Well, since people can't just arbitrary choose their sexual preferences, I guess Vette has trouble changing it, too. But it seem she got better.

Is that really true in practice? The base abilities might all be there, but without significant buffs from the Medicine tree, they are insufficient - in the time you heal yourself you take more damage then you heal, and could deal a lot more damage to the enemy if you were on the offensive - and if you take the Medicine Tree buffs, you won't have the damage buffs, and are overall ineffective ,unless you go all the way in and are now a real healer. Do you see an area of mixing two specializations where the net benefit is truely better than a fully specialized build would be? Or are you just not sure yet and try to identify such builds and this find the abilities that would need tweaking to compensate?

Quick and Easy is a value on its own. Of course, computer games that try to balance the different classes and routes can't really emulate this. But you never know if your Sith Warrior or Inquisitor could have become a Jedi, or if he would have lacked the discipline, being sorted out early, never reaching his power? And if the Jedi Code is so important to become light-side, it isn't easy to fulfill. Give up on your passions, calm your emotions? Could you really stay calm if someone were to murder your loved ones in front of you, or wouldn't you lash out in anger and fight, assuming you don't just give up in despair?

It's apparantly browser-based? Isn't there a PVE game played for GSF? Only the last one is not superficial, I suppose

The Hooligan outfit I believe makes you look like an Imperial Officer. Of course, considering that your a covert agent and probably rarely carrying uniform, you should consider some completely different outfit. It might actually be fun to pick some Adaptable armor that makes you look like a Smuggler or Bounty Hunter... Too bad it's a bit expensive to change your outfit regularly.

It might be that while some Operatives might have been nerfed mostly in terms of their damage that raising the damage back is not the right solution. There was probably a reason the damage was nerfed - it probably lead to kills that were too fast and left to little time to react, and was deemed "unfair" or whatever. But the Operative obviously needs something else to compensate then.

It could also be an issue of lag, perhaps? The server thinks the enemy ship is at position x, but you see it at position y and aim there instead, so it things you're shooting at y where no target appears. If y ou have hire rate of fire, you will likely sweep over a lager area and may hit both x and y durnig that time, so some shots will hit. This is usually not such a big issue in usual MMO combat mechanics because your just picking a target with your mouse once and then the computer does all of the "aiming".

Ah, thanks, I will try that...

Hah, this is my stupid question of the day: How do you switch weapons? or When? Either I suck at reading (neither the tutorial nor the keybinds in the preferences screen helped me), or I am just dumb, but I couldn't figure out how to switch between the two. Or is there no switch ,and they actually fire together. (In which case I am blind, because I didn't notice that my fighter was firing two weapons at one.)

Well my experience was similar, but being always on the losing side, I figured there was one common denominator and it was my fault. And since I only recently came back, I stopped playing GSF and returned to finish up leveling. Is ti really just selective perception? Is there a population imbalance? For GSF only? I would say t hat I don't like the Imperial ships much, at least not the base ones. But could that be it? Are subscription players usually playing Rep side? Or maybe for some reason Imperial ships have larger hit boxes (is that relevant?), or are easier to recognize? Are the maps unintentionally adantageous for the Republic side?

I wonder if this situation will improve one GSF gets opened up to the "general public" and not just the subscribers and whales.

One has to wonder why my HoloCom sometimes magically works to get information from a quest giver or get the next task in line, and sometimes I have to go back... STO for example allows you to contact most quest givers via subspace from anywhere. (Only a few require being actually where the quest giver is, and I believe Dailies are always available via SubSpace).

Clipping might be a problem for TOR, but: Just making a hood-less version of many of the existing hooded Robes would improve the game already. The hooded robes might also point a way to how to fix some clipping issues - those hoods come off when you wear (and show) head gear that would be in the way (funny how they prioritize head gear over my character's hair!). If they make some long robes, they could use the same technique to turn pants invisible (or replace them with something that will definitely work on the robe.) Though I am not claiming the latter would be a trivial task. Maybe it would be easier to live with some clipping issues and respond to people complaining about that, then people being unhappy that they can't wear iconic Jedi clothing. It's funny that STO had very customizable uniforms ... But Cryptic knows customization is important. (I am still not sure if NWO is a counter-example or them just finally capitalizing on this fact for their financial gains...)

Is this a non-Healer Operative discussion or a non-Healer Sorceror discussion? It all sounds the same to me.* *) Not the suggestions, but the critique at Bioware

If some people say the more pressing concern is survivability for the non-healers... Well, one way to do that would be to attach this to powers along-side the different trees. Some skills that come to mind - Tactical Opportunity (Concealment: When the player has TA, he could gain a dodge bonus, and he gains one TA when his hit points go below 50 % and below 25 => that means you also get some TA when it'S you that get surprised and get focused fire, and you have some defensive benefit from it) - Calculated Frenzy (Concealment: Frenzy could grant some damage resistance) - Augmented Shield (Lethality: When the shields damage absorption maximum is reached before it expires, you also get a kolto injection or something similar in effect.) - Escape Plan (Lethality: When your hit points are lowered to 25 %, your shield probe instantly finishes cooldown) I am not sure however how changes to Lethality would affect the Sniper in undue ways. If that is a problem... I dunno.

