with your uber character, but on the other, you have a much bigger available resource pool once you start buying gear with the comms you've earned.

There have been several discussions on the topic already. One such discussion can be found in my sig, but suffice it to say that we've gone from "soon " to "sooner than you think". The only mystery left is how it's going to be implemented. In other words, how much are they potentially going to make you pay and exactly what currency they're going to use.

Well that's certainly better than "soon ", but I'm still fairly skeptical of their implementation at this point. Ultimately we'll just have to wait and see just like everything else. I'm still leaving a couple spots open for Cathar just in case..

I believe the actual quote was something along the lines of "something we would like to see in the game sometime down the road". And it was also posted the the cartel market suggestions indicating that they have no intention of making it anything more than a cash grab directed at players unhappy with their character but too invested to simply start over. Outside of the personal correspondence with the lovely and talented Courtney Woods, they have yet to comment on the subject in any official suggestion thread outside of the cartel market to my knowledge.

I believe this was mentioned early on in this thread and that it falls under the heading of "vastly improved character creation options". I would much like to see the cyborg "race" disappear in favor of an augmentation slider myself. I just don't think that's likely to happen now that cyborgs are official. Interestingly enough, it's possible using Mr. Angrys suggestion a couple pages back and phasing out cyborgs altogether. Under this idea, all cyborgs revert to humans with the augmentation slider set at whatever number they were at with the cyborg. The token could then be redeemed to change the players racial preference. Although at this point I'm mostly just paying lip service to the idea since I kinda feel bad for the guy and his sensitive emotions. Realistically, it would be easier to have players simply enter the character creation screen when they log onto that character and have them redo their charter before playing.