Going by the prices you pay for mechs, tanks or starships in Mechwarrior Online, World of tanks and Startrek Online.. Don't be surprised if this is these prices stay. Apparantly 10-30 $ is a realistic price in the F2P market, as much as I dislike it. Though in MW:O you don't have characters, so you need only one, and in STO ships bought via Zen are account unlocks.

I have to agree with the notion that it feels a bit slow paced, a duel can take some time. Maybe that is to make those "rail guns" have a use? If everything could be three-shotted (or whatever you deem "normally reasonably fast"), then those guns might not feel like much. The RPG elements like evasion... I don't know how I feel about them. It's kinda interesting, but it is unusual. My favourite Space Combat title is still TIE Fighter, but it's followed by Independence War. In the latter, you didn't even aim yourself, the former was of course twitchy.

Actually, that could be exactly one way to get the current behaviour with one power less. When you use Backstab from stealth, you get a bit of an extra damage bonus and the knockdown proc, and also Backstab instantly refreshes. Backstack could be the same out of stealth as it is now. That would allow keeping the current damage output - including the specific timing - identical to now, but we now need one ability less to do so.

Indeed, he was quite understanding, and he was funny, too: "I always found your taste in men questionable" he said... After we've definitely explored some ... romantic options. And if I am not mistaken, you can even get rid of some of his anty-stuff. At least there is a scene where he has regular eyes. My agent of course knew who she was getting into with him and wouldn't have any of that. He's not some ordinary human and doesn't have to pretend to be so.

Backstab and Hidden Strike I don't PvP, and I only solo PvEed so far, so I am hardly an expert on the Operative. But I agree that it would make sense to make Hidden Strike into a special circumstance bonus for the regular Backstab. It really doesn't make sense to me that it's a separate ability. Of course, this would alter the burst potential a bit - where as you need two wait one Global Cooldown for the Hidden Strike / Backstab combo, you wouldn't do so if it was one ability. I suppose it might require some tinkering from the design team to rebalance things. I imagine it would be particular nasty in PvP if the burst comes too fast. Concealment and Healing I find that there are many abilities that I don't really use as a concealment operative. The heals, for example. It's really extremely rare that I find a situation where they'd be a good idea. Without being specced into them they take too long to be cast, pushback is severe, and the healing is marginal. Unless I managed to not have aggro from NPCs, it's more likely to get me killed then anything else. If I am really in such a bad position that I need a heal or die, I should better consider using stealth and running off. That might reset the fight,but it's more likely to save your life. I would recommend balancing the Concealment and Lethality trees considering that the heals are mostly irrelevant and not helpful. Procs and Rotations It's also frustrating to see how procs can wreck any good damage rotation. Sometimes I get another Shiv and thus tactical advantage to use another Laceration - or I end up having to use Overload or something else once or twice. It feels off. Maybe that's why the developers consider buffing Overload?

Yes. That's the only part of the EU that I really, really loved. it would ground SW a bit after the Prequel Super-Jedi SFX. Which is probably why it won't happen.

Why should he stop being lazy? Is this some kind of job or exercise that he must do to earn this money or advance his career (chances)? Or is this a computer game we play for fun and our personal enjoyment and entertainment? I know that species change and trait changes was a big deal in Startrek Online - the reason the developers didn't allow the changes wasn't really because they hated the idea, it was just the game wasn't designed to do it. But now traits can be respecced (and work totally different then they used to). I believe they still haven't the tech for race or gender changes, but that is still just a design limitation that can be overcome. The question is what priority it has compared to other features.

Well, I did play the original TIE Fighter and X-Wing with a Mouse and Keyboard, and when one of the later titles (was it Alliance or XvT?) no longer supported it, I disliked it. For a long time, I also played Descent with a Mouse and Keyboard. (In fact, I think I just recently did this gain, a few months back, I re-acquired the games via GOG.) I don't remember how I played the I-War games. The biggest reason to use keyboard and mouse to me seems that these are the controls you use everywhere else in the game, and switching to a joystick for a specific game mode is inherently awkward. If you don't consider this expansion to create a "pure" new game but something you do between all the other leveling, grinding, raiding and PvPing you do, then it might really be the most sensible thing to optimize for this and avoid having barriers to entry for all other players - even if that means that the hardcore space simulation crowd doesn't get its favourite control.

Yeah, but where to get a good joystick back then? I certainly wouldn't know where to find a decent 3-4 Axis Joystick that would give me the most and best options. And I still believe that for aiming, nothing beats the mouse. For trying to hunt a TIE Fighter that's trying to get in your back (or whatever the AI thought it was doing)... I suppose my hand and arm and my mouse pad would have thanked me if I had used a Joystick for that...

I always played X-Wing and TIE Fighter with a mouse and keyboard